All About Troupe Larps and Kishar

We encourage guest posts from players and owners across the Larp genres.  They will not always express our views or fit every game. If you would like to do a guest spot, please email us here with your idea!  J Duncan runs Kishar and here discusses Troupe Larps and Kishar. 

What is a troupe LARP, and what does it have to offer?

Many of the people reading this blog probably play one of the large national LARPs, whether that’s a non-combat LARP like One World by Night (for White Wolf games) or a national boffer game like NERO, Amtgard, or Dagorhir. All of these games offer the ability to take a character from city to city, and possibly even attend many events a month, since different chapters can run on different days.

In contrast to that, troupe games have a much smaller presence, often running only in one city or region, and usually have only one or two games each month. So why would you play in a troupe game? Well, for starters, they have incredible variety. Many of the staff and player groups behind these games have written their own world settings and rules, and you make get a totally different experience in each. If you want exposure to new mechanics, new character types, and new cultures, sampling all the available troupe games in your area is the only way to do that. Secondly, they’re agile. If you’re in a national game, try to think about the difficulty involved in requesting that a rule be updated, or a new class added to the game, or could there possibly be a nation called X in the world setting so that I can be from there? In a troupe game, there’s much less bureaucracy, and the owners and staff are people you see regularly. They may still be busy people (they usually are!), but you won’t have to go through an elaborate chain of command to get to talk to them. Almost universally, the owners aren’t in it to make money – all of the money brought in by the game (and usually, personal funds as well!) gets invested right back in making the game great.