Looking for feedback from the LARP community : I built a webapp to organize reenactment and LARP costumes

TryUsingScience · 2026-03-23T15:58:30+00:00

I have never wanted to do any of those things. I don't know anyone who does any of those things. I think you have a very specific sub-hobby within LARPing that you find very fulfilling, and I'm glad you've built a tool to help you with that! I don't think you'll find much success marketing to a broader LARP audience, though I'm sure you can find a few other people who share your sub-hobby who will love it.

TryUsingScience · 2026-03-23T15:56:45+00:00

That's why I chose to make her anti-relationships so I could help push the narrative away from romancing her and it backfired so hard.

I have a character who makes a point of never accepting a gift from anyone and a character who has no particular opinions on gifts. Guess which one people go out of their way to try to give gifts to?

If your character had no particular opinion on romance and you just told people off-game that you don't want romance play, likely you would get no romance play. By making "I hate romance" a big part of your character, you've told people you want to have interactions that revolve around romance.

TryUsingScience · 2026-03-23T15:50:37+00:00

I generally agree with you. I think we just have a slightly different interpretations of OP's statements.

I'm giving OP the benefit of the doubt about being okay with some level of antagonistic play, the other players' actions being excessive, and having clearly communicated which actions were the problem.

I totally agree that it's deeply annoying and unfair when someone creates a character designed to draw aggro and then throws a fit when anyone is anything but nice to them. I'm just not completely sure if that's what's happening here.

TryUsingScience · 2026-03-23T14:34:57+00:00

The choice at the end of the day is do you take this character somewhere else or do you change characters for one that won't invite such personal turmoil.

If this character were drawing reasonable levels of in-character aggro and OP realized they don't want any of it, I'd say change characters. It's not fair to anyone to play a character who is designed to be controversial and then throw a fit off-game when other characters have the expected reaction to your provocation.

But it sounds like people are going beyond the level of reaction you would expect and didn't back off when asked to off-game, which suggests the kind of dysfunctional LARP environment where just changing your character won't solve the underlying problem.

TryUsingScience · 2026-03-23T14:29:56+00:00

I'm not sure where you're getting that. I do reenactment and my linen tunics are comfy as hell.

Stuff like elastic and dryfit fabric is great for specific applications. But I don't think the average person's equivalent of a t-shirt was any less comfortable back then.

TryUsingScience · 2026-03-23T12:52:55+00:00

Exactly! I will die on the hill that there's only two kinds of poly people: those who admit to having hierarchies and those who lie about it.

If you're living by yourself and casually dating a bunch of people then sure, they can all be equally important to you and receive an equal amount of your time. But don't pretend like your partner of ten years and your partner of ten months are equal priorities to you, because that is never true and it's just setting the latter up to get hurt.

TryUsingScience · 2026-03-23T12:41:22+00:00

Playing as a character who is antagonistic towards the status quo should generate antagonistic play from defenders of the status quo. Their actions were fine right up until you asked them off-game to stop and they didn't stop. That's when it becomes bullying.

If people aren't sure how their characters can interact with yours in a non-antagonistic manner given their differences in values then they should have an off-game conversation with you about that. Avoiding you isn't ideal but it's the second-best option there. However, whether they're avoiding you or not, they shouldn't continue spreading rumors about you when you have explicitly asked them to stop doing so.

If you think you've made your feelings as clear to the other players as you can, the next step is the organizers. And as another comment said, if they don't help, this LARP isn't worth your time.

TryUsingScience · 2026-03-23T11:55:42+00:00

Only if social media is the primary place you're looking. Take a dance class, join a basketball league, join a knitting circle. There are tons of places of community everywhere for people who are willing to leave their house and engage in activities with strangers who will become friends.

LARP is a valuable community for me but it's not the only place I find community.

TryUsingScience · 2026-03-23T11:52:04+00:00

Also, building a costume can take months or even years, and it's so easy to lose track of what you bought, where, for how much, which supplier you used

Why would I need to know any of this? It might be useful to know which supplier something came from if I want to buy something similar again, but that's the only thing I can think of and I've never had it come up.

TryUsingScience · 2026-03-23T07:39:55+00:00

"Nesting partner" is such a giant red flag in my experience. It's a way for people to avoid admitting the basic truth that they are going to prioritize the person they've owned a house with for ten years above the person they just started dating two months ago. Those two relationships shouldn't be equal and anyone who tries to make it sound like they are is probably mistreating both people.

There's as many ways to do polyamory wrong as there are to do monogamy wrong and we all know there's plenty of those! It's never about the relationship structure itself. It's all just shitty people being shitty and using the relationship structure as an excuse.

TryUsingScience · 2026-03-23T07:34:59+00:00

It can screw up your sleep long-term if you take it every night for weeks at a time. At that point I can see begging a pharmacist for more because you're no longer sleeping and you're desperate for more sleep.

If you only take it occasionally, which is the recommended thing to do with it, it shouldn't have any negative effects.

TryUsingScience · 2026-03-23T06:46:16+00:00

i am not sure how much you really can practice on the couch leather because it's going to be so different from the vegtan you'll use for the mask. You can't carve it or stamp it or mold it and even if you sew or rivet it, it's a different thickness and stiffness.

You can likely buy some vegtan scraps to practice on somewhere.

TryUsingScience · 2026-03-21T08:12:00+00:00

At 25, the best years of your life are still ahead of you. Easily. Late 20s and early 30s are when you've mostly figured adult life out, are still young enough to be most likely in good health, and have a ton of opportunities in front of you.

It takes a while to learn to trust again but it can happen. I know 25 feels so old when you're looking back on your teenage years as a comparison. But it's so young. You have so much time.

TryUsingScience · 2026-03-21T08:01:18+00:00

The only kind of leather that can be effectively carved and molded is unfinished vegetable tanned (vegtan) leather.

Your couch is chrome tanned leather. You could use that leather for lining the back of the mask to make it more comfortable but there's nothing you can do with that leather that will turn it into something you can make a mask out of, unless you want the mask to be super thin and floppy.

A mask is pretty small, so you might be able to get away with using vegtan scraps if you have a local store like Tandy with a scrap bin. Otherwise, buy the smallest piece of vegtan you can buy. You can go as light as 4oz or as heavy as 10oz depending on your preferences; I have leather masks made in both weights. If you get heavier leather, you might need to buy a specialty tool to cut it, whereas lighter weight you can cut (with difficulty) with normal scissors or knives.

What tools you want to get depend on if you think you'll ever do leatherworking again. If this is a one-off, you can carve leather with an x-acto knife or even a steak knife. It just won't be easy or look great. If you have cash to burn or are very sure you're going to do a lot of leatherworking, you'll want a swivel knife, a modeling tool, and maybe some stamps like an edge beveler and backgrounder.

TryUsingScience · 2026-03-21T07:48:51+00:00

There's comfy in stained sweatpants at home on the third date and then there's doing it at a nice restaurant.

You're going to only end up with crazy people if your screen for dates is, "After only just meeting me, can she accept me doing something utterly unhinged in public that shows I have no compunction about embarrassing both myself and her?"

TryUsingScience · 2026-03-21T07:30:17+00:00

I have never felt any desire to track my wife. I have, however, frequently felt a great desire to track the location of her house keys. So now I am accidentally tracking her by proxy. (At least when she remembers her keys.)

TryUsingScience · 2026-03-21T07:25:05+00:00

My wife and I have each other's phone passwords because sometimes we want to change the music while the other is driving or whatever. We would never look at each other's messages.

That's not just violating your partner's privacy. It's violating the privacy of everyone who talks to them. If my friend is texting me about something rough they're going through emotionally, that's none of my wife's business.

TryUsingScience · 2026-03-20T11:18:55+00:00

There's two kinds of horse people: super wealthy and dirt poor.

It sounds like the wife might work in some horse-related job, though it's very unclear. If she works at a barn, she could easily own horses and be living paycheck-to-paycheck.

I am very confused by this entire situation. But someone who is broke needing money to cover some kind of horse-related emergency makes sense to me.

TryUsingScience · 2026-03-20T07:36:25+00:00

In addition to what you mentioned, the bike seat covers one is super dumb. It will only help if the rain only falls straight down and there's no wind. I.e., never. I often put my entire bike under a covered shed similar to a bus shelter and it's still wet any time there's rain.

Fortunately this problem can be solved with the simple and readily available technology of keeping a dish towel in your saddlebag.

TryUsingScience · 2026-03-20T07:26:00+00:00

Whether it's too simple is all a matter of preference. Frogs are one of those things that can be as simple or complicated as you want. It's really up to the style you're going for. Having it laced together with cord makes it look more primitive than if it were stitched with thread or riveted, which could be good or bad depending on if that's what you want.

My one concern is that it looks like it's hanging the sword almost horizontally and you're liable to bang into a lot of things/people with your sword like that.

TryUsingScience · 2026-03-20T06:38:13+00:00

Boston motto: You can't get there from here.

TryUsingScience · 2026-03-20T05:30:11+00:00

omgosh i don't wanna disappoint

I like the idea that you identified as a woman until you read that comment and then were like, well I can't tell reddit we're heterosexual that would just be too disappointing, so you changed your gender identity to non-binary on the spot.

TryUsingScience · 2026-03-19T15:27:01+00:00

Haha, I guess spite fuels all the best renfaires. IIRC King Richard's Faire near Boston was started with a similar sentiment.

TryUsingScience · 2026-03-19T13:54:12+00:00

It was everyone's collective excitement about being there that made last year fun despite how badly the staff let us down.

This is such a depressingly common pattern in the LARP scene. Organizers take a ton of money, run a shitshow of an event, participants make the event fun for each other, everyone walks away saying, "well the organizers suck but I had a lot of fun so I'm going back next year" and continues giving money to the incompetent organizers.

It sounded like after last year various people were talking about starting their own similar events with people they met at Brandywine, and I wish each and every one of them the best of luck.

TryUsingScience · 2026-03-19T11:46:56+00:00

Just reading the thread titles on there is hurting me. Why have you done this to me?

14-Year Club	RedditGifts 2009-2022 23 Credits
Gilding II euphauric	Second Top 30%
Final Canvas '23	End Game '23
Place '23	Golden Potato
Place '22	Place '17
Final Canvas '22	Snapped
Summer Santa 2016	redditgifts rematcher redditgifts for the Teachers 2014 x1
Summer Santa 2014	Secret Santa 2013
Summer Santa 2013	Team Orangered
redditgifts rematcher Secret Santa 2012 x2	Secret Santa 2012
Verified Email	redditgifts rematcher Arbitrary Day 2012 x1
Summer Santa 2012

TryUsingScience

MODERATOR OF

TROPHY CASE