COVID-19 Time-Skip Explanation
Hello! This is the explanation for how we’re going to handle the big gap in time created by the pandemic. The staff has spent a long time looking at options and ideas for this; off and on for a year or so all told. We had some pretty cool concepts for incorporating into the setting and explaining the lack of events, and so on.
Ultimately, however, we realized that any explanation we used would really just serve to remind players of the pandemic every time the explanation came up. We’d lose the escapism that can be a fun and valuable part of larping for a lot of people. We also talked about the nature of our community members and how fortunate we were to have such an amazing group of kind people who just want to come together to have fun and excitement in a safe and shared space. That made it easy to figure out what to do.
So here’s the deal, we’re not going to have an elaborate explanation, but quite the opposite. We are going to hand-wave away an entire missing year. And, trusting in our participants, we’re going to ask everyone to collectively not look too deep into exactly how much time has passed or other little oddities that might creep up because of this. For example, some dates or years in conversations or in game letters might not quite line up anymore and be off by a year here and there. We’re just going to not worry about it and collectively let that roll off our backs.
To be a bit more specific: we had our season finale at the end of 2019 (1019 in game), things have been quiet over the spring of 1020, and we’ll be picking things up less than a year later in the early Fall of 1020. Ish. Documents will generally continue to be dated as the current real life year minus 1000 (how we made it easy to remember when we started). Which, yeah, means you might get a letter dated 1021 this year. Just roll with it, that’s the kind of hand waving we’re talking about.
Now, Invictus is definitely a lore rich game with tons of mysteries that might come down to the details. So as much as we’re asking you to kinda just overlook little inconsistencies due to the missed year, we understand that you might run into something and not know if it’s meant to be an actual clue or something to shrug off. If this happens, please, by all means, reach out and ask a staff member. We’re all in it together and, speaking for myself, I promise you I know what it’s like to wonder if something I’ve noticed is meant to matter or not. :)
In short, we’re just asking everyone to not pay too much attention to this particular thing and we can enjoy getting back into the story together.
We’re also going to use this opportunity to make a few little tweaks here and there. We’ll hopefully have new coins for the event, just treat them like they’re normal. We might update some NPC costuming or descriptions, we’ll make sure it’s clear who they are and if it’s something you should care about as a Big Clue or not. I’m testing different ways of doing Givick facestones (If you’ve seen me with multicolored gems in a pair of lines down my face, that’s them) so they might alter a bit. That sort of thing. Minor facelifts and we’ll be aiming to be clear about what we’re doing in that regard. Thalasi will still be blue, however, never fear!
Lastly, I want to ask for patience and understanding as we all settle back into this together. Staff members will totally have forgotten something you told them, players will mix up NPC names, etc. If it’s an in game slip, we have our trusty friend The Fracture to easily explain it away. If it’s an out of game oversight, assume the best of intentions and please just let us know. There’s gonna be some awkwardness and it’s gonna be ok. :)
See you all soon!