 So for those of you who don't know, I'm a big fan of LARPing and I try to go at least once a month. The idea of being able to live out an experience that I'd usually be resigned to talking about over a pen and paper makes LARPing one of the most fun experiences that I have in my life right now. And while it's cold and wintery here in my home state of Michigan, I'm stuck indoors with my LARP closed until March. So I've decided to talk about my very first experience at my very first LARP to both quell my inner LARPer for a period of time as well as potentially influence other people to maybe give LARPing a try and maybe find themselves an amazing hobby to be a part of. Names and situations may be altered to protect anonymity or because it makes a better story. So there I was. Me and my four friends had just gotten on the field for the very first time. I was playing a half-elf bard. One guy was a human rogue and my other three friends were all playing orcs, two warriors and a shaman. It was my first event, so I was in awe of everything. I saw people practicing swordplay on the trail, selling drinks in a tavern. I even overheard a couple people trading items, one of them mentioning, thanks, this is gonna break the greater curse on me. Now, I know a lot of people are gonna hear that and think that it's hella nerdy, but to be in a fantasy world and seriously, like, live it, it was crazy. After taking in all the sights, we pitched a tent, had some grab bread, and then went off to complete a quest that some vendor guy had given us, talking about clearing out an abandoned keep that had been recently taken over by some squatting cobalds. My whole shtick was that I shot arrows at people, so when we got to the old keep, we kicked open the door and I let loose my very first arrow. It flew through the air, whistling in the breeze. And then I shot a female NPC right in the tit. She took it and stride, and I'm sure that her response of yeeting a throwing dagger in my chest was more of a welcome to the game yeet full of friendliness and wet blood. At that point, all the orcs started swinging and our first fight got pretty crazy. Every once in a while, a cobald would notice me alone, firing arrows, and it would turn into a game of knife tag where we would see who could run the fastest. Unfortunately, the cobalds never expected it when I would pull a knife out of my bag and start shanking everybody that got near me. Sure enough, after about a minute, all the cobalds had been stab-murdered and the keep was clear of its creepy critters. But all was not well, for deep in the keep was an old trail that ran deep into the forest, beyond the keep. At the end of the trail lay a grove, clearly magical and druidic, as noted by the fact that there was a big ball of light that was floating in the middle of it. This wispy thing flew up to our shaman and was all like, Yo dawg, I need a druid. I've been abandoned, shit's not right. And it was at that point that we realized that, in our search for a one-off mission to gain money and notoriety, we had accidentally unlocked an entire side quest. So we returned to town and involved ourselves in the second half of what LARPING's all about, interacting with other players. The group splits up and searches for clues as to where to find a druid, and there were actually quite a few different paths to go down. There was a druid among the triblans, full of barbarians, that you would have to prove a show of strength to if you sought their aid. There was a practicing druid on the far side of the field, that you could get help from if you managed to find her relatively secluded grove, but the druid that we landed on ended up being an even more interesting choice. The last druid was a member of a major elven presence on the field, and she hated orcs. Of which, mind you, we had three. And only assisted us because it was her druidic teacher that had once owned the grove that we were looking to help. As it turned out, she had been tending to it while he was gone, but due to an accident, she had broken her leg, and couldn't safely travel all the way to the grove in the previous month, leading the grove to apparently panic and attract all manner of creatures so that it could find a new druid to keep it safe. Clearly, she was the druid that we needed for our quest, but her leg was still broken, and she couldn't get to the grove, but she wasn't about to let a dirty green skin just go back to the grove and tell it that everything was gonna be alright, so instead, she sent with us an elven assassin, one of the strongest players on the field. His reputation sort of preceded him, since we had heard from other players not to get tangled up with him specifically. Like, hey, don't listen to that guy. That guy smells. That guy'll stab your babies and eat your house. He'll stab your babies, eat your house, and he'll send you an angry Christmas letter. Needless to say, he seemed like a great guy, and we were happy to have him. We made our way back to the grove. Stab murder, McNifeers, and Toe, and the grove just looked at us with a grovy visage, like, what, where's the druid? Upon telling it that the druid had taken a long fall off a short sloop, the grove decided, well, beggars can't be choosers, and declared our shaman companion as its new caretaker. However, this did not sit well with the assassin, who, as it turned out, had came along as insurance against this exact scenario, and so he handled it the way all assassins like to handle things. In just a few blinding quick motions, he silently killed everyone but our shaman, who had entered the grove's circle already, and so no one without permission could enter, like it was nature's dirty VIP room. Of course, being completely new to the game, our shaman player didn't fully grasp that concept, and so the assassin capitalized on this by challenging the shaman, which the shaman accepted. Immediately, the assassin yeeted his way into the circle, and struck down our shaman, TPK'ing the party and doing the Fortnite dance over our graves. Afterwards, the assassin decided that if his people couldn't have the grove, no one could, and he buried our bodies within the circle as a sacrifice, so that he could perform a ritual to dismiss the grove and have it go back from whence it came. The grove, hurt by this insistence on it leaving, was all like, damn dude, you don't gotta be rude about it, and dissolved back into nature, becoming just another part of the forest. In one last show of total bro-iness, the grove decided that we were way too high in saturated fats, and spat us back out into the forest, reviving us in the process and leaving our mouths filled with dirt like we had just filleted a molehill. We got up, unanimously decided, well, that was weird, and walked off into the sunset to return to the town, ready to continue our LARP adventures wherever they may take us. So, yeah, that was my very first experience at a LARP. There was drama, romance, bloodshed, and everything I love about D&D, but in real life. I now LARP whenever I get the chance, usually at least once a month, and it's honestly my favorite thing right now. I'm always looking forward to my next event. I'm even planning on, in the future, maybe making a small series covering the in-and-outs of LARPing. I hope this influences you to maybe, I don't know, give LARPing a try, but yeah, to have you out.