A Grandiose Disaster - Golden Valley

Everthing seemed fine but then it happened...

A scenario-driven live action roleplaying game of disaster movie drama. You can't stop the disaster, but you can decide who survives!

A Grandiose Disaster is a live action roleplaying game where you play out your own character-centric disaster/horror movie! Using a set of structured scenarios, you will play archetypical characters run through the wringer of the disaster. Who will you try to save? What choices do you make to survive?

Who lives, and who dies?

It is the distant future, twenty five years after the Grand Catastrophe of 2000. Most of you have no memories of the before time, a time of plenty where no person wanted for anything. Some of you may be old enough to remember what it was like back then, but they are dim memories from childhood.

But that all changed, and now you are barely able to eke out a living. You do not have global communication, so you do not know about the rest of the world, but everything local is terrible. The soil is arid and unhospitable; practically nothing grows in it. The world is dry and the frequent dust storms are destructive and deadly.

The basic necessities of life are scarce. Fresh water is worth more than its weight in gold. Canned foods from the before time were abundant, but you have nearly run out. You will starve, soon unless you find a food source. You can scavenge wild berries occasionally, but even those are rare here.

But you have heard a rumor that brings you hope. You have heard tales of The Golden Valley, a verdant unspoiled paradise where fresh fruits grow and clean water flows free. Unfortunately, it lies on the other side of the Purple Mountains. The mountains are home to hostile folk, strange mutated monsters, and worse. The weather is inhospitable to say the least.

You have no choice though. There is nothing for you here. You have gathered together in a caravan to try to forge through the Purple Mountains to the Golden Valley. Surely some of you will die, but maybe some will survive to reach the promised land.

But don't listen to me read what the designer says about it. Mike Young sez: "I have been designing larps since 1989. I started larping as a way to play a character without having to learn lines or be on stage. Over time I have come to love writing larps. I love interweaving stories and then giving these stories to a group of people and see what they come up with it. It is an amazingly collaborative, interactive artform unlike any other. I had the idea to do a disaster movie larp for some time. Originally, I was looking at a one-shot but I couldn’t decide what scenario to write. It hit me in the middle of the night: instead of writing a single larp, I could write a larp system and then write many scenarios for it. The character creation concept was inspired by Fiasco and the runtime format was inspired by some of the Nordic black box larps I played. I am very proud of A Grandiose Disaster. It has elegant mechanics and a great character creation system. I like watching the participants work together to create their shared histories and then agonize as to who they care about must die. I love watching the players react to the scenes in character, throwing every disaster movie trope in along the way. My favorite moment from all of the runs was from the very first playtest where a player yelled at the rest of the group, “you’re asking me to choose [which should die] between my father and my best friend.” That really crystallized the decisions I wanted to see in A Grandiose Disaster."