The best way of describing the difference between normal role-playing and live role-playing is that live gamers do it standing up. Whereas in a normal game the players sit around a table, in a live game they dress in costume and actually act out what their characters are doing. Of course they don't act out everything - there's always some mechanics involved, whether it be cards, paper-scissors-rock, or even (gasp) dice, but in general an attempt is made to make these as nonintrusive as possible in order to focus on the role-playing.
Historicly, the style has two seperate origins. The first is groups of gamers saying "wouldn't it be cool if we could do this for real..." which resulted in groups of costumed gamers hitting each other with rubber weapons while doing D&D-style dungeon-crawls through rented castles. The second was a desire to have bigger games - huge games, with fifty or even a hundred people involved. This led to the "theatre" or "freeform" style of game, where the players are portraying attendees of some huge event (dinner parties and funerals are the favourites), and the major action is political rather than combat. I'll make my biases clear from the outset and admit that I like the latter style. Not that there's anything wrong as such about trekking through the mud until you get bopped on the head by a guy in a rubber mask who's pretending to be an Orc - it's just that I like to stay indoors where it's warm.
One other style which deserves a mention, if only because it's so popular, is Mind's Eye Theatre, otherwise known as "those Vampire freaks". White Wolf has published a live-action adaptation of Vampire: the Masquerade, and it has become a very definate subculture within LARP. While most theatre-style games are one-offs, Masquerade is intended for campaign play, and many cities now boast their own Chronicles.
Check out NZLARPs guide here.
The quick version:
Last Updated: 25/7/2009.
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