Minnesota roleplay collective
Documentation for My Jam
A live-action game about music, magic, and high school drama
Designed by Jeff Dieterle and Eric Mersmann
Organized by Cat Stuntebeck, Jon Cole, and Katherine Shane
Photography by l.p.lade
19 August 2018
Minneapolis, Minnesota
Eight players
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.
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
Saturday, 22 September 2018 from 12:00 pm to 5:00 pm
The larp will be held at a private residence in Minneapolis or St. Paul (TBD)
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.
Continue reading “Larp House Presents: I Say a Little Prayer”
Space squid ganglia melds. The finest game in squid-based role-playing.
Documentation for Space Squids, a light-hearted live-action game about space, puzzle solving, and polyamory.
7 players
Designed and organized by Kevin McIntyre and Jon Cole
June 2018
Minneapolis, Minnesota
While each individual phonomancer has their own favorite genres of music they’re into, phonomancers band together in “covens” of others who relate to music in a similar way.
Continue reading “The Phonomantic Covens of Robert Johnson Memorial High School”
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.
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
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