I went to a LARP
I went to a LARP.
Historically I have only been familiar with what I’ve been referring to as “Swords and Shields, Living in a Field” kind of LARPing, something that falls into Lord of The Rings in terms of popular public perception and the type that I am only familiar with through things that were essentially university drinking societies, or back handed reference in UK sitcoms.
From my perspective it was never about being above it or judging it - I never feel the drive to mock someone’s passion - I am just completely on the outside here. I’m reasonably invested in Table Top RPGs and I’ve always had a flirting interest in doing something that felt closer to the dramatic since I studied Drama at High School and it was the highest grade I had… but I also don’t really like the cold, I’m a bit of a home body and I felt like it was a big investment of time to get into this - I’m not the sort of person who is particularly craftsy, so the idea of preparing armour, weapons or an array of costumes set hairs up my back in anxiety for doing something I would feel pride in.
At the end of 2025, I was bored in all honesty - My goal for 2025 was to actually use a majority of the things I bought in my hobby space, I actually managed to use about 70% so success to me! This year my goal is to start engaging with it in the real world more, not moving away from digital spaces but engaging with more conventions and local groups as well as crossing over into subcultures or experiences parallel to TTRPGs that I may not have before.
So what about LARP. I started to look into it more following a few posts on Discord discussing LARP culture and some events they had been doing, I got advertised at me on Steam of all places a “Frostpunk LARP”, an event set in the reaches of Poland that attempted to simulate the BAFTA nominated video game which focuses largely on misery, cold and wondering how the British Empire had managed to continue through this. However, multiple days in the middle of Poland in February for £400 plus travel costs seemed a bit much for a first time investment.
I write this from a completely naive perspective, I am not an expert nor do I have all the correct vocabulary or am I looking to position myself as an authority but I will to the best of my ability to explain things as I have passively picked it up or understood it, largely because I just want to talk about how I felt about things as a person entering this space for the first time.
Which is a lot to say that somebody told me what Chamber LARP is, derived from the Nordic tradition which seems to focus on accessing emotions and using them to explore varied themes - some difficult, some light hearted - and all within the span of a few hours? Easy to move on and form a different experience if one didn’t work for me. If I hated it, I had a story. If I loved it, I had a potential new hobby (and a story).
“The Smoke”, advertises itself as the international Chamber LARP festival, a two day event taking place in the centre of London. At about an hour roughly from my house - oddly three hours by train - and financially wouldn’t ruin me to attend like the previously mentioned Frostpunk LARP. The requirements for picking specific LARPs is that you purchase a weekend ticket at £90. This way I could ensure that I wouldn’t accidentally fall into any themes that I wasn’t comfortable with or felt ill suited within - lets avoid putting too many new experiences on top of too many new experiences. This was the first thing I’d note about it, my experiences with LARP groups at university was that they were much more ‘lads groups’ and power dynamics were defined by a social hierarchy - from the get go The Smoke seemed to be very open, welcoming and friendly.
Luckily all this information about topics and general themes was upfront and available in their programme and covered a large variety of topics from a LARP that is going horribly wrong (maybe a bit too meta for a complete newbie, I got a run down from someone who took part in it), recreating fan fiction fandom during the height of Star Trek airing in the 60s, or simply cruising for sex at a gay bar in the 80s. There was no shortage of things that I could have engaged with - not a field in sight, just a small theater in London.
I’ll only be covering my first day at the event sadly I was unable to attend the second day due to illness and needed to take some time to recover before having to go back to work on Monday - I can, in all earnestness, understand why somebody would block out holiday for this kind of event on the other side of it now.
From this point on I’ll discuss the LARPs that I took part in, what I liked about them, what I found difficult and how they made me feel - I will not be naming people involved in the LARP to respect their anonymity but I will highlight performances or interactions that I felt were noteworthy. To be upfront - any criticism I have at this point is entirely not on the shoulders of anyone I interacted with, everyone was lovely, friendly and warm and for a new hobby space this is the first time I have ever just felt welcomed through the door - I have spent the majority of my youth in video game or table top spaces - I am now 35 years old and do not have the patience for particular behaviours in my life anymore.
If this somehow spills out somewhere else, I do genuinely want to thank the smoke.
Duck Stamp
This was honestly a good and easy introduction for me - very light, little to no rules (and those that were, are communicated in character exceptionally well), and threw you straight into the meat of things. There was a term that was used to describe it which included “Zero” in the title, I cannot find the exact wording, but the intent is to put you straight into the action the moment you enter the room and there is no inbetween, no workshop or anything just an implicit agreement that you are part of the game immediately.
Before even beginning it was outlined to us that we did not need to know anything about the Federal Duck Stamp. This is a real thing and there was literature available for us to read into after the event.
The advertisement for it described it as a living “Christopher Guest film” (Waiting for Guffman / Spinal Tap) and the minute I walked through the door and the GM began talking, it hit. An upbeat earnest individual incredibly excited about this almost silly sounding thing - we are here to pick the next Duck Stamp, a small stamp that gets inserted into a journal as a Hunters Permit. The camp was dialed up and the characters were larger than life.
Each year a new stamp is elected by a group and has faced real drama such as the introduction of general water fowl on the stamp alongside ducks. Truly difficult and important.
Going around the room we were introduced to the pertinent concepts right off the bat - a number of entrants, we were going to be playing them whilst some players were the judges. The GM was the co-ordinator, entirely embedded into the story itself.
Immediately people began to be provided with an index card sized piece of paper outlining their characters (to list a few)- an eccentric judge, promoted to stop them from entering. A passionate entrant who had her work destroyed by said judge. A lifeless and soulless individual determined to ensure that the least beautiful entry won.
I played the wife of a judge, we had met prior in prison but I now wanted to move past that part of my life. My lover, less so, still entrenched in that hierarchy - to the credit of my partner he heavily embodied the dead eyed uncomfortable stare as I tried to play a more demure individual only somewhat oddly recounting previous events in prison whilst resenting the relationship I formed before. I just want to move past that part of my life, I served my sentence. Dinner is in the fridge honey.
People really threw themselves into some of these characters, one in particular I absolutely adored performed an entire interpretive dance when asked to explain their choice for their elected duck stamp candidate.
This was the first event I’d taken part in and for me the part I struggled with was knowing the boundaries I could push and what I could do - a part for me that I found I struggled with was that the character dynamic I had set up with my wife was borderline domestic violence at points, the other player would regularly clutch my collar and make demands but the reality of it was that I was fully comfortable and when I checked in with other players towards the end they said they completely understood and reassured me - in fact the first person who came up to me complimented me which really put me at ease. The door was also always open.
This would have a complete inverse relationship to the second LARP - I mention the door always being open but for a lot of this, this advice and suggestion was communicated in character from the start which made it difficult to understand what the safety tools were in place for this - but since the game itself was more comedic in tone I do not feel this is a worthy criticism of the game itself, nor if I was someone who did not have experience with safety tools via the world of table top RPGs would I have paused to think about it.
What I think truly drew me in with this one was not only the ease of access to the source material but having a clear definitive statement of intent, followed by sharing of the actual historical context behind a lot of these things.
One Flesh, One End
I found this one difficult. Structurally, stylistically and emotionally.
This LARP used some established fiction of a series of novels I had not heard of before - this one seemed to focus more on the elements that I think I heard described by people talking about nordic LARP - notably ‘using bleed’. This one had notable structure and staging requirements that relied more on setting up established truths before progressing. As such this one did focus more on the elements I had heard about, establishing safety tools and ensuring that the environment itself was comfortable for each player in this space. This was the first time in the day that I saw several terms such as “Cut”, “May I”, and many more. Whilst some of these elements made sense I did wonder how realistically they, like a lot of safety tools, translate to reality when peer pressure is applied.
Each participant was put into a pair, these houses consisted of a high level set of prompts that related them to the fiction of this world, this also included some workshops that explained some of the basic concepts and what the role of a necromancer was, as well as the role of a cavalier - the primary roles of this game. My largest issue was gleaning what the tone of this series was intended to be and what I should be adding to it, the impression I got from the Proper Nouns used and the general descriptions was that the closest thing I could equate this to was Young Adult Warhammer 40k, I appreciate that if anyone sees this and is familiar with the fiction I am probably talking heresy here.
Dropped into the House of God we were to solve several trials before The Emperor arrived.
Each trial was about interacting with our cavalier and engaging with the way we are linked to them, my house was one that focused on subterfuge and being duplicitious, it was easier to accuse them of heresy than deal with them directly.
What did I find difficult? There was an element of cruelty in the power dynamics as well as the overall world building that does not, in all honesty, come naturally to me. I found this difficult to reconcile at times since we had agreed in my group due to the theming of the house itself that focuses on exploiting people. Much of the relationships between houses were themselves antagonistic as well - which immediately put me on the back foot.
I ended up in a trio and I do want to thank the woman I was placed with because her support was really vital to me feeling somewhat more comfortable with the setting, because I will confess I do not think I was a good fit for this game - I became a bit too introspective about what certain things meant, what the writing on cards meant requiring me to drop out of character, what the expectation of me in terms of violence or displays of strength would be but to her credit she threw herself straight in and I admired their eagerness - telling me that they actually participated in this LARP three times before hand. As such, when she unfortunately… died in the story I felt bad for the cavalier in our team because I did not have the strength or where-withall to really know where to go with my character.
I mentioned the cruelty - in part I think the fact I did not know how to deal with violence was hard. A fascinating part of this was my prior wife in a previous game who dutifully modelled Offtime and Intime in a way that I found incredibly useful, explaining calmly and keenly what he was going to do and ensuring that each person in the game was comfortable with it.
Whilst this game may not have been for me, I do think it was a great tool of education.
So, did you enjoy yourself?
A resounding yes. I’m not sure it is the brand new all entangling hobby that has me absorbed like TTRPGs, but if I was to tomorrow find myself coming across an event that would be a day or so long that I could get involved with - I would be fully onboard.
Free from play is often something that is relegated to childhood, and this is an interesting structure and format that I think lets us explore some parts of ourselves that we either may not enjoy or may derive a new understanding about ourselves, but as an adult I feel I need to understand what my limits are and as a new player how somebody is expected to participate. Things like the aforementioned Offgame/Ingame that I observed would have been something that would have given me the tools to perhaps be more confident in what I am doing.
I wrote this all out just to explore how I felt about this, so if you made this to the end. Thanks, I’m aware there are probably several run on sentences or otherwise :P