Mystic Realms
They came to the isolated Boy Scout camp in the middle of the winter wearing jeans, and business suits and thick woolen coats. Their ages ranged from 16 to well into their fifties, and what strikes many people when they come to their first event is just how normal everyone seems. The school teacher with her husband the banker stroll up to the kitchen house of the small campground, still dressed in their work attire and carrying large duffle bags. The college kids, in jeans and converse sneakers, all with backpacks slung over their shoulders packed to bursting with the necessities for the weekend poured out of cars five or six at to a vehicle, since they tended to carpool to save money.They all made their way though to the kitchen house in the back of the campground, through the complex of six wooden cabins and a larger troop house with a large sandy open area in front of it. It was cold, but many of the people didn’t even seem to notice the weather, as they stood outside chatting with people they hadn’t seen in the month since the last time they’d all gathered here. They caught up on stories and gossip from around the state of New Jersey. They hugged and joked and laughed like any large group of friends gathering.
In a few hours, however, this campground would be transformed for these people into the magical town of Evermoore, and they would all step out of their lives for two days of being a citizen of this town, and the protectors of the magical Realm of the Five, where it was located. These people would spend the next two days playing out the next chapter in a dramatic adventure that had been going on for years. The event that all these people had gathered to participate in was a Live Action Roleplaying, or LARPing, event.
After they settled all their luggage, these people would shed their buisiness suits in favor of chain mail shirts and leather armor. Jeans and tees hirts would be replaced with skirts and bodices. The large wooden troop house would be transformed with colorful banners and garlands into the Inn of Evermoore, where these people would gather to gossip much as they had in their real-life personas. They would all spend their time fighting the hoards of darkness, which in reality were really just their friends playing the enemies for the weekend.
People who come to these events have to have amazing powers of imagination to transform the man in the felt mask into the slobbering hound jumping at them, or the goblin shooting poison darts. They have to see fireballs where there are really only cloth pouches full of birdseed. They confidently stride around the campground, hanging banners and pitching colorful tents to make the place look like the festive “market day” for the town of Evermoore rather than just a bunch of silly people in the woods fighting with birdseed spells and swords made out of foam and duct tape.
The man who created this game is called Tony, and in real life he is a lawyer. He is a calm, well-spoken man with an easy smile and a good sense of humor. During the weekends however, he is Deadalus, the bloodthirsty and angry necromancer who attacks first and asks questions later. He walks around with a large staff with a skull atop it and gets into theological arguments with a cleric, who in reality is a young medical student.
When Tony was studying for his bar exam, he still came to the events of another game, and paid people in in-game money to guard him as he studied what he said were mystical tomes rather than miss the opportunity to enjoy himself during a hectic time.
The people who come to these events all know the reputation that LARPing has gotten in other circles. Those who know about LARPing who have never been to an event see LARPers as somehow outside society and detached from reality. In the movie “Vampire Clan,” brutal murders are blamed on a vampire-based live action roleplaying game rather than on the actions of one sick individual, and in “Mazes and Monsters” the character played by Tom Hanks goes insane and begins to believe he is the character he portrayed in the Dungeons and Dragons-esque LARP that they played in that movie. Popular culture abounds with images of LARPers as somehow dangerously unstable, when they are really normal people with an unusual hobby.
Tony gave the opening speech at the beginning of the event, where he welcomed everyone to another weekend of fantasy adventure and gave a quick primer on the rules of the game. One of the players, dressed in furs since she played a barbarian character, stood up and told everyone that she was an EMT and that if anything were to go wrong, she was the one that they should seek out. After all that, Tony told everyone what had been going on in the world they were about to be entering, and the people in the room started fidgeting, excited to start the game. Finally, Tony called his customary “Three, two, one, GAME ON” and everyone cheered. From that moment on, they were their characters.
The people who had been playing the game for years will tell any new player that the game is only as good as what they players bring to it. It’s harder to believe in the world that the game is built around when there are people talking on their cellular phones or listening to their iPods right next to them. To these people, this weekend was also a way to get away from the constant connected nature of the world now. People who normally wouldn’t be seen without their Blackberry phone in hand were suddenly able to pack that phone away and just socialize with people, albeit while in character as heroes of a magical realm.
Many of the people who started playing this game were familiar with tabletop roleplaying games, while for some the only games they’d ever played before were video games. LARPing was much more about acting than it was about actually playing a game. For the game to really work, they characters had to seem as real as possible in the situations, and that was up to the players. It’s easy to see why many people think that LARPers have a difficult time discerning fantasy from reality when they work so hard to make their fantasy real when they are at these game events.
While at the event, players go on “trails,’ or little adventures designed by player/writers and aided by NPCs, or non-player characters (the friends in felt masks from earlier), on these trails, the people have to make choices and interact with each other as their characters, they have to fight the enemies and receive the rewards. They work together and solve the problems put forth to them. There are always multiple ways to solve a conflict. One group might fight the stubborn Orc who won’t leave a helpless farmer alone, some might bribe him, others might try and reasons with him. These options are sometimes complex and difficult and may change the entire outcome of a weekend or even a story that has stretched out for five or six years.
At the end of the weekend, all the tired, sore, elated people clean, pack up their stuff, and once again they leave in the jeans and teeshirts. The town of Evermoore again becomes just a Boy Scout camp in southern New Jersey, and the people are no longer rogues, rangers, wizards and warriors, and instead are school teachers, college students, lawyers, and bankers. The next month, they will return, ready for the next Evermoore market and once again make a fantasy world come alive for the few people who know how to look at it.
