I'm both a Christian and a Lrper and I've attended all of the easter Maelstroms and each year I've found a local Church to attend an Easter Day Service.

I've always found the churchs in question to be welcoming and have had no problems with drop in Visitors.

As to the wider church, not so sure.  whilst there have been plenty of stories about the Christion Right being up in arms about how this hobby is a work of Satan etc etc,  I've always though of it as a minority view rather than the opinion of the Wider church.  Although I feel that might be a topic for a compleatly different thread.

Back on topic,  One thing that I have seen well recieved was when a Lions sanctioned event fell on rememberance Sunday and the Scouts who ran the site invited the players to attend a rememberance service.  They seem quite shocked when 100+ lrpers in full kit trooped over to take part as they had only done 20 or so hymnnsheets. So some recognition of the outside world is not so bad.

Pete

Will Mosh for Food

The rememberance was given as an example of a non religous event that it was nice to see recognised.  Though I draw the line well below showing the football in the Bar at an event.

Pete

Will Mosh for Food

We actually had a discussion on the way back from the event this weekend about our Dog. The upshot of the discussion was that we were going to minimise the number of events we attended where animals were not allowed to attend. Basically, we would rather miss an event, even an event we possibly enjoyed a lot, than be forced to put him in kennels more than necessary. So this is an example of commitments in RL influencing LRP.

Weddings (as well as other family and even friends social gatherings) are another example. We were forced to not book for Victoriana because there was a close family wedding that coincided and there was no way we could miss it without being churlish. There have been a number of other cases where this has occured. There was also a couple of players for Waypoint who recently told me that they may not be able to make the next event because some friends of theirs were having an important anniversary near that weekend and they may be expected to attend some celebration. As it was, there was no celebration (the couple clearly decided to go for doing couply things for the anniversary than a big party) so they later booked.

And a similar situation to the religious debate... I know of several people who were in two minds about attending one particular Maelstrom because it coincided with the first episode of the new Doctor Who...

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The Whispering God is your friend... trust the Whispering God...

Ruins of Empire

1st - 3rd Feb, 2008, Gladstone scout centre, Chester

I suppose the extent to which organisers should avoid clashes depends how many people will be inconvenienced by the clash and what it is. For example, the majority of my old Maelstrom group were invited to one group members' wedding during a Maelstrom weekend. It would have been very unreasonable to expect PD to rearrange. However, had it been, say, a Lions event then the invitees would have been nearly a quarter or the regular player base, and so the organisers arguably should look at finding a work around/compromise/pick a different weekend if possible.

Likewise if the player with a broken leg is the one the plot revolves around, it's more serious than if they're more background this event, and the organisers may be advised to compromise. But ultimately, it's up to the event runners rather than the players to make that call.

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LT - Captain Iolanthe Swan

Riftworld - Jenna Neraid, Clan Sceptre

Brighton Below - Drizzle