The Smoke, London’s International Larp Festival, was a weekend of shortform larp (blackbox, freeform, and so on) held in London at the beginning of January. I was on the organizing team, together with Dominika Kovacova, Jamie Harper, Jost L Hansen, Karolina Sołtys and Michael Such. (We’ve since been joined by Laura Wood.) No Smoke without Read the full article…
I went to the second Tallinn Larp Festival! It happens in a community centre not far from the historic part of the city, and it had about 40 people – a nice mix of Estonians and internationals – playing 14 different larps across four slots. Larps at Tallinn I ran Real Men, the co-created larp Read the full article…
This year’s annual nordic larp conference was Knutepunkt 2017, in Norway, just on the edge of Oslo. It was my fourth time of attending, which means that I’ve now completed the cycle around the four host countries – which is probably some sort of level-up. The venue was a comfortable hotel, the food was all Read the full article…
A couple of weeks ago I played in Living Embers, a new(-ish) larp designed by Patrik Bálint, David Owen, Karolina Sołtys, and Laura Wood. It had run at Stockholm Scenario Festival and at Consequences towards the end of last year, and participants had raved enthusiastically, so I’d been keen to give it a go! The Read the full article…
Back in the autumn I played in Brudpris, a one-off weekend larp designed by Anna-Karin Linder and Carolina Dahlberg. This was the third run, and was organized by Mads Dehlholm Holst, Mads Havshøj, and Oliver Nøglebæk, at a scout hut in Denmark. It was played in English, and there were 51 players, from (I think) Read the full article…
I went for the second time to Stockholm Scenario Festival, early in November – you can read here about my first visit, last year. This time I was part of a quite decent-sized UK-based contingent, and I think overall the attenders might have been a bit more internationally mixed than last year. In stages I Read the full article…
Last weekend was the tenth annual run of Consequences, the UK chamber larp convention. When it started it focused very strongly on the style known here as freeform, but in recent years it’s broadened out considerably, and you can find a real mix of styles and approaches. It’s a very friendly, mingly kind of convention, Read the full article…
Have played a couple of great boardgames recently! Mysterium So this is a coop game, for 2–7 players, in which one person is a ghost and the others are psychics trying to work out who killed them (by Oleksandr Nevskiy and Oleg Sidorenko). The original Polish version came out a few years ago, and then Read the full article…
I’ve recently run a couple of small chamber larps in London. I like the intimacy of a small group of players, and the way that everyone is involved in everything. It makes for a very tight focus on design, and needs every element to be working together. The ‘standard’ length is usually around 4 hours Read the full article…
At the weekend I played in this small, experimental chamber larp designed by Karolina Sołtys with help from the Reactor Core. For five to seven players, it took place on a grassy riverbank (if you can call that a ‘chamber’) and lasted about 10 hours. Content warning: discussion of suicide and mental illness. Each player Read the full article…