SYSTEM 7 LARP
Grab 7 Cards and Go Play!
The History of System 7 LARP
In 2007 Alterverse Games put out an open call to design the backgrounds for a Card Game. They did not accept my designs. These designs would sit in a folder on a hard drive for 11 years until they were pulled out for use on System 7.
I started LARPing that same year and within 10 years I was running my own club. With permission, I had re-written 800 pages of rules into a much more managable 200 page rule system but wanted to compress it more. I had already written and submitted MTG sets to Wizards of the Coast and knew how compressed language on Cards was and decided to go with Cards. I compressed 800 pages into 200 Cards.
No Experience and No Boons
In 2018 design on System 7 started. I had a concept of what I was going to create but there were a lot of abilities that were later cut. There used to be both Boon and Experience costs to learn Cards. After many ideas, I went with keeping it simple and dropped both. You now learn 2 Player Shards each time you Crew for an entire game.
The font, certain backgrounds, copyright and the symbols changed over time. I had someone with color blindness approach me and discuss changing the Cards to make them more legible and removed the stonework appearance on the resources.
Gelvcarnosis and Equality
Two things came together during design; Keeping the game simple and making it inclusive. The early concept of species was dropped. It made things simpler. Further, race and gender now had no impact on what abilities you get in System 7 so it was fair for everyone.
Only one Card was developed that manipulated your 'species'. Already concerned, the name was a made up word and when species were removed, the Card was revised to only use it's second ability. Gender appearances started being tracked to make it more balanced and right near the end of design, with AI art, were able to introduce more racial diversity. This thinking lead to the Without Malice set which, among other things, is designed to try assist differently abled persons who want to LARP.
All Sorts of Little Changes
Originally all 4 resources; HP, Mana, Stamina and Willpower could be spent to activate abilities and Monsters were designed to damage different resources. However, keeping track of 4 constantly changing resources proved to be frustrating during playtests. Now Stamina and Willpower are never a cost and only rarely damaged. Mana only goes down with rare exception. This leaves Hit Points as the single number that tends to change a lot, up and down.
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Fun Fact: The word "target" was never intended to be used in System 7 LARP but I've designed and played so much MTG that I kept using it by mistake when I should have said '1 person' or 'touched person'. There was a day I spent almost exclusively hunting for this term and removing it from every single Card.
Covid and the Kickstarter
In 2019 I was playtesting System 7 LARP as an intended replacement for the existing rules my LARP club was using. I even launched a Kickstarter for System 7 LARP. All of that came to a crashing end with lockdown. The Kickstarter failed and I did not launch System 7 at that time. This ended up letting me put a lot more thought and effort into the game.
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During Lockdown, I did gardening, leatherwork and tinkered with System 7. I created the expansions, starting with Shadows of Blood . I planned out 5 years worth of products to release and, by late 2023, I had created 6 years worth.