Over the course of the larp, characters will find themselves caught between two fundamentally incompatible forces: the raw, feral Zone; and the labyrinthine, esoteric Authority. During the game, these two forces will cause characters’ identities to shift and collapse. A character may respond to this with enthusiasm, ignorance or resistance - but they cannot emerge unscathed.
There will be things to discover by exploring these two opposed spaces, designed to facilitate characters’ internal play and their interactions with other player characters, creating more questions than they answer.
The Authority plays on themes of corporate horror, cults and paranoia.
It is the organsiation behind the research expedition, its purpose and internal structure obscured even to its employees.
The Authority makes frequent use of hypnosis and psychological conditioning, and all characters will have experienced these methods prior to entering the Zone. They also have means of monitoring their agents' psychological welfare.
The Authority have inserted their presence into the Zone to reclaim some small patches of land from it. The main indoor play spaces during the larp all belong to the Authority. They are surrounded by the Zone, but are not a part of it.
The Zone plays on themes of exploration, ecology and vitality.
It is the area the characters have been tasked with researching. At first glance it could be mistaken for an ordinary area of British woodland, but it rejects laws of nature, science and mathematics. Impossible things happen here, and people who walk its woods come back fundamentally changed.
The Zone is represented by all outdoor spaces at the venue. Within the Zone, there will be many laminated cards describing what your characters finds and inviting you to interact.
Characters in Dissolution are represented by their job tite and "character deck" - a set of cards used out-of-character to represent the impulses, memories, and core beliefs that make up their psyche.
Your starting deck will be provided in advance to suggest the basic structure of a character and their state of mind when play begins, which you are encouraged to flesh out before the game.
Any time your character experiences something that tests their limits, you should draw a card from your deck. This means selecting one at random, and using what's on it to inform your roleplay. Perhaps a buried memory rises to the surface, or stress provokes an unexpected emotion.
You might do this in response to a strange encounter in the Zone, a moment of tension in the Authority, finding yourself alone in the dark, or any time you want to inject an element of chaos into your play. You can always wait for an appropriate moment after a major event if drawing a card would disrupt the flow of a scene.
Through play, exploring the systems of both the Authority and the Zone, you will encounter things which change the contents of your deck. Cards may be added, swapped, removed, modified, or adapted. What parts of the self will your character cling to? Will they mourn or rejoice as they are snatched away? And what will they find in their place?
Interpretation is at the core of this system. There are no right or wrong ways to make sense of what a card means, and we hope they can faciliate an essentially human experience in the face of impossible and controlling forces.
You will also be provided with a small in-character journal, for writing notes and reflections on events.
The Authority's systems demand much of its employees. Employees will be provided with instructions on ways to explore (and perhaps rearrange) their colleagues' psyches, represented by interactions with the character deck. These are intended to drive interaction between players with minimal organiser input.
Bottom base will contain a system for limited correspondence with the outside world. It will listen to private, personal briefings, and return stark, public directives.
Top base will contain the remains of a filing system from the previous expedition. It can be used to analyse samples taken from the Zone as well as store new data gathered in the course of play, forming an increasingly complex web of information.
The Zone is full of strange and impossible things.
These will be represented by cards attached to props and pieces of the woodland itself, across all parts of the site that can be safely accessed.
Each card will tell you what effect it has on your character, likely including an interaction with your character deck.
It may describe options for further interaction, such as collecting samples to take back and study.
The contents of these cards may subtly change over the course of play, inviting characters to return and review.
In all cases we will be aiming to make things as intuitive as possible, with a focus on feeding a characterful experience rather than intricate rules.
Before the larp, all players will be provided with more information about how the game’s systems will work - such as character decks, and systems specific to the Authority and the Zone.
Over the course of the larp some players may come across instructions that reframe these mechanics and provide new ways to interact with them. If you see a character interacting strangely with a mechanic, you should assume that the player knows what they are doing, and is interacting with a slightly different system.
Although this is a game about a research expedition, the characters’ work and the discoveries that follow are there to drive their transformation throughout the game - represented by changes to the character deck - rather than to reveal any fundamenal truths about the Zone or Authority. Characters may have their own epiphanies over the course of play, but the game will not provide any final moment of certainty.
Similarly, although the Authority divides characters between several bases, and although some characters may believe themselves to be of higher or lower status, there is no structure provided for venturing out into the Zone. From a design perspective, a character is just as able to enter the Zone alone as in a group of any size, and there is no need to inform game crew that you are entering the Zone.
Characters in this game will be placed in situations where they may find themselves fearing for their life, their existence and their fate. However this fear is driven by internal forces of doubt and dread, which is why we're describing the horror as "personal". It's unlikely that you will come across jump scares or chases through the woods, but we encourage you to scream and run for your life if it feels appropriate!
The sources of the horror of this game will mainly be in each character’s:
loss and change of self
alienation from their environment and each other
interpretation of their experiences and surroundings
We're focused on giving players the tools they need to scare their characters. You will likely get more out of this game if you come ready to lean into the horror and develop your character’s internal world in situations which may from the outside seem perfectly mundane.
This is not a larp where violence is heroic or noble. Characters are permitted to carry a single larp knife (ideally in a modern style) from the beginning of the game - which you will need to bring yourself. There may be other weapons such as hammers, axes or pipes found within play, but these will be provided by crew and cannot be brought to the event by players. There will be no guns at this larp.
Combat, when it occurs, is intended to be messy, chaotic and desperate. The outcome of Player versus Player violence is always determined by the victim, and should broadly be along the lines of ‘what you see is what you get’. A single stab wound won’t kill a character, but is likely to stop them fighting back except in the most desperate circumstances.
The exception to the above rule is when an element of Zone is involved in a violent act. Player Characters cannot win in combat against something they believe originates from the Zone. Where they are a victim of violence from the Zone, the violence should always have consequences - be they physical, mental or something more difficult to define. A player character aggressor should be aware that attacking something from the Zone is likely to have unexpected consequences.
Death is a part of this game, but players are asked not to allow their characters to die before a certain point in the game. Organisers will make it clear when characters are permitted to die, and before this point any act that should reasonably kill a character results instead in a very close brush with death. There will be interesting options to continue play after the death of a character.