User:Alyais
Joseph William Landolfi is the creator and owner of Avegost LARP in Georgia, United States. He was born in New Orleans, Louisiana and currently lives in Savannah, Georgia. He is a contributor to US LARP WIKI.
Education
Joseph is a student of Medieval History at Armstrong Atlantic State University. His educational focus is on Late Antiquity and Dark Age European history. He is fluent in English with minor fluency in Deutsch. Due to his studies of primary sources he has a basic understanding of Latin.
LARP History
Joseph's first LARP was Phoenix LARP of the New Orleans area which he began playing when he was nine years old. After a hiatus he later played NERO Fathoms in Detroit, Michigan where he was later made a member of the plot writing team under Tim Klima for that NERO chapter. He also visited NERO Chicago, and NERO Aeon during his time as a staff member of Fathoms as well as an active participant in Dagorhir, specifically its Eriador chapter, in Michigan. His final LARP experience in Michigan was at CARPS LARP. He briefly returned to New Orleans and was a member of Gleann Abhann, a Society for Creative Anachronism kingdom. With his move to Savannah, Georgia he became briefly involved in NERO Atlanta and Fourth Castle, a Society for Creative Anachronism group. After two years of hiatus due to a lack of interest in local options he founded Avegost LARP in 2009.
LARP Philosophy
Joseph's time at various LARPs shaped his philosophy greatly in his youth but running his own larp, Avegost, had a resounding effect. Avegost followed the familiar formula of 'American LARP' in its first year but with many non-larpers joining the community and the American LARP style not appealing to many there was a shift towards the study of LARP abroad and how LARP was being successfully run without the stigma it has in the United States. In time Danish larp philosophies began to appeal to Joseph and with the help of others he began to reshape Avegost into a European style game with a strong philosophical focus, and attempted adherence, to Turkuism and other immersion driven larp philosophies such as Dogma 99.
While not an absolute Turkuist or Dogmatist himself Joseph is a strong advocate of immersion and prefers to see LARP as an art form or sociological experiment than a 'game' in the traditional sense. Avegost is highly informed by the views of Joseph as its owner and its many members who profess to be immersionists. With a focus on immersion, and the effects that come from that focus, it is believed that Avegost brings legitimacy to the Georgia LARP scene where other groups follow familiar models which are stigmatized in the United States.
Several key aspects of an immersion led larp philosophy are as follows;
- No mythos, lore, setting element, mechanic, rule, or logistical tool should exist that disrupts the immersion of the player.
- Fantasy within the mythos must be minimized (though may be present) to increase realism and, as a result, immersion of the player.
- Anachronisms to the setting must not be visibly present in any form.
- The 'narrative' of the experience must be crafted by recreation and reenactment of the setting instead of artificially written and led by an outside force (such as a 'plot team').
- Immersion must always be maintained with the exception of medical emergencies.