Characters!

The long wait is almost over! Next week, we will start sending out characters and briefs. Before that, please take some time to read this post, as it will give you an insight on what to expect from the characters and what happens next as well as what adjustments you are able to make.

At first, a short reminder on how larps with pre-written characters should be approached. All your characters contain secrets, and some might have information that include major spoilers to other characters. So please be mindful on what you share. It is NOT allowed to share your full character description with other players. Especially if you have one of the characters who know the bigger secrets, please be careful to not spill them before the larp. Pre-written larps rely heavily on players respecting the written background, existing contacts, and the characters’ agendas and personalities. Should you choose to entirely ignore some aspects of your character, it might severely impact the experience for others involved in those plots and themes. That said, we’ve tried to create characters with several different paths to take and multiple ways to solve situations, as well as plenty of open options on what to do and where to go. We very much encourage you to make the character your own and to emphasize the aspects you enjoy and make choices that make the game successful for you. But we ask for you to be mindful of your contacts and plots and acknowledge them instead of ignoring them even though you might not spent that much play time on some of them.

What adjustments are you able to make? At first let us say that casting a larp with 104 characters, hundreds of relationships, mostly gender neutral characters, and three runs with the same source material is - well, not exactly a stroll in the park. So, while we have made our best to make sure that your current romantic partners match your requested co-players genders, we were not able to make this happen with all the ex’s your character might have. If it is an issue for your that your characters FORMER romantic partner does not match your romantic gender preference, feel free to discuss with the players and agree that the relationship that was written as a romance was something else. Maybe a very close friendship that made your partner jealous (if that was relevant for the plot) or maybe it was a bar fight instead of a failed one night stand (if the point was that your friends didn’t like how the other person treated you). However, in our vision gender is not a big deal in this world. There is no discrimination based on it (or orientation), and it is more common than uncommon to have partners regardless of their gender. So if this is not that big issue for you that your character’s ex is of a different gender than your preference, we encourage you to not change it. However, if another player contacts you and asks to change the nature of the contact, you should agree on it, even if the contact would be fine as it is for you.

There are friends, partners, and relatives written for your characters, and some might be described in great detail while others might have less information provided. Even if there is not that much relevant information in the contact description, feel free to enhance the relationship, talk about the common background (if not specified, feel free to choose where you know each other from - i.e. were you neighbors, friends from school, or did you take the same boat building classes etc.). There is so much written information that writing everything to the detail would have made the characters way too long. So even if there is only a paragraph for a contact, you should consider it meaningful and develop it further. While creating all the contacts, we’ve made our best to create contact chains for the characters to ensure that information will be shared between different groups, and certain secrets and conflicts are designed to escalate through circles of common friends or relatives. Thus please don’t ignore a contact on the premises that there is not much written about them in your character. Create more! And share information about your characters with each other (but again be careful with the secrets).

It is very much allowed to get to know other characters in your group and create light links and contacts between you. However, do remember that these new links shouldn’t overshadow your existing contacts, as the people written into your character are there for a reason, and if you go and create bunch of new contacts, it might end up leaving some characters alone or result on some plots not moving forward. Please do introduce your characters to other members in your group as in some cases you might have known each other for months or years (e.g. the crew of ESS Odysseus, Velians and the crew of Atlantis 3).

And then last but definitely not the least: we’ve spent the past 6 months plotting, writing, and creating these stories. There is a ton of information, contacts, links, and crossing timelines. It is very much possible that some errors have slipped through our fingers despite rigorous cross-checking, or there might be some other reason we will end up making corrections or alterations on some characters. Should we do this we will clearly mark it on the character sheets by highlighting the new or removed information. E.g.

Public Database Sheet

You will receive a personal information sheet with your character, containing the information that is written in databases for your character. We might add some new information to that sheet as well, as the one you receive with your character is not yet final. However, the most relevant information should be there already. You will receive an updated version a couple of weeks before the larp. 

The same goes for briefings: the most relevant briefings will in most cases be sent out with the characters, but some will come a bit later. At the end of your character sheet, there will be a list (with links) to all your relevant briefings, and we will update the links when all the briefings are ready (we’ll inform you when this is ready).

If you have any questions, concerns or requests, or if you just want to tell us how super excited you are, please contact us by email: [email protected]

We are so excited about the larp and hope that you are too!

Laura, Producer and Story lead
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