I swung my claymore in the heat of battle, taking down zombies with every swish. Then, an elf shot an arrow that pierced my armor. I fell to the ground, wounded, and right as the zombies were closing in for the kill, my partner healed me and I was back up fighting again!

This is my everyday life on Wednesday because I play LARP. LARP stands for Live Action Role Playing. It’s sort of like Dungeons and Dragons except we play out the battles and quests in real life with foam weapons. My LARP group plays at Mitchell Park every Wednesday. The basic idea is at the beginning of the year everyone makes a character and gets a weapon. I am a Level 2 Knight who can make weapons and has improved strength. The most popular weapon is a katana because it’s so lightweight, but my favorite weapon is a claymore, a large sword about 5 ½ feet tall.

Our group starts with a warm-up of Capture the Flag led by Chris, our Dungeon Master. In the story, my friends and I are working in an army for a country called Illianos. We vote on a mission from the choices on the board. Some of the missions that we do are kill zombie hoards or search a dungeon. Everything in LARP that we use for battle is coated with or made from foam. There are also a lot of rules that tell you how to heal people and keep everyone safe.

One time some people were walking through the field where we were playing and Chris shouted, “Hold!” so everyone froze exactly how they were in the middle of battle. The pedestrians started looking at us funny since we were all frozen, and as soon as they stepped off the field, Chris shouted, “Game on!” and everyone started swinging their weapons again.

All in all, LARP is my favorite thing to do and I hope I can do it more.