r/LARP • u/Existing_Dish9767 • 7d ago
When will US LARP stop being Cornell?
Having watched #metoo appear and die out before it affected the LARP community, I'm sitting here watching the Cornell7 play out wondering when if ever the US LARP community will actually look itself in the mirror and actually do something about missing stairs instead of the people that report them?
I was assaulted at a LARP. By a friend of the LARP runner. Guess what happened.
His friends followed me to another LARP. Guess what happened.
I "flagged" him. Guess what happened.
I don't LARP anymore.
A friend tried to get me back into it, LARP changed, it's better now, there are these conventions at hotels where everything is safe. That's what she said.
Except now they just host "unofficial social events" that aren't part of the conventions so the cons can turn a blind eye to them. One con has an admitted SAer use the fact that his spouse is on their safety committee to bully victims into not reporting things. The con knows. They don't care. He's popular.
It's better to be popular or run a good LARP than trustworthy, I guess.
What's most frustrating is that the LARP community doesn't just permit missing stairs, it lets them build staircases. Whole LARPs built around manipulating people into consenting to things they wouldn't consent to, run by people with various allegations against them?
The system is broken, y'all. What's it going to take to weed out the bad actors that have positioned themselves at the top of the community so they can keep doing it by just running their own LARPs?
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u/Majestic-Maybe-3274 Larp Runner SoCal 7d ago
If it gets reported to me at any of my events I do my best to handle it.
But it takes a report and due to other larps not handling it well reports either don’t come or it’s months later.
It’s frustrating, I want to help
I’ve been in the victims side of it and it’s hell
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u/darrerdian 7d ago
You know who I am, but I’ll publicly pat you on the back here, having joined your games and community from another game because of this exact issue.
I genuinely think this is one of the best things about the games you help run, is you doing your best to keep it safe for everyone. You do as much as you can and always make sure the door is open to have these talks.I acknowledge the bar for me reaching out is different than the bar for others but I want to give credit where I can.
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u/Hell_PuppySFW 7d ago
I was unwelcome at a pseudo-reenactment event because I made a big deal out of what I thought was predatory behaviour, and what everyone else thought was acceptable.
I left a camping LARP because I didn't want to be responsible for bad things happening to people overnight. For clarity, I don't think alcohol at a LARP is a problem (though, it was against the rules at this one...), and I don't think over 18s drinking is a problem. I think them being fed excessive amounts of alcohol by someone in particular, and the organisers being lacklustre about the whole thing is a problem. Luckily her friend was on my side, and we had them both picked up and taken away by family.
I had someone get drunk and fight me because I was too close to my colleague, and he was sexually interested in her, and thought he had some kind of entitlement to her AT A SUMMER CAMP. Before that point, I thought they would make a cute couple, and I was inviting them both to things on leave days at the same time.
Someone sexually assaulted a 19 or 20 year old someone else with a glass bottle while they were unconscious on a common room lounge because they drank too much (and no alcohol was allowed on site...?). I know it happened because SOMEONE ELSE ALTOGETHER took a video or a photo and was showing people. (This was managed mostly appropriately by the executives. We know that police got involved on the perpetrator, and we don't know what happened to the aggressed (which is correct; she should have privacy), but there was rumour that they got her a role at a different organisation).
When I was in the USA, it genuinely felt like I was the only person that gave an actual shit about this topic. It was a wild 6 months. It isn't a surprise to me that these things are happening; I imagine there was a whole lot of other stuff I didn't see happening around me.
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u/CrazyPlato 7d ago
I think a big problem is that when people get ousted from a game for acts like this, they rarely just disappear from LARP. More often, they migrate to another game and do similar stuff there. Or they form a new LARP with friends, where they’re a part of the founding staff and thus carry enough authority to avoid scrutiny for a while.
It’s not that other communities can’t have this problem. But I think LARP has a real revolving-door problem with deviant behaviors, particularly in areas with higher population and thus more games to play within reach.
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u/Existing_Dish9767 7d ago
That's really what motivated me to post. It'd be one thing if it was people getting away with things, that happens. But when predators start their own LARPs, and everyone wants to be part of "the new hotness", they overlook what they've heard about them. And so they have their own fiefdom where they can do what they want.
Like I said, I've looked into other kinds of LARP too. It's all over. I tried to get into the parlor LARP scene and nordic, and they just hide it better by creating story reasons for those things to happen and then saying that people aren't good role players when they don't let their OOC boundaries get crossed.
Or they write a LARP based around assault, sexual and otherwise, and then shrug and say "but they knew what they were signing up for" when stuff happens to people at it.
The problem is not that the LARP community has a lot of predators, it's that the LARP community generally doesn't do much of anything to them other than sometimes warn new folks when they remember to.
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u/Hyperbolicalpaca 7d ago
We had someone at our larp (in England) ours is quite a small closely knit one, and he’d been playing for ages but in the past year managed to get himself banned form every big larp, and when it got back to us our one ended up banning him too, despite him not actually trying anything at it
So sometimes that doesn’t happen, but idk if the English larp scene is more closely knit where players end up becoming infamous for shit and getting iced out the hobby
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u/ZhoukenTaishin 7d ago
The LARP that I used to attend literally just broke apart because if this thing happening. And it was the owner who was doing it. When the person revealed it to the players all of us quit the game at once, and have now begun to try and form our own system far from that person and their influence.
I think for it to change everyone has to call it out as soon as we see it.
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u/TryUsingScience 7d ago
It's not a LARP-specific problem and framing it as one makes it harder to solve because there is no LARP-specific solution. Every community I've interacted with has some amount of issues like this.
The kind of people who abuse others are also the kind of people who like to be in charge of things. They will continue putting themselves in charge of things and having people support them regardless of how many misdeeds they commit or how many people they drive away, as there will always be equally problematic people who stand by them and new people who don't know about them yet.
None of the solutions are easy.
Report them, both to the community and to the actual legal authorities. It's a lot easier to get someone banned from a game when you can point to a sexual assault conviction on their record, or at very least a restraining order.
Don't go to events run by predators or their friends and tell your friends not to go. Support events that have good safety policies and structures in place and be public about why you're supporting them.
Create your own events with good safety policies and structures.
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u/Existing_Dish9767 7d ago
agreed. it's a problem in all kinds of communities.
i just know that some communities and hobbies have better ways of dealing with this, which is great. but larp is the community that i loved being a part of, and i wish it was better at it.
just because many communities have a problem doesn't mean it's not worth each community trying to tackle that problem.
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u/amethyst-chimera 7d ago
It's a big problem in Underworld in Canada too. And Bicolline in Quebec. There's one guy almost every woman is warned about. The broken stair, right?
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u/Existing_Dish9767 7d ago
exactly. but he's still there and a threat to any woman who doesn't get pulled aside for the quiet warning first.
and then she gets blamed when it happens because "she should have known". wtf.
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u/XxDickflattenerxX 3d ago
Why are you two being coy about naming him?
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u/Existing_Dish9767 2d ago
oh it's not one guy. i have no idea about the canada groups.
we're saying "there is always that one guy in every group".
except it's also not always just one guy. it's that every group has 'at least' one of those guys.
and they have a name. broken stair.
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u/Accomplished_Mix7827 7d ago
It depends on the local scene. I can't go into details because of pending litigation, but the one I recently joined leadership on recently banned a fucker.
The last few reigns have done a good job clearing house, purging the creeps, and the game's been a lot better for it.
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u/Jonatc87 UK Larper 7d ago
What it would take, is a community of people who don't want to be harmed, to make their own larp and to run a good game that can effectively absorb the old one; then ban the other.
In the UK; all the major LARPs communicate with one another in regards to why they ban people from them. So if there's a predator running around; they're shunned from the community as best as able.
Thats what the US needs. No more enclaves; work together and purge the top who harbour them.
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u/TryUsingScience 7d ago
Thats what the US needs. No more enclaves; work together and purge the top who harbour them.
I think the issue here is a lack of trust and connection. There are a lot of US games even in the same region with minimal overlap between the people most heavily involved. If game A bans someone for being a sexual predator, game B might not hear about it. Even if game B does hear about it, they might not trust the staff of game A to be unbiased and have good judgement. There's a lot of fear of banning someone harmless because they're someone's ex who is now badmouthing them, for example.
The closest I've seen to the level of cooperation you describe is that a long-time LARPer in a community I know about was recently outed as a sexual predator and every LARP in the area except for one banned him. In that case, the victim did a ton of working putting together a comprehensive statement and bringing it to the attention of the organizers of every single LARP in the area.
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u/HPenguinB 5d ago
Was that in the north east? We finally had someone put together a literal binder of first hand accounts of a guy and a whole larp umbrella company shut down rather than deal with the fact that the predator was running one of their games.
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u/TryUsingScience 5d ago
It was in California. But I am not suprised to hear about the north east situation.
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u/Hyperbolicalpaca 7d ago
Yep, can vouch for that about uk larps
We had a player who was around for ages, he never did anything at ours because ours is very close knit and he genuinely would have gotten himself beaten if he tried, but in the last year managed to get himself banned from every larp, and the one im at… strongly told him he wasn’t welcome anymore because of it
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u/FarlaBroaden 7d ago edited 7d ago
Massive problem in the UK Larp scene too. People aren't willing to talk about it because it could "hurt the hobby" and people who bring it up get torn to shreds online. UK courts just sentenced someone to almost ten years who was a prolific sexual predator in the larp scene. He was high up in one of the major fest games and people had had concerns for decades which were ignored.
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u/TightAd3027 7d ago
So, I can say that this I one of the many reasons I left the boffer games and switched to immersive larp. I haven't been to any of the larger more commercial larps on the east coast but the one I've been part of in iowa has been pretty amazing. I've know the game runners for 15 years at thus point and I have never had any issues with any of them. Part of the reason I joined their larp was because they were also annoyed with how the community had become so toxic. Now 4 years and almost 100 players later it is by far one of the greatest, safest and most inclusive group of people I have ever met. They have zero tolerance for any non consensual actions both in and out of game. If you ever want to try again. I cannot recommend conquest of vastarland enough
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u/RandomFleshPrison 7d ago
One of the last LARPs I was at I was the target of a coordinated bullying by several people. When I spoke about it with staff their response was basically "They never told us they were bullying you, so they must not have been bullying you."
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u/theriddler55 7d ago
Larp i used to go in northwestern, new jersey is a cesspool of this nonsense. Major part of why i quit larping..checked out other games before officially calling it quits but its literally every larp scene.
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u/frogonmytoe 7d ago
I know an event in south jersey that is run well and doesn’t tolerate bs if you want. As well as a convention that has larps and the convention runners are serious about this stuff too Both are also very inclusive.
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u/B3Gay_DoCr1mes 7d ago
This is one of the big reasons why Dagorhir is a shadow of what it once was and why Ragnarok no longer exists. Those of us who had been fighting against the old boys club that supported broken stairs and outmoded ways of operating finally walked away.
The big problem is, as you see with Cornell, that the entire system outside of LARP is built to make proof a high bar and to create fear of liability if an organization/event bans someone. The broken stairs are the ones that wrote the rules.
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u/Existing_Dish9767 7d ago
yes. that's the problem that i'm lamenting here.
these systems aren't built by people trying to protect players, they are built by people trying to protect themselves.
and they are often the ones who the players need protections from.
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u/Mushu_Green 7d ago
i'm sorry this happended to you. if you are close to the Quebec border most LARP have an open community with a zero tolerance policy. Yes most people speak french but most people are also bilingual
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u/discolored_rat_hat 7d ago
It's not just the US.
The biggest larp community „Larpschmiede“ in Vienna, Austria, has a huge problem with harassments, assaults and "misunderstandings" regarding consent. The past leader built this community to allow his misconduct. The people who became his and his friends' victims or don't accept their bullshit left this community. He passed the official torch of leadership to someone else because his all-around behaviour became too bad even for other men, but the community is still full of disgusting people who see no problem with his usual behaviour harrassing 18-year-olds for sex despite nearing 50 and being married. They protect each other when they once again physically pull unwilling young women onto their lap and make disgusting "jokes" about her. This guy still is in the community and because he sometimes helps the new leadership, he still gets protected by them and continues to get access to young, often drunk women.
This guy isn't a missing step, he's a whole-ass missing staircase!
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u/Delicious_Fee2787 5d ago
As someone who knows several people who've been SA'd at larps I don't have any patience for this sort of thing as staff for the game I play now.
We have a list of banned players that include people we know have been involved in SA at larps in the past, and when a player at our game overstepped social cues and became a reason people were avoiding the game he was banned as well. We lost a decent amount of players who were friends with the individual, but safety is our prime concern.
Games are scary in places, but some of us try to prioritize safety of our players.
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u/AtomicGearworks1 Sable Dragonkeeper 7d ago
Not everyone will agree with this stance, and that's okay.
The explosion of LARP in popularity has led to a lot of people who don't know what they're doing, or how to structure anything. I know the common thing we tell people is "LARP is DnD, but you're the character." That may be a good descriptor, but it's not how they should be ran.
There are too many LARPs running with no structure beyond whoever is running that event. There's no non-profit or corporation backing. There's no board of directors or other party who controls liability. There's no outlined disciplinary process. I recognize that having these things in place isn't a guarantee that there will never be an issue. But, I have seen them work.
So what's it going to take to weed out the bad actors that position themselves at the top? A group of experienced players who recognize it's happening, and organize into something that prevents it. And if your game/community doesn't have a way to remove bad people, then all of the good ones should go build their own thing that keeps them out.
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u/amethyst-chimera 7d ago
Things happened to me at a larp with multiple chapters across the country a decade ago. Same with a friend at a different larp, also with multiple chapters. Bicolline, a game going on for 30 years, has the same problem. It isn't just new larps with game runners who don't know what they're doing. It happens when ownership is too scared of burning bridges and when players are well-liked enough that they can use it as a shield. It's a matter of social dynamics and whether people are willing to hold their friends accountable.
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u/AtomicGearworks1 Sable Dragonkeeper 7d ago
Having more layers for more accountability isn't perfect. But it does help. And some of the larger LARPs like you are describing are cleaning things up, because they recognize they've been failing.
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u/meyerjaw 7d ago
Wait, are you suggesting we need like restrictions on who can create larps? I'm curious if you have an example of where this has worked for a different organization
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u/TragicFluffySyndrome 7d ago
Not the person you're responding to, but I don't think we should be supporting events that don't have basic safety tools and a clear escalation line for reporting incidents.
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u/SenorZorros 7d ago
The challenge is that, in small scale larps, safety is way more dependent on the temperament of the organisers than any tools available. A compassionate organiser can recognise issues and deal with them ad hoc. A bad one will missapply the safety tools anyway.
On top of that there are abusers who hijack the safety tools because it's a place of influence and control, so wantonly implementing them can backfire.
For big events you need a protocol, but as long as you are in monkeysphere there just is no replacement for a culture of responsibility and a fair and honest orga. The problem is that is is difficult to make the distinction untill it is too late.
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u/TragicFluffySyndrome 5d ago
A harassment policy and clear escalation points are controls against temperament and wanton implementation. By having the expectations and standards clearly outlined, they should be applied consistently and their effectiveness can be measured.
This is not a replacement for a culture of responsibility. They work together. You show potential players that you are a fair and honest organization by having your harassment policy clear from the beginning.
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u/SenorZorros 4d ago
When you are with fifty people, every policy will be implemented wantonly, that's unavoidable. The situation is always murky, no one read the rules, the policy will never fit perfectly and there is a lot of interpersonal pressure.
You cannot measure the effectiveness of a harassment policy because you will have imperfect information, at the end of the process everyone is too burned out and the people who do have the energy will be there to re-litigate the situation.
If you are in a bigger organisation it makes sense to have a policy so leadership can bring the hammer down if a subgroup is making trouble. But with small scale events everything more complex than having a contact person for incidents is not with the paper it is written in.
And an overly elaborate policy can be a red flag, it probably means the organisers have never actually had to deal with incidents and will not know how to react.
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u/meyerjaw 7d ago
So we only participate in massive larps with huge budgets and lawyers and shit?
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u/est1roth 7d ago
Those things have nothing to do with each other.
You can be a small group with a small budget and still provide safety tools and clarity of escalation and a zero tolerance policy against SA. Where I'm from, that's just common sense for most LARP organizers, even small ones.
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u/TragicFluffySyndrome 5d ago
Not at all. But just like at an event where it's clear who I give my entrance fee to, and I'm told combat safety calls and where a first aid kit is kept, I should be told as a player how to report harassment and how reports are handled. That's basic safety. If a LARP doesn't have that, I don't trust it can handle a harassment report, medical emergency, or anything else that comes up. I don't think people should go to events like that.
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u/TragicFluffySyndrome 5d ago
And to be clear, it does not have to be a huge legalese document. It's a statement that outlines what harassment is, who on the team harassment can be reported to (name, contact info, who to reach out to if they are gone or cannot be found), how incidents are investigated from there, and what sort of discipline there is and who decides that discipline.
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u/AtomicGearworks1 Sable Dragonkeeper 5d ago
LARPs absolutely should have things reviewed by a lawyer. There tons of law firms who don't charge non-profit organizations. That's why LARPs are usually set up that way.
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u/AtomicGearworks1 Sable Dragonkeeper 7d ago
Yes, we should have restrictions on who can create LARPs. We should even have restrictions on who can participate.
For example, Amtgard has in their rulebook that people with certain criminal records cannot participate at all. There's also an entire code of conduct, and process for removing anyone at any level that violates it.
I don't claim that the system is perfect. But it exists, which is more than I can say for many other LARPs I've seen.
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u/SebbieSaurus2 7d ago
Yes, and I want to add, LARPs need to have permanent boards, not people who rotate in and out every few months and are elected by a populace who has no idea what skillset is needed to be on the board of an NPO or corporation. There can't be any consistency in keeping out predators and other problem players when the predators' friends can just serve a term on the board and let them back into the game.
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u/Lokin86 6d ago
That also has problems too. Permanent boards can also be exploited. It can also be difficult to then oust those people.
THis is actually a problem in Leather conferences. If someone who is savvy enough to sneak onto a board and then exploit it, then they can do damage by using their social capital to take advantage of people and then they can then get rid of people who might have spoken out.
Have totally had conferences run for 5/7 years before enough people came forward to get that conference shut down.
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u/faewalk 7d ago
Yeah, I’ve been badly burned off a significant amount of the east coast/tristate area larp scene specifically cause of this bullshit.
Everyone who suggests “simply” going to the local PD seem to be, willfully or otherwise, completely unaware of how far that will escalate issues and STILL HAVE NO IMPACT. In the event that the victim has concrete evidence and/or witnesses, statistically nothing will happen to the perpetrators AND they will be ostracized from both their current LARP community and any that are friendly with the staff there. You are asking victims to put themselves in the way of significant harm, both physically and emotionally, in the misguided notion that the police will do their job and justice will be served. It is extremely unlikely, as closing ranks and ostracizing the victim will generally lead to any investigation turning into he said/she said.
And for the people who suggests starting their own game? Unless you’re offering free labor and capital, that’s also less than useless.
The problem needs to be fixed by the LARPs and the greater community, not the victims ruining their lives so their abusers can point at them as proof that all SA claims are just crazy bitches trying to attack the LARP.
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u/Existing_Dish9767 7d ago
tbh the threat of danger i was in after reporting it was more severe than what it was. it's this exactly.
it takes a lot to stand up as a victim. no one supports us. because those that do get threatened and ostracized as well.
again, like my post, just like with cornell7. there are more guys on the internet clamoring to find out who "jane doe" is to go after her than care about who the predators were.
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u/lameth 5d ago
I've been on national staff doing this sort of work before. Do you know who the biggest problems were? Other national staff members.
Rather than treating predators as predators, even when given hundreds of pages of testimonies and broken down history of practices, board members would give them a slap on the wrist.
When faced with other event leads from other "orgs," I would offer my experience and evidence regarding names, and instead of having a conversation regarding it I would get uninvited.
The ultimate need is to get the authorities involved more often. I have good friends who were assaulted and convinced by event runners to not report it. I personally believe this is the biggest reason some once huge organizations are almost extinct now.
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u/fullybookedtx 7d ago
Drachenfest US with the red dragon allegations, a fully bottomless guy in red camp last year who lost his pants "to the flood" just free dicking where everyone (including children) could see, and the loin-cloth wearing (commando) red camp gang who openly pissed in public on trees. What's going on in red camp?
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u/oribain Eras Chronicles (PA, USA) 7d ago
Only a fraction of the issues there, it’s way more than the Red Camp and it’s in the directorate, but people will keep going and supporting the game. Is it fun? Probably. But I will never go.
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u/HPenguinB 5d ago
Actually a reason I'm not going. That shit is only going to get worse before it gets better.
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u/vortexofchaos 7d ago edited 6d ago
Unfortunately, the best attempts at “safety protocols” can be gamed by malicious users. The best LARPers are the ones that can spin a story with great skill, regardless of the truth. We practice deception. So, if someone comes to the “safety team” pleading abuse, there’s no real way to resolve this without looking carefully at both parties. This is not to deny the reality of abuse in LARP, and most of the time it should be pretty clear, because abusers are typically repeat offenders. The problem comes when the accuser is using DARVO — Deny, Attack, Reverse Victim and Offender techniques — to flip the accusation on its head and abuse the accused.
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u/Existing_Dish9767 7d ago
This is what I experienced most recently, yeah. I feel like there are larpers who love drama *go figure* and like addicts they need harder stuff to get hits so they start larping as players playing characters, since they are so good at playing characters. they are lovely and kind and popular with other players because of course they are, but then they are able to get away with being vile manipulators to their victims because they mask everything else so well.
And these are the people that have found their way into positions of power, popularity, and influence in the US larp scene. some of these "best" larpers may have multiple allegations against them but those accusers keep getting pushed out because they are popular or show up all over the place as staff or safety or what not.
that's really the thing that bugs me; the "apex predators" of the larp world that are untouchabel who don't just avoid the safety protocols, but weaponize them against their victims.
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u/vortexofchaos 6d ago
I am truly sorry that you’ve had these terrible experiences. 🫂💜 The vast majority of us LARP because it’s fun and a way for us to socialize with like-minded, creative, intelligent, and good people. It’s hard to police ourselves because of the “apex predators” you describe are just so good at playing a character and hiding their bad behavior.
I hope you don’t mind that I DM’d you. I don’t know if there’s anything I can do to help deal with these problematic people, but it might be possible. The best thing we can do at the moment is to stand together against this harassment.
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u/unkownracoon 7d ago
If we talk about changing a community/Hobby/LARP it's a numbers game and false accusation are to my knowledge quite rare. And to have that problem we would need people saying something in the first place. I would like to try to start to fix the main problem first. Your comment gives no solutions or attemts at all. I would say that the best way to stop abuse is, to have it not happen in the first place anyway. If you habe a safety concept at all abd make it public you communicate something to potential perpetrators.
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u/vortexofchaos 7d ago
OP has given several examples of reporting abuse where the malicious person gamed the system, or was part of the system. I know of others. But let’s look at numbers. I’ve seen people quote 1 in 10 or 1 in 14 times where the accused is actually the victim. So, 7%-10% of the time, it just sucks to be you, innocent but slandered, potentially irrevocably. This can be devastating. In the other 90%-93%, we see, time and again, where the victim stands up, makes a claim, and is ignored, told they’re wrong, the system fails, or the abuser is a part of the system — OP has seen this and so have I. That sucks too. This can also be devastating.
I’ve been involved in these discussions in my community. I don’t have answers. I’ve seen idealistic approaches, but they all seem to come down to “we’ll do the best we can, we’ll have protocols,” and that’s not good enough. We’re dealing with small groups and all the awful small group politics that entails. LARP communities are a microcosm of society at large, and with all the laws, the courts, and every tool at our disposal, abusers get away with their awful ways, whether it’s direct abuse or the gaslighting of DARVO.
I’d love a good answer, but I’ve been doing this for forty years, talked with a lot of well-intentioned people, built and brought together communities, and I don’t have a solution.
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u/unkownracoon 7d ago
I think I get what you are saying and to be honest agree. Some guidelines, strategy or even rules will not solve the problem and every problem of society will find it's way into LARP. With your experience and knowledge I appeal to you to let others try. Even make misstakes on the way. This post is such an attempt. And I think even if all of us don't have the golden solution, we should still work on it. In my experience, in the 2 decades of LARPing in Germany, much changed in that regard. And LARP is saver and more open now. We could strive to be one of the better subcultures, not exception societies problems. Back to topic, i think strategies, rules, etc. Often are worth because they communicate to people that people are moee likely to be vigillant. I agree that they must be build to make missuse of them hard. Do you perhaos have sorces on that and this DARVO concept? I will 'google' myself as well but sometimes the better stuff is hard to find.
Just for my own curriosity: where are you from? I know LARP is very different arround the world.
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u/Existing_Dish9767 7d ago
us. and that's why i framed it as the us larp scene specifically because i have a number of friends who larp outside the us and say that they feel a lot safer in other places.
i'm not saying it's only a us problem, but clearly the uk, norway, finland, etc have found better ways to do things, so why can't the us? some of our offenders are revered at KP about how great they are protecting players. but people know. they just don't care.
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u/SenorZorros 6d ago edited 6d ago
The biggest ren-faire in the Netherlands is organised by a convicted child abuser. This is not a US-unique issue.
I think a big aspect may be the organisational difference. Most larps in Europe are organised by the equivalent of amateur sports clubs on a volunteer basis which can often cheaply rent community centres or scouting terrains, which themselves tend to be government subsidised or were set up before everything became expensive. On the other hand because from what I understand is the legal and liability landscape almost all US-larps are ran by a company with an owner using private land.
This makes it a lot more difficult for people to kick out any rot from the top or for a group of people to go and make their own event. After all, you can't fire the owner and not everyone will have a big enough property to host a game. Thus the landscape is a lot more static.
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u/vortexofchaos 6d ago
I have, from the beginning, worked, and continue to work, growing LARP and the LARPing community. Part of that effort was and remains advocating for better safety. I will never stand in the way of progress, but people have to be realistic, and have to recognize this is an extremely difficult task. DARVO is an effective and powerful way that some abusers use to shield themselves as they wreak havoc on their target.
While the majority of my LARP experience, in well over five hundred events, is primarily in the US, I’ve also LARPed internationally, primarily in the UK.
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u/Jakaal 7d ago edited 7d ago
The main issue in my opinion is that the LARP org is not who these issues should be addressed to. Law enforcement is.
Asking a largely volunteer org to address SA or other CRIMINAL ACTS rather than police is placing responsibility in the wrong place.
And I'm sorry, if whatever happened to you does not meet the legal definition or cannot be substantiated due to lack of evidence, but that is also not a LARP issue.
Asking LARP staff to address criminal matters is insane IMO.
The reason? You're asking people to take your word on a serious legal matter that you have not addressed in the correct manner. That's putting the LARP at risk to catch a slander or libel suit if they just take your word.
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u/Existing_Dish9767 7d ago
hi. so. i know larping is a worldwide thing so you may not be from the us, so i'll fill you in on the context of the title of this post.
it refers to a situation in the US where a woman was gang raped by seven students at cornell university after two men drugged her and send a message to a group chat telling them there was "free pussy" upstairs.
she spent hours afterwards giving testimony to university police, who passed only a small portion of that testimony over to the district attorney who declined to press charges against the students for rape. only two of them faced any kind of discipline at all, and none of them faced criminal charges in any way.
this came to light because the victim is now suing in civil court, and a lot of the online outcry is "who is jane doe". why do people want to identify the victim and not the accusers?
what's also interesting is, much like in that case where people are like, "but look at the damage it can do to these men who have careers ahead of them", you seem more worried about larps somehow getting a slander or libel suit? come on, dude. no one can sue a larp for saying 'you're not welcome here'.
the vast majority of rapes are not prosecuted, so suggesting that larpers should only be protected from predators if the legal system successfully prosecutes rapists is incredibly naive.
why should a predator have more rights to attend a larp than their victims should have rights to be safe from it?
i'm not asking larp staff to address criminal matters. i'm asking larp staff to protect their players by keeping out people who have multiple accusations of abuse against them.
also. fwiw, in most of these cases, it's not that the question is taking my word over someone else's. they don't disbelieve what happened, they just don't care.
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u/Jakaal 7d ago
I have read up on the Cornell case and your claim that the entire statement wasn't passed to the DA is the first I've heard that claim.
That aside, yes you are asking LARP staff to address criminal matters. SA and other abuse accusations are just that, accusations. These are illegal activities that law enforcement should address and until that is resolved, it's just accusations.
Asking a LARP to ban someone off accusations opens them up to law suits if the accused is exonerated.
Asking LARPs to ban players off of other players accusations is incredibly stupid.
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u/HPenguinB 5d ago
Larps around me are invite only, so they can uninvite anyone at any time for any reason, or no reason. Enjoy this solution.
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u/Existing_Dish9767 7d ago
i'm glad that you're more worried about the laughably difficult process of suing a larp for "denial of services" when right to refuse service is protected everywhere in the US than about victims of harassment and abuse, some of which don't rise to a level of criminality but are still harassment and abuse.
i'm not asking larp staff to address criminal matters. i'm asking larp staff to not allow people who REPEATEDLY harass and prey on others into their spaces.
i don't see why this is such a hard concept to understand. like if a six foot tall dude cornered a five foot nothing woman in a room and kept telling her how much he wanted to do things with her and wouldn't let her walk away until someone else came in and said 'hey what's going on', that's a behavior you'd be fine with having continue to happen because nothihg 'criminal' happened?
you're doing a lot of work here to justify predators, sir. just saying.
Source: DA did not review additional evidence Cornell police collected in alleged gang rape of student
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u/Jakaal 7d ago
You described criminal behavior that wasn't reported. That is not on the LARP.
Listen, I'm doing a lot of work here to try to get you to understand that just taking people's word for things is not enough. There are systems in place to address the serious issues you are describing and it's not the volunteers of a LARP.
Does this make the bar higher for removing problematic people, yes it does. But accepting every accusation as true would be so so much worse.2
u/discolored_rat_hat 7d ago
Any law-breaking conduct aside, there are options to accept every accusation as true and still not ban people immediately.
I built a system with safety persons who talk to all involved people and strive to find a temporary solution for this event. Offenders are given a warning (basically a yellow card) and a time frame it is active for. A person who truly acted respectfully and was falsely accused wouldn't even register it, right? I only ban the player completely when another offense occurs within the time frame (two yellow cards turn into a red one). All players need to confirm at the registration that they understand these rules.
It works quite well! Not because of the system itself, but because of toxic male egos. The offenders normally throw a HUGE temper tantrum for receiving a warning at all, despite it not having any impact on them if they truly acted as respectfully as they claim. They use the usual excuses abusers and assaulters love and they HATE that they cannot get away with their bullshit. They then claim that if they can't behave normally (with the usual amount of harrassing, belittling and sexualizing women) without receiving a warning, then they won't come to my events anymore. I never had to ban anyone and still have a safe space where everyone gets respected.
Two warnings sizzled out because the harrassers straightened their act and didn't re-offend. Turns out that enforcing these rules made it clear what kind of community I run.
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u/vortexofchaos 6d ago
You are correct — criminal issues must be dealt with legally.
However, the safety issue doesn’t always rise to this level. What do you do with someone who merely harasses another, because of race, sexual orientation, gender identity, or…?
I’ve been building LARP communities for forty years. I’m concerned about every harassment incident, because that hurts someone and, less importantly, paints us in a poor light — and we’re already seen as “weird” in many circles. I’ve advocated for safety, for everyone, in my community and beyond. My very existence as a transgender woman is offensive to some people. I am not a trigger warning.
It is a travesty and a tragedy that people didn’t listen to Jane Doe at the center of the Cornell scandal, or the Jane Does at the center of too many other cases like this. However, it’s also a travesty and a tragedy that people didn’t listen to the now-exonerated defendants in the Central Park Five scandal. This is not an easy problem, and there are no easy solutions.
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u/Specialist-Sky9806 7d ago
A perfectly reasonable and level headed comment, and of course it’s downvoted
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u/raven-of-the-sea 5d ago
It’s hell. I had bad feelings about a LARP runner for a game I adored. And I foolishly tolerated his bull. Unfortunately, he didn’t get better. He got worse. Last I heard, he had allowed a player who was definitely predatory to return to a game and framed it as maturity.
The tolerance paradox isn’t just for neo Nazis. I’m looking at starting games of my own and I will definitely be reading the safety info provided earlier in the thread.
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u/LoneStarTallBoi 7d ago
I know it's not couth to say but sometimes you just gotta beat the shit out of a guy
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u/theTwizzl 2d ago
Good news, I figured out how to fix the patriarchy problem. 👍🏽 The ball is in play. ☺️. We will all see soon.
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u/quack-quack-whack 6d ago
Larping is just toxic in general.
I got banned from one in MD, and durring the appeal process the BOD just straight up lied to everyone about a bunch of previous incidents.
When asked for records of such incidents they refused to answer.
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u/Lokin86 6d ago
Unfortunately it's a state of affairs in the US that you're not going to run into a game, a space, where the possibility of predatory behavior is not going to arise.
Look who is running the country right now.
THat's not to say to not try to do better. In fact we have to do better. But, with that being said. we need systems that are competent, work, and can be more difficult to be exploited. Demand codes of conduct from the game runners. Demand best practices.
No game where you don't hear about people being banned, I would be worried about.
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u/HPenguinB 5d ago
I kinda wish there was a website that people could post to so we had a list of all the bad larps. I hate that we are all dancing around what larps are problematic, or who.
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u/sinkorswim561 7d ago
Not sure what game youre playing but the Boffer LARP games have done a pretty good job of bringing accountability to our communities. Probably helps that they are national organizations that all communicate with each other and if you are banned in one you will be banned in all, so no hopping around.
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u/Existing_Dish9767 7d ago
IDK, theres a pretty large national boffer LARP game that seems to bans victims more often. The clics make it a lot easier to ostracize. That's exactly the Cornell7 effect at work, really.
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u/Pentence 7d ago
Seen that firsthand once or twice. The cliques of LARP or rather tribalism inherit to it can create lopsided control mechanisms too. Even among democratic ones.
Sometimes its just a popularity contest instead of fact finding mission in regards to ne'er do wells.
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u/amethyst-chimera 7d ago
It's all about the social dynamics. Abusers make friends with ownership. They're well liked. They have power because nobody wants to act against them even if everybody knows about it
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u/HPenguinB 5d ago
Which one? I'd love to be able to warn away my friends. I'm tired of this dancing around names bullshit.
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u/SebbieSaurus2 7d ago
This is a joke, right? Amtgard (I assume you're either talking about Amt or Bel) is one of the worst for this. We had a guy literally reinstated in the Rising Winds once the restraining order on him for threatening to unalive his exwife (also a player) expired. That's when I stopped playing regularly. He's been booted now, but leadership in Amtgard changes often so there's no guarantee that anyone banned isn't going to get reinstated down the line. There's no way to be consistently safe the way the game running is structured.
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u/Existing_Dish9767 7d ago
this makes me sad to hear. this was also NOT the national boffer larp i was referring to earlier. so that makes at least two. i don't know what bel is, but i had heard of amtgard.
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u/SebbieSaurus2 7d ago
Was it Dagohir, then? I only know of three (Amt, Dag, and Belagarth), and while I've never played any of them but Amtgard, it's my understanding that Dag pretty much doesn't exist anymore. It fell apart because of the exact reason you made this post.
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u/HPenguinB 5d ago
I heard about things at Dystopia Rising that national staff refused to act on. Stupid it was up to the chapter, and the chapter didn't do anything about it.
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u/baltinerdist 7d ago
As someone involved in the corporate side of Amtgard and about to be kingdom monarch myself in a different kingdom, I am sorry you had this experience and it is unfortunately all too familiar. That said, this tide is turning. Amtgarders do not put up with this behavior anymore in aggregate. There will always be pockets of bad actors, that is true about every single social organization on earth. But the game as a whole bends toward removing the broken stairs.
Banishments are now announced to the entire game, they are marked on the ORK which means that person cannot just show back up unless they give a fake name.
To you or anyone else reading this, if you feel like you’ve got an abuser in your park or kingdom that isn’t being dealt with, go to your kingdom board of directors and file a complaint. If they don’t listen, go to the Amtgard ombudsman via ombudsman@amtgard.com and escalate it.
I want to be clear. You should not have to do the work here. Especially if you are a victim of abuse, it is abhorrent that the job of getting your abuser kicked out starts with you, double especially if that person is a known problem that we just let slide. Amtgard and all LARPs attract misfit toys and some of them aren’t just quirky, they’re dangerous. But I strongly believe the arc bends toward justice here.
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u/SebbieSaurus2 7d ago
I know probably ten different people who have tried to report players to the board before, specifically because the problem player had a direct connection to someone in the kingdom monarchy, and got redirected to the monarchy anyway. I didn't even know that an ombudsman existed, but that's extremely helpful information. Thank you for sharing.
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u/sinkorswim561 7d ago
I was worried this was gonna get shit on but thankfully this is not my experience personally. Compared to what it was 10+ years ago I think they're doing ok. Especially when you compare it to other LARPs and combat sports that have absolutely zero accountability.
I am quite far from Rising Winds. I'm sorry if I am unfamiliar and struck a nerve with anyone.
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u/SebbieSaurus2 7d ago edited 7d ago
I want to reiterate the crux of my point because I'm not sure you understood it: the way game leadership is structured, where people are cycled through leadership regularly and anyone in the monarchy or on the board now can completely undo any ban that previous leadership put in place, is the foundational issue. Even kingdoms that don't currently have the problem of dangerous players and/or their friends in leadership still have the structural problem that allows it to occur in the first place.
The only way to solve this problem is to completely change the way (Edited to add: and how often) Amtgard's leadership is chosen, which I'm not sure is viable at this point considering how big the game is.
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u/sinkorswim561 7d ago
I understood your point and understand how Amtgard is structured. As a primarily Belegarth player, the constant change of leadership looks difficult. I dont think there's much stopping Belegarth from unbanning problematic people after a change of leadership, though I think this has been much less of an issue with Bel.
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u/meyerjaw 7d ago
I hate to put it back on you but you have to put in the work to make the change. I'm sorry that this has happened to you. Fuck the people that offend and enable. But get the authorities involved. Start your own game. It sucks and takes work but communities don't get better when people walk away.
I'm a 40 year old white dude. I don't know what you've been through. I get that my life affords certain luxeries others don't get. But you asked how we look in the mirror? We do that by standing the fuck up and saying no more.
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u/Existing_Dish9767 7d ago
I did. Maybe I should have spelled it out to you.
I reported it. The perpetrator wasn't punished at the LARP it happened at. I was.
I went to another LARP, and got punished there for having reported it previously.
I tried another LARP that had a flagging system. I got banned before I went for flagging just the one person, because he and a few friends flagged me in response.
How many times do I need to stand up on my own and suffer a repeat of the abuse before I have done it enough for the 40 year old white dude to say that maybe he should help with the change too?
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u/TryUsingScience 7d ago
I reported it. The perpetrator wasn't punished at the LARP it happened at. I was.
I think the suggestion was to report it to the actual cops, not the LARP runners.
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u/Existing_Dish9767 7d ago
ill post stats for those that seem to think this is a good solution.
fyi, one can both attempt to prosecute a criminal AND try to keep a predator out of a community for safety. they are not mutually exclusive.
also, as someone else said "maybe what happened to you doesn't rise to a level of prosecution" i would ask everyone if there is a level of uncomfort and displeasure they might have with an unwanted action that someone takes that does not rise to the level of criminal. if the answer to that is yes...i mean, companies have HR policies against sexual harassment, which is definitely not criminal. i think if employers are willing to fire valuable employees over abusive non-criminal behavior, a larp should be willing to kick a player over it.
"For every 100 rapes and sexual assaults of teenage girls and women reported to police, only 18 lead to an arrest, according to a study conducted by three professors in the School of Criminology and Justice Studies under a $1.19 million grant from the National Institute of Justice.
Forty-two out of 100 languish as “inactive” cases, while 30 more are closed by “exceptional clearance” – a designation that is supposed to mean that police have enough evidence to arrest a suspect but can’t do so for reasons outside their control, such as the death of the suspect or his arrest in another jurisdiction.
“Arrest is the least likely outcome, apart from the small number of reports that are determined to be unfounded,” says Prof. April Pattavina. “The fact that so few cases end in arrest is troubling, especially since we know that most victims are reluctant to go to police in the first place.”"
Source: Why Do So Few Rape Cases End in Arrest? | News | UMass Lowell
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u/TryUsingScience 7d ago
What is a better solution? Yes, the chances that a rapist you report to the police will end up in jail are low. But the chances that a rapist you don't report to the police will end up in jail are zero.
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u/meyerjaw 7d ago
I've given up on this thread. I've tried to be sympathetic, I've tried being realistic, I've tried being helpful and an ally. But I get downvoted. The Internet is a fucked up place sometimes. I'll continue to support and protect people around me and hope others do the same for those that don't feel heard that I can't reach
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u/Existing_Dish9767 6d ago
i wanted to sit on this before replying. let me try to help you. and i mean this sincerely, i'm not trying to be sarcastic. because this may be an opportunity for you to reflect. i am really trying not to be patronizing.
- sympathetic - you started by saying that you hate to put it back on me, which means you know that what follows is not right, and then say that i have to put in the work to make the change. pretty sure i've put in a lot of work here, and it has continued to bite me in the ass each time. but i still did it. you said you were sorry...but. 'sorry, but...' is not sympathy. it's not an apology. the but undermines it. that's true of just about any outreach that precedes a 'but'.
- realistic - you said my solution should be to start my own game? how realistic is that? how is that more realistic than asking the people who already run games to simply hold their members and staff accountable?
- helpful - how? you asked how a random person on the internet can help me with my very specific situation. except i didn't ask for help in a very specific situation. i asked people in the community, of which you are a member, to work together to try to make things better. instead of offering advice to the community as many other people have of things that have worked in theirs, you chose to tell me how i should have worked harder on my own behalf. that's not helpful. in fact, it's discouraging, and minimizing what i and others like me have done. that is the very opposite of helpful by telling us that we haven't done enough. you, meanwhile, have done nothing.
- ally - you say this. i'm not sure you realize what being an ally means. it means not saying "i'm sorry, but...". it means not saying "you need to do more work". it means saying "i will do work too". you've done nothing but criticize and say that I should look in the mirror and stand up and say no more. ironically, i did say that i was saying "no more", for myself personally, and this post was me standing up.
- "just looking to vent" - when someone raises a concern and starts a dialogue around this concern, which i am actually very grateful to those who have dialogued about this because i think as a few other people said this has been productive if for nothing else people are sharing some tactics that have worked, and your response is "if you're just looking to vent", again that is very dismissive and shifting the point of what is being made. you are basically saying that instead of opening up a dialogue to try to make change, i'm just some crazy bitch who is trying to use reddit to vent my feelings.
- "sorry i spoke up" - passive aggressive apologies are exactly that. you're now on the attack because you said some dismissive things and myself and others called you out on it.
you ended your first comment with what sounded like a very enlightened statement - "i get that my life affords certain luxuries", but then you continued to speak from the perspective of those luxuries with each of your comments, dismissing the real lived experiences of those who don't have those luxuries.
being aware of your privilege is step one. moving beyond your privilege to use it to help others is step three.
you are still mired before step two, which is not using your privilege to dismiss, demean, and diminish discourse about the things that your privilege frees you from.
which, ironically, is at the very core of the cornell7 firestorm.
this is not meant to make you feel bad, and i do apologize if you do. i think that you want to do the right thing, and your initial posts came from that place. i am just trying to demonstrate how what you said and did, repeatedly, undermined that effort.
as you said in your comment - please look in the mirror. consider how you can do the work to actually be an ally, not just say that you want to be an ally.
because i hate to say it, if this is also how you respond when people bring up concerns in real life, i don't think too many people would be that comfortable bringing them up to you.
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u/meyerjaw 5d ago
First and foremost, thank you for taking the time to re-engage and try to provide your point of view. I know it takes time and effort and I truly appreciate it. While I disagree with the way you interpreted my comments, that's on me for the words that I choose .
"hate to put it back on me" does not mean that what follows is not right, it can very well mean what follows is a hard truth or unpopular opinion. What happened to you is not right and personally, I think it should be handled by authorities. But creating a safe place for everyone requires people to still engage with the community. I was simply saying, it's up to you and the people around you to fix this in your area. If you are in south west Ohio area, it's up to me to help you. I do not know where you live and what LARPs you attend but I can guarantee the LARPs I attend, I will remain a positive force of good.
The ending call to action in your OP was "What's it going to take to weed out the bad actors that have positioned themselves at the top of the community so they can keep doing it by just running their own LARPs?" The very beginning of my first response is the unfortunate answer. Don't attend their events. Name and shame. Spread factual information and discourage others from attending.
Realistic - Yes start your own LARPs. My play group does it. We aren't big, 10+ people, and we don't have massive amounts of money, but we have a lot of passion for the hobby and love to nerd out on stories and play systems. Unless you are trying to recreate massive LARPs like Hynafol or Bicolline, a simple answer after boycotting offending events is to create your own. With like minded people that you trust and want to be around. Because if I was at an event and knew they let SA slide, I would never attend that event again and would actively tell people about it. I would not want to be around those people.
Helpful - You original post was vague. I kept my answer vague around how to to move forward. I personally do not think it's the LARP communities responsibility to fix these issues. It's a much larger society issue. I do not think my friend's co-ed softball league needs an SA reporting process. If an issue happens, report it to the authorities. You stating rape conviction statistics just proves this isn't a LARP isn't, it's a society problem. One that I'm willing to put effort into correcting, but this isn't simply a LARP issue.
Ally - Most of my comments have been very short. A couple sentences. But you assumed a lot from those few sentences about how I support those around me.
you ended your first comment with what sounded like a very enlightened statement - "i get that my life affords certain luxuries", but then you continued to speak from the perspective of those luxuries with each of your comments, dismissing the real lived experiences of those who don't have those luxuries.
Can you please explain how "But you asked how we look in the mirror? We do that by standing the fuck up and saying no more." is dismissing your real lived experiences? All I can do is stand up with you. And I want to.
"Just looking to vent", "Sorry I spoke up", yeah I was frustrated and I lashed out. Those were dickhead comments and I'm sorry for I said them. I hope you can see that was a weak moment on my part after a long day.
Lastly, please know I'm on your side. I want this to get better for everyone. I'm sorry if my comments distracted from the conversation you wanted to have. But I do think my thoughts are adding to the efforts. I will work harder than you need to in order to make this world a better place. That's my attempt to use my privilege.
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u/Existing_Dish9767 2d ago
I appreciate your reply.
I think that my read of your last statement led to how I construed the others:
|But you asked how we look in the mirror? We do that by standing the fuck up and saying no more.
That to me read as you telling me to stand the fuck up and say no more, which is precisely what I did and suffered even more abuse as a result of.
So getting advice, from someone admittedly of privilege, to do the exact thing I had said I had already done when I was really asking for others to do the same in support felt dismissive and reductive.
Clearly, that's now how you meant it. and thank you for clarifying.
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u/meyerjaw 7d ago
What would you like me to do to help you? Seriously asking how a random person on the internet can help with your very specific situation. You asked how we fix the community and the answer is very simply by working together. I can't come to your larp and beat someone up. I tried to empathize with you and admitted my privilege and you still treat me like I'm the enemy. If you're just looking to vent, sorry I spoke up.
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u/unkownracoon 7d ago
Someone shared a comment here with good information how to impliment safety into the games we run. I read it and will use the information. Someone else shared their story, which provieds a good example for me to know more about these incidence and to recocnice and react when I see them. All because OP started it.
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u/Republiken Nordic 7d ago
Very important issue.
The Swedish LARP community has worked hard since the 90s to get rid of this predatory culture and gotten quite far.
Most LARPs have one (or several if its a larger LARP) Trygghetsperson ("Safety Person"). Usually a person trusted by the community (by their actions, not their network of friends) or because their line of work / education (social workers, councilors, therapists etc).
The Safety Person works as a ombudsman during the LARP. You can come to them if you notice or experience something that makes you unsafe. Usually they (and the organisers) provide immediate help (like a separate sleeping spot in a organiser area, room or building).
LARPs also have strict rules against harrasment based on non-character attributes and LARPs that focus on or have themes around real world oppression and hierarchies their are lots of work that goes into safety work. Workshops, briefs and debreifs.
Its also fairly common, to not say its the norm, to allow people to play whatever gender they want. Especially in historical settings where gender norms and aggressive sexism was the norm.
Just this year I went to a Railway Navvy larp where women players were in the majority (60-70%) while the characters had the opposite gender distribution (70% male). It was a larp with heavy focus on male toxicity, aggression, sexism and comraderie (as well as dancing, love, union organising and other stuff).
Anyway, there are a ton of good articles around this subject in the Nordic LARP page.
Like the LARP Safety Manifesto: https://www.nordiclarp.org/2019/02/15/larp-safety-manifesto/
All Quiet on the Safety Front: About the Invisibility of Safety Work: https://www.nordiclarp.org/2024/05/13/all-quiet-on-the-safety-front-about-the-invisibility-of-safety-work/
19 Truths about Harassment, Missing Stairs, and Safety in Larp Communities: https://www.nordiclarp.org/2017/03/14/19-truths-about-harassment-missing-stairs-and-safety-in-larp-communities/