My story is a bit different.
I am a Crewmember of a LARP-group called Vortex for 12 years now.
Not many people have heard about the term LARP i think, so
will explain it.
LARP means Live Action RolePlaying.
Instead of walking around in a game, you are really part of the game.
I can tell you, this is more then a hobby for the people who join.
Everyone makes his own clothes and items, except for weapons.
Weapons have to be bought from a special shop, because of the safety.
All weapons are made out of Latex combined with a solid core.
All weapons match the weapons from real life perfect.
They are identical in weight and look, so you can say it's a real copy of
a real weapon.
All weapons are also balanced perfect.
For example a real Claymore has weight of 12kg, so the latex Claymore
has also the weight of 12kg.
This is done, to make the fighting realistic.
and to give another example that LARP is more then a hobby.
Players pay about 1300-3000 euro for making they're own clothes.
There are players walking around with real handmade Chainmails
of 150 euro.
Players have to pay 150-600 euro for a Latex sword.
And everyone is paying for food, drinks, etc. with ingame money.
They have gold, silver and copper, that they bought with real money.
There are 3 major events a year and are taking place in a whole week each.
besides that there are 6 minor events taking place during a weekend.
A player spends about 1000 euro each event of a week only for playing,
eating, drinking, training skills and stats and handling weapons and shields.
As crewmember i look at they're safety and besides that i am a Game Master too.
And when i don't work, i join them in battle.
Vortex has 3500 active Larp-members.
