Philosophy
The Seven Virtues campaign staff hopes to challenge and engage our players in mind, heart, and body, just as the School trains its students. We want to provide an immersive, complex, responsive experience for our players, whether you’re poring over an ancient tome for clues to a lost truth, running through the woods in fear of a nameless evil, or facing your greatest enemy within your own heart.
Here are some more particulars about our philosophy and game flavor:
Story. Seven Virtues is a story-driven LARP. We want you to be invested in the game because you care about your character, care about other characters, want to see what’s going to happen next, and want to make something happen next. We will seek to involve you in the story we all create together — heart, body, and mind.
Agency. We want you to feel that in Seven Virtues, everything is clickable. We hope to respond to your actions in a natural, organic way, giving you a feeling of true immersion in a world where your actions have consequences. Sometimes we may present you with a situation and leave where you go with that situation entirely up to you. Other times we may provide you with more in game guidance; but always, we want you to feel that the choices you make are entirely in your character’s hands, and that those choices will matter. One key part of giving you that kind of agency is making sure you submit a PEL after ever event so that we can keep track of what you’re doing.
Win or Lose? In Seven Virtues, we will strive neither to let you win nor to stack the deck against you. It is our belief that you must sometimes lose for winning to have meaning. We make no guarantees that this story will have a happy ending. At the same time, we are not here to punish you, and do not see players as our opponents in this game. We will present a level of risk consistent with the game world, and try to deliver realistic consequences.
Sleep. Generally speaking – though not as a hard and fast rule — we will avoid starting non-targeted plot after 2 AM (other than the Hour of the Dead module). So if you’re not doing anything when 2 AM rolls around, you can probably go to bed... though we may still run targeted encounters from time to time, so there is no guarantee that something dark and spooky from your character history won’t kick in your door at 3. This is more of a guideline than a rule, and there is no IG or OOG guarantee that you are safe in your cabin during this time. Oh, and we’re extremely unlikely to run anything before 9 AM. Ever.
Combat. We want to avoid making our game physically gruelling, generally speaking, so you won’t see many 3+ hour hellgrinder battles. There will be a fair amount of combat in the game, but not constant. We do not generally use “random crunchies” — while you will certainly get attacked outside of set encounters, your opponents will always have a purpose, goal, and context. In general, we want combat to stay immersive. We will strive to make sure our combat is clean, safe, and fun for both staff and PCs at all times. If you aren’t really into combat, you can probably still have plenty to do as a Seven Virtues PC or NPC (though we can’t guarantee an entirely combat-free experience). However, there should be enough combat to sate the needs of most LARPers; hardcore combat junkies might find it a bit light.
Staff Fun. We are very deeply committed to giving our weekend staff (NPCs) a fun experience. We precast roles in advance for every pre-registered NPC, and will do our best to make sure you get your preferred mix of roleplaying and combat, and that you get cool roles, including “face” or recurring roles if desired. Those who sign up as Permanent Staff are more likely to get recurring roles (and are guaranteed at least one major recurring role), just because we know you’ll be at events when we need you to play the part, but we will always try to get non-permanent staff excellent roles, too. We also invite our weekend staff to get more involved in the campaign than just playing roles if they wish; we are happy to share information, let you help set up and design encounters, help run encounters, and give you other responsibilities if you want them. If you have some area of talent you’d like to share — makeup skills, prop making, performance skills, F/X, you name it — we’d be delighted to hear about it!
Characters. We place a strong emphasis on character development in Seven Virtues. As such, we require character histories before you can play (even sketchy ones, if you must). We really like to be able to give you at least a little individual attention — be it only having an NPC know who you are — and this is infinitely easier if we get your character history in advance. Similarly, we urge you to preregister for events as far in advance as possible; we really enjoy running targeted plot, but we can’t target you if we don’t know you’re going to be at the event at least a month or two in advance, when we’re actually writing the plot.
Good Guys and Bad Guys. Please let the NPCs be the villains for this campaign. Seven Virtues is a heroic campaign; we don’t mind characters who are sketchy, brooding, grim, prefer muted color schemes, or what have you — but don’t be evil. If you do Bad Things, you will probably wind up getting kicked out of the School — why on earth would they keep you? And then you couldn’t play. So STAY GOOD! Or at least not bad.
It’s a Game. Seven Virtues is not a business. No one makes any money off it. We are running it because we think it will be fun for everyone involved. We only charge money for you to play to meet operating costs like campsite, props, costuming, and so forth. Every single cent the game takes in goes right back into the game. Everyone on staff is a volunteer, and many are spending their own personal money on props and costuming, much like PCs do. The only thing we get paid in is floon. So we run Seven Virtues like a game, not like a business. We have players, not customers. Our highest goal is for everyone involved — staff and players alike — to have as much fun as possible. We hope we can succeed!
Genre. Seven Virtues is high heroic fantasy. What do we mean by “heroic?” That we are, fundamentally, pitting good vs. evil... though you can expect to find plenty of shades of grey along the way. Also, “heroic” means you can take a certain amount of tasteful liberty in such things as costume design, and we can in skill design... we are looking for a certain amount of fantasy flair rather than straight-up historical realism. (It DOESN’T mean superheroes, though. Put the spandex away.) You may also see certain fairytale and horror overtones from time to time.
Immersion. We hope that Seven Virtues will be a relatively subtle and nuanced campaign. We want our NPCs to feel like real people with their own lives and goals outside of just hooking your module or dying on the end of your sword. We want you to feel like the game world extends beyond the walls of the School and continues between events. And we want you to feel like you can affect it, and it can affect you.
Period. Seven Virtues draws on aspects of a variety of different periods in real-world history — for instance, the costuming varies by nation based on period — but it centers loosely around High Rennaisance (or early Age of Enlightenment). Technology includes such things as moveable type, telescopes, and very basic clockwork; it does not include gunpowder (even cannons that would have been around in the real world at that time) or steam tech. When in doubt about a prop or idea, feel free to ask before bringing it in.