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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 3 of 4
Talk about a weekend getaway.
"The performers are of course playing themselves, but at the same time they're playing an imaginary construct influenced by characters, scenes, and situations found throughout popular culture," says Kurt Lancaster, professor at Colorado's Fort Lewis College and author of two books on "imaginary entertainment environments," in an e-mail interview. "Just as a reader depicts imaginary situations when they're reading a novel, role-players are visualizing through the imagination the fantasy setting."
Mr. Lancaster believes no other form of entertainment immerses an individual so deeply into an imaginary world. "At its best, [LARPing] is collective storytelling," he writes. "You can have deeply humanistic transformative experiences in role-playing games, just as you do when exposed to good literature."
Back in the forest, Wolf is bent on vanquishing the bands of marauders threatening our town. "Bandits are definitely on my list of things to do today," he exclaims. "LARPs get a lot of bad spin," admits player Lauren Massengill. "It's not merited. It teaches leadership and social skills. I've seen shy people who, after a few games, became leaders."
Within the first hour of play, I watched an inarticulate young man blossom into an English-accented, chivalrous knight.
Hark! A quest worthy of Frodo
By Day 2, I was getting the hang of this new world. I had witnessed a battle between nasty, half-humanoid, half-plant mandrakes (in green costumes) and 20 defenders. I watched a goblin throw fireballs (little cloth bundles) and saw a fairy named Dusk Whisper ("Triage Healer") patch up the wounded fighters.
We were beginning to bond.
But adventure had still eluded me. Until, that is, an armored knight stumbled into the tavern. "I have a quest," he said. "I seek the most beautiful thing."
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