Story

The Setting

The True Love Initiative takes place in a dystopian-esque semi-futuristic alternate universe. In this world, the middle class never emerged in society, and the difference between those of means and the backs they built them on only grew. The lower class being defined by their need to work, toiling away in mines, factories and the service industry just to keep themselves alive. Whereas the social elite only works to find meaning in a life where there is nothing to do besides simply exist. This is believed to be the natural order of things and few people question the inherent separation in society.

This societal structure has entailed that there are many people in this world who search for meaning in life. The lower class is too busy to keep themselves alive that there is no time to focus on things that make you happy, on hopes and dreams or anything really besides the small things in life. Whereas the upper class has so much time on their hands that the idea of happiness and meaning is all they really strive for. This has created a sort of exaggerated version of our world, where meaning and happiness is mostly believed to be derived from love. Through marriage and the perfect partnership, you can become complete, you can find your true happiness and live the life you always wanted to.

Inversely for the lower class, happiness through love is seen as something exclusive for the social elite, and only if you are the luckiest person in the world can you marry above your station--the only way to really rise in society--and have your happily ever after.

However, this belief does not mean that the social elite are all happily married and living their best life. On the contrary, divorce is rampant everywhere as everyone tries and fails to find true fulfilment through love, and those who do succeed take on a particularly prosperous position in society as they are seen as having actually manifested what is widely believed to be what makes you the happiest. But they are very few and far inbetween, as the inherent culture of the upper class is so strongly tied to the idea of individualism and self-centered gratification.

Love Through an Algorithm

The exception to this culture, however, is the True Love Initiative.

The Initiative was born about 35 years ago as an attempt to help the people find their perfect match, and the results were astounding. All preliminary testing showed a 100% success rate in happiness and durability, and soon the Initiative took the world by storm.

What made the True Love Initiative so successful was its exclusivity and very particular testing parameters. Despite accepting hundreds of thousands of applicants every year, the program only allowed a couple of hundred to actually go through the full program. The reasoning being that the program would, through initial testing of all the applicants, narrow down groups of people within whom the algorithm could guarantee a perfect match. Hence only very few were lucky enough to be chosen for the full program every year, but that also meant promising an actual 100% success rate for those who participated.

In order to make sure that the program had the most diversified possible participants, the Initiative also allowed people who couldn’t pay for the program--i.e. people of the working class--to participate. Of course only very few of them were actually chosen for the programs itself, but some came through, which made the Initiative very attractive and popular among the lower class as it promised the actual opportunity to marry above your station and therefore change your whole life with it.

Group Eurydice-X

12 years ago, the characters of this story applied to the program, and were beyond lucky and exhilarated when they were chosen to actually take part in the True Love Initiative as a part of Group Eurydice-X. What had followed had been an extended weekend of getting to know each other, having fun and doing exciting and sometimes weird exercises to test their compatibility with the other participants, and then finally the program chose their partners for them.

After that they built their lives around their partners and their true love match.

However, a couple of months ago, a data leak from The True Love Initiative emerged which showed that during the tests of Group Eurydice-X, the program had shut down for about an hour during testing. The company behind True Love Initiative apologized profusely for the situation, but promised that it was a one-time occurrence and that they were certain that it had had no effect on results of the group.

However, in light of some media backlash, the company decided to offer the Group to retake the program in order to extinguish any doubts of the validity of the final pairings--of course completely free of charge for the participants. For several different reasons everyone of our characters decides to re-join the program, amongst other things because they unfortunately were told that they will not be able to keep calling themselves a Certified True Love Match™ if they do not participate--a status that despite the backlash from the data leak, still holds a lot of value and importance in society and to the characters.

And that is where our story starts, as our characters once again go back into the program they participated in 12 years ago, telling themselves it is no big deal and that the weekend will only be a fun retreat--not truly realizing what awaits them.

Characters

The characters in this larp will mostly come from an upper class background, with a few characters having been born in the working class, but have through their marriage elevated themselves in society. All the characters were between the ages of 18-23 when they participated in the program, so they will all be between 30-35 years old during the larp.

Every character also has a reason why they wanted to participate in the program 12 years ago, that will primarily be built around the idea of all of them believing they can find meaning and happiness through love.

All of the characters will have memories of their time in their program back then; what their hopes and dreams were, who they liked and did not like, the intensity of it all, and how it formed friendships and relations between all of them that has lasted years.

The center of all characters will in some way be their partnership.

Since the program, our characters have lived many years with their partners. They have built up a whole life, some of them have gotten kids, others jobs or other things to give their life some purpose--but in the center of it all has been their relationship. The thing meant to give them love, make them whole, be their everything and the premise of all their happiness.

Of course, this is not what it has actually been like for our characters. The premise of this larp is dysfunctional relationships and our characters' desperations to make them work. Some relationships will be worse than others, but in the core of them there are no completely happy stories. There will be heartbreak, desperation, abuse, frustration, power struggles, and so much more that fuels the relationship, but also many reasons why they matter so much to our characters and why most of them want to do everything to keep it together and make it work.

The characters are pre-written. Play preferences during sign-up will be taken into account and possibly even be written into the characters during character creation.

The different pairings will have different themes and relationship structures they want to uphold, and they will have relations with other characters that will challenge that relationship and themselves. These other relations can be everything from family relationships to friendships to romantic relationships. Each couple will be a part of a primary friend-group of 6 characters, but will also have relations outside of that group.

Gender and sexuality

In the True Love Initiative you can sign up to play as any preferred gender including non-binary and transgender, with no regards to your off-game gender identity or presentation, and all gender constellations in the couples will be possible to play.

Gender in this universe have no particular meaning whatsoever. There are no beliefs about gender roles or expectations about performing in any particular way, and you can present in whatever way you see fit for your character in this way.

Overall, gender is not important for this game, and there will be no discrimination related to gender, both in and out of character.

The concept of sexuality in this universe is also different from ours. Everyone is expected to be bi/pansexual, and can of course have personal preferences, but the idea of calling yourself a specific sexuality does not exist in this universe. Likewise, the concept of asexuality does not exist; everyone is assumed to want romance and sex. This does not mean that sexualities does not exist in this universe, but the concept and the words for it do not.