Final Playtest: Cruising for Sex in a Burning Building

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Join us on December 6, 2025

“I walked in there and I was absolutely terrified because everyone was in leather, head to toe. And I was the only one who was wearing Levis and a regular shirt. []…I was terrified, visually, at what I was seeing, excited at the same time–tremendously excited…”
–Ellis Chan on July 19 1996, recalling The Brig

Cruising for Sex in a Burning Building is a larp about intimacy and community connection through kink, set in the underground gay men’s leather scene in the 1980s under the shadow of the AIDS epidemic.

When your most-familiar forms of sexual expression have become dangerous, alienating, unfamiliar can you learn to share your heart’s deepest fears and desires? At this bar the music’s pulsing beat and the burning heat of other men’s bodies call to you. Beautiful boy, when the clock strikes midnight are you going hard or going home?

In this larp players use a variety of embodied meta-techniques to stand in for BDSM play, experiencing first-hand the sensations and emotions their characters do. Play is an emotional mix of discovery and anxiety as characters decide how to re-enter BDSM while forsaking the exchange of body fluids.

What

A live action game about gay 80s leathermen
Duration: 4 hours. 2 hours workshop, 2 hours play
Players: 8 to 16 players

Designed by Jon Cole and Moss Bosch
Facilitated by Jon Cole

This event is a playtest. This larp isn’t finished, though it will be a complete play experience. It has been playtested before, and there will be some parts that still need more polish. If this larp sounds interesting to you even though it is not in its final form, please join us! This larp will premiere at The Smoke, London’s larp festival in January 2026.

When

Saturday December 6, 2025

Noon to 5 pm

Where

Riverview Library in Saint Paul

Metro Transit routes 62D, 68, 68D, 71, 75, 75B stop nearby. Street parking available.

Tickets

Get a ticket here! Once you have filled out our form you don’t need to do anything else besides show up to play!

On the day of the event we request a pay-what-you-want goodwill cash donation ($5–$20 suggested) to support low-cost immersive scenarios in Minnesota. No one will be turned away if they do not make a donation.

Story

It’s the mid-1980s, and the gay leather club Inferno is preparing to re-open after some time shuttered by public health authorities. Tonight has a hopeful tone, though – bar staff and volunteers have put in a lot of work to reopen both Inferno’s bar and The Pit, the hottest, sweatiest, most free and wild zone of the club, and the ribbon will be cut in a few hours time. New to the club is an added awareness of the safety needs brought up by the AIDS epidemic. Leathermen arrive tentatively, awkwardly, and hopefully to figure out the future of The Pit together.

Characters range from old hands in the leather scene, earnest and socially messy community organizers, baby gays working up the nerve to enter the club for the first time. Play begins during the event setup “technically the party has started, but no one is ever on time” phase of the night, and ends as the club finally begins to draw a crowd.

As the space opens, early birds are encouraged to practice their rusty BDSM skills with one another to warm up the space. The middle of the scenario is largely unstructured cruising and playtime, though pausing for a poignant toast to remember the dead. Players can freely visit different parts of the club marked such as the bar, bathroom, cruising maze, or dance floor.

The larp ends just before a crush of new patrons arrive, when staff make a dramatic showing of opening The Pit, a dedicated darkroom and dungeon in the basement of the club. During the final song players decide where their character chooses to end their night now and in the future: will they go home alone, leave with one or a few, find solace socializing at the bar, or descend into the crowded heat and complex intimacy of The Pit?

Techniques

This larp offers players a party experience with negotiation, gossip, and feelings that players act out. For the party’s kink and cruising, real activities are all replaced with abstract techniques to invoke similar feelings. Techniques use experiences like engrossing sensations, intentional vulnerability, or trust-building to gesture at what they represent. The techniques are abstract rather than representative so players can feel like manly, sexy leathermen regardless of their relationship to masculinity or sex in real life.

To support the themes of discovery and communication in this scenario, each player learns only a few of the kink replacement techniques thoroughly. In order to experience the rest of the kink techniques, they have to find someone to teach it to them during play, in character. Furthermore, we invite players to let their personal reaction about any technique bleed into their character’s opinion of the kink. If a player tries a technique and dislikes it, their character might decide it’s not for them any more. Conversely, a character might be surprised by a new kinky interest, simply because the player finds the technique fun.

Here are some things represented by techniques: pain play, restraint, power exchange, bootblacking, sex, and more. Players will learn a constellation of techniques based around ars amandi, a technique that focuses on touch between hands and arms, with variations to represent different behaviors. As examples: self touch as masturbation, sensual ribbon on hands and arms for restraint, gentle squeezing pressure on hands for pain play, and signaling condoms use by wearing gloves. Having one underlying framework for the techniques supports our goal that they be easy to learn so players can teach them to one another during play.

Content Notice

You can expect to hear frank discussions of sex, sexual health/safety, kink/BDSM, and the experience of living during an ongoing epidemic, which may include references to illness and death.

You can expect to see varied forms of physical, social, and emotional intimacy, primarily expressed through meta-techniques standing in for kink/BDSM play. You can choose your personal degree of engagement with those meta-techniques. Real kink, real sex, and real nudity aren’t part of this larp.

You can expect to see simulated alcohol use, though substance abuse is not a thematic focus of this larp.

You will play characters who exist in a homophobic world, but characters will not be directly subject to homophobic threats or violence, social or physical, during gameplay.

Costuming

No costuming needed. If you want to wear something that makes you feel like you’re at a grungy 80s leather bar, go for it! A t-shirt or button-up, jeans, belt, and whatever boots you already own was considered spot-on leather bar wardrobe at the time.

Since this event is held in a public building, keep any costuming you choose to wear street-legal. To comply with our venue’s policies, don’t bring any weapon props.

Covid policy

N95 respirators or better are required for everyone at this event, and we will have a few to share.

We strongly recommend all attendees get the fall 2025 covid vaccine before attending this event. The Minnesota Department of Health has stated that in Minnesota you don’t need a reason or to be at extra risk to receive this important annual vaccination.

If you have any symptoms of COVID-19, stay home. If you are able to, take a rapid test before arrival. Please reach out if you have any questions about our policy.

Other Information

Who is this event for?

Like all Larp House events, this is intended to be accessible to first time larpers.

In this larp people of all genders, sexualities, and bodies are invited to act butch and be handsome. Furthermore, it’s open for people who have only experienced pop culture depictions of BDSM. It’s open for ace or aro people who are up for playing in a story where many characters are pursuing sex or romance.

This is a historical larp, and you don’t need any prior historical reading or research to play it. We provide pre-written character sheets, briefings, and workshopping to help people portray characters in a historical context.

Unlike some of our other events, minors are not permitted to attend this larp.

Calibration and Consent Tools

We take out of character time to help participants set default touch boundaries, practice negotiation, and try out cruising so that players have a shared vocabulary of in-character non-verbal signals to opt in or out. The workshop’s intention is to provide players with tools and scripts to use as they flirt and negotiate encounters.

Following play, we will debrief our experiences and shed the roles we assumed for the game. The debrief is encouraged, but not required.

Why make a larp about the AIDS Crisis?

As two sex educators we want to offer players an experience of empathy for a formative moment in the sexual, cultural, political history of US. We think that the interactive art of roleplaying can do just that. We ourselves have been deeply moved by some artistic depictions of the AIDS Crisis such as Just a Little Lovin’, I Say a Little Prayer, Angels in America, and more.

Even if we write an excellent larp it will fail to adequately and accurately express the spirit of the leather community during the AIDS crisis, because it is just one work of art. As a work, it cannot represent the whole of anything, least of all these complex issues of identity and history. This larp is one statement, one position on the setting material actively co-created by the designers, organizers, and players. We all benefit when more people release creative work addressing this subject matter.

Social

After the larp some folks will get food together at the famous “District del Sol” restaurant El Burrito Mercado, and otherwise continue to be social even if you don’t want to eat. Hanging out afterwards is totally optional, and we think it’s fun to get to know your fellow players as people, not just as their characters.

Accessibility

Our venue is in the basement and is climate controlled. The building is ADA compliant. Our playspace has plenty of seating and is is monitored by a security camera. There are two non-gendered restrooms adjacent to the playspace, though you will need to ask for the key at the front desk.

Water will be available, and we recommend bringing a water bottle for your ease of access. No food will be provided.

We assume that players will have the ability to navigate freely around the space. This is a scenario with pervasive music and conversation, which could be tricky for people with auditory processing disorders, even though we don’t aspire to realistic club volume.

Please reach out if you’ve got any accessibility questions or to request accommodations.

Contact

Contact us with any questions or concerns!

Image credits

Images by Another Believer, Houston LGBT History, Nahkahomo.