 Howdy how's it going? My name's Davy Chappy and I'm coming to you live from this pre-recorded video to give you a crash course on LARPing so that the hobby can finally move out of the basement of the nerd zeitgeist and you can finally touch grass. This video will give you everything you need to start your journey so that you can hopefully let off some of the anxiety from trying a new and scary thing. As always, keep in mind the majority of this is just my opinion so please do not see me if you receive injuries related to LARPing. Also, I'm from North America, specifically here, so my experiences are based on being a Midwestern fellow that sometimes gets to stretch out and try other regions. I've been as far as Texas, but if you're from Europe, this video may not be 100% accurate. Unless it's because your LARPs are better. But with that out of the way, let's begin. So LARPing, as you probably know, stands for live-action role-playing, wherein you go outside dressed up as an original character, do not steal, and go on real-life quests that make you feel less bad about never getting that gym subscription. At an average cost of like 50 bucks, you get to spend an average of three days in a magical world of make-believe, where you're the star of a show that's all about you and about six dozen other dorks. The big thing you have to know about LARPs is that there's not one book to tell you how it's all played. Just like TTRPGs, there's a ton of different LARPs all over the world and all of them were started by a group of friends in the backyard who thought that it would be fun to act out their favorite tabletop game in real life. In fact, most LARPs take inspiration from, or just straight-up steal, full concepts from other role-playing games, the biggest ones being World of Darkness, Fallout, and of course, Dungeons & Dragons. That said, your typical LARP will have you interacting with people, going on quests, and generally making a nuisance of yourself because it's theater class, and the director isn't here to stop you. It is a highly social game, and that might turn you off if you're an introvert until you realize that you'll be surrounded by people who are just as introverted as you are, who understand everything that you're going through, and they'll lead you through a better path of expressing yourself. LARPing really is one of those experiences that can be described to you over and over, but you won't fully understand it until you give it a try. And I promise that once you take that first step in game, everything will become so much clearer and much less daunting. But to take that first step, you've gotta know where to go, and finding a LARP near you can be difficult, because despite the fact that we live in the information age of the internet, LARPing as a hobby started around the 70s and 80s, which means that the majority of them are now ran by boomers who think that social media advertising begins and ends at Facebook. If you Google something like Hot LARPs in my area, you'll get some fun results, but you'll also have to make peace with the fact that plenty of LARPs need a large plot of land to function beyond 10 people, meaning there aren't a ton of locations to start one up, so it's likely that you'll end up driving an hour or so just to get to your nearest one. The ones that I go to right now range from 40 minutes to 4 hours away, and I only make the effort to go to that one because I carpool with friends and we sing karaoke the whole time. Finding friends to go with you is a major benefit in both gas prices and driving time, but I understand if you're the first and only friend to be willing to give this a try. But if you have found your LARP and you know its location, the next thing that you need to know is the genre. Believe it or not, running around in the woods with your grandparents drapery on is not the only type of LARP out there. In addition to fantasy LARPs, you've got post-apocalyptic LARPs, steampunk LARPs, a dozen LARPs based off of the World of Darkness games, and I even had a friend go to a one-shot LARP where the company rented a submarine and fitted it out to become a Starship Trooper LARP. And even though fantasy LARPs are the biggest, you still need to understand what kind of fantasy the game is going for. Plenty of LARPs are high fantasy spells and elves, but a not insignificant amount of LARPs are low magic, where fantasy elements are purposefully kept mysterious and out of sight. All this to say that people like different things and you should know what you're getting into before you start picking out costumes. And speaking of costumes, you'll need to dress a certain way to live in a fantasy land, but every game is different and some portion of its rulebook will be undoubtedly dedicated to how you're allowed to dress. Some LARPs don't do fantasy races, some LARPs are color-coordinated, so wearing red could get you jumped by a bunch of blueies, and some LARPs aren't fantasy-based at all. You gotta make sure that your outfit matches the tone of the game, and I'm not gonna lie to you, fantasy clothes are expensive. If you don't want to shell out $200 for a dublay, here is a really basic peasant's kit that should help you survive inspection. First, buy a t-shirt, preferably a few sizes too big so that it reaches your elbows and midway down your thigh, like a tunic. Rip the seams of the collar, arms and waist to get rid of anything that looks manufactured by a modern machine. Get some sweatpants, the thinner the better, and sew a patch somewhere, like on the knees. Don't worry, you don't actually have to make a hole for the patch to cover, so it doesn't actually have to be sewn in very well, but bonus points for effort. Finally, buy some brown boots or dress shoes and make sure that the underside isn't smooth so that you don't slip while you're running around and land in the mud. The shoes won't look perfect, but shoes are by and large the hardest thing to come by, so most LARPs will give you a free pass because we've all been through the struggle. Thristores will have plenty of old boots for cheap, but remember to avoid the Salvation Army if you're gay, because you will burst into flames. Once you've got your base outfit, you're good to go, and most people will want to accessorize, either by equipping some knickknacks or adding details to the clothes, such as a basic lining on the sides or laces to the collar. This constitutes the bare minimum for fantasy garb, so the more effort you put into your presentation, the more it will show, and most of the fantasy LARPs that I've been to are full of communities that are always trying to get more people into the hobby, so they're willing to donate a bag or two if it means seeing the game grow. But wait! If you're an enterprising entrepreneur, perhaps I can interest you in Burgshneider, the historical garb company that crafts clothing of all canvases so that you can dress your best when you're being invaded by the British. Whether you're a fantasy role-player or a fantasy role-player, Burgshneider has cloaks, tunics, gambesons, and coice, along with many other accessories that'll make you say, Wow! It's just like the plague! And if affordability is your issue, then my intimidating reputation can save you some gold. Just type CHAP into the discount code when you're making your purchase to receive a whopping 15% off the total price. Once again, that's CHAP, like the lips or the pants. Burgshneider. Dead people wore it first, but you wore it best. Granted, if you want to sidestep this problem entirely, you can try to find a LARP with a more modern genre. Like I said, fantasy LARPs aren't the only game in town, unless they happen to be the only game in your town. And most other genres that you'll find will be some variation on modern. For instance, my favorite LARP is set in the post-apocalypse, where you can just throw an old shirt on, poke some holes in it, and you're good to go. My first costume was this. This is just some shit I found. That, that's an unpainted Nerf gun. Then I got a jumper and some goggles, then I lost the vest, then I switched to the jumper collar, then I told my friends not to come to school tomorrow. It's a natural progression. I'm telling you, don't worry about your first outfit, because after a game or two, you'll find the motivation and resources to make it better. Moving off from clothing, the other things you need to look out for are sleeping and food arrangements. Like I said before, driving long distance is a likely scenario, so you'll need to know where you're sleeping and how to get food each day. If the LARP is close enough to your house, you could literally just go home every night and sleep in the comfort of your own bed, unless you're playing a special event, where they bar the exits and rotate guards toward off escapees. But in the likely scenario that you don't live near the LARP that you're going to, you should check to see if the LARP offers either its own lodging or a camp city. Some LARPs will give you a place to rest as either part of the ticket or for an extra fee, and other LARPs have a designated out-of-game area, where you can pitch a tent and figure it out for yourself. If those options aren't available, look for a hotel, or if you have a friend who lives nearby, sleep with them, and then ask if they have a spare bedroom. What you should not do is sleep in the woods, mountain man style, and then try to pop out in the morning like everything's fine. That dirty floor of the woods that we call the ground gets very cold at night, and it will siphon your heat like the gas prices are too high if you try to sleep on it. In a worst worst worst case scenario, you can sleep in your car, but Davy Chappy is not recommending that you sleep in your car. That is how you get back problems. As for food, there's often a meal plan that you can buy, or it might be included in the ticket, and if you don't have that, you're always allowed to bring food with you. Obviously you can't bring a pack of Cheetos with you to Rivendell, but if you store a few apples in your bag and make sure that you are always carrying water, then you'll be perfectly fine. Once again, other Larpers do not want you to starve, so there will always be someone who is willing to supply some food for you, although please do not rely on that generosity. You should be caring for yourself, you are an adult. Lastly, and it's kind of weird that this is actually the least important thing, but you really want to look at the rules of the Larp you've chosen to find out if it's even worth the effort to make the journey into the far fields of nowhere Kentucky. Every Larp has a rule book that runs the game, and if you can navigate the bonkers layout of their website, seriously, what is this? Then you should be able to find it yourself. I found that giving the book a cursory examination helps give me an idea of what the Larp is about, and then when I go to the game, I'm given a rundown of the rules again, this time by an actual person that I can ask questions to. But please do not skip over the part where you need to read the book yourself, because some games are bad, and don't provide a new player orientation, so you'll just show up and people will yell things at you, like Stupify or Defenestrate. That means throw yourself out a window. I know lots of things, I'm very smart. One particular thing you should be looking out for, LARPs heavily vary in how hard you're allowed to hit people with your spongy murder weapons. Some LARPs consider foam to be a material blessed from God, and therefore believe that no weapon raised against them shall be able to prosper. And then they get cracked in the face by someone swinging with the might of Atlas, and they start to wonder where all this blood came from. Phone weapons obviously won't kill you, but the simple math of fast things swing hard means that it's still possible to sting when you get hit. So most LARPs use the term full contact to represent games where anything goes, and you can flip over your opponent and punch the referee. Or they'll run Lightest Touch LARPs, where the idea is to hit somebody with all the daintiness of someone just tapping you on the shoulder and asking if you wouldn't mind lowering your hit points. My main LARP falls in the middle. You can hit somebody, but if it starts to hurt, then they'll tell you to watch your swings, and every LARP falls somewhere within the spectrum of 0 to 100. So this is usually important to me because being a small, fragile boy with his face as his best feature, I personally want to make sure that I'm not going to come out of the game with bruises because somebody got too rough with their latex. If combat isn't your thing at all though, there are even parlor LARPs, which are usually played inside and throw out combat altogether so that no one smashes the chandelier. When two people want to fight, instead of throwing fists, they'll throw dice, cards, rock, paper, scissors, or some other game of chance to determine who is better at being badass. Game mechanics can affect the chances, and this is altogether a type of combat played usually at political intrigue LARPs that don't put a lot of effort in fighting. Still, since almost all LARPs have some form of combat and most people expect to experience that combat, it's good to know how each LARP handles it so that you can optimally shake your stick at someone. Overall, you really just want to do the research of finding out if it's a game you'd enjoy playing, but looking at a document and experiencing the game are two different feelings, so who knows? Maybe your first impressions of the rulebook will be overwritten by your impressions of the first event. I found that a good LARP always comes from the community anyway, and the mechanics are just an excuse to hang out with them in a place that they can't escape from. But that'll about do it! I hope this video helped you figure out how to take those first few steps into the hobby, and I'll be making more videos about LARP etiquette, how to craft your first weapon, combat, all that jazz. Feel free to leave your own LARP experiences or tips for new LARPers in the comments, and if you want to help me out by supporting me on Patreon, I put audio and early releases of my videos, along with snippets from my How It Feels to Play series out on my Patreon all the time. But yeah, Davy out. And lastly, I know it's been a while, but I want to give a quick shout-out to all of my patrons who have supported me over this last year, where I've been going through my biggest dry spell. Hexagon wrong, Patrick Snipes, Exiat, Jeremy Thornberg, Ashway, Alejandro Garcia, Dugan Porcanoy, Joshua Cheshire, Rachel Whitley, Clint Davis, Aaron Silia, Audrey S, Mr. Saturday, Generous Heel, Primrose, William Rainier, Rowan T. Buck, Spirit, Yodem, Romulan, SpaghettiOs, Patches, Phoenix Omega, Brandon Walker, Texas Toast, Roger Bryant, Super Bunny, Bun, Wolfdog, Bikles, and Vasudean Guy. Thank you all so much for supporting me during my dry spell. The wait is finally over.