There is a good story and much gained experience about how to run a historically accurate LARP here. Read on, stalwart adventurer! Article 428 of alt.games.frp.live-action: Newsgroups: alt.games.frp.live-action Path: isc-newsserver!rit!rochester!udel!wupost!howland.reston.ans.net!torn!nott!bnrgate!bnr.co.uk!pipex!uknet!mcsun!news.funet.fi!roisrv.urova.fi!xxxx From: xxxx@roisrv.urova.fi (xxxxx xxxx) Subject: New mlist for variag/viking adventures Summary: New mailinglist for variag/viking adventures Message-ID: <1993Jun4.114255.17420@roisrv.urova.fi> Date: Fri, 4 Jun 93 11:42:55 GMT Organization: LAPIN YLIOPISTO Keywords: LARP Lines: 60 Dear Sirs, You are welcome to join our "Nordic Adventures" reenactment project, which consists of viking and variag style boat journeys. You can participate on the project either by - helping us plan some of the easier or tougher journeys - participating in one of the journeys. Please, return this questionaire and join to one of our mailing lists: 1. In answering these questions I represent a) myself b) our club or chapter (name it!) c) a bunch of friends (how many) 2. I wish to join your VARIAGLIST for high realism, high cost adventures that are hardly possible without the aquisition of several sponsors. The first goal of this list is to build up an organization for the planning of a variag journey from the Baltic to the Black Sea (not necessarily all the way). 3. I wish to join your LARPLIST for mythological variag journeys that are "spiced up" by medieval spells (as the ones found in Kalevala), shamans and other features normally only found in live action role playing. These adventures shall be planned in a way that makes them inexpensive enough - even without sponsors. (Well, if you would have to fly here from Hawaiji, the costs would be fairly high). 4. My opinions about combat and weapons: a) combat need not play any role on the journeys b) I would like to have boffer sword combat in light, variag style armor (or no armor) c) I would be ready to carry heavy armor to allow rattan fighting 5. Participation to planning a) I am willing to offer some help in planning b) I am mostly interested in participatin such journeys 6. I could help in the starting of either one of these mailing lists 7. Name, email-address and other possible comments Yours, xxxx xxxxx, Lapland, Finland xxxxxx@levi.urova.fi (Perttu the shaman) ------------------------------------------------------------------ ------------------------------------------------------------------ Finally, in April 2002, I got in contact with Pasi. I asked him some questions about LARPing that he happily answered. Below is our exchange. -------------------- From: Lee To: Pasi >Subject: RE: Historical Live Action Roleplaying? >You have the correct person :) Wonderful! I wanted to know how well it went. A few years ago, I tried gathering a group of people together to do an event with similar logistics... a fantasy roleplaying game with strong elements of realism. http://lee.org/Reading/Gaming/LARP/real%20adventure.txt I have played a fantasy LARP for many years (http://nerohq.com) and wanted to take it to the next level.... make it epic and closer to reality. I didn't get enough support to run my adventure but I still think about it. I remember reading about 2 large scale adventures in northern Europe, one that was quite historic and one that involved casting spells with very long incantations. These might be one and the same. I think that your adventure was historic one. Yes? Did it happen? Have any happened since? What was the most successful scale of the adventure? 2 days? 7 days? 10? What was the best location? Nearby mountains? Far away historic sites? What kind of people enjoyed it the most? Histoy buffs, historic re-enactors, fantasy gamers...? Please forgive me if I'm not speaking directly about the kind of adventure you ran. I've done several different kinds of adventures and I don't recall exactly what kind you were speaking of. I have found several history texts on the web by you. So I would assume that you're adventure was based around reliving these histories. That sounds rather exciting! I would think that the logistics of any adventure, whether based in fact or fiction, would be similar. I would love to gain from your experience and maybe try to make my adventure happen. Lee Sonko ------------------------------------------------------------------ ------------------------------------------------------------------ From: Pasi To: Lee Dear Lee, I do not have much time for writing this mail so I'll be brief: - My best success was Bjarmia 1995 LARP which was based on realistic history of Finland (years 500-1000) plus some real Finnish spells (taken from folklore). - The game took place in a 5 km long canyon with 100 m high slopes. In middle there was a small river. This narrowed down the area very well. - There wall a Lapp style camping site there (made available by Finnish government) - The area was natural park (or almost) - In my script I had written "there are bears in the canyon" and that was meant to be fiction, but it turned out reality (we saw only footprints) - The game was held 10th of May and I had not planned that there would be 1 m snow in some areas of the canyon - There was a beautiful glaciere pouring down the canyon slope (according to my script there was a tribe that warshipped this "god of frost") - The script was somewhat similar to the 7 samurai of Akira Kurosawa - The tribesmen were threatened by tax collecting orcs and at the end of the game fred by 7 brave strangers who killed 20 orcs with help from the tribesmen - Everybody lowed the game because it combined LARP with really authentic feeling - Game lasted for 2 days HINTS: - do not try to combine "extreme adventuring" with LARP (this is what I tried in Bjarmia 1993 which was a total failure as parties got lost for days in the mosquito marshes of Lapland while trying to pull their canoes over some mountines to another river... ) - If you want to do extreme historical realism and combine it with adventure, you must be a project manager, archaeologist and engineer in the same person (and read carefully what Thor Heyerdahl learned when trying to cross the atlangic with Ra) Yours sincerely, xxxx xxxxx Author and director of Bjarmia 93, 94, 95, 96 and 97 ------------------------------------------------------------------ ------------------------------------------------------------------ From: Lee To: Pasi Thank you for responding. I suppose that Americans prefer more fantasy based games because they don't have the benefit of real and interesting history to look back on. The best that Americans have is the conquest of the American Indian. But it's politically incorrect to think fondly of that time. Wouldn't that be an interesting subject for a thesis... Thank you very much for your guide! I'll listen closely to your recommendation about not combining extreme adventuring and LARP! And all your other comments too. I've started looking into information about Thor Heyerdahl. It is extremely facinating and exciting. Thanks for telling me about him. This is a good resource for me! Great travels, Lee Sonko ------------------------------------------------------------------ ------------------------------------------------------------------