LARPing by Post, or How I Got into Fountain Pens

At the start of the pandemic, a lot of folks felt isolated. One of my favorite hobbies is LARPing (Live Action Role Play for those unfamiliar with the acronym), and well, when you're not allowed to meet in person, it pretty much put every LARP I wanted to attend on hold. But then, while chatting with a friend, I found out about a Regency Letter LARP. Basically, it would be a game played entirely via post, with the group running it directing the mail between the players. I like to write and I like to LARP and I'm an unrepentant Jane Austen fangirl, so I was all in.

Since then, I've participated in three different Letter LARPS, two with the same group, Letter Ink. Currently, they're ramping up a 9-month LARP by post, but instead of Regency Era, it's set in the modern day with vampires. I'm not playing this time, but joining plot as a writer. It's gonna be wild.

While waiting for mail can be a slog, there's something magical about physically opening a letter and reading the contents you've spent weeks looking forward to receiving. Even more so when a lot of the players are extra like you can go all out with the wax seals and washi tape, which is where the fountain pens come into the equation.

I have decent handwriting, so of course I was going to write my letters for a Regency LARP out by hand. And of course, I couldn't use some gel pen or ball point pen. Instead, I started with a dip pen and some ink I had left over from high school. I quickly became apparent that writing in such a way was going to take me forever. Fortunately, a bunch of people on the LARP's Discord were way ahead of me and had done the research into finding pens and ink and paper that made writing by hand a new art form.

So what do I do? Order a couple of ink samples and a pen they suggested and try out this fountain pen nonsense. And writing with a fountain pen? Miles easier than writing with a dip pen, though there were some bumps along the way in learning which pens can handle which inks. Because it's not just colored ink that's out there. There's sheeners and shimmers and shaders and combinations of all three. Wanting to try a few more of these, I ordered another pen and some more samples. And then another pen and samples and then another and...well, you get the picture.

At present, I have 13 different pens (two of which stopped working well and or cracked) and more samples and full bottles of ink than I am comfortable admitting I own. Suffice to say, I have a desk drawer filled with ink and then a few more bottles on my desk itself.

I will save my ink and pen recommendations for another day (as well as my recommendations on where you can order them), but thanks to letter LARPing, I've gotten into fountain pens. We'll just not talk about the washi tape this time.

But better than fountain pens, I've made some awesome online friends in the process (thanks Discord!). Some are fellow writers, some are fellow chronic illness veterans, but all are fellow nerds who support each other. I haven't met any of them in person, but if we did all meet, I think the universe might implode from the amount of awesome gathered in one room--though I might be bias.