Shebopaleileigh, by Tory Root
Northumber College, Canaan, Vermont. It's halfway through December, and your overdue final projects are piled up as thick as the snow outside your window. The cold light of dawn looks pretty through the pine trees, sure, but this will probably be the third late night in a row. All the same, you're pulling your boots out from the wet pile in the lobby of your dorm and shrugging into your coat, because you just heard that the famous traveling Shebopaleileigh Improv Troupe has come round to the campus. A last-minute sort of thing, sure, because Jack Kissinger's play was supposed to go up tonight, but nobody else could pull it together after he died. But Shebop's worth the freezing walk, another chug of Diet Rockstar and rum, and a few hours of your time.
Shebopaleileigh is a real-world, high-character, low-plot dramedy for nine theatrical larpers and three improv comedians, soaked with caffeine and desperation. Because everybody needs a good laugh during finals.
"The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want..."
"...for drugs!"
- the Shebopaleileigh Improv Troupe
Shebop is a crazy little experiment of a game that, all things considered, went off better than it could have. Tory's probably trying something vaguely certifiable with the central conceit of the game, which she considers a Horrible Spoiler and will not discuss further, but the players seemed entertained by it, or at least a chunk of them did. It suffers from a primary/secondary character divide, perhaps overwhelmingly, perhaps not. Tory has plans for what to do with it if she ever gets around to it.
April 4, 2009, at the Brandeis Festival of the LARPs in Waltham, MA. There are photos of this game!
November 13, 2009, at SLAW at WPI in Worcester MA. There are photos of this game!
Shebopaleileigh is a game for twelve players (characters mostly have pre-defined genders) which runs for three to four hours, in one room, under the direction of one GM. Average character sheet length is about fifteen hundred words.
The game could use one major edit which is not time-consuming but which will turn it into a ten-player game. More likely, though, it'll just stay in retirement, as a lot of what Tory wanted to do with this game, ahhrtistically speaking, she did better in two other games. The game has no casting, stuffing, or runtime information, though it wouldn't be hard to write up.