Is This Revolutionary?

By robin.dwyerhickey, in Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay

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Foolishboy said:

Sorry to side track, but LARPs are definitely roleplaying games.

They have concrete rules and systems for skill checks, even though some are as crazy as using rock-paper-scissors.

Sorry to keep going with this side track but LARP's are not RPG's, there is a strong hint in the fact that they are called LARP's not RPG's. The two bands of LARP players that I've met would not even consider playing a traditional RPG.

"Live action role playing" vs. "role playing game".

This semantic argument is pretty silly.

Also: I too have a personal anecdote that I can use as evidence to back up my argument:

Both parties that I've known (D&D and Vampire: the Masquerade) also played their table top variants (especially in winter).

This is like a nerdy mexican standoff.

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I do SCA, live action RP, live battles and the like.

I will not call all these "stuff" RPGs.

Quite the opposite. I play both to experience different types of games.

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Necrozius said:

This is like a nerdy mexican standoff.

Democratically you have been out voted gui%C3%B1o.gif .

So let's just agree to disagree.

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Foolishboy said:

The two bands of LARP players that I've met would not even consider playing a traditional RPG.
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jadrax said:

Foolishboy said:

The two bands of LARP players that I've met would not even consider playing a traditional RPG.

Interesting, that does not mirror any of the many Live Role-play groups I have come into contact with.

One group said RPG's we no fun, the other looked at me like I had three heads for even suggesting playing a traditional RPG.

But the more important issue would you consider LARP to be the same as RPG though?

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Two different mediums, doing the same thing namely role-playing: But as Active and Passiv, Active being larping and passive being rpg.

Thats my stance on both my hobbies.

And MET (Minds Eye Theater) is not pure larping, its a hybrid of both as you in the new uses cards, and both old and new use a char sheet. Normal larp is no such thing and much more free.

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Foolishboy said:

But the more important issue would you consider LARP to be the same as RPG though?

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jadrax said:

Foolishboy said:

But the more important issue would you consider LARP to be the same as RPG though?

TBH, the whole hobby is just gaming. Dissecting it down any further than that is largely pointless, counter-productive and doomed to failure because there is far more in the shared areas of the Venn Diagram than in the outer regions.

This.

Needless division is an exercise in retardation. Maintaining standards of purity is completely silly.

Dungeons and Dragons, the first instance in which you played a single character in a game that had no means of winning was based on miniature wargaming rules. Gary Gygax's Chainmail. When Dave Arneson adapted the rules to single character combat the RPG seed was born. And they still used minatures. All the measurements in the first edition were given in inches. Not feet. So arguably, to be considered a classical RPG a system must have a miniatures component of some sort. But that's silly. Many a great game that pretty much anyone would classify an RPG contains no miniature combat system. Call of Cthulhu for example.

I would say that the DEFINING characteristics of a Role-Playing game is each player takes on the role of a character, and there is no pre-defined victory condition. In other words the game doesn't have an ending. Everything else is just window dressing.