Ruin Raiders LARP Playtest July

We've had three successful runs of Ruin Raiders as a stand alone adventure game and each time we've moved a little closer to turning the concept into something that would work for an ongoing monthly LARP.

The setting is a far future post apocalyptic world where small groups of Raiders must work together to scavenge for the materials to maintain their equipment and build up secret sites where they can acquire raw materials as a regular income.

The next event is designed to test the format we envisage for the game and whether it can support the numbers of players we need to make an indoor combat LARP financially viable.

The system is designed around hard skills, so your ability to squeeze through gaps, decipher codes and haggle are all just as important as your ability to shoot straight. Teamwork and strategy are key to maximising your manpower and ensuring you have the right tools to hand when you need them.

For this event we’ll be using the Equipment based class system we used for the stand alone games. But, we have plans to develop this at future play tests. Combat will also be limited to Nerf combat within the ruins for this event. Don’t bring your own weapon, we’ll be providing them.

Costume
We’d welcome people coming in what costume you can muster and we have a few accessories that we can lone out. Try for combats and a t-shirt as a minimum and if you’ve got more, then awesome! More info on concepts coming soon.

Team Bookings
The event has space for up to four teams, so if you have 4-6 members we can book you a team slot of your very own. Solo raiders will be sorted into teams on the day.

Price
We want our games to be open to anyone, regardless of financial means so we operate on a Pay What You Can basis. We feel a donation between £5 and £20 is a fair price for the event that we run. Unfortunately, because of the number of no-shows at the last event we will be moving to an Advance Tickets basis.

Children
Unfortunately, it looks unlikely that our venue will have a suitable child licence in time for this event. But we do aim to make these events available to under 18’s in the future.

Facebook event available here:
https://www.facebook.com/events/757352440982504/

The Look & Feel - Before The Fall

The world that Ruin Raiders is set in is not the near future grungy post apocalypse of walking dead or Mad Max. It takes place after humanity has reached for the stars and obtained it's utopia. Inspirations for before the fall would be Star Trek: Next Generation, Ian Banks' Culture Novels and the pre crash parts of After Earth.

This was a post scarcity society where anything you could ever want was available just for the asking. They had something similar to Star Trek replicators where any item could be 3D printed on demand if you had enough raw material. Most items are expected to be used a few times and then broken down into the raw materials again. Because of this, items are hardly ever made from natural materials like wood or leather, advanced plastics, vinyl, sythetic cloth and metals are used instead.

Inspiration From Before The Fall

Currency in Ruin Raiders

One of the things I wanted to do differently with the Ruin Raiders world was to make the economy a proper barter system. I wanted prices of items to naturally vary based on the usefulness and availability of items.

But, I also wanted to create a yard stick that people could measure worth by. So I needed at least one fixed point on the economic scale that you could use for reference. The fixed point I used was the amount of electrical energy carried by the most common batteries..

This unit of measurement was the Cell.

These small coin sized batteries have become the backbone of Raider bartering across the ruins. Each one carries a small amount of electricity that can be used to power the various items found in the ruins.

Importantly, they can also be used to power the Protein Spinnners, meaning that they are one of the few items that has an almost fixed price. After all, everyone needs to eat.

There are also larger batteries that carry a charge equivalent to 10 cells. These are commonly called Bats to differentiate them from Cells.

Getting my bugs in a row...

Lots of good chat at the No Rest For The Wicked Christmas party last night. It was good to get a catch up with folks.

In particular I had a decent chat with Sean and Diz from Skian Mohr about my plans for compulsion and what I was looking to do. Lots of excited banter and some good ideas were suggested.

I need to get some ideas down on paper and then go through to have a proper chat about it.

One of the subjects that came up was the importance of Scran.

More on that later :-)