Kat Quatermass spotted that Søren Lyng Ebbehøj was looking for speakers who'd thought about designing for competence at Knutepunkt this year. The Wing and a Prayer team certainly had. I couldn't be there in person, but wrote a script and made a quick recording of it. Søren was kind enough to accept it... This was... Continue Reading →
Time-tax: a guest post by Andy Raff
Never, ever, time tax your players, says Andy Raff, and good advice it is.
Access and Lessons in Medieval Combat: a guest post by Tim Baker.
Tim Baker writes "This article came about because of the worries expressed by a friend about learning to fight, due to accessibility issues, then wondering both what advice I could offer and how I could adjust my own teaching. For anyone who does not want to read the whole thing for my conclusions, the short version is: communication is powerful and respect each other."
Games-within-games: a guest post by Nick Bradbeer
Nick Bradbeer was on the team for both runs of Allied Games' "Wing and a Prayer", and if he didn't coin the term "tasklarp" he was there or thereabouts when it was first used. (I'm pretty sure it was pre-dated by Lauren Owen using the phrase "joblarp", for what it's worth.) This is a Facebook... Continue Reading →
Rule 7: a confession.
I've been trying to evidence this one, to no real success. You'll just have to trust me, unless anything shows up. Facebook, 31st October 2020 Edited to add: Something I've no reason to doubt has shown up - see above - the rest of this is as originally written.I'm the one who coined "Rule 7:... Continue Reading →
Is LARP art?
It's a medium. Like telly, or cinema, or books, or fag packets. What you do with it is up to you.There.Settled.
Armour cleaning 101: guest post by Tim Baker
Just one of those Facebook posts which might be useful one day. Nb: before you start, this advice is geared towards a 'practical' clean with a focus on long-term protection and maintenance of the armour. If you want another specific finish you might take a different approach and I would tweak the advice.Tim Baker, Facebook... Continue Reading →
All For Anvil
Somewhat oddly, given it's at least larp-ish, I didn't mention this year's first project here. It was my son Bill's idea - an adventure book called "All For Anvil". designed to teach folk about the Empire game rules and world. To my great joy, and Bill's delight, it got successfully funded on Kickstarter. All For... Continue Reading →
Midwinter
Just back from Midwinter larp, a genuinely gorgeous bit of genius.Get this for a pitch. You're an elf in Santa's toy workshop. You're working shifts to get the toys made on time. Deadline - well, there's one. 24th or bust. The pressure is on. Then, there's official toy-making process. Designed off-game to be as dysfunctional... Continue Reading →
A template plot document, and some other thoughts
Chris Whitehead asked for a template plot document the other day, and I thought to myself: “I must have one of those somewhere?” Before I quite knew it, I was adding notes to the raw list, and now it’s more a “how-to” than just a template. I realised after starting that, I’d touched on the... Continue Reading →