S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Symbiosis

Location: Abandoned military base near Kyiv, Ukraine

Mechanics: Airsoft\LARP + Electronics

LARP: 10:00-02:00, 3 days

“In short, pals, I’ve never seen such huge Stalker traffic in Red Forest. After Strelok disabled C-Consciousness Zone became fucking attraction for tourists. I can’t even say when the fuck it was worse. The only thing makes me happy is that with all those greenhorn Stalkers you can chill and make them dig in shit instead of you. Stupid jerks.” Long story short on Apr.28-May.1, 2019, like a pack of rabid dogs one hundred of Stalkers crushed everything on its way. Famous with rumors game promised to shine and entertain us with different goodies and that's actually did happen. The game was so intense and full on events that modest Gentlemen of Fortune didn't have a single chance to leave their base - they always had visitors from all kind of “business partners”. Even weird night game-stop was full of grenade explosions.

LARP was on an old abandoned military base (2x2 km or so) close to Kyiv. Almost all roads and even some buildings were completely covered with greenery. It was so tangled that any newbie could get lost and easily die. On the other hand amount of events threw you from faction to faction every time.

Of course a huge thank you to Prometheus Club for the amount of quests during the game, but you couldn’t keep track of all the shit happening around.

AA: Hi! First of all can you tell something about yourself. How did all start? How long are you in STALKER LAPR and do you organize any other projects? Sever: Hi!) Well I’m doing this since 2009-2010. I once got to participate in STALKER organized by Vityaz (he used to be an org) where my consciousness completely changed!) That Roleplay game hit me through the skull and got stuck somewhere in my spinal cord. Incredible atmosphere, great people and quests, loads of fun and emotions, what can I say - my first Roleplay) Closer to “org backstage” I got a chance to participate in a wonderful project “S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Pulse of the Zone” by Digger. Project was very powerful and for that time (and even for now) changed perception and had risen the level very high. Lots of people including me very surprised by organizational approach for creating high quality game content and before-game preparation. Regarding other projects - we do have them) We also do night horror-quests, but that’s a whole other topic to discuss)

Plot

C-Consciousness fell because of one unknown Stalker (yeah, ofc). Red Forest is swarmed with Stalkers trying to earn easy money from artifacts or cut other Stalkers who already got the cash. Everything else is a mystery.

Amount of quests exceeded all our expectations, they were from regular ‘find an artifact’ to encoding laboratory security doors, investigations, mutant hunt and God knows what else that we didn’t get a chance to see.

Factions

Location was divided between different factions that traveled to Red Forest (as always). You could find any group except for Sin and Renegades. And you could also find an Arena, Bar and different laboratories boarding with Red Forest. There was even a radio station that was broadcasting live during the game. We want to mention overall entourage and costumes. Very nice. Outfits people had during the game were awesome and didn’t make your eyes bleed. Despite the fact that everything happens in 2012 and technically you could find all kind of modern camouflage in the Zone - every single player had an outfit identical to the game, including patches and guns (almost). There was of course some improvisation and weird shit, but anyone barely noticed it and no one gave a fuck.

AA: For how long were you preparing Symbiosis and what are your own impression after the game? Were you able to do everything planned? There are already lots of reviews of the game, but what do you think yourself as organizer, except feeling fucking tired? Sever: Concept was born end of Spring 2018 when we decided to create our club. First we thought to continue series of small games like “One day” with main focus on atmosphere, game events, but for a limited time period. We started preparations beginning of Summer. And special thanks to Oleg ‘Olegator’ and Max ‘Snoup’ for great military ground for the event! Closer to Autumn we changed format to 3 day game. It was a long and hard road. But with new people on board it got a little bit easier. We managed to embody lots of our ideas, but not all. The club has a good dozen of “features’. We will see them with development of the project.) Impressions after the game, despite everything, are the most great.) Everything thanks to participants. The main goal is emotion. If we were able to create it, get it and present - everything went as planned. The only feeling I have is that we will continue soon.

Locations

Every faction had their own base located in different abandoned buildings, but most badass were Arena (exactly the same Arena from the game in the abandoned hangar), bar, Forester hut and C-Consciousness. Locations looked very nice and you could notice that orgs spent lots of time and effort. And of course already mentioned radio that was broadcasting live during the whole game.

Electronics

Once again we would like to comment on electronics during Stalker games. During registration every player would require a PDA (personal or rented from orgs). This game used PDA LUCH (ЛУЧ - Ray, eng.), which signaled you radiation levels, anomalies around you, your life level and your resistance to anomalies and stuff. Despite the fact of how old this system is and how buggy it is as well - it’s fucking awesome for such kind of games and is a must.

The whole game location was covered with radiation and anomaly beacons which made you shit bricks when you walked 10 meters away from your base.

Also it was very cool that different quests also involved different electronics like hacking electronic locks, safes, etc., not just “go bring ten tentacles from Bloodsucker”.

AA: So tell us something about such thing as PDA Otklik (Response, eng., - yeah-yeah, pals, everyone had PDA LUCH, while some had PDA Otklik) and how it works with artifacts? Lots of people, I believe, even never heard about it. What plans do you have for it and when we will see it live? Sever: There is such ‘thing’) But it’s not a PDA in our understanding. It’s an artifact detector. A huge thank you to Korzun (Sergiy Korzun) for making this idea coming true. We have a working prototype, which was tested during the game. Without going into tech.details will tell just we plan to add big (in fact of same size) artifacts, which have to be found with those detectors and carry it with a special container, to prevent radiation. The only thing that prevents us to get this live is lack of resources and free hands. But doors of our club is always open and we hope on help from players. I’m sure we have lots of specialists capable of helping our “community”.

Photos by Anastasiia Prokopenko

Monsters

You are one bunch of badass ugly motherfuckers.

The only thing that did disappoint is half-build pseudogiant. It looked fucking amazing being build in a workshop and we did expect something that will make you shit bricks. But on a game it looked like it was left half way into crafting. Let’s hope it will look great next game.

Organization

Orgs are also badass motherfuckers, but misunderstanding of game rules by GMs made us facepalm each time.

We as players can only promise to love you, be patient and throw Snork poops at you time to time.

AA: What’s overall planned for future? What do you plan to do and what kind of obstacles are on the way? Sever: We have lots of plans, but the main goal right now is club developments and increasing our cooperation with other projects. For example, this game we had main organizer of Stalker from Minsk (Belarus) Andrey ‘Tkach’ (‘Stalker Fort Minsk’ Club). I met Andrey on international conference PoRtaL Larp Convention where we decided to start out cooperation. We would like a lot to increase quality of thematic games first. Our club is also interested in running other projects, not just Stalker. There are tons of obstacles and I’ve mentioned them previously.) But as practice shows - there’s nothing impossible.

AA: And your final word what you would like to tell other players. Sever: 'HAPPINESS FOR EVERYBODY, FREE, AND NO ONE WILL GO AWAY UNSATISFIED!'

https://symbiosis.prometheus.team