Tutorials - Ensemble

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A character learning tool for larps

 

What is Ensemble?

Ensemble facilitates an accessible presentation of characters and a quick way to learn them. It provides organizers and players with a very flexible tool and intuitive interface for presenting, sorting and categorizing characters. Remembering them is made easy, social and fun through a deck of flash cards, a booklet as well as an online database. There is no need for layout skills, Ensemble lets you print the cards and booklet with all layout done, and you don’t need an app to access the characters from your phone.

Ensemble is suitable for all kinds of larps, from small chamber larps where the organizer presents the players with pre-written characters and fixed relations, up to and including huge sandbox games where the players write their characters and group affiliations themselves.

Why Ensemble?

So many of the larps we play portray very close-knit communities, be it a village, a spaceship, a military unit, a prison camp or a school class. You will typically have close relationships with a few other characters, and maybe learn about a couple more, but the feeling that you really ought to know all of them intimately lingers.

Through Ensemble the players can realistically be expected to arrive at the site already knowing most of the other characters. This means less onsite time has to be allocated for character and group presentation workshops. Players will be more familiar with the social structure of the larp and feel less stress about “who is who”, they will feel more immersed and can more easily play with everyone instead of just the players they know the best. Basically, the players will have a better game.

How to use

Once you activate the "Ensemble feature, the user interface will show the link to the dedicated page:

 

In it, there are three view available: Book (to show all the characters in a booklet format), Cards (to show / print the characters in the cards format), Compact list (to show the characters in list format). 

Once the feature is active, in the Factions edit page it will be possible to choose a color; the card of a character will show at the top the colors of the factions assigned. 

 

(Many thanks to Janusz Maxe and Lars Nordbeck for sharing their work!)

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