The Luminary Roleplay Society has had its first official larp!  On Saturday, September 10th, Daniel – with the able assistance of Matt and Amanda – ran “All the President’s Zombies,” a larp written by Mike Beddes (not affiliated with the LRS).  We, the players, were cast in the role of the President and his cabinet, trying to work out how our administration was going to respond to reports of a zombie uprising in Georgia.  With scanty information on the real situation and a fast-approaching press conference about the crisis, we debated and argued and ultimately came up with a plan – or at least, something that looked enough like a plan that the public would accept it.

All the President’s Zombies (hereafter abbreviated AtPZ) is unlike most of the other larps in the LRS Grimoire.  The Society’s catalog of larps are mostly written in the old Stanford style or in the MIT Assassin’s Guild style, both of which feature heavy PvP and strong mechanics to help facilitate the action.  AtPZ, by contrast, has almost no mechanics at all, and the problem that drives the plot is both distant and unsolvable.  The players must work around that limitation, and do what they can to make the situation better, even if they can’t fix it completely.  Nearly entire game takes place at a conference table, although the GM would occasionally pull players aside with phone calls from their staff (played by the AGMs) which brought new information into the game.  This was done with the GMs’ actual phones, for an extra touch of realism.  Once we had a plan that seemed reasonable, the president headed off to the press conference, where the rest of us played reporters and grilled her mercilessly on the plan that we had devised.  It was a unique format, and it was also a lot of fun.

Here’s a small sampling of quotes from game:

“We can see Cuba.  We’re not *in* Cuba, but we can see it.”

“I’ve been informed that we have not been able to get one of a treadmill.”