Quick assessments of free larp scenarios

Community Larp discussion
#1

(Not sure if this is the appropriate forum for this, but it didn’t fit anywhere else)

So, there’s this list of free larp scenarios. One of the quickest ways of getting a game to run for your local community or con is to look through the list and pick something. This thread is intended to be a place for people’s quick assessments of those games. Not full reviews, just the few things that come to mind when they skim something to decide whether to run it or not.

Here’s a few from me:

All the President’s Zombies: Good fun, but will date badly.

Boots For The Glory Of Russia: Not enough parts for women (2 of 9), no scope for re-gendering. Amusing premise. Includes a game system to influence the Revolution.

Plan Eight From Outer Space: Comes in PowerPoint. Comedy.

Trapped: 4 people stuck in an elevator with no reason to push their confrontations and therefore no action. Avoid.

Archangel: Looks quite promising. Angels deciding on various aspects of creation, mechanics seem OK, would need portentious announcements at the end of every “day”.

Battlestar Galactica: The Black Corridor: Not really a theatreform, more adventure-style. Has a nifty conscience system which is stealable for games where not everyone can pull the trigger. Climax arbitrary, needs major rewrite to be useable.

Dragon in the Poplars: Great premise and staging instructions, utterly crippled by not enough parts for women (2/15).

An Evening with Clarence: A metalarp, and a giant in-joke about the early Intercon community. Probably best for people who will get that joke.

The Family Andersson: Kitchen-sink about squabbling over the will. Playable if you ditch the experimental tag-team play aspect.

In Absentia: Good premise, but a staging nightmare. Uses a formal trial structure, with murder-party style requirements to reveal certain information. Which means that if the trial aspect is to function, most people will be audiance most of the time.

The Kick Inside: Kitchen-sink; primarily a vehicle for an experiment with repetitive, simultaenous, intertemporal play.

Mayday: Werewolf/Mafia in a furry hat.

Priceless: Stuck awkwardly between a tabletop and a larp; perhaps best thought of as a small adventure larp about children? Interesting premise, but really does need a big old Victorian house for a venue.

Screwing The Crew: Kitchen-sink about incestuous messy relationships in small groups. A 3-hour game with a 2-hour workshop beforehand to establish the facts and the rules. Playable if that’s your thing.

A Shout in the Dark: Not enough parts for women (3/12), and has very hard gender roles.

Tango for Two: A framework for an experiment about dual play (conscious and unconscious personality); not much of a larp actually there.

Club Felis: Nice concept, but three-line character sheets. Possibly Dogme; certainly seems to rely on openness to spread information. Not enough there to really get more than the simplest game.

Dune - Point of Balance: Not enough parts for women (max 9/27, incl all soft-gendered parts).

Ides Of March: Not enough parts for women (7/20).A bit thin.

Mad About the Boy: Not enough parts for men (1/29), though that is the point; very long, would need additional bureuacrats to run in short format.

New Voices in Art: Dogme. Playable, and probably a good intro to that style of game.

The Salem Witch Trials: Inadequate rules.

Salem 1906: Werewolf/Mafia in a pointy hat.

If you find a free larp, think about running it, and don’t, please post your spoiler-free reasons below.

Need a larp
#2

Any particular reason they have to be free? Even the ones that charge aren’t exactly going to break the bank.

#3

Actually, none at all.

#4

Well, OK, then.

An Eccumenical Matter The premise of this game sells itself - batty priests and nuns. In terms of content, it’s closer to two hours than three, and some of the characters felt a little light, plot-wise. That said, it looked like people were enjoying themselves in the game I ran. Presentation is pretty basic, has a couple of proofreading lapses, and comes with item cards rather than printable props. (If you want to run this, let me know, and I’ll send you the handouts I made for it.)

#5

A few more:

iSpy, iSpy2: Good premise (spy school!), but very light, to the extent that I’m not sure there’s enough there to fill 3 hours.

The Fall 2 - Ship in a Bottle: part of a linked series of larps and tabletop games telling the story of the demise of the Terran Dominion, a future totalitarian state similar to the Federation in Blake’s 7. This episode is about the Committee, the heads of the Dominion, and how they respond to their capture. Its very much a situation game, with little in the way of plot; instead its about reacting to that external event, and the events that preceeded it. Could be playable, but would work better if The Fall 1 - The Truth (a tabletop) was used as a teaser.

The Fall 3 - Cat and Mouse: Good premise - two ship crews, one the Resistance who have captured the Committee, and the other the Dominion who are trying to stop them - but requires some sort of computerised starship bridge simulator, the details of which are not included.

The Fall 4 - An Artificial Interlude: A political game, about how a world on the edge of the Dominion (with problems of its own) reacts to its demise. Looks runnable.