Faster, Pussycat! Kill! Kill!

[james_davis_nicoll]

How to tell LARPers from violent extremists.

Comments

[oh6]

When a late-2000s Death Note abridged parody had someone straight out say their villainous plan and when questioned say "Er, ahem, role-playing", I thought it was an entire joke. Perhaps it was at the time.

[(Anonymous)]

What if you think you're involved in LARP but then you find it is actually a violent extremism cell? Maybe at a pretty embarrassing moment!

See also "kidnapped by aliens at a science fiction convention, etc."

Robert Carnegie

[azurelunatic]

Strangely, this makes me feel a lot more sanguine about the doomsday prepper group I was part of some 20+ years ago. Because the only time weapons came up as a topic of discussion was in the context of hunting (suburban Alaska, where one of the likely hazards keeping you from getting somewhere on time is the moose between you and the vehicle) and that much less often than general bush survival skills and miscellaneous medical skills. There was a lot of secrecy, on the principle that a small but thriving community might be the target of violence, but nobody really mentioned violence as a way to defend the community.

(It all came to nothing when the leader moved out of state and found a better-suited gender. He was correct in foreseeing that his old life was about to be over, but extremely wrong about the cause.)

[original_aj]

Interesting. It could have used a bit more review by experienced LARP/Re-enactment/etc. people.
He states having concern for legality is a red flag - all the groups I have been involved with have been very careful about legality and making sure the local police know that we're out to play to avoid misunderstandings. In the UK it's an offence to fool someone into thinking that you are commiting a violent offence even if you're not (Affray), so making sure you're on record as planning to do your thing is important. An obvious test to start with is whether there's evidence from before the event that it was expressly planned as a LARP etc. We also issue a lot of advice to new people on how to behave so as not to breach laws regarding weapons etc. Not openly carrying weapons except during the actual event for a start.
He would have done better to include considering the settings for a LARP/re-enactment - particularly the latter. I and many other re-enactors I know have plenty of real weapons for the periods we portray, especially the black powder period re-enactors. Unless they are relatively modern firearms I doubt they'd be of much interest or use to the extremists he's concerned with.

[bunsen_h]

I thought that the description of LARPers as all happy-fun was a bit off. Some LARPers would prefer no interaction with a non-player audience, I think. I remember hearing about vampire LARPers getting into trouble because they were alarming the people around them. And while most LARPers are perfectly normal people engaged in a performance hobby, some don't present well in interactions with people in general and law enforcement officials in particular.

[original_aj]

That's true, which is why the people who organise these things tend to try and pre-empt law enforcement complications by making sure they know what's going on in their area. I've had one or two interesting encounters when that message hadn't been properly disseminated to all patrolling officers. Fortunately I can talk calmly and politely while explaining what we're doing, and having the record of notification at HQ helps.
I certainly wouldn't run around playing Killer the way we used to back in the 80s.