Update on LARP Ohio

I know you all deserve an explanation on why posts from me have been so scarce lately.  Since the beginning of this blog, I've endeavored to have a post a day (with the occasional fallouts).  That's quite a grueling pace for a casual blog, but I felt it was worthwhile.  I had a lot of things that I wanted to say, had an itch to write, and really enjoyed it.

But the truth is, I can't keep up with the grueling pace anymore.  It's bad enough to post every day when you have a lot to say.  But it seems I have already said most of what I wanted to say.  Between this blog and my writing on Alltern8.com, I've done more than 400 posts on the subject of LARP.  That's quite a brain dump.

In addition to that, a lot of my tastes in LARP has changed since I started this blog.  In the GNS Spectrum, I've gone from what I would consider to be extreme Gamist to primarily Simulationist.  However, I think that most of my readership is Gamist/Narrativist, which makes writing for my audience a bit difficult.

Finally, I do think I'm hitting a bit of a null in my LARPing career, and may just need to let the LARP part of my life take a bit of a backseat.  I spent a lot of energy on it these past few years (particularly on NERO in the past 9 months), and I'm a little burned out on it.

So what does that mean to me?

Well, it means that LARP Ohio won't be posting daily anymore.  Of course, with my absence the past few weeks, I'm sure this isn't much of a surprise to anyone.

However, we are not shutting down.

I still plan on doing "The Week In LARP" posts, because I think they're just too helpful, and will occasionally make posts when I feel something is particularly post worthy (or if I have something on my mind).  In addition, Karin will keep giving us wonderful, thoughtful, and relevant posts.  So make sure you come by and read them on Thursdays!

New Blog on the Block: Gamesthetic

I'm always a fan of new LARP blogs that come out, no matter what the information is about.  I'm also a bit of a nut for theory on rules and game design.

So it's no surprise that I'm pretty excited about Rob Ciccolini's new blog, Gamesthetic.

For those of you who are not familiar with Rob's work, you need look no further than the Madrigal and the Accelerant ruleset.  He's been involved with LARPing for a very long time and has played in tons of different systems, and those experiences have shaped the simple and intuitive nature of his game.

Even though he only has a few posts so far, I find that most of them contain some gem of information that sparks insight in my mind, such as his suggestion to focus on player interaction rather than plot interaction if you want to become involved.

If you consider yourself a connoisseur of game design, or are running a game and really want to take it to the next level, I highly suggest that you subscribe to his blog and read it religiously.

You can get to his blog at http://gamesthetic.blogspot.com/ or in the blogroll on this blog.   

Props to the Propnomicon

I've always been amazed at the quality of props people can make. I mean, at least people who aren't me.

Mike, one of the staff members for Invictus, sent us a link to a super sweet blog called "The Propnomicon," where they show of some awesome Lovecraftian props, ranging from floating aliens in jars to massive monster skulls and the like.

If you consider yourself an artist of sorts when it comes to prop work, I highly recommend this blog.

Pause for the Cause

I was going to talk about the positive aspects of a Nature Magic, but I wanted to stop and talk about SOPA/PIPA. The "Stop Online Piracy" and "Protect IP" acts were "designed" to protect copyrighted material online. However, the bills put a lot of control in the government's hands to censor the internet, which could severely hamper first amendment rights online. If you're concerned about these rights (which you should be), contact your local representative and let them know!

One of my favorite Nerd Rappers, Adam WarRock, did a song about SOPA. It does have some explicit language though, so you'll have to go off-site to watch it.

Tomorrow, we'll be back to talking about running around in the woods, dressed like wizards.

Spotlight: CollabNarration

I didn't have a proper chance to welcome Zoë into the fold when her blog originally came out. I was taking a little break *coughstarwarscough* at the time, but her blog seems to be moving right along.

And you know what's great? You can add to it, too!

Her blog, CollabNarration, gives LARPers a chance to submit stories to the site. I think it's a great idea. We tend to lack a central forum for LARPers from different games, and even when that happens, people don't like surprise walls of text.

So, now we have a place where people can put their stories (in-character or out-of-game) for others to enjoy. Much better than a common forum, because people know to expect a wall of text, and flaming is a little more difficult when someone can just delete your comments.

I know the best part of LARPing for me is the stories, and I know that I plan to submit some stuff to CollabNarration once I get a little more free time *coughstarwarscough*.

Seriously, though. Check it out, throw those people who have posted stories some support in the comments, and if you're brave enough, submit some content of your own!

And We're Back!

It was nice to take a bit of a break during the holiday season. Let's be honest - when Christmas and New Years both fall on a weekend, it makes LARPing kind of difficult to pull off. And that isn't even considering the weather.

Things are still slow, so I may hold off on "The Week In LARP" posts until I start to see some real events on the horizon. Maybe I'll even get that calender working as intended, so people can have more than a week's notice.

Let's hope 2012 will be as good as 2011!

Happy Veteran's Day

One of the nice things about having a blog with a fair number of readers, is that I can just use it as a platform for talking. I know a number of LARPers who are also veterans (and some still serving!)

And with today being Veteran's day, I want to thank all the veterans for everything they've done throughout the years for the US.

So, on behalf of LARP Ohio, Thank you.

Looking for Contributors

As some of you may have noticed, Tim hasn't been posting much as of recent. His new position keeps him swamped, and he simply doesn't have the time to write when he gets home.

I've done my best to keep up with the furious pace of a post every weekday, but we're getting towards the end of the LARPing season. That means I'm going to have a lot less anecdotal posts to go on.

Based on comments I've seen below, I know you guys and gals have a lot of great ideas and opinions on LARPing. Wouldn't you like a platform for your opinions?

As such, I'm taking on guest posts for anyone who's interested (maybe I'll make it a segment), or even take on a full time contributor to the blog. If you're interested, send an email to larp.ohio@gmail.com.

New In Blogroll - FSLE and State of Play

For those of you with an eye for detail, you might have already noticed there were two additions to the blogroll this week. I'm excited about both of them.

Foam Swords and Latex Ears
This is a blog that talks about general tips and information regarding LARPing. It's been around since July, with a new post every Thursday. Some great information can be found there, so I highly suggest giving it a read.

State of Play - The Gaming Blog
This one is more of a general gaming blog with heavier focus on Video and board gaming. But still, some great stuff there, and the site updates regularly.

I know I've gone about this in detail in the past, but I'll say it again. If you know of some blog/forum/content site that you believe is a treasure trove for gamers/LARPers, send it to us at larp.ohio@gmail.com, and we'll get it up on the blogroll.

Google Is My Bitch

As of yesterday, here were LARP Ohio's standings in Google (searched by me while logged out).

Search for "LARP":
Results: About 6,310,000
LARP Ohio standing: 36 (Page 4)

Search for "Ohio Blog"
Results: About 253,000,000
LARP Ohio Standing: 15 (Page 2)

Search for "LARP Blog"
Results: 1,290,000
LARP Ohio Standing: 1 (Page 1)

I am quite astonished by our standing in "Ohio blog", since it has no references to LARP whatsoever. Maybe this will help it become mainstream?

Anyways, I wanted to give my heartfelt thanks to all the readers for making this happen. That's all on you.

Expanding LARP Ohio's Coverage

After the last post, and after Corey posted the blog on an Indiana-based facebook community, I decided I'm going to try and expand this blog to reach games a little bit further out, like Indiana, Michigan, Kentucky, PA, and parts of NY.

But I need your help.

Currently, I have to manually search through the various sites to find what games are running when. NERO Cincinnati has a handy dandy calendar that helps, but still only gets me what I need for NERO.

So, if you want to have your game posted on the This Week In LARP post, please send an email to LARP.Ohio@gmail.com, including the following.

- Name of The Game
- Dates for Events
- Website
- OOG Location(s) (address if you have it)
- IG Location(s)
- Cost to PC
- Cost to NPC
- Any other pertinent information.

I am going to try and put together an extended calender for games, so feel free to send the info for all the events you'll be running this year.

Get Your Blog On

Over a year ago, I gave the (few) readers a homework assignment to find LARPing resources. It seems that every damn thing on the internet has a million blogs and a hundred wikis dedicated to the subject. But not LARP. In fact, I bet there are more webpages and blogs dedicated to fu--ies than there is to LARPing (something that I never plan on confirming).

So here we are, a year later, and community has improved. Even still, several blogs have come and gone on the topic of LARP, and only a few survive.

So what's the deal?

Well, truth is, blogging is a difficult and grueling process. This isn't actually my first attempt at a blog. I had a blog before this one that was originally intended to be a resource for Champions Online (but was eventually changed to gaming in general when Champions proved to suck hard.) Around 100 posts I grew tired and weary about the project and started writing for Alltern8.com, where I expected I would be showered with hits and, more importantly, cash. Not quite, but it did help me decide to use my powers for good and start another blog with Tim's help.

Ramble Ramble Ramble.

Anyways, this post isn't necessarily about LARPing. It's about blogging. I want more resources out there, helping people everywhere fly their nerd flag. Or sports. Whateves. If you're not interested in that, here's Nyan cat.

If you are interested in blogging, beware of the incoming wall of text.

And the Winners Are...

Thanks go out to everyone who sent in their information for drawings last week. I've had time to process the results and have come up with the list using a sophisticated method to determine the winners *cough*excelrandfunction*cough*. And here is the list, with the order of the winners!

1. Michael Jones - Free WAR Weekend
2. Eric Kociecki - Free Cinci Weekend
3. Mark Henry - Free WAR Gameday
4. Ben Mathis - Free NCN Weekend
5. Chrsitine Bair - Free Cinci Gameday
6. Vincent Errico - Free WAR Gameday
7. David Jurns - Free Exiles Weekend
8. Tera Boster - Free NCN Gameday
9. Angela Kroger - Free Cinci Gameday
10. Mark Mora - Free NCN Gameday
11. Sarah Canton - Pass
12. Jordan Selch - Free Wastelands Weekend (New Player)
Alternate: John Siemon - 10 Free Rads (Wastelands)

Congratulations to our winners!

Here's the way we're going to do this thing.

I'm sending an email out to all the winners to let them know that they've won, and each person will have 24 hours to pick their prize before I move on to the next person. Once a person selects their prize, I'll move on to the next, while editing this post with what that person selected.

In the case that the people at the bottom of the list do not want any of the remaining prizes, I have selected alternates to receive prizes, who will be contacted separately.

For reference, here is the list of prizes (which will be edited as prizes are selected.

- Free weekend at Cinci - Taken by Eric
- Free weekend at NCN (Non-transferable) - Taken by Ben
- Free weekend at WAR - Taken by Michael
- Free weekend at Exiles - Taken by Dave
- Free weekend at Wastelands (New Player Only) - Taken by Jordan
- Free game day at Cinci (2) - Taken by Christine, Angela
- Free game day at NCN (2) - Taken by Tera, Mark M.
- Free game day at WAR (2) - Taken by Mark H., Vincent
- 10 Rads at Wastelands (Non-transferable) - Taken by John

Anniversary! Prizes! No Tuberculosis!

Today, we're celebrating the Spirit Journey Formation Anniversary for the LARP Ohio blog. Sunday will be 1 year for the blog, making it official that this blog lasted at least 10 months longer than expected.

We've had our ups and our downs. Discussions a plenty. Maybe an argument here or there.

Tim asked me "Now that you've done a year of LARP blogging, what do you plan on doing next?" To which I responded, "I'm going to Disney World." But seriously. I am. And I leave on Sunday.

ENOUGH ABOUT MY AWESOME VACATION.

So, here's some statistics for the blog.

Posts: 254
Posts/Week: 4.875 (pretty close to the goal of 5 per week)
Views: 35,000+ (since Google started tracking it in July)
Comments: 1025+
Quantity of Rock: Too much rock for one hand.


But seriously, none of this could be possible without the support of the local players and especially the local games.

The local games,
The ones who are going to give you stuff,
For free,
Free stuff,
Free stuff for you,
Get it?

We're giving 12 prizes away, courtesy of the local games. 12 prizes! Total value is worth more than $350! Interested? Better read on!

YouTube Friday: Do You Smell That?

But really, do you smell that? Smell's like something big is coming. For those of you that have been reading for a while now, you might want to glance back and look in the archives for when this all started. Looks like we're getting pretty darn close to one year on this blog. That only calls for one thing. As Rick James would say:

It's a Celebration, Bitches!


Anyways, we're going to be giving away some totally sweet prizes, so all of our readers should get ready for a contest!

In another note, I will be out of pocket the week of June 13th, so I'm putting the call out for guest posts. If you've got something you've always wanted to say regarding LARP, but didn't want to go through all the hassle of finding a readership, setting up a blog, and getting your name forever associated with LARP, now's your chance. Send all drafts of your posts to larp.ohio@gmail.com. Keep them clean without malicious content and your post might very well be posted on this very blog.

Finally, since it's Friday, I guess I should do a YouTube video. However, quality videos have been really scarce as of late, so I thought I'd go off the board for a thousand. This video even makes the title of this post make sense!

Enjoy your porkchop sandwiches!

Keyword Fun 3

With all the traffic, it's becoming harder and harder for me to pinpoint interesting searches. Google only shows me the top 10 searches for any given day, and higher traffic means more bland searches like "larp ohio" or "ohio larp blog".

But there are still a few gems to be found.

"bruce campbell" larp
I would play that LARP. I don't care if it's Army of Darkness or Burn Notice.

highest larp level
No one knows for sure, but I bet it's over 9000.

larping app
I found a soundboard on my phone, but my guess is that it wasn't made by a LARPer at all. It claims that you will enjoy this if words like "crit attack, roll, dodge, or oop" are in your every day vocabulary, you'll enjoy this app. Sounds like a miss.

how to build larping golem fists 4
Take the first three steps... and repeat!

is there larping on shake it up
I think "Shake it Up" is some kind of Disney kids show. So my guess is no.

inflation games youtube
Inflation games? I did a search for it on google and got some weird results, so my guess is no.

And there you have it! A whole lot of weird.

All Good Things Must Come To An End...

It's been a wonderful 9 months, but as the post mentions, all good things must come to an end. I feel at this time Tim and I are ready to move on to our next endeavor.

You see, a wealthy investor who wishes to remain nameless has sent us a couple of emails asking us to run our own LARP for him. We've got full creative license, will receive a percent of the proceeds, and have all expenses covered (including relocation). We'll be renting our houses until they can be sold, and we'll be moving up in the world.

You see, Oregon is in dire need of LARPs. They've got plenty of forests and parks for us to use, and they want us to use it as a way to bring tourism to Oregon. Through a heavy bout of viral marketing, we're hoping it will be bigger and better than any LARP before. And you know what, if it doesn't work out after a year, we have an option to cut at any time and they'll help us relocate back.

We will not be leaving everything in the dust though. We know a lot of people follow this blog for the topical information rather than regional news. For those of you interested, feel free to follow our new blog at LARP Oregon!

Stabin' Video

I'm sure I'm going to get all kinds of keyword hits for a post title like that.

---------

I'm still traveling, which makes posting consistently a little more difficult. Luckily, I'll be back at home creating content next week and for the near future after that.

In addition, I've been working on an MP3 of my soothing voice talking about the changes to 9th edition. I expect all the kiddies to listen to it on the way to 9th ed events to help them understand what has actually changed. Anything we can do to prevent reading, right?

Anyways, I thought I'd leave you with this video of a lady fighting two men in boffer combat. This video was sent to me by an up-and-coming LARP video maker, and I really like the cinematography (even if it looks like those two guys were going easy on her).

Enjoy!

Keyword Fun 2

I didn't get a chance to do an in-depth analysis today, so instead I thought I'd distract you with some fun keyword searches that people use to get to our website.

poker chip larp armor
Said it before and I'll say it again. You need to have the chips meshed pretty close together to get the full benefit of this armor. As in millimeters between them, and don't dare have any areas that aren't covered or you won't get the 75% coverage required.

templates for newscast homework
Lie, Sensationalize, Lie, Scare Tactics, Sensationalize... that about does it.

what does the blue color mean in larp?
Freud would say it has to do with uncontrollable human urges. Everyone else says it means blue.

yo dawg, i herd you like noodles so i put noodles in ur noodle
Look what happens when I do one "Yo Dawg" post.

larp mini game
Yo dawg, I herd you like LARPs, so I put a LARP mini game in yo' LARP, so you can LARP while you LARP.

football pad nero armor
Just don't do it.

pride and predjudice larp
Just don't do it. (Tim, was this you?)

nero 9th edition "smoking policy"
Smoke 'em if you got 'em! (and you're not underage)

fat guy running picture
I thought about putting a fat guy running picture, but when I googled it in google images, I got scared...

Another Apologetic Post

I'm very sorry for the lack of posting the past week, and am afraid to announce that it will continue until about February. I am currently traveling internationally for work, and I'm finding it difficult to find the time and connectivity necessary to make posts on a daily basis.

I will be back in the country and posting again no later than the week of January 31st. In the mean time, if you or someone you know is interested in doing a guest post for the blog, send an email to Larp.Ohio@gmail.com.

Have fun LARPing!