This post begins with a definition. LARP is Live Action Role Play.
What this means is, you go to a wooded area, arm yourself with foam weapons that look real, and fight scary monsters and zombies and other bad, weird things. I tell my students that it's basically a video game in real life.
I have a few Fairie Festival friends who recommended that I try out the whole LARP thing. They go to this event in Williamstown, NJ once a month for a weekend. I went a few times before the pandemic, but I hadn't been back to Williamstown until last weekend.
And I had a blast.
The property where the LARP is held is really swell. It's wooded in places, meadow in places, and a Christmas tree farm. The people who go to this regularly have built structures in the woods. There are so many it really looks like a little magical town. I would say there are at least five acres in all. So, if nothing else, it's fun to just stroll around.
LARP is pretty complicated, especially if you've never played a D&D type role-play game. Which I haven't. So I don't really know how to defend myself from the monsters. My only strategy is to run, but now that I'm better known as the token geezer, the monsters just let me escape. It's called "noncom," and it saves my graying keister.
"Graying" is the operative word here. I could be the parent of almost all the other players. There aren't any others in my generation. The participants are mostly 20-somethings, maybe early 30s. Some of them have tots.
On my previous visits to this adventure, I was pretty awkward. This time I kind of found a niche as a Non-Player Character (NPC). I helped to hang shiny things in the woods, I helped to determine where the magical land-shifting was occurring, and I did the muscle-memory church lady thing--helped to prepare dinner for everyone. In between I watched battles from a safe distance and caught up with my festival friends.
I was warmly welcomed in Williamstown. It felt good, sort of like a festival but not.
I'm going to the next event, Labor Day weekend.
No photos, alas. It's hard to run from monsters with an IPhone in your hand.
4 comments:
Sounds fun! I've done vampire LARPing but that was just standing around in fancy clothes having conversations :P
And do you get to dress in costume? Sounds like lots of fun!
Hitting people with foam swords sounds like more fun than a Ren Faire, tbh! And, that's from one geezer to another!
uh, no
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