At Dexcon, I was given the honor and pleasure to take part in one of the most anticipated Larps at Dexcon 2014. The game was Pacific Rim: The Rise of Tiburon. Based on the immensely popular 2013 Guillermo Del Toro movie, Rise of Tiburon was a high production larp created by Nerdy City. It was also one of the first games to utilize the Chronos Universal Larp System in their game play.
For those of you who haven't seen Pacific Rim, I'll give you a synopses of the world. In an alternate 2013, a giant rift in space and time opens up in the pacific ocean, unleashing a giant reptiloid-esque monster. Within the span of days, San Francisco and several other Coastal Cities are levelled before the monster is killed. Then, eventually, more came. In response, the nations of the world banded together to create weapons capable of killing what were then being called Kaiju. These weapons were called Jaegers, giant humanoid mech suits piloted by two pilots (called Rangers) who link up together and with the Jaeger to move in an effective unit. They think together, they move together, they are together. The pilots, and the machine both have to be compatible to enter what is called the Drift which links them as one.
Rise of Tiburon is set in 2023, two years before the main events of the movie, inside the Seattle Shatterbase where the Jaegars are housed. It was the original house of Mark I Jaegar codenamed Echo Thunderhead. Echo was an awesome hitter, but after years of use and the growth of larger Kaiju, he was phased out and put into disrepair. Housing a rotating cast of visiting Jaegars, the Seattle Shatterbase is the home for a colorful cast of characters that help to cancel the impending apocalypse.
When I registered, I spoke with Josh, one of the gamerunners, about what kind of character I wanted to play. In the movie, there was a scientist character who was unabashedly an admirer of the Kaiju from a scientific stand point. I asked him if it was possible to play that, but for the Jaegers. I was blessed with a childhood where every show that had the word Gundam in it, and every Power Ranger Zord to come across the screen. In short, I wanted to play someone whose love of watching Giant Robots go to town fueled his brilliance and his desire to work on the things when they became a viable reality. No sooner had I said that did Josh present to me a list of options which included exactly that.
And thus, Dr. Himura was given to me. Dr. Himura (whose first name was omitted as to allow anyone to play them. I named him Akira) had a full page dossier, including blood type, family members, and enough of a description to give me a feel for him. I'm used to larps where people come in with PCs they themselves have built, and the level of detail they put into these characters was astounding intricate. And they wrote 75 of them, each with their own agendas, history, wants and connections. In short, they could write a book simply on this game alone and still have some leftover on the cutting room floor.
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| I may have been drunk when that photo was taken, don't judge me |
It also says something of the source material. Del Toro wrote an entire world that never showed up on the screen. Histories and Jaegers and Kaiju, the way the world reacted (which is alluded to as nearing Dystopic levels) and the rise of Kaiju Worshipping. The gamerunners clearly did their homework and used that to their advantage to build on it, extrapolating and creating a world that while there is a lot of their stuff it makes sense to the heart and soul of the core material.
Finally, game day comes, and we're given a briefing on the game, Chronos and the sections we'd be playing in. Himura was a member of J-Tech, the technicians who build and repair the Jaegars. Each character was fully fleshed out, from Chief Engineers, to neuroscience experts, to computer programmers and robotics experts (that'd be me) and munitions experts that believed More Dakka was not ever enough Dakka. Each group had their own Storyteller, ours was Miles, who played Punk-Grunge frontman Quartermaster Eli Jeong. Miles wins the award for costuming, clearly playing a native of Seattle in the "Grunge didn't die, it just got upgrades" attire. He, more than anything, sold the setting for me. Plus the band's name was Baby Seal Club, which I spent a lot of time giggling madly about (I'm a sick individual, sue me)
Speaking of the selling the setting. The production that Nerdy City put into making gamespace REAL was a masterstroke. Most of my experience was in J-Tech, a work shop with desks, a row of computers and a giant robot hand that belonged once to Echo Thunderhead...
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| 'Sup? |
This was all before game. And the moment we went in we started to work, interacting with one another, clashing ideas and reminiscing about the glory days of Echo Thunderhead. Then the sirens went off, and the screen in the room showed us look at the Seattle Skyline as Bedlam Armada, Echo's Replacement from Canada, took to the bay to meet with the incoming Tiburon, the first of the Category IV Kaiju. It was sleek, it was fast, and it dropped into the bay like a sack of titanium alloy potatoes.
With only hours before Tiburon touched down onto the coast, everyone in J-tech looked at each other, then the large giant hand in the room. A few minutes of Aikidoing Command and Echo Thunderhead was to be recommissioned for one last fight.
That was when the game really began. Repairs and rebuilds were represented by interesting minigames doled out by Miles. Computer reprogramming took the form of transferring cyphers, calibrations were done using an app that simulated the little handheld games that required you to move all the ball bearings into little divets at the same time. In order to reformat the model software, I and a team of three built a small sculpture of Echo using modelling sand that was collapsing in my hand. I enjoyed this section as it actually reflected the hardwork that we would be doing.
It was aided by the fact that certain challenges required certain proficiencies that no one person had. Himura was Great at Robotoics, and Decent in bio-tech and computers. If he was given a task that required robotics and mechanical engineering, he needed to find someone(s) to work together. This part upheld the theme to Pacific Rim, the need to work together, to compliment each other's skills. Rangers needed to be compatible to drift with the Jaeger, the crews needed to be compatible to make the Jaegers work.
After several hours of work, and a few interactions that cemented the team further, we got the job done. We were treated to watching the fight on screen, piped in live from one of the other rooms as Echo Thunderhead made it to the bay and took on Tiburon in a fight that nearly destroyed Seattle but saved millions of lives. It was interesting, watching the better part of 75 players sitting together and cheering on something that we all felt like we worked together to build.
I remember after game feeling giddy about the experience. It didn't help that each room seemed to have the Pacific Rim soundtrack playing, which is geared towards the epic and badass, and in keeping with the J-Tech Grunge, a good chunk of Black Sabbath and other bands were playing. It was a fun experience, and an immersive game all around. It kept us in J-tech busy enough that we didn't break out of character even while doing the minigames. Whoever thought of them was a genius, and regardless of who did, Miles deserves props for being an awesome ST.
My one negative is that, as a member of the J-tech Minigame squad, I did not get to use the Chronos Cards. At All. They did serve as an effective reminder of what my character could do, but there was nothing present in the environment that allowed himto do so. So as much as I'd love to do a work up of Chronos--I'll get to it eventually--it'll have to wait until my review of FATE is done. That being said, I loved the minigames as it actually felt relevant and representative of the actions we were taking part in and was something that was actively active as opposed to turn based systems, which can take you very much out of a scene.
Other than that, Rise of Tiburon was one of those games that, as a fan of larps and a up and coming builder of larps, set the bar high for what theater larps can be. With the right amount of creativity, madness (which may be one and the same), support and funding (important, that last one) you can achieve a lot. Clearly though it can't be run by the faint of heart, and that certainly doesn't include the folks at Nerdy City. I know that many people were asking for the next run almost immediately after game, and there have been some rumors. But until then, let the guys decompress. They ran an awesome game. And not unlike the movie it was based on, we can always hope-and receive-the sequel it deserves.
Later,
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| Just hit Play: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1vU7XqToZso |
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