I remember a crisp fall day in Fort Collins several years ago, biking around this strange town I had just moved to in order to assess just how much of a cow town I had chosen to live in for the next four years while I finished school. As I surveyed the neighborhood on a Sunday afternoon, I found myself at the edge of City Park and noticed a large group of costumed young men and women shouting and hitting each other with foam weapons. Nerds, I thought to myself and continued on. I later learned that this same group of people spars under the larch in City Park (I like how rhymey this is) on Sundays and they refer to themselves as LARPers.
“Oh man, we are going to get so many ladies.”
For those of you unfamiliar with nerd sport, LARP stands for Live-Action Role-Playing and it is way more complex than you may think. After hearing what Josh and Chuck had to say on the matter and doing some personal research on the web, I had to applaud the creativity behind the duct tape and cardboard and noodly weaponry. By the way, these noodly weapons are called “boffers” and Lukrain can tell you all about them.
Endless possibilities with PVC and foam!
Happening upon the nerd squad at City Park set off the D&D alarm in my brain and I thought, just how delusional have they become? They really think they are fighting off dragons and casting spells now. They’re even speaking in old-timey language. But what I have hypothesized through my research, is that LARPers are merely thespians of the sci-fi/fantasy persuasion. Loving genre fiction is not enough, if you’re going to truly understand the motives of a warlock, you’re going to proudly wear that purple cape and throw bags of magical birdseed at the warrior princess charging you with her intimidating foam mace.
Note for next year: spandex bodysuit is not conducive to peeing in the forest.
But all joking aside (yeah right), there is so much imagination and hard work essential for creating a successful LARP experience. While many of these events are based on books and board games, a lot of these groups create entire worlds, even universes, where every detail must be worked out: Are there social classes? What kinds of materials are available in this world? What is this world’s history of warfare? Does magic exist and if so, who can practice it? I mean, you practically have to write a novel yourself to fulfill the role of “game master.” But what most fascinated me is the variety of LARPers out there. One self-proclaimed LARP expert stated, “It’s very likely that if there is something you’ve enjoyed, there’s a LARP out there for it.” Think of the endless possibilities! Zombie dead presidents wreaking havoc in Washington, steampunk vampires terrorizing present-day suburbia, or extraterrestrial goat-humans invading North Korea. And just because this is too good not to share, there is actually a group of LARPers in Europe who pretend to be hillbillies in Georgia. Yes it is true, there are even nerds in Europe.
All you need for hillbilly LARP is a bandana and some bad cargo shorts!
Cultural Curiosities 