The Uncertainty Principle

Maybe you'd go away and never call / And a taste of honey is worse than none at all

You know me. I'm not one to make judgements about the way people live. What consenting adults do in their own free time is a matter for them. I'm not trying to deride anyone here, merely highlight a past time that I was not previously aware of.

Last Thursday night I was making small talk with a guy, about 10-15 years older than myself who I didn't know very well. I knew he was born in Southwark and worked in IT. I was struggling for small talk. A nice guy, he makes it easy for me and announces that the weekend started for him that night, as he was off work on Friday.

"Good work!" I said, chuffed with his feeder line. "What are you up to?" I followed the framework he offered.

"Oh me and a few mates are heading down to the Forest of Dean to going LARPing. Gonna be coool. We're gonna be part of the monster crew running around in the cave system down there. Going to be a laugh."

"Excuse me? Larping?"

That's right readers, LARPing. Had anyone else heard of this?

For the rest of the tube journey I became obessed with finding out as much about LARPing as possible. On my train home I jotted down as many of the terms as I could remember resolving to look them up when I had a moment. I say 'look them up' as a proxy for 'google and wikipedia the hell out of them'. But you had already grasped that.

So. Larping. A cross between Dungeons and Dragons and historical re-enactment. An excuse -but not a very good one- for grown men and women to dress up and beat eachother up with fake Elvish swords.

My colleague's membership of the 'monster crew' references his role as a functionary of the game, building the narrative, moving props around behind the scenes, and being cannon fodder for the paying participants.

As with so much of this Science-fiction and fantasy role-playing world, the charm for me stems from the baffling complexity of the theory and unnecessary rigour of the preperation and rule making, juxtaposed with the somewhat amateurish costumes, and I imagine, fairly shambolic actual delivery of the games themselves.

Like I said, I am now getting increasingly fascinated by all of this. How do they sustain the role-play? What happens? How does the fighting actually work? I didn't want to ask too many queries of my tube companion, just in case he mistook by curiousity about LARPing in general for an interest in participating myself.

Internet to the rescue.

Many LARPs utilize some sort of game system that promotes the growth of a
character, to maintain player interest. Some LARPs use a point system, where a
player is awarded points based on attendance of events; s/he can apply these
points to his/her character to provide growth and mastery of the character's
chosen traits. Advancement might be in the form of a "level-based" system, where a character starts at level one and advances levels using awarded points. It might also be a skills-based advancement, with no measurable increments, where a character uses points to simply acquire more traits - wikipedia

The Lorien role playing System combat rules provide a quick and effective method of resolving live combat with a minimum of interruption to the flow of the game. The combat system is generally self-policing. This is to say that it is the players themselves who are primarily responsible for taking their hits and for taking the reasonable care not to hurt one another. Head hits are generally discouraged, and all blows must be pulled to reduce the force of impact...With the exception of some total body or special creatures, all characters have six body locations. These are the head, torso, left arm, right arm, left leg and right leg. Each body location has a single hit. The number of hits a location has can be increased through skills, magic, items and special powers.... - Lorien Trust

Every time your character is hit on a body location you should deduct one hit from the armour on that location (provided that you are wearing a phys-rep for your armour and have the skill enabling you to use it). If you are struck on an unarmoured location, or on a location covered by armour with a current armour value of zero, you should deduct one hit from the location struck. If your character is hit on a body location by an arrow, a bolt or a quarrel fired from a bow you should deduct one hit from the location struck whether or not that location is armoured. If a body location is reduced to zero hits it is rendered unusable. - Lorien Trust

My favourite bits of the Lorien Trust's comprehensive rules and guidance is on spellcasting.

All spells have a vocal and action component. The vocal components of a spell
must be in English and must be as similar as possible to those printed below.
The only exceptions are spells or channelling effects that must be cast over a
period of time (for example ten seconds). The vocal component of these spells
and effects may be anything the caster wishes, but must end with the vocal
printed below. All magic and channelling requires that nothing be held in the
casting hand. This hand is used to tear the held power card and if required, to
point at or touch the target

So, in reality, you have to tear up a piece of paper and yell things like "By the power of the dark Ancestors I wound you!"

I presume these sort of events don't usually attract spectators. But check Youtube. In the world of live action role play as in so many other realms of life, the Germans run tingz.