Back from the GEF

Well, after a long weekend, with a day off either side of it, I am back from my weekend LARPing and ready to write up all about how I managed to achieve all the aims I set myself in last weeks blog post on this topic, except... none of them were really fulfilled quite how I wanted. The weekend was rather interrupted by the fact that we lost the Saturday to the weather, and in fact bugged out back to Burton to keep dry (and play another session of Return to the Temple of Elemental Evil, which I will write about later), and we did not return to site until time-in on Sunday morning. With this (poor) excuse out of the way, here is how I did regarding my aims.

The VKP at the GEF 1114 (photograph courtesy of Kren Cooper)

1) Join the Healers Guild

Flat out didn't do it. I managed to enter the guild tent once (to collect my power cards on the Friday) and didn't set foot in there again all weekend. Pretty much a poor show on getting that aim achieved I am sure you will agree?
With none of the rest of my group being healers, and with me being pretty poor at going out and making myself known with strangers, I just didn't get the keen to go and join up. This really is something that needs working on I think.

2) Go Monstering

Two for two here: as a group or individually we didn't monster once. Again, a really poor show I think. I am going to take the easy way out and blame the weather, as we missed all of Saturday and so were keen to make up for lost time on Sunday playing our characters. This, coupled with some enthusiasm for the main battle Monday meant we never got around to making ourselves useful to the refs. We gave a brief try Sunday morning, but after an hour or so of there being nothing going out, we wandered off to the beer tent for the afternoon.

3) Getting Myself Known

 Well, I could probably make a small claim for making myself useful rather than known. In the Lions wall during the final battle on the Monday I did at least manage to keep our faction battle commander on his feet with a few timely heal spells for the first half of the battle. Whether or not he would remember me again if he tripped over me is highly debateable however. In light of this I guess that's three aims from three that haven't really been achieved.

Holding off something big and nasty in the Lion's wall (photograph courtesy of Kren Cooper)

With a spectacular rate of failure on the personal aims front, I can at least make claim to having spent more time in character this event. We spent a good deal of Sunday chin wagging with some Honeybadger beastkin, and we also spent some fun moments joking about with Squad D of the Lions (thanks for the good humour there guys). All in all it was an enjoyable event, even if we lost a day due to the weather. I am looking forward to (heopfully) making the Gathering later in the year. Maybe there I can actually achieve one or two of those aims?

Larking about LARPing

So this weekend is the Lorien Trust's Great Erdrejan Fayrem the second mainline event in the LT's season, and the first one I will be attending. I always look forward to these events as a great way to spend time with my friends, relax, and get involved in some roleplay. However, there is just one problem with that list of three things: the roleplay. I will freely admit that I suck at it. I find it difficult to get into my character and stay in character for the whole weekend (or even one whole day of the weekend).

With the above in mind, I am going to set out this weekend to try and step up my roleplaying and see if I can do better. The leader of my group (Scrat, leader of the Valendian Knights of Peace) has a strong character identity and a good idea for a group identity (a disparate bunch of vagabonds an thugs, prepared to get our hands dirty so that other Lions don't have to). I think if we actually play up to this and make ourselves known, we would all enjoy the weekend more and feel less like we exist on the periphery of our faction.

I have some actual aims I would like to achieve this season, and the first of those would be to join up with the Healer's Guild, seeing as I am a healer. I think this might give me a chance to get to know people in character and expand my horizons. The second aim is to get out monstering some more: this means that for an hour or two I don't play my character but hand myself over to the plot team for use as an NPC body, most likely to get hacked to bits multiple times. I have often found this can be some of the most fun I have over the whole weekend and I feel like I should do more of it. The third aim is slightly more nebulous: it's to get my name known around the faction a little. I think that hanging around the centre of camp, rather than our own tents would help this one, so I may suggest it to our group. I may get none of these aims done, but at least I have some to work on.

The Valendian Knights of Peace: From Left to right are Scrat, Aurelian, Sable and.. dammit forgot George's IC name!

I hope that we get better weather tahn the reports are offering right now, and I plan to take some photos of the goings on, to do a post about them in the next couple of weeks. If anyone reads this and sees us in the field, then come say hi, there will be drinks in it for you I am sure! Enjoy your Bank Holiday weekends (if you are in the UK), I know I will.