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Brief

You made it!

However our characters are just outside Florence, Italy

The game is set in 1454 - rural Italy - in the less known estate belonging to your host Claudius Giovanni, the vampire.

Four/Five Day Experience

You have three full nights of roleplay and an extra pre-game night for socialising, a player calibration workshop and relaxing after travel. It is included in costs. No rush to get settled in - you arrive at the mansion a day before the LARP even starts for the social to connect with everyone - and get a full night sleep.

Do note you’re away for five days for travel plans. (It’s Wednesday - Sunday)

Long Time-In

At 4pm we draw the thick curtains and shut out the day for time-in. We run 4pm - 3am for eleven hours each day. Although: at midnight all bedrooms can become off-game space if you want to retire then.

Airport Meet and Greet Option

From London straight to the venue, there and back - we wait for flight delays! No man, woman, non-binary person or ghoul left behind. A member of our team will meet you at Heathrow Airport and get the player group corralled. We will request your flight details in the week leading up to the game, to better coordinate.

Do note you’re away for five days for travel plans. (It’s Wednesday - Sunday)

We really arrange everything, so you can relax

Giovanni: The Last Supper is a narrative game of vampires and mortals, a story of darkness and light that provides players with the opportunity to engage directly in the age-old tradition of collaborative storytelling. You will step into the role of an immortal vampire or a human seeking to survive - even if survival means becoming one of the very creatures that have brought you here to this auction.

This is a roleplaying game set during the Renaissance. Each player creates or chooses a character within the setting. You do not need to know anything about the time period before signing up, we have constructed a page specifically for you:

The Setting

If on the night(s) you cannot remember something about the world, the era, about vampires, or even if you just forget something you think your character should know- no worries. That's absolutely fine. We are all warm and friendly people and it's common to not know things. During game hours if you are anxious or just stuck unable to remember something that's come up in conversation, perhaps about the time period, a vampiric thing, or even your own brief, just say "The day sleep clouds my mind". This signals to the other player(s) to just move on. Say this whether you're playing a vampire or a human. The humans have had to snooze through most of the day too, after all. They're tired from the night.

The mythos of how our vampires work - and how vampirism functions for sunlight, feeding, physiology etc - is based on the vampires from the World of Darkness game series, specifically "Vampire: The Masquerade" classic (or "old") edition. Don't know what this is? Don't worry! We have a page to brief you. Please read it even if you are playing a human, because you will undergo the metamorphosis during the game to become a vampire:

Exclusive access to the whole mansion

Real, wide open fire places crackle in the night and huge fire pits are outside for roleplay in the dark; ancient leatherbound books line the walls of the libraries; five acres of stunning grounds to explore day or night, IC or OOC; deep sofas for cuddling, feeding and plotting in decorated great halls; perfect dark alcoves lit by candlelight; chaise longes and dramatic space to monologue in; indulgent deep bathtubs and luxury power showers (massive boilers for a place this size so the water is always piping hot); fully stocked bar, free red wine ;) (Don't get too drunk to roleplay); all-inclusive mature-rated game; game expectation and content transparancy; experienced Storytellers.

This is an intimate game so we have lovingly selected a venue that provides us both luxury and privacy.

The Black Dawn

And miles to go before I sleep

The Black Dawn was a day in the late fourteenth century when the sun did not rise. The Cainite vampires looked on in varying states of shock, horror, awe, or excitement as they lay themselves to rest that morning, but no rigid torpor took their limbs; no little death came upon them. They were free to walk - and hunt - in the strange twilight that cloaked the world.

No one knows why; the eclipse came unexpected, unchartered for. Human astronomers and loremasters were left mystified. Some vampires took caution: was it gift? A sign of more to come? Was this the work of the Dark Mother, or some great power flexing its foetid hide? Gods - could it even be Lasombra? - or another such ancient creature? Many among the vampires still hold to the notion that there are no such Bogeymen.

Years would pass before the deeper effect of this solar phenomena were felt: for on that black day a select few humans were born - humans with an incredible gift, each of them unique, their blood full of a secret they know nothing about, but which had since haunted their lives and dogged their steps, it had isolated them from their family and friends.

They were special, though they tried to hide it. The Giovanni were the first to notice.

They Embraced one that they found, and in realising the power of marrying up vampirism with this human they developed a necromantic means of tracking others in the world. As to what they should do, division broke out in their ranks. Claudius Giovanni hoped to monetise the mortals, gather up a group of them through whatever means: seduction, coercion, blunt truth, or simply force, it depended on the human. These were the ones he would sell off to the thirteen clans, earning Boons and favours from all vampires, making a name for himself between Clan Giovanni and the wider world. It is to his house that the vampires are called, to partake in what a few undead are scorning as a meat market while others look on in envy - or even excitement, knowing that these mortals might represent a blood renaissance for their clan's disciplines and power.

Some go forth to prevent a rival from attaining a human. Others accepted their invitation at the last minute, seeing how much attention the auction had gained. There are representatives of almost every clan in attendance. It forced the attendance of those politically-minded who might not otherwise have gone.

What's alarming to some, Claudius claims that he has found, through his dark experiments, that these mortals have their potency sharpened when the Embrace is under willing conditions. Their gifts flourish differently if their heart desire the change.

Not everyone will care. Some vampires know no sympathy for mortals, or the human condition, and lesser still do they believe Claudius. There will be others who seek to undermine these efforts, and others still who want none of these humans Embraced.

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What about you? Are you here by seduction, force - or invitation?

Giovanni: The Last Supper is played in the Nordic-style tradition of larp. It is a game for 90 players. A third of the characters are human.

You have come to a human auction.

This is an emotional game

In this game you are asked to take on the life of a character who is faced with a difficult time ahead of them. If you choose to start as a vampire you are already “living” in a very dark world. Vampire: the Masquerade is a mature, horror-based game where the supernatural world preys upon the traditionally natural; but it also preys upon itself. Vampire is as much a game about victimisation as it is being an undead force to be reckoned with. It is a world where every monster is in chains to another, in some way or another, be that their Sire (the vampire who created them), clan, or even their own beastial nature, as they strive to live a life not yet lost to gluttony, impulse and pain.

Vampire is an exploration of being both victim and abuser in a world that never rests, but instead seeks to puppeteer every supernatural’s life in a parody of what it means to be powerful, because there is always something larger behind you, even if your vampire is not aware of it. It is no wonder that many vampires bury themselves in human lovers when they cannot trust each other; theirs is a flame in an endless black that burns more brightly than anything the vampire can ever hope to produce.

Extensive character creation

Including many canon vampires - or build your own character; we will work with you to make a character that you're excited about. We ask that canon characters have their original history maintained, but you can of course flex their creative muscles and make each one your own.

You can also craft a totally new (or old!) vampire, or a gifted human. We’ll help direct you in their birthing and development right through to this night - or go with the bare bones - we can help you brainstorm a person who would exist in this world. The night awaits you, no matter your choice.

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Particularly with a larger player base we all need to be comfortable. We calibrate ourselves in pre-game briefings so that everyone understands the expectations of them as players and how to engage comfortably and enthusiastically with one another, with no surprises coming out at anyone during the game.

Long time ins; we all eat lunch together at 1pm, to negotiate scenes for later and to inspire each other for more dramatic roleplay. At 4pm curtains are drawn, fireplaces and candles lit, and the vampires and humans time in to a group scene (usually the auction display).

We believe in design transparancy and operate under a “No Surprise” policy for our participants; what you see is what you get, and everything from the game mechanics, to its themes and playstyle, even the bedroom pics (coming in October), is all here on this website. Please ask us questions, we are here for you! Just hit the mail icon at the bottom of the website - or contact us on Facebook.

We love this size of playerbase - not only is there a bustling, vibrant number of roleplayers to fill a beautiful mansion, but there’s not so many that we cannot focus all of our attention on every character’s unique backstory and entry into the world.

The Game

What you can expect

Please read this content in full.

Participants in Vampire games rarely get to experience an event that is so fundamental to every vampire’s life: The Embrace, the night they are turned into a monster.

For many vampires, it is not just a moment in time. Rare is the vampire who Embraces by accident, or without motivation. Vampires attach to a human, they watch them, they might even speak with them - most often under a false pretence of identity, but some vampires favour a direct approach, freely offering to this selected human the difficult truths of their world. Clans prepare “childer” in different and sometimes alien ways to each other, warping or verbally conditioning the human to better accommodate their blood. It is one of the most dangerous periods of time for the intended Childe, because they have just come into an awareness of the World of Darkness, but they are themselves human.

Their eyes have opened to the horrors of the supernatural - they are exposed, shaken, and no longer sitting at the top of the food chain. A wise Sire will use this time to protect their human if indeed they cannot or will not Embrace immediately (as is the case with the long-formal Ventrue or even the younger Tremere Clan), erecting magical, political or physical safeguards around the human before later burdening them with their new, cold eternity.

An Opportunity to Explore the Untravelled

Often in roleplay games, when the Embrace is explored (the process of turning a human into a vampire) it is done so rapidly, either over the course of a single scene - a shock factor to rouse drama in a playerbase - or performed in paranoia and secrecy during the “downtime” of a longer running campaign, between the actual game sessions. It is background narrative. Participants do not often want to risk other participants interrupting this delicate event, which is an amusingly close mirror of what the vampire themself must surely be feeling. Sadly it all means people rarely get to explore the grooming stage that vampires engage in when embracing a human, what they do in priming their chosen individual for their gift, let alone what happens in the vampire who is possessive when there is competition for that human.

These are not normal humans, and their powers illicit varied and unusual responses in other people who have come into contact with them throughout their lives - sometimes tragically so. For the vampires, they will discover, it will be no different.

The vampires attending Claudius Giovanni’s remote house have come to an auction for these poor souls, under a guarantee of hospitality.

Giovanni: The Last Supper provides space and incentive for participants to explore the Embrace between the vampire and the human. It provides drive for the vampire to connect with a human (potentially several humans for the more industrious - or the more greedy - vampires) and grow attached to them, or to attach to the idea of what the humans represent with their unusual powers. In doing so, they will become aware of each human’s colourful past and the tragedies they have lived for rather young creatures.

We ask vampire participants to consider how the Clans embrace differently from one another, and how they as a member of their own blood might think about the Embrace and its importance.

You are also here to roleplay with other vampires. Many of the canon vampires available as player characters have deep, vibrant histories with one another and they have existing places in their world. There are old scores to settle, romances to revisit, grudges galore, bones to pick and a looming black cloud upon their world as the Inquisition begins to turn its gaze past the human witches and stray creatures of the world… to the vampire.

It is considered for the purpose of Giovanni: The Last Supper that the big Burning Times have not yet occured for the vampiric species; but it might be just around the corner, for those who dare to predict such things and try to forewarn their cousins in blood. Meanwhile the rest of the vampires drink, dine and feast on humanity, brilliant art, culture and the explosion of the Rennassiance, ignoring the threat beyond the looking glass.

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You are here to explore

• The Embrace

  • And the different ceremonies, dogmatic lectures or cruel/pleasurable rituals your vampire might put a human through to prepare them for the embrace

• Elder and Neonate dynamics; power plays between Clans and individual vampires

• Predator and prey dynamics

• Territoriality

• Mentorship, instruction, and imparting your own vampiric ideology down the throat of the one(s) you’ve chosen

• Freedom and enslavement

• What it means to be human

  • These “humans” are so different as to be practically supernatural themselves. They have lived tragic, difficult lives ostracised from their own kind. Many of them may not even like other humans, but fear them - and in some cases, loathe them. They have questioned daily as to whether they themselves are even human. What might be a horror-auction for one of these humans may be an event willingly gone to by another. Claudius approached each of them differently.

• Protectiveness and Fear - some vampires will come to care for their new human(s) or desired apprentice; the blood of these humans is more potent than expected, theirs is emotionally addictive, and it creates protectiveness in those who sup from their veins

• Territory marking

  • Perhaps you want to enhance your own bloodline, even to experiment on it. You might be here to hunt down a power that should belong to another Clan, and prevent them from exploiting it.

• Jealousy; these vampires are intended to covet (or eventually come to covet) these mortals

• Possession and ownership

• Vampire politics and philosophy - humans to learn it in roleplay, but there’s plenty of time for all the vampires to reunite with old flames or enemies, (un)bury the hatchet and bring up petty grievances that have occurred between clans and vampires through the dark ages and into this time setting.

Humans you are here

• To be bartered

• To be on show

• To be fought over

• To resist and rebel - or,

• To provoke and encourage

  • Some humans may wisely recognise that they are not getting out of this situation alive; some may strategically learn which vampires are better or safer options as the night unfolds, and they may try to entice one Sire above another. Vampires care about a wide range of traits, from the intellectual to the physical, from the mundane to the obscure. Does the famous theme of a vampire’s seduction go… both ways?

• To grieve your situation - but,

• To take an opportunity

What is not present in the larp

• There is no nudity. Players are asked to delve into some difficult themes during this LARP and it is not a small playerbase; we anticipate a range of roleplay experiences. We made the decision to forbid nudity to make calibration easier for the whole, as without nudity a greater number people tend to feel comfortable pushing for more intense scenes and mutual contact.

  • Simulated sexual acts are performed in full clothing or, if you choose, down to underwear that covers genitals, the majority of your buttocks and chest area (e.g. vest tops and pants) for all genders, so that no nipples are on show.

• Killing Poor Old Claudius™ in the opening scene. Vampire participants need to make characters that are not fundamentally opposed to the idea of turning up to this auction, even if it is for the purpose of plotting against Claudius and ranting how terrible it is to any vampire that will listen. There are a few partly-scripted scenes (usually to kick-start the roleplay after time-in and springboard some action) that anyone is encouraged to interact with and direct, but the auction needs to go ahead.

• There is to be no full-force striking without explicit consent given by the victim of the slap. You can grapple and throw one another into a clear space, or onto a sturdy wide sofa, but you must ensure that all participants nearby are aware that you intend to do so (roleplay loudly and clearly your intentions, e.g. “I will throw you so hard that you will see stars -” while gesturing dramatically, pointing to the area you intend to launch the person into, and be careful of furnishings).

This game features a lot of public objectification of humans for their special abilities.

There is to be no sexual objectification, however, of any of the humans during the auction scenes. (Anything beyond the auction scenes you need to negotiate with the participant.)

There will be points in the game where the human characters are on display during an auction, and their powers objectified both positively and negatively by a watching, participating audience of vampires. There is too much room for negatively-impactful bleed if you try to shame or fetishise a player character for the appearance of their body, as most of us have no control over a lot of aspects of our physical appearance. Indeed we may not even be wanting our character to carry certain physical traits that we do.

Of course, vampire characters whose players have gone to the trouble of actually using prosthetics to make themselves horrific - e.g. Nosferatu, Tzimisce - you may verbally target these artificial appendages or points of horror in roleplay.

These characters you may objectify for their appearance - at least those traits that have been crafted onto their character for makeup design and most of them would invite that conflict and horror in roleplay. If you are at all unsure - ask the participant if it would be a welcome point of roleplay.

This website contains absolutely everything you will need, excluding your personal character briefing which is a piece of fiction tailored to your backstory. You will get this closer to the game. We like to spend several months brainstorming with our players to give them a rich and detailed entry into the world - and to understand what they want out of their character.

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Content Rating

Giovanni: The Last Supper is a mature, horror-based game featuring strong themes of victimisation, violence and predation, and even the vampire characters could fall victim to others of their kind. We strongly encourage play based around the themes listed in the “Themes” section above. Players are advised that there will be simulations of violence, sex, and torture in the game spaces, though all roleplay must be firmly and enthusiastically consented to by all parties. Any player may remove themselves from a scene at any point with no negative consequence whatsoever.

Juhana Pettersson explained this best: "If we want the in-game world of darkness, we need the off-game world of kindness," and in fact working from this sort of place from the “Off Game” perspective really helps us plunge into the more intense, darker side of Vampire themes.

If you're dealing with themes that demand a lot from your players, safety becomes the priority in design choice; safety is an accelerator, it helps you go into darker places with characters, get there faster and deeper into these kind of imaginative spaces because people are more comfortable, they know each other’s limits and mechanics can propel roleplay deeper - through a defined route that people can expect.

For this reason our safety workshops and briefings are mandatory and you cannot play without attending them. To ensure that everyone is well rested and on site for this, we have taken the liberty of paying for an extra night before the game even starts. Everyone will fly in/travel in the day before and every participant will be able to actually meet their fellow players and get to know them as people independent of the (potentially) horrible vampires that they will be playing.

The point of Giovanni: the Last Supper is to bring the Gothic literacy sensibility to bear on roleplaying - in essence drawing on the Victorian literary standard and coupling it with Vampire The Masquerade to create an intense, brooding atmosphere rife with conflict and emotion, and set back in time. While doing so may require more effort and focus than some troupes are up for, the rewards for such a deeper emotional experience are greater as well - after all, this tradition sees the origin of the vampire as something other than a mindless, bloodsucking monster. There is room for heartache as well as love, trauma and monstrosity all wrapped up into one. The Renaissance, as with the Victorian era, was one of contrasts: of light and dark.

The people coming out of the late middle ages (that era which we falsely refer to as The Dark Ages on this website, just to keep in line with the term used by the Vampire source books) were on closer terms with their fears than we are, and really, how could they not be? Despite their much-vaunted civility and expansion of European power, the only thing standing between them and the dark of the night was the light provided by fires. The closure of the Crusades and plague was a recent phenomenon, and the forces of superstition - old, powerful and deep-rooted - had yet to be effectively expelled from the public psyche; witches are still being burned at the stake.

The relationship between achievement and anxiety is one of the defining hallmarks of the Renaissance. The very first book will be printed a year from now - it will be The Bible. Compared to the laborious and often inaccurate copying of manuscripts, printed books will be circulated with a speed and accuracy and in quantities previously unimaginable. But the spread of new ideas in print, especially in religion, will also provoke instability, uncertainty, and nervousness, leading artists and thinkers to further question humankind’s right to it, their place in the world and on a personal, individual level, it would lead people to question their significance, who they were and how they lived in a rapidly expanding world. There is a deep seated anxiousness behind progress for a lot of people, especially for vampires.

The idea of the Victorian “Gothic novel” will be invented many years after our game's Renaissance setting, but it is about a protagonist becoming embroiled in an increasingly complicated web of eerie and bizarre occurrences and wondering if she'll escape with her body (or at least her soul) intact. At its root, the Gothic novel isn't about heroics, but, rather, victimisation, and is a delicious setting for Vampire in the Renaissance. We encourage you to consider the themes we've listed and how you could engage with them.

Players must be willing to forego power-gaming. This is a one-shot and although it is a detailed, rich game, it is stand-alone. Throw yourself and your character into the heat of the action because...

Your character cannot die

There is a necromantic ward around the estate to the stone perimeter, active during the nights of the auction and able to be felt by higher senses. It specifically prevents souls from leaving the body - of a vampire or a human. It interferes with astral projection, too.

Originally put in place by the Giovanni to prevent any of their merchandise from meeting an untimely end (though it does not prevent the Embrace) the ramifications of this ritual will not be apparent until (and only if) your character would die in a roleplay situation. Instead of death they face crippling agony. Naturally, there will be vampires very upset with their host for not providing a full and detailed explanation on the finer points of their protections. Necromancers, eh?

Racism, Classism, Religion

We do not permit any off-game or "Out of Character" discrimination, be that on gender identity, sex, religion, race, body image or otherwise.

It is however permitted in roleplay. Please click here for the full page (opens in a new window):

As a BIPOC (black, indigenous, and other people of colour) organiser who is also from a non-Christian religion, I do not like whitewashing out racism or religious context from games, in particular from historical settings. I am a sensitivity reader for the African and Arabic diaspora, and I can assist on that front for characters with eastern links, but I have no lived experience of being Jewish or Islamic - therefore I've reached out to those in our game community who belong to these groups to inform our decisions here concerning playable characters. My co-organiser is an LGBTQIA* and disability educator for a national organisation; you are welcome to speak with either of us on these topics in relation to the game.

This is a historical setting with all the prejudices of the era, and while many of these prejudices are affected and in some instances reduced by vampirism (sexism for one), they are present in the world.

• You may roleplay strong religious opinions if it is applicable to your character, and engage in social antagonism based on the religious background of a character

• You may roleplay strong biases based on class and socioeconomic background and target any character for social antagonism or conflict based on their class

• You may roleplay white-on-white racial prejudices

• You may roleplay white-on-non-white racism and racial prejudices

Be present. Be kind. Cut loose. Throw into the spirit of the era and the trauma, heartache and pain. Some of the best stories come out of the most challenging of themes. We have deeper briefs to facilitate sensitivity on these themes.

You can decide to what extent you wish to engage in these themes, or how much your character cares about them, if at all. We prioritise safety, kindness and fun on an off-game basis first; you may leave any scene at any time and people will organically continue to roleplay without comment. Please see our Mechanics page for our Lookdown mechanic, also for the Cut mechanic, etc.

In this era the clans of vampires that are traditionally associated with non-white ethnicity (The Children of Set; The Children of Haqim, notably) are, and have been, Embracing new vampires of white European descent in the recent two centuries. Players are welcome to select or create a character thus who is from one of these clans but are themselves white for their ethnicity.

Please see the fuller page on this for more information.

The Team

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I (Orion, that is) cover venue scouting and hiring; our insurance and business management, public liability costs, accounting etc.; website creation and payment encryption, ticket sales; core writing; community management; game and scene design/scenology etc.

Sable is my go-to intelligence for anything Renaissance; they're incredible with the middle era for its history and they’re my key for minute details - anything from the global political climate to western and eastern religions, sexual and gender identity across the Italian city states, usury and banking... They are my pocket adviser. They are on the core writing team and are behind most of the content for the Renaissance website page, including what the clans are up to in the era.

The LARP is run entirely in English but we have many native Swedish, Finnish, Italian, Danish and Norwegian speakers and a large multi-racial, warm playerbase. You must roleplay in English just so that nobody is excluded by a less commonly spoken language barrier.

We time in after lunch and go quite late into the night, so you should expect 11 hour time-ins (4pm - 3am) on Thursday, Friday and most of Saturday (on Saturday we are timing out just after midnight, so that we can have a social party time and wind-down). You can of course go to bed straight after the LARP officially ends, but it is advised to stay on for at least a half hour and chat to debrief your weekend with other players or ourselves. There is an optional workshop immediately after the game ends for players who want it, which is intended to help with LARP drop and managing bleed.

All bedrooms are an accessible space for roleplay - people can converse, move about, and sit on any furniture inside them, but no beds may be sat upon or interacted with unless you have the explicit Off-Game permission of the person who it belongs to. This especially is required in cases where simulated sex is occuring; it is best to use your own bedroom for roleplaying this. Of course, you can roleplay this anywhere else in the mansion, including in front of the Great Hall’s fireplace and fluster the more innocent characters. Or find a cosy alcove.

Although we formally time out at 3am, all bedrooms can become off-game space from midnight if you want to go to bed at this point; we have red ribbons that you tie to the outer handle of your door, and from midnight you can do this.

No bathrooms or shower rooms or WCs are roleplay spaces. There are additional designated Off-Game places to relax in and eat, or get some space away from everybody else. Teas, coffees, fresh water, juices etc are always available and the vampiric host will even remind you over the eerie sound system in the mansion to go and feed. (What a joy it is to practice necromancy.) This is not a game wherein you are to push yourself for your body’s ability to cope; you must sleep and you must eat, you must hydrate yourself and take pauses if you need it. You can roleplay inside or outside of the mansion, the designated outdoors space is clearly marked by a very solid stone wall around the mansion grounds. There will be firepits outside in the communal seating areas. Fireplaces in the hearths indoors will be lit, you are not to touch these at any time please; we have a dedicated staff member who will tend to them. The entire internal venue is a no smoking area, although there will be a dedicated space outdoors for smoking that is Off Game where you can do so. You are allowed to consume alcohol that you bring with you, or the wine we provide; you are not allowed to consume recreational drugs, this includes cannabis.

PhoTOS

What Happens in the Renaissance…

There is strictly no photography or video footage permitted during game hours in any of the game spaces. Outside of game hours (even right before time in) or in off-game spaces you may take pictures and selfies to your heart's content, whenever you want, of yourselves and the venue, and you can photograph anyone who you have permission from. It was a hard decision to make to ban in-game photography given we love sharing the weekend publicly too, but ultimately we opted for game privacy.

COsts

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£850 (inc. VAT) Payment in 7 instalments - or pay it all at once. Credit card option for financial insurance. We accept Apple Pay, WISE, direct wire, all major Credit and Debit Cards.

Join us

Rawr

Welcome aboard! Ready to plunge into the depth with us?