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> These standards will likely make officers go after more genuine LARPers than before. These tips are very problematic if police officers start to follow them.

It sounds like it might be a dangerous time to LARP about and plan terrorist acts. That could be very problematic for those who enjoy that as a recreational hobby. But in some ways there's a precedent for it with flying. Lots of people used to love to LARP about taking a bomb on a plane and that recreational activity has been significantly curtailed. Maybe we're heading for a world where it's no longer safe to plan the kidnapping of state or national government officials and then practice the steps necessary to carry it out, and where we can no longer joke about a bomb look-alike device that we want to take on airplanes.

I have been interested in planning a bank heist (but obviously not following through). It's sort of the same motivation for lockpicking, LARPing, or even homesteading- an exploration of the criminal world, the fantasy of being a Ocean's 11/Clooney type, the (admittedly, likely false) comfort of being able to make a difference if fascists/Russia/China invaded and took over. I have never given this much thought, as I've assumed this counts as conspiracy to commit a crime or similar.

So, counter to your (ironic?) point, I think the existence of this article will make me more likely to explore this avenue- I have a reference for what I would need to do to avoid crossing the line. And counter to what I suspect may be your actual point, I think it is totally reasonable to want to do things like this.

I guess your best bet would be to have someone design a fictional bank to rob.

Yeah, if people who want to LARP as bank robbers could be paired with people who want to LARP as bankers, tellers, and cops, that could be an answer to the incipient commercial real-estate crisis. Just a matter of getting the right people in the same room together.

I would pay money for this, but probably not as much as it would cost (assuming that people who want to LARP as bankers/tellers and can't get those jobs don't really exist).

Perhaps, after the AI singularity, it will become trendy for us all to LARP our former jobs for amusement.

...bank robber?

After the 'happy ending' version of a singularity, nobody will care if you were a bank robber in your previous life.

I would also love to do this, but the closest we'll probably get for a long time is some VR heist game (Payday 2 had a VR mode that was alright, but it comes with all of Payday's unrealism, which is sort of the wrong kind of unrealism for me). It's in that category of "wait for the Holodeck" things.

Not live action - but a lot of this goes on in GTA roleplay servers - you can watch it on Twitch, for example https://twitch.tv/uhsnow

> Lots of people used to love to LARP about taking a bomb on a plane

Really?

He’s making fun of the absurdity of the parent comment

The examples were absurd. Take lockpicking hobby as an example and it's a different picture.

Was there a bombing plane map in Counter Strike? I vaguely remember a not so popular hostage map from way back the day...

I agree with the top post that the title confused me. But reading the article I came away with a very different take than you. This person is trying to define the difference between LARPing and being terrorist. That may be obvious to someone who knows LARPers, but not everyone does.

I really don't think that the police are going to be a problem for people in fantasy gear, cosplaying, or re-enacting a historical battle. I have never heard of it. But LARPing shouldn't be an excuse for people who want to don real tactical gear and weapons and plan mayhem.

> I really don't think that the police are going to be a problem for people in fantasy gear, cosplaying, or re-enacting a historical battle. I have never heard of it.

But now with these guidelines police has a reason to go after them. Something like: "I just followed these guidelines, it says you are showing terrorist signs and aren't real LARPers".

They didn't do that before, but guidelines like these changes behavior and can easily make things worse.

You're being histrionic. Nobody is coming for your LotR LARP group.

These guidelines are literally an attempt to distinguish actual terrorists from people who insist on pretending to be terrorists. It's as much good faith as you can hope for from the government, considering the domain.

None of this applies to you even if you're in the park wearing full Orc battlegear, are belligerent, drunk in public, and urinate on the arresting officer.

Here's how low the bar is:

> Among violent extremists, there may be online discussions about and guidance in using LARP as an excuse during encounters with law enforcement,

Actual LARPers don't need to be reminded to tell cops that they're LARPing. The bar is that fucking low. They'll even accept lorebooks and stats sheets as proof.

What motivation do they have to do this? Are you talking about, like, Civil War re-enactors? Pretty sure the police aren't going to roll up on some dudes in wigs and toy bayonets in a park. Those people usually get permits for that kind of thing anyways.

If you're part of a group with a manifesto, ordering weapons and explosives and doing practice drills to take down the US government, then yeah... it's highly likely that the feds are going to pay attention.

> If you're part of a group with a manifesto, ordering weapons and explosives and doing practice drills to take down the US government, then yeah... it's highly likely that the feds are going to pay attention.

And in those cases the "I was just LARPing" defense already doesn't work. This document will not help catch criminals since in clear cases they are already caught, all it does is raise more suspicion against genuine LARPing.

>: will not help catch criminals since in clear cases they are already caught

??? Yea, I can tell you've never actually worked around any real life investigations before.

The difficulty with any real life situation is in a large enough group there will be some portion of the 'fakers' that are actually really motivated to commit illegal actions.

Even online this issue occurs with forms that mock the stupidity of other groups, flat earthers being a great example. If left unchecked a forum can turn from satire to true believers.

The article acknowledges the possibility of people LARPing in a more contemporary context.

I find this plausible, too: I can imagine groups of people getting together recreationally and fantasizing about how they're going to overthrow the fascist mayor, or kill all the Jews, or whatever else. With their real guns and tactical gear, because those look cool. With a badass logo, maybe with some skulls in it. But with no intention of ever actually acting out those fantasies.

Up until the point when they do something that crosses a line.

eg: see youtube's Flattened Earth - The Glorious LARP (2021)

Conspiracy Theory Historic Reenactment Metal Band Flattened Earth is Satire

See, for example, KAOS (Killing as an Organized Sport), also known as Killer or Assassin (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Assassin_(game)).

It’s a multiplayer game in which players LARP as assassins out to kill targets that they receive secretly at the start of the game.

The game has rules that describe how to simulate various forms of weapons and tactics (e.g. using a rolled-up sheet of paper as a dagger), and the rules are intended to help make it clear to observers that it’s just a game in which no actual crimes are intended, but it still involves people behaving in ways that could be misinterpreted.

I played it some at VCU in the late 1970s. It was fun.

> But LARPing shouldn't be an excuse for people who want to don real tactical gear and weapons and plan mayhem.

Just saw a video talking a bit facetiously about this. The question is, "What's the difference between Paintball and LARPing?"

Dressing up and using made-up names and speaking specialized terminology and engaging in make-believe combat...

They decided there is no difference. (This could just as easily be airsoft or paint markers for regular guns, to be clear.)

At the end of the day there is no clear boundary between simulation for fun and for practice, the real question is what are you simulating. If some people were playing paintball in an accurate mockup of a government building, with one team taking up the positions of government guards and persons of interest, I don't think it's absurd to view that with some suspicion, particularly if there are other reasons to suspect it is more than just a game.

I'd say paintball is like fencing. The actions are real, but the consequences are minimized by the equipment.

I don't know much about LARPing but I have the impression that the actions there aren't real, just people saying things like "I strike at thee", "I parry and riposte" while pantomiming in slow motion.

Wouldn't it be easy to tell a fencing duel from a LARP swordfight?

FWIW, compared to real sword fights, fencing (as practiced in the Olympics et.al.) isn’t generally considered to be “real”. Points scored from tapping toes, foils which bend unrealistically, artificially constrained movements, one winner when both stabbed each other milliseconds apart…

But to your point, yes, most amateur sports could be boiled down to a form of LARPing given enough twisting.

Serious LARP'rs make their own swords and chainmail .. the difference between a fencing duel and a LARP swordfight is the shear size of the blades and the weight of the chainmail. *

eg: https://greycompany.com.au/

Now billed as "Historical Re-enactment focusing on the Dark Ages and Medieval times" and has been swinging swords and building trebuchets since ~ 1980(ish) at least.

* Varies, of course, by LARP groups

This isn't "seek out LARPers". This is "how do I distinguish a group of people in the woods running around in camo as LARPers or violent extremists". They found the people first.

Stop and frisk isn't "seek out black people", they found the person first and then identified him as black and that means he is a risk and needs to be stopped and frisked.

I don't really see the difference.

I didn't interpret the article as "investigate LARPers to make sure they're not domestic terrorists" so I don't really understand your take. Stop and Frisk has obvious racist origins, but the process starts with you suspecting someone of a crime and using that as a foot in the door. This seems the opposite guidance of "before you spend too much time investigating a group, try to build the case that they're not LARPing". Like the whole preface is that terrorists are trying to evade justice by saying it was all a game. Stop and Frisk wasn't created because people carrying weapons and committing crimes were pretending to be minorities so cops wouldn't be suspicious.

Don't worry, the cops are not going to take away your robe and wizard hat.

But if you're playing pretend with real weapons, you deserve scrutiny, regardless of your ideology.

This: Guns are not toys, and if you are using guns as toys, don't be surprised if you get grilled.

You're looking at this from an assumption-of-LARPing.

Imagine an FBI agent looking at evidence of Timothy McVeigh at a gun show in 1994. He's selling a flare gun he claims can 'shoot down an ATF helicopter' and ATF hats with bullet holes in them.

When interviewed without charge, imagine McVeigh claims that it's part of his LARPing activities.

What standards would you suggest that agent applies, in order to avoid a false negative?

Your example just proves that this document doesn't hold water, he did that in public and didn't care about people seeing what he did, so the document would suggest he was LARPing for real.

I don't see how this document would help find criminals and help free innocents. It seems to give way too rigid guidelines that will be misused by many officers.

He wasn't practicing building pipe bombs in public.

By the rubric this document suggests, McVeigh would have satisfied 0 / 10 LARPing signals in Table 1.

Your scenario was:

> Imagine an FBI agent looking at evidence of Timothy McVeigh at a gun show in 1994. He's selling a flare gun he claims can 'shoot down an ATF helicopter' and ATF hats with bullet holes in them.

Not "Imagine an FBI agent looking at Timothy McVeigh building pipe bombs in private". I don't see how this document would have helped stop McVeigh.

Clueless FBI agent today is looking at a stack of next-McVeigh-claiming-LARP + 5 LARP/military RP groups.

Maybe this doc helps them sort the wheat from the chaff, because the agent doesn't actually know anything about LARP groups.

> assumption-of-LARPing.

And this seems accurate as the ratio of larping to terrorism is probably millions to one.

Thousands of people larp every day in the US. Terrorism is fairly rare with maybe a few events per year.

I think this might expose (again) the wrong-headed assumptions of law-enforcement for how common terrorism is. It’s rare, but in order to justify the military-industrial investment behind it, we need to be told that we are under constant threat. That terrorism is everywhere, always.

“Terrorism is fairly rare”

The only people who make that claim are terrorists.

Not only is this a weird generalization, but it doesn't even make sense. Why would a terrorist want to downplay the frequency of terror incidents? That defeats the entire purpose of trying to, you know, inspire terror.

It always seemed that terrorists are stupid and irrational in their attempts to achieve their goals, fortunately for society.

So maybe this is another case of terrorists just being stupid.

Or I expect that GP had some sort of brain fart, disagreed with my statement, and typed the first version of “nuh uh” they came up with.

I’m fairly certain I’m not a terrorist and I made the statement. Therefore; I think your conclusion is false.

I made the statement because according to statista [0] there were only 149 terrorist acts in North America from 2007-2022.

That seems fairly rare to me.

[0] https://www.statista.com/statistics/489581/terrorist-attacks...

Another way to phrase that first sentence is "assumption of innocence". And while random commentators on the internet are not obligated to honor it, law enforcement is supposed to.

This document is seemingly targeted on the investigation phase, before a charge has been filed, to distinguish what characteristics legitimate LARPing may have vs militia claims-of-LARPing.

Presumption of innocence does not extend to the initiation of an investigation, but comes into play with increasingly invasive methods (and ultimately, charges).

US law enforcement is empowered to initiate duck investigations on things that quack pretty liberally.

Yea, this entire thread really tells me that most people on HN have absolutely zero experience with the investigation phase of law enforcement.

If your in some group that reenacts pointing weapons at each other, or coming up with idea on how to blow up buildings and you have someone overhear this and report it, law enforcement themselves have no idea if you're the real thing our not (statistically, no your not, but investigators deal with outliers all day every day). If there is some kind of audio or video evidence saying something actionable (even though it may be pretend) and that gets in front of a judge, expect a warrant to get issued to tap into just about every part of your life.

Really? I don't think due process and law enforcement have anything to do with one another. Law enforcement arrests people on made up laws all the time just because they are doing something the law enforcement officer doesn't like, there is no consideration of presumption of innocence. Law enforcement's job is to enforce "the law" as they interpenetrate it -unlike civilians where "ignorance of the law is not an excuse" in law enforcement they certainly an go with ignorance of the law as long as the judge thinks it's "reasonable". Let's not forget the police have been embedding themselves in peaceful protest groups for the last 100 years.

>And while random commentators on the internet are not obligated to honor it, law enforcement is supposed to.

This is not the standard actually applied to law enforcement in the US. You can be convicted of nothing other than resisting arrest. Resisting arrest for what? Literally does not matter.

Also if you are arrested and found innocent, you are not compensated in any way for that arrest, which was clearly wrongful. Police in general are simply exempt from unlawful detention, except in cases of a well connected individual.

>Also if you are arrested and found innocent, you are not compensated in any way for that arrest, which was clearly wrongful.

Not only that, there are likely fees and fines.

Assumption of innocence is for the court. The prosecution and law enforcement are not supposed to assume innocence, they are supposed to do everything in their legal power to prove guilt. There are things they can't do without reasonable suspicion, or probable cause, but these are vastly lower thresholds.