Considering that the long-running live roleplaying series by Evolution Events are coming to a close, we've had some time to consider the future. There are still some (financial) details to work out, but we are proud to present our newest LARP event: Extraterrestrial.

(Disclaimer: This post is about a game. Most of it is fiction.)

Last weekend was our fourth Lextalionis event, in Heerlen. I'm currently on my way back in the train (4+ hours from Heerlen to Enschede...) and quite exhausted.

I'll not go deeply into the plot of this weekend, but instead go over a few highlights. The in-character context was the mental institution Arcadia, owned by the Malkavian Primogen. The first night was not Elysium and the patients and doctors of the instution were present amongs the vampire guests. This resulted in a very weirdish ambiance, where nutcases and doctors were roaming freely, sometimes even interchanging roles... To top it all off, there were some roaming spirits from long dead patients and doctors.

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A short advert^Wentry about a play that will be performed on january 25 by Evolution Events and a lot of supporters, in a theater in Baarn. The play is written in the context of our Lextalionis Vampire LARP event, but is going to be a perfectly normal play about the utopic city of Altenstadt, ruled by the ambitious politician Bruno Wolff van Metering.

If you like theatre (or are just curious what we have created), you should visit the play's site and make reservations at once. Note that both the play and the site are in dutch.

Just in case you're wondering, I do not have a part in the play. I will, however be playing a role in the audience. I will visit the play as Pieter Beemstra, a ghoul to Michelle du Croix.

I've just spent a weekend in a cottage in Frankenau with Evolution Events. It was just a nice weekend of vacation together, which proved very fun and interesting.

Last weekend was the first Lextalionis. Lextalionis is a LARP event based on Vampire: The Masquerade. This is the first actual event organised by [Evolution Events], the LARP club of which I am in the board. A lot of people have been working very hard for this weekend, which it turned out to be.

I'm not gonna write too much about this. Partly because I have not seen as much of the actual roleplaying and plot because I did a lot of reffing, making physreps, fixing things and being generally useful. Also, I have been continuously distracted for the past seven hours, but finally managed to get my study work (deadline: past friday) done. So, I should really go to bed Real Soon (tm).

Anyway, about a week before the event, it turned out the location we wanted to use was not available since the required permits would not be arranged in time. Since we had a backup location arranged for, there was no problem. That is, until the contact from the backup location told us there had been a fire there about a month ago, making the location unusable. They hadn't been able to tell us, since all of their contact information was lost in the fire.

So, past week was spent by Sander and Rene looking for a location. We already had a location for saturday night, but we needed one for friday night (and for sleeping saturday morning). Late thursday afternoon, they finally managed to fix up a new location: The cellar of a wine store. Unsure what to expect, it turned out to be an ideal location for playing (with a bar, very nice decor and nicely situated in a window-less cellar). In short, a perfect Toreador Elysium.

The location was a little less suited for sleeping, though. It was somewhat cold and the location was only a single room (which is bad for early sleepers while people are still playing). Still everybody managed to get some sleep and it worked out okay-ish.

The transportation to the second playing location saturday afternoon went a little less smooth. There were a lot of things to arrange, so it took a while before a few people were arranged to drive back and forth. The first car (with me in it) was fixed rather quickly, but getting the bulk of the players to the other location took quite some time. Fortunately, I was already there quite early, together with a few people helping out, so we managed to build up the second location in time.

The second location was rather briljant. It was a big car workshop, complete with a sports car on the car lift. There were a bunch of construction yard style fences available, which we were able to use for separating the OC area for luggage and early sleepers. The night evolved rather nicely (and since we started at 8 instead of 11 as we did friday, it was pretty long too).

My favorite scene was the elimination of a certain Lasombra trespassing the Elsysium. It took the sherrif of the city one night and a half to find out he was an actual Lasombra, but after that, it took only just over two seconds to completly blast him to pieces. Just before this happened, the tension in the room rose slowly, but visibly and immediately after this, it was gone. Very pretty :-)

Anyway, I'm gonna leave it at this for now. Yesterday evening and this afternoon have been well spent evaluation and talking about the weekend, so we already have tons and tons of new ideas for the next one. Yesterday, Sander tried to officially asked me if I wanted to join the Lextalionis crew, but since I've been running around the event taking care of things and making calls all weekend, I found it rather implicit that I would do that. Still, I gladly accepted. So, also because I have a clear view of what Lextalionis is now, I will probably be able to help out with the preparations of Lextalionis 2. But for now, I we need to focus on our next event: Exodus.

I have a few good ideas on a nice online system for event subscription and character building/administration, which I will post here sometime soon. I have been thinking about this a while longer (together with Simon, from Symbols, with whom I will be cooperating on this), but slowly this is getting more solid. But, that's for later.