Un-Hamlet, by Tory Root and Lily Benderskaya
I'm not going to beat around the bush: the troupe's been bought out. I know this seems sudden to you. All I can say is that it was necessary, that we're going to go through some changes, but we're going to be stronger for it. There is great opportunity coming for us.
- K
We'll see you all tonight, of course. No matter what's on the horizon, our rehearsal process is important.
- G
I'll prepare the exploratory scenes! Family drama, romantic tribulations, murder of course, one can't do without a little murder. Oh, perhaps a trial for high treason...
- P
I'll bring the usual and we can all commit hiiigh treason.
- R
I've heard that the new management is going to have to let one of us go. Is that true? We need to know if that's true.
- C
Freaking whatever, it'll all change by tomorrow anyway. TRUTH OR DARE AFTER REHEARSAL call it celebration or the last gasp before we all die, I don't care, but it's happening.
- J
Management always changes when a troupe gets bought out. Somebody else is going to be calling the shots when the dust settles, I just know it.
- L
Let's enjoy the time we have together. Whatever else happens, you are all my dearest friends.
- O
I heard the early exploratory rehearsals were legendary even before I joined. Let's make history.
- H
Un-Hamlet is a Shakespeare-inspired meta-larp of scenes, surreality, literary interpretation, and a theater troupe that may or may not exist. Players will start as members of an eccentric theater troupe, pick up and act out scenes as their characters, and receive a character sheet update as reality shifts, identities compound, and decisions must be made. The game structure is on the rails, including both stupid party games and everything you think you know being turned upside down. Characters' genders are player-determined. This game contains pervasive themes of grief and mental illness, including suicidal ideation, depression, and mania; some sheets and scenes may explore mild drug use, toxic relationships, and betrayal. Scenes will be full of dramatic conflict, and the game will end with one character dying.
"I am Hamlet, Hamlet, and as Hamlet, I never killed you!"
- Hamlet
This was not even the first game we came up with while driving somewhere on Route 3, and that seems to work pretty well as a brainstorming location, all things considered. It was the first game we voluntarily premiered at nine in the morning, for reasons having nothing to do with sane decision-making and everything to do with not wanting to miss another larp.
Despite the abrupt urge to describe this game as "it's a lovely morning in the castle and you are a horrible prince," which isn't even that accurate, we blame a different steam game for the existence of this larp. Un-Hamlet isn't exactly a time-looping Hamlet game, it's a different kind of weird Hamlet game, but we'd both been playing Elsinore nonstop and had Hamlet on the brain for a while there. Also, hey, there's a time-looping Hamlet video game called Elsinore, go check it out!
February 28, 2020, at Intercon T in Warwick, MA.
October 8, 2021, at a larp day in Canton, MA.
July 23, 2023, at Summer Larpin' in Boxborough, MA.
October 1, 2023, at Be-Con in Chicago, IL.
Un-Hamlet is currently a game for nine players (characters have player-determined genders) which runs for about four hours, in one room, under the direction of one GM. Pre-game reading, including rules and starting character sheet, is about fifteen hundred words, and there is significant in-game reading. It could theoretically be cast at the door in a longer time slot, but probably works better pre-cast. It could also theoretically, with only a few extra tweaks, run without a GM.
The game is runnable as is. It does not have much GM information written at the moment.