Celebrating the End of Summer in True Halfling Fashion: ‘Shiretown Shindig’ (Review)

Every year, hobbits from six families gather to share skills, stories, and more food than regular humans could possibly imagine. It’s a day filled with music, relaxation, and absolutely no drama — which is only kind of weird for a Live Action Role Playing (LARP) game.

Of course, Shiretown Shindig isn’t a normal LARP. It’s a gentle experience about connecting with community over simple pleasures. As game runner Dan Comstock says, Shiretown hobbits are “all equally small. I think there’s something beautiful about that.”

This was my second Shiretown Shindig, and it was just as charming as the game’s 2021 inaugural run. The game mechanics are simple: each family has a color and a handful of defining traits. Gurdybucks wear purple and like entertaining; the industrious Bluebottles wear blue, the courageous Bluffwaters wear green, and so on. My family — the Tallows — wear orange and are, for lack of a better term, lovable idiots.

Family guidelines make gameplay simple. All you need to do is decide which family feels most aligned with the kind of day you’d like to have, then try to live your best hobbit life in line with those characteristics. Personally, I wanted to spend my weekend agreeing with people. Being a Tallow gave me the opportunity to lean into naivete, wonder, and curiosity. Did your great uncle Chungus actually roll down a hill so quickly that he launched into the sky? “That’s amazing! He must have been quite a guy!” No skepticism for me, thanks.

Standard LARP safety mechanisms are taught during pre-game workshops. Other than that, the rules are simple: show up, be a hobbit who revels in life’s little comforts, and enjoy! This low barrier to entry convinced a few of my friends to make Shiretown their first LARP. It’s a great game for newbies, but mine were anxious. What if they weren’t hobbity enough? Did they need to write out a character backstory? What were we going to do all day?

Spoiler: they had nothing to worry about. One player described Shiretown Shindig as “a role-play light, vibes-heavy experience.” Between the game’s user-friendly player handbook and a wonderfully inclusive online community, players have all of the resources they need to plan a hobbit holiday. As for how to spend the day? The staff at Ye Olde Commons had it covered.

Ye Olde Commons is a repurposed campground in Charlton, Massachusetts. LARPs of all shapes and sizes happen at YOC, but once a year its tavern, meadow, and tents bloom with pendants in family colors, long tables for meals or crafts, and all manner of hobbity leisure activity. The genius of YOC is how they’ve created a well-balanced framework of activity and opportunity that puts new players at ease while making lots of space for emergent play.

Officially, the event starts Friday evening. This allows for a kind of soft entry into Shiretown. Most players arrive in partial costume. People get to know their families while playing the theatre-kid equivalent of party games. Game play starts first thing Saturday with second breakfast, followed by meals, family portraits, and an evening concert in the Tavern. But like I said, that’s just the frame. The magic — the thing that makes this a LARP and not just a themed party — is what happens in between those officially scheduled activities.

Players are encouraged to make the Shiretown Shindig their own. In year one, this meant bringing something to share. I’ve never seen so many homemade breads, butters, and cheeses in one place. And musical instruments! Players set up a calligraphy station, ran spinning wheels, shared circus arts, and taught craft lessons.

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This year, players took it a step further by scheduling games and lessons on the tavern’s notice board. The value Shiretown places on active sharing promotes an overwhelming feeling of inclusion. That’s no accident. In pre-game workshops, players are taught how to call-in people they might see standing on the sidelines. And that’s what pushes Shiretown beyond simple role-play. We’re not just pretending to be hobbits. We’re coming together to create a set of cultural norms that allow people to move through social spaces differently.

In this case, YOC, Shiretown, and its players collectively created a space where the troubles of the outside world didn’t matter; where everyone appreciated the unique gifts and talents of everyone else; where lifting each other up was the norm; and where good food, drink, and company mattered more than a person’s status. Perhaps this is why the player base for Shiretown is more diverse than many other games I’ve played. LARP remains incredibly white in the US. But YOC hosted The Decolonize & Discover Festival this past June, and the BIPOC, LGBTQIA2S+, and disabled representation present at Shiretown this September was a step in the right direction.

So what does a day at the Shiretown Shindig look like? Every hobbit has a different story, and the only way to find yours is to come see for yourself.

I spent my shindig playing Beric Tallow, a young man with a secret penchant for poetry. Between meals and the occasional nap, I spent time lounging in the grass, listening to Gurdybucks compose songs about the other families. I watched a group of jugglers and helped deliver felt bees to people who clearly did not have enough bees in their lives. I snuck into the tavern with a friend to “steal” a few drinks, and I directed curious hobbits to my cousin, Cricket Tallow, for potato readings (because everyone knows that it’s bad luck to eat a potato without having your fortune read). My evening was spent sharing toast and cheese around a bonfire. I missed an amazing twisted folk music performance by Troll 2, but the company was good and I couldn’t have asked for a better night. I fell asleep, happy to have been a simple young man who read a poem aloud to his friends.

On Sunday morning, life went back to normal. People put on regular clothes and grabbed leftovers from the tavern while they loaded up their cars to head home. There wasn’t any de-rolling. Shiretown was just gone. But the sense of community — of potential — we had collectively created remained. People are already making plans for Shiretown 2023. My newbies want to come back, and so do I. A TikTok about the event got 20.5K views in one week. There’s something compelling about spending time celebrating simple pleasures, and the world is taking notice.

That’s the power of LARP. And second breakfast.

The Shiretown Shindig ran from Sep. 16 to the 18th in Charlton, MA. Tickets were $125–325 (based on accommodations).

Editor’s note: Shiretown Shindig is based on The Hobbit’s Hoedown, a LARP written and designed by Desany Phanoraj.

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