Yesterday, Rachael Storey Burke and I hosted (at her place) a DC Larp Day.

Yesterday, Rachael Storey Burke and I hosted (at her place) a DC Larp Day. The key to the night was the Sarcophagus, wherein you play individuals in a bomb shelter as bombs slowly fall.

Warm up exercises include: Close your eyes and imagine what happens to your loved ones if you die. What're they doing tomorrow, in a week, a month? A year? Five years?

Its a cheery game.

For those in the know, I was the Soldier.

We set up relationships - I wound up as a patriarch, with three grown sons in the vault. Their mom had gotten sick and died years ago, and now I lived in a furnished one bedroom while finishing out my career in the Navy. The sons were played by Jonathan Davis , Misha Polonsky ,  +sam zeitlin, who is in a first but I cannot plus..

We had two strangers in the vault - a loner girl (played by Melissa S Cohen ), and a stockbroker (played by Sean Leventhal ).

During the game, I tried to keep everyone's spirits up - this is the great country on earth, it'll be fine - with the normal military party line. There were these fantastic small moments where I connected with my sons. Told one to step up and be quartermaster, asked another one to support him. Told the drifter loser son that he's always been his own man.

Then ... the reveal. After that was exceptionally poignant, and there were tears. 

Five out of five for emotional heartwrench.