two chicks write some LARPs this one's a head trip

stuff we've written - stuff we're running - stuff we're planning - stuff about us

Stars Over Atlantis, by Lily Benderskaya and Tory Root

Forbidden love! Eternal friendships! War and intrigue, magic and betrayal! Stars Over Atlantis, the new fantasy novel by bestselling paranormal young adult writer Rhiannon Sinclair, has it all! Follow the saga of Princess Thera through the forgotten reaches of human history. Coming this winter from Tor Books.

Rhiannon Sinclair will be doing an early promotional reading of her new novel at 2 p.m. on Sunday, August 1st, at the Crook and Flail in Providence, RI. 18+ only. Space will be limited. RSVP to demian@crookandflail.org.

kellicious: OMG the reading's local!
omgpwniezzz: so I'm coming down to see you and Rhiannon and it's the longest I've ever traveled alone but it's totally going to be worth it! Providence here I come!
kellicious: finally get to meet you! squeeeeeeeeeee!
kellicious: wait whut? the place the reading's at, it's some sort of weird sex club.
omgpwniezzz: buh?
kellicious: we're both legal so we can probably go, but I dunno, might be weird.
omgpwniezzz: weird like old people?
kellicious: weird like whips and chains?
omgpwniezzz: huh?
kellicious: um...
omgpwniezzz: don't care still going!!!
kellicious: guess we gotta email that demian guy?
omgpwniezzz: anyway so, like, Princess Thera! gonna be awesome!
kellicious: also, deja-vu. dunno why, feel like I've heard that somewhere before.
omgpwniezzz: don' get all weird on me, <3!

Stars Over Atlantis is a game about remembering things that you'd rather forget. About tragedy and sacrifice and death; about guilt and karma and forgiveness; about love and sex and gender. This game contains pervasive themes of alternate sexualities, including bisexuality, polyamory, and BDSM, as well as gender questioning and transitioning, and is recommended for mature players.

"Every kinkster'd like to be
In my place instead of me
Cause I'm the king of bondage, baby
I'm the king of bondage town."
- Demian, a la Max Raabe

We can't disclose what altered state of consciousness we were in when we came up with the bizarre idea for this game, because we don't remember. But it was so awesome that we decided to share the mindscrew with our players. We dislike the idea of gag rules, but have considered implementing one for this game, due to some Fatal Spoilers. So the first rule of Stars is that you do not talk about Stars.

The current version of Stars Over Atlantis, version 1.1, is a game for fifteen players (five male, eight female, two neutral) which runs for four or more hours, in one average room, under the direction of at least three GMs.

Version 1.0: March 4th, 2011, at Intercon K in Waltham, MA. Finished and printed the day before the con, after Tory had barely slept for a week, and ran in hectic disarray. We soon discovered that this game does not work with only two GMs, and we were spread thin and barely had time to breathe, but most of our players really enjoyed the game, so after various people declared it to be their best game of the con, we were forced to acknolwedge it as a rousing success.
Tory was too busy running around like a headless GM chicken to take any pictures.

Version 1.1: April 10th, 2011, at Brandeis Festival in Waltham, MA. This run kind of broke the GMs with how radically different it was from the last. Where the last half hour had been a heartbreaking tragedy, it was instead a sex comedy, and we called wrap after a four-way in a closet. (And wished we'd had a tape recorder, for some of the hilarious shit that our players said.) We've realized that we cannot predict the genre of this game, and suspect that in the next run, the players will somehow make it a Western. The players seemed happy, though, so whatevs.
Photos of this game! Tory had forgotten her DSLR, and so resorted to getting photos of people's costumes on her iPhone. That's all there is of this run, because this was the Festival of photoFAIL.

No future runs are scheduled, though we have some plans to re-run during summer or fall of 2011. We need to do some coherent edits first, as opposed to the frantic tweaks we implemented between 1.0 and 1.1, which will probably involve adding another character.