this post was submitted on 04 Jul 2026
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I remember playing this 3 day LARP, the kind with pre-written in-depth characters and story that is played over 3 days strait in characeter, in Wierd Wild West setting, where I played a Trapper that was about to marry someone from the local village, my family was married into but my parents died shortly after.
It eventually turned out that the whole village is a cult that eats people to keep some kind of evil imprisoned, and my fiance's family is the one spiritually leading it, and I still can't forget the nights spent trying to reasonably argue and discuss with my fiance that it's definitely not ok and we should just leave.
I obviously never had to have discussions like this in real life, but it was pretty interesting how extremely futile it is. They have so many arguments you can't say anything against. Once they start with "But this is our purpose given to us by God, if we don't do this the whole world will end", or "It was God's will, you will understand soon", you really don't have much to say to that to get through.
Of course, it was just a LARP and she played her character well, but now I can pretty vividly imagine that talking to someone who's so much into anything like that is extremely difficult, to the point of being futile.
(I managed to convince her to leave, the winning argument was "Your grandmother tried to poison me, here is proof", lol).
The thing with RPG worlds is, when the characters are saying these kinds of things there's a good chance that this is actually and demonstrably how that RPG world works and they're not just a bunch of grifters.
Oh, it was definitely how that world worked, and she played that role really well.
But, the experience (especially in multi-day nonstop LARPs, where you immerse into the world and your character really extensively) is pretty indistinguishable from real-life. At least in how you perceive it. For the few days, your life has these problems now. And you just accept it and get into it, and don't even consider a difference between real and "imaginary" problems. It's hard to describe, tbh.
I was not trying to imply that any of the involved people were grifters, I was mostly talking about the experience of being in a situation like that, where you have to actually talk to someone like that. I'm pretty sure that there wouldn't be much of a difference between talking to someone who can roleplay well and has spend two days in their character, vs. talking to someone who spent most of their life being indoctrinated like this.
Or rather, the problem-solving part of it. I had literal days in that world to figure out how to approach this, what to say so it would work in that situation, how to argue with her. I didn't come up with anything that would work, and things that I came up with were swiftly rebated by fanatic religious speeches. Just like she had a pretty easy time of coming up with arguments I couldn't say much against, that would still be perfectly in-character, as she told me after the LARP.
EDIT: I may have misunderstood your comment, sorry :D. Yes, you are right, it was how the world worked - we did eventually all died because some kind of evil has been awakened, lol. But that doesn't change anything about the experience of having to argue with someone who's indoctrinated in a cult vs. you, who don't believe in stuff like that. It's difficult. From my point of view, they were grifters, because I had no indication of proof of what they are saying, so I did my best to figure out what to do or say, and I couldn't come up with anything.
Dammit you're making me kinda want to try larping
I mean, it's pretty different if what the weird cult claims could be true, i.e. gods and evil demons do exist in general. In the real world, you pretty much know that's it's all fake, the only remaining question is whether the person you're talking to believes it or is in on the grift.