The nature of man is the same as the nature of a wolf and the same as the nature of an ox?

Good selection, liked it. 

Yes it does.  It applies to both.  Admittedly the times we generally play in don't have strong governments enforcing the laws, indeed, lawlessness is a recurring trope of LARPS in the UK.  So perpetrators of violence generally get off scot free.  Plus the abscence of corpses and blood also make it hard to track people down.  You'd get very, very bloody chopping people up (according to CSI) and this would preclude you from then strolling into a camp nonchalantly.  For the victims, frequently there aren't any lasting effects of a severe beating, as in they recover either immediately that they aren't dying or until they can get hold of a magic potion, don't even get me started on the lack of psychological trauma IC.

Terminal violence is pretty much the method of first and last resort for a lot of people.  Non-terminal violence is largely ineffective for the reasons given above, as is intimidation etc.  I think that once you've gotten very good at using violence, you should look at other methods.  However, again, many systems do not support less "extreme" methods, to me these would include the effective use of economic sanctions from simple blacklisting up to and including destabilising someone else's currency!  In high fantasy games, magical rituals of plague etc are seen as "game breaking" but how are they less "game breaking" then prevalence through simple numbers?  I don't know, I'd have said that it gave a much needed counterbalance to a smaller but specialised group.  Admittedly, that's the sort of group I'd be likely to play in, but hey.

Not quite, dealing with the threat of violence or becoming prepared to deal with it or finding ways to identify violent trends and neutralise them are the biggest activities I've been involved in.  However, it's definitely the single biggest factor because it doesn't matter if only 1% of the game is violent, that's the 1% that will see your character live or die.

To reverse the order, I think the game organisers should be clear on how much violence they are prepared to tolerate.  They design the system, the setting and vet the backgrounds of everyone who attends.  Similarly, the players of the game should respect the brief they are given by the organisers and find characterisations which fit the setting.  However from what I've seen there's always a tendency to want to be an iconoclast, to ask for special treatment and where's the fun in that?  The individual player is of course the most powerful person in this equation.  They can read the briefs and decide whether they're happy with what they read, if they're not they can double check with the game organisers and if they think the level of violence will be too high, they can exercise their veto and not come.  I find people who whinge about the game being too violent OOC irritating.  If they don't like it, then they can design and run their own.  Who knows, if it's interesting, some people may forsake their bloodthirsty ways and come play in it?

Dunno.  Will let you know.  ;-)  But seriously, I think you can, but OOC whispers will generally start within your own group if you're covert, and if you're overt in your actions, then how OOC is it anyway?

Only if you're going to really bad events. Level of violence varies, but there should always be consequences. IMHO, obviously.

Depends entirely on the game, thje world, the setting and how well its run. Sometimes yes, sometimes its far more difficult.

depends on the system, some are violent worlds where there is little law so its kill or be killed. Others are set now and the same considerations apply as in the real world.

In some yes. I have played games exclusively centred arpund immenent violent threat.

In others no.

If its truly a live roleplay (and to me that implys free player choice in their actions) then yes you must accept this MAY occur. You do not get to exempt yourself from part of the experience on a whim.

I have bno idea what you are talking about. Please elucidate.

I mean, in my experience, if a groups embarks upon activities involving the apprehension and killing of other individuals, for profit, fun or religious reasons, it seems to be irrelevant how successfully they achieve their aims or how IC undetected they are. A couple of days later, the dead people's groups turn up and beat the lot of them into damp patches on the floor. This stinks of the mystical alchemy that occurs at LRP events where OOC knowledge leaks across the mystical barrier and ends motivating IC actions. I mean, enquiring after time out as to why your mate is a new character now is only natural, the problem is that if enough people do this, someone somewhere will fail to draw the line correctly and decide to act upon it. Then everyone else conveniently presumes that this individual has found IC evidence of the criminal act, and jumps on the 'kill the baddies' bandwagon, with the reasoning 'well, why wouldn't I?'

I ought to point out that I've never been on the receiving end of this pattern, but I have been mugged and killed by a group and then seen everyone find it reasonable enough to wipe them out without IC evidence.

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The nature of man is the same as the nature of a wolf and the same as the nature of an ox?

You've been to lousy events then mate.

Yes and Yes. Violence in LRP - and I'm tempted to say all LRP - somehow ends up easy to start and usually non deadly. This stands true for attackers and victims. It makes it easy to mug people, but hard to kill them so usually a mugging is not considered worth pursuing unless there is a secondary political motive for the prosecution.

At the same time, people feel content to wander about without taking simple precautions against muggings or attacks, since they feel that being a victim of violence also has relatively few IC repercussions. Some people even get pissy if they actually have to face any repercussions at all - both as victims or perpetrators.

Friends of mine spotted a group of muggers at the first Maelstrom game, and sent out a guy as 'bait'. When the muggers jumped him, the remaining pair, in turn, jumped and killed at least 2, maybe 3 muggers. The result was one crying mugger, which is kind of silly when you reflect that he'd spent all night looking for someone to kill.

I think that most of the time, violence is promoted above other forms of settling conflict, certainly. Other methods depend on other aims - it's quite possible to play a fight-shy scholar though it's not always reasonable to expect to do or go where you want without facing a stabbin'. As for other means of conflict resolution, I thing that politics and trade are becoming more prominent at some events (Maelstrom for example) though there is always a sense that 'one day, that frothing mob out there is going to be frothing at us...' simply because so many players will do anything or follow anyone simply to get involved in a fight, and, might I add that few players elect to support the weaker side in these cases...which would at least make for a better fight with more people actually getting to hit stuff. I guess that really people want reflected glory at as little personal risk as possible.

Not in every game, though the freer player actions are, the more that this becomes the tendency so far. I think that giving the player a caretaker role, that is, giving them resources and such that have a concrete effect on the gameworld (without being superlammies) is a positive step towards curbing the 'pointless fight' tendency.

I don't believe that special treatment of any kind is appropriate in a LRP event. I get personally quite irritated by all manner of 'I'm a special, delicate and unique flower-ism' be it motivated by people's angstyness, personal horror stories, primadonnoid personality disorder, chemical imbalances or more often than not, responsibility escapism. I do accept that some people have genuine problems, but these people still have a personal responsibility to manage that. The majority of people with problems that I have experienced in LRP have simply had problems behaving like an adult, and if I was an organiser I would have taken them out of the game until they had calmed down and then sent them straight home.

The last time I had to deal with anything like this was in 2005. A guy had two very nearly violent outbursts in 3 nights, and I had to stop him from suffocating himself after he crawled between his tent outer and inner. He then offered me a fight once I had pulled him free and spent several hours after that yowling and spitting like a cat, which distressed my girlfriend somewhat and didn't help anyone sleep. The next day he was sent home, not by the refs but by the rest of the group, and we suffered considerable stigma as a result of his ridiculous behaviour.

Now I don't care what excuse this guy has for his behaviour, the practical upshot was that he sucked as a human being, and if I wanted to deal with that I'd become a mental health worker or work with young offenders. God knows, if someone had mugged him they would have got a shock - and it would be anything but the muggers' fault since this guy should have had a hazard warning label. I guess that I've gone the long way around saying that whereas IC violence (including mugging) is legitimate IC behaviour that everyone should know may happen to them, freaking out about it (an OOC response) is not really part of the game, and we all have a personal responsibility to limit it, or to not attend if we do not feel able to meet this requirement.

I do believe that, within reason, efforts should be made by organisers to include people who would otherwise be unable to attend, but I am currently unsure as to what is or is not reasonable efforts. Certainly within indoor events, the provision of disabled access is possible to achieve, but outdoor/fest games probably have logistical problems enough as it is. The perspectives of organisers would be interesting, but I fear that I'm already heading 'new thread'-wards in a stream-of consciousness way...

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The nature of man is the same as the nature of a wolf and the same as the nature of an ox?