Alba is a LRP/LARP game by Carcosa Dreams. It is a combination of “Weekend” and “Festival” LARP systems, consisting of five smaller regional events in various parts of the country, followed by two large Festival events; a pattern which will repeat until the end. It’s a game with a story arc, a beginning, middle and end; but exactly how many events that will be will depend on maintained interest levels.
The game is focused around the island of Alba, a fantasy setting based on pre-roman British folklore. It’s a land without geography, and a people whose cultural memory is maintained by a benevolent group called the Keepers. Every so often, the Keepers will invite people of the villages of Alba to come with them to a gathering, to share tales and trade with the rest of the land, to bind together against common enemies, and to do things that will go down in legend as the stories for a future age.
At events there will be opportunities to build up your own legends, which your Druids will tell to the Keepers that they become legend. If they do, you will gain a non-transferable representation of that legend, and we encourage you to integrate your new status with your character – a new name (from Adyn to Adyn The Dragonslayer), a dragon scale that hangs around your neck, a tattoo. Becoming enough of a legend grant opportunity beyond the mundane – to forge a powerful weapon, or to ascend into myth. But your status may also be used for other purposes, to renounce your status as The Dragonslayer to save the life of your love (which may, of course, be yourself), to have your myth forgotten in return for a plague retreating from your lands. Story is currency, and you can earn and spend it.
All of these are long term goals. We do not expect to be giving out many story rewards in any single game, and the rules for getting a reward are not mechanical – you must impress the Keepers, which depends as much on who did the thing as what they did. It’s an IC process, not a vending machine, and the decision of what gets rewarded is up to the characters giving them out. If you suspect OC corruption, report it to us.
Alba is a class-based game, and you may switch between those classes at any point between events. Classes affect how you can interact with the gods and animal spirits of Alba, which weapons you can use, how many hits you can take before you face death itself.
The game itself is not heavy on the externally driven plot. The area outside the main camp is dangerous – more so at night, when the Other Place starts to send its foggy tendrils into this world – and creatures may attack from known directions. Watches are worthwhile. While the main field is 24-hour time in, game support and hard-combat encounters will cease on a timetable.
Alba as a system isn’t finished. We intend to update systems and concepts over the first set of Regional events, after which changes are less likely to be structural, but we will be updating things based on how they end up working in a field. Specifically the first three regional events are before we’ve finalised mechanical aspects of villages and a fest-game focused Alba-wide subgame (For those who did Odyssey, about the same conceptual level as the World Forge, but different in execution and intention), and this initial release of the site is missing important things like costume guides and look & feel.
The Alba website is now live!
