The Dove

The JMS Dove is an exploratory ship on a mission to the far reaches of space for reasons that are as much political as they are scientific. The Consortium of Free Planets and the Autarch Alliance are locked in a decades-long cold war that occasionally erupts into outright violence. At the edge of their disputed territory is an asteroid belt rich in valuable minerals that shows indications of containing elements not yet found outside a lab. The Consortium and Alliance have agreed to launch a joint scientific venture to examine the asteroid belt. Those hoping for an end to hostilities see this as the first step towards forming a lasting peace. But there are those in both factions who would rather see this mission fail. 

The Dove is now three hours out from the warp gate and it seems the warmongers might win this round. Several critical systems on the ship have been sabotaged. Without operational systems the Dove will be denied entry to the warp gate, if the damaged ship can even make it that far. Losing this gate window will mean months of additional negotiations while warp equations are recalculated, contracts are extended, and power brokers on both sides jockey for advantage. Can the crew of the Dove fix the damaged systems and find the saboteur in time to save the mission?

tl;dr: political who-dun-it adventure in spaaaaaace; cross between The Captain Is Dead, the Resistance, and Clue

Good for players who: like pursuing fixed goals, like tabletop-esque mechanics, like shouting

Bad for players who: like deep emotional complexity, like freeform goals, have difficulty absorbing written information

Run Time: 3 hours plus pre-game demonstrations and post-game wrap-up

Players: 7

Suggested player experience level: Novice to expert 

The Dove is intended as a bridge from TTRPGs or complex board games into LARPing. It uses custom playing cards to represent items and die rolls to represent physical abilities. The things that tend to make LARPs stressful for new players - lengthy backstories, extensive pre-existing character relationships, vague and feelings-based goals - are not present. Instead, all of the characters have just met each other and have straightforward goals. That's not to say this game can't be a lot of fun for experienced LARPers or become deeply emotional if the players take it in that direction. 

Running Requirements

The game requires three adjacent rooms, ideally with two of those rooms having a physical door between them that can be closed. This has worked well in a bedroom, hallway, and kitchen/living room with a breakfast bar, but many other combinations are possible. 

The various ship systems require some amount of pre-game set-up from the GM, mostly in the form of printing, cutting, and taping things to one another. It should take less than 2 hours. 

Various options for props are presented in the GM guide that vary from less convenient free options to more convenient purchasable options. You shouldn't need to spend more than a few dollars beyond what you spent purchasing this game if you take the most frugal route. Any props created or purchased for this game can also be used for several of the other games in this setting and are not consumed when running the LARP; you can create/acquire everything once and run this LARP as many times as you have a set of seven friends who want to play. 

You can save yourself some time by purchasing the Dove Components Deck rather than using the print-and-play card files included with the game documents.