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Champion
 
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The added benefit I see in adding entertainment to a LRP fest, is not so much that I won`t get bored when I play there, but that other people won`t get bored when they 'lose concentration'. Speaking for myself, maybe it`s because I`m not on a diet of coffee and Red Bull, but I can manage not getting bored - and getting very little sleep - while NPCing at an eighty player catered weekend that runs from friday evening till sunday noon, where there`s plot written for every single character that`s been to a previous event (sometimes literally so  ). When playing at a bigger fest over four or more days, well, bored may not be the right word, but there will be plenty of times when I`ll be in dire need of some distraction. Now in a small system any player who notices another player lapsing off, can give him a little peptalk to keep him going through the linear, or just strike up an IC (or if need be OC) conversation to offer a little pause and distraction. At a big event, you`re not faced with single characters suffering from attention-span exhaustion, but with zombie hordes of a kind you don`t want to encounter. As a single player you`d be more inclined to avoid them and the places they hang about. On that scale, they become an organisational issue. So yes, I`m all for the organisers providing some distraction, to prevent bored players dropping OC or starting to look for an IC fight just for the heck of it.As for how old the German scene is, I couldn`t give an exact answer. The scene in the Netherlands is about twenty years old, so I would be unlikely to have heard anything about them before that because I hadn`t grown antennae yet. About a dozen years ago one Dutch club started a fest in the style of the Gathering (which turned into a Frankensteinesk creature that ate it`s creator and then spit it out again) and in the early years I met a German player who told me he played in a system called Mittellande, where each German region represented a different country in a common world. Characters from one country could travel to another if they had an IC rationale (I suppose you`d have to make a new character for a 'foreign' region if you didn`t have the rationale but still wanted to play there occassionaly). I think he mentioned that sometimes they had bigger events where characters from different countries came together. He made at least clear that this system was spread over the country. In later years German traders came to the event. The really big German events all sprang up in the last ten years, I believe. I remember getting a flyer for New Order, a cooperative event of two or three clubs, some six years ago. I believe it was for their second event, but they weren`t the first. Hang on, I just thought of something. The Germans have this one very big and important happening once a year called SPIEL, 'die weltweit größte Publikumsmesse für Spiele und Spielzeug', or: 'the world`s biggest public convention for games and toys', that draws public from across Europe (or from the Benelux at least). The German games industry is very active (Settlers of Cataan et al.) so it`s the place to be if you like games. Now what I hear from friends who`ve visited there, LRP has a growing presence. It`s starting to dominate the RPG section, which itself has gotten one of the bigger halls (hall 6 in 2007 if you visit the site). Probably mainly due to the fact that LRP stuff is bigger than your average snake&ladders, but still, the gameloving public gets exposed to it.
________________________________________________________ - IRL: Edwin Hofstra
- - mostly crewing at the moment
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Squire
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I don't know whether this really reveals anything or not but just some extra to add to the German/British differences:
A year or so back, I found myself with time on my hands in Hamburg and stumbled across a tabletop and LARP shop. I got chatting to the guy who ran the shop and we started comparing LRP knowledge. Something that particularly struck me was the 'variety/invention' of UK LRP vs the German style. It very much came across that the style of most German LRP was a sort of pseudo-medieval re-enactment.
I was telling him about Maelstrom and such like, talking of cat-people and bird-people and bug-people and people in frock-coats with rapiers and pistols. He told me that the most unusual thing he had seen at German LRP were elves and orcs and so forth. Also, the wonder of Tallows-style rapiers and thrust-safe spears were an unknown to him.
He described German LRP to me as pretty much "German medieval + a bit of LotR".
**************
Moxious!
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Squire
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Just a quick thought, do you think gender expectations have anything to do with the difference between England and Germany, here in the UK I see many systems that are mostly about Blokes beer and swords, 'The Wife' is left at home with 'The Kids' while 'The Man' goes out and does his thing and the only women who attend the events are girlfriends that have been dragged along or mature supervisory types to keep everyone from dying from alcohol poisoning or extreme stupidity (not mutually exclusive)
Dumnonni has a Dutch group now and I notice that there are far more couples enjoying their role play together and recently I have been in contact with a couple of German groups that have been considering making the trip over to see us and the same thing seems prevalent from what I have seen there, in fact it seems to be the women who are interested in role play and the men slightly less so.
These impressions might be wrong and might mean nothing at all, but there they are.
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Mark, Dumnonni Chronicles Ref.
www.Dumnonni.com/dc/
www.dumnonni.com/gallery
Where ever you go, there you are.
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Wag
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Dumnonni Dog (5/19/2008)
These impressions might be wrong and might mean nothing at all, but there they are.
I'd suggest that your impressions don't match up with a lot of other people's, and I can also name at least 20 women I've met at fests who'd take serious issue with your description of them there. The Healer-Girlfriend and the Matriarch-Queen may be the stereotypes, but that doesn't mean they're even close to a majority at most events.
(Sorry if this sounds a little aggressive, but I've just come back from an event where every single stereotype you mentioned there was blown out of the water so hard I'd be surprised if any bits came back down again.)
PD - Brother Farael of the Ordo Dictum Dominus
EOS - Lord Nasir Suran
6P - System creator (now retired), Andrei Treune of Clan Suner
RL - Will Robinson
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Wag
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While I'm not sure I agree with the way Dumnoni Dog states the case my experience of LRP is that fighting tends to be very popular with men and less popular with women. If that is reflective then the traditional gender bias in table-top roleplaying might well have had a strong influence on the development of LRP in this country, which as best I can tell, seems to have got more social and less combative over the years.
chalicier (5/19/2008)
(Sorry if this sounds a little aggressive, but I've just come back from an event where every single stereotype you mentioned there was blown out of the water so hard I'd be surprised if any bits came back down again.)
*shrug* From what I could see EOS seemed as supportive of the general stereotype that a greater percentage of blokes prefer combat in LRP than woman as any other LRP event I've been to. However putting individual analysis of the event aside, it's not really possible to blow a stereotype out of the water with a relatively small example set, it just doesn't make any sense. You don't prove that giraffes don't have really long necks by finding a couple of giraffes with short necks.
History is an important source for LRP. Along with other works of fiction.
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Wag
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Matt Pennington (5/19/2008)
While I'm not sure I agree with the way Dumnoni Dog states the case my experience of LRP is that fighting tends to be very popular with men and less popular with women. If that is reflective then the traditional gender bias in table-top roleplaying might well have had a strong influence on the development of LRP in this country, which as best I can tell, seems to have got more social and less combative over the years.
Oh, most certainly - but he wasn't expressing a tendency, he was saying this:
Dumnonni Dog (5/19/2008)
'The Wife' is left at home with 'The Kids' while 'The Man' goes out and does his thing and the only women who attend the events are girlfriends that have been dragged along or mature supervisory types to keep everyone from dying from alcohol poisoning or extreme stupidity (not mutually exclusive)
That's not a tendency, that's an open expression of stereotype. And I'm not just saying that because I left my little girl with 'The Wife' last weekend. 
*shrug* From what I could see EOS seemed as supportive of the general stereotype that a greater percentage of blokes prefer combat in LRP than woman as any other LRP event I've been to.
Not at all certain about that. Hell, your own group was a counterexample.
Bearing in mind the balance of genders number-wise at EOS is fairly ordinary (as opposed to Strom, where it appears much more equitable, although that may just be my perception) there's a very strong showing of combative and confrontational female characters. Yes, there are a number of male-only combat groups, but they aren't the only kind of confrontational group in the game. Cool as the Brood are, there's more to the game than Shouty Man-Orcs With Big Shields.
However putting individual analysis of the event aside, it's not really possible to blow a stereotype out of the water with a relatively small example set, it just doesn't make any sense. You don't prove that giraffes don't have really long necks by finding a couple of giraffes with short necks.
But you do prove that a generalisation that all giraffes have really long necks is so much bollocks, which was kind of my point. Finding a couple of giraffes with short necks means that either you need to reconsider your generalisation, or you need to come up with a new name for these bush-eating gangly things. Since I don't think we're going to define a new gender for "combat womens", I think that could classify as blowing the stereotype wide open.
PD - Brother Farael of the Ordo Dictum Dominus
EOS - Lord Nasir Suran
6P - System creator (now retired), Andrei Treune of Clan Suner
RL - Will Robinson
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Wag
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chalicier (5/19/2008)
That's not a tendency, that's an open expression of stereotype.What do you see as the difference between the two? What can a stereotype be *except* a tendency? No-one calls gravity a tendency, we regard that as an invariant fact, but it's a tendency for men to be taller than woman. I meet a handful of women who are taller than I am, it most certainly doesn't prove that the stereotype/generalization is wrong.
Not at all certain about that. Hell, your own group was a counterexample. Not my group... Will's group.... 
I felt our group supported the general tendency personally, but I wasn't looking that closely at any individual group.
Bearing in mind the balance of genders number-wise at EOS is fairly ordinary (as opposed to Strom, where it appears much more equitable, although that may just be my perception) there's a very strong showing of combative and confrontational female characters. Yes, there are a number of male-only combat groups, but they aren't the only kind of confrontational group in the game.
To me this makes no sense. You've pretty much just stated that most of the hitty characters at EOS are male, albeit by stating it in terms that most of the characters at EOS are male. You then seem to think this proves that it is untrue that hitting things appeals to men more than women. I just can't follow this logic. Even if all the women at EOS wore mail and used two-handers it wouldn't prove your case that the stereotype was untrue, if there were many more men there than women at the event (it wouldn't prove the generalization was right either, mind).
Cool as the Brood are, there's more to the game than Shouty Man-Orcs With Big Shields. Had we played shouty orcs with big shields, I suspect we'd have had a few less women. Sneaky thieving goblins seems has more appeal to women than "big and hit things" I *think*. Which is pretty much the point originally made.
However putting individual analysis of the event aside, it's not really possible to blow a stereotype out of the water with a relatively small example set, it just doesn't make any sense. You don't prove that giraffes don't have really long necks by finding a couple of giraffes with short necks.
But you do prove that a generalisation that all giraffes have really long necks is so much bollocks, which was kind of my point.
You prove that it isn't true for ALL giraffes, you categorically DON'T prove that it isn't true for MOST giraffes, which is what you would need to prove that the assertion of the stereotype was wrong.
Finding a couple of giraffes with short necks means that either you need to reconsider your generalisation, or you need to come up with a new name for these bush-eating gangly things.
No, it most categorically doesn't. It just proves that not all giraffes have long necks.
Since I don't think we're going to define a new gender for "combat womens", I think that could classify as blowing the stereotype wide open.
We seem to be utterly failing to communicate over the very concept of what is intended with the idea of a stereotype/generalisation. I think you have misunderstood what the word means, so I'm going to leave it at this, since this can't possibly go anywhere from here!
History is an important source for LRP. Along with other works of fiction.
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Wag
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Matt Pennington (5/19/2008)
I just can't follow this logic.
Logic is a white, male, bourgeois, European construct historically used to denigrate and belittle the Other. Naturally, if we are going to embrace the equality imperative we must accept intellectual plurality as more than a token gesture, we must accept the equal relevance of *feeling* and disallow reactionary attempts to censor through the invocation of "consistency". An excess of veracity can be counterproductive to the acceptance of transformative social goals - technical inaccuracies may be serving spiritual truths.
Marios
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