Terra incognita
Template:Larp Skymningsland (Duskland) was a larp run in Hällekis, Sweden in 2010 (at the same site as Futuredrome) as a follow-up to Ingenmansland. It was designed by Olle Nyman, Sebastian Utbult, Andreas Sjöberg, Johannes Axner, Anna Sorrti and Jenny Fornell. Other crew included Cecilia Dolk, Anna-Karin Linder and Viktor Malmberg.
Contents
Setting and Themes
Kitchen sink realism in a post-apocalyptic Sweden. The backdrop was a refugee camp/frontier camp under a ruthless capitalist system. Primary themes were exploitation, oppression, sex and sleaze, trauma and rebellion.
Summary
Five years after the a world wide war broke out, and two years after the pandemic that followed, refugees from all over Sweden have ended up in Brottet ("The Quarry"); a ruthless and horrible little settlement in northen Sweden. Here the refugees quickly get indebted to the gang running the place, and are forced to work off ever increasing debts under harsh conditions. Sickness, starvation and violence is ripe. But, in this hellish place, a glimmer of hope can be found in the underground Union; a covert organization trying to unite the poor and fight for better conditions - or even overthrowing the current rule. But how do you fight an overwhelming enemy, without weapons and on an empty belly?
Synopsis
Skymningsland was, for many, about abject misery. The majority of characters at the larp were poor, indebted refugees forced to work hard for scraps, while the ruling elite could eat well and live off their work. Characters were more or less divided into four distinct groups; owners, muscle, workers and lumpenproletariat, with the majority of players in the last two groups. The owners were your typical tycoons; ruthless, greedy and powerhungry, and they in turn controlled the muscles - a biker gang á la Bandidos or Hells Angels. The muscle had the de facto monopoly on violence, and both owners and muscle came down hard on anyone found armed or spreading dissent.
The workers, to which most of the workers belonged in some form, were just your average joes. Having lived as refugees in a warn torn and diseasestricken country for several years, they were desperate for any kind of security, shelter, food, and as such were easy for owners to manipulate and control. The lumpenproletariat were the people who couldn't even get jobs and had to steal, beg or be very creative to survive. The lumpenproletariat was also actively kept as such, in order to make the workers in the camp less quarrelsome - if you didn't like the situation and voiced an opinion you could easily end up with the rest of the hobos.
A lot of effort was put into having actual work for the players to do ingame; chopping wood, making coal, pumping water and other labour intensive jobs. BAH continuing this later
Techniques
- Black Box
- Blank-firing Firearms
- Pre-game Workshop
- Honor System
- Flying Start
- Cut & Break
- Participatory Culture
Video
Video presentation
Presentation about the project by Olle Nyman, Johannes Axner and Sebastian Utbult at Prolog 2010.
