jasonw1239 wrote:
I had a player from my early D&D campaigns (1980-1982) who flipped out and ended up institutionalized for some time. He had developed two distinct personalitites separate from his own. Very sad. I often wondered if my D&D campaign based on the Cthulhu mythos pushed him along...

Lost track of him for many years but did see him again once when he was in his early 30's back in the mid 90's. Him and his girlfriend were walking down the main street, both dressed in long black cloaks and him with a six foot staff. Very....odd.  

When I worked at a music store in the early 90s, a girl brought to work a story from the newspaper about her ex-boyfriend, he had drifted farther and farther into the then-new Vampire LARP.  His parents were told he wasn't going to school, they came home from work to confront him and found him naked hiding under his bed sucking blood out of raw pieces of meat.    Needless to say he was institionalized...of course the newspaper article was full of all sorts of specualtion about how Vampire was going to cause lots of these situations in the future...I blame heavy metal death music  

Mike B.

hey peeps!

if there is anyone here who would like to e-mail me while i am over in morocco, they have just announced how you do so, as follows:

TIMING MDS Email  

EMAIL-Phone-Fax
09/03/2007
Once again this year, AOI offers you the chance to send emails free of charge to a correspondent of your choice. Around 10 computers will be made available at the "email concurrents/competitors' email" area.
Please be patient when waiting for your turn. You can send a second email for free, but will have to begin the queue again.
.
Due to increasingly draconian anti spam procedures, you can send your message to only ONE address. You should therefore determine with your correspondent the group of people you wish to forward your message to, before leaving for Morocco.
.

Note : messages are sent via satellite so computers are not on line. Emails are sent at the end of the day. You cannot send attachments.


Other services on the bivouac: telephone and fax : 4 euros per minute.
Communication (email, fax, telephone) is made by satellite only.


Remember to tell your family, friends and sponsors that they can leave you messages during the MARATHON DES SABLES, but only from 24 to 30 March 2007. Go to the website and follow the instructions.
.

http://www.darbaroud.com
section "écrire aux concurrents/write to competitors"

After 30 MARCH, this email service will no longer be operational.

Only messages with surname, first name and race ID number will be transferred.
.
Do not send attachments (e.g. photos). This will cancel the message. Messages will be given to competitors on the bivouac every day.


what this basically means, is that from 25th March to 30th March, you will be able to send me a msg following the instructions above.

so obviously, where my name goes, you will need to ensure you enter: Silcock, Alan, 543 in whatever message box it shows come the time. i cant check now as it doesnt display the option until either late on the 24th or even the morning of the 25th, so you will need to check yourselves and see!

any and all support will be most appreciated believe me!

Al

jasonw1239 wrote:Hey Al,

Good luck in the run!
I watched a show called The Hour on CBC (Canadian Broadcasting Corporation) a few nights ago with an interview with a runner named Ray Zahab from Quebec who is doing the Sahara 7000 km run. Looks pretty wild!

The Hour website says:
His marathon run will be captured and edited into a documentary, "Running for Africa", which will be narrated by Matt Damon.

Interview here:
http://www.cbc.ca/thehour/video.php?id=1448

hey ray has already done that! he completed it a short while ago, with two other athletes.

amazing guy - stupendous effort which imo, pales everything!

http://www.nationalgeographic.com/runni ... about.html

equates to running 58km a day for 111 days non-stop.

now THAT is awesome in a word man!

Al

SH60B wrote:I have heard a lot of bad stuff about vampire rpg.  I guess the worse one was a group of teens who ended up murdering one of their parents posed as vampires.  Kind of creepy.

No...you've heard a lot of stuff about the kind of people who can be attracted to the Vampire RPG.  These people would be doing something wierd with or without the game.

Mark  

FormCritic wrote:
No...you've heard a lot of stuff about the kind of people who can be attracted to the Vampire RPG.  These people would be doing something wierd with or without the game.

Mark  

Just gives them more motivation I sappose.

I don't have any thing to back it up, just off of memory but the case I'm talking about involved two males between 17-19 and one female that was 14 and they had talked her into killing her parents and all I remember was it had something to do with a vampire rpg.

Winterwords wrote:Here it is

http://www-gatago.com/alt/religion/wicca/21919920.html

Anyone want to LARP?  

Winterwords wrote:Here it is

http://www-gatago.com/alt/religion/wicca/21919920.html

I stopped reading partway through.  I'd heard enough.

To list a few of the words used in the article:

satanic rituals
introduced to the occult
human sacrifice
at a young age
alcohol
use drugs
skip school
soliciting a minor

I could go on but that's enough...

My point is that all of those things were permitted or even practiced and condoned by the muderer's parents and the adults around him.  

All of them were completely outside the context of Vampire the Masquerade.  

The connection with Vampire casual...that is, the game was only a part of the interests and activities of the offender...rather than causal.

I also suspect mental and emotional problems as well as academic and interpersonal problems that were not mentioned in the article.

This is a story about what a disturbed, betrayed and evil person does when his parents are too busy with their own addictions and problems.  It has very little to do with Vampire.

The Vampire RPG was only the sexiest and strangest detail about the actions of this group of people.  One could probably build a casual connection between lots of these people's other group preferences and behaviors, such as where they ate, what music they listened to, video games, movies, television, clothing outlet stores, shoe sizes, cosmetics and whether or not they liked Coke or Pepsi.

"Chad was abandoned by his father, who introduced him to Pepsi at a young age.  He witnessed Pepsi drinking episodes beginning at the age of eight.  By the time he was 12, Chad had a Pepsi drinking habit of his own..."

Mark  

gyg wrote:I prefer coke - & I don't like 'Vampire' type games - must be a connection - spooky

wierd!

back in the day, i never felt like doing anything strange like that.

must all be in the mind. i guess i wasnt "into it" enough

Al