Welcome to the Discarded World

Player Principles:

Play Together, Explore with curiosity, Power of Friendship, Collaborate Creatively, Respect Players

The Player Characters find themselves pulled from their worlds and cast into a new, chaotic realm called The Discarded World, a shifting mosaic where magic clashes with technology, dragons fly over steampunk cities, and hardboiled detectives share taverns with elven archers. A world stitched together from the broken pieces of a million realities and populated with characters from epic fantasy, to dystopian sci-fi, and everything in between. Something hunts and eats souls in the Dark. Monsters called the Nameless. Who will these characters become in their new world and who will they meet?

LARP STYLE: Boffer, Nerf, Spell Ball, Collaborative role Play Game
GENERAL RATING: PG 13
GENRE: Adventure-Horror, Dark Fantasy, Post Apocalypse, Dystopian Fantasy,
THEMES: Found Family, World-collision, Liminal World, Hunted by Forgotten Things, False Utopia, In it Together, Challenge Beliefs, Identity, Love letter to the weird

TONE: Whimsical, chaotic, heartfelt, and stares unflinchingly into the dark. Emotional character-driven narrative that blends epic stakes and danger with humor, and heart. A Heroic survival with all the cards stacked against the characters.

Foundations

Pieces of other Lost Worlds- The world is beautiful and full of decaying layers of hundreds of worlds. Ruins of ancient, unknowable civilizations layered under markets and towns. Where the world feels like a forgotten myth or half Remembered dream. The world has dangers but is explorable.

Nameless- Soul-eating monsters come with whispers and lullabies. Shadows move where light should fall. Inhabited by horrors, some of utter nightmares and others subtle and full of existential dread. Creatures in the Shadows hunger for souls. They are relentless. But are held away from Empire towns by the Magic of Namestones.

Empire-The empire speaks in gold-leaf proclamations, but is there rot underneath? The empire provides safety, food, shelter, medicine and education to all, but is it controlling narratives for power? Maybe it feeds the monsters. Maybe it is the monster. Seems to be a utopia inside the walls.

Lost Characters- Characters grapple with identity, fate, and loss in a poetic, tragic way, facing a new world with hope while rediscovering themselves. Their old world is gone. Many times, with all context of who they were and everyone they knew. They may be from a drastically different world, now having to cope with others experiencing the same thing. Imagine a high elf and gunslinger trying to survive alongside a grimdark warlord.

World Building

A Shooting Stars, cuts across the sky. A new person has arrived in the Discarded World. A new Immigrant. An immigrant may come into the Discarded World in many ways, they may not even remember exactly how they ended up here. Some of the most common transitions are caused by large explosions, implosions, magic gone wrong, science gone wrong, tangling with gods, portals, black holes, worm holes and a strong desire to live beyond death. There does seem to be a tendency for Immigrants to be attracted to Namestones, since most end up in towns, but if they don’t, adventurers generally come rescue them.

Disoriented and missing pieces of who they were, often, a new resident experiences what is called the Mists where they lose skills, talents, or memories from their old world. But their Core- their Soul remains the same. By use of forbidden magics, a Core can be made physical as a clear crystal with dancing red streaks inside it. It is said that if you stare deeply enough into depths that you can see memories of the creature it was before. It can be traded for a life to continue living. People with strong Cores can come back from the edge of death serval times.

In the shadow, creatures called the Nameless or Innominatam stalk, looking for easy marks to feast upon their Cores. They come in a variety of nightmarish forms but generally are dark in appearance and have stark white bones exposed on their bodies, often times, their face. They slip into the ether around the Discarded world and back in again with ease, existing between the world of the living and the dead in a place called the Dark Realm. They are not Living, Dead or even Undead. They are kept out of Cities by the power of the Namestones within them that are provided by the Empire as only the Empress herself can create them. Dark Mages, people who make pacts with the Nameless for power, however are not repelled by Namestones, and therefor can be far more dangerous at times. Especially when they hide their nature to hunt for Cores and Power in secret.

Spanning the entire land mass of the seven continents of Discarded World, the Empire is ruled over by the Empress. Her name is lost to time. It is said she has lived thousands of years and cannot die as long as there is still magic in the Discarded World. The Empire see to it that every city is protected, that every citizen in city walls has food, shelters, health care and education. Those who live outside of a Namestone’s protection are looked on with suspicion. Exile is a punishment for lawbreakers as life in the Wilds is dangerous. Conversely those who must work “Out of the Ring” for the community’s good are looked upon with reverence. This includes farmers and the Guardians, especially those who protect the Rattan Caravan that carries travelers and trade through the wilds from town to town in a scheduled route all over the world. It is the life blood of the Empire as it transports people, goods, letters and news from city to city. It must cross through vast distances of wilds. The road itself is maintained by the Guardians who also have Watchtowers and rest stops along its route. Even the most remote of towns will be visited by a caravan at least once a month, although large cities may have dozens arriving and leaving through every gate every day.

Also Called the Empress’s Guardians, Guardians are the citizens who have taken up arms to defend other citizens from all that would harm them. They are Armed Forces, Police, Fire fighters, Civil engineers and much more. They Answer to the Empress in a chain of Command. Most are genuinely good people who want to do good in the world. Some are just doing a job.

Nameless are not the only dangers in the Wilds, and Sentient creatures aren’t the only thing that falls into the Discarded World. Monsters do too. From many different worlds, they are hard to summarize, other than that they are generally hostile to any creature they meet and are generally considered not to be sentient; some exceptions may apply. Any creature from any world may turn up, from the familiar to truly alien.

Magic is common in the Discarded World. Elemental magic is the official, legal magic. It is readily taught. It is considered stable, safe and common. It is not strange for most people to know an Elemental Spell or two. Fae Cards, Blood Magic, Alchemy and Arcane magic often straddle the border between illegal and tolerated in the Empire. Dark Magic, practiced by Dark Mages and Nameless is completely illegal to perform in an Empire City.

What level of Technology an area has access to varies wildly from city to city depending on local capability and knowledge. Residents moving from one place to another is one of the hardest/most dangerous things in Discarded World, because there are miles and miles of unprotected monster and Innominatam filled Wilds between settlements. As such, spreading information is difficult. Technology is often limited by the ability to reproduce and power devices. Many times, Magic is a simpler solution, or is used in concert with technology. The Empire encourages spread of useful technologies whenever it can. Hospitals are often where the most advanced technology in an area can be found.

Tekom

Our current game takes place in an Empire Town called Tekom. It is a remote mining town on a border between 3 Regions and with a population of about 500 people, half of them are miners or farmers. Tekom seems beset on all sides. Fae Courts have decided on Tekom as a meeting of battles in a centuries old War over Dragons, some Shadowy organizations have taken interest in old war tech buried under the town, and Dark Mages are drawn to the remote town for some unknown purpose. In addition to all of that, the town has become a gathering place for zmajin- a dragon crossed species, seeking healing from a mage in town, who themselves have become targets of some nefarious plan.

So, who will you play when you go beyond the last page?

The NeverEnding Story (1984)
The Matrix series (1999–2021)
Coraline (2009)
Scavengers Reign (2023) 
Howl's Moving Castle (2004)
Princess Mononoke (1997)
Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind  (1984)
Castle in the Sky (1986)
Firefly (2002)
Pan’s Labyrinth (2006)
Dark Tower (2017)
Castlevania (Netflix)

MEDIA

The Sandman by Neil Gaiman
The Stormlight Archives by Brandon Sanderson,
Fairy Tail by Hiro Mashima
Log Horizon by Mamare Touno and Kazuhiro Hara.
Discworld series by Terry Pratchett
The Dark Tower by Stephen King

Dragon Age by BioWare
Kingdom Hearts by Square Enix