What Might Have Been

RPG system: LARP
Participants: 6-18 players

By

The Smoke (2019), Theatre Delicatessen, 2 Finsbury Avenue, London, United Kingdom

Karolina Soltys

Tallinn International Larp Festival (2020), Dance School Koit, Tallinn, Estonia

	David Owen
	Karolina Soltys

Description

They say the world is ending. Back in the city, the tabloid headlines screamed ASTEROID WILL KILL US ALL IN 2021, while eggheads on TV said it would probably fly by. But here, on this farm in the middle of nowhere, there’s just the radio, blending this multitude of stories into a more and more uniform hum.

There’s a group of us here, waiting for the end, forgotten by the rest of humanity. We are very different people, with different reasons to be here, but the end of days seems to be bringing us closer together. Stripped of our jobs, mortgages and everyday lives, we’re all just people here, trying to make sense of things and saying our goodbyes. Today, we’re celebrating a wedding – perhaps the last one any of us will ever see – and afterwards, someone will have to do the dishes. We have 400 more days to fill with meaning.

Inspired by Melancholia by Lars von Trier.

Content Warnings: Self-harm, child abuse, cancer, alcoholism, depression, drugs.

Presented by
Karolina Soltys (UK): Karolina Soltys has been writing, playing and organising Nordic-style larps for several years. She is a founder of The Immersivists Club, a community playing larps in London, and has co-organised three editions of The Smoke. Her larps have been presented at several larp festivals; one of them, Arsenic & Lies, has been published commercially. In her practice, Karolina takes inspiration from other forms of art (literature, film, music), adapting them into co-creative, character-driven immersive experiences.

Played at