Middle Earth Day is this Saturday!

The Higgins Armory Museum in Worcester, MA is hosting Middle Earth Day this Saturday (previously). The blurb once again:

Middle Earth Day at the Higgins Armory Museum in Worcester, MA
Saturday, September 29, 2012
10:00-4:00

Hear the stories of elves, hobbits and men; sing their songs, learn about their armor, and help defeat the Necromancer! So dust off your travelling cloaks and study up on your runes, or just comb your feet and join us for a day of fun and fellowship!
Swordfights- See Arwen teach Aragorn the proper way to slay an orc??!!
Storytelling- hear stories of Bilbo from J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Hobbit
Crafts- Make Gimli’s shield or design your own
Come dressed as your favorite character from Tolkien’s stories of fantasy and adventure

One Museum to Rule Them All…

Higgins Armory Museum
100 Barber Avenue
Worcester, MA 01606
508-853-6015 ext. 20
http://www.higgins.org/

The event is free and open to all ages.

Now in Convenient Calendar Format!

If you've hit the site in the past day or so, you may have noticed that there's now a "Calendar" link at the top of the page and an "iCal feed" link in the sidebar. That's right, I'm now adding every event I post about to a Google Calendar. You can add this calendar to your Google Calendar (look for the "+ Google Calendar" button in the lower right), or import the iCal feed into any iCal format-supporting calendaring software.

Just as I'm not attempting to capture all the northeast boffer events in the blog, I'm not attempting to put them all on the calendar either, just the ones I post about. Thankfully other people have risen to the task -- in particular, the Ultimate Larp Calendar is tracking an impressive 45 boffer larps in the New England area (at last count). It's now linked over in the sidebar as well.

What other area boffer larp calendars should I be linking to? (In particular, I'm looking for calendars that cover the New York/New Jersey and DC/Maryland games.)

Hopefully, with our powers combined, this will make it yet easier to track upcoming larp-related events in the Northeast US!

Larp Shout-out in the Boston Globe

If you're looking for geeky things to do in Boston, the Boston Globe's Lifestyle section last week ran an article on some of the various geeky events available in the city.

You’re a new nerd in town. You want to roll some dice, cast some spells, kill some orcs. Or you want to leverage your fandom for good, not evil, in the so-called “real world,” whatever that is.

Let it be known, verily and forsooth, that Our Fair City and its environs is a kingdom replete with every variety of nerdery known to man, woman, halfling, and beast. Boston is the undisputed center of the nerdverse — a mothership for dweebs, techies, trekkers, weirdos, and gamers.

Of larp they said:

Live-action role-playing

If you’re hankering to don a costume and portray a character, LARPing is your game. Nero Boston (www.neroboston.com) runs its games in “The Duchy of Volta,” “a harsh and wild land filled with danger, magic, and intrigue.” If steampunk is your preferred genre, try Steam and Cinders (www.be-epic.com). Middle- and high-school kids can “larp” at the Arlington Enrichment Collaborative (www.arlingtonenrichment.org). “We hold each other to the idea of ‘doing awesome things,’ ” said Eric Love, director of the LARP Adventure Program (www.larpadventureprogram.com). They host an open house on Oct. 18. Intercon (www.interactiveliterature.org/M) is the annual LARP convention held in March.

There's a bunch of other stuff in the article of interest to larpers as well (swordplay and medieval reenactment, anyone?) -- further proof, if any were needed, that our hobby is becoming more mainstream (or is it the mainstream becoming more geeky?).

New LARPs at SLAW!

Two new LARPs have been added at SLAW -- Kara Hurvitz and Will Walker's Pooka Support Group on Saturday afternoon, and Peter Litwack's Dreams of Peace, Dreams of War on Sunday afternoon. I played Pooka Support Group at Festival, and Dreams of Peace at Intercon, this year, and can attest to their both being great games.

As of this writing, there are also still open spots in The Dance and the Dawn (running twice due to popular demand!), Yo Dog I Heard You Like Larps, Time Travel Review Board Saturday morning; Collision Imminent Saturday afternoon; The Road Not Taken and Resurrect Me, Please Saturday evening; and New Voices in Art Sunday afternoon. A couple of the games -- Time Travel Review Board and The Road Not Taken -- you can play even if you've already played them before; The Road Not Taken in particular will even be adding new material.

The usual reason for games to not fill early is not because they're bad games -- far from it, all of these games have run before and have been well-liked. These games didn't fill early because much of the community has played and liked them already. They are, you might say, time-tested and larper-approved. With these new additions, there are a couple games available in every slot (except Friday). If you've been unsure about coming, especially if you're new to larping or just new to this style, now's a great time to try it out.

The SLAW schedule is here.

(h/t Sarah Judd by e-mail)

Boston Festival of Indie Games is tomorrow!

The Boston Festival of Indie Games (previously) is tomorrow, Saturday, 22 September, at MIT's Building 34 (50 Vassar St, Cambridge, MA).

They're running a Cthulhu Live LARP called "Silver Twilight" from 5-8p, plus a keynote by the excellent Jason Scott and Leigh Alexander, screenings of Darkon, Get Lamp, Going Cardboard, talks from companies in the area, and a game jam, plus a ton of board, card, and tabletop games. (I saw Jason talk at DEFCON last year, about his Archive Team work, and he was brilliant -- if you get a chance, totally go.) Here's the full schedule and map. Registration is free. It looks like a great time.

Trailers for the screening track below the cut.

Boston World of Darkness Campaigns

From Lise Fracalossi via e-mail:

Just a heads-up on some Mind's Eye Theater campaign games happening in the Boston area: there's an old World of Darkness Masquerade game and two new WoD games, Requiem and Mage. Here are the basic details for those of you who might be interested in one or the other:

Masquerade happens on the second Saturday of every month, usually from 6pm to 11pm. The next game is October 13th. It's a Camarilla game, although we have representation from many independent clans, too. It usually meets at a private residence right in Waltham, only 1-2 miles from [Brandeis's] campus.

Speaking to my personal experience playing this, I was pleasantly surprised how roleplay-focused it was, although the mechanics are there if you need/want them. Even at my first session, I had some very intense scenes. The staff is great, too, and has been very helpful in getting me set up with a character and making sure she had stuff to do, even from my first game.

If you're more interested in new World of Darkness, Requiem and Mage usually take place back-to-back on the third Saturday of each month--in fact the next game is coming up this weekend. The usual venue is the basement of the Cathedral Church of St. Paul right on Boston Common.

Things are going to be changed up a bit November-January, when we're going to try to smoosh all the games together into one Saturday, but we can fill you in on the details if you decide to join.

The usual cost is $5/game, but it's waived for new members--so you can definitely try before you buy.

There's also a website and stuff! You can find it here:
http://shatteredantiquities.com/

If you're interested in any of these games, contact the domain coordinator
at nhma.dc@gmail.com. He can help you get in touch with the right people for the game you're interested in.

Lise also offers to answer any questions relative to her own experience playing Masquerade games -- if you have questions, contact me, and I'll be happy to put you in touch with her.

Station Ident

We've got some new visitors around here: welcome!

This is Northeast LARP News, a site for LARP-related event announcements in the Northeast United States. (Which I define roughly and arbitrarily as anything within a day's surface travel of Boston.)

We're interested in new LARP campaigns and existing games doing special events, LARP conventions, LARP workshops, LARP book readings, or anything else happening in New England, New York, and the Mid-Atlantic states that might be of interest to LARPers.

If you're running something like this or just hearing about it yourself, please e-mail it to me at nelarpnews@gmail.com!

A Feast of Ice and Fire with Pandemonium

Not a LARP, but maybe of interest to LARPers. From Pandemonium Books and Games via e-mail:

Join us for the Feast of Ice & Fire at the Tavern in the Square, on Friday, Sept. 28th at 7pm. This will be a six course meal. Cost is $50, plus beverages.

The menu will include:

• Sister's Stew
  
• Crusty White Bread (for the table throughout the meal)
  
• Onions in Gravy
  
• Sweetcorn Fritters
  
• Wild Board
  
• Wintercakes
  

Our goal is to provide a culinary tour of the Seven Kingdoms. Chelsea Monroe-Cassel and Sariann Lehrer, authors of the cookbook A Feast of Ice & Fire, will be on hand to answer any questions and sign copies of the book. Copies of the book are available on our website and in our store right around the corner from the tavern! As part of the arrangement with Tavern In The Square, we must submit a final head count no later than Sept. 14th in order for this event to go forward. They need to order special ingredients. To sign up, please email Tyler at general@pandemoniumbooks.com

Click through to the Pandemonium event page for links to pictures of some of the menu items.

The recipes used in this meal hail from the cookbook written by the authors of The Inn at the Crossroads, a blog of recipes recreating dishes from the A Song of Ice and Fire books by George R. R. Martin. The blog features among other things some of the most gorgeous food photography I've ever seen on a cooking blog. Highly recommended, but only if you want to be hungry.

Edit 2012-09-08 14:54: Per a question on Reddit (hi Reddit!), the Pandemonium event page confirms this is at the Tavern in the Square in Central Square (730 Massachusetts Ave, Cambridge, MA), just around the corner from Pandemonium itself.

Time Bubble sign-ups are open!

Sign-ups for Time Bubble (previously), the RPI fall LARP weekend, are now open! Looks like another good weekend of games. FairEscape has reviews of the games up here.

Mad About the Boy sign-ups close Saturday!

Sign-ups for Mad About the Boy (previously: here, here, video) close on Saturday, September 8. Twitter informs me that they have seven open spots left, so if you've been torn about signing up, now's the time!

SLAW sign-ups open tomorrow!

General public sign-ups for SLAW at WPI (previously: here, here) open tomorrow, Friday, September 7, at 7p. At least one of the smaller games is nearly full from student and GM sign-ups alone, so expect things to go fast. It looks like they've got a really good schedule of games up, so it should be a good time.