MECHANICS | Ihuntlarp

This page contains a short overview of the mechanics we will use during the event to ensure everyone's safety and to communicate certain elements of atmosphere or game design - you'll find a more detailed look in our Design Document.

All of them will also be explained and workshopped on location.

We encourage all participants to calibrate certain boundaries - like physical touch, triggers and similar - with relevant relations before the game.

PLAYER & CREW SAFETY

PHYSICAL TOUCH BASELINE

At a LARP like this, calibrating any and all touch is tricky, and we will assume that participants are comfortable with physical touch in the intensity of e.g. a short, light hug or a superficial touch on the arms.

You may always opt out of physical touch.

When approaching someone, participants should make sure that the other party sees them initiating touch so they may opt out of it, by stepping back or offering an alternative, like a handshake or wave instead of a hug.

Physical conflict aka fights may be played, but only if you calibrated them off-game before or opted into the Black Box elements discussed further down on this page.

GAME DESIGN

NAMETAGS & BUTTONS

During the game, all participants will be wearing name tags, which will include the characters name, online handle, hunting type
and in-game pronouns.

Players will also receive off-game pronoun buttons to make interactions as fluid as possible. (These will include He/Him, She/Her, They/ Them, Any or No Pronouns, if mentioned in the casting form participants can also receive other pronoun buttons instead)

EXISTENTIAL DREAD PIN

Players who are opting in into playing on the Existential Dread elements of iHunt will be wearing a very easy to recognize symbol. This means they are up for personal play involving the topic.

Please be mindful of those not opting in and try to not involve them. The symbol can be removed or added at any point during the game.

BLACKBOX

A Black Box is essentially a blacked out room with limited props and SFX input, in which scenes are played out that do not take place in the in-game location of the LARP.
In our case this will primarily, but not exclusively be, the title giving monster hunts. How a Black Box is used in our LARP will be
explained and workshopped in greater detail on location during the first day!

We will have one stationary larger Black Box, but may claim a room of the location for a short temporary one.

Players will be given enough time to finish scenes they are currently playing in the room before setup for a temporary Black Box begins.

Scenes in a Black Box will be mostly offered by us, but there may be a few limited time slots when you can sign up to have a very simple scene set up for personal plot or similar. How many of those there will be we can not say until further down the line.

SHADOWPLAY

We will be using dark costumes with hoods pulled down into our faces to portray supernatural effects or to move quickly
through the location undisturbed.
The shadowy figures are not to be played on except for the effects they create, they may give you whispered play prompts about

what your character is feeling or perceiving, whispering voices & other sounds, floating objects and so on. The figures are therefore not actually there, what they do is something you perceive, though.

SPECIAL EFFECTS

We will make use of many kinds of special effects!

Some examples are different coloured lights to indicate danger or something mysterious/supernatural being afoot or to set the right ambience, projectors to convey surroundings or other scene setting, soundscapes, music and potentially scents to make scenes more immersive and of course the mythical powers of our fog machines.

These will be mentioned in the content note tab of hunts in the app alongside potential trigger topics, as a way for you to opt-in into the hunts with effects you are comfortable with.

NPC, GPC & SLEEPER NPC

We as organizers and our crew will be portraying most of the NPCs, non player characters, which include the monsters, big mainstay NPCs who will return for the entire campaign and one offs that might only be around for a short scene.

You may interact with them in person, via text messages or during a call while the event is running.

There might also by GPCs/Sleeper NPCs about, which are guided player characters and hidden non player characters respectively.
If you, for off-game reasons need to know who they are, come talk to us or shoot us a message before the LARP.

BOFFER FIGHTING

This LARP will have opt-in boffer elements (aka LARP fighting) in the form of the name giving monster hunts and occasionally scenes outside of them.
You do not need to have prior experience in boffer fighting to play our LARP, this is also not a skill contest, we designed the hunts in a way that should level the playing field. There will also be a workshop and maybe additional time on workshop day to practice if you feel so inclined.

This means you are allowed to bring LARP safe weapons (aka boffer/foam weapons) your character might possess, but you don’t have to if you believe they would not. We ask you to ist the boffer weapons you are bringing in the character sheet, and they will be checked for fight safety on location during check in. We reserve
the right to disallow a weapon if we deem it unsafe, due to how it is manufactured or other issues.

For more infos check out the Design Document!

HUNT MECHANICS

We will only get into this briefly here, but you can find a more detailed verison in the Design Document!

During the game, players will have access to a functioning web based app via their smartphones or on a select number of devices left in prominent spots across the location by us. Over the course of the game, hunt requests will pop up in the app that players can sign up for. Usually a hunt has space for 4-5 players, and we will hopefully offer enough, so everyone can have a go if they feel so inclined! The group or a representative then either call, chat or meet with the NPC client a good while before the hunt begins, get more hints and details about what they are going up against and get a solid chunk of time to do research and prepare if they so choose. You can always go into a hunt un- or underprepared if that is not the kind of gameplay you are interested in, but we promise we try to make it fun! Think arg elements, reading old tomes, getting the scoop by talking to other hunters or NPC contacts and more.

The hunt itself will be played out in a Black Box and play towards an outcome determined via the Fate Mechanic (see below) and after finishing players will upload a selfie with the defeated monster to prove to their client they finished the job or ruefully tell them that they were not able to. Then they either get paid, and a review will pop up on their profile, shortly after changing their rating, or they will lick their wounds, bury their friends and see the
consequences of a failed hunt at a later point during the same event or the following.