Behind the casting

Casting a larp is an enormous task, especially when you need to match 104 characters with 104 players ...for three subsequent runs. Well, let’s just say that we’ve had quite a busy week behind us. Our casting team spent 35+ hours going through the players’ answers to the casting questionnaire, and matching them to our available characters. Before that, our hero Ville had already spent countless hours processing the data for the script and running your answers through it.

We’ve done our very best to make sure everyone gets the experience they are aiming for. However, as always, some compromises were required, and it was of course impossible to fulfill every single wish.

We used this priority list in trying to find an enjoyable character for each of our players:

• Trigger themes: We excluded characters that had these themes.
• Yellow flagged players: We checked that no one has to play a close contact  with anyone they flagged with a yellow flag. We also tried to make sure they aren’t in the same reference group, but this wasn’t possible in all cases. And there might be some shared third  contacts; i.e. both characters might have another character as contact.
• Other preferences: Child as a player, parent as a player, pregnant, pre-determined fate, etc. For characters with these elements, we gave a lot of weight on the player answers.
• Character group: We put a lot of effort to place all players within their prefered character groups. We did not succeed 100%, but in the rare case we failed, we tried to accommodate the affected players’ other wishes.
• Preferred short descriptions
• Preferred themes
• Preference for rental/own costumes: This went pretty closely hand in hand with character group wishes, but in some rare cases we ended up not enforcing it.
• Preferred attributes​

What ended up not influencing the casting (except in some rare cases):

• Preferred contact players: Unfortunately we were able to consider these only in very few cases.
• Preferred work shift: With this one, we needed to give up at the very beginning, as it was simply not possible to match this with the other requirements. And since the characters are divided into work shifts based on contacts, work shift preference ended up being practically impossible to implement.

​All in all, we are very happy with the results and on how many wishes we were able to accommodate. However, no matter how many hours we put into this, we are bound to have made some errors. We’ve been going through Excel sheets for the past week and a half, so even though we’ve checked and double-checked and triple-checked, there might still be errors. So, how to proceed from here?

First, we will publish the casting document for each run. You get to know the name, job title, and starting group of your character right away. Within a week or two, we will send everyone further information. You will receive a short description of your character, your preliminary shift (if any), costume information, the character groups your character belongs to (some characters have up to five character groups and some just one), the age of your character, and the list of your character’s closest contacts. The list is not your final contact list, but these are the most important ones. There is also information in case your character has a predetermined fate, or if there are other very important aspects involved (though sleeper agents are not revealed at this point).

We would kindly ask you to wait until you receive this latter personal information email before contacting us in case you have concerns, as not every character is what they seem they are. It saves us a lot of time and effort, as then we don’t need to answer questions for which the information is already soon on its way. If you have concerns or questions after receiving this email, whether about themes, close contacts, character groups, shifts, or other aspects of the game, do not hesitate to contact us!

In case you have major concerns regarding your character, it might be possible to swap characters or make some minor adjustments. If there is nothing we can do instantly, there are bound to be cancellations during spring, and we might be able to switch characters later on.

That said, we encourage you to embrace the themes, aspects, and unknown players, and to dive head first into your character. If your closest friends haven’t been cast as your contacts, you can take that as an opportunity to get to know awesome new people you just haven’t larped with before!

We would like to remind you that the short description is just that: a short description. Even though it tries to capture some of the meaningful themes for your character, there are loads of things it does not touch on. There are lot of stuff in store for every character!

So, all in all, this casting was an enormous task, and it sure felt like an impossible one for a few times along the way. But we did it! We hope you are as giddy and excited when you receive your characters as we were when we cast them.

Laura, Producer of Odysseus
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It did feel like this time to time, but it was such a pleasure to go through your replies and to feel your enthusiasm and ideas!