Riverbough

What if elves are so secretive about their origins because they spend decades as cringey overdramatic teens? In this rules-light game, players will improvise gossip about each themselves and each other while preparing for Riverbough High School's most important event of the week: Promcoming.

Inspirations: Riverdale, Gossip Girl, Degrassi, etc.

Long Description

Elves. A people blessed with preternatural grace and beauty. Their centuries of life bring incredible wisdom, kindness, and harmony with the natural world. Yet the scholars of other races have never been able to crack one singular mystery: where are all the young elves? The youngest elves out and about in the world are a full century of age. Why are the adults all so secretive on this singular point?

The truth is simple: were anyone else to learn the secret of the First Century, every single elf would simultaneously cringe in embarassment so hard they would cease to exist.

Young elves’ minds are positively soaked in teenage hormones. Every triumph, no matter how insignificant, makes them feel as though they are ready to take on the entire world single-handedly. Worse, even the smallest imagined slight turns into a world-shattering event from their perspective, the stuff oaths of vengeance are made of. The most inconsequential of new interests becomes something that is vital they re-center their entire personality around. And in all of these cases, they have all of that natural beauty, grace, and magical talent to back it up. This lasts for decades. It is for this reason that the Young Elves are carefully sequestered deep in the forests, in the High Schools of Elvenkind, where their dramas can play out uninterrupted and unseen.

Promcoming, the most important social event of all time since last week's most important social event of all time, is fast approaching, and that means the election of a Promcoming Monarch. Everyone who's anyone is going to be aiming for the crown. It will take every bit of gossip, every past connection, and every ounce of Drama you have in you to secure that title, but it will be worth it. How could it not?

Riverbough is a 3-hour LARP for 8-10 players, played in three phases: the first two hours are Promcoming Week, in which the players establish their characters and shared backstories, culminating in the vote for Monarch. It is followed by a half hour for Promcoming itself, and then a half hour for the Hundred-Year Class Reunion, in which our now-grown elves come together to reminisce and hopefully not feel too embarrassed.

The central mechanic of Riverbough is Drama Points, which are spent to establish past connections with other characters, anything from “We used to date back when you were really into yo-yos” to "There was a couple of years where we were both vampires and that was a whole thing." Players will submit a short paragraph of character background ahead of the game, but expect for that to be shaped by the many, many phases you've gone through in the past decades.