It is July third, 1950. The Korean War is eight days old. National Security Council Report 68 is sitting on Harry Truman’s desk, a grim outline of the Cold War that is to enfold the world for the next 40 years. Alan Turing’s paper “Computing Machinery and Intelligence” is circulating for review. Cinderella is a box office sensation.And you have invented a computer that can see the future.Employing cutting-edge Ward-Takahashi identity derivations outside their quantum-theoretical framework, JUGGERNAUT processes enormous data sets, ostensibly in the service of code-breaking once the technology is proven and refined. The unstable geniuses behind the math have reached some curious conclusions that only experimental evidence can confirm. By the numbers, JUGGERNAUT —given enough resources— should be able to crack ciphers before they are even invented.
Juggernaut is a LARP for 4 - 6 characters who are testing the new machine - a computer that can supposedly see the future. All characters are pre-written and there are various reason why there might already be tension between them. Some are scientists and the character I played who worked building rockets under the Nazi regime before transferring to America (where we set the game) kept fighting with the military officer who had lost friends during the war. Other characters had equal reasons why there might be tension between them. In addition to personal reasons for strained relationships the game was set in an era of racism, xenophobia and McCarthyism so the atmosphere as the game began was one of tension and paranoia.
The contents of the game were a soundtrack to the machine working and a deck of 21 cards with different predictions on them. There were extra decks of cards that could replace cards in the original deck used to change some of the predictions so there is a re-playability value and I would be keen to play this game again, preferably as a different character.
The predictions themselves were unveiled when a character pressed play on the soundtrack and took a card when the soundtrack completed. The predictions began with relatively mundane events and political events in the future which our characters had no way of verifying. The challenge of the LARP was that all predictions about the team members on that day had to come true. The first card I drew was that I had lost a pen and would engage others in a search for it. Which I then had to do during the course of play.
I won’t go into details about the predictions. Discovering them and acting on them is the fun of the game. One of the players called Juggernaut an ‘improvised LARP’ and I think that’s a fair assessment. Every card you drew, you had to ensure that the events on it happened during the game and as the intensity of the cards increased it led to the team becoming increasingly paranoid, secretive and hostile towards one another.
As we started to get through cards and realised that some of the ‘predictions’ hadn’t been acted on one of the players had the idea of, in character, sorting the cards into verified (i.e. things that had occurred), unverified (i.e. things that were predicted to occur but that we hadn’t made happen yet) and unverifiable (things predicted for a future date.) This made it easier for players to see what actions their character’s still needed to complete by the end of the game.
The game lasted about 2 hours and was enjoyable. We did experience some issues of our character’s personalities altering as predictions came through in order to fit in with the predictions. However, there was some guidance given on each character and how they felt about the others so none of the alterations were incredibly drastic. It did make it difficult to play any of the characters in a nuanced way but in a 2 hour game this wasn’t a problem.
The game was partially immersive in an interesting way. On one hand I did feel the tension and paranoia increase with particular predictions, and in fact it was immersive to the point that I accidently opened the door a few times when I was pulling on it as hard as I could, forgetting that I wasn’t really locked in!
On the other hand I had to take a step back and work out how and when I could play out predictions and how I could give others an opportunity to play out their’s.
Overall if you get the opportunity to play this game, play it. I would advise that in addition to focusing on your character card and ensuring that your predictions play out you focus on your feelings towards the machine and how they change throughout the game depending on the predictions you receive. What happens if you are sceptical but the predictions, despite your best efforts come true? What happens if you start off believing in the maths but have a really, really vested interested in the machine being wrong? It would probably useful to have a brief understanding of the time period the game is set in to get the full experience of it.
This game strikes me as a very good beginner LARP that would work well for someone who wants to try out LARPing but hasn’t done it before.
Juggernaut can be purchased from Bully Pulpit Games
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