Across the Sea of Stars

Credits

Across the Sea of Stars is a Tale-telling game, along the lines of Tales of Pendragon and Arabian Nights. Across the Sea of Stars was written by Jennifer Diewald, with the invaluable assistance of Jordan Diewald. Additional brainstorming help came from Lynn Anslow, Susan Giusto, Tim Lasko and Barry Tannenbaum.

First Run

At the end of February, 2004, Jennifer played in the brilliant and wonderful Tales of Pendragon game, a Tale-telling LARP set in Arthurian times. On the plane flight back, Jennifer realized that this was the perfect vehicle for playing out all those science fiction stories she'd been inhaling since she was a child. Across the Sea of Stars was born on that plane flight.

Over the next year, Jennifer wrote many of the Tales for the game. When Intercon F was announced, it seemed like the perfect venue for the game, and so TNT Productions was dragged into the process. At the time, TNT Productions consisted of the Usual Suspects: Lynn Anslow, Jennifer Diewald, Susan Giusto, Tim Lasko and Barry Tannenbaum. TNT did some brainstorming. Much port was consumed. There was Real-Life™ issues, where commitments were dropped or ignored. Jennifer did all of the writing, much of it late at night, with her cat Phoebe keeping close watch. Despite having another entire year, it was a challenge to produce the unfinished game under the tight deadline of the con, but Jennifer kept at it night after night. It was very tough, but she finished the game minutes before run-time. The game ran on March 4th, 2006. TNT made a great floor GMing team. The results blew all of us away.

Jordan Diewald read every bit of the game as it was developed. He contributed many important ideas during that time, including several plots. Jordan also helped to prototype some of the puzzles and mechanics used in the game.

The rules were taken almost directly from the rules for Tales of Pendragon. Thanks to Brandon Brylawski and the rest of the Pendragon team!

This is where Jennifer learned an important lesson — never bid a game before it's finished.

Second Run

The game was updated during 2008 for Intercon I by Jennifer, with some brainstorming help by the latest round of Usual Suspects: Jennifer, along with Susan Giusto, Tim Lasko, Charlie McCutcheon, and Barry Tannenbaum. Because Jennifer wanted Drew Novick to play, and since Drew was first on the waitlist, Jennifer wrote a new character just for him, and tied the character into many of the stories. Jennifer is crazy that way. Once again, Jordan Diewald provided invaluable help and brilliant insights.

The game ran on March 7th, 2009. Once again, the results were intense. It also helped that TNT actually had time to read the materials before the game, so they were able to offload some of the run-time GM questions from Jennifer.

Third Run

During the spring of 2012 (and before), Jennifer was asked very nicely by several people who'd heard great things about the game and wanted to play it. Once Jennifer had GMing agreements from the TNT team, she started looking for a venue. Fortunately, Carolyn Daitch, Daniel Burns, and (at run-time) Bernie Gabin of the BSCF made it possible for us to get the Levin Ballroom at Brandeis.

This led to the Week of a Thousand Papercuts©, where we assembled everything for the third run. This was a major effort, where Barry Tannenbaum, Charlie McCutcheon and Jennifer were helped by Jaelen Hartwin, who also wanted to help us run the game. We also enlisted Greg McCutcheon, Jordan Diewald, and Julie Diewald to help us slice, fold, stuff and pack the game.

Fourth Run

The theme for Intercon O was "Orbit," and what better space-based game to rerun than Across the Sea of Stars? It is the LARP that Jennifer is most asked to rerun, based on the word of mouth of our previous players.

In 2013, Jennifer was thinking about potential new Tales for Across the Sea of Stars. There were many TNT discussions over port, interesting cheeses and crackers. While it didn't add any new Tales to Across the Sea of Stars, the results were indirectly helpful in inspiring Jennifer and Jordan in the creation of The Tales of Irnh. The Tales of Irnh is another Tale-based game experimenting with the form, set in the Across the Sea of Stars universe.

After Irnh, Jennifer continued to write Tales, and three of them ended up in Across the Sea of Stars. Jordan was instrumental in the creation and editing of these Tales. One of them, Special Relativity, provided a very memorable scene for Jennifer to marvel over. The other two went well, too.

Jennifer's new double-sided printer also proved a valuable addition to the process, radically shrinking the number of physical pages needed for the game. It meant a much shorter Week of a Thousand Papercuts©.

The game ran on February 28, 2015, run by Jennifer Diewald, Jim Edwards-Hewitt, Susan Giusto, Tim Lasko, Charlie McCutcheon, and Barry Tannebaum. There was a full cast, in a slightly smaller room than usual. It meant the players spilled out into the foyer area. There were several dramatic moments that caught the eyes of others at the con. Several also caught sight of our sets and our Klorn and thought they were very cool.

This run also proved, once again, that you can rerun a LARP essentially unchanged and have a very different set of outcomes.

Just a Few Tales

In July, 2015, Philip Kelley sent Jennifer an email about running a "LARP sampler" at Northwestern University in the Fall. Philip asked about a number of small LARPs, and then asked if he could run some of the Tales from Across the Sea of Stars in a standalone format. It was an intriguing question. Jennifer knew that the Tales worked just fine this way, from back when the Tales were playtested. Furthermore, many are very approachable as small LARPs, even for new players.

Since it was Philip, and he asked nicely, Jennifer agreed, sending all of the game materials for Philip to pore over. Once Philip had a chance to go over the materials, they discussed which Tales might work best, out of the set of thirty-five. Philip settled on a short list and prepared the materials.

The Dead City Productions of An Afternoon of LARPs ran on October 4th, 2015, in Annenberg Hall on the Northwestern campus in Evanston, Illinois. Philip Kelley and John Kohn set up the players with a handful of Tales from Across the Sea of Stars. They were popular and people were clearly amused. (Philip has the incriminating pictures as proof.)

Fifth Run

In June, 2019, Stephen Kohler, of the Lime Green Shirts in Troy, New York, was looking for more weekend-long LARPs to run at RPI. Several of the Lime Green Shirt GMs had already played, so they volunteered to help run the game, in exchange for the sources. Since that meant more runs of the game, Jennifer was more than happy to agree.

Jennifer and Jordan Diewald started talking about the game, and what changes we wanted to make. There were some simple editorial changes with the character sheets, making them easier to reference — changes we'd wanted to make for a long time. We also tweaked the framing of the entire story.

Then they started to talk about Tales. Nine new Tales went into the run. They were mostly smaller Tales, which made it easier to respond to requests for new Tales during the Tale periods, as groups of available players changed and merged. One of the Tales was special, for all of the players at one time. The fake mustaches worked to perfection.

This was also the first time that Jordan GMed a LARP. As half of the Tech GM staff, he was invaluable in keeping the process going. Jennifer and Jordan were joined by Will Fergus, Allan Pendergrast, Melanie Saunders, and Rob Wensley — an excellent GM team that made everything work seamlessly.

The game ran all afternoon and evening on August 17th, 2019. The result was electric and fun. The revisions worked even better than Jennifer and Jordan hoped! We were cursed as GMs, for hitting all the right dramatic pain points. There were pointed guns in alien standoffs, probes gone wrong, gray goo, and more than one surprising pregnancy. The players applauded when the game ended; a rare treat. They made the game great.

2023—2024

I'd planned on running the game again in March 2024, for Intercon V, but it was not to be. I had a great GM team lined up, the bid was accepted, the game was scheduled, and we had enough players signed up to run. We weren't full; even though we were on Friday, our two consecutive time blocks were competing against more than twenty other LARPs. As the convention got closer, several of the players decided they could not come to the con because of Real Life Issues™. Just weeks before the con, I had to pull the game. I just didn't have a critical mass of players. Jordan and I could not make it work.

It was frustrating and heartbreaking. I'd spent six months completely refactoring the game. I'd converted it to use a static site generator, to automate the generation of every file in the game, using a nice set of consistent templates. I'd edited nearly all of those files, removing the copy after copy of duplicated code I was now generating. This radically simplified a lot of things. Files shrank significantly. It also allowed me to automate a huge chunk of the production process. With a single command, I could generate a set of single, customized zip files, to mail out to each player.

More importantly, I had to do a complete editing pass over all the materials. I converted all of the characters, Home and Tale, to use they/them pronouns. This makes the game far more accessible. I can cast someone in any role and let them choose the gender, if any, of the character. This also makes it far easier to cast. I'm no longer constrained by the gender-specific roles.

Jordan and I wrote several new Tales, which will see the light of day at some point. I restructured a few existing Tales, to clarify them, and to make them easier to pick up and play. The editing pass also meant I could fix weird sentences and a few typos that remained, even after twenty years.

My thanks to Jordan Diewald, Will Fergus, Allan Pendergrast, and Mel Saunders, for the time and effort in preparing the game, that you don't see as players.

I want to run this again. I just have to find an affordable, standalone venue somewhere in the Boston area. Or win the lottery.

Science Fiction Authors that Influenced Across the Sea of Stars

Jennifer is always reading science fiction. Aficionados will recognize many of these stories and references. Some are based on works by such wonderful authors as:

Television that Influenced Across the Sea of Stars

Some are based on some of Jennifer's favorite TV shows:

Movies that Influenced Across the Sea of Stars

Jennifer devours science fiction movies, and a few others. These certainly had an impact on her writing efforts:

Note 1: All of the Apes movies. And the TV show.

Note 2: Jennifer saw the 1972 very long, very slow Russian version when it first came out.

LARPs that Influenced Across the Sea of Stars

Jennifer has also written fiction in this Universe, based on the stories of Captain Maggie Gale and the sentient starship Vortex of Chaos. This was also the inspiration for her contribution to the Collision Imminent! LARP.

Charley Sumner and Mark 'Justin' Waks' incredible Tabula Rasa II LARP was also an inspiration. One of the Tales is an homage to their game.

Other Credits

Many others have contributed to this effort.

Phoebe, the sweet tabby girl cat tried to help Jennifer's typing on many occasions, by walking across the laptop during the writing process. It is not true that the weird alien names are the result of her paws. Phoebe spent much of her time curled up next to or on top of Jennifer as she wrote. Phoebe was a huge influence, getting Jennifer through several rough, long writing sessions.

Sven Skoog suggested some mathematical game theory ideas that translated into some very useful puzzles and interconnections.

Doug Hoover found a significant blooper on Jennifer's part, and told her about it nicely, so it could get fixed. The superstable transuranic element hooverium is named after Doug.

Steve McGarry helped with the set construction and created our Klorn. He is a wonder!

Streaming radio, starting with the HBR1 streaming radio station playing ambient electronica. Many of the characters were written while under the influence of this station. It's vanished in the years since the first run. Other streaming stations have come and gone. Most of the updates were written under the influence of video game soundtrack pieces. Jennifer uses Apple Music these days.

Several people helped to playtest parts of this game. Their early contributions were invaluable.

This Website

Jennifer built this website writing everything herself, using HTML and CSS. She could not have done this without the Eric Meyer books on CSS, which became a standard reference in Jennifer's technical library.

Jennifer completely renovated and refactored the site in May of 2023, using the Middleman site generation application, Ruby on Rails, HTML5 and modern CSS. This radically simplified the coding and eliminated all the hand-duplicated code. While it looks almost identical to the original, this is much easier to modify.