Revelry Under Gaslight was a larp I wrote a few months ago. This one was weird because it's probably the least dark Larp I've written. This despite being set in a world of eternal darkness. The basic premise is that the world consists of seemingly endless deserts occupied by monsters that would be very happy to snack on humans. There are, however, gaslamps that stretch out as far as the eye can see. Many are lit, and seem to ward off the monsters. These gaslamps have existed far beyond written history and act as safe havens for explorers and researchers.
In the center of this is The City. A walled city, the only source of human civilization known to most of the characters. It's protected by the massive flame in the center of the city, providing light in the dark to a city undergoing an industrial revolution.
Amidst all this we have Sandships. Crewed by criminals and ne'er-do-wells, Sandships perform the important task of lighting the lamps outside the walls. And since it's a job with a pretty high fatality rate, a lot of the crews consist of criminals using it to expedite their sentence.
The players are either crewmembers or stowaways. The latter group were found by the crew who turned around to return the kids home, only to discover that their home was shrouded in darkness. It seems that everyone in The City was dead or disappeared. And with them any chance of resupplying. So now the players have to figure out, what next.
Where do we find hope when all seems hopeless?” That was the big question. And as such, the game was a lot lighter than that description would have you believe. There was a lot of dancing, reconciling, reunions and finding hope in possible futures and imagined goals. It wasn’t quite as wild or as heavy as Dream Come True. It wasn’t as Bombastic as Masks. It wasn’t as weird and esoteric as Matchmakrr. But it was sweet. It was a game where every character was just trying their best, and I think that’s nice. I don’t think it was quite as good as previous larps. There were some characters who didn’t do much. And without clear villains conflict sometimes fell flat (apparently trying to write like Chekov is hard, who knew?).But still. It was sweet. And I appreciated it.
