One Dance, One End

You receive a letter. Written on real paper. It reads:

"The Emperor, the King Undying, Necromancer Divine, King of the Nine Renewals, His Celestial Kindness, the Necrolord Prime, has determined a need for new Lyctors. He, in his great wisdom, has foreseen that the next set of Lyctors must combine Necromancers and Cavaliers from different Houses. He has called forth one Necromancer and one Cavalier from each House to attend a formal dance, at the end of which each Necromancer will select the Cavalier that they believe to be their divinely chosen Ordained Thanergic Partner.

You have been selected to represent your House. The coordinates of the Midnight Ball are attached. Find your Ordained Thanergic Partner and thereby prove yourself worthy to become a Lyctor."

tl;dr: angsty cavaliers and necromancers dance a bunch of waltzes to find their OTPs

Good for players who: like pursuing fixed goals, like waltzing, like melodrama

Bad for players who: do not like waltzing, prefer political games over emotional games

Run Time: roughly 4.5 hours but can go slightly shorter or longer

Players: 15 PCs, 2 NPCs

Suggested player experience level: Novice to expert 

One Dance, One End (1D1E) is a LARP about dancing waltzes, fighting duels (if you're a cavalier), and finding that one perfect person who accepts your flaws and complements your strengths. 

1D1E is a knock-off of Warren Tusk's The Dance and the Dawn LARP set in the universe of the Locked Tomb books by Tamsyn Muir. The target audience is people who are familiar with the Locked Tomb setting and want to spend an evening living in it, but those who haven't read the books usually enjoy it as well and the game documents contain a brief primer on the setting. 

1D1E is set several generations before the events of Gideon the Ninth in an alternate universe where the Emperor had a different plan for recruiting new Lyctors. The premise is that seven necromancers and eight cavaliers will dance a series of dances with one another while each person tries to find their Ordained Thanergic Partner. Some may find their Ordained Thanergic Partner, others may fail and end up with a partner who is okay but not quite perfect, and at least one person will end up alone. 

This game is not about overthrowing the Emperor, discovering the secrets of Lyctorhood, making breakthroughs in necromantic research, unraveling political mysteries, or anything except finding your divinely chosen Ordained Thanergic Partner. Unlike the original Dance and the Dawn, this is not a romance game! Most pairings are platonic. 

Though no significant spoilers for the books (or the Dance games) are written into the text of the game materials players receive, it is a near certainty that spoilers will come up in play, especially during the construction of epilogues after pairs are chosen. It is possible to avoid these spoilers, but the group playing should decide beforehand whether they will take care to or not. 

This game involves a lot of waltzing! Each person will dance approximately 22 short waltzes. You don't have to be good at waltzing, and players with physical mobiliy issues can sit in a chair while someone waltzes around them, but you do have to be willing to do your best to waltz if physically able because if no one is waltzing, it's not much of a dance game.

Running Requirements

This game requires a space large enough for seven pairs of people to waltz simultaneously with room around the edges for people to sit and for snack tables, an adjacent space for people to quietly converse, a separate adjacent space for sulking, two prop swords for dueling, seven unique brooches for necromancers to use as favors, and an audio system. 

You will also need to acquire 22 roughly 3-minute-long instrumental waltzes to play during dances and, optionally, a dozen or so roughly 90-second-long instrumental songs to play during duels. Copyright laws prevent me from including the music directly but I have included screenshots of my playlists to serve as inspiration and a reference.