i went larping with my first husband pretty regularly. the amount of people waiting at registration that casually mentioned how happy they were to come larp instead of using the money to pay rent was..... alarming
@cyberpunk-2O77 I would make a joke but someone went to the hospital over it. I mean DM almost killed someone because of mixing meds and medical conditions.
The only time they get to feel important. It's the same mentality as Karens that abuse retail, and food service workers. They have no power, or control in other aspects of their life, and so they take their grievances out on other people that can't, or won't really fight back. Big fish in a pathetically tiny pond.
What an awful person the gf was. Like, don't lie and lead someone on. If you wanna be with someone else, say so. As someone who was lead on and cheated on, it hurts worse than just being dumped, trust me.
Absolutely hurts more than being dumped… but they aren’t doing it because they don’t want to hurt you, they do it because they want the attention of multiple guys. They are always attention hogs that can never get wnough
This story gave me a bad feeling the pit of my stomach. I'm really worried about that girl they recruited, that group doesn't just give off kind of a 'mean girl' thing, but predatory cultish vibes as well.
I've seen this a bit with very insecure women who join LARPs (as a woman). It's not uncommon behavior. Some people look at these events for dating potential instead of gaming.
For some reason I know what to make a group that saves these groups to go to war with Caligula, because larping isn't for certain groups, its for everyone to have fun even if you have no money to play, you can still play
Mass chargeback and go to the local news. They failed to deliver for their event TO THE POINT OF BODILY INJURY OF PARTICIPANTS. Max capacity exists for a reason, and while OP did the right thing and found their own place to safely lodge overnight (at their own cost/inconvenience, still being denied their full promised product/service in that regard) they also were denied the fake currency with no good reason. 4-8 people getting frostbite because a jackass larp llc doesn't know their shit is exactly what the local news is for and would help deflect the targeted blacklisting that would come with this.
Oh I agree, from the way the story sounds it was a while back so maybe it was cash and not card, but the local news should have been contacted especially since this group was malicious in addition to being poorly ran
@@lootgoblinmarketplace In that case, the local news helps one get their money back with less likelihood of being blacklisted across the board. There really was a certain magic to small time journalism before social media... It makes good 1st level D&D content for experienced roleplayers, too! When you can't just Hero your way through the town's problems and want RP opportunities, this is it. (And then they will invariably come back and hero the town later, but that's for a different session)
Lets be honest, no Local News is going to cover a LARP gone wrong. Anyone outside of the Gaming Community are going to look at you weird and ask 'Whats a Larp?'. Then when you explain it they will likely tell you they only tell "Real" News. Unless the Media can somehow spin it into a Story about LARPing being Deadly or "Satanic" they wont care, unless you get a Fatality that is.
Are they that bad? My rpg group enjoys passing time together, playing or not, a lot; we even booked an airbnb together for a week, a couple of years ago.
@Zarlos01 LARPing is its own Beast. You REALLY have to be into Acting, because some of these people take it REALLY serious. Even when its just Combat they get pretty picky about things. Also A LOT of internal Politics is being done, and I am not talking about RP Politics, I mean NASTY High School levels of Clicks and in fighting. This Story is an example of how people will abuse their Power in it, and if they dont like you there is really nothing you can do about it. I once lost a Friend for about a Year to a LARP Group, as they decided the rest of our Table Top Group was not worth having around. They basically convinced him to dump us and spend all his time with them. After a while he came back and apologized, but still this kind of thing is not uncommon.
@@Zarlos01 Yes. Just like finding a D&D table that fits your standards, you have to find a larp that fits yours too. Some are more invested into fighting, others into just running a game for their friends, and some are invested into everyone having fun but that's so rare. - think doubling the problems of a D&D campaign because it's all in person and camping. It's not just the organization that owns the title? It's really about who's running the event. You might like someone else's events a lot more than anothers.
It’s really sad that so many things like this give such a bad reputation to the few good larps. But it also makes me glad that I have found a good one as well.
I once played DnD (on discord) with a girl that went by Celeste, she was a friend of the DM (my bf at the time) and tbh they way she described in this story mirrors a lot of my experiences. She was invited to help us new players (the party consisted of4 new players including me, plus Celeste) and she was invited to help us learn how to play and get us started into DnD 5e. It slowly devolved into her meta gaming, even mentioning her plans in general chat to the DM annoyance, and her constantly flaunting how she was so hot and such the perfect wife and kids to her husband etc. She wasn't very helpful, and if anything, became a issue when she tried to poach the other players by constantly mentioning another table top rpg she wanted to run so badly but so happened to need new players. Outside of that, she never engaged with us, other to brag about her perfect body, and how she got dinner already ready and how her boobs are massive etc, how she real life cosplays and other weird world centers upon me shit. I'm not saying there the same person, but its funny how Celeste's have the same attitude and world centered upon them vibe, funny it happened twice
If I had a nickel for every time a Celeste had a center-of-the-universe attitude, I'd have two nickels. Which isn't a lot, but it's weird how it happened twice.
LARP just seems like an absolute nightmare. Tabletop already has its fair share of power-tripping game masters and that-guy players. LARP requires a whole other level of obsession.
As someone who has been going larping for about 5 years or so now (a fest larp, 4 weekends a year), and for the most part everyone is pretty chill really. There's a few thousand people iirc, so probably a few bad actors, but most people are all invested in it and there to have fun, and so don't go out of their way to make problems.
I was part of the Vampire the Masquerade official world game LARP some years ago and....yea, I can empathize with anyone else who went through these experiences.
Definitely no coincidence that they treated Celeste so special, made sure she had the warm private room, and she later moved into with them after dumping her bf. She’s getting clapped out by the whole kingdom😂
I've never larped, doesn't appeal to me personally. But when does the RP end? Like if I went somewhere with my partner and they said oh we are going to have her sleep away from you in a place full of strangers whilst your locked outside, we would both laugh at you for basic safety common sense.... I hate to victim blame but you knew these guys had a crap reputation, you went a long way in crap weather to have a crap experience and then just pottered around. If you two didn't want to go and Celeste wanted to go by herself and then met someone else then thats her life and her decision but I wouldn't put myself through that!
I agree that it seems like people let a lot slide for the sake of “roleplay” when it’s really just bad behavior. They are customers paying for an experience and once it became clear that the rival larp group was hazing them, it’s time to get your money back and leave.
@@rootyful - I'm glad they do and most people are great. But I wouldn't trust the safety integrity of strangers when it is unrequited, especially not one's who have given me reason to doubt them prior to the event.
Not larp but i went to a Otaku convention with my girlfriend (now my ex) years ago, and the moment the group gave me a bad feeling i told her i wanted to leave, she didn't, and so i left her there. She can take care of herself and call me if something happens and i can take my own decisions, if i want to spend time together somewhere i hate to be in i would go visit her parents
Honestly, some nerd groups I have found to be the most toxic communities around. It's why I stopped playing trading card games, because as a teen the majority of adults thought bullying and ragging at younger/newer players somehow made them better then them or something. So I'm really not surprised by this story. Also been to quite a few rent fairs where I've been harassed for not wearing accurate clothing(By people in anime and rpg outfits), and been to a lot of fairs that were just dogshit and charged like 80$+ to enter. It's why I don't do that stuff anymore.
Larps are great fun but, they come with caveats: they are written and run by big personalities, the bad ones will use it to cultivate their harem and cult of personality. Prep for extreme weather, especially a winter event (which are the hardest), is intense and not recommended for young larpers. And it takes cultivating a culture of 'include and lifting up' style of play, being the new guys in bare bones costuming, standing at the edge of the gathering; yeah, nothing is going to happen to you story wise (though watching your "friend" getting dotted on/courted is something else). Larp has come miles since this story (this was written before Masquerade), of course there are dinosaur, problematic larps but, successful games have come a long way since then. OP knew they were problematic, were actively warned, let them shark their larp, and then paid to be mistreated. They paid to go to Sea World and got upset they got soaked.
I think that they wrote down "which ones we win" and after a guest ruined the plan, they refused to improvise. I agree that he really sealed the deal on things going wrong by doing that.
Having just watched this, it seems to me that the only real hardship is tied to the poster's group, and not totally indicative of the overall experience (the worst is that it was cold, but, you could likely tell going in by watching the weather channel or something). In fact, most of the issues with the larp were rather petty compared to other similar stories I've heard (there was the one guy who was too arrogant to prepare for other inevitabilities and scoffed when he was told to prepare more, there was the poaching, and there was the cold, and there was the customer service/reception desk stuff). Sucks that there was the obvious partisanship though. Best way to crush a rival larp group would probably be to make them love yours more than theirs.
There is a LARP group in my area that is called Caligula and does something very similar. They DO have a player actually named Celeste, which is super weird. She's nowhere near that popular though.
Yeah, they tried to monetize their hobby which is fine, but if you suck at doing it.. sabotaging the competition is just sad because it means you suck at your favorite thing and refuse to improve. It is like running a comic book or card shop and having a reputation for running it poorly and not being good at having what people like in stock. Instead of getting your shop in order and improving your customer service, you just start making up lies about the other shops in town, trying to take their most reliable employees through additional lies all in the hopes they close down and their clientele becomes yours.
Fred really dodged a bullet with Celeste. A significant other that lets you be ignored and mistreated? She'd ditch him later anyway.
Something Something monkey branching.
i went larping with my first husband pretty regularly. the amount of people waiting at registration that casually mentioned how happy they were to come larp instead of using the money to pay rent was..... alarming
When my wife was active in the SCA, the number of people with that mindset (including our then-roommate) was distressing to say the least.
Whoa, a bunch of man children with no concept of personal responsibility or work ethic comprises the majority of the LARPing community? No way
This was tame compared to the DM who drugged his party for immersion.
👀👀
*You wake up, groggy.*
Oh, you're finally awake...
@cyberpunk-2O77 I would make a joke but someone went to the hospital over it. I mean DM almost killed someone because of mixing meds and medical conditions.
@@dwaynejackson551 Was that in the news?
@@termitesc.aardwolf3644 No, it was a reddit story. Stop deleting my comments youtube.
@@dwaynejackson551 ok so it never happened. Got it
Bullying larpers and power tripping in roleplaying has got to be one of the most pathetic things I've ever heard
The only time they get to feel important. It's the same mentality as Karens that abuse retail, and food service workers. They have no power, or control in other aspects of their life, and so they take their grievances out on other people that can't, or won't really fight back.
Big fish in a pathetically tiny pond.
What an awful person the gf was. Like, don't lie and lead someone on. If you wanna be with someone else, say so. As someone who was lead on and cheated on, it hurts worse than just being dumped, trust me.
Absolutely hurts more than being dumped… but they aren’t doing it because they don’t want to hurt you, they do it because they want the attention of multiple guys. They are always attention hogs that can never get wnough
This story gave me a bad feeling the pit of my stomach. I'm really worried about that girl they recruited, that group doesn't just give off kind of a 'mean girl' thing, but predatory cultish vibes as well.
Exactly my thinking.
I've seen this a bit with very insecure women who join LARPs (as a woman). It's not uncommon behavior. Some people look at these events for dating potential instead of gaming.
For some reason I know what to make a group that saves these groups to go to war with Caligula, because larping isn't for certain groups, its for everyone to have fun even if you have no money to play, you can still play
Mass chargeback and go to the local news.
They failed to deliver for their event TO THE POINT OF BODILY INJURY OF PARTICIPANTS.
Max capacity exists for a reason, and while OP did the right thing and found their own place to safely lodge overnight (at their own cost/inconvenience, still being denied their full promised product/service in that regard) they also were denied the fake currency with no good reason.
4-8 people getting frostbite because a jackass larp llc doesn't know their shit is exactly what the local news is for and would help deflect the targeted blacklisting that would come with this.
Oh I agree, from the way the story sounds it was a while back so maybe it was cash and not card, but the local news should have been contacted especially since this group was malicious in addition to being poorly ran
@@lootgoblinmarketplace
In that case, the local news helps one get their money back with less likelihood of being blacklisted across the board.
There really was a certain magic to small time journalism before social media...
It makes good 1st level D&D content for experienced roleplayers, too! When you can't just Hero your way through the town's problems and want RP opportunities, this is it.
(And then they will invariably come back and hero the town later, but that's for a different session)
Lets be honest, no Local News is going to cover a LARP gone wrong. Anyone outside of the Gaming Community are going to look at you weird and ask 'Whats a Larp?'. Then when you explain it they will likely tell you they only tell "Real" News.
Unless the Media can somehow spin it into a Story about LARPing being Deadly or "Satanic" they wont care, unless you get a Fatality that is.
"I thought this was Rome, not Alabama!"
Ive always wanted to larp because i love camping and dnd but if something goes wrong im staying in my car
I'm not afraid to LARP, I just know people that LARP and I wouldn't be able to spend an entire weekend with those people without wanting to end myself
Are they that bad?
My rpg group enjoys passing time together, playing or not, a lot; we even booked an airbnb together for a week, a couple of years ago.
@Zarlos01 LARPing is its own Beast. You REALLY have to be into Acting, because some of these people take it REALLY serious. Even when its just Combat they get pretty picky about things. Also A LOT of internal Politics is being done, and I am not talking about RP Politics, I mean NASTY High School levels of Clicks and in fighting.
This Story is an example of how people will abuse their Power in it, and if they dont like you there is really nothing you can do about it. I once lost a Friend for about a Year to a LARP Group, as they decided the rest of our Table Top Group was not worth having around. They basically convinced him to dump us and spend all his time with them. After a while he came back and apologized, but still this kind of thing is not uncommon.
@@Zarlos01 Yes. Just like finding a D&D table that fits your standards, you have to find a larp that fits yours too. Some are more invested into fighting, others into just running a game for their friends, and some are invested into everyone having fun but that's so rare. - think doubling the problems of a D&D campaign because it's all in person and camping. It's not just the organization that owns the title? It's really about who's running the event. You might like someone else's events a lot more than anothers.
Hears Caligula: "I get that reference!"
It’s really sad that so many things like this give such a bad reputation to the few good larps. But it also makes me glad that I have found a good one as well.
Sounds more like a caution story about dating popular girls lmao.
I once played DnD (on discord) with a girl that went by Celeste, she was a friend of the DM (my bf at the time) and tbh they way she described in this story mirrors a lot of my experiences. She was invited to help us new players (the party consisted of4 new players including me, plus Celeste) and she was invited to help us learn how to play and get us started into DnD 5e. It slowly devolved into her meta gaming, even mentioning her plans in general chat to the DM annoyance, and her constantly flaunting how she was so hot and such the perfect wife and kids to her husband etc. She wasn't very helpful, and if anything, became a issue when she tried to poach the other players by constantly mentioning another table top rpg she wanted to run so badly but so happened to need new players. Outside of that, she never engaged with us, other to brag about her perfect body, and how she got dinner already ready and how her boobs are massive etc, how she real life cosplays and other weird world centers upon me shit.
I'm not saying there the same person, but its funny how Celeste's have the same attitude and world centered upon them vibe, funny it happened twice
If I had a nickel for every time a Celeste had a center-of-the-universe attitude, I'd have two nickels. Which isn't a lot, but it's weird how it happened twice.
Great how everything crumbles because of one single idiot
The fact theyre still operating is abysmal. Someone should do something substantial.
LARP just seems like an absolute nightmare. Tabletop already has its fair share of power-tripping game masters and that-guy players. LARP requires a whole other level of obsession.
When LARPers go bad, they go all the way...
As someone who has been going larping for about 5 years or so now (a fest larp, 4 weekends a year), and for the most part everyone is pretty chill really. There's a few thousand people iirc, so probably a few bad actors, but most people are all invested in it and there to have fun, and so don't go out of their way to make problems.
In the UK, this is. Not sure what LARP culture is like elsewhere.
@@tomlaptain646 European LARP is a different beast than American LARP for sure.
Iou "fake money" is called Script. It's a historical actual thing. Certified and witnessed by some government agent, or a notable business.
It's used by Swordcraft (major Australian LARP) at Quest
I was part of the Vampire the Masquerade official world game LARP some years ago and....yea, I can empathize with anyone else who went through these experiences.
Definitely no coincidence that they treated Celeste so special, made sure she had the warm private room, and she later moved into with them after dumping her bf. She’s getting clapped out by the whole kingdom😂
I've never larped, doesn't appeal to me personally. But when does the RP end? Like if I went somewhere with my partner and they said oh we are going to have her sleep away from you in a place full of strangers whilst your locked outside, we would both laugh at you for basic safety common sense....
I hate to victim blame but you knew these guys had a crap reputation, you went a long way in crap weather to have a crap experience and then just pottered around.
If you two didn't want to go and Celeste wanted to go by herself and then met someone else then thats her life and her decision but I wouldn't put myself through that!
I agree that it seems like people let a lot slide for the sake of “roleplay” when it’s really just bad behavior. They are customers paying for an experience and once it became clear that the rival larp group was hazing them, it’s time to get your money back and leave.
A good larp would have safety tools in place for scenarios like that, and discussions beforehand how things like that are handled.
@@rootyful - I'm glad they do and most people are great. But I wouldn't trust the safety integrity of strangers when it is unrequited, especially not one's who have given me reason to doubt them prior to the event.
In a well run event, when things are in character or time in will be clearly advertised and so will when things are out of character or time out.
Not larp but i went to a Otaku convention with my girlfriend (now my ex) years ago, and the moment the group gave me a bad feeling i told her i wanted to leave, she didn't, and so i left her there. She can take care of herself and call me if something happens and i can take my own decisions, if i want to spend time together somewhere i hate to be in i would go visit her parents
Honestly, some nerd groups I have found to be the most toxic communities around. It's why I stopped playing trading card games, because as a teen the majority of adults thought bullying and ragging at younger/newer players somehow made them better then them or something. So I'm really not surprised by this story.
Also been to quite a few rent fairs where I've been harassed for not wearing accurate clothing(By people in anime and rpg outfits), and been to a lot of fairs that were just dogshit and charged like 80$+ to enter. It's why I don't do that stuff anymore.
I want to know what the actual larp groups are called!
If I remember correctly from another horror story video, I think it was called NERO.
Someone in another video from long ago said the group was called nero
This sounds EXACTLY like the Australian LARP community 🤔 🤣
I thought Stuart from the first story was part of CALIGULA, and he was why they were shitty to Bob and Fred 😂.
I'm not really ready to do larping... I hope some day i have the time and confidence to larp with those I care about 😢
Larps are great fun but, they come with caveats: they are written and run by big personalities, the bad ones will use it to cultivate their harem and cult of personality. Prep for extreme weather, especially a winter event (which are the hardest), is intense and not recommended for young larpers. And it takes cultivating a culture of 'include and lifting up' style of play, being the new guys in bare bones costuming, standing at the edge of the gathering; yeah, nothing is going to happen to you story wise (though watching your "friend" getting dotted on/courted is something else).
Larp has come miles since this story (this was written before Masquerade), of course there are dinosaur, problematic larps but, successful games have come a long way since then.
OP knew they were problematic, were actively warned, let them shark their larp, and then paid to be mistreated. They paid to go to Sea World and got upset they got soaked.
This seems like a fun campaign idea but like this is all part of the campaign
IE: DMPC is a trickster who keeps dragging party into his scams
why stuart insisted in getting the 4th one correctly? I dont get it, thats just completly dumb
I think that they wrote down "which ones we win" and after a guest ruined the plan, they refused to improvise. I agree that he really sealed the deal on things going wrong by doing that.
Having just watched this, it seems to me that the only real hardship is tied to the poster's group, and not totally indicative of the overall experience (the worst is that it was cold, but, you could likely tell going in by watching the weather channel or something). In fact, most of the issues with the larp were rather petty compared to other similar stories I've heard (there was the one guy who was too arrogant to prepare for other inevitabilities and scoffed when he was told to prepare more, there was the poaching, and there was the cold, and there was the customer service/reception desk stuff).
Sucks that there was the obvious partisanship though. Best way to crush a rival larp group would probably be to make them love yours more than theirs.
(feeds the almighty Algorithmo of DOOOOOM!!!!!)
There is a LARP group in my area that is called Caligula and does something very similar. They DO have a player actually named Celeste, which is super weird. She's nowhere near that popular though.
🔥🔥🔥
Ahahah NERO is such a shitshow, even today.
Sounds like a cult tbh
caligula guys sound like losers tbh (isnt like winners do larp but only losers take it so seriously)
Yeah, they tried to monetize their hobby which is fine, but if you suck at doing it.. sabotaging the competition is just sad because it means you suck at your favorite thing and refuse to improve. It is like running a comic book or card shop and having a reputation for running it poorly and not being good at having what people like in stock. Instead of getting your shop in order and improving your customer service, you just start making up lies about the other shops in town, trying to take their most reliable employees through additional lies all in the hopes they close down and their clientele becomes yours.
3 minutes in and I'm too worried about the cringe to continue... good luck