There's a recent report of a murder associated with a LARP in Brazil. The details, however, are sketchy. At the CAR-PGa (RPG Advocacy) the folks need to assemble more information to make an informed defense of the inevitable attacks this will bring on RPGs.

The event was reported briefly here: http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20050515/ap_on_re_eu/brazil_game_killings/nc:732

If you can speak Portuguese, or know someone who can, would somebody be willing to read up on the event from some more local sources, or chats, etc, and get the real story here? And report back to me or the CAR-PGa.

Many thanks,
Mike

I've used Babelfish to translate from Portuguese to English to read about this case. A search for "Thiago Andrade Guedes" (the victim) will get you a lot of material.

As far as I can tell, it seems the killers were actually after money his parents (real estate dealers) made from the sale of a hotel; they're using the RPG defense to plead insanity, so they won't have to face 30 years for murder, just 10 years in an institution. It doesn't look like the courts are buying their story. However, there's been some talk of banning RPGs in Espirito Santo.

http://www.espacorpg.com.br/modules.php?name=Forums&file=viewtopic&p=122375

Oh - and of course, a message on one of the Brazilian boards will probably get you some very eager translators!

Thanks for the work you've put in, Matthijs. Good information.

I'm still looking for a speaker, however. Nothing like a fluent translation to be sure of the details. If said translator could contact me, I have some specific places that they could check.

Mike

On the CAR-PGa site, some brazillian speakers have been along to help out. They've basically said:

A) Too confusing to be sure of anything at this point.
B) Likely that the culprits are using, as Matthijs said, RPGs as an insanity defense without a shred of justification.
C) The media and government are going ape there making hay over the connection. Meaning promises to villify and persecute gaming in the future and even the proposal of some unconstitutional laws.

Not good.

Mike

Hello gentleman,

First post around here. I was searching for broad general issues at the forum and searched for "Brazil", and sadly i found out this thread. I know it has been a long time, but here we are anyway.

The ultimate conclusion of this case was that the guys really dumped the naive guy, robbed and killed his parents, and plead insanity due to "RPG evil influence". The didnt get away though, and Justice Department here in my state (ES) was quite eager to douse the flames against the hobby. This has been the third case of murder to stain our rep in ES ALONE (a small state of less than 3 million souls) in the past five years. Some protestant politics really tried very hard to ban the sell of books, but were outclassed by a congresswoman, who happens to be the mother of one of our friends. 

In case you need any portugese translator just let me know, i will be glad to help. Just hope the subject will be more pleasant than this one ;-]

Douglas.