See interesting LARP event

>See interesting LARP event
>Good setting and rules, experienced organizers with great reputation and big amount of players
>Get hyped and immediately start thinking about which faction to join, what character to play, what costume to make
>Then remember your health problems that will make playing LARP troublesome
>There are plenty of space for non-combat roles, but all organisation, preparation, transporting and pre-game communication will drain you even before you'll arrive at the location of event
>Then there is also construction of in-game location and actual process of playing the game
>Combining with the fact, that LARP community in your city is gone, most likely you will have to handle most of the preparations alone
>"Looks like I still have stick with the tabletop."
Every year I have to go through this.
I used to play LARP and train with local fencing group, but my health doesn't allow me anymore. I'm not disabled or obese, but since after I suffered a nasty illness, long physical and nervous stress affects me more than a normal human. For example, I had to go on the trip to the large city last summer in order to settle some matters. It took three days, and by the end I was completely drained and had to recover for about two months.
If there are any European LARP players, I want to receive advice. How can I participate in LARP without pushing myself over the edge in my situation?

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Start prepping a long time in advance, as to not have any of the mental strain of the 2 weeks prior "SHIT I GOTTA FINISH HALF MY COSTUME".

Besides that I'd say play non-combat roles as you said, actually look into a merchant caste on the event. If it ain't there yet all the beter, because this gives you a monopoly and a pretty cool much-needed RP function in camp. Heck you can do all kinds of cool stuff, from actual bed-selling inn-keeper (does need a whole lot of stuff but we had it) to older noble on a retraite from his last campaign. Here solely to drink wine and poke fun at the young'uns.

Play a blacksmith or other craftsman. Set up a tent in the middle of town somewhere, get a counter and a comfortable chair, and ask the crew if you can start the game with some merchandise and ores. You can comfortably sit in your chair all day without anyone batting an eye, and more importantly without fear of being sidelined. Whenever things become a bit too much, just head inside to 'repair an item' and take a nap.

Now, setting all that up pre-game and tearing it down post-game might prove a little troublesome. Do you maybe have some friends from your old larping time that could help?

Just sounds like you're fat and lazy desu

Kill yourself.

I'm not a LARPer but I do historical reenactment and I know there's a lot of crossover when it comes to practical considerations (and public image, but whatever).

Honestly, and have it covered. If you don't have friends who can help you out, what I would suggest is maybe contacting the organisers and letting them know about your disability and seeing if they can help you. I know my reenactment group (the largest in the UK) bends over backwards for disabled access.

Also sorry OP, I know you don't describe yourself as obese but my friend is in a similar situation healthwise and she gets disability benefit so it was the first word that came to my mind.

Disabled*

What the fuck I need to sleep sorry guys

Heck, if you're actually ready to do a non-combat role that adds to the event all together (like helping out with IC/OC catering as an innkeeper, or doing plot relevant things in politics, or even better adding a better touch to the crafting and trading system) taking up contact with the organisation and becoming a player NPC character might be even cooler.

Actually go that extra mile, talk abit about cool ways to implement it in-game see where you can help the game's orga and they'll see where they can help you. Maybe they don't mind borrowing you a big tent, helping you set up shop, etc. etc.

There's a whole wondrous world that opens up if you set up nice comms with the orga.

There're some people I can contact, but a lot of them are not in my city anymore. They go individually most of the time, but when somebody tries to gather group of people to certain event, they always prepare as combat factions. I tried to go to Tolkien game with them when they applied for semi-combat Harad temple, but it turned out to be pretty action-heavy. So, pretty much the only help I can receive from them is in making a costume.

Because being alone on big-scale events is pretty hard, I tried to find a non-combat role that was a part of a group on several games, but dealing with people from other regions was pretty hard in terms of preparations. I was able to have fun with other groups, but it turned out to be demanding too.

Good small-scale events that don't need a lot of preparation are often pretty far away, but I haven't tried them to be honest.

Thanks for your replies. I think I will try to do as proposed. I doubt that I will be allowed to do something plot relevant, but I hope organisers will be cooperative.

well, ex-larper with health steadily failing here too - degenerating joints making it increasingly difficult to do so much as I used to.

so, step 1. Accept you cant do everything yourself. it is sometimes easier for your health to outsource some parts, like costuming etc, if its going to completely wreck you. Yes, it will cost, but its the choice of expense, or incapacity.

Organise travel well in advance. cheaper that way too. if you're driving there, plan a holiday around the event, so you've got a few days to do it, and a few days after to recover from the worst of it. You dont want to be hauling yourself back from the event driving all day, and right back into work. Look into hotels nearby, and take the day off after the event.
Scheduling and planning to absolutely minimise the last-minute rush is going to be critical for this.

2. there's no harm in admitting your limitiations to organisers. And if that means saying "I'd like to avoid all the pre-game comms in the week building up to the event" or "I'm going to have problems from my health, I'd like someone to be able to assist me for setting up a stall, can you get someone pencilled in for me at my arrival time?".

3: ask them to put a word out on thier network, asking if there's anyone local to you able to team up?

Talk to a doctor about how to train yourself back up to normal human functioning?

one last detail I forgot to add. sleeping: I fucked my spine (skiing crash 20+ years ago.) and camp beds are never going to be good for me. Dont be afraid or ashamed to say "I'm going to stay in the hotel down the road for the night, because my health makes camping out bad for me" or the likes. it might restrict your activity a little, but if it keeps you from feeling like death, its worth it.

Thanks a lot. Your advice sounds exactly like a thing I need.

I still visit doctor from time to time to get a course of treatment, but overall post-effect from illness is permanent.

sounds like you have 7 Con
you should reroll

No worries man. Your post sort of hit a bit close to home for me because I fucked up my liver with an overdose last year and it's looking like I might not be fighting at my reenactment stuff for a while. Talking to my group's officers about other ways I could get involved helped me immensely when I was considering dropping out, so I'm basically doing what other anons here have suggested to you -- crafts/camp follower roles.

I sincerely hope the organisers can help you out. Like I said, I'm not familiar with LARP communities specifically, but any hobby like this is a wonderful thing to be a part of and it's genuinely fucking good for you being out in an open green space talking to people.

Look after yourself.

What illness left your health in that state?

What LARP is this? Sorry for a question thats not directly related to the topic at hand but I'm interested in LARP in the UK and have no idea where to start or where to go.

he said its reenactment not larp he does.

so its probably Regia Anglorum, the viking age reenactment group, or Sealed Knot, the Civil War society. not sure which is larger.

Yeah I'm in the SK lads. It's good for a laugh, Regia or Historia Normannis are much better for the actual authenticity and level of detail that goes into their displays but the SK is the only group that can consistently bring 1000+ people onto the battlefield at major events. I'm a postgrad history student so it #TRIGGERS me a lot how sloppy we can be with that sometimes but it's a compromise I'm willing to make for the amount of fun I have when fighting. Also camping out, socialising and drinking with that many people at once is amazing.

As for the LARP side of things, I have a couple of mates who do both reenactment and LARP (purely because most kit for most pre-1700 reenactments can double as really high-quality LARP kit, you just need weapons) and I've heard a lot of good things about Empire.

profounddecisions.co.uk/empire;jsessionid=9uivogpa56vej64glto7b210?0

One thing I will say is that depending on what you're looking at getting out of LARP, reenactment might tick your boxes just the same and be easier to find. If you just want to dress like a twat and rail on people it's arguably funner to do it with steel rather than foam weapons too. History knowledge is never mandatory either.

Can't you just travel with the group to the event, without partaking in their group activities?

A very strange form of encephalitis. After I was out of hospital, my doctor wrote a dissertation based on my case.

It could get worse. A lot of people get paralysed, and a good percent of cases ends up with lethal outcome, so I think I can consider myself lucky.

There were worse post-effects after my illness, but they were healed in a bigger or lesser degree. For example, one of post-effects is that I became sensible to weather. There was an incident when I tried to attend to game after my state stabilized. On a preparation day when everyone was constructing buildings for locations, I've started to feel bad: my head became heavy and I had to lay down to feel better. It was a very hot day, not even a cloud in the sky. I told everyone that there will be a shower, no one believed. Then in the evening shower actually begun and I've stopped feeling bad immediately.

Are weapons used in LARP in your country exclusively foam? In my country it's mostly fiberglass or duralumin. There are some foam, but majority of people don't like them.

I can, but games of their choice are combat-oriented for the most part. I came with them only once after illness on that Tolkien game, because from description it seemed that temple will be a quiet place, and my role was completely non-combat one. But on practice temple became an object to active sieges through all games.

>Yeah I'm in the SK lads.

"Drinking club with a sword problem" as one member put it.

there's worse groups to be with , trust me.

I know a lot of regia's people. I really should make more stuff for the SK era, but its a whole new field of research I've never got round to.

>Their games of choice are combat-oriented
Ah, I'm sorry to hear that.
Most larps have a facebook group or a forum, perhaps ask if there's anybody from your area who wants to drive there together?

"Paramilitary arm of CAMRA" (the Campaign for Real Ale) is another popular one.

What sort of 'stuff' do you make mate? Bit bemused to meet another reenacty person on Veeky Forums but I guess I shouldn't be too surprised to find a like minded nerd in a thread about larp.

historical bladesmithing; military arms (I'm a museum exhibition-grade swordsmith - dont make a lot of reenactment-safe stuff nowadays.),a range of civilian cutlery replicas based on archaeological examples, and assorted material culture items when they interest me (silversmithing, wax tablets, paternosters, belts and buckles with hand-tooled work, custom-made lostwax castings for buckles and the likes... that sort of stuff.)

I tend to stop around 1550-1600, never have the time to really dive into the post-1600 material culture in enough detail to start producing replicas of those items too - high medieval era sucks up half my life. It just takes so much time researching every decade of the 12th - 15th centuries, and identifying the particular fashions and decorative styles prevalent in each decade or quarter century, and perfecting reproduction of it.

Well you officially just made this entire board jealous, nice one.

To be honest the swords of our period are a bit naff in my opinion, here in England especially, so you're not missing out on much. Some mortuary swords are fucking beautiful though. If you were producing battle-ready reenactment weapons at the moment you'd probably be silly not to branch out into ECW simply because we make up so much of the reenactment community in this country mind.

Is your civilian stuff for museum pieces or do you sell that shit to the public? Asking for when I get paid.

museum-grade's open to anyone to buy. its just a term to indicate that's its good enough to go into a museum cabinet if so needed.

the problem with reenactment kit is, its invariably on a lower budget - armourclass' hangars, etc, which what,about 300 quid? problem is, for a craftsman with some health issues, its not particularly rewarding, and pretty damaging to joints and hands, as you have to just churn out crap at a huge rate of knots to make a profit. spend any time pimping it and making them look right, and the cost/time/profit equation gets all skew-wiffy and you're rapidly sucking up hours and your income/unit rate plummets till you're making less than minimum wage.

So I go the other way, for the high grade archive quality work that uses genuine wrought iron, gold and silver inlay, every item researched down to minute detail from the originals in museums worldwide, using academic contacts to have access to the real things, every little element referenced for the customer. Hell of a lot more work per item, but its the difference between a Rolex, and a Timex. or something. If I were focusing more on the budget side I'd be miss the ECW, but given I rarely make it to things like TORM, its not a huge percentage of my customer base really.

someday, when I'm finally happy that I'm able to do 14th C wiggle-work engraving and 15th C inlay in gold equally well, then I'll start doing more 17th C stuff. Or Roman. or both.

Pic is on the workbench this week, slowly working on the scabbard metalwork for French/English C. 1410.

civilian stuff for exhibition is generally reconstructions of objects (ie, remaking something that's dug out the ground as a bit of mangled scrap) or experimental reconstruction of the elements that are destroyed - like the painted decoration on wooden objects, like this little wax tablet with late 13th to early 14th C decoration, based on surviving artwork and sources.

in many ways, much more fun than the metalworking of swordsmithing. We have an unfortunate habit of focusing on the weapons that were only used for rare moments of violence, rather than the domestic moments that were the majority of people's entire lives.

Armourclass's hangers are £150, which is fucking ridiculous. Pretty sure they just stamp them out on a press and fit a guard around them. From a recruitment perspective it's great though because every fucker who joins this hobby wants to play with swords and you can make that relatively accessible to them.

By the sounds of it mate you're doing god's work anyway. A lot of the really skilled craftsmen seem to be dying the fuck out and it's good you're maintaining this level of artistry. Love the look of that thing in the pic -- is the grip wire?

That's gorgeous. I wish I'd taken more archaeology modules as an undergrad because domestic material culture is just so fascinating and beautiful. We call this sort of thing 'living history' in the reenactment side of the hobby, as though that's worth differentiating from the battle stuff, but groups like Regia and Normannis seem to be swinging the hobby towards a focus on that which is really refreshing. Having something tactile that people can actually look at and play with is a fucking goldmine for getting the families involved and considering reenactment groups earn their keep by coaxing middle class parents and their bratty kids out into heritage sites and stately homes on the summer holidays I think that's the way the hobby is going generally.

It's so important to be able to teach people that history is more than just a series of monarchs wars and revolutions.

>wire

beechwood core, bound with ultra-fine linen cord and leather riser at the midline, glued with 100% authentic hide glue, wrapped in wet sheepskin skiver leather, then bound and compressed down with a thicker cord, which is what impresses the texture that looks like wire into the leather. once its all dried the outer cord is removed, and the leather hand-dyed to the right colour.

scary bit is that grip alone costs more than an entire armourclass weapon.


Armourclass' one is actually pretty well done despite the price - not stamped, the blades are from bar stock EN45 which has been forged to shape via hydraulic rollers in a mill. AC then do the shaping: the blades are profiled using a plasma cutter, blade fullers are milled with a bullnose cutter, then cross-section grinding is done on a particularly nice grinding setup they have. (its a small business, there's only a dozen of us in the UK, so you'll be un-surprised to know I know john and ian at AC - in fact they've done heat-treatment for me in the past - andtheir heat-treatment work is second to none - they've been doing it for 20 years, and the quality's always been excellent. )

the hilt is cut from plate stock and hot shaped, I think with a fly press arrangement, which is pretty reasonable, really. the big area they fall down is the use of that spiral of leather for a grip - that's a horrible reenactorism, but it costs £1 for the materials and takes 5 mins, whereas a sword I'm doing, I'll expect to pay £30-40 just for the leather, wood, cord, any metal parts, and it takes 12 hours of shaping, binding and setting.

here's a blade AC did the heat-treat on for me.

Where are you located, and what is your health issue?

Central part of Russia.
Issue is with post-effects of encephalitis, as I've described here

My suggestion is to make your way to our endless larpthread in /cgl/. We got folks from Russia who might be able to help.

That sounds great. Thanks.

>want to get friends into HEMA or LARPing
>go out and buy baffles, make them as a fun group activity
>order cool training weapons online, made of hard plastic - polypropalyne? and show them some stuff I've learned from Matt Easton and some basic cuts and dances
>they get tired after 20 minutes of swinging shit around
>would rather stay inside and play magic

fuck, its not like I wanted to have fun or anything. In their defense its always shitty outside where I live and no LARPing exists - and if it did would be filled with turbovirgin megafags and hipster libshits

you have an entire internet around you. Advertise.

Looking for players in
Looking for group of 5 /10 / 1 beeelion players interested in LARP event. Contact at

or

"Interested in learning longsword fencing? Looking for interested parties to set up HEMA (Historical European Martial Arts) club. contact on "

stick ads like that in local library / bookstore / LGS, etc, see if anyone else bites, stick them in local web forums, facebook etc.

>If there are any European LARP players, I want to receive advice. How can I participate in LARP without pushing myself over the edge in my situation?
with great care, help from your friends and a shitton of willpower.
It's not easy but doable, but know your limits

>Because being alone on big-scale events is pretty hard
I know that feel, been to drachenfest alone.

> They go individually most of the time, but when somebody tries to gather group of people to certain event, they always prepare as combat factions
Have you ever tried to organize your own group with a mostly non-combat faction?

beep