Last Boat Leaving

RPG system: LARP
Participants: 6-12 players, Male characters: 3-5, Female characters: 3-5, Characters that are not strictly defined as male or female: 0-2

By

Lucky Consequences (2018), Naish Holiday Village, Christchurch, Dorset, United Kingdom

Tony Mitton

Intercon S: Smoke and Mirrors (2019), Crowne Plaza in Warwick, Rhode Island, United States

Tony Mitton

Description

It's 1987 in Silent Valley, a tiny, isolated community deep within rural Oregon. Over the course of three, widely-separated celebrations the inhabitants will love and lose, learn patience or despair - and perhaps finally learn why it's always 1987 here, and has been for a very long time indeed.

_Last Boat Leaving_ is a game with a mystery at its heart. Why is it always 1987 in Silent Valley? Why does nobody ever die? And why can nobody ever leave? But this isn't a mystery to be solved in game - play is about what life might be like under such circumstances, the dynamics of a small group, acceptance over time of the very strange, changing relationships - and whether it's possible love forever. Plus 1980s pop music. The game is loosely inspired by sources such as Lost, Dark City and One Hundred Years of Solitude.

The game will be structured in three acts, each widely separated in time, and with its own (diegetic) musical soundtrack. The first two acts - "Darkness on the Edge of Town" and _(name TBD, but possibly "Don't You Want Me, Baby?")_ - are celebrations, and there may be dancing (it's optional). Act Three - "Atomic" - is a darker finale as a great storm engulfs Silent Valley. Everything, even 1987, ends one day and perhaps the reckoning has come at last. What final decisions can be made? What is left to be said?

Whilst there are a number of pre-written plots and relationships, there will be some co-creation of characters before the game. But no workshops, I promise.

Played at