Developed and piloted at the New Orleans run of End of the Line, these negotiations required players to discuss openly physical and emotional boundaries before engaging in scenes with sensitive content. Instead, Convention of Thorns used a consent-based style of play, in which players negotiate violence, intimacy, and feeding through a scripted off-game consent negotiation workshopped before the game. Unlike most Vampire larps from the Mind’s Eye Theatre tradition, no traits are spent to perform actions and no rock-paper-scissor throws resolve conflict. However, physical combat was highly discouraged. Originating in White Wolf and Odyssé’s End of the Line, a player could lay a hand on another player and issue a verbal command with the words “really really” to indicate the use of a Dominate, Presence, or Auspex command. The game did feature a few mechanics, most notably in the use of the “really really” mechanic for simulating Discipline use. While the blockbuster style is certainly visually impressive, the Nordic roots of these games also represent a departure from White Wolf’s usual type of larps in their embodiment of physicality. Consent Negotiations, Day Play, and Collaborative Style Photo by Przemysław Jendroska and Nadina Wiórkiewicz for Dziobak Larp Studios. The Camarilla Ventrue Founder Hardestadt addresses the assembled Kindred in the opening scene. These new White Wolf larps such as Convention of Thorns, End of the Line, and the upcoming Enlightenment in Blood are not intended to replace traditional Vampire games, but rather to augment them, by creating one-shot, uniquely immersive experiences set in the World of Darkness. True to form, Convention of Thorns attracted players from several countries, producing impressive documentation photos of the authentic-looking castle, costuming, and prosthetics from several photographers, including John-Paul Bichard, Przemysław Jendroska, and Nadina Wiórkiewicz. Such projects draw participants from around the world, are well documented, and garner a remarkable amount of mainstream attention, as witnessed by the media frenzy around the College of Wizardry larps. Claus Raasted, “Claus Raasted: Larp Tourism (Produced for Nelco 2015).” YouTube, August 28, 2015. Photo by Przemysław Jendroska and Nadina Wiórkiewicz for Dziobak Larp Studios.īlockbuster larps are a form of what one of Convention of Thorns’ designers, Claus Raasted, calls larp tourism, in which players can use time and resources usually reserved for a vacation to larp in an impressive setting and have an immersive experience. The Tzimisce Irenka Brozek, the White Spider. which features high production values, an expensive location, richly detailed setting information packed into pre-written characters, and some plots or NPCs deployed by the organizers during the game. This larp represents an effort by White Wolf to embrace the blockbuster style of larp, Eirik Fatland and Markus Montola, “The Blockbuster Formula – Brute Force Design in The Monitor Celestra and College of Wizardry,”, May 6, 2015. Nordic Larp (Stockholm, Sweden: Fëa Livia, 2010). as well as several one-shots set in the canonical Convention of Thorns, this event marks a historically significant moment in the development of White Wolf larp. While larp groups have organized immersive, Nordic style Vampire games before, Jaakko Stenros and Markus Montola, eds. The latter factions ultimately reject the Camarilla’s authority, with the fledgling Sabbat declaring a war upon the Establishment that endures through the modern nights. In the White Wolf canon, this event leads to the official division between the Camarilla, the Anarchs, the Independent clans, and a new sect called the Sabbat. The Convention represents an attempt to establish a code of rules – or Traditions - as well as to standardize a new form of government called the Camarilla, which is based mainly on Establishment values. The Kindred were involved in a brutal civil war, in which elder members of the Establishment attempted to maintain their power while younger Anarchs rose up to kill and usurp them in a bloody revolution. Photo by John-Paul Bichard.ĭuring this time, the Inquisition was purging many of the vampires throughout Europe. The Nosferatu Josef von Bauren, one of the Founders of the Camarilla.
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