OldTown 2118

As always abandoned airfield at Stargard, Poland, hosted a post-apocalyptic festival OldTown. 3 days of partying and 4 days of non-stop LARP. This year OldTown hosted about 1300 participants from all over the world: Finland, Germany, Spain, Israel, USA, Ukraine, Belgium… Poland (no wonder) and much more.

Location: old airfield close to Stargard, Poland Mechanics: Airsoft\LARP melee weapons + NERF guns for NPCs

LARP: 24/7 for 4 days First of all the first noticeable change was increase of LARP part from 3 to 4 days. Being honest changes are always taken with a bit of frustration, despite the fact how good or bad they are. But more LARP for the God of LARP is always a good thing. We will see how it goes - more time gives much more space to plan your game activities.

Szymon 'Szyna' Ulenberg - One of OldTown Organizers and LARP Coordinators

This year it was twelfth OldTown. Tell us how this actually all started? Was this just another Fallout inspired LARP game or a party with like-minded friends?

Szyna: Actually it was 13th OldTown ;) It all started in 2005, as a Fallout Fans meeting on the abandoned airfield in Kluczewo, Stargard. This was sort of meeting of people from forums, there was a very small larp, but nothing like we have today. The first OldTown by the name of OldTown was actually in 2006, and it had a larp intertwined with classical convent attractions (no division on festival and larp, everything went on together). What we had was a game and lectures, contests and board game tournaments happening at the same time. That was not the best solution, as people responsible for those events had no idea whether their tournament won’t be interrupted by a sudden raiders attack. Additionally such approach also stalled the game. Therefore right now we have it separated. Regarding how it started - it was a fallout-inspired party for like-minded friends. And I believe that’s actually still a case. We gain our inspirations from many sources - Fallout was our main inspiration, but a size of the game allows us to play with postapocalyptic convention and customize it to better fit our universe and be something different, than just a Fallout clone.

Briefly what's it like. OldTown is divided in two parts: 3 day Festival first, then 4 days of LARP. During the Festival part you can go through accreditation for LARP, hang out with friends, attend workshops, listen to live bands, finish setting up the camp (many Factions arrive even a week before the festival) and see different evening shows like Wrestling. Also there are operational food courts during the whole festival, bars, showers and all you need to survive. When the LARP starts - you're 100% in-game non-stop for 4 days. There are also similar activities like musical bands playing, arena fights, but all in-game.

This year we also had a chance to participate officially like a faction. Making long story short it gives you recognition on political LARP arena, you can select a good spot for your camp and more actively participate in OldTown story itself as a group.

Can you tell us anything on this years story? Of course without any spoilers, if you can do that.

Szyna: This years story was focused on political issue regarding faction power, and factionless people being passively “bullied”. The game began with raiders stealing lots of stuff from city caravans, and being quite numerous on wasteland. They focused on robbing the factionless, as factions mostly are well-armed and tough to pick a fight. That, and simple situation in town (factions did nothing wrong, it is simply a matter of being a factionless that makes you feel less powerful) caused a situation where factionless felt opressed. During second day, city council has been kidnapped by - what looked like - raiders. The plot assumed that while factions set to rescue the council, a mastermind behind all evil plots - so called RedCap (who was an NPC from previous year) will enter the half-empty town with a bomb and an ultimatum to end the reign of factions. All the factionless had a chance to choose one faction that will be a target of this bomb, and an example for other factions to not overlook people. All in all players managed to detonate the bomb with no harm for any faction, and capture and kill the RedCap. As it goes with no-spoiler version, i’m afraid that’s it. This is just scratching the surface of plotlines we prepared, as they went much deeper.

Diving deep into the story we gonna explain what is OldTown. OldTown is a city in Poland controlled by AI called Igor. Once a year factions from (now) all over the world gather at OldTown as neutral territory to do business, trade, make new alliances or do routine raider stuff - kill other people... because... why not?

(photos by Piotr Kołakowski)

OldTown is a safe (non-airsoft) zone guarded by androids and drones with a network of terminals around the city. Terminals are computers which can be found in different locations were you can try to communicate with Igor or access your character profile (let's call it profile for now). Strangely at first it was very easy to miss this mechanics in game, if you never tried to visit the terminal, but your character profile allows you to access your skill set (which are obtained during LAPR at schools), items you can craft and minor stuff like rumors, literature, etc. In addition all in game items have a chip on them, so you can analyze those items via Terminal, see which items are required for different crafting schemes, what different items can do, etc. Well, pretty neat.

You have some rather nice mechanics like Igor Terminal for example. Do you have anything planned in future, like craftable items, that is actually crafted combining different items, not just collecting them and giving to a GM; maybe more usable electronics? Or is it all gonna be a surprise for us at some point?

Szyna: I’m pretty sure one day we will reach better quality of crafting items. Right now we are focusing on enhancing Igor Terminal in a way that would minimise GM-visits. That alone will make the game and immersion better, because you won’t have to run to GM with every issue you have. But it is still in development, so no details for now :(

For past several years you can notice that OldTown has expanded a lot. People come from all over the world and, at what is actually just an empty airfield, build actually a small city with buildings sometimes 3 floors high. City became divided into several districts (Czeska - panie!) with their own rules and laws, clubs and gangs. We would also like to note that from year to year more and more people build bars, kitchens and different attractions that work only for in game currencies during the LARP, which helps you dive deeper into the world and atmosphere, which sometimes lacks on similar events when you can get yourself a meal for real life cash.

Of course considering the amount of people coming from different countries you start to notice drastic difference in roleplay style.

Talking about rules - how do you feel you can find balance? With so many people from so many different cultures everyone has absolutely different approach to LARP. Some say that it’s too softcore or hardcore. We know many try to run after every feedback and try to satisfy everyone, but on the other hand the game itself can lose its post-apocalyptic spirit and atmosphere.

Szyna: I once heard a very true saying, that true RPG should never be about balance, but about roleplaying and adventure. We do our best to balance economics, but the difficulty level is much more streamlined right now than it was e.g. in 2006-2008. Back then you had ASG in town and food was a normal trading resource. I remember trading a instant soup for a beer and a few caps just because someone was really hungry. No-one ranted about it back in the day, cause we knew it was fallout. But that was a game for 60 people, who exactly knew what they were going to do. Right now, with such a big interest in our game, we cannot really allow such mechanics. We are aware of the fact that we won’t satisfy everyone - and we do not aim to. We have a vision of what we want OldTown to be. And that vision is creating a place of great adventure, focused on maximizing this adventure. Hence the off-game zones with showers and food, so that you don’t need to travel to lake or gas station to take a shower and lose 2 hours in the process. Or cook food and lose a few hours of the game. Of course there are people who say “but we enjoyed cooking our food and food at gastro is expensive”. Well, we’re not stealing participants food and cooking gear, they’re still able to do that and no-one will say a word. Same goes with showers. When it comes to the balance while designing the game - there are always people who will say “wasteland was too easy” or “I died 14 times wasteland was too hard”. Same goes with bar music. You will never satisfy everyone, and we never will. But we have a clear vision of how we want the wasteland to look like, and we stand by it. Year by year we gather feedback from as many players as we can, and try to tune our assumptions based on the most valuable opinions, doing our best to make the game better year by year.

Also with so many big players on the arena you can notice that it's getting more and more difficult to follow the story. There's just too much stuff going on. When previous years you could notice any big events, hear more rumors, when now you can't just keep up with everything going on and the game itself looks more and more like sandbox, not a specific storyline. It's hard to tell whether it's a good change, because everyone got used to stories in RRGs, but sandbox is actually what real life would look like hundreds years ahead. There will be still people living trying to survive without narrator above driving their story.

From year to year it feels rather different each time. One year there’s raider claims on the city, another one it feels like there’s pure sandbox and players create story themselves. What can you say about that? Would you prefer that players themselves create story of the OldTown or you want to develop it into something you always had on your mind? It’s your creation after all. Like a baby.

Szyna: Year by year we try to experiment with new storylines, but the formula remained the same. Factions have to offer quests for players, we provide a global storyline for factions and players. This year it simply stopped working. Therefore we are working on huge changes regarding how we plan the game. We will be more focused on creating sandbox rather than a railroad larp. That means we will have a lot to discuss with factions and change the way the LARP is organized and administered, but we have a whole year ;)

Despite the fact that OldTown is a safe place - factions and other people do war on each other and play intrigues. Of course when Igor is not watching, but it's not an easy task to avoid his eyes.

Of course you do the game for yourself and players, but what do you feel you would like to receive back from players as well? More badass costumes, interesting quests and stories?

Szyna: More fairness in abiding the mechanics. Quests and stories provided by players are really nice, and costume level is something worth noticing. The biggest problem is players that cheat, because that breaks the game for everyone. We design the game to be and adventure, and death in OldTown is not a punishment. It can be a great scene, it can make you have more interesting scenes on the wasteland, and experience by the eyes of another character you prepared. Unfortunately, looking at this year and how much people are afraid of it, we are heavily discussing the terms of character death. It will be possible to kill other player, but that will require much more effort.

Also as a faction we had a chance to participate in the story ourselves as one of the main requirements is to create your own quests. This is really nice as you have more options to cooperate with other factions and tie your stories with other factions and lone players. The only downside this year was the delay with quest item registration brought by factions. Unfortunately there were so many of them org team was not able to process everything in time.

Wasteland

Wasteland is not where all the action happens, but this is the place with finally no rules and you can do there what ever you want and shoot whomever you want... if it won't shoot you down first.

Territory of the Festival is indeed huge. It's an old airfield after all. This year we tried our luck and traveled on foot to the farthest location 'the Hotel'. Well... it took us around 1,5-2 hours one way to get the from the OldTown location. We've managed to find nothing, but graffiti, which made us terribly disappointed, 'cause we had to get back and we wanted to get back alive, which is not an easy task.

This year several factions were living outside the city and it took you time to get there as well. Though again and again Wasteland is a place were raiders rule, so be ware they will kick you ass, like they kicked ours (ptts... no spoilers).

Festival

One point always worth mentioning is costumes people craft. There are really incredible shit you can find at the festival. And of course crafters with whom you can talk, ask an advice or share any ideas.

In addition to that OldTown Orgs made one step into improving quality of craft people bring to the festival and did raise requirements for accreditation this year. Being honest all previous years melee weapons were an eyesore of the festival. You brain exploded when you saw awesome raider outfits and silver-duct-taped-dildos... we're bowing our heads and saying a huge thank you to Org Team.

Also it was rather cool that there were much more crafting space during festival part and lots of people could craft together and share any ideas with already well known crafters like Mark Cordory, Wasted Couture and more. It's always awesome to learn something new.

(photos by Bodek Macal)

This year the festival part was much more active and interesting, comparing to the previous year when on the last day everyone started deconstructing everything and you were watching Wrestling at half-deconstructed festival... meh...

And the last, but not least - where the hell were Prize Fights?

Szyna: Prize fighters were organized (for about 2-3 years) strictly by factions. This year we had no Prize fighters, as no faction clearly stated a will to organise them. There were supposed to be other activities organised by factions instead, but there were no willing participants. However next year, judging by a lot of people missing that event, we’ll do our best to bring Prize fighters back.

Conclusion Long story short there's shit loads of fun stuff to do. It's definitely not the first and last time we will visit OldTown. Going through all above OldTown is a must place to visit on your post-apocalyptic route through Europe, so don't miss the chance to visit it next year. See you soon.

Sincerely yours, 12 Monke... Apocalypse Almanac

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