Songs Of Our Youth is a weird one. (Gods, I’m saying that for all of these, aren’t I). It’s weird precisely because it’s not. It’s a normal high school reunion. Nothing magical. Nothing strange. Just the feeling of returning a place that was the site of So Much. So much hope. So much trauma. So many dreams. So many fears. It’s about growing and having grown and reflecting on things. The big question was “What do we do with our past once we’ve grown out of it?” There are no plot elements. No midgame events that change context. Just…people. It was also a boxed larp, meaning that unlike other games where the player submits a survey that I base a character on, I wrote these characters on my own and then assigned them to people.
I ran it a month or so ago. It wasn’t very good, I think. A couple things made it harder. We were missing some characters which meant that some plots didn’t really go anywhere. I was also sick as all hell and a little bit delirious, so it was hard for me to do anything day of. Finally, I think the game was oddly missing a lot of the little details. Which is strange, given the sheets were mostly little details from people’s lives. But they were incomplete, dear reader. They lay incomplete still. I had planned to make text conversations between all of the characters. To give a sense of how the characters spoke with one another. To give a sense of how a character’s voice changed over time. I didn’t manage to do this for more than two or three characters. It’s a shame.
Still, there’s something special there. Something weird and nostalgic and sad. And the nice thing about a boxed larp is that I can revisit it. Re-run it. Edit it. I’ve never been one for editing. I’m bad at it. But I think I want to try. One day. And we’ll see how different this memory is.
