Getting Started
WELCOME TO RENEWAL
Renewal is a live-action roleplaying game run by Curious Pastimes Ltd. It is a long-running fest campaign, staging four major events every summer since 1996 and supporting about a dozen smaller events a year through the autumn and spring.
What is Live-Action Roleplaying
Live-action roleplaying (or LARP) is a form of collaborative storytelling, in which players take on the roles of heroes in a fantasy world and act out their stories. These player characters quest, scheme and strive, interacting with each other as well as with a variety of non-player characters – friends, foils and foes – played by members of staff (or other players volunteering a little of their time). Think of it as a huge game of Dungeons & Dragons, where you get to dress up as your character.
Scores of LRP events take place every year across the United Kingdom, most of them one-off events (or short campaigns lasting a few events) for just a few dozen players; the handful of fest games, like Renewal, are larger-scale events with hundreds of players organised into distinct factions, competing and collaborating to achieve their goals.
The story runs continuously, with characters persisting from one event to the next (barring death or retirement) and stories unfolding over months or years. Characters in the game grow and develop over time, learning new skills and acquiring new powers, as well as forming friendships and alliances, accumulating experiences and earning titles and accolades.
LRP or LARP?
Some people call it LRP (for live roleplaying), some call it LARP or Larp (for live-action roleplaying); some people have extremely strong opinions on the matter, and will give you detailed arguments why one is more self-evidently right than the other.
We call it LARP, just because we had to choose one for consistency, but you can call it what you want – we’re more concerned with playing it than arguing about the name!
How Do I Get Started?
For starters, read about The_World of the game and familiarise yourself with the setting, the factions in the game, and some of the creatures you’ll meet on the way.
Head over to Character Creation and start planning a character. You may have a group of friends you’re planning to attend with, or at least have a faction in mind to play in, which could inform the type of character you create. All of the factions have social media spaces, at least on Discord and Facebook; pay your prospective new home a visit and get to know them.
Read the Rules of Play and the Combat rules and brush up on Calls. It’ll be useful to familiarise yourself with all the rules, eventually, but those three sections, plus whatever sections are relevant to your character’s skills, will be enough to get you started.
Source yourself some costume and weapons. It can be daunting to get started putting your kit together, but some tips are listed in these sections, and you may be able to borrow or scrounge stuff to start with.
And then come along. Don’t worry about learning everything or feeling completely prepared; just have fun and you’ll figure the rest out. Welcome to this strange, silly, wonderful hobby!
CHARACTER CREATION AND PROGRESSION
Your character is your persona in the game. You’ll play as your character from time in to time out every day, pausing only to volunteer as a monster or to take a break from play. Your character persists from one event to the next (barring death or retirement), forming friendships and enmities, earning titles and accolades, and learning new secrets and skills over time.
You can have only one active character in the system at a time; once a character is retired, it is out of play (i.e. you may not switch back and forth between characters from event to event).
CONCEPT
You can play any kind of character you want, as long as it fits into the world of Renewal. Every character in the game can be a hero, and you will walk among a host of those who live, fight and die together.
In game terms, your character is chiefly defined by their skills, which determine what they’re trained to do, but it can help to start with a sense of who they are. We call this a character’s concept: they could be a haughty duellist, for example, or a studious wizard, or glamorous courtier. You don’t have to start with a concept – feel free to jump ahead to the next section – but it can help to inspire you and to shape your choices.
A concept is usually broad and simple, expressed in a few words. Players approach it in a variety of different ways.
Skills: Most players, inevitably, base their concept on the skills they want to pick: a pike-wielding soldier, a potion-stained alchemist, a master of the ritual circle, a skilled tracker, a body-hacking surgeon.
Role: Many players start from where they’ll fit in their group or faction (p. 00): a wealthy merchant, a courtly chatelaine, a devoted civil servant, a priest to a flock – or even a hardened criminal.
Motivation: For a lot of players, of course, it’s all about what drives their character: a power-hungry noble, a knight trying to rediscover their holy zeal, a perfectionist blacksmith, a rogue dedicated to chaos.
There isn’t any one right way to come up with a character concept: you could take inspiration from a favourite book or historical figure, or start with your backstory and work forward – or even start with a costume. Whatever fires your imagination!