Minnesota roleplay collective
Members of Larp House ran larps at Con of the North, Minnesota’s longest-running gaming convention, running 14-16 February 2020.
We also got a chance to meet other local larp designers!
Games ran:
Thanks to all the con volunteers, the friendly hotel staff, and all the rad players that showed up to play!
Game Chef is an annual
role-playing game design competition, where participants have one week
to create a game. It is the Grand Prix of game design competitions, and
winners of this event have routinely published profitable games. This
year the competition is being held June 13-21st. To kick it off the Larp House is hosting a LarpJam.
LarpJam is a round-robin larp design workshop. Players make larps in small groups and trade them around. Each larp is expanded on by each subsequent group, becoming stronger as it comes into contact with more designers. In a matter of hours people with no larp design experience can create awesome, fully-playable larps!
Even if you can’t attend this LarpJam, you are encouraged to design something for Game Chef and plan to attend a future jam.
WHO:
Anyone with interest in games can LarpJam. In fact, people with little or no larp experience are more qualified to create larps in LarpJam. Experienced larpers and game creators are also, of course, welcome.
WHAT:
A larp design workshop for 5-25 participants
Written by Jon ColeOrganized by Jon Cole
WHEN:
6:00 pm – 9:00 pm on Saturday, June 13th, 2015.
If transportation is an issue, e-mail the Outreach Committee at [email protected] with what area you are in and we will try to find somebody you can ride with.
WHAT GENRE:
game jam, larp design, exquisite corpse, playstorm
Larpjam is a collaborative game design workshop. Participants make their wildest larp dreams come true by working in small groups.
HOW DO I SIGN UP:
If you are interested in playing, register for our event on meetup.com. This event is free and open to the public, so invite your friends and forward this email widely!
ACCESSIBILITY:
The
event takes place in a public building, with both handicap and
non-handicap off-street parking spaces available. The event space is
accessible by public transit, with around 1 block of walking from the
nearest bus stop.
Participants will be randomly assigned into design groups. Play will include talking and writing in small groups. If you have any question about this content warning please email [email protected].
CONTACT THE ORGANIZERS:
For more information about this event email [email protected]. Your inquiry will be forwarded to the organizer best suited to answer it.
WAYS TO HELP:
Jon is looking for someone to help organize this event. He has run many LarpJams and would love the opportunity to teach someone The Way of the LarpJam. If you are interested, send an email to [email protected].
Heya folks,
Do you like cooking up some tasty games? Well Game Chef 2015 starts soon (June 13) and in honor of that event, our good friend +Jon Cole with the help of the United Geeks of Gaming (http://www.geekpartnership.org/clubs/united-geeks-of-gaming/) will be offering the always tasty Larp Jam. You can read more about the event and sign up right here http://www.meetup.com/geekgaming/events/222661312/. You need no experience to design a delicious game, so join us at 6:00 pm on June 13th.
Three organizers from the Larp House bring home a Golden Cobra award for their groundbreaking freeform. Congratulations!
THE GAME WE’RE MOST EAGER TO PLAY
Still Life
by Wendy Gorman, David Hertz and Heather Silsbee
A refreshing and thoughtful metaphorical freeform larp that keeps us moving forward in thinking about the potentials for role play. Throwing out assumptions left and right, like the need for plot, action by the players, people as characters, and focuses on stillness, interior play, subtle changes in position and being with the people and issues around us.
Still Life gives us the opportunity to larp as the inanimate, to live and breathe passivity for 2 hours without being bothered to make a power play or do something beyond simply communicating (and building from there). We as judges insist that this game be played.
Still Life grabbed each of the judges immediately and wouldn’t let go. We kept returning to Still Life and marveling at it. While many contest entries tread familiar ground, the designers of Still Life took the weird path into rocky country (sorry). This weirdness pays off immensely in a game that is at once bonkers and full of strange pathos.
Wendy Gorman, David Hertz, and Heather Silsbee’s game is instantly inspiring. It’s so cunning in its vision that each judge wanted to play it almost at once. Many of the structures of play that are usually taken for granted are effortlessly tossed out the window by this game, and players are left with a broody and subtle experience. Who knew it was possible to yearn so hard for the experience of pretending to be rock! We would have said it couldn’t be done, but with Still Life we have been proven wrong.
http://oftenfuzzyfaced.tumblr.com/post/101391762844/just-submitted-to-the-golden-cobra-challenge
Title: Blasphemy!
The second submission from a group of Larp House people, created during the Golden Cobra LarpJam. Good luck!
http://thenamechanger.tumblr.com/post/100456646550/golden-cobra
The first submission from a group of Larp House people, created during the first playtest of LarpJam. Good luck!
LarpJam, a workshop where participants will create their very own larps in a round-robin format. In a matter of hours people with no larp design experience can create awesome, fully-playable larps or the seeds that future larps can spring from! This process folds creative invocation, constructive constraints, and peer feedback into one lightning-fast process.
This event is being put together outrageously last minute because the Larp House was specially invited to participate in
Golden Cobra, a new freeform design competition that concludes October 30th. Seriously, Whitney Beltrán and Jason Morningstar wrote us personally to ask Larp House people to submit. Even if you can’t attend this Larpjam, you are encouraged to design something for Golden Cobra!