Friday, April 24, 2015

Fresh Faces- Ethan "Jean Baptise" Goldman

How did you learn about Realms?
Photo by Jesse Gifford
Ethan is in the front

So earlier this October was my birthday. Coincidentally the larp group at U-Mass Lowell was doing a apple juice fund raiser. I think even the real stuff, not the kind you get in a juice box.

Because of the timing I got double the apple juice and felt it was only fair to pay my dues. However it took me a while to actually get to be able to make a event and so I only got to join mid November. Life is like that.


How many event have you been to?
Lets see, I played seven I think? Enough that I should complete the punch card soon.


Have you ever LARP’ed before?  If so tell us about it?
Nope! I did a bunch of tabletops but they don't help you learn how to swing a sword.

What is your character like?  Where are they from? What is their race? What is important to them?

Ah Jean Baptise, or Baptist as his northern spring certificate says. He's a slightly crazy chef but so far no one seems to mind. He also sells jerky. Fresh jerky, home made and harvested with meat fresh from the Realm's finest and most exotic dungeons and dwellings. Some might say it's a lot of work dehydrating a dream demon, but at Baptise Butchery we just care a little bit more.

If I had a logo, youd be seeing it right now. Trust me, it would be super cool and you'd totally buy some.

He's from a old temple that worships the god of food. Who exactly the god of food is didn't seem to matter to the lardinals however so Jean's on a quest to "Find god." He's currently petitioning for Neden, but their immigration and customs department is very high profile.

Who knew?

While he is human born and blue, he's currently a bit, preserved will be the appropiate word for it. Undead and all.

Jean cares only about a few things, the sancity of life and death not among them (do you KNOW what you do to make a sausage). One is the betterment of his abbility to enjoy existence, the other is the betterment of others to enjoy existence. This usually translates into perfecting and producing food or assisting people who aren't currently killing him.


What do you remember most about your first event?

Oh man okay you are in for a good one.
Most people get to take newbie quests like "Catch the butterfly" or "goblin punting" or something, I've heard there are newbie quests so I assume they exist.

I got "Invade the mine of lost souls and liberate gaia's spring to stop a soul devouring plague."

No pressure.


So on Wellspring our guide suggested we go on ahead. I was the only one who heard him and was ambushed by the mid boss and her flunky. I think I was to dead for it.

So I was then dragged off stage, where the npcs were confused and looking to the event handler because apperantly this never happened before.

So I got killed, scalped, and corrupted. Do you not know what corrupted is? Neither did I, all I knew is that when I drank the water of Gaia I exploded.

So succeeded in dying more then anyone has ever died before.


What things have helped to make you feel welcome in game?
When I was dead I got to go to the snack bar, That was pretty cool.

Also people actually laugh at my jokes, and I was invited to Neden, not in a fancy way that let me skip the legwork but it let me know I wasn't actively disliked.

What parts of the game do you find most challenging?
I've heard that this game gets you really tired, I never had to deal with that as I die so fast, so I need to work on that.

Also strangely every time I go to a event, I'm sick. Like, ​Raistlin. So serving with a migraine was weird.

Do you have any game related goals (as either a player or character)?
I want to set up a jerky stand, and I want to get into Neden, there are some other ideas I have to try to cement my characters existence (not necessarily into prominence but into thereness) one is to host a event. But the event stuff is in the near future, the jerky and neden stuff is things I can see happening in the foreseeable future.


What advice would you give other new players?

Okay so there is this guy in Blackwood with a jester hat. He takes that thing really seriously, do not talk about the hat.

Just trust me you don't want to get scalped over this.


What have you enjoyed most about the game so far?
We got great board games.

 Anything else you'd like to take the opportunity to put into print?


Many competitors have made claims about the nature of our buisiness. Saying that it's unethical, or diabolic, or even that it's made of human flesh.

I don't want to get into a shouting match with these fine folk, so I will just say this.

When the hordes of horror are barging on your doorstep in the Western front, sometimes it gets hard to remember why its all worth living through.

For that there is Baptise Butchery, made for you, from you.

We not only offer our own house blends for consumption but if you bring us ingredients you'd like to munch on while trekking through the haunted forest of unreasonable spookiness, we won't give you any questions.

But what we will give you, is delicious and quality product. That's our guarantee.

Baptise Butchery is not responsible for any Wendigo based curses that arise after eating our product. Consumer discretion advised.