Producing the “21 Grams or Bust” LARP
“21 Grams or Bust” was originally created for the Vegas Darkness Emergent event in 2024. I have been running LARPs for 15 years, but always on an invite only basis, where everyone who joined needed to be vouched for by a current player. 21 Grams was my first public game for a group of players I had never met before.
Darkness Emergent is set in the World of Darkness and uses the Vampire the Masquerade (VtM) LARP rules. Since the main game was vampire, I did not want to run a straight vampire game, but I did not want to deviate too much either. After some discussion with my team, we decided to run a game based on Wraith, the ghosts of the World of Darkness. In the game, a team of vampires explores a long abandoned and haunted casino to solve its mysteries and break a curse.
To ensure that the game ran quickly, I created a simple rule system. Each player got 3 index cards, and, over the course of the game, they could select up to 3 Skills or Discipline Powers from the VtM system. They could then use these Skills and Discipline Powers as much as they wanted. This limited players, but still gave them enough flexibility to do everything they wanted to in the game. When players faced a challenge in the roleplaying, they could draw a card from a deck each of the Storytellers carried, and needed to draw equal to or higher than our set difficulty for that test. If they had the right Skill, they could draw 2 cards and use the better one.
Vegas Storyteller Team
Blood trail to the Crime Scene
After an Introduction where each player had an opportunity to tell the group a little about what their character brought to the team, we started Act 1. Players were now able to enter the gaming space, where we had turned off the lights. The players only had glow sticks and electric candles for illumination. We placed index cards around the game space to mark locations, so that STs and players would always know where on the casino map they were located. During Act 1, the players could barely communicate with the spirits, and they discovered the Crime Scene.
The Crime Scene was an area we had laid out with plastic blood splatters and a variety of props, each with a corresponding yellow crime scene number. Players could explore and investigate the crime scene, and find a red box with 3 locks marked “motive,” “means,” and “opportunity.” But they did not yet have enough information to actually solve the crime.
At the same time, players in the bar area of the casino would find a box with a note saying they would need a fresh deck to summon “The Dealer.” The deck was hidden among the props in the crime scene. Eventually, the STs would encourage the players to meet back up and go over their findings, leading to the team with the note and the team that found the deck trading information. Once the deck was sorted, numbers had been written on the side, giving the code to a lock box found in the box. Opening this box gave the players a gold Tarot and started Act 2.
Two big chains of events started in Act 2. Ryan, playing The Dealer, would give each player character a tarot reading, and the players would solve the murder. In order to solve the murder, the players would have to explore the casino to find documents that the STs used as rewards, and contact wraiths to gain information. This section led to more interaction with the wraiths and a slow drip of information to the players. They would eventually learn that Venus, a movie star past her prime, had been ritualistically killing patrons and employees of the casino in order to extend her life and youth. She did this through elaborate traps, but eventually killed her own daughter, Tyche, in order to gain even more power. However, the detective who had been hunting her forced her to hide in a secret passage, which activated one of her own traps and killed her. With Tyche dead, the casino being abandoned, and none of the involved spirits able to find closure, a curse of oblivion fell over the casino. The players would also discover that in order to defeat the ancient, evil being haunting the casino, they would need to bind and anchor their own souls using a tarot card.
Simultaneously with all of this, Ryan gave tarot readings to each character. These readings were tailored to the players’ characters, which sometimes led to bleed, when the Player feels the emotions of their Character. During some of the readings, Ryan would have other STs, players, or himself play the spirits of the dead from the character’s past, so they could have a final moment to speak to them. This led to some pretty emotional scenes and bleed, especially when exploring relationships that were close to real deaths and LGBT+ family dynamics.
Ryan Omega as The Dealer
Setting up the ritual
After all the puzzles had been solved, the players would enter Act 3 and were rewarded with instructions for a ritual to summon Lethe, an ancient god of oblivion who destroys memories. The players had to build a pentagram and place candles, then gather around and offer up their most powerful memories. Once each player character had told a story and offered their memories to the ritual, the memories were all destroyed and consumed by Lethe, and the players entered the shadowlands of the dead.
The showdown with Lethe and their minions was our Act 4. Keith wore a glowing cloak in the dark, while Sidney and Fab moved around the players like evil wraiths. I used my deck of cards to go around the room and ask each player how their character would face the challenge. Finally, the player wielding The Hand of Oblivion, an item found during exploration and by solving puzzles, would use it to banish Lethe back to Oblivion. Once the ritual was completed, the players used their tarot cards to find their way back to the world of the living and escape the shadowlands.
With the game completed, we took time to go around the room and talk about our experiences, especially focusing on interactions with other players. I always believe a cooldown is important to connect with other players and help with bleed. When players find themselves at the center of such intense scenes, talking about the experience can alleviate pressure and make them comfortable continuing the conversation with others in the room. In this process, and talking to players after the game, I learned that players had explored personal hauntings, family rejection, and even the real deaths of loved ones.
Darkness Emergent: Los Angeles 2025