Burgschneider, a German live events company, has runway past its goals on Kickstarter to hold The Brandywine Festival, in partnership with Middle-earth Enterprises.
The live-action role-playing (LARP) event will take place in Harrodsburg, Kentucky, — the first ever live game event for Burgschneider in the U.S. The Brandywine Festival is in partnership with Middle-earth Enterprises (owned by Embracer Freemode). The Kickstarter campaign has raised more than $529,000 from nearly 1,100 backers, far above the goal of $80,000. It’s a big result for a fan event (scheduled for October 7 to October 12, 2025), and owners of game intellectual properties ought to take notice.
“I read the Lord of the Rings as a teenager and it literally changed my world,” said Markus Boehm, CEO of the firm, in a message to GamesBeat. “It sparked my passion for all forms of fantasy role playing as well as Tolkien inspired table top, video games and card games. It gave my inner nerd the outlet he didn’t know he needed.”
Live immersion games are a growing trend among gamers of all ages. The event will feature narrative games in honor of J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings. And it will feature fun costumes, a lot of food, ale, dancing and fireworks. Yes, you can pretend you’re in the Shire and celebrate like a hobbit.
Some game people are on the board, including Jason Kingsley of Rebellion and Jon Middleton.
“We’re cheering them on,” Middleton said.
He noted that one of Tolkien’s quotes was, “If more of us valued food and cheer and song above hoarded gold, it would be a merrier world.” And his character Bilbo Baggins said, “It’s a dangerous business, Frodo, going out your door. You step onto the road, and if you don’t keep your feet, there’s no knowing where you might be swept off to….”
Origins
For the past 20 years, Frankfurt, Germany-based Burgschneider has produced quality Live-Action Roleplaying (LARP) equipment, clothing, and events around the world. With over 20,000 event attendees yearly, and tens of thousands of garments sold. Believe it or not, the company has a team of 40 across Europe, North America and Asia, said Boehm.
In the late 1990s, Boehm sold a software company he built from the ground up and vowed to never do serious business again.
“So, dead set on that goal I opened a game store in Frankfurt, Germany. That is where I met Andreas Paul who at the time made his living by selling medieval clothing at Renaissance Faires,” Boehm said. “More than 10 years, two kids and another IT company later, he contacted me looking for office space for his still one man show.”
Soon thereafter, Paul moved into a small corner of Boehm’s corporate office.
“That was when we joined forces to expand on the business. We came up with the Burgschneider name (which translates to “The Castle Tailor” in German), built up an e-commerce business and less than a year later we had sales of over seven-figures in revenue,” he said. “We formally founded Burgschneider GmbH in 2014.”
Two years later, they started the U.S. subsidiary, and in 2019 they bought Live Adventure, a company running the biggest Live Action Role Playing Event on the planet.
“We host over ten thousand players for nearly a week at our largest event every summer,” he said.
Boehm said he started LARPing in the late 1990s at a Cthulhu-themed event at a haunted castle in the south of Germany. It was run by the designers of the Cthulhu Pen & Paper Role Playing Game and had loads of professional actors among the participants. It left a lasting impression.
“I realized that beyond a certain level of immersion my brain wasn’t able to differentiate between a simulated and a real experience. An emotional tour de force that resonated with me for quite a while afterwards,” Boehm said.
Now, most countries around the globe host large vibrant communities of live gaming hobbyists, running self-made and community-organized games.
“There is a ton of passion and enthusiasm for live gaming. In some countries, there are smaller businesses that form the nucleus of a more professional infrastructure,” Boehm said. “However, Burgschneider is the only company globally organizing live immersive games internationally on a professional level and in partnership with major entertainment and gaming brands.”
He added, “We at Burgschneider believe that the potential of immersive live gaming is gigantic… as clearly demonstrated by the success of our first foray into the US market with the Brandywine Festival Kickstarter. We couldn’t be more excited.”
Embracer Group acquired Middle-earth Enterprises during its expansion period. That gave it worldwide ownership of Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit franchises in certain media, while the control of the books like The Silmarillion are the domain of the Tolkien Estate, the family heirs who inherited the beloved property after Tolkien passed in 1973. Tolkien’s books have sold more than 265 million copies worldwide, and the Peter Jackson movies generated billions of dollars.
Boehm said that his team met Embracer after launching its Dungeons & Dragons Costume and Equipment Line at ComiCon New York in 2023, where they met John Mayo, VP of Creative & Product Development at Middle-earth Enterprises. Mayo was impressed by the high quality of Burgschneider’s products.
“Since our products are meant to be worn for days at an event battling Orcs or venturing through the woods, the term costume doesn’t really do them justice,” Boehm said. “We design real clothing made out of lasting materials.”
“What people generally imagine when they hear the term LARP and what we actually do are two very different things. Our event videos always provide a very surprising plot twist – our events have been described as a popup theme park,” Boehm said. “Burgschneider really strives to deliver participatory gaming on a grand level and that is always eye opening.”
Soon, they connected with Lee Guinchard, CEO at Embracer Freemode, and got invited to pitch ideas to the Middle-Earth team including Fredrica Drotos. They were really great and recognized the Burgschneider team’s love of LoTR and devotion to quality immediately, and the rest is history, Boehm said.
“These kind of events and partners really bring out the spirit of Middle-earth, and is great fun for fans to participate with creators,” said Guinchard, in a message to GamesBeat.
Regarding the Kickstarter campaign, Boehm said the team designed this first officially licensed event for a major IP partner carefully, because they honestly didn’t know what to expect.
“Our initial expectation was to sell a few hundred tickets and look to have a good test run for bigger live games to come,” he said. “However, we’ve now sold more than a thousand tickets and an extremely engaged community has formed in the process, which is buzzing with anticipation and creativity.”
Major creators like Matt Graph and Rachel Maksy among others got involved and the hype within the Lord of the Rings gaming community became enormous.
” We always knew live gaming, cos-play and fandom would add up, but we couldn’t have imagined a better first result. It’s been magical,” Boehm said.
A survey among ticket buyers revealed that more than 90% of them have never visited a Live Action Role Playing Event before.
“This clearly underlines the massive potential that still awaits us beyond the initial Brandywine Festival,” Boehm said. “We’ve uncovered a model which allows entertainment brands and their most fervent fans to truly interact in real life.”
Now Boehm believes Burgschneider can be a facilitator of co-creation. On visiting a Burgschneider event players tell their own story using a costume they curated, modified or even created from scratch.
“We design costuming and accessories in a way that can serve as a canvas for player creativity. Gamers design, imagine and play their own character. Building on that trend, we are in the process of acquiring a company that will give us the ability to enable similar co-creational aspects for fan designed streetwear and a wide array of merchandise for life outside of the games,” Boehm said.
He added, “All created in partnership with the brands our fans love. This will further help build large, fast growing and extremely engaged communities around our events and products. Over the course of the next few years there will be more instalments of the Brandywine Festival in North America and Europe establishing a yearly event at each location.”
There will be additional events for other IPs, genres, as well as more advanced/dramatic game types.
“We’ve already announced our partnerships with Hasbro and Games Workshop for D&D and Warhammer respectively,” Boehm said. “And we have secured further unannounced deals to build our business as we continue to grow. We will unleash the passion of countless hardcore fan communities globally to join us in creating thrilling adventures and tales of epic emotions, bringing their favorite worlds to life with live games. It’s a game fan’s perfect storm.”
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