And don’t push yourself because you ‘feel’ you have to
If you can afford them Sealskin socks are a godsend!
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Oh, I’ve gone home in gills carrying swords openly on the train. Surprisingly, no-one challenged me, perhaps because I’m small and harmless-looking or because they’re used to anything at the Banbury and London stations, and I go through the Hemel one a lot.
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To clarify, these are “Sealskinz” socks, also available in generic as waterproof socks. They are wool or cotton socks with a waterproof/breathable membrane, not socks made out of seal leather. e.g. these
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I kept pushing myself during the hottest (and slowest) time of the day; then one of my camp family said they took a siesta so they could stay up until time out, what a notion. I’ll be joining a new nation and new group at E1 this year, and wearing a mask, so I am expecting a retreat for meal times to make the rest of it bearable, and yes, probably a little siesta so that I can be with it for all the night time shenanigans.
I don’t usually carry snacks on me, but I do have them in my IC tent. I do carry a bottle and a cup for myself, to decrease my chance of catching larp-lurgy.
Layers are one’s friend, as is a hood or head cover of some sort to shield from wind, cold, and heat. Spare set of soft kit, as well as OOC wear, is wise.
I’m the driver, so whilst the others are loading the van, I shut my eyes and rest, as I’ll be driving for many hours afterwards and still have to unload at the other end.
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Thinking about self care should start a long time before you hit the field. For me it’s a hugely important part of character gen, and needs to be built in to character headspace from the ground up.
For example: give your character reasons to need breaks IC. Maybe they stop to meditate. Maybe they’re a Night mage who believes in the importance of dreaming and so gets an early night.
I always play a character who is less physically capable than me, not more. It can be really really tempted to push at larp, so I need my character to need to stop before I do. It can be really tempting to play to a hero fantasy - my character can push through pain and never gets tired and will sacrifice physical comfort to achieve the goal - it’s a really easy to want to play those tropes cos they show up in fantasy stories all the time. But they don’t work for larp! Instead I play characters who are out of their depth, and where their limits make sense in the context of mine.
Baking that in to your character creation can make it easier to to do all those things in up time like drinking enough and stopping to eat and getting enough rest.
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I have IBS so a thing that helped me was just keeping some small snacks in my tent I know wouldn’t upset my stomach. I didn’t need them in the end as the range of food at Empire was so awesome I easily found stuff I could eat. But knowing I had a safe backup helped me a lot mentally. I did a few other things to help plan round my stomach. But this helped me forget the stress of it. Which let me have a lot more fun.
Another thing that helped a lot was a blackout OC tent. Really helped get a good night sleep and not get woken up by the sun at stupid times.
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