“Alas! My poor money! My poor money! My dear friend! They’ve taken you away; and since you’re gone, I’ve lost my comfort, my consolation, my joy; all’s over with me, life’s not worth living any more. Without you, it is impossible for me to exist. ‘Tis all over, I am done for; I die; I am dead; I am buried.”
Misanthrope, Molière
WHEN?
There will be one run on 18-22 September 2019.
WHERE?
The game takes place at Valeč Castle and its grounds in Western Bohemia, a bit over an hour by car from Prague. The site should be reasonably accessible by car from many places in Germany, Austria and Poland. For the international run there will be a bus from Prague and back.
WHAT WILL I GET?
Apart from the actual game content and materials, we will also provide you with a full costume, all props and weapons and so on, as well as three meals a day and access to hot tea and water for the whole game. We will only ask you to bring a non-disturbing set of shoes, sleeping equipment and food utensils.
HOW MUCH?
The basic price for the game will be 190 euros. A small portion of the price of the basic ticket will also be used to fund the discounted tickets for people who could not afford to go to the game otherwise.
If you want to support us, you can always contribute more. We won’t be giving out special packages for donors: we will direct all the money into our larp projects
There will also be an option to apply for subsidized tickets for anyone who could not afford to go to the game otherwise – students, unemployed people, people from countries with overall lower wages, etc. The price will be 90 euro. If you want to apply for a discount, the application process is open until the 8th of February 2019 – apply here.
Regardless of how much you pay, you will have the same game experience, casting options and so on. The price does differ from the Czech price, since it needs to cover the additional costs of translation, language-related personnel issues and transport. There will be no additional costs (apart from your travel of course) on top of it. For a small fee, we will be able to lend you some extra sleeping gear or a field bed, but you can easily bring your own or cope without it. The only other costs will be for whatever you buy at the game – there will be a castle café (ran by a very lovely local) and a tavern ran by the organizers.
If the price is prohibitive for you, we can try and work out an arrangement of giving you a discount for work (manual on site before and after the game, costume work, etc.).
CANCELLATION TERMS
The fee must be paid by the last day of the deadline. Any spots that are unpaid after the payment deadline will be cancelled and advertised to the waiting list players.
After the payment deadline, the cancellation fee is 10% of the ticket price. A month before the game or less, the cancellation fee rises to 50% of the ticket price. Two weeks before the game or less, the cancellation fee is 100% of the ticket price. If a paying replacement player is found for the cancelled spot, an amount higher than noted above can be returned – but only up to 90% of the ticket price; the 10% fee is always non-refundable. If the cancellation fee is 50%, you get any part of the replacement player’s payment that is above 50% of your original ticket price (only up to 90% of the paid ticket price). If the cancellation fee is 100%, you get the whole amount of the replacement player’s payment (only up to 90% of the paid ticket price).
Valeč Castle is a lovely building, which offers a lot of diverse environments, including a big park with a baroque fountain, an old derelict chateau and a fully renovated baroque church for Catholic Mass. However, we find it very important to say that if your expectation of a ‘castle larp’ is a beautiful hotel inside a castle, you will not get that at all at De la Bête. Valeč is not a glamorous, comfortable, furnished castle. The area is very pretty, but most of the castle is empty: very basic renovated rooms, mostly bare and unfurnished, with only a few exceptions.
The comfort level that you should expect is, therefore, closest to “camping in buildings”. Everybody will be sleeping on the floor in more or less empty rooms. You will be as comfortable as your sleeping gear allows you. None of the in-game buildings have running water or toilets – there will be port-a-potties outside the buildings and a trough with water in one spot. There will be a few showers, but access to them will be limited and a bit complicated (since it’s quite few showers for so many people).
We will be able to lend you a limited amount of field beds, as well as mats and blankets, but everybody will need at the very least a sleeping bag.
We will ask you about your preferred level of comfort in the questionnaire and take it into account when casting. The groups with the highest level of comfort will sleep on the floor, but within the castle proper, in rooms with insulated windows. The lowest level of comfort is sleeping outside in historical tents. In between, there is sleeping in other buildings and rooms, which might be slightly colder, a bit less insulated or maybe a bit dusty.
Some groups will also have some action, with running around the forests, possibly also at night. Other groups do not have to do more than stroll leisurely around the castle grounds. The weather in September is generally not too bad, but of course it can be chilly or rainy.
The food we provide will generally not be fancy, but should be filling and warm. We will provide it in a vegetarian version and a version with meat and we will take care of any allergies and intolerances. However, our kitchen options are quite limited, and we cannot provide food for vegan, paleo, or similar diets. There will be places on site to buy snacks and drinks.
We want to make the game accessible to as many people as possible and we believe the roles we offer can accommodate a wide variety of needs. However, there are some basic limitations: the game will largely happen in the castle and castle grounds – meaning outside or in unheated buildings with stairs. We therefore need our players to have sufficient mobility to deal with these conditions and the site is sadly not wheelchair accessible. Everybody will also be sleeping on the floor on what they bring (or at best on a field bed we can provide), in rooms with other people, and there isn’t really a way around that, so that is a hard limit you need to consider.
Different roles will have different physical demands. Even random villagers may occasionally need to take a short walk in the forest. On the other hand, even the hunters won’t have an extremely physically demanding game: they will do some light hiking around the forest, including off beaten paths and in the dark, and they might need to run for a few meters from time to time.
Safety is also very important for us – we want people to take away great experiences, not physical or mental harm. We will have organisers available at all times for consultation – both for any game-related problems and for any practical or personal issues. We will also have people experienced in crisis intervention on-site and ready to assist in the event of any problems.
There will also be some gun replicas in the game. There will be a safety workshop to make sure everyone knows how to use them.
In general, this game happens in an open space and we therefore cannot guarantee that you will not encounter the following topics and scenes that somehow contain them, for example through encountering them out in the open or having someone tell you about them or try to include you into a plot that contains them. You will always have an option to leave the scene, use the safe word and go into the off-game space, but we cannot shelter you from being present in scenes that contain this content in some way. Characters that have triggering content as something central to their personal story and theme will be tagged as such in a separate pdf that we will provide. You can also ask not to get a character who directly plays with some of these in the questionnaire.
In general, everybody in the game may need to be present while there are gunshots around and everybody in the game may at some point need to go into the forest, even at night and alone. All characters playing at the galley will encounter some jump scares and horror content, as well as some bullying and physical violence (passive and active; workshopped specifically to be safe).
The topics that will be present at the game and that you may encounter in the manner described above include:
- Abortion (characters dealing with it directly will be tagged)
- Alcoholism and other cases of substance abuse
- Murder
- Suicide
- Strained relationships
- Social inequality
- Gender inequality
- Death of infants
- Religion and religious conflicts
- Sexual violence (direct participants in sexual violence will be tagged)
If you’d like to ask more about our safety procedures, the exact nature and details of certain characters, or whether the game is suitable for you if you have an issue with specific types of content, our safety team will be happy to talk about it with you at: davidfrantisekwagner@gmail.com
We will provide all costumes, weapons and important props for every character. The only costume item players will need to bring will be shoes. If players want to, they can bring their own costume upon consultation with the organizers, with the exception of some characters who wear uniforms. We prepare and modify each costume individually and for this purpose, we will need all players to provide their measurements to us. This data will only be available to our costume team.
We are aware that getting a costume provided is unusual in many larp cultures and can be scary for anybody who doesn’t have a standard size. However, we have a lot of experience with making sure every player has a fitting costume and we have dressed players with all kinds of bodies. Having your measurements ahead of time allows us to pick the right costume from our very large costume stock and modify any pieces that might not fit. Of course preparing somebody’s clothes from a distance can always end up with something not fitting exactly right, but we will have a costume team on site, ready to modify any pieces that don’t fit.