Patrik´s Blog, Part 5: 2021
Hey, my friends! It’s been a while. Lately I found myself not having much energy to do stuff. Depression and shit, you know… I postponed my summaries so much, I fell several months behind. Well, what the heck, let’s do it now! :-)
LARP SUMMARY FOR MAY
In May I played two larps.
First one is named Qualia – an online larp about AI and that philosophy about “AI and life”. I really liked it! Not just because I studied AI at the uni, but because I generally like the topic and like to think about it, ‘cause I think it is one of those difficult ones. And also because there are not so many people who’d like to talk about it with me IRL and I had a whole larp of people, where I could focus my stream of thoughts about the topic! MUHAHAHA… ehm. I also think it uses the online format pretty damn well. Most of the online larps I played had the online format just because we couldn’t meet in person, so they moved the idea online. But this one was built around the online world and it wouldn’t work offline. I played a data mining engineer and I think it was the very best character for me in the game.
Second larp was Projekt Chiron. It is a Shadowrun-like larp that has been running for some time and I have a spoiled rich child hacker character in there, but this time, I played as a random npc with an airsoft gun. And because I really like to shoot people, I enjoyed it! It was outside (and in one underground bunker), so it was the first one played in person this year.
LARP SUMMARY FOR JUNE
June – I helped to run one larp called Perfect Strangers. About that one I wrote before, so just quick sum up: a group of friends with their husbands and wifes gather for dinner together and someone has a brilliant idea – they will read aloud all the messages that come to anyone there. What could go wrong, right? :-)
LARP SUMMARY FOR SUMMER
July and August – I played one larp, but…
Same as last year, I was at a two weeks long event called “Summer Camps” that organize our group Prague by Night, but where I just come like a regular child. It’s focus is mainly for teen people, but I am not the oldest “child” being there anyway. In those two weeks, you can be part of a whole bunch of activities and some of those are larps. And the main larp runs almost every day (for like 4 hours a day). This time the theme was Abarat – based upon the children’s books written by a gore horror writer. No kidding. The world is an unusual fantasy setting, where you can be practically anybody. There were people, who played for example a reflection on the water surface, a mushroom, a necromant and his creation, some kind of sneak people (?), crab-like pirate and for example in the case of my in-game wife – some water grass (I don’t know, don’t ask me). I played something like a wood-pixie, who is a journalist. There were magic “rap battles”, a lighthouse lit in fire (literally), a statue that exploded (literally), a lot of walking through woods, a lot of softened violence and also negotiation and forming of a new kingdom. You know, your usual larp stuff.
I will return to regularly posting these, I have already few plans for larps. Let’s hope the covid thing gets better and it won’t be canceled. I mean – I hope no more lives won’t be lost and then that the larps won’t be canceled, just to be clear.
Take care and hopefully see you all soon!
LARP SUMMARY FOR September
In September, I participated in two or three larps. Why the “or”? First – two larps were two runs of the same chamber larp and second – most of the other larp was during October already. BUT the workshops started still in September, so that counts! And for October, there are more larps I’m gonna attend.
So the first (two) were Perfect Strangers where I helped to run it as a NPC. I wrote about it several times already, so just quickly: a bunch of friends gather for dinner and they play a game, where they have to read aloud all messages that will come to them. What could go wrong, right? Inspired by the movie of the same name.
The other (third?) one was Sunday Ends Too Soon which is about people in a boarding house for two days. Most of them are artists or are somehow connected to art. It is set in the USA in 1955 and the themes are conservatism vs. liberalism, sexual orientations, “good and bad art” and also about people co-working or being trapped by the regime of the time. I played it for the second time, this time I played a different kind of character than an artist (who I played previously) and I loved the game once again, because I’ve got a totally different experience than last time. I had one of the coolest larp romances I’ve ever played on any larp! And I also played a sound engineer with a simple, but real mixing console and old tapes to record and that was so cool! I’d love to record and play with the sound even more, but the other people wanted to play their storylines and such…
Anyway, it is a well written larp with a lot of art. Cool like hell!
And that will be for this time. Have a nice day and wish you to also have an opportunity to play some larp after the apocalypse!
LARP SUMMARY FOR October
I played two larps in October. And one more I just visited – this I’ll explain in the end! :-)
One of the larps I played is called The Legend of Blackhill and it’s theme is “weird western tales”. So, a western with witches, zombies, monster hunters and also with the gold diggers and native tribes etc. It is played in a western town that the owners constantly build and it is a pretty awesome location.
I played a native american from a Lacota tribe, who lives and hunts with white people and I loved it! First – there were NPCs, who kinda reenact the life of the native tribes IRL and all my conversations and play with them was just awesome! And my co-players were great as well. My game was about responsibility, duality of life between wilderness and civilization, old legends (that may come alive) etc.
The second larp I played is called the Shards and it is an urban fantasy larp played in Prague. This was the second run in the continuous chronicles and the main theme is uncovering the world behind the world one. Meaning discovering there is magic, ghosts, fairies and so on and so on. I play a catholic priest, who is challenged in his beliefs. Partly because of all of those weird things happening, but mainly because the game gives me moral challenges. When I was creating the character, I thought, it could be interesting to play something like this. And I was right :-).
So – about the third one. There is a larp called the Midnight Circus and is based on that WoD one. I explained in some past years, but let’s be honest, who’d remember it, right? :-) The main characteristic is that there are three types of participants. First – there are the people from the circus, who transform a youth center to a circus for a weekend. They play clowns, seers, fortune tellers, build a haunted path to go through, there is a tearoom with homemade cakes and there are many more things. Then there are people from the public that go to visit the circus who do not need to know anything about any larp, they just go there to enjoy their time there and to see a theatre show and fireshow at the Saturday evening. The circus people are kinda NPCs in a larp for 6 players (a group of 5 and one solo player) with their own stories that continue through all the years that the circus is played (idk how much… 15 or so years? Can someone tell me? :-)). During the day, the players can normally visit the circus and enjoy all the stuff as the next guy, but they have their stories and stuff to do in the circus and after the shows end and the circus closes for the public, the real and spooky game only for players and circus people begins at full.
I already played the larp and I like to go there and visit the circus as a random person, but I more or less know who is who and it is pretty fun to play along anyway. And one of my favourite things to do is to guess who the players this year are.
That is a lot of words to say that I did not really play a larp, right? :-)
LARP SUMMARY FOR November
I played one larp – Akkon 1291. The setting is the end of crusades, when the last city of the crusaders is besieged by the Mamluks and the situation seems to be hopeless.
As some of you may know, I like history, the medieval ages and most of all – the crusades (especially the time about the so-called Third Crusade – the end of the 12th century. I once started to make a larp from this time period with a friend, but we never finished it. I remade it as a P&P RPG and played it once. I may run the game again with enough peer pressure :-)). So, it was no brainer I signed for this game. I have got the role of Guillaume de Beaujeu, the head of the Poor Fellow-Soldiers of Christ and of the Temple of Solomon. Yeah, that’s right – I played the grandmaster of the Knights Templar.
I like historic games, especially in a castle and I could wear a knight costume, a sword and a shield, play high politics, faith and fence with some saracens. Costumes were provided by the organizers and all looked just amazing. To be fair, the game needs some more work on the content of the characters, but my game was fine (thanks for having a high ranked status, which allows you to do a lot of things) and as I said, I played a friking Templar grandmaster. One of my larp dreams came true! :-)
LARP SUMMARY FOR the year 2021
I have been involved in 10 larps last year.
In 8 larps, I have been a player.
In one NPC (in three runs).
And In one I have been a random visitor :-).
Three of those 8 were online larps, one inside a computer game, one pretended like it was not online.
One larp was international.
Among the roles I played (cannot list all of them because of spoilers sadly) were catholic priest, sound technician, stranded scientist, mad vampire, big data analyst, native american or templar knight.
This was the first year in past (I believe) 8, when I did not organise any larp! :-o This year, I will do some and I already have some plans for the next one, so it was probably the only pause for quite a time in future.
One last thing – I want to make an online meeting during February, where we can talk larps and stuff. There are tons of people I have not seen in years already! So, if you are interested, leave me a message or comment and I will invite you, when the event is made. Do you think we do not know each other well enough? Oh, in that case – I would be especially happy if you could join, as it could be an opportunity to get to know each other better!
Cover photo: Michaela Portychová, Zachytit ten moment
