Las Cruces at Buckets of Dice

Buckets of Dice will be happening at the usual time this year: June 3 - 6 at Te Whare Akonga o Te Akatoki, just up the road from the University of Canterbury. The larp this year will be Las Cruces: Sin and Redemption on the Edge of Civilisation:

[quote]The town of Las Cruces sits at the border of God’s America and La Republica del Mayo, in the blasted wasteland that is the American south. Out here, you pay your respects to the Almighty, pay your tithe to the Wardens and survive the best you can.

But tensions are rising. Rumour has it that the Wardens are on their southern route, and they’ll visit Las Cruces soon enough. Patrols from La Republica have been spotted in the south, far closer to the town than they usually come. And tempers are rising between the townsfolk too, as long-buried secrets start to rise.

It’s only a matter of time before something snaps. And meanwhile, the Devil watches from the sidelines, and laughs…[/quote]

This is a post-apocalyptic larp, using the same setting as this year’s Grand Strategy.

I’ve never been to Christchurch. I wonder if this is a good year to start.

It’s always a good year to start. As was said at Kapcon, we’ll be able to arrange billets for those that want them, and possibly transport in from the airport too. :slight_smile:

[quote=“IdiotSavant”]

This is a post-apocalyptic larp, using the same setting as this year’s Grand Strategy.[/quote]

Wow, that’s a first. I wonder how that’ll influence people’s perspectives in the Grand strategy. :slight_smile:

I’d go with “yes”. The last two years have been building up momentum. This year seems even more on-to-it than last year, so I expect it’ll be even better. And last year was very good. :slight_smile:

Can anyone tell me what in the world a Grand Strategy is?

It’s a combination of computer real-time-sim and LARP. Generally (although I don’t know about this one) all the players form a number of teams/sides/countries/whatevers, and using - again generally - some sort of resource management system attempt to reach the stars/kill the oppostion/get voted into office/whatever the objective of this game is.

Most often the players are the generals or the politicians or the heads of corporations, and issue orders to their peons, which are then carried out by the GMs. You get the results of your actions and then plan the next thing, etc.

Viperion

The Grand Strats have been slowlyc hanging over time. A few years ago, they were MUCH more like a large scale boardgame/wargame with attached LARP elements. Dillion’s been experimenting though, trying to generally get rid of anywhere there was a hold up in the gameplay waiting for turns, and to cut down the admin work.

I will definitely be there this year. Meant to go last year, but didn’t really know folks + general lack of organisationyness. But this year - it’s gonna happen!

Since I’ve now gone up to KapCon and actually met up with folks in the North Island: this year is a great year to come down to Buckets! We’re currently going to be running over three days (plus one evening), which also means that you don’t have to put up with two late nights in a row (LARP and Grand Strat will be separated by a day). Although Monday may become recovery day in the style of KapCon.

I can’t guarantee that we’ll be quite as excellent as Al Shir-Ma - the LARP community at SAGA has died off quite a bit recently. However since I’m writing the LARP (and already have quite a bit written down on paper), if we get a giant influx of LARPers I can definitely write in some more roles for folks.

Welcome to Diatribe, Akchizar! It’s really good to meet some Christchurch folk, and have you guys let us know what you’re up to in terms of larping. I don’t think I got a chance to meet you at Kapcon but hopefully we’ll meet at another con soon.

Something between a wargame with larp elements and a larp with wargame elements, with realtime feedback between the two. So you do some larp, take some actions on the board, and panic over the response, with the wargame providing a stream of events into the larp element for the players to respond to. The ur-grand strategy is probably kriegspiel diplomacy, where each country is played by a team of three, typically with a fog-of-war (so your negotiators are also there to gather intelligence on where other people’s units are).

They’re a feature of buckets; Dillon has made noises about running one in Wellington, but it hasn’t happened yet.

I should add: this year’s Grand Strategy is American Apocalypse, by Dillon Burke:

[quote]The Palin Presidency did not end well.

Following a series of nuclear exchanges with all the nuclear powers you can see from Alaska (Russia, North Korea, China, et. al.) the urban heartlands of the United States of America have been transformed into radioactive wastelands. Frustratingly for the surviving liberals who were about to indulge in a mighty round of “I told you so”, the Rapture occurred, spiriting away a large chunk of the remaining Republicans. Now Angels and Demons walk the earth and the time of tribulation is at hand.

While the rest of the world has gone to hell in a combine harvester, the USA has divided into five splinter states, each of which claims to be the legitimate successor to the old US government. These states now compete for the remaining resources needed to sustain life, and bargain with the Divine and Infernal powers for aid in their struggles against the other states and their wrong-thinking citizens.[/quote]

Grand strategies are the reason I continued roleplaying after that time I got dragged up to a Buckets by my flatmates. It’s basically boardgaming as a team sport. :wink:

That really does sound like a lot of fun.

What at totally awesome concept for a game !

Of course, The Onion has the backgrounder on how Palin got elected in the first place…

How many players will the Las Cruces larp have? Any chance it could be re-run at Chimera? The setting is cool.

I’m going for 25 or so players max (we don’t have huge numbers here in Christchurch). I don’t even know if we’ll be heading up to Chimera…but this would give me an excuse to go :stuck_out_tongue:.

When would you need to know by?

I think 25 characters would be absolutely perfect for Chimera this year - anything between around 20 and 30 would suit well given the expected size of the con (100+ people).

If you’re happy for it to run at Chimera, then you could let Anna know, and if it turns out you can’t make it then maybe someone else could run it up here, if you were happy with that.

But you should come, it’s awesome. :slight_smile:

Typically, I send the email call for game information for the website in early March, and game information for the website trickles in over the course of March and early April, with the website going up early April. I try to have a full timetable of games available by the time Game Selection opens (on June 1st this year) and this year I’m trying to over-anticipate demand so I don’t run around in June with my hair on fire (to borrow an expression from IdiotSavant :wink: )

So the short answer is, “by the end of March” - and Ryan speaks truth, 25 is a really good size, we’d love to have you.