Understanding the Fantasized Past

Understanding the Fantasized Past

There comes a time where the man becomes a monster, and the monster becomes a man. Where the civilized turn barbarisitc, and the barbaristic turn civilized. From then on out we enter in an existent world filled with morbid creatures, medieval weaponry, and confusing languages. Larping is the name of the game, which means Live Action Role Playing. A live game where the individual player plays a role in a collectively created setting called the medieval fantasy world. This world has its own state laws, religions, and human nature mainly reflecting the medieval era. Early Psychologists defined role playing games as being a form of escapism from reality, but at modern times, the way of gaming changed, because nowadays, larping does not lead to escapism, rather even improves our personal development.

Society is affected by the multimedia, and that is a fact. Stating the name Lord of the Rings, Warcraft, or Harry Potter, to be widely known, is also a fact. The term RPG (role playing game) evolved from historical mythical, fairy tales to a form of playing of these tales. A game, for example, named Warcraft, has been sold as computer, board, and card games distributed globaly, and is now a financial success in terms of the game concept. The concept is complex, therefore let me explain it in a broader sense. As with most real-time strategy computer games, the player has to control

his faction, in terms of construction, recruitments and science. Warcraft features many opposing factions, the noble Humans, the savage Orcs, or the swift Elves. Warcraft was unique in that it dealt with fantasy settings and archetypes, including melee battles and spell-casting taken from earlier roman and greek fairy tales. Each faction's units and buildings have a counterpart within the other faction. With the exception of some spells, each unit is basically the same as its counterpart, with only slight variations. For example, orc spearmen do slightly more damage than human archers while having a slightly reduced range. RPGs is well known to being very addictive, keeping the player fixated on his or her chair for approximately 2 to12 hours a day, and that's were the main problem arrives. Many players attenuate and are not challenged socially, due to their addiction. "The human brain has no real way to distinguish between created and actual memories, which is why the things we do and see in gaming become so vivid and so personal, and all I can see from that is a bunch of antisocial, physically

undeveloped dreamers. (Garrett)

It is mainly the male side of the genders whom deal with these problems, because the world of RPGs focuses on chivalry, meaning it is all about using violence to gain the good, for example, killing an equal evil opponent to save the towns people. It sounds nice, yet the reality shows a vapid and timid person sitting for more then 3 hourse in front of a computer, and the picture of chivalry fades.

Famous writers are sometimes referred to be fantasists, because they are mainly driven by insight and creativity. A fantasist is an individual whose art is to live in a magical or other supernatural life formed by his own imaginary world. A fantasist was called to be the main creator for fantasy-computer, -board, -stories and -card games. Creations such as larping, was invented by fantasists. It is unclear who invented larping, but it is known for it to have started in Great Britain around the 80s. Due to the lack of advertisement, and the unfully developed game rule, it took twenty more years to finish the game. LARP means live action role play. LARP evolved from an earlier genre called the RPG, due to the lack of social activities in RPGs. In RPGs the player gets to control one or several characters in the game, while on the other hand, in LARPs, the player is the character in a live environment. This idea evolved from fantasists that saw the problems of RPGs and the bad reputation it made.

I personally have experienced the heart of the world of fantasies, in every aspect, but I have never heard of the modern creation of a game like larping. I was introduced to it during spring break, when I was in germany. My friends there, take gaming more passionately then I do and most of them have too comfortable lives, due to the fact that they play almost all types of Rpgs everyday . They explained to me the basics of larping. You as a character try to fit into an imaginary world. Imagine yourself in a medieval fantasy war and you have no weaponry nor armory to defend yourself and suddenly you were hit by an axe and your dead, then the game would be over. The next time try to find the salesman, because he or she offers you a variety of all types of survival accessories. So what would you choose? The most important things you would need as a beginner is a weapon, from there on you could choose a variety of axes, swords, bows, hammers, moon stars, spears etc. Keep in mind that these weapons are made out of a very heavy and hard rubber plastic, making the weapon non-lethal, for example, the arrows have a padding on the front so that the target is no impaled by it. Everything else is made out of real material, but not the weaponry assortments. Armor, for example, the chain mail is real, made out of heavy and robust metal chains. Shields, helmets, paddings etc. are also real. Larping encourages writers to imagine creative stories for the game, giving it new job opportunities. Another new job would come back to working with steel, due to the fact that most armors are and can only be created by hand-craftsmanship, jobs like a blacksmith, designers, writers and so forth. When the player finally chooses what he wants to equip himself with, then he or she has a greater chance to survive. When Fully equipped, the player gets explore the village, build up by other players, resembling a tribal form of environment, and that may vary through other places and time of game. All these traits of the game, are just there to stimulate the imagination of the player. The player gets to solve riddles, ally with other players, complete missions by the higher ranked players, trade in valuable goods, dual other players, or even go into war. The game offers a lot more then what I've explained and it is only recommended for adults, due to the complexity of the game. LARP is an extended interaction between three things - a world, its rules and the people in it.

What I found most compelling and very interesting to look at, is that larping should never be considered antisocial, for as many have judged it to be. The most surprising thing I have learned was that Larpers are people that come from all different backgrounds, some of them have never even experienced earlier games to have a foundation of understanding the complexities of role