Interregnum is a Live Action Role Playing Game. In case you’ve never heard of Roleplaying Games before, in short, it’s a bit like one of those murder mystery parties that people sometimes host, only rather more freeform, with an ongoing narrative, and the world and characters tend to be rather less like our own. For more, we’d suggest reading Wikipedia’s article on the subject – it goes into the subject in rather more depth than we have space to do here.

In Interregnum, the players take on the roles of Vampires who are part of an ancient conspiracy that has ruled the world for time out of mind – as the game begins, these Vampires find that they’re been given a very unusual opportunity, the like of which hasn’t occured in centuries. But, of course, this opportunity is not without a number of attendant risks…

When Is It?

It runs on the second Sunday in the month, in a central London location. The first game will take place on Sunday the 13th of July from 7pm, in the function room of The Blue Posts pub on Newman Street, off Oxford Street.

Can I Play?

Absolutely. We’d love to have you. We don’t care if you’ve never played in a Vampire LARP, or any kind of LARP before. We’re friendly, welcoming, and will do everything we can to help you join in. (And if you’ve played in hundreds of Vampire LARPs before, well, we’d love to have you, too.)

How Do I Join In?

Well, to start with, we’d suggest that you read the various bits of our guide for new players.

People who’ve never played Vampire before, well, we’ve written all that to help you get a handle on the game, but please, don’t panic if you’ve read it all three times, and it still sounds like Ancient Greek as translated by a Martian. You aren’t expected to memorise all of it. This is not a test.

Drop the refs a line, and we’ll be happy to talk stuff through with you at any time. And if all else fails, then simplest option for new players is to just turn up early to a game. Our game starts at 7pm, but there will be refs on hand from 5pm to help people get things sorted out. We like to meet new people.

For Beginners

If you have no idea what the Vampire: the Masquerade setting is, then you’ll want to start off by reading about the basics of the setting and the lexicon, just to give you some idea what you’re getting into. From there, you might want to go and read the character generation, and the more detailed background to Europe.

If you’re familiar with roleplaying, and what to get some idea what your character generation options are in more detail, then you’ll also want to read the sections on Influences, Backgrounds and Downtimes, although in any case if you’d prefer to simply get assistance with generating your character before the first game, just turn up early – the refs will be there to help you from 5pm.

If you’d like to get your own copy of the rulebook ahead of time, then PDF copies are available reasonably cheaply here, but it’s not really something you need to do unless you want to – the refs will have everything you need available at the game.

Experienced Players

People who are familiar with Vampire LARP can skip a lot of the basics, but it’s particularly worth reading the Character Generation, Backgrounds and Downtimes sections, just so you’ve got an idea of what we allow, and how stuff works, and you might want to take a look at the setting detail about London and Europe, just so you have some sense of the world.

What Makes Interregnum Different?

In short: we think we’ve come up with a setting that will allow Camarilla and Sabbat characters to mix without devolving instantly into open war, which will provide roleplaying opportunities that are not available in a normal LARP. As a secondary concern alongside this – we’re attempting to do away with the usual overt power-divide structure of Vampire society, and run a relatively low power game in a manner that still provides for political tension.

And as a final consideration: unlike many other World of Darkness LARPs, Interregnum has no sister games containing other types of supernatural creature. This has two benefits: firstly, and most importantly, there is only one narrative in the world, and it is focused entirely on the PCs in this one game. Secondly, it means we’re not bound by any published information on the other types of supernatural creature, allowing us to inject a sense of the unknown back into the world.