Lift Off!

RPG system: LARP
Participants: 8 players, Female characters: 2, Male characters: 4, Characters that are not strictly defined as male or female: 2

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Description

“When you launch in a rocket, you’re not really flying that rocket. You’re just sort of hanging on.”

– Michael P. Anderson

T minus 5…

Last minute scans of the diagnostic readings show everything optimal, save for a brief power fluctuation. T minus 4… Mary clutches the hands of her best friend in both hands as she watches the ground crew close the sturdy door to the rocket. T minus 3… Tom tips the whiskey glass back, ignoring the stares in the room. Maybe after the noise of the launch he can leave and finally get some sleep. T minus 2…

The power fluctuation is brought to the director’s attention, but the director is unconcerned. The launch will proceed.

T minus 1… The rumbling starts inside the rocket and Mac exhales, trying not to show nervousness. Roger puts a comforting hand on their shoulder, but says nothing. Lift Off! Lift Off! is a scripted scene game about the people involved with the (completely made up) Ganymede 1 mission in the 1960s. Events and characters are fictional and not intended to represent anyone living or dead, but are inspired by the people and events surrounding the Mercury 7 program and the Apollo 13 mission. Players will take on the roles of Ganymede astronauts, NASA personnel on the ground monitoring the mission, and family members of the astronauts watching at home. Topics during game play will include gender roles, alcoholism, friendship, divorce, infidelity, guilt, grief and potential loss of loved ones. Theere will also be a few simple puzzles to simulate complicated technical tasks. As a scripted scene game, you will play through specific scenes following a guideline of character actions and goals. Sometimes players will act in scenes and sometimes they will observe the scenes of others. Characters will occasionally be separated by physical space when running simultaneous scenes. Scripts for the scenes will be slowly revealed to the players during the game, leaving room for a few surprises. As the game goes on, there is less direction and more agency for each character. The final scenes will allow the players to create a collaborative, shared ending to their story which is not pre-written.

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