Across the Sea of Stars

Credits

Fifth Run

In June, 2019, Stephen Kohler, of the Lime Green Shirts in Troy, New York, was looking for more weekend-long LARPs to run at RPI. Several of the Lime Green Shirt GMs had already played, so they volunteered to help run the game, in exchange for the sources. Since that meant more runs of the game, Jeff was more than happy to agree.

Jeff and Jordan Diewald started talking about the game, and what changes we wanted to make. There were some simple editorial changes with the character sheets, making them easier to reference — changes we'd wanted to make for a long time now.

Then we started to talk about Tales. Nine new Tales went into the run. They were mostly smaller Tales, which made it easier to respond to requests for new Tales during the Tale periods, as groups of available players changed and merged. One of the Tales was special, for all of the players at one time. The fake mustaches worked to perfection.

This was also the first time that Jordan GMed a LARP. As ½ of the Tech GM staff, he was invaluable in keeping the process going. Jeff and Jordan were joined by Will Fergus, Allan Pendergrast, Melanie Saunders, and Rob Wensley — an excellent GM team that made everything work seamlessly.

The game ran all afternoon and evening on August 17th, 2019. The result was electric and fun. We were cursed as GMs, for hitting all the right dramatic pain points. There were pointed guns in alien standoffs, probes gone wrong, gray goo, and more than one surprising pregnancy. The players applauded when the game ended; a rare treat. They made the game great.

Just a Few Tales

In July, 2015, Philip Kelley sent Jeff an email about running a "LARP sampler" at Northwestern University in the Fall. Philip asked about a number of small LARPs, and then asked if he could run some of the Tales from Across the Sea of Stars in a standalone format. It was an intriguing question. Jeff knew that the Tales worked just fine this way, from back when the Tales were playtested. Furthermore, many are very approachable as small LARPs, even for new players.

Since it was Philip, and he asked nicely, Jeff agreed, sending all of the game materials for Philip to pore over. Once Philip had a chance to go over the materials, they discussed which Tales might work best, out of the set of thirty-five. Philip settled on a short list and prepared the materials.

The Dead City Productions of An Afternoon of LARPs ran on October 4th, 2015, in Annenberg Hall on the Northwestern campus in Evanston, Illinois. Philip Kelley and John Kohn set up the players with a handful of Tales from Across the Sea of Stars. They were popular and people were clearly amused. (Philip has the incriminating pictures as proof.)

Fourth Run

The theme for Intercon O was "orbit", and what better space-based game to rerun than Across the Sea of Stars? It is the LARP that we are most asked to rerun, based on the word of mouth of our previous players.

In 2013, Jeff was thinking about potential new Tales for Across the Sea of Stars. There were many TNT discussions over port, interesting cheeses and crackers. While it didn't add any new Tales to Across the Sea of Stars, the results were very positive, leading to The Tales of Irnh. The Tales of Irnh is another Tale-based game experimenting with the form, set in the Across the Sea of Stars universe.

After Irnh, Jeff continued to write Tales, and three of them ended up in Across the Sea of Stars. One of them, Special Relativity, provided a very memorable scene for Jeff to marvel over. The other two went well, too.

Jeff's new double-sided printer also proved a valuable addition to the process, radically shrinking the number of physical pages needed for the game. It meant a much shorter Week of a Thousand Papercuts©.

The game ran on February 28, 2015, run by Jeff Diewald, Jim Edwards-Hewitt, Susan Giusto, Tim Lasko, Charlie McCutcheon, and Barry Tannebaum. There was a full cast, in a slightly smaller room than usual. It meant the players spilled out into the foyer area. There were several dramatic moments that caught the eyes of others at the con. Several also caught sight of our sets and our Klorn and thought they were very cool.

This run also proved, once again, that you can rerun a LARP essentially unchanged and have a very different set of outcomes.

Third Run

During the spring of 2012 (and before), we were asked very nicely by several people who'd heard great things about the game and wanted to play it. Once Jeff had GMing agreements from the TNT team, he started looking for a venue. Fortunately, Carolyn Daitch, Daniel Burns, and (at run-time) Bernie Gabin of the BSCF made it possible for us to get the Levin Ballroom at Brandeis.

This led to the Week of a Thousand Papercuts©, where we assembled everything for the third run. This was a major effort, where Barry Tannenbaum, Charlie McCutcheon and Jeff were helped by Jaelen Hartwin, who also wanted to help us run the game. We also enlisted Greg McCutcheon, Jordan Diewald, and Julie Diewald to help us slice, fold, stuff and pack the game.

Second Run

The game was updated during 2008 for Intercon I by the latest round of Usual Suspects: Jeff Diewald, Susan Giusto, Tim Lasko, Charlie McCutcheon, and Barry Tannenbaum. Because Jeff wanted Drew Novick to play, and since Drew was first on the waitlist, Jeff wrote a new character just for him, and tied the character into many of the stories. Jeff is crazy that way. The game ran on March 7th, 2009. Once again, the results were intense.

First Run

At the end of February, 2004, Jeff played in the brilliant and wonderful Tales of Pendragon game, a tale-telling LARP set in Arthurian times. On the plane flight back, Jeff realized that this was the perfect vehicle for playing out all those science fiction stories he'd been inhaling since he was a child. Across the Sea of Stars was born on that plane flight.

Over the next year, Jeff wrote many of the Tales for the game. When Intercon F was announced, it seemed like the perfect venue for the game, and so TNT Productions was dragged into the process. At the time, TNT Productions consisted of the Usual Suspects: Lynn Anslow, Jeff Diewald, Susan Giusto, Tim Lasko and Barry Tannenbaum. Despite having another entire year, it was a challenge to produce the unfinished game under the tight deadline of the con, especially when Real-Life™ struck so many of us. It was very tough, but Jeff finished the game just before run-time. The game ran on March 4th, 2006. The results blew all of us away.

Other Credits

Science fiction aficionados will recognize many of these stories and references. Some are based on works by such wonderful authors as:

Some are based on favorite television shows, such as:

Some are inspired by favorite movies, (good, bad, and cheesy) such as:

• 2001: A Space Odyssey
• Armageddon
• Blade Runner
• The Caine Mutiny
• Deep Impact
• Galaxy Quest
• It Came From Outer Space
• Mutiny on the Bounty
• Planet of the Apes (all the movies)
• Solaris (Jeff saw the 1972 Russian version when it came out)
• The Day the Earth Stood Still
• This Island Earth

Some are inspired by other LARPs, such as:

• Collision Imminent!
• Tabula Rasa II

Some are even Jeff's own work. This game is set in Jeff's universe of Maggie Gale and the Vortex of Chaos, which was also the inspiration for his contribution to Collision Imminent!. You can read three of these novellas using the links at the bottom of the Setting page.

Many others have contributed to this effort. They include:

• Jordan Diewald, who read every bit of the game as it was developed. Jordan contributed many ideas during that time, including several plots. Jordan also helped to prototype some of the puzzles and mechanics used in the game. Jordan is now one of the co-authors of the game, and one of its GMs.
• Sven Skoog, who suggested some mathematical game theory ideas that translated into some very useful puzzles and interconnections.
• Doug Hoover, who found a significant blooper on Jeff's part, and told him about it nicely, so it could get fixed. The superstable transuranic element hooverium is named after Doug.
• Steve McGarry helped with the set construction and created our Klorn. He is a wonder!
• HBR1, a streaming radio station playing ambient electronica. Many of the characters were written while under the influence of this station. It's vanished in the years since the first run. Other streaming stations have come and gone. The latest is "Klassic Radio — Games," which plays video game soundtrack pieces.
• Phoebe, the cat who tried to help Jeff's typing on many occasions, by walking across the laptop during the writing process. It is not true that the weird alien names are the result of her typing. Phoebe spent much of her time curled up next to or on top of Jeff as he wrote.

Several people helped to playtest parts of this game. Their contributions were invaluable.

Jeff built this website writing all the HTML himself. Much of the look and feel is controlled by CSS. Jeff could not have done this without the Eric Meyer books on CSS, which are now a standard reference in Jeff's technical library.