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Hello and welcome to the Hat Chat Podcast. What episode are we on, Ross Hornby? 191. Wow, that's a lovely number. Isn't that great? That's a palindrome for a number, kind of. Unfortunately, the nine isn't, it's not mirrored. I mean, it does pronounce the same way backwards as it does forwards, I suppose. I'd love it if it was mirrored, though, like 181. That would be sick. That's right, Alex Smith. Yep. I'm Chris Trott. Oh, nice one, Chris Trott. I'm Ross Hornby. Yeah.

Today we thought we'd do a bit of a special Hatchet episode because we're just a days out essentially from running a brand new festival sized LARP that we've set up for the past year. So we thought it might be, oh I'm manspreading real good. If I do that it's going to expose more rips in my trousers and my jeans. If you are watching on YouTube, look at that! Oh my god! Look at this!

And what's more shocking is that this has actually been stitched as a patch underneath. It's tearing at the seams of the patch. Sorry, audio listeners, you're going to have to describe this in detail. You're going to have to watch the video on a hat-check podcast on YouTube. He's got two tears in his crotch. Yeah, there's two tears in my crotch. They just rubbed away. Ross, you're biomechanically broken.

Like you are, you walk in a way. These aren't even like that tight. These are fairly loose. Look. It's to do with the distance between your inner legs. Yeah. It's to do with how, if your hips were a bit wider, you wouldn't frictionize it so much. I know, but. You need to like pull your hip bones out. I don't know, man. Should we try that? I need to put like some plastic barriers or something. Stretch over time.

You know the... Like an Invisalign, but for hips. Stretchy pants. You know that Japanese tradition of your broken crockery... Yeah, and they do it with gold. Which would break his hips. And then redo it with gold filament. Yeah, gold filament. Some would describe it as cartoonish levels of torn. It's not cartoon. I guess... It's kind of silly. Yeah, it's annoying. Because I paid good money to get these repaired. Well, I hope you've got nice warm jeans.

slash trousers for the festival. Indeed. I'll probably wearing, you know, more peasantry wear almost in what I've got. And the kind of loose, loosely stitched trousers. If you've seen the York stuff, it's probably pretty much my outfit for that. So yeah, I'll probably add more bits to it. You know, that peasant, like medieval look where they just got pants and that's it. I want you to wear that.

And just like a codpiece hand. At the start of the video game, we have nothing. So it used to be that trousers weren't one piece. So I think this is what you're talking about. So instead, people would wear like these kind of like white cotton like shorts underneath. And then for the leg part to protect the leg, they'd put on these like basically...

that one piece, like, so each leg was one piece and they did bring that up and then that's why it looked like. It's pretty, kind of weird when they didn't think to do it. Shakespeare styles, like tights with a skirt piece, a little skirt piece, but like the frilly. Oh. What are they called? Roughs?

Something... Tunes? Or like... Pantaloons. Pantaloons. Is that right? Am I thinking of that? French for trousers. I'm thinking more Renaissance where it's all... It depends on the era. Yeah, there's loads of different styles of trousers. You get ruse style trousers. Trousers. So ruse style trousers. Look that up. RUS style trousers. Those are the ones that go wide at the thigh. And...

So to bring you up to speed on why we're talking about all this kind of stuff, LARP stands for live action role play, which is kind of like taking D&D and putting yourself into D&D on the field, being that character in person and being amongst and in the world. And you may have seen LARP stuff before, troped, stereotyped through modern media, used as like a good...

prod of comedy, mockery. A beating stick for the creative and imaginary. Sometimes the first reference point to anyone is stuff like role models. Yeah.

Touch your tips gingerly. Yeah, or like kind of the lightning bolt one meme. Yeah, which is very American. But a lot of these are very American kind of tropey bits. And obviously they've got different standards. So they have to have like fluorescent tipped things often. Although not all of them do. But that's the one that's often seen because it's funny to film. However, much like D&D was the satanic panic of the 80s.

basement dwelling nerds that played D&D and worship the devil LARP's kind of got that stigma as well however with Stranger Things modern media D&D 5th edition it's becoming way more mainstream and LARP is kind of having its surge as well I think so Smith and me have done it

for a lot longer than this present post-COVID surge that's happening right now. Yeah, for almost like 10 years now. Like 2016, something like that. Yeah, we've done lots of laughing and...

I just, yeah, I think the people, I think the main barrier to people who are kind of interested, like you say these things, of course, the people watching us and listening to us are probably interested in the things you were talking about adjacent to D&D, adjacent to role-playing, adjacent to game-playing. Do you like Skyrim? Yeah, but I think one thing that people tend to presume that I think once you have LARPed, you realize isn't the case and you kind of forget people think like this is I think that they're really worried about being like in character the whole time and having to give their like,

full energy to almost acting the whole time. And that's like a video game character. Yeah. Sound like a video game character. Exactly. That's not the case. Basically, there are just a few base interaction rules, like, you know, using the name of the characters you're talking to. So for example, say trot was called thistle. I,

I'd just be saying, Thistle mate, can you pass me that cup of ale? You know, like literally that. And there's no difference. I'm not going like, Hail Thistle. You could. Greetings Thistle. If you wanted to have a laugh at it. Greetings Thistle. I am passed. You know, some people play really fun characters like that. Some love to do that. Yeah. Because they're thespians. Yeah, exactly. And they love that. And that's fine. You can do that. But there's no pressure to do that. No pressure. You just don't talk about Playstations anymore.

use people's in character names because we're xbox focused yeah yeah yeah not these days used to be but but yeah it's like putting your phone away and uh just discussing things that's in the world rather than out of in the real world that's it that's the minimum and then beyond that obviously you can put layers on once you start to understand the game and once you start to understand the resources you get really into it and before you know it you don't even realize you're you're talking about imaginary things because everything feels real because the coins you

You can't help but be in it after a certain period. There's like a switch point where you're like, I don't really know what's going on too. Oh, cool. For me, that was like a day. I was there on a Friday night and I was a bit like nervous and I just sort of kept myself to myself and my friends just sitting around. Is this for me? Is this like cool or not? Yeah. Do I care? Like, do I feel comfortable? You know, but then the second day came around and yeah, I started getting involved in some stuff and I was just like, oh, this is fun. So going from...

Ross, you've never done it before, but we'll get to that. No, I've never LARPed before, no. So this is brand new to you. But you have extensively roleplayed at this point. Yeah, well, I guess the amount of roleplay we've done on our channel alone. Yeah. Yeah.

As well as obviously the games we've done. So you know what it's like to adopt a character. Yeah. Be that for a bit. I used to do improv classes. Yeah. Back in the day when I was a young child. Yeah. So. That kind of thing sounds quite fun. It lends to this sort of thing. Yeah. And it's kind of, you're given a platform with which it's okay to do so. You're allowed to be, you're allowed to play in this sandbox, which is LARP and everyone else is doing it. So it kind of feels a bit less silly. So last year,

Smith had the epiphany of, holy shit. I'm sure it was an epiphany. I'm coming up to my 40s. Oh, yeah. You're framing this, right? Framing it like that. Yeah. How do I explain my horizons? Why you had this idea, I guess. Yeah, I guess it was a creative project. I think it was like... It was...

and it was the idea to do something creative. Like a bit like when we would, when I did booty, I suppose it kind of, I was just like looking around at something I loved with empire and LARPing in general, like doing the smaller LARPs I do as well at ILARP.

I was just like, yeah, this is really awesome. I love it. I see all the people around me loving it and getting really into it. Like, why are there still so few of these? Like, why hasn't anyone tried to make a festival up in the last decade? And I understand the huge challenges. Obviously, we understand now. More now than ever. To find out the realities of that in every possible way. But I mean, yeah. It's hard to do. It is. It's hard. And like, it is very hard. And it takes a lot of organization, a lot of effort, a lot of people, a lot of money. And,

And here we are a year later after deciding to do it. But yeah, I think it was just about creating another thing. It's just like, you know, anything. It's just like when you really enjoy films and you want to make a film. Yeah. But imagine that there are only... But we saw a path to it. Yeah, imagine there are only like five films out there. And you're like...

Should we try and do one? I think it was kind of partly that. You also noticed doing all these LARPs that you're surrounded by people that are super passionate, super smart, don't have the opportunity to do something like this, and then realizing that, well, hat films could help in some way to jumpstart. Because the biggest thing is having...

investment to do so right having an investor who's willing to invest in the idea yeah to take that risk i suppose turns out hat films in general love gambling

Love gambling. All are very nicely saved. Without that instant gratification of 21. I mean, that's the thing, yeah. It's very much, we'll see. We do love gambling. That's been hard because all of this will be completely worth it as long as we eventually make some money. If you don't know about flyer deals on Instacart, this message is for you. Flyer deals are like strolling through your favorite store looking for deals. But you're scrolling your phone. And maybe you're in bed.

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There's the community and creative nourishment you get from it, but also we have to make sure that we don't lose money. And so, yeah, a creative process becomes a... It is like making a film, I think. I've not done it, but in terms of securing funding for it, creating production for it. Man, the protocols that you in particular have had to abide by just to... Man, the headache of...

Working with so many people, the health and safety risk assessments, the coordination of insurance, all of that. I just had a taste of Microsoft compliance and I was just like, get me back in. I want that. Get back in that hole. So that has been an ongoing thing of learning and having to do said things on such a mass scale has been very eye-opening.

Um, and we've kind of been stuck in the weeds for the past year and it's only been ramping up in complexity and, and, uh, work workload to get to this point. So we've got the right people on board because yeah, like all of that stuff in itself is a lot for us to have dealt with or even know about. So having the right people on board, um, with the right mentality and the right, um, kind of experience has helped massively. So, and this is the other side of it is obviously me and Smith, uh,

approaching this from understanding LARP, but then there's this other angle, which is you, of we want to get people into LARP

But we're already in it. We want to have an outside perspective as to what kind of questions would you ask? What would you want to see in order to understand LARP at all? And that's Ross's very insightful perspective. And thankfully also the person that films and edits the videos. He's going to ask a load of questions. He's like, what the hell is this? Why do I have this many coins? What does this essence mean? What does that do? Stuff after doing like two or three LARPs.

you kind of take for granted and forget that you ever asked those questions. You forget the perspective. It's kind of, yeah. So it's been useful to constantly remind ourselves, like people don't know that this is a thing.

let's make sure they understand it through an easy approach, which again, festival LARPs are catching up now. They're doing more modern media. Thanks to us kicking them in the ass. I think we've kind of maybe. I've noticed a few of the other LARPs, which I love. The few big LARPs have started doing a lot more of the media and style that we've,

been trying to do but i think that's just a general trend for social media in general right it is so i think i think if you're trying to sell anything social media is the way to go with anything so regardless of whether they may have seen stuff we've done it's the right thing to do like to get your content out there put on all the platforms and just show people what these products are what this event it's a great medium to teach people right there's a lot of it there's a little barrier to entry that you can overcome with it so yeah no it's been really good um

Yeah, but yeah, it's very exciting. We've done a great thing. We've done a massive thing. So for a sense of scale, a volunteer count, because so LARP is driven by, obviously we have paid for people that are doing like the top line work that are crafting the mechanics, coming up with the world plot, right?

like overseeing everything logistically and then LARP is driven by the volunteer aspect of it who were allowed to come to our event for free but in return are providing support

some aspect of the LARP for us, either like being on the field, playing the NPCs, playing the monsters, writing plot, helping with guild support, nation support, that sort of thing. And because they're very enthusiastic to want to, because they prefer that than actually playing the game often.

It's like I actually like being a monster. I like being the person that kind of can feed information to other people. So it's very much a community aspect there. So we have 159, I think, people coming to this LARP that are just volunteer base. So that's the amount of people that we're dealing with. And that's not including everybody that we have.

in our team that were trying to coordinate all together. So it's a lot of people. There's some of those volunteers who've never done it before. Exactly. And they've taken a plunge. This is like an introduction which...

some people have said that's probably quite a good way to learn before you start playing the game. Yeah, totally. And speaking to some of those people, they're like, oh yeah, this is a great way to kind of just see behind the curtain and then get involved. Because I imagine they probably, once they've seen the first one or two events, they'll be like, yeah, I want to actually just play the game. Because it's organized, right? Because we have to make sure our referee team, our monstering team understand the calls, the rules, the regulations. So we do training regularly.

We did a video series where we went up to the site and we had like our game control team give a speech about like radio safety, combat safety, how to interact with players, how to handle disputes, you know, all the like really important things. So to have that understanding and,

and to get that training on the field is a really good way to understand LARP really quickly especially the game itself yeah the rest of the game itself was very interesting very eye opening as well to what's needed and yeah hopefully those guys have all

prepared for that. So, yeah. Of course, I said 159. That's just our team that's helping making this work. Yeah. That's not our player base, which is much larger than that. I mean, when you look at something like Empire, they can have up to, like, what, 4,000 plus? Yeah. So here's an example. So the biggest one in the UK right now, with crew and players included, probably comes in at about 5,000 people. Right.

for us players and crew included the rat thousand. Um, so yeah, we're, you know, not bad considering that's crazy for the first event. First event in April. A lot of people like, don't know if it's going to exist properly or going to go well, like a lot of trust. And we're very thankful to everyone that has taken that plunge, but hopefully you've seen the amount of work gone into this and, and based on the past experiences of the team that have run sites at Eversley, um,

every week they know what they're doing and they do all the other fast laps as well. So we've got a real good team. Um,

But yeah, those people have taken the plunge, which is awesome. Yeah. And hopefully they come away from this event being like, holy shit, they did it. Yeah. That was awesome. Can't wait for the next event. I'm going to tell all my friends that it's okay now to jump into the war. Yeah. It's not shark infested. Yeah, because it would be daunting for any of these types of things. I think I'd be the same of just like, do you go to the first one? Do you want to see if it's just going to be, you know, especially if you've never done LARP at all. Yeah. Yeah.

So, yeah, this is – and it's looking like it's going to be a great week for weather as well. Oh, yes. Which is even better because, you know, I mean, some people don't like camping at all, but, like, to camp in good weather is a good vibe. Yeah. And the weather is coming together for us. Yeah. Which is awesome. So lucky. It's going to be a lovely event. Yeah.

Incoming sudden storm. Sudden storm. An unpredictable storm's happened. Oh boy, it's rolling in. It's a Richter 5 earthquake. Great bit of drama for their videos though. Yeah, it would be great. As long as we film it, we're going to get something out of it. But yeah, we're taking a new approach to Festival Up. Obviously, we're like the young kids on the block storming in on a well-established thing. So we're kind of

unearthing some things that have been set in stone for a very long time and kind of bringing a new approach to it. That of course comes with its own frictions and things like that, but we really think a fresh take on it, a new perspective on a thing with some real skilled people is a real good thing to like kind of as a positive disruption. - Yeah, absolutely. - 'Cause it like, for example, like the level of coordination we've got proper SES security onsite

they are keeping us on our toes in terms of making sure everything is up to code. So the health and safety of our players, um, the amount of security we have 24 hours on site, the structures, the plans to take, I mean, you know, this in depth. So like, it's not that interesting. Um,

but we're looking after you it's all the red tape that you just wouldn't even think about before setting these things up but it's there yeah it's taking a gigantic amount of work and maybe pre-covid and all the stuff and make sure all the volunteers are fed and all the other bits yeah and it's yeah it's planning all that stuff which is it's taken a long time to sort out and it's more expensive now like post-covid

events is yeah it's got shot up in costings so this is an even bigger risk on our part to to put on something like this but we're still very passionate to make it happen um so yeah and then we go global right guys

international we do have americans coming um they're trying to leave their country and hoping for a new imaginary place ah yes of course relax but yeah uh menace fate worldwide menace fate worldwide mfw mfw well i mean yeah we'll see we don't even need to go worldwide just the uk is enough that's what's great enough for us i mean we i i

So that's Menace Fate. That's our LARP. So there's a... Speaking of still keeping this object on LARP, we're going to a slightly different LARP and talking about worldwide stuff, a little bit of information. You might have heard this the other day, but I find it quite funny. So there's an official Lord of the Rings LARP coming. Yeah. No way. There's an official Lord of the Rings LARP coming. Official as in like... Licensed. It's been licensed by... And... No way. It has Bergschneider, who are a German costume provider of medieval clothes, and

as like the main organizer of it. Is that the website we looked at the other day? Yeah, yeah, yeah. So they are, I think, the main sponsors and organizing it, I think. They've somehow secured this brand deal, right? And they're like, right, we're going to do... And the idea is I think everyone's hobbits.

in it and you enter like a Lord of the Rings style story I'd want to be Aragorn yeah can't be a rider I'd grow my hair out for him so Ross we've got German we've got a German company doing it right and then it's Lord of the Rings based and

I think it's pretty unlikely that, you know, somebody said like, where do you think it's going to be? Or where do you think they're going to put it? And I was like, well, obviously like New Zealand would be the obvious one, but I feel like that's a stupid idea. If they're German based, obviously there's loads of amazing mountains in Europe. Forest in Bavaria. Yeah. Yeah. Or like Austria or even like Wales, I think would be great. I think Wales would make a good one. Lovely scenery. But they're doing it in Kentucky in America instead. Oh, right. Yeah.

Nothing says Lord of the Rings like Kentucky. The market will still be big though for it. Well, yeah, that's the thing. They're targeting the US, which is gigantic. There aren't many good US stars. It's also a Kickstarter. Right. And tickets are like $375 for this event. Well, because I can imagine the license fee is probably quite high. Yeah. Like that's not free. The license fee alone. That won't be free alone. So yeah.

Yeah, they're doing it in contact. Because Lord of the Rings, yeah, that comes up a lot in terms of, oh, so you're just dressed like Lord of the Rings characters. And it's like, well, in a way, in a way you can be, but as long as you fit within the brief of the nation, then sure. Just be a bit creative with it and change your name. But you can wear a cloak, you can wear a sword, you can do whatever you like. But yeah, not to shit on this that much, but by comparing it,

to the amount of world and plot and just mechanics we've created over the last year for Menace Fate. It's a D&D game that works for a thousand people. Yes. If you've ever created a D&D game, think about that. For a thousand people. But then also, like, we've got... It's not a picture. We've got coins. We've got essences, which are like physical representations. We've got faith tokens. We've got player passports. Every player has, like, a proper banker's guild, like,

a couch folio the banking system is going to be impressive to see I mean seeing the coins like obviously you had to sort those out how many were there 37,000 was it 37,500 coins flown by airmail from China what was the kilograms it was crazy kilograms half a kilo sorry half a kilo half a ton half a ton of coins

But yeah, we're charging a third of the price for that experience. Yeah, but yeah, and it's built in a different way and obviously people are going to that for the Lord of the Rings. It's Lord of the Rings. But just to play a hobbit, that sounds a bit like I'd want to play as other characters. Strider! And it's going to be difficult for them to get the accent right as well. It is. They're going to be trying to do the accent. Yeah. But they're going to sound like Americans. Hi! Hi! Hi!

I'm a little hobbit living in my hole. Or transatlantic accent. Look, guys, I know that we're trying to get more American accents in fantasy. Saw the D&D film, enjoyed it. But you've got to have an English accent when it comes to fantasy writing. It's just so deeply embedded with Tolkien. It just sounds better. Gives it a more old school vibe, doesn't it? But yeah, anyway, are there any other tidbits?

thoughts of like yeah like in terms of like it's it's taken a lot of people to put this all together and i'll say there's a lot of help from volunteers and the story what was quite interesting doing the interviews was the the pride everyone has in the stories they're creating as well for these nations yeah and writing these um kind of like briefs of the law yeah which obviously kind of like i guess evolve over time but like the

The people we spoke to are so excited to see it all come together. Yeah, well, the amount of creative people we have that just like writing things and now finally have a reason to write something for an audience that will actually use it must be quite gratifying. And get to live within it. Yeah, get to live with it and expand upon it because you have to be of a certain mindset to write for LARP because you have to be willing to let go of your child and allow it for player agency to allow it to grow further

beyond your original intent. You have to get the joy of people reading it more than the joy of writing it and owning it. No, I didn't want them to be like that. Yeah, it's been pretty awesome. I think also what's cool about this, I've been trying to arrange my thoughts recently just to create some sort of speech or something, I suppose. But the idea that

Everything you do for this, hopefully this will last four years. You know, many, all of the other festival ops have been running for at least a decade. Like, yeah,

there's a few that are small but like so the idea that all the things you create now will echo into the future last yeah well will legitimately mean something to people for a long time you know like i i won't forget the 10 years of larping i've done you know like i just won't it's been awesome it's like every like four times a year you have a holiday with your friends where you go on a really fun camping trip and do silly character shit and it's just it's

it's just like having a quality holiday. Like, you know, like the more time you invest into a thing, the more involved and embedded it becomes as part of your psyche. Exactly. And these stories, the stories that people are writing and all these things that these plot writers and other things are doing, like they hopefully now, I know a lot of them do, but yeah,

They're writing something that will mean something to people for a long, long time. It'll be genuinely historical for certain people. Yeah, yeah. But also, as a player, if you have a great arc, for whatever reason, that will be told and retold in the annals of many's fate history that all the players will learn of on our wiki. Do you know about the narrative end system? Have you heard about that? Yeah, yeah. You might know about it. So narrative end system is like,

If you want to retire your character, or if you've been working on a long bit of plot for a long time, engaging with certain things, you can end your character's story by doing something gigantic or cool or amazing. That's the end of your character. For example, you might become...

an avenging werewolf, let's say, who spends the rest of his days prowling the perimeters of like a village that they grew up in and protecting it. And like, that's like the story. That's the narrative end for your character is like thistle,

became a werewolf i did all my rituals i got together my essences and this takes several years yeah yeah this will take several years and then they'll be like right if you want when you retire your character instead of just dying on the battlefield you can have a narrative end instead and that will be written into the world that there'll be this werewolf patrolling this thing for the rest of yeah your character will live on in the history exactly of the story beyond just your deeds you can try and you don't just have to die every time yeah to make a character yeah so i think that's

pretty cool. I think that's unique to us. That's the difference of Men Is Fate to potentially other big festival ops that are a bit more maybe politically driven. Our one is a lot more narrative and plot focused, right? Where you're kind of trying to tell a cool story and we sometimes hand wave some of the logistics to make sure that that happens. It's about fun stories and telling fun stories to your friends about the silly things you did is the most rewarding thing.

Of course, it's all grounded in very well planned out mechanics, which I'm sure will have patch notes and stuff as we develop it. To give a meaning, yeah. To give it tangible meaning and that, you know, your HP is your HP because you worked on it and you've built it up by doing certain things. But yeah, it's very plot driven. Cool stories hopefully should come out of it. Yeah. That's collaborative and affects lots of people. Yeah, I hope so.

And Ross is going to be filming it. I'm going to film bits of it. Bits of it. Yeah, in controlled environments. In environments where people are happy with people filming, essentially. Because we appreciate that people want to have privacy at these events. They're not normally environments you can film at. People are kind of encouraged to put their phones away and take photos in the out-of-character areas. But to be fair, any stuff we're doing is mainly for promotional reasons or to show you guys what it's like. Yeah. So...

So, yeah. Because there's not enough of that and it's really hard to film. It's hard to film LARP. I know, yeah. For multiple reasons. One, it kind of looks silly because people are rubbing foam swords together. It's the same reason as airsoft's difficult to make look cool unless you do certain things. So it's just, yeah, it's a case of...

Getting an essence of it. Yeah. But also, you know, the safety of our and privacy of certain people on the field. We very much respect that. And we have takedown policies and stuff like that in place. Ross is only going to be focusing mostly on people that are up for it. They can take me down whenever. Yeah.

You see me, just take me down. So many people with LARP swords chasing me down. Come on, guys. I got an expensive camera. Go easy. But yeah, it doesn't...

quite right it's not all going to be combat yeah we're filming uh as much as that is seems to be the focus for a lot of film i think there's an assumption that that's the coolest thing to play fighting and stuff but there's a lot more to it you can do a lot more scenic it's the ambience yeah it's the scenic and ambience and cinematics i think that's what's so cool about shooting it because that's stuff i like yeah it's like sitting around a campfire and just soaking in my environment more so than

getting sweaty on the field a lot of people fucking love that johnny loves that yeah i'm sure there's different courses horses for courses yeah yeah we're having like yeah a load of like glowing fires and people kind of like in this village of kind of yeah activity i want people are making roasts and stuff and yeah you know people yeah people like roasting i love the cooking stuff yeah johnny does as well we all do i mean like we we all the camp cooking is so fun and every time like man some of the stuff people have got is wild

like somebody like you know like the whole rotisseries and things like that rotisseries and then like potato rotisseries as well Johnny's got one of these Johnny's one of the directors of Men Is Fate yeah he's in the combat call video yeah he's a guy with a big ginger beard and the eye patch but he's got this really potato roaster thing so it's like a basket you put all your potatoes you boil them put your potatoes in and then you rotate them over a fire and it eventually roasts potatoes in the field and it's just like

It's fun. And also, there are certain people that will bring stuff like that and you can use your in-game coin which you get given...

to buy it. Just trading. I was like, I want that potato, please. How much for that potato? You can use your in-game fake money to get it. One of my mates ran a kebab stand last event for Empire and he sold them for money. Yeah, and you made jerky. Yeah, I did beef jerky. And that was one of our early businesses was like the Grimm and... Olfen Grimm's Curious Things. Curious Things. Yeah, I got a custom stamp made and then died the next event. Oh, wow.

So, Orphan Grimm died. Well, Grimm stayed alive because he's a real stupid character. Didn't know what to do with business. Oh, right. Jesus Christ.

But yeah, there's lots of things like that that it's hard to explain all these things happening at LARP. You kind of just always go gravitate to the things that everyone always talks about about LARP, which is like fighting with foam swords and shouting spells at each other. But it's really the other little bits, the little mini interactions that you have around the camp that are fun.

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And we got a menu with four projectors projecting. Yeah, with like effects. It's a nine foot fucking stone made by like an SFX company. Is it nine? I thought it was eight foot. Is it nine? No, it's nine foot. It's a nine foot fucking obelisk. Wow. Which has been designed, obviously, not actual stone because that would be nuts.

but we've got four projectors on it using the technology software that's used at gigs. Mad Mapper, right? Yeah, Mad Mapper, where you can map to the menu, mask it out and project...

onto it vfx sorry and sfx are like particle systems so when people are surrounding this stone doing rituals and they're doing something of the earth essence there's going to be greens blooming flowers stuff like that coming out of the mania that's something that doesn't happen at laps we're doing that yeah yeah so we're trying to like push the boundaries of like

because we love the tech shit, we do this as like hat films. We're like, I want to put that skill set into this. And we've got some awesome people. Yeah. For example, that has just taken that and championed it and done a really good job. So yeah, there's a lot of space in life for indulging in your hobbies and your abilities and trying to, especially creative ones. Cause a lot of times the creative stuff, you just,

you need to be paid for it or you do it for yourself and like yeah so have an outlet where people can do something creative and feel like it's worth doing yeah like you know eventually when we get so big we'll create a mountain hat more and our faces will be carved into a mountain size yeah yeah looks over the top yeah we'll pull a star in of course but it's to scale just look over and we'll be in kind of real royal gear lights come out of our eye sockets that's it and then it projects onto several menus yeah

Welcome to our land. We need to buy a woodland next. Yeah, just buy a woodland. They're not that expensive, honestly. Owning woodland. You know how you see all these signs everywhere, woodland for sale. I don't think I've ever seen a sign for sale. You've never seen that? Because then we could do permanent structures. Then we could have our own place. Mount Hatmore. So there's loads of woodland for sale in like just in South Wales and places like that. Just because you can't build on it. Currently. Right.

Yeah. So like a lot of its use limitations means that, I mean, it's still not cheap. It's probably just in case it all has to be kind of kept. Yeah. Yeah. Well, even that you can, so the ones I looked into, very quick tangent, you can harvest wood from them. So like you could, you could do limited logging if you bought the woodland. But that'd be good for the fine. A hundred grand you can get woodland for. So a hundred grand, you'll get like, you can get five acres of woodland.

which I know is a huge amount of money, but five acres of wood is a large amount of space. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, the cost of us renting is, because obviously the farmer wants to use that land for crop and stuff, and that comes with its own expense and licensing fees, et cetera. Being able to own it means we can...

accrue that back over time hopefully and make some cool shit on that site as a result so long that's long term goals might be a while before yeah oh yeah a long time before we even consider that so we'd like many's fate to be a real success don't get me started on the cruise ship idea oh yeah many's cruises many's cruises larp cruising you ever been

Yeah, we've got some real cool... It's hard not to spoil the story sometimes because I remember there's a lot of stuff that I know because I've read a lot because I put a lot of stuff on the website that's going to happen.

In the event that players don't know about yet. So I'm excited. There's a convenient memory fog wipe. The fading. The fading that's happened. The hangover. A lot of people don't remember the history of their own land, which is great because it means you don't have to remember everything that has happened in the world because you've literally forgotten. That's the point. But you're going to unearth things and the truths will come.

and monsters it's gonna be really cool yeah so yeah you can still come if you want to menisfate.com best if you get a ticket online please because i'm literally going to be scanning qr codes on the day and uh if you haven't bought a ticket i'll literally be the guy are you at the entrance are you doing i'm gonna be at the entrance oh shit um

and Friday. I will hopefully have a team with me so I don't have to be there all the time but I'm probably going to be the guy you meet to get on site. So please don't make me have to make an account for you.

That would be great make your own account and get a ticket and yeah check out the website there's all the character creator stuff and All the law and stuff is slowly going up and off the wiki. I think it's mostly on. Oh, it's a ton of shit It's kind of overwhelming now. So again, we might need to do more videos to like break down the world a bit by bit Yeah, I think it's been quite good doing it kind of in pieces so that we can get a little grasp of it and also use it as reference material so yeah, and

As you can imagine, this is a whole side project. We didn't want to disrupt films throughout this whole year. So, of course, we've been kind of limited with our time and

on Men Is Fate we'd like to do as many videos as possible but we also prioritize hat films we want to make sure there's still daily content going out for you guys and we're not burning out doing Men Is Fate on the side so hopefully you haven't noticed too much of a disruption at all really other than our usual like oh shit sorry I haven't done a hat chat this week we've always been like that but yeah it's been a fuck ton and Smith is almost dead

I'm almost dead. And it's been a lot, but E1 is literally setting up everything from scratch. So hopefully, going on, it's all done now. We just need to iterate on the thing and patch holes where there's problems. And the rest of the team are doing great as well. They've done so much work. Oh my God. Yeah, the amount of emails and back and forth and team meetings and...

just cohesion between groups to make sure everyone understands all the things because there's so many people involved there's a lot of like cooks and some things can get established over here that they forgot to communicate over here it's like oh shit we've already done that okay let's meet in the middle you know lots of things logistically like that that's really difficult to achieve we've done it we somehow pulled it off yeah one is happening so very exciting yeah yeah for sure um

Yeah, it's happening. Like to answer questions, we are very happy with how E1's turned out in terms of numbers. We can't wait. I mean, it'd be great to have loads because that's great profit. But at the same time, we want to have an awesome first experience for all the people turning up. Yeah, it needs to be a good foundation, doesn't it? And a good test. It's all going to evolve from there anyway. Exactly, yeah. So yeah, and a lot of people want to go to E2.

They're waiting for E2 to see how E1 does and for the weather to be better, which is completely understandable. And completely unpredictable. It probably is going to be worse at E2 than it is at E1 at this point. It's hard to know. English weather, you never know. I reckon that's going to be the case. We'll see. So E1's looking wonderful right now. So if you took that plunge and were expecting shit weather, you've actually lucked out. So...

We look forward to seeing you there. We're going to be bright red lobsters in two weeks' time. When we come back, we're going to be... Yeah, get your sun cream on. Oh, God. Because it is going to be quite sunny. I'm going to make sure I apply. I'm a Neapolitan man again. Yeah. You're going to have to get some sort of Gandalf's hat style. Yeah, you can get those. Yeah, yeah.

suddenly become a member of the wonder because yeah i need to cover my face up and avro avro like wizardy hats as well um and we obviously have to disclose we are going to be there other people that you recognize are going to be there mark is going to be an npc he's going to really thespit up for you yeah just remember that we're also there to be doing to keep

Menace Fate Running so we're more than happy to meet you and greet you if it's at the ticket stand I'm probably just going to have to get through queue so I can't stand and chat for too long imagine if it just turns into a one man signing that'd be so ridiculous I'll scan your code and then sign this for you I don't want to hold up anybody you just sign that guys probably no signing guys when we have time in which is when everyone goes into character

Just remember that we are time in and that we're not talking about hat films. Oh, yes. Talking about our real lives at that point. We are trying to immerse ourselves in the world. Ross is trying to get a job done filming and stuff. So please respect that and respect your fellow players and make it as immersive as possible for everybody. Awesome. Looking forward to it. Yeah, have fun. I think that's the thing. Have a fucking blast. Don't get sunstroke.

and don't die from hypothermia at night. It's going to be cold at night. Please drink water. Get a real comfy insulating sleeping bag.

get lots of blankets if you don't have that and wear thermals at night time if you feel like it's too cold there's a hotel down the road there's a hotel down the road it's more of a service station hotel I wouldn't call it a hotel it's a motel you'll cover the grounds if you desperately needed to yeah I'm almost certainly using it for at least one night grab a shower and a warm bed

And then some bed bugs probably because it's a motel. My socks are chips. Yeah, they're nice. They're fries in a fry bag. Now I'm McDonald's.

You made him hungry from your socks. I ate at McDonald's for the first time in like a while the other day and oh my God, it was great. Do you get the Philly cheesesteak? No, I didn't. I couldn't go too far. It's incredible. It's one of their best burgers. This is not sponsored by McDonald's. Well, again, we know. Yeah, but like, no, we're going to probably tempt other people to be like, oh shit, yeah, Philly cheesesteak was pretty good. Yeah. It is a very tasty little morsel. The beef industry is not good.

Was there any alien news? Actually, we have Greenlight has ticked off the UFO. Don't worry. You're going to get it straight from the source soon. We're going to start planning as soon as we can, really. Yes. Obviously, we're going to do this event first, which is next week. Next week, we'll be back to it. And hopefully, us and Craig can coordinate when we're going to be doing the UFO campout, which is being greenlit. Good day for that. We've got that sick new lens as well.

Yeah, hopefully the zoom lens is, I mean, it's not. Hold it steady. Hold it steady. This is why they can't ever get footage of it. It's grainy as shit. I understand that. I understand. So yeah, I look forward to that coming soon. Obviously the first green lit project is already going out right now. It's the mini golf.

First 18 holes done. There's four videos coming out of that. The other two are coming soon. So Craig is diligently editing all the copywritten music out of the audio as well as doing all the graphics and edit.

it on that. And there'll be a little gap between Hatchats just because we'll be doing the event. We'll literally be on a field next Friday. So that's why there won't be one within that period of time. That's why also today's Hatchat is a little delayed to spread it out a little bit. On a Monday. Yes. But to be fair, yeah, they're kind of, they're spreader because they are. Yeah. Hopefully we come back

And we can talk about hat chat and how men is fate has been an awesome success and you should not miss out on E2. Yeah. That'd be fun. That'd be great. That'd be a good chat to have. We could do a little recap. Lovely. Thanks for watching and listening. Most importantly, I hope you all have an awesome time. Hope to see you all at men is fate. And until then.

Thank you so much for supporting us, especially if you're a Patreon or a YouTube member or a Twitch subscriber. You're all keeping Hat Chat going through your wonderful funds. We wouldn't do this without you. So thank you. Indeed. And we'll see you all next time. See you later, everybody. Have a good week. Bye for now. Have a good week. Bye. Bye. Bye.