Setting up a common armoury or newbie stash or however you call it.

At a certain point, I should say above a certain number of people - a larp group grows beyond the point where you know everybody and can pay attention to everybody. There would also be a sort of population boom - the bigger it is, the more folks will start coming.

Now what I'm going to argue about is the benefits of setting up a common armory with spare kits for the new guys. Lets be reasonable most of them start with nothing. You don't want folks with jeans and T-shirts and we've grown beyond the point where everybody is everyone's friend who'd teach him how to craft his stuff. Not to mention there are a lot more new guys so time and money and effort becomes an issue. A lot of groups have loaner kits - just a sword and(maybe) a tabard or tunic. I'll argue about taking this a bit further. Let's talk about setting a common armory.

  And by Armory, I don't mean just clothes and some weapons - I mean everything! Weapons, clothes, armor, shields and basic equipment. Here in Sofia, I keep the main common armory and it occupies much of the attic. Yes yes, the person dealing with it will need space. He will also need some help, at least in the start - be it with extra hands or money or old equipment nobody needs(for now). 

What are the cons? Well, its time consuming and definitely a resource drain. Often the task is not appreciated by others as well. Keep in mind to always remind people that you are not a charity or a given benefit.


What are the benefits now? They come three-fold.

1st - much less immersion breaking jeans and T-shirts in games.Even new guys will be able to blend in easily and play without gear related limitations from the start.
2nd - the above mentioned fact will keep a lot of people in the hobby, that would otherwise just give up and go before they pick up the basics. By allowing them to try out stuff for free - they can decide exactly what they want to play and how to equip themselves.
3rd The extra gear does not have to be newbie only. For example the tolkien game from the previous post.

By providing equipment from the common armoury - I made sure that the Gondorian tower guard actually looked like god damn Tower Guard from Minas Tirith.

Our orcs(plenty of first timers among them) looked like proper orcs! Yes I used up a lot of scrap leather and canvas and bones but its ok.

If necessary I could have equipped a few more gents. The point is that the spare kit does not have to be junk. It can be good quality stuff that can be used by game organizers when they need to give a faction the look that it requires so that they are believable.

One thing I don't advice is giving away consumable items arrows - arrows are lost way too easy by inexperienced archers.

First time organiser

Yep, I lost my game master virginity. For the first time I organized an event mostly by myself.

1 day gig, about 60 participants in total. Lord of the Rings related battle game, depicting the battle on the Fields of Celebrant.

 

The game also had two distinctive features - first time we got proper artillery - namely a small balistae and headcam footage.

Anyway, few tips I can give, based on my experience.

1 - always have backups for important roles. The great khan of the easterlings disappeared without warning. That gave me quite the problems.

2- Don't expect people to read up on what they are supposed to do. You will have to explain the same stuff 3-4 times. Its best to have some printed lore lists for the job.

3- Have plan C for logistics just in case.

4- Actual terrain preparation involving proper wooden barricades is not so hard - especially if you are in a forest and finding fallen trees is easy. Its much better than "pretend its a stone wall fishing cord".


Somehow the game went well. Could be better of course. Definitely got some experience for later.

Bit of a problem

My father died this Saturday.

Completely unexpected. I m a fresh graduate, still unemployed. If you ever considered sending me a few bucks over PayPal, for all the work I've done on this blog, now is a damn good moment.
I will continue to update it every now and then.

I made myself an Etsy shop

Yep. Time to sell a few things away.


Namely the minis since big items are expensive to deliver(from Bulgaria that is. Strangely enough, delivery rates TO Bulgaria are much lower)


http://www.etsy.com/shop/ShashMaille?ref=l2-shopheader-name

Just a few things there - will add more as time progresses. DHL and UPS cost ridicilous sums for even the smallest of packages so only via postal service.

So Knights of Badassom is out...

Aaaand its rather dumb actually.


Yeah shoot me now  for this blasphemy. Shoot me twice for pirating it. Not that I care or it will help ;) 

Anyway, I don't know what the movie was like in its original form. Rumour has it that some producer guy basically edited the whole thing into its current form.

The current form is classic summer teen horror with larping puns included. Yep.

The ending is just lee-ron-dickilous too but so is most if it. Could be worse I guess but not by much.

Rapid fire archery tutorial

1 year later I finally did a tutorial. Hopefully its slow enough to be self explanatory. Now no need to rush you'd need couple of months of practice to get anywhere. Get the book Saracen Archery too, its nice to have for the illustrations.

I was hoping to do some more vids that day - cantabrian circle and shower shooting - i can do 3 arrows in the air before the 1st hits the ground,  quite willing to try for 4, but all the vids we did are of poor quality.

Nevermind - hopefully this will be for the benefit of larp archers world wide.