Discord LARP: C.S.MERIDA

HOW MUCH IS YOUR LIFE WORTH

C.S.MERIDA is a sci-fi horror LARP that mixes elements of chamber LARP and digital game design. Utilizing the widely accessible platform Discord as its mainframe for the game’s programming. But the game is also supplied with a selection of assets that can enhance the gameplay immersion for the players involved. C.S.MERIDA and its universe focuses its attention on the divide between classes in a hypercapitalistic society, where your worth as a human is predicated by your capita in money and connections to moneymen and women. 

In this storyline, the players will be dealing with the dangerous trivilization of human life, and how the human spirit can suffer if truly marginalized by wealth as a material value. Furthermore, the game seeks to facilitate a conversation about blame and scapegoating. Why do we point our fingers at the people we do? Who takes the fall for the better of a group when there are no other way - and why do they do that? 

All of this is baked within the worldbuilding that your players are free to explore, as well as in the mechanics of the gameplay. Hopefully, your players will be able to discuss the value of a human life in retrospect after their experience. 

As per request, the C.S.MERIDA project is aiming towards developing and releasing a full Game-Master's guide in the future; which strives to pass the experience along to new game-masters,  by teaching the setup of the game, it's individual mechanics, and how to enforce the themes of the game's narrative. This is currently a Work in Progress. 

Summary

The plot in short is as follows: Your players take on the roles of six crew members onboard the ship of C.S.MERIDA, an exclusive interplanetary freighter that has been deployed onto a diplomatic mission to a space station called Terra Commerce Frontier 2.0. This station is known for its yearly wealth summits, where rich men and women discuss the matters of their businesses and get even richer in the process. 

But why are they going there? 

The world has ended. Well, the world as we know it at least. A great catastrophe swept planet earth with such ferocity that humankind lost much of its history and culture along with it. Never mind the billions upon billions of lives. But like cockroaches in a nuclear fall-out, some managed to survive. Those someones being the rich. Of course, with an apocalypse on your hand, your money and resources will save you and your family. And thusly, many poor and middle-class people perished. Leaving only the wealthy to form the new world order. And as you can imagine, the new world order became bound up on the exact thing that saved the surviving families in the first thing - Money. 

Now, the world may be technically “saved” by the wealthy people, but as it is - it is still dying. The rich develop their corporate empires to garner wealth and remain relevant in this society - depleting the natural resources and making the planet increasingly uninhabitable. Luckily, this expedition should see that one of the monopoly corporations may gain enough influence to start expanding beyond Earth. A lucrative and time-sensitive matter. 

As for our player’s characters working on the exuberant ship - they are not so lucky as to be able to simply cruise among the stars with their wealth making an otherwise long and arduous journeys, comfortable. They are merely crew, and crew are there to serve its passengers. 

Which is why - when the ship comes under a insidious attack from a rivaling company on their journey, they find themselves at the very worst of circumstances. As a biohazardous parasite sweeps through the ship's lower half, the crew must first find the infected, and kill it - so that they may land safely at the harbor of the trade system of Terra Commerce Frontier 2.0. With no hope of receiving any outside help, as their lives are made truly irrelevant by the outside world sealing them on the bridge and crew cabins under threat that if they do not find and kill the parasite - the entire crew will be done away with for the safety of the rest of the passengers. 

The twist

The visual style of C.S.MERIDA borders on the optimistic and fantastical. This is on purpose. The veneer of optimism and hopefulness is but a veil for what is to come. C.S.MERIDA hopes to surprise its players with a shocking turn once the parasite comes on board. Your players will be held in the dark about the bioweapon and the subsequent attack until the moment everything erupts, throwing them right into the fray without preliminary warning. Now - naturally, this means that you should screen your players for any aversion to horror elements and to any discomfort around the themes of betrayal and extreme classicm, just to make sure that everyone’s comfortable even without knowing the twist itself. 

Environment

C.S.MERIDA’s systems have a number of assets that you can use to build up the illusion of a “safe” and “comfortable” flight for its players. Such as a recruitment letter, the handbook, and a broad assortment of 3D environments and objects that you can arrange to make your players feel at home in the universe before you tear it down.

 

The ads

To drive the capitalistic themes home, and further marginalize your players in-world. The game provides a set of "pop-up ads" that you can forward to your players as they debate who to kill. These ads go into their private cabins as little private advertisements for them to enjoy.  Use them to start conversation in case your players go quiet, or to underline the irony of their predicament during heated arguments. 

The handbook

C.S.MERIDA comes with a handbook that your players will need before starting the game. As well as a character sheet, which you or your players must customize to fit their characters. The handbook explains what your players need to know about the most integral mechanics of the game, as well as a brief summary of the story and world they are about to become part of.

Credits: 

Art Director, 3D assets, 2D assets, System design, GM - Isaak Hass Lerche
Character concepts, GM - Ashcon Hamedi Nejad
2D assets -  Jiayu Chen
3D assets - Josefine Henriette Kronhøj
Unity setup/programming,  Writing - Milas Manley Norman
Environmental concepts, 2D assets -  Mads Bradtberg Arvedsen