The Golden Valley

• Interactivities Ink

RPG system: LARP
Participants: 6-12 players

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Interactivities Ink

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Description

It is the distant future, twenty five years after the Grand Catastrophe of 2000. Most of you have no memories of the before time, a time of plenty where no person wanted for anything. Some of you may be old enough to remember what it was like back then, but they are dim memories from childhood.

But that all changed, and now you are barely able to eke out a living. You do not have global communication, so you do not know about the rest of the world, but everything local is terrible. The soil is arid and unhospitable; practically nothing grows in it. The world is dry and the frequent dust storms are destructive and deadly.

The basic necessities of life are scarce. Fresh water is worth more than its weight in gold. Canned foods from the before time were abundant, but you have nearly run out. You will starve, soon unless you find a food source. You can scavenge wild berries occasionally, but even those are rare here.

But you have heard a rumor that brings you hope. You have heard tales of The Golden Valley, a verdant unspoiled paradise where fresh fruits grow and clean water flows free. Unfortunately, it lies on the other side of the Purple Mountains. The mountains are home to hostile folk, strange mutated monsters, and worse. The weather is inhospitable to say the least.

You have no choice though. There is nothing for you here. You have gathered together in a caravan to try to forge through the Purple Mountains to the Golden Valley. Surely some of you will die, but maybe some will survive to reach the promised land.

**The Golden Valley** will be run using the **A Grandiose Disaster** system. Players will spend the first part of the slot creating characters using a simple, interactive character template system. Then they will run through the scenario. Then they will run through the scenario. **A Grandiose Disaster** focused on character interaction and roleplaying. There will be no complicated game mechanics or puzzles to solve.

_Trigger warning:_ **The Golden Valley** is a representation of a post-apocalyptic disaster movie. Some players may not enjoy disaster movies. The game system will require players to decide which characters will live and which will die. Some players may not be comfortable making this decision. This larp is not appropriate for younger children.

### What is **A Grandiose Disaster**?

**A Grandiose Disaster** is a new system that brings disaster and horror movie larps to your home. First you make your characters, based on tropes and templates: the rugged hero, the love interest, the comic relief, the precocious child, and so on. Then you are taken from scene to scene and in most scenes you have to decide which characters live and which die.

**A Grandiose Disaster** is designed to run quickly and easily, and without a GM. There are no complicated mechanics to learn. Character creation is simple, easy, and interactive with the other players. Runtime mechanics involve going from scene to scene and deciding who lives and who dies through a simple “majority rules” voting system.

The game is designed to focus on roleplaying and interactions, not mechanics. There will be no puzzles to solve, no “you need to figure this out to live.” Everything is presented to you by the scenario, and you get to roleplay as your world goes to hell around you.

I hope to release **A Grandiose Disaster** for sale in 2016, along with several different scenarios. To that end, we’ll be play testing some of those scenarios at Intercon P. Please contact mike@intink.com if you want to try playtesting some scenarios at home.

### Can I get a few more details?

Sure. Character creation is template based. We have templates for all the basic tropes of characters from a disaster movie. Some scenarios will have additional templates available. Character templates are gender neutral and may be made as characters anywhere along the gender spectrum. Character creation involves producing a small history for your character. Players then work together to create shared histories for their characters including positive and negative relationships.

Characters will have simple special abilities. Each character template will let you choose one ability from a specified list. Abilities let you break the rules in a simple way, maybe allowing you to survive when you would have died, or maybe letting you come back in to save the day after everyone else believes you are dead.

Play is simple. The scenario will be divided into scenes. The majority of these will be challenges to the players. For example, “you make your way through the dark hallway, when you come to a locked door. You can feel heat emanating from the other side. You need to make it through the fire.” Sometimes you will get to use an ability to get through the scene, but sometimes you will have to choose someone to die. The player gets to narrate the death scene, roleplaying it out with other players.

### What happens if we can’t choose someone to die?

Scenes are timed. If you cannot choose someone to die before time runs out, then a character is randomly chosen with characters whose templates are more likely to die weighted toward a random death.

### What happens to the players of dead characters?

They become the audience of the movie. They can sit on the sidelines and watch and bet among themselves who will be the next to die. And we’ll provide popcorn, just for them! Also, they can come back in as NPCs for future scenes. The runtime of **A Grandiose Disaster** is around 2 hours (not including character creation). We will try to avoid killing characters off until at least 1/3 of the way through the game.

### Can I play in more than one run at Intercon P?

Sure, play in them all. They will all be different scenarios. Note that some will involve interactive character creation and some will come with pre-created characters. Check the game description to be sure.

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