When Our Destinies Meet

Template:Larp When Our Destinies Meet is a black box role-playing system.

It is used to create short Black Box Tape Larps together with players in a workshop right before the game starts.

The system was created by Morgan Jarl and then co-developed with Petter Karlsson. Larpwrights are encouraged to hack the game and take parts of it with them as it is designed as a toolbox for creating larp rather than just one larp. In 2012 it was published for free download online.

When Our Destinies Meet is very heavy on dramachanics and transparency.

Summary

A party. A predestined meeting. A web of interlacing stories. We gather our inspiration from the director, playwright, and theater theorist Bertolt Brecht: his acting theory of Verfremdung and Haltung; his aesthetics, which were made widely known through the films Dogville and Manderlay by Lars von Trier; and his concern with social problems, morality and relationships.

When Our Destinies Meet requires 2 hours of preparation and 2 hours of black box larping, which uses theatre techniques and shifting perspective as the player, director, narrator, and audience. Using a model where larps are created by the participants in workshop before play, you should be ready to hash out some relationships and plots. The only story components and preparation we have as we enter the game are as follows: a party, social roles and, one or more destined meetings. We decide these three factors together during the workshop. First, we spend approximately 2 hours to create the drama, the game, and the relationships; then, we play for approximately 2 hours with a 30 min debrief. That is the total structure of the game and its preparations. A game to go. Out of the box larping.[1]

Techniques

• Pre-game Workshop
• Black Box
• Tape Larp
• Monologue
• Cut & Break
• Acts
• Flashback
• Flashforward
• Focus Scene
• Time Jump
• Cut Scene
• Narrative Voice Over

History

When Our Destinies Meet was first played in 2009 with name När Våra Öden Möts at the larp conference Prolog. It has subsequently been played at Knutepunkt 2009 and 2010, at Prolog 2010 and 2011 and at The Larpwriter Summer School 2012.
It has also been run in Finland, Sweden, Norway, Denmark, Latvia, Palestine and beyond.

External links

• Official game website where you can download the system as PDF