UK conversations about lrp game design have fragmented - there isn't a UK-based forum, and they tend to end up on Facebook. Which is a shame, because the wisdom isn't there to be found later. So when a particularly good thread cropped up earlier this week, I thought I'd distil is a bit and stick... Continue Reading →

I’ve lived the development of Empire for close on two years. Nothing like the top bods, in time or effort, but I reckon 30k of the words are at least mostly mine – and I never expected to be able to say that about a project. I’ve been generously given a producer credit for a... Continue Reading →

Matt was interviewed by Starburst Magazine recently. It's over here: http://www.starburstmagazine.com/features/feature-articles/2871-interview-matt-pennington Most of it is Matt waxing lyrical, as only he can and it's good stuff. But I think he missed the point of one of the questions: "SB: How important is storytelling when it comes to games? "MP: Personally I have never valued storytelling in... Continue Reading →

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 →