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At the weekend I attended Herofest, a Live Roleplaying festival down in south Wales. I have up until this point never done any live roleplaying, nor have I really done any table-top roleplaying. I have played quite a lot of Oblivion, but that probably doesn’t count. Despite my complete lack of experience and my trepidation, I thoroughly enjoyed it and would really like to go again. It’s all Rich’s fault.

We travelled down on the Thursday as Rich was faction rep for the Dai Fae Dyne so needed to be there a day early. On the way we visited a Welsh cider mill where we spent copious quantities of money of even greater quantities of alcohol, some of which I have brought back with me, you’ll be glad to hear. After trying a few “tasters” of cider, which were about a third of a pint each, I was a little bit tipsy and might have sung all the way to Candleston, which is roughly here.

Having arrived we met with the few others who were that early, and tried to pitch our tents. Rich had brought a 5m diameter bell tent which proved not too difficult to put up once we found enough space for it, whereas I’d borrowed Jimmy’s 3-man tent. It’s a nice tent, but without any instructions I’m ashamed to say it took me probably 45 minutes to pitch. One reason might be that I started with the outer sheet both inside out and rotated 90 degrees from where it should have been. The other is that the double guy ropes confused me. Ah, it’s been too long since I went camping.

After that I think we went shopping for food that we never ended up eating because we were too busy to even keep a fire going most of the time. I did buy two fold-up chairs though. I spent most of Thursday and Friday worrying about my costume, which I’d basically picked up in a few charity shops at the last minute with the instructions “find something green and brown”. It was alright, not too obviously modern but I still ended up buying a few extra bits and pieces from the traders at the site. I now own a large brown cloak, which I might take to the beach and sit on to ensure it gets some real-life use.

I paid for the meal deal which was well worth it, as it meant we got Friday supper through to Sunday breakfast for £30 and no need to cook over the fire, and proper cutlery and plates and a tavern with a roof in which to eat and drink without getting rained on. The food was pretty good, especially the tasty chilli, and a full breakfast was plain necessary after a day of running around. Talking of the facilities, unlike mose camp sites the showers not only worked but were quite strong and plenty hot enough. The toilets even had loo roll. Whatever next?

The rest of our faction turned up a bit later, until there were 6 of us. Uglee (Shane) the half-orc warrior, Angus (Dave) and Haggis (Andy) who were wee free men warriors, Prudence (Helen) the witch scribe, and Fylgar (Rich), who was faction rep so automatically was a healer-scribe, and Esk (me) the bard healer. Since my guitar didn’t work properly, I ended up being Esk the cursed Bard for the duration.

(photo courtesy Tim Salmon, thanks Tim)

Our faction — The Dai Fae Dyne — are essentially neutral ruthless traders, so I spent a lot of time making series of lucrative trades so that we could get what we needed, but also what everyone else needed and then sell it to them at high prices. This was really fun and got me running around to see all the camps, some of which were impressively decked out, in particular the Wizards Concillium and the Dym Wan.

One thing I thought was a great idea was having each faction play some wandering monsters. Costumes were provided and there is very little that is more fun than running around looking scary and trying to hit small children with a sword. The kids’ faction, the Squires, was actually one of the most violent ones, as they seemed to lack the subtlety of diplomacy and intrigue and far preferred to beat people up. Can’t blame them, really.

The people were by and large less geeky than I expected, and yet the roleplay standards were higher, despite which I found myself welcomed by mine and other factions equally well. I threw myself into things on the Friday evening when I was left representing the Dai Fae in the Tavern accompanied only by Uglee, who being an orc was not a lot of use when it came to wheeling and dealing. Since I didn’t have the scribe skill, I couldn’t write anything down, so I had to remember 3 or 4 different trade agreements that I’d tentatively made before the rest of the faction came back and someone could make a note of it all!

Being new, I wasn’t entirely aware of all the rules, which meant that I’d made the assumption that you couldn’t be attacked in the Tavern. This is almost entirely true, however it turned out that there were certain exceptions to which I was not privy, with the result that I was coming back from the loo, spotted an enemy, went in to tell Haggis, and then we both turned round to find it raised up preparing to strike — I actually screamed and tried to run but failed and took a body hit - went down, crawled off to the side and waited for someone to come and heal me. Pretty much everyone had run off, but eventually someone, I think Uglee, came and fixed me up. It was a properly immersive scary moment, which pleased me as I’d clearly suspended my disbelief to the right degree.

The focus of the weekend was the ritual of the Wizards Concillium, which appeared to involve setting fire ineptly to fireworks and a big sigil dug into the ground and filled with cotton balls. It provided an impressive end to the Saturday night, especially when it inevitably all went horribly wrong and we had monsters coming out of our ears (well, mostly the rift gate, but y’know).

After we handed in our game money for safekeeping we sat around in camp for a good while chatting before going to bed. After going to bed, the Keepers sang “I am the Music Man” with their own instruments each round, so I didn’t get a lot of sleep. I didn’t mind really, if I had been a bit more awake I might have got up and joined in, but that would have involved getting up and out of my cozy sleeping bag. Not going to happen.

Sunday morning we were out of character again and made a leisurely day of packing up and returning home, stopping off at Dave and Helen’s for a cuppa on the way. It was quite odd getting breakfast called out in my own name, and I nearly forgot that ‘Claire’ — rather than ‘Esk’ — was me. That could have happened any morning though, I suspect. We made it back to Aber at about 5.15 and I still went to Buffy night despite being fairly knackered.

It was somewhat like a big murder-mystery with strangers and lasting over a weekend, but with subplots and sidetracks along the way, and a lot more freedom. So if you don’t like dressing up, or you don’t like camping, or you don’t like new people, it’s possibly not for you. However, if you like most of these things, and also cider, you should let me know and come along to the Interplanar Fayre in July! If you’ve managed to read this far down, that is. Sorry about that.