We aren't getting Disco Elysium 2, so I just LARPed it instead (An Intro)

The leader of the fascists, Paris von Burgen, has been arrested. Shortly after, I watch the most terrifying capable capitalist in La Cage be led out in handcuffs as well. This means that both the fascists and the monarchists are now leaderless and stripped of funding. As I turn the corner, I find my distressed monarchist flatmate and fellow student, Aubin Sol Montpensier. He tells me that this means he is now leading both the fascist Iron Cadence and the monarchistic Suzerainists.

He is not qualified for the task. He will lack the stomach to do what must be done. Both factions will fall apart by the evening. 

And only I, the de facto leader of the anarchists, union organizer, and recently-radicalized Mazovian, know this. 

With this information, I know beyond a shadow of a doubt that I have the means to convince the Mazovians, the union, the migrants, and even the local RCM precinct to support overthrowing the Coalition of Nations and running their globalist, moralist forces out of town. Liberation is at the tip of our fingers. We could do this.

The choice to grasp the hope of freedom shoulder-to-shoulder with fascists, or retreat to the safe stability of globalist hegemony in the name of anti-authoritarianism, lies in front of me. I sprint as fast as my legs will take me to spread the news; to tip the scales in the direction I want them to fall. 

My name is Lumen Boulanger and, in this moment, I hold the fate of La Cage, and perhaps Revachol itself, in my hands.

_____________________

97 Poets of Revachol is a multi-day live-action role playing game created by Czech LARP collective Rolling and set inside the world of Disco Elysium*, taking place in Terezín, Czechia. In it, players take on one of 96 roles of people living inside the rundown neighborhood of La Cage, a place which houses both a migrant housing center, a sizable fascist presence, and a local Moralintern presence armed by the Coalition of Nation.

*There are a few minor breaks from Disco Elysium canon in order to better contort the lore to the needs of the LARP's gameplay and goals, but it is overall about 99% certified Disco.

The roles which players can take on broadly fall into a few different factions: Migrants trapped in bureaucratic limbo while being exploited by local sweatshop owners, sweatshop owners and other capitalists just barely scrapping by while Coalition forces underpay them for the goods they provide, local Coalition forces and collaborations eager to protection moralism and the status quo, elderly Mazovians in hiding, the vulnerable and swayable working class, fascists and their monarchist allies, and the people living in the sewers. There is also the pseudo-diagetic role of the Unseen, this game’s answer to the Disco Elysium’s skills. These are people who typically exist in the background, but are in actuality spirits of cosmic will which haunt La Cage and place their thumbs on the scale to tip theirs to their own desired ends, which is why Dolores Dei is in fact one of the playable characters. As is the Rat King. 

Rolling is an organization best known for their Content LARPs, so named for their fixation of fusing pre-scripted content with live-action role playing. If you’ve ever heard of Nordic LARPs, these are very much in the same vein. Perhaps Rolling’s most successful work in this vein is Legion, a multi-day historical LARP about a forced march through the Siberian winter countryside in the depths of World War 1. The players take on pre-scripted characters that they’re allowed to play as they will, as they are marched through a relatively linear story. 

Legion’s 36th and 37th run will be taking place this January.

It is, objectively by the standards of its genre, a run away success, and it was not hard to find players who were at 97 Poets after being blown away by their time with Legion.

And for the record: I am open to being peer pressured into partaking in it. I don't know what's wrong with me either.

While sharing a lineage with those kinds of heavily scripted content LARPs, 97 Poets is ultimately sandboxy in a way that separates it from them, leaving players to decide how best to spend their time and take their actions. This game is then played out over 3ish days with a loose schedule that they are free to ignore but probably should not, as the players run back and forth across the town communicating with important peoples, running vital errands, and generally suffering a whole lot as they try and likely fail to steer the stories of their characters and La Cage itself towards their desired end. If you’re now thinking ‘Wow, that actually sounds a lot like Pathologic’s general structure’, you fucking said it, not me, I can’t be held accountable for comparing yet another thing to Patho, I have never done anything wrong in my life.

At time of writing, this game has been played 4 times, with the first two runs notably featuring famed youtuber and my girlfriend, SulMatul AKA Hayley. An experience which she, affectionately, would not shut the fuck up about. This is quite reasonable though: if I had a partner as obsessed with acting, the emotional impact game mechanics can have, and art that hates you as I am, I wouldn’t stop elbowing them to participate either. And in hindsight, I’m quite glad she did.

I was lucky enough to participate in both Run 3 and Run 4 of 97 Poets, and it's an experience I wouldn’t trade for anything. Most of all, it’s one you need to hear about. 

This will be the story of Run 3.

Full disclosure: I’ve had relatively minimal LARP experience prior to this, at least in the way we typically use that word. I have a lot of experience with both comedic and dramatic improv, as well as TTRPGs, all of which is adjacent to what we’re talking about (and why I generally felt very in my element during all of this), but also definitely not what we mean when we say LARP. Whenever one of the veterans would ask how much LARPing I'd done, I'd always told them that it could be accurately summed up as 'Fireball! Fireball!' shit, much to their sour-faced dismay - Light, silly fun with friends, but definitely not what I was looking for from this medium.

I wanted something that was, frankly, more intense. More immersive. More stressful, challenging, and sprawling. I wanted something that would force me to consider perspectives  I never would have otherwise, and force me to make choices I’d never wanted to be confronted with. I wanted something more human, violent, and gut-wrenching. I wanted something that would wash over me and leave me changed.

I am quite happy to say that I got what I wished for, for better and for worse.

This is a story that starts with me anxious, exhausted, and heartbroken. It will end with me realizing a great many things about how games immerse us, and finding a hidden store of hope I didn’t know I still had tucked away in my heart.

This is a story about learning to believe the better things are still possible, in spite of it all.

The leader of the fascists, Paris von Burgen, has been arrested. Shortly after, I watch the most terrifying capable capitalist in La Cage be led out in handcuffs as well. This means that both the fascists and the monarchists are now leaderless and stripped of funding. As I turn the corner, I find my distressed monarchist flatmate and fellow student, Aubin Sol Montpensier. He tells me that this means he is now leading both the fascist Iron Cadence and the monarchistic Suzerainists.

He is not qualified for the task. He will lack the stomach to do what must be done. Both factions will fall apart by the evening. 

And only I, the de facto leader of the anarchists, union organizer, and recently-radicalized Mazovian, know this. 

With this information, I know beyond a shadow of a doubt that I have the means to convince the Mazovians, the union, the migrants, and even the local RCM precinct to support overthrowing the Coalition of Nations and running their globalist, moralist forces out of town. Liberation is at the tip of our fingers. We could do this.

The choice to grasp the hope of freedom shoulder-to-shoulder with fascists, or retreat to the safe stability of globalist hegemony in the name of anti-authoritarianism, lies in front of me. I sprint as fast as my legs will take me to spread the news; to tip the scales in the direction I want them to fall. 

My name is Lumen Boulanger and, in this moment, I hold the fate of La Cage, and perhaps Revachol itself, in my hands.

_____________________

97 Poets of Revachol is a multi-day live-action role playing game created by Czech LARP collective Rolling and set inside the world of Disco Elysium*, taking place in Terezín, Czechia. In it, players take on one of 96 roles of people living inside the rundown neighborhood of La Cage, a place which houses both a migrant housing center, a sizable fascist presence, and a local Moralintern presence armed by the Coalition of Nation.

*There are a few minor breaks from Disco Elysium canon in order to better contort the lore to the needs of the LARP's gameplay and goals, but it is overall about 99% certified Disco.

The roles which players can take on broadly fall into a few different factions: Migrants trapped in bureaucratic limbo while being exploited by local sweatshop owners, sweatshop owners and other capitalists just barely scrapping by while Coalition forces underpay them for the goods they provide, local Coalition forces and collaborations eager to protection moralism and the status quo, elderly Mazovians in hiding, the vulnerable and swayable working class, fascists and their monarchist allies, and the people living in the sewers. There is also the pseudo-diagetic role of the Unseen, this game’s answer to the Disco Elysium’s skills. These are people who typically exist in the background, but are in actuality spirits of cosmic will which haunt La Cage and place their thumbs on the scale to tip theirs to their own desired ends, which is why Dolores Dei is in fact one of the playable characters. As is the Rat King. 

Rolling is an organization best known for their Content LARPs, so named for their fixation of fusing pre-scripted content with live-action role playing. If you’ve ever heard of Nordic LARPs, these are very much in the same vein. Perhaps Rolling’s most successful work in this vein is Legion, a multi-day historical LARP about a forced march through the Siberian winter countryside in the depths of World War 1. The players take on pre-scripted characters that they’re allowed to play as they will, as they are marched through a relatively linear story. 

Legion’s 36th and 37th run will be taking place this January.

It is, objectively by the standards of its genre, a run away success, and it was not hard to find players who were at 97 Poets after being blown away by their time with Legion.

And for the record: I am open to being peer pressured into partaking in it. I don't know what's wrong with me either.

While sharing a lineage with those kinds of heavily scripted content LARPs, 97 Poets is ultimately sandboxy in a way that separates it from them, leaving players to decide how best to spend their time and take their actions. This game is then played out over 3ish days with a loose schedule that they are free to ignore but probably should not, as the players run back and forth across the town communicating with important peoples, running vital errands, and generally suffering a whole lot as they try and likely fail to steer the stories of their characters and La Cage itself towards their desired end. If you’re now thinking ‘Wow, that actually sounds a lot like Pathologic’s general structure’, you fucking said it, not me, I can’t be held accountable for comparing yet another thing to Patho, I have never done anything wrong in my life.

At time of writing, this game has been played 4 times, with the first two runs notably featuring famed youtuber and my girlfriend, SulMatul AKA Hayley. An experience which she, affectionately, would not shut the fuck up about. This is quite reasonable though: if I had a partner as obsessed with acting, the emotional impact game mechanics can have, and art that hates you as I am, I wouldn’t stop elbowing them to participate either. And in hindsight, I’m quite glad she did.

I was lucky enough to participate in both Run 3 and Run 4 of 97 Poets, and it's an experience I wouldn’t trade for anything. Most of all, it’s one you need to hear about. 

This will be the story of Run 3.

Full disclosure: I’ve had relatively minimal LARP experience prior to this, at least in the way we typically use that word. I have a lot of experience with both comedic and dramatic improv, as well as TTRPGs, all of which is adjacent to what we’re talking about (and why I generally felt very in my element during all of this), but also definitely not what we mean when we say LARP. Whenever one of the veterans would ask how much LARPing I'd done, I'd always told them that it could be accurately summed up as 'Fireball! Fireball!' shit, much to their sour-faced dismay - Light, silly fun with friends, but definitely not what I was looking for from this medium.

I wanted something that was, frankly, more intense. More immersive. More stressful, challenging, and sprawling. I wanted something that would force me to consider perspectives  I never would have otherwise, and force me to make choices I’d never wanted to be confronted with. I wanted something more human, violent, and gut-wrenching. I wanted something that would wash over me and leave me changed.

I am quite happy to say that I got what I wished for, for better and for worse.

This is a story that starts with me anxious, exhausted, and heartbroken. It will end with me realizing a great many things about how games immerse us, and finding a hidden store of hope I didn’t know I still had tucked away in my heart.

This is a story about learning to believe the better things are still possible, in spite of it all.

I arrived in Czechia a few days before the LARP began proper with high hopes, a deep sense of awe for this beautiful country I’d never seen before, zero hours of sleep, and only 1 of my bags because Icelandair lost the luggage with all my fucking shoes. By the time Hayley and I got to Terezín, I’d already felt almost every human emotion possible.

After getting checked into the hotel we'd be staying in until the game started, we walked over to the old abandoned military hospital that Rolling is headquartered in, and where we would be volunteering to help with the set up for 97 Poets. It was here I technically met the team, but after realizing that by this point I had been conscious for 31 contiguous hours in stern defiance of god's will, we’d decided it was best to save proper introductions for when I was a person again.

I'd like to take a moment to note that, in real life, A) Terezín is a very beautiful town, and B) all of this takes place in the hospital where Gavrilo Princip probably died. 

Those are probably the most fun facts that I can tell you about Terezín. 

If the name otherwise rings a bell for you, it’s likely due to it’s history as a ghetto used by the SS during the holocaust. Terezín itself was not an extermination camp, but more of a waystation on the way to the camps. This does not mean that conditions in Terezín weren’t horrifying, nor that there weren’t a stomach churning number of deaths. Indeed the town itself does not shy away from this history, and it was not hard to find people who were present to pay respects and grieve. 

And this is where we were going to play our silly little game about fascists wanting eject migrants out of their country.

More than once I had to ask myself whether or not this was, for lack of a better term, in good taste - Something I suspect the organizers had also asked themselves a few times given how careful they were to be respectful about it. Within the game itself, special care is taken to emphasize that fascism within the world of Disco Elysium does not carry the same baggage as our fascists: They are a reprehensible group with incredible potential for violence, but also a fairly new one which is not responsible for the same kind of horrors as their inspiration. At least, so far.

Even now, I find myself tempted to delete this entire section cause I’m here to talk about the game, right? Yet not acknowledging that this hung over much of my time in Terezín and the game itself feels deeply remiss, especially in the face of what I was there to participate in. I was there to simulate resisting fascism in a place which had bore witness to many of fascism’s worst historical crimes. However, places where atrocities happened don’t just stop existing because nightmares came to life there: This was and is a real place, with real people, still living, working, and continuing on in the shadow of history. 

In the end, I decided it was best to let it be a chance to learn and let it inform the stakes of, well, literally everything. As this story becomes more and more about resisting fascism, I’d also like to welcome you to seriously consider the true stakes of what it means to do so, because the scars of fascism are still very, very much out there.

Over the next few days, I got to know the team who was making this possible and watched as the pieces for everything fell together in real time. Perhaps unsurprisingly, it was a staggering amount of work - setting up electricity, organizing character props, transporting weapons, setting up signage, writing up instructions, sweeping up rooms, and so very much heavy lifting. The kind of work which causes you to occasionally hear the Morrowind level up chime and see a tiny pop up in the corner of your eye telling you Your Athletics Has Increased. In my early 20s, I spent a lot of time working both at youth camps and in theatres as a stagehand, and I couldn’t help but be reminded of both over the many tiring, beautiful hours.

This would have likely been a delightful experience, were it not for the fact that I was doing all of it in a pair of shoes that were old, torn up, and absolutely not equipped to be supporting me through this kind of work. I put them on for the flight because they were cozy, but never in a million years expected them to become my soul support during the intensity which would follow. Rookie mistake, shout outs Icelandair. By the third day in, my feet were already in screaming pain, something that will end up being a recurring motivation for me in-game. 

In the process of helping set up, I was able to get a sense of the general structure of how things would play out:

-Players were divided into different rooms of Families/Collectives which doubled as sleeping quarters and where you would pick up your costumes + props

-Along with the character sheets came schedules which had times for certain critical private and public events, but also featured great deal of downtime where players were free to do what they wanted (Events were also skippable if you just, like, didn’t show)

-In practice, downtime was less 'time to relax' and more 'time for you to take care of everything else'

-Every character belonged to 4-6 factions which all have their own standalone storylines

-There were a handful of Black Box rooms where certain characters would be taken for flashbacks, surreal scenes, and other events detached from the main canon (and usually directed by one of the Unseen).

-Game begins proper with a shoot out between Wild Pines Mercs and a local gang which kickstarts the main plot

-This climaxes with a high noon stand off at the halfway point

-After the standoff is a brief off-character break followed by a low stakes intermezzo party which is designed to be the fun bit before everything

-Regardless of the outcome, tensions continue rising and the town begins to fracture between those who want to stay with the Coalition of Nations, and those in favor of an independent Revachol (the Fascists are pretty much inherently pro-independence).

I quickly began to realize that La Cage was effectively broken into 6 major areas: Apartment Block A, Apartment Block B, the Immigrant Wing, the Courtyard, the Sewers, and the Main Hall.

Block A housed the richest folks in town, Block B housed mainly people who were impoverished Revacholians, the Immigrant Wing was what it sounds like, the Courtyard was where most major events happened including meals and where sweatshop work would be organized, the Sewers were for the worst and weirdest social outcasts, and the main hall contained all the most important rooms like the bar, pawn shop, clinic, town council, etc. 

There was also the Disco club and the Anodic Dance club on the bottom level as well.

In the process of seeing all of this, I also got to visit what would become my bed:

Full room walkthrough: https://youtu.beRLaovq0hHI?si=bHIgh6yE9yuPnUr

Ahhhh reminds me of when I started Codex Entry, this would cost you at least $1500 a month in the Bay Area (thank you again for the support <33)

Around this same time, I received my full character sheet and was introduced to the real star of this first story: Lumen Boulanger.

Lumen is a young, passionate anarchist pacifist who is steadfastly convinced that the beginnings of liberation will flow out of a utopia they’ve crafted out of a 4 bed flat housing 5 people in Apartment Block B. Her landlord is a fascist, her roommates are a monarchist, a contrarian centrist, an environmentalist, and an artist. She also has a polycule with a hardcore underground speedfreak, a local reporter, an aspiring DJ, and a 70 year old migrant storyteller (as is anarchist tradition), with whom she performs love and sex rituals with in the name of acquiring visions of the future, after they all collectively saw a ghost they couldn't explain. This polycule miiiight lowkey just be a replacement for their ex who abruptly left to fix the police from the inside, and who Lumen miiiiight technicallyyyy be cheating on, but she’s still heartbroken enough about the relationship stalling out to show up drunk to her bar job and crashout in front of the owner, losing the gig in the process. Not that Lumen really NEEDS the Reál that bad, given that her rich mom keeps secretly sending her money which would be more than enough to cover the whole flat’s rent if she didn’t feel the need to convince everyone that she's cut off contact from her bougie parents. But making sure everyone pays their fair share is more about the spirit of solidarity than the money, ya know?? Ya knoooow????

Oh, also, she hangs out with the anodic dance scene. She doesn’t like the music that much, but she really looooooooves the sense of community.

And the drugs. She, of course, really, REALLY likes the drugs.

She is a fucking mess with a heart full of hope, a touch of naivete, and way more insecurities than she wants to admit to.

Above all else, Lumen is one of those passionate young people who doesn’t think things could be better, but KNOWS that things WILL be better. As sure as the sky is blue, love will win, and the world will move towards justice. And it will definitely, totally, absolutely happen without even needing to use violence, because people are universally good, rational, and eager for better.

Obviously.

Full disclosure: Lumen is basically just me if I’d been extroverted in college. To an almost uncanny and embarrassing degree, if I'm being fully honest.

Or rather, MY Lumen is.

Important to note: While I’m referring to Lumen here as a women, neither she nor any of the other characters have a preset gender. Some of the roles have a bit of a leaning one way or the others, things like aggressive patriarchal spouses or Dolores fucking Dei. But also in this run, Dolores Dei was played by a man - as was the Run 4 Lumen. None of these things are set in stone by design but rather (as is so often the case with gender selects) become set in stone by the choice of the player, and MY Lumen was most definitely a girl.

This was one of the first things that I was really struck by, and part of the reason I feel so comfortable talking about so many spoilery specifics is that, even here, at this early stage before I’ve even spoken to another player, I’m already making run-defining decisions off the back of interpretation. As we'll see, I took leaning into the anarchism of it all very seriously, my Lumen believed every word they were saying, regardless of how childish it might have been. My Lumen firmly held every starry-eyed hope in her heart as a vision of the future which we WOULD reach, no matter how hard she had to fight to bring us there. Against Me!'s 'Baby, I'm an Anarchist' began autoplaying in my head more than once during all of this.

However, it would be VERY easy for someone to play Lumen as a spoiled rich kid roleplaying at anarchism, the politics of it all being a petulant act of rebellion done in the name of pissing off their parents while hypocritically taking their money, constantly talking about burning down the sweatshops while never even speaking to their workers. It’d also be quite easy to play them as a young libertine who just wants to feel free and falls into addiction and hedonistic empty sex in the process. Somewhere in the many timelines, there is a supernaturalist Lumen obsessed with using rituals to non-violently end government. Hell, I could even imagine a libertarian capitalist Lumen who gets smooth-talked into thinking that free markets are voluntary. 

While all Lumens are building off the same foundation of anarchism, hope, and unhealthy copes, I think it’s also inevitable that no two Lumens will ever be the same, particularly once we get into how the choices of other players will influence the course of your character (as we will very much see). It’s why I’m not too worried about spoiling any part of this for someone who might one day want to take on the role of Lumen themselves. Lumen, like every other character in this story, is a silhouette which the player will be left to fill in, and that vagueness grants a whole lot of freedom.

Rather than being driven by stats or dice rolls, the vast majority of the game’s interactions were determined by spur of the moment player choice, largely playing off the improv principle of ‘Yes, and’. It was expect that, in any roleplay scenario, you would not reject whatever was being offered to you, but play off of it in a way that made sense for your character. If you were playing an 80 year old drunkard cornered by fascists, you COULD choose to berserk rage your way out of it, and the other players would likely respect that, but why would you?

Everyone had to choose what characters they were comfortable playing before all of this.

During the sign up, we were given brief overviews of every character. This is a screenshot of my own incomplete sheet. It's quite funny in hindsight to see Lumen listed as my Number 3 pick, as at this point I can't imagine having run this NOT as Lumen, but we'll get there when we get there.

Point is that every player crafted a list of 10 roles, in the order they wanted them. To my knowledge, there were no randomly assigned roles. This meant that you have already made the deliberate choice to roleplay someone who would be an easy target. Everyone here knew what they were signing up for, and are here to commit to it. That said, as we all know, it's one thing to sign up for pain and suffering, and quite the other to actually endure it.

I cannot stress enough though: There were multiple mechanics of escalating intensity which did in fact allow players to opt out - Hand signs that could quickly communicate comfort or lack there of, look down mechanics which could allow you to just leave, and a proper safe word designed to bring everything to a complete halt the moment it was uttered. It was, in it’s own way, the most platonic and large-scale BDSM scene I’d ever partaken in (so far~). Much like with BDSM, there was a lot of trust placed in each other to know our own limits, as well as what we wanted. A common refrain was ‘Only you can decide what happens to your character’ for very good reason. As ever, the freedom of choice (and personal level of commitment to the role) lies within the player.

However, this freedom still exists within a network of other players exercising the same freedom, which naturally calls for a whole lot of pre-game calibration and safety mechanics. Even after other players began to arrive, effectively the first full day was a Session Zero; a collective effort amongst the organizers and players to lay down the ground rules of how it was and was not okay to be shitty towards eachother. There were the obvious things like sitting down with players who you knew would be intimately involved with your story and working out limits and foundations (is it alright if I scream at you, are you alright with reasonable touching, how do we know eachother and what baggage do we have, etc.). We were taught stage slaps and how to properly roleplay beating someone into the ground, shown how to dance in-universe and told that we could insult players for what their character’s dancing was (a fascist saying ‘You dance like a filthy immigrant’ was the example in both runs) but told to never insult the PLAYER’S dancing, and given a general primer on the lore of Disco Elysium and La Cage itself.

Notably in this period, the other students and I agreed that our apartment had a rule banning bird seed. The hallway leading up to the student flat house an actual bird’s nest which, as players, we all agreed shouldn’t be touched. As characters, we argued about it, eventually culminating in someone throwing bird seed into the monarchist’s bed which in turn meant it became covered with shit. Everyone was a suspect, everyone had a motive. This for the sake of peace, a new house rule was generated: No bird seed. Something that Lumen was especially keen to enforce because this whole flat was on the verge of falling apart and I really, really needed this to work out. As I assemble the terms of a fragile peace with my soon-to-be roommates, I found perhaps my first real emotion as Lumen: ‘If I can make this flat work, then I can make the world work. Whatever it takes.’

The flexibility of interpretation finally began to take hold.

But to appreciate just how deep that unique flexibility runs, we’re gonna need to dive a bit deeper. As such, over the next week or two, I’m going to be posting a play-by-play of what happened, along with some parallel thoughts I had about the whole experience. I fully expect that much of this is going to find its way into a large stand alone video at some point, so this will also act as a bit of a script writing experiment where you get to watch me write and refine this in real time. However, with all I’ve seen, learned, and felt over the past couple weeks,I’m simply too excited to share it to hold off till I have the chance to sit down and record all of it. 

So I hope you will join me in the coming days, for the Tale of Lumen Boulanger.

Looking forward to sharing it with you all soon~
Ruby <33