LARP in South Africa

LARP in South Africa is mostly single evening events of fewer than four hours in length, with 8 to 20 players. Larger, longer-term campaigns are occasionally run, most using World of Darkness: Vampire. Cape Town is reputed to be the LARPing capital of South Africa, and there is a large archive of LARPs written by Capetonian designers. See the the CLAWS Monthly LARP page for links to lists of South African LARPS. CLAWS is a roleplaying society based at the University of Cape Town.

There is a heavy emphasis on roleplaying. In the single evening events this means that there is little use of non player characters, costumes are the norm, and simple game mechanics are used. The standard conflict-resolution systems are symbolic, usually involving dice and very simplified character proficiency statistics. Special abilities are generally handled using cards that the player using the ability shows to those affected by it.

In the once-off events, players are usually given detailed character sheets, sometimes of up to eight pages. These included background, goals and knowledge of other characters. This information gives structure to the game, as various characters and sub-plots interact to form a story. Due to the nature of once-offs there is no character development.