Larper from Germany

N

Nazuul

Newbie
Hi,

I moved from Germany to the Chicago Area and I am looking for Conventions (fantasy, medieval). Are there any events in this area?

Any help to get connected to the local community(s) would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks
Nazuul
 
Just to make sure we arn't having a culture break down, what do you mean by Convention? I think your looking for a Renaissance Festival, you should be able to google it to make sure and see what there is in the area.
 
To be honest, I don't know, if I have the correct wording. I play LARP with my major Char for multiple years in Germany. These events are called "Conventions", where staring from around 60 up to 3.500 players come together, following a plot (story?). My character is full equiped, including background story etc. I am looking for similar events or "Cons" in the area of Chicago. Please let me know, when I am totally wrong here ...
 
Conventions in the local area typically refer to large scale conventions with multiple games over several days. You should research "GenCon" for example.

Locally we run "events" which take place over the weekend and typically have around 50-80 people attend. These events run a more cohesive story.

Your best bet may be to contact waysidelogistics@gmail.com where we will help you figure out how our game runs and such. You are also welcome to contact me via facebook or such.
 
I haven't actually been to any German larps, but if your experience is with something like Drachenfest or Conquest, there's not really anything like that in the area. The closest you'll find is Bicolline up in Quebec, Canada. They run some smaller games throughout the year but they have an annual week-long (IIRC) event with something like 1500 people. It's all run in French, but there's a group of Americans called "The Voyage North" that goes every year. Might be worth looking into if you're looking for something larger.

Our games (and this is fairly typical for American larp) run from about 9 PM on Friday night through Sunday morning. From my limited knowledge on how European larp typically works, here are a few things you'll probably find different about Alliance:
  • Lower production values - costuming standards aren't as high over here
  • Different NPC setup - NPCs in Conquest (I think) play the same character all weekend and their costuming is generally just as good as PCs. In Alliance, an NPC will play several different characters over the course of the weekend and costuming is often pretty minimal, though we've tried to make sure our NPCs look pretty good in the last few years.
  • More focus on the rules - Alliance is definitely heavier on rules than any of the European larps that I'm aware of.
  • More competitive? Not sure if that's exactly the right word for what I mean, but you'll see more of a drive to "win" in American larp than in European larp.
  • More active schedule - I get the impression there's a lot more downtime in European larp than in our style of game
  • Typically no vendors on site
  • More focus on comfort/safety - a lot of the time in American larp, "safety" means comfort. I'm not criticizing the focus - I don't like getting hit in the head any more than anyone else - but a lot of the things people call out as safety concerns may not seem all that serious compared to what would get called out in German larp.
  • No alcohol - this isn't a universal rule for American larps, but Alliance and some of the other major larp groups prohibit alcohol on site.
  • No religion - this is specific to Alliance and some related games, but there's no religion in game. No gods, no worship, no prayers.
Again, this is all based on my limited understanding of European larp, but I've done a little bit of reading on it at least. There's a Facebook group called "LARP Haven" with a lot of American and European larpers that might be able to answer any questions you have better than we could, though I wouldn't be surprised if the discussion turns into an argument about whether American larp or Nordic larp is better. :P It wouldn't be the first time.

Another thing to keep in mind is that characters in our game should come from within our world. I'm not saying you can't adapt your existing character for our game if you decide to come check us out, but you should try to work him into our setting if you can.
 
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