Minnesota roleplay collective
This Friday night, Canadian game designer David Leaman is in the Twin Cities and will be running one of his games. (Probably Did I Fall Asleep) If you’re interested, you can email him at dave@howweplay.com for details.
(This is a private event not associated with Larp House, although several Larp House folks will be participating.)
You’re all high-school phonomancers at the biggest dance of the year. During the dance you’ll be able to hang with your friends, pick arguments with your frenemies, and moon over your crush—just like any other high school dance. But when your music is playing, you’re empowered by it and become the most powerful being on the dance floor and maybe the entire gymnasium! At the end of the night, one of you will be elected Dance Monarch and enact a powerful ritual that can permanently change the world.
Some of you are here to dance, some of you are here to hang out with friends, and some of you are here because you have nothing better to do. All of you are here because music is magic.
A is together with B and is making out with C who is in love with D who has an affair with E who rejected F who’s hitting on everybody. A lot of people live like that. Sometimes everybody’s happy, and other times it doesn’t really work out that well. What emotions, conflicts and weird situations may arise in a group of friends with somewhat loose sexual relations crisscrossing the social sphere? And how did it turn out that way?
The waiting room is bland and antiseptic. You have made unimaginable sacrifices to get here. Through that door is a chance at a better life—one away from war, death, and horror. But between you and the door are a dozen fellow refugees with their own agendas, and an immigration officer eager to send you straight back to hell.
Documentation for ATHENA’S CHOSEN, a live-action game about women in ancient Greece seeking empowerment through the favor of Greek goddesses.
Organized by TLS and Kathy Shane
Photography by TLS and Jon Cole
Twelve players, Minneapolis, Minnesota in May 2018
You are between 4 and 7 feet in length, possess a head, mantle, eight locomotive limbs and two manipulative tentacles arranged symmetrically around your central axis. You respire through osmotic absorption of oxygen suspended in liquid hydrogen dioxide. You are, in short, a space squid.
The evolutionary advantage your species enjoys is that while engaged in mating behaviors using your two tentacles, your ganglia meld with those of your partners, combining your intellect and skills, but also your attitudes and biases. Which is critically important today, because your deep space colonization vessel has broken down! If you can keep the ship habitable, restart the engines, and plot a new course you should be able survive to settle on a planet. If you hope to survive, you will have to work together!
WHAT: SPACE SQUIDS, a parlor larp playtest for 6 – 24 players (the more the merrier!).
Designed by Kevin McIntyre and Jon Cole
Organized by Jon Cole, Kevin McIntyre, and Kathy Shane
WHEN: Saturday, June 30th from 2pm to 6pm
Documentation for WINTERHORN, a live action game about how governments degrade and destroy activist groups
Organized by Larry Lade and Katherine Shane
Photography by l.p.lade
Seven players, Minneapolis, Minnesota in April 2018
The novices are locked in the holiest of holy in Athena’s temple. This final night you will be tested and tempted by the gods themselves. Will you have the faith to turn your back forever on family, love, and desire to become an Exalted Virgin Priestess and finally have true power in the world of men? Or will you listen to the sweet temptations of wild Dionysus, the god of ritual madness and fertility, and leave with his free but shunned cultists. Maybe you will reject the gods and return to your beloved but intensely patriarchal Ancient Arcadian Greece outside the temple walls. Your virginity, your soul, the patronymic name that your father branded into your very skin – you might lose them all tonight.
This larp uses physical space to direct players rather than time-bound act structures – as you walk into the different gods’ areas, their essence will influence your character.
All characters identify as female, players of all genders (or none) are equally welcome.
WHAT: ATHENA’S CHOSEN, a parlor larp for 8 – 16 players (the more the merrier!).
Designed by Susanne Vejdemo and Anna-Karin Linder.
Organized by TLS, Katherine Shane.
WHEN: Saturday, May 12th from 2pm to 6pm
WINTERHORN: the code name of a small but passionate group of “peace and justice” activists. On the surface they project innocent, if misguided, zeal, but
you know better. You’ve dealt with groups like this before, and there’s always a dangerous core. Gun-runners. Bomb-makers. People who deserve to be thrown in a dark hole somewhere.
As government agents, your goal is to nudge them into destroying
themselves, using every trick in the book – black bag jobs,
disinformation, spinning up rival front groups, and even escalating to
vandalism and violence when necessary. Your mission, with the full force
of the government behind you and time running out, is to get
WINTERHORN’s members fighting like rats in a bucket. They need to fall
apart before they can hurt anyone, and the state’s hands need to stay
clean.
They won’t know what hit them.
WHAT:
WINTERHORN is a live action game for 5-8 players about how governments degrade and destroy activist groups. By playing law enforcement and intelligence operatives working diligently to demoralize and derail, you’ll learn about the techniques used in the real world in pursuit of these goals. By playing WINTERHORN you’ll have a chance to reflect on weak points in your own activism, and think about ways to harden organizations you care about against government intrusion. Continue reading “Larp House presents: WINTERHORN”
Larp House Presents: DERANGED
Deranged is a historical, musical drama about the boundaries between genius and madness. The aging, deranged Robert Schumann who on his deathbed, ill with Syphilis and Mercury poisoning, revisits the memories of the people that had an important impact on his life. Schumann has decided that he will create one last, great masterpiece before his death. A piece built on the memories of his life with Clara Wieck, Robert Schumann, Felix Mendelssohn, and Johannes Brahms, who drifted in and out of his life and gave it nerve and excitement. But the memories are collapsing and merging with the madness, so it is difficult for Schumann to distinguish between reality and fantasy. And like one’s memories can be revisited so can the scenes of this scenario. Because perhaps the memories would be better if things had happened in a slightly different way?