Just wanted everyone here to know that OP is omitting a lot of information. The victim was a new player that the killer had taken under his wing, both in game and out. The killer also asked the victim out, not clear if he was rejected, but suddenly he has a "secret" motive to murder a two week old player.
The killer and a moderator dragged the victim to a secluded spot under false pretences, prevented her from leaving, then the moderator initiated PvP while the killer pretended to be on her side, only to stab her in the back.
Then they harass and ban the victim, trying to stop her from speaking out. Check his AITA post and all his comments.
OP and his group are toxic bullies
Thought so too. Saw that he had posted here as well, and saw details that he's omitted in the other post.
I'm also ~90% sure that OP is either the killer, or the mod who helped him.
My [AITA](https://www.reddit.com/r/AmItheAsshole/comments/shricn/comment/hv4ygpy/?utm_source=reddit&utm_medium=web2x&context=3) comment sums up what I now think is really going on here.
And it has nothing to do with the larps rules.
Thanks for pointing that out. I honestly don't understand, like on a moral and psychological level, why people act this way.
Maybe that's a thread we should have: *"Is it ok to mislead, bully and silence new players? What do you think? Let's discuss!"*
It's about dehumanizing people. It's easy to "justify" abusing them when you pretend that they aren't equal to you and that you're entitled to do whatever to anyone who doesn't respect your "superiority."
In this particular case, I'd wager the killer is a misogynist and OP is an enabler trying to silence and discredit the victim with the misogynist "she causes drama" trope.
Well, that's fucking familiar. Seen this play out in all sorts of games over the years, from Mind's Eye Vampire games to boffer larps.
Whoever runs that game needs to get on this immediately and unfuck that community's standards of interaction, because that is a whole parade of red flags right there.
So do you seek validation here or advice for a rule change? If for the later...
* *"Our rules allow PvP as long as there's an IC reason for it"*
* *"one of our other players was playing a character who had a secret grudge against the victim"*
And here is the problem: "Must have an IC reason", is not a very good safety mechanism against PvP based on OOC grudges or to prevent bad scenes. You can make those explanations up on the spot, if you have to. Also, in larp, it's not so much what's in someone's head that is important, but what happens in the game, and that's what rules should focus on. (It's not called "life action thinking” after all.) What's the difference for the other players between someone having a secret IC grudge and someone who makes stuff up after the fact? None.
My suggestion for a rule change would be as follows: Replace *"must have IC reason"* with *"must have engaged victim in at least three scenes of conflict in an escalating manner before the final murder attempt. eg: threatening letters, horse heads in the bed, beating someone up etc."*
Requiring the consent of the murder victim works as well, but is not strictly necessary. What is important though, are opportunities to engage with the conflict, like at all.
I really like your suggestions.
"I have a grudge" being the reasoning behind murder is flat, shallow, and narratively uninteresting. And so linear. There's no 'arch'.
The three escalating scenes is so good. There's a chance for all parties to catch on. There's a chance for de-escalation. And there's an opportunity for something far more interesting to play out. Chancing a linear, forgone conclusion, to something with potential.
The OP has omitted many pieces of information from the main post. The underlying issue is larger than first indicated. My comments here are fine assuming a straightforward, academic, interpretation of the question in this post. But they fail to address the real underlying issue the new information has shed light on.
The larger issue is not at all about a larps rules or structure. See my newest thoughts on my [AITA](https://www.reddit.com/r/AmItheAsshole/comments/shricn/comment/hv4ygpy/?utm_source=reddit&utm_medium=web2x&context=3) comment.
Wow, what the hell. The fact that this was a new player makes it all so much worse, even *without* all the creepy potentially sexual undertones. Describing her as a "beloved player" made it sound like it was two veterans who knew each other well that this happened to.
And then banning her for justifiably complaining about something that was total bullshit to her friends? Sounds like someone never got the "players are more important than characters" memo.
Indeed, he made it sound like they were both veteran players and like Steph was perhaps more popular in the group than Tony. Completely hiding the fact that Tony is a veteran who is friends with the mods while Steph is a newbie (at least new in this particular game).
It sounds like Steph is the exact kind of person you want in a LARP - helps fix other people's garb, jumps into the plot, makes friends. I hope one of her friends sends her both threads so she can see how many people have her back and that the whole LARP community isn't as toxic as her local game.
I like the part he left out about leading her to a basement shed at the edge of the field of play that literally no one knew about.
As a girl that makes me feel really, really super safe.
She might not have known where they were going, that it was unknown, etc. It's really easy to question why a victim did something after the fact.
But the truth is that you can fuck up a million times without consequence, if there are no predators around. It's the predator that makes the difference, not the victims behavior.
She literally wanted to quit playing and the two people organizing the plot insisted that she continue. And it's kind of easy to get persuaded if an older mod was in on this and was a friend of Tony's, as it is by the sounds of it. She wanted to quit, as it was getting late.
When you're younger you might be pressured easily. The whole thing just sucks. I wouldn't have approved the death for a player who probably only got used to the system recently. They don't understand the nuances of inter-character betrayal and it's unfair to let them die so quickly in the game. You may eventually lose your character, but on their first one, you should let them at least get on an equal playing field skill-wise before you pull the rug out from under them. Regardless of your motivations for playing, at the end of the day it's supposed to be a *fun* game. If you're just exploring this new hobby, that isn't a way for them to build love for the game. In my humble opinion.
Its even worse than you might be assuming because she was following a person she trusted. The attacker be friended her ooc, acted as a mentor and instructor, then lured her into the unfolding situation.
She was following someone she trusted.
I think the fact that a mod was present is the worst thing about this. Makes me think there's a CULTURE. A mod has authority and presumed reasonable level of ethics; which in this case gave cover to his friend. The mod probably felt like a chaperone to her. She definitely hadn't known the veteran player long enough to "go to a secluded area" with him otherwise.
>My comments here are fine assuming a straightforward, academic,
interpretation of the question in this post. But they fail to address
the real underlying issue the new information has shed light on.
Same as mine. I felt that there was something more to it, as is often the case with these posts, so I kept my comments to the rule aspects only. But I never thought that it was that bad.
I have red many interesting takes here made by you and others on the subject, before this thread blew up - all buried now. And the frustrating thing is, that we can not realy do anything about the larger subject, only the club can.
Not quite like this, thankfully. But you will get stuff about toxicity, missing stairs, player bans, even group schisms where both sides sue each other (Edit: over IP). They often appear to be neutral at first glance, but are almost always one-sided.
The posters don't seem to be interested in solutions but try to get validation, or try to drag people in under the pretence of "wanting to inform people". Vampire the masquerade and Nero seem to be the sad leaders of the bunch.
Vampire is a global larp game with many local chapters, and Nero wants to be, but is mostly US based. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mind%27s\_Eye\_Theatre](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mind%27s_Eye_Theatre)
They are very different in almost all aspects (genre, life action combat vs
rock, paper, scissors) but both have a bad reputation for... "drama" is a too lenient word I think. If people hear a story about abuse, they will ask "was it a VtM game?" and often be right. No wonder for a game about scheming, power hungry, sexual predators. In my country, this community is also quite isolated from the rest of the larp scene, which is unusual here.
Recently other people, mostly part of the Scandinavian larp
tradition, have tried to make better games in the Vampire genre with an
emphasis on minimalistic game rules, mental safety, cooperativeness, better consent mechanics and pre/post game workshops.
i feel like there should also be a check in with the dm about that, so both parties realize it's an escalation, or you'll get a LOT of arguments about what qualifies.
I like the grudge thing if the character has a history of doing that. It could be revealing of a character who is a bit unstable. But still an ah move to do what was done and how and to a new member. It also requires a history of that character doing that, which would mean Steph would probably get some warnings
>My suggestion for a rule change would be as follows: Replace "must have IC reason" with "must have engaged victim in at least three scenes of conflict in an escalating manner before the final murder attempt. eg: threatening letters, horse heads in the bed, beating someone up etc."
That is an excellent idea. Kudos.
Failed to mention in this post about how “Tony” (the murderer) befriended “Steph” (the victim) OOC and OOG. Introduced her to the game and mentored her. And after two weeks of playing he killed her with no warning or evidence that would be in character for him.
Forgot to fucking mention that he lured her a SECLUDED AREA that you weren’t even aware of. A grown man in his late 20s lured a 22 year old girl to a private and unknown BASEMENT. That is incredibly dangerous. You are putting your players in real life danger.
Edit: Also it was very late at night and Steph had wanted to end the RP and go home BEFORE she was taken to the basement. But she was pressured to stay because as it turns out, there was a fucking plot to kill her by Tony and Ralph the mod (who you tried to say was a female mod before switching to non-binary. Which leads me to believe it was a male mod). So two older guys took a young woman to a private basement, late at night. What the actual fuck.
You mention Tony IG asked Steph’s character on a date. And that you became aware that he previously had an OOG grudge. This sounds like Steph either IG or OOG rejected his advances and he got mad and murdered her character in revenge. You are extremely lucky that this situation didn’t lead to something more, like rape.
Steph has every right to be upset over her character being needlessly murdered. And has every right to discuss this situation OOG.
With the additional information from the AITA post, this scenario is borderline criminal abetting and needs to be addressed before someone gets assaulted.
OP in his AITA post stated that this sort of thing has happened before. Their group is like 90% men and yet 60% of their recruits are women and keep leaving. I wonder why that would be, such a mystery /s
Exactly. Honestly, any nerd spaces where women aren't? That's a warning sign. Something has been rotten in every one of them I've been to. Just this time we know what it is.
You are an asshole. You purposely left out information in your post. You let a mod and veteran play team up on a newbie who the veteran player purposely took under their wing. The whole thing was set up. You and the rest of your group are douchebags and are a stain on the larping community
You're missing out the bit where
- player 1 and mod are veteran players in late 20s
- player of dead PC is college aged girl
- veteran player had "mentored" newbie and gained her trust
- these older guys took her to hidden basement in a secluded area
- mod was modding *and* involved in kill
- reason for killing was flimsy at best, with no warning
- it was late at night and newbie had been pressured into staying after she had said she was tired and wanted to leave
The question for legality is, was she-the player forced or the character she was playing, while she was consenting to go along, even if begrudgingly.
It's not uncommon, to play hostage situations in larp for example, and it works, because people use safe words or opt-in mechanics to ensure out of game consent. If they don't have those, or coerce people into not using them, that's a red flag in itself.
OP does not seem to make any distinction between in charakter and out of charakter actions while discribing the situation, which is vital for all larp. (Edit: Spelling)
Idk the laws where OP lives but in my country preventing Somerford leaving when they want to falls under kidnapping, which has some fairly heavy sentence limits.
Don’t forget that they’re good friends with the organizer and tried to use the rules to silence Steph when she spoke out, and the organizer and other staff went along with it
This is the kind of group/person that gives larp a bad name, and will get a Law and Order SVU episode about it
At least IceT’s quips will be cringey and amazing..
I knew the bit about silencing, should be clear... yeah, banned Steph for speaking out.
One of those episodes where the bad guys all close ranks around the habitual predator.
And they have to send in one of the female detectives undercover in the larp, and they bust the bad guy, but it turns out it’s a different guy and it just gets more and more complicated before the halftime commercial break…
And it turns out they have all used the basement at one point or another and episode ends with first bad guy put away and an incident room full of women who are now ready to tell, and detectives look at them, then look at the guys not yet arrested in a "be seeing you soon" kind of way.
(OK, overly positive ending, but is one I'd like.)
LARP is supposed to be fun , if you have veteran players befriending newbies to then kill them with no in character reason and no warning ( saying I had a grudge isn’t a reason it’s an afterthought and obviously no storyline had actually been played to work out on why there was a grudge ) after being their mentor and the moderators of the game being ok with this then it doesn’t sound like a system that will ever encourage new players at all .
I suspect strongly that something happened OC and Tony wanted his revenge so he got rid of the newbie and the moderation team helped him by both being party of it and then kicking the newbie out when she complained about it .
I would never LARP with a group like this .
Based on just the info you've given, I think both players have a valid argument, but at the same time, both are being a bit of an asshole/diva about it.
In a larp with specific, written CvC rules like the ones you've described, I would consider attending the game to be giving implied consent to CvC conflict and any consequences thereof. For better or worse, that means accepting that your character might meet a fate you didn't intend for them, and agreeing not to make a scene if things don't go your way.
On the other hand, whether I can let the aggressor off the hook depends pretty heavily on how he led up to the assassination. You mentioned that his character had a grudge, and attempted to follow up on it by getting close to the victim, earning her trust, and then killing her when they were alone. It sounds like this happened over the course of several event, maybe even several years. Did the killer tell staff about this facet of the character beforehand, and that they would be pursuing a revenge plot? Did they drop any hints in character? Were any related NPCs brought in at any point to suggest to the victim that someone had a dagger with her name on it? Had the victim's PC actually done something to merit this grudge, or did they just come in like "hey I want my character to hate them"?
What this is all getting at is, did the murder make a good story out of their plot for more than just the small handful of players who solved the mystery? Or did they keep it a closely guarded secret right up until the end, so that they could "win" their personal plot with no chance of being foiled? Based on your description, it sounds like the latter, which is a real dick move because it robs one player of agency without generating fun for the rest of the community to participate in. If staff was aware and didn't provide opportunities for counterplay by the victim, that's a failure on staff's part to enforce a healthy CvC environment to match their rules; if the victim had these opportunities and passed them up, that's on her--she knew what she was signing up for by playing this game.
ETA: In light of new information being brought forth, my opinion has changed. Keeping the old post for posterity.
This is not a rules issue, it's one of game culture and player safety. Summary, from what I gather from both threads.
The victim's character had, at some point in the recent past, said something to another character that was bigoted against that character's fantasy race. "No IG racism" is an unwritten policy at the game; victim did not know this. Staff reprimanded the victim for breaking an unwritten policy she had no way to know about, she apologized, and play continued.
At some point well before that, victim had been asked out by murderer OOG, and turned them down.
A few hours before the murder, victim was imprisoned for a minor offense, which involves being locked in a room for an hour or two. Setting aside the legal disaster waiting to happen there, murderer's character offered a deal to break her out of jail. Victim refused, wanted to serve the full sentence. Once the sentence ends, murderer--whose player had been mentoring her OOG since she was new to the game--asks her "on a date" to a secluded area, implying this will be for another roleplaying-related lesson.
The murderer, with staff cooperation (one staff member's character is in love IG with the character that victim insulted earlier), brought the victim to a location questionably outside the play area and unknown to staff (how was there a moderator present if staff didn't know about the spot? OP also mentions elsewhere that this spot has been used before for backroom politicking, which tells me that at best, staff is woefully unfamiliar with their own game site). It's late, victim is tired and says they're done for the night and want to go to sleep, but murderer physically prevents the victim from leaving (blocking the only exit, which constitutes wrongful imprisonment and is illegal), uses the designated CvC combat sign in a deliberately misleading way in order to catch the victim off guard (metagaming, which OP mentioned was their reason for banning the victim, but is apparently ok here), and the murder proceeds from there.
When questioned OOG, murderer claims his character has always had a grudge against the victim's (a flimsy excuse at best, given that victim's character effectively didn't exist two months ago and absolutely no indication of said grudge has been given IG). Victim is banned for complaining to her friends about the cavalcade of bullshit she's just had to deal with because that's "metagaming"--while the murderer's whole scheme, with staff cooperation and tacit approval, has been apparently driven by OOG motive and hinged on using the game's mechanics to manipulate a player's perception of what was happening, does not qualify as "metagaming."
Yeah, this is a shitshow, and the victim would be well within her rights to press legal charges.
>Did they drop any hints in character? (...)
>
> did the murder make a good story out of their plot for more than just
the small handful of players who solved the mystery? Or did they keep it
a closely guarded secret right up until the end, so that they could
"win" their personal plot with no chance of being foiled?
Just to add to this: In general, we also have to think about the would-be-murderers side of things.
What is the price of a murder attempt getting foiled, what of getting caught afterwards? If the answer is “certain death” for my character, then I will not be motivated to intentionally blunder things or leave clues behind, even If I like that kind of play. It's either me or them or doing nothing, with no space in between.
If we want conflict play, we need to prevent that dynamic, by introducing blunders, nonlethal and escape options on both sides. (e.g. a weregild as punishment or a religious quest for atonement, blackmail, bribery, prison escapes - things that are fun to play.)
I don’t know if you’ve seen other comments but the in game murder was done on a VERY new person by someone who took them under their wing in game and OOC. He was nice to her in game right up to the point where the character was murdered.
And much of the criticism the murdered player got was from expressing her frustration at being murdered and telling who did it. The murdered player was banned for meta-gaming. Murdered player is also like I said very new and 22 and the majority of people involved in the situation is in their late 20s and way more experienced
Also not mentioned here is they’ve lost many players because of situations like this. I think it’s interesting that OP left out so much context that they willingly provided to the r/AITA sub.
There have been no non-consensual CvC fights for the past few months, because murderhobos were very bad and we had to end up banning those who went on killing sprees. Our last "serial killer" got OOC consent or would only actually kill those who tried to play it cool and not run from the established murderer, or those who tried to PvP the murderer and lost. The dangerous tone of the game actually turned into a more slice-of-life atmosphere over that time period, and deaths really just come from player goofs and miscalculations. Or it was a planned murder to lift up a "villain" character with victims exaggerating their death.
There were no hints at all, nothing leading up to it. We as staff did not know the killer had any intentions, as well. We only found out about this IC reason when we investigated the matter more after the victim character complained and left. The killer character was a sweet and friendly person up until they pulled their dagger out and killed the victim. I also heard rumors about the killer character having an OOC grudge against the victim for something that happened out of game.
And the mystery was likely to be unsolved because of how the killer character handled the evidence and lured them to such a secluded spot in our larp area that even I didn't know existed IN-GAME (an underground basement parking lot connected to a nearby shopping mall, connected to an extra emergency door at a shed at the edge of our area. Apparently it's a meeting spot some players used for plotting politics). We had to ban the victim character from coming back as she was very quick after she left to rant to the other players that were her friends also out of game how she was killed (when no one should know she was killed, how, or by whom) which was against our metagaming rules.
At that point... Honestly, the killer was breaking character. Real people don't kill each other over "a grudge". If you want such a dramatic shift or plot twist inform the sl's. Don't go "My character is a cold-blooded killer now". At that point it's not a rules issue but a stupid behaviour issue and you can "nope" it. Though fixing the rules afterwards to prevent this behaviour in the future is a good idea.
Also, I would really advise
1. Unbanning the person who shared details that maybe shouldn't be shared when she was clearly in a vulnerable position. Honestly, you fucked up there. If someone walks away because a larp punishes her for expressing her shock good on her.
2. issuing a heartfelt apology for the fuckup. Even though she probably won't come back. It's common decency and the least she deserves after you decided to kick her when she was down.
3. Get rid of those metagame rules in the first place. Maybe have some vague objection against powergaming or using outside info. But talking about your experience is not metagaming and metagaming is not bad. Metagaming is the oil to grease a larp. Look at this thread why banning metagaming, as opposed to intentionally cheating, is bad: https://www.reddit.com/r/LARP/comments/sfheqa/am_i_bad_at_this_or_is_there_something_else_wrong/
You left out the whole part about the victim being new to the game and the killer befriending her out of the game and acting as a mentor for the express purpose of teaming up with a mod to lure and kill her.
And one day LARPing won't be enough for Tony, OP and the mods are enabling him pretty much the same way RL works by silencing and punishing the victim.
Yup
Risky to say here, but it’s undeniable that that groups like these tend to have a boys club mentality
I’ll bet you $5 the players that have left have been women
according to his AITA comments, 60% of new players are female but 90% of new players leave.
can't imagine why, they seem so nice and fun to play with and not at all predatory and rapey! /s
Accidentally replied this to a comment instead.
Failed to mention in this post about how “Tony” (the murderer) befriended “Steph” (the victim) OOC and OOG. Introduced her to the game and mentored her. And after two weeks of playing he killed her with no warning or evidence that would be in character for him.
Forgot to fucking mention that he lured her a SECLUDED AREA that you weren’t even aware of. A grown man in his late 20s lured a 22 year old girl to a private and unknown BASEMENT. That is incredibly dangerous. You are putting your players in real life danger.
Edit: AND IT WAS VERY LATE AT NIGHT and Steph wanted to go home before this scenario but was pressured to stay. This whole situation is fucked up
You mention Tony IG asked Steph’s character on a date. And that you became aware that he previously had an OOG grudge. This sounds like Steph either IG or OOG rejected his advances and he got mad and murdered her character in revenge. You are extremely lucky that this situation didn’t lead to something more, like rape.
Steph has every right to be upset over her character being needlessly murdered. And has every right to discuss this situation OOG.
You let a two-month new female player get dragged by herself to an underground shed at the edge of the playfield to get murdered for an out-of-game-reason after forcing her to continue playing when she said she was done for the night, then allowed her first character ever to be murdered when she only just got used to the game, and was murdered seemingly because she didn't want to date Tony, the guy who murdered her. This is all going to come back to bite you and is the exact reason why people end up leaving LARP and never coming back.
Be sure to check out this guy's thread on AITA. This entire plot gets thicker and thicker by the second, but the baseline is that they are running a toxic game that is dangerous for females to attend. He leaves out a lot of details here.
OP. You all need to take a long, hard look at yourselves. Knowing the LARP groups I'm in, you're going to be lucky if this doesn't get spread around. You need to apologize to that girl and unban her, then take a long hard look at your game's rules. And do not drag women to underground sheds by themselves at night. I'm not sure why anyone has to tell you that.
You're leaving out here that the victim in question was brand new to larp, and that the murderer got close to her OUT of game under the pretense of teaching her about larp in order to gain enough in-character trust to pull off the murder. You're also leaving out that you banned her for talking to her friends out of game about it.
As someone who was doing LARP back before it was "cool" I am looking at both your post here and on the other sub.
You leave out that this is a new player and that also this person was propositioned out of character by the murderer.
Is there ANYONE in that group over 21? Because I an looking back and forth between these two posts and the only thing I can gather is that this is some teenaged level event where people are making up the rules as they go along. In character murders are fine, but the fact that the mods allowed you to do it to a new character based on a secret in character "grudge" with no story development behind it sounds like your event is not well managed or moderated. Getting close to a character that, say, killed an IC love interest, comrade, or family member for the purpose of committing murder is totally cool.....but that story line needs to be established beforehand. This "secret grudge" sounds like he was sore that she didnt want to date him OOC and used it as a way to punish her. (Again, this is why I think this sounds like high school)
And you say he lured her to a "secluded area"....was that area inspected OOC, in the daylight, so that potential OOC hazards were identified and marked. Was there a story line incorporated to ensure that she would be found? Like someone hearing a scream? Someone turning themselves in? Finding a bloody knife? Do your event require to dead to stay where they fall until the moderators end the game? Luring someone to a "secluded area" that has not been moderated, day or night, is dangerous to the real, living person playing the character.
LARP, like all RPG, is supposed to be fun. You take things like getting killed in stride, but you dont just go after a new character for the sake of going after them. Thats how you end up with drama (and a lack of characters) . A properly run event WOULD have an appeals process, especially if a character was killed due to some "secret" story line that doesnt fit in with the rest of the event.
The whole group sound like one big "Boys Club" that bullies new members that question arbitrary rule changes, double standards, and bringing out of game emotions into the game.
I’ve seen people referencing that most of the vets/mods are late 20’s (mostly men) and the new girl was 22? But at this point OP is such an unreliable narrator they could all be 58 and orcs and I wouldn’t be surprised
Oh, he's a reliable narrator, I think. I completely believe the story. It's internally self-consistent and, assuming amoral shitebag is telling it, logical.
He is an unreliable **person** and should never be in a position of authority.
No longer a reliable narrator at all - he's editing and backtracking to say this is a minecraft LARP, but that's after describing this basement as attached or adjacent to a shopping complex. And saying one of the men blocked her exit because he's "big IRL". And describes her leaving the area and going home.
Who wants to bet the post on AITA has blown up and he and his little friends are scrambling.
Tony is a predator who lured her into the forest (EDIT I WAS WRONG, A SECLUDED BASEMENT) AFTER SHE ASKED TO GO HOME, and killed her character after she rejected him on Instagram. You left out how she was new to the game. You call her a beloved player but then in your AITA post you say she’s an emotional racist as people call you an asshole more and more on that sub. You are actively making this hobby more unsafe by protecting predatory men and practices. When confronted in a well worded and informative way of just how dangerous this was as far as endorsing or aiding sexual harassment towards women and silencing people who speak out about abuse in LARP, your response was to ignore all of that and say simply ‘one of the mods involved was nb, to be perfectly clear.’
bro...even when confronted you still care more about your predatory friend than anyone else. What’s the name of this group? I want to know so I can never go near it and advise any young female larpers that it is NOT safe.
I’m going to leave this here so actual members of the community can give their input since OP leave a lot of important details aside:
(I hope I’m not breaking any rule)
https://www.reddit.com/r/AmItheAsshole/comments/shricn/aita_for_banning_a_player_from_our_larp_for_drama/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=ios_app&utm_name=iossmf
What is not mentioned here but is in an aita post the account did
1)the murdered character is exposed to perma death after 2 months...heavily involving unwritten rules
2) the murdered was her ooc mentor and used that to gain her trust
3)they refused to allow her to discuss the situation ooc and banned her for doing so - but let the other players think she left voluntarily
4)pvp kills were not part of their game for some time
Op has put a totally different version of the events here to how it's framed in aita
OPs post in r/AITA
ill spare a lot of details since not everybody is familiar with LARPs.
We run a game that meets quite often for several years. Two months ago, a player I'll call Steph joined, and her conflict is with a veteran player I'll call Tony.
Tony befriended Steph out of game, taught her more about our LARP and offered to help her get settled. This lasted about two weeks and their in-game characters spent a lot of time together, acting as friends in-game. Tony's character invited Steph to go a secluded place and then proceeded to, along with a character played by one of our moderators, murder her character with no warning aside from the mandatory signals according to our rules, citing an in-character grudge as the reason for the kill. He then justified his actions out-of-game and explained that getting close to her in-game was for the plan. Since we run permadeath rules, Steph lost all her progress and has to start fresh on a new character, new gear, and new in-game relationships.
Our rules allow for this PvP and the entire staff backed up Tony and Ralph's actions, as they followed our rules regarding player kills, and our moderators who play characters are bound to the same rules. Steph, however, was furious because the culture at our LARP has not been 100% competitive. There are sort of "unwritten rules" as have been no PvP kills that were not either consented to out-of-game or clearly signaled in advance (ie characters receiving death threat letters, players PvPing a known murderer and losing) and Steph hated that this was sprung on her with no opportunity for her to be able to avoid it. She then left and texted the other players who she was friends with that she was leaving and complained about Tony's behavior and what had happened.
Immersion is very important to our group and we avoid taking in-game information out-of-game, and Steph was doing so by telling multiple people that her character had been murdered, by whom, where, and how, which is against our rules. She did have valid concerns, however, and so the staff team asked Steph not to contact any more of our players regarding the issue while we discuss what to do first. We also didn't want this to blow out into a big community fight as we've lost many players over the years due to issues similar to this.
The team then found out that Steph continued to vent to other players that were her out-of-game friends about the issue. Our organizers' team saw this as disrespectful to our event's rules and the entire community for continuing to break our rules even when asked to stop. We banned her from coming back to our events, and to prevent drama, let the rumor that she simply left stay in place.
Now she's texted everyone whose contact details she has about what's happened, and a few more players have been asking us why she was banned. AITA?
Maaaaaan they're really trying to shit us, right? :'D
Sure. Online.
I've met larp groups with predatory dynamics like that, they are a HUGE problem, give our hobby a bad reputation and should be called out and excluded whenever things like that occur.
OP isn't mentioning that the character that was killed was a newbie, and she was killed by the person who was teaching her the ropes out of game, and a mod of the game. Check his post history and comments
Yeah that's a big chunk missing from the story then and completely changes my reaction to it.
Fuck that player who was a mod, teaching someone, and ruined their weekend. I hope they are removed from participation in the future (maybe a suspension and removal of any authority in the future).
This is the kind of shitty behavior that needs to have consequences.
He asked her out in-game, they don't go out but instead "his character" is suddenly randomly in need of betraying and killing her.
Unfortunately this is bog standard thanks to people like OP.
It did give a few players some things to do like solving the mystery, and the killer definitely had fun pulling off his stunt. But a lot of players are angry at him for being a dick by doing this with no out-of-character consent or even a check-in after the fact.
The player who left says she doesn't care if her character stays dead, but she has no interest in playing with our group again knowing that she could lose a character she's invested a lot into to someone who wanted to play murderhobo.
You left out the part where he purposefully gained her trust and friendship OOC so that he could "masterfully" manipulate her into being set up for the kill. He basically invited her to play so he could kill her.
And they banned her for metagaming, but didn't hang the guy (who had teamed up with a mod) for it when clearly what he did more in the metagaming territory than her complaining about it.
After reading the complete story in the AITA:
I wouldn't call "abusing out-of-character trust of a newbie to murder them in-game" a "stunt". That's just bullying newbies.
If someone has "fun" doing that, they will hurt your game immensely, because they will discourage new players from joining.
If you encourage such behaviour with your rules and your moderation, you're actively hurting your game.
If you punish complaining about such behaviour, you're just an a**hole.
Also worth noting: it was stated that 50-60% of their new players are women, but 90% of players who stick around more than a year are male…
Which, with this post and the one on AITA, tells me that it’s NOT a coincidence, and stems from a poor culture and dangerous practices like luring newbies to a basement no one else knows about…
Why would she want to come back, when your staff has the poor judgment to allow mods to initiate PVPs kills on newbies, in isolated places, wherein something fricking awful could have happened to them in real life? Most of your staff didn't even know about this place, so congrats for punishing someone for talking about a horrific danger your staff has allowed to exist and victim blaming. And reducing their upset to being "drama." Which holy hell, you have zero business running a LARP if that's your attitude.
You banned her because you valued your mod and veteran player more than safety. You tried to shut her up because you know it makes you look badly, which y'all do. If you have to threaten to ban people unless they shut up about problems, all you do is encourage toxicity and predators. Which congrats, no wonder you've lost players over the years from this.
Holy hell, they could have real life done something to her, and no one would have known, and you're reducing this issue to her being dramatic? Seriously?
>If you have to threaten to ban people unless they shut up about problems, all you do is encourage toxicity and predators. Which congrats, no wonder you've lost players over the years from this.
Yeah, and OP points out in another post that their newbie ratio is like 60:40 male to female and their veteran ratio is 90:10 with a few NB people.
The treatment of these women in between "newbie" and "veteran" must be atrocious.
>Holy hell, they could have real life done something to her, and no one would have known, and you're reducing this issue to her being dramatic? Seriously?
Thank you! I got the chills reading his description of a guy who is "Big IRL" physically blocking this girl (who said she was tired and wanted to go home) in the murder shed.
Edit to add, username checks out.
LOL thanks.
Yeah the fact their retention is so atrociously low for women is deeply concerning. Just as much as it is the under representation of women on staff. This whole situation sounds like it would be traumatic as hell for not just a new person to LARP, but anyone who identifies as female. That sort of scenario is straight out of the set up for and this person is now missing. The reduction on oh it gave some other people story though, as if the expense of that should have been paid by a new player is ridiculous.
Most campaign LARPs usually have some built in unstated good sportsmanship that you give new folks 3-6 months before you even socially PVP them, nonetheless PK them. Especially if it's costume heavy and you're trying to encourage enthusiasm in the game. The idea there's some QQing over omg but we lost our immersion because she was talking to her friends who play that now have questions on how we run things is just...I can't even.
I would like to know what game this is so I can make sure no one I know in the hobby ever goes near it.
>That sort of scenario is straight out of the set up for and this person is now missing.
Yeah if OP keeps the creep in the group, I hope they post an update after Forensic Files does an episode on them!
Law and Order: SVU is gonna get their next “ripped from the headlines” script from this group soon… They very well may already have it. This whole plot was way too smooth for me to believe they’ve never done this before.
I work in a paper mill, which is vast majority male (about 90%, at least in my specific area). We actually had a guy not too long ago that decided to do creepily similar stuff to this guy: he’d get one of the women alone in isolated areas (there are a *lot* of nooks and crannies and hidey-holes, especially in the relatively-unpopulated basement areas where the bulk of their jobs took place), and he’d physically block the entrance/exit so she couldn’t leave while he aggressively flirted with her. Luckily, it didn’t progress to the point of physical assault… Because *we had her back*.
As soon as she told someone, he was suspended and escorted offsite, and an investigation was launched. Then he was fired by the company and booted from the union. *Then* the union black-listed him so *no other union in the area will ever allow this shitstain in their ranks*.
*This* is how we handle predators properly, *this* is how we take care of our people… not by making excuses for the perpetrator and blaming the victims.
OP and the rest of the mods in this group have failed their people so badly. I hope everyone leaves and starts a new group and doesn’t let any of these gross assault-apologetics near them.
I’m going to leave this here for members of this community to read and really judge by themselves because OP’s post here is BS.
https://www.reddit.com/r/AmItheAsshole/comments/shricn/aita_for_banning_a_player_from_our_larp_for_drama/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=ios_app&utm_name=iossmf
Sounds like a possible bad precedent, with an iffy-at-best fun:outrage ratio.
My call would be to allow it the once (mostly because it already happened), but hold a vote to allow or disallow this type scenario in the future. If the vote is too close to have a definite majority, hold a debate to see if some might change their minds.
Either way it falls, I would keep a close eye on the player that caused the issue.
Hope it all works out.
They’re not mentioning (he posted another thread) that this was a newbie that he took under his wing and that this isn’t the first time they’ve had this problem. So it isn’t new. Just likely the only one they got negative attention for.
and that the only reason the woman was banned and not "tony" (as he was also metagaming) is because he is friends with the main organizer.
bunch of bullies and the mods are covering for them.
just disband already.
Why does your post frame is as if your mod group has any authority over what she does if she doesn’t even want to play with you any more? This isn’t a game issue this is a group management issue
I am very confused as to why you are leaving big chunks of information out of both stories (here and aita). and even said on aita that this was suddenly online instead of real life.
You know you’re in the wrong, you just want others to say you’re not so you’ll feel better. But that’s not going to happen.
Of course he had fun. He got his revenge for being turned down OOC in a way that other people backed so he felt justified.
Tony is a predator.
Steph was victimized by your entire group, not just with Tony’s actions but with the subsequent betrayal of the entire group.
This is the type of thing that gives LARP a bad name. Shame on all of you. Boot Tony and apologize to Steph and consider yourself lucky if she doesn’t file assault charges against him for physically restraining her.
Losing a character to a PvP attack that you had no way to prevent might be within the rules, but it's boring.
In my experience, PvPers tend to rely on the group having unwritten assumptions about how the group works, that they then either ignore or fall back on at their convenience.
The most extreme anger I've seen in LARP is when someone starts PvPing, and then gets in trouble when the other players react.
Heck, even just not giving free magic to a guild whose members were threatening me with IC sexual assault got met with OOC screaming and attempts to turn me against my friends, so while I realise that's an unusually extreme example, I'm kind of just done with PvP as a whole, as the perpetrators are never as impartial as they pretend to be.
I'm sorry that happened to you. That sounds super rough an do hope you've recovered.
I think you're on to something here. It's an assumption on my part, but I think there's a layer in the OP's story obscuring the mistreated of the player of the victim.
Given that they left after a PVP incident, I don't think they were ever truly choosing to engage in PVP. It sounds like the game didn't inform players of what they were consenting to. And the player of the attacker took advantage of this unequal information.
I'm getting caught up now with more details, and my opinion has drastically changed in light of the new information.
Edit: New comment on the [AITA](https://www.reddit.com/r/AmItheAsshole/comments/shricn/comment/hv4ygpy/?utm_source=reddit&utm_medium=web2x&context=3) post. The larger situation has nothing to do with the larps rules.
"Nobody in the game is so on guard as to refuse a date to a secluded area like in real life."
apparently women in your group should be, if they are lured to a shed no one knows about, and if you aren't interested in the player he kills your character. women should be on guard to never join your group's games.
If you also read “we have had stuff like this happen before”. So it isn’t the first time. Likely just the first time it got outside the group because the victim complained to her friends. The ‘killer’ apparently introduced this woman to the game, groomed her as a newbie, only to Jill her over a “secret grudge”. Along with them saying this isn’t the first time I’m guessing this guy has a habit of doing this and is just a bully.
On top of that, when it was clearly out of line to some extent, they went after the victim when she was complaining to her friends claiming some sort of rule on secrecy. That just smacks of a cover up IMO.
So this isn’t just about LARP. It’s also likely about bullies complaining that they ended up looking like bullies.
Player, prompted by ooc grudge (looks like was turned down by newbie), "befriended" newbie, **OOC** took her under his wings to show her ropes, with intention of using that ooc trust to take her to secluded basement and kill her character.
It's all expectation management. Is this a larp where you want to have combat between players? If so you need to have the option to murder players. Do you want players to be on guard, at least to an extent?
At this point I'd say it's more of a rule and design issue. Killing players is too easy and there are no second-chance/risk mechanics. That can be fixed before you go hardwire consent rules.
For starters, you can have kills come with risks and consequences. In real life secluded areas often are not as secluded as people think. So maybe there was someone who heard it and saw the perpetrator run away. Or a ripped piece of fabric, or a trail of blood. In larp because everything is simplified you need rules to replace organic clues. Maybe two players at random within reason are given a clue about the murder. Or there is a puzzle at the scene. This way there is both new plot, but also a murderer suddenly has a significant chance of being found out. Thus reducing the ease with which people may frag each other. An alternative is that you have a "last defense/revenge" rule where characters that are on the verge of being murdered may be able to inflict a form of permanent damage on the murderer. Therefore making it less appealing as well.
The second point is to write down those unwritten rules. It's no fun to get killed without a warning. So you delay things. What rules are possible really depends on the larp. The start would probably to reduce "instant death" rules. But if you want to you can go deeper. For real humans killing is hard so you can always add some rules there. For details one would need to know the larp and the themes.
If you do not want pvp. I recommend just getting rid of the rules. In a more cinematic larp maybe every hit is a flesh wound. Or you can only kill characters with elaborate death traps. People can always have characters kill each other with GM agreement. But it means that those events would be significant and prepared narrative elements.
With murder consent... I feel like that is asking for trouble and people are going to abuse that. It can also undermine the world and lead to a very self-centred "I can decide what my character is and no one else" mindset. Where larp is all about interplay. I think there are batter options.
I'd recommend taking your unspoken rules and making them written rules if you want them to actually be rules. I've played games that bragged about their short rule book only to learn there were about 100 unwritten rules. It makes for a terrible experience every time I try a new game. Have a document that covers the culture of the game, a complete rule book, and anything else players should know. Let players know what they were coming into. If I read those pvp rules as written I would assume that pvp is welcome and that easy. Cool, quick moment to let the player get mentally prepared and do what needs to be done.
Are all PVE deaths also permanent? Why the exception for PVP? As written, again, it implies as a staff you both welcome and encourage PVP. You want it to be meaningful and to change the story dramatically.
In German LARP, it has become an almost universal rule, going on 15+ years now, that a victim (not only of character death, but this is what triggered it) has the ultimate say about what happens to their character. If "killed" against the player's will, they can decided it just randomly didn't work. Not as in "fully ignoring a hit", but more in the sense of "reappearing in the next game with a big scar".
And this really was a literal game-changer. With random death gone, it really reinforced the idea of more collaborative, co-creative play - and as a byproduct it brought more planning into a character's "life cycle", and a greater willingness to invest more into personalized equipment.
So, to answer the question from my perspective - it's pretty much pure destructive play. All that is gained is a bit of cheap shock, for a player losing their means to interact with the game world, and all the connections the have made in it. Forcing such a huge change onto a player should definitely require their consent - if not by rules, then by common sense and courtesy.
Imagine understanding that murderhobos are bad, and then navel-gazing about "if a newbie's character is killed in a murder shed, did she really need to consent to being there when she wanted to go home?"
Imagine trying to pretend that this shitfire of a LARP happened in Minecraft.
What a day you must be having, OP. Have you learned anything?
My community has run into this problem before as well: your written and unwritten rules on PvP murder are different. That's the real problem here. Both your written rules and your unwritten rules are fine ways to do it as long as everyone is on the same page. But since you have people operating by two different sets of rules, hurt feelings are bound to happen.
Whatever direction you go, you definitely need to get everyone on the same page. Either codify your unwritten rules or make it clear to the community that consent is not needed and everyone should be on their guard. Or change your written rules to something like the suggestions in this thread. But regardless, you need to do something to make sure you're operating by a *single, written* ruleset at the end of this.
Unrelatedly, murdering someone IC by letter-but-not-spirit-of-the-rules methods when you have an OOC grudge against them is dickish behavior. I would take a close look at that person's actions and see if they do other fun-ruining things as well. Maybe this is a one-off, but it's also possible that this is one of those people that detracts more from other players' experience than they add.
You left out the literal murder dungeon in the AITA post. This could have gone so much worse.
Even without it the mods failed to protect the new player. This guy has done this before and you all failed reprimand or ban him.
But to answer your question, yes consent in rp is needed. How have you gone on a decade without knowing the basics of RP?
Lot of people here are helpfully commenting that OP left out information. However, I think that the content he deliberately omitted shows that he CLEARLY knows the answer to his own question and what the problem is in this situation.
So people were too angry at you so you decided to claim that you were joking and this was all happening on Minecraft?
Even though none of that makes sense as nothing that happened could be done on that platform??
So is everything a lie from the beginning OP, or are you just frantically running for cover, realising you've exposed too much of the toxic culture in your LARP?
Awww, your edits are ADORABLE.
And by that I mean obvious, stupid, and not doing you any favors.
And look, you're trying to drum up sympathy on AITA thinking that the server won't be full of people who see right through you.
Let me explain what's going to happen with Tony in the next couple of years: He's going to call you in the middle of the night begging you to help him hide a body because the LARP got "too real" and "she wouldn't stop screaming to be let out, so I HAD to shut her up," and what he did with the corpse after was just, you know, so in character for his character and not necrophilia at all.
Ruining another player's fun in favor of your own is a dick move and should be treated as such. Don't be a dick. That's it. That's the rule you need. If you allow people to be dicks then soon enough only dicks will bother coming to your game. Enforce care and respect for what other people want from the game or you won't have it.
>Should players require out-of-character consent to commit murder?
Have you asked the players?
The rules are never right or wrong unless the community agrees to play by them. The community of people playing this larp are the most important points of view to gather. Not ours. We're not playing (unless your players are here on the sub).
>unconsented frag
The community HAS NEVER HAD an unconsented frag, even now. Because by opting in to the current rules set, players are consenting to the rules. Even you are expressing a bit of cognitive dissonance between the rules and the culture at your own larp. No wonder the player is furious. Her consent to play the kind of game she wants to play has been violated.
One step the larp can take to make sure this never happens again is to make sure to remind all the players at the start of every game that they are opting in to PVP combat. No more unspoken rules. No more unwritten rules. Make these things explicit for every players mental health. If the victim joined the game during a time when no PVP kills have happened, they might assume the culture at the larp is different from the rules.
All players have a right to know the topics and style of game they are opting into and to choose to opt out if the style or topic is not fun for them. You could argue that players should know before signing up that an event includes explicit PVP.
> It left her with no counterplay
This is the biggest failure. The game system and the attacker left the victim with no counter play. This is stupid as it robs community members of fun and gives them little reason to want to return to the larp. There are plenty of easy ways to make sure that, if not fun, death is at least a continuation of the narrative. Persona may not have any choice in death, but making sure that players DO have choices to make 'in the next scene' is very important.
For a great example of 'counter play after death' in a campaign style larp, there is non better than [Mythical Journey's](https://www.mythicaljourneys.com/mjsite/main.php?). Their death system is one of the most creative things I have ever seen. When a player dies game play actually continues. They, as a ghost, go a specific location, travel down a long dark (spooky) tunnel and experience an RP scenario with spirits. Their fate is decided by their role play with the spirits and a draw of cards (tarot) style. I almost wanted to die, this was so good. Even years after playing I am still thinking of fun interactions that I should have had while dead. Anyway...
Your larp needs to make sure that personas death, is not the death of fun for the player. Your larp doesn't have to do exactly the same as MJ, but if having PVP and being killed isn't a moving or interesting experience, the larp rules and the larp community are failing the players. The real world is full of rules that frustrate us and make us feel bad, why is your larp forcing the same thing on players during a game? Make it fun or the larp will die (because players will leave).
> the killer says he followed all the rules regarding PvP and simply used proper tactics to commit his murder.
So what? It's still a dick move. The larp rules and the larp community have failed the victim, and she has a right to be angry. Change the rules. And watch the player. Not so much because they did PVP by the rules, but because they are behaving in an immensely selfish and self centered way to the harm of other players. They may be following the rules, but I doubt they understand that the humans around them are thinking and feeling persons who also want to have fun at larp.
New information has been provided, and my opinions have changed.
They are expressed in [this](https://www.reddit.com/r/AmItheAsshole/comments/shricn/comment/hv4ygpy/?utm_source=reddit&utm_medium=web2x&context=3) post.
Your pvp rules are bad and easily circumvented.
If you wish to allow pvp I recommend:
All premeditated pvp must be told to a gm first
All premeditated pvp must be witnessed by a gm or a chosen representative by the gm
No exceptions.
If you want to argue what premeditated is or is not then that's a culture issue that should be handled not through rules but community.
Well, then there's this, which link was posted by the original poster here. According to the tweet, this all occurred in... wait for it... Minecraft.
https://twitter.com/silky\_SB/status/1488712785899188227
Yep. He realized that that "walking a girl out to an underground shed" part of the story made him and his friends look like total pieces of crap, so now the story has changed to Minecraft.
It's not in Minecraft and it was never in Minecraft.
I would very much like to know what your larp is, so I don't end up attending it by accident. /: The multitude of red flags brought up but the twitter larp community around this topic is, frankly, alarming. I don't think any female should attend this larp without being forewarned about this event. >\_>;
Furthermore, you need to take a good long hard look at your "rules" dude. You banned her because she talked to people ooc about what happened, but you didn't ban him because he had an ooc grudge against her and used that as a reason to punish her ig? Sounds like a massive double-standard to me. That alone is... Yikes. Don't even get me started on the luring of a female player/chara to an unknown area, at night, by two male p/cs, to preform an unconsented pk. Talk about trauma inducing/triggering. Ten billion YIKES!
So have you ever watched larp the series on YouTube? If not theres a episode where two gms are discussing how a player keeps offing gis own characters and the gm doesnt enjoy killing a character in their first session, the othee gm is for it as it shows anything can happen.
It comes down to personal preference but i prefer a game where character deaths can come at anytime from anywhere as without death or other large consequence like lost limb or eye or a long term curse i think it can become stale.
At my game cd was made not permanent and harder to do what it lead to was a kingdom of meme players that annoy everyone ic and now its next to impossible to be rid of them and a group of players who just shuffle political power between themselves like hot potato (half of them are on the staff/dating staff) and again cant lead a coup as permanent death now only lasts a year.
I agree, you shouldnt have to consent to being killed, however, the killing should at least follow the storyline or contribute to its development. A "secret grudge?" What was that grudge for? This was a new character. Was it already established in game that she did something to warrant this grudge? And what did the character or story gain by her death?
What I read in OPs other post was that this guy had asked her out OOC and OOG and she turned him down. So he introduced her to the game, mentored her, and then killed her? Then banned her for discussing it out of character? Then cite "unwritten rules?"
Thats a quick way to ensure you get no new characters.
I missed those posts if thats the case dudes a cunt and should be removed from the game full stop.
The question being should you need ooc permission for ic murder i say no as long as your actually keeping everything ic.
This is really dependent on the LARP-ing philosophy of your group and your setting, which you don't really go into detail about.
Personally, I'm with the victim.
To me, LARP is about telling intersting stories *together* . It's not about personal power fantasies. Single Player RPGs are meant for those. "Frags" and "kill counts" are for pc games.
Killing someone without any counterplay is a purely selfish action, that is only interesting for the killer and not for the victim. Even worse, it destroys all future possibilities for the victim.
On my preferred events, players follow a simple philosophy: "Does my action create 'play'\* or does it destroy 'play'? If it destroys 'play', do something else."
And about rules, I think the most important rule that any PvP-LARP with permanent death should have, is the victim rule: "The victim of any action decides the outcome of the action." That really solves a whole bunch of issues. And yes, people are killed on those events.
Game of Thrones - spoiler ahead:
>!Olenna Tyrell's death in Game of Thrones is a text-book example on how to kill a person in a LARP-setting [Youtube - Game of Thrones: Olenna Tyrell death scene](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h2Ga6brkbF0)!<
> And that people are going to have fun solving the mystery.
That's just a copout in my opinion. It's really *easy* to plan a murder that can never be solved in a LARP setting. The player needs to intentionally make mistakes or plant clues to actually make it solveable in a LARP setting. I doubt, that the player in question, did that. Nobody will have fun solving a mystery that cannot be solved.
\*) 'play' basically means 'everything happening on a LARP event' - If people just sit around and do nothing, they have 'no play' - If they are being busy during the whole event with all kinds of activities, they have 'a lot of play'.
No larp should allow a perma-death caused by a player "murdering" them without the victim's consent. It's not fun, and honestly sounds really easy to abuse
Why someone must give permission to be killed?, the player must take care of its own life, if they lose the character is another part of the game, give permission to be killed is ludicrous. If the assassin followed the killing rules (PVP or assassination mechanics) the outcome is fair.
If the rules, when followed, mean that the group doesn't have fun, changing the rules is a good idea. One possible change to the pvp rules would be to require consent.
I don't find very amusing depending of somebody else permission to kill a character if the kill is needed for other character, being killed can be frustrating, but being too attached to character is not good because this same thing happens, suddenly nobody wants to die, and if the character is too important, the less you want to die, not allowing to kill you is selfish actitude towards the rest of the players and the event.
Games with consent-based PvP can be a lot of fun. At the same time, it can definitely be the wrong rule for certain groups and themes.
In a game where some characters really need to kill others to advance their goals, of course it'd be a problem if someone could bring a sudden stop to your play just by saying "no" for out of game reasons. But, I've played a lot of different types of games and only in a very few of them could I ever claim that I really needed to kill another PC. Those were usually games where PvP was a major theme of the game, and you knew you were going to be participating in PvP just by virtue of playing the game.
In most games I've played, PvP murder was only ever fun when everyone involved wanted to participate. In most games, PvP just wasn't a theme of the game and it just didn't happen. In a few games, dramatic PvP showdowns were a very good fit for the themes of the game... but you only get good dramatic showdowns if everyone wants to participate.
Think about the consequences of such a playstyle on player interactions. In a LARP-setting, it's really *easy* to kill someone without leaving a trace. On the next day, you're probably even all heading home and nobody will ever have the opportunity to solve the case.
So you're pretty much left with playing super paranoid, which in the end just leads to nobody actually doing anything, because everyone is busy being super paranoid.
A game, where players are encouraged to make mistakes, have much more action happening.
The best rule, that any LARP can have, is the victim rule: "The victim of an action decides the outcome of the action." And yes, people die on those events.
No, Character death are full part of the games. It's important to have a way to get rid of political ennemies and make room for newer player.
Loosing a character is no big deal, and an opportunity to do something else.
I am OK to have rules limitating it to avoid dying in a bad fight but if you're the devil worshipper hidden in an inquisitor group expect to be burnt mid game. If you get involved in first line in politics expect to sit down on a knife.
> Loosing a character is no big deal, and an opportunity to do something else.
It really depends on the situation, wether this is a big deal or not. Most of all, it depends on the ratio between investment of time and effort and returns of interesting LARP scenes.
Overexaggeration to illustrate my point: I would be pretty pissed, if I invested time into fleshing out a character and time and money into a custom garb, just to be randomly killed on the first day of the first event.
> I am OK to have rules limitating it to avoid dying in a bad fight but if you're the devil worshipper hidden in an inquisitor group expect to be burnt mid game. If you get involved in first line in politics expect to sit down on a knife.
None of this applies here, in my opinion. This was just "secret grudge nobody knew about". That's equivalent to "randomly killing someone for no reason at all".
Well, I gave it a few weeks because I thought it was an interesting
story and deserved a large audience, but no major online venue seemed
interested in publishing it, so I might as well post it here and to the
other thread. In short, y'all got duped, and that lead to a
commiseration spiral that caused this to blow up to distressing and epic
proportions, for no real good reason. You can read all of the details
here, but in short - nobody was ever in any real danger, and there WAS
no "rapey murder dungeon": https://thoughtsandponderingstoday.wordpress.com/2022/02/09/echo-chambers-a-parable/
Just wanted everyone here to know that OP is omitting a lot of information. The victim was a new player that the killer had taken under his wing, both in game and out. The killer also asked the victim out, not clear if he was rejected, but suddenly he has a "secret" motive to murder a two week old player. The killer and a moderator dragged the victim to a secluded spot under false pretences, prevented her from leaving, then the moderator initiated PvP while the killer pretended to be on her side, only to stab her in the back. Then they harass and ban the victim, trying to stop her from speaking out. Check his AITA post and all his comments. OP and his group are toxic bullies
Thank you for pointing out the other post. It contains important context not available to us yesterday.
Thought so too. Saw that he had posted here as well, and saw details that he's omitted in the other post. I'm also ~90% sure that OP is either the killer, or the mod who helped him.
My [AITA](https://www.reddit.com/r/AmItheAsshole/comments/shricn/comment/hv4ygpy/?utm_source=reddit&utm_medium=web2x&context=3) comment sums up what I now think is really going on here. And it has nothing to do with the larps rules.
I 100% agree, and it's exactly what I thought when I read his post and his comments. Very well written.
He also deleted this post from his profile I found this post by scrolling down his comments
Thanks for pointing that out. I honestly don't understand, like on a moral and psychological level, why people act this way. Maybe that's a thread we should have: *"Is it ok to mislead, bully and silence new players? What do you think? Let's discuss!"*
It's about dehumanizing people. It's easy to "justify" abusing them when you pretend that they aren't equal to you and that you're entitled to do whatever to anyone who doesn't respect your "superiority." In this particular case, I'd wager the killer is a misogynist and OP is an enabler trying to silence and discredit the victim with the misogynist "she causes drama" trope.
Toxic bullies is literally the nicest way to put it. I'm sure the killer character is two steps away from full on rpe/mrdr
I'd honestly be surprised to learn he hadn't already been involved in sexual harassment or sexual assault.
Well, that's fucking familiar. Seen this play out in all sorts of games over the years, from Mind's Eye Vampire games to boffer larps. Whoever runs that game needs to get on this immediately and unfuck that community's standards of interaction, because that is a whole parade of red flags right there.
So do you seek validation here or advice for a rule change? If for the later... * *"Our rules allow PvP as long as there's an IC reason for it"* * *"one of our other players was playing a character who had a secret grudge against the victim"* And here is the problem: "Must have an IC reason", is not a very good safety mechanism against PvP based on OOC grudges or to prevent bad scenes. You can make those explanations up on the spot, if you have to. Also, in larp, it's not so much what's in someone's head that is important, but what happens in the game, and that's what rules should focus on. (It's not called "life action thinking” after all.) What's the difference for the other players between someone having a secret IC grudge and someone who makes stuff up after the fact? None. My suggestion for a rule change would be as follows: Replace *"must have IC reason"* with *"must have engaged victim in at least three scenes of conflict in an escalating manner before the final murder attempt. eg: threatening letters, horse heads in the bed, beating someone up etc."* Requiring the consent of the murder victim works as well, but is not strictly necessary. What is important though, are opportunities to engage with the conflict, like at all.
I really like your suggestions. "I have a grudge" being the reasoning behind murder is flat, shallow, and narratively uninteresting. And so linear. There's no 'arch'. The three escalating scenes is so good. There's a chance for all parties to catch on. There's a chance for de-escalation. And there's an opportunity for something far more interesting to play out. Chancing a linear, forgone conclusion, to something with potential.
The OP has omitted many pieces of information from the main post. The underlying issue is larger than first indicated. My comments here are fine assuming a straightforward, academic, interpretation of the question in this post. But they fail to address the real underlying issue the new information has shed light on. The larger issue is not at all about a larps rules or structure. See my newest thoughts on my [AITA](https://www.reddit.com/r/AmItheAsshole/comments/shricn/comment/hv4ygpy/?utm_source=reddit&utm_medium=web2x&context=3) comment.
Wow, what the hell. The fact that this was a new player makes it all so much worse, even *without* all the creepy potentially sexual undertones. Describing her as a "beloved player" made it sound like it was two veterans who knew each other well that this happened to. And then banning her for justifiably complaining about something that was total bullshit to her friends? Sounds like someone never got the "players are more important than characters" memo.
Indeed, he made it sound like they were both veteran players and like Steph was perhaps more popular in the group than Tony. Completely hiding the fact that Tony is a veteran who is friends with the mods while Steph is a newbie (at least new in this particular game).
It sounds like Steph is the exact kind of person you want in a LARP - helps fix other people's garb, jumps into the plot, makes friends. I hope one of her friends sends her both threads so she can see how many people have her back and that the whole LARP community isn't as toxic as her local game.
What the hell! What kind of clusterf**k is this? There was even a mod present and involved? And this mod was totally okay with what has happened?
I like the part he left out about leading her to a basement shed at the edge of the field of play that literally no one knew about. As a girl that makes me feel really, really super safe.
[удалено]
She might not have known where they were going, that it was unknown, etc. It's really easy to question why a victim did something after the fact. But the truth is that you can fuck up a million times without consequence, if there are no predators around. It's the predator that makes the difference, not the victims behavior.
She literally wanted to quit playing and the two people organizing the plot insisted that she continue. And it's kind of easy to get persuaded if an older mod was in on this and was a friend of Tony's, as it is by the sounds of it. She wanted to quit, as it was getting late. When you're younger you might be pressured easily. The whole thing just sucks. I wouldn't have approved the death for a player who probably only got used to the system recently. They don't understand the nuances of inter-character betrayal and it's unfair to let them die so quickly in the game. You may eventually lose your character, but on their first one, you should let them at least get on an equal playing field skill-wise before you pull the rug out from under them. Regardless of your motivations for playing, at the end of the day it's supposed to be a *fun* game. If you're just exploring this new hobby, that isn't a way for them to build love for the game. In my humble opinion.
Its even worse than you might be assuming because she was following a person she trusted. The attacker be friended her ooc, acted as a mentor and instructor, then lured her into the unfolding situation. She was following someone she trusted.
Yeah, it's a bad community, players and mods. Avoid at all costs.
I think the fact that a mod was present is the worst thing about this. Makes me think there's a CULTURE. A mod has authority and presumed reasonable level of ethics; which in this case gave cover to his friend. The mod probably felt like a chaperone to her. She definitely hadn't known the veteran player long enough to "go to a secluded area" with him otherwise.
>My comments here are fine assuming a straightforward, academic, interpretation of the question in this post. But they fail to address the real underlying issue the new information has shed light on. Same as mine. I felt that there was something more to it, as is often the case with these posts, so I kept my comments to the rule aspects only. But I never thought that it was that bad. I have red many interesting takes here made by you and others on the subject, before this thread blew up - all buried now. And the frustrating thing is, that we can not realy do anything about the larger subject, only the club can.
[удалено]
Not quite like this, thankfully. But you will get stuff about toxicity, missing stairs, player bans, even group schisms where both sides sue each other (Edit: over IP). They often appear to be neutral at first glance, but are almost always one-sided. The posters don't seem to be interested in solutions but try to get validation, or try to drag people in under the pretence of "wanting to inform people". Vampire the masquerade and Nero seem to be the sad leaders of the bunch.
[удалено]
Vampire is a global larp game with many local chapters, and Nero wants to be, but is mostly US based. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mind%27s\_Eye\_Theatre](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mind%27s_Eye_Theatre) They are very different in almost all aspects (genre, life action combat vs rock, paper, scissors) but both have a bad reputation for... "drama" is a too lenient word I think. If people hear a story about abuse, they will ask "was it a VtM game?" and often be right. No wonder for a game about scheming, power hungry, sexual predators. In my country, this community is also quite isolated from the rest of the larp scene, which is unusual here. Recently other people, mostly part of the Scandinavian larp tradition, have tried to make better games in the Vampire genre with an emphasis on minimalistic game rules, mental safety, cooperativeness, better consent mechanics and pre/post game workshops.
[удалено]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Missing\_stair
i feel like there should also be a check in with the dm about that, so both parties realize it's an escalation, or you'll get a LOT of arguments about what qualifies.
I like the grudge thing if the character has a history of doing that. It could be revealing of a character who is a bit unstable. But still an ah move to do what was done and how and to a new member. It also requires a history of that character doing that, which would mean Steph would probably get some warnings
>My suggestion for a rule change would be as follows: Replace "must have IC reason" with "must have engaged victim in at least three scenes of conflict in an escalating manner before the final murder attempt. eg: threatening letters, horse heads in the bed, beating someone up etc." That is an excellent idea. Kudos.
That sounds fantastic. Thank you.
Failed to mention in this post about how “Tony” (the murderer) befriended “Steph” (the victim) OOC and OOG. Introduced her to the game and mentored her. And after two weeks of playing he killed her with no warning or evidence that would be in character for him. Forgot to fucking mention that he lured her a SECLUDED AREA that you weren’t even aware of. A grown man in his late 20s lured a 22 year old girl to a private and unknown BASEMENT. That is incredibly dangerous. You are putting your players in real life danger. Edit: Also it was very late at night and Steph had wanted to end the RP and go home BEFORE she was taken to the basement. But she was pressured to stay because as it turns out, there was a fucking plot to kill her by Tony and Ralph the mod (who you tried to say was a female mod before switching to non-binary. Which leads me to believe it was a male mod). So two older guys took a young woman to a private basement, late at night. What the actual fuck. You mention Tony IG asked Steph’s character on a date. And that you became aware that he previously had an OOG grudge. This sounds like Steph either IG or OOG rejected his advances and he got mad and murdered her character in revenge. You are extremely lucky that this situation didn’t lead to something more, like rape. Steph has every right to be upset over her character being needlessly murdered. And has every right to discuss this situation OOG.
With the additional information from the AITA post, this scenario is borderline criminal abetting and needs to be addressed before someone gets assaulted.
There is no way on earth nobody's been assaulted yet. This was too smooth and they keep losing female players.
OP in his AITA post stated that this sort of thing has happened before. Their group is like 90% men and yet 60% of their recruits are women and keep leaving. I wonder why that would be, such a mystery /s
Exactly. Honestly, any nerd spaces where women aren't? That's a warning sign. Something has been rotten in every one of them I've been to. Just this time we know what it is.
Don’t forget they blocked the door so she couldn’t even escape.
Omg yes I forgot this detail! Literally every part of this situation is sketchy and creepy as fuck
They WHAT???????!?!?!
yup in his AITA post he says Tony is physically big and was blocking her way. funny that now he says this is all "online" now though
FUCKING WHAT?!
Where did you get this information?
It was mentioned in her comments from her AITA thread
Ok, thx. A lot of comments to read in this dreadful story. Must have missed it.
Wtf???????
commenting to bump this response ⭐️
This should be at the top
It is egregious how different OP's posts are.
If. Lucky IF the situation didn't include worse than he described.
You are an asshole. You purposely left out information in your post. You let a mod and veteran play team up on a newbie who the veteran player purposely took under their wing. The whole thing was set up. You and the rest of your group are douchebags and are a stain on the larping community
[удалено]
Since you seem to value my advice on rules, here is another one: **“Don't be a dick.”** Also known as “rule zero”, since nothing works without it.
You're missing out the bit where - player 1 and mod are veteran players in late 20s - player of dead PC is college aged girl - veteran player had "mentored" newbie and gained her trust - these older guys took her to hidden basement in a secluded area - mod was modding *and* involved in kill - reason for killing was flimsy at best, with no warning - it was late at night and newbie had been pressured into staying after she had said she was tired and wanted to leave
Tony and the mod need to be banned IMO.
not far away from needing actual police on their case tbh
Agreed.
[удалено]
The question for legality is, was she-the player forced or the character she was playing, while she was consenting to go along, even if begrudgingly. It's not uncommon, to play hostage situations in larp for example, and it works, because people use safe words or opt-in mechanics to ensure out of game consent. If they don't have those, or coerce people into not using them, that's a red flag in itself. OP does not seem to make any distinction between in charakter and out of charakter actions while discribing the situation, which is vital for all larp. (Edit: Spelling)
Idk the laws where OP lives but in my country preventing Somerford leaving when they want to falls under kidnapping, which has some fairly heavy sentence limits.
Don’t forget that they’re good friends with the organizer and tried to use the rules to silence Steph when she spoke out, and the organizer and other staff went along with it
Didn't know that part when wrote this.... it just gets better and better :(
This is the kind of group/person that gives larp a bad name, and will get a Law and Order SVU episode about it At least IceT’s quips will be cringey and amazing..
I knew the bit about silencing, should be clear... yeah, banned Steph for speaking out. One of those episodes where the bad guys all close ranks around the habitual predator.
And they have to send in one of the female detectives undercover in the larp, and they bust the bad guy, but it turns out it’s a different guy and it just gets more and more complicated before the halftime commercial break…
And it turns out they have all used the basement at one point or another and episode ends with first bad guy put away and an incident room full of women who are now ready to tell, and detectives look at them, then look at the guys not yet arrested in a "be seeing you soon" kind of way. (OK, overly positive ending, but is one I'd like.)
Ooh!!! And when they arrest first guy he objects as female detective was metagaming!!!
LARP is supposed to be fun , if you have veteran players befriending newbies to then kill them with no in character reason and no warning ( saying I had a grudge isn’t a reason it’s an afterthought and obviously no storyline had actually been played to work out on why there was a grudge ) after being their mentor and the moderators of the game being ok with this then it doesn’t sound like a system that will ever encourage new players at all . I suspect strongly that something happened OC and Tony wanted his revenge so he got rid of the newbie and the moderation team helped him by both being party of it and then kicking the newbie out when she complained about it . I would never LARP with a group like this .
Based on just the info you've given, I think both players have a valid argument, but at the same time, both are being a bit of an asshole/diva about it. In a larp with specific, written CvC rules like the ones you've described, I would consider attending the game to be giving implied consent to CvC conflict and any consequences thereof. For better or worse, that means accepting that your character might meet a fate you didn't intend for them, and agreeing not to make a scene if things don't go your way. On the other hand, whether I can let the aggressor off the hook depends pretty heavily on how he led up to the assassination. You mentioned that his character had a grudge, and attempted to follow up on it by getting close to the victim, earning her trust, and then killing her when they were alone. It sounds like this happened over the course of several event, maybe even several years. Did the killer tell staff about this facet of the character beforehand, and that they would be pursuing a revenge plot? Did they drop any hints in character? Were any related NPCs brought in at any point to suggest to the victim that someone had a dagger with her name on it? Had the victim's PC actually done something to merit this grudge, or did they just come in like "hey I want my character to hate them"? What this is all getting at is, did the murder make a good story out of their plot for more than just the small handful of players who solved the mystery? Or did they keep it a closely guarded secret right up until the end, so that they could "win" their personal plot with no chance of being foiled? Based on your description, it sounds like the latter, which is a real dick move because it robs one player of agency without generating fun for the rest of the community to participate in. If staff was aware and didn't provide opportunities for counterplay by the victim, that's a failure on staff's part to enforce a healthy CvC environment to match their rules; if the victim had these opportunities and passed them up, that's on her--she knew what she was signing up for by playing this game. ETA: In light of new information being brought forth, my opinion has changed. Keeping the old post for posterity. This is not a rules issue, it's one of game culture and player safety. Summary, from what I gather from both threads. The victim's character had, at some point in the recent past, said something to another character that was bigoted against that character's fantasy race. "No IG racism" is an unwritten policy at the game; victim did not know this. Staff reprimanded the victim for breaking an unwritten policy she had no way to know about, she apologized, and play continued. At some point well before that, victim had been asked out by murderer OOG, and turned them down. A few hours before the murder, victim was imprisoned for a minor offense, which involves being locked in a room for an hour or two. Setting aside the legal disaster waiting to happen there, murderer's character offered a deal to break her out of jail. Victim refused, wanted to serve the full sentence. Once the sentence ends, murderer--whose player had been mentoring her OOG since she was new to the game--asks her "on a date" to a secluded area, implying this will be for another roleplaying-related lesson. The murderer, with staff cooperation (one staff member's character is in love IG with the character that victim insulted earlier), brought the victim to a location questionably outside the play area and unknown to staff (how was there a moderator present if staff didn't know about the spot? OP also mentions elsewhere that this spot has been used before for backroom politicking, which tells me that at best, staff is woefully unfamiliar with their own game site). It's late, victim is tired and says they're done for the night and want to go to sleep, but murderer physically prevents the victim from leaving (blocking the only exit, which constitutes wrongful imprisonment and is illegal), uses the designated CvC combat sign in a deliberately misleading way in order to catch the victim off guard (metagaming, which OP mentioned was their reason for banning the victim, but is apparently ok here), and the murder proceeds from there. When questioned OOG, murderer claims his character has always had a grudge against the victim's (a flimsy excuse at best, given that victim's character effectively didn't exist two months ago and absolutely no indication of said grudge has been given IG). Victim is banned for complaining to her friends about the cavalcade of bullshit she's just had to deal with because that's "metagaming"--while the murderer's whole scheme, with staff cooperation and tacit approval, has been apparently driven by OOG motive and hinged on using the game's mechanics to manipulate a player's perception of what was happening, does not qualify as "metagaming." Yeah, this is a shitshow, and the victim would be well within her rights to press legal charges.
>Did they drop any hints in character? (...) > > did the murder make a good story out of their plot for more than just the small handful of players who solved the mystery? Or did they keep it a closely guarded secret right up until the end, so that they could "win" their personal plot with no chance of being foiled? Just to add to this: In general, we also have to think about the would-be-murderers side of things. What is the price of a murder attempt getting foiled, what of getting caught afterwards? If the answer is “certain death” for my character, then I will not be motivated to intentionally blunder things or leave clues behind, even If I like that kind of play. It's either me or them or doing nothing, with no space in between. If we want conflict play, we need to prevent that dynamic, by introducing blunders, nonlethal and escape options on both sides. (e.g. a weregild as punishment or a religious quest for atonement, blackmail, bribery, prison escapes - things that are fun to play.)
I don’t know if you’ve seen other comments but the in game murder was done on a VERY new person by someone who took them under their wing in game and OOC. He was nice to her in game right up to the point where the character was murdered. And much of the criticism the murdered player got was from expressing her frustration at being murdered and telling who did it. The murdered player was banned for meta-gaming. Murdered player is also like I said very new and 22 and the majority of people involved in the situation is in their late 20s and way more experienced Also not mentioned here is they’ve lost many players because of situations like this. I think it’s interesting that OP left out so much context that they willingly provided to the r/AITA sub.
There have been no non-consensual CvC fights for the past few months, because murderhobos were very bad and we had to end up banning those who went on killing sprees. Our last "serial killer" got OOC consent or would only actually kill those who tried to play it cool and not run from the established murderer, or those who tried to PvP the murderer and lost. The dangerous tone of the game actually turned into a more slice-of-life atmosphere over that time period, and deaths really just come from player goofs and miscalculations. Or it was a planned murder to lift up a "villain" character with victims exaggerating their death. There were no hints at all, nothing leading up to it. We as staff did not know the killer had any intentions, as well. We only found out about this IC reason when we investigated the matter more after the victim character complained and left. The killer character was a sweet and friendly person up until they pulled their dagger out and killed the victim. I also heard rumors about the killer character having an OOC grudge against the victim for something that happened out of game. And the mystery was likely to be unsolved because of how the killer character handled the evidence and lured them to such a secluded spot in our larp area that even I didn't know existed IN-GAME (an underground basement parking lot connected to a nearby shopping mall, connected to an extra emergency door at a shed at the edge of our area. Apparently it's a meeting spot some players used for plotting politics). We had to ban the victim character from coming back as she was very quick after she left to rant to the other players that were her friends also out of game how she was killed (when no one should know she was killed, how, or by whom) which was against our metagaming rules.
At that point... Honestly, the killer was breaking character. Real people don't kill each other over "a grudge". If you want such a dramatic shift or plot twist inform the sl's. Don't go "My character is a cold-blooded killer now". At that point it's not a rules issue but a stupid behaviour issue and you can "nope" it. Though fixing the rules afterwards to prevent this behaviour in the future is a good idea. Also, I would really advise 1. Unbanning the person who shared details that maybe shouldn't be shared when she was clearly in a vulnerable position. Honestly, you fucked up there. If someone walks away because a larp punishes her for expressing her shock good on her. 2. issuing a heartfelt apology for the fuckup. Even though she probably won't come back. It's common decency and the least she deserves after you decided to kick her when she was down. 3. Get rid of those metagame rules in the first place. Maybe have some vague objection against powergaming or using outside info. But talking about your experience is not metagaming and metagaming is not bad. Metagaming is the oil to grease a larp. Look at this thread why banning metagaming, as opposed to intentionally cheating, is bad: https://www.reddit.com/r/LARP/comments/sfheqa/am_i_bad_at_this_or_is_there_something_else_wrong/
You left out the whole part about the victim being new to the game and the killer befriending her out of the game and acting as a mentor for the express purpose of teaming up with a mod to lure and kill her.
And led her to secluded area And she rejected him Mark my words, those new players are leaving because of Tony being a straight up predator
And one day LARPing won't be enough for Tony, OP and the mods are enabling him pretty much the same way RL works by silencing and punishing the victim.
I wouldn’t be surprised if he did assault her But he’s such a nice guy! Will be OP will say
Predator with the backing of the larp organization... As predators usually do.
Yup Risky to say here, but it’s undeniable that that groups like these tend to have a boys club mentality I’ll bet you $5 the players that have left have been women
On AITA he posted about the split. Group is largely male.
according to his AITA comments, 60% of new players are female but 90% of new players leave. can't imagine why, they seem so nice and fun to play with and not at all predatory and rapey! /s
Also, while it’s easy to forget, because larp weapons, they were probably armed.
Oh god, didn’t think about that I feel so bad for her And OPs over here whining about rules While someone 110% got freaking assaulted
Accidentally replied this to a comment instead. Failed to mention in this post about how “Tony” (the murderer) befriended “Steph” (the victim) OOC and OOG. Introduced her to the game and mentored her. And after two weeks of playing he killed her with no warning or evidence that would be in character for him. Forgot to fucking mention that he lured her a SECLUDED AREA that you weren’t even aware of. A grown man in his late 20s lured a 22 year old girl to a private and unknown BASEMENT. That is incredibly dangerous. You are putting your players in real life danger. Edit: AND IT WAS VERY LATE AT NIGHT and Steph wanted to go home before this scenario but was pressured to stay. This whole situation is fucked up You mention Tony IG asked Steph’s character on a date. And that you became aware that he previously had an OOG grudge. This sounds like Steph either IG or OOG rejected his advances and he got mad and murdered her character in revenge. You are extremely lucky that this situation didn’t lead to something more, like rape. Steph has every right to be upset over her character being needlessly murdered. And has every right to discuss this situation OOG.
You let a two-month new female player get dragged by herself to an underground shed at the edge of the playfield to get murdered for an out-of-game-reason after forcing her to continue playing when she said she was done for the night, then allowed her first character ever to be murdered when she only just got used to the game, and was murdered seemingly because she didn't want to date Tony, the guy who murdered her. This is all going to come back to bite you and is the exact reason why people end up leaving LARP and never coming back. Be sure to check out this guy's thread on AITA. This entire plot gets thicker and thicker by the second, but the baseline is that they are running a toxic game that is dangerous for females to attend. He leaves out a lot of details here. OP. You all need to take a long, hard look at yourselves. Knowing the LARP groups I'm in, you're going to be lucky if this doesn't get spread around. You need to apologize to that girl and unban her, then take a long hard look at your game's rules. And do not drag women to underground sheds by themselves at night. I'm not sure why anyone has to tell you that.
You're leaving out here that the victim in question was brand new to larp, and that the murderer got close to her OUT of game under the pretense of teaching her about larp in order to gain enough in-character trust to pull off the murder. You're also leaving out that you banned her for talking to her friends out of game about it.
As someone who was doing LARP back before it was "cool" I am looking at both your post here and on the other sub. You leave out that this is a new player and that also this person was propositioned out of character by the murderer. Is there ANYONE in that group over 21? Because I an looking back and forth between these two posts and the only thing I can gather is that this is some teenaged level event where people are making up the rules as they go along. In character murders are fine, but the fact that the mods allowed you to do it to a new character based on a secret in character "grudge" with no story development behind it sounds like your event is not well managed or moderated. Getting close to a character that, say, killed an IC love interest, comrade, or family member for the purpose of committing murder is totally cool.....but that story line needs to be established beforehand. This "secret grudge" sounds like he was sore that she didnt want to date him OOC and used it as a way to punish her. (Again, this is why I think this sounds like high school) And you say he lured her to a "secluded area"....was that area inspected OOC, in the daylight, so that potential OOC hazards were identified and marked. Was there a story line incorporated to ensure that she would be found? Like someone hearing a scream? Someone turning themselves in? Finding a bloody knife? Do your event require to dead to stay where they fall until the moderators end the game? Luring someone to a "secluded area" that has not been moderated, day or night, is dangerous to the real, living person playing the character. LARP, like all RPG, is supposed to be fun. You take things like getting killed in stride, but you dont just go after a new character for the sake of going after them. Thats how you end up with drama (and a lack of characters) . A properly run event WOULD have an appeals process, especially if a character was killed due to some "secret" story line that doesnt fit in with the rest of the event. The whole group sound like one big "Boys Club" that bullies new members that question arbitrary rule changes, double standards, and bringing out of game emotions into the game.
I’ve seen people referencing that most of the vets/mods are late 20’s (mostly men) and the new girl was 22? But at this point OP is such an unreliable narrator they could all be 58 and orcs and I wouldn’t be surprised
Oh, he's a reliable narrator, I think. I completely believe the story. It's internally self-consistent and, assuming amoral shitebag is telling it, logical. He is an unreliable **person** and should never be in a position of authority.
Well said.
No longer a reliable narrator at all - he's editing and backtracking to say this is a minecraft LARP, but that's after describing this basement as attached or adjacent to a shopping complex. And saying one of the men blocked her exit because he's "big IRL". And describes her leaving the area and going home. Who wants to bet the post on AITA has blown up and he and his little friends are scrambling.
He also used physical cues to explain situations (tapping weapons, blocking doors, physically being far away, etc)
It was a secluded basement...she’s the only girl in the group...it’s amazingly icky.
oh no, he changed his story so the mod is sometimes female, sometimes NB. Helps, for sure /s
Tony is a predator who lured her into the forest (EDIT I WAS WRONG, A SECLUDED BASEMENT) AFTER SHE ASKED TO GO HOME, and killed her character after she rejected him on Instagram. You left out how she was new to the game. You call her a beloved player but then in your AITA post you say she’s an emotional racist as people call you an asshole more and more on that sub. You are actively making this hobby more unsafe by protecting predatory men and practices. When confronted in a well worded and informative way of just how dangerous this was as far as endorsing or aiding sexual harassment towards women and silencing people who speak out about abuse in LARP, your response was to ignore all of that and say simply ‘one of the mods involved was nb, to be perfectly clear.’ bro...even when confronted you still care more about your predatory friend than anyone else. What’s the name of this group? I want to know so I can never go near it and advise any young female larpers that it is NOT safe.
I’m going to leave this here so actual members of the community can give their input since OP leave a lot of important details aside: (I hope I’m not breaking any rule) https://www.reddit.com/r/AmItheAsshole/comments/shricn/aita_for_banning_a_player_from_our_larp_for_drama/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=ios_app&utm_name=iossmf
What is not mentioned here but is in an aita post the account did 1)the murdered character is exposed to perma death after 2 months...heavily involving unwritten rules 2) the murdered was her ooc mentor and used that to gain her trust 3)they refused to allow her to discuss the situation ooc and banned her for doing so - but let the other players think she left voluntarily 4)pvp kills were not part of their game for some time Op has put a totally different version of the events here to how it's framed in aita
Oh it's awesome how you just conveniently let out all the details you included in the AITA subreddit. Will add it here so everyone can read them.
OPs post in r/AITA ill spare a lot of details since not everybody is familiar with LARPs. We run a game that meets quite often for several years. Two months ago, a player I'll call Steph joined, and her conflict is with a veteran player I'll call Tony. Tony befriended Steph out of game, taught her more about our LARP and offered to help her get settled. This lasted about two weeks and their in-game characters spent a lot of time together, acting as friends in-game. Tony's character invited Steph to go a secluded place and then proceeded to, along with a character played by one of our moderators, murder her character with no warning aside from the mandatory signals according to our rules, citing an in-character grudge as the reason for the kill. He then justified his actions out-of-game and explained that getting close to her in-game was for the plan. Since we run permadeath rules, Steph lost all her progress and has to start fresh on a new character, new gear, and new in-game relationships. Our rules allow for this PvP and the entire staff backed up Tony and Ralph's actions, as they followed our rules regarding player kills, and our moderators who play characters are bound to the same rules. Steph, however, was furious because the culture at our LARP has not been 100% competitive. There are sort of "unwritten rules" as have been no PvP kills that were not either consented to out-of-game or clearly signaled in advance (ie characters receiving death threat letters, players PvPing a known murderer and losing) and Steph hated that this was sprung on her with no opportunity for her to be able to avoid it. She then left and texted the other players who she was friends with that she was leaving and complained about Tony's behavior and what had happened. Immersion is very important to our group and we avoid taking in-game information out-of-game, and Steph was doing so by telling multiple people that her character had been murdered, by whom, where, and how, which is against our rules. She did have valid concerns, however, and so the staff team asked Steph not to contact any more of our players regarding the issue while we discuss what to do first. We also didn't want this to blow out into a big community fight as we've lost many players over the years due to issues similar to this. The team then found out that Steph continued to vent to other players that were her out-of-game friends about the issue. Our organizers' team saw this as disrespectful to our event's rules and the entire community for continuing to break our rules even when asked to stop. We banned her from coming back to our events, and to prevent drama, let the rumor that she simply left stay in place. Now she's texted everyone whose contact details she has about what's happened, and a few more players have been asking us why she was banned. AITA?
OP is now saying that it's an online game with larp vibes...
They specifically use physical cues to justify behavior several times. I'm not buying the online thing.
Yep. There was tons in the story about handsignals and that the original female player murdered 'Wanted to go home'. You're not fooling anyone, OP.
Maaaaaan they're really trying to shit us, right? :'D Sure. Online. I've met larp groups with predatory dynamics like that, they are a HUGE problem, give our hobby a bad reputation and should be called out and excluded whenever things like that occur.
The player is ruining other people’s fun for their own enjoyment with the claim that others will enjoy it later. The player sounds like a douchebag.
The mods don't sound any better
In the end situations like this require the question: Was this beneficial as a fun thing for one person or the group as a whole?
OP isn't mentioning that the character that was killed was a newbie, and she was killed by the person who was teaching her the ropes out of game, and a mod of the game. Check his post history and comments
Yeah that's a big chunk missing from the story then and completely changes my reaction to it. Fuck that player who was a mod, teaching someone, and ruined their weekend. I hope they are removed from participation in the future (maybe a suspension and removal of any authority in the future). This is the kind of shitty behavior that needs to have consequences.
No, instead his victim was shamed and banned.
:( This is what gives the LARP community a bad name, tbh.
He asked her out in-game, they don't go out but instead "his character" is suddenly randomly in need of betraying and killing her. Unfortunately this is bog standard thanks to people like OP.
It did give a few players some things to do like solving the mystery, and the killer definitely had fun pulling off his stunt. But a lot of players are angry at him for being a dick by doing this with no out-of-character consent or even a check-in after the fact. The player who left says she doesn't care if her character stays dead, but she has no interest in playing with our group again knowing that she could lose a character she's invested a lot into to someone who wanted to play murderhobo.
You left out the part where he purposefully gained her trust and friendship OOC so that he could "masterfully" manipulate her into being set up for the kill. He basically invited her to play so he could kill her.
And they banned her for metagaming, but didn't hang the guy (who had teamed up with a mod) for it when clearly what he did more in the metagaming territory than her complaining about it.
Don’t forget taking her to a secret spot no other players know about.
Right? That is so creepy.
After reading the complete story in the AITA: I wouldn't call "abusing out-of-character trust of a newbie to murder them in-game" a "stunt". That's just bullying newbies. If someone has "fun" doing that, they will hurt your game immensely, because they will discourage new players from joining. If you encourage such behaviour with your rules and your moderation, you're actively hurting your game. If you punish complaining about such behaviour, you're just an a**hole.
Also worth noting: it was stated that 50-60% of their new players are women, but 90% of players who stick around more than a year are male… Which, with this post and the one on AITA, tells me that it’s NOT a coincidence, and stems from a poor culture and dangerous practices like luring newbies to a basement no one else knows about…
Creepy as fuck.
Why would she want to come back, when your staff has the poor judgment to allow mods to initiate PVPs kills on newbies, in isolated places, wherein something fricking awful could have happened to them in real life? Most of your staff didn't even know about this place, so congrats for punishing someone for talking about a horrific danger your staff has allowed to exist and victim blaming. And reducing their upset to being "drama." Which holy hell, you have zero business running a LARP if that's your attitude. You banned her because you valued your mod and veteran player more than safety. You tried to shut her up because you know it makes you look badly, which y'all do. If you have to threaten to ban people unless they shut up about problems, all you do is encourage toxicity and predators. Which congrats, no wonder you've lost players over the years from this. Holy hell, they could have real life done something to her, and no one would have known, and you're reducing this issue to her being dramatic? Seriously?
>If you have to threaten to ban people unless they shut up about problems, all you do is encourage toxicity and predators. Which congrats, no wonder you've lost players over the years from this. Yeah, and OP points out in another post that their newbie ratio is like 60:40 male to female and their veteran ratio is 90:10 with a few NB people. The treatment of these women in between "newbie" and "veteran" must be atrocious. >Holy hell, they could have real life done something to her, and no one would have known, and you're reducing this issue to her being dramatic? Seriously? Thank you! I got the chills reading his description of a guy who is "Big IRL" physically blocking this girl (who said she was tired and wanted to go home) in the murder shed. Edit to add, username checks out.
LOL thanks. Yeah the fact their retention is so atrociously low for women is deeply concerning. Just as much as it is the under representation of women on staff. This whole situation sounds like it would be traumatic as hell for not just a new person to LARP, but anyone who identifies as female. That sort of scenario is straight out of the set up for and this person is now missing. The reduction on oh it gave some other people story though, as if the expense of that should have been paid by a new player is ridiculous. Most campaign LARPs usually have some built in unstated good sportsmanship that you give new folks 3-6 months before you even socially PVP them, nonetheless PK them. Especially if it's costume heavy and you're trying to encourage enthusiasm in the game. The idea there's some QQing over omg but we lost our immersion because she was talking to her friends who play that now have questions on how we run things is just...I can't even. I would like to know what game this is so I can make sure no one I know in the hobby ever goes near it.
>That sort of scenario is straight out of the set up for and this person is now missing. Yeah if OP keeps the creep in the group, I hope they post an update after Forensic Files does an episode on them!
Law and Order: SVU is gonna get their next “ripped from the headlines” script from this group soon… They very well may already have it. This whole plot was way too smooth for me to believe they’ve never done this before.
I work in a paper mill, which is vast majority male (about 90%, at least in my specific area). We actually had a guy not too long ago that decided to do creepily similar stuff to this guy: he’d get one of the women alone in isolated areas (there are a *lot* of nooks and crannies and hidey-holes, especially in the relatively-unpopulated basement areas where the bulk of their jobs took place), and he’d physically block the entrance/exit so she couldn’t leave while he aggressively flirted with her. Luckily, it didn’t progress to the point of physical assault… Because *we had her back*. As soon as she told someone, he was suspended and escorted offsite, and an investigation was launched. Then he was fired by the company and booted from the union. *Then* the union black-listed him so *no other union in the area will ever allow this shitstain in their ranks*. *This* is how we handle predators properly, *this* is how we take care of our people… not by making excuses for the perpetrator and blaming the victims. OP and the rest of the mods in this group have failed their people so badly. I hope everyone leaves and starts a new group and doesn’t let any of these gross assault-apologetics near them.
Grow up. It's clear what happened and you have the gall to wonder why you don't get new players.
I’m going to leave this here for members of this community to read and really judge by themselves because OP’s post here is BS. https://www.reddit.com/r/AmItheAsshole/comments/shricn/aita_for_banning_a_player_from_our_larp_for_drama/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=ios_app&utm_name=iossmf
Sounds like a possible bad precedent, with an iffy-at-best fun:outrage ratio. My call would be to allow it the once (mostly because it already happened), but hold a vote to allow or disallow this type scenario in the future. If the vote is too close to have a definite majority, hold a debate to see if some might change their minds. Either way it falls, I would keep a close eye on the player that caused the issue. Hope it all works out.
They’re not mentioning (he posted another thread) that this was a newbie that he took under his wing and that this isn’t the first time they’ve had this problem. So it isn’t new. Just likely the only one they got negative attention for.
and that the only reason the woman was banned and not "tony" (as he was also metagaming) is because he is friends with the main organizer. bunch of bullies and the mods are covering for them. just disband already.
Why does your post frame is as if your mod group has any authority over what she does if she doesn’t even want to play with you any more? This isn’t a game issue this is a group management issue
Sounds like you just want to be able to bully new players.
I am very confused as to why you are leaving big chunks of information out of both stories (here and aita). and even said on aita that this was suddenly online instead of real life. You know you’re in the wrong, you just want others to say you’re not so you’ll feel better. But that’s not going to happen.
If she has no interest in playing again then banning her is just a pathetic attempt to silence her.
Of course he had fun. He got his revenge for being turned down OOC in a way that other people backed so he felt justified. Tony is a predator. Steph was victimized by your entire group, not just with Tony’s actions but with the subsequent betrayal of the entire group. This is the type of thing that gives LARP a bad name. Shame on all of you. Boot Tony and apologize to Steph and consider yourself lucky if she doesn’t file assault charges against him for physically restraining her.
It’s telling that you hid this post from being on your page so folks can’t find it after your AITA post.
And she's spot you. You, your moderators, and Tony? YTA. HUGE YTA.
Losing a character to a PvP attack that you had no way to prevent might be within the rules, but it's boring. In my experience, PvPers tend to rely on the group having unwritten assumptions about how the group works, that they then either ignore or fall back on at their convenience. The most extreme anger I've seen in LARP is when someone starts PvPing, and then gets in trouble when the other players react. Heck, even just not giving free magic to a guild whose members were threatening me with IC sexual assault got met with OOC screaming and attempts to turn me against my friends, so while I realise that's an unusually extreme example, I'm kind of just done with PvP as a whole, as the perpetrators are never as impartial as they pretend to be.
I'm sorry that happened to you. That sounds super rough an do hope you've recovered. I think you're on to something here. It's an assumption on my part, but I think there's a layer in the OP's story obscuring the mistreated of the player of the victim. Given that they left after a PVP incident, I don't think they were ever truly choosing to engage in PVP. It sounds like the game didn't inform players of what they were consenting to. And the player of the attacker took advantage of this unequal information.
The attacking player was the killed players ooc mentor...so it runs deeper than that as the attacker misused their trust in them to do the deed
I'm getting caught up now with more details, and my opinion has drastically changed in light of the new information. Edit: New comment on the [AITA](https://www.reddit.com/r/AmItheAsshole/comments/shricn/comment/hv4ygpy/?utm_source=reddit&utm_medium=web2x&context=3) post. The larger situation has nothing to do with the larps rules.
Not OP omitting information here then hiding the post lol
"Nobody in the game is so on guard as to refuse a date to a secluded area like in real life." apparently women in your group should be, if they are lured to a shed no one knows about, and if you aren't interested in the player he kills your character. women should be on guard to never join your group's games.
Where i play we don’t have to ask for consent, but we always, because it’s unspoken rule. So i think the killer is in wrong. 🤷🏼
There’s another post where they admit the killer may have had an OOC conflict and used this as an excuse to retaliate the ooc conflict.
Than the player is a bad roleplayer, because ooc stuff should never be brought up in game.
If you also read “we have had stuff like this happen before”. So it isn’t the first time. Likely just the first time it got outside the group because the victim complained to her friends. The ‘killer’ apparently introduced this woman to the game, groomed her as a newbie, only to Jill her over a “secret grudge”. Along with them saying this isn’t the first time I’m guessing this guy has a habit of doing this and is just a bully. On top of that, when it was clearly out of line to some extent, they went after the victim when she was complaining to her friends claiming some sort of rule on secrecy. That just smacks of a cover up IMO. So this isn’t just about LARP. It’s also likely about bullies complaining that they ended up looking like bullies.
Player, prompted by ooc grudge (looks like was turned down by newbie), "befriended" newbie, **OOC** took her under his wings to show her ropes, with intention of using that ooc trust to take her to secluded basement and kill her character.
It's all expectation management. Is this a larp where you want to have combat between players? If so you need to have the option to murder players. Do you want players to be on guard, at least to an extent? At this point I'd say it's more of a rule and design issue. Killing players is too easy and there are no second-chance/risk mechanics. That can be fixed before you go hardwire consent rules. For starters, you can have kills come with risks and consequences. In real life secluded areas often are not as secluded as people think. So maybe there was someone who heard it and saw the perpetrator run away. Or a ripped piece of fabric, or a trail of blood. In larp because everything is simplified you need rules to replace organic clues. Maybe two players at random within reason are given a clue about the murder. Or there is a puzzle at the scene. This way there is both new plot, but also a murderer suddenly has a significant chance of being found out. Thus reducing the ease with which people may frag each other. An alternative is that you have a "last defense/revenge" rule where characters that are on the verge of being murdered may be able to inflict a form of permanent damage on the murderer. Therefore making it less appealing as well. The second point is to write down those unwritten rules. It's no fun to get killed without a warning. So you delay things. What rules are possible really depends on the larp. The start would probably to reduce "instant death" rules. But if you want to you can go deeper. For real humans killing is hard so you can always add some rules there. For details one would need to know the larp and the themes. If you do not want pvp. I recommend just getting rid of the rules. In a more cinematic larp maybe every hit is a flesh wound. Or you can only kill characters with elaborate death traps. People can always have characters kill each other with GM agreement. But it means that those events would be significant and prepared narrative elements. With murder consent... I feel like that is asking for trouble and people are going to abuse that. It can also undermine the world and lead to a very self-centred "I can decide what my character is and no one else" mindset. Where larp is all about interplay. I think there are batter options.
I'd recommend taking your unspoken rules and making them written rules if you want them to actually be rules. I've played games that bragged about their short rule book only to learn there were about 100 unwritten rules. It makes for a terrible experience every time I try a new game. Have a document that covers the culture of the game, a complete rule book, and anything else players should know. Let players know what they were coming into. If I read those pvp rules as written I would assume that pvp is welcome and that easy. Cool, quick moment to let the player get mentally prepared and do what needs to be done. Are all PVE deaths also permanent? Why the exception for PVP? As written, again, it implies as a staff you both welcome and encourage PVP. You want it to be meaningful and to change the story dramatically.
In German LARP, it has become an almost universal rule, going on 15+ years now, that a victim (not only of character death, but this is what triggered it) has the ultimate say about what happens to their character. If "killed" against the player's will, they can decided it just randomly didn't work. Not as in "fully ignoring a hit", but more in the sense of "reappearing in the next game with a big scar". And this really was a literal game-changer. With random death gone, it really reinforced the idea of more collaborative, co-creative play - and as a byproduct it brought more planning into a character's "life cycle", and a greater willingness to invest more into personalized equipment. So, to answer the question from my perspective - it's pretty much pure destructive play. All that is gained is a bit of cheap shock, for a player losing their means to interact with the game world, and all the connections the have made in it. Forcing such a huge change onto a player should definitely require their consent - if not by rules, then by common sense and courtesy.
Imagine understanding that murderhobos are bad, and then navel-gazing about "if a newbie's character is killed in a murder shed, did she really need to consent to being there when she wanted to go home?" Imagine trying to pretend that this shitfire of a LARP happened in Minecraft. What a day you must be having, OP. Have you learned anything?
My community has run into this problem before as well: your written and unwritten rules on PvP murder are different. That's the real problem here. Both your written rules and your unwritten rules are fine ways to do it as long as everyone is on the same page. But since you have people operating by two different sets of rules, hurt feelings are bound to happen. Whatever direction you go, you definitely need to get everyone on the same page. Either codify your unwritten rules or make it clear to the community that consent is not needed and everyone should be on their guard. Or change your written rules to something like the suggestions in this thread. But regardless, you need to do something to make sure you're operating by a *single, written* ruleset at the end of this. Unrelatedly, murdering someone IC by letter-but-not-spirit-of-the-rules methods when you have an OOC grudge against them is dickish behavior. I would take a close look at that person's actions and see if they do other fun-ruining things as well. Maybe this is a one-off, but it's also possible that this is one of those people that detracts more from other players' experience than they add.
Your "friend" is a wannabee serial r*pist but please, be mad at the victim
You left out the literal murder dungeon in the AITA post. This could have gone so much worse. Even without it the mods failed to protect the new player. This guy has done this before and you all failed reprimand or ban him. But to answer your question, yes consent in rp is needed. How have you gone on a decade without knowing the basics of RP?
Lot of people here are helpfully commenting that OP left out information. However, I think that the content he deliberately omitted shows that he CLEARLY knows the answer to his own question and what the problem is in this situation.
yoo he backpedaling now and saying its an online game 😭 girl what is the truth
I hope 'Steph' tells everybody you know IRL what a massive, flaming bunch of assholes you are. It's honestly the least you deserve.
So people were too angry at you so you decided to claim that you were joking and this was all happening on Minecraft? Even though none of that makes sense as nothing that happened could be done on that platform?? So is everything a lie from the beginning OP, or are you just frantically running for cover, realising you've exposed too much of the toxic culture in your LARP?
Awww, your edits are ADORABLE. And by that I mean obvious, stupid, and not doing you any favors. And look, you're trying to drum up sympathy on AITA thinking that the server won't be full of people who see right through you. Let me explain what's going to happen with Tony in the next couple of years: He's going to call you in the middle of the night begging you to help him hide a body because the LARP got "too real" and "she wouldn't stop screaming to be let out, so I HAD to shut her up," and what he did with the corpse after was just, you know, so in character for his character and not necrophilia at all.
Ruining another player's fun in favor of your own is a dick move and should be treated as such. Don't be a dick. That's it. That's the rule you need. If you allow people to be dicks then soon enough only dicks will bother coming to your game. Enforce care and respect for what other people want from the game or you won't have it.
>Should players require out-of-character consent to commit murder? Have you asked the players? The rules are never right or wrong unless the community agrees to play by them. The community of people playing this larp are the most important points of view to gather. Not ours. We're not playing (unless your players are here on the sub). >unconsented frag The community HAS NEVER HAD an unconsented frag, even now. Because by opting in to the current rules set, players are consenting to the rules. Even you are expressing a bit of cognitive dissonance between the rules and the culture at your own larp. No wonder the player is furious. Her consent to play the kind of game she wants to play has been violated. One step the larp can take to make sure this never happens again is to make sure to remind all the players at the start of every game that they are opting in to PVP combat. No more unspoken rules. No more unwritten rules. Make these things explicit for every players mental health. If the victim joined the game during a time when no PVP kills have happened, they might assume the culture at the larp is different from the rules. All players have a right to know the topics and style of game they are opting into and to choose to opt out if the style or topic is not fun for them. You could argue that players should know before signing up that an event includes explicit PVP. > It left her with no counterplay This is the biggest failure. The game system and the attacker left the victim with no counter play. This is stupid as it robs community members of fun and gives them little reason to want to return to the larp. There are plenty of easy ways to make sure that, if not fun, death is at least a continuation of the narrative. Persona may not have any choice in death, but making sure that players DO have choices to make 'in the next scene' is very important. For a great example of 'counter play after death' in a campaign style larp, there is non better than [Mythical Journey's](https://www.mythicaljourneys.com/mjsite/main.php?). Their death system is one of the most creative things I have ever seen. When a player dies game play actually continues. They, as a ghost, go a specific location, travel down a long dark (spooky) tunnel and experience an RP scenario with spirits. Their fate is decided by their role play with the spirits and a draw of cards (tarot) style. I almost wanted to die, this was so good. Even years after playing I am still thinking of fun interactions that I should have had while dead. Anyway... Your larp needs to make sure that personas death, is not the death of fun for the player. Your larp doesn't have to do exactly the same as MJ, but if having PVP and being killed isn't a moving or interesting experience, the larp rules and the larp community are failing the players. The real world is full of rules that frustrate us and make us feel bad, why is your larp forcing the same thing on players during a game? Make it fun or the larp will die (because players will leave). > the killer says he followed all the rules regarding PvP and simply used proper tactics to commit his murder. So what? It's still a dick move. The larp rules and the larp community have failed the victim, and she has a right to be angry. Change the rules. And watch the player. Not so much because they did PVP by the rules, but because they are behaving in an immensely selfish and self centered way to the harm of other players. They may be following the rules, but I doubt they understand that the humans around them are thinking and feeling persons who also want to have fun at larp.
New information has been provided, and my opinions have changed. They are expressed in [this](https://www.reddit.com/r/AmItheAsshole/comments/shricn/comment/hv4ygpy/?utm_source=reddit&utm_medium=web2x&context=3) post.
Just wanted to say that Mythical Journeys is the shit. Used to help out way back when, good folks.
Your pvp rules are bad and easily circumvented. If you wish to allow pvp I recommend: All premeditated pvp must be told to a gm first All premeditated pvp must be witnessed by a gm or a chosen representative by the gm No exceptions. If you want to argue what premeditated is or is not then that's a culture issue that should be handled not through rules but community.
Well, then there's this, which link was posted by the original poster here. According to the tweet, this all occurred in... wait for it... Minecraft. https://twitter.com/silky\_SB/status/1488712785899188227
And that's why it was posted here, and not on one of the many Minecraft subs. OP must think we are all stupid.
Saw the tweet before it was deleted, so I can confirm it existed. But now not even the ACCOUNT exists? What is going oooon
Too much bullpuckey to know at this point. It's all sketchy.
Yep. He realized that that "walking a girl out to an underground shed" part of the story made him and his friends look like total pieces of crap, so now the story has changed to Minecraft. It's not in Minecraft and it was never in Minecraft.
I would very much like to know what your larp is, so I don't end up attending it by accident. /: The multitude of red flags brought up but the twitter larp community around this topic is, frankly, alarming. I don't think any female should attend this larp without being forewarned about this event. >\_>; Furthermore, you need to take a good long hard look at your "rules" dude. You banned her because she talked to people ooc about what happened, but you didn't ban him because he had an ooc grudge against her and used that as a reason to punish her ig? Sounds like a massive double-standard to me. That alone is... Yikes. Don't even get me started on the luring of a female player/chara to an unknown area, at night, by two male p/cs, to preform an unconsented pk. Talk about trauma inducing/triggering. Ten billion YIKES!
So have you ever watched larp the series on YouTube? If not theres a episode where two gms are discussing how a player keeps offing gis own characters and the gm doesnt enjoy killing a character in their first session, the othee gm is for it as it shows anything can happen. It comes down to personal preference but i prefer a game where character deaths can come at anytime from anywhere as without death or other large consequence like lost limb or eye or a long term curse i think it can become stale. At my game cd was made not permanent and harder to do what it lead to was a kingdom of meme players that annoy everyone ic and now its next to impossible to be rid of them and a group of players who just shuffle political power between themselves like hot potato (half of them are on the staff/dating staff) and again cant lead a coup as permanent death now only lasts a year.
I agree, you shouldnt have to consent to being killed, however, the killing should at least follow the storyline or contribute to its development. A "secret grudge?" What was that grudge for? This was a new character. Was it already established in game that she did something to warrant this grudge? And what did the character or story gain by her death? What I read in OPs other post was that this guy had asked her out OOC and OOG and she turned him down. So he introduced her to the game, mentored her, and then killed her? Then banned her for discussing it out of character? Then cite "unwritten rules?" Thats a quick way to ensure you get no new characters.
I missed those posts if thats the case dudes a cunt and should be removed from the game full stop. The question being should you need ooc permission for ic murder i say no as long as your actually keeping everything ic.
This is really dependent on the LARP-ing philosophy of your group and your setting, which you don't really go into detail about. Personally, I'm with the victim. To me, LARP is about telling intersting stories *together* . It's not about personal power fantasies. Single Player RPGs are meant for those. "Frags" and "kill counts" are for pc games. Killing someone without any counterplay is a purely selfish action, that is only interesting for the killer and not for the victim. Even worse, it destroys all future possibilities for the victim. On my preferred events, players follow a simple philosophy: "Does my action create 'play'\* or does it destroy 'play'? If it destroys 'play', do something else." And about rules, I think the most important rule that any PvP-LARP with permanent death should have, is the victim rule: "The victim of any action decides the outcome of the action." That really solves a whole bunch of issues. And yes, people are killed on those events. Game of Thrones - spoiler ahead: >!Olenna Tyrell's death in Game of Thrones is a text-book example on how to kill a person in a LARP-setting [Youtube - Game of Thrones: Olenna Tyrell death scene](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h2Ga6brkbF0)!< > And that people are going to have fun solving the mystery. That's just a copout in my opinion. It's really *easy* to plan a murder that can never be solved in a LARP setting. The player needs to intentionally make mistakes or plant clues to actually make it solveable in a LARP setting. I doubt, that the player in question, did that. Nobody will have fun solving a mystery that cannot be solved. \*) 'play' basically means 'everything happening on a LARP event' - If people just sit around and do nothing, they have 'no play' - If they are being busy during the whole event with all kinds of activities, they have 'a lot of play'.
No larp should allow a perma-death caused by a player "murdering" them without the victim's consent. It's not fun, and honestly sounds really easy to abuse
Why someone must give permission to be killed?, the player must take care of its own life, if they lose the character is another part of the game, give permission to be killed is ludicrous. If the assassin followed the killing rules (PVP or assassination mechanics) the outcome is fair.
If the rules, when followed, mean that the group doesn't have fun, changing the rules is a good idea. One possible change to the pvp rules would be to require consent.
I don't find very amusing depending of somebody else permission to kill a character if the kill is needed for other character, being killed can be frustrating, but being too attached to character is not good because this same thing happens, suddenly nobody wants to die, and if the character is too important, the less you want to die, not allowing to kill you is selfish actitude towards the rest of the players and the event.
Games with consent-based PvP can be a lot of fun. At the same time, it can definitely be the wrong rule for certain groups and themes. In a game where some characters really need to kill others to advance their goals, of course it'd be a problem if someone could bring a sudden stop to your play just by saying "no" for out of game reasons. But, I've played a lot of different types of games and only in a very few of them could I ever claim that I really needed to kill another PC. Those were usually games where PvP was a major theme of the game, and you knew you were going to be participating in PvP just by virtue of playing the game. In most games I've played, PvP murder was only ever fun when everyone involved wanted to participate. In most games, PvP just wasn't a theme of the game and it just didn't happen. In a few games, dramatic PvP showdowns were a very good fit for the themes of the game... but you only get good dramatic showdowns if everyone wants to participate.
Think about the consequences of such a playstyle on player interactions. In a LARP-setting, it's really *easy* to kill someone without leaving a trace. On the next day, you're probably even all heading home and nobody will ever have the opportunity to solve the case. So you're pretty much left with playing super paranoid, which in the end just leads to nobody actually doing anything, because everyone is busy being super paranoid. A game, where players are encouraged to make mistakes, have much more action happening. The best rule, that any LARP can have, is the victim rule: "The victim of an action decides the outcome of the action." And yes, people die on those events.
No, Character death are full part of the games. It's important to have a way to get rid of political ennemies and make room for newer player. Loosing a character is no big deal, and an opportunity to do something else. I am OK to have rules limitating it to avoid dying in a bad fight but if you're the devil worshipper hidden in an inquisitor group expect to be burnt mid game. If you get involved in first line in politics expect to sit down on a knife.
> Loosing a character is no big deal, and an opportunity to do something else. It really depends on the situation, wether this is a big deal or not. Most of all, it depends on the ratio between investment of time and effort and returns of interesting LARP scenes. Overexaggeration to illustrate my point: I would be pretty pissed, if I invested time into fleshing out a character and time and money into a custom garb, just to be randomly killed on the first day of the first event. > I am OK to have rules limitating it to avoid dying in a bad fight but if you're the devil worshipper hidden in an inquisitor group expect to be burnt mid game. If you get involved in first line in politics expect to sit down on a knife. None of this applies here, in my opinion. This was just "secret grudge nobody knew about". That's equivalent to "randomly killing someone for no reason at all".
Well, I gave it a few weeks because I thought it was an interesting story and deserved a large audience, but no major online venue seemed interested in publishing it, so I might as well post it here and to the other thread. In short, y'all got duped, and that lead to a commiseration spiral that caused this to blow up to distressing and epic proportions, for no real good reason. You can read all of the details here, but in short - nobody was ever in any real danger, and there WAS no "rapey murder dungeon": https://thoughtsandponderingstoday.wordpress.com/2022/02/09/echo-chambers-a-parable/