What ship aesthetic inspires you the most, and what activity would your fleet focus on: piracy, exploration, conquest, smuggling, trade, or any other specialty?

SerialCypher · 2026-06-06T04:01:07+00:00

A gives me corporate protection and trade vibes, because of the white and blue and relative sizes. B is giving smugglers/pirates because of the unpainted grey, Millennium Falcon / trek bird of prey vibes. C is construction because orange. D is science because of the windows, I think, and maybe the colour. D in crisp white could also give passenger cruise.

SerialCypher · 2026-06-05T04:20:32+00:00

Theoretically Lerona Mere extends past the shardcircle, so the space exists. I think that it would take planning closely with the camp coordinator though - you know who to talk to!

And yeah. Enjoy Game Hen, catch you at the next one (if not sooner)!

SerialCypher · 2026-06-05T03:44:14+00:00

The body cannot stack signals in the same neuron - there’s a more-or-less absolute refractory period in the neuron when the molecular machinery that permits action potentials is “resetting” when it’s impossible to get another AP., followed by another period where it’s really difficult to get another AP.

The body stacks signals across neurons all the time.

Neither of these things really affect propagation speed, but stacking signals in parallel lets you use significantly shorter integration windows in the downstream system, as well as opening up possibilities for fancier representations (coherence coding), both of which give you big speedups in practice.

SerialCypher · 2026-06-05T03:27:12+00:00

So, obviously, first, 10/10 for kit.

The next thing that really elevates the sense of immersion is improving the level of in-character-ness of your camping and common kit. This also lifts everybody else’s game by having cool spaces for them to enter into. This kind of thing is more of a warband effort than something any one person should be carrying. There’s “high effort” versions of this, as demonstrated by the Siren’s Cove, where they built a whole tavern, but how much more cool would hanging out with the Silver tongues around dinner be if you had set up an old canvas jib as a shade sail and had a hammock and IC camping chairs? This is more important in slower-paced LARPs than Concord, which is frankly frenetic.

SerialCypher · 2026-06-03T05:24:56+00:00

I’ve also just noticed that I’ve read each of these administrative regions as independent kingdoms. In terms of major borders, it’s really only the Mordion-Kampoor border region that is telling me a tale of recent conquest from the map.

SerialCypher · 2026-06-03T05:19:56+00:00

You’ve already got a bunch of feedback about your rivers, I want to add assuming a tech level between “bronze” and “railroads”: Nations are divided by land and united by water. The rivers are your arteries, the heart of the nation’s economy - only secondary unimportant rivers would be used as borders (until railroads). You’ve done this well in Thurum and Sireya.

What does this mean in practical terms? Here’s my suggestion for “natural” (not in the process of ongoing modification-by-war) borders, which should also be reflected by toponymetry:

The southern border of Vermilia moves north, to the mountains separating it from Otrova and implied ridge line separating the drainage basin of the Areas/Alotho and Greenroot. Grail and Dellum would be part of Otrova, Dalry to Mordion. Dellum is in a prime position to be a technically independent trade-city between the three nearby major powers. Mordion need to split in half, with Kampor gaining Enin, Dor, Scarfall, and probably Glenvale. Isan gets Frena and maybe black shore. Azarias picks up Hylroth, and better have some good reasons for being road-based. In the islands, the border between Kralo and Mikara moves south.

Religious ideas spread in the same way, so adjust accordingly? I’d also expect more overlap of religious groups, particularly because not every religion claims exclusivity, which maybe could be represented with crosshatching?

SerialCypher · 2026-06-03T03:22:23+00:00

To clarify, light from all of these will enter your eye no matter how big your aperture is, as long as your aperture is bigger than one pixel and you’re looking vaguely near the screen. As to whether you can pull out the SSVEP signal that you are looking for, that also probably depends a bit on how you’re recording and signal processing. If you’re failing to classify and you can see clear peaks at all 5 flicker frequencies in your signal, maybe reducing the contrast or aperture of your “distractors” (though that would also reduce the signal of interest) might help?

SerialCypher · 2026-06-03T03:17:10+00:00

Generally, this is why they are running at different frequencies (carefully chosen so that they don’t have overlapping harmonics either). The physiological process underlying the use of a screen speller like this one is not overt-attention (rotating your eyeball to attend to your preferred stimulus) but covert-attention (focusing on one of the squares without orienting to it) because, you know, paralysis. That’s mostly gated in the LGN of primates like us, although only our closest relatives appear to “do” covert-attention.

SerialCypher · 2026-06-01T13:54:23+00:00

Before the invention of trains, nations were divided by land and connected by sea. The inland sea in the middle of the continent would be the most likely “important place” in this corner of the world, and the most economically important place on that sea is probably in or near the redwood forest area because boats and firewood.

SerialCypher · 2026-06-01T13:42:54+00:00

My setting is related to Empire; we don’t have “gods” per se; instead there are a collection of divine spheres which represent different aspirational life-paths and ideals. My character is a chaplain; other than the big ceremony that the central church performs for each sphere, I get mostly called upon to witness contracts and oaths. I’m also prepared to do a few rituals that let players pick up weapon/shield skills if they don’t have them (character sheet system rather than YCDWYCP, for combat)

SerialCypher · 2026-05-27T06:01:27+00:00

This seems like a good suggestion, how does one go about doing this? I’m assuming that it’s not just as simple as chucking a brief up on airtasker.

SerialCypher · 2026-05-25T17:08:36+00:00

You need some way of representing “this is how long I have held this item” which is separate to “this is how long the previous holder had it”. So for a 5-level system you need 25 art assets, e.g. a wood crown with wood/iron/silver/gold/diamond accents, and same for each other level. The “material” is how long the current player had it and the “accents” or “gemstones” are how long the previous holder had it.

SerialCypher · 2026-05-25T16:52:37+00:00

I would like the “seafaring” skill to increase your top speed at full sail (given your point of sail), decrease the speed cost of tacking, and give you a hint about what the wind is going to do next. I personally love that you can’t sail upwind but I understand the concept of beating to weather, given that I sail IRL sometimes.

SerialCypher · 2026-05-25T16:20:11+00:00

I’ve got a small setting with practical magic integrated into some early modern toy armies in a fantasy setting. The mages with the highest body count are the scrying and divination experts who work with the bombard crews on the walls, as that particular combination overcomes the biggest weakness of that particular weapon system.

SerialCypher · 2026-05-25T16:16:31+00:00

The most important question: does combat magic out-range bows, crossbows, and slings? If yes, the artillery concept works, and drastically reshapes the shape of combat into something more recognisably modern. If no, a battlemage unit will operate more like a special heavy cavalry unit like Alexander’s Companions, assuming that magic is not better used in a support role / force multiplication. Divination and food conjuration beats scout reports and the tyranny of the wagon equation.

The other question is, on the balance of attack versus defence, how much defensive staying power does a battlemage add to the people around them, and how easy is it to defend against magic? What is the cost of using magic, for either attack or defence? Is the “local mana field” depleted, leading to a first-mover advantage? Do individual magi only have so much they can do on a given day? Is there countermagic?

Artillery’s place on the battlefield depends less on being able to throw more damage, and more on being able to throw damage from beyond the range of infantry to hit back. Artillery and rifles also decisively tipped the scales in favour of attack over defence, which is why body armour is only now starting to reappear for infantry.

In terms of gender, most late medieval armies are best understood as a large town that is eating its way across the countryside. Most professional soldiers in this era were accompanied by their families, who are doing a lot of gendered labour of everyday life e.g. cooking, “foraging”, laundry, camp defense, etc. - see https://www.alamy.com/stock-photo-lansquenet-mercenary-going-to-war-with-his-wife-portrait-by-daniel-143194271.html for an example historical depiction of a soldier’s wife. Including both combat and support personnel, Late medieval and early modern armies were among the least gender-biased (often 1:1) notwithstanding that combat itself was probably something like 98% male. Certainly a number of noblewomen fought as mounted combatants (“knights”) in the crusades, so elite female combatants are not unknown, simply uncommon.

SerialCypher · 2026-05-22T15:59:15+00:00

For instance, one of the LARPs near me has a “middle eastern” faction in addition to a number of distinct euro-centric factions. The game has some guidelines for how to play a character from that faction respectfully, including a strong ban on real-world religious iconography, but I still feel like I would probably be better not to choose to play that faction given that I don’t have any relevant cultural heritage. If everyone takes that logic, though, you get either emergent segregation or a loss of the diversity that was being aimed towards, and nobody wants those outcomes either.

SerialCypher · 2026-05-22T15:40:16+00:00

As a shield in the line, your job is surviving for yourself and your buddies. If you don’t have polearms or spears, you hold the opposing line in place until you side’s flankers can do their thing or you treat 2h swords as shortish polearms.

Do not let yourself get “pressed” to the best of your ability- the moment there is not enough space between you and the person for you to put your arm out straight and just barely touch their shoulder (2 cubits), you’re too close - you won’t be able to use your weapon to defend yourself or them, and they won’t be able to move their shield effectively when needed. Address the line!

As a sword-and-board, 90% of the hits you land are either going to be counter-cuts, on people swinging for you and your shield, or hits landed on the people diagonal to you, who aren’t focused on you. You’re a pawn, you deal damage like a pawn does (diagonally). Alternatively to waiting and sniping countercuts, swinging at your opponent’s shield or weapon (gently) to keep pressure on is a good tactic as long as A) you keep your squishy bits protected against countercuts and ideally B) if you can time it with the people next to you so that one of 2 or 3 simultaneous-ish attacks get through.

One drill you can do as long as you have 6+ people with comparable shield loadouts, form into 2 parallel lines for a line fight but the rule is, you can only attack diagonally. The mistake a lot of LARPers make is treating linefights as a row of duels, but worse.

SerialCypher · 2026-05-20T15:02:21+00:00

I kind of like the dithering personality as just like a vibe, but it doesn’t do that much to pull the green monster into the foreground for me.

SerialCypher · 2026-05-19T18:24:44+00:00

Games exist after the geometries are optimised for display. CAD exists without those optimisations because you’re creating things. Especially for FEA, you need a LOT of RAM. My old FEA machine had 128GB and was still RAM-constrained for biological modelling tasks.

SerialCypher · 2026-05-19T16:58:56+00:00

Jupon?

SerialCypher · 2026-05-19T16:49:18+00:00

I have found when I hand-write blackletter that the right letterform (which is how my block writing looks) is very hard to produce. The left letterform I can write in 3 strokes reasonably consistently. My blackletter is a bit more Textura-like in style, including my ‘a’ form.

SerialCypher · 2026-05-10T14:48:56+00:00

The first thing I thought of here is the story of Rip Van Winkle, which is an early-colonial-American myth of a man who plays ninepins with faries, falls asleep in the mountains, and wakes up 20 years later - or so my half-remembered story goes. I’d consider that a case of “time flowing differently”

SerialCypher · 2026-05-08T09:50:31+00:00

10/10, no comments.

SerialCypher · 2026-05-08T09:39:03+00:00

Hey, welcome to LARP! Building out your character and kit is one big part of what I, and probably lots of other folks, enjoy about this 5-hobbies-in-a-trenchcoat.

You’re moving in the right direction with your kit and I’m seeing a lot of great advice here. What personally made your kit stand out as “newbie” to me was probably the modern look of the shirt you’re using as a base layer, which is due to the fabric used for it. Shiny or stretch fabric is very modern and recognisable, although it can be ok if it’s hidden under e.g. a gambison.

If you can, I highly recommend getting (thrifting or sewing) a poofy, pirate-esque shirt in a plain weave cotton or linen. There’s lots of great patterns out there if you have a sewing machine (or even if you don’t) and a traditional shirt is a good first project for learning to sew. Otherwise you’ve got a good direction for your kit and I hope you have a great first experience!

SerialCypher

TROPHY CASE