Dumnonni Fire

Over the weekend of 27-28th June 2015 there was a major fire at the Dumnonni Chronicles site in Devon. NO ONE WAS HURT but overnight the long hall and new roundhouse were completely destroyed in an accident - there was no malicious intent.

When I think of the work in creating these lovely buildings it breaks my heart to see this destruction the fire has wrought. So I thought it would be nice to gather memories of the good times we have enjoyed there, and encourage you all to think about how you can help contribute to it's rebuilding. 

Already the great community on the FB Dumnonni page has sprung into action, here is the statement from the Dumnonni refs -

To begin with, a heartfelt thank you to everyone who contributed to the July event and ensured it could take place following the loss of our buildings. The ref team have considered, and continue to consider, 'where to go from here'. Knowing the years of effort that went into the structures that were lost, and the massive scale of the task of simply replacing them, the best way forward seems to be to take it one step at a time - setting clear and realistic goals for each step DC takes.

Note that we don't wish any of the steps to be rushed, just to 'knock something up' for the sake of having it. Everything we do should be at least as good, if not better, than whatever came before.

First: To continue the great work on the site in general that was started at the clear-up weekend. There is a lot that needs to be done - improving drainage, managing the trees (damaged and undamaged), replacing the furniture that was lost, and simply maintaining the existing structures.

Second: Try over the summer to build a kitchen to act as a welcoming focal point in Culhaven, with oven, hearth and food preparation area large enough for multiple cooks, and a covered communal space. This will depend on our time and the turnout to builds.

Third: To put on the October event at Culhaven and make sure it is as epic as it can be. We believe that any rebuilding at the site should not detract resources from the events - DC exists to put on great live roleplay events and that is what we should continue to strive to do.

Fourth: A new, major building. Thousands of hours of work went into the old buildings - for some people the majority of their spare time, energy and creativity for several years went into them. This sort of project is not something to be launched into lightly and without sufficient preparation. Therefore, we are looking into various options for a major building in the future. Stages one, two, three are enough to be going on with, please be patient.

Various very generous offers concerning fundraising have been made. It is fantastic that the DC community has come together at this time. We have decided against setting up an online crowdfunding appeal. Instead we have gone for the simplest option.

Donations can be sent to:

Dumnonni Chronicles Live Role Playing Club

Lloyds Bank

30-96-23

0771593

Tag you donation 'From the Ashes'.
We will not announce donations publicly, but we will know who you are and love you for it.
Any donations will be used for the site-improvements listed above.
If you want to discuss/arrange fund raising ideas for DC please contact Mark Matthews.
The best way to contact Mark is by PM, or e-mail to traders@dumnonni.com.

And, of course, any time and energy you can spare for build weekends on site will be vital to the success of DC's efforts to remake Culhaven as a magic place to tell epic tales within. We hope to run one or more build weekend over the summer and will let you know dates as soon as we have them.

All rights Simon Cornish

Added to the Archives

With thanks to Daniel Cawley!

There are a few here we have not seen before :)

Issue 6 contents page, issue 6 Cover
Issue 7 Contents , Issue 7 Cover
Issue 8 Contents , Issue 8 cover
Issue 9 Contents, Issue 9 Cover
Issue 10 contents, Issue 10 Cover
Issue 11 contents, Issue 11 cover

Arthur and Merlin film!

Ok so quite a few of the folks we know and love got the opportunity to be extras for the battles in this low budget film. They went to the premiere and got to see their names in lights too! Here is a great little blog article on the "making of"

14 Things I Learned Making An Epic Fantasy Feature Film On A Micro-Budget

Set-dressing to impress!

There is a real trick to making a place look the part to such an extent that characters can get really immersed in another world. Here is a sneaky look into how a very ordinary wooden barn was converted into a plush and exotic souk interior. This was for the Mythlore new lands 3: 2014. The site is Candlestone.

Rights Mark Cordory

Here are the before shots, the counter to the right is inbuilt as is the stove, the open door you can see leads to the kitchen.

Rights Mark Cordory

..the inevitable mountain of kit arrives, this is the other end of the barn, taken from the stove, including the main doors.

Rights Mark Cordory

Rights Mark Cordory

 Left - here we see the process of pinning cloth to the roof and walls, this obviously requires time and a LOT of cloth.

Rights Roy Smallpage

 And now the finished location. The Saracen's Head in the Balsora Souk. It would not be difficult to imagine yourself in a truly exotic place, warmed by the sand-laden winds and the salt smell of the gulf. 

And of course to finish the location all other senses must be treated - music, light, food and entertainments and exotic smells of incense.

Rights Ian Heath

Rights - Roy Smallpage

 The lights are natural and soft through lanterns.


Food can add a great deal to an event, this is a shot of the main "feast." Catering by the 

Rights Mark Cordory

award winning Kellie Sweeney.

And what could be more appropriate than alluring gossamer veiled dancers?

I think you will all agree the transformation is startling! Well done to all the team involved.

Rights Roy Smallpage

Although this trilogy is completed there are thoughts to visit these lands again in new stories. If you are eager to join the next instalment from this talented team sign up to the facebook group and watch for further details Mythlore LRP/LARP

Diary of a new event: The World Went Dark. Part 1, by Cazz Walker

Two weeks before Christmas I posted on Facebook, desperate to find a post apocalyptic game I could play that ticked the right boxes for me as a player. After a lot of comments on that status most of which seemed to tell me to run a game myself I decided to do just that.

The problem with this initially was that having never run an event I had no idea what to do. So I decided to come up with my vision of a post apocalyptic world. I started writing down an overview, and then I sent it to a good friend who offered to help me run it.

From there I think the word snowball is the best description for what happened. In a 2 week period over Christmas and new year we made an FB page, we locked down a site, we made an event page, we sold out of tickets 48 hours after putting them on sale and we fleshed out the game world hugely.

Along the way we picked up more people to help run the game. If I have learnt anything in the manic 3 weeks its that being able to task people with jobs is a god send at getting stuff done. Especially when you have an idea and are failing at wording what you want it to be.

Skype has proved invaluable, as it means the refs who are a bit spread out can all get together once a week and have a brainstorm or just chat about what we've all been up to for the game.
Likewise Google docs is invaluable, as it allows all of us to edit and read documents live. So either while on Skype together or while chatting on Facebook. And all of you can edit at the same time, so no risk of saving your document and deleting someone else's work.

With the event sold out the next challenge is to go through all the players backgrounds and make sure they fit the game world and work with the playerbase to make the world a living thing. On top of that we have to start designing and making the crew kit, ordering the weapons, and ageing the guns.

Building up kit already! Rights Cazz Walker

So far its been a bit of a rollercoaster! I did not expect this to take off in the way it has. There are systems that have been running for years that don't sell out in 2 days. So for people to believe in an untried event enough to book us up, is awesome, but also an added level of stress. On top of that some of the people coming, run, what are in my opinion some of the best events in the UK. So have the pressure of that as well.

The worst part so far- the inevitable issue all event organisers have when some people dont quite get the event and try and shoe horn stuff in that doesnt fit, or start going on about how everyone will combust in flames if we dont have modern lighting... the solution? In our case its been talking to the players, ensuring to the best of our ability that they understand this event may not be what they are used to or what they think it might be like. Working with them as much as possible to make sure their backgrounds are enjoyable for them but also fit the game world, and offering as much help as we can with their kit and costume. Its really easy to slate someone who doesn't get the look and aspiration you are aiming for with costume. But I think every good costumer at some point was sat down by someone and told how to do it well. I know that was the case with me.

Best part so far was seeing people clearly into the idea of the event. The level of keen is amazing, and that in turn feeds our keen! 

Stay posted for more diary entries over the coming months.

Videos!

So I created a Youtube channel for the Scribe Magazine.

Do we think LRPers of the UK are ready willing to share their videos of events?

Contact me if you are! I know that lots of us less talented types would LOVE to see them and it would be nice for them to be all in one place. You would retain full copyright and we would clearly mark it as your creation!

Costume trials and tribulations by Matt Pennington

I have an confession to make. It's sort of an embarrassing condition for a LRPer, and doubly so for someone who runs LRP games that extol the virtues of good costume.

I hate costume.

I don't mean the physical thing of course, I don't have an actual hatred for bits of material and props and stuff. No, what I really absolutely 

the kit of terror -All rights Ian Heath

loathe with a passion is the process of getting a costume together.

The hatred is visceral and deep seated. I very nearly cancelled a ticket for a LRP event for which I had paid £200 because when faced with the prospect of having to get a costume together for it - I just couldn't bear the thought of having to go through that awful experience. In the end I did go, but "work avoidance" hit so bad, that I put off the need to sort costume for nine months... getting steadily more desperate with every passing day as I did literally anything other than sort my costume. In the end I threw myself on the tender mercy of a friend who doesn't LRP - and they helped me sort a costume. Sort of the one-eyed man leading the wilfully blind.

I accept I could be wrong, but I think there are some people in our hobby who enjoy sorting costume. In my head this is a bit like enjoying the prospect of root canal treatment without anaesthetic. How can anyone enjoy something so agonizingly painful, so unpleasant? I don't actually spend much time wondering how they do enjoy it, what I find more interesting is why I hate it so much. I have a sneaking suspicion that while I might be something of a caricature on the subject, for once I represent normal.

For me, for something to be this painful, two conditions need to be met. (1) it needs to be something I'm really bad at and (2) it needs to be something that is very important. I'm really bad at cooking - I mean desperately bad at cooking, but I never give that a moments thought because it's just food so it doesn't really matter - at least it doesn't in our house. I'm really bad at loads of things, but most of the time they're just not important.

What I consider important can change over time. Like many LRPers, I'm desperately bad at football. At school I was only saved the embarrassment of being picked last each day by the presence of a little crippled midget lesbian boy. Being good at football was the basic requirement for social acceptance, being unable to dribble, shoot, or pass meant bullying and isolation. I responded in my usual **** you manner by refusing to participate - which was a problem when the law mandates regular physical bullying at schools. The result was frequent detentions and an enduring hated for our "national sport".

After university came an epiphany. I was suddenly part of a social group that played football for exercise and for fun, rather than as a means for identifying targets for bullying and social ostracism. Suddenly football was FUN! I mean I was still hillariously awful - we would all laugh at my utter inability to do *anything* other than a frantic waddle. I play football like a penguin being chased over snow by a polar bear - but now it didn't matter anymore. And once it didn't matter.... it stopped being painful and immediately became fun.

I'm bad at sorting costume. Making it is not a problem. Making things is a technical thing - I'm not very good at it, but really any idiot can thread a sewing machine and push the pedal. You just follow the instructions. Anyone can thread a needle and push it through some material. Of course I'm a bit cack handed and I struggle with any pattern more complicated than a cloak - but I've made lots of kit, the making of it is just a thing.

It's *thinking* about costume that I hate. Trying to work out what it should look like. Trying to decide what colour it should be, what shape, what material. I'm desperately bad at this. Which bits of costume to put with which. It's not a technical matter - what looks right, what looks good - it's a matter of taste. And I don't have any. As a result I find the entire process excruciatingly difficult. It's like trying to think in five dimensions, or trying to imagine what a new colour looks like. My five year old daughter already exhibits far more clothes sense than I will ever have. My brain just can't do it.

Yeah, yeah, whine, whine, who gives a shit? I'm bad at lots of things - they don't cause me pain like this one - why is this one so important to me that it is capable of tormenting me like this? That's what is I find fascinating - why is this such a big deal? LRP's just a game, it's just for fun.

I didn't use to care. When I first started LRPing I was part of a club which made leather armour using brown furniture leatherette. If we wanted studded leather armour... we put paperclips through the leatherette. Kit standards were not great, but you wore armour so that you could get Armour Class 17 - it didn't matter what it looked like!

Then I went to my first national LRP event and suddenly I met LRPers who had great looking kit. Briefly I experienced some of the old familiar anxiety. Was my kit good enough? Would I look stupid? But my friends assured me that my leatherette armour with 8,000 curtain rings sewed to it and a shield made of cardboard was good enough and off I went. I soon discovered there were people with gaffa-tape weapons and karrimat armour - whew... I was ok.

In the years that followed, kit standards steadily improved - but I learned to freeload. If I was going to an event then I'd get myself in a group with friends going - we'd agree the kit together (they would agree, I would nod). Without realizing it, I was making two mistakes - I was seeking out events where kit standards were promoted - because I enjoyed them more. But I was also getting to know an awful lot of people - this is a great hobby full of great people. As I got to know them... I became friends with them... and suddenly I cared what they thought.

And then the worst mistake of all, I started running events - professionally - that stressed the benefits of good costume. And what that means is that if I don't have at least bearable costume... then I don't just look stupid - I also look like a fraud and a hypocrite in front of my friends. So suddenly I care immensely about something I know I'm horrendously bad at. And that means that preparing for an event suddenly becomes unbearably painful - at least it does if I have to make my own costume choices.

Now I imagine that most folks don't have to worry about their professional reputation when considering their LRP costume, (although I suspect that is a problem for some LRP traders), but I know from talking to LRPers over the years that I'm not the only one who suffers from this anxiety. The truth is that it's a lot more common in our hobby than we think and by and large we don't talk about it.

Why? Why on earth would we care? I mean seriously, this is a game, we do it for FUN. How could it possibly be important what we look like when we're dressing up as elves and goblins and pretending to cast spells at each other? Get a grip right?

To look at it differently for a moment, why wouldn't we care? In the real world people are obsessed with their image. Maybe it's cultural, a product of society, maybe it's genetic and we're all just peacocks dragging round enormous tails. Whatever the reason, few people would coherently argue that human beings are disinterested in their appearance. We don't have a global fashion industry worth billions because appearance is just silly and nobody really cares. Our sense of our self, of who we are, is intimately wrapped up in our appearance. I'm not concerned here with the ethics of why our self-esteem is so tightly wrapped up with our appearance - I'm simply pointing out the blatant truism that it is.

If there are deep-rooted psychological or genetic reasons why our appearance is massively important to us - then it seems to me that it would be incredible if that didn't bleed into LRP. Sure, this is "just for fun"... but actually most of life is "just for fun". When teenagers go nightclubbing, it's just for fun - but judging from the time and money invested, when we socialize is precisely when our concerns about our appearance are most powerful.

The moment we start to make an issue of costume, encouraging each other to make an effort with our kit then I'd expect to see some negative responses in terms of people feeling anxious, awkward, or concerned. The plural of anecdote is not data, but talking to LRPers -and to other organizers I've accumulated scores of war-stories that expose exactly this kind of concern, expressed in many different ways.

Up to now that's always been an intellectual concern to me, albeit one that impacts my games heavily. I desperately want players to make an effort with their kit - the more effort they make the better the game is. But nobody wants their players to be intimidated, anxious, or upset by the thought of joining the game. What surprised me this year, having gone to play an event which had high kit aspirations and for which I had no existing costume - was how visceral my own response to those fears was. I'm normally an incredibly confident person - I wouldn't argue with the word "arrogant" - but I was at my wit's end here doing something I knew I was bad at because I hadn't realized how important the end results were to me.

Going fowards, I hope we see costume standards improve over the next decade the way they have over the last. But to make that happen with as little pain as possible, I think it would be valuable to find ways to encourage people to want better costume that don't provoke our anxieties that we will be judged by our appearance and found wanting. Maybe we won't manage that - but if we do then I think the starting point is probably the realization that our appearance in front of our peers is as important in LRP as it is in the real world.

Great kit (from an unknown hero)? -all rights Tom Garnett