‘Velvet Noir’ Gives You the Power to Tell Your Own Story (The NoPro Review)

A larp convinced me to go home and tell a man that I love him.

While that’s not exactly an everyday thing, it isn’t all that surprising to hear after a weekend-long, boldly-designed larp like Velvet Noir. Entropic Endeavors’ premier event is a sandbox full of unforgettable characters telling moving stories, almost entirely crafted by other participants who are eager for you to join in on the storytelling too. The agency given to participants, allowing them to create entire characters and their plotlines from scratch, is unlike anything you’d find in a theater, achieving new emotional heights.

For a mainstream audience, “live action role-playing” (Larp, or, LARP) typically calls up the images of white men dressed as Dungeons & Dragons characters, hitting each other with padded sticks in the woods. This stereotype is decades out of date, though, with the art form growing, taking influences from literature, theatre, kink, and more. While the “foam swords in the woods” format has its moments, larp has gotten much bigger and much weirder over the years.

As a reader of No Proscenium, you’ve probably already noticed larp mechanics popping up in many immersive shows and even Disney’s upcoming multi-night Star Wars: Galactic Starcruiser Experience. By attending the first two games of Entropic Endeavor’s Velvet Noir, I took a deep dive into unalloyed larping, and I am so glad I did. The opportunity given to me to tell stories directly relevant to my life was invaluable.

Character creation, the first step in onboarding, starts months before the game. It can be intimidating for first-timers starting out; Entropic Endeavors simply asks you to fill out a brief Google form telling them who you want to play in their game. The options are endless, though you get a nudge in the right direction when asked to sum up your character as a single trope, ideally from film noir.

Velvet Noir takes place exactly 90 years in the past. The Great War has left scars in the minds of many of its characters. Prohibition is giving the federal government an excuse to investigate and attack marginalized communities. The Stock Market hasn’t crashed yet, but the preceding economic inequality is plain to see. The fashion’s pretty nice, but tasteless Gatsby party this ain’t.

Velvet Noir highlights the historical struggles of the aforementioned marginalized communities. The Fenghuang Jin, the Mishpacha, los Cuervos, and the Root are fictional gangs from the fictional, non-specified “City.” Each gang was written and is now led in-character by larpers from the communities that inspired them.

White players are told to play within their own heritage but are welcome to play a trusted ally of one of those gangs, practicing allyship that will serve them well in real life. Wanting to make the most of the setting, I invented Sgt. Tomasz Wolski, a first-generation Polish-American, Great War army veteran, and booze smuggler for the Fenghuang Jin. From there, I raided my own personal baggage for costume pieces.

In real life, I have no connection to the half of my blood where I got my Polish roots. So, Tomasz is the same, in his case disowned by his parents. But that doesn’t stop him from making pierogi and bigos to share with his chosen family.

Food is an important part of the community at Velvet Noir. Despite running Friday to Sunday, meals technically aren’t provided by staff. Instead, there’s a player-organized meal plan, which is bolstered by in-character family-style meals within your gang. I had never cooked so much as a single kielbasa before Velvet Noir gave me a platform to be unabashedly Polish. I’ve made bigos since, and my heart glowed thinking of the people I helped feed at the game. I have Tomasz and my willingness to give him a bit of my own story to thank for that.

Which is how he ended up surprising me. For me, the recipe to a successful larp is one part emotional investment and one part dumb luck. I got lucky when I ran into someone I had met at a previous larp, Hilary. Within a few minutes before the game really started, we talked through and agreed upon a romantic relationship between my Tomasz and their character Sophie, a non-binary sex worker with los Cuervos. That was the crowbar that let Tomasz force his way into my relationships in real life for the better.

At my first game playing Tomasz, I led him by the hand as he lived through in three days what I had long since discovered about myself. Coming out as a bisexual man, even to the meager extent that I am out, has been a process. Giving my larp character a non-binary love interest let me relive that process in a discreet and discrete way. At the start of the game, he was flabbergasted when his old war buddy admitted to being gay. By the end, Tomasz held Sophie’s hands in the infirmary, proud to be there with them. It felt so good to be an invisible mentor to Tomasz as he walked in my footsteps.

At game two, Tomasz flipped the script on me. Hilary and I agreed, the relationship between Sophie and Tomasz grew since our last meeting and would continue in this game.

Over (prop) drinks at the bar, Sophie told Tomasz, “Can I tell you a secret?”

They leaned in. I could feel their breath on his/my neck.

“I love you,” they said.

“That’s a good secret,” Tomasz said, “Thank you.”

(Yeah, I know, neither of us are smooth.)

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Sophie followed up that revelation by also telling Tomasz that they are polyamorous, maintaining multiple significant romantic relationships at once. For Marshall, I was back on solid ground; that’s just another thing I know about myself that I could guide Tomasz through for the next few hours.

Saying “I love you, too,” though?

Since seeing myself as a bisexual, polyamorous man, I had never let myself use those words. They held too many bad memories of monogamous relationships that tore themselves apart when they couldn’t satisfy all of both partners’ needs. Not even with my long-distance boyfriend, who had graciously let me take a similar clumsy escape route as the one Sophie permitted Tomasz.

While other characters plotted to smuggle illicit booze or rehearsed for their musical performances that night or avenged slights to their gang’s honor, Tomasz asked everyone who would listen, “How do you say ‘I love you’ to a polyamorous person?”

It was pretty entertaining to watch a bunch of 1920s gangsters struggle to give romantic advice, but it also had a real edge for me.

“I always had a plan,” he said, “Find a good woman, say I love you, get married, and make some little Wolskis. This is not part of that plan.”

I had set that plan aside a while back, but hadn’t found the nerve to replace it with anything. Until that weekend, the same was true of Tomasz.

The next day, after a larp’s worth of drama and stress, Tomasz had Sophie’s hands in his yet again, this time just outside the infirmary.

“Can I tell you a secret?” he asked them, “I love you, too.”

The bastard beat me to saying it. This fictional, made-up, imaginary jerk, who just heard about polyamory yesterday and was damn near a homophobe three months prior, was more emotionally vulnerable with his partner than I had been.

Two weeks later, I caught up to Tomasz, finally working up the courage to be as brave as my own fictional creation.

I can’t put into words how much that meant to me.

For many people, larp is a safe place to experiment with the identities, behaviors, emotions, or more that they wish they could be, do, or express in their real lives. And sometimes, that experiment is successful and leaves the lab.

Your mileage will inevitably vary. That’s a big part of the magic. Larps like Velvet Noir will take you places you never thought you’d go, especially if you permit yourself to look inward for play.

There are many immersive shows that are borrowing from larp to great success, but I challenge you to go straight for the real thing.

Velvet Noir III: The Longest Nights and Brightest Days will take place in February 2020 in Petersburg, PA.

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