Dragonbane was a large international

live action roleplaying game A live action role-playing game (LARP) is a form of role-playing game where the participants physically portray their characters.(Tychsen et al. 2006:255) "LARPs can be viewed as forming a distinct category of RPG because of two unique feature ...

(LARP) project. The game itself took place from July 27 to August 4, 2006 in

Älvdalen Älvdalen (Elfdalian: ''Övdaln'' or ''Tjyörtjbynn''; literally meaning ''The River Valley'') is a locality and the seat of Älvdalen Municipality in Dalarna County, Sweden, with 1,810 inhabitants in 2010. The parish is widely known for being t ...

, Sweden, close to the border with

Norway Norway, officially the Kingdom of Norway, is a Nordic country in Northern Europe, the mainland territory of which comprises the western and northernmost portion of the Scandinavian Peninsula. The remote Arctic island of Jan Mayen and t ...

. There were 325 players from several countries. While there was little media coverage in other countries, it received the attention of Scandinavian newspapers and gaming publications.

The Game

The game events took place in the fictional village of Cinderhill. The game setting was based on the world of Valenor, from Mike Pohjola's game

Myrskyn aika ''Myrskyn aika'' ("The Time of the Storm") is a Finnish role-playing game. History In the late 1990s, Mike Pohjola became interested in various theories of the Nordic style of LARPing (Live Action Roleplaying), how it differed from the American ...

(Age of the Storm). The setting mixed influences from the late

Iron Age The Iron Age is the final epoch of the three-age division of the prehistory and protohistory of humanity. It was preceded by the Stone Age (Paleolithic, Mesolithic, Neolithic) and the Bronze Age (Chalcolithic). The concept has been mostly appl ...

and the

Middle Ages In the history of Europe, the Middle Ages or medieval period lasted approximately from the late 5th to the late 15th centuries, similar to the post-classical period of global history. It began with the fall of the Western Roman Empire ...

. The game aimed for total immersion and there was no out-of-character area.

Organisation and arrangements

Dragonbane was an unusually large

LARP A live action role-playing game (LARP) is a form of role-playing game where the participants physically portray their characters.(Tychsen et al. 2006:255) "LARPs can be viewed as forming a distinct category of RPG because of two unique feature ...

project with a budget approaching 1 million

euro The euro (symbol: €; code: EUR) is the official currency of 19 out of the member states of the European Union (EU). This group of states is known as the eurozone or, officially, the euro area, and includes about 340 million citizens . ...

s. Most of the funding came from dozens of corporate sponsors, including several major corporations, such as Hewlett-Packard. An entire village was built for the game, as well as a large electromechanical dragon.

The village of Cinderhill

A mock medieval village called Cinderhill was constructed for the game, and for future games. The building of the village begun in spring 2005 and took (a few winter months excluded) until the very day the game began on July 4, 2006. The Cinderhill village was eventually burnt down in summer 2012, because the land owners did not want to keep it there any longer. The village contained 4

long house A longhouse or long house is a type of long, proportionately narrow, single-room building for communal dwelling. It has been built in various parts of the world including Asia, Europe, and North America. Many were built from lumber, timber and o ...

s, a smithy, a

bakery A bakery is an establishment that produces and sells flour-based food baked in an oven such as bread, cookies, cakes, donuts, pastries, and pies. Some retail bakeries are also categorized as cafés, serving coffee and tea to customers wh ...

, a healer's hut, toilet facilities, wash house, carpentry shop and a grand temple. All in all, there were 12 buildings with 320 indoor sleeping places and a floor area of over 500 square meters. Cinderhill was very much a work in progress, and there were many ideas for other aspects that were not realized.

Outcome

The Dragonbane project was one of the most ambitious in the history of

, and some critics expected it would never operate. The originally advertised event in

Estonia Estonia, formally the Republic of Estonia, is a country by the Baltic Sea in Northern Europe. It is bordered to the north by the Gulf of Finland across from Finland, to the west by the sea across from Sweden, to the south by Latvia, and t ...

was postponed and moved to Sweden. Fewer than a third of the 1000 player spaces were filled, but still the project went ahead, and after several preliminary events (to help build the site and establish characters) the 5-day game was run. Several last-minute technical problems restricted the mobility and articulation of the dragon. Some of the camping areas (outside the village) were reported as inadequately provisioned. Player response to the event was mixed, dwelling both on the high standards of the immersive environment and on technical and organisational flaws. The game was billed as a single event, and as yet no plans have been announced for sequels.

References

{{reflist

External links

Dragonbane websiteDragonbane - The Legacy
- an evaluation report on the project (10MB PDF) By Tiinaliisa Multamäki, Johanna Koljonen and Tiina Kuustie Live-action role-playing games Fantasy role-playing games