What is LARPing? Isn’t it for Nerds?

by | Jul 27, 2017 | Articles

Many people have a misconception of what LARPing really is.  Anytime an individual puts on a costume, or wears a team’s colors, to pretend to engage in some form of imitation competition they are LARPing.  This almost always involves some sort of competitive battle game & taking on a role that you don’t normally have in your regular life. These roles can range from support members, to wizards, rugged trappers, or even that guy sitting off in the bush waiting to snipe the enemy.

Now I know many individuals will argue, “Nuh Uhh!!!  My Paintball/Airsoft/Mountain Man/Civil War reenactment group doesn’t LARP!!!!”  Well let’s look at the facts of what LARPing really is:

  1. Wearing an outfit specifically designed to create a certain setting, usually set in some fiction to allow you to escape the boredom of day to day life.
  2. Practicing for hours on end to become the best at your desired skill set so you can hopefully win competitions set up by an event coordinator.
  3. Pretending to be in a setting that is different than your day to day life. Usually this is, but not limited to, some historical setting.
  4. Using weapons, items, or gear that wouldn’t be commonly used in civil society on a day to day basis.

These things happen in every battle group I am aware of, and each of these groups are epic in embracing their inner nerd in some way. This includes steel fighting knights of the Armored Combat League all the way down to the best competitors of paintball tournaments.  Each of them have these four elements included in them.  Now most people associate LARPing with basement dwelling dice rollers who took a game like Dungeons & Dragons into the light of day with foam noodles crying for lightning bolts to rain down on their enemies.  This is the most prominently form of LARPing globally, and here our efforts tend to focus on the medieval combat aspect of LARP groups because of my own bias through the camaraderie of groups like Belegarth and Amtgard. Though we are happy to link to any groups that are looking to increase the numbers in their battle games as long as they use swords, like a group close to my home Rexerit, and we might even tell you about other types battle games from time to time just because the adrenaline rush is amazing!