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Salon du Larp House: Glamourous Night playtest

enchanted forest

Wizards, humans, magical creatures, and faeries attend a mundane community’s summer solstice festival. Magic is in the air, voices are stilled, and dreams can come true at a cost. Tonight shifting auras will grant attendees terrifying mystical power to pursue their desires. How far will you go to get what you want? When you are all-powerful, what is actually important to you?

What

Glamourous Night is a larp about faerie magic and wizards’ hubris for 15-25 players. It is an abstract and musical experience exploring the themes of temptation and choice. This event is a playtest for an unfinished larp designed by Jon Cole.

In Glamourous Night, players use two movement techniques to perform ensorcelling magic as their characters. Characters will experience joyful exploration and tempting darkness as they share, subjugate, and are subjugated.

When

Sunday September 1st, 2019, from 1:30 to 6 pm

Background

This is an alpha playtest of a larp. Glamourous Night isn’t finished, and this will be one of the first times it is played. There might be big holes missing or rough patches in play. If this larp sounds interesting to you even though it may not be a coherent start to finish narrative experience, we will be very glad to have you join us!
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Larp House Presents: The Hirelings

"Five Soliders and a Turk on Horseback" by Albrecht Dürer

In a world of perilous adventure and dark dungeons filled with precious riches, one group of aspiring adventurers are having their first day in a new job, and it’s not quite working out as planned.

The Hirelings is a role-playing game in which you play out the preparations and the aftermath of a failed dungeon crawl.

It draws heavily upon clichés from fantasy role playing games such as Dungeons & Dragons, video games, comics, and fantasy literature. In addition there are also elements from modern life, like job interviews, group therapy, sports, and team building. The characters in the game are all novice adventurers, who are preparing to head out on their first real quest.

What

The Hirelings, a live-action fantasy comedy role-playing game for three to ten players (The more the merrier!)

Designed by Håken Lid and Ole Peder Giæver.
Organized by Shawn Stokes

When

Sunday, 9 June 2019 from 3 pm to 6 pm

Where

A North Minneapolis nonprofit located near Broadway and Emerson. Players will be given details after they are registered.

Parking on site. Metro Transit lines 5, 14, 30, and 32 stop nearby.

Registration

If you are interested in playing, fill out our The Hirelings Sign-Up Form by Sunday, 2 June 11:59 pm. This larp will run as long as we have a minimum player count by this deadline, so please register by or before June 2nd if possible!

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Larp House Presents: So You Think You Can Dance?

So You Think You Can Dance?

During the 2002 Israeli military invasion of Ramallah, people were arrested at random and put placed in a transitional prison camp while they decide whether to release the prisoners or transfer them to a permanent prison.

By coincidence a group of former classmates from Birzeit University are arrested in the middle of the night. They are held at this prison camp with hands tied and eyes covered.

In So You Think You Can Dance? the players will take the roles of characters that each represent different political views on how to end the occupation, as well as different visions for the Palestinian State. During the scenario the characters will revisit their political arguments from 1993 (year of the first Oslo Accords), and explore how these arguments and political views have developed by 2002.

What

So You Think You Can Dance? is an educational live-action game for non-Palestinians about the internal Palestinian political situation, for 5 to 10 players.

Designed by Riad Mustafa, Ureib Samad, and Mohamad Rabah
Organized by TLS

When

Sunday, 20 January 2019, from 2 pm to 6 pm

Where

So You Think You Can Dance? will take place at SpringBOX, located at 262 University Ave W in Saint Paul, Minnesota.

Parking on site. METRO Green Line and bus lines stop nearby.

Directions

Registration

If you are interested in participating, fill out our So You Think You Can Dance? registration form before 11:59 pm on Saturday, January 12th. We’ll let you know if you are in the larp by Monday January 14th.

SpringBOX is a space for community events and programming, operated by Springboard for the Arts. We are requesting a pay-what-you-want goodwill donation ($5 suggested) to support the work of SpringBOX in appreciation for the use of their space. No one will be turned away if they are unable to make a donation.

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Larp House Presents: I Say a Little Prayer

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Five gay men live together in a shared apartment in New York City. We follow this group of friends over a couple of years in the early 1980s when the AIDS epidemic hit gay communities hard. These men will be personally affected by the AIDS crisis over the course of play.

This larp is a condensed version of the internationally acclaimed Nordic larp Just a Little Lovin’, run in Minnesota last year. The themes of friendship, desire, and death are universal ones. We hope to offer participants new insight on an often overlooked part of US history through this event.

What

I Say a Little Prayer, a freeform Nordic larp scenario for five players.

Designed by Tor Kjetil Edland
Organized by Jon Cole and l.p.lade

When

Saturday, 22 September 2018 from 12:00 pm to 5:00 pm

Where

The larp will be held at a private residence in Minneapolis or St. Paul (TBD)

Registration

If you are interested in playing, fill out our I Say a Little Prayer sign-up form before 11:59 pm on Wednesday, September 12th. You should know if you are in or out of the larp by Tuesday, September 18th.

We encourage you to sign-up promptly! If we see there are sufficient sign-ups, we may consider adding additional runs. If way way too many people sign up, attendance in the multiple runs will be decided by weighted lottery.

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Larp House Presents: My Jam

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.

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Larp House Presents: Screwing the Crew

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?

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Larp House Presents: Space Squids

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

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Larp House Presents: Deranged

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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?

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Larp House Presents: QUILTBAG

Larp House Presents: QUILTBAG LARP

The University would like to invite all queer, questioning, intersex, lesbian, transgender, bisexual, asexual and gay students, faculty and community members to join the University Queer Life support group. This will be a safe, affirming and confidential peer led monthly support group for all local members of the queer community.

A parlor larp about the lives and identities of 8 regular people through the lens of their monthly support group.

WHAT: QUILTBAG, a playtest of a parlor larp for 6-8 players

Designed by Frank Beres, Quinn D, E. Chris Garrison, and Susan Weiner

Organized by Kathy Shane and Jon Cole

WHEN: Sunday, February 18th from 2pm to 6pm

REGISTRATION:

If you are interested in playing, fill out our QUILTBAG sign up form before 11:59 pm on Friday, February 9th. If more people sign up than we have room for attendance will be decided by weighted lottery. You should know if you are in or out of the larp by Sunday, February 11th. If less folks than max sign up, registration will be open after the deadline for stragglers.

WHERE: A North Minneapolis Nonprofit located near Broadway and Emerson Avenue in Minneapolis. Accessible by bus.

We are requesting a voluntary good will donation $5-10 to support the work of the nonprofit in appreciation for the use of their space. No one will be turned away if they are unable to make a donation.

PLAY STYLE:

This is an Intercon-style parlor larp. Play will alternate between playing support group meetings and workshopping what happens to characters in between meetings based on event prompts. Players are cast as prewritten characters before the larp. Each character is sheet 3-4 pages long.

THEMES: QUILTBAG is a game about the development of identity through community.

ACCESSIBILITY:

The play venue is ADA accessible. Plenty of seating. Water available. Climate controlled building.

COSTUMING: No costuming is required, but you can costume if you get excited about that sort of thing.

WHAT IS A PLAYTEST?

A playtest is a larp session intended to find design flaws in an in-development game. Often, designers will ask players for their thoughts on the experience after a playtest.

CONTENT WARNING: This game deals with issues of gender and sexual identity, experience of bias (outside the group), family rejection, offstage violence, discussion of violence, relationships and community, and gender transition. Sexual violence is not included in this game.

ART: Airman 1st Class Celeste Smith, 354th Comptroller Squadron customer service technician. U.S. Air Force photo by Senior Airman Ashley Nicole Taylor/Released