Tremendous articles and talks about larp that you should 100% read or watch!
Articles
- The Battle of Primrose Park: Playing for Emancipatory Bleed in Fortune & Felicity (Jonaya Kemper, 2017)
- 19 Truths about Harassment, Missing Stairs, and Safety in Larp Communities (Maury Brown, 2017)
- A Matter of Trust – Larp and Consent Culture (Sarah Lynne Bowman, 2017)
- Playing the Stories of Others (Kaisa Kangas, 2017)
- More Than a Seat at the Feasting Table (Jonaya Kemper, 2018)
- Larp Crush: The What, When and How (Sanne Harder, 2018)
- On the Commodification of Larp (Usva Inei, 2019)
- The Impact of Social Capital on Larp Safety (Muriel Algayres, 2019)
- The Paradox of Inclusivity (Axiel Cazeneuve, 2020)
- Emotions as Skilled Work (Sanna Koulu, 2020)
- Sex, Romance and Attraction: Applying the Split Attraction Model to Larps (Laura Wood and Quinn D, 2022)
(this is a list in progress)
Talks
- Introduction to Nordic larp (Johanna Koljonen, 2010)
An oldie but goodie. Clear and engaging explanation of what the general point is of Nordic larp. - White Knighting and Why It’s Problematic But Not Necessarily In the Sense You Might Think (Aina Skjønsfjell, 2018)
(THe title says all you need to know about why you should watch this.) - Not good enough: on larp and systemic anxiety (Muriel Algayres, 2019)
How can we deal with problems of anxiety around larping? - Online Larp Design: Pitfalls and Opportunities (Karolina Soltys, 2021)
Practical overview of the vast accelerated learning that we've recently had about online larp.
(this is a list in progress)
Tremendous larps that you should 100% run or read!
- The Curse (Lizzie Stark, 2013)
Would you cut out healthy body parts if you thought it might save your life? - Bring Your Own Bottle (Alisa Matavilava, Yauheniya Siadova, and Nastassia Sinitsyna, 2015)
One of the nicest and cleverest larp experiences. (Hosted here on this site.) - Strangers (Nina Runa Essendrop, 2016)
How can cultures understand each other: how can refugees belong? - Childfree (Axiel Cazeneuve, 2018) (this edition in 2023)
A thoughtful exploration of voluntary termination of pregnancy. - A Plague Among Us (Moyra Turkington, 2022)
Sad, thoughtful, powerful. - The Vision (Laura Wood, 2022)
Haunting examination of religious faith and of childhood.
(this is a list in progress)
My own stuff
I'm gathering together here some of my chamber larp scripts and other things from recent years. Do let me know if you run any of these – it'd be great to hear how they went!
Read about, and download, larps!
- Keep It in the Family (2015) – a tense chamber larp for 6 participants
- Women on the Verge… / These Are the Days of Our Lives (2015) – a female chamber larp for 4–6 participants
- Real Men (with Kevin Burns, 2015) – a male chamber larp for 6–8 participants
- The Life of Mermaids (with Jouni Karppinen, Mira Suovanen, and Olga Rudak, 2016) – a damp chamber larp for 4–6 participants
- ‘Heroes’ (2016) – a heroic freeform / chamber larp for 4–5 participants
- The Best Medicine (2017) – a hilarious chamber larp for 5–8 participants
- The Drinklings (with Anna-Karin Linder, 2018) – a bibulous chamber larp for 4–8 participants
- Experimental Findings (2018) – a scientific outdoor larp for 5 participants
- Fake News (2018) – a spinning chamber larp for 2–6 participants
- Get Stuck In! (2018) – a footballing microlarp for 2 participants
- Fortune's Always Hiding (2018) – another footballing microlarp for 2 participants
- Life Lessons (2018) -- an artistic chamber larp for 5–12 participants
- Five for Silver (2018) – a repetitive piratical chamber larp for 12 participants
- Primal Soup (2018) – a protozoan hot-tub larp for 4–8 participants
- Trauma Ward (2019) – a supine chamber larp for 4 participants
- Passing (2016–2019) – a prejudiced microlarp for 3–6 participants
- Dirty Laundry (with Holger Pick, 2019) – a musical-differences larp for 4–6 participants
- After Dark (2020) – an online plague larp for 4–8 participants
- The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie (2020) – a dinner-table larp for 4–8 participants
- Still Waters (2020) – a murderous hot-tub larp for 4 or 6 participants
- Tant Pis (with Anne Marchadier, 2021) – an underwildering larp for 4 participants
- Dark Places (2021) – a mystical Roman scenario for 4 participants
- Alex the Great (with Larps on Location, 2021) – an online reality-TV larp for 4–16 participants (or maybe more, even)
- Friends Who Larp (2021) – a larp about larping for 4 participants
Some of them have got places where references or more detailed explanations are yet to be completed – but they're all basically runnable from these scripts.
These larps are all free to use, under the Creative Commons licence that you'll see at the foot of this page.
Still to come
Other larps that might appear here in due course:
- Freakshow (with Traci Whitehead, 2015)
- It's Just a Stage (with Karolina Soltys, 2016)
- The Baby Club (with David Owen and Jamie Harper, 2016)
- Asking For It (with Laura Wood, 2017)
- Life of a House (with Ruth Trenery-Leach and Will Osmond, 2017)
- The Ghosts of London (2017)
- It All Fits Together (2020)
- Pillow Talk (2021)
- How's Mum Doing? (2021)
- At Sea (2021)
- The Report on Planet XB325/1 (2022)
- The Knights of Queen Tiffany (2022)
- Writers' colony larp idea (2022)
- ChatGPT larp idea (2022)
Other sites
- The Outsiders (with Cat Tobin, 2013) already has its own website, as does;
- None but the Brave (with Traci Whitehead, 2014), as does;
- On Location (with Karolina Soltys, Kate Bennett, Laura Wood, Michael Such, and Will Osmond, 2017; and with Elina Gouliou, Laura Wood, and Will Osmond, 2019) which is not a chamber larp but is still pretty cool.
- Likewise The Clinic (with José Fabregat, Laura Wood, and Mirella Machancoses Lopez, 2021)
- Where Do the Children Play was a project I worked on with Adam James and Michael Such (2019) – here's Adam's collection of photos from it
- And The Discovery of Witches (with Laura Wood, 2021)
- And in general Larps on Location (with Laura Wood)
- I was part of the design team on Alongame (2021)
- And also on Allegiance (2022)
And not written by me – it's by Malcolm Campbell – but inspired by one of my larps:
- 21st Century Fake News (2019)
Writing for others
I've done bits and bobs of character writing etc for other people's larps, including Fairweather Manor, Suffragette!, and Reborn.
Organizing and editing stuff
I'm an organizer of The Game Kitchen, and was for the first five years of The Smoke: London's International Larp Festival, and helped with Just a Little Lovin' 2019 UK. I'm an editor at nordiclarp.org, and have contributed editing work to several KP-books.
Articles
As well as writing larps, I also write about larps. Thank you to Lorraine Kipling for suggesting how to organize these!
About political (loosely) matters
- 'Orientalism and exoticism', on the Ginger Goat blog, May 2014
- 'Larp and Prejudice: Expressing, Erasing, Exploring, and the Fun Tax', in the 2016 Solmukohta companion book and also on nordiclarp.org, March 2016
- 'Walking in the Darkness: handling race in Lovecraftesque', in Lovecraftesque, December 2016
- 'What Does it Mean When Sex is Sexy?', with Monica Hjort Traxl, on nordiclarp.org, February 2017
- 'History, Herstory, and Theirstory: Representation of Gender and Class in Larps with a Historical Setting', in the 2017 Knutepunkt companion book and also on nordiclarp.org, February 2017
- 'Some thoughts about historical larping', on my blog, May 2020
About design techniques etc
- 'Workshop Practice, in Practice', in the 2015 Knudepunkt companion book and also on nordiclarp.org, April 2016
- 'Real Men – Defining Gender Identities', with Kevin Burns, in the 2016 Nordic Larp Yearbook and also on nordiclarp.org, November 2016
- Two articles ('How to Make your Sandbox a Playground' and 'Co-Creative Design with Players') and contributed to a third ('Designing for Intersectional Identities', with Kat Jones and Jonaya Kemper) in the 2019 Knudepunkt companion book, which isn't online yet
- 'Inner Tension' with Monica Hjort Traxl, in the 2020 Solmukohta companion book and also on nordiclarp.org, April 2020
- 'Larping Before the Larp: The Magic of Preparatory Scenes', in the 2021 Knutepunkt companion book and also on nordiclarp.org, October 2021
About alcohol
- 'High on Larp: Alcohol at Larp Events', on nordiclarp.org, March 2017
- 'The Blue Ribbon Collective', on nordiclarp.org, March 2017
Reviews of activity / explainers
- 'Pillage the Vikings!', with Ole Peder Giæver, on nordiclarp.org, July 2014
- 'Nordic-style larp in the UK', on nordiclarp.org, July 2014
- 'What's the big deal about Nordic larp?', on larping.org, October 2014
- 'Opening the Chamber of Secrets – an introduction to chamber larp', on larping.org, May 2015
- 'Non-nominated Fastaval Scenarios', on the Plan B blog, April 2016
Talks
- 'On Location: Playing, with Expectations', with Laura Wood, at the 2018 Nordic Larp Talks (here's the powerpoint)
- Me being part of a panel of 'Larpers of Colo(u)r', at Knutpunkt 2018
- 'Fleshing the Skeleton – How to empower players to make characters their own', at the 2019 Nordic Larp Talks (here's the powerpoint)
- 'About The Smoke', at LarpCon 2019
- 'Burn Out and Fade Away', at the 2022 Nordic Larp Talks (here's the text)
My blog
- Games! All sorts of different ones. mostly holds reviews and stray thoughts and ideas about games. In recent years it's mostly been about larp.
Other game-related work
- I wrote a scenario for Lovecraftesque, called 'Darkness Visible', which you can get here.
- And one for Cthulhu Dark, called 'Good as a Feast', which I'm not sure if you can actually get hold of… it was released as a pdf with the Kickstarter.
- And a setting for Flotsam: Adrift Amongst the Stars, called 'The Big Hot', which you can get here.
- I've done copy-editing and proofreading for a load of games, including Amazing Tales and the Itras by Menagerie and Bite Marks.
- I designed a card game called Shape Up!, which is published free of charge by Good Little Games.
This work is licensed under a Creative
Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License. This means that you can share it and adapt it as you wish, without charge and without needing to ask permission. But, you may not use it in commercial work; you must apply this same licence to anything that you create with it; and you must credit Mo Holkar (and anyone else named) as the author(s).
Favicon: fist roots by corpus delicti from the Noun Project