You're listening to DrachenPod, the official podcast of DrachenFest US. Please share, like, review, and subscribe to help our community of champions grow. Learn more and secure your tickets for this incredible experience today at DrachenFest.us.

DrachenFest US, the largest festival larp in the United States. Each June, more than 1,200 attendees spend 4 days in Pennsylvania roleplaying fantasy characters engaged in immersive gameplay, experiencing celebrations, battles, stories, and medieval life. You have answered the call, and your adventure begins now with this episode of Dragon Pod.

Welcome to DrachenPod, the official podcast of DrachenFest US. I'm Ryan Faricelli. I'm the marketing coordinator for DrachenFest. I'm Carie Varner and I'm the design lead for Limbus. And I am Jason Hughes, the coordinator for Limbus. and we're here to talk about DrachenFest and about the experience leading up to it and what people can expect to find there and and how they should prepare and hopefully just kind of answer questions that folks might have about just what this huge event is like. You may recognize us from On A Roll Podcast in which we used to talk about how to run better games and how to play better games. But now we've become intrinsically linked to the Dragon Lands. Our souls bound to its service. Yeah. Who are we joined by today, Ryan? Today we're going to be joined by Dan Comstock and he's going to tell us all about what he does and talk a little bit about just what DrachenFest US is and how it came to be. He's the event director. Is that correct? That's right. Sounds good. Let's head to the summoning circle and bring forth our champion. Let's do it.

I summon into the podcast the one whose vision and perseverance established DrachenFest US. The one whose leadership guides the event experience. The one whose heart is driven by a passion for fun. I call forth Dan Comstock.

Welcome, Dan. Thanks for joining us. How are you doing today? I'm great, thank you. That's awesome. You're coming to us from a very haunted place, I hear. Oh, yeah. I live in Sleepy Hollow, New York, which And I live in a very haunted part of it. It's very spooky and ghosts are everywhere. That's kind of fitting, I guess, right? Yeah. Well, Dan, what is your role with DrachenFest? I am the event director. So, I manage the um player experience uh while you're at the event, uh which is the the big the competition, the battle, the sandbox plot, the roleplay, um and uh a lot of the experience in the camps. Uh and a a lot of stuff. I do a lot of setup for the event. I'm part of a large team. I I lead the event part of it, but um there's a bunch of us that produce it. So, you're kind of the 40,000 ft guy. Yeah. What is DrachenFest then? Let's just jump right in and you know, tell us what this festival larp thing is that you're doing. All right. DrachenFest. Uh so, we get this campsite for a whole week. We get uh a ton of people to show up. Uh last year we had about 1,200 people. Holy cow. Um, for the whole people for the whole week, people dress up as fantasy characters that they make up themselves. It's your fantasy character, not like, you know, you're playing as Link or uh, you know, from some IP, but um, you make up your or you bring your D & D character or a character from another larp or whatever, and you and you play as this character for a whole week. So, while you're at DrachenFest, most of the players are in one of the five dragon camps. They serve these five different colored dragons. Each dragon is one of the gods of this dragon world and they have um their own themes. And these dragons are in competition. The players spend the whole week playing capture the flag against each other and going to tournaments and um engaging in plots and quests and doing all this like fun roleplay narrative stuff. A lot of it earns their teams dragon eggs and whatever dragon has the most eggs at the end of the week uh is named the ruler of the dragon realm for the coming year. Where where does an idea like this even start? Where does that come from? All right. So larping is uh been around for you know since like I guess the 80s in America, late ' 80s. What was your first LAR? My first larp was, you know, my friends and I had not heard of larp and we just started playing in our backyard with sticks and that eventually then we we heard about Nero and I got swept up into that for many years. Uh but you know, we we uh uh my first larp was an outsider larp where we just kind of made up what we thought playing D & D in person would be like and so so at some point you heard about about something like a DrachenFest, right? O over in Europe there are these huge larp events like Conquest and DrachenFest that get thousands of people at them. I attended Conquest and DrachenFest. I fell in love with DrachenFest. I was really like DrachenFest Germany at this event with 7,000 plus people at it. Wow. Uh, and and it's it's huge and it's so nuanced and it's like, you know, just like when people go to like Burning Man and stuff like that, like they bring these like sets with them and they bring these like great outfits and costumes and everybody's been doing that over and over and over again and it gets more elaborate and cool and 20 years later it's like really rich and uh I don't know, it was just such a cool experience. I was like, what they're doing over here is magic and we would love it in America, but nobody's doing anything like this. So, I I began this multi-year quest to try to start an American larp festival and put together this kickball team of other people that are great at doing these like big events. Some of them are from the DrachenFest Germany team. Uh they allowed us to uh license their IP. So, we're kind of like uh the little sister of DrachenFest Germany. Uh much smaller, but uh eager to be here. And so, uh yeah, there's a big one over there. And and we're kind of inspired by that. We we start from the same premise as it but uh you know we are kind of an independent thing. How many folks did you have at at DrachenFest US last year? We had about 1,200 people on site. Wow, that's crazy. That's probably the biggest event of any type I've been at. Not just a lar and this and how many years now have you been doing it? This is the fifth year. Well, this this coming summer will be year five. Yeah. 2026. So it'll be June what this year? June 22nd through 28th. Wow. 2026. Wow. So, you've you've created this this United States version of it. Tell us now a little bit about like what what is the story, right? Because I know one of the the things you mentioned a minute ago was that people can bring characters from anywhere. You said they could bring their D & D, right? So, how does how does that work and fit into what is the DrachenFest US in-game store? So, you uh if you have an existing character that you're bringing to DrachenFest, like you play them at some other larp or u maybe they're a D & D character that you want to try playing as for a whole week or or it's just a character that you came up with that doesn't live anywhere else but your head. So, your character hears this call. We call it the the call. It's this metaphysical uh communication that goes out. All the dragons join their voices and they call out for uh people that would come and attend them in this and serve them in this this big war that's about to happen. And each of the dragons is like kind of the god of a different domain. And so you your character experiences all this and then whatever dragon kind of calls out to them the most that resonates with them the best, you are uh generally join their their camp and uh serve that dragon in the DrachenFest. So, if your dragon wins, then you're part of the the group that gets to rule the the realm for the coming year. Um, and you get a little piece of land in the game world if your dragon wins. It's about having a narrative victory, not a mechanical one. Like, as in like, yes, the number of dragon eggs wins, but the big prize at the end is really just this narrative thing of your dragon gets a little bit of honor and a little piece of land in the dragon world. Exactly. We like to say that, you know, the competition between dragons and there's a lot of different ways that you can compete and clash with other people, but it's it's it's uh we only roleplay that it's really important. We love it how, you know, in a fantasy movie your characters are really motivated and they're really passionate and they really hate the other guy. Um, but like out of game, we all buy into the reality that this is really just like a way to have fun for a week together in the summer. It's really like the excuse to get all the characters in one place. It's not actually the plots that characters will necessarily be pursuing. We're really just roleplaying that we we really care which dragon wins. Uh and at a game we know that it's you know on a real world level it's just about like fun to get in fights with each other and the the prize for winning doesn't matter that much. It doesn't get the team anything like out of game, you know? It doesn't even really represent that you're like the best team. it just meant you played the the game really well that year. And so um you know it's kind of low stakes even though in universe it's the highest possible stakes and it's you know end of the world consequences if the wrong team wins and you know we you know we we we like having a lot to roleplay around it really all of that is in service to just being able to play with each other and have fun. Mhm. So it never gets too real. And and I love that at the after the final battle, there's almost always this like festival-wide party to celebrate that we had this that we had this competition and whoever won that, you know, we celebrate them as a as a group and also celebrate the fact that I get to be part of this great conflict and uh go have a couple of drinks together or just go have a meal together as a group instead of as just individual camps. Again, it's interesting because the competition is not about like killing the other army. It can be. But ultimately though, like winning the festival by collecting the most eggs is not necessarily contingent upon destroying the other armies in battle, right? It can be, but it doesn't. And the team that that wins isn't necessarily the team that had the best time playing, you know, like a lot of times the team that plays dead last had the best time doing it, you know, and um so the competition's there, but um you know, it's only a set piece really. Mhm. And there's it's such a creative festival. Like there's the competition, but there's so much else happening. Like I said, I think the most interesting stuff at the festival is often just the the weird events and ideas that players bring to it, the different um enterprises that they have. Like they they'll run businesses and set up little shops and sell services for or you know goods for coins and you know there's there's so many weird things you can get by walking around the bazaar that are you know exist in a fantasy world. Not just like a rentfair market like turkey legs and stuff but like how you can you know get a cup of coffee that also curses you. Right. Right. So there's a bazaar like explain that a little more. So in addition to the five dragon camps there's also the bazaar which is like our little renn fair on a hill. Um it has uh vendors that you can buy real world food and garb and stuff like that from using real world money. Uh, and then and you know, also the awesome latex weapons that we whack each other with all week. Also, in-game enterprises, groups of players that have started businesses that sell Yeah. like mercenary services or uh fortune telling or, you know, there's like all sorts of little services that players have come up with that you can get uh from wandering around the bazaar and talking to people. And that's bought with in-game coins, right? Yeah. Your your your real world money is no good there. you just the the in-game coins of the world are what you use to pay for services and enterprises. And there's also guilt. There's groups of players that kind of like get together and cultivate the way to roleplay a spellcaster or a you there's a fighter guild, there's a you a magic guild, a bard's guild, a you know, there's about seven of them. And they uh each one has its own cast of characters that um like teach classes that anyone can sign up for with uh you know a couple coins. Um some of those classes have like unlockable skills behind them like if you you can take like a class in lockpicking and then your character can now pick locks. But these classes are actually taught by other player characters and and they spend an hour telling the history of of the skill or the spell or whatever it is that your class is on, right? Yeah. A lot of the classes aren't like lectures. They're like these little interactive adventures workshop. Yeah. Like a little, you know, the alchemy gardening group will go on little field trips to look at plants and, you know, weird stuff will happen. Uh, a lot of the Bard classes are uh little seminars and doing street music and like playing in like strange situations. It's, you know, interesting stuff. I love that it's like 5%, hey, here's a mechanical skill you might get and 95%, hey, here's an amazing roleplay experience that you get to be participating in with other players. One of the things that I'm kind of hearing is that while there is a large buffer larp component to this, you know, hitting each other with foam weapons, that that that's not necessarily the the bulk of of the interactions folks will do. Or some people could, I guess, choose to never, right, to never swing away. I go fight or Yeah. A lot of people do not compete in the war. A lot of people never get in a battle. people still have a very fun DrachenFest just hanging out and doing their own plot and socializing or running their own enterprise or little organization. I that's one of the things I love about DrachenFest. It's not quite but a little bit all things for all people. Like if I want to go there and just have roleplay experiences the whole time and be a diplomat or uh be a merchant or start a little cult or something. I can do that. or of course Jason wants to start a cult. Uh or I can go fight all weekend and all these battles or I can do any combination of the two that I want all weekend. One of the things that I I love about DrachenFest is that I brought two people to it that had basically zero buffer experience. Carie had a little bit in college, just a little bit and I never had boffer larp experience when I and after the first game they're like, "Oh, I get this. Yes, I will enjoy this even if I never hit anybody because let's be honest, I'm old and my knees will not let me do that final. I kept I kept thinking I don't want some 19-year-old jock swinging a weapon at me at my 51year-old legs, but at the same time, you can still have a good time going around and even participating in the battle summit if you want to. So, let's talk about that a little bit. Dan, tell us a little bit about what what can players be at DrachenFest when they're making characters? Is is there really any limitations? You have to need to be a fantasy character. We you know, you can't be from the real world either. You can be from a fantastic analog of the real world, but um you know, we try to keep the real world a little bit out of it and the real world history. Uh some parts of it are a little too sharp to Right. Right. Like I said, you build your character mechanically by choosing two roles that off of a list that give you kind of different parts of the game that you can interact with. Uh but uh no, in terms of you know like any D & D character, any like weird fantasy character, you know, the real limitation is what you can depict. You know, like you can't play a giant unless you can somehow show yourself as a people would look at you and go, "Yeah, that's a giant." You know, right? Um, right? You know, maybe you're a giant that drank a shrinking potion. You look like a person. You can convince people you're a giant, but it won't really work unless they see it. You know, they won't treat you like a giant unless they see it. Really figure out a way to present it. They will treat you extremely like a giant. This is very much uh full immersion. What you see is what you get. We're not going to be wearing tags that say like uh suit. Yeah. Expensive business suit times four in our t-shirts and jeans. Yeah. I'd like to say that really the the most important rule of the festival is just about reacting to each other because that's really where a lot of story comes from and and so the the big rule is if if somebody does something you give it a reaction. You that we when we react to something it pulls it more into reality. You know, you could just be like kind of talking to yourself and when somebody like gives like a fictional reaction to it and like calls you out about it or something, you know, you've suddenly made a little bit of it could be a story if it falls into line with a couple other little things, but everything from small things to big things, if we just react to them and we make them a little bit more real, then it starts to feel like we're really in this fantasy world. And and after a few days at DrachenFest, it really starts to feel like all the all the little parts inside the fiction feel very immersive. you know, they feel really like Yeah, it's it's like nothing else in the real world feels like it, you know, to be worried about your camp getting attacked and, you know, mages doing a ritual that, you know, confuses our warriors and, you know, all this like weird fiction stuff. It just to actually be inside of it and feeling it with your in 3D rather than in like a tabletop narrative or, you know, reading about it in a book. It's uh people are people are sleeping in game uh many of them in period appropriate tense. Right. Right. And that's not a requirement but but many choose to. Yeah. So let's say I wanted to play a vampire like how can I do that? What are the mechanics for like you know drinking blood like those sorts of things? Yeah. Right. So under that that ro rule of uh if you do something you know people will react to it and and you you give the proper reactions. So, you know, how do you think of a vampire in terms of that? It's somebody that is, you know, hungry for blood that uh, you know, would you you you think about roleplaying drinking blood from a victim? you know that there's also like a consent driven way to do that so that you're not just like putting your mouth on some stranger's neck. But like, you know, you kneel and do a little pantomime, you know, and maybe do a little check-in to make sure they're okay with you being that close, you know, and and then you roleplay drinking their blood in a way that feels kind of cool within that scene. Maybe you have a mug of of of high of like fruit punch or something, right? Yeah. Maybe you have some props or fake blood that you can, you know, make it look cooler. Like that. That kind of stuff really brings the larp experience to life. And uh you know what else is a vampire? Like you you react big when somebody you know indicates that they're they've got garlic or you know, holy water or you know all that vampire stuff. Like if you play into that fiction you know people will think of you as a vampire and you're a vampire now. And so it's not really about the mechanics and the hit points and you know what abilities do does a vampire have? It's really about like what are you gonna how are you going to present a vampire in a lar that people are are going to get and be able to play with. And in my experience, the more you react to other people, the better they react to you because you're making it fun to play with them so they want to play with you and and have fun too, right? What can characters do at this larp? So, I have a character. I've I've created it from my my tabletop game at home, let's say, and and I'm bringing it to DrachenFest. What am I gonna do when I get there? That really depends on what you're interested in. There's so many different parts of the experience. Uh like I said, part of it is camping out. You know, you'll you'll set up a tent, you'll meet your neighbors, you'll figure out what the local news is and what's going on in your camp. And there will be a lot of opportunities to get involved in your camp army or you know different plots and quests that may be happening or and a lot of them are a lot of the plots and quests are just characters at the event that have some motivation and are trying to get something done and they need help and they wrap other people up into it and you know so we're going to go spy on this other camp and play you know all this other stuff. Let's say my my Dungeons and Dragons vampire items because that's what we're talking about. Like and if I come into the game, I can come in with like a goal in mind that I I don't necessarily have to like email a storyteller ahead of time and get all these permissions or anything. Like if I want to come in and be like somewhere out there there is a cross that that I'm able to hold and it doesn't burn me and I'm looking for that. Like at some point I could just get people together to help me look for other players who maybe have props that are crosses and see if they'll let me touch it and if it'll burn me or not. Like I mean like is that kind of how how this how some of the plot works? A lot of people who make their own plot um you know will will either come up with like kind of a quest for other people to do or or they will have something you know character driven that they are exploring in the game. Then this is, you know, it's optional. Like some people do this, a lot of people don't do this, but one of the one of the dishes at the buffet table is exploring your character backgrounds and the your characters inner conflicts and stuff like that at the festival. You know, you can have a really good time um with like, all right, I'm a I'm a paladin and I've broken my vow and I've got to find someone who will help me atone and I got to figure out how to atone, you know, and come up with a little story for yourself that that involves finding stuff at the festival, having your opinion made up by events that happen to you. A lot of people end up with like very rich personal experiences from DrachenFest that really feel like this complete package of a story because they they went into the festival with a goal and they explored it and they let their, you know, made fiction choices about how their character is going to get changed by this. What does it mean when this group accepts me? You know, how does it change who I am and how do I express that change now in terms of my like costume or like, you know, do I do something that brings that into the fiction? And so that's just people larping with each other at the festival. It's a really cool environment to have those kind of play experiences. I talking about it almost makes it seem kind of uh esoteric, but like it in in the environment when you're around people, it feels very natural to just kind of talk about the the fiction. So, what you're saying it's it's lots of yes and yeah, it's lots of lifting of other players. Say you know that this guy is coming and he's never played a bot before. Maybe he has some idea about what role play is like. He's got his costume. He's decided to join one of the camps. Day one, what what two pieces of advice would you give that person to get involved? The game is only a week a year, right? What do you tell that person, hey, showing up? What do you go do first? So, how do I just show up for for one week a year? So, that new player, what do you tell them to do to get started? Um, one is if you're if you're really lost, talking to your camp refs can really help. Every camp has referees in it. They have a really good understanding of a lot of the different things that are going on at the festival and they can kind of help steer you. So, if you really don't know anything and you're like, I want to get into a fight, how do I do that? You know, the camp ref can kind of talk to you about how to get involved in the stuff that you want and give you a little map to get there. Is a camp ref. So, a a camp referee is not just about adjudicating rules calls. I mean, they do that, but you're you're saying they're also a little bit kind of like your first step in the storyteller lap, right? They they Every camp has referees. They they sit at kind of a desk near the entrance to the camp. They're, you know, they're outside the atmosphere a little bit. They can help you with all sorts of things. They can help you with if you don't know where like the bathroom is, if you don't understand how a rule worked, uh if there's something that you saw something that you want to report, you can talk to them. But they larp, you know, one of their duties though is helping you kind of design your own festival experience and have a satisfying story play while you're there. So you can go up to them with something that you're interested in doing and they will kind of like workshop with you, you know, how to accomplish that by yourself. And and it's it's not like um you know, like a like they will run like a specific story for you, you know, like but they will um kind of teach you how to set up play experiences for yourself that a story will kind of may feel like a story at the end. Like there's no scripted scenes at DrachenFest. it's just people, a lot of things are just wild stuff bouncing into each other and people reacting. So, I'd say that's the the the referee system is like a really good compass. Um, also finding players that are doing stuff that you're interested in and going up and engaging them, especially if you're new. You know, people are really eager to show each other around and teach each other about the festival and people are really eager to share their knowledge. It's a low social boundary game. Like, it shouldn't feel weird to just walk up to a group of strangers and begin talking. It's actually very normal at the festival. It's very like open uh socially. So, are there places that you could go to talk to those players? Like like if I'm brand new, I don't want to just kind of like ease drop on people like where would I go to talk to these new to other characters to find out these things? Well, a good place to start in in the camps. The camps are going to have camp meetings uh where players come and they give an overview of what's going on and talk about different opportunities for play and you know different things that you can help the camp out with. Every camp is because every camp is its own little village. They also have leaders that are selected at the beginning of the game. So there's you know there's like a high council and there's a war master, you know, a spy master. Um, so there yeah there are also player leaders that are like organizing a certain type of play within the camp and they will try to make themselves visible to everybody in the camp. And you know at some point someone will say if you if you want to get in battles you know I'm the general come sign up over here and you know we'll make sure you get put into a fight group or whatever. Most camps have like a bar or a restaurant or some sort of like tavern gathering place as well to hang out. Correct. Yeah, every camp does have taverns and social spaces and places where players are just hanging out as well. The the bazaar. Yeah, I was going to say the bazaar even has like a billboard, right? People will host things schedule of events in town and you know, one one side of it has like the kind of like official like the guild and tournament schedules and the other side of it has just whatever players have planned and whatever right crazy stuff happens. So like and and it fills up, you know, it is you can go there and you know, if you're looking for something to do at 3:30 on Thursday. Yeah. There's a parade, there's a, you know, like a tournament, there's a you know, there will be like all these different things. And if you wait a day, I know there's also a a newspaper that gets printed, right? That's right. And they'll print like things that are needed or wanted to. And that's totally player run. Yeah. It's an enterprise, right? Yes. Yeah. Yeah. There's a player run newspaper. Yeah. There are a lot of things it sounds like that makes DrachenFest different from other larps. One of the biggest differences that I'm hearing is that when you have 12 people at a parlor larp, you have lots of storyteller gamer runner interaction and time. I always think back to my early vampire larp days where you'd go to, you know, one game that was like 20 people and then there was another game that was a hundred people and the amount of storyteller time you got and the player generated story happening was was wildly different. You're talking about 1,200 people all working together to to create just this experience and it sounds incredible. Can can you share with us a little bit about this that uniqueness? I think it's um the atmosphere of it is really wild and there's there's a lot of events in America that are like fighting based where people put on armor and whack each other. I personally I love the fantasy elements within that. I love the uh how accessible it is. Like at a lot of games like you have to be like actually like kind of physically tough to go into combat because you're going to get hit really hard and like is about it's acting combat like like there like sometimes people get really excited and they'll hit pretty hard with a latex weapon you know by mistake but that's not the norm at the game. Like touch we say it's theatrical. We like it's really more about like delivering a hit and then people giving a big reaction. The theatrics of combat is a big thing. Like we um we also have a a lot of I'd say immersive healing roleplay where when someone's getting treated for their injury, you know, it's a scene with, you know, stitches and fake blood and, you know, uh props and it's a little bit more mundane healing than, you know, you wiggle your fingers and the wounds are knitted and that's over. That there's like a lot of roleplay of recovery that makes the atmosphere really intense. It kind of sets a stake for battle that you you feel like uh people roleplay injuries and after a battle people are limping and oh that was a tough one you know missing fingers and you know whatever. It's a lot of uh we we really put the roleplay of combat in the foreground of it you know more so than it being like a sport. So I think that's a little different like approach than a lot of games. So someone not good with a sword could actually still play a master swordsman if you wanted to yeah to roleplay somebody that's hitting really hard and they're really strong. You know it's more about your body role play and you know does your you know than than it is about like a you know a mechanic or skill that you fall. If you hit somebody with a big hammer with a big heave, even if it hits their shield, often they're going to get stagger back, even though the rules don't say that you have to do that, but it's something that makes the game feel more real. And people are really generous with each other with those kind of moments. So that that makes the game, the combat atmosphere feel different, I think, than reenactment events or a lot of like quick light touch popper or medium impact, you know, dagger here type games. It's definitely its own combat vibe. One of the big differences I think of is that a lot of larps are sort of like tabletop as in I am consuming the content that the staff is providing and it and it feels like a DrachenFest. I'm not consuming content. I'm I'm creating as much as I'm consuming it. I'm part of this big story. I'm not a consumer of it. Right. I I I was talking to a referee whose whose mind was blown when the first battle he saw where somebody did a um a really cool gust of wind spell like and he he you know throws like leaves into his like this fan and he's fanning it and and but like the his roleplay of the spell is like really really over the top and striking and it it just it really sells that he's casting a spell really well, right? And so, and very often, even the spell is like only affect supposed to affect like a couple people. Like, it will affect like 10 people will get blown back 10 ft because they see somebody role playing like that and they're like, it would be really fun to just get thrown with the wind, you know, to get hit with a hurricane force wind after after that presentation. The way to become a more powerful magician is really about, you know, learning how to sell magic better and make bigger roleplay effects and give people a bigger prompt to role play against. And I think that's a really special thing about it, too. We don't have experience points. There's not like a character progression where the more DrachenFest you play, you're going to have, you know, 20 more hit points and you're going to win more battles through it. Like, yeah, we we play one event a year and you can get some guild skills, but like you you don't have this like continual progression of character power where like there are high level characters and low level characters. Yeah. Everybody can kind of play with everybody. It's kind of flat and it's it's really much more about the Yeah. the role playing surrounding all the the combat and the the war and the Yeah, I guess if if I don't have a bunch of experience points to spend to buy more stuff on my sheet, then I can see how like instead the way to get bigger is to roleplay bigger. That being said, too, like I think it's still like a fun game to play if you just kind of want to play war games with people and march in an army and get into big clashes. Like I'm I'm really emphasizing a lot of like the roleplay and story, but like that's also not like that's also just one of the dishes at the table that you can have or a lot of people don't touch it and they just they they love being part of an army and you know fighting with their friends and you know going back to the camp and having a beer and you know just that whole lifestyle of uh being a soldier in a fantasy army is that can be a whole week that you can enjoy with your friends and you don't need all the story stuff you know other than uh you know what story your group has. Sieges are a huge deal, aren't they? Yeah, sieges are a lot of fun. So, what is a siege? So, every camp has gates that they build together at the beginning of the week. They come in in U-Haul trucks, right? Yeah. People haul in all this stuff, and every camp builds this, you know, they have this big archway, this big wooden door, and it's all decorated, kind of themed like the camp. People will also bring armaments, these large monster costumes and siege equipment, war machines like catapults and cannons, but they fire like kickballs. And then so siege play is about people wield their catapults and cannons and battering rams and stuff up the hill up to to the to the camp. And you know, you you play batter the door for a certain amount of time and depending on how long you batter eventually the door will get burst open and uh your army will charge in and there will be a big fight between the defending army and the attacking army. They try to hold the attackers off. If the attackers win, they get to come in and take the camp's banner and march it home and then there's usually a big celebration. That's part of the big capture the flag game. Right. Right. Yeah. The siege is a it's an exciting moment. It's you know, it's it's very immersive. You know, the siege is like a lot of like you're waiting for the immense amount of violence to happen anyway. So, you're standing with your friends in your courtyard and then it's this huge fight. Everybody's really excited and then there's um everybody afterwards is lying around bleeding and getting stitched up and um you know, talking about it. We'll talk about this a lot more in a later episode, but but I feel like this is a good time to to just sort of ask like, can my character be killed in one of these sieges? And if so, am I am I out of luck for the rest of the game? Yeah, you're dead. He's gone forever. Um, so in in our world, you know, these dragons know that nobody would serve them if uh it meant dying. So they um uh the dragons have created this thing called the Limbus, which is this alternate plane uh that uh you get pulled into when you die instead of getting moving on. And within the Limbus, your character under goes some kind of challenge. If you escape the other side, you your character uh will wake up in a in your camp or in a graveyard and you can keep playing from there. You're still like a little woozy and sick for like an hour after you resurrect. But the Limbus brings people back from the dead when they die. And the Limbus is also just like a really fun cool experience. It's one of the coolest things you can do at DrachenFest. You actually Jason, it's just okay. We'll talk about it later. Yeah, Jason runs it so uh with a great team. Uh like you should try to die though, honestly. It's it's yeah, it's fun to survive the whole week, but it's more fun to die and see what what's going on in Limbus because there's just it's a cool experience and it's secret like you can only find out what it is by going there and knowing your character can't talk about what happened when you're there. So like and we ask you like out of game like don't tell anybody. So ultimately I don't have to pack a backup character. No, no, but it is uh I will say it's a cool set piece. It's a very cool place. Can you tell me as a new player, I've bought my ticket. What do I need to do between now and the event? One good thing to do is to meet your camp mates. Uh when you got your ticket, you got a email with a link to the different camp Discords. It'd be good to step in there and introduce yourself. These are Discords that are run by players. Each camp has their own and and I can figure out I can decide which camp my character is going to belong to by just going to the website. Just reading the information about each camp, right? That's right. Yeah. All the info is on the website. That'll help you make a choice. You can also leave and decided for now. But at some point then just go join their Discord and start start meeting the people that's going to be camping with you. Meet the people. Um you're also going to need to figure out how you're getting to the event. Sure. So, you want to think about uh if you need a flight, you know, and then how you're going to if you take a flight, you're going to probably land at Pittsburgh International. Okay. Uh and then we'll need a ride or an Uber or some way to get to it's about 40 minutes from the airport, the campsite, which is one of the reasons you want to talk to your campmates to see if you can either share an Uber, share an Uber or get a ride. And then you want to think about your character and your costume and start putting that stuff together. And also your actual camping gear. You know, you're going to want a tent, you know, because this is an outdoor camping event. Um, so get a tent that you're comfortable with. Practice setting it up and breaking it down. Make sure you're ready for camping outdoors with it. Does my my tent have to be period appropriate? No, it doesn't. Every camp has an area for like in period tents like canvas tents that look like they could be medieval atmosphere and it has a non-decorum area kind of behind that or um you know if you have nylon bright pink tents that you know wouldn't make sense on the set of a fantasy movie that's fine. They just put them in a different in a different place. Put them Yeah. So they're all together in one part of the camp. What if I want one of those cool period tents? Like how can I get one from DrachenFest? How do I where do I even get one? We do sell canvas tents. Sales close at the end of January though because they have to be manufactured and shipped. So hurry. So yeah. So hurry on that. Is that on the website? That's on the website. Uh and then you can also rent tents through some of our partners. You can see links on the website as well. One final question. Okay. At that game that you and Chris ran when you were kids, what was the name of your character? Oh no. Oh no. Oh, it was Mal Eclipse. What was Mal Eclipse like? What was my first RPG character like? I had I don't know. I want to know what the one in that madeup game that you and Chris ran together was like with the sticks. I had a I had a cape. I had an evil sword that was driving me mad. Oh. And is that your DrachenFest character now? It should be. Do Do you get to play? Uh, a little bit. I you know during the festival I get to put on a costume and wander around for a few hours, but uh no, I'm I'm pretty busy backstage. When you do play, do you play your German character? Yeah, my character that's been to the German DrachenFest and is now uh getting to see this other weird place. That's incredible. Yeah, that's fun. Well, Dan, thank you so much for joining us and letting us pick your brain a little bit about everything that's going on as we get folks excited and ready to go for DrachenFest. Tickets are on sale now and the sooner you buy them, the cheaper they are, right? That's right. Thanks, guys. Yeah.

Carie, Jason, and I are returning from the Dragon Lands. What did you think? That was pretty amazing, right? Dan's great. Yeah, I really like talking to Dan. Yeah. All right. Before we leave the DrachenPod, I have a question. Okay. How did you all hear about this about DrachenFest? So that's very interesting because even back when we were doing the podcast, I had talked to Dan about this idea of, you know, this big festival art we he wanted to start in the United States. And, you know, we kicked it around for a little bit, but the reality was, uh, between the two or three people that we talked to, we just didn't really have the skills that were needed, especially at the time. And then a few years later, he starts Damarong with that group that he needed. And Damarong after its run, he was able to finally start DrachenFest and he reached out and said, "Is this something you would be interested in helping out with?" And then one thing after another, I got involved in Limbus. And then I did it for a few years. And then he wouldn't stop talking about it. I'm trying to That is very, very true. Right. Well, we had just kind of wrapped up at a similar time. most of the larps that we played in kind of ended and then COVID happened. And so your involvement there sort of happened as uh as we were starting to feel the the the gaping hole uh the lack of larps hit and you and you asked us if we would come help and so we did. I I helped in Limbus for the first two years and now I'm the marketing coordinator and now I'm the design lead there. All right. I will say one thing that and and years ago we talk about in the podcast but I think most of us were pretty burned out at that time because we had went through so much even even the relatively positive experience of underground theater when we all had you know we're doing stuff in that but it was it had become overwhelming all those years of running and playing larps and all the the like the bad stuff starts to add up to you right and the experience of DrachenFest has really helped me deal with that burnout It's definitely a pallet cleanser. Yes. Well, we've all been laring for decades and so we've definitely got a lot of a lot of experience and a lot of different larps behind us and I I can say for myself that DrachenFest is unlike any of them that I have ever been a part of. Absolutely. I agree. I agree. It is much more refreshing and easy to be a part of than any other organization I've been part of. Even ones that I feel like were well run. I think that the uniqueness of DrachenFest is something that is an incredibly wonderful and amazing thing to experience. And sometimes it can also make it a little bit more difficult for those of us who have larp a long time to really kind of grasp and embrace uh the open world and the the yes and and the the collaboration that happens at DrachenFest. It's sort of like this amazing wonderful thing that can also be a little bit gray and hard to wrap our brains around, but but I hope that with this podcast, we'll be able to help everybody jump on board and arrive and get right in and involved and love the game as much as we do. Yeah, cuz as soon as you as soon as it clicks, it clicks. Well, we'll see you uh in a couple of weeks. Thanks for listening and we'll talk to you soon.