Mysterious Glow

When I was a teenager, experimenting with alcohol, there was a drinking board game that I liked, called Passout. You would roll dice and tramp around the board, and drink when it told you to. Unlike today, with my iron liver, I was a lightweight in those days, and I can’t remember how many times I went around the board- not that many. We had the good sense to only do shot glasses of beer, and so we didn’t have to suffer through that annoying alcohol poisoning, which can really cramp your style.

So, I was reminded of Passout, when I saw this board game, Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas. This looks more like an art project and the price tag is pretty steep. It comes in a suitcase, well-organized and color coded with pill bottles and flasks, which you fill with the drugs and alcohol Hunter and his Samoan attorney took. How one would find exotic chemicals like 5-MEO-DMT ,which comes from cane toad venom of all things, 2C-E, and other alphabet drugs I’ve never heard of, to play the game is beyond me.

The rules state to play the game you need a sitter, who also functions as a driver. This person does not participate in the game. To play the game each contestant needs a weekend, and I imagine that it is a full 48 hours of this insanity. In some ways, it becomes a Live Action Role Playing game or LARP. Playing a LARP shouldn’t kill you, this very well might. But unlike any LARP I’ve ever heard of, there are game cards which are drawn, which say things like Go to a Carnival. I’ve never played a LARP, other than working at a Renaissance Faire which I think counts, and I thought a LARP was just a version of playing “let’s pretend” for grown-ups. I don’t know if Vampire: The Masquerade makes you use cards to resolve combat situations, but I do know you aren’t allowed to really bite people. Some people have taken LARP-ing too far, and confused it for the real world.

Playing Passout, one might find themselves in the emergency room, having their stomachs pumped. To play this game, one might just turn up in a morgue. I guess one could play the game with different colored jelly beans, confectioner’s sugar and lemonade. But I would still be worried about developing diabetes from it.

An interesting art project, but if you were to actually play this, you would get arrested or worse!