The Zone

Forming A Team

Important note: this page is being left as it is deliberately, largely because it covers some important design points, but these plans did not really survive contact with the players. The current players have largely banded together as a single group at this point and have set up a base of operations. For new players, those in this group have had it made clear to them that their default position should be to invite new characters into this group unless the character in question provides them with a good reason not to. New players should also keep in mind that this player group has put in a lot of work to reach the point they have, and they have every right to protect that effort from characters they feel are going to betray them. The game team is extremely adamant that it will not allow gatekeeping that prevents new players accessing every part of the game, but equally past player effort must be protected. Anyone joining an existing player group solely to grief, troll or otherwise ruin someone else's game will not be welcome back to future events.

It is a deliberate choice for game design that players arrive in the Zone as solo freelancers who do not know each other. There are a few reasons for this.

• A level playing field. Many larp systems promote people arriving as an organised group, but with a relatively small player base that cannot easily expand, one large group can easily dominate the game.
• Getting to know people and forming teams in game gives solo players a reasonable chance at finding a group to join up with.
• Players cannot pool money to outfit one person to a level beyond other starting characters.

The in character justification for this is that the smuggling gangs can exert a significant amount of control over freelancers that do not present a united front. Thus they discourage teams and squads forming as much as they can, and use the mission sign-up system to prevent groups getting much bigger than 4 or 5 people. Past experience has shown that once a freelancer team gets to about a dozen members they begin to push for better pay, better trading terms and a voice in how a given hub is managed. Like the union busters of the outside world, the various barkeeps do all they can to prevent collective bargaining.

When groups of people arrive to be smuggled into the Zone, the gangs usually arrange to have them separated in transit and sent to different hubs. If at all possible they prefer each new batch of rookies arriving at a specific hub to have never met each other before.

Team Insignia

Most teams that form within the Zone last about as long as the individual members do. A group of friends formalise a working arrangement and little else. As a result they don't adopt an insignia or uniform. Some teams start up with the ambition of assembling a small army and becoming a faction within the Zone. This very rarely works because the smuggling gangs work against it, and a long-lasting faction always forms around an ideology rather than work or mutual protection. Nonetheless, some teams have endured over the years and brought in new members as others died or left the Zone. These longer-lasting teams often adopt a uniform of some kind. Due to a lack of available resources in the Zone, the “uniform” is often very little more than a crudely drawn symbol on an armband.

If you want to put together a team, please speak to a referee. When you're putting a uniform together please consider the difficulty of obtaining new clothing in the Zone and plan accordingly.