Rounding out the Luminary Roleplay Society’s games for 2016, on Dec. 11th Acata ran a LARP called Midwinter at the Summer Court.  Midwinter was about a Court of the Fae, facing a dire threat on the night of the year when they were weakest.  It was a short, accessible game written for a large number of people – we ultimately had 23 players!  We are excited to report that several first-time LARPers turned out.  They were great and we hope to see them at future events.

Midwinter, like Will that be All? before it, asked the players to provide a lot in terms of fleshing out the world and the plots and the connections between the characters.  Unlike WTBA?, there were some pre-written plots, which drove the action of the game.  However, we also were encouraged to develop more on our own, and add things to the world as we saw fit. (There was a whiteboard in one room where we could log all of these added elements, so that others would know they existed and use them in their own plots.) Similarly, on our character sheets, we had very few preexisting connections to the other characters.  Instead, we did a pre-game round of connection building – we all had four randomly drawn colored beads, and we would partner with a person with a bead whose color matched one of our own.  Once we were all paired, Acata told us what kind of connection to form with that person – i.e. positive, negative, or a bit of both.  We then repeated this process twice more, reserving the last bead to spontaneously generate past connections during the course of the game. (I don’t think this was used too many times, though.)  We were encouraged to form connections with players we didn’t already know, which helped mix up the groups of people who have gamed together before.

Once all the setup was done, we played!  The game is live, so I can’t go into much detail about what transpired.  Suffice it to say that there was a profusion of memorable scenes and excellent roleplaying, it was a very fun evening, and I thought it was a nice finale to LRS’ 2016 season.  We’ll have more information about our 2017 plans soon.  Until then, happy holidays!

Some of the players of Midwinter at the Summer Court.

-Sarah, Historian Luminant