Ghoulish white faces with dark eyes lurked beneath the chandeliers and timber beams. They whispered in Slavic-sounding accents. A man with pointy ears and a deformed face shuffled under the candelabrum shaped like a dragon, muttering to himself. This was a particularly strange evening at the historic James J. Hill House, because everyone present was a vampire.
“Smile, you’re dead,” Genevieve Woodward said to a small woman with pigtails, and then whispered something in her ear. Genevieve and others were playing an unusual game, in which players dress and act as the vampire characters they create—complete with personality, life story, and various magical powers. It is called live-action role-playing, or LARP.
The vampires congregate each month, usually in a rented building on the Macalester College campus, where some are students. But they occasionally save up to make a playground of places
like a glasshouse conservatory or historic museum.
Forty of them gathered in the Hill House’s art gallery, fussing with their costumes and stepping around security ropes. Some sat in folding chairs near the antique furnishings; all adhered to a sacred vow not to touch anything. Their undead leader, who wore a bowler hat and a gray face, addressed them in a low, raspy voice.
“I hope last month treated you well.” This, like a lot of what was said, seemed to be some kind of password or code; someone from the crowd then discreetly nodded at Genevieve, who stepped forward to interrupt.
“OK, this explodes,” she announced with calm authority. She pointed to a spot on a couch in the center of the art gallery. The tall blonde was distinct from the crowd, because she wore a large white T-shirt with the word “Goddess” printed on it. She was one of four deities who were running this elaborate game. They are known formally as the “storytellers.”
“It’s shiny. Everyone do a courage throw,” Genevieve instructed. The silence was broken by the sound of fists slapping into palms, as players engaged in a group round of rock-paper-scissors to determine their next move.
“We create the world,” Genevieve told me, speaking for the storytellers. When the pretty twenty-six-year-old returns to human form, she works on a master’s degree in fisheries at the University of Minnesota. She thinks of LARP as a creative outlet. “It’s my way of sharing my little plot lines and story ideas.”
Crouched in the back of the exploding art gallery was John Schwartzbauer, whose dyed black hair and thick black eyeliner nicely complemented his entirely black outfit. Nearby, a smaller Schwartzbauer with wire-rimmed glasses and a black bandanna, also dressed in black, mimicked John’s stance. “This is the little brother. He’s larping now,” John said. “It’ll be really lame when the father joins. It’ll be lame, but it’ll be cool.”
He proudly explained that the identical arm cuffs he and his brother Luke wore were a project made by the thirteen-year-old. “It is really cute,” John said. “I have huge hopes for his geek factor.” John, a peppy twenty-year-old, said he used to be a shy, antisocial teenager playing less interactive games like Dungeons & Dragons in dark basements, away from people. He said that live action role-playing “propelled me out of the gloom that I was in.” During daylight hours, he is a professional butcher. But he hopes to enroll as a mortuary science student.
This game was part of the fourth large-scale role-playing project to emerge from a scene that, for the last five years, has been casually headquartered at the Aster Café in Minneapolis. The storytellers are exquisitely organized, even requiring young Luke to bring a permission slip from his parents before he would be allowed to play. Who knew Goths were so responsible?—Juliah Rueckert
Leave a Reply Cancel reply