#larpreview

Disclaimer: as per all larp reviews, my focus is on the positive.  I will talk primarily on things i liked, but will offer one strong point of criticism.  In addition, expect numerous side conversations where I go entirely off track from the discussion.

Summation for Anyone Who Doesn’t Like Reading

Dead Legends is a weird west larp.  It is also the best larp I’ve been to in a very long time and everyone should get out to it as soon as biologically possible.  

The Awesome

The Rules

Rules matter.  Dead Legends rules fill a slim volume; 52 dense pages, which is like a pamphlet when it comes to american campaign larp rules.  This is to the advantage of the game they are trying to create.  There are hard caps, and low health totals, which makes fighting brutal and deadly, but never unfair.  Every time a fight breaks out, survival always seems like a close thing. 

In most games, I find myself hating lore skills, they tend to be vague and largely useless, but here the game employs a research system which puts the lores to a hard and specific use.  I spent a fair amount of time with my fellow researchers trying to unravel mysteries.  We were able to put questions directly to the one with the knowledge, and that knowledge produced tangible results.

Lastly, I loved that about a third of the game carried no weapon other than their wits.  Most larps penalize this sort of play style, but here it felt natural that many people simply don’t walk around the weird west carrying weapons.

The Campsite

Camp Furnace Hills, about 30 minutes north of Lancaster, might be the best overall larp camp I’ve ever been to.  There is plenty of space.  The buildings are all well taken care of (which is something I’ve literally never seen at a camp), and most of them have electricity.  The entire camp feels like something that someone puts a lot of time into, making certain that it is not just running on life support, but is actively tended, repaired, maintained, and improved upon.  

As a larp owner, there is nothing that made me quite so jealous as the fitness of camp.  There were so many open spaces, so many sites to set up interesting encounters.  Well tended trails.  And everything fits to make this weird west setting sing.

I must kill the larp owners and take their camp.  It is the only way.

THE ONLY WAY

Coming in to Town

As a new player, we started off in a far flung part of the camp.  We assembled right out side the “train station”, where we were met by a grossly incompetent guide, who lead us, after a series of bizarre twists and turns, to an abandoned trade post.  There we heard the crazed shouts of a man who had trapped himself inside a building.  While others tried to treat with the man, I looked around for anything of value, and clues as to why this place was empty.  

Minutes later, a lone figure comes stumbling out of the darkness.  We try to speak to the man, but he seems to be bent on wordlessly tearing us limb from limb.  And his FACE...that is not the face of a living man, but of one who has spent weeks in the grave.  

Our group was not well armed.  The fight against this one GRAVE WALKER, was a battle for our lives...then more started to appear, from all directions.  I barricaded myself inside a building, but found myself trapped inside, unable to get out. 

After several tense minutes my companions distracted the grave walkers long enough for me to sneak out the back...but the distraction they provided was not proof agains the undead.  As gathered my bravery to leap across a small gorge, one of their number tore into me with its bone claws.  

When I came to I was being treated by another of my traveling companions...but still the grave walkers surrounded us.  There was no way out for us but to run and pray.

Then the dark figure of a pale woman, dressed in black with a black veil, came to our aid.  By the light of her lantern we were saved.  She guided us to the settlement, and bid us safe travels.  

This set the tone for everything that was to follow and was an incredible introduction into the game.

The Oubliette 

Late friday night, we started to hear rumors of a strange flickering light that drew people away to another realm.  I played a writer with a keen interest in such things, and made my way toward the disturbance...

There I was witness to one of the coolest mod set ups ever.  Tunneling laser and a fog machine was used to represent the entrance to the other world.  Inside everything was lit by blacklight.  Book pages were strewn across the ground, and blind screaming figured stumbled about, attracted by sound and smell.  

All of this was done in a space that serves, during the summer, as a large shower facility for the pool, but such was the lighting and set dressing that I didn’t even realize that until the next day.

The Lantern

I spent 2 hours roleplaying with a lantern.  This sounds really lame on paper...and is a sort of...you had to be there experience.  But trust me, lantern RP is A+.

Death Around Every Turn

There were so many times that made me really feel like we were just holding on for dear life.  So many times when I was rushing into or out of a place because I was just a writer with a dagger who was completely out of my league.  

It was fun to be afraid at a larp.  It was something I had not experienced in a very long time.  It was something that I dearly missed.  

The Not So Awesome

I started off by praising the rules, but one aspect of the rules, or something that the rules have allowed to happen, took me out of the experience at some point on Saturday night.   Let me explain by example...then I will get into details. If you are running a Star Wars game, there is a general principle that either everyone is a Jedi, or no one can be a Jedi.  Jedi are terribly overpowered in comparison to everything else in the Star Wars universe, so it is difficult to impossible to balance them for player use without changing fundamental aspects of the Jedi.   Dead Legends has something that skews toward this.  There is a somewhat open ended skill in the game called Dabbler.  It allows you to use magic to a limited degree.  There are all sorts of downsides of picking up Dabbler which offset some of the benefits...but don’t really offset the benefits enough to matter.   Dabbler allows you insight into things that no one else can touch.  It gives you powers that no one else can easily attain.  The downsides of Dabbler, are madness and a opening yourself up to the darker more secretive aspects of the gameworld...but these downsides are their own benefit.  They give the player more to do, more to work with, and provide more explicit roleplay opportunities.  They are downsides only because they are negative from a gameworld perspective...but are in general just fun and interesting from a roleplay perspective.  

Having Dabbler more or less turned one PC into the main character for a large portion of Saturday night.  He was the one person who seemingly (true or not) had to be there for everything to play out, it appeared as though without him, there was simply no way for us to defeat the big bad of the weekend.   The problem with Dabbler might not exist if there was something like it in other aspects of the rules, something that was available for people who weren’t playing Academic characters.  Dabbler ends up feeling too much Jedi.  

I went into the weekend thinking that Dabbler was never something I’d shoot for, and came out feeling like if I didn’t shoot for it, I was playing wrong.  

The Other Stuff

I’m glad I picked the right character to play this time around.  I played something that gave me access to the gameworld.  I was a writer with a background in the occult, who came to research material for his upcoming novel.  This gave me agency, gave me permission and reason to speak to people, to get involved, and to ask questions.  

And it was nice to have an excuse to wear my big faux fur coat at a larp.  

A Conclusion!

Dead Legends is a new larp with a lot of good ideas, most of which are well executed.  It is a game that cares about production value, for set dressing, for roleplay, and commitment to staying in character.  It also shares the sensibilities and values I consider fundamental to a modern larp, including rules for removing yourself from scenes that might push a bit too hard, rules for active consent.  All of it part of the fundamental culture of Dead Legends.   It is my hope that Dead Legends grows and becomes a larping institution, and sets a strong standard for what American Larping can be.