I concur, story-telling is an awesome OOC skill… good for history, new players, and atmosphere around the fire…
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The ability to keep a straight face. The ability to look like you know what’s going on when everything you’re being told is completely new to you cannot be overstated. 
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A loud voice with a confident bearing. 90% of the time that’s enough to make a unit effective, as long as you keep shouting.
(Assuming you’re actually in command, that is. Don’t start shouting randomly if you aren’t, or the commander will clip you round the ear )
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To elaborate: From my personal experience, interval cardio fitness. Going out for a run isn’t the same as running around on a battlefield. While running will help being fit in general, adding in a regular exercise that will push your heart rate up high for short bursts will improve your battlefield fitness a lot.
For example: When I go for a run, my heart rate will be around a steady 150bpm, which is pretty comfortable for a workout. However, if I’m sprinting around a front line, jumping back from attacks, bolting out of an area of effect, then my heart rate isn’t going to sit around a comfy 150bpm. It’s going to shoot up to 180bpm, then I’ll get a minute or two breather before I need to shoot off again.
So if you add in some High Intensity Interval Training (HIIT) designed to get heart rate up high for 30s, a quick 15s breather, then another burst for 30s etc. I do that pattern 6 times, then have a 2 minute rest, the repeat the whole process 3 times. “3 sets of 6 reps” if you will. Then you’re training your body in a way that fits a LARP field pretty well. Another thing to practice is good breathing in those little breaks. A couple of good slow deep breaths through the nose, out the mouth help with quick recovery.
Of course, any exercise is great for improving fitness, but I’ve found that including HIIT in my regime has made a huge difference on battlefields.
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This pretty much the suggestions from Larphacks with a couple of additional thoughts:
As always the caveat is if your current fitness level is low, or you have previous injuries or other physical issues see a professional for advice before starting anything new.
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Perhaps not so surprising, but: good short-term memory for texts up to a maximum of maybe around 120 words.
If your character uses the “Signs and Portents” ritual or the Goosewhisper apothecary vapour stuff, then a ref hands you a slip of paper with text describing what your character experiences. You can look at it for a while to try to memorise it, but then you have to hand it back, and then role-play your character having just experienced that. (I think at that poinst most players role-play their characters quickly writing down their experiences as well as they can recall them.)
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Ability to function reasonably well on very little sleep, at least for as long as the event lasts (and the journey home).
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Lighting fires and keeping them burning with a minimum of smoke.
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Oh gods, yes. My experiences with with both a Goosewhisper vision and a True Liao Vision was punctuated with panic that I could literally feel the memories slipping away and there was nothing I could do about it. 
Still a bit gutted about the second one in particular, although there were good IC reasons why she wouldn’t be able to remember stuff clearly.
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Charisma
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We’ve mentioned fitness a bit. On the field at E3 I felt I was one of the fittest, and I wanted to explain some of the ideas about exercise that have helped me stay at the top of my game into my 30s.
I believe the best kind of exercise is:
- that which is fun,
- has measurable targets,
- and takes you closer to the body you want.
Exercise which is any two of these is still good- but its harder to stick to. If every few months you hit a milestone, or every time you look in the mirror, you see the gradual impact it has it motivates you. This is also why fun matters – right now I am a terrible gymnast and at 30 and I know I am unlikely to ever even reach the top 50% people in my sport, but I do it because parallel bars/rings etc are the most fun I’ve ever had exercise wise, and because after years of shoulder issues, strengthening the little muscles around the joints through these movements has really improved my life.
I think larp probably would have the best cross over with martial arts. Essentially each martial art involves moving your feet a lot, and thus strengthening all the tendons that are at risk when you run in armour over uneven ground. Jogging doesn’t do this- because your only doing one leg movement i.e. going forward. In martial arts, you’d be circling people, advancing and retreating as well as learning to be aware of the signals that someone is going to strike.
if you’ve ever seen someone training for football- you’ll have seen them doing lots of odd things to strengthen vulnerable tendons, like running in zigzags or side to side. IMHO martial arts are a fun way of doing something similar.
Like gymnastics, I was always at the bottom of martial arts classes; again I left starting quite late, but more because of dyspraxia which means that I find it hard to co ordinate complex movements; but conversely that I benefit more from practicing and developing co ordination skills.
I think psychologically it’s a lot easier to lift weights, or jog- because you can do both on your own – without a group of people seeing how rubbish you are. I certainly got a lot out of lifting weights and jogging – but I find martial arts and gymnastics dramatically more enjoyable and easier to reach goals through (although learning a movement is hard, it’s a lot easier than taking a minute off your time on your morning route or adding a cm to your bicep).
If I had the time, I’d do everything exercise wise we’ve mentioned so far (not just in my post but all those preceding too), but because time is precious, I prioritise exercise that is fun, has measurable targets, and takes me closer to the body I want.
(I’ve been deliberately vague in my use of the phrase “body you want” -this is because whilst we all want to look good- most of us also have aches and pains- or are on the way to developing them. I think most people above a certain age would rather eliminate them then look good on those rare occasions you get to take your shirt off publicly. Again, this is something that exercise can do- although its hard to find what will work; I spent four years trying everything for my shoulders before by accident I stumbled on the idea that things like front lever over time reduced the pain in my shoulders and ended up joining an adult gymnastics group)
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No one has said “mental arithmetic”. You want to fleece rubes and avoid being fleeced in return? Work out how to multiply on the fly. At a minimum, learn your 8x table.
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Very much this. Watching the really experienced traders do all the calculations quickly off the tops of their heads is akin to a form of magic.
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- The ability to eat on the move – vital if you have a lot of meetings.
- Preparing food/drinks in advance, to maximise time doing IC things.
- Practice at putting your tent up, armour on, makeup etc in the dark when it is raining, with little time.
- Charisma – the ability to persuade people to agree with your evil plan, is pretty dammed powerful.
- Ability to keep your eye on the long term goal (if that is your IC goal).
- The ability to project your voice – vital for the battlefield.
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You don’t need charisma to persuade people to agree with you, all you need is free alcohol and maybe some cake.
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Depends on what you’re trying to achieve. Politically speaking most of the important people you’ll need to agree with you will have built up a resistance to low level bribery.
If they haven’t, then they’re not the person you should be talking to, you need to find the person who’s already pulling their strings… 
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