April 2025 Event Information

Hello, ACO Community! Katie here with another blog - today’s topic? Our April full weekend event - A Whole New World. Ticket sales and pre-registration are live, so read on to learn more about event logistics, tickets, what to expect, and more! With this event, Alliance LARP Colorado also achieves its 6th logistics period - a major milestone marking our little chapter finally gaining voting rights  in the wider Alliance LARP Network. A big thank you to everyone who helped us get here - we can’t wait for another amazing season.

First, let’s talk about dates and times. As a friendly reminder, this event will take place from April 18 to April 20, up at Girl Scouts Camp Sky High Ranch - more on the site later. Tickets are already on sale, and preregistration, with the myriad of benefits it provides, will be available until Midnight, April 11 - one week before the event. That means you’ve still got over two weeks to get that prereg in, but don’t delay! That date will sneak up on you. For this event, staff assisting with setup will be welcome onsite at 3pm, and ALL other players will be welcome at 5pm. We’ll run opening announcements at 9, followed by a target lay on at 9:30. Game will continue from there until 10am Sunday morning, when we will lay off and have closing announcements! We have a hard offsite time of noon at this site, so expect lighter content Sunday as the team packs up NPC camp and ensures we can fully vacate in a timely manner. If you tend to need more time post-game to clear your cabin or tent, please keep this in mind and start packing up early.

Since Sky High Ranch (SHR) is a new site for us, I’m going to do a little bit of a deep dive about it next. SHR is located at 30924 N State Highway 67, Woodland Park, CO, 80863. Anticipate driving times of approximately an hour from central Colorado Springs, and up to two hours from central Denver - if you’re driving in from up north, make sure your car is gassed up before you head out! Our Coordinator, Seth, advises avoiding route 67 through Sedalia - heading south by way of 285 or looping through Colorado Springs proper are both safer drives; particularly at night. Our sources indicate that at least Verizon phones get service on-site, so there should be no issues making emergency calls out on your personal device or that of another player or staff member in a pinch.

With the current count of open cabins on site (some areas are still closed out for the winter), we are expecting to have around 85 bunks available for players to sleep on in heated cabins with electric outlets! With our expected attendance this month, we expect this will be more than enough for everyone to take a bunk with room to spare. We will be staying in the Lucky Circle and Greenwood cabin areas - We will not be assigning cabins in advance, though cabins will be marked as either NPC or PC lodging if they are available to stay in. Please do not store food at your cabins to avoid pests. There should be toilets scattered around the site, but the main modern bathhouse is located close to the main tavern hall. The camp site has ample space for a tavern (which is where you will come to check in), a separate monster camp, and various other spaces scattered throughout the site. RVs are NOT allowed on-property and all roads are dirt, so make sure your car is up to the task. You will be able to park your vehicle near the cabins to unload before moving to the main parking area marked on the map attached to this blog.

Finally, meals! Meal plan tickets including 5 meals over the weekend with vegetarian/kosher(ish - we aren’t in a kosher certified kitchen) options for every meal are available to purchase as an add-on for your event ticket. I will be publishing another promo later this week with all relevant menu information! If you do not wish to participate in the meal plan, please make sure you’re bringing enough proper food for yourself - players are welcome to store food coolers at the tavern. Kitchen access will be limited to our staff tavern team, but players are welcome to use the provided microwave in the dining area or bring their own air fryer or similar. Bringing any ignition devices is dependent on current burn bans in the area, so please do your homework before packing one.

Next up, ticket pricing! We’re happy to announce that we’ve been able to maintain the same weekend event prices from last year - with one small improvement! As a refresher, standard no-casting tickets are $120, a limited number of tickets with a 4 hour casting shift are available for $90, and NPC/Staff tickets are $20. All of these prices will be further discounted by $10 until preregistration closes. Meal plan tickets will cost $30. The last pricing note - and the area where we were able to cut costs - was with our Annual membership! Thanks to a more competitive insurance rate from the presidents, we were able to cut it down from $30 to $10 per year per person! As a reminder, players are required to pay for this membership after they have attended three EVER (not annual) ACO events. This small fee goes entirely towards paying for our site insurance, with any leftovers being used to improve the game. Like all other tickets, sales, or donations, we want to remind you that your money will NEVER go into the board’s pockets. We are fully dedicated to ensuring your contributions to the community go towards one thing - improving the community and the game we love.

The last topic for today’s blog is a reminder about the benefits of preregistration. As a reminder, preregistration gets you a ten dollar discount on your ticket! If that weren’t enough, there are other important reasons to preregister - when the prereg window closes, meal tickets go off sale, logistics will not be able to guarantee filling your GS and DS spend requests, and perhaps more importantly, it creates more last minute work for an already very busy team… so get those registrations in ASAP, and we’ll see you soon!

That’s all for today’s blog! Keep in touch on discord at https://discord.gg/alliancelarpco, and I’ll be back soon with another post all about the event meal card!

See you in the Shattered Realms,

Katie B

Welcome to the Shattered Realms

Welcome everyone to Season 1 of Alliance LARP Colorado. As usual, it’s Katie here to deliver the scoop about what everyone has to look forward to this year - and from an ample schedule of live events, to our new IBGA system, all the way to new staff positions and beyond, we have lots of ground to cover. Read along to learn more!

First, let’s talk about events! We made a brief announcement about it last week, but today we’ll go into even more detail about the specifics. Our goal this year is to host five events for a total of 9 logistics periods - over double what we were able to put on last year. The theme of the season is ‘A Whole New World’ - and as your characters discover the new thrills within the Shattered Realms , you the player will have the opportunity to discover new IRL locations as our season takes us through multiple different game sites! 

Veterans of Colorado LARP may fondly remember Sky High, the location where we will be hosting our April 18-20 season opener. The tentative May 18 day game scheduled shortly afterwards, as well as the August 15-17 and September 12-14 weekend events, will see us returning to a site everyone enjoyed and had very positive feedback on last year - YMCA Camp Tumbleson Lake! During the first half of the year the YMCA is going to be working relentlessly to make improvements to the site, with highlights including a brand new kitchen and bathhouse! On a semi-related note, keep an eye out for announcements soon about opportunities to get involved with YMCA work days at Camp Tumbleson Lake - they’re a great way to serve the community while also earning some extra goblin stamps and silver scales to power up your character! Finally, we’re planning for an October game - this one will likely be at one of the Girl Scouts of America sites (Magic Mountain or Sky High Ranch), but reservations are only bookable 6 months in advance, so we don’t quite have all the answers yet. We’ll keep everyone posted as soon as we do!

If an excellent slate of season 1 events wasn’t enough, we’re also excited to be opening this season up with ACO’s first round of IBGAs! With Submissions going live on March 1 and closing on March 21, players will have a chance to influence the fate of Chioascuria through their character actions - as the mist storm looms ever closer, the community’s collective decisions will influence what the rituals spare and what is left to the ravages of the void. Keep your eyes peeled tomorrow for further details, and an IBGA form to fill out! Plot would also like to remind everyone that our character background submission form remains open, and can be used any time - Find that form HERE

The last major update for today is an update on current staff needs! Currently we are looking for people to support us in the following areas: Plot, Social Media, Community Management, Tavern, Logistics, and New Player Liaison. Volunteering your time is the #1 way to boost our community - and it comes with extra perks including discounted tickets for at-game staff roles, a monthly or per-event goblin stamp stipend, and occasional invitations to staff get-togethers! Learn how you can make a difference and consider whether any of the roles fit your experience HERE!

That should do it for today! We have lots of ground to cover in blog posts coming up in March - expect the next blog to cover preregistration details for April, information about ACO’s updated Goblin Stamp and Silver Scale buy list, and more! See you then!

-Faithully yours, Katie

ACO Head of Publicity

Cataclysm's Dawn Information

Good afternoon, comrades! Katie here with your promised blog post telling all about Alliance LARP Colorado’s September event, Cataclysm’s Dawn! Read on for information about the event, the site, and even a fundraiser update. Let’s cut right to the chase - we have a lot of ground to cover!

First off - important game announcements! Prereg closes after THIS SATURDAY, the 31st of August. Once prereg closes, all ticket prices will go up by $10, we will no longer be able to sell meal plan tickets, and logistics will not be able to provide any custom tags ie. magic items (not to mention you’ll make our logistics team very sad). Make sure that before the end of Saturday, you have filled out the prereg form on the CMA and paid for your ticket on our store at https://www.alliancelarp.co/store.

For this event, we are still working with site to get confirmation for when it is possible to come on and off site, but we can safely say that Opening Announcements will be at 9:00pm on Friday and Lay-off will be at noon sunday. We are also working to nail down a time for a new player and new to this site orientation, so keep an eye open for that in a followup announcement.

If you are going to NPC this event, this section is for you - first off, if you NPCed last game and played a face NPC you’d like to bring back, please DM Dre on Discord. Include with your name, your NPC name, a brief description of the NPC and their role, and whether you plan on attending the weekend event. Wednesday, September 4 at 8pm Mountain Time, all players registered as NPCs are invited to join plot on the main discord server for an ooc overview of plot and expectations over the weekend. Keep tuned on the discord server for more details!

Thanks to the contributions of Tyler and Jeff, we have a site FAQ! Check out the following document for some commonly asked questions about Camp Tumbleson Lake, where we will be hosting this weekend event; this is a living document, and will be updated as more common questions are identified! Remember, this site is high elevation, and you should prepare for chilly nights with your warmer sleeping bags and pajamas! Link: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1P7-TuuA7RiryGNSf1myRqKt0xJywbcc8wMC1xLKV2pM/edit?usp=sharing

Next up, Logistics! As a reminder, ACO is currently operating under the national standard for Goblin Stamp expenditure, which can be found in the rulebook on page 12. DO note that the adventuring supply GS cap has been raised to 75 GS per logistics period instead of the 50 listed there. Players also might see items called ‘Silver Scales’ making their way into their pockets in exchange for donations and volunteer work - keep your eyes sharp for them, as they will be a key part of forging GS magic items once that pick list releases! Finally, if you were bringing in a new character during our previous event, and did not have time to get starting items at checkin, please email logistics@alliancelarp.co and we will take care of you ASAP prior to the event. Having trouble deciding what to pick? Send one of our friendly new player liaisons, Squee or Soren, a DM on Discord for help!

If you are planning to get on the meal plan, please note: It IS an additional charge, and you MUST purchase a separate ticket on the storefront! The total amount is $30, and it is not included in any of the ticketing options. Expect an announcement with the menu content of the meal plan to come out tomorrow! We have a pretty solid menu lined up, and are excited to share it with everyone. The meal plan will include 5 meals, plus simple grab and go snacks throughout the day.

The final agenda item for the day is a couple of fundraiser updates. First off, we have made the decision to extend the fundraiser’s end date to the end of the season. It will now end on October 19, in line with our season closer day game. We are currently just a hair over $400 donated, so keep those donations coming if you are interested in hitting stretch goals and getting bigger rewards! Check out the fundraiser document here: https://docs.google.com/document/d/e/2PACX-1vQuNWj_z00vM_MJ3nTFqAMVJPElgvGTstKPKw8N44Plc333F2xyxcfs4enA8iM41Kass11KDN6lSSod/pub 

See you soon, everyone!

-Katie 

Alliance LARP Colorado’s Character Background Submissions and Lore!

Hello, ACO Community! Today’s blog post will cover an important item of business for both new to Alliance players, and those bringing an existing character to our new realm - worldbuilding and backstory submissions! Without any further ado, we’ll get right into it with a talk about the lore we are dropping today, and how we plan to release more in the future. After that, there are lots of details to cover about our new, streamlined background submission process. Let’s get right to it, shall we?

Alliance LARP Colorado’s story will begin in the Luminous Empire within the realm of Chiaroscuria, an ancient kingdom on the cusp of disaster its people have ever seen - but it will soon stretch beyond, into the swirling patchwork of the campaign’s long term setting; The Shattered Lands. Much of the information about the setting will be veiled by design until players uncover it live at ACO games, as discovery and exploration is a major part of the setting’s intrigue, so bear in mind that what we release today is just scratching the surface - there’s still a world to discover! 

These are relatively light information packets, designed to give players a chance to get characters started, and get us through season 0, but they do not present the full depth of the planned information we want to provide. Over the winter and spring, we will be working diligently to fill out the various game locations with more locations, details, and flavor. If you want to wait and see what comes from that, we recommend looking into the Fatelost background option. Keep your eyes for updates in the coming months!

As mentioned, 2025 will take players to the Shattered Lands; a mysterious and unique new realm about which precious little is known. Within the Shattered Lands, distinctive locations are called Fragments - the twisted remnants of what used to be entire realms, pulled into a swirling graveyard of dead and dying worlds. Travel, communication, and trade between individual fragments is difficult, and individual fragments tend to be relatively isolated compared to regions in other realms; in game, your characters will have plenty of opportunities to uncover the nature of why this might be.

If you’d like to check out currently released worldbuilding information, head to https://www.alliancelarp.co/lore  to check out culture packets for the three Shattered Lands fragments we are offering for starting backgrounds, plus a primer on Chiaroscuria. Just remember - If your character doesn’t come from the new setting, they would have no reason to know any of this exists in-character yet! Future worldbuilding and lore releases will be deposited on the same page as they would become accessible to character in-game; Once the campaign first arrives in the Shattered Lands, this lore database will represent the information that would be generally available to a character via common and public channels of knowledge. The plot team’s goal will be to maintain this webpage as a living database covering everything there is to currently know about the realm as more information is uncovered and unearthed. 

Now it’s time to dive into backstories. REMEMBER: YOU DO NOT NEED A SUBMITTED OR APPROVED BACKSTORY TO ATTEND AN ACO EVENT!!!!!! While we firmly believe it will enhance your experience, it will never be required. 

At the core of our backstory submission process are two player resources. First, the backstory submission page on our website located here: https://www.alliancelarp.co/backstory-submissions . Next, once you’ve gone through that and the worldbuilding pages linked above and feel prepared to submit a backstory of your own, follow this link to submit a backstory for your character: https://forms.gle/a9e18CovTsP27gRX6

Considering the unique nature of ACO’s setting and campaign, we gave careful consideration to the ways in which players might introduce their characters to the setting, and came up with five distinct options, each catered towards a specific situation and given as much flexibility as possible. While there are nearly limitless options for how to bring your character into the setting, there ARE some limitations to what you can do with an existing character that it’s important to remind people about. The most important of these is that we are strictly unable to change or rewrite an existing character’s backstory; all returning characters must remain the same person, with the same past and identity. Anyone not wishing to carry an existing character forward into ACO’s new campaign is instead welcome to opt for a character retirement, allowing a new character to enter play with 50% build. While new players are allowed to rewrite their character’s card after their first 6 logistics periods as a PC, this similarly does not allow you to change who a character is or what experiences they have had; only their build can change.

As always, anyone with questions or concerns about the character backstory submission progress should reach out on our discord server, or send an email to the appropriate team. For backstory related questions, that will usually be plot@alliancelarp.co . With our first event coming up on August 17, we can’t wait to see what backstories everyone submits for their characters!

See you in Chiaroscuria,

- Katie B

Alliance LARP Colorado’s 2024 Event Schedule

Hold your hats, folks - It’s time for THE BIG ONE! 

Our event schedule for the year is officially live, with pre-registration for our first event in the CMA already open; So get excited, tell your friends, and read on for the logistical structure of Alliance LARP Colorado’s Season Zero. (Lore posts will be coming in the near future, don’t you worry!)

Throughout this opening season, we will be hosting a variety of different event formats as our staff team gets settled in, and stretching their wings; there will be tavern nights (likely with our friends at Thane’s Table), day events at the Bear Creek Greenbelt in Lakewood, and a full weekend event hosted at YMCA Camp Tumbleson Lake near Ward, Colorado. Overall, between now and the end of the season, we plan to deliver a total of five narrative driven official events spanning a total of six logistics periods. We hope you’ll join us for the whole journey!

Before the official season kickoff, we will be hosting an unofficial tavern day on August 3 from 10am-2pm with our good friends Thane’s table, located at 7655 W 88th Ave, Arvada, CO 80005. This will be an in-costume, RP light event (meaning people are free to interact in or out of character as they see fit), with no major story elements - but there may be a few surprise NPC appearances to tease the new setting! Tickets to the event will cost 30 in order to offset the venue rental fee, but that price includes a food gift card for the same amount that you can use to enjoy appetizers, food, deserts, and drinks at the venue! This is the first major get-together our chapter has on the books, so we highly encourage EVERYONE to come out! Whether you are a new or old player, there is a mountain of fun to be had. Tickets can be had at https://www.alliancelarp.co/store (make sure to specify the player name(s) you are paying for!). If you need to make alternate payment arrangements, or are struggling to afford this event, please send an email to customerservice@alliancelarp.co as soon as possible and we will do what we can to help you out.

Our first event - Calamity’s Tidings - will be a day game on Saturday, August 17 at Bear Creek Greenbelt - with preregistration PC tickets costing only $30 and NPCs playing free, we hope you will join us for a full day of roleplay, mods, and loot as the chapter’s first major plot arc begins! The address for the game site is 2800 S Estes St, Lakewood, CO 80227, where we will be renting a large pavilion. You can find more information about the Bear Creek Greenbelt at the following website: https://www.lakewood.org/Government/Departments/Community-Resources/Parks-Forestry-and-Open-Space/A-to-Z-Park-List/Bear-Creek-Greenbelt-Park 

The event will span a single logistics period; Players may arrive on site starting at 9am with opening announcements at 10am and game close at 7pm. We will all be working together to clean up and pack out after lay off, so please plan on sticking around for a little bit longer to help out! Food will NOT be provided for this event; we’ve rented out a pavilion, so there will be a place/time to eat. It’s close to town, so there is food available nearby, or you can bring lunch.

Tickets for the event will cost $35 for PCs and $5 for NPCs, with a $5 discount for signing up before the pre-registration cutoff date of August 10, bringing PC tickets to $30 and NPC tickets to the low price of free! We STRONGLY encourage pre-registration as it will give our hard working logistics team the time they need to prepare items and tags. The hard cutoff for ticket sales is midnight on August 15, so please make sure to register prior to that date, or we will not be able to accommodate you, either as a PC or NPC. Players who fail to purchase a ticket prior to the pre-registration date may not have access to goblin stamp purchases, or requests for item tags. As with our Tavern Day, Tickets are already available on our site at the following link: https://www.alliancelarp.co/store . If you need to make alternate payment arrangements, please send an email to customerservice@alliancelarp.co before you register.

For any general event related questions, send an email to customerservice@alliancelarp.co, and for any logistics needs, send an email to logistics@alliancelarp.co… and as always, we can also be found on our discord server, happy to assist from there! 

As we get closer to ground zero, please note that Chapter transfers ARE open; fill out the following form if you would like to transfer an existing character to the ACO chapter: https://forms.gle/wJLWnx7Xrsd6Yk827 . If you are a new player, create a character at https://db.alliancelarp.com/ and make sure to set your character’s home chapter to Colorado.

With the year’s event schedule releasing, we are also pleased to announce ACO’s inaugural fundraiser! Another post will be dropping at the same time outlining the details; please check it out and consider donating if you are interested in receiving ACO goblin stamps, unique local rewards, and supporting the chapter’s startup.

Please review the below schedule for the rest of the season’s events! Blog posts will be coming soon with further details about each individual event as they come up in the rotation. From all of ACO’s team, we can’t wait to see you at game!

ACO 2024 Schedule:

August 3: Tavern Day at Thanes Table (Unofficial Event)

August 17:Calamity’s Tidings - Day Game at Bear Creek Greenbelt

September 6-8: Cataclysm’s Dawn - Full weekend event at YMCA Camp Tumbleson Lake (Fundraiser Closes!)

October 19: Hope’s Endurance - Day Game at Bear Creek Greenbelt

Winter, date TBD: Formal Ball at Thanes Table (Official Event)

-Katie B

Alliance LARP Colorado’s 2024 Fundraiser!

As Alliance LARP Colorado releases our schedule of 2024 events, we have another exciting announcement - the chapter fundraiser is now live! Running from today until the Friday of our full weekend event, September 6, we’ve prepared a whole slate of excellent rewards ranging from Goblin and Dragon stamps, to special physrepped magic items, and even some exciting local currencies that can be redeemed for unique rewards both in and out of game; earning players top notch rewards, and even altering the flow of fate itself. For the full details of the fundraiser and everything you can earn, read on to the following document linked below:

https://docs.google.com/document/d/e/2PACX-1vQuNWj_z00vM_MJ3nTFqAMVJPElgvGTstKPKw8N44Plc333F2xyxcfs4enA8iM41Kass11KDN6lSSod/pub 

In order to donate, please send your payment via one of the following Zelle! Our handle is customerservice@alliancelarp.co, or via the donation link on the front page of our website at https://www.alliancelarp.co/ . If you are unable to make a donation via Zelle or the website, please email customerservice@alliancelarp.co and we will assist you with figuring out an alternate method.

When you send a payment, please make sure to note who the donation is on behalf of, INCLUDING a Discord name and your CMA Email, and that it is for the ACO 2024 fundraising drive!

Our fundraiser has several key goals, and in line with our chapter’s key guiding principle of transparency, we will always make sure our WHOLE playerbase is informed on how their donations are spent. Every dollar of donated money spent by our chapter will be fully accounted for by a board vote, 100% of the time; and it will NEVER end up in the pockets of chapter leadership. Here are some key areas we plan to spend fundraiser money this year:

• Offsetting the cost of purchasing new boffers for NPC Camp from Fire Thieves Studios

• Offsetting the cost of purchasing ADL’s old NPC camp from Jessie, ADL’s owner prior to Will and Suzanne, after he repossessed it from them

• Paying for transport and storage of our NPC Camp to and from events, as well as NPC Camp infrastructure like shelving units

• Purchasing makeup, cleaning supplies, white headbands and other consumable items for NPC camp

• Reimbursing our Design and Build team for the expense of materials used to craft game props

• Helping offset the cost of venue rental costs of tavern nights throughout the year, to help reduce ticket prices

As our team works hard to create meaningful, unforgettable experiences for the community this year and going forward, we hope that we are making a product and community that earns your donations and support. Let’s look forward to an amazing opening season!

-Katie B

Join Alliance LARP Colorado at FanExpo!

Howdy, everyone!

Today, we have a very exciting announcement - Alliance LARP Colorado will be at Denver FanExpo 2024! This is an incredible chance to reach out to the greater Colorado nerd culture community and connect a TON of new people with our game.

We're super excited to make it happen, but none of this can happen without you! We are looking for a team of volunteers to help us set up/tear down, market, and staff the booth in full costume. With a hefty 10’ by 40’ space in the community zone that we are sharing with Dystopia Rising: Colorado, we will have ample room for activities, and a tremendous need for your smiling faces to come and make it all happen. From an all-day boffer ring, to guided roleplay activities, to possibly even panels, we are going big this year and want everyone to be a part of the team!

Interested in volunteering? We will be providing compensation for all attendees in the form of up to 30 Dragon Stamps per day, with additional GS rewards and more! A complimentary exhibitor badge will also be provided for the duration of your shift, with chances to explore the event floor throughout your time. We want everyone to have fun with it! If you can only attend a limited number of days, please prioritize Thursday and Friday as these will be the tougher days to staff up for with work and life schedules getting in the way.

So, what are you waiting for? Join our community for four exciting days of fandom, community, and excitement at Denver’s largest pop-culture event! Ready to join the fray? Fill out the linked form here: https://forms.gle/vRvy9AnbacUHgZ1k7 

See you at FanExpo!

-Katie B