A Positive LARP Culture

Over the last weekend, Eldaraenth had it's start of season feast and social event. We normally have the event in January, but, since 2012 was a really bad year for just about everyone, it took us a couple of extra months to get started. Since this event is the time for us to set the tone for the season, I thought it would be a good time to reflect on more than just story or character plot and look to what being part of a community and culture are really about.

As last year progressed, the game I love to play began to feel less and less like itself. One of the reasons I have been such an advocate for LARP and Role Play in general is because of the positive messages and lessons it can bring to those that are part of that world. I've always seen it as a way to improve myself and develop friendships that last for decades. During the course of 2012, however, even Eldaraenth, which has always prided itself on being those things seemed to be falling into the trap of becoming a place where people go out to fight and then spend the night partying.

I didn't do the frat scene in college, and I don't want to do the frat thing now that I'm almost thirty. In my introspection, I realized that as the game's leader, it was up to me to remind the players that I love exactly why we loved the game in the first place. So, I poured all of my thoughts and emotions into a speech and set off to the event ready to really share something important to me with the players around me.

The moment I got to the event site, I was bombarded with a lot of concerns and problems that players had spent all winter worrying over. I realized that most of what they were telling me were the same worries that were biting at the back of my mind. I wasn't alone in my concerns. I listened as each of them came to me with their fears.

I was actually pretty shocked when I realized that some of the most veteran players, people that had given a decade of their lives to this game, were in a place where they seriously considered not playing anymore. I'm not just talking about dedicated event attendees, either. I'm talking about hardcore veterans that spent weeks working on things for the game before each event. These were people that I couldn't imagine ever not playing the game.

I knew that I had made the right decision about what I had put in my speech. I knew that I had picked the right issues to address and focus on this year.

The speech I wrote was an emotional one for me. If you've ready any of my other blog, you probably know that I'm a bit emo. This speech was the most emo thing I'd written in a very, very long time. It took a lot out of me, standing in front of a group of people I have a lot of admiration and respect for and pouring my heart out. As soon as I was done speaking, I had to excuse myself from the hall we had rented for the feast and spend some cool down time outside.

When I came back in, I was almost immediately pulled into conversations about what had been happening the year before and how we could address those issues. They went beyond just talking about the partying and began bringing up ways we could improve ever facet of our game and our culture.

I was proud to be sitting at that table with a handful of players, veterans and new, who wanted to make their game a better place for everyone involved.

As one issue after another got address and resolved, the talk natural wound down and split off on tangents. I sat back and felt accomplished. I realized that I was really looking forward to this year after feeling so burnt out and drained from the year before.

People began to head out after a long day of fighting, eating and catching up. Several of them stopped and let me know that they had been feeling pretty down about the game before the event and now they were feeling incredibly positive and optimistic  Like me, just coming out and reaffirming what we wanted our community to be had rekindled their love of it.

For the first time in a very long time, I felt like I had done my job as the game's leader. For the first time in a long time, I felt like I was living up to that mantle.

Even better, players were feeling like they had found something they had lost and remembered how much the loved and missed it when it was gone.

To me, that is the point of all of this.

LARP culture is an amazing place that can help boys and girls become men and women, or more. Knights and Wizards! Or Orcs and Trolls if that's what they're into. We as a community and as a culture can help children grow in a positive, amazing environment.

Then, in my excitement and with the encouragement and feedback of the people watching the video of my speech on Facebook, I posted a link on the LARP subreddit and was reminded that our culture can have a downside. There is an natural draw to games that allow you to fight, plot and scheme. It is a creative outlet for people that are aggressive and confrontational. That's a wonderful amazing thing, as long as it is directed into the positive atmosphere of a boffer field or an intense role play.

Where it gets damaging is when we allow those things to carry over into the mundane side of our games and community. Where a rivalry between two fighting companies makes for some intense, fun, and epic battles on the pitch, a rivalry between games or players becomes a dirty mockery of the values we should be embracing. Manipulating court politics can be an exciting way of getting involved in a story. Obsessing over game politics is a destructive waste of time.

I love Eldaraenth. It is the game for me. I love what I get from it as a game and what I get from the community I play with.

It is not better or worse than other games. It is different than other games. For me, that difference is mostly in who I play with and how we play, not what we play.

I feel like the greatest crime in LARP culture is the inherent rivalry that grows between games and the resentment that players harbor for one another. Those are the truly poisonous parts of our culture that we should all, regardless of game, genre, location, or tusk count should work to eliminate in favor of creating a more positive community all around.

We all have parts of our community that we can improve. I'm certain that even with a dedicated group working through every problem they could think of, we're still going to have some massive holes in our strategies. All of us, and I mean all LARPers, need to share and help one another.

What are some of the issues that you've seen in your game?
How did your game address them?
What is your State of the Game?

I'd love to hear from all of you on this. Together, we can all build a better LARPer.

Top 3 Online Resources for Every LARPer

Top 3 Online Resources for Every LARPer

There are a ton of resources for LARP out on the internet. Most of them are pretty good, some of them are absolutely amazing, and some of them are scary wastelands of terror. I'm not here to judge anyone. My little LARP blog probably goes towards the end of that list, but I do know of some places that you can find absolutely amazing resources for just about any kind of LARP you play. 

Today, I'm going to focus on 3 places that I go for help figuring out how to gear up and impress my LARP friends. I have to admit, my kit has fallen to the dogs over the years, and I'm working to get it all back up into tip-top shape. Time to practice what I preach, right? 

Without further adieu, here is your list:

1: r/LARP

My /r/LARP Dashboard

Reddit is a community made up of thousands of people. It's one part social network, one part link aggregation. There are times when you have to sift through some scary to find the diamonds in the coal, but the /LARP subreddit is absolutely one of those diamonds. 

It caters to all kinds of LARPs, although lately it's seemed to be on a bit of a Fantasy Role-play bent. There are great links to all kinds of LARP related tutorials, videos, blogs, and Facebook Groups. 

I've found a ton of interesting things that I can't wait to try out this spring. 

Even better is that it isn't just about the player's perspective. There are some great conversations about things ranging from weapon safety to running events, fighter practices and pot luck dinners. 

It's a great source of info for veteran players, newbies, and complete outsiders alike. 

2:  LARPCRAFT

LARPCraft is a great website. It is dedicated to it's own gaming system, but the community is good and their videos are fantastic. They are full of practical advice, safety tips and tutorials that can be applied to a lot of games. I'm especially fond of their LARP Gear Reviews. I could go on about their site, but I think I'll just let you watch one of their videos to see for yourself how cool these guys are:

3: Craft Tutorials

If you need to make it for your medieval LARP character, chances are there is a tutorial for that here. These guys cover everything from armor to bedrolls and they're tutorials are pretty easy to follow along with. I've spent a lot of time scavenging the deep corners of cyberspace looking for some of the things these guys have put out there. I'd be a horrible, bad man, if I didn't send you to them. It will save you a lot of painful google searches through old SCA websites that aren't available anymore. 

Trust me. Its a great resource. 

If you're a complete newbie, then you should start with their extremely basic costume tutorial. 

So Much More

There are so many more great resources out there. These are really just the tip of the iceberg. The internet is a vast, amazing place filled with untapped potential for the discerning LARPer. 

What are your favorite online resources? The best LARP blogs or tutorial sites? 

If you've got a hot site, please, send me a comment and let me know. I'd love to check it out. 

LARP is Mutual World Building

LARP is Mutual World Building

     When you attend a LARP event, you are going there for a reason. You are there to enjoy yourself by getting lost for a while in a fantasy. Yes, LARP is about friendship. LARP is about the community. It is  about sword fighting. It is about camping. It is about being outside with friends and enjoying nature. It is about all of those things, but you can get those same joys from other things. 

     You could just go camping with your friends and spend some time beating each other with boffer weapons. That isn't why we get dressed up and go out to events, though. That's basically what fighter practice is for. There are those of you out there that are looking for that, and that's wonderful. I enjoy spending time just beating my friends with foam and then having a party. That's a good time, and it's worth doing once in a while. 

     If that is what you are looking for, then there are plenty of boffer games out there. They are a filled with great communities, and are truly enjoyed by the people who are looking for those experiences. Games like Dagorhir are a great example. They're not worried about building a cohesive whole because they exist for the boffer fighting. Call me elitist, but I don't think of Dagorhir or similar games as LARPs. They are great Boffer Games. They are focused on combat and camaraderie. They are great at what they focus on.

     My personal background isn't in those boffer games. I come from a boffer LARP. The game I'm most familiar with, Eldaraenth, has it's roots in the SCA and Renfaire re-enactments. It got it's birth from the desire to add a fantasy element to those cultures. When I started playing Eldaraenth 13 years ago, that belief and focus in immersion were just considered the standard. Regrettably, I feel that Eldaraenth has lost that over the last decade, and as a game leader, I know that I bear the responsibility for that. 

     That's why I went looking for how to regain what we had lost, and that's when I came across this video:

     A lot of this video is focused on the kit and costume of the game. It focuses on the physical representation of immersion, and I think that is extremely important, but it isn't the end all be all of immersion. I am lucky that I play in a fairly small game that has a truly dedicated player base. There are quite a few older, more veteran players that are willing to really help out with getting newer players geared up and kitted up. I am extremely grateful for that. I think without them, Eldaraenth would have gone the way of the dodo a long time ago. For now, I feel like the original culture of the game is on life support, and needs an infusion of new immersion.

     One of the most important things I think we can do for our game, and perhaps you can do for your games, is to remember the goal. We are coming together at events for the purpose of creating a mutual fantasy.

     No mater what type of LARP game you're playing, there is a setting and a world that comes with it. To me, that world is the core, the heart, of the LARP. Breathing life into the world is most important thing you can do to help rebuild that immersion that has been lost, or to grow it organically.

     Focusing on the physical representation is a good start. It can help you get into character. It can help you define who your character is and why your character does what it does. The costume and accessories are not your character, though. You character is the persona that you're going to use, and the best thing you can do to improve your character isn't to develop a kit, it's to define your character and then do your best to stay in it.

     Role playing is the heart of Live Action Role Playing. Being in-character is the core of that. I love the accouterments of garb, weapons, and accessories, and I do my best to increase my own kit quality and help those around me increase theirs. It is amazing to increase the reality and feel of our world in that way. It makes for better pictures and easier role play.

    The role play itself, though, is the goal. The kit isn't the goal. The weapons aren't the goal.

    The kit video is great because it brings about the most important concept that every LARPer should take to heart: We are a community and we should help each other to be better. We should help each other have a better time. For me, I think we should not just limit ourselves to the fighting and the costuming. We should be focusing on helping each other get into the game. 

How to Turn Over the Reigns

It is that time of year, the official launch of the boffer season for those of us that play Eldaraenth. As the guy in charge, I have to admit, that I’m a little nervous because this is the first event of our new National Story Marshal, and letting go of one of the responsibilities that has been weighing me down over the last couple of years has left me feeling more anxious that relieved.

Honestly, I shouldn’t be worried, I have faith in the new NSL and the other National Officers, but there is always a bit of worry when you let your baby go off into the hands of someone else. For the first time, I am really starting to understand the position our founders were in when I took over the game. Which leads me to the point of this week’s post:

How to Step Aside and Let Someone Else Do the Work

There are a lot of reasons you might need to step aside. If your game is growing (like mine is) you might need to take a more administrative role and have less direct involvement of the majority of the games day to day bureaucracy, or maybe you’re just worn out and need a good long break. The important thing is to recognize that you do need to step aside, and that there are ways that you can handle that smoothly.

1 – Find the Best Person for the Job

It’s important that you find someone who is capable, willing, and just as importantly willing to work with you. The better a relationship you have with this person, the better both of your lives will be. You need to trust them to do their job well, and force yourself to remember that if you didn’t trust them, you wouldn’t have given them the role in the first place.

2 – Make Sure They have What They Need

I’m going to admit to you all that I’m a little lacking in this. My new Story Marshal has asked me for quite a bit of information that she might need to run the story properly, and is only available inside my head. I have every intention of answering her questions because she does need that information, but something always seems to come between my intentions and my actions. For example, this blog post.

As a result she might be limited in what she was wanting to do with this weekend’s event.

I also have to admit that part of me is hesitant to turn over the entire world to her, and that has kept me back a bit. This is an issue I really need to get over, because:

3 – You Can’t Micromanage

I won’t be an effective game leader if I’m spending my time trying to do the jobs of my officers instead of my own. That means I need to get over the hang ups I might have with giving editorial control to the new person. This is especially stupid in my case because the person in question is probably also the person with the most knowledge of my vision of the world outside of myself and the game’s Head Game Designer.

Besides, 10 years under me has gotten a little stale, so it is time to let the world have a breath of fresh air so to speak.

4 – Concentrate on What YOU Need to Be Doing

There is a reason you have passed the torch, so focus on that. If you are just stepping down to enjoy playing, go play, if you’re stepping down to focus on developing mechanics or putting out fires, then you should do that.

Focus on what needs your attention, and before you know it, you won’t even have time to worry about what the new person is doing.

5 – Enjoy Helping Someone Else Shine

There is a definite feeling of accomplishment to helping someone else step up and take a bigger role.

That’s one of the founding ideals of the boffer tradition in Eldaraenth. We strive to make each other not just better fighters, but better leaders, woodsman, craftsmen and people.

Enjoy the fact that this is one way you can spread that tradition to more than just combat.

 

Take it easy this weekend. I’ll be back next week, hopefully not injured or too terribly sore from shaking off the winter rust.

Running a LARP Event: Recovery

If everything is going well, then you won’t be in the middle of this bonfire, but instead sitting around the outside of it drinking in both a well deserved sense of satisfaction and probably something best referred to as an “adult beverage.” Take your time to enjoy yourself and let the cares of the day burn away because after about the first 3 rounds of drinks, the comments of the day are going to come in.

Now, no matter what, 90% of the things anyone will say to you will be, “Great event, I had so much fun.” Gather these in your heart and hold on to them. These compliments will fortify you for the real work of the next few days, which is taking the other 10% of the comments and learning from them. Generally speaking, most of the negative feedback will actually be pretty good constructive criticisms that you can learn from, but some of it will just be hurtful words from someone that wishes the event had gone differently for any myriad of reasons, most likely because of something that happened to their character, and almost always it will be something beyond your control.

Of course, you should never forget that some people are also just dicks.

The key to all of this is to figure out who is giving you good feedback to make the next event even better.

I have a very simple way I determine the value of feedback.

Step 1 - Enjoy praise, and remember it, but don’t focus on it.

It’s important to remember what you did right, but we really do learn more from our mistakes. It’s good to get the compliments, though, it lets you know that the players, who you spend so much time thinking of as the enemy, really are your friends and do appreciate what you give them. Also, it makes you feel really good inside. You deserve to feel proud. Running an event is not an easy task.

Step 2 - Ignore the angry ramblers.

Generally speaking, you can easily tell who is just spouting garbage for the purpose of stirring up drama or because they have a personal reason to be angry. You can tell, because either they won’t say anything directly to you, or when they do, it will be loud and and spittle ridden. There is nothing you will learn from these people other than that you don’t want to party with them that night. Ignore them completely. If you don’t, you’ll only let their issues drag you down. If they have real issues, they’ll come to you or another officer when they’re calm and talk about it rationally.

Step 3 - Seek out the people that matter to you.

Chances are, there are players that came before you, and that you respect and admire. They have probably been there before and have already learned some of the lessons that you are going through now. Listen to their advice and take a bit more stock in their praise. Make sure you seek out other veteran players, too. Even players that have never run an event, but have quite a bit of experience being part of an event will usually give you great feedback on what you can do to improve.

Step 4 - Tuck it away, and play.

There will be plenty of time in the next few weeks to go over the notes and ideas that you got from people after the event, but there are only so many hours to a post revel. Go out and enjoy yourself with the stories, songs and jokes around the campfire.

Remember, this is a game that you love, and you should keep loving it.

Relax and Enjoy.

Running a LARP Event - Phase 4 - Abandonment

 

Okay. Now that you’ve got something that can keep you calm, let’s talk about what happens when things go a little big off script, or more likely when things go a lot off script and you are left standing in the shattered ruins of all of your wonderful and glorious plans.

Before we look at how to address each possible issue, let’s look at their root causes and see how we can handle them.

PC Revolt

Sometimes players just do stupid things. Sometimes they do completely genius and unexpected things that just screw up everything you’ve got carefully planned out. Since the PCs are your enemy, this is to be expected, and will require you to develop some improvisational skills. Really, this is something that you will get better at as you do it more often, but there are some tricks that I can help you out with.

Never force PCs to do anything. No one enjoys a scripted game.

If you lose, you lose. Live with it and try again later.

Players have more fun if PCs live longer than NPCs. Don’t over power them unless it’s to get them to work together.

They might be your enemy, but your goal is their enjoyment. Keep that in mind.

Have some back up plans.

If all else fails, do your best to get them to fight each other (IN CHARACTER)! This will give you some time tot think.

Let the players guide you. Give them the rope, and let them hang themselves.

NPC Revolt

If you’ve done a great job of recruiting good players to play your NPCs, then you won’t have to worry about this one, if you haven’t, then you might be really screwed.

NPC Revolt is when the people playing your NPCs decide to do something more PC like, which is screw you over in some way. There are some ways to avoid this:

Keep your NPCs as informed as possible, the more they know the better.

Keep an eye on how things are going down.

Make yourself easily reachable in case they need to make a decision you should be part of.

Of course, no matter how much you try to micromanage, this is probably still going to happen, especially at larger events with tons of players running around on the field. Once it happens, you’ve got a whole can of worms to work with.

So, how do you handle it?

Well, if you’ve got a good player playing the NPC, don’t worry about it, especially if you’ve kept them informed about what your goals are. A good player will take the motivations you gave the NPC and breathe life into it. There is a good chance that they’re following a plan that you just aren’t fully aware of yet and will fill you in when they get a chance. Roll with it, it takes a bit of burden off of you and everyone has more fun this way.

If you’re player isn’t as responsible, then you might have a real problem. Each problem has a completely different solution of course, they usually just take a bit of creative thinking. It’s more work for you, but nothing you can’t handle. Just treat it the way you would a player doing something unexpected and improvise.

Something you should NEVER do, though:

NEVER OVER REACT. No matter how tempting it might be to freak out, stop gameplay, scream at your NPC or try to retcon something, DON’T DO IT!

STORYLINE SHOULD ALWAYS MOVE FORWARD, ALWAYS.

Everything Else

Those two scenarios just about cover everything in your power. You can’t do much about weather or accidents except to recover and carryon afterwards. Still, be on the lookout for things that might cause a problem and deal with them when they arise.

You might be there to run the story, but player safety lets the story happen.

One last thing:

You are there to make sure everyone has a good time, but you are also the person in charge of the event. That means if you have to be the bad guy mundanely, do it.

I don’t think nearly enough game officers are prepared for that little fact.

You’re the Sheriff around these parts, be prepared to be the bad guy out-of-game as well as in it.

Running a LARP Event - Phase 3 - Execution

The big day is here, are you ready for this? Let’s hit the checklist of things you’re going to need to get through the day.

• Vodka
• Shotgun
• Alibi

Got that all gathered?

Good, Let’s do this thing.

Execution

Gather your minions, your weapons, your potions, and your pungi sticks. It’s time to get real up in this mug.

Handle the Mundane Details

Send one of your most patient yet mentally unstable minions to go and handle the registration. That way the players will already be cowed by your first boss, the deranged sign in. It’s good to keep them afraid as long as you can. Hopefully they’ll wet themselves.

Take the rest of your crew and get them sorted out into what they’ll be doing. Get your combat and safety guys in place quick. They’ll have a flood on their hands soon enough. If you’ve picked well you can forget about them. They’ll get their jobs done. Most combat marshals take enormous pride in what they do. It’s not something that’s easy to achieve, so trust them to get things done the way they need to be done.

It’s your job to focus on the actual running of the event now.

Set up your NPCs

Make sure the conscripts volunteers playing them know what they’re doing and give them an idea of why they’re doing it. Then, if you’ve got a good crop, you can pretty much let them go about doing their thing. Most veteran players that volunteer to NPC will make that NPC their own. They’ll give it life, and the more life they put into that character, the more fun your party will have with less work on your part.  Give them the freedom to do it their way and you’ll be rewarded by it.

Just make sure that you tell them anything you don’t want them to do. These are still players, after all, if they can find a way, even inadvertently, to screw you over, they’re going to. They just don’t realize what you’ve got in mind on the grand scale yet.

Now for the Players

Head back to where the soulless monsters are waiting for you, and if you’ve got the spare time, gird your loins or what have you. Put on the maniacally confident face and make sure they feel that you’re going to burn alive with just the power of your mind. They like that. Remember. Soulless monsters.

Give them a brief rundown of the scenario, or don’t. This is your call. You can either send them in blind and let them fumble around for themselves, or you can give them a bit of direction.

My suggestion is to only send them in blind if you have aggressive NPCs ready to smack them down and give them a reason to go off in search of the dark and dangerous world you’ve prepared for them.

If that’s not on the menu, then you might want to consider giving them a bit of a hook to get them started. The size of your player base will probably have a pretty big effect on what that hook is. The more players you have the less specific you need to be with why they’re out here in the first place.

Give them the freedom to hang themselves.

Remember, someone hiring a group to kill a monster will attract a handful of people, the whisper of gold somewhere in Alaska will attract an army of them.

Blow your horn or raise your arm, whatever it is you do to signal the start of the slaughter and send them off to do their thing.

You’re now ready for Phase 4.

Running a LARP Event: Phase 2 - Preparation

Now that you’ve got a rough outline of what you think will go down at your event, you’re ready to start doing the prep work. This can pretty easily be broken down into a handful of easy to swallow chunks. Actually while on the subject of things that are easily swallowed, make sure you put “hard liquor” at the very top of your “to-buy” list.
Trust me on this one, you’ll probably want it after the event.

Prepping Your Event

There is an easy way and a good way to prep an event. My personal philosophy is that if you’re going to do anything that’s worth doing, being an event marshal isn’t on that list, so I go with the easy way. However, I’m not running a game for hundreds of people that have paid money to get into the event, so you might have a slightly more demanding burden than I do. So, I’ll outline the best way I know for preparing for an event, and I’ll casually mention all of the shortcuts I take.
That way, all of my players that might read this will finally realize how much goes into running an event, and also how big of a lazy bastard I really am.

Step 1 – The Easy Stuff

Step 1 is easy. It’s  series of questions you need to answer based on what you put down in your plan. You do have a plan, right? You didn’t think you could get away with skipping Phase 1 of running an event did you? Well, pretend like you have a plan and answer these questions.
What makes this step extra easy is that some of these will be answered for you by the game or other officers.

Pick a Date, Any Date:

If you are planning on having a nighttime event then try to pick a date as close to the full moon as you can. If it’s a daytime event, then really, I recommend picking a weekend, but any day will work. Generally speaking, this is one of those questions that will be answered for you. I would recommend picking a date that is decades into the future, too, so you have plenty of time to plan, but that’s not really going to happen, so, good luck.

Pick a Place, a Good Place:

I’ve been spoiled from years of playing and running a game with a permanent event site. One of our most active players and supporters has a huge tract of land. It makes it easy to know where we’re going to have events. In the last couple of years, though, we’ve grown to areas well outside an easy 15-20 minute drive to that site, and I’ve learned a thing or two about how tricky it can be actually finding an event site. Fortunately smaller games have more options in this, and bigger games generally have sites they frequent.
State Parks make a great place to camp and fight, and are generally free most of the time. There might be a small fee for camping. This is probably the best option if you don’t have access to a large hunk of private land. The downside is, not all states and county parks will allow boffer fighting in them. Make sure to check with the Parks Authority before assuming everything is okay.
Also remember this very important rule: No Alcohol allowed. I know for a fact that State parks in Missouri and Kansas are dry zones, and I suspect it’s going to be that way everywhere in the US. You can check on it, but don’t get your hopes up.
Of course, the best place to play would be someone’s private property. Of course, that’s assuming that they are willing to let you borrow or rent it. Don’t just go and set up camps on some dude’s land. That’s a dick move… and illegal.
As a last resort, there are plenty of places that you can pay to camp, and quite a few of them will let you fight there without a problem. Just make sure before your players drop down a site fee on the camp ground that you are going to be able to play there. Camping is fun, but it’s not what us stick-jockeys are coming out for.

Blow the Horn to Summon Your Minions

Let’s face it, unless you’ve only got a group of 2-3 guys, no one is doing this alone. You’re going to need some back up. Now is the time to guilt your friends into helping ask for help from other veteran players. Most of the time they will be eager to help out, if not, blackmail convince them how much you’d appreciate it.
A bit of advice, double the number of people you think you’ll need when you’re recruiting help. Some of them will be no-shows. They might just flake on you, or they might have a helicopter land on their car. Maybe it’s something as mundane as a medical emergency or getting grounded by their spouse. You’ll be better up if you have redundancies in place.
Again, some of these positions will probably be filled by the game officers, so you might not have to worry about it, but there is a list of people that you need before you even start the actual event itself:

• Registration Table – Preferably x 2
• Combat Marshal- You’ll want 1 for every 20 combatants. Less makes things go slower, more makes them go faster.
• Goblin Wrangler – This is a selfless person that has the only job less enviable than yours, wrangling children. You now owe THEM a favor.

Of course, you’ll also want to get in touch with the people who will be playing NPCs if you have any. Make sure you get with them as far in advance as you can. That way they can ask you any questions they think of that you might have missed.
The more your NPCs know about themselves, the better they’ll be able to react when the party burns all of your precious plans in the fires of their evil hearts.

Step 2 – Purchase Your Supplies

Ok, you’ve got the logistics taken care of, now it’s time to hammer out the real brass tacks so to speak. You’ve got a list of everything you’re going to need to run this event, now is the time to hunt it all down.
Now, when I say “purchase” I don’t actually mean buying something, unless you can’t find another way to get your hands on it. Mostly, I mean “Scavenging,” but since you’re a LARPer, you’re probably already pretty used to that.
Really, you just need to gather all the things on your list, then prepack them into your bags.
Then Prepack your bags into your car.
Then preferably drive them out to the site now and store them in a hollow that is both well hidden but easy for you to find again.
Failure to follow all of these steps will result in “Little Damnits.”
So, basically what I am saying is forgetting something minor is going to happen. Don’t sweat it, but do your best to avoid it.

Step 3 – Wonder Around Your Site

It’ s a good idea and a good practice to head out to the event site the week before the event and get a feel for the land.
Figure out where everything should go down.
If you can, hang your signs and things.
This is the last chance you’ll have to really feel like you’re actually in control of any of this so enjoy it.
Meditate under a pretty tree.
A week later, you’re going to be sobbing under the same tree, so pick a comfy one.

Step 4 – Head out Early and Get Set Up

The night before the event is preferable, but if you can’t than the morning of, head out to your site, set up your own camp, and get ready to spend the next day working your ass off for little or now gratitude.
Congratulations, it’s here.
You’re in the driver’s seat now.

Running an Event - Phase 1: Planning

Okay, you’ve chugged a few pots of coffee, six cans of supersized LiquiCrack Energy Drink and have become one with the universe due to the speed with which your atoms are vibrating.

Now is the time to begin what is ultimately the futile task of planning a LARP event. So, grab you trusty notebook and get ready to pull all of your hair out in frustration, because, friends, this is just the tip of the iceberg, and from here on out, it only gets more and more painful with fewer and fewer thanks.

Actually, this is the easy part.

Plan to Succeed

The more you have planned out, the better off you’re going to be when your players decide they hate you. Which is the only explanation for what they are going to do to you at your event. They’re going to figure out what you had in mind for them to do. They’re going to see exactly what you’ve got ready and realize how many days of thought you must have poured into it, and then they are going to go off and do something completely different.

Later, at the post event, they’ll poke you with sticks.

It’s inevitable.

But, you can fight their evil machinations by planning ahead for everything. Or conversely you can skip all of this and go straight to phase 4: Abandonment.

I like to mix up the two.

Planning pretty much comes down to a formula, answer these questions and you’ll be ready to handle anything those evil bastards we call players can throw at you.

1) What Type of Event is This?

There are as many different types of events as there are games, but they basically fall into a handful of categories:

1. Killing Things – Usually PCs vs NPCs. Like, you know, “KILL DE DAGRON!”
2. Killing Each Other – PCs Vs PCs. The easiest for you, because, face it, they’re all doing your bidding now!
3. Eating Things – The HARDEST event for the person in charge. You have to make sure every little minutia is covered, and we’re going to ignore this event type and come back to it when we can concentrate on it in depth. I mean, it might need it’s own series. I might need help writing it.
4. Drinking – Basically this event is an excuse to party together with your LARP friends. Often combined with the Eating Things Event, but not always. This even requires you to think of enough things to keep everyone entertained until they get tired and start fires. Eventually all players start fires.

Since Killing Each Other is pretty easy to do, just sit around and count who dies win, generally, and Eating Things is so impossible that I prefer to push these events off onto a professional event planner, we’ll focus on what we need to plan for Killing Things events.

You can pretty much just play any games you want at a drinking event. Or, if you’re players have been really horrible to you in their sadistic cruelty this year, find chores for them to do. Gathering Firewood and digging latrines are on their level. Manual Labor, always.

2) What Are We Going to Kill?

Killing things of course is really just a broad analogy for dealing with NPCs. I prefer to come up with a reason for the NPCs to be around and let the players decide what they want to do with them.

If the decide to ignore them, I smite them with Undead or Elementals, then I cackle as they die horribly.

If that doesn’t work…. DAAAAGROOOOON!

For our example, we’ll throw a couple of NPCs out there as, oh, a Goblin named Shiney Rock and his owner a Troll named Eats Shiney Rocks.

For poops and giggles we’ll throw in a wizened old man we shall call the Pot Stirrer.

3) Why are We Killing it?

We need a reason for NPCs to hang around. So, We’ll assume that Eats Shiney Rocks is hungry and Shiney Rock is trying to find something else for him to eat. We’ll also give Shiney Rock and actual Shiney Rock. I’m going to call it a sunstone.

You can have your own McGuffin of course, but it’s always a good idea to give the players something to fight over. They won’t care what it is because they don’t have emotions. They only feel evil.

Of course, Pot Stirrer also wants the sunstone. Why? So he can perform a purposely vague ritual.

I’ll leave it up to you what the ritual does, but I’d recommend summoning one of the following:

• Zombies
• Elementals
• DAGRONS!
• Piles of Gold  Don’t use Piles of Gold

4) Contingency Plans!

Bad things happen. When your players are involved they are guaranteed to happen repeatedly. You think I am telling you to have contingency plans in case your party gets killed off by monsters.

NO! Don’t think like that.

Kill those jerks dead. The Deader they get the less work you have to come up with for the next event because your NPCs are already wondering around needing to be killed in revenge.

No, the contingency plans you need are incase the party kills off all your NPCs for no reason other than because they’re murderous dicks.

I already suggested Zombies and Elementals, right?

You should probably come up with some other things to keep in your box. You don’t want to get stale.

A good idea is to find one of your players and get him to turn on the others. This not only keeps them entertained but sets up further “Kill Each Other” events and less work for you.

It is very easy to get them to turn on each other. They are evil by nature, you know.

5) What Do I need?

This is the last step in the planning phase: Make a list of everything you need for the event. In the above mentioned event example it basically breaks down to 3 NPCs and a shiney rock.

Make sure your list is comprehensive. You want more things on it than you could possible ever need.

This is because you are going to leave a bunch of important things at home and end up improvising props.

This is inevitable and we’ll cover it in the Abandonment phase in a couple of weeks.

For now, have a little fun and get ready for the slaughter.

If you’ve planned right, it will be theirs, and they deserve it. If you have failed, you will only have to survive long enough to drink the pain away at the post revel.

See you next week when we cover Phase 2: Preparation!

Stirring Up Trouble - A Beginner’s Guide to Running an Event

Sooner or later, it happens. You’ll be going along, minding your own business, killing orcs, or vampires or what-have-you, when you suddenly find yourself in a horrible, unenviable position. They’ve put you in charge. Maybe you’ve always secretly wanted to be here, maybe you’ve stumbled into it on accident. Two absolute truths you should just accept now so you can move on with your life though:

1. No One who hasn’t done it will appreciate the amount of work you’re about to do.
2. Do a good job, and they’ll talk about this for years.
3. Do a bad job, and they’ll talk about this forever.

 

Sorry, that’s just how this whole “Event Marshal” thing works. Now that you’re calling the shots, you get all the blame and only a modicum of glory. Of course, there is the power, the raw, titillating knowledge that the world rest in the palm of your hand! *insert maniacal laughter here*

But how do you use that power appropriately, as we all know you’re going to. After all, they only allow fine, upstanding and in no way, cruel or sadistic people to control events, right?

Of course.

I’m going to assume that you’re already familiar with the rules and regulations of your own game, otherwise, who in their right mind would allow you to run the thing? What you might need first and foremost is a primer in how the bureaucracy of an event runs. The subtle nuances of a hidden culture inside your subculture.

Yes, Game Officers are a completely different breed of LARPer. They are a sad, tired lot, with the weight of the world, or at least a small portion of it, carried squarely on their shoulders.

And now, you’re one of them, congratulations.

Let’s Start with the Basics

An event can basically be broken down into 5 parts from your perspective:

1. Planning
2. Preparing
3. Execution
4. Abandonment
5. Recovery

Over the next few posts, we’ll go into more detail about each of these phases, but for today, we’ll start with a basic understanding of what each one involves.

Planning

In my experience, this involves sitting round, staring at the ceiling and thinking about how it would be nice if you could convince someone else to do all the work for you. We’ll talk about how to pull off that trick later, though. For now, you’re on your own, and that means you’re going to have to start figuring out exactly what type of event you’re going to run. Is it an adventure? A War? A Feast? Maybe Just a weekend of cleaning up your event site?

Once you have that down, you can start working on the minutia of figuring out what you need to do what you have to do. From there, you enter into phase 2.

Preparing

Preparation is pretty easy. It’s just getting what you need to get to run the event. You can usually double this together with your normal event prep, but you might want to make some calls to solidify NPCs if they’re needed and the like. Not much to say here.

Execution

This phase is the hour or so of registration followed by the first 15-20 minutes of the actual event. The shortest, and most easy part of an event.

Abandonment

About 20 minutes (or less) into an event, all of your players are going to rebel against you’re wonderfully thought out plans and start doing things you would never in a million years expect them to do. This is the Abandonment. It means you have to think quickly, and with some guile to keep things from turning into a Canadian Independent Film.

If you’re lucky, you survive this phase and end up, late at night, sitting around a campfire exchanging war stories with other game officers. These will all start with, “No shit, there I was…”

Recovery

The blissful Monday morning feeling that you have done the impossible, and that you are a god amongst men. This quickly fades with the realization that one of two things has happened:

• A) You’ve done a wonderful job, and thus will be doing it again… soon.
• B) You’ve done a horrible job, and no one will ever let you forget it.

Either way, there are ways to recover, and we’ll talk about those later.

So, now that you have a very basic idea of what goes into running an event, surely you’re going to go out and give your game officers hugs, booze, and chocolate chip cookies, right?

Yeah, I didn’t think so.

Shaking Off the Winter Gloom

We at Eldaraenth have survived the winter, and with the completion of our Midwinter Feast in January, have begun preparing for Crown War in the coming season. Of course, I myself have spent the winter warm and cozy inside the walls of my very modern house, addressing such important tasks as gloom yetis on Castleville.

Now that the winter is starting to wind down and combat is verging on the horizon, I have begun to realize that I have allowed myself to become fat and lazy and my weapons are all in disrepair. That means not only is it time for the Spring Cleaning event, it’s time to shake the cobwebs from both my own mind and sword arm.

The first step is tracking down my local players and getting back into the habit of fighting at least once a week, if not more. The second step is becoming more active on the forums and boards for online role play.

This is also a great time of year to invest in some new garb and weapons. Perhaps with a little bit of tax return money.

So You Want to Play…

Over the course of the next month, and hopefully hopping up back to it from time to time for years to come, I will be writing about playing different types of characters, not about playing a certain class or race, but the actual heart of a character, the role playing archetypes, and how to make them your own.

Why a Role Play Guide Series?

Part of me finds the need for a role play guide to be counter intuitive to the experience of playing a LARP. The fun of it comes from stepping into the shoes of someone you are not, or someone you want to be. The most important thing you can do for your own enjoyment and fulfillment is make your character your own, unique to you.

I’m just hoping I can help you figure out what that means, and maybe find some cool stuff you can add to your kit to go with it. There is a bit of general advice that you can take away from it all, though, a handful of concepts you can start thinking about to make improvements to your character on your own right now, regardless of what your character is.

The idea of this series is to help people take their character from being just another face in the crowd to being something truly unique and special.

Your Character’s Profession

Generally, when you ask someone about themselves, the first thing they tell you is about what they do for a living or what they do for their hobbies. Most Role Players, even in the LARP environment, tend to ignore the more mundane aspects of their characters, preferring to answer with their class. I think you lose something when you neglect the day to day details of your character’s life. It leaves it two-dimensional and incomplete.

Besides, there is a lot more to LARP than just going out in the woods, pretending to be an elf and hitting your friends with foam swords. There are crafts and skills that people fall in love with as they play the game. Other hobbies spring up from involvement in LARPing, and many of them can translate into game and add more depth to your character.

Accessories make the Character

There are a few things that pretty much every LARP player should have in their kit, things like a belt pouch, weapons and the like. Then there are things that just make a character stand out from the pack, turning the player from just another fighter on the field into something special. Everyone wants to stand out and be memorable, and the accoutrements you carry really can make an big impact on how big an impression you make.

Make it Your Own

Fantasy as a genre is full of archetypes. Those of us who grew up gaming and reading epic stories all have an image in our head of what we want to be. For some of us, it is the shining armored paladin, for others it could be the sneaky cutpurse. The pitfall that we have to avoid as role players is not trying to emulate our favorite characters too closely, otherwise you end up at an event with a half dozen fallen kings living the life of a woodsman or a smattering of redeemed drow.

We don’t want to abandon the archetypes, though. They are what brought us into all this, it is what we enjoy. The idea is to take that concept and build on it, bring your own voice to the character instead of just playing another clone of the kid who’s parents were murdered by orcs.

Hopefully over the next few weeks, we can get there together.

Your Input Matters

One last thing. LARP is about community, and without it, nothing really ever gets done. If you don’t have any friends to role play with, you’re just a crazy guy dressing funny in the park and swinging pvc pipe at the air. The same goes for this blog. Over the last ten years of LARPing, I’ve come up with a pretty good idea of the types of questions that players have and the information that they really desire, but I’ve probably missed some, too.

If you have a particular niche, profession or character concept you’d like to discuss, please feel free to leave comments.

Everything is better when we work together to figure these things out.

Hidden Resources - Instructables

There are a lot of great websites out there to find out how to make the things you want to have for an awesome LARP experience. You can generally find anything you’re looking for with a quick search on Google, but sometimes you can find too many awesome things when you’re just use general search terms.

Whenever I want to learn how to make something, I start with one great resource, Instructables.Com.

If you’re not familiar with Instructables, it is a website for crafty and creative types. Most of the site is made up of tutorials that cover just about anything.

Spend some time on there surfing around and I’m sure you’ll find a thousand projects you want to knock out.

Here are some great LARP Instructables that can get you started:

How to Apply Elf Ears - Latex ears are the most common Phys Rep (physical representation) you’ll see in a LARP game, and just as common is seeing them fall off, so it’s nice to know how to do them right.

Tattoo Tights - Tattoos are a great way to show off how awesomely unique your character is, and this instructable is a great way to make sure your tattoo is always the same. It beats the crap out of drawing them on your skin each event with make up, or worse, a sharpie.

Steampunk - One of my favorite things about Instructables is there e-books section, which is a collection of related topics put together. The Steampunk book is one I visit often for my mad sciences.

Chain Maille - A great instructable on how to weave chain maille. If this one doesn’t suit your fancy, there are several dozen other patterns and techniques on the site.

Those are just some of my favorites. I have spent hours pouring over the site, finding amazing things that range in difficulty from projects that kids can do to projects that make professional engineers quiver in fear, but I always find something I want to tinker with.

I’m sure you’ll find what you need there, but if you can’t, they also have a pretty great forum you can turn to for help and tips.

So, head over to Instructables.Com and impress your friends at your next big event with your awesomeness.

Arm Yourself - Where do you Get Your Weapons?

Let’s face it, you picked a combat LARP because you wanted to get some aggression out and beat down your friends, or maybe you have the more noble goal of wanting to learn a martial art. Perhaps you just want a bit more exercise, after all you can burn around 500 calories per hour having a great time beating on your friends.

No matter the reason you want to beat your friends, you’re going to need something to beat them with, otherwise you might want to look into joining the MMA.

Where do get those Wonderful Toys?

There are a few great ways to your hands on some wonderful weapons, and there are plenty of ways to do that. Each has their own pros and cons, and you should probably look at them all.

1) Make Your Own

Making your own weapons is always a great option, and probably the go-to option for

most players. It’s the lowest cost, and you can get it exactly how you want it. I encourage everyone to at least learn how to make their own weapons. Every game out there has different rules for exactly what goes into their weapon construction, and there are a  lot of great resources and tutorials on the net, but they can be a little hard to find, so I thought I’d through out a couple of links to get you on your way. They are game specific, but if you go with the most padded weapon you can make, you’ll probably be fine in any game.

NERO - Nero has the most basic weapons of any game I’ve explored. Their weapon construction is pretty simple, and can be found here.

DAGORHIR - Dagorhir is a heavy combat game, and their weapons are built for that. There are some great techniques out there for building their basic weapons. If you go that route, they’ll be useable in most combat games. The weapon construction tutorials on their site will probably do you well for most games. Bonus, you can find an amazing tutorial for Wynar’s Plasti-Dip Weapons on their forums.

Of course the best way to learn to make weapons is to get with the Combat Marshals in the game you play. Sometimes they even offer classes at events.

2) Get them Made by a Fellow Player

I’ll admit, that I’m not the greatest boffer-smith out there. I can make a basic functional weapon, and it’ll pass inspection and do well in combat, but it’s ugly. That’s my short coming, I suppose, and I accept that. I do, however, have some truly talented weapon builders that I fight with, and they can make some weapons that aren’t just functional, they’re works of art.

Just about every group that you’ll fight with will have a person, or people, that have perfected the art of boffersmithing, and they’ll usually be willing to hook you up, sometimes to make a little bit of money, and sometimes in exchange for something you’re good at that they might be lacking in. The world of boffer fighting is a world run on the barter system.

3) Buy them Online

They can be expensive, and there is no real chance for customization with them, but if you can’t make your own, and you can’t find someone to help you out, it is a pretty decent option. There are hundreds of sites out there to buy weapons from, but I personally recommend commissioning something from Wynar. His prices are pretty reasonable and his work is amazing. Of course, you’ll be paying for the work that goes into a custom weapon, so expect to pay $50-$100 for a sword.

For less money, and less customization, you can also go with some of the nicely made weapons over at Forged Foam. Their prices are pretty decent, and they come highly recommended in some of the boffer communities. I have not personally bought weapons from them, so most of my information is second hand.

A Note About Latex Weapons

Most combat heavy games will not let you use a latex weapon. They are designed for more role play based games, and tend to lack in the padding and other features combat games require, such as thrusting tips. That being said, they are about as good looking as you can possibly expect to find, but that price matches the glam.

Now, go get your hands on some foam and start learning how to be a bad ass.

Bring Extra Socks and 8 Other Practical Tips for Events

It’s the night before you head out to a big event, and you’re getting your things together. You go down the list and double check all of the necessities; you’ve got your garb and weapons ready to go, you remembered to pack your tent and sleeping bag, and you’ve even filled your cooler with food and beverages. Seems like you have everything under control, but do you really?

Preparation is about the Basics

When you’re packing for your big event, make sure you cover the small stuff, too. Making it through a camping weekend isn’t just about the big stuff, and there are a ton of things that can make you take time from enjoying an event and need to head deep back into the mundane world, dressed funny and smelling like a street urchin. Make sure you pack these 9 things to keep you in the game and going.

Extra Socks

Ok, you’re going to be in the woods for 2 days so you would think that 2 pairs of socks will cover you, right? No! When you’re tromping around a field, sword fighting and running from zombies, your feet are going to get sweaty and skanky. If they get too gross, not only are they going to stink up the inside of your tent, but you’re going to get foot rot and loos hunks of flesh. It happens, but it’s avoidable.
I generally pack an extra pair of socks for each day I’m going to be at the event. I might not need them but they sure do come in handy when I do.
Back in December of last year I went to an event in the snow and almost froze my toes of even after we were inside. I had extra socks in the form of thin little athletics, but they just made my feet dry. That day I was given a pair of big thick, heavy cotton socks. They melted my feet into balls of happy goo and changed my life forever.
Now, I make sure to pack those socks when I head to any event. Chances are I won’t need them in July, but you never know when you’re going to fall in a creek and need something to keep you warm and going.

Toilet Paper

This one seems more obvious than it should. You need to go to the bathroom. You need to clean yourself when you do, otherwise you are going to smell like a sewer rat. That might be a little too in character. Take some tp with you into the woods, and you’ll thank yourself later. Again, you might not need it, but it’s better to have it than not. Even if there is a bathroom or port-a-potty on site, you are better off having this around in case of an emergency.

Trash Bags

We have a rule in Eldaraenth, you leave an event site better than you found it. That means policing and cleaning your camp regularly to make sure there isn’t any trash floating around mucking up the place. It’s best to bring two types, also. Grab some plastic grocery store bags to keep around in places where you might need to seal the trash away, especially if you have to break out the aforementioned toilet paper. Another great place to have something like that hanging is where you prepare your food, especially meat.
Make sure you grab some bigger trash bags, too. You can put the smaller trashbags inside them when they are full and put most of your general camp trash in them as you go along. We like to keep one at all times near our water station.

EXTRA WATER

There is no such thing as too much water at an event. Dehydration is a real worry, especially for the guys wearing heavy armor or the ladies strutting around in corsets (or vice versa). Most games will provide water for players, but it can be hard to keep it stocked up good and full when you’ve got a bunch of people all pulling from the same tank. Just do yourself a favor and bring extra water with you. You will drink it.

Sunscreen

I am a pale, pale man. I burn through my garb sometimes. It’s a good idea to sunscreen up. I like the kind that sprays on, and you can sometimes get it with bug spray built into it. Two for the price of one, I’m sold. Use it, and prevent melanoma.

A Tarp

I have a friend who is an outdoorsy kind of guy. He taught me a very valuable lesson. Bring a tarp (or two) when you go camping. One under your tent can help keep it warmer, keep the dew out, and get you a bit more off the ground, and one on top of a tent will work a million times better than the best rain flap out there. Also, if you forget your tent poles, a tarp and some rope makes a fairly decent lean to.

Extra Blankets

It can get cold out there at night. If you need them, they’ll keep you warm, and if you don’t they’ll make the ground a little more comfortable. I recommend putting one down under you anyway, because getting off the ground will help keep you warm when it is freezing cold.

Tooth Brush

People forget this one all the time. Morning breath can ruin everyone’s day. Bring one, and some toothpaste while you’re at it. At least grab some mouthwash.

Wet Wipes

This one never occurred to me for years. I just thought “Hey, I’ll go home and shower for two hours, so why worry about stinking at the event.” Then we had a new player come into the game and it changed my perspective. She brought wet wipes with her to the events and cleaned herself completely each morning. It was like, “wow, she doesn’t smell like a hobo!”

The List Goes On

There a a lot of little things that can be added to the list. Do you have any advice for new players, or maybe a simple recommendation for some of your veterans?

NPCs - The Fun Break from your Character

Generally when you go out to an event, you’ll want to play your character. After all, that is the point, right? Sometimes, though, it might not be easy to fit your character into what is going on with the rest of the event, or to make things run smooth the person running the event could really use a hand. That’s when you find yourself playing one NPC or another, sometimes single handedly staring down a party of players, waiting for the beat down.

It can be frustrating and annoying when our turn to NPC comes up, or it can be a nice break.

Playing an NPC can give you a chance to try something new with a character or to give you a little escape from the same old character rut you’ve been stuck in for a while. Besides, it’s not very likely that you’re going to get to spend time sitting in the woods in a bear suit by playing your character.

Make it your Own

The next time you draw NPC duty, don’t think about it as your turn on a chore wheel. Instead, think about the NPC you’re going to be playing that day as a brand new character that you get to have fun doing whatever you want with for the rest of the event. Your real character has consequences to deal with, but the NPC usually just has a set of orders that need to be dealt with. Other than that, sew a little chaos.

As memorable as the in-character moments are to most players, a well played NPC will be just as fond a memory. Players like to tell stories about that time So-and-so played the annoying goblin, or how they crapped themselves when they heard the roar come out of the woods.

And who wouldn’t when this guy is coming right for you.

LARP in the Moment - Getting inside your character’s head.

Archi pushed Relevar back against the wall, his fingers twisted in the neck of his long tunic. Relevar’s hand slid inside his spell pouch, wrapping around the components to a spell. Soon, the every one else in the room was on their feet, their hand reaching for weapons they had smuggled into the tavern. Relevar relaxed his shoulders, there was now way he could take down all six of them men and come out unscathed, he would wait for a better time.

Archi continued to stare him in the eyes, hate boiling behind them. Relevar just stared back at him, a sly grin on his face. It wasn’t considered a crime in these lands to murder a drow, even one that had defected from the empire and joined in the aid against them. According to the law, his plan would be considered murder, not justice.

A loud cough was heard from the door to the private room and the bar’s owner, a half-ogre that could wield the large club at his side with the same skill as even the most seasoned warrior made a motion as if to say, “Take it outside.” Archi pushed Relevar back one last time and stormed out. Relevar looked around the room at the man’s companions, trying his best to let them know that Krunk had just saved all of their lives, while silently thanking the ogre for saving his own before heading outside himself.

He crossed the threshold of the bar, passing into the mundane zone as he did so, and saw Archi waiting for him. “Dude, that was freakin’ awesome.”

Getting into the Moment

When you set out to role-play a character, you generally have one goal: to spend some time being someone other than yourself. Try as hard as we can, most of the time, we find ourselves just responding to the things going on around us as we ourselves would, without really thinking about how our character would actually react. You can spend all of the time in the world on creating an awesome character for yourself, but all of that time is wasted if you don’t at least try to give it life and form in the game.

Those times when everything does start to click, though, end up becoming legendary. Those are the interactions that are going to get talked about around the camp fire and at mundane get togethers. Those are the moments that people will remember for years. They are the moments that turns the simple stick-jock into the hardcore role-player.

They are few and far, between, however. How can we strive to make them happen more often?

Encourage the Role Playing

A lot of time at events is spent socializing out-of-character or just playing games to get some more fighting in. If you are really looking to get in the mindset of your character, you have to get away from the mundane and get into the game world. Get away from the registration area, or the mundane cooking fires and head out into the in-character zones. You’ll never get there if you’re not even trying.

When you do find someone out there that is willing to role-play, jump into an in-character conversation with them. It doesn’t matter how good they are or how good you are, like everything else, getting into character is a skill that develops with practice, so practice it!

Know Your Self

The more different from yourself your character is, the harder it will be for you to get there. Of course, the more challenging your character is to play, the better stories you’re going to get out of playing it. Keep to something simple in the beginning. If you’re new to roleplaying, than your best bet is to stay as close to your comfort zone as possible. Try starting out as a human warrior. Just about any game will let you change it later, and usually there is a grace period.

If you’re a veteran, or you feel confident in your ability to pull something off, go ahead and give it a shot. Get together with your story tellers and the sky is the limit.

Volunteer to NPC

Playing an NPC gives you a chance to practice roleplaying something different than your normal character, plus, there are never enough people around to be NPCs. Just by volunteering you are helping out the game. Most of encounters that take a great deal of skill are going to be passed on to players that have cultivated those skills already, but even if you do get put in the position of playing something you aren’t ready to play, no one is going to complain. After all, if they want to gripe about the NPC players skills, they could have volunteered to NPC themselves.

Don’t Sweat It

The best experiences come on their own, and sometimes when you least expect it. Don’t try to force it to happen, that defeats the entire point of trying to make it as natural as possible. In my time as a LARPer I’ve learned that the absolute best role play moments just spring up on their own. It isn’t the big plot points that create these special moments, it’s the players interacting around them that are really important.

It doesn’t have to be Big

The above story is from my own time in Eldaraenth. The entire conflict lasted only a few minutes, followed by myself and the other player giddily talking about how awesome it was outside afterward. It wasn’t even something that happened at a full scale event, but just at an in-character get together held at a player’s house. It is a story that is still told by both the players that witnessed it, and is one of my best memories from the past twelve years of playing the game.

That small moment also defined the character interactions between the two characters for years following it and had a pretty significant effect on the direction the two characters went from there. It didn’t seem like much at the time, just another argument between two strong opinioned, loud men, but it came to define a relationship and even a little bit of the story.

So, get out there and spend some time in-character. It doesn’t even matter if you’re good at it. When those intense moments come, even the worst roleplayer will suddenly have that perfect accent that has always alluded them, or that stare at just the right angle.

Just remember, it’s all a game, so afterwards, head back to the mundane area and revel in it for a while. Gamers in general, and LARPers particularly, can be some pretty dramatic people. It’s good to keep grounded.

What is A LARP?

LARP - Live Action Role Play
You've probably seen the movie "Role Models" and so you have an idea in your head of what a boffer combat LARP can be like. You might have even heard of the Society for Creative Anachronism (SCA) or Mind's Eye Theater. Maybe you've seen a group of people in medieval clothing fighting each other at a local park, or dressed up as vampires in your town square. All of these are different types of LARPs, or Live Action Role Playing Games. At it's core a LARP is a game played by a group of people that come together and develop personas that they role play for the purpose of telling a story. It's part improv theater, part arts and crafts and can even be a little bit martial arts.

I imagine if you are reading this, than you probably already have a pretty good idea of what a role playing game is, and are curious about LARPing. What makes a LARP different than a table top game like Dungeons and Dragons or RIFTS? Well, that question isn't entirely easy to answer. There are hundreds of LARPs in the world, and each is pretty unique. You can break them down into three different types, based on how much "Action" versus how much "Role Play" there is.

Boffer Combat Groups (Sword Tag)
On the scale of Role Play vs Action, boffer combat groups are probably the farthest down the action side of the spectrum. Though boffer combat is a pretty big part of a lot of medieval/fantasy larps, pure boffer groups don't generally worry about things like story or characters. Some games still have rules for costuming, but don't even pretend to care about persona (like Dagorhir or Belgarth). The also tend to be a little more hard core in their fighting, allowing things like grappling and shield bashing.

I've heard them described as "Paintball with foam swords," and it isn't an inaccurate description. In fact, I've heard of a handful of Post Apocalyptic and Zombie LARPs that add the Paintball markers back in.

Boffer LARPS
The difference between Boffer Combat Groups and Boffer LARPs is pretty much in execution of why people show up, and what they do at an event. There is actually a lot of overlap between the two game groups, with many players playing both types for different reasons. Boffer LARPs generally have an in-game story, or in-game world, and players are expected to have characters that fit that world. Depending on what game is being played, the line between character and player can be pretty loose or incredibly strict. This group is a bit of a hybrid between the other types of larps, emphasizing characters, but still settling actions by doing them.

Different games can very pretty widly in the range of how intense the fighting is, ranging from full contact combat all the way down to simple tapping of your opponents with swords.

No-Combat LARPs
Not to say that there isn't fighting between characters, but No-Combat LARPs have no fighting by players. Vampire and Star Wars LARPs both come to mind in this genre, with disputes settled by everything from tossing dice to playing rock-paper-scissors. No-Coms are probably the closest LARP cousin to traditional table top role playing games like Dungeons and Dragons, and sometimes even have players carry character sheets. This is probably the most commonly observed type of LARP, since players do not require a lot of space for fighting, and they can often play anywhere that is open to the public.

In Springfield, MO for example, there is a White Wolf based LARP that uses the City Limits as the play field, and players can be found in character just about anywhere.

What is NOT a LARP
There are a lot of groups and organizations that have some cross over with LARPing, but are definitely not LAPRs in and of themselves. For example the Historical European Martial Arts (HEMA) organization that specializes in the study of sword combat in the same way that most modern Asian Martial Arts schools do.

Re-enactment groups are also do not qualify, as they are generally seeking to recreate specific events that have happened in history. Generally with as much accuracy as possible.