Wired has probably the best, most balanced article on LARP-ing – Live Action Role Playing – I have ever seen. I’ve known LARPers, though not done any myself, and to a person, they describe as an incredibly fun activity they look forward to throughout the year. However, media coverage has always taken the kook/geek/deviant/possible terrorist angle. Likely it’s easier to make fun of people than to have fun with them?
Reading this article makes me want to get a costume, grab a lute (because of course I would be a bard!) and head into the woods to hang out with my kind of folks!
I need to also recommend a book to you if you are at all interested in this sort of thing – Peter S. Beagle’s The Folk of the Air. What if playful – or murderous – spirits decided to use a hapless and largely unaware LARP war to summon a great evil into the world? Beagle wrote The Last Unicorn and A Fine and Private Place and is one of the US’s greatest fantasy writers.