“When are we going to start LARPing?”

Stick Man asked the above question on day 3 the first week.

“I thought we were already LARPing,” I replied.

“But we aren’t fighting!” He responded.

“What do you mean? We are fighting! We are fighting the forces of destruction—together!” I told him.

I had to up my game. I needed to come up with something so amazing it would wow their socks off.

I spent much of the weekend devising LARPing activities which included various “escape room” type games and challenges and involved a lot of thought and preparation. I met with a friend, Jared, who has been a Dungeon Master for years. He’s incredibly creative. He helped me solidify some of the game and gave me some great ideas about how to add fun dimensions and up participation and buy-in.

All that work for nothing. Well, not completely nothing, but it didn’t go as planned.

On Monday we met at SCERA park. There was another summer camp happening in the same area with about 30 kids doing mostly physical group activities. There were a lot of stares as my kids started showing up in their costumes.

I set out all my beautifully decorated and designed challenges. I had put each one into a unique container. All the instructions were in poetic form (thanks ChatGPT). They included mind games and physical challenges. They were intertwined with the story I had started to tell them the week before, about Prue Sarn, the afflicted and sad villain. They unanimously chose as their first challenge a box that looked like a book. Inside were 3 poems all cut into 9 parts. First, they had to piece together which stanza’s went with each other and then they were supposed to each memorize one portion of the poem and then recite it all together. I knew this first one would take awhile.

One of the ideas Jared gave me was to give them each a token they could turn into me if they wanted to skip a challenge. They each had one skip token and Michael and Alex both wanted to use theirs on the very first one. I had told them that if they didn’t ever use their skip token, they would get a special prize at the end of camp. That didn’t deter them in the least. They both said they hated memorizing and wanted to sit this one out. The rest of us decided we would only memorize one poem and then move on to the next challenge. A few of us had two parts to work on since we had fewer people. But, we pulled it off with not too much effort. Dagger had already learned all three poems in school. The poem we memorized together was “If” by Rudyard Kipling. I had hoped they would choose “Jabberwocky”.

They reluctantly chose another box. It was a red solo cup stacking puzzle. They did this one rather quickly.

I could see I was losing them and they needed to move so we went to the playground equipment and Alex showed us an obstacle course she had made at that park with some other friends a few weeks before. We used the stop watch on my phone to time each person’s attempt. Locke won this contest of agility and speed. But Stick Man was a close second. They seemed to really enjoy this part.

Afterwards, we went to the bathrooms and drenched ourselves in water as it was a very hot day.

Near the end, Stick Man and Dagger were both complaining that what we were doing wasn’t true LARPing and there needed to more fighting. I asked them what we should do and Stick Man explained that each character had to come up with their stats. Speed, strength, health and IQ (there was another stat but I can’t remember it). He started explaining to the other kids how to come up with their numbers and helping them decide. He wrote it all down on a piece of paper.

We all went home.

Tuesday I was up at 5 am to be at the election location by 6. I got home at 9:30 pm and crashed into bed.

Wednesday we met at Canyon Glen again. I had contacted Stick Man and Dagger’s mom to ask them to come with “foes” to fight so we could finally get to true LARPing. Stick Man had created the enemy “Polymer” who was a giant Orbi. This creature could grow at will by adding water to itself and shrink by using a sponge. Dagger was very unhappy and thought it unfair when he lost to Polymer because the odds were not in his favor. These “battles” took place while we sat around a picnic table. Death Stalker was able to fight Polymer with his pet fox he had bought at thrift store the week before. It was perfect for his costume. I think he was the only one who won a battle against Polymer.

Gordon Ramsay’s sister had joined us again for the last 3 days and she had chosen the name Katniss Everdeen for her character name. She came dressed in khaki’s and a denim shirt. She wore her thick hair in a side braid. On Wednesday when we met at the canyon park, she and Gordon both took off on a trail that wound through the trees next to our table. They were never far away but they stayed in the “woods” while most of the “fighting” was taking place.

Stick Man was having to do complicated computations to figure out who won the fights and most of the other kids were sitting around waiting for their turn. They were bored. Perhaps Stick Man was getting a glimpse of what it was like to entertain a bunch of kids. It wasn’t easy.

We decided it was time for lunch. It was just as we were finishing that Alex came. She had been attending a cake decorating class that morning and brought the cake she had decorated for us to share. She had written on her cake: “I ❤ LARP camp!”

After cake, we went to the amphitheater to find something to do. They weren’t interested in all the rest of my “games” I had brought with me. I had been hoping to use them after spending so much time creating them. Maybe in the future they will get used. They wanted to play charades on the stage. This entertained them for some time.

There were lots of bugs and some like Gordon were picking them up and others like Alex were deathly afraid of them. It was because of the bugs that we decided to go back to my house for our last hour. They filled some water balloons and drew faces on them. Some only survived a minute or two. We sat on the back deck planning what we would do for our last day.

They decided we would ditch our characters, wear pajamas, make treats and watch a movie. It was one of our best days together. We made fruit pizza and chocolate chip streusel pizza. There was math happening on the white board as they figured out how much more flour was needed. A few of the kids took charge to decide how to fairly pick a movie. After several votes and discussions, they settled on Brother Bear. I found all the extra blankets and we laid them on the living room floor and we settled in. We talked about starting a kids club together—perhaps we will.

It was an amazing, fun day.