The Tales — the Scenes in the LARP

A Tale is a small LARP, focused on making one, specific decision. There is a dilemma to be resolved. When the choice is made, the Tale is done. Think of it as a LARP with one plot, for a small group of players, lasting no more than twenty or thirty minutes. Tales may be resolved in a shorter time.

Characters may not survive the Tale. Since characters aren't reused in later Tales, they may choose to meet some terrible or noble end. We can play out The Cold Equations or the end of Titanic. The players will get entirely new characters for the next Tale.

A Tale is small. Jeff has written or co-written several dozens of Tales, most notably for Across the Sea of Stars and The Tales of Irnh. A small, odd number of players works best in his experience. All of the Tales in The Tales of Irnh are for five players. The Tales in Across... range from three to six players. For simplicity, we should aim for five player Tales. Having a Tale of a different size may make it hard to fit in with other Tales at runtime.

Tales should run themselves. There should be no need for a GM; anything that has to be resolved should be resolved by the players in a cooperative fashion. This can be done by negotiation or challenge.

The Journey of a Single Step Made Quadrillions of Times will consist of a series of Tales. This is the same structure as The Tales of Irnh, which has eight Tales and runs between 3.5 and 4.5 hours, depending on the players. It helps if the dilemma for the first Tale is simple and small in scope. If it isn't, the players can get stuck trying to solve some overarching problem they aren't equipped to solve.

The first Tale written is provided as an example.