Reflections

RPG system: LARP

By

✏️	Patrik Bálint
✏️	David Owen
✏️	Karolina Soltys
	Patrik Bálint
	David Owen
	Karolina Soltys

Description

Reflections. ​A Nordic-style larp inspired by Solaris.

Dates: 11-12 November, 18-19 November 2023.
Location: Chislehurst, London, UK.
Cost: £225. Subsidised tickets available.
Sign-up: closes on Monday, 3 April.

​
Must I go on living here then, among the objects we both had touched, in the air she had breathed? In the name of what? In the hope of her return? I hoped for nothing. And yet I lived in expectation. Since she had gone, that was all that remained. I did not know what achievements, what mockery, even what tortures still awaited me. I knew nothing, and I persisted in the faith that the time of cruel miracles was not past.​


When you enter the Mirror, you encounter Reflections… mysterious beings with an uncanny resemblance to people who were important in your life. People who died a long time ago, who left you heartbroken, or who only ever existed in your imagination. Can you relive the past? Can you change the future? Can you escape the present? In Reflections, a Nordic-style larp inspired by Solaris, test the limits of escapism and explore your innermost self… or create a new self, and a better world, to live and die in.


Man has gone out to explore other worlds and other civilizations without having explored his own labyrinth of dark passages and secret chambers, and without finding what lies behind doorways that he himself has sealed.


The modern-day world almost as we know it – but with small pockets of the unknowable, “Anomalies”, and the Agency investigating them. Don’t expect the paranormal as-seen-on-TV, Eldritch horrors and green skinned aliens. In your experience, the paranormal is much more subtle and hidden: a 90 year old peasant who seems to genuinely remember her past lives, a basement of a farm in Kansas inflicting temporary amnesia on researchers sent to investigate it, and now – Anomaly K-964, codename “The Mirror”.

The first group of researchers was sent there a month ago. Within the Mirror, they soon encountered human-like beings, in many cases almost identical to people they used to know, seemingly sharing their memories and personalities – and yet somehow subtly wrong, or at least different. Were these just figments of the researchers’ imagination? A manifestation of some unknowable alien will, attempting to communicate with the humans? Ghosts living in a strange metaphysical dimension?

The researchers began conducting various psychological, moral and philosophical experiments on the Reflections: do they feel emotions? How much exactly do they resemble the original person? Could they hurt a human? But over time – and some of the humans claim that much more than a month has elapsed since they entered the Mirror – their research methodology lapsed, and they started succumbing more and more to the influence of the Mirror: for how long can you resist your dead lover’s embrace?

The Agency has now detected a growing instability in the electromagnetic energy levels of the Mirror: it is likely to fade out of existence, perhaps returning to whatever other dimension it originally came from, within the next few days! A second group of researchers has been dispatched with orders to extract their colleagues, and gather whatever knowledge they still can before this unique opportunity to expand the horizon of human understanding disappears forever.

Note: even though the larp is otherwise quite closely inspired by Solaris, it is set on Earth rather than on a space station: the researchers are exploring a maze-like cave complex which mysteriously appeared overnight somewhere in rural UK.


So must one be resigned to being a clock that measures the passage of time, now out of order, now repaired, and whose mechanism generates despair and love as soon as its maker sets it going? Are we to grow used to the idea that every man relives ancient torments, which are all the more profound because they grow comic with repetition? That human existence should repeat itself, well and good, but that it should repeat itself like a hackneyed tune, or a record a drunkard keeps playing as he feeds coins into the jukebox...


Despite the sci-fi setting, Reflections is primarily a larp about human relationships and the ways we perceive ourselves and each other. Do not expect much in terms of organiser-driven plot, intrigue, puzzles to solve or secrets to uncover. Instead, we’re hoping that you’ll cry on each other’s shoulders, argue about the meaning of life, beg each other for forgiveness, and share one last kiss before parting forever.

The characters are fully pre-written. There are two types of characters:

Humans: many of them are researchers investigating the Mirror, but some have arrived here in other ways and for their own reasons. Some of them have lived here for some time already – they’ve become fascinated by the Reflections, living with them, perhaps falling in love with them. Other human characters will arrive at the beginning of the larp and only encounter their Reflections for the first time when they arrive.
Reflections: strange beings within the Mirror, they only take a concrete form when someone arrives from outside. They typically mirror someone or something important in the outsider’s life – even if that person is now dead, or never even existed. Most of them believe that they are human. From the larp design perspective, the Reflections are full characters, with their own pasts, relationships and relatable motivations. The players will be able to choose their balance between humanity and Otherness, and will be given suggestions and content for both of these directions.


Note: this is not a paired larp. While of course the relationship between the human and their Reflection will be an important one, it will not be the only focus of the larp and all characters, human or Reflection, will have several other important relationships. The researchers are not just colleagues: they have all kinds of familial, romantic and other entanglements with each other – and the same applies to Reflections.

The larp will follow the last couple of days that the humans can spend in the Mirror before it disappears. During the day, the researchers will have some optional instructions for performing experiments – designed to fuel play on relationships and emotions rather than as puzzle-solving or any actual “science”. At night, the atmosphere in the Mirror changes and becomes even stranger, confusing and intoxicating. The humans are tempted to forget about their external lives and fully embrace this world created by their innermost desires. Finally, the human characters must decide whether to leave the Mirror, leaving behind their Reflections, or stay forever.

Playing flashback scenes will be an important element of the larp. This will let us explore the shared past between the humans and the original versions of the Reflections.


It’s what we wanted: contact with another civilization. We have it, this contact! Our own monstrous ugliness, our own buffoonery and shame, magnified as if it was under a microscope! We came here as we truly are, and when the other side shows us that truth—the part of it we pass over in silence—we’re unable to come to terms with it!


Some of the main themes of the larp are:

Confronting your deepest issues, aspects of yourself, your “inner demons”.
The opportunity to finally have the important conversation you have rehearsed in your head for years.
Questioning your identity and your purpose.
Memory – how it is fallible and biassed.
Trying to relive, or escape the past.
Coping with bereavement and abandonment.
Becoming obsessed with someone.
Do we truly know the people we love?


The larp features some heavy themes in the backstories of many of the characters, and they will be played upon during the larp. Some examples are: bereavement, alcoholism, drug addiction, physical illness, mental illness, suicide, religion, death of a child, pregnancy, bullying, toxic relationships, childhood abuse or neglect. During sign-up, you will be able to specify which themes you don't want to have in your character backstory, and which you don't want even in the backstories of characters you have pre-scripted relationships with; we will ensure you will be cast according to these preferences. However, there is no guarantee that an unrelated character will not e.g. confide to you during the game about these themes; if this happens, you will be responsible for ensuring your own psychological safety and using safewords to de-escalate, opt-out or stop the scene.

Sexual abuse will not be present in the character backstories, and there will be no play on sexual violence. We are aware, however, that the notion of informed consent can get quite blurry in this setting. A situation may arise where a Reflection gives enthusiastic consent to have sex with a human, while being fully immersed in their human persona, believing they are e.g. a loving spouse of that researcher. Even the researcher might be so influenced by the Mirror that they are deluded into thinking their spouse never died, and that they're now having sex with them. When the Reflection at a later point realises their true nature, they might be upset about -- among many other things -- that intercourse having occurred. However, we suggest that the players steer away from intense play on sexual trauma, since this is a topic that tends to easily dominate the larp experience and we don't want it to become a theme of the larp.

The types of experiments the researchers might conduct on the Reflections are varied – playing on the more unethical end of these (e.g. intentionally causing the Reflections mental or physical suffering) will be restricted to the final hours of the larp and will be opt-in for both the researchers and the Reflections; we don’t intend the larp to be “torture porn”.

The inspirations of the larp include:

Books: Solaris and The Mask by Stanislaw Lem, Uncanny Valley by Greg Egan
Films: everything by Andrei Tarkovsky, Aftersun by Charlotte Wells, Persona by Ingmar Bergman, Decision to Leave by Park Chan-wook
Games: Immortality by Sam Barlow, Transistor by Supergiant Games
Larps: Lone Wolves Stick Together by Nadja Lipsyc



Safety techniques. We will be using well-established safewords and signs to escalate/de-escalate/opt-out/stop the scene. They will be explained in the player documents closer to the larp, and again during the workshops.

Physical contact. The baseline for contact without asking for consent is hugs, violence represented by carefully shaking someone's shoulder and making a slow-motion punch without connecting, intimate/romantic/sexual touch not going beyond caressing cheeks, hands and hair and using a theatrical kissing meta-technique (kissing your own thumb placed on the other person's lips; we will demonstrate it during the workshop). However, the larp supports levels of consent both below and above this baseline:

If you're uncomfortable with anything from this list, you will be able to announce it to the group during the workshop, and your wishes will be respected. You will also be able to use safewords to de-escalate/opt-out/stop the scene during the game in case people forget.
We expect players with pre-scripted romantic, sexual or violent relationships to calibrate their comfort zones and expectations in detail before the game. There will also be time provided for it during the pre-game workshops. As long as the players have negotiated it between each other, they are allowed to go above the baseline.
If new romantic/sexual/violent relationships emerge spontaneously during play, you can use escalation/deescalation techniques to go above or stay below the baseline, or have a quick off-game discussion with the other player to establish comfort zones before proceeding with the scene.


Player-centred attitude. Play up slowly to scenes that might be potentially upsetting to other players and give other players the option to opt out or approach the scene in a way that they are comfortable with. It is always okay to ask someone for a brief off-game discussion to calibrate any aspect of play.


We look forward to playing with you!


It's... a sick God, who always desires more than he’s able to have, and doesn’t always realize this to begin with. Who has built clocks, but not the time that they measure. Has built systems or mechanisms that serve particular purposes, but they too have outgrown these purposes and betrayed them. And has created an infinity that, from being the measure of the power he was supposed to have, turned into the measure of his boundless failure.​
​-- Solaris, Stanislaw Lem

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