The Accidental Tourist Ex Patriate

 What a mouthful of a title! You'll just have to follow along to see how it applies.

This is a "Gods Are Bored" entry on how I am keeping myself sane in these troubled times. And right now, more than sea glass, and Mummers, and especially the Baltimore Orioles, this is the anesthesia of absolute preference.

Nerds, rejoice! My anesthesia of choice is LARP.

So, for those of you with the wits in your head not to do LARP, the acronym stands for Live Action Role Play. It is an immersive game that you play in the woods or on a campground with other humans. In my case I play two different LARPs on a private property near the Pine Barrens. Although the setting is the same and many of the people overlap, my two LARPs are very different. I'll get into that, probably, in a later installment.

"Anne," you're asking. "How did you ever get involved in LARP? You don't mention a word about it in the entire Gods Are Bored archives until about 2024."

It's a funny story, actually.

Well, if you're an old-timer in this silly space, you know that I have gorged on fairy festivals since the turn of the century. It was through a fairy festival that I met Otter, and he was my catalyst to get into LARP. (Catalysts are a big deal in LARP.)

EXHIBIT A: ANNE AND OTTER, 2011

Just before the pandemic, say 2019, Otter started posting photos of himself and his buddies at some event that required fairy festival clothing. When I asked him where he was, and he named a municipality not far from my own, I decided to look into joining him in whatever he was doing down there. He told me the name of the game and the address, and that was all. He didn't encourage me to come, and that should have been a red flag, because we are pretty tight.

So I dressed in my fairy clothes and found the place, and the gate personnel eyeballed me up and down and said I looked the part, what did I know about the game?

Answer: nothing.

What did I know about LARP?

Answer: again, nothing.

It was game day, so no one had time to sit down and teach me. They just kind of shrugged, took my entrance fee, had me sign a waiver, and pointed me in the direction of "town."

"Town" turned out to be about two dozen makeshift buildings with tarp roofs. In and around these buildings were people dressed in armor, with horns and face paint and various other costuming, all very busy preparing for the next incursion of monsters and the next plot-driven quest.

I saw someone I knew from Otter's inner circle, and he greeted me warmly. I just couldn't understand why he couldn't sit down and have a nice long chat with me. Nor could anyone. They were busy speaking another language (rules jargon, plot twists) and going about their role play. I did not understand this at all. I tried pulling people off task to chat about anything but what was going on. And if you do LARP, you will know that this is the ABSOLUTE NO of the game.

Eventually I found someone who was pulled off task long enough for a talk, and she was very nice. Otherwise I was completely adrift, and Otter wasn't there to explain things to me. So I just kind of stood around in the way, and when the battle started, my first thought was, "Oh this ain't for me."

To this day I don't know why I went back a second time. But I did, and it was absolutely the same as the first time. People were nice, but distant. It was clear I had no idea what was going on, and the game was so doggone complicated that no one had time to take in a newbie, especially one who didn't even know what an NPC is.

On this second occasion, however, Otter was there, and when he wasn't swashbuckling, he was perfectly content to sit and gab "out of game." So I had a better time, and some of the players even began prompting me to take baby steps and learn how to do this thing. Still, I felt like I was an American tourist in a foreign country. Nothing made sense, and the monster attacks were seriously scary.

One winter morning in early 2020, just before the pandemic began, I found myself once again driving to the LARP, wondering what the fuck I was even doing it for. I still didn't understand the first thing about it, except that I couldn't just sit and gab. I felt like the people were barely tolerating me. It literally felt like I was about to enter that foreign country again, and the natives don't like tourists.

Then I passed a road sign that said ATLANTIC CITY  36.

Thirty-six miles from the hobby that I excelled at -- sea glassing! And it was a bright sunny day! Never mind that it was winter. I'm an idiot. I wade in the briny Atlantic in every season, if there's a shard of sea glass burbling in the surf. Ah, sea glassing. That was it. I should just breeze right by the turnoff for the LARP and make my way to AC.

That was actually a turning point in my life, right there. If I had gone on to Atlantic City, instead of taking the turnoff and braving the challenges of LARP, I would have sealed my fate as an old white lady content to lumber up and down a beach. But I made the turn. You see, LARP is populated by people young enough to be my children. There are a few others my age, but there are way more who are teen, twenty-somethings, and up from there. I just wasn't ready to walk away from the chance to be around younger people for a solitary and, frankly, monotonous hobby.

I stretched. I learned. They patiently corrected me when I said or did something the wrong way. I created a character and inhabited that character and forged friendships with other characters. And when I felt overwhelmed, I strolled off into the pines. (It's a 14 acre property, with a small Christmas tree farm and lots of woods.)

We just finished a campaign called "Caravan," in which I played a character named Feather. I thought it was an appropriate name for a LARP lightweight.

Our next campaign begins (for me) in June. It's called "Outpost" and is set at a new research facility in the fantasy world we inhabit. So this time, in a bold stroke of hubris, I created a character who is a serious scientist, a savant. Now is the time for me to understand this foreign country called LARP. My character is intensely interested in everything, including all the minute rules and regs.

The girl who runs this thing tells me that everyone loves me. They think I'm cute, and they appreciate how I keep trying even when I'm hopelessly flailing. And like a good expatriate American, I'm starting to fit into the culture and the language and the lore. I'm a regular LARP Emma Goldman.

EXHIBIT B: HAS ANNE FOUND HER PEOPLE?

This is a happy little photo from about a year ago. There I am, a slightly-past-prime monster, on the far right in the rear.

LARP aggressively removes itself from the here-and-now. I think all these people need a break from politics, and bills, and tough jobs, and emotional ups and downs. It sure helps me to disentangle myself from the CHAOS. And for that I am eternally grateful.

In Which I LARP

Welcome back to "The Gods Are Bored," if you've kept the faith all this time. My name is Anne Johnson, and I talk to book case brackets and bored deities. Not necessarily in that order.

It's no secret that I've been struggling at work since September. Mightily. But this here girl knows her some struggle. That which does not kill me only makes me more stubborn.

One gambit that has always worked for me when I'm struggling is to veer off into a fantasy world. And knowing this about myself, I have to wonder: Where has LARP been all these years that it took me so long to find it?

Since I myself didn't know what LARP was until about 2019, I'm going to attempt to define it for you. LARP stands for Live Action Role Play. Basically you join a group, create a character for yourself that fits the parameters of whatever game that group is playing, and you go off into the woods to be that character for a weekend with lots of other people doing the same thing.

Like, dang. This was my entire childhood in the 1960s. 

There is, of course, a big difference between pretending a fallen log is a dragon and riding it while your buddies slash the underbrush with sticks (1965) and attending a modern LARP (2023). LARPs are, so far as my limited understanding goes, based on rules that have descended from Dungeons & Dragons. In other words, the whole thing is complicated. It's almost akin to going to an exotic foreign port as a tourist who knows a few basic phrases of the language and nothing else.

Not only that, these LARPers really know their stuff. They have fabulous gear and deep understanding of the process. They camp overnight at the LARP property from Friday until Sunday! Again, dang. Hats off. This is serious fun.

Several times before the pandemic I attended this LARP and gave it up as a botch. I just couldn't get it at all. It didn't help that I was clearly at least a decade older than the other "older" players, and basically old enough to be almost everyone's mom.

But last spring, this group of LARPers started a whole new campaign. I went down a few times to help spruce up the property, and I got to know them. They, in turn, took me under their wings and helped me fit in. Since everything was new in a fresh campaign, I was a little less lost (only a little).

This fall, LARP has saved me.

My character is Feather. She has an arcane shield and direct knockback, level five wing it, arcane restore, and umami blood type. She has joined a monster-fighting vanguard as a healer. If that makes no sense to you, I totally get it. Still wrapping my own noggin around it.

The LARP is held on a private property near the Pinelands. It's part piney woods and part Christmas tree farm, all tucked away from the world of public education and highway upgrades. The people are smart, funny, cheerful and youthful. There are golems, and basilisks, and hydras, and zombies, and booby traps, and lava pits, and then dinner is served.

I have attended three events since school started. The game is held once a month.

When I set off for LARP last weekend on an early Saturday morning, I was so beaten down and dispirited that I mulled just driving to the beach instead to spend the day pacing some lonely stretch of boardwalk. Instead I went to the game, and it totally breathed life into this withered brain of mine.

You want to get LARP in a nutshell? I was with a group of players, and a vulture happened to fly overhead. I launched into my whole Sacred Thunderbird prayer, which invariably draws strange looks, and instead of those s. l., the whole group that I was with dropped their gear and started praising the Sacred Thunderbird without really knowing what they were praising. When they discerned that it was a carrion bird, they praised it with all the enthusiasm of true Vulture believers!

I think I have found a new tribe.

Readers, I'm still wading through the Gods Are Bored archives, excising spam comments. It's a herculean task, but heartwarming to see all the great comments left on this site by so many of you, over and over again. May the bored Gods bless you, early and often!

A New Gambit

 Are you still hanging out here at "The Gods Are Bored?" I can't blame you if you have moved on. Not much to see here anymore.

But pish tosh! What happens to people when nothing happens to them? They seek  new levels of weird!

And I, Anne Johnson, who have never played even one toss of Dungeons and Dragons, I have found myself a LARP group and am all ready to run through the woods with a shield and a boffer and packets of bird seed used to cast spells!

And this stuff is complicated, especially if you've never played D&D or any video game. It's like a whole foreign country, with its own vocabulary and rules and points and time units, and XP and ... wow, kind of like French, only without the buttery pastries.

So, even now as I write this, I'm having a Google Docs convo with an NPC (voila!) about my character for the new campaign.

The best part about this gambit is that everyone there is young. Not young like my students, but young like my daughters. So the gamers are adult, but not creaky old farts like me.

I find in life that it's best if you hang out with a younger crowd. I've done this since I stopped being young myself, and it works every time.

Of course, the older you get, the easier this is to accomplish. Almost everyone is younger than me now.

I have not much to say these days. Instead I'm listening. That's a new gambit for me too.

Yes, I Went LARPing with a Bunch of 20-somethings in the Woods

 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.