Around here, we like are our scenes immersive, our characters complicated, and our drama in game. Here are a few pointers to get the most out of your LARP experience:
1: If you're a new player, here's a place to start from! New Player's Page
2: Planning is a fun hobby but they usually don't make it through the first couple hours of game. Character growth in the world of darkness involves things going terribly, horribly wrong. Is your character a monster? The world is out to get you! Human? The world is full of monsters that are out to get you! Embrace it! Enjoy it! Even if your character dies, you can make another one.
3: We are a community of players that meet to play a roleplaying game. No one is really a vampire, werewolf, or ghost. But you knew that, right? This also means that you are not really your character and other people aren't really their characters. What happens in the game, stays in game.
4: You need to eat, sleep, hydrate, and take care of yourself. No one, especially you, wants to be that 4am hypothermia sleep-deprived out-of-game hysteria guy.
5: Remember, this is a Pretendy Fun Time Game. In the end, you are running around with friends in costume and a rubber mask and hitting other people with sticks.
6:This is an 18+ game. Combat, adult themes, and horrific situations are explored. Player discretion is advised.
That Pesky (But Really Important!) Out of Game Stuff
All players must know and follow the safety guidelines. We want people to have good safe fun.
There are a few OOG (out of game) things that we use to keep the game going smoothly and safely. You should be familiar with them.
Shadow Accord is a "What You See Is What You Get", or WYSIWYG LARP. This means that as much as humanly possible we represent what is going on with props, costumes, makeup, or sets. Counted actions are nearly non-existent. If you cannot climb a tree, your character cannot climb a tree. If you can't run away from that pissed off Salubri, oops, you really shouldn't have taken his hat. This makes things pretty easy on you. What you see is, in fact, what you get. The list of exceptions to WYSIWYG is what we call the Rule Book.
-The game world is split into two different areas: The normal world where humans, plants, animals, physical things, and delicious things come from. There is also the spirit world, which is where ghosts, spirits, and things made of will and dreams live. This is called the Shadowlands, or the Umbra. The veil dividing them is the gauntlet. You will find that rules of the game refer to your ability to use it the normal world (realm), the spirit world (umbra), or across the gauntlet (for example, if you are in the umbra you can see the aura of a guy in the realm).
IG/OOG Areas The parking lot, the check-in area before midnight, ST camp and the bathrooms are considered out of game areas. If you need a break or a time out from game, these are places you may go, or you can leave site for a while. Please be careful to not disrupt people in game as much as possible.
There are no rewinds or take-backs to scenes that happen at Shadow Accord. The scenes happen as they do, and once something is done, it's done. This is one of the reasons knowing the rules well is important.
Part of your site fee is that you are guaranteed a place to sleep. Try to find somewhere character appropriate to sleep first. If you can't, you can let someone with a spare bunk know OOG that you don't have anywhere to sleep. We don't want anyone sleeping in their car. Besides, some really interesting role play may come out of that. Some people sleep out of game. There are powers available that let you do it. People sleeping out of game will have a 3x5 card on their bunk and will be wearing an orange headband. Sometimes players of full time NPCs will also be sleeping out of game.
3x5 cards and the information on them are considered out of game. They are there to help you know how to react to something in game. For example, a warded door will have a 3x5 card on it with the information on the ward. Your character doesn't know there's a ward there until you run into it though!
If you need to drop character for a game question, you can hold up crossed fingers to ask your question and receive the answer. This shows you are briefly out of game. This should be used sparingly. It's intended for rules clarifications; using it to tell a joke or make a snarky out of game remark will annoy people.
You will see people wearing masks over their face. These masks indicate that their appearance has changed to match the mask. Because of this, masks that are NOT indications of shape-shifting abilities (sometimes someone just has a mask!), in-game masks must appear obviously hand-made or crafted. Super realistic masks have to be kept for the shape-shifters to avoid confusion.
We use a number of headbands to signify specific game status such as out of game, in the Umbra, or non-combat.