The Credits for the Tales of the Future

It usually starts in the car, while out running errands. Sometimes, one of us will walk into the room with the other and say "I have an idea." Often, it's Jennifer yelling in the middle of her shower, so that Jordan will bring his iPad to the other side of the bathroom door.

An idea for a Tale spills out. Jordan usually transcribes the notes on his iPad, because he's not driving, or not in the shower. Jennifer rambles. Jord asks the right tough questions. The roles switch. Voice dictation and translation is also a wonderful thing, although it can be a challenge to retranslate some technical term that got turned into gibberish. The concept for a Tale is born. It's a natural and easy collaboration.

Eventually, Jennifer sits down with the notes and works through a nicely formatted first draft. This is a struggle, given Jennifer's migraines. On rare occasions, the stars align, and it only takes a day or two. Most times, it's longer. Some Tales are lost because we didn't write enough notes when the original idea struck. If we are patient, persistent and leave enough of a trail, the Tale gets written. We both read the results as a sanity check. Jordan inevitably points out the things Jennifer missed, and the second draft is much better.

We initially started writing these Tales to be able to add them to the thirty-odd Tales in Across the Sea of Stars. Since 2017, we've written Tales that haven't fit into that LARP, for various reasons. We've also been asked if we'd just run the Tales for people to play. That brings us to Tales of the Future. We have more than enough new Tales for two four hour LARPs, so there will be at least a Volume 1 and Volume 2.

Thanks go to Rain Wiegartner for some early website sanity checks, and for their tremendous efforts to get more LARPs written. Doug Hoover suggested we write LARPs like this. Philip Kelley ran some of our other Tales separately at an event at Northwestern University. So thanks go to them for planting and reinforcing that cyborganic meme in our heads.

We want to thank our players in the first Volume One run; it was our first time running a virtual LARP. We learned a lot, and their feedback was invaluable. We also had a lot of fun, and knew we had a good LARP on our hands.

We want to thank our players in the second Volume One run, because they were simply amazing, breathing life into these characters. We ran long, and then stayed up even longer, talking through what had happened. They also had great feedback. Wow! 🦆

We want to thank our players in the third Volume One run, who were also amazing. They brought passion and emotion to the characters, in ways we hadn't seen before. That's part of what we love about running the game frequently — there are always brilliant nuances and interpretations that new players bring to the Tales. Going three for three is also a promising sign for future runs.

We want to thank our international players in the fourth Volume One run, who were brilliant. We GMed for players in the UK and the US, across Zoom, and the play was stimulating, intense, angstful and funny, as appropriate. We especially want to thank Alison R-H., for stepping in at the last minute, to play the first two Tales when one player was temporarily called away.

We want to thank our players in the fifth and sixth Volume One runs, who were intense. They found several solutions we hadn't seen before. Their characters' passions and drama made for some great scenes. We are especially thankful for Tony V. stepping into the sixth run at the last moment.

We want to thank our players in the seventh Volume One run, who fought through wifi issues and a localized power failure for our Swiss player. The results were brilliant, creepy, and a lot of fun. Josh K. even wrote us a song.

We want to thank our brilliant and insightful playtesters for the first run of Volume Two. They proved that the material worked, rocking each of the Tales, then providing valuable and useful suggestions for improvements. We're incorporating those ideas into the game. Volume Two will be better for it.

We want to thank our players in the eighth Volume One run, who showed us there were new solutions previously unexplored. They now hold the record for most characters killed in a Tale! The ninth and tenth runs were similarly inspired, with drama, angst, and a strangely malfunctioning sentient incinerator. We also want to thank our waitlisters who filled in for last-minute emergency drops.

We want to thank our players in the two Intercon U runs. This was the first time we'd run both Volume One and Volume Two in person, and our incredible players took it up to a whole new level. There were some very surprising twists and some truly incredible physical acting that just wouldn't be possible in a virtual setting. It helped to have physical props as well.

Jennifer is responsible for the various images that highlight these pages. She's spent far too many hours playing No Man's Sky since it came out in 2016. These are screen captures from her saves.