Old LARP Articles

I’d like to start this article with a shout-out to the people at Diatribe. Thanks for the post about my articles. It’s fun to see who all find these and what people think of them. This article covers a topic that I’ve touched on many times (Setting Game/Player Expectations, Recruitment and Retention and The “Business” of LARP in particular) but have never really written about: the importance of communication. A comment by an individual named Captain Jimmy on the RPG.net forums really sparked the thought of discussing this particular topic in an article all its own. I can see…

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This article is covering a topic that I’ve found many LARPers if not all suffer from at one point or another: Burnout. It’s a topic I’d thought about covering, but after a post on the LARPers community blog, “How does a well-travelled LARPer handle burnout and creative recharging?,” I knew it was a topic that really deserved to be covered. I’ve known plenty of LARPers, particularly those who are on the staff of a game or involved in other aspects of the hobby (though I’ve known players to suffer from burnout too), who end up burned out from the…

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I’ve spent some good time talking about LARP design and offering some general advice and opinions on various LARP related topics, however I felt it’s now time to give some attention to a topic that’s often asked but finding advice for can be challenging: Creating a LARP. I think part of this is due to the varied nature of LARP and that the needs for creating and starting up a LARP is as varied as the games out there, yet there are some commonalities. It’s those commonalities I plan to address and should a request be made to go…

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This article really isn’t much of an article, but rather a list of various other works which I feel are good reads (if I could I’d make them required reads) for players and LARP organizers/GMs (with a few at the end for designers). If you’re looking for the designer link dump, you can find it in the “A designer’s reading list” article. I’ve always been a big advocate of reading what others have to share on the hobby in the way of opinions and advice. Not only does this give a person a chance to see things from a…

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This week’s topic has been inspired by some comments made to Kevin Tjia’s article Has LARP Evolved? and this forum thread comment (focus on the part discussing club vs. corporation). It got me thinking, what could the LARP hobby learn from the business world? As I was doing some research to answer this question I happened upon a really good article on the Top 10 Basic Business Principles, which was exactly was I was looking for: What basic principles should someone running a business be aware of. I think it’s easy to take these 10 business principles and apply…

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I’ve yet to find a LARP group that didn’t want to grow its numbers, even slightly. So, how does one go about attracting new people to the game (or even the hobby) and then get them to stay? Over the years I’ve seen some successful and not so successful methods used to encourage individuals to try a game out and I’d like to share that wisdom with you. To start, make sure you know what your game is and isn’t. You don’t want to give a false impression of your game when trying to recruit and keep new members…

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To start I’d like to give a shout-out to the Clanthia SOLAR LARPers. I’ve loved reading your comments to the posted snippets of my articles (Gender thread and Costuming thread). This week is the second half of Costuming and You, sources and resources for costuming. The first half, various tips to remember when costuming your character, was presented last week. Hope you’re ready for a link dump and a slew of ways to create costuming on the cheap. I’d like to start this week with a link I dug up that is a general discussions of inexpensive costuming. Rather…

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This week and next week’s article is courtesy of a conversation I had with a fellow LARPer and friend, Adam. We got onto the subject of costuming and by the time our several minute conversation had ended we agreed that an article (or two) on costuming would be a good idea. Thus from that conversation we have Costuming and You, parts one and two. This week I’ll be sharing part one and next week will be part two. One of the points we did agree on, and I think many LARPers will agree with, was that part of the…

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