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Fighting goblins and ogres in a Georgia park
For fans of live action role-playing games, true adventure is only a performance away.
from the March 30, 2007 edition
Page 2 of 4
There are hundreds of LARP groups worldwide. The largest, such as England's Lorien Trust, can draw as many as a thousand players. Forest of Doors is much smaller. In late March, Tang's group rented a campsite at Indian Springs State Park, about an hour southeast of Atlanta, for their weekend game. Players pretended the lawns and ramshackle collection of wooden cabins scattered in a pine wood were ruins, caverns, and battlefields.
"We understand these things aren't real. But that is the value in it. We are part of this shared ritual," says Charles Kelley, one of the game directors, who calls LARPs a form of "secular ritualism."
Barbarians inside the gates
My first evening, the place reminded me of summer camp. Backpack slung over my shoulders, the weight of my hesitations felt even heavier. I was to play the role of Ethor, a humble monk from the Realm of Castles. I'm reserved, learned, a man of the cloth. I avoid violence. Nonetheless, I was handed a mace upon my arrival. While donning a blue monk's tunic, I looked around at the other residents: about 40 other bantering barbarians, snickering goblins, giggling fairies, and nodding sages. We'd all have to stay in character for two days.
I wanted to go home.
Yet home was far away. In the Forest of Doors, characters from eight Homeworlds – places such as the Dark Mountains, Empire of Perfect Unity, and Enchanted Glade – have supposedly passed through magical doors, à la Narnia, to appear in this "place of infinite secrets." They don't know how to get back.
But the 239-page rule book promises, "you may forge a new destiny for yourself." Hence the appeal of the game: The freedom to be someone else.
Nick Perretta, who works in network TV sales when not playing a warrior character called Wolf, says the game gives him a chance to inhabit a crude and outspoken character. "Drama is wonderful," he says. "I don't do what anyone wants."
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