Thanks to John for uploading the pictures from Saturday’s playtest. I’ve put them in their own gallery here. Check them out!

- Nathanael Phillip Cole

Yesterday’s playtest session of the new working BMF LARP rules was quite satisfactory. Beer, Pizza, Highlander Jokes, and more, the game was pretty damn fun, and John even took some good pictures of those who could make it. Sadly, several of the originally-listed players were missing-in-action, but there were a few extras who showed up to fill most of the roles, with me taking the reigns of one of the “wild card” faction characters.

The People

Thanks to Robin, John, Alex, Jason, and Tammy for coming over, eating pizza, drinking beer, and having a damn good time roleplaying, playtesting, and dorking out. You guys are my heroes of the week.

I’m pretty excited about tomorrow’s playtest of the BMF LARP rules’ core mechanics. The Screg and I have worked together Shake-and-Bake-style to pen a fairly nifty scenario that should fit the playtest’s needs quite suitably. The scenario is based on the shoulda-been-a-hit TV series Jeremiah, and the premise is a high-stakes negotiation before a full-blown war erupts.

I’m in the middle of writing up the character roles right now, and I am having a blast doing so. Each character for this scenario has three major involvement-defining features beyond the rules mechanics. The character’s Motivation is the goal they’re working towards first and foremost as the scene progresses. Alongside that is the character’s Concession, which sets one or more conditionals which would alter that Motivation, and how. Finally, the character comes into the scenario with an Empowerment, giving them an extra edge over the rest, a hidden trick up their sleeve, or maybe just a good force or power to back up their words.

Anyway, here’s my introductory write-up for the whole scenario:

“Jeremiah is set in a future post-apocalyptic world where, over a decade before, a deadly virus wiped out the world’s adult population sparing only those who haven’t reached puberty. Now in their 20s, the oldest survivors of the pandemic must find their way in a decadent civilization and attempt to create a new world order of hope.”

Sixteen years ago, the Big Death hit. In 2004, this mysterious virus wiped out everyone in the world over the age of puberty, leaving their children to live and suffer in their absence. Over the years since, some folks took to the roads to steal and scrape by, while others gathered together to form power centers great and small. Now, in 2020, two of these powers have brought their forces to bear against each other at Four Roads, and the events that follow this encounter will drastically change the political face of territories which were once the Midwest and Northeast United States of America.