Style and Tone

If there is one thing that unites every Shade in the Underworld, it's their misery at what surviving in this place is like. People will do a lot of things to overcome that, and walking this road is a one-time opportunity for people to escape. And there's not a lot people wouldn't do to get their own chance at freedom. This is a cutthroat world, and people will go to great lengths to secure their destiny.

The journey is dangerous, and not to be taken alone. You know some of these people, but others are strangers. Yet you must travel together. Can you trust those who you travel with, and will you be able to uncover those intent on saboutaging your efforts?

The game will mainly take place in the Underworld, following your journey along the tracks as you trace a route towards the Living World. The aesthetics and tone of the game are heavily inspired by the musical Hadestown, the Underworld feeling like Dust-bowl America. Technology is mostly mechanical, with rudimentary electronics present in some places.

While there are some PvE elements, Anabasis is primarily a game about your own character's journey, and their relationship to the other characters on the journey. There may be characters out to prevent you from completing your journey; these might be NPCs, but there might be a Demon in the player party deliberately out to saboutage your character. As such some of the PvP in this game is similar to hidden role boardgames such as Werewolf and Blood on the Clocktower.

This game will be for you if you enjoy deep emotional roleplay, uncertainty, and characters working through dire circumstances.

We have drawn inspiration from a number of different media sources. Here are just a few of our top picks:

• Hadestown
• Dante’s Inferno
• Paradise Lost
• Classical Mythology
• The Magic Flute
• Nightmare Alley
• Werewolf (Board Game)
• Blood on the Clocktower (Board Game)

As well as being directly inspired by Hadestown, the landscape of The Underworld is loosely inspired by works from both Classical mythology (like the Odyssey) and Classical reception (like Dante’s Inferno). While we hope that familiarity with these inspirations will help establish a common frame of reference, knowledge of them is not required, and there is no one to one mapping between either any individual locations or the overall topology mentioned in these source materials and the setting of Anabasis.

We would also like to thank some other LARPs, which we have drawn inspiration from, for both themes and game design ideas:

• Threshold
• Live and Let Live
• Hotel Normality

Much of the wording on this wiki has been drawn from pervious OLS games, primarily Underlings, which in turn we owe a debt to the wealth of OURPGSoc Society Games from which that game was derived.