To the Waters and the Wild: A Sidhe Nordic LARP concept

This was an idea that formed this week, and wanted to write it down and write it out. It had originally started as an idea for the Changeling game I take part in. I play the Emperor of the West Court in New York City, and a Merchant in one of the local Goblin Markets, where anything can be bought and sold

Anything.

The stories are varied. Goblin markets are sometimes where stories begin, or sometimes they are the stories themselves. I had started getting ideas about scenarios in them, about mortals who slipped in and had to deal with the bizarre rules and even more bizarre people who run the market, about dealing with the devils and possibly buying and selling more than they realize.

Then my brain changed a turn, I'd always wanted to do something involving a college setting. High School and College (to me anyways) is where normative social rules are hammered down. What if a college campus had a brush with the weird, or odder yet, the Wyrd. What if the artist students met a leanansidhe? what if the jocks, idolized in the normal world, was quested and challenged in the weird. What if the popular kids now contend with the courts of the High Sidhe? What if some of the students revealed themselves to be Sidhe?

Then my thinking turned around. What if this was a larp? I mean, yes, Changeling has the mechanics for it. They have an entire book dedicated to the Goblin Markets. But I didn't want it to be a game about mechanics.

My heart has been grasped by the clutching allure of Nordic Larp, that great dream of Live Action Roleplay, where the focus is on deep immersion and bleeding the lines between character and person. Where games are given government sponsorship in some ways and seen as an artform. I'd dearly love to try it.

So here's my thinking, a one night game: from dusk until dawn. Players will play either human or Sidhe, explorers or dancers of a strange game. Human players would explore the magical realms, and in a way explore themselves. The Sidhe would play their various games, with the humans and with themselves. Some will triumph, some will fail tragically.

The setting would be as such, the mortal players would receive a message inviting them as friends and guests of one of their friends, who it strangely says it to be crowned a Lord in the Court of Nine Lights (Fictional, but I like the ring of it) at the promised place, at the promised night, their friend leads them into the land of the Sidhe. During the night, the mortals deal with the Sidhe, dealing through the wide and varied stalls of the market, spinning in the dancer's garden, engaging in bawdy singing, and engaging in the duels that spring up. Meanwhile, the coronation of their friend and the ritual behind that takes place. When the sun rises, the revels are over and the humans go back to their lives. Some may not have learned anything; some may have been transformed forever; some may not have gone back, having been claimed by the waters of the wild. And still the Changelings dance on.

In my head, this combines several aspects I've witnessed over the years. The first is the clash of odd vs normal in Changeling: The Lost, especially with their concepts of the Goblin Market. It also mixes the concepts of a real life Goblin Market that was put together with performers portraying the merchants and selling/bartering things like the whisper of a lover or a memory of a childhood joy. It could also bring out the ribald performances of my friends in the Ren Faire circuit except  not performing for paying normals, but for each other as performers. It also brings out the concept of ritual, which is something I want to see more in Larps.

This right now is a sprawling rant, I've put this together in my head in the odd hours between work shifts. But if this were fleshed out, what would you like to see. What questions do you have?

Later