Across the Sea of Stars

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This is the history of the future.

In the Age of Expansion, starships set out in a thousand different directions, some chosen, some accidental, growing ripples of influence across the sea of stars. When the ripples began to collide and interfere, the galaxy entered the Age of Contact. There were conflicts and conquests, projects and progress. The galaxy grew both larger and smaller, all in the span of a few centuries. As more and more races sailed their ships across the sea of stars, the Coterie emerged, an agreement that spanned the galaxy. The Age of Federation was born. There were still disagreements. Some of them were small, and could be resolved with diplomacy, economics and technology. Some of them were large, waves that threatened to wash across the entire galactic sea, waves that could wipe clean millennia of efforts and quadrillions of lives...

The Klorn were ancient before anyone found them, a race so old that they must be one of the first to rise to sentience. Until now, they have resisted every effort to bring them into the Coterie — but everything you know about the Klorn is wrong...

The Klorn have unexpectedly agreed to consider joining the Coterie, if representatives of the various races will tell the Tales of how each of them came to the Coterie. This game tells those Tales.

You will play characters representing your race before the Klorn. Those characters will recreate moments from the history of the future, playing legendary and forgotten figures, telling the Tales of the races as they set sail Across the Sea of Stars.

About the Game

Across the Sea of Stars is a ten hour Tale-telling LARP (with a dinner break) for twenty-five players, in a hard science-fiction galaxy-spanning setting filled with humans, aliens, androids, sentient starships, and other strange beings. Players will play detailed characters with intricate backstories and supporting bluesheets, in a rich and diverse Universe. Much of the material for the game is available through the navigation links on these pages, but more character-specific material will be given to you well in advance of the game.

This is a character-driven, low-mechanic, little-to-no-combat LARP. During Tale periods in the game, players will tell Tales, stepping out of their Home Characters and into Tale Characters, to play out short and intense microLARPs within the LARP, using classic science-fiction tropes and settings. The Tales may be bloody, intense, and dramatic — but they are only Tales. They do, however, illuminate the difficult dilemma that your Home Character has to decide during the course of the game.

The Tales are small LARPs, which means 1-3 pages of material for each character in the Tale. This is a lot of reading, which you should be aware of, up front. If you need an accommodation, please let us know ASAP, so we can determine if and what we can do.

Ask your friends who have played this game. They will tell you this game is well worth ten hours of your time. It isn't rerun very often, because of the effort it takes to do so, but it's the game I'm most often asked to rerun.

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, Charlie McCutcheon, and Barry Tannenbaum.