Leaving Mundania

by Lizzie Stark

  Having a permanent camp changes the game. For one thing, set-up will be immensely easier—he won’t have to cart Knight Realms props, costumes, and decorations from campsite to campsite in the trailer. Each game will have a storage shed at its disposal, and cleanup at the end of an event should be a snap. Aside from logistical concerns, there’s huge potential for the permanence of the site to change things inside the game. Characters will be able to create makeshift shelters or draw sigils—symbols with in-game magical properties—in the woods that will persist over time, allowing the world to feel more genuine. James’s keen eye for decoration, his ability to build a palpable world for his players, will be enhanced and expanded, proof that at least for one man, at least in Knight Realms, dreams really do come true.

  5

  The Adventures of Portia Rom

  Portia Rom entered the inn with two gypsies she’d just met. She was new to town, an itinerant priest who had recently passed across the rift in search of new truths to write down in service to her god, Chronicler. The inn was barely full tonight; a handful of people lounged at a dozen wood tables illuminated by flickering candle light. Balthazar Yhatzi, one of her two new friends, ordered a bottle of wine from the bartender, and they passed it around as he told a variety of jokes. He wore a purple skull cap striped with silver, a burgundy vest over a loose blue shirt, and bells about his waist and wrists that jingled as he gestured. Portia remained largely quiet, hoping to blend in, but soon enough Balthazar drew her out, and she talked about her relationship to the god Chronicler, how she awoke one day to find herself sitting at a desk, ink-smudged, with a freshly completed manuscript she had no memory of writing sitting nearby.

  Suddenly, a cluster of goblins burst through two of the doors of the inn, pinioning the little party in between. Someone yelled “Goblins!” and Portia froze for a long moment before some instinct toward self-preservation gripped her. She grabbed her borrowed staff and dove under the table, her last glimpse of the room revealing a green-faced monster slashing at Balthazar’s back as he cried out in pain. Soon enough, a small horde of town guardsmen appeared, bristling with swords. They put an abrupt, grisly end to the goblins, then searched the corpses for items of value. Balthazar bled out on the table as his niece put her hands to his face and screamed for a healer.

  The incident had shaken Portia. Some combination of shock and adrenaline catapulted her into slightly hysterical laugher. Her dive under the table had been an instinctual reaction to danger, but what danger had she really faced? The goblins with swords were merely men in green masks armed with foam bats. The “wine” that had made the table “drunk” was nothing more than Kool-Aid in a green glass wine bottle.

  The candles illuminating the room were battery powered because this Boy Scout camp did not permit open flames inside buildings. Balthazar Yhatzi’s real name was Josh, and in real life he worked for a financial services company. Portia, crouched under the table, was me, an innocent writer wearing a borrowed medieval costume. Some things were real, though: I was grateful to Balthazar for talking to me that night, when I was new to town and felt alone. And when I dove for the ground, I felt real terror and surprise, coupled with delight, like some people feel watching ax murders at the theater.

  The genius of the goblin attack had been that in the moment the green-faced men came at me with spears, in that moment of shock and surprise, Portia’s goals and Lizzie’s goals had merged; we both had the instinctual human desire to move to safety. The fear I felt overcame my natural newbie urge to feel ridiculous; it shocked me out of myself and into the game. Unfortunately, once the moment was over, I reverted to feeling slightly silly.

  I had wanted to try a campaign-style boffer larp for a variety of reasons. On a surface level, the style of combat interested me. I’d talked to a number of larpers who preferred boffer combat to other forms of combat resolution on the grounds that it is more true to life. During a throw-down in the Avatar System, for example, players first draw cards to determine what order they’ll attack in, and then one at a time, each player and monster draws cards to determine the strength of the attack and then describes it verbally to everyone. It often took twenty minutes of real time to figure out the result of a fight that would have been over in seconds in the in-game world. In a boffer game, what you see is what you get, for the most part. If Elawyn hits you with her sword, she actually hits you with her sword and yells out what sort of damage she is doing. If someone hurls a fireball at you, they throw a small, biodegradable beanbag filled with birdseed at you, and if it hits you, they yell the spell effect. This speeds up combat, especially in large groups, and is more visually realistic.

  I figured that realistic surroundings would help me become a better role-player, since I’d be able to focus less on imagining the scenery and more on getting inside the head of my character. Many larpers prefer campaign games with multiple installments, because over long periods of time it’s possible to develop a robust character, one that becomes personally meaningful. Some campaign larpers told tales of the ultimate character-player meld, in which playing a character could yield a personal epiphany. A few even said that when they got the flow just right, for a brief moment they ceased to control their characters; instead, their characters controlled them. No wonder a great many larpers describe the hobby as the ultimate vacation. I wanted to experience that level of intensity, and as a self-conscious, slightly awkward role-player, I didn’t think I could achieve it at a convention.

  At first, it wasn’t easy to keep a straight face. I spent my first main mod laughing hysterically, half in fear and half at the sight of so many adults pretending to kill one another in the dark. The plot for my initial Knight Realms weekend concerned a super-powerful vampire named Pesmerga, and on Saturday night, the town, some fifty to seventy players, searched him out, traveling deep into a cavern with sentient walls—a tunnel that the GMs constructed out of garbage bags, lined with NPCs who put their boffer-wielding arms inside and smacked at us. The tunnel dead-ended into a largish cabin, which only a few of our number could fit into. The rest of us waited in the tunnel. I am told that the GMs executed a spectacular physical effect inside the cabin, making the ceiling rain blood using some tactful red lights and a poor, sweaty man who crouched in the rafters for hours and poured water down into a makeshift sprinkler system of PVC pipe, as our villain yelled, “I will make the walls rain blood.” Finally, some mystic ritual was activated, and for the sake of safety, the monster marshals called a time out, or “hold,” and everyone—all hundred of us, monsters and players—moved into a large clearing behind the cabin. And with everyone in position, “Three … two … one … lay on!” was called, and the chaotic battle began. A tall guy dressed in rags wildly swung an imitation dinosaur bone while yelling threats in a loud, guttural voice. Legions of painted zombies oozed from the trees near the border of the clearing and attacked. A man with blood around his mouth used some skill that allowed him to cut a bunch of us down with his sword at once. I dropped to the cold, leafy ground and began my death count, and someone touched my shoulder, whispered a few words, and cast a healing spell that had Portia back up. I took more care after that, but the monsters were everywhere in the darkness. Tens of people lay on the ground, dead or awaiting a healer, and dozens more were embroiled in pockets of fighting around the clearing. It was difficult to know who was a friend and who was a foe. The air filled with cries of “Four damage!” “Break limb!” “Dodge!” and the dull thud of boffers against flesh and shields was all around me. I periodically stopped to watch the fight, thinking that this was ridiculous, all these grown men and women in chain mail or other armor underneath their cloaks. And just as this thought would occur, some shadow would flicker at the town’s flanks, or right behind me would appear some monster out for Portia’s blood, and suddenly, a flash of genuine fear would come over me, and I’d flee, laughing hysterically because although it only was make-believe, it was still frightful. It was terrifying, delightful, and ridiculous all at t
he same time.

  That evening, the town was hopelessly outclassed by the monsters, and we fled from the baddies, leaving some of our own to die on the “cave” floor in what was really a small clearing in a forest in Pennsylvania.

  Over time, I adjusted to the newness of the experience. I stopped running into the inn shrieking whenever I saw a goblin, to the tired sighs of older, jaded players. I expected knife-wielding assassins to come at me in the woods at night and consequently never walked anywhere by myself. I learned some of the lingo, including the words players used to refer to out-of-game items in an in-game way. Since cars didn’t exist in Travance, if we saw them we called them “caravans”; if someone had a cell phone out, a frowned-upon practice, we’d talk about it as a strange device of gnomish design. In-game, the now-extinct gnomes had been tinkers of unparalleled ability. No one went to their NPC shift, they went to do “baronial paperwork,” and if someone cast a protective spell on you, they’d ask for your “soul,” your character card, to record the benefit. I acquired a winter and a summer costume, made to my measurements by other players in the game, and it no longer seemed odd to see, for example, the thirty-six-year-old Geoffrey Schaller running around in purple breeches and jingling with gypsy bells as Carlos. I became immune to large-bosomed women squeezed into corsets, to men in kilts who spoke with Scottish accents of varying authenticity, to people wearing satyr horns, to women dressed as cats, and to portly ogres who made terse jokes with their single-word sentences. I became so used to the idea of adults in costumes that it actually unnerved me to see these people in their street clothes.

  The older players were the first ones to truly welcome me to Travance. According to conventional wisdom on the larp scene, the hobby draws participants of all ages but has a demographic hole among players in their thirties. Essentially, kids grow up playing and play until they get married or have kids or some other real-life thing happens to draw them away from the scene. Those players aren’t lost forever, though. Many return after their kids are old enough to attend events. At Knight Realms, the demographic is a little bit different. A large group of players began playing the game in their teens and are now in their early to mid-twenties. Some of them have dated one another, and a few have gotten married. This group is devoted to the game they came up in. One long-time player married a woman who wasn’t a gamer on a weekend that coincided with a Knight Realms game. He, some of his groomsmen, and a number of wedding guests spent Friday night, the night before the wedding, playing the game.

  A number of older players have an unofficial mission of adopting people who are new to town. Most prominently there was Geoff Schaller, a long-time larper who was in his late thirties. Whenever other players wanted to prove to me that larpers weren’t nerds living in their parents’ basements, they’d point to Geoff as their poster boy. He had entered Cornell as an electrical engineering major but graduated with a degree in theater arts. Geoff had been a gamer and a larper for more than two decades and joined Knight Realms in 2001. He was completely immersed in the gaming community. He helped Double Exposure put on their yearly conventions. He had larper roommates who played the Avatar System, a game in which he used to be more active, and a larper girlfriend, Diane, who played Avatar and Knight Realms and who had been a second mother to Gene and Renny Stern in their early years at Lunacon, where she had run the anime room. Geoff wore his profession proudly. He held a lucrative job as a systems administrator at a small hedge fund in Manhattan and used his disposable income to buy costuming the way a golf hobbyist might buy fancy clubs or a cooking enthusiast might spring for all-copper cookware. If Geoff has a spare grand burning a hole in his pocket, he buys custom-made latex weapons or a new suit of armor. During college, Geoff had specialized in costuming, and now he was famous for his characters’ garb, from Carlos’s swishy purple outfit to the elven smith Gideon’s scale leather armor and glow-in-the-dark shield to the puma-like facial prosthesis he wore as Garrun, who was a member of the Jaxurian (great-cat) race. Part of what attracted Geoff to larp was its creative energy. Knight Realms allowed him to practice his old costuming skills and to step outside of himself to play, for example, the flamboyant gypsy Carlos. He got a rush from playing a character in the same way some people get a rush from watching an action film. Larp fed his creativity of dress and of spirit.

  However, while Geoff loved Knight Realms as a creative outlet, that attraction paled in comparison to the friendships he formed within the larp community over his many years of involvement. These larpers were his people, and the bonds he’d formed with them over the years ran so deep that the group felt more like family than like friends to him.

  Aside from his costuming, Geoff was known for his service to the game. Out-of-game, he served as Knight Realms’ technical officer, putting his IT knowledge to work creating and maintaining the game website. In-game, his characters always performed some service to other players—Carlos the gypsy read fortunes for people, while Gideon, as a smith, constantly fixed weapons broken during battle. When I was new, he helped me “roll up” Portia—a character-creation term derived from Dungeons & Dragons but used in many larps and other role-playing games. In Dungeons & Dragons, new players roll up their characters by rolling a set of dice to determine starting character attributes. At Knight Realms, of course, there are no dice. New players start with ten build points, which they can use to buy skills before the game starts. On Geoff’s advice, I put a point in staff-fighting, so that I could wield a boffer, some points in literacy, so my character would be able to read and write in the common tongue, and gave myself a basic healing prayer and a few extra career points so I’d be able to cast it repeatedly. Earlier, Geoff had suggested I play a priest of Chronicler, the god of truth and knowledge, since Chronicler’s faithful are supposed to follow people around and write things down, which would provide a convenient camouflage. He arranged for me to sleep in a cabin that had electricity, in case I should want to plug in my computer to write. He lent me a lovely latex staff and an air mattress with an electric pump, and he arranged for me to borrow Renaissance dress from Avie of Avatar fame. Before the game began, he gave me a fancy blank notebook covered in brown paper and decorated with straw so my character would have a period-looking journal to write in. In-game, his character Carlos taught me how to use my boffer to prevent attack, introduced me to a variety of players, and most importantly, let me hang out with him when I was new and frightened and didn’t know anybody.

  Early on in my days of Knight Realms, perhaps the oldest player in the game, Charlie Spiegel, fifty-six, a retired entrepreneur and game designer, adopted me as well. He played Father Edwin, a priest of Valos, the god of justice and head of the pantheon of good gods. Father Edwin wore a long, crinkled white shirt, a gold-patterned vest, and numerous rings, necklaces, and bracelets. Charlie often said that since it wasn’t socially acceptable for him to wear jewelry in real life, he wore it in-game. Charlie and Edwin were both bald and had puffballs of gray beards on their chins. They each exhibited a streak of wicked humor and loved to pontificate. I was a willing listener. As I listened, the bond between our characters grew, and it was from Edwin that Portia learned how to be a proper priest. One lesson in particular sticks out for me. I wanted to learn the skill “willpower,” a useful mental defense, so I sought out Edwin, who had the skill “willpower” and the skill “teach,” to be my teacher. We role-played for nearly half an hour. As Edwin pointed out, having willpower meant saying “no” to whatever one had a weakness for. For some people, it was money; for others, chocolate. He asked Portia what her weakness was, and I explained to Edwin that my drunk, murderous husband, who might be searching for me at this very minute, still held allure for me. “I suppose my weakness is dangerous men,” I said. He told me that if he was to teach me willpower, I’d have to get rid of that husband.

  We debated for several minutes until I eventually agreed to divorce my husband, thus exercising willpower in the face of Portia’s most compelling temptation. Edwin prom
ised to petition the leader of the church of Valos for a divorce on my behalf. It was a poignant moment for my character, giving up that tie to the past, and after the event we corresponded as Portia and Edwin electronically through the game’s forums and through e-mail. Finally, Charlie asked for my address, and a few days later I was surprised and delighted to find an envelope in my mailbox containing a handwritten piece of parchment sealed with red wax ending my “marriage.” As with any kind of pretend, having a real prop can make things seem so much cooler. Charlie had talked with James to make this happen for me; they invented the divorce language, and Charlie drew up the document and sent it. Over time, as Portia cemented her place in town, Charlie and I encountered each other in-game less and less frequently. He adopted other young characters and gave them the gold, protection, and items that I no longer needed.

  For me, the perennial problem at Knight Realms was what to do during the game. Sure, action continually erupted over the course of a weekend. After the first fifty times I got jumped by NPCs while walking around the camp, that genuine fear and adrenaline-generating surprise stopped having its effect. I was uninterested in monsters and mods that ended in a brawl. I learned quite early on that I didn’t really enjoy fighting with a boffer and that Portia was a social character, not a sword jockey. In fact, one of the tenets of her religion was to “avoid interfering with the course of history,” which didn’t exactly jive with fighting in battles. This meant that I would have to spend most of my time actually interacting with other characters and having conversations with them, a duty that seemed dreary and difficult at first, just as it had at DEXCON when Verva Malone had made anxious cocktail chatter. I simply didn’t know what to say, and I wasn’t well versed enough in the in-game world to make conversation about the local nobility or the amazing Jaxurian hot chocolate being served in the inn. Plus, talking about such things seemed silly if not downright embarrassing, until I realized that, in fact, everyone else was in-character and I would seem silly or embarrass myself if I did not play along. Several developments helped me overcome this self-conscious feeling.