One week a year I escape my ‘real’ life as broke standup comic – and travel back to medieval times | Scout Boxall

A standup comic finds solace in medieval fantasy world of live action role play, where they can temporarily escape their 'real' life.

The full report

In a community sports field in Melbourne's inner north, a few hundred people dress up in historical armour and attack each other with foam latex swords, participating in live action role play, or Larping. This activity allows individuals to straddle two worlds with fellow enthusiasts, entering a realm where death can be reversed and they can be a cashed-up bureaucrat. The author has been Larping for seven years, and it is the biggest thing in their life outside of comedy. The two scenes have a lot in common, with everyone being broke and having been bullied in high school. No one gets into Larp or standup if things are going well, and gatekeeping is a commonality between the two.

The biggest event on Australia's Larp calendar is Swordcraft Quest, where hundreds of players pitch tents in a rocky cattle paddock in Pomborneit, Victoria to role play living in a medieval fantasy village for a week called Sudenburg. It's fully in character and immersive, save for a few modern conveniences. Even the most fearsome warrior needs a Portaloo and a soy flat white. Players can be a noble paladin, a sage elven scholar or a tricksy halfling bard, but if they're a real freak, like the author, they'll spend the week as a fiscally conservative tax agent. This year, the author was appointed Master of Coin, responsible for overseeing the town's finances.

In Larp, money works weirdly, with twelve copper to a silver, 20 silver to a gold. A copper is worth between $3 and $6 in

The author revelled in the brutal bureaucracy of being the Master of Coin, where players produced elaborate disguises, fraudulent documents and even held them up at (fake foam) knife-point in fruitless attempts to steal the town's hoard. Each of these heists was prenegotiated out of character. The final night of the event, someone simply broke into the tent and took the coins for real, which has since sparked a genuine out-of-character investigation.

Larpers love to replicate real-world dilemmas with a dirtbag medieval slant, such as Dwarven miners extracting obsidian from a poisonous seam with indentured goblin child labour, and the Town Council funnelling tax funds to their allies. Sometimes Larp and real life collide and form something that is technically

Last year, a terminally ill player called Silas* held their own funeral in the game, wearing elf ears and tucked into a mechanised wheelchair beneath heavy blankets. Afterwards, they married their long-term partner in the tavern with a real celebrant presiding. The ceremony was soundtracked by live bards and emceed by a hulking man called The Mad Mage. It was a strange day that straddled two worlds: our collectively imagined realm of Sudenburg, where death can be reversed through magic, and the real world.