LARP links

[exiledinpn]

Diatribe pointed me at Nordic Scene, a blog devoted to Nordic-style LARPs. This in turn sent me to Chamber Games, a blog devoted to small, short, one-room LARPs. There's a couple of examples there, which are intriguing. Unfortunately, they fall into the Dogme 99 school, which means they don't do characters so much as stick the players in a

Comments

[anarchangel23]

Are those anything like or associated with Jeepform (the LARP craze that's sweeping America! - Well, the Indie scene at least...)?

[exiledinpn]

Looking at the description on Jeepen.org, my initial judgement would be "no". Jeepform seems to involve a lot of scene cutting, and a lot of GM intervention (through the "bird-in-ear" technique), both aimed at telling a GM-directed story. It is also strongly in favour of "main characters". This is all completely antiethical to a Dogme LARP.

That said, it's evolved out of the same scene, and they're both focused on short games. But Jeep has a lot more direction, and simply because it bothers to have characters might make for a better game. Someone want to run something from their archive and see?

[exiledinpn]

Reading more, Jeepen also seems to favour very small games - lots of 2 or4-player jobs. The Chamber Games are for larger groups (10, though New Voices In Art can handle 20+), and conceptually, come across as traditional LARPs, only with no plot and no characters. It's just a bunch of people (most likely player avatars) hanging out somewhere, wondering what to do...

[exiledinpn]

I should note that if you're curious, go ahead and read the scenarios. Dogme asserts that there shall be no secrecy, and that the players should be allowed access to the complete LARP materials. So, you end up with games where reading them gives nothing away.

IMHO, this is one of the areas where Dogme disappears up its own arse.

Cool post!

[anonymous]

thanks much, guy