Dissipation Cove, by Tory Root
They say that when George Vancouver first put in at this small bay, back when he was exploring the Puget Sound, one of his longboats struck out into the fog and never came back. So he named it Dissipation Cove. Well, who knows how true that is? Wouldn't be the first passive-aggressive place name he came up with; wouldn't be the last.
Anyway, fast forward a few hundred years and here we are. There are weirder, queerer, cooler places around here, but this small town is quiet. Surprisingly friendly, mostly normal. The fog is thick, the internet is slow, and sometimes people feel drawn here. Which is not to say it doesn't have its problems. What do you expect? It's a small rural town that's trying to develop and scrabbling along. But it's also one of those places where if you're meant to be here, you feel like you've lived here all your life.
Dissipation Cove is an urban fantasy mindscrew game of small-town drama, surreality, identity disruption, and creeping loss. This game is set in a fictional small town around the turn of the millenium. It will take place in two scenes, both set at the same yearly town festival: the first in 1999 and the second in 2004. Between the scenes, some players will be changing characters and some will not, though everyone will get a character sheet update regardless. Some players will also be pulled aside for black box scenes with a GM at various points. Most characters in this game have pre-set binary genders that are fairly locked in for various reasons; of the rest, one is genderqueer and one can be set by the player.
This game contains pervasive themes of loss, separation, grief, and mind alteration. Some individual characters may deal with infidelity, alienation, severe loneliness, parental abuse, substance abuse, economic stresses, suicidal ideation, the aftermath of sexual assault, social difficulties facing veterans, or being a parent who has lost a late-teen or young adult child. Some characters may experience brief periods of near-complete darkness during black box scenes if possible in the gamespace, but that can be adjusted due to player needs.
"Tory, what the fuck?"
- multiple players
Another game that arose from Tory squinting at a wall and asking "wait, how can I engineer a larp to instill that particular complicated feeling?" Yeah, the intended feeling is a spoiler. :P This is a sad and heavy game where nearly all conversation takes place in quiet corners that it's rude for a GM to eavesdrop on, so Tory has a startling shortage of funny quotes from it.
After the first few runs, Tory has been forced to admit that while this can jam into a four hour slot, it will be a more pleasant experience with an extra half-hour or hour to breathe. She also still has some runtime mechanics to tweak.
February 1, 2025, at a private residence in Canton, MA.
February 28, 2025, at Intercon W in Warwick, RI.
May 17, 2025, at A LARP Festival in Cambridge, MA.
June 14, 2025, through the Greater Boston LARP Society in Belmont, MA.
Dissipation Cove is currently a game for twelve players (characters mostly have pre-defined genders) which runs for four to five hours in one room with an isolated side area, under the direction of one GM. Average pre-game reading, including rules, setting, and character sheet, is about four thousand words. The second character sheets read during game average a little over a thousand words.
The game is runnable as is. It has almost no GM documentation.