Conquest of Appalachia

I'm super excited and can't contain myself.

You may have noticed a lot of posts recently about immersion, tents, etc.  Well, as usual, I write about the things that I'm working on.  And finally I can announce the thing I've been working on.

Conquest of Appalachia.  

We're bringing Conquest of Mythodea to the US and we'll hopefully break through the stigma that comes with playing LARP.

For those of you who are not familiar, this is a "Fest LARP" which means it's treated a lot like a long running concert/renaissance faire.  Except, everyone is in costume.  We'll have vendors, inns where you can get drunk, comedians, and vomitoriums, all fully immersive and participation for all.

And all you need to bring is a costume, your wallet, and an open mind.

I don't want to get into too many details, but here are some of the things we've improved upon from the Conquest system.

Combat Everywhere
To improve upon the feel of the game, doctors are suggested to carry flasks and give shots to players that are injured as a form of anestetic.  In order to keep the immersion factor up, the alcohol should be real and should be terrible (ideally grain alcohol).  This also acts to balance the game, as weaker players can team up on a powerful person to force them to take shots and reduce their battle effectiveness.

Because of this, we figured there's no reason to limit combat to non-drinking areas.  Players can be attacked at the inn, in their sleep, or when they're on the toilet.

Furry Friendly
In order to bring as many people into the hobby as possible, we're making the game 100% furry friendly.  In order to encourage interactions between our Furry friends and the rest of the roleplayers, we've implemented an interactive and revolutionary system for mounted combat.  Bronies unite!

River Styx
We've also designed the death system so that it would be fully immersive.  Characters who die must go to the area that represents the River Styx and deal with Charon the boatman.  Hopefully you brought your two silver, or else Charon might make you do your best rendition of Renegade to get across.

Sponsors
Players are encouraged to get sponsorship from one of the many companies that will be vendors at the game, such as Wizards of the Coast, Edhellen Armory, and Walmart.  However, to keep in the spirit of immersion, characters who are sponsored by companies must come from the place that bears their name.  So characters may actually be Wizards from the coast or hail from Edhellen or the Mart of Wall.

This is going to be seriously wicked.   The Conquest of Appalachia will be held exactly 1 year from today.  Get pumped and mark your calendar!

In-Period Tenting

It's tough to find an inexpensive camp these days. This is particularly true if you're looking for camps that have lots of cabins. But one of the ways to mitigate this is to convince your players to get some tents!

Let's not kid ourselves. In-period tents are expensive. While you can make your own, a lot of people don't want to do it. But tents that hold more than 2 people will often cost you easily over $400.

BUT THEY LOOK SO GOOD!

I would encourage games to give discounts to players that bring their own tents, and possibly require that the tents be in-period. While game owners won't make money off those players having tents to begin with, once players reach a critical mass of tenting, you can move to a camp with only 1 or 2 buildings and lots of open space. That could mean a lower cost and room for more players.

And then you'll have Conquest of Mythodia!

For anyone interested in tenting, I highly suggest you do some searching, specifically in resources from the SCA.

If you know of a resource for tents, drop it in the comments!

YouTube Friday: Conquest 2012 Trailer

This it the trailer for Conquest in 2012. 'Nuff said.

Enjoy!

YouTube Friday: Conquest of Mythodea

I'm actually somewhat surprised that I've been able to go this long without posting a video about Conquest of Mythodea.

For those who aren't in the know, Conquest is just about the biggest LARP game in the world. It's hosted in Germany and every year over 8,000 people (1,000 of which are NPCs) and they change the world around the players for complete immersion.

I know that both Dan and Noah (common readers of the blog) have had a chance to attend the game with Joe V., and I know that Dan said that it changed the way he thinks about LARPs. There was also a fair amount of talk about it from the guys at the LRP store back when I wrote for Alltern8.com.

The obvious downside is that it's in Germany. We really need to get something like this in the US. Unfortunately, we're way too up tight to ever let that happen.

Anyways, Enjoy!