Barbarians battle Orcs at Delta Park
JOHANNESBURG - Delta Park was turned into a battlefield this weekend with barbarians fighting orcs and villagers in Tales of Teana.
Delta Park was turned into a battlefield this past weekend as ‘barbarians’ fought ferocious battles with ‘orcs’ and ‘villagers’.
Randburg Sun spent some time with the organisers and participants of Tales of Teana on Sunday to find out more about larping in South Africa.
Larping is a live action role-playing game (larp), where participants physically act out their characters’ actions. The players pursue goals with a fictional setting represented by the real-world while interacting with each other in character.
Live-action role playing appears to have been ‘invented’ many times by different groups, relying on local ideas and expertise. By the 1980s, larps had spread to many countries and organisations, and different styles of play had been developed.
Childhood larp games possibly date back to historic times with well-known games such as ‘cowboys and Indians’, ‘house’ and ‘doctor’ stemming from earlier historical and pre-historical equivalents throughout many other cultures. Live-action role playing, as practiced by adults, has also existed for millennia in the form of historical reenactment.
Tales of Teana started in Johannesburg about five years ago and has a large following, with events ranging from a handful of participants to over a hundred. “Teana operates in two distinct types of events. There are adventure days, which is a morning only type of event or a whole weekend event, where we usually go out of town and book out an entire venue,” says Greg Barlow, member of the plot team for Tales of Teana.
“It’s kind of like a story book, in that everyone makes a character in a fantasy setting called Teana, that the plot team writes the storyline for. Everyone then plays as this character, for example, today this is the barbarian team and they have requested that they go on a raid, so the plot team has written the storyline along these lines for them,” Barlow adds.
The Tales of Teana larps are a fantastic way to spend some interesting time outdoors interacting with some wonderful people and using your imagination.
Anyone interested in joining can visit the Tales of Teana website at www.teana.co.za
To watch the video please go to www.youtube.com/ShayneRobinson.
