Review: The Wild Hunt

I was super excited yesterday, when I noticed one of the new movies available on Netflix Instant was The Wild Hunt. For those of you not in the know, The Wild Hunt was an Indie film that was considered to be the closest thing to Mazes and Monsters for LARP. You know, everything's fun and games at a LARP event until someone takes it too seriously.

To start off, I was really impressed at the quality of the movie. At the beginning I was a little worried, as some of Lyn's lines were hard to hear, but soon after I felt like I was watching a movie from a major studio.

The movie's portrayal of LARP is amazing. Sure, some of the characters are a little tongue-in-cheek when representing stereotypical LARP archetypes (like the male plot member dressed like a faerie), but ultimately they do a good job of integrating IG elements of a LARP with OOG interactions, making it seem like the characters weren't one-sided or obsessed with the game.

Without giving spoilers, the movie takes a dark turn at the end, and is actually pretty brutal. However, I think this was done very well, without it seeming like the LARP itself caused brutality, like the aformentioned Mazes and Monsters. But I certainly wouldn't show that part to kids or people who want to know what LARP is.

All and all, it's worth giving a watch. I'd probably note it as slightly more realistic in it's portrayal of LARP than Role Models, but I think I'll still stick to Role Models when showing someone who's never LARPed what LARP is.

Game Design: Looking Through Lenses

I've always been a sucker for game design and try to read everything I can get my hands on. One of the presents I got for Christmas was a book I've been lusting over called "The Art of Game Design: A Book of Lenses," by Jesse Schell.

Even after just starting this book, I can tell you that it's amazing. It is a text book (which means expensive, long, and boring), but what is really great is that they teach you to look at your game from specific points of view - something I think many game designers lack the discipline to do.

I could easily design a game that I think is fun, but what about other people? What would be the main goal of various rules? What about a theme?

This book provides 100 different lenses in which you should analyze your game, complete with the questions you should ask. Lenses include:

Lens of Fairness
Lens of Economy
Lens of Reward
Lens of Punishment
Lens of Griefing
Lens of Simplicity/Complexity

And many more. So for all you aspiring game designers out there, I would heartily suggest that you pick up this book and use the lenses it gives you.

Review Ring Mesh Chainmail

Today I am going to take a quick look at a product that I have owned for around 5 years. Ring mesh chainmail, whoever thought this stuff up was brilliant. It is essentially a butchers mesh shirt made from stainless steel welded rings. The resulting masterpiece weighs less than 3 pounds, looks like a mithril shirt and lasts for a very long time.

Style: These shirts are really cool looking. The chains are welded and the pattern is a machine weave so you will never see a handmade shirt that looks this good. There are no alternate patterns or colors and you cannot anodize stainless steel very easily but for plain jane chain mail this is definitely a 5/5

Functionality: The use of a chainmail shirt in larp is really just to get you armor points and look cool. These shirts do both. If you plan on wearing this shirt to a knife fight you should realize that although it will probably stop slashs, stabs are gonna kill you. Overall if you get the right size this shirt is a 5/5 for larp. Remember that chainmail does not stretch like a shirt, order a size up.


Durability: Zero tears after over 100 larp events. have not popped a single link. Perfect durability. I actually tried slashing at it with a cavalry sabre, no links popped. 5/5 on durability too.

Value: Now the sticky point the short sleeved shirt is 172 bucks, that is pretty pricey. Still look what you get, an almost permanent interchangeable costume piece that has mechanical benefits. For me it seemed like a value but since you can make your own chainmail for way less, I am going to give it a 3/5

So overall you get (5+5+5+3)/5 for a total score of 4.5 I highly reccomend their work but you may find yourself priced out.

Book Review: Fantasy Freaks and Gaming Geeks

I recently had the chance to read the book Fantasy Freaks and Gaming Geeks by Ethan Gilsdorf. As the title indicates, the book covers swaths of geekdom including Tolkien, Tabletop, LARP, SCA, Online Gaming, Conventions, and even Guédelon Castle.

Gilsdorf was an avid Tolkien and D&D oficianato as a child, and often used these things to escape things in real life, most notably being his mother who suffered a brain aneurysm, changing her personality and crippling her. In college, he drops the fantasy and gaming until he has a mid-life crisis-esque event in which he returns to gaming and fantasy 20 years after he last played D&D. As a journalist, he vows to pursue as many gaming/fantasy endeavors as possible in order to see if he's still a gamer after all these years.

There are some things I really liked about the book. Throughout the entire book, I was well aware of Gilsdorf's journalism background. In each of his geek topics, he interviews one or two people and does these interviews very well. It's tough to be biased, but he never demonizes or degrades anyone he's talking to, whether it's the Mom with the WOW problem, the guys at the Gygax convention, or LARPers. He seems to spend the right amount of time on each topic before moving on (for the most part). And, of course, the topics are quite interesting and not super common in reading materials.

However, there are parts of the book that I skipped outright or breezed over. Whenever Gilsdorf got onto an editorial slant or talked about his personal life, it was hard to take him seriously. At times, he would lament the lack of romantic relationships, to the point where he pretty much was trolling for tail at Dragon Con. I skipped the chapter about dating gamers, because it seemed boring and unnecessary towards his major premise, which was supposed to be escapism.

I say supposed to be, because Gilsdorf must have run into a deadline at the end, writing the last three chapters in a Red-Bull induced fever dream. The book spins wildly out of control in these chapters, as he seems to have trouble putting a coherent conclusion together about his story. At one point, he says that all gaming is a good form of escapism, then he says video games aren't, then he goes back to saying they are. Then, after the final chapter, he has another faux chapter that continues to try and state a conclusion but ends up further convoluting his point.

Ultimately, I give the book 3/5.

If you dig reading and are interested in any of the geeky topics above, I'd suggest reading the book, but don't force yourself through the Grizzly Man parts of the book where he sidetracks to "I need a girlfriend.". It's difficult to find a book that covers even one of these topics in ernest, which makes the book very refreshing despite its flaws.

Review: Lake County Dagorhir - The Dunedain

Tim had a halloween party this weekend that prevented us from attending any LARP events this weekend, but we had recently heard word of an Amtgard group in the area that runs practices on Sundays nearby, so we decided to check it out.

I'll start off with the fact that we did suspect something was up, simply because the Amtgard group hadn't updated it's character stuff since 2006, and Tim remembered talking to the guy who sent the email - about Dagorhir. We went out there anyways, because we were just looking for some foam fighting.

Sure enough, we were duped. The mercenary who we talked with (who was not actually part of the unit) apologized when we got there, but whatever. We'll give it a shot.

My biggest fears of Dagorhir were that the game was a bit more physical than I'm used to. I'm a short guy without a lot of strength, so as soon as games start to involve elements like shield bashing and grappling, I get a little worried. In some ways, it wasn't as bad as I expected it to be. In others, it was exactly what I expected.

The Unit - The Dunedain
I believe there were 4-6 people who were part of The Dunedain, a few independents, a mercenary and a member of the ravens (another group).

The members of the Dunedain were actually pretty cool. We never really received any grief for being NERO players (although they kept calling us Amtgard players, since we were looking for Amtgard). They've got a few fighters that were on par with our fighting, and a fair amount of newer fighters that were still green. None of those players got too physical, apologized when hits were in the head, and had pretty decent shot calibration (didn't hit too hard or too soft).

Now, the fighting did at times get a little hairy. The mercenary pretty much runs at one level of intensity all the time, and it shows. While he's a good fighter, he was definitely not shy about getting up and physical with his shield which is totally legal for Dag. However, he did give me a pretty nasty shield rim to the face when I was legged and there wasn't much I could do. In that situation, I don't see any value in shield rimming over shield bashing, other than inflicting physical damage on the down person.

Translation: It's a Douche Move.

I don't want to sound vain, but between that and a pretty solid shot to the face that rung my bell, I am kind of worried about losing some teeth.

I was also a little concerned about the training community there. There was a newer player who the mercenary called his "Noob," but he seemed more interested in teaching him by embarrassing and beating on him rather than actually teaching him how to fight. He actually went so far to tell us about a guy who swings way to hard just beating him to make him not fear getting hit. At one point, Tim and I helped him a little bit with single sword fighting, explaining the use of the off hand for hand blocking, and talking about putting his weight on his back foot for leg control, since he kept getting legged. After we said that, the merc said "You just have to keep telling him," yet I hadn't heard him give one hint about how to fight.

I think the big thing is that they look up to the mercenary, and they back down when he's around. The Dunedain seem like they like to help each other (based on their forums), but the merc's personality is pretty overwhelming.

Summary:
All and all, I think the group is a lot of fun and it would be great to be a part of it. It was fun playing with everyone, except for that mercenary. However, I think my concerns about the physicality of the fighting and fear of losing my teeth might prevent me from getting big into Dagorhir. Because even if the Dunedain guys are cool, there will always be a douche on the other side of the field that I can't account for.

Edit: After some nice discussion on the Dag boards, the Dag community has pretty much agreed with my assessment that the guy was a douche. This give me hope for Dag. Activity like his is not the norm, and they don't condone that kind of activity.

Last Week In LARP

I've realized that, while useful, the "This Week In LARP" posts have not been very interesting for our readers. That's why I'm going to add a new part to those posts.

In addition to telling you all about the games coming up that week, I want to get as much feedback as possible from players who went to LARP the previous weekend. It could be for any event, regardless of where it's held (I know we have quite a few readers from outside of Ohio).

Here's the format I'd like:

Game
Chapter (if applicable)
Rating: 1-10 (10 being best)
Pros: Things the event did well
Cons: Things the event could have improved upon.

Then, at the end of the year (or every 3 months), we can compile that data and send it to the owner/plot teams, in the hopes of improving upon past performance. Also, it could drum up some interest in some of the smaller, but fun games.