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Amtgard

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Amtgard is a live-action fantasy roleplaying and combat game. The term is also used to refer to the official organization that hosts and oversees gameplay.

History

Amtgard as an organization was founded in El Paso, Texas in 1983, though the rules used appear to date to before that, possibly evolving from the rulesets used by Emarthnguarth, Dagorhir, and similar groups. The largest concentrations of Amtgard chapters are in Texas and the Southwestern United States, but groups are found throughout as well as in Croatia, Finland, Germany, Korea, Russia, and Sweden.

Amtgard has given birth to a few splinter groups, notably the High Fantasy Society.

Ruleset

Character creation in Amtgard is class-based; that is, players choose a "template" archetype with pre-established abilities, similar to systems used by Dungeons and Dragons and other tabletop roleplaying games. Players can increase the abilities of their characters by going up in level; a player's level is determined by the length of game time they have played that particular class.

Roleplaying is largely limited to social functions (such as feasts and madrigals), as most character class abilities are combat-related. As such, Amtgard has been criticized by other LARP groups as being more a "live-action miniatures wargame" than a roleplaying game. Some players however, see the lack of rules-governed roleplaying as granting them more freedom to develop and portray their characters.

Amtgard combat is a mixture of simulated and actual physical fighting. The weapons are similar to boffer weapons (albeit held to a much higher standard of safety and quality) but a player's physical ability, rather than game-based attributes as with other LARPs, determines the outcome allowing for a more realistic experience. Despite this, injuries are quite rare due to the stringent attention paid to safety. Amtgard combat is closer to that of the Society for Creative Anachronism than the more "stylized" forms used by groups such as NERO or Dagorhir.

Battle games range from tournaments to team battles to mass warfare. The largest "grand melees" are held at the major annual events and will incorporate sometimes hundreds of members from many different chapters.

Setting

Unlike many other fantasy roleplaying games, Amtgard has no established "backstory" to its world. The setting encourages and incorporates elements of historical Europe and Asia as well as the high and low fantasy genres. One interesting piece of fanon relates the name Amtgard as referring to a mythical land of heroes between the Norse mythological realms of Midgard (the human world) and Asgard (the abode of the gods).

Organization

A common theme of medieval and fantasy feudalism runs through even the official level. Amtgard chapters are generally organized by size, with smaller groups (called variously a "shire," "barony," or "duchy," depending on the number of active members) grouped under the larger or older chapters, called "kingdoms." Each chapter is semiautonomous, but each agrees to abide by the official rulebook, standards of play, and a shared set of organizational bylaws.

The twelve kingdoms, along with their primary locations, are:

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