Guard duty in LARP sucks! Everyone knows that, right? It’s boring and you get left out on your own and you miss loads of plot and it’s raining and pointless and this is shit.



But wait! Everyone who was on guard with me at the most recent game I played said they had a lovely time. Even people who usually hate it. How did we achieve this witchcraft?!



(I will be covering how to write a LARP guard rota as a player or NPC - not “how to ref a game that makes guard duty fun”. That isn’t the purpose of this post.)





No Solo

Firstly, never let one person be on guard (army slang, “on stag” - from standing guard) on their own. They will get bored and stop paying attention, and if they get pulled away for something urgent there is no way to replace them.

On The Bus, Off The Bus

Secondly, break up your duty as much as possible. It is way better to have one person on guard twice for an hour apiece than once for two hours. An hour is pretty much your upper limit of time anyone should be on guard. At 24hr-time-in games this means broken sleep - but the payoff is worth it. An hour is about the right block of time - depending on how long you’re guarding for and how many people you have.

New Friends!

Thirdly, stagger your rota, so that two people are never coming on / going off guard at the same time. This means that even if I’m on guard for an hour, I know that something will happen halfway through (my shiftmate changes! A new person to talk to!), which makes it feel far less onerous and monotonous. It also means that the person going off guard can wake their replacement knowing that their shiftmate is pushing through with nothing to distract them.



To explain this, a typical rota might look like this:



0100-0200 Jones

0130-0230 Smith

0200-0300 Patel

0230-0330 Singh

0300-0400 Michaels

0330-0430 Witherspoon

0400-0500 Jones

0430-0530 Smith



So Jones finishes her shift and wakes Patel (while Smith is still on guard through the changeover), who wakes Michaels, who wakes Jones again; Smith wakes Singh (Patel is halfway through her shift at this point), who wakes Witherspoon, who wakes Smith again.



(In terms of dealing with the start and end of the shifts, you can either let someone take a half-hour duty, or you can let someone go solo and take the risk. The former is safer, the latter is often simpler.)

No Means No

Fourthly, let your guys off-duty BE off-duty - just make sure they tell the person who’s waking them or pulling them out of the pub where they will be.

Stand To, Stand To

Fifthly, give clear orders and provide appropriate equipment. Tell them what to do, what to shout, who to wake and how to raise the alarm if there’s an attack. Tell them codewords and what to expect. Tell them what to do in the event of something going wrong with the rota (can’t find replacement, someone is refusing to soldier, they’ve lost the stag list). –> This should usually be a variant on “find you”, where “you” is the person in command of the guard.

Make sure they have weapons if they need them, and whistles, bells or a means of loudly raising the alarm. If there are squad weapons like a ballista or mortar on the position, make sure someone knows how to use it. If there are group resources like bandages or mana crystals, make sure they’re kept on the position, not taken home in someone’s pocket. Finally, if there is any way to get tea, cigarettes and snacks out to the guys on guard (this is a great job for someone who wants to help but isn’t physically capable of standing still / in the cold / fighting), they will thank you for it, particularly the 0300-0500 shifts.

In real life, the guard commander would have a set of written orders concerning who does what when. This isn’t necessary for most LARP, but a few minutes’ thought into how to run your guard post will pay dividends in how much fun your guards have.

Boring Paperwork Bollocks

Sixthly, write AT LEAST two copies of the stag list, give them to each person on guard first, and MAKE THEM HAND THEM OVER TO THEIR REPLACEMENTS - THEY WILL FORGET TO DO THIS AND THEIR REPLACEMENTS WILL BE SAD.





It’s All Fun And Games

Finally, don’t forget that you have LARPers - not soldiers. Nobody who doesn’t want to lose sleep or stand on a point should feel pressured to do so, even at 24-hour-time-in games. You will have to approach this with some delicacy, but there are always ways to do it - asking for volunteers is one, sticking a list up on the wall early and letting people sign their names to it is another. Just because YOU are OK with broken or reduced sleep, or standing still for a long time, does not mean that everyone else playing a military character is, nor should they have to be unless it explicitly says so in the social contract of your game.

Help your mates out by talking around, rather than about, the discrepancy between who takes a shift and who doesn’t; don’t make a big deal out of it. Bitching someone out IC because their character dodged guard duty may be good roleplay - bitching someone out IC because their player did not feel able to take a shift is fucking rude, so simply avoid it if there is any doubt at all.