How To Survive A LARP

I was serious and firm.

Once we start to advance, don’t break away and stick with me.

Where I move, you move, and if you are unsure of what to do stick closer to me.

The field was so large and full of players we didn’t even hear the starting horn, we only knew as the lines of players on our side put on the helmets, raised their shields and started marching to the center.

Despite my instructions two of them started to pull ahead, started to get pulled into the push and I had to yell out and almost physically pull them back.

They were not new to the game, but they were new to the scale of such a game.

With this many players you were fighting both an opponent and the press of the crowd.

If I tried to explain it to them, they wouldn’t’ listen, thinking their previous LARP experience had any value here on this field.

It didn’t.

Nothing prepares you for the sheer numbers.

The best I could do was navigate them through the first battle, keep them alive and hope that experience leads to an awareness.

I controlled the tempo, and I made sure we were not the first to crash in, you never want to cash in first, and either get killed in the game, or gas out and get killed shortly after that.

You can’t help the team if you are dead.

I tried to keep them around me so I could call things out to watch out for, but when two of the team broke the circle and ran ahead, I had to let them go.

To risk the others, I was in charge of for them was not a viable trade.

I tried to shield those in the circle with me from not only the other side, but our own side, who are equally as deadly, and often more-so.

The threat of the opposing team is easy to see, colors, armor, attackers and defenders.

It's the people on your team fighting that don’t know how to swing a pole arm without missing and hitting a team member. It's the people on your team who draw a sword back to strike and wind up hitting a teammate behind them. It's the people on your team firing bows and crossbows with no thought of who might be behind the intended target when they miss.

The lesson that I was trying to transmit in that first battle is that you are not just fighting the other side, you are also fighting the chaos of your own side.