Engineering
Engineering and item crafting has a heavy focus on role-play at Ardent Spacers, but not the usual “role-play for 10 minutes then swap your materials at the admin desk”.
You’ll be faced with a variety of physical activities and puzzles as an engineer, and are vital for keeping the AES Ardent working to its fullest capacity.
Repairing
Repairing satellites, radio stations, and other faulty objective markers will be common on missions. These will require physical puzzles to be completed which may need specialist IC equipment, ranging from simple battery replacements to full prop reconstructions. You will use actual props supplied at base or found on missions to complete these tasks. Think of it like a jigsaw – where duct tape and screw drivers actually have a use, instead of just being cool props to have at a larp.
Repairing HP Equipment
Anyone can repair their own damaged armour and HP-based equipment unless it has been completely destroyed, for example, by dumping it in an incinerator.
Restoring A-HP (Armour Hit Points) or S-HP (Energy Shield Hit Points) requires the use of Repair Patches, a cheap item that gets slapped on to fix the in-game equipment. These patches will be physrepped by illustrated stickers that need physically sticking to the relevant physrep. If they fall off or are removed after, that’s fine!
Crushed Items
Items affected by the Crush call become physically broken, and if they have A-HP, this is also reduced to zero.
If one of your items is hit by this call, a referee will find you to give you a FAULT card for the item. The item is unusable until this FAULT is repaired.
If you are wearing armour, the armour gets crushed. If you aren’t wearing armour, that limb is crushed, and you’ll get a TRAUMA card instead of a FAULT card.
Resource-based repairs
Some tactical items and tasks may need in-game resources to get up and running, either instead of or in addition to the physical roleplay style of repairing. These items will have a Lammie attached stating what they’re missing in order to function.
Static
Static stops powered items from working, rendering Power Cells useless until resolved by using a suitable item. For example, if you have a sword with an Upgrade, you can still fight with the sword, but can’t use that Upgrade’s ability.
FAULT cards
FAULT cards are the item version of roleplay injuries, where items aren’t working as intended or are broken in some way. These are represented by Tear Card Lammies.
Inside, there will be roleplay instructions to follow to remove the item’s fault. Some will require specific resources or equipment in addition to roleplay. If you don’t have the knowledge or an item that lets you open the card, you can still try to remove the fault. Do the roleplay with a witness, and open the card at the end. If you’ve managed to predict everything correctly, congratulations, it’s fixed! If not, inside will also state a failure result, which often means damaging the item further.
Recycling
Specific equipment will let you break down items to recycle them into a portion of their base materials.
FABREP Crafting
Crafting at larps can feel like a vending machine, so we’re leaning into that!
Instead of spending time role-playing making basic items, players will be able to hand over materials to the fabrication lab in the TASKMINDERS base and come back later to receive their new things. It’s like 3D printing but much more advanced. Some items will be available quickly, others might take hours or days to complete.
The spaceship has a limited material storage that characters can purchase, and use of the lab has a small fee. If you already have the materials, you’ll just need to pay this small fee. Be warned – if everyone decides to suddenly buy a lot of metal from the ship, that will drain the ship’s supply and may have knock-on consequences (and new missions to go and find metal in the environment or broker trade deals with locals).
If there isn’t anyone in the FABREP lab, there will be an envelope drop-off to write your details and submit the right materials and money. It’ll be processed as soon as someone returns.