What larp has which other live games tend not to is characterisation. Larp is perhaps well described as a consensual halluncination, participants jointly existing as characters in a world as well as a players in a game. Maintaining that hallucination is problematic even for small events with players selected for the ability to ingest and... Continue Reading →

I love writing/running Odyssey, because we have license to experiment. Enforced segmentation was something I particularly wanted in. The idea that you choose a path, and that gives you a specific set of stuff to do, that links to the other path's stuff to do. In Odyssey, it's (loosely) warleaders leading fights and holding territory,... Continue Reading →

I really started learning how to run larp events at the knee of Earthworks Cardiff. I'd run linear days in what's now called a "club" style before then, but they first taught me how to make a weekend ebb and flow, how to inspire heroism, how to make epics, how to power the story-generating machine. Subsequently, we made... Continue Reading →

It's been clear since the dawn of the hobby that different people want different things out of their larp. Hardly a surprise. My knowledge of psychology is pretty slim. I  know Maslow's pyramid has a pointy bit at the top, but that's about it. But increasingly, I find myself needing a taxonomy of  larpers that I can... Continue Reading →

I've not posted for a few months, which I'm mildly irritated about. My excuse would be that I've been running and designing games, so no time to blog them. Nonsense. I've just bottled it, through fear of "being wrong"... Crazy. People are wrong on the Internet all the while. So, without worrying about whether or... Continue Reading →

Now, I love the unconference format so I'm always more likely to like an event which uses it. I love the serendipity, love the involvement, and love the way the format shares knowledge and experience so much more effectively than a traditional "Moses from the Mountaintop" style event. But I do admit that there are... Continue Reading →

Just so I can always find and add to it, here's an answer to the question: "I'm turning up to crew an event, what do I need..." Mostly from a list HarryW started on the Death Unto Darkness forum, as follows: I would suggest as basic crew kit: Black / plain dark top Black /... Continue Reading →