The Zone

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Forming A Team

It is a deliberate choice for game design that players arrive in the Zone as solo freelancers who do not know each other. There are a few reasons for this.

• A level playing field. Many larp systems promote people arriving as an organised group, but with a relatively small player base that cannot easily expand, one large group can easily dominate the game.
• Getting to know people and forming teams in game gives solo players a reasonable chance at finding a group to join up with.
• Players cannot pool money to outfit one person to a level beyond other starting characters.

The in character justification for this is that the smuggling gangs can exert a significant amount of control over freelancers that do not present a united front. Thus they discourage teams and squads forming as much as they can, and use the mission sign-up system to prevent groups getting much bigger than 4 or 5 people. Past experience has shown that once a freelancer team gets to about a dozen members they begin to push for better pay, better trading terms and a voice in how a given hub is managed. Like the union busters of the outside world, the various barkeeps do all they can to prevent collective bargaining.

When groups of people arrive to be smuggled into the Zone, the gangs usually arrange to have them separated in transit and sent to different hubs. If at all possible they prefer each new batch of rookies arriving at a specific hub to have never met each other before.

Team Insignia

Most teams that form within the Zone last about as long as the individual members do. A group of friends formalise a working arrangement and little else. As a result they don't adopt an insignia or uniform. Some teams start up with the ambition of assembling a small army and becoming a faction within the Zone. This very rarely works because the smuggling gangs work against it, and a long-lasting faction always forms around an ideology rather than work or mutual protection. Nonetheless, some teams have endured over the years and brought in new members as others died or left the Zone. These longer-lasting teams often adopt a uniform of some kind. Due to a lack of available resources in the Zone, the “uniform” is often very little more than a crudely drawn symbol on an armband.

If you want to put together a team, please speak to a referee. When you're putting a uniform together please consider the difficulty of obtaining new clothing in the Zone and plan accordingly.