As kids, we all loved Halloween for the candy and for the chance to become someone else, if only for one night. Most of us played games like cops and robbers or pretended to be knights who had to slay dragons before rescuing the beautiful princess. You'd lose yourself for a whole afternoon or a day playing out the fate of another character in a world entirely different from your own. Kids love games that engage the imagination like that, but sadly, most of us stop playing them and leave them behind somewhere in adolescence.

Others don't, and continue to play board games like Dungeons and Dragons well into adulthood. When that is no longer enough of a creative outlet, there's LARP, or Live Action Role Playing.

Legends (www.legendsroleplaying.com) is a nine-year-old group of local "larpers" made up of 140 people from all over New England, but based in Central Massachusetts. They are mostly men, but there are many women, of every age over 18 and varied backgrounds.

Their games take place at Camp Marshall in Spencer, but when the Legends take over (six weekends a year), it is a dangerous and mysterious frontier called Areth, owned by the Galenese (but stolen from the Aknorians.) Each player invents a fictional character with his or her own long history. You choose your name and race (there are 16 Arethian races), buy costumes, and give yoru character abilities according to the rulebook, which is more than 110 pages long and amazing in its detail. This is the time to get really creative. The more details, the better, and you can take it about as far as you like.

Typically somewhere between 40 and 80 players come to an event. One of the characters, Gertrude von Stein, was kind enough to speak with me over her breakfast. She is a fun-loving bar wench, the daughter of a bar wench and Boris the rat-chaser, an occasionally valiant man who spent the night with her mother after rescuing her from marauders. Gertrude never knew her father, but having inherited his lust for life and adventure, came to Areth to find him. She did meet up with him briefly along the way, but things on the frontier never go as planned, and she continues to look for him as she tries to carve out a place for herself in Areth. One thing you should know about Gertrude: she never backs down from a fight.

Many of the names have an Welsh/Olde English sound to them like: Rhaenys Stormborn, Eduard Calgary, or my personal favorite: Sir Simon Finklestones. Others are distinctly Lord of the Rings-ish like: Aylild of the Bay, Udo, and Feldor. Still others seem to have been chosen for their intimidation factor alone, like: Guts, Blade, and Rock. You see, battles break out between frontiersmen like pimples on a prom date.

Legends is much more than just a band of folks running around pretending to bludgeon with one another with foam clubs indiscriminately (though it must be said this is no small part of the appeal from what I saw.) There are plenty of folks who like to mix it up, but if that's not your thing, there are other storylines which will keep you out of the fray. All of the fighting is fake and injuries are unusual. Most injuries come from people running and falling at night.

Besides, if you need them, you can always hire a mercenary like Gorthyn Hawkmoon and Cerridwynn Penndragon to fight your enemies for you. Their camp is decorated with the skulls of farmers and assassins. If your cause is just, they can be hired for very little money. Cerridwynn confided in me that business has been a little slow this moon, but is typically quite robust. Costumes in this game have a distinctly medieval look to them and are usually homemade or picked up at renaissance faires.

New folks are always welcome and can even just come to watch. While I was there, a brand-new group of nine gypsies had just arrived. The basic story is that Areth is a large island on the planet Areth. The island isn't entirely inhabited, and the game takes place on the frontier as it is being settled. The Galenese run things and consider the island a massive land-grab. Political affiliations, cunning, imagination and race all play a big role here as well.

Points are awarded upon joining and can be used to "purchase" vitality, weapons, spells and the like (the use of armor is free, but you must make your own.) Additional points can be obtained by helping to set up the game, clean up after it, or by writing a "post-event letter" telling the owners of the game what you liked or didn't like about it. Staff and owners are constantly implementing new ideas to keep things interesting and fun for the players.

The landscape where the games take place is wooded, but signs that you are not in Areth abound. Residential homes can be seen from much of the camp, and non-player people hike and walk their dogs through the forest, so the Legends staff goes to great lengths to bring in props and develop storyline plots to maintain the "suspension of disbelief." The players work hard at it too. While visiting Areth for this story, they had my friend and I wear thick woolen cloaks so we wouldn't stand out so much.

The owners store, transport, and set up over 100 large plastic bins filled with lights, masks, facepaint, costumes, spell packets and scary-looking props of every description. The camp kitchen has been transformed to a frontier tavern, where people gather to eat as well as meet and beat each other. The Arethian calendar is entirely different from our Gregorian calendar. They've even had actual metal Arethian coins (called decta, hecta and till) minted and there are also Arethian gemstones. There is a map of Areth, a graveyard, and the staff office is littered with three ring binders filled with character information and storylines. In all, it takes two full days to transform the camp into Areth and the effort is obvious and effective.

One cabin might be the blacksmith shop, another becomes the alchemy shop. There is a Dark Tavern, a mystic library, and the cabins the players sleep in. As we toured the grounds, players were walking about, a cartographer was mapping the area, and shouts and howls could occasionally be heard coming from the woods. Arethian days consist of moments quiet apprehension punctuated by regular outbursts of adventure.

Any frontier is dangerous, and Areth, with its healthy population of angry monsters (called "mages") is even more so. Death is actually fairly common here, but it doesn't come quickly. If you are "killed," you must actually visit and kneel before Death (a character played by staff) with whom you can barter the terms of your demise and afterlife. If you are unusually persuasive and he is feeling generous, your Death need not be final. Death may decide to prolong, ease, or increase the pain associated with your death before recording it in his book. Game owner Dan Devitt allowed me to tour Death's office, and it was as dark, creepy, and filled with skulls as any haunted house I've ever been in - far more horrific than even my fourth grade CCD teacher warned it would be.

As it was getting about time to leave, I was a little disappointed to have been there so long and not seen a decent battle, when some townspeople ran past us shouting in their best, most panic-stricken olde english accents "There be beasties about!" Moments later, four magma mages dressed in red costumes and devil masks came out of the forest and approached the eight or nine people who were just minding their own business outside the tavern. The townspeople made good use of their clubs, ice darts and slaughter spells to fend off the magma mages, but the mages rejuvenated themselves in a lava pit and came back for more. Just then a human/fire mage decked out in a magisterial red cape and headdress that came on the scene attempting to broker a truce in exchange for some metal for the magma mages.

Where diplomacy failed, violence prevailed, and the mages were ultimately driven off and no serious injuries or deaths were sustained. Tranquility returned to Arethian forest, if only for a moment.Areth returns to Camp Marshall on Oct. 13. Details can be found on their on their website, www.legendsroleplaying.com.