Their Irresponsibility Will Destroy us ALL!!!

The mad shenanigans of the gang of miscreants who produced the fatally flawed Pittsburgh run of "Clarence" have finally caught up with them. Now it is about time that they paid the piper for their lunatic pursuits. They have caused someone to be nearly killed! What will be next? The "White Slavery Game!"

I have been involved in LARP nearly as long as any of the hooligans connected with Clarence. The best of them, Miss Wallace, being by no means temperate. And I can tell you that they have been begging for this sort of disaster.

I enjoy LARP. Do not get me wrong. However, LARP is about play-acting of some funny characters. When I go to a LARP I want to laugh, and perhaps say a few lines as if I were a different person, maybe even pitching my voice differently.

However the sort of immersive experience that the "Clarence" gang offers is not to my liking! It may seem very harmless to pick up a sheet of paper and thereon read not the passive description of a character, but a sort of strange gloss written in second person, so that instead of saying "Dick Grey is a policeman and you are acting as him" it says "You are Dick Grey and you are a policeman."

This is not something which modern sensibilities can tolerate. It is to LARP what the degenerate Moscow Art Theatre is to the stage - a sort of cesspool summoning up the worst of human traits. The Lord God created us as who we are. Now it is all very well to play act to be someone else. But when we cross the boundary and begin to talk as them - not merely occasionally to pass a few sentences, then reverting to the more comfortable form of "Dick Grey tells you that you are full of bunk," we are entering a dangerous area. The monster emerges. We become Dick Grey. And if we can become Dick Grey, what else might we do - Dick Grey has no soul, Dick Grey will not stand for judgement! What is to keep us from becoming anarchists, or cannibals!

Indeed this whole type of theatre embodies the anarchist ideal. In breaking down the rules of behavior and spending not minutes but hours talking and walking as someone else, we not only take the fun out of LARP, but we destroy the humanity within us. We become anarchists as surely as if we hurled a bomb in Haymarket Square.

In particular the acting out of a character like the Lunatic Carry Nation is destined to deal a blow to the human mind.

I knew I did not like this sort of LARP, but my Emma had heard "positive things" about Clarence. Such are the trifling gossips of women who hound after fashion even if the lit fuse of anarchy is just out of site. So like Du Maurier's innocent Trilby, we sat on Svengali's couch and let him wave his hands before our eyes.

I had firmly told Emma that I was not willing to undertake any of the "new" roleplaying. I have played LARPs, Charades and other Parlor type games for years without walking around and talking as if I were deranged and thought I was someone else. She had spoken on the telephone with Henrietta Wallace and assured me that it would not be necessary.

I picked up my "packet" and retired to my room for a cigar, and to read the blasted thing. Right then and there I should have packed Emma into our Surrey and gotten out of that damnable place.

I was told that "You" meaning myself "are Dr. Frankenstein." In principle this should have been fine, for while I had never read Mary Shelley's novel, I vaguely remembered that Dr. Victor Frankenstein was a fairly earnest young doctor, and seemed to recall childhood illustrations of men with torches. It was not at all clear who it was that he was supposed to kill, but I was attempting to be in a good humor, and I assumed that my victims would be disclosed to me as I went along.

I gave a quick glance at the rather lengthy sheet provided, which seemed to have all sorts of irrelevant information about Dr. Frankenstein's background, romances, and mannerisms, which I could not imagine there would be any reason for me to know, as he was a character in a book, and I was Mr. Clovis Lee Munger, Jr. I had a perfectly good name badge to let anyone who wished to know who was hunting them know that I was Dr. Frankenstein, and it was a mystery to me what anyone would want to know all of those details for.

I cut the end of a Big Wolf Robusto, and began thumbing the plethora of confusing and generally useless paper for my combat stats. Why anyone should put all sorts of other detritus on top of them was a mystery to me, unless it was out of fear that someone else would take my packet and see them on the top.

What I found was very disappointing indeed. There were a set of cards which appeared to have some function in combat, but the rules provided were very vague. Well then! I had been to games that had weak systems before. I would be on comfortable ground here. I looked at my strength, which had a numerical value of 5. I did not of course know what the other characters had, but based on a game I had played last month, I concluded that I was probably fairly well off. I did not see any rules for ambush by surprise, but I thought I should probably progress to the stairwell and begin waylaying other people with badges. If I could trim a few of them before they had read the system, I might have whatever items had been theirs, and perhaps get a revolver or knife or something which would confer an advantage. If any GM did not see it my way I certainly had the strength of will to give what for to them.

I did fairly well. Combat was resolved by comparison of numbers with the higher number prevailing. If victorious I could take either a random item, a specific item I wanted if I named it and they had got it, or I could tie them up and leave them incapacitated for ten minutes. In the event of a tie, one would play "Rochambeau" to determine the outcome.

In this way I collected and assortment of "Elephant Parts," of which everyone seemed to have at least one, my evening ended when I accosted a little miscreant hiding near the entry to the ladies lounge who informed me that he was not in fact "Captain Mors," but that his character was a Dragon, and that he had breath of fire and a strength of 20. Now nobody I had run into had anything like that strength, so I went down and grabbed hold of the nearest Gamebody, and propelled him hence, whereupon he confirmed my Suspicion. "Captain Mors" was not indeed a Dragon, and did not have any flaming breath. I maintained I should have pickings of him for free as he had cheated, however the Gamebody was rather weary, and declared that I must best him. As we both had a strength of 5 ( a not uncommon situation) we played Rochambeau, and I bested him getting for my troubles a treasure map of some sort to a lost kingdom of Amazons.

He proceeded to ramble for some little time about how he was in fact a dragon, and left me confirmed in my opinion that mental games such as these Gamemeisters engaged in lead to derangement!

In the case of this lad his unhingement had occurred quicker than otherwise might because of his obvious history of self-abuse. His lackluster eyes, and flaccid, nearly palsied throw made me to firmly believe that he was a chronic self abuser of the sort who will end up in an alleyway somewhere. Dragon! Bah!

He had put me in a foul mood, and I sought the comforts of bed.

An Outrage!

The next day was a further compilation of outrages such as one might only imagine in a three ring circus where the performers have run amok and taken control of the place.

A young woman to whom I had not even been introduced appealed to me that she was my long lost love and asked me to ask her to wed. Obviously I could do no such thing!

For this I was to pay by listening to the shrill squaking of a female hen who was deputized as a GM. I suppose that there might be something to the idea of having a female GM for the lady players, but I cannot see how one might expect a man to listen to the hysterical rulings of a lady-GM. If there need be such creatures at all they must understand that they cannot GM for male players, for they do not understand the crafting of rules.

I would have had a miserable time, but I happened to stumble upon the bluff William Jennings Bryan (or some such alike), who had just become President of the United States. A Democrat myself, I was happy to help Mr. Bryan with his war games. He commissioned me a General in the Army and set me to handling the troops of a Civil War. There was something to this that I had missed, but the important thing is that a new Confederacy, with the help of some millions of Chinese who had, it is supposed, finished with their work on the railways, rather handily took over the rest of the country and Mexico, until we were stopped by the arrival of the Martian War Machine.

Now it is the case that in Mr. Wells novel poor planning is the lot of humanity. Should sapping and mining have been done early enough, and enough ships been committed, the Martians should have been stopped. Even so it was well given that humanity would do passing well having gotten a feel for the brutes, for by accident they felled two. However despite my vast plethora of Chinks (all of whom it should be pointed out might well know mining and dynamiting from working on the railroad), I was not able to overcome this single machine, which I thought to be a fairly raw deal.

Finally humiliated, I left the girl to pack my bags, and took a hansom to my club to keep the evening from being a total waste, and know not how anything fared after my departure.

At home, an Outrage sir, I learned that my Emma had been put through the motions of marriage to another. An Outrage! Though she assured me it was as if in a stage play, neither of us are actors. Another man! I shall not have it! I vowed to call the responsible party out, but that turned out to be Miss Wallace, and champions having fallen out of favor, I shall have to remain unsatisfied for my wife's debauchment. And of all the crass nerve, apparently much had been made of my name at the Wrap for not having given up my hard earned map and elephant parts before I left, as well as some sort of blueprint which had done me not one whit of good in any of the fights I was in.

Emma said that she had a fine time - entirely too fine a time, as I have forbid this entertainment forthwith, and you can, sir, cancel my subscription!

- Metagame Vol. II, No 4, Winter 1906, Letters to the Editor, Mr. Clovis Lee Munger, Jr.