Well, that’s a whole year gone by and we’ve clocked up around 85,000 views since I started recording the stats! This time last year I was furiously coding LARP Guide v1.0 and getting everything ready to launch. It was nothing more than an ambition a year ago, to bring the UK LARP community a resource for making better games.
I knew I could do it because I have some of the most talented friends around. Leah from Mandala Studios jumped on board with me at an early stage, moving her regular blogging here. In all honesty it’s Leah that picks up the slack around these parts because over the last year university has got so busy for me that I’ve barely had time to think.
Then a load more friends began to write for me, too many to name individually. And most recently Vicki from Armoured Brownies has started thinking about content for LARP Guide too. While Vicki mostly makes Cosplay related videos, the techniques she uses in her prosthetic sculpts are applicable for anyone wanting to have a go. And I suspect in the summer when she’s out and about at Empire LRP and the Lorien Trust we’ll see lots of LARP videos from here.
I’m really very grateful to everyone that pitches in around here, but there’s always room for more! If you think you have something worth saying on this site, please do drop us a line and lets have a chat.
But without further ado, here’s our top five posts for 2015 here at LARP Guide. I can’t wait to see what takes off in 2016 – leave us a message on this page if there’s anything you’d love to see covered!
5. Enter the Dragon
With 2,290 views Kiera and Bill’s big drake build from Empire LRP is in fifth place. With the War Rhino the year before and the Drake this year, who knows that Keira, Bill, and the rest of the team will make next. Whatever it is, I can’t want to photograph it up close!
4. LARP has a Woman Problem
There were a fair few discussions surrounding sexism in LARP last winter, so I took the time to pen a few thoughts about how women are perceived sometimes at LARP and it’s been viewed a little over 3,000 times. It’s the one post that I continually get messages about and see shared about on Facebook so it must have said something that a few people can relate to. If you have time you should also watch Ann Erikson’s video that I linked on that page – it’s a great exploration of women’s roles at LARP from the Nordic LARP Conference that happens yearly.
3. Just Say No
Occasionally I manage to convince Matt Pennington to say a few words. I say a ‘few’ words, Matt famously can’t manage to keep to a word limit to save his life. This one isn’t too long at 1600, but I have a few mammoth posts in my inbox from him that I need to chop down to ‘essay’ length rather than ‘war and peace’… anyway… Anyway, this one is about roleplaying characters that aren’t the good guys – his own personal speciality. And it’s been read over 3,500 times this year.
2. That Event Is Too Expensive
Callum ran his first LARP game this year. Fortunately The World Went Dark went off without a hitch but while planning it out he quickly became irritated and people telling him that his event was too expensive – despite it selling out in less than 48 hours. His post about how much events actually cost to run has attracted almost 6,000 viewers and a whole host of shares on social media. The World Went Dark thankfully wasn’t too expensive for some, and it’s running it’s second more expensive event in the summer of 2016 (which also sold out almost straight away).
1. Clothes Not Costume – Layering
Still can’t believe that this one went viral with over 11,000 views this year. I wonder if it’ll get that many in 2016? The post stemmed from the fact I used to put things on mannequins and photograph them for a living, so I decided to try it out with some LARP Garb from my Odyssey NPC. I’m planning to do loads more of these in the future, in addition to the one I did of a set of Carthage kit.
Well, that’s it for 2015’s roundup. I’m looking forward to seeing what happens around these parts in 2016! Don’t forget to always let us know what you’re making the games you’re planning, we’d love to hear about it for LARP Guide.
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