Thinking about stories and games and larp
It was the last event of the Odyssey system. I'd played King Minos, the MC of the arena since the first event. 7 years, 13 events, 500 or so arena combats witnessed. I'd never taken the floor in anger.
We got a lot of useful feedback after the event, some of which I'm using to comment on my own Design post and a Learning post elsewhere.This is really just the froth. I say "just", it's lovely to hear people praise something you've spent best part of 5 years working on on and off, so...... Continue Reading →
Cinedrama is pulp film-style as larp practise. It comes straight out of the Crooked House playbook; notably Dick Britton and the Voice of the Seraph in 2005. As an attitude to play, it sits somewhere between a UK "LARP is just for fun" instinct I don't entirely subscribe to, the "Win by losing" playstyle I... Continue Reading →
I can't recall the first time I used cryptography in a larp, but it was a good 20 years ago. Some players like the puzzle solving, some don't, no-one likes struggling with something that for plot reasons is actually impossible. Tricksy.Experience suggests the simplest cipher - the Caesar - is easily breakable in a field... Continue Reading →
Follows an article written for larpgeist magazine in 2011... I can't find it on the Internet anywhere, so here it goes. Publish. It's a bit dated, but then it was 8 years ago.
Some more thinking about Odyssey from the files of the Wayback Machine, this time from Ian Andrews and myself. Apparently, we thought it was a game back then.
Back in the day, I was involved in the design of a fest lrp game called Odyssey. This is what Ian Andrews and Matt Pennington had to say about designing PvP play into that game...
Last year, I was part of a team that ran "Wing And A Prayer". I've been tying to write some words about it for ages. Unedited, here they are.
In my professional life, we try and have a meeting after every chunk of every project to work out what happened, so next time we can improve what we can improve, and revel in what went well. There's been a flattering number of paeans of praise for Odyssey - not all of them written by me - and... Continue Reading →
