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Epic Dramaturgy

Revision as of 07:45, 28 May 2014 by Penguin (talk | contribs) (Typo fixing, typos fixed: ie → i.e.)

An Epic dramaturgy is a structure for a larp that use time jumps and where the same player will play in several different in-game locations.
Epic larp dramaturgy techniques picked from games like 2027, When Our Destinies Meet, Just a Little Lovin' and The Monitor Celestra:

  1. Time jumps with common brakes for the whole larp. This usually happens during act brakes.
  2. Developing story simultaneous in core groups of anchor relationships (ca 2-4 people) and social groups of larger relevance (your subculture or friend circuit, ca 5-10 people) and the whole world/larp/culture in the game (all players), both in brakes and during runtime to promote story development across the whole larp. It is important that the groups are not to overlapping, i.e. all anchor relations should not be within the same social circuit all of the time.
  3. Black boxing different places and times during runtime, like a temporary smaller time jump or flashbacks for just a few players.
  4. Using Fluid time in 360º runtime segments where different people need to be at different times for their stories to develop properly. Rigid time might brake the games consistency or a plots internal logic.
  5. Using several game locations with different scenes played in different places. Particularly traveling epics similar to the Odyssey can be played in a 360º illusion this way. The time spent in transition from one place to another can be dealt with in different ways: As storytold or verbally played out narrative transition or as an in-game larp trip for instance.
  6. Cut scenes where players are allowed to watch other players as they play a part of their story to develop a sense of the different stories being told in the same story, the other plots and subplots.
  7. Narrative Voice Over especially as intro and extro for acts and scenes.