Invited, Accepted, Partnered

Monstrosity works a little differently than other larps… you can’t just sign up for it. Additionally, even after you’ve joined the cast, you might not be able to play. We have a three-step process we call “Invited, Accepted, Partnered” that we use to ensure we have the best possible casts for the experience.

Why We Do It Differently

Monstrosity is a high-risk larp (you can read more about that in our article on Risk Management). We allow realistic violence and actual sexual activity and engage in difficult topics. This means that our participants need to do three things:

Understand the risks before they consent to them.
Consent enthusiastically and continuously as they engage the content.
While they engage the content, they have to assert their boundaries and respect the boundaries of others.

Note that we don’t need our participants to “be” anything. They don’t have to be “safe” or “respectful” or anything, because we’re concerned with behavior and not making judgements about people. Judging if someone is “safe” is very difficult and has a catastrophic failure mode. Watching someone’s behavior and making sure it matches our requirements is a lot of work, but we feel confident we can do it. As such, the only requirement for our participants is that they’re 21 years old.

However, we have to make sure that people will behave appropriately. The Invited, Accepted, Partner model is the first step in this: in order to join the cast of Monstrosity, they need to take certain steps.

Invited - Asking For What You Want

The first step is to get an invitation from someone who has played Monstrosity before. Our application is password protected… someone has to give you the password to apply. There’s a couple of ways they can do this.

They can simply send you the password.
If you’re on our Discord, anyone who has the Alum role has instructions on a private channel about how to invite them using the server.
In either case, remember the name of the person who invited you, as you have to put it on the application.

More Information

In addition to our main pages, we have a blog to elaborate on the design. Here's some entries to help you learn about Monstrosity.

Tools, Not Rules

Expectations of Behavior

Discretion

Partner Play

Social Justice and Scholarship Policy

Communication Policy

Refund Policy

Refusal of Service Policy

There's one other way to get an invite: if someone who has an invite intends to partner with you, you're invited as well (in other words, if you you apply with a partner, only one of you needs an invite).

It’s not a complex process, but we do ask one thing: if you want to be invited, please ask. The best place to do that is on our Discord, in a channel called “invitation-finder.” However, if you found out through a friend, feel free to ask them.

Just be ready to hear “no.”

As we mentioned above, the reason we have the Invited, Accepted, Partnered model is to make sure our participants behave a certain way. If you play in Monstrosity, we’re going to make sure you say “no” during our workshops. Saying “no” and hearing “no” is hard, but very important. And we want to make sure that the possibility of hearing “no” is one of the first things you can hear.

We also want you to ask for what you want, knowing the answer could be “no.” Asking for what you want is also an important part of Monstrosity - no one can read your mind, and asking for an invitation tells us you’re interested in the larp.

It also means that the producers and previous participants have an idea of who’s applying. If we don’t know someone, we can go to the person who invited them and ask about them. If someone had bad behavior in previous communities, someone might reach out to us and let us know. The people who can give you an invite generally care a great deal about this larp, and we’re going to do our due diligence through this process. And while it’s a risk to put your name out there, knowing other people might talk to us about you, this is a larp about taking risks. And in this case, the worst thing you can hear is “no.”

Of course, you’re likely to hear “yes,” and get an invite. Some of you might be directly invited, if people think you’re a good fit for the larp. The next step is to be accepted.

Accepted - It Works Both Ways

We have an application; this is our tool for acceptance. This isn’t just us accepting you. You also have to accept the larp.

The application is long; we make no apologies for it. However, we only really look at four questions to determine if we’ll accept you (and two of those are “who invited you” and “are you at least 21 years old”). Everything else is to see if you accept the risks or prepare you for play. We make sure you acknowledge everything from the content of the larp to the time commitment required to the fact that a lot of people have bruises. We want to make sure you know what you’re getting you into.

After you accept us, we’re still going to ask you to do some work. Some of the application questions are relatively hard. We’re going to ask you about having sex and being violent. We’re going to ask how you can be a monster. The hardest one? We’re going to ask you what you want to actually do at the larp… not what story you want or feelings you want to have… what do you want to do with your body at the larp. We do this because we want you thinking about that when you apply, and for the application to be a minor barrier to entry. We start this right away, so that by the time you play the larp, months later, you’re fully ready to engage with the material.

On our end, we don’t have a good way to figure out if you’re a good fit based on your answers, but we can tell by the fact you give good answers. The fact you filled it out completely and with a bit of thought is our biggest concern. After that, we see if you took exception to any of our risk-related questions (it’s rare, but it does happen… usually if someone doesn’t consent to the risks they don’t finish the application). Finally, we have a three step process:

We check to make sure you’re at least 21 years old.
If none of the Producers know you, or know your partner, we reach out to the person who invited you to check you out.
We read two specific questions in the “About Monstrosity” section that gives us a pretty good idea if you’re making an informed consent decision.

If you’ve completely filled out the application, you accept all the risks, you’re 21, your invite checks out, and we have a good feeling after reading those two questions, we accept you. If we have any reservations about those things, we’ll do our due diligence and make a decision based on our best judgement.

If we have more applicants than we have spots in the larp, we accept people in the following order of precedence:

First, the producers can award up to 4 spots in each run at their discretion.
Second, we make an effort to prioritize diversity.
Third, we reserve one spot for scholarships for every nine people.
Finally, we randomly decide the remaining spots, reserving 2 to 4 spots for individuals without a partner.

We generally open our survey 6 to 8 months in advance, to ensure we have time for an installment plan. We will have an application deadline listed on our website: this is the latest time you can apply before we cast the larp. We will keep our application open until a month before the larp to allow people to sign up for our waitlist or for any open slots. If you apply before the deadline, you should know if you’re accepted within 72 hours of the deadline.

However, acceptance does not guarantee you’ll play in the larp. First, you have to pay for it (unless you’re on a scholarship). In addition, we reserve the right to refuse service at any time, for any reason - so if someone sees your name on the cast and contacts the Participant Advocate with concerns, we can and will refuse service if we feel we should. Finally, before you can play, you have to have a partner.

(You can see all the application questions here - clicking the link creates a copy for you to fill out in advance).

Partnered - The Start of Risk Control

You need a partner to play Monstrosity. We talk extensively about why in our article on Partner Play. The primary reason is narrative: this is a story about vampires who bring a particular human into a terrible situation. However, there are three other benefits to having all participants have a partner:

Having a partner helps you prepare for the structure of Monstrosity… a couple of moments are focused on a human and vampire sharing an experience. With a partner, you can prepare for those moments.
You can talk with your partner before the larp. We purposely ask participants not to make ties with each others’ characters… except for you and your partner. Having a partner helps you get ready to play your character.
Having a partner mitigates risk. Not only does it serve as an informal buddy system, it also is a check on casting: someone has to agree to be your partner.

We already told you that we don’t view individuals as “safe” or “unsafe” - we focus on behavior. However, in a larp like Monstrosity, with the risks the participants take, it’s important that everyone has a level of trust with each other. Knowing that everyone had to find a person willing to play with them helps promote this trust.

More importantly, finding a partner means you’ve taken certain actions. You had to approach someone and ask them to play with you, and open yourself to the possibility of them saying “no.” In talking with them, we expect you discussed what you want to do at the larp, and went over common boundaries. And when you agree to partner with someone, you place your trust in them, and accept their trust in you. These actions aren’t something you’ll do just once; throughout Monstrosity, you have discussions with the rest of the cast just like the one you had with your partner. By ensuring that everyone has a partner, we make sure that everyone has already demonstrated the behavior they’ll have to practice at the larp to some degree.

If you're accepted without a partner, you'll have the opportunity to find one from the individuals who are also already accepted, or from the waitlist. You can also invite someone to apply; they'll be able to do so outside the application window and if accepted they will join you in your run. We'll go over the full procedure for this process after you're accepted.

The biggest takeaway from the entire Invited, Accepted, Partnered process is that it’s just the beginning of forming the cast, not the end. Forming the cast is just the initial vetting, but no form of vetting is 100% effective. The activities encouraged by the process will happen continuously as you prepare and play in the larp, and help form a cohesive and supportive cast.

A Few Notes

We have a few questions we’re regularly asked. Here’s some notes that might clarify parts of the process:

Our invitation system is one-step in a larger process. While it’s important, we have numerous controls that back it up. As such, we don’t give people much guidance on how to issue invitations… we think it’s important to trust the people who have already played in the larp. After all, we have to demonstrate the trust we want you to practice.
We don’t have a formal flagging system (for those who don’t know, flagging is a process where all applicants can express concerns about all other applicants). We have numerous reasons for this, but the biggest is that we have a Participant Advocate to address concerns about the cast list. Please be assured: we will take action if the presence of one participant would threaten another.
If you sign up individually, we’ll offer you limited help to find a partner. We’ll collect and share information between people looking for partners, but we won’t pair anyone with you. You have to reach out to potential partners on your own.

The Invited, Accepted, Partnered process is unique to Monstrosity, and we expect you to have questions about it. If you have any questions, comments or concerns, please email us.