Musings: the Gathering ;)

Wow, what a busy time since my last post!

In the time since I last posted I went along to the Gathering in Spondon with my shiny new upgraded healer character Aurelian. He was the first character I had ever upgraded under the Lorien Trust system and was hoping to show off my awesome new healing abilities to help keep my group alive. This desire lasted about 3 hours, before being hacked down whilst on a rescue mission at our faction gate, dragged away and promptly killed. I knew I shouldn't have spent my OSPs! So with the untimely demise of Aurelian, it was time to get thinking of a new character sharpish.

I didn't want to repeat what i had already done (a heavy armour healer) and didn't wish to reuse the kit from the character, as to me, it would be too similar (not that I am recognisable in the Lions faction). So I decided to settle on a mage: enter stage right Pertinax: mage of awesome cosmic power. In a system like the LT system I always shied away from playing a mage, as it seemed to me that I would blow through all my (underwhelming) spells and be usefulness for the rest of the day. I can safely say (after 3 days of playing him) that this is not the case. i don't think i have ever enjoyed a LARP character so much. The tactical challenge of playing such a fragile character made for interesting fights, and my spells were far from underwhelming. The decision of what spell to use when is a lot of fun, and in many different situations, I felt I could have a decent impact on the fight. The highlight had to be stopping a member of the undead continuing his chant of wasting with a quick mute spell, thus saving his victim's life. That felt good!

This year's Gathering was probably the most enjoyable event I have been to. I think a combination of having more players (including a new one in the form of Anna's rogue type character), playing a character I really clicked with (despite my healer's death), and actually starting to do things as a group, have all combined to make it feel like we mattered as a group and that the event was a hit. Even leaving early on the Monday due to awful weather didn't dampen this feeling. Our group acquired it's first ever magic weapon (at a very reasonable price, thanks Ved!), and we were a useful and cohesive unit of the battlefield in both the set piece and the monster skirmishes. Our unit went along onto the plane of unlife on the Saturday morning, getting involved in some of the Lions plot of getting thoroughly beaten (but living). It was a fantastic event and I have come back with a renewed sense of keen for LARP and fantasy roleplaying. It was such a good event I only got one hand of Magic in!

The subsequent weekend has been taken up moving home to the West Midlands. I am now set up to work from home, and commute, meaning that I no longer have to reside in a flat on my own 5 days a week. What this means for gaming is hopefully a better focus on spending time writing/preparing for sessions and more chances to play. I got another session of Temple of Elemental Evil in this weekend and plans are afoot to get a second regular game on the go. Hopefully in my next post I should be able to provide more details on one or the other of these things.

Busy moving and Gathering

Sorry for the lack of updates in the last week or so. I have been busy arranging my move back to the Midlands, packing up books and furniture, as well as arranging the house ready for when I get back and our new arrival shows up in a couple of months time!

This has meant that not only have I not had chance to write my usual blog posts, I have also not had the chance to play much, either table-top roleplaying or Magic: the Gathering. However, with moving back at the end of next week, and being able to meet up with my gaming group more regularly I should soon have plenty of things to write about.

Coming up this weekend is the Lorien Trust's Gathering (not to be confused with MtG). This is the biggest event in the LT's calendar and I for one am really looking forward to getting back to Erdreja, along with the rest of the VKP. It looks like we may have a fifth member for this event which is great news (fingers crossed there Anna!), and our glorious leader Scrat should hopefully be full of both keen and command this event. On top of the usual excitement for a LARP event, I am extra excited as this will be the first time I have ever gone to an event having spent OSPs (the systems experience points) on my character. I should go from an adequate healer to one who is much more useful at both healing and holding my own in battle, and repairing hits to body and armour alike. If I can find some nifty new bits to add to my kit that will be even better!

The VKP.... on a dry day! Octavian is hiding behind our glorious leader, Scrat...

One of the issues we have with LARPing weekend events is the ever present threat of bad weather. However we are pretty lucky as a group, as we are only about 15 miles from the site so if things get too rough we can retire to our home town and get dry. This leaves us with what to do whilst the inclement weather gets it's self gone. The obvious answer? More gaming of course! Last time around, we got one day rained off so went home and played a session of Return to the Temple of Elemental Evil in Pathfinder; this time around I have a back up plan which consists of us going old school. My recent purchase of Twilight 2000 from RPG Now has meant we have a bit of a build up in enthusiasm for playing it, so if we get bad weather then I hope to get some characters rolled up and start exploring the landscape of post-WWIII Poland. Along with that I am sure there will be plenty of hands of MtG to test some of my decks with, and general beer to be drunk, friends to be chatted with and all the other fun LARP brings with it.

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.