Its a simple and expansive question really, while in the Empire has little starvation, there is plenty of difference between economic strength, even from nation to nation, even at events, one could legitimately play a very poor (but as influential as any other) character, from a itinerant priest, or a poor Dawnish youngster from the edges of a territory who dreams of becoming a noble. The League particularly has parts about large parts of it’s population being poor and dreaming of fleecing someone in the long con and getting rich. So, in appearance, what does the poor of each nation look like? And how, would an aspiring costume maker make a poor costume (as in a financially poor character not a bad costume) and not look like another nation (e.g. a poor Dawnish Yeoman could look like a Marcher, a Steinr might end up look a bit too Navarr).
The Varushkan wiki has this:
"Low status Varushkans
This couple are wearing some traditional Varushkan garments, a white dress and a white tunic with embroidered hems respectively. Sheepskin is a practical but cheap material which is worn by poor Varushkans, wealthier individuals would layer their garments instead and hem them with fur. Patterned fabrics, such as the woman’s skirt, are used by the poor in place of the embroidered garments worn by most Varushkans. "
Highguard’s poorer folk are probably clad very plainly, in the stark contrasts of the nation but without much ornamentation; they probably prefer simple, roughspun cloth in plain white and as dark as they can manage (I expect black dye is available in the Empire world but it may still be more expensive than others, even if not prohibitively so). They probably have one or two pieces of nice trim that they save to resew onto a new garment whenever the old one fails, maybe pewter or brass jewellery that mimics the silver and gold of more prosperous people while retaining a similar look.
Define poor? My character has sworn to use skills (magic) & personal resources (mana) for the good of Nation & Empire, never for personal gain. She finds the whole idea of money puzzling, and hasn’t brought anything more expensive than a bag of fudge. She wouldn’t think of herself as poor, though.
Financially poor as in money, ability to afford good clothes Isca. E.g. a very poor Dawnish Yeoman or League citizen (or Montebank deliberately dressing poor for a con) wouldn’t be able to afford the best fabrics; maybe have those nice fabrics but they are crappy worn second hand clothes that are dirty and torn. Think of the difference between the rich and Macleane for Plunkett and Macleane before and after his makeover to a rich person (vastly setting inappropriate I know but I get the idea of what I’m getting at):
You get the idea. This would also be a point for many Briar’s as their trappings tend to be they don’t give a flying fig regarding their appearance (if you want to play that style).
The one that gets me is a poor Urizen, I have absolutely no idea what they’d look like.
Poor Urizeni (or the more common case, Urizeni who have had no heed to their clothing due to being obsessed with something else) I’d expect to be wearing similar styles but in rougher, plainer cloth with fewer Drapey Wizard Sleeves and similar wasteful design elements, and possibly with signs of patching and repair.
In the Brass Coast wearing white clothing is seen as an expression of poverty as you cannot afford richly dyed cloth.
In the League:
I imagine the cheapest clothing would be from shops (or market-stalls) that deal in used clothes, so there’s a trade-off between the original quality (original price) and its current condition.
If a garment has a stain or a hole, that might be disguised with a bit of fancy trim. A rip might be incorporated into a pattern of slashes. I imagine people putting effort into keeping the outer appearance good while letting the hidden parts decline: linings turning to tattered shreds, a worn-out shirt getting new bits of cloth sewn on only where they’ll show under the doublet.
I imagine clothes would be washed when they start to get dirty, but sometimes stains won’t come out.
Sometimes people might choose to appear poorer than they are, but I have the feeling that the other way is probably more common.
The League has some potential tricks involving fashion, as well. Slashing and detachable sleeves, for example, are a fair amount of extra work, but can potentially be “faked” by people who can’t afford a new garment when those styles come in. Sewing a small bit of ribbon to the top of a sleeve at the shoulder seam can give the appearance of something laced up; adding trim to a sleeve vertically (maybe with a bit of extra material, between two bits of trim, to puff out in the semblance of an undershirt) could give an illusion of slashing.
Unfortunately you are now straying into the territory between rich (or highly skilled) and poor players. The player may be unable to afford (or make) high quality clothing and still be a rich character. Commenting on them “dressing down” IC, might touch an OOC nerve. Particularly where the player is doing their best to portray a richly garbbed character.
“Faking” costume is a thing, including substitution of fabrics, machine embroidery, etc.
Wearing white in the Brass Coast is an obvious exception, and there are probably some others, but in general I would try and avoid making assumptions about someone’s IC wealth,or attitude to wealth, based on their kit.
[quote=“Cayce”]
Unfortunately you are now straying into the territory between rich (or highly skilled) and poor players. The player may be unable to afford (or make) high quality clothing and still be a rich character. Commenting on them “dressing down” IC, might touch an OOC nerve. Particularly where the player is doing their best to portray a richly garbbed character.
“Faking” costume is a thing, including substitution of fabrics, machine embroidery, etc.
Wearing white in the Brass Coast is an obvious exception, and there are probably some others, but in general I would try and avoid making assumptions about someone’s IC wealth,or attitude to wealth, based on their kit.[/quote]
Yeah, I was actually going to make a comment to that effect. It’s always a tricky one - you might choose to deliberately dress “poor” IC but people may avoid commenting on it, ever, because of this. Who can say that this Freeborn character is wearing a white shirt because they are poor IC, or because the player only has one LARP shirt and it happens to be white, and can’t afford anything else?
To an extent, playing “poor” has to be telegraphed somehow in how you play the character. It’s always tricky because IC wealth doesn’t correlate to OOC access to kit. Those suggestions I made are still reasonably intensive in terms of kitmaking - particularly the faux slashing - and if someone were asking me advice on how to make “rich” kit with similar effort I’d suggest different things entirely. But you’re right in that all LARP costume is fake.
I’m playing a not-very-well-off leaguer, and trying to get this accross through costume is difficult.
I went for:
Detachable but not slashed sleeves: sleeves still tied on, but labour (and therefore money) saving through just being tubes of fabric, not slashed or made in pieces. Doublets, again, are not slashed, but decorated with ribbon.
Plain hose: My hose are bright colours, but made of plain (and quite rough looking) linen.
I do have a large amount of OC sewing skill to make this things, though.
This is a really interesting concept as a newbie- E2 will be my first LARP event, meaning that while I’m trying to borrow as much as possible (such as camping gear), I will be spending a significant amount of money for things that may only be used once. I will be cutting corners wherever I can, meaning I will be wearing a very simple costume (and I dread to think what my armour will end up looking like- while I can make chainmail myself, I can’t do it in a month and I wouldn’t want to, in case I never come back). I’m playing Freeborn but I won’t have lots of layers of flowing fabric or beautiful jewellery (if indeed any), and my shield and sword may be very plain. I think if this was something that was regularly commented on IC, it would become somewhat frustrating.
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[quote=“Hellcat”]This is a really interesting concept as a newbie- E2 will be my first LARP event, meaning that while I’m trying to borrow as much as possible (such as camping gear), I will be spending a significant amount of money for things that may only be used once. I will be cutting corners wherever I can, meaning I will be wearing a very simple costume (and I dread to think what my armour will end up looking like- while I can make chainmail myself, I can’t do it in a month and I wouldn’t want to, in case I never come back). I’m playing Freeborn but I won’t have lots of layers of flowing fabric or beautiful jewellery (if indeed any), and my shield and sword may be very plain. I think if this was something that was regularly commented on IC, it would become somewhat frustrating.
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If it’s a consolation, I honestly don’t think anyone will comment; the social contract of the game is pretty explicit about kit being ‘aspirational’ rather than prohibitive. My previous character’s kit was cobbled together from charity shop buys and cheap Ikea throws, my next one is being assembled from a similar stockpile 
Bizarrely, I think simulating poverty often ends up more time- and money-intensive than not, because the main way of making it clear that’s what you’re doing is going to be using the various weathering techniques out there to artificially age things.
I can’t see many poor Brass Coasters showing up in Anvil of all places in actual white but maybe they have white things that have been badly died post manufacture. This thought brought to you as an excuse to start messing around with red cabbage and beetroot.
So my character doesn’t really understand the point of money, though she wouldn’t see herself as ‘poor’. She takes her Vate oath to mean that she should use her skills and resources freely for the good of Nation and Empire. In return she’d expect other people to help her out, knowing that she’d only ask for help if it was really needed for the greater good. If she decided that fancy clothes were useful or interesting she’d have no problems acquiring them, but she doesn’t want to. Turns out that dressing like a hyperactive compost heap is a handy disguise in cities as well as the deep woods.
Anyway, here’s how I’ve taken the ‘scruffy’ end of the Navarr brief and pushed it as far as I can:
All of Isca’s clothes are IC secondhand, or pieced together from scraps and offcuts, heavily patched and stained. This takes more OC work than making new-looking clothes, because I’m piecing together oddly shaped bits of different fabric types to non-standard patterns, rather than just sewing together two or three pieces of mostly straight lines for a basic tunic.
I’m using lots of different non-matching notions and trimmings, which can also take more resources - maybe four colours of thread, the buttons don’t match, and so forth. This is easy to do if you already have the sort of things long-term clothes makers accumulate, but awkward if you are just starting out. I also use some non-standard tools like a saw, which again not everyone has easy access to.
It takes a bit of OC knowhow to make anything look quite that badly put together without it risking disintegration during an event, especially if hand sewing - lots of backstitch to look like running stitch, for example. My scruffy kit also tends to need more repairs between events, just because it’s got more seams, more bits hanging off, and other points of weakness. A lot of ‘rough’ looking fabric is quite loose weave, and has a horrible tendency to just separate at the seams if you aren’t careful.
The fabric is heavily distressed - I mostly do this by letting my rabbits nibble it for a few weeks, or setting bits on fire if I’m in a hurry. I try hard to avoid straight seams or straight lines anywhere. This takes being careful about structural integrity, tricky seams, and occasionally things just don’t work out and I cannot use a bit of fabric as intended because the bunnies have been a bit too helpful with their lacework.
Some of my kit uses interesting dyes, for example so they run into each other. I do not recommend this approach and would not do it again, it is much better to be able to shove everything from a muddy event into a washing machine at once. I also wouldn’t use burlap again, it just sheds everywhere and is a PITA.
At a posh League party, photo credit John Scott
Looking grimy at an indoor player event in central London takes effort, both the smears and the smell of mud come in separate pots.
Note that in this photo Isca is luceting, though you can’t see it well - if she’s going to be sitting still, she’ll often be found making or repairing kit IC, partly 'cos she fidgets lots, partly because it just wouldn’t occur to her to pay other people to make her clothes. If she really does destroy something beyond even her repair, the next wayhouse will have a scraps basket.
photo: Beth Dooner
photo: Steph Morris
This one shows up non-matching arms - I like this for the ‘asymmetric’ bit of the Navarr kit brief, but again it requires buying two colours of fabric, which can be annoying if your local shop has a minimum order (often a metre), or just doesn’t stock a decent range of colours.
Photo: Ara McBay
The tatty coat and hood in particular needed loads of fabric for the tatters - probably three times what I’d have put into just making a coat. Fortunately, I got most of it in the form of offcuts from friends, scraps bins, and chopping up charity shop reduced rails, but again it’s not necessarily free to make your kit look scruffy.
Hand sewing is another thing that’s great for making your kit look a wreck, but much more time consuming than the tidy machine version. I’ve spent lots of long train journeys adding patches with horribly wonky stitching, often in (expensive) embroidery thread so it shows up better. Generally making things look rough and wonky needs handmade.
Some of Isca’s kit is also massively too big, particularly for tunics. Emphasises it being secondhand, gives me more room to hack at the edges and add tweaks to make it hang interestingly, and makes her look smaller - inside my head she’s a few inches shorter than me, and generally not built for heavy combat.
That’s a heck of a lot of work to look like you don’t care! Amazing results though, definitely worth it.
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[quote=“Hellcat”]That’s a heck of a lot of work to look like you don’t care! Amazing results though, definitely worth it.
[/quote]
Thanks! Isca does care, just not about looking ‘nice’. No straight lines, because that’s a dead giveaway for camouflage. No waste, because fancy new clothes are a waste of time and resources that could be better put to use against the Vallorn and barbarians. No unnecessary stuff, because she carries everything, and packs light to run with.
None of it is particularly difficult or complicated, I’m only a semi-competent beginner, and scruffy does have the advantage that I don’t worry about mistakes or things not looking perfect. But it does hopefully illustrate that there’s a difference between clothes that are IC a scruffy mess, and OC the simplest, fastest basic kit. I don’t think people need to worry about looking that much of a mess by accident, just because they’ve kit that is OC cheap or simple to make.
Thanks! Isca does care, just not about looking ‘nice’. No straight lines, because that’s a dead giveaway for camouflage. No waste, because fancy new clothes are a waste of time and resources that could be better put to use against the Vallorn and barbarians. No unnecessary stuff, because she carries everything, and packs light to run with.
None of it is particularly difficult or complicated, I’m only a semi-competent beginner, and scruffy does have the advantage that I don’t worry about mistakes or things not looking perfect. But it does hopefully illustrate that there’s a difference between clothes that are IC a scruffy mess, and OC the simplest, fastest basic kit. I don’t think people need to worry about looking that much of a mess by accident, just because they’ve kit that is OC cheap or simple to make.[/quote]
Sorry! I did mean to make it look like you don’t care about your clothes, rather than in general!
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