Larping

Before taking this class, I drove by the park past the interstate on West End on Sundays and saw what I found to be an amusing spectacle. A group of ten to twenty adults adorned in odd medieval outfits would run around the park with play swords, javelins, and maces hitting each other and falling down. While I was not quite sure what these people were doing, I could definitely tell that all of those partaking were having fun. Over the last week, I have found out that what I saw these people doing was called larping (Live Action Role Playing) and was actually quite common. In live action role playing, participants play a game of war while portraying fictional characters in a fantasy world. After listening to the NPR interview with documentarian Andrew Neel in class Tuesday, I gained a new prospective on larping. Apparently, many people find that through larping they can be someone they normally aren’t in the real world. In the documentary Darkon, Danny MacCarthur, a self proclaimed nerd, enjoys larping because he feels that he has much more power and control in the fictional world than in his real life. To me, this seems very similar to why many people chose to play MMORPGs. They are not fully satisfied with their real world life, and they use these virtual worlds to fill some of the gaps. Another interesting person portrayed in the documentary is Kenyon Wells, a business manager who used larping to develop real world skills that have drastically improved his life. Through larping, Kenyon developed great social and leadership skills that he believed led to his promotion to a management position in a successful business. According to Kenyon, “Long before I was ready to negotiate a multimillion-dollar business contract, I was negotiating a treaty between our country and other countries in Darkon.” Although larping is a virtual game, it can be very beneficial to people’s real world lives.