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Anybody LARPing?
I just got home from Bothwell 6 in Abbotsholme (UK), a live action role play event (also known as a LARP) where you play as a student in a magical school (those events are legally and morally distinct from JK Rowling).
While I had several previous experiences in its sister-LARP College of Wizardry in Czocha (Poland), this was my first Bothwell and I had a blast.
Anybody else larping ? Or curious and would know more about my experience ? (I got to perform in front of a Fae lord for favors, and one of my housemate turned out to be the ring-leader of an illegal-performance enhancing candy scheme... that got used by the professors anyway). What the hell is a nordic LARP anyway ?
I've LARPed in the US, the vibe is different as I understand it, but I used to go a couple times a month to different events. Pandemic killed the chapters I attended but I do miss it.
I did LARP a few times back in my college days - there was a complete overlap with Anime Club and we workshopped making foam weapons and then drove out to some campground for a Saturday. I remember playing as a Man at Arms and having a fair bit of fun. I don't remember what system we were using though, it was over 20 years ago.... wow, I'm old.
I did several events with a LARP group a year or two back now. It was themed as a post apocalyptic wasteland. Which was a fitting vibe in the middle of the woods with these shanty structures folks had put up with multiple towns of several structures. My best character was H2Bro, a hydration focused partying bro-robot (or brobot if you will). I rigged up a water cooler to a PVC frame for carrying around. Combat was done with foam melee weapons or nerf guns. Folks had modded some pretty impressive weapons, my buddy lent me one for one of the games before I did my non-combat H2Bro. They would also rig up campaign events for the weekend that culminated to a dungeon. Can't say I ever cleared the dungeon, but I couldn't get my friends to go in on easy even with a bad party comp bc the rewards for losing a higher lvl were better lol. There was a general rule of don't be a dick, which held well, but some folks were too aggressive with the melee.
Had some good fun with it. Just haven't had it in me to get back out.
So there was a combat system and a level system? How does that work?
For the larp I did - which was high fantasy -
Combat was light touch boffer mixed with bird seed packets for spells and such. Means that if you were touched by the foam sword, you took the damage to your armor or health. Spells had to physically hit their target while also having rules about incantations and things. I was an alchemist who threw "globes of gas," which were just a different color bird seed packet, and I was very fast and very accurate.
Monsters were played by the plot team with some players taking "NPC" shifts.
You got XP per day played (most games were over the weekend but you could come for one day). And points for leveling let you buy offensive or defensive skills or even roleplay skills that functionally got you gold but invested into your backstory in a tangible way that would often encourage a plot team to support you in it. (You have put 10 XP into Tracking? You did a little roleplay about trying to find the fleeing enemy? Sure that will allow you to find the location of their camp and go attack it. (Internally as plot: Give me 20 minutes to go make that up, I wasn't planning on you going and wiping out the goblins tonight)
Bit like a D&D campaign with things planned out but players having agency and sometimes screwing things up, etc.
They've done a reset since I was there, but the general gist is probably the same.
-Combat was centered around flags representing health and armor. 1 hit = 1 flag, except for limb damage (unable to use that limb, but don't lose the health flag).
-Characters have perks, like bonus health/armor, additional melee swings per second, access to effects like stun, gun modifications like alternative ammo type/larger mag/bigger gun, though there are also non combat perks.
-Combat can occur between player characters or non player characters (volunteers dressed as monsters generally)
-NPCs would drop loot on death, including XP tokens, which could be exchanged at a GM station for a level up. Levels granted perks.
-XP could also be gained from plot events and special tokens earned from other players through social perks.
Wow! A question that actually dragged me out of lurking!
LARP'd for more than a decade in Australia, in a nation-wide, long-running World/Chronicles of Darkness LARP club that recently closed after 25(+?)yrs of operation. Most of its operation was full tabletop rules - Australians pioneered using full rules in addition to parlour style LARP, because we wanted to eat our cake and have it too. It waxed and waned over the years, sometimes as low as 5 people in a room for the evening, with highs of 50+ for a weekend con in a big city. Chronicles (persistent world story) would run for roughly 7 years a piece, with games every other Saturday night, give or take, cons once a year.
Most times, several genres (Vampire, Werewolf, Mage, sometimes Changeling) would run at the same time. Some chrons, they'd be forbidden from crossing over at all, as in separate worlds/stories. In later chrons (as we moved into Chronicles of Darkness over o/nWoD), we did the cross-genre thing, but it was run very poorly by different storytellers with no experience (or interest, IMO) in running a balanced cross genre game.
It even made it through (most of) COVID unscathed, but it ultimately fell apart during a lull in part because someone fucked off with one of the largest city's entire venue and game into their own, distinct LARP club/setting, cutting the game in half. They then later had that all fail on them, too, so it didn't go well across the board. Otherwise it always fell to, and ultimately succumbed to, mismanagement and narcissism, due to being built entirely on volunteer labour. Social cliques and other social engagement issues became too much for the mostly neurodivergent volunteer crowd, as well as some of the most Drama(TM) drama you've ever seen.
I played a Vampire that survived his chronicle (the Rapture happened, mostly only vampires were left, he was an aussie drover Gangrel that wielded a stop sign as a one-handed polearm and a riot shield in the other), and a Mage that survived the next chronicle (ended up Ascending and coming back to help when the God Machine started to get uppity.) I also did a lot of admin work in later years, eventually running the Mage genre con in the second last chronicle.
In the last Chron we used the new VTM V5 rules (all, always, with heavy addenda to try and curb problem players/cheating/etc). We tried to come at it with a modern, fresh view of LARP to mitigate a lot of the issues we were having in previous genres. It generally led to the collapse of the organisation as a whole, so. LARP, she is a fickle beast.
It's a hell of an experience, having that connecting history and lasting consequences, and having interstate contacts and plot, but... All on the backs of volunteers? We simply don't have the population density to drum up the fresh blood to sacrifice on the altar of burnout.
Some days, I miss it. But it's like missing a WILD ex. The sex was GREAT. The rest, not so much.
Never LARPed but was heavily into reenactments for various time periods, totally different vibe. Started with the 18th century, then WW2, WW1, French and Indian war, and some east German / polish commie stuff.