Leaving Mundania

I was inspired to sit down and write by one of my  cultural heroes, Cory Doctorow, by his comments in this interview, on how blogging is a powerful mnemonic device. This interview also reminded me of what I, of course, know to be true (not least now after reading Outliers) that practice makes perfect, and thus, by writing this blog I'm not wasting time from other stuff I could do in connection with either my job as a teacher or my role as a graduate student.

Anyway, I finished Leaving Mundania by Lizzie Stark just recently. This is a non-fiction book about Larping. It's a very interesting read.

The subject is fascinating. We get to know all kinds of different approaches to larping, from the traditional foam weapons and calling out damage to the weird and fascinating world of Nordic Art Larp. Stark has no previous knowledge or experience with table top RPGs so this also makes for an interesting and fresh approach.

The writing is personal and captivating, even moving in places. I especially found her confession concerning how she resents the fact that her husband is not her first reader to be moving, and it made me wonder how that will have gone down.... (208).

I highly recommend this book to anyone with a serious interest in gaming, and the weird and wonderful variety of human endeavours.... It serves well to quench prejudice people have against this hobby, even though I see a number of problems in getting started - mostly problems concerning time and effort. However, her discussion of the so-called 'free-form' format, a mix between larp and table-top, is something I'm definitely going to look into...