Halloween is for RPG Players

I call Halloween the Beast Holiday (from the Beauty and the Beast TV series). It's the holiday that the Beast could freely walk around without being bothered. And it is much the same for us who play role-playing games.

This is especially poignant for me as I play LARPs (live-action-role-playing) almost every weekend. There are often times when we'll hit a restaurant after one of our events and most of us will still be dressed as our characters (or NPC monsters - makeup is hard to get off). Most of the year we get second and third looks...and sometimes negative comments. However, during the Halloween season we get positive comments about how good our costumes look; people are not surprised by how we are dressed.

This also works for tabletop rpg players. It's the holiday where pretending you are a fierce warrior or clever mage is acceptable. People understand the desire to be something else, to be heroic. Carrying around an rpg game book is not frowned upon as it may be during other times of the year. Halloween is a commonality between rpg players and those who are not gamers.