What you need to know about Dexcon, a raucous, five-day roleplaying game conference.
A roleplayer dons his mages robes at Dexcon 15.
A tabletop role-playing game like Dungeons & Dragons requires little physical action besides rolling dice or moving figurines around on a board. In live-action role-playing (LARP), participants move around and converse in real time, rather than take turns. It's like Second Life come to (real) life. And Dexcon 15 — a gaming convention held over five days last week at a hotel in New Jersey — is a LARPer's dream.
While Dexcon also plays host to board game and tabletop RPG enthusiasts, it's the LARPers that are the most fascinating. Roleplaying requires players to assume the identity of a fictional character and progress through a narrative. The stories they play through are controlled by the Game Master (GM), who is responsible for explaining where players are in the story, how their actions play out and the consequences thereof, and providing other details. At their core, roleplaying games are improv that require its participants to interact with and rely upon each other and to be resourceful and strategic.
Take wargaming, which is done with miniatures in an arena. Most of the participants brought their own, handmade sets. The wargaming room was also home to a large 50-by-20-foot arena where larger models could fight it out. A massive "Warhammer 40K" battle that began at noon showed no signs of stopping by the time I left the convention six hours later.
Figurines from Warhammer 40K dominate the wargaming arena.
Another LARP was set in the universe of Joss Whedon’s Firefly, which served as a prequel of sorts to the TV series. The organizers wrote out detailed personas and skill sets for all of the players and then set them loose. Pretty soon, LARPers were chatting with each other and forming alliances. “You lookin’ for a ship?” asked one LARPer whose character was named Doc Banyon. “I got ships that can go all the out past the Outer Rim.” Some players showed up in full browncoat gear while other were slightly more relaxed about the affair.
