The Darkon Wargaming Club
Darkon Wargaming Club is a LARP Sword and Sorcery Fantasy game based around Baltimore, MD and Washington, DC. Founded in 1985 and built upon the rules of the now-defunct Emarthnguarth Outdoor Wargaming System, Darkon grew from a handful of LARP enthusiasts to almost 2,000 members in 2005, with a small number of chapters dotting the country.
Much of Darkon’s rules were originally based around Advanced D&D rules. Now, however, they have taken off in another direction, attempting to find a happy compromise between styles of fantasy play.
Darkon is divided into countries that take on historical or fantasy cultures as their premise.
Darkon shows examples of the following tropes:
- Adventure-Friendly World: The Realm of Darkon is this, to the entertainment of its members.
- Back Stab: Thieves and Assassins have it.
- Badass Army: Mordom, Elidor, Ched Nasad…take your pick.
- BFS: The maximum size for a sword is 6½ feet long.
- Blue Blood: The Noble Council.
- Chaotic Neutral: Moot. Some consider them to be Jesters, others Non Ironic Clowns.
- Character Alignment: Optional, but can significantly change roleplay.
- Character Level: Gaining levels usually unlocks new abilities until about level 20-25.
- Charm Person: the mage spell Feeble Mind.
- Color Coded for Your Convenience: Many of the “evil” countries wear primarily black. Most of the “good” countries wear bold primary colors.
- Combat Medic: Clerics.
- Crazy Prepared: If you’re a spellcaster, you need to have enough spell balls to be effective.
- Death Is Cheap: Characters come back to life after a maximum of 12 minutes unless assassinated. Even then, they come back after 24 hours.
- Elves vs. Dwarves: mostly averted, as in many cases race does not matter.
- Empty Levels: Most levels after 25th do not grant new abilities. Spellcasters, however, gain more spell points.
- Evil Army: Take your pick.
- Fantasy Kitchen Sink: Players can play any kind of fantasy creature imaginable.
- For the Evulz: Mordom’s motto: “Hate Without Reason”
- Genius Bruiser: It’s scary to think how many people in Darkon are doctors, lawyers, rocket scientists…
- Grappling with Grappling Rules: Grappling rules had to be changed after characters in full-plate insisted on grappling unarmored players.
- Horny Vikings: The Forgotten Ones
- Human Sacrifice: Has been known to happen on more than one occasion.
- Instant Death Radius: Fireballs basically do this on normal battle days.
- I See Dead People: The spell “Speak With Dead” allows the caster to ask a dead body three yes-or-no questions.
- Knight in Shining Armor: Cavaliers are required to wear metal-based armor like Plate and Chain, or no armor at all.
- La Résistance: The Republic of Harn.
- Law of Cartographical Elegance:
- Made of Indestructium: The Shield of Deflection.
- Magic Missile: The Wand of Gartan fires three of these.
- Magic Pants: The spell “Giant Growth” affects everything worn by the caster.
- Malevolent Architecture: some adventures include a dungeon that may be full of traps, falling bridges, and more.
- Manly Gay: Arguably, Laconia. They of course were playing off of 300, so…
- No Conservation of Energy: Where does magic come from?
- One-Man Army: Some Darkonians could be considered this: Pain, Inox, and Slindar come to mind.
- Our Orcs Are Different: And yet they all fall back into the idiosyncrasies of Warhammer 40,000 orks.
- Private Military Contractors: Bloody Axe mercenary Company, who adhere to a strict honor code.
- Puny Humans: Averted, because race makes no difference to your character’s stats or abilities.
- Putting on the Reich: The Teradox Imperium.
- Real Life Writes the Plot: Keldar handed over a lot of responsibility in ruling The Kingdom after his player, Kenyan Wells, injured his ankle very badly and could not attend fights for almost a year.
- Religion of Evil: Some of the religions in Darkon could be considered this. Lolth, anyone?
- Shields Are Useless: Averted. Shields are hard to destroy, and take infinite hits.
- Siege Engines: Included, and arguably the most powerful tools in the game under correct circumstances.
- Spell Book: Necessary for spellcasters.
- Squishy Wizard: Averted: Mages receive magic armor that under correct circumstances can be better than some armored characters…without the drawback of actually wearing armor.
- Standard Fantasy Setting: Played straight on purpose, to allow more flexibility with player-run adventures.
- The Fair Folk: Elidor, arguably.
- The Horde: Ched Nasad.
- The Pirates Who Don't Do Anything: Aquilonia hasn’t had a war in years.
- The Plague: Used as an adventure arc in a recent year.
- The Roman Republic: Legio Exilium.
- They Changed It, Now It Sucks: Someone says this ever year when a new rule change goes through.
- Turn Undead: Clerics can do this.
- The Usual Adversaries
- Weapon of Choice: Some players are known for certain weapon preferences.
- Weird Trade Union: Guild of Fighters, Guild of Mages, Guild of Thieves, Guild of Druids…and lots of others…
- World Map: here [dead link].