Elsinore: The Time Is Out Of Joint

System: LARP
Teilnehmer: 4-9 Spieler, 0-2 NPC

Von

Tapestries (2026), Embassy Suites by Hilton Milpitas Silicon Valley, California, Vereinigte Staaten

Reggy Granovskiy (GM)

Beschreibung

“The time is out of joint. O cursed spite, that ever I was born to set it right!” (Hamlet 1.5.210-211)

Something is rotten in Elsinore Castle. King Hamlet’s ghost has trapped the castle residents in a time loop, unsatisfied with their actions in the wake of his death. But can the spirit be trusted? Play as members of the court as they confront both literal and metaphorical ghosts. This is a mechanics-light 4-9 player game focusing on emergent narratives coming out of character relationships and internal conflicts.

Players will play as characters from Hamlet, with space to interpret their character in many different ways and take their arc in unique directions. The game consists of two main segments: Loop Zero, a ~1 hour long series of vignettes guiding players through the main plot beats of Hamlet, meant to familiarize everyone with their character, their relationships, and the mechanics; and the Time Loop, an extremely free-form series of scenes where players have complete liberty over their arcs and their responses to revealed information.

Will you seek revenge? Investigate the haunting? Conspire with loved ones? Run away with pirates? Become someone new? Break down under the strain?

During Loop Zero, characters will be given short prompts that guide the upcoming scene – and once prompted, will have the freedom to improvise a scene based on their character motivations. Once the main plot of Hamlet is complete, the guardrails will come off and the Time Loop will begin. During the Time Loop, players will essentially have an open sandbox to play in. Players will be largely responsible for determining when to reset the loop, as well as setting up new scenes once the loop has been reset, with some guidance from the mechanics. The main thrust of the Time Loop will be how characters balance their (both internally and externally) conflicting desires, and how they react to: being trapped together, losing loved ones, both dying and being unable to die, others’ revealed secrets, and opportunities to explore new aspects of themselves. Players will have the best experience if they’re willing to make dramatic declarations/short speeches and are proactive in pursuing character relationships and exploring different aspects of their characters.

This is a mechanics-light game with a focus on assisting character development. Every character has a list of secrets to choose from prior to the game – meant to assist in building your own interpretation of a character from Hamlet – and the ability to accumulate new secrets during emotional moments to increase inner turmoil. There will be verbal cues to signal deaths, cues to initiate time loop resets, hand signals for spying/disguises, and special rules for ghosts (people become ghosts when they are killed). There will be no pantomimed combat; violence will be conveyed through mini-monologues. (Essentially, you need to talk about your feelings if you want to do violence.) Character death during the time loop portion will require player consent through a verbal cue. During Loop Zero, scenes will have written prompts for each character; during the Time Loop, there will be broader pre-written motivations to choose from at the beginning of each loop to help guide roleplay, and a set of example scenes to help with loop resets. There’s no “crunch” or numbers in this game – all the mechanics are meant to facilitate developing a character arc and telling a story.

Knowledge of Shakespeare’s Hamlet isn’t required! Your character sheet and the events of Loop Zero should give you all you need to know as a player – and the events of the game may not always directly match the events of Hamlet. That said, Hamlet is a tragedy and this game is meant to address its themes; while there will likely be funny and chaotic moments, especially during the time loop, the overall tone is high drama with serious themes. Most characters will die – often multiple times.

Also, although characters are gendered in the original play, in this game characters can be played as any gender – and gender doesn’t need to remain static in a time loop with countless possibilities.

NPCs include King Hamlet, who will have a series of partially-scripted scenes to participate in and power over loop resets/setting new scenes during the Time Loop; and a Swing NPC, who can jump into different scenes as a guard/pirate/thespian/etc. as needed.

Content Warnings

Pervasive themes: suicide and suicidal ideation, death and dying, grief and loss, dysfunctional family dynamics, madness and distorted beliefs, violence

Present in some character sheets/scenes/arcs: gaslighting, allegories for psychiatric abuse and institutionalization, misogyny/sexism, religious guilt, infidelity, alcoholism, romance, internalized gender issues

The mechanics around madness are meant to facilitate exploring various aspects of madness (e.g. perceptions not aligning with others’, difficulties with communication/being understood, internal conflicts, emotional extremes) through roleplay without resorting to stereotypical “Hollywood"esque representations of mental illness.

Feel free to reach out to the GM with any questions or concerns about how these topics may come up / be addressed.

Hier gespielt worden