A room full of LARPers dressed in character at Intercon XV.sun/bob whitaker

Intercon XV attracts live action role players to Chelmsford's Radisson Hotel for three days of theater-style games

By DAVID PERRY
Sun Staff

You couldn't miss the people dressed up, many swathed in long robes and topped off with homemade turbans. There is a woman who face is covered in silver makeup, and all chat enthusiastically about the game before them.

The looks on the faces of passersby seem to ask the same question: Have I taken a wrong turn into the Star Wars convention?

Welcome to opening night of Intercon XV, last weekend's three-day live action role playing convention at the Radisson Hotel in Chelmsford, where starships flew, terrorist Guy Fawkes was on the loose in 17th century London and some games got downright medieval.

Live action role playing (or LARPing, as players call it) is a mix of theater, elements of role playing board games (such as Dungeons and Dragons) and improv. Players are assigned characters, given background and cut loose to interact with others in creating the game in the spot. Authors/Game Masters oversee and move the games along periodically with instructions and guidance.

Through Sunday, at least 213 people participated in more than 20 games, the largest of them Etherlines II, involving 60 players, running Friday and Saturday.

What kind of "geeks" are these people? The kind that probably run your computer system at work.

"People who are known as geeks in college tend to be introverted, creative people, who go off and create their own little worlds," says Anne Cross, 23, of Medford, a systems administrator. LARPing, she says, is an extension of that.

"It's very similar to computer programming," says Douglas Pickard, a 22-year-old computer systems engineer from Middleton, R.I. "You take an empty space, a computer memory, and transform it into whatever you want."

(While organizers stress that LARPers hail from all walks of life, every one we spoke with was involved in the computer industry.)

"I like to think of it as a bunch of people who get together to kind of get away, play out their fantasies in a harmless way," says Ilene Tatroe of Chelmsford, a product manager for the software company Kronos, who also serves as the convention's press liaison.

Pickard wears a turban of sorts, and is dressed otherwise in a shirt and tie and khakis. "I'm the Emir, in charge of all the Arab states. In the game, most nations left the planet, thinking Earth was basically a rathole." He learned of LARPing two years ago, while attending RPI, and is at his first Intercon.

"It's a lot of fun. It's the first Intercon I've been to."

But "dumb" people need not apply, he says. "There's too much information to keep straight."

Cross says non-players are referred to as "mundanes," and one rule is that "there is no freaking out the mundanes," by running around in public, waving swords, uttering odd dialogue. Some games, she explains, involve vampires, which has caused some to confuse players with "devil-worshippers." Nothing could be further from the truth, she says.

"Just try explaining that to the police while you're all dressed up," says Pickard.

There are two basic styles of LARPing, theater-style and live-combat (or "boffer-style") says Cross. A boffer is a harmless, homemade sword players carry. Most battles are fought with rock-paper-scissors contests.

As much as the convention is about the games, it is about social interaction.

"I see friends I've made over and over" at conventions, says Ryan Smart of Marlborough, dressed in a brown robe for his role as Sheepdog, a hippie cult leader from California. "The friends I've made through this are from all over, so where else can I see them?" He calls LARPing "a shared fantasy experience. Besides, where else can I go to be worshiped as a hippie God?"

Down the hall, there is the Con Suite hospitality room, where players can enjoy soups, snacks and sodas, and they've taken over the conference suites for the weekend. While hotel charges are separate, registration costs only $40 per person.

One of the most avid LARPers seems to be Chelmsford resident Jeff Diewald, 42, who discovered the activity 14 years ago through a friend.

"You just stumble into it." He enjoys "the mix of theater, creativity and storytelling, especially standing up in front of people and acting it out."

His kids Julie, 12, and Jordan, 9 are hooked, too. With their father, they wrote the convention's welcome skit, "Whose LARP Is It Anyways?"

Brian Williams and A.J. Smith have flown in from England.

"There's so much more of this going on in the states than the U.K.," says Williams, who has been playing theater-style games for a decade. "If you want to play games, you go to the U.S."

"Last year," says Smith, "I went to my first one and it was brilliant fun."

As Etherlines II begins, a man is hauled before the crowd by an executioner. The throng is encouraged to stone "the creature that brought down the princess."

No one picks up any of the duck-tape stones, so the executioner slays him with a large axe. The traitor is Mark Waks, Intercon XV's chairman.

Stunned characters mill about in the hallways and an adjacent room, and begin to talk, remaining in character. Things will liven up as the game progresses, promises Waks.

"Tonight, there will be a lot of people gently feeling out other characters. Tomorrow afternoon, the political intrigue gets going and by tomorrow night, people will start to die."

Spoken by a man who already knows what that's like.