The King's Council

RPG system: LARP
Participants: 13 players, Female Characters: 5, Male Characters: 5, Characters that can be in any gender: 3

By

Intercon U: Ultraviolet (2023), Crowne Plaza, Warwick, Rhode Island, United States

Tamasin Wohlers

Description

It’s 1847, and the Victorian era is in full swing in Ruritania. Railways are being built, and it seems new factories are opening near constantly. The future, it seems, has come into your lives in just these past few years. The world is changing, too – the telegraph and steam powered travel brings once distant lands close, and the people across Europe and beyond stir to the tunes of Nationalism, Communism, and other new political movements. National alliances shift as borders are redrawn, and the face of warfare is forever changed.

Amidst all these changes, trouble stirs at home. Other nations have designs upon Ruritania, Marxism rears its head, famine and bankruptcy both loom. The king is weak and ineffectual, and both nobles and commoners alike see a chance for their classes to benefit. Religious discontent threatens to break the once solid bedrock of society. And none of this is helped by a rumored feud within the royal family itself.

So the King has called you, his council, to advise him on what changes must be made. If you can manage to get past your petty disagreements with each other, of course.

The King’s Council is a four hour high-mechanic political game where the players will be working, sometimes together, sometimes at cross purposes, to find a solution to the problems faced by their country that both solves the problems, and benefits their interests more than those of their rivals. It is not possible for everyone to ‘win,’ and indeed, it is difficult to even solve the Kingdom’s problems successfully. There is also some amount of interpersonal conflict, and some light romance. Content warnings: period sexism, classism, homophobia, and other regressive attitudes.

Played at