Arthur, Shane, Evan, Brittany, Will
LARPs: The Series is a 2015 web series created by Beanduck Productions and sponsored by Geek & Sundry revolving around a group of LARPers in their everyday lives.
The prologue can be watched here
LARPs: The Series contains examples of:
- And the Adventure Continues: Season 2 ends with the group starting a new Shadowrun-style game, led by Cyber-Noctus!
- Artistic License: The LARP has one GM and the same group of 3-5 players in each game, which more closely resembles the group dynamics of a Tabletop Game. A LARP of the kind shown typically has a crew of NPCs, allowing the players to meet more than one person at a time, and it's common to alternate between player and NPC between adventures. It isn't strictly speaking impossible for a LARP group to work this way, but it would be highly unusual.
- Although it's intended as a surprise, the finale of Season 2 has a more plausable balance between players and NPCs, due to Mia's steampunk group joining as NPCs.
- Bratty Half-Pint: Sam, Brittany's younger brother, has quite the attitude. He likes nagging Evan about joining the game and harassing Brittany over the ambiguous status of her relationship with Will.
- Deadpan Snarker: Evan.
- Distracted by the Sexy: Kat has done this twice to Evan: once in the game and once outside of it (while they were playing chess), in order to distract him and win
- Fate Worse than Death: The Exiler. While the usual worst outcome for a player would be to have their character killed off, the exiler represents being removed from the game entirely.
- Fake Brit: In universe. Kat normally speaks with the actress's real Canadian accent but in game she goes into Lancashire. Brittany also regularly affects an upper class British accent in order to play Corillia.
- Fake American: When acting as N.P.C.s for the Steampunk LARP, Brittany starts using a thick Southern accent
- Groin Attack: In the prologue, when Corillia believes Noctus to be mindslaved, but doesn't want to kill him, Will's solution is to shoot him in the dick.
- A few episodes later, when Biff is being held hostage, Noctus returns the favor.
- Will really likes this attack. He uses it to bring down Evan's N.P.C. in Season 2 Episode 9.
- Heroic Sacrifice: In the Season 2 Finale, most of the team does this with only Corillia missing out on an opportunity due to being saved (against her will) by a sneak attack.
- Idiosyncratic Episode Naming: Each episode aside from the prologues is named after some LARP term.
- Season 2, Episode 9 only shows the episode title card at the very end, to hide a spoiler: Claudia and her steampunk friends are guest N.P.C.s and she is demanding that they help her wipe out Evan's player characters entirely.
- In and Out of Character: Naturally occurs whenever they are in a game. It is also notable that the subtitles never describe Will as IC (in character).
- Large Ham: Most players are this when in character. Lance is never not this.
- MacGuffin: The Eleventh Eye. While described as powerful throughout, it is only used once within the story.
- Nice Job Fixing It, Villain: Claudia plans to wipe-out the PCs of the main cast.
- The resulting epic, Dying Moment of Awesome-laden session thoroughly satisfies the players, and helps bring closure to some of the personal dramas that were festering throughout the season.
- The rest of the Steampunk group finally realise that Claudia has gone too far, and give her the cold shoulder after the game ends.
- And Arthur, who started the whole thing by killing Claudia's PC after she mocked him for losing his own, gets to play his beloved Noctus again in the new cyberpunk setting.
- It also means that Noctus actually did outlive her character, which was a major part of her gloating.
- He even gets to finally have his 'loser' character not only killed, but killed in a heroic manner worthy of Noctus.
- No True Scotsman: Evan shows signs of this when he finds out Kat is informing on the group to Shane for her articles. When she complains and she and he are both LARPers, he complains back that he'd been in the hobby for over a decade and that she had been at it for a lot less, calling her a pretender.
- O.O.C. Is Serious Business: In the finale, Will suddenly gets in character for the first time ever, after Corillia dies.
- Puzzle Boss: One enemy fought inside the campaign is genuinely defeated by solving a Rubik's cube.
- Pyromaniac: Shane’s first action in the party is to burn down the inn to kill incoming legionnaires. She eventually takes down the King by dousing herself with oil and hugging him as she lights herself on fire.
- "Rashomon"-Style: "Retcon" shows the same game session, noted to have almost caused a total party kill, from each player’s perspective
- Shane’s could be described as probably the most accurate view of the events.
- Arthur’s involved all the other characters besides himself just going through the motions of what happened, with everyone treating him with utter contempt.
- Kat’s is a basic, almost child-like depiction. Brittany only seen from the eyes up, the eleventh eye described as “the important thing”, Kat's protective shield spell is cast with the words "Protect thingy" and movement is almost entirely cut out except for a few jump cuts.
- Brittany's had every character talking in long drawn-out flowery monologues, all deep in character with great drama, with the exception of Will who, having no in-character persona to speak of, is cut off after a few words.
- Will’s was something out of a Coen Brothers movie with the setting, costumes and entire events changed so Biff kills the enemy with a gun.
- The Reveal: Throughout the first season, it's clear that something's up with Shane and that she has ulterior motives for participating in the LARP. The second season reveals that she's a journalist writing a column about the LARP group's adventures.
- Roaring Rampage of Revenge: Claudia goes on one of these to get back at Arthur, personally killing three of the party as part of a tpk. However, this made the session into an epic finale.
- The Roleplayer: Obviously, they're all roleplayers, but Brittany really gets into the roleplaying side of things. This causes her some distress in Season 2 when she and Will break up but their characters remain a couple (because Corillia is an elf and an elf's love is eternal).
- Serious Business: The Exiler is considered the ultimate punishment with an absolute fate. In reality, it is a simple nerf gun.
- In season 2, Will’s new boss is very intense about his board game café.
- Sheathe Your Sword: At one point, the party has to get past a golem. They can't defeat it in combat, but when Noctus approaches it unarmed, it steps aside for him.
- Steampunk: Mia's LARP group, introduced in season 2, are doing a Steampunk LARP. The group joins one session as guest NPCs.
- Straight Gay: Arthur is mentioned to have gone on a date with a guy, though he hasn't shown any other romantic interactions otherwise.
- The Watson: Kat, an enthusiastic newcomer who gets a lot of the finer points of roleplaying explained to her over the course of Season 2.
