My husband, son and I were invited by a friend of ours do to the Otherworld Adventure weekend. It’s… Okay descriptions get a bit weird.
You could call it a LARP[1], but a hard-core LARPer would have her expectations kinda messed with attending it.
I’m a minor Rennie and it does have a bit of a Faire feel to it, but it’s not based on a real historical period. It’s fantasy. And it doesn’t have vendors. And you’re really part of the shows.
Probably the best way to describe it is being a character in a fantasy novel. The idea is that instead of playing a character, though, you’re supposed to play a heroic version of yourself.
The weekend generates dozens of “No shit, there I was” stories. Yes, I have a bunch of them, and they were all kinds of fun. I can’t tell ‘em. Why? Well, mostly because putting them out on the Internet would screw up the story for the next batch of participants. Suffice to say, the weekend generated a lot of those stories.
So, on to what I can talk about:
Otherworld creates a weekend-long adventure to be played by eight parties of six participants and several dozen staff playing characters within the event. Participants can bring their own costumes or dress up in costume items provided by Otherworld, or even some combination thereof. I do recommend that if you do bring your own costume, make sure it has a good belt to hang things on – just saying.
Each party has a set of six character classes and each one is pretty necessary to solving the puzzles assigned to the parties. It really discourages any one participant from taking over the party, but instead encourages some pretty serious teamwork. I was really lucky, as my party was amazing. Well, I knew my husband and son are fun companions, but the other three people in the party were also awesome. Anyone who reads this knows I’m hardly the world’s biggest people fan, and I don’t necessarily automatically like everyone, but I can say with all honesty that I thoroughly enjoyed adventuring with the people in my party very much. Like many a fantasy adventure, yes, it starts in a tavern.
There was a lot that was impressive about the weekend. The setting is wonderful. It’s in a 4-H camp in Connecticut and the grounds are just gorgeous. The cabins are small for seven people[2] but it doesn’t matter. The only thing you do there is sleep.
Part of what impressed me was the level of organization that went into creating it. The bones didn’t show. It is incredibly easy to dive into the fantasy and forget you’re not really living there. I think the most complimentary think I can say about the organization is that it’s so smooth that you don’t notice it. Having organized a minor event or two, I can say beyond a shadow of a doubt that Otherworld is good at what it does.
I’m a bit sorry you can only do this once as a participant[3]. I’d do it again in a red-hot minute.


