This ad campaign makes LARPING almost look cool… almost…

You guys know how I don’t like to talk about anything that occurred after 2001 on this site, but I had to share the Battle of the Gods site. Sony is promoting the next God of War game using Larpers and it is fucking hilarious. For those of you that don’t know about larping (live action role playing), from wiki:

A live action role-playing game (LARP or LRP) is a form of role-playing game where the participants perform some or all of the physical actions of the characters they are playing within a pre-determined space for a pre-determined span of time. LARP may be considered a form of improvisational theatre.

The kind of people you find larping are the guys that hang out at EB Games and smell like cheese or the ones that hang out in Barnes and Nobles and read all of the R.A. Salvatore books without buying them… not the coolest crowd if you catch my drift.

But yeah, the site is extremely well made. You can watch the profiles of each of the characters, but the real “meat” is getting them to fight one another. There are 25 possible battles, but my favorites all involve Icarus for some reason. I have to give it up to these guys and gals, even though larping is quite possibly the nerdiest thing you can do next to writing erotic furry fiction or learning Klingon, their costumes are well made and they seem to be having a good time.

Here’s a funny story about my only experience with larpers. Way back in high school my friend Jason and I ran into a few kids at the baseball field whacking each other with boffer swords. We talk with them for a while and one of the larpers talked about how you could hit him as hard as you want with a boffle weapon and it wouldn’t hurt. To demonstrate, he handed my friend Jason a boffle sword and bend over, offering Jason a free shot at his head.

Now Jason was a great athlete. Furthermore, he was the captain of our high school baseball team. I think you see where I am going with this…

There was a load “thud” as the boffle sword connected with the back of the larper’s head, followed by another “thud” as the larper hit the ground. The larper was knocked out for a moment and when he came to he was dazed and wanted to go home. Funniest thing ever.

If you’ve got a few moments, head on over to Battle of the Gods. Trust me you won’t be disappointed.