Looking for a way to expand my horizons a bit and to stretch a little in LARP terms, earlier this year I let myself get convinced to try out NPC'ing a post apocalyptic zombie horror LARP called Endgame that runs in NH. I enjoyed the experience greatly and was eager for a chance to do it again. That chance came this past weekend.



I speak to one of the people who run the game over IM occasionally. I told her I would be coming and asked if there was anything I should bring or if she needed any props. She mentioned she was going to be running a big mod that would be set in a factory, and it would be great if I could come up with some props to represent industrial control panels and parts and junk for the players to salvage parts from.

So I went to work on that, and as things like that typically go for me I over did it just a tad. I got a late start Friday morning in large part because I had trouble fitting all the junk I was bringing in the car. I constructed four control panels out of fiberboard and scrounged parts and gizmos. I had several boxes full of every conceivable computer part, wire, cord, switch, gadget and gizmo I could lay my hands on. I had stuff ranging from 1990's era 10 base T network interface cards to dashboard switches from a 1976 Triumph Spitfire. I felt like Sanford and Son going down the road.

I only got lost briefly on the ride up to the site, so all in all it took about 11.5 hours. The ride wasn't too bad since I had gotten a good night's sleep the night before, and the weather was pleasant. I cruised into monster camp around 8:00PM and got the last empty bunk in the building. I didn't have too long to wait before getting shoved into game.

Friday night for the most part was fairly low impact. I spent most of my time playing disposable zombie crunchies and mindless human thralls. I got to dress up in cool gawd awful looking zombie clothes. I spent most of the night wearing a tartan patterned sports jacket that fit great, kept me warm, and looked hideous. It was just perfect.

When it came time to grab weapons for the first time I saw that someone had stocked monster camp with some new toys. In addition to the regular swords and claws and guns someone had made a boffer parking meter. I had been telling myself I was going to do that one day, but it looked like someone beat me to the punch. There were also a couple of shields made out of road signs and a VW hubcap. I used the No U Turn shield a number of times over the weekend.

I got to play my first real roleplayed role in a little small mod. One of my regrets from the first event was that since I only played small combat roles I never got to interact with any of the PC's. This was a relatively small scene and it ended up not going anywhere in particular. But it did allow me to get escorted into town where I spent a little time in the tavern talking to some of the PC's.

I was a little worried when I got up Saturday morning and it was pouring rain. I looked out the door of monster camp and I couldn't see 30 ft because of the fog and rain. Luckily this cleared up before noon so things were only a little bit delayed. Pretty soon it was back to zombie-ing.

I spent much of the early afternoon crunching for a repeater mod. I understand the inspiration for the mod came from American Gladiators. The essential gist was that small groups of people were brought into the mod and divided into two teams and made to compete in various tests and events. There was an obstacle course and shooting gallery and puzzles and duels and so forth. The teams were rewarded with treasure based on how well they succeeded.

It was a cool mod, but after about 3 groups went through I decided I wanted to do something else. Again, this mostly came from my experience from my first event where I got stuck on mods for 4-6 hrs at a time. I wanted to make sure that I got a chance to mix things up a little more this time. I went back to monster camp and switched out with another NPC.

So I did some randoming, ate some food, did some more randoming, did a few small things and generally just helped out around monster camp. Around dinner time I went back over to the large mod building and went to work setting up all the junk I brought for the big factory mod that was going to be run later that night. I got a real good feeling for the mod during setup. All the props looked great, the setup looked cool, the special effects were super creepy, and I thought this mod had a good chance to be really spectacular.

After dinner we geared up for the Main Event. This was going to be a marathon combat mod that was going to cover a lot of ground and a lot of time. The campsite that was used for the event was the Boys Camp. About a 1/4 mile down the road there is nearly identical Girls Camp. As it turned out that campsite was not being used on Saturday, so the decision got made to turn that whole camp into one great big huge mod site for this humongous battle.

The mod consisted of the PC's attacking and taking over various spots and then holding them for a short time so that a ritual could be cast. Then they would move on. So the battle slowly moved from a couple of buildings in the trees, up a hill onto a soccer field, and up another hill to another ball field. At this point the Big Bad Boss Monsters came out and pushed the PC's back down to the first field where the battle eventually concluded. It was a long, hard, tiring mod. I think it took close to an hour and a half just counting the combat time. It you factor in the planning, the 1/4 mile hike and return trip, it all told took up most of the night.

The majority of us NPC's were fairly wimpy. We had our own little meta-game going on during the mod. If we died, we were supposed to go to one of several respawn points and wait 3 minutes before coming back. Of course, we hated standing around waiting. However, one of the Big Bad Monsters had a healing ability, and every couple of minutes she would loudly shout out a phrase which would heal all of the NPC's on the field.

So the game we played was to try to time our dying to her healing shout. If we got killed and were lying on the ground doing our one minute bleed out count when she did her healing shout, we got to jump up and get right back to fighting without the annoying 3 minute wait. But if we lasted too long or died too fast, we would time it wrong and end up bleeding out and have to go sulk at the respawn point for 3 minutes.

The mod seemed to go fairly well. Lots of hard fighting. Lots of screaming and hollering. There were a couple of resurrections, but most of those were people dying in a blaze of glory because they made suicide charges against the Big Bad Guy. They ran out of the line and unloaded their guns into him point blank, and were promptly deathed for their efforts. In short, cool death.

When this was all over all of us that were going to run the factory mod hustled back to camp in order to get that ready to go. We were afraid that if we wasted any time that people would end up going to bed after the long tiring mod that had just run and all our efforts at setup would be wasted.

Various snafus and glitches delayed us a bit, but eventually the mod got hooked and the players showed up. There were eight of them. Immediately there was a mod breaking problem. The main thrust of the mod was for the PC's to come to this factory to salvage much needed technical supplies. Due to some unforeseen drama back in town, the one guy who was still around and who had the necessary skill to salvage the parts didn't get hooked. In other words, no one on the mod could complete it.

Once the PC's realized this there were a number of naughty words said over and over again. I don't know what happened next but after a short while of arguing and fuming the tech guy showed up on the mod. I think they sent someone back for him. From that point further the mod hit its stride and really clicked.

I put a fair amount of work into getting this mod run, so you are all going to have to bear with me for a bit while I exercise my vanity. The mod completely rocked. The props I made looked great. The background soundtrack gave me goosebumps. The NPC's had their zombie on hardcore. The mod's premise and layout was insane. The PC's were seriously freaking at a few points. We pulled out all the stops and it paid off.

One of the rooms had a liquid nitrogen tank, and every five minutes an alarm would sound. People had to scramble to clear out of the room before it vented and killed everyone. Another room was full of toxic radioactive waste, and the only way to cross it was to walk on a path made up of dead bodies. This gave most of the people the shaken effect.

The mod didn’t go perfectly as planned, but it was certainly the highlight of my weekend. I believe the PC’s really enjoyed it and got into the mood of the mod completely. All the work I put into making the props was totally validated.

Sunday I got another nice roleplay role as the centerpiece of a small mod. The PC’s needed to convince my poor dead ghost to give them some treasured item. Things didn’t quite work out mostly because I don’t think the PC’s picked up on the fact I was a ghost. I’m pretty sure they thought I was just some guy. I was trying to figure out how to proceed from that point when out of the blue I decided to make up something on the fly. I got them all to raise their right hands and I swore them in as auxiliary members of the society I belonged to, and thus I was able to entrust them with the object I was guarding for the society. I was worried that I might be screwing up the plot, but I think it all worked out in the end.

All that was left at that point was one big finally town mod. We had a great big fight in the large mod building. Once again I was a schmucky zombie. I got shot on one of my first resets and the Velcro nerf dart embedded itself in the crappy tie I was wearing. It stayed there through the entire fight, which for some reason amused me to no end.

When the event ended I ran around for a little bit cleaning up. I would really have loved to have hung around and talked to people about the event, but I still had the drive home ahead of me. Unlike the drive north, the drive south was going to be made when I was severely exhausted and sleep deprived.

I won’t dwell on the details of it. However, suffice to say it was really horrible. I love the game, I love the experience, I love the people and I truly hope I can come back soon to do it again. But I don’t think I am going to be able to solo this trip any more in the future. Not unless I take a plane or something.