Characters
The characters can be divided into three main groups depending on their agenda and game style.
Pupils | 23 roles
The pupils are the most numerous group. The players of these characters impersonate the Czech–German youth held in the Institute in order to be re-enacted, healed from the aftermath of the possible experienced traumas, and to have some appropriate Czechoslovak values instilled. That is why a strict routine, regular therapy sessions, and a certain amount of oppression by the authorities awaits them. Their role presents exactly the experience that we consider essential in Requiem: Reichskinder. They play a game about guilt, punishment, forgiveness, and damnation.
Their game stands on three basic pillars: their common past and confrontation with it, their current tense relationships and short-term goals within the Institute, and last but not least, their interactions with their special, peculiar friends, creatures that the others cannot see. All the characters are presently young adults who already have a past behind them, some of whom may also have a future; the game is not about children.
Staff | 5 roles
Another group is represented by the Institute's staff. They are the work crew, educators, and nurses who take care of the pupils and at the same time develop their own stories. The players in these supervising roles are responsible for the correct operation of the Institute's routine, for organizing the drama therapies, and for interacting with pupils from a position of executive authority. The players in these roles can expect a lot of responsibility, a bit of investigation, and very tense relationships with each other.
The players in these roles do not experience as much oppression or physical discomfort as the players in the roles of pupils; on the other hand, being directly responsible for the others falls on the supervisors, so they can experience a certain degree of stress. In addition, the staff are also not necessarily in a hostile position towards the pupils; their relationships with the individual pupils are very diverse and tend to evolve during the game. The members of the staff thus uncover stories, get to know the pupils, try to save some of them—and sometimes also take revenge on them, punish them, or even deliberately hurt them.
Therapists | 3 roles
The last, very small, group is the therapists. They provide therapeutic sessions to individual pupils, keep personal files on each of them, and make decisions about the therapies and procedures that the pupils have to go through. The therapists’ game will consist mainly of interviews with the pupils and psychoanalysis. There will be just three therapists, and their game will be very specific and different from the other roles’ games; therefore, signup for these roles will also run separately from the other applications.
The roles of the therapists offer zero action and will be very stereotypical: The therapists will spend their time making constant rounds of interviews, through which they will try to get to know their clients better, or, on the contrary, they will reveal things to the clients that the pupils themselves are unaware of. The therapists do have a special kind of power over the pupils. Not only do they choose therapeutic procedures and evaluate the degree of national enthusiasm and other qualities of individual pupils, but the setting of the game also very often gives them a chance to determine what actually happened to a particular pupil in his or her past or to determine what his or her crime was. The role of the therapists is suitable for those who want to tell and co-create the stories of others in a special form, as well as for those who desire to decide the fate of others. The therapists will not meet or interact with the special friends of the pupils in any direct way.