nothingtoseehere
Artisan
I can answer some of your questions! Please bear in mind that I am not staff in any way, shape or form. It is also an important distinction that I am answering these questions OOG, as Spencer. If you asked my character IG you may get a different answer.
Almost all of your specific questions are IG questions, but most of them are also questions that your character, as a person who has presumably grown up in the society, would know.
With regards to Maelstrom, things are more complicated since it's fairly post apocalyptic. However, my character has an IG post located here: https://alliancelarp.com/forum/threads/maelstrom-primer-safe.34250/ which goes over general information about the land.
Nobility IG, like knighthood and barons and that sort of thing, is a title usually earned in game through roleplay. Characters become squires to other characters who are knights and eventually get knighted in turn. Sometimes the knights and barons and kings and queens will be NPC characters. There is no OOG rule which requires you to follow their orders or do what they tell you, however choosing to roleplay someone who doesn't follow their orders can have IG consequences (in some lands, the IG law has laws about 'disrespecting nobility' and can get your character thrown into jail or fined etc).
It is also important to note that IG nobility *only* has any kind of authority at all IG. So someone whose character is an IG knight can't be like "Hey. I'm a knight. Pack my car for me." or something like that- their social influence should only exist IG. The only people with any kind of OOG authority are staff members- though that OOG authority does not extend to the characters they play IG.
Imagine everything IG as if it was in real life. Imagine for a second a noble as a police officer- there is no omnipotent God "rulebook" that forces you to obey what the police officer tells you to do, but you know as a person that not doing what the police officer tells you to do can result in consequences. Whether your character chooses to disobey the 'police officer' is up to you and is a roleplaying choice. Don't OOG think of those consequences as a bad thing- they're just a roleplaying choice. You may decide that your character *would* disrespect this noble and get thrown into jail. Then when your character comes back you can roleplay talking about how hard prison was, or roleplay starting a peasant uprising based on the cruelties and injustices of their IG jailtime.
In the long run, the goal of LARP is not to 'win' but it's to tell a good story- with conflict, characters who seem real, and the stories that make them seem real. It's very, very different from a style of game where combat is the fun part and the priority (you've seen our fighting- it's clearly not the priority ;D )
Almost all of your specific questions are IG questions, but most of them are also questions that your character, as a person who has presumably grown up in the society, would know.
Enerret and Maelstrom are two separate lands and separate campaigns with separate plot staffs. Our characters travel between the lands by way of magical 'mist' which connects all the lands of Fortannis (the collective name for all the lands of all the chapters). Some people play a different character in each game, but most people play the same character who travels back and forth. All (or, almost all) characters have a 'backstory' of where they are from and why they are with this group. For example Terren, my character, is from the land of Maelstrom. He was born there. He travels to Enerret to help out as well. Some characters have been around long enough (some people have been playing their character for 15+ years) that they are from the lands of old campaigns that are no longer running, like Parna and Garrenshaw. If your character is originally from Enerret you should send the staff an email to get a 'race packet' which will give you starting information about the land, including information about it's nobility structure, which your character as a citizen of that land would know. If your character is not originally from that land, then it would be exactly like if you went on a trip to another country- you'll have to ask people IG about the land.
With regards to Maelstrom, things are more complicated since it's fairly post apocalyptic. However, my character has an IG post located here: https://alliancelarp.com/forum/threads/maelstrom-primer-safe.34250/ which goes over general information about the land.
Again that's an IG question, and one your character can look into by asking characters IG, including NPC/Cast members. In most (though not all) chapters, PC's who have received or earned noble titles are respected for their title wherever they go but must be 'recognized' as an official noble by the ruling class of that land in order to have official authority. Again, that is not true in every campaign or every chapter (Maelstrom being an example, since it is post apoc and doesn't officially have a government to recognize people with). These are social/roleplay rules rather than rulebook rules. There is no rule in the rulebook that says you cannot walk into a place and claim to be a knight, but there will be IG roleplay consequences for claiming a noble title (you could be taken to jail by the local ruling class, you could be executed, you could get away with it- who knows!
Again this is an entirely roleplay choice for your character. As a general social suggestion as a long time player, it is usually appropriate to offer advice but you will get a wide variety of reactions based on who you talk to and when you talk to them and how you talk to them.
Line commanders are not an official position of IG nobility in any of the chapters I've ever been to. They are also not a metagame concept. They are entirely an IG roleplay concept. Characters IG have realized over time that battles tend to go better when a single individual is in charge, otherwise the battle gets scattered. Who is the battle commander is dependent on IG roleplay, your character could absolutely step up and say "I want to be battle commander for this fight" and other characters would react in game.
Nobility IG, like knighthood and barons and that sort of thing, is a title usually earned in game through roleplay. Characters become squires to other characters who are knights and eventually get knighted in turn. Sometimes the knights and barons and kings and queens will be NPC characters. There is no OOG rule which requires you to follow their orders or do what they tell you, however choosing to roleplay someone who doesn't follow their orders can have IG consequences (in some lands, the IG law has laws about 'disrespecting nobility' and can get your character thrown into jail or fined etc).
It is also important to note that IG nobility *only* has any kind of authority at all IG. So someone whose character is an IG knight can't be like "Hey. I'm a knight. Pack my car for me." or something like that- their social influence should only exist IG. The only people with any kind of OOG authority are staff members- though that OOG authority does not extend to the characters they play IG.
Imagine everything IG as if it was in real life. Imagine for a second a noble as a police officer- there is no omnipotent God "rulebook" that forces you to obey what the police officer tells you to do, but you know as a person that not doing what the police officer tells you to do can result in consequences. Whether your character chooses to disobey the 'police officer' is up to you and is a roleplaying choice. Don't OOG think of those consequences as a bad thing- they're just a roleplaying choice. You may decide that your character *would* disrespect this noble and get thrown into jail. Then when your character comes back you can roleplay talking about how hard prison was, or roleplay starting a peasant uprising based on the cruelties and injustices of their IG jailtime.
In the long run, the goal of LARP is not to 'win' but it's to tell a good story- with conflict, characters who seem real, and the stories that make them seem real. It's very, very different from a style of game where combat is the fun part and the priority (you've seen our fighting- it's clearly not the priority ;D )
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. This is all super clearly OOG. So, a little on my perspective of where I am coming from: I personally don't consider the bel/dag foam fighting stuff I do to really be LARPs (not making that statement as a positive or negative, simply that the RP in them is so low that it is really hard to group them in the same category, especially in the groups I fight in!). Most of the experience I'm drawing on to try and understand and play in alliance comes from ~ a decade of playing and running (mostly running) various pen and paper RPGs. Obviously not all that experience is going to translate, a pen and paper RPGing is going to struggle to have the scale and intensity of of a LARP, and has a much lower requirement on the ability of players to improv, but some of it does (one of the primary tenets of at least the RPGs is the same, your goal is not to win or lose but rather to play a character and enjoy interacting with the world and participating in the world unfolding).