Its National Novel Writing Month, and several members of the larp community are busy writing their novels. Meanwhile, for larpers, there’s an alternative: National Larp Writing Month, or NaLaWriMo.
The “rules” are simple: write a larp, in a month. Any sort of larp, any number of characters. Just get it done by the end of November. Then maybe offer to run it at Hydra, Cerberus, or Phoenix next year?
It can be done. I ground out Delicious Friends (20 players) when we did this in April 2011, The Devil’s Brood (9 players) one christmas holiday, and Persephone’s Choice in a month last year. I wouldn’t recommend more than 20 characters, but a small or mid-sized game is totally do-able. As for what counts as “done”, first draft of all player-facing materials (so character sheets and handouts) is a good target to aim for. Many larps never take the GM stuff out of the GMs head anyway, and the aim is to write a game, not get it ready for publication (that said, when you’re done, you should publish your damn game, because anything less is wasteful).
If you don’t quite make it, that’s OK, finish the game in December. But finish it. The key to larp writing is actually Doing The Thing, rather than just thinking about it.
Please post on this thread if you’re participating. A working title and blurb when you’ve got one would be nice, and you can always add running character counts. I’ll add mine when I’ve worked out what the hell I’m doing this year.