I got to play the freshly-published version of the excellent social card game In a Bind recently. It’s designed by Behrooz Shahriari, who I know originally via the London playtest meetup. It’s a very straightforward game, quick to learn and to play, for 3–10 players, about physical constraints. At its simplest, players take turns to Read the full article…
I spent most of last week in the 1980s, in New York. I was Abner Finkel, a professor of modern literature at Columbia University, and a radical nihilist poet. The larp was Just a Little Lovin’, my first long-form Nordic larp. It was written by Hanne Grasmo and Tor Kjetil Edland and is one of Read the full article…
This last month or so has seen a whole bunch of playtesting activity. Playtesting is what you do when your game isn’t yet ready for publication/release/whatever your final intention for it is – so you run an unfinished version of it and ask the people involved to feed back to you on what they thought Read the full article…
One of the most fundamental decisions you need to make when designing a larp is: who will be responsible for creating the characters? In fact it’s so fundamental that people with experience only in one area of larp may not even realize that it’s a variable. If you only play trad larp, the idea that Read the full article…
What’s a scene? In the theatre, it’s a self-contained section of action, often signalled by the curtain going up and down or the actors going on and off stage. In a game, basically the same thing, except it’s often signalled by the GM saying “Right then… what do you want to do next?” In traditional Read the full article…
“Dystopias come from somewhere, and they go somewhere. They appear because someone is able to convince others that they are reasonable, and they disappear because someone is able to exploit their weaknesses. They rise, and they fall.” The other weekend I got the chance to playtest Rise and Fall, a new (GMless and prepless) storygame Read the full article…
“Who will you be? The tearaway debutante? The stalwart father figure, bent on political supremacy? The Machiavellian footman? The kind housemaid, trying to meet the divide? Will you rule from above, or below?” A Foot on the Stairs was a weekend larp for around 60 people, at the beginning of February, held at this rather Read the full article…
Just back from Knudepunkt 2015, this year’s version of the annual Nordic larp conference. It was great! – a fantastic time of interesting thoughts and lovely people (and vice versa). I wrote last year about my experience of the 2014 KP, and a few weeks ago here about encouraging people to go along, so I Read the full article…
Silence is, proverbially, golden. But is that also true of the larp I played in at the weekend? Read on to find out! “In a world of more and more sound, silence is becoming more valuable. Before and After Silence is about limitations and listening, and about doing almost nothing. It is non-verbal and uses Read the full article…
… And this is the website that Cat and I (again, mostly her) put together for The Outsiders, which we ran at Consequences 2013. This is a bit different from the Oh dear! website because, as well as the player-facing pages explaining how the game’s going to work and who the characters are and so Read the full article…