Understanding the Fantasized Past

Understanding the Fantasized Past

There comes a time where the man becomes a monster, and the monster becomes a man. Where the civilized turn barbarisitc, and the barbaristic turn civilized. From then on out we enter in an existent world filled with morbid creatures, medieval weaponry, and confusing languages. Larping is the name of the game, which means Live Action Role Playing. A live game where the individual player plays a role in a collectively created setting called the medieval fantasy world. This world has its own state laws, religions, and human nature mainly reflecting the medieval era. Early Psychologists defined role playing games as being a form of escapism from reality, but at modern times, the way of gaming changed, because nowadays, larping does not lead to escapism, rather even improves our personal development.

Society is affected by the multimedia, and that is a fact. Stating the name Lord of the Rings, Warcraft, or Harry Potter, to be widely known, is also a fact. The term RPG (role playing game) evolved from historical mythical, fairy tales to a form of playing of these tales. A game, for example, named Warcraft, has been sold as computer, board, and card games distributed globaly, and is now a financial success in terms of the game concept. The concept is complex, therefore let me explain it in a broader sense. As with most real-time strategy computer games, the player has to control

his faction, in terms of construction, recruitments and science. Warcraft features many opposing factions, the noble Humans, the savage Orcs, or the swift Elves. Warcraft was unique in that it dealt with fantasy settings and archetypes, including melee battles and spell-casting taken from earlier roman and greek fairy tales. Each faction’s units and buildings have a counterpart within the other faction. With the exception of some spells, each unit is basically the same as its counterpart, with only slight variations. For example, orc spearmen do slightly more damage than human archers while having a slightly reduced range. RPGs is well known to being very addictive, keeping the player fixated on his or her chair for approximately 2 to12 hours a day, and that’s were the main problem arrives. Many players attenuate and are not challenged socially, due to their addiction. “The human brain has no real way to distinguish between created and actual memories, which is why the things we do and see in gaming become so vivid and so personal, and all I can see from that is a bunch of antisocial, physically

undeveloped dreamers. (Garrett)

It is mainly the male side of the genders whom deal with these problems, because the world of RPGs focuses on chivalry, meaning it is all about using violence to gain the good, for example, killing an equal evil opponent to save the towns people. It sounds nice, yet the reality shows a vapid and timid person sitting for more then 3 hourse in front of a computer, and the picture of chivalry fades.

Famous writers are sometimes referred to be fantasists, because they are mainly driven by insight and creativity. A fantasist is an individual whose art is to live in a magical or other supernatural life formed by his own imaginary world. A fantasist was called to be the main creator for fantasy-computer, -board, -stories and -card games. Creations such as larping, was invented by fantasists. It is unclear who invented larping, but it is known for it to have started in Great Britain around the 80s. Due to the lack of advertisement, and the unfully developed game rule, it took twenty more years to finish the game. LARP means live action role play. LARP evolved from an earlier genre called the RPG, due to the lack of social activities in RPGs. In RPGs the player gets to control one or several characters in the game, while on the other