Foam Swords and Latex Ears

A Positive LARP Culture

2013-03-18T15:55:00.000-07:00

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

2013-02-22T21:52:00.000-08:00

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

2013-02-11T17:11:00.000-08:00

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

2012-04-12T20:57:00.001-07:00

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

2012-04-07T21:54:00.001-07:00

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

2012-03-30T12:52:00.001-07:00

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

2012-03-16T07:01:00.001-07:00

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

2012-03-09T07:49:00.003-08:00

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

2012-03-01T20:33:00.001-08:00

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:

Killing Things – Usually PCs vs NPCs. Like, you know, “KILL DE DAGRON!”
Killing Each Other – PCs Vs PCs. The easiest for you, because, face it, they’re all doing your bidding now!
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.
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

2012-02-24T07:38:00.001-08:00

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:

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

Planning
Preparing
Execution
Abandonment
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

2012-02-17T15:44:00.001-08:00

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.

Garbing Up for Winter - The Importance of the Cloak

2011-11-17T22:00:00.000-08:00

Winter is finally on us here in Missouri, and that means it’s time to scrape ice off of the cars in the morning, make sure our foam isn’t frozen before fighting, and put on our cloaks. It is important to keep a fighter warm when they’re out fighting. Sure we’ll all get hot and sweaty while we’re on the field, but the moment stop, we’re just out in the cold and wet. We need to make sure we always have something nice and warm nearby to throw on.

Sure, real jackets and coats work, and should be used if you have nothing else, but we all try to maintain the illusion, right? Luckily there is a solution that not only keeps us warm when it’s cold, but also makes us look like a mysterious bad ass when we stand on a muddy path.

Let’s hear it for the Cloak

Once you have the basics of your garb covered, the cloak is the next step to looking cool, intimidating and better than everyone else. The cloak is actually a really simple beginners sewing project, and a basic cloak should be able to be finished in about an hour with under $20 in materials. It’s basically 5-6 yards of fabric depending on how tall, or fancy you want to get.

There are literally thousands of websites on Google that will show you how to make a cloak of your own, and probably thousands more willing to sell you one premade, so I’m not going to spend too much time fussing about that. I do have a few ideas that you might want to keep in mind when you are making decisions, though.

Your cloak is the center piece of your winter garb. Your priority here is to have a piece that keeps you very warm. A good cloak will keep you warm both around the camp fire and away from it. It should be heavy enough to keep the chill off of you, and soft enough that you can curl up in it to sleep. What it looks like is secondary to that.
The ultimate cloak material is felted wool, which is both waterproof and crazy warm. It is also insanely expensive ($15+ per yard, easily) and almost always dry clean only. If you can afford to get a wool cloak, I highly recommend it, as it will not only be period, but will keep you warm and dry. However, be aware that it will cost more to have cleaned, not that you’ll need to wash it more than a couple of times per year.
The two best alternatives to wool are Flannel or Polar Fleece. They are both soft materials that stay warm, without costing an arm and a leg. They are also both machine washable. I recommend fleece over flannel because it has a bit more water resistance to it. Either way, though, you should be able to find it in whatever colors you want, and still have a perfectly functional cloak. For extra warmth, double down and line your fleece with flannel. It will be the coziest cloak ever.
AVOID RIBBON TIES. Most cloak patterns, and even a lot of the mass produced cloaks out there, seem to think that you’ll be fine tying a couple of pieces of ribbon together at the throat and going. This is horrible. Spring for buttons or clasps and thank me later. At the very least use some wooden or cloth toggles. All the ribbon ties are going to do is get knotted, and eventually cut off when it starts to choke you anyway.

There you go, keep those things in mind when you’re making the decisions on your cloak, and you’ll be the warm huddle in no time. One more thing, make sure you get a cloak with a nice hood. It’ll keep your head warm, and it really does add to the level of mysteriousness you have as a character.

You might also want to invest in a light weight cloak for summer. Historically they were called “travel” or “dust'” cloaks, and they were made of extremely light weight material, just enough to keep the dust off your clothes while you travelled. They won’t keep you warm, and you’re not too worried about getting dirty, but it definitely adds a level of bad ass to your character, so keep that in mind, too.

So You Want to Play: A Healer

2011-11-10T22:00:00.000-08:00

Tending to the sick, wounded and feeble of mind are only the tip of the iceberg when it comes to what it means to be a healer. From the Dungeons & Dragons stereotype of the cleric, curing diseases and wounds with magic all the way up to the modern physician, there is a broad and wonderful world out there for the player that wants to follow the medical path. There is much more to being a a healer than just healing the sick.

Science and Magic - Healing

In a fantasy setting, healers are found in all walks of life. They can be religious figures, like priests, clerics, shaman and witch doctors, but they can also be simple herbalists, alchemists, or apothecaries. Most games have a class you can play that has some sort of built in ability to heal. Even if your game doesn’t, there is a lot you can do to still build your character into the iconic profession.

Role Playing a Healer

Even if you don’t have a class in your game for specifically playing a healer, there is a lot of things you can do to build up the role play of the healing arts. Once again, you can look to the modern world for roles that doctors play to get an idea of the types of things that you can bring a fantasy flair. There are plenty of things to heal beyond the body. There is also the mind and spirit, and in a fantasy world, those can be much more common injuries.

Work on spending time establishing an air of kindliness. A good bed-side manner goes a long way. Remember, a good healer heals the whole person, not just the wound.

Cultivating the Healing Profession

Whether they are using primitive herbs while studying the four humors or the latest pharmaceuticals while, well basically studying the four humors, healers are always on the cutting edge of science. In a fantasy setting that also means studying the effects of all kinds of magic, even if you don’t use it yourself. This might mean developing a good relationship with the story tellers running your game in order to make sure of the things your character may or may not know.

On the battlefield, healers can use bandages, herbs, medicines or magic to aid their friends. Back in their labs, they can mix all kinds of potions, elixirs and draughts to bring comfort to the ill. Perhaps you have less honorable intentions, twisting and turning the healing arts in perverse ways that were never intended, like creating powerful poisons.

If your game goes in that direction, you might even get the chance to investigate a grizzly murder or diagnose a terrible epidemic. Keep your options open, because there is a whole wide world out there.

Gear you Should Carry

There is a pretty big difference between role playing a healer and actually being a medical professional, but that doesn’t mean you can’t be ready to help with the minor things. Get yourself at least a basic first aid kit and carry it on you. At the very least you should have some bandages and some sanitizer. A good pair of tweezers for pulling out splinters comes in handy too.

You can also get into the mode by carrying some potion bottles. Fill them with different flavors of Kool-Aide, Sports drinks or just Water with food coloring in it to give them the enchanting appeal of magical spirits. Even if your game doesn’t have that sort of thing, most of those potions never really worked all through out history anyway. Remember, even delicious Dr Pepper started out as a cure all elixir.

If you want to cultivate a classic look, go for flowing robes or lab coats. Of course, you can also mix it up a little, creating a medieval lab coat or a modern medical gown.

Remember, to have fun with it. That is the whole point, after all.

Do you have any suggestions for people of the healing persuasion?

So You Want to Play A Scribe

2011-11-04T10:42:00.001-07:00

Huddled over ancient tomes of lore, transcribing the legends of old, and documenting the official histories of the world are just a few of the duties of a Scribe. Blessed with the sacred skill of written language, Scribes are the pillars of culture, history, and government. The keepers of records and stories, they are simultaneously responsible for maintaining the bureaucracy and creating art in the form of books, poems and even typography. A scribe must master not only composing diplomatic letters and maintaining ledgers, but also entertaining others with history and fiction.

A Scribe is an important and noble profession.

What does it Mean to Play a Scribe?

In the modern world, and especially in the role-playing culture it is rare that to find a person that lacks the basic skill of literacy. This almost seems to push the profession of scribe out of existence, since their primary defining attribute, knowing how to read and write, is common among all of the players. You simply don’t need another person nearby to scribble down words for you so they can be delivered to your political rival, or maintained in libraries for posterity.

At the same time, though, a player interested in being a scribe can be so much more important for the survival of a game than anyone ever realizes, once you redefine the job from being merely the word processors of the days of old, and look at them for what they are in the modern era.

Scribes are writers, publishers, and graphic designers all rolled into one.

If you want to stand out as a Scribe, you need to make sure you are seen scribbling away the stories of your game, and share them. Keep the histories for your friends in character. Volunteer to draft a letter on behalf of your knight. Throw yourself into the fun of playing a character that is dedicated to not just writing things down, but creating documents and seals.

It also helps to get into the organization side of things. Chances are, since you are already carrying a notebook and a pen, you’ll end up hanging on to other papers, too. Sooner or later, you’re going to end up helping with the mundane tasks of running the game simply by virtue of having the right tools. It’s okay if you don’t want to do that, as far as the general masses are concerned you won’t get much thanks or praise, but when it comes time to do promotions, awards and honors, I assure you that the people up the ranks notice these kinds of things.

Besides, if you’re playing a scribe, you’re probably already pretty inclined into keeping a hand in the paperwork pot of bureaucracy.

Keeping an in-character journal is a good idea for any player, but for you, it means having a place you can quickly jot down ideas for stories or notes that you need to write up beautifully later.

Tools of the Trade

If you’re going to play a scribe, you need to have a few things that just scream, “Scribe-i-ness.” You’re going to need something to be able to write on, something to write with, and a way to carry them all around easily. These are going to be as important a part of your character as your garb and weapons. Spend time picking out what you want for your character. Just like the rest of your kit, use a cheaper, easier alternative in the short run while you are working towards getting your signature piece.

The Paper

You can go with a nice bound journal or just a stack of printer paper. In reality the actual paper you write on in the field won’t matter to anyone but you, so make sure you find something that fits your tastes, and use that. If you’re doing a special project for someone else and you need a special heavy, muslin parchment, you can get that when you need to.

Pro Tip: Go cheap while you’re at the game. Anything you write out there should be considered draft copy, really. If you go with an expensive journal for your character, carry something cheap, like some printer paper or a spiral notebook, too. That way you can jot down your ideas and notes quickly, and then transcribe them into your nice journal later.

Remember, this is your character’s signature prop, and it is worth the extra effort to make it amazing.

Best Option: Journal

Nothing gives the air of an adventuring scribe quite the way a leather journal does. It evokes just an idea of mystery and elegance, even if it isn’t entirely historically accurate. This is the piece that really stands out and screams “Writer” about your character, whether you’re keeping your liege’s ledger or transcribe tomes of ancient sorcery into it, and fortunately you have a few options on how to get them.

Of course the easiest way to get your hands on one is to buy it. With great websites like Rogue Journals and Renaissance Art, you can get your hands on some truly amazing works of art to jot your ideas into, though the prices can be pretty high. A good alternative in the short term is to go with a faux-leather massed produced journal, Markings makes a plentiful selection, or even a Moleskine. Another fairly popular choice due to it’s ease and affordability is a standard hard cover sketch book. What makes them a great choice is that you can get them at just about any big-box general store, and you can almost always find a merchant at any Ren Faire that sells unique, hand-made, leather covers for them.

Of course, if you are the super crafty type, you can make them yourself!

Second Option: Loose Leaf it Up

Another great option is to just carry loose paper. It can be much harder to keep track of this way, but it is much more historically accurate. People jus didn’t carry books all that often. Plus it can be much more convenient if someone asks to borrow a piece of paper, and this is going to happen… often. I recommend if you are going to go this route that you carry a combination of cheap printer paper or inexpensive, higher quality printer paper, and some nice parchments.

If this is the route you plan on going, I recommend finding a nice stationary store. Part of the appeal and fun of going this route is being able to pick all kinds of different papers to use for different things.

The Pen

We all have the image in our head of the classic writer, scribbling down ideas and thoughts with a quill pen. As brilliant as it is to think about that, the truth is, writing with a quill pen sucks, and it sucks even more if you’re not sitting at your desk or table with plenty of time to let your inks dry. The argument can also be said that ballpoint pens just break the look of a character and destroy immersion. I’ve never been a big believer in that train of thought, though. Of course, there is always the middle ground of getting a good fountain pen, too.

My personal recommendation is to follow this instructable, and build your very own ballpoint quill! It has the convenience of a ballpoint pen and the look that everyone loves.

If you want to do some awesome calligraphy work, then you can invest in the tools for that, but those are the types of projects you work on at home, away from the dirt, sweat and grime of an event.

Something to Carry it In

You don’t want your hands full when some big orc comes at you with his axe, so you’ll want to get something to carry your tools in. I recommend getting your hands on a nice satchel. You can find them all over the internet in a variety of types. A good place to start looking is Etsy. You are basically looking for a messenger bag that fits your character. Another great way to get one is to find out if there is anyone in your game that makes leather bags, or sews pouches. If you’re feeling creative, you can even sew your own.

On a special note, if you plan to carry your paper loosely, then you’ll want to get your hands on a scroll case. You can spend some money buying them from Ren Faires or online from shops that cater to the LARPer/SCA crowd and modern day pagans. If you’re strapped for cash, you can also make your own scroll case from a Pringles can. If you’re a crafty person with a bit of money, or a person with a bit of money and a crafty friend, you can also make your own out of leather.

A Few Mundane Tips:

Keep cheap pens and paper handy. People will come to expect you to have it just because they see you writing things down often at events. You do not want to lend them your nice pens or a page ripped out of your journal.
Write things down quickly on cheap materials and the transfer them to you expensive props. It might be extra work, but you’ll be happy you did when you are getting compliments on your extremely well done props.
Don’t worry too much about authenticity. The authentic tools suck and are hard to get your hands on anyway.

So, at your next event, head proudly out to the field, holding your head high. You are the the history books, the news papers and the government records for your entire kingdom. Demand the respect that you deserve and Scribe on!

So You Want to Play…

2011-10-27T22:00:00.000-07:00

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.

Body by Boffer - LARP for Health

2011-10-20T18:02:00.001-07:00

I am a large man. I’ve always been a large man. There isn’t going to be much outside of spending hours in the gym that is probably going to change that. I am also in fairly decent shape for a guy my size, and I have one thing to attribute to that, my biggest hobby: boffer fighting.

Personal Experience

I took a couple of years off of fighting, and in that time, I gained a lot of weight. A lot. Without realizing it, I had let my self swell from being a big man to being dangerously obese, and I knew it would take work to get back into any semblance of shape. That’s where boffer came in.

I did a little digging around on Google looking for information about exercise and diet, searching for an activity that I could and would do because I enjoy it. While looking at a list of the average calories per hour burned by various things (ranging from driving a car to brushing your teeth), I learned that fencing actually burns a lot of calories, between 500 and 1000 calories per hour.

All those years of sword fighting really had kept me healthy.

I got back into boffer pretty heavily last year. I had been fighting off and on at events before that again, but I hadn’t been attending practices or really trying to keep up. I changed that last November, really throwing myself back into it full force.

I’m proud to say I’m down about 45 pounds.

No Mistake it IS Exercise - Don’t Hurt Yourself

It’s important to remember that not only is boffer fighting a great form of exercise, it can be a very intensive, high-impact workout. Make sure that when you are out there fighting you are taking care of yourself, and make sure to follow a few important tips:

Be sure to stretch, especially your legs and shoulders.
Keep hydrated, fight hard, sweat hard!
Warm Up, Cool Down - don’t just jump into full beat down mode, work your way through some one-on-one fighting first.
Take a Break - Give your body some rest as the day goes on, especially at events.

Make it a Regular Thing

Like any good workout, you need to do it often to get a benefit from it. Since you also get better as a fighter the more you do it, you’ll be getting a double benefit from making sure you get out at every chance you get to fight. The more, the better.

Trust me, you’ll thank yourself later.

Getting It Handed To You - How to Loose with Grace

2011-10-13T20:28:00.001-07:00

“But how do you stop somone from cheating?”

“We count on their honor.”

“Does it work?”

“No comment.”

This past weekend, I went and fought in Eldaraenth’s biggest annual Tournament. I’ve been boffer fighting now for about 12 years. I practice less often than I should, but I think I’ve managed to maintain a modicum of skill. I never expected to do extremely well in the tournament, after all my body just can’t keep up with some of the younger guys anymore. I also didn’t expect to get what I got.

I got beat like a pell.

Boffer combat is a big part of a lot of LARP games. It is the cornerstone of conflict resolution, and there are multiple players out there that only come to events to beat on each other with foam swords. It is an aspect of play that I encourage people to get into for a dozen reasons ranging from looking like a badass to the health benefits. It can also be the aspect of the game that is the most frustrating.

We Aren’t All Bad Asses

Dragons, Feared-Men, Billy Badass. Call them by a dozen different names, and you still have the same thing, the guys on the field that you know are going to hand you, your friends, and your friends’ grandmother their ass. Sometimes we dread fighting them. Sometimes we seek them out on the field so that we can test our metal against them. No matter what, everyone at your game knows who they are and knows those are the guys to fight.

Most of us aren’t one of those guys.

Nobody likes to loose, though. It sucks to be rolled over by an unstoppable juggernaut of foam combat, and it can be even worse if you used to be that guy but your age and apathy towards training have moved you to the sideline.

Add that frustration into the adrenaline and passion of the moment, and it’s easy to let yourself slide into throwing swings that are too wild, or ignoring shots that you know you should have taken.

We’ve all been there.

It’s important to remember, though, that when we’re down in the dirt, getting kicked around by a guy that is ten years (or more) our junior and feeling like we’re absolute pieces of garbage, all we have left is the most important thing to any boffer fighter.

Our Honor.

So, I’ve decided that I am going to make a conscious effort to shift gears in my boffer fighting. I intend to fully keep training myself, pushing myself to get back to where I was in my prime ten years ago, but I’m no longer going to worry about winning or loosing. I swing foam swords because I love doing it. It is fun.

I can have just as much fun with loosing as I can have by smacking a guy down.

I just need to get better at my melodramatic deaths. It seams to me that screaming in agony and writing in pain on the ground before finally succumbing to my wounds will be a great way for me to remind myself that I need to make sure I’m not taking it all too seriously.

When you take it too seriously, that’s when you start to jeopardize your honor.

In the grand scheme of things is one boffer fight, one match in a tournament, really worth loosing that?

I don’t think so.

Hidden Resources - Instructables

2011-10-06T22:14:00.001-07:00

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?

2011-09-29T22:00:00.000-07:00

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

2011-09-22T20:22:00.001-07:00

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

2011-09-15T22:00:00.000-07:00

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.

2011-09-08T22:00:00.000-07:00

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.

5 Steps to Writing a Character History

2011-09-01T22:00:00.000-07:00

Okay, you’ve been to your first event, gotten your hands on some basic garb, and even spent some time finding the perfect inspiration for your character. Now, you’re ready to take the next step and figure out exactly who you are. Where do you begin? What do you need to know?

5 Steps to Writing a Character History

1) Learn About the World

Not all LARPs have the same game world to them. Some characters just don’t fit in, that doesn’t mean that a little creativity can’t be applied to make it fit, but you’re probably best off learning the basic make up of the world and working to fit it there. You don’t want to play an Airship Pirate in a Sword and Sorcery LARP, and you probably don’t want to play a Muskateer in a post apocalyptic Zombie LARP.

Your best bet is to get with the friends you’ve made and start with something that fits in easily with them. You can always branch away from that later on, when you’re more confident and comfortable with the way the world works.

2) Know the Basics

Know the absolute basics of your character. These are pretty much the things that will come up in game quickly, and you can spend time fleshing out everything around them. The basics are usually pretty easy, too, because they’re the important things you’ll need to know just to play the game:

What is your character’s name?
If there is a choice, what is your character’s race?
How about the class?

In addition to those, you might want to add a couple of details, like

Where was your character born?
Where did you learn your class skills?

3) Add Some Background

Once you’ve got the basic details down, you can start working to really flesh out your background story. Of course, the more you know about your character and motivations, the easier it is to role play. It is important in this step that you work with your game officers a little bit and make sure you’re not putting anything into your character background that goes against the game’s established story.

If you’re having trouble figuring out what you need to know, you might want to take a look at Dread Pirate Rose’s List of 100 questions to Ask About your Role Playing Character

4) Go Out and Play.

The absolute best way to build your character is to spend time playing it. Get out there and role play! Make friends, enemies, and the occasional bad decision. People learn who they are by living, and your character will do the same. Chances are, if you don’t know something about your character now, you’ll learn something about your character while you’re on the field. Maybe you’ll learn that you really are afraid of dragons, even if you don’t want to admit your afraid of anything.

5) You’re Never Really Done

From my experience, anything you put into your character background now will change a year from now, and probably again two years from now. The longer you play one character the more they grow, both in who they are now, and how they got there. Sometimes you might decided to change a detail that didn’t quite fit, and sometimes the game will change them for you, revealing secrets you didn’t even know about your character. That’s part of the fun of it all.

Don’t Worry if It Isn’t Perfect

Life is dirty and messy, and the best characters are no exception. Your history doesn’t have to be an immaculate best selling novel ready to hit the shelves. It doesn’t have to answer every question about your character. The only reason it exists is to help you, and your game officers, to get more involved in what’s going on. Don’t sweat it if you aren’t Tolkien. Just do what’s best for you.

The 4 Player Archetypes - Where do you Fall?

2011-08-25T22:00:00.000-07:00

Every LARP, and at some levels every Role Playing game has 4 basic types of players. In the twelve years that I’ve been a LARPer, I’ve seen hundreds of players, and you can almost always fit them into one of the four. It isn’t bad thing, and I think that it is important for a game to have all four to really thrive. Learning the types, and learning how to work with them can really make a game become more well rounded.

1. The Warrior

The warrior is the guy that is there for the combat and fighting. In a combat larp, they are going to be the guys that spend the most time practicing the martial art of boffer combat. They tend to get involved much more heavily in that side of things. They aren’t going to worry too much about role play and characterization, but they are going to be the guys that strive to become combat marshals and spend hours perfecting the art of smithing weapons and armor.

You can almost always rely on them to have extra weapons laying around, and they’re going to be the guys that will keep people from getting too bored when mundane things bog down an event by organizing games and sparring. In my experience, they’ll end up forming a unit together and become a force to be feared. The boon they bring to the table is that they are also usually more than happy to take aside a newbie and show them a trick or two to help them out on the battlefield.

Usually the first to volunteer to play some a group of NPC monsters, and tend to have a lot of fun with it when you give them a one shot character, especially if it’s a monster that is just there to get beat on by the party.

2. The Actor

Pretty much the opposite of the warrior, this is the guy that is here entirely for the role play. On the extreme end they can even be non-combatants that only want to spend some time in character. Their focus is going to be on story and plot. Good to have around because they don’t mind being thrown a curve ball for the sake of a great story line. These guys will spend time in shadows around a campfire working on politics and schemes.

You can usually use them to introduce new things into the game, and given a little bit of prompting can run with it. Even the most minor thing can become an epic plot point if you let these natural hams take care of it. With a handful of them around, the job of the story teller becomes easy, and you don’t have to worry too much about finding reasons for your warriors to gear up and beat on each other.

3. The Craftsman

Seamstresses, blacksmiths, even cooks, these are the people who are here for one purpose only, to make things that are awesome. Sure, they’ll pick up a weapon and fight, or might even spend some time negotiating over a few coins for a spare weapon they’ve got lying around, but their true passion is in the craft associated with the game. They will spend hours making garb and weapons, and will generally be the first to volunteer to help a new player get geared up. They, and their friends, family and unit, will almost always have the best garb, and they’ll no sooner have one project done than they are already working on the next great innovation.

They can go a long way to making a game look a lot better in the photos.

Take advantage of what they can offer in training and trade, but make sure you’re giving back as much as they give out. In my experience they will be too generous with their goods. Actually, that applies to most players. Make sure that if they hook you up with something cool, you at least repay the favor by helping them with some camp chores.

Generally, when they do sell their craft for cash, their prices are a lot lower than you’ll find online for work that is as good or better. Better yet, get some materials and spend some time learning a bit about the craft from them. It might not be your passion, but it’s always good to know how to at least fix the hole in that fancy pouch you’ve got.

4. The Heart

For every guy that is an amazing fighter, there is a guy that can’t quite seem to get past the basics. For every brilliant character, there is a guy struggling to find himself. For every artisan, there is a guy that somehow sewed his new cloak into a tree. Every once in a while, you get someone who is cursed with all three of these, but they don’t let that get them down.

The heart is the core of a LARP. They show up because they love the game, and they put more work into it than anyone else. These guys are die-hards that just can’t be beaten. I love them for that. They might not ever be the best at anything, but they’re going to try everything, and they’re going to keep on trying, no matter what. You can’t ever do better than that.

One of the best things about playing a LARP is that you get to step outside yourself for a while and be closer to what you really want to be. It doesn’t matter to LARPers if you’re a bumbling clutz in real life. We’re just out here to have fun, and these guys have fun, no matter how bad they might be at something. Their spirit is infectious in a positive way, and can keep people in a good mood even when it’s hot, humid, and the bugs are horrible.

Plus, guys that are this dedicated will usually be the first to volunteer to help run things, because it’s something they love. Give them time and encouragement, and you’ll find that someone with real heart will one day become a force to take seriously. Besides, we can’t all start out perfect, can we?

Breaking the Mold

Of course, anything as broad and generalized as these archetypes will cover everyone. That’s not an excuse to let yourself fall into one. It’s good to recognize what people love, and help them do what they enjoy. It’s better to help everyone step outside of their comfort zone and become great at more.

If you’re a warrior, why not take that guy with heart aside and help him get better with the sword. He might not ever be the best, but a little one-on-one training can make a huge improvement for a fighter.

If you’re the actor, why not pull the craftsman aside and help him really develop that blacksmith persona into something grand? It might just liven up the event to have a boisterous merchant haggling prices.

It’s always been the philosophy of the people I game with that we are here to help each other get better as people, not just players. It makes the game better when we work together to help overcome our own weaknesses and strengthen those around us. It just makes for a better time.

Seeking Inspiration - 5 Great Fantasy Movies For LARPers

2011-08-18T22:01:00.000-07:00

There are a lot of great movies out there that really capture the spirit of a LARP. They can be funny, epic, serious, or even a little scary. Some are the obvious classics that make us go, “Heck Yeah! Slaughter some Orcs!” Some are cult classics, and some are the dark horse sleepers that come at you from no where. All of them can be a great source of inspiration for basic character concepts, or even just to play in the back ground while you’re working on making some weapons or garb.

The Top 5 Movies for Fantasy LARP Inspiration

1. The Lord of The Rings Trilogy

If it isn’t absolutely obvious that the Lord of the Rings is the most influential fantasy series ever created, then, allow me to explain why this is such a great series to watch (and read) for inspiration in most fantasy settings.

Despite being the basis for most modern fantasy, the Lord of the Rings series is also the inspiration for the setting for most fantasy role playing games in general, a practice that has carried over into the Live-Action gaming scene. It’s got an epic storyline, great dynamic characters, and not just a small amount of brilliant dialog. In fact, the only real criticism I can say of Tolkien’s work is that he tends to be a bit overly descriptive at times. It can be a little hard to get through when you read it.

Fortunately for you, Peter Jackson took all that work out of the equation and left you with a great trilogy of movies that not only have some amazing special effects, but can be a pretty awesome source of inspiration on garb and weapon design.

Just do everyone a favor and don’t get too caught up in technicality of it all. A lot of LARPs have struggled hard to break away from the Lord of the Rings because it is so influential. It takes a lot of work to become a unique fantasy LARP and not just another “Tolkien Game.”

2. A Knight’s Tale

A Knight’s Tale is a bit of a cult classic. I’m sure there is some die hard historical accuracy buff out there right now raving like a madman and setting his monitor on fire because I’ve put it on this list. That’s pretty much why I love it, though.

Too often players put way too much emphasis on trying to sound like they’re living in the middle ages, and it can be clunky and nerve wracking. It takes a lot of practice to get down the lingo, let alone make it roll off the tongue like you’ve been speaking that way your entire life.

A Knight’s Tale is a great movie that shows us that we can still have a fun, period time without worrying too much about being historically accurate. I’d stay away from it if you’re in a die hard period LARP, but for a casual fantasy game or a period boffer combat game, it’s pretty much the exact atmosphere we’re looking for. I know that in the game I play, we use it as a great example of how you can still maintain character without worrying too much about anachronisms.

3. Willow

The moment I hear, “Madmartigan, you are the greatest swordsman in the world,” I smile and think about my first event ever. Not only is Willow a fun movie that everyone should just watch because it’s awesome, it has some great characters. It doesn’t take itself to serious, and it just oozes fun. That’s exactly what you should be looking for in a LARP, right?

Besides, it’s got Warwick Davis, and that’s enough of a reason to love any movie.

4. The Lion in Winter

Lion in Winter is a movie about the Winter Court of Henry II. It’s a great movie about political intrigue, posturing, scheming and all that other great character interaction that really drives the drama of a story home. It might as well be an episode of the West Wing set in the 1100s. The costumes are all fairly historically accurate, and the entire plot is driven with very little actual fighting, which goes to show that with the right motivation you can run an entire event combat free.

Plus, it has Patrick Stewart sporting a pretty jaunty wig. Don’t pass that up.

5. Gladiator

Gladiator is probably the least historically accurate movie you will ever see quoted as a source of information on Roman culture, but none of that really matters, because it has two things going for it: Blood and Bad Ass Quotes.

Sure, you could spend a lot of time researching real roman culture, or, if all you care about is being a bad ass gladiator, watch this movie. The title says it all. As far as most LARPs go, this is going to be as accurate as you need to get. Remember, the rule of cool goes a long way. Just don’t go trying to replicate Maximus if you find yourself at and SCA event or with another re-enactment group. This is not an accurate depiction of Roman culture. Not even a little.

Honorable Mentions:

There are a ton of other great fantasy/period pieces out there, and a handful of really terrible ones that can still be a great inspiration to LARPers. All of them might be worth a watch, especially if you have a group over to work on the tedious task of making some armor.

Prince of Persia: Sands of Time - Do yourself a favor, mute the movie and look at both the pretty costumes and the tasty weapons. Really, you’re better off this way than trying to explain why the American actor portraying the Persian prince has a British accent.

Robin Hood - Russell Crowe likes to make movies that have people getting murdered by a renegade, outlaw hero. Once again, historical accuracy is a naughty word here, but you’re looking for the b.a. factor anyway. Of course, you’re probably better off watching the BBC’s Robin Hood Series anyway. It’s not as epic, but it has a lot of that same “modern in period” feel as A Knight’s Tale

Braveheart - I’d be a bad man if I didn’t put this on the list, and all of my skirt wearing warrior friends would probably throw logs at me.

Of course the list can go on and on. Any fantasy or period movie can inspire someone. The important part is to remember that you’re looking for inspiration, not imitation. Take a character archetype you like, and then make it your own.