Live Action Role-Playing

SpoCon 2011 is in it's new home Downtown Spokane Double Tree and we're excited to be hosting LARPs again this year. We'll have two great LARPs again this year - Vampire: The Masquerade, and our own Firefly LARP. We're very excited (and lucky!) to have SpoCon's own Dead Gentleman Christian Doyle reprising a very special role in our Firefly LARP, so this really will be a game you won't want to miss!

What is LARP?
LARP stands for Live Action Role Play. It resembles, in many ways, improvisational acting. Each participant takes on a role and develops their own character. Through the course of play that character will interact with story elements introduced by the Storyteller and with other characters to develop the story of that character. Throughout the course of the character’s life view points change and relationships develop – both in and out of character!

Firefly LARP
What is Firefly?
Firefly is a space western sci-fi television show by Joss Whedon, creator of Buffy The Vampire Slayer, Angel, Dollhouse, and The Avengers. The show takes place in the year 2517, long after humanity has abandoned a ruined earth and settled in a new frontier of terraformed planets and moons in a distant star system. Life is difficult and often deadly for most of these space pioneers living on the outer planets in the system, while the aristocratic elite live in the lap of luxury on the wealthy core worlds. A horrific civil war is still fresh in recent memory, dividing the loyalties of people and planets alike. The oppressive Alliance of the core worlds still feels the echos of resentment of the Browncoats who lost their fight for independence.

Firefly As A LARP
Our LARP game will let you play a character in the world of Firefly, with all the space western action and drama of the show (in a safe environment, of course!). We use Nerf guns for real-time action-packed combat, so feel free to include those as part of your Firefly LARP costume. Keep in mind that modifying Nerf guns might render them unsafe, so we reserve the right to inspect and possibly disallow any Nerf guns in our game. We will be hosting a Nerf modification workshop during the summer to show enthusiasts how to safely modify their guns to shoot further and look more realistic, and we'll post the date here as soon as we know it.

We'll be using the Space Western LARP rules developed by our Gaming department chair, Chad Davis. We'll have a downloadable copy here as soon as final playtest is complete, as well as character cards for those of you who want to submit your characters beforehand.

Returning this year as our very special guest is musician and actor of stage and screen Christian Doyle of the Dead Gentlemen. We are truly priveleged to have an actor we all know and love share his talents with us in the LARP, and can't wait to see what he has in store for us this year!

If you'd like to learn more about the Firefly fandom, you can check out the charity events happening all across the globe at Can't Stop The Serenity, and visit the local Spokane Browncoats on Facebook. To view episodes of this amazing show and see what it's all about, visit the Firefly page on Hulu.

Spokane Camarilla Vampire: The Masquerade LARP

What is Vampire: The Masquerade LARP?
Vampire: The Masquerade was the first of White Wolf Game Studio's World of Darkness live-action and role-playing games, based on the Storyteller System and centered on vampires in a modern Gothic-Punk world. The Revised Edition, sometimes alternately referred to as the Third Edition by fans, was released in 1998 and explains that, "the setting of Vampire is a composite of its populace and their despair." The title of the series comes from "The Masquerade", referring to the Camarilla's attempts to hide vampirism from humans and their governments and media; it also serves as a double entendre, referring to vampires' efforts to convince themselves that they are not the monsters they have become.

What games do we play?
Spokane currently has Old World of Darkness Camarilla and Sabbat venues.

Camarilla policy is that vampires should try to fit in with and hide from the rest of humanity, as to easily feed on them. For this reason, they created a web of lies and misinformation, called the Masquerade, to make the public believe that supernatural beings like vampires could not possibly exist.

The Camarilla also believes that the only way the vampire species can survive in these modern nights is if it unites - any breach of the Masquerade by any vampire risks exposing the entire race. Both viewpoints are fundamentally opposed by the Sabbat.

Freedom is preached in accordance to the Sabbat belief that every vampire is free to create their own destiny without being hindered by the reputations of their elders, and that no Sabbat has to lay down their life for cowards who cannot take care of their own matters. Of course, it does not always work like this in practice.

Also unlike the Camarilla, the Sabbat believes in Antediluvians, and for the most part considers them a great threat. This is unsurprising, especially considering that the Sabbat was formed in the wake of the Anarch Revolt, and both of the core clans, the Tzimisce and Lasombra, claim that their clan founders were killed during this period of upheaval.

All Sabbat adhere to a code of conduct called "The Code of Milan", which preaches loyalty to sect and packmates, and to one's own freedom within the sect, as long as one's own good is never placed above the good of the Sabbat itself.

In addition to a very firm "if you're not with us, you're against us" mentality, the sect considers vampires to be a higher form of life than humanity, and is based upon the principles of Loyalty and Freedom. Loyalty to the sect and to one's comrades is one of the important aspects of the sect, and the Sabbat vampires maintain this loyalty through a ritual called Vaulderie, where strong emotional bonds are created between members of the Sabbat.

Still have questions about the Camarilla and LARP in general? Check out the article on Wikipedia.

For further inquiries about the Spokane Camarilla, Email us!

If you're interested in hosting a LARP or have any questions, please email gaming or post in the LARP Forum.