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Design
Our Last Year is designed to simultaneously provide complete player freedom to flow with their character and create their own story, and enough structural support and play guidance to help the players get back into the game if they are feeling lost.
Characters
The characters are core to the larp. Our Last Year has 31 characters, which will be matched at sign-up with players' preferences. We will discuss characters with their players before and after assignment to tailor the experience to the player.
In Our Last Year, we chose to embrace a maximalist approach to character design. On top of a backstory and relationship descriptions every character sheet will include a variety of impressions of that character: their diary or snippets of their stream of consciousness, a playlist of songs, perhaps some images, poems, interactive fiction... We will also provide various play suggestions and possible story arcs, but whether you choose to play on these is completely optional. Each of these characters has been alive in our minds for quite a while, accumulating life experiences, different interpretations, new personality facets; we will try to convey all this to you the best we can, and let you take over from there.
Craving identity. Craving connection. Please, just once, just so I know how it feels like. Please, I’ve never, I’ve never. Pick up the transmitter. Start talking. There must be someone on the other end, someone who will listen, someone who cares. Hi, I’m Max. I’m seventeen. The world will end before I turn 19. I’m a misfit | miracle | mistake | mind-reader | mirror | marionette. Me. I’m me. Max. I'll be listening on this frequency.
Structure
It’s all we are, a sequence of memorable moments. Birthdays, graduations, anniversaries, funerals. Weddings. Your thoughts and feelings on a random Wednesday morning don’t matter, you won’t remember them on Thursday. All your Wednesday morning selves never existed. What persists, what makes you you, is you in a mortarboard. You riding a bike for the first time. You in a wedding dress. This is why we invented all these rituals, rites-of-passage – we need structure, we need to do things the right way. We need to stage our lives with care. The end of the world is no different.
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Day 1, 14:00-20:00: workshops, mostly dedicated to discussing and calibrating relationships between the characters.
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Day 1, 20:00-late: The larp starts one week after the news about the asteroid. This evening, the community celebrates a wedding between two of the characters. Preparations, ceremony and party.
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Day 2: Friday will represent the entire year in the life of the community before the predicted impact. The players will be able to choose the most emotionally interesting moments in the lives of their characters that they want to experience (see below, Fluid Time). Preparations for the disaster and an attempt at normal life in the community, punctuated with events like Christmas or an 18th birthday.
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Day 3: The final day. Last rites, preparations, farewells, prayers, hopes and doubts. Finally, the characters gather to witness the end.
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Day 3, evening-late: optional debrief, after-party.
Meta-techniques
Fluid Time. Day 2 represents the entire year in the life of the community, September 2027 - September 2028. The main way to play on this is: if you have an interaction with someone, and another interaction with that person some time later, you can assume that more time, e.g. weeks or months, have passed in the fiction. There will be no cuts between scenes - the players will be free to play in whatever pace feels right to them. However, the scheduled events like Christmas will remind people of the passage of time. This will make it possible to play through the last year of the community and see the different highlights, preparations, changes and conflicts. We will workshop it before the larp.
Radio Transmissions. The radio is the only source of contact with the external world, but it is unreliable, distorted, surreal, more and more so as the game progresses. The transmissions will provide inspiration for play, highlight the conflict between the different interpretations of the world, and be an echo chamber for the characters' inner voices. Note: we will provide printed transcripts for all the transmissions for any players who prefer to read rather than listen.
Blackbox. A space to explore the alternative past, present and future of the characters.
Meta-spaces. Several special places with different, focused atmospheres, allowing the players to reflect and steer their play in a specific direction.
- Only two minutes?!
- Everyone needs to stick to their quotas. Radio transmissions this powerful cost us a lot of electricity.
- But there's so much that needs to be preserved! So much human culture which will be lost otherwise! The others send into space "Hi, my name was John Smith and I used to like football, it's sad to be dying," isn't world's literature more important?!
- Kate, calm down. Two minutes is all you get. Choose one thing. And it's transmitting already.
- But what do I choose?! Fuck, fuck. Focus. Okay. This.
Autumn Day by Reiner Maria Rilke
Lord: it is time. The summer was immense.
Lay your long shadows on the sundials,
and on the meadows let the winds go free.
Command the last fruits to be full;
give them just two more southern days,
urge them on to completion and chase
the last sweetness into the heavy wine.
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Who has no house now, will never build one.
Who is alone now, will long remain so,
will stay awake, read, write long letters
and will wander restlessly up and down
the tree-lined streets, when the leaves are drifting.
Activities
Boss? I hope you're getting this, there's no reception here so this weird radio transmitter might be the only way for me to contact you for a while. So, I've gathered a lot of material, I'm thinking not just a column, I might need a few pages for what I've seen here! I feel I'm the only sane guy in a madhouse here, there's all kinds of crazies: preppers, self-proclaimed leaders of the new world, preachers, visionaries... And then some more people who seem to just want to party, can't say it doesn't appeal. And actually the work we're supposed to be doing here isn't bad either, can't remember how long it's been since I made anything with my own hands and gotta say it feels more satisfying than staring at a screen all day. But it's all crazy, the asteroid will miss us by like a million miles, right? Right?! Anyway, I know I said I'd be back in the office by Monday, but can you grant me a couple of days of holiday? I'd really like to stay here a bit longer.
There will be player-led, optional activities for your characters to engage in, oppose, or ignore as they see fit. They are meant to provide play opportunities and drama, as various groups hold different beliefs on what is important for the community. Some examples:
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Improving the Habitat with your own hands: building fences, sealing doors and windows, sewing and affixing tarpaulin airlocks etc.
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Gas mask and first aid drills, physical exercise.
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Helping cook delicious meals from simple ingredients.
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Organising and participating in celebrations, religious and spiritual rituals. other events.
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Enjoying the holiday resort and partying.
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Participating in various player-led projects, e.g. preserving humanity's cultural legacy.
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Psychological screenings.
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Providing entertainment for the rest of the community.