Hey! Old people!

[Bubba Kush]

Hello forum,

So I'm curious, for those of you who played Larp in the 90's and early 00's, what was game like?

By that I mean cell phones, the internet, the media... all of that was either not prevalent enough our not as pervasive as the modern day.

I'm off the opinion that most vampires are anachronistic, so Elders please share your wisdom about days of yore and how vampires investigated, communicated, researched, and coordinated back in ye olde times.

As a bonus, do you folk have former characters that were good back in the day but wouldn't be as effective in the internet age, or vice versa?

Thanks, and stay rad!

[Just Evan]

Are you asking how things were handled at EC / SBC at that time or just in LARPS in general?

[BLewis]

Sweet Tripod and Geocities pages.

[The Mouth]

Let's see... No google, no youtube - Streaming video - Hah! Cell phones didn't have camera's, texting cost real money. Pre-2000 the internet was only like 30% porn, file sharing was done with Napster or FTP exchanges.

In short, the idea of a reporter being a threat to the masquerade was a real threat as opposed to 9,000,000 page views or video downloads. OMG's - The video stream was for sheiss until about 2003ish, and slooooooow.

[Bubba Kush]

Larps in general,I suppose.

I assume different decades would have different means of investigation & communication (Chinatown v Bourne Identity in terms of tech & culture)

[Bubba Kush]

Jan 31, 2014 11:47:45 GMT -8 BLewis said:

Sweet Tripod and Geocities pages.

What's Tripod?

[Ross]

Jan 31, 2014 13:08:42 GMT -8 Bubba Kush said:

What's Tripod?

Where you ended up after using HotBot.

-Ross

[BLewis]

Jan 31, 2014 13:11:45 GMT -8 Ross said:

Jan 31, 2014 13:08:42 GMT -8 Bubba Kush said:

What's Tripod?

Where you ended up after using HotBot.

-Ross

ORRRR Metacrawler.

[Ross]

But, seriously:

I was involved with a gaming group in the mid-nineties. Not LARP, but the closest thing I had to it prior to college and my first LARPing group.

The primary means of communication then were email lists, BBS systems, and IRC Chatrooms. Webpages were maintained in some cases, and I ended up creating an Angelfire page or three for posting rosters and event notices.

When I got involved in WoD LARPs in 2000, email and word-of-mouth were what kept things running, primarily. But then, Bellingham is a relatively small town, and everyone involved was rarely more than 1 degree separated from anyone else, socially.

-Ross

[Bubba Kush]

Jan 31, 2014 13:21:31 GMT -8 Ross said:

But, seriously:

I was involved with a gaming group in the mid-nineties. Not LARP, but the closest thing I had to it prior to college and my first LARPing group.

The primary means of communication then were email lists, BBS systems, and IRC Chatrooms. Webpages were maintained in some cases, and I ended up creating an Angelfire page or three for posting rosters and event notices.

When I got involved in WoD LARPs in 2000, email and word-of-mouth were what kept things running, primarily. But then, Bellingham is a relatively small town, and everyone involved was rarely more than 1 degree separated from anyone else, socially.

-Ross

What about in-character?

[Bubba Kush]

Jan 31, 2014 13:14:16 GMT -8 BLewis said:

Jan 31, 2014 13:11:45 GMT -8 Ross said:

Where you ended up after using HotBot.

-Ross

ORRRR Metacrawler.

For serious, I have no idea what any of those things are/do.

[Ross]

Speaking for myself of course, pretty much as is done today: in person at game, or doing weeklies in person, over the phone, or through emails.

-Ross

[NOMNOMNOM]

Jan 31, 2014 13:21:31 GMT -8 Ross said:

But, seriously:

I was involved with a gaming group in the mid-nineties. Not LARP, but the closest thing I had to it prior to college and my first LARPing group.

The primary means of communication then were email lists, BBS systems, and IRC Chatrooms. Webpages were maintained in some cases, and I ended up creating an Angelfire page or three for posting rosters and event notices.

When I got involved in WoD LARPs in 2000, email and word-of-mouth were what kept things running, primarily. But then, Bellingham is a relatively small town, and everyone involved was rarely more than 1 degree separated from anyone else, socially.

-Ross

Oh God, I remember Angelfire! My friends and I hosted an Angelfire page for our tabletop RPG games, and we (foolishly) let each person involved in the game design and manage their own character page for records, art, etc. Needless to say, the downtime logs and blue-books were a motley collection of sparkly text and flashing gifs.

Still, those primitive archives and the early message boards we were on were what got us into the larger network of gamers, so it wasn't ALL bad.

[BLewis]

Jan 31, 2014 13:46:07 GMT -8 Bubba Kush said:

Jan 31, 2014 13:14:16 GMT -8 BLewis said:

ORRRR Metacrawler.

For serious, I have no idea what any of those things are/do.

Hot Bot and Metacrawler were both long-pre-Google search engines.

They invariably led to animated-gif-laden pages hosted by Angelfire, Geocities and Tripod.

[Bubba Kush]

Jan 31, 2014 14:08:45 GMT -8 BLewis said:

Jan 31, 2014 13:46:07 GMT -8 Bubba Kush said:

For serious, I have no idea what any of those things are/do.

Hot Bot and Metacrawler were both long-pre-Google search engines.

They invariably led to animated-gif-laden pages hosted by Angelfire, Geocities and Tripod.

Wow, it's like I'm in Tron. The first one.

[Iris "Chases-Rainbows"]

Oh god.

web.archive.org/web/20020606131855/http://www.seattlebychoice.com/default.htm

here. take a look at some of this.

[Just Evan]

In terms of IC stuff - I played in a game in 2001 where a ventrue bought all 4 of the cell towers in town and got to listen to everyone's phone calls.

Investigations were all footwork or library and usually scenes.

Elysium had a courtesy phone that was a land line. Am NPC ghoul would answer and fetch characters to it for calls.

There was never discussion about buying assault weapons online from China or anything like that. Never an argument that "I found that online, so my character would too, right?".

[Iris "Chases-Rainbows"]

Well damn.

Look what I found...

web.archive.org/web/20030904073831/http://www.seattlebychoice.com/forums/who/view.asp?bioID=443

[Bubba Kush]

Jan 31, 2014 15:47:01 GMT -8 Just Evan said:

In terms of IC stuff - I played in a game in 2001 where a ventrue bought all 4 of the cell towers in town and got to listen to everyone's phone calls.

Investigations were all footwork or library and usually scenes.

Elysium had a courtesy phone that was a land line. Am NPC ghoul would answer and fetch characters to it for calls.

There was never discussion about buying assault weapons online from China or anything like that. Never an argument that "I found that online, so my character would too, right?".

For some aesthetic reason I keep wanting to stick the World of Darkness into the exact time period as the movie Se7en.

[Just Evan]

During Schetzel's second run as HST, there was a lot of discussion of this. I pushed against the idea of technology lagging behind in the WoD at the time, but with hindsight I am finding I also like the idea of slower tech, less reliable information gathering and the inability for something the size of a quarter to be an internet broadcast-able recording device with a range measured in miles.

There are times when a vampire game can start to resemble Shadowrun with fangs. Likely because the real world is getting closer and closer to ubiquitous drones, mesh network communication and social standing based on the broadcasting of as much of your life experiences as possible.

Is it impossible to tell a story of isolation and fear in 2014 in the US? Not even a little bit. But the all-pervasive, existential dread of the WoD as described is a bit harder to encompass when your character can just hit r/awww on Reddit and look at some cute kittens.