Partner Play

To play in Monstrosity, you not only have to be invited and accepted, but you have to have a partner. You don’t need a partner to be accepted into the cast, but at some point before the larp, you need one to play. The simple reason for this is the story: every vampire brings one human to the “dinner party,” and the story focuses on individual relationships, including that one. However, we do have some practical benefits for having you find a partner.

Why You’ll Have a Partner

There are three benefits of having a partner.

The first is narrative structure. Monstrosity is focused around several “beats,” which are key moments of the larp that form a sort of ritual. One of these beats is the moment where vampires reveal their true nature to the humans, and another is the Revel, which is a mass feeding scene. We’ve found that these beats work better if you have a partner who you can talk to beforehand.

It also helps you to have someone to talk to about your character. Before the larp, we ask you not to make character ties with other participants. For vampires, we want you all to have a common history, and if some people make ties before the larp, other participants get left out. For humans, your character is showing up to a strange event where they don’t know anyone but the person who brought them. The exception to this is your partner: we encourage you to talk to them about your character.

Finally, having a partner helps us mitigate risk. It’s an informal buddy system; we know you have someone to talk to if you don’t feel comfortable talking to us right away. It also is a check on casting: you need to get someone to agree to be your partner before you play. 

It’s important to remember that these three benefits, along with the story-related reason, are all the reasons for you having a partner. Which means it’s important to remember what your partner is not supposed to be.

Limits of Partner Play

Monstrosity is a larp about a group of individuals, not a collection of pairs. During the larp, we want you to play with the entire cast, and not focus on partner play. More importantly, we want you to focus on yourself as a participant, and what you want to do at the larp. This means a couple of things:

• You are not responsible for your partner having a good time or doing the things they want to do. Focus only on your play.

• You’re not more responsible for your partner than you are for any other participant. We expect you to be respectful, but it’s not your job to take care of them.

• You don’t have to do any sexual or violent acts with your partner, and we encourage you to be clear about your boundaries. 

We’ll talk to you more about partner play during our Two-On-One meetings with you, but remember: your partner is there for a few specific reasons, and not to be the focus of your larp. 

What Partner Play Can Be

While we have specific reasons for you to have a partner, and specific things you should not expect from partner play, we also have one recommendation for you: you and your partner should make characters that matter to each other. We’ll talk about this more before the larp, but we suggest you establish a strong connection between your human and vampire - it’ll help drive home the themes of Monstrosity.