Practicals

Here we’ll try to answer to the most frequent questions about the LARP and practical moments you need to know, when you are going to visit some far away country ;)

About the LARP in general

The LARP “Deus Ex Machina” will be held from the evening of the 2nd to the late evening of the 5th of August 2017 in the general Moscow region by the “Stairway to Heaven” group.
The amount of players is about 700 people.

The setting of the LARP is some version of our future in the year 2067. The game is devoted to questions about human and humanity, the fight with death, transhumanism and cyberpunk.

More about the setting, plot and topics of the game can be read on the website and in larp’s fb group.

The price for the LARP is 50 euro. After you sign up, we’ll send you the information, how to pay. After that we’ll start two processes at the same time: applying for a visa and work on your character.

What about visas?

Let’s start with the most disturbing question. The bad news is — yes, you have to get a visa to go to Russia, and it will require some effort and money from you. The good news is — it is doable, and we’ll do our best to help you. And usually there is absolutely no reason a visa won’t be granted, if you start the process early enough.

The first thing you have to do to get a Russian visa is to get an invitation. The easiest way to do this is to buy it from some specific touristic company. If you are not curious enough to do it completely by yourself, we’ll help you with this by buying it for you. It will cost about 40 euro. We will need your passport data to provide them to the company (it is a company we know, of course). Then we’ll send you your invitation in .pdf format. Then you'll have to apply for a visa in your closest Russian consulate. The cost, required documents and address of the consulate depends on your country. On this step almost everything is on you, but we still can give some advice based on previous experience of our foreign guests.

The important point is: it is not a fast process to get the visa, so we advise you to start it as soon as possible. It is better to buy flights even before that, because there is not a big chance to fail with visa, but the tickets price could become higher every day.

How to get to the venue?

The venue is suited about 100 km from Moscow. There are three easy ways to get there:

  1. All of you will have some connections with Russian players, many of whom will go to the location by cars. You (or us for you) can always find a place in some car.
  2. There is a train station near the venue. The train goes from Moscow a bit more than one hour. Then you have to have a short taxi ride.
  3. If there will be enough people willing, we’ll order a bus to the venue right from Moscow.

The beginning of the game is in the evening of the Wednesday. But usually most Russian players try to be on the venue earlier to complete some building. It is normal to come at any time from the Saturday before the LARP to the Wednesday. Usually there are no workshops before Russian LARPs, but this construction-time works for them. So, if you want to know your fellow-players better before the game, it is a good idea to come to the place on Tuesday or at least early on Wednesday.

If you'd like to, you can also participate in the construction. Usually it doesn’t require any special skills, anyone can help under the leadership of the more experienced fellow-players or organizers.

Accommodation during the game

Sleeping. Our chosen location has two empty one-storey buildings and some ground around them. There will be a lot of scenery to construct and the main way to live in will be tents. You don’t have to bring your tents with you, if you don’t want to. Please, notify us and we’ll find one for you. But, either way, it’s a good idea to have a sleeping bag with you.

Food. There are two common ways to have food on Russian games usually:

  • There are in-game cafes, restaurants and places to eat, where you can eat or drink something for in-game money, if your character has enough of it.
  • Players bring some food with them and cook it during the game.

You can discuss this moment before the game with the russian connection-players and decide it together or ask game-organizers to help you, if your character is too independent to depend on someone in this question. We also don’t recommend to bring the food for the game from abroad - in general everything in Russia is much cheaper than in most of european countries or America.

Facilities. There are some well-built field toilets on the place, and we will order some more removable cabins to satisfy needs of the participants.
More precise information about showers will be later. There are some common showers in one of the buildings and, maybe, some removable will be built for the game. Anyway, it’s a river bank right in the venue, so you can swim, if the weather is good enough.

Emergency situations

For the case of any emergency situations, professional physicians will be present during the whole time of the event. Any participant will be able to get any help from them at any moment. Also, organizers have cars and drivers on stand-by to go to the nearest hospital (and the road to the venue is in good shape in case of a call for an ambulance).

Our group has a many-years experience of the big events, without any significant incidents during them.

Accommodation in Moscow before and after the game

We encourage you to go to Russia earlier (or to stay longer) to have a chance to visit Moscow or some other places as well. We can recommend you hostels or even find hosts, show you everything or organize some common events. We’ll decide more precisely about plans, when we realize, who will be here when. Anyway we promise not to leave you lost and forgotten.

Languages

The LARP is bilingual. Although most of the players are Russian and will speak mostly Russian during the game, we believe we have a strong idea how to include English-speakers into the larp process firmly. We are not going to set up some special location for you, but will incorporate you into in-game families and groups of Russian players who are ready to play with you in English and help you during the preparation period.

More about this plot and the idea in general

After the work on your character start, we’ll connect you with players, who will play the relatives/friends/colleagues/enemies/whatever of your character. These players will be chosen by us from those, who indicated their strong desire and readiness to play with you in english and to help you prepare to the game in general. And here the adventure will start.

PS

Here is the article by Erik Phil and Frida Aronsson, who were the participants of our previous LARP “1905” (Erik and Frida, thank you again for it!). The design of “Deus ex Machina” and experience we expect you'll get here is very different from the 1905”, although we think it still might be interesting for you to read it.