To all you people posting larp resumes

[usernamenumber]

...how do you do it?? I mean, many of you have been in as many games as I have or more, and I don't think I could begin to remember all of them. In fact, I keep browsing yours and noting ones I was in, but that I totally would have forgotten if I'd tried to put mine together. Does everyone but me save all of their character sheets or something? I guess I've got soft copies of *most* of mine, but even then, not all...

Comments

[beetiger.livejournal.com]

I dunno. I forget what I did last week sometimes.

[teenyweenyowen.livejournal.com]

The beauty of gmail's archive makes it a lot easier. After the first dozen or so missing a few isn't that big a deal.

[beetiger.livejournal.com]

*grins* I guess I've been larping well before people were using email for characters. But that's old school foam swords kind of stuff.

[teenyweenyowen.livejournal.com]

Well the foam sword stuff is fun too (which one? I'm in Realms) but I'm young enough and busy enough that I can remember most/all the pre-gmail LARPs I've done. When it comes to LARP expierience I feel that the only answers really worth mentioning are "none", "a handful", "lots" and "X years". I have rarely found more detail helpful. Knowing the kinds of characters someone tends to play is handy though, but an experienced LARPer can usually answer that directly without a resume.

[breakinglight11.livejournal.com]

I've been keeping mine almost as long as I've been larping. Every time I'm in a new role I add it to my list. I'm a compulsive record-keeper who really, really likes lists.

Also, the more trivial a piece of information is, for some reason the more perfectly I seem to retain it. :-P

[electric-d-monk.livejournal.com]

Well, Intercon and Festival schedules for previous years are easy to dig up, and I've gotten in the habit of saving digital copies of game materials...

[lightgamer.livejournal.com]

Yep, I keep digital and hard copies of every sheet I've ever had (most of them are in a box at home in NJ). As Matt said, schedules of past cons are very helpful, plus I have a very good memory and like making lists like Phoebe does.

[juldea.livejournal.com]

I used mental association (think of the local universities, and think of what LARPs you might've played there) and the past Intercon/Festival schedules to do mine. The latter was indispensable.

[zombie-dog.livejournal.com]

Yeah, this was my first thought too. Digging up Intercon schedules could save me if I decide to do it, though.

[usernamenumber.livejournal.com]

So, if Intercon games count as separate entities, what about Threads scenes. ;)

[zombie-dog.livejournal.com]

I would probably count my arguably 'major' roles in Threads (Fishy Bob, Halston Dark, Konrad Stahl), and list it as a single 'game'.

[mllelaurel.livejournal.com]

It helps that most of my games were at cons. In most of those cases, I can go and look at the con schedule. (Keeping up old sites - yet another reason I love Intercon!)

Of the standalones, many were memorable either because of the game itself or because of my circumstances at the time. There was one year I was driving (well, being driven) back and forth from Bennington, VT to Boston, and that makes it harder to forget.

Incidentally, would you consider 42 a lot of games?

[usernamenumber.livejournal.com]

Given that 42*4/24 = 7 total days spent playing, and that that's assuming all of your games were 4hrs long, and I know at least some were weekend-longers... yeah. I'd say 42 is a pretty hardcore number. :)

..and now I'm really fearing calculating what mine is. Yeesh. ;)

[mllelaurel.livejournal.com]

I guess I'm a veteran, then. I...really don't know how that happened. I still feel like a newbie, sometimes.

[zrealm.livejournal.com]

Incidentally, would you consider 42 a lot of games?

For what its worth, I think that means you've probably played in more LARPs than I have

[mllelaurel.livejournal.com]

*whistles* That's pretty special. You've totally GMed more games than I'm pretty sure I *ever* will, though.

[usernamenumber.livejournal.com]

He's GMed more games than most people have played, the psycho. ;)

[laurion]

Heck, I've been larping for coming up on 15 years now. And that probably puts me about middle of the pack for larping careers.

There is -no- way I could list out all the games I've been in. Especially since Intercon became a fixture and I started squeezing off 3-6 short games in a single weekend. I -might- be able to list all the weekend long games I've been in.

And even if I had all of the emailed materials I'd been sent for games over the years, there are plenty of games where I didn't get materials until the game itself (a few Intercon games have been like that), or I picked up replacement characters part way through for one reason or another.

I know people who used to keep every name badge as a way of keeping a history, but not every game has issued name badges.

In this era of Gmail and Livejournal, I suppose we now have the tools to keep a record of every game, in one form or another, and to constantly update a larp resume, but I guess I'll just stick to remembering the good games, the good roles, the bad games, the bad roles, and let the mediocre middles fall away over time.

[laurion]

Heh, and looking at the list of other commentors, it seems like the ones keeping lists have been larping for about a third of the time I have, and all talk about tools that didn't exist back in my day.

Whippersnappers.

GTFO my lawn.

(heehee)

[bleemoo.livejournal.com]

Yeah, what you said. And I didn't start LARPing until a few years after you. In fact, I'm pretty sure it was your fault. Not that I knew who you were then, but you were one of the many people who TMA'd at me.

[hanasaseru.livejournal.com]

Like _dragonwolf_ said, I've been keeping a record of my larping experience since pretty early on. Within the first year after I started, anyway.

I started it to try and figure out what I liked and disliked in larp characters, to be able to answer questionnaires better. That's why mine had markings for characters I particularly did or did not like. Now that I'm started to have a clearer idea of that sort of thing, I'm mostly maintaining it for the memories, and because I really like having records of my life and things in it.

[hanasaseru.livejournal.com]

Also, I do keep all of my character sheets if I can, but that would be a complete mess to sort through in any kind of order to try to pull together an organized list. There are just random piles, the majority of which are currently in Maine.

[darkoni]

Yeah, I've been thinking about it since I saw others doing it. I wouldn't be able to remember all of them. My first larp was Future of Oz in '91. So yeah, that's a lot of larps.

I might give it a try some day, just to see what I can remember. Hell, I'm not sure I can remember how many times I've run Mary Celeste. I think it was seven.

[lisefrac.livejournal.com]

Remembering the games I played in is not hard, as I've only been doing this for five years, and most everything has been at cons, so I can look at old schedules.

Remembering character names... well, I needed a little help there. I played in a lot of AE games, and I just bugged Nat for help to remember the names of my Fisher Expedition, Scearbridge, Snaf U, and Fire on High characters. I also consulted Matt, because he kept most of his character sheets, and we've played in a lot of the same games.