#UK larp

[greatbritishapocalypse]

[not-a-farrier]

Award winning author and Arch Heretic of my favourite larp Jeannette Ng?!

#Yael was right

[two-reflections]

WIP Wednesday ✨

Fic ✨

I've been slowly working on my fic for the 40k summer exchange. Can't share any of that, of course. The scope of the story has grown and I'm still wondering if it's okay to post one chapter and release the rest over the next new weeks. I guess we'll have to see. If I'm not done by the deadline, that's what it'll have to be.

I'm also not sure quite how smutty this one should be. Hmm.

Nothing more to report for WIP Wednesday, so let's talk about larp.

LARP ✨

Last weekend, my favourite larp ever finally finished...

It was an amazing game through and through. Not going to post the name because I'd basically be doxxing myself and it's over anyway, but the vibe was XCOM meets Bloodborne meets the Industrial Revolution and the rise of Labour rights.

This game gave me my first leadership role at a larp. Way back in 2018, I was chosen as the Commander of a secret government bureau responsible for fighting fear-based entities called Nightmares that were encroaching upon a newly industrial country in the wake of a revolution. I thought I'd be terrible in a leadership role, but actually, I had a great time and we collectively smashed the ending. I feel like I did a good job.

And my character got her desired ending. She led the bureau in redefining the nature of Nightmares, empowered the Dreaming Dead who watch over the country, helped establish a new form of government to replace the old monarchy, mostly kept her comrades alive, was promoted to the highest rank of the bureau, and finally, just as the game ended, sat down to rest with a cup of tea.

There are a lot of larps in involved in, but I'm going to miss this game so much.

...oh, go on then. Here are a couple of pictures.

So, as for the reason why there's so little 40k progress this week... Last week, I was busy preparing for the big larp finale, and this week, I've got Covid AGAIN. There are a couple of strains going around the UK again, seems like everyone and their dog has it at the moment. All attendees had to test before the game and about four long-time players couldn't come, but I guess someone slipped through. I'm self-isolating now, coughing a lot and feeling like utter shit, but I guess I chose this so I shouldn't complain too much. They really need to make the jab more easily available again, I would have gotten it if I could.

Oh well. Game was worth it.

[ladyasabat]

Lullaby on the West End

Strap yourselves in, it's going to be a long one.

Last weekend I disappeared off to my happy place in Retford to play in Lullaby on the West End, a LARP I'd been looking forward too for far too long and it was everything and more I could have asked for. I had to wait until today to start to convert my bullet points into legibility, and wrangle those word squirrels into sentences before they escape into the wild and get eaten by reality.

I'd like to say a massive thank you to all the people who made the story possible, to the GMs for writing all the chaos, to the utterly exceptional cast of players, but especially to the players behind Miss Mullins/Trunchbull and Dewey Finn who were the cornerstones of most of my play.

I had the utmost joy of being cast as Jenny Honey, timid school teacher of Horace Green being run under the strict thumb of Rosalie Mullins (Trunchbull). I have always felt a kinship with Miss Honey, growing up with the Matilda movie as one of the core tenets of my upbringing and so when that character sheet came floating into my inbox I did a happy little dance in my computer chair (much to the horror of my cats).

Her story can only be described as the most incredible journey. I laughed, I cried, I laugh cried and I cry laughed. The one thing I was not expecting was just how much love everyone seemed to have for her, and how much they wanted her to succeed, from the students (who were her world) to the other teachers and everyone in between. It was that love and support that really gave Jenny the self-confidence she needed. I genuinely cannot emphasise enough how heart-warming her story was, only that it was better than I ever could have imagined.

You don't really have ten years to hear the story in its entirety, and there are SO many heartfelt moments and even more things that Jenny got involved in over the game, but I would like, if I may, to share some of them with you.

Warning, spoilers lie beyond this point.

Miss Rosalie "Mistakes Were Made" Trunchbull/Mullins - The perfect antihero, a villain for everyone to rally against and ironically played by one of the kindest people I know. From yelling at Jenny for the audacity of being given flowers by her students to dragging her to the Chokey for spending FAR too much money on books (more than I the player had really understood) and generally making Jenny feel like the most pathetic, spineless being ever. Only to then have the most wholesome conversation after Rosalie had re-inherited her family powers where she admitted she may have been entirely wrong about Jenny (which was in no small part due to Joe Casey persistently telling her about what she'd done for him) - "Miss Mullins, you're not yelling at me. Are you feeling alright?" and the discovery that Rosalie had in fact stolen the will that Horace Green belonged to Jenny all this time, and that the Chokey was a machine put in place to take the children's creativity to power the factory that Wonka had built. A factory that met an incredibly explosive end.

Dewey Finn/Ned Schneebly - Although they seemed a strange pairing to the outside, Dewey was Jenny's rock in the chaos of the storm, and the one who supported and encouraged her from the first moment Miss Trunchbull yelled at her - even if at that point she just knew him as Ned Schneebly. He brought out her rebellious side and in turn she showed him how wonderful the students were and taught him to be a teacher. He won her trust and then her heart, and as they escaped into the underground tunnels to get away from the tentacles reaping havoc in the city, he realised there was more to Jenny than met the eye "My girlfriend's a superhero!"

The Students - There was nothing Jenny cared about more than her students (both current and ex) and no matter how she was feeling at the time, she wanted to be there to encourage and support them. This resulted in a strange combination of both sweet and chaotic scenes as they asked her for help and advice in anything from issues with their parents to strange bird people in dark alleys handing them a mysterious cheese.

They also handed her an obscene amount of flowers, because it made her happy (or in Raven's case because she didn't want them) which in turn made Miss Trunchbull furious...so they did it some more! She got so many, that when I gathered them all together Jenny had a perfect disguise as a floral arrangement.

She also got to encourage them all to take part in the various activities - Captain Tempest's Space Auxiliaries and the Kite Festival, the latter of which Miss Trunchbull had explicitly forbidden Jenny from taking the students, and in a pique of rebellion, she decided to do the opposite and so turned into an incredibly sweet moment of joyous singing and waving kites to the iconic song "Lets Go Fly a Kite". Until Pugsley blew them all up (perfection).

Jenny held one official "lesson" during the game, which was originally set to contain some Science from Dr Horrible and then ended up being filled with Chaos, as Javert turned up to Educate the students about Crime, Dr Horrible got recruited by the Evil League of Evil and then then students went off with Rusty on a train ride. Because why not?

Parent-Teacher evening was an experience. Taking place just after Jenny had inherited the school, it contained the dramatic revelation that Dewey Finn had been masquerading as Ned Schneebly the whole time, which of course caused an uproar with the parents, and was perhaps the first and only time anyone ever saw Jenny Honey raise her voice. It also saw her put her new-found confidence to the test and persuade Mayor Falco to come see his daughter Raven in the battle of the bands, and witness their tearful reconciliation afterwards.

The Lost - Part of Jenny's story was her alter-ego as Jennyanydots, a no-nonsense teacher who had stumbled upon a bunch of people in the underground tunnels who needed her just as much as the students in the school. The genuine pride she felt at Stratt's grammatical accomplishments on the protest boards, and the bonding that happened later in the game as the Lost and the Cats worked together to save the world through the power of musical instruments and the hunt for Schrodinger's guitar.

Her connection to the Lost also led to a few escapades in the tunnels below the city, including the discovery of a train holding barrels of sarsaparilla being guarded by totally-not-cybermen and the Beige Room. Nobody liked the Beige Room. We also went on a quest for Goop and narrowly missed encountering Sid the albino crocodile.

Cats - Oh yes, Jenny was a Cat. Or at least the anthropomorphic personification of one. Struck by strange purple lightning, her and a small handful of other City dwellers were granted cat-like powers including for her a perfect Clark Kent disguise that allowed her hide in plain sight as Mysterious Stranger, Jennyanydots.

It also turned out these cats had an Important Decision to make, which we used to help save the world. Jenny somehow ended up becoming the leader of these felines, even being given the proxy vote of one Hidden Paw, the Macavity cat - something about organising the students, plus seemingly having the most information about what exactly was going on meant she was strangely adept at herding cats.

There were a couple of wonderful moments of getting to really show off Jennyanydots' abilities, diving in to rescue fellow school teacher Harry Blitzstein from being thrown into the Chokey - the first real time she ever stood up to the Trunchbull and it was not as herself - and then dropping into the tunnels to land in the classic superhero pose as her and Dewey escaped the approaching tentacles. 10/10 would be a cat person again.

Singing - My biggest regret, and perhaps my only one is that I never got to sing all the things I'd planned to, mostly due to the grey sponge that occupies my skull giving me incredible stage-fright (which given how much singing/dancing I did in Lullaby 2 made me cross at myself). However, taking part in many of the group numbers including defeating a pop-music AI through We Will Rock You and the grand finale of Bohemian Rhapsody is something I will remember with great joy.

In all, it was the best weekend I could have possibly imagined and my favourite weekend game of all those that I've played. There are so many small things like offering Javert a lamp as people kept telling him to "Lighten up" and calling Charlie Bucket's new suit a "Chocolate Orange" that enriched the game, and getting to spend that time with the people I hold dearest in my heart and adding more people to that number (you all know who you are).

Thank you all for the greatest time, and I shall cherish these memories forever more.

[listen-to-the-inner-walrus]

My mom's watching a livestream of the riot (?) in Newcastle which seems to have been cut off before it could really start by counter protesters and two things from my brief watching of it

Hearing people chant "Say it loud and say it clear, migrants are welcome here" was so refreshing and not to be cliché but heartwarming.

Nazis really love posting the Norwegian flag, huh? Like I know why they do it, but it's real weird to watch your racist idols fail to start a riot about too much immigration to the UK and post the flag of Norway in response.

[twilightcitadel]

Brutally Honest Review - HiiFeuer Viking Faux Leather Berserker Set

Welcome to my comprehensive product review of the HiiFeuer Viking Faux Leather Berserker Set. In this review, I will delve into the four components of this set - the Single Pauldron, Leg Gaiters, Waist Armor, and Arm Guards - and evaluate their quality, design, and overall suitability for Viking enthusiasts, LARPers, cosplay lovers, and those who enjoy participating in fantasy events such as Renaissance Faires, Comic Con events, and Halloween cosplay parties.

Whether you are a seasoned LARPer or someone looking to make a statement at your next costume event, this product offers a range of benefits that will enhance your overall experience. In the following sections, I will provide an in-depth analysis of each component of the HiiFeuer Viking Faux Leather Berserker Set - the Single Pauldron, Leg Gaiters, Waist Armor, and Arm Guards - exploring their design features and practicality for various types of events.

Read More

[solarpunks]

The Interspecies Festival London UK: The Treaty of Finsbury Park

The Treaty of Finsbury Park is an immersive fiction that looks at what it would be like if other species were to rise up and demand equal rights with humans. What that means is you, as a human, can come and take part in the fiction only by playing for and as another species (so, like, NOT as a human ok?!). The project started in 2020 and it will run until 2025 when the Treaty itself will have been created and signed by all the species communities of Finsbury Park.

If colonial systems of dominance and control over living beings continue we all face an apocalypse.

With a planetary health check revealing over a million species on earth at risk of extinction because of humans, we decided to explore new ways of developing mutual care and respect on earth. We believe that by treating other life forms as resources to be managed and exploited for profit, rather than lived with and learned from, humans are condemned to lonely self-destruction. Biodiversity is crucial in mitigating the effects of climate change. As cities now hold some of the world’s greatest biodiversity can’t help but wonder if they also hold the greatest potential for positive impact. It's time to spark new ways of being, feeling and acting together locally, nationally, transnationally…

How to Join The Interspecies Festival of Finsbury Park 2023

A massive immersive role-play event for park lovers. Explore the park as another species, with new eyes, ears and totally new priorities. The Interspecies Festival welcomes ALL human people over the age of 9

Festival Prep Workshops 29-30 April 2023

Attend any or all FREE workshop activities:

⇨ Learn how to think, move and speak like your given Mentor Species… ⇨ Make amazing costumes to enhance your Mentor species masks. Wow everyone! ⇨ Learn 3 short songs for Multispecies Choir: a lament, a protest song, and a celebration…| ⇨ Dig the soil and plant new trees with the Rewilders of Finsbury Park…

The Interspecies Festival: Sat 3 or Sat 10 or Sun 11 June 2023: 12.30-5.00, Finsbury Park, London, UK

Revel in games and other activities celebrating the cultures and talents of all Finsbury Park’s species…

⇨ Multisensory Mystery Tour: see, hear and smell the old forest through the sensory superpowers of squirrels, trees, and dogs… ⇨ Multispecies Choir: squeak, squawk, howl and honk “songs” of lament, celebration and protest… ⇨ Help shape the first-ever interspecies treaty of cooperation for bountiful biodiversity…

All festival activities were devised by players of the 2021-22 Interspecies Assembly Games.

These events are FREE but require prior registration. Book your tickets here!

----

Furtherfield are close friends of soalrpunks and we attended prototype LARPs back in 2019 and 2021. If you are based in London or close enough book tickets and check this ambitious community project out! 

[ashbless]

"Welcome to The Gritlands, a grimly hilarious new post-apocalyptic LARP event like none other.

The year is 2277, the old world is gone and forgotten. The United Kingdom is completely and utterly wrecked, and in its place stands a remorseless, deadly and grimly hilarious new world. To it’s weird, wonderful and often deadly Inhabitants, this strange new world is known only as... The Gritlands.

Secrets of the Gritlands, our first story, will begin at event one on the 20th-22nd October, 2023. More information on tickets, rules, character creation and location coming soon. Head over to our official Facebook group to download The Gritlands setting and participation handbooks.

The Gritlands is created and brought to you by: Andy Connel, Benjamin Harwood, Kate Rowley, Dale McClurg, Rook Glanten and Matthew Taylor.

Artwork and art direction by Benjamin Harwood

Photography by Jack Murphy"

[merlin-the-not-so-magnificent]

This is a totally off topic post but I just had the best event idea. A larp ball/festival, it's just a one day event but attendees get to setup ahead of time. Maybe there's a discord where you can pre register for a guild/allegiance and access their specific channels. Plot or quest giving npcs that are recognisable and a final culminating event that could be effected by the outcomes of the quests carried out throughout the day/evening.

I'm aware this is just a ren faire meets the bridgerton experience meets the shitty star wars Hotel - but imagine being able to do this with your friends every year for a day.

[antimnemonic]

“yo también soy alfa” me muero

[greatbritishapocalypse]

ASCENSION process

[mostlysignssomeportents]

Amazon's bestselling "bitter lemon" energy drink was bottled delivery driver piss

Today (Oct 20), I'm in Charleston, WV at Charleston's Taylor Books from 12h-14h.

For a brief time this year, the bestselling "bitter lemon drink" on Amazon was "Release Energy," which consisted of the harvested urine of Amazon delivery drivers, rebottled for sale by Catfish UK prankster Oobah Butler in a stunt for a new Channel 4 doc, "The Great Amazon Heist":

https://www.channel4.com/programmes/the-great-amazon-heist

Collecting driver piss is surprisingly easy. Amazon, you see, puts its drivers on a quota that makes it impossible for them to drive safely, park conscientiously, or, indeed, fulfill their basic human biological needs. Amazon has long waged war on its employees' kidneys, marking down warehouse workers for "time off task" when they visit the toilets.

As tales of drivers pissing – and shitting! – in their vans multiplied, Amazon took decisive action. The company enacted a strict zero tolerance policy for drivers returning to the depot with bottles of piss in their vans.

That's where Butler comes in: the roads leading to Amazon delivery depots are lined with bottles of piss thrown out of delivery vans by drivers who don't want to lose their jobs, which made harvesting the raw material for "Release Energy" a straightforward matter.

Butler was worried that he wouldn't be able to list his product on Amazon because he didn't have the requisite "food and drinks licensing" certificates, so he listed his drink in Amazon's refillable pump dispenser category. But Amazon's systems detected the mismatch and automatically shifted the product into the drinks section.

Butler enlisted some confederates to place orders for his drink, and it quickly rocketed to the top of Amazon's listings for the category, which led to Amazon's recommendation engine pushing the item on people who weren't in on the gag. When these orders came in, Butler pulled the plug, but not before an Amazon rep telephoned him to pitch him turning packaging, shipping and fulfillment over to Amazon:

https://www.wired.com/story/amazon-let-its-drivers-urine-be-sold-as-an-energy-drink/

The Release Energy prank was just one stunt Butler pulled for his doc; he also went undercover at an Amazon warehouse, during a period when Amazon hired an extra 1,000 workers for its warehouses in Coventry, UK, in a successful bid to dilute pro-union sentiment in his workforce in advance of a key union vote:

https://jacobin.com/2023/10/the-great-amazon-heist-oobah-butler-review

Butler's stint as an Amazon warehouse worker only lasted a couple of days, ending when Amazon recognized him and fired him.

The contrast between Amazon's ability to detect an undercover reporter and its inability to spot bottles of piss being marketed as bitter lemon energy drink says it all, really. Corporations like Amazon hire vast armies of "threat intelligence" creeps who LARP at being CIA superspies, subjecting employees and activists to intense and often illegal surveillance.

But while Amazon's defensive might is laser-focused on the threat of labor organizers and documentarians, the company can't figure out that one of its bestselling products is bottles of its tormented drivers' own urine.

In the USA, the FTC is suing Amazon for its monopolistic tactics, arguing that the company has found ways to raise prices and reduce quality by trapping manufacturers and sellers with its logistics operation, taking $0.45-$0.51 out of every dollar they earn and forcing them to raise prices at all retailers:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/04/25/greedflation/#commissar-bezos

The Release Energy stunt shows where Amazon's priorities are. Not only did Release Energy get listed on Amazon without any quality checks, the company actually nudged it into a category where it was more likely to be consumed by a person. The only notice the company took of Release Energy was in its logistics and manufacturing department – the part of the business that extracts the monopoly rents at issue in the FTC case – which tracked Butler down in order to sell him these services.

The drivers whose piss Butler collected don't work directly for Amazon, they work for a Delivery Service Partner. These DSPs are victims of a pyramid scheme that Amazon set up. DSP operators lease vans and pay to have them skinned in Amazon livery and studded with Amazon sensors. They take out long-term leases on depots, and hire drivers who dress in Amazon uniforms. Their drivers are minutely monitored by Amazon, down to the movements of their eyeballs.

But none of this is "Amazon" – it's all run by an "entrepreneur," whom Amazon can cut loose without notice, leaving them with unfairly terminated employees, outstanding workers' comp claims, a fleet of Amazon-skinned vehicles and unbreakable facilities leases:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/04/17/revenge-of-the-chickenized-reverse-centaurs/

Speaking to Wired, Amazon denied that it forces its drivers to piss in bottles, but Butler clearly catches a DSP dispatcher telling drivers "If you pee in a bottle and leave it [in the vehicle], you will get a point for that" – that is, the part you get punished for isn't the peeing, it's the leaving.

Amazon's defense against the FTC is that it spares no effort to keep its marketplace safe. As Amazon spokesperson James Drummond says, they use "industry-leading tools to prevent genuinely unsafe products being listed." But the only industry-leading tools in evidence are tools to bust unions and screw suppliers.

In her landmark Yale Law Review paper, "Amazon's Antitrust Paradox," FTC Chair Lina Khan makes a brilliant argument that Amazon's alleged benefits to "consumers" are temporary at best, illusory at worst:

https://www.yalelawjournal.org/note/amazons-antitrust-paradox

In Butler's documentary, Khan's hypothesis is thoroughly validated: here's a company extracting hundreds of billions from merchants who raise prices to compensate, and those monopoly rents are "invested" in union-busting and countermeasures against investigative journalists, while the tools to keep you from accidentally getting a bottle of piss in the mail are laughably primitive.

Truly, Amazon is the apex predator of the platform era:

https://pluralistic.net/ApexPredator

If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this post to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/10/20/release-energy/#the-bitterest-lemon

My next novel is The Lost Cause, a hopeful novel of the climate emergency. Amazon won't sell the audiobook, so I made my own and I'm pre-selling it on Kickstarter!

[derinthescarletpescatarian]

I don't know how active you are in the UK LARP scene but I promise that the VTM LARP scene and kink & BDSM scenes are so spectacularly intertwined that you have to be careful which games you sign up to lest you fall into a scene by accident

That's hilarious

[megabuild]

weird fujoshi tgirl grian. tge bad boys were making her lose her mind. in the same way that young weird fujoshi girls rp as gay men online (source me) do u think she stays in the closet exclusively for all her weird gay shit going on with like. (counting on fingers) um. 10 or more friends

not coming out as transfem just so you continue larping your uke twink fantasy is the exact level of deranged commitment to the bit i expect from g. so yeah i think so

[maximumwebb]

Is transitioning actually worth it? Seems like being visibly trans kinda sucks ass especially in the current day. Yk with all the hate crime and having to argue with therapists and then take a shit ton of pills I don't have a full picture of how bad it is in the UK really. I don't get that much dysphoria at all and I think I could swing larping as a cis man maybe I'm non binary? Idfk

[twilightcitadel]

We are proud to say that the team at Twilight Citadel have partnered up with Medieval Extreme! They are a group of Ukrainian designers, fighters, and craftsmen dedicated to painstakingly creating elite armour appropriate for full-contact combat such as 1 on 1 tournaments and buhurts in IMCF, and HMB leagues.

Under the leadership of Mykola Avenirov, a combat veteran with over a decade of combat experience, Medieval Extreme has partnered with us to bring our shared love of the medieval era to life through the creation of authentic, top-notch armour and weapons.

Check out there website if your looking to build you LARP armour set!