Genre: Heightened slice of life, Reality TV, Dating Show, modern style, consent and calibration based, lgbtqia+
Themes: Queer-focused romance, dating, larger than life personalities, drama, emotional immersion
The Setting
This is a larp inspired by the hit Netflix show "Love is blind". Its online version on Discord has been run over 10 times since its pilot "season" in 2022.
All characters sign up for a TV show where they want to find a spouse to legally marry at the end of the experience, without ever having seen them.
All characters are some flavor of bisexual / pansexual. They may have preferences, but none of the characters are to be played as straight or homosexual with only one gender preference.
All characters have consented to be on TV, it's a reality show and everybody has signed a waiver. This larp is not about outsmarting the system / breaking the show. Your characters want to be on TV and they are motivated to stay on the show, and they consented to the concept that this means they might sign a marriage certificate after knowing someone for 10-14 days.
The show is designed to target queer audiences and highlight / represent queer stories in reality TV.
All characters are some degree of bisexual, we are not going to divide people into gendered groups.
The whole experience is set to be online, participants will "leave to meet in person, move in together, and have a wedding" after the end of the larp.
There will be drama, feelings, tears, love, hate, "confession cam" interviews and maybe even a proposal or two.
The Masterminds
The entity behind everything that happens in game is the production crew of a TV show, commonly referred to as Production (they, plural).
Production are not a matchmaking agency. Production are not a reigning monarch overseeing social season.
Production want to make good TV. They care about ratings and viewership numbers. They care about drama and intense story arcs. Production doesn't care about the candidates as individuals, they see them as pieces to the jigsaw puzzle that is the finished product.
You as participants should be aware of that. How aware your characters are of that in game, is up to you.
You should expect and be open to be pushed, steered or manipulated by Production to make decisions for the drama, for the big TV moments that will go viral on TikTok, for the quotes that will make you the standout star of the season.
Production will encourage candidates to drink alcohol. To confront rather than avoid. To make big gestures and important choices quickly rather than waiting it out.
Off game, on a meta level, watching what the characters do from our perspective as larpers, we know these decisions are bad. But we want to play with them and dive deep into the emotions resulting from them.
The larp is about making a compelling TV show.
The Dates
Unlike other romantic-focused larps, Listen 2 Your Heart doesn't have characters spend a lot of time with a chosen few others. Candidates will be dating each other in short periods of time, and meet as many people as possible first. Then, decisions will be made to allow focus on fewer possible matches.
Due to this design point, it is not possible (or at least not encouraged) to sign up in pairs or with a few close friends with whom to play out one set story line. This is not a "partner larp". Even if you sign up with someone and want to play on dating their character, you won't be playing together almost at all during the first two days.
We ask participants to be open to meeting lots of people and exploring many possible avenues with their and the others' characters. Even if decisions seem to have been made, nothing is ever set in stone. Fighting, sabotaging and backstabbing is possible. Or, as a last resort: Revenge.
Unlike in the show Love Is Blind, where you see many candidates leave or just hang out because they haven't found a match a few days in, the larp will have all candidates dating throughout the entire experience. Nobody will "just not get a date and hang out in the kitchen". Everybody gets the same amount of dates.
Everybody is a main character in their own story.
Behind The Scenes
Production, meaning the larp crew such as org/NPCs, are there for you. They will help you make your stories bloom and flourish. In game, they will push and pry and prod, they will try to make your characters be their most entertaining selves.
Off game, they are your support. They help you with cooking, they listen to your worries, they bring you paracetamol or a band-aid. If you are struggling with finding cool scenes to play, they will help you find something.
While romantic rejection is a theme ever present within the larp, we don't want sad or triggered players. Should you ever feel like needing to steer your character's story somewhere more comfortable for you, the larp crew is there to help you make it happen.