Swords in the Forest at Noon

"An epic duel of long long cousins fighting over family honour."

Yesterday I met up with a second cousin who I've never encountered before in person. So naturally we tried to beat each other to the ground with padded swords to determine who had the right to carry the family crest onto the battlefield. It probably wasn't fair that I've been at this game for a while, while this was her first time wielding a padded weapon.

This was a part of the first session for a new LARP starting in the Southern Highlands. We didn't get many players for the first session, but every groups has to start somewhere. 6 in total... 3 who'd never done anything like this before, 1 who had been a re-enactor and done a few things with friends, and 2 of us who'd been doing this style of LARP for a while. I'd like to think that on average, 50% of the players will bring a friend along to their next game...so we'd see 9 players next session, maybe 13 after that..then 20... And then we'll be able to get some story happening.

Since this is a new LARP, with new people, there is the opportunity to build a new system from scratch, ignoring the stuff that has proved problematic in the past, building on the stuff that worked well, and experimenting with some completely new ideas.

I'm trying to make sure I get my input at the ground level, because the other "experienced" player has only really seen a single LARP system in use, and I fear that he's going to make this into his LARP-heartbreaker.

There are so many great ideas out there in the LARP world, and so many that I've seen ignored because "that's just not how we play things in this game".

Let's see how this one goes over the next 12 months.

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