Ever dreamed of combining your passion for role playing and board games with a Caribbean cruise?
- Gamer Adventures began as a experiment about taking games on vacation. It has developed into a full-service travel agency that caters to gamers and their families, says Kimberly Maita at Gamer Adventures.
– At this time, we are organizing 3 to 4 cruises per year in addition to land tours.
Web: Game Adventures
Article by Ole Peder Giæver
The competition invited Belarusian game authors to contribute short, re-playable larps discussing human rights and society. The best games will be played at the international larp festival Grenselandet 2011 in Oslo 28-29 October. Hosted by Laivfabrikken and Fantasiforbundet.
The winner will be announced after the jury has played the games at a larp festival in Minsk later this year.
Web: Grenselandet 2011 & Larpwriter Challenge
Article by Ole Peder Giæver
Larpweekend is an international chamber larp festival in Brno, Czech Republic. Its eight volume is going to take place on October 27th-30th and you can expect a wide range of games hosted in Czech or English from both local and foreign organizers.
This year, you can look forward to several new games including The Rocker, a game about a rock band behind the stage, and a still unnamed game about pirates and treasures with a spark of humour.
Web: Court of Moravia & Facebook
Photo: Court of Moravia
Article by Ole Peder Giæver
Rød oktober (Red October) is a larp about the Norwegian Maoist party AKP(m-l) in the 1970s. The players will assume the roles of activists on a party gathering at a secret location somewhere in Norway.
- We hope to use this larp both to explore the historical phenomenon of AKP(m-l) and the shaping of consciousness and ideology in tight-knit groups, and generally to have fun, says Even Tømte, one of the organizers.
The Maoists movement in Norway grew out of the broader youth rebellion of the 1960s, and probably was the best organized and most politically rigid of the lot. While they never got a significant political following, they exerted an influence far beyond their actual numbers, perhaps particularly in cultural life. This made them not just a fringe group, but a quite important phenomenon in post-war Norwegian history.
– Recent Norwegian history is obviously the most important source of inspiration for us. The organizers come from different political backgrounds, but all of us have worked for the revolution at some point in our lives, and some of us perhaps still do. Exploring conflicts and dynamics on the left, the idea of revolution and the seductive call of revolutionary ideology are to varying degrees also connected to our own personal experiences, says Tømte.
Played primarily in the Norwegian. 21-23 October, near Oslo.
Web: Rød Oktober (In Norwegian, English with Google Translate).
Illustration: Chinese Posters
Article by Ole Peder Giæver
Keep your eyes out for the tentatively-titled Leaving Mundania: Inside the Transformative World of Live Action Role Playing Games, American journalist Lizzie Stark’s account of the stateside larp scene. The book, which is aimed at a mainstream audience, takes readers inside long-running convention and boffer larps in the US, and explains terminology, history, and game mechanics. She profiles many gamers, from the long-haired Republican who runs one of the eastern seaboard’s most successful boffer campaigns, to a retired military man and devoted larper whose every hobby involves war. Due out from Chicago Review Press in spring 2012.
Leaving Mundania tells the story of adults who put on costumes, develop personas, and interact with other characters over the course of hours or days as part of a larp, or live action roleplaying game. A larp is a hybrid of games like Dungeons & Dragons, historical reenactment, fandom, and good old fashioned pretend; it’s well-organized make believe for grownups.This diverse subculture is just beginning to enter the mainstream imagination in America.
Leaving Mundania looks at the hobby from a variety of angles, from its history in the pageantry of Tudor England to its present as a training tool for the US military. I profile a diverse range of larpers, from a dad who ran his kids through nightly D & D mods with morals instead of reading them bedtime stories, to a police detective terrified his office will discover his hobby. Along the way, I duel foes with foam-padded weapons, let the demon Cthulhu destroy my parents’ beach house, and survive an existential awakening brought on by Scandinavia’s avant-garde larp scene.
Web: Leaving Mundania
Photo: Kyle Ober, from Knight Realms which Lizzie recently visited
Article by Ole Peder Giæver
Playground Magazine 