Who goes to a larp event?

I've been away over the weekend at an event hosted by my own faction. It strikes me that people don't tend to write about the out of character logistics and how an event comes together, so I'm goin to write a few pieces intended to address that gap.

As always, I'm talking about my own personal experience. This definitely differs from system to system and probably within the system between factions to some extent as well. The events I'm talking about are the smaller ones, sanctioned by the Lorien Trust, but run by the individual factions or guilds. This one was a Harts faction event.

Around a hundred people turn up, 95-100% of these will have pre-booked as signing up on the gate is discouraged. This site was a Scout camp, hired for the weekend. Sometimes the site will be a custom purpose site, such as Stockwood towards Wales, or Candlestone which is in Wales, but usually the site is a Scout camp. The attendees break down into three types. The players, the crew, and the monsters. These people are all volunteers.

The crew are mostly the people who pull it all together. They will include some of the command team for the faction or guild running the event, people involved in creating the plot for the event, refs and marshals and a sanctioning officer. The sanctioning officer writes a report of the event to send back to the LT who have certain requirements that must be met in order for the event to run. They okay the plot, insist on having enough first aiders on site and generally give the yay or nay over whether your event can take place. If they wanted to, a sanctioning officer could close down the event halfway through. The refs are there to see that rules are properly followed, in this case that refers to the game rules. Lorien Trust is on the third iteration of its rulebook, and players are expected to know all the things within it that apply to their character, and hopefully more. The refs are there for clarification and enforcement. The marshals' job is to keep things safe, stopping combat from straying into dangerous areas, physically blocking hazards, and helping out to some extent with the rules, although they can't make declarations with the same weight as a ref. Refs and marshals take tests to gain their positions, and refs will also help out with marshal duties.

As regimented and harsh as it sounds, it's actually very informal and friendly. The only other specific crew role I can think of at the moment is that of weapons checker, although this is sometimes carried out by players. Again, nobody is a weapons checker until they've made the grade and they are tested, and their job is to examine primarily weapons, but also some costume and other kit, to ensure it's fit for purpose and meets the LT requirements for being used in the game. Old weapons wear out and can become unsafe, and some new ones are badly made or simply don't live up to the rigid requirements this particular system wants.

The next set of attendees are the players. This is the whole point of the system - to have players there to build a story around the plots that the plot team come up with. There will generally be an average of around 60 players in attendance. Each of these has built a character according to the rulebook, and they may have collected Occupational Skill Points by attending events which they have subsequently spent on improving and upgrading their basic character. I understand that two years is a fairly average lifespan for a character, but some players have characters in the system that have been going since its inception, making them something around 15 years old. A player can only have one official character in the system, although they are free to dump it whenever they want to. They play this same character at all the events they attend, although they can alter the skillset a little if they want to tweak it. The gameworld is one big set background, over which LT have the final say. Each event that takes place in this world has to slot together with all the others to some degree, so the players build up a knowledge of a huge and intricate game world by attending different events, and at a character level, different countries or lands. Every character stand the possibility of dying at one of these events, the methods for which are laid out in the rules. When a character dies they cannot return as death is a permanent end to a character. The players are there to solve problems and defend the land. Although anyone can book to turn up and play, players are asked to consider the reasons for their character to be there and the significant proportion of the players will belong to the guild or faction leading the event.

The final set of attendees are the monster team. While players pay up for their attendance, the monsters are generally subbed and may even be provided with food and drink for the duration. They also generally get first chance to use any indoor accommodation the site provides. The reason for these incentives to be in place is that most by choice will play their characters, but the monsters are an integral part of what is needed. The players need somebody to fight and interact with and the way the system works is quite similar to MMORPG games such as World of Warcraft. Our monster crew takes on the role of all the random creatures that attack would-be warriors, as well as all those non-player characters that stand around to pass on information when interacted with. Of course, when you're not run by a computer routine you have a lot more flexibility in how you can respond to the player, and the roles that the monsters play can be very intricate and detailed. Sometimes monster roles carry between events, but often they are one off characters for a single event. This weekend, for example, we defeated a vampire we've known of the existence of for some time, but have only just encountered. Meanwhile there were a number of villagers having issues we needed to solve. We're unlikely to ever see them again, but it's possible that should the plot require it we could ask that we get to chat to the Librarian from Penross because he now has an established position in the game world.

Certain areas of the site will be declared in character (IC), while places such as bunk rooms, the player camping area, the toilets and so on are out of character (OC or OOC). There will be a room or space set aside as the "monster room" where the planning is done, the monsters are briefed and given stats and get their faces painted for creature roles and/or costume for roles. Within the IC area you're expected to stay in character at all times.

That's the general breakdown of how the attendees fit into different roles, but it's worth mentioning the kind of people who turn up. I swear my mother thinks I'll outgrow it any time now, and I've had to correct her assumption that I must be, at 36, one of the oldest attendees. Mainline events allow children and so there are babies aged only a few months at the lower end of the scale. Most of the kids old enough to know what's going on love it and look forward to the larp weekends, and more than a few parents have had to explain to the school that actually, when Johnny says he spent the weekend fighting demons, he's not actually making it all up for attention. At the upper end of the scale I'm aware of a couple of players rapidly approaching their sixties, and I expect there are people I don't know who exceed that age range. There tend to be a lot of people who have been playing for years, but new people do enter the system as well, and this particular sanctioned event had a big student contingent who are fairly new to the game. Sanctioned events are often stricter on the lower end of the age range, many events are 18+ although some exceptions are made for established players.

The backgrounds are interesting. There's a strong bias towards traditional geeky pursuits so there are a lot of programmers and other IT types among us, but other professions make up surprisingly high numbers, with teaching and police work among them. Alongside these I've known shop workers, a postman, long distance drivers, admin staff, high ranking civil servants, a swimming instructor and a tree surgeon. Attending larp events expands your horizons - imaginary and otherwise!

What is larp?

Ask old enough players and they'll tell you larp is an abomination and we should be referring to lrp. Ask others and they'll talk about "larps" as plural items. It's both, neither and all these things depending who you ask.

Larp stands for Live Action Role Play. Older players don't bother to mention the Action part, after all, everything is action once it's live, whether it's the action of chatting or hitting someone with a fake sword.

For most people with a fleeting interest, the closest thing to larp is a computer game such as World of Warcraft, but it's different in a lot of ways. Some also deny familiarity with such games, so it's easier to ground the description in non-computer terms. A lot of larpers talk about "cross country pantomime" because it is, indeed, done cross country in scout camps and large fields and there's a high degree of costuming involved. Personally I don't like the description much because it suggests more of a scripted engagement.

For me, the best description is that it's something like a crossover between a paintball game and a murder mystery evening. Larp involves taking on a character and engaging in a story. Some might say it's not a very good story because everyone in it thinks that they're the main character and the start and ending are not as well defined as your typical script would have. While it's a freeform engagement, it's played within some very specific rules and these rules differ from system to system. There is somebody in charge to make sure it all holds together and plot is introduced that may not be player driven, but the point is that the players take an active role and become someone else in a different world, be it a post-apocalyptic version of this one or some faux medieval mythology setting.

It is difficult to generalise beyond this because the systems do have significant differences, and while some think it's similar to re-enactment it's usually got some very different aspects. For one thing, most larp takes place in a made up setting and the outcome may be directed but it isn't usually enforced. My understanding of re-enactment is that those taking part take on specific roles and play out some event where the final outcome is pre-determined according to historical records. Similarly, re-enactment involves recreating a time gone by with close attention to detail and some level of eschewing day to day modern comforts. In larp you're expected to fit in, but the rules regarding costume are more lax. While re-enactors use real or very realistic weapons to do battle, larp involves using specialised equipment, generally made of foam and latex which is crafted to look realistic and designed to be able to do very little harm.

Most of the time when I write about larping I'm going to be referring to the system I play most, which is Lorien Trust, but I've tried to make this introduction more generic, short as it is. I will try to cover more than just LT when I write, but most of what I know from outside my system is stuff I picked up on the internet or chatting to friends, I'm no expert within my own system, I know much less about others.