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Ragepyro
Nov 7, 2010

Fantastic.
I'm trying to get a basic costume together with a bunch of friends so we can head to next Empire. My first larp ever so I'm a bit anxious, but I'm sure it'll go well.

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Gravitas Shortfall
Jul 17, 2007

Utility is seven-eighths Proximity.


Ragepyro posted:

I'm trying to get a basic costume together with a bunch of friends so we can head to next Empire. My first larp ever so I'm a bit anxious, but I'm sure it'll go well.

What nation are you going to play?

Ragepyro
Nov 7, 2010

Fantastic.

Gravitas Shortfall posted:

What nation are you going to play?

We're all going Navarr.

jazzbanjo
Jan 12, 2010

Improvisational jazz banjoists will be shot on sight.
There's some particularly friendly types in ... well, most nations tbh. If you get on their FB pages and introduce yourself, someone will take you under their wing :)

atal
Aug 13, 2006

burning down the house
Officially signed up as crew for the next Empire :getin:

Anyone here planing to do NPCing/Skirmishing at the next event?

Gravitas Shortfall
Jul 17, 2007

Utility is seven-eighths Proximity.


Won't be at E4, no time/money.

I'm tempted for E5 though, I'm mainly in it for the drinking and fighting, and crewing is a hell of a good time.

WINNERSH TRIANGLE
Aug 17, 2011

atal posted:

Officially signed up as crew for the next Empire :getin:

Anyone here planing to do NPCing/Skirmishing at the next event?

Same! Really looking forward to it! I'm slowly putting together my main PC gear (very slowly), but in the mean-time, it's crewing time. I've been sewing some basic kit together, which is cool, even if it basically means that I'm entering a whole new world of hessian.

Gravitas Shortfall
Jul 17, 2007

Utility is seven-eighths Proximity.


Found a photo from E3 that sums up my experience with crewing at Empire, and also gives you an idea of what the crew-issued orc masks are like.



See all those fallen logs and brambles in the background? Your shins will become very well acquainted with them.

Doctor_Fruitbat
Jun 2, 2013


Oh good, a LARP thread. I play in the Curious Pastimes system in the UK, although I did join a friend on Team Evil for the final Maelstrom event, where we literally had carrier bags full of magic cards and got poo poo-all use out of them instead of the apocalyptic hellstorm we were hoping for. We instead went out in a blaze of glory in the pub. Good times.

Do any of the UK LARPers in this thread play CP? It never quite stood up to LT or PD in terms of budget in the past, but they have seriously been stepping it up in the past couple of years:



They're also trying an NPC faction for the first event of next year, partly to introduce a new part of the game world but presumably also to see how it works in-game.

Gravitas Shortfall
Jul 17, 2007

Utility is seven-eighths Proximity.


Doctor_Fruitbat posted:

They're also trying an NPC faction for the first event of next year, partly to introduce a new part of the game world but presumably also to see how it works in-game.

I've monstered a bit for CP at the Game Team events. Was thinking about doing the NPC faction, but I dunno, it's weirdly named after an actual ethnic group.

Doctor_Fruitbat
Jun 2, 2013


I'll take your word on that, mostly because I can't find the info on it to check. Although to be fair, plaigarising reality is the basis for more than one LARP group. I entirely trust CP to do something good with it. If you don't fancy it, why not create a regular PC? Some of the faction descriptions are a bit out of date though.

Doctor_Fruitbat fucked around with this message at 00:31 on Nov 16, 2013

OtspIII
Sep 22, 2002

Here's a video of Cecilia Dolk & Martin Ericsson talking about running the Monitor Celestra their Battlestar Galactica LARP run in a decommissioned battleship. It goes a bunch into Nordic LARP, the intersection of LARP and politics, and the logistics of running a really huge game (that largely sells itself as something other than LARP).

Gravitas Shortfall
Jul 17, 2007

Utility is seven-eighths Proximity.


Bumping this thread because the first Empire event of the year is next week. I'm planning to spend the weekend drunk or fighting or fighting drunk as usual, any goons confirmed?

Gravitas Shortfall fucked around with this message at 17:27 on Apr 10, 2014

Doctor_Fruitbat
Jun 2, 2013


Only CP for me, if anyone's attending those? I'll be romping about in big chunky beast kit with the Jhereg, having lost my obnoxious elf pirate early last year (and my temp human character after he was cursed with total fearlessness and didn't bother to run away with everyone else from a rampaging werewolf).

Gravitas Shortfall
Jul 17, 2007

Utility is seven-eighths Proximity.


Still on the fence about CP though I will probably go to whichever event my friend goes to (he's quite high ranked in the Lions AFAIK)

atal
Aug 13, 2006

burning down the house

Gravitas Shortfall posted:

Bumping this thread because the first Empire event of the year is next week. I'm planning to spend the weekend drunk or fighting or fighting drunk as usual, any goons confirmed?

I'll be there - do you have Plat?

Hedningen
May 4, 2013

Enough sideburns to last a lifetime.
Wish I could make Empire, but I'm stuck in the US for the time being. At least I can head up to Biccoline this summer and, in the meantime, work with local groups to make some good games.

Right now, biggest work is on technology-assisted gameplay mechanics. Running some small-scale tests with some of the initial technologies, but right now, the systems we're getting in place are fairly neat. Might as well do a run-down of the various sub-systems that are being tested.

Project 1: Firearm Replication
This is being worked on in a few stages. Cost is somewhat prohibitive (roughly 150$ to outfit a single person, single game use), but is being tested for use in a Western game. The basic idea is to allow for gunplay without requiring goggles or obtrusive, out-of-game equipment that would break immersion in a quasi-steampunk (I know, loving cliche, but the market's open, and I'd like to see something that's not "goths in brown and tophats" gaming) Western setting.

Emitter/receiver is just based off of laser tag equipment, without a lot of the fancy lights or other indicators. The emitter is a relatively simple system - Arduino, hooked to an IR emitter and an RFID scanner. At game start, the emitter is loaded with the player's "Gunplay" skill - as IR can't do location-based hits, we're using an abstracted seed for a RNG to determine hit locations. It fires based on trigger pull, and is reloaded by swiping an RFID tag hooked to a little speedloader device. The receiver is also Arduino-based - all it has is an IR receiver and a speaker system. The program accepts input from the IR device, uses the seed from the "Gunplay" statistic to run a RNG, then plays a soundclip that indicates location.

It's really loving crude, and still in development, but the idea's working fairly solidly. We're trying to make it a bit more dynamic in a few areas - avoiding re-use of ammunition is a problem, for one thing, as I'm a complete amateur with regards to this stuff - and there are still some problems, but it's somewhat satisfactory so far. Biggest issue is using this stuff for one-shots; I'm not interested in developing a whole goddamn recurring game based off of this idea, nor is that a good idea considering space, liability, and other poo poo that needs to be dealt with.

Project 2: Demons and Ambient Magic
Similar to the above, using RFID chips and UV-reactive paint to indicate spots with magical potential and a little RFID dump of information about demons. Players use them for getting specific in-game equipment - more of a scavenger-hunt thing, but with the right writing, it could be interesting.

The big project behind all of this, however, is going to be coming up with an IR-based magic system. Using simple colour codes, we're hoping to dynamically represent a whole host of magical effects in an organic way, utilizing fantasy-looking equipment on players to indicate if they're under the effects of spells and lose the whole "throwing orbs at things". Thankfully, I'm working with a couple guys who actually know their poo poo with regards to hardware and programming, so I'm just the "Make props look pretty, figure out design parameters so that it 'feels' magical, and determine how to incorporate this into a game" guy on this particular project, but it feels like something entertaining. Again, cost is gonna make it nothing more than a curiosity, but microcontrollers are pretty useful for a wide variety of weird applications.

Already had some fun with traps using Arduino-based tech - nothing beats motion-activated poison gasses and traps that require a bit of logic and skill to get past, which has always been a concern in dungeon environments. I'll keep folks updated as to where things are going, and I'm going to be releasing all of this stuff as open source once it's developed enough to be usable - after all, it's a curiosity, intended to be a new approach to a problem of representation.

Gravitas Shortfall
Jul 17, 2007

Utility is seven-eighths Proximity.


atal posted:

I'll be there - do you have Plat?

Yup, PMed you.

Polyakov
Mar 22, 2012


Gravitas Shortfall posted:

Bumping this thread because the first Empire event of the year is next week. I'm planning to spend the weekend drunk or fighting or fighting drunk as usual, any goons confirmed?

I should be heading up for my first empire, rolling up as an Urizen priest.

One_Wing
Feb 19, 2012

Handsome, sophisticated space elves.
Not making Empire 1, but I should be at 2/4, and both Odysseys (as crew).

Bucnasti
Aug 14, 2012

I'll Fetch My Sarcasm Robes

That all sounds wicked. You should kickstart that stuff.

Hedningen
May 4, 2013

Enough sideburns to last a lifetime.

Bucnasti posted:

That all sounds wicked. You should kickstart that stuff.

Nah, it's a personal project, and all the stuff will be released open-source when it's done. I've got no business acumen, so trying to make a proprietary system wouldn't work, plus open source makes wider acceptance a lot easier for people. Besides, with no Kickstarter, I don't have a time limit on any of this and don't have to develop a marketing strategy for it.

Besides, open-source means that there's a greater likelihood of innovation for people; building the framework so people can do what they want with is more appealing than trying to get funding for this. Whole project is pretty cheap, and the Arduino base means I've been able to experiment with a wide variety of concepts.

Camrath
Mar 19, 2004

The UKMT Fudge Baron


Dammit, can't believe I only just found this thread.

Anyone here do the Lorien Trust? I've been a regular there for about 8 years or so, currently based in the Harts and forging myself a globe-spanning empire of brothels and whorehouses..

Major shout-out for the Vale (http://majesticoaklrp.co.uk/vale/index.php) for any UK LARPers- seriously, give this system a try. I went to the first event a few weeks ago and despite appalling weather it really was one of the most intense LARP experiences I've ever had. It's a full PVP resource-control game between two camps- one of humans, elves and beastkin and one of greesnkins, undead and.. well.. elves. Very high standard of kit, costume and set-dressing, call-based firearms using cap-guns (I was playing a musketeer and had a blast in every sense), a 170 acre fully live site to play on (with no restrictions- one guy surfed down a crazy high embankment on his shield to get into a fight 50 metres away) and an atmosphere like no other game ever. The next event is this weekend, and bookings are still open- please do give it a try if you can!

Also a shout-out for SlenderLARP (https://www.slenderlarp.co.uk), run by some very close friends of mine. Next event is at the end of June. It's a brilliant 24-hour time in horror investigation LARP featuring all sorts of dread creatures of the night (obviously, the Slenderman but the Rake, various demons and fae and all sorts of other weird poo poo have made appearances). It veers from high drama and absolutely terrifying horror to wonderfully pulpy sillyness (my character is current a zombie welded into poorly constructed power armour, with a grenade launcher. Another long-term PC is essentially a sardine-oil powered cyborg. Yeah.). Really worth a shot for something different. :)

Doctor_Fruitbat
Jun 2, 2013


Camrath, in the UKMT thread posted:

Oooh, nice. I've never done CP- I've been an LT bod since I started in 06, but was down to go to the Vale this weekend prior to crippling myself. Seriously, give the next Vale event a go if it doesn't clash for you- bloody lovely site, and quite unlike any other system I've played in.

I'd like to branch out from CP as it's all I've done, but as I don't have a huge amount of cash to spend on (more) LARP I'll be sticking with CP for the time being - I'm hoping to jump ship to a higher paying job this year though, which will mean more spare cash for more LARP.

Doctor_Fruitbat fucked around with this message at 13:37 on Jun 4, 2014

Fans
Jun 27, 2013

A reptile dysfunction

Camrath posted:

Anyone here do the Lorien Trust? I've been a regular there for about 8 years or so, currently based in the Harts and forging myself a globe-spanning empire of brothels and whorehouses..

Also a shout-out for SlenderLARP (https://www.slenderlarp.co.uk), run by some very close friends of mine. Next event is at the end of June. It's a brilliant 24-hour time in horror investigation LARP featuring all sorts of dread creatures of the night (obviously, the Slenderman but the Rake, various demons and fae and all sorts of other weird poo poo have made appearances). It veers from high drama and absolutely terrifying horror to wonderfully pulpy sillyness (my character is current a zombie welded into poorly constructed power armour, with a grenade launcher. Another long-term PC is essentially a sardine-oil powered cyborg. Yeah.). Really worth a shot for something different. :)

Yep! I'm in the Vipers Fey, forging myself an empire of drinking other factions wine and eating their cheese.

I'm going to my first Slenderman game this weekend. I have absolutely no idea what to expect and now you've explained some of it... I'm left even more unsure about what to expect.

Camrath
Mar 19, 2004

The UKMT Fudge Baron


Oh, awesome- I was in the Vipers myself up till 2012, in the 95th Foot And Mouth. Which fae are you?

I didn't know SL was running this weekend- thought it was at the end of the month? Sucks if I've messed up, as I'm actually clear. ;p

Fans
Jun 27, 2013

A reptile dysfunction
Ack I meant month! It is the end of this month!

I'm in Court of the Serpent, though it's hard not to love the 95th's naming scheme.

Hedningen
May 4, 2013

Enough sideburns to last a lifetime.

Camrath posted:

Dammit, can't believe I only just found this thread.

Anyone here do the Lorien Trust? I've been a regular there for about 8 years or so, currently based in the Harts and forging myself a globe-spanning empire of brothels and whorehouses..

Major shout-out for the Vale (http://majesticoaklrp.co.uk/vale/index.php) for any UK LARPers- seriously, give this system a try. I went to the first event a few weeks ago and despite appalling weather it really was one of the most intense LARP experiences I've ever had. It's a full PVP resource-control game between two camps- one of humans, elves and beastkin and one of greesnkins, undead and.. well.. elves. Very high standard of kit, costume and set-dressing, call-based firearms using cap-guns (I was playing a musketeer and had a blast in every sense), a 170 acre fully live site to play on (with no restrictions- one guy surfed down a crazy high embankment on his shield to get into a fight 50 metres away) and an atmosphere like no other game ever. The next event is this weekend, and bookings are still open- please do give it a try if you can!

Also a shout-out for SlenderLARP (https://www.slenderlarp.co.uk), run by some very close friends of mine. Next event is at the end of June. It's a brilliant 24-hour time in horror investigation LARP featuring all sorts of dread creatures of the night (obviously, the Slenderman but the Rake, various demons and fae and all sorts of other weird poo poo have made appearances). It veers from high drama and absolutely terrifying horror to wonderfully pulpy sillyness (my character is current a zombie welded into poorly constructed power armour, with a grenade launcher. Another long-term PC is essentially a sardine-oil powered cyborg. Yeah.). Really worth a shot for something different. :)

Yeah, it's a bit of a quiet thread, so I haven't been trying to keep it super-updated. Plus, things tend to move on a rather slow pace in the world of LARP, unless you're working with people in organization, whereupon it's a gigantic slew of things that need to happen pretty constantly.

I've always liked 24-hour horror games, although I've always run them as one-offs with my groups. Site set-up and atmosphere building is quite fun - last game I ran of that style was an investigation into some fake folklore we'd written up and released in the months leading up to the game, then we got to the site a couple days early to bury various important items and set the stage itself. It was quite good, too - we found a nice clearing to set up the remains of a ritual, covered it in rotting meat, some spare bones, and a bunch of blood we got from a butcher, and let the players discover it. The whole thing was staged in two places - the 'meet-up' location, then we ferried players out to the site while having them listen to some fake radio broadcasts that we brewed up. Got some great horror out of it, and while all the characters died or went terminally insane before the event ended, they made good headway into solving the various mysteries.

It was a poo poo-ton of work, so I can't exactly recommend going to these kinds of lengths, and my player base was smaller than it could be due to people not wanting to play a game where they weren't allowed to bring weapons in (as they had to find all of them on-site), but it was a ton of fun for everyone involved.

Camrath
Mar 19, 2004

The UKMT Fudge Baron


So endeth another Lorien Trust season- during which I managed to break my shoulder through fighting while out of my gourd on painkillers, set up a massively profitable brothel, make more money per event than I'd made in the previous eight years put together, find my other half was being semi-stalked by a combined LARPer/Furry/Sexual predator and other adventures.

Anyone here actually do the LT or is it all just Empire types? Would be great to get some goons together in the field at some point!

Doodmons
Jan 17, 2009
Half my irl friends do LT, the other half do Empire. Some do both and most of them do Outcast, which I've heard big things about. Never actually larped myself, but from what I hear Outcast is the place to start.

One of my LTing friends is convinced he's gonna get killed before the year was out because he was involved with the fallout from the Watcher murder that the Starcrafts and Wardens are up to. I've no idea what they stole, but it's important whatever it is.

Pocky In My Pocket
Jan 27, 2005

Giant robots shouldn't fight!






Camrath posted:

So endeth another Lorien Trust season- during which I managed to break my shoulder through fighting while out of my gourd on painkillers, set up a massively profitable brothel, make more money per event than I'd made in the previous eight years put together, find my other half was being semi-stalked by a combined LARPer/Furry/Sexual predator and other adventures.

Anyone here actually do the LT or is it all just Empire types? Would be great to get some goons together in the field at some point!

I only briefly LT'd. Some of my friends are thinking of going but if we do it'll be far, far into the casual and silly side of things rather than the plot side of things. Really it'll be an excuse to sit around and get stoned & drunk

Doctor_Fruitbat
Jun 2, 2013


All CP all year for me, with a few decent highlights including infliltrating a beastkin army for the Wolves by faking the death of their war leader, resulting in two factions having a massive aneurysm while they combed the forest for me and a scouting missions where our five-strong scouting team, the four-strong monster crew and a 28-strong army of players ran into each other in the pitch black. We spent most of it crouching in the shadows, horrendously exposed while all hell broke loose around us and confusedly wondering what the hell we were supposed to do, since we didn't know who the army were.

Next two events will be faction events, one our parliamentary wah-fest and the other being at Fort Widley, where the long, dark tunnels will be a prison we're tasked with taking back. It's gonna be ace.

I'd quite like to give the Vale a crack at some point, so I'm hoping to have all of next year's CP paid off by the year's end so I can look at other events. Possibly Empire too, if it doesn't clash.

Patrat
Feb 14, 2012

I am strongly tempted by Empire, given I am in the UK, that said what sort of period weaponry does it tend toward? I ask because my sister and brother in law are apparently interested and they used to be be internationally competing Epee fencers before being professional coaches for years. This essentially means they are super intrigued by the idea of murderating people using rapiers at terrifying and inhuman speed whilst moving in manners which are blatantly impossible for humans to process (I just used to fence saber, they scare me!). Is this a thing which is liable to work within the game?

Doodmons
Jan 17, 2009

Patrat posted:

I am strongly tempted by Empire, given I am in the UK, that said what sort of period weaponry does it tend toward? I ask because my sister and brother in law are apparently interested and they used to be be internationally competing Epee fencers before being professional coaches for years. This essentially means they are super intrigued by the idea of murderating people using rapiers at terrifying and inhuman speed whilst moving in manners which are blatantly impossible for humans to process (I just used to fence saber, they scare me!). Is this a thing which is liable to work within the game?

Bearing in mind that you can't stab with a larp weapon since it's a carbon fibre pole and will just go through both the foam and the person you're stabbing, that sounds viable. A few of my larp friends were and are fencers and from what I hear being really dangerous with a basket hilt rapier is the apex of larp fighting. As for Empire, I know they hold duelling tournaments and the fluff for a few of the nations suggest that duelling bravos are a completely viable character concept.

Flavivirus
Dec 14, 2011

The next stage of evolution.

Doodmons posted:

Bearing in mind that you can't stab with a larp weapon since it's a carbon fibre pole and will just go through both the foam and the person you're stabbing, that sounds viable. A few of my larp friends were and are fencers and from what I hear being really dangerous with a basket hilt rapier is the apex of larp fighting. As for Empire, I know they hold duelling tournaments and the fluff for a few of the nations suggest that duelling bravos are a completely viable character concept.

When I was still playing duelling with rapiers in the League was the height of style! As someone who's fenced and larp fought the techniques involved don't have a ton of crossover, but footwork and accurate and rapid weapon movement will do wonders. The main difference is the lack of stabbing, as Doodmons said, as well as the greatly increased need for battlefield awareness - you can be murderous 1 on 1, but if the rest of the army has advanced off while you were fighting and isolated you it can mean an inglorious death in a ditch pincushioned with arrows. Well, that or sprinting 500 metres in chainmail pursued by minotaurs, orcs and an undead dragon...

cptn_dr
Sep 7, 2011

Seven for beauty that blossoms and dies


A bunch of photos have gone up from this past weekend's Crucible Larp.

http://www.larping.org/portfolio/wild-troll-appeared-the-crucible-new-zealand/

We had a troll.

Cocomonk3
Oct 21, 2010
Really glad to have found this thread.

I've been running a LARP in Australia for.. just about a year and a half now. Grew out of another LARP group and now we're up to 200+ members. My issue is (amongst other things) that we folks running the game are sort of just muddling through things. We've got a ruleset based heavily off Conquest, but modified for our gameplay, and that's working well for us. But it always seems like we're running into random issues that we solve and then realize had a very simple solution. Are there any good books out there about running a LARP? Or articles, websites, or such? We're managing, but I'd like to try and figure out things ahead of time rather than deal with them as they come up. For example, we've had rules on harassment and banning people from games if necessary, and last game it actually came up and we had difficulty figuring out how to implement them.

What resources would people recommend in general?

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Hedningen
May 4, 2013

Enough sideburns to last a lifetime.

Cocomonk3 posted:

Really glad to have found this thread.

I've been running a LARP in Australia for.. just about a year and a half now. Grew out of another LARP group and now we're up to 200+ members. My issue is (amongst other things) that we folks running the game are sort of just muddling through things. We've got a ruleset based heavily off Conquest, but modified for our gameplay, and that's working well for us. But it always seems like we're running into random issues that we solve and then realize had a very simple solution. Are there any good books out there about running a LARP? Or articles, websites, or such? We're managing, but I'd like to try and figure out things ahead of time rather than deal with them as they come up. For example, we've had rules on harassment and banning people from games if necessary, and last game it actually came up and we had difficulty figuring out how to implement them.

What resources would people recommend in general?

I know there's a group on FB, LARP Haven, that's occasionally good for discussion, although there tends to be rather divisive issues, with a lot of people assuming background and some odd folks. There are a wealth of organizers there with quite a bit of experience, but if you're looking for gamerunning advice, always check the experience of the folks giving it - there's a lot of people who still stick with the American module system, which is rather different than open-world games that a lot of Euro-style games don't utilize. It's also got some decent resources - I think somebody translated some of Bicolline's rules to English.

Otherwise, in general, it's like running any other business - work on having a clear plan, stick with it, and be sure that any rules you say will be enforced are enforced. Good job on enforcing your harassment policies - LARP is one of the worst hobbies for encouraging the Nerd Social Fallacies, and so a lot of games don't weigh short-term losses versus long-term losses of the game. No matter how long someone's been with a game, it's never a reason to excuse lovely behaviour. I'm sure we've all got some good stories of horrible players, and a sure sign of game death is an organizer being unwilling to enforce their own policies.

As for edge cases and rules elegance - just keep reading about other people's experiences, and figure out how to deal with them in a consistent manner. I've always played it according DKWDDK philosophy - if you can figure out how to represent it well in-game in an unambiguous fashion that other people can recognize, then it'll work.

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