UB roleplayers go to war, create alliances, and even get married - for real - in a tale of their own creation.

On a brisk autumnal Sunday in the high halls of house Sat, situated on the gulf coast of the Golden Kingdom, San Sat Vit Jan, leader of the elf-lords, was presiding over the daily comings and goings of the Kan Empire’s noble court. Nearby sat his wife, arrayed in flowing gold satin robes, her black hair curling around pointed ears and flowing midway down her back.

As foreign merchants and dignitaries presented themselves to the court, Vit Jan nodded to the head priest of the Sat church, who watched carefully as he fondled the head of the jeweled scepter that signified his role as spiritual leader of the Kanjyn species. His gold and white robes brushed the floor, barely covering a pair of torn black and white tennis shoes.

As a visiting bishop clad in blue jeans and a UB Con ’92 t-shirt rose to introduce himself to the local hierarchy, he was interrupted by an outburst from the crowd.

“I need coffee,” said an elf from the back of the hall. “Is Starbucks still open?”

The girl was chastised for breaking character, but the spell had been broken. The scene fell away, the regal court was once again only Room 110 in the University at Buffalo’s Baldy Hall, filled with enthusiasts of Live Action Role Playing (LARP). San Sat Vit Jan and his elven wife reverted to Carlos Castillo-Garsow, a graduate student in linguistics, and Beth Burdick, an artist with a degree in plant science from Cornell University.

They, and others, are part of Sjanne, a LARP game that meets on the second Sunday of every month. Sjanne is one of many LARPs at UB that reserve Baldy Hall each weekend in order to have a place for the favored pastime of a certain brand of fantasy fan.

Anyone can sit in front of a computer screen or roll a few dice. LARPers devote several hours of their weekend to the wonders of a world in which their characters live (and in some cases die) on the whims of their own imagination, and every move writes a new line in a tale of their own creation.

The Live Action Role Players Association (LARPA) defines LARP, or interactive literature, as “any dynamic art in which multiple participants interact at the same time, to create a story.” This general description provides an insight into a broad spectrum of activities, all of which fit under the umbrella of “LARP,” a method of writing a fictional tale through the direct actions and dialogue of its participants.

“If you’ve ever done improv, you’ve LARPed,” said Castillo-Garsow, referring to a method of acting in which participants make the story up as they go along. “You just call it something different, and you’re not as formal about it.”

At UB, stories range from the Dark Jyhad vampire LARP, a local chapter of a nationwide game which has been active in the Buffalo area for nearly a decade, to less structured games like Changeling, in which characters can assume any form that fits the needs of the story. The larger LARP community stretches across the globe, and there are games that tell (or retell) every story from the Civil War and WWII to the galactic battles of Star Wars fame.

Generally, however, LARPA’s site says they can be broken down into two groups, based on how they resolve conflict: Theatre Style (TS), or Live Combat (LC).

TS style games usually require players to bid amounts of XP, or energy, in order to see who prevails in a test of will or magic. In LC games, fake physical combat takes place, with players often fighting with foam swords and plastic shields. The more physical nature of their games tends to draw negative attention, even from within the LARP community.

“It’s kind of frowned upon,” said Marc Savel, a digital media student at Erie Community College (ECC). Savel helps run the Changeling LARP at UB, which runs on the fourth Sunday of each month in Baldy. Changeling is a TS game, in which players never touch one another, and use rock-paper-scissors to decide the outcome of any “battles.” According to The Shining Wolf, the game book Changeling is based on, a changeling is “a fae soul born into a human body for protection from the cold winds of disbelief and Banality.” Players assume the role of anything from a werewolf to a pirate, as long as it fits into the context of the larger story. Changeling focuses on the creative aspect of storytelling, as opposed to the action of fake combat. The only limits, other than the basic guidelines of the book, are those placed by the player’s imagination.

“[Changeling] is the last light in the world of darkness,” said Rich Zimmerman, head storyteller for the game, during a break from their September meeting. Zimmerman, dressed all in black with a full-length trench coat and wide-brimmed hat, said the game is about “escaping the general tedium of everyday life.”

As he tapped a jewel-topped cane on the seat of a Baldy desk, Zimmerman said he got into LARP for much the same reason.

“It gave me a chance to take a break from life,” he said, where he works tech support.

“I’m in what you’d call bottom rung management,” Zimmerman said. Running the game gives him a once monthly respite from the rigors of the nine to five. He said the players in September’s game had created their own persona, drawing mythological inspiration from cultures ranging from Chinese to ancient Nordic.

The September 26 game took on the form of a tournament, with events ranging from an insult competition to a dance-off to the grand finale drink-for-drink chug-off. The dance floor was a Dance Dance Revolution footpad, and the chug-off “mead” was mostly Tab and Wegmans Diet Ginger Ale, but again, it’s about imagination.

Zimmerman closed the proceedings, after the seventh hour of play, with an advertisement for Changeling’s Halloween celebration, which took place Sunday, October 24.

“Halloween is a night when changelings experience their darker side,” and often don’t remember their actions, said Zimmerman. He recalled later a Halloween event where one player woke up in a field, covered in mud and holding a traffic cone, not knowing what had happened the previous evening.

“One thing you can say about LARPs is, the unexpected happens very often,” he said.

The Sjanne players, who held their debut game on Sunday, October 12, didn’t hold a Halloween event, as their monthly rotation forced them to miss the holiday.

Castillo-Garsow and Burdick wrote their own system for Sjanne, which they hope to publish in early 2005. The game centers on a race of elves that were created after a failed attempt at Creation, which resulted in humans. In the game, humans are hunted for sport and used as slaves; killing a human is a lesser offense than eating meat, which is a capital crime.

“Picture ancient China run by Catholic elves…with magic,” said Steve Hoffman, who plays the head priest of the Kan Church in-game.

Castillo-Garsow and Burdick are, in fact, legally married; the costumes they use for the game are from their wedding.

“We did the wedding in Kan language and style as sort of a publicity stunt among the family, so they know what we’re up to,” said Castillo-Garsow. Hoffman, also gaming director for UB’s Simulated Action/Role Playing Association (SARPA) performed the ceremony.

Both Hoffman and Changeling’s Zimmerman agree that there would be no LARP in Western New York if it weren’t for SARPA, which helps with room reservations, coordination, and advertisement for a number of LARPs and gaming conventions.

Burdick, the part time elf queen, got into fantasy at an early age, starting with a love for unicorns and dragons in the first grade. Later, she read the works of J.R.R. Tolkien (The Lord of the Rings) and Douglas Adams (Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy).

“I started making up fantasy creatures and worlds when I was six,” she said. “I basically kept investigating the realms of sci-fi fantasy fandom until I reached the logical conclusion of role playing.”

“Well, really not a conclusion,” she clarified, “But one more thing to assimilate.”

Castillo-Garsow chalks his introduction to role playing up to an early affection for playing and designing video games.

“As things got more sophisticated, it was less about the game [for me], and more about the setting,” he said. “So I role play because I can create places.”

Both he and Burdick agree that while criticism from those outside the gaming community may come with the territory, LARP usually creates more controversy within the realm of role players, especially with those who play tabletop games, such as Dungeons & Dragons.

“From the inside, tabletop is thought of as an older tradition,” said Castillo-Garsow. “A lot of tabletoppers feel self-conscious about the level of involvement [in live action games].”

“Some people love it, swear by it, and hold it as the epitome of role playing,” said Burdick. “Some people hate LARPers and mock them continuously.” In response to mockers, she says, a shrug is all that’s necessary.

Castillo-Garsow isn’t surprised at division amongst the role playing community.

“We all need someone to look down on,” he said. However, he’ll continue to wear the label “geek” with pride.

“Stereotypes aren’t just for the people on the outside,” he said. “They help the people on the inside form a group identity and bond: I can be friends with other geeks because I am a geek.”

This is a UB graduate student and author of a soon-to-be published role playing game system, who spends one weekend a month dressed as the lord of an imaginary elven kingdom. Who does he look down on?

Castillo-Garsow answered easily, “Teenagers.”

The great halls and dark passages of in-game setting are lined with book bags, character sheets, whatever food the gamers could bring to hold them over for what usually turns out to be an all day affair, perhaps longer. LARPers have been known to sleep in the Student Union or on Baldy couches after particularly long games.

For observers outside the imaginative storyline of a LARP, games look like any other group of friends gathering on Sundays in Baldy to talk. Before and after games, or when out of character, players talk about the upcoming presidential election, compare classes, and discuss other LARP or SARPA events.

In-game discussions are difficult for the outsider to understand. Dialogue can range from political backstabbing to large cash transfers to the definition of a Black Spiral (a werewolf who’s gone corrupt). That and the appearance of gamers who wear costumes, which many choose not to do, are the only things that draw curious glances and inquiries from passersby.

Whatever the public perception, Changeling storyteller Zimmerman sees LARP as just a different way to spend a Sunday.

“We’re no sillier than Civil War enthusiasts dressing in wool uniforms in August,” he said, which he has taken part in himself from time to time.

The will and enthusiasm with which LARPers commit themselves to their own imaginative impulses rivals that of hopeful sports fans that look always for the win behind the loss.

Zimmerman added, “We’re no sillier than football fans with no shirts on, painting their chests in the middle of January.”