What-if, choices, identity |
| Designer: Rei England (UK) |
| Number of participants: 6 |
| Duration: 3 hours |
| Genre/style: uk-freeform / Nordic influenced improv hybrid. Modern day drama with a background sci-fi plot device. |
| The presenter feels that this larp IS NOT suitable for people under the age of 18 |
About the larp
When one door closes, another opens, or so the saying goes. All through our lives we make choices. Some turn out well, and others not so well. But what if you could go back and make another choice? Change one of those choices; open a door you left closed and always wondered about?
This is a game about a group of old university friends, meeting at their usual holiday cottage for another annual (more or less) reunion, who find themselves jumping through alternative universes. How differently could their lives have turned out? How might those small moments have changed the trajectories of careers, families, relationships? What’s causing them to jump? And will they get the chance to choose which door to leave open, and which to shut forever?
The game begins as a traditional UK Freeform/Parlour LARP, with prewritten characters. Then as the universe shifts, players are encouraged to improvise the consequences of the different choices they made.
Content Warnings: Some plots include: adultery, choices about childrearing, dealing with disability. It is possible to cast away from these, but all characters are likely to have difficult life choices and relationships they’re dealing with during the game. Additionally, we will make use of a safety policy to give players tools to use in the event of a scene inadvertently causing distress.
Presented by
Rei England (UK): Rei has been sharing their imaginary worlds and letting people play with them for over a decade. Among other things, Rei has wiped minds on behalf of a repressive government, destroyed the world with rocks, boldly roamed the stars, destroyed the world with demons, sent students to Hogwarts, destroyed the world with orbital phaserfire, and taught people how to fly to Never Never Land. Rei has noted that a number of different LARP traditions are beginning to come together and has been experimenting in new approaches with the aim of combining styles in interesting ways.
Parameters
| Communication style | Lots of speech |
| Movement style | Sitting |
| Tone | Dramatic |
| Characters | Players build their characters around a predesigned skeleton or archetype |
| Narrative control | Players have some influence over story, but there is basically a script or structure that they’re within |
| Transparency | There are predesigned secrets the organizers have from the players, and also that the players will have from each other |
| Representation level | The fictional space is pretty similar to the play space |
| Play culture | The concept of rivalry or cooperation between players doesn’t really apply |
The Smoke 