My first LARP experience (and why you should at least try it once!) [Photo + Story]

Hello Steemit!

I've been away for most of the holidays because of moving, celebrating and spending time with my friends. I'm back today to expand a little bit more on my LARP experience.

LARP stands for Live Action Role Playing

It can take place in any kind of universe, but the most common ones are usually medieval-fantasy and post-apocalyptic. I have also seen a couple of Star Wars LARPS here and there. It would make sense because the lore is deep and very rich.

LARPs are pretty much a DnD game life in real life. You create a character based on a race / class system, and then you level up accordingly and gain skills. Some people do LARP for the Role Play (incarnating your character) and some people do it for the PvP (hitting people with foam swords (that you can usually level up too by changing the material for instance)). Some people also do it for both, but I'm not going to lie I'm terribly bad at handling swords so I do it mostly for the Role Play.

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I was maybe 15 or 16 when I first LARP'd. It was at a small LARP in Québec called "Les Terres d'Ondeval". Since there are very few players (ranging from 50 to 180) it was quite an immersive experience. I met a lot of my good mates there (both in and out of game) I think I was lucky to experience such a small LARP first-hand because it got me into it straight away without being extremely daunting. There was a small amount of players and it was easy to distinguish guilds and good guys from bad guys.

The very first character I played was a half-elf rogue called Kainym. She came on these lands to find her sister, Nym. She got taken away from her after they escaped their abusive dad as kids. Nym, after being kidnapped, got taken to a brothel. There, she met Azriel - a Drow - with whom she fell in love. They escaped together, and apparently they were here, on the lands of Ondeval - in a village called "Andal". Kainym had heard all of this from a Drake (half dragon, half human) mage called Dalia. However, she didn't know how long ago all of this had happened, but it was her last hope.

Kainym, wearing her dark assassins's gear, probably looking around to see if anything dangerous is going to happen

In my LARP early days, I really didn't have that many "medieval" looking costume gear, but I somehow made it work. Black on black.

The first thing I had to do when I walked in Ondeval for the first time was to create the character. The process is much like a DnD character sheet. Pick your skills, pick your class and race and you're up and ready.

This is part of our group filling in our character sheets for the first time
From left to right (character name) : Sebastian, Sahii, Kainym, Nym and Dalia

Sebastian, played by my good friend, is an outcast noble with a terrible attitude. Attributing titles to every single one of his actions, and bragging about it. Constantly claims he's from a rich family, when actually he's been exiled.

Sebastian, looking at something (?)

Sahii is a priest that came from far lands to see how people lived on other lands. He's hiding a dark history, but none of our characters knew this at this point.

Kainym and Nym have their stories above.

Dalia, Nym and Kainym finally reunited

As for Dalia, she is a failed Drake Mage who tries to find new powers by going out to pubs and talking to strangers. She's actually very powerful but she doesn't know this yet. She has always been told that she's a failure.

Dalia, posing for the camera

Since this LARP happened quite a while ago, I don't exactly recall how it went, but I remember the gist of the 8 campaigns/ sessions that ran through the summer (a total of roughly 118 hours of play).

Some people took control of the city, Andal - and made money off the 'poor' (to explain: you are attributed an amount of gold at the beginning - and you can trade, buy, make a business etc.) They build a forge and charged ridiculous amounts. Fortunately, Sebastian turned the people against them, and fought for a democracy.

Maximus, one of the people who ran Andal as a terrible King
(Gotta love the Nikes)

The Drow who Nym loved (Azriel) turned against her and built his own little army of bad guys called "Les Marquis" and were a bit like the Lannister family from Game of Thrones (for comparison). They all switched to a Chaotic Bad alignment and started praying Arthakan, the god of death. They built a little temple (activated by a relic) where they respawned every time they were killed. They were pretty much invincible... unless someone took the relic away from them. This was the main mission through the whole campaign - take the relic before they kill everyone on the terrain (or make more disciples). They had incredible amounts of money, and had to their belt some of the most experimented players on the terrain. Fortunately, they were dumb enough to follow an Admin NPC into a quest to become "Gods". Of course they were fooled, it was all a ploy to seal them away into a sacred rock where their relic could not save them. It was a tragic end, but because one of them possessed the power of the phoenix, they didn't really 'die' that day.

Some of the Marquis, trading with a merchant

To be completely fair, the most awesome thing about a small LARP is that some of the Admins, if you've made an awesome backstory, are willing to play some of the characters you've created in your script. This is what happened with Nym and Kainym. (As a small side-story)

Remember how I mentioned how they ran away from their abusive father? Well. They ran away from him after they witnessed him brutally murder their mother with an axe. Kainym, traumatized, took her younger sister, packed a minimal amount of things and ran out the door never looking back.

Turns out their father had always been tracking them, and now that he had both of his daughters in the same spot... He was ready to kill.

Father

Father with a mercenary he picked up along the way to help him on his mission

He used the mercenary to get Nym and Kainym to a set location. Then, he revealed himself. He then claimed he'd never done anything to our mother. Kainym denied and tried to have a go at him. Everything soon turned into chaos after that failed attempt. Father cast a spell on Nym to make her comply to him and he took her away into the depths of the forest.

Kainym, shocked and unable to do anything

Kainym eventually followed, but he ambushed her and planted an axe in her heart. She died there, in the woods with no one to find her. Before she drew her last breath, he told her she was a mistake and that she should've never been alive in the first place. Nym is still missing to this day.

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That's how I killed off my character before I left for Australia, really (and also it was an excuse to make Atlas). It was dramatic, and ended the character well. It also added a bit of lore to the LARP universe. I probably am forgetting huge chunks about certain things, but if I remember cool things I'll remember to make a post about it. I'll upload a couple more pictures under here :)

Here's our small LARP group before the event started

Here's the Admin that played Nym and Kainym's father before the whole thing went down. He's with Nym on this

A cool true neutral paladin who walked around with this really sick dragon armor

Honestly for those of you who haven't tried it yet, you definitely should. It helps build tight connections with people that share common interests. It's also a way to play characters you couldn't be in real life. You also get to gain a little bit of social skills and how to handle a sword. The main reason for me is that it's just that: plain simple fun in medieval costumes. You don't have to be super outgoing to like it. Admins usually provide quests for people who want to keep away from the big 'player driven' storyline. It has honestly been a life changing experience for me, and I keep wanting to go to bigger ones. I hopefully want to create a small one, one day. For people to bond, fight playfully, and have a great, memorable adventure.

That's it for now people!
I hope you liked reading this small snippet of a LARP campaign :)

If you have any questions, feel free to ask me.
Comment and upvote if you enjoyed this ^-^

Until next time,
Skullyzard <:D