Listen to this episode here.
Larp! It’s that thing where you dress up like wizards, go into the woods, and hit each other with sticks. Right? Well.. yeah! Except no, because it’s a million other things, too.
Today I'm gonna introduce you to the world of larp. If you've ever been intimidated by it, this is a place to start. Because I think tabletop designers have so much we could learn from larp, so much that this is the start of a big series on larp.
And where better to start than with a mechanic that makes getting into larp easier than ever: just pick up a card and read what it says…
Further Reading
Ghost Court by Jason Morningstar
We Are Roommates Now by Wendy Gorman
Space Larps by Jason Morningstar
Welcome Guests by Jason Morningstar
The Climb by Jason Morningstar
So Mom I Made This Sex Tape by Susanne Vejdemo
Behind the Magic by Randy Lubin
The Hench Union Larp by Sam Dunnewold
Socials
Randy on Bluesky
Randy’s foresight games are at leveragedplay.com
Randy’s consumer games are at diegeticgames.com
Randy’s online games platform StorySynth
The Dice Exploder blog is at diceexploder.com
Our logo was designed by sporgory, our ad music is Lilypads by Travis Tessmer, and our theme song is Sunset Bridge by Purely Grey.
Join the Dice Exploder Discord to talk about the show!
Transcript
Sam: Hello and welcome to another episode of Dice Exploder. Each week we take a tabletop RPG mechanic and sue it for libel.
My name is Sam Dunnewold and my co host this week is Randy Lubin.
Except this episode marks the beginning of a whole series where that intro I say every week is a lie. Because,
We're gonna leave the table behind for a few episodes and talk about
LARP.
Live Action Role Playing. It's that thing where you dress up like wizards and go out into the woods and then hit each other with sticks, right? Well,
yeah. Except, no, because it's also so much more than that. It's spending a whole weekend in a real live castle pretending to be at wizard school.
It's 20 people in a parking lot at a family reunion.
it's 4 people in a living room
Pretending to be ghosts.
In other words,
it's a lot like tabletop RPGs.
But different. And I think a lot of tabletop players and designers are intimidated by LARP. You're in character so much more of the time.
which maybe means you're performing more, which maybe
You know,
top human fear. And if we're not intimidated, then maybe we're hesitant of the stigma around LARP, at least in the United States. The core idea feels
maybe a little goofier? Like,
not actually dressing up for our playing pretend.
That'd be so nerdy.
But
I think we have so much to learn from what this sister medium is doing. There are so many design tools that LARP knows how to use that we so rarely deploy, and
I want you to come with me,
dive into that world
and see what happens.
learn from this medium, and come back with cooler new games than ever.
But to start us off, I want to spend today's episode on how to get into LARP in the first place, because like I said, just like with tabletop games, it can be intimidating.
And for that purpose, I am delighted to be joined by Randy Lubin.
Randy is a tabletop and LARP designer through his studio, Diegetic Games, and he also designs serious foresight games through his consulting studio, Leveraged Play.
And I think Randy is a great
teacher, and he designs all kinds of really simple role playing games that I think work really well for new players to the hobby.
in short,
He's perfect for this.
And today, we're talking about Ghost Court, Jason Morningstar's LARP slash party game about being in a reality TV courtroom
where ghosts are real. It's fun, it's easy to get into, and specifically, it comes with cards that lay out each case.
And if you're feeling uncomfortable.
you can basically play the whole game by just reading those cards aloud.
And that makes it a great starting point for trying on LARP for the first time.
And we actually have a special treat for you here, we're going to kick things off today with a short actual play of Ghost Court, a little live LARPing for you here at the beginning of this series, so you can hear how it sounds.
You'll hear me and Randy in there, along with three other members of the Dice Exploder Discord,
Thank you so much to all of them for hopping in.
So, let's get into it. It's the LARP series. Here is Randy Lubin, Ghost Court, just read the card aloud, and a little bit of actual play.
Randy: Hi, I'm Randy and my pronouns are he, him.
Audrey: I'm Audrey, or Lady Tabletop. Pronouns are she, they.
Wafer: I'm Waffer and my pronouns are he, him.
Nico: And I'm Nico, and my pronouns are he, they.
Randy: All rise! Oyez, oyez, oyez! The Honorable Judge Vapex is now sitting for the dispatch of this honorable court's business. You may be seated.
Sam: Thank you, first case up today is Price vs. Lafarga. This is a contract dispute between the living manager of the Coffer Avenue Theater and a ghost employee. The plaintiff will speak first.
Audrey: Yeah, so, your honor, Lefarga, there, dead, ghost, right? Promised to haunt the theater that I run uh, in exchange for unlimited free screenings and some other perks, you know, popcorn on the side, whatever, just for the smell of it I guess at this point.
But I'm telling you, I'm ghostless. There's no haunting. Completely breached our verbal contract. I need this place to be haunted, or I need some sort of compensation. Because, let me tell you, it is not easy running a haunted movie theater when there's no haunting happening. It's completely undermining my business model. And also popcorn is expensive. People will tell you that it's not expensive and that the prices are all up charges, but it's expensive.
Wafer: I don't understand, so let's, talk his way out of this situation.
Nico: Well, what Price over there is not telling you, is that there is a ghost hunter attending these screenings, and I just don't know how I'm supposed to work under those conditions. If I cross paths with them, I will undoubtedly end up dispersed, sent back to the afterlife, and then price still won't have a ghost.
And then I'll be, well, not dead. Not not unde, re, re, re, re unde Reed, I don't know. I don't know the terminology.
Wafer: If I understand correctly, if these ghost hunters were prohibited from the theater, you could hunt for the prize. Yes or no?
Nico: well. Yes, gladly anything for the free screenings.
Wafer: Wonderful. Mrs. Price, are you able to prohibit your theater from ghost busters?
Audrey: I think, your honor, that there can be a case made for this patron being disruptive that I could bar him from the theater. Certainly.
Wafer: Wonderful, in that case it's another case closed.
Sam: What's your order specifically, judge?
Wafer: My order is to prohibit any ghost hunters into the theater of Mrs. Price, so Mr. Lefarga could haunt for her just like they agreed.
Sam: I'll put a gavel sound effect in here. Uh, Another, another case for the books, thank you all so much for attending this edition of Ghost Court. oh, I'll take on the the role of reporter here now. Mrs. Price, Mrs. Price, do you think the verdicts was fair?
Audrey: I think that under the circumstances yeah, that it works in my favor. 'cause I'm getting what I want in the end.
Sam: Are you gonna disallow me as an amateur ghost hunter? I'm only amateur, I'm not licensed. Can I still come to the theater?
Audrey: I think that depends on the nature of your ghost hunting. Are, are you the kind of like ghost bro who's trying to, to trap and, and disperse ghosts or are you the kind of, like, amateur YouTube guy who just wants some spooky sounds on a machine no one understands?
Sam: I'd prefer not to, to get into it too much, but I can vow that I won't do any ghost hunting at your theater.
Audrey: Then you are more than welcome to come to the theater.
Sam: Great. And, Mr. Lafarga, if I may do you think the verdict was fair?
Nico: Well, honestly I feel as though I'm actually entitled to some kind of compensation for missing out on the free screenings that I was promised, so, you know, you might see me back in this court sooner rather than later. That's
all I have to say.
Sam: And could you, could you also just step over a little closer to my little vacuum looking apparatus over here for me real quick?
Nico: Hmm, well, perhaps, but only because it looks very poorly put together and I don't think
Sam: Vvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvr
Nico: no!
Sam: Randy, thanks so much for being on Dice Exploder.
Randy: Thanks for having me on.
Sam: That little actual play was so fun. I'm so glad we got to do I'm so glad we're talking about a game that like lent itself to doing five minutes of actual play. I wish I could begin every episode of this show that way.
Randy: I think we need to start making more and more games that can be played in five minutes.
Sam: I mean, that's a that's not what we're here to talk about today. Uh, What are we here to talk about today?
Randy: Well, the mechanic I brought today, which you just heard, is just read the thing on the card which is very helpful and can work for all sorts of game design as well.
Sam: Yeah, I love this mechanic for so many reasons that we're gonna get into today, but especially as a mechanic for this, for the like, introduction to LARP episode .
So, I mean, I think it's pretty self explanatory, but let's break it down. We just heard people play the show, but like, what were we, as players, looking at as that game was happening?
Randy: So for any given case, there's three cards. The first goes to the clerk and it's very short. So it's the one sentence, what you read aloud, just sort of says who's the plaintiff and defendant and what's, what's a very high level case about.
Then the Plaintiff and Defendant each get their own card. It says if they're living or dead a ghost.
Sam: Yeah, and actually, let's, let's read these. Do you wanna take the, the Price card,
Randy: sure, this is literally what's on the card. Price, Plaintiff, Living. The Defendant, the ghost Lafarga, made a verbal promise to haunt the Coffer Avenue Theater in exchange for various perks, including unlimited free screenings. Lafarga has instead stayed away from the historic landmark and left it ghostless in breach of contract.
You want Lafarga on the job, or you want damages.
Sam: Lafarga, defendant, dead. You made a verbal promise to haunt the Coffer Avenue Theater in exchange for free screenings. However, recently the noted ghost hunter Pauline Couchenoir has been attending screenings, randomly, but quite often. You dare not cross paths with Couchenoir who could capture or disperse you.
Randy: So, you can see from the actual play of these cards, fairly similar in content, and if a player who wasn't as confident in their improv skills just wanted to read this aloud but instead of in second person had it be first person with I, it would totally work. Like the game would sing and then they'd have to answer a couple questions the judge might ask, but It's really, playing with safety wheels on and ensuring that anyone can bring the right drama, and in this case the right comedy without being a skilled improviser.
Sam: Yeah. Yeah, I really like the analogy of bumpers on a bowling alley. The idea that they're there, but also if you just bowl a strike, like, they never even come up, right? They're just there for you to kind of, like, fall back to
Randy: so some folks will just read the card, some folks will go way off script and just use this as inspiration and ham it up from there, and people will be all, all in the middle on a spectrum.
Sam: yeah, and I think in our actual play, something we were talking about between then and now was just how quickly the case got resolved. Like there is like an obvious compromise at the heart of this, and everyone involved was like cool, and we kind of moved on. But there's a lot of room, like I was sitting there like Oh, if I'm playing as Price, then I'm gonna say, I'm married to Pauline Couchenour, and like, like you can't expect me to ban my own wife from our co owned theater together.
Like, she would never get rid of the haunting, like, you know, like you see, there's plenty of room to like build on the baseline here.
Randy: Yeah, yeah, who's gonna make up for the lost revenue?
Like,
Sam: yeah, yeah, totally.
Randy: So I think that like the ability to just read the card is amazing scaffolding. The other amazing scaffolding coming here is that it pulls on things that everybody knows about.
So I mean, I think most people are familiar with the concept of Judge Judy, but even if you're not like reality TV judge, Immediately, a lot of things click into place.
Folks are familiar with courtroom proceedings at a high level. And so just build, build on that common shared knowledge. Yeah.
Sam: We're a little jumping the gun here, given that this is the beginning of like, the LARP series. What is LARP? Like, what makes this a LARP? When I, ten years ago, heard the term LARP, I thought, like, there's this old video that my high school friends and I loved, of a bunch of people dressed up as a D& D party running around the woods, and one of them just yelling, Lightning Bolt! Lightning Bolt! Lightning Bolt! At, like, everyone else running around, right?
And, like, That's LARP ing. That's absolutely LARP ing. There are a lot of LARPs that work like that. And also, This is Judge Judy. This is completely different. This is more like an improv game, right? What makes this a LARP and not just an improv game?
What does LARP mean? Like what? Categorically, how do you think about the idea of LARP in relation to this game?
Randy: So these are all, all good questions without good answers. And I think you see this in the tabletop side too, but it's even more so here. In tabletop, at least like a bunch of things trace their way back to D and D, or D and D ish. Where like, I think most tabletop designers, when they've shared their like, really quirky, dice less, GM less game, and so it goes like, oh, like Dungeons and Dragons, right? And you kind of go, yeah, yeah.
With LARP, it's not even that, like, trace backable, and it, LARP can cover so many things. So what you were describing, people are running around the woods, maybe throwing sandbags at each other or swinging foam sticks, is, it's boffer LARP, is the term that I'm familiar with. I've actually never played one of those. And I don't know if it shares much design DNA at all with completely different kinds of LARP, ranging from a secrets and powers genre where folks are trying to, as their characters win in some way, usually by leveraging secret information and maybe some hidden mechanics. Quite mechanically involved.
To Blockbuster LARP, where you're going away for a long weekend and you're gonna be in character that whole weekend to American Freeform, which is the kind I'm most familiar with, which I think Ghost Court was probably situated within which is intentionally very broadly designed to be anywhere from like The People going, oh yeah, that's obviously LARP, to like, that's just tabletop, but you're staying in character more often.
So rather than having like a very clear definition, or even a very clear taxonomy, it's more just like, there's a bunch of things that you can look at and go, oh yes, this seems very LARPful. And I think one of the main ones is that you're, you're staying in character for the vast majority of play, although not necessarily all of play.
Sam: Yeah, that to me feels like the big distinction between LARP and tabletop in my experience, which is largely four hour time slots in which you're doing 90 minutes of setup and then two hours of playing a game where you're in character the whole time, and it really changes the feel of things, even when there are tabletop like mechanics in play.
And I think it's sort of shocking in LARP how much just the idea of staying in character and like who your character is can effectively replace traditional rules and mechanics.
Coming out previously to this episode will have been a whole episode on pre generated characters in tabletop We're talking about The Last Train to Bremen, which is this wonderful game from last year by Caro Asercion. And I think something really notable about that game to me is the mechanical core of that game is playing Liar's Dice and like narrating stuff around it. But the characters themselves are so strong that it feels like you could just go in with the characters and the relationships and then sit around and yell at each other for two hours and have a great time.
And that's, to me, what LARP feels like. That it could totally just be we're sitting around a table, we're playing a tabletop RPG. We're even like dipping out of character to be like, I need to go to the bathroom. Or like, hey, could you back off a little bit? Or oh, I have a little power that I want to do here. Let's like roll some dice real quick. That's, it's just that, that sliding up that dial of how much you're in person feels like the thing that happens in LARP.
Randy: Totally, and on the sliding up the dial, are you having a guest later on to talk about the mixing board of LARP? I mean, I think that that metaphor works so well, because again, there's a bunch of those things are very LARPy, and whether somebody, doesn't really matter if somebody calls something a LARP or not, but like, the more of those you have, the more likely somebody's going to click and go, oh yes, that's a LARP.
I mean, Jason doesn't even call Ghost Court a LARP, he calls it a party game, or
Sam: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Randy: let me get the actual words, yeah, it's a live action party game, so he uses the word live action, but yeah.
Sam: Well, but he also probably, like, I'd be curious to hear him talk about whether that's a semantic, categorical statement out of him or not wanting to scare off the like, families and first time LARPers that this game is clearly designed to be for.
Randy: There's definitely a marketing angle. I'm not sure beyond that if you'd just be like, let's, let's just, let's just say what the game is or what you do in the game rather than apply a label. Yeah,
Sam: yeah, and like I find it just to put more cards on the table like, I find the discussion around like categorizing things at the like fringes to be very tiresome. Like what's a LARP? know when I see it. I don't really care like yeah, great cool. Here we are. This is a LARP and also if you don't want it to be like great I don't
Randy: It just doesn't matter. It's not helpful. Yeah. What I would say is really interesting, or like, especially when I was first getting into LARP and LARP design was looking at some of these labels, especially with like the Types of LARP as like, oh, I've never played something that's Secrets and Powers. I've never played something that's Nordic.
Let me, let me do that so I can get a sense of what those games and what those designers are trying to do, what that feels like. That's more about me building my like, pattern library of like, what are all the cool things I can bring to bear on my next design.
Sam: I cannot tell you how hard it has been to actually start recording this series because I have felt so overwhelmed by how little I know about the space. Like LARP as an idea is I think more global or at least not American centered than tabletop RPGs and the really big blockbuster stuff which you know, Nordic LARP is it's a community we're gonna do a bunch of episodes on over the course of this series, and I don't have the means or capacity to go experience that kind of LARP full stop. And so I like want to include it on the show. I'm really interested in it. I think the book LARP Design, which is coming out of that community and which is going to come up on essentially every episode of this series, is really good and has given me a lot of cool thoughts on the form. And also It has been really challenging to sit down and start recording episodes about something that I feel so much less informed and comfortable with than tabletop games.
And the thing that I finally did was, I just have to start doing it. Like, this can be me learning about that stuff. And I hope that what this series does is to try to make that idea. Easier for listeners to actually playing these games. Like, if you are feeling the way that I did about recording this series, I'm like, this is overwhelming, I don't know any of this stuff, it sounds scary, I hope that this series, like, gives listeners an on ramp to thinking about and maybe trying out some of these games.
Randy: Totally, and immediately getting a list of, oh, I have to play this and this and this and this because I'm so excited. I think it's, there's other interesting, like, sort of confounding factors in the mix. Some of the, a lot of LARPs, a lot of the really cool ones, end up being large player counts. I mean, putting aside the blockbuster ones where you actually need to rent a castle somewhere. You know, I think you and I play a lot at conventions because that's the only time you can get enough people together in a big enough room.
And so like early on in my larp trajectory, it was very much about going to big bad con or drew mission or metatopia on the East coast and being like, okay, cool. Who's running really weird and interesting games that I couldn't get anywhere else? So I think that's really cool.
I think there's another thing that can make LARP a little bit less approachable. And you see it a little bit on the tabletop side too, but it's the things that are not explicit in the rules that are just part of whatever the cultures of play are. I think that happens a lot on the tabletop side. Where if you're playing with like an OSR style versus a story game style or whatever it might be, there are all these preconceptions that are not made explicit in many of the rules.
Likewise here, there might be a very short set of rules for a Nordic game that don't spell out all the different techniques that they're probably expecting you to bring to bear or sensibility.
Sam: This episode of Dice Exploder is brought to you by me! I have a new game out. We Three Shall Meet Again. It's a three player asynchronous story game where the story goes like this. Once upon a time on the edge of a dark forest, three witches were cursed to share one body. They took turns living out days, never meeting, communicating only by post it notes and dirty dishes while they searched for a way free. It's a story about bad magic, bad bodies, and bad roommates. check out We Three Shall Meet Again now at sdunnewold. itch. io.
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just to, keep laying out my goals for this series, Something I have really enjoyed over the past year or so is a bunch of other games by Jason, Morningstar like Ghost Court that are designed for smaller player counts and for first time larpers who might be intimidated by the idea that can be a much smaller, chiller, more accessible at least emotionally accessible experience for people coming into the, the form for the first time.
Randy: One of my favorite repositories of those L almost no prep, just get going and it's not that long is Golden Cobra, where which is like, the American Freeform Challenge happens every year in the fall and always has interesting challenge categories they award prizes in.
But the max length that a judge will read to evaluate it is four pages. So you can immediately go there and start skimming some of the winners and seeing, Oh, these games are doing all very different, very cool things, and I know what I want to test with my group.
Sam: Yeah, totally. and I think that smaller, more logistically accessible kind of game is a good transition back into actually talking about Ghost Court here.
So something else I wanted to pick up on from the actual reading of the cards was the fact that a person who was feeling uncomfortable as Lafarga would have to translate the card from second person to first person and on the one hand, I think that that does put up a slight barrier, right? Like, you can't, in fact, literally just read the card. You can if you're the clerk. Like, I literally just read the card. You as bailiff literally just read your card. But once you are a plaintiff and a defendant, you do have to do this little bit of translating.
And I think that that is so nice as a stepping stone into freeform roleplay, right? Like, as soon as you have to, like, mentally calculate, How am I going to change this? Suddenly, you are roleplaying, even if it's only the 5 percent of that translation, And it's suddenly so much easier to just, like, slip in another improv sentence there, And then we're kind of, like, off the card, and we're off to the races.
Randy: Yeah, I think it's a really keen observation.
Other things that like a different game might do that could be interesting is like, have something around tone, like, is this a very angry character? Is this a very obsequious character? That's another like, thing that could be a quick tell of like, okay, cool.
I don't, I don't have a long list of stock characters in my head. But like, obsequious, cool, I can play obsequious.
Sam: Mm hmm. Yeah, I can't because I don't remember what obsequious means, but um, there's a Similar thing that I have really enjoyed from another set of Jason games that I played a bunch of in 2024 was This series of space larps that he was putting out. They're all like four people on spaceships. You and I got to play some of those at Big Bad Con.
And one of the things that the character sheets do on there is they have a little section that reads a lot like one of these cards like Here's what your deal is, and then a little section for each of the other three characters in the LARP. They're like, here's what you think of this person. And each of those descriptions ends with a suggested question to ask that person.
And I love those suggested questions, because they're just one sentence, and you can just read them verbatim. They're written, like, in your character's voice, and a thing that you would say to this person, and then the other person has to answer. But, like, once they are asked a question, it's so much easier to come up with an answer than to like start a whole ass conversation. And then as soon as they're talking with you, you're right back in it.
Randy: Exactly, and especially because half their answer is going to be on their character sheet anyway, so they're just going to start immediately drawing on that.
There's, what I think what you're describing is that there's no blank canvas to be nervous about, no blank page without any words. It's, you have something, it's always easier to, to start with something that's half written and keep working on it than absolutely nothing.
There's another Jason example that he wrote for uh, Jason and I have a collaboration called Honorbound. It's a LARP about toxic masculinity and honor culture through the lens of an old fashioned duel.
And the Doctor character on that has this panel, so it's a really short character sheet like a folded up piece of paper with like four little panes, but the Doctor has this list of all of the absolutely horrendous, graphically detailed, awful things that can come out of being in a duel and taking a bullet somewhere.
And so what this does is like, you know, there's some workshops to get people familiar with what honor culture is and talk about toxic masculinity is. How it expresses itself and how to play it in the game. There isn't anything in any of the workshops about medicine in the early 1800s. And so in this case, the doctor can just like, pick one of these very gross things from the list and be like, so, challenger to this duel, you know, that really gross thing can happen? And there's, they sound like this subject matter expert and they're, they're basically empowered to have these really amazing character moments without any extra work or flex at all.
Sam: Yeah, a theme that I'm seeing in all of these like the medical facts, the ghost court defendant cards, the suggested questions in the space larps is they're all like starters. They're all a place that you can just like read the thing out and that's gonna start a conversation And then like the person that you are talking to is going to have something they can play off of, and that's going to like kick you back up into things.
Even like here in Ghost Court, you know, immediately Lafarga does his thing, Price does her thing. And now the judge is there, like, there's obvious questions that I have, right? Like there's a conflict here and like, it's your job to resolve it. And there's, there's immediate, like, well, why can't you just do this? Why can't you just do that? And everyone can play off that conversation.
And even if, like in our actual play, the conversation immediately ends. Everyone's just kind of like You got it. Like that's fine. Like that's, that's a totally serviceable and fine conversation. And like Ghost Court is set up with a hundred of these cases and you can just like get onto the
Randy: next one. Yeah, there's I feel like this comes back to some improv advice. Which is just like, say the obvious thing, you can never go wrong by it being super obvious. And what this, like, read the card thing does, even if you don't read it exactly, is it gives you something obvious to say that you know is going to work, you know is going to propel things forward.
Sam: Yeah.
Randy: There's another interesting thing, which I don't know if it's actually recommended in the rules, it might be explicit, I feel like I've seen it in a lot of other games, where, which is, If there's a player who's more experienced or more comfortable, give them this role.
And so I think like in this case, at least for the very first case, give someone who's a little more comfortable improvising the judge role because they'll be a little faster on their feet maybe to ask some of the probing questions, or they'll have an idea for like how to introduce some more, more tension if you want more
Sam: Totally. Yeah, and I like that this game also does have a couple of these supporting roles, like the bailiff and the clerk that we were playing, who do have cards that you can just straight up read after the fact. And also a role like the reporter who is off to the side and can't, can do nothing. Like I could have just edited out my whole reporter thing from the actual play there Alright, I'm, I'm a little bit more experienced here at LARPing, I think, than the other people who are on the call there, and I can come in and like, make a whole scene out of that, I'm like, that's kind of fun, you know?
yeah, There's just so much space to grow or shrink the size of your role to your comfort level.
Randy: Absolutely.
Sam: Another conversation that I've been having a lot the past couple of weeks, at the end of 2024 and beginning of 2025 here, is Nova, Idle Cartulary from the Dice Exploder Discord and the Idle Cartulary blog did this series of like reviewing a game every fucking day in December. That was ridiculous but very cool.
And a recurring theme in it was her opinion on prompts. And prompt writing and how she really really wants like really specific prompts because the thing that is interesting to her is like how does my character feel like I want to do the like role playing of how I feel I don't want to have to do the like world building and all this setup.
And I wanted to call out how how effective I think like these specific cards are for that kind of goal for prompt. There's so, so much specificity in these like we're in Judge Judy style courtroom. Like one of us is a ghost like this is the exact conflict that is between us. Like we can get really really hyper specific and then like what do we do once we're in that super specific situation is the game.
And I think that broadly speaking, if you're writing any kind of tabletop RPG or LARP, not being afraid to get that specific is something really valuable to learn. That, like, you're never, ever gonna get too specific for people to start having fun.
Randy: Totally. And especially when there's always the room for people to take it and customize it and make and bring their own improv skills to it too. And right, and sometimes you get specific about what is the, the going on in the world or the problem. Sometimes you get specific with how the character feels and you have to have them and justify or back out of that. Like, I think a lot of the, For The Queen prompts are like, you feel this way, why?
But yeah, but those powerful prompts go so far. And I think this goes a little bit into the pregens topic and Jason topics too, but like, I think a lot of players, a lot of designers over design for replayability when, like, the, like, I feel like for me, like, I'm glad if anybody plays any of my games once. Like, I, like, I'd rather have a really powerful first time experience without worrying about replayability down the road.
But also I think with a lot of these words, like, start with a very well defined core, but then bring your own personality to it. We could have played that same case with five different groups and had five very different uh, feelings, experience five very different resolutions.
Sam: totally, And like, also I've watched a lot of my favorite movies 20 times, you know, like, like, it's, it doesn't change, like I change around it a little bit, maybe, or maybe I don't. Maybe I just want to do exactly the same fucking thing again because that's fun. Maybe I want to listen to the same song a hundred times in a row.
Like, if you have a really, really, really hyper specific experience of a game that you want to give to people. I mean, people play Mass Effect. How many times have my friends played Mass Effect? Like, there's nothing wrong with making a really, really hyper specific experience. And in fact, people will probably like that more than if you are designing for replayability,
Randy: Totally. I think part of that too is like choosing what not to put in your design. Like maybe it feels a little silly to say, but like Ghost Court doesn't have a, any complex resolution mechanic. It's at the end of the judge says, okay, I, here's my ruling or maybe we've come to consensus. So, so let's agree and move on.
You know, there's not like a chart or there's not like a polling system of the jury. It's or the audience in the room. It's, it's just that it doesn't need anything else.
Sam: Yeah. I don't know. It's good. It's so simple It works so effectively. Some people I think aren't as comfortable even with the cards like playing this kind of game and like that is perfectly fine. Like LARP isn't gonna be for everyone But I don't know. I just don't I don't know a better way to sort of like onboard people to this thing.
Randy: Totally. And I think it's, even if it's the kind of thing that you don't think is for you, it's one of those things that, in a safe scopedown way, which Ghost Court totally is it's worth trying, because you might turn out that you love it.
Like, I was probably a little bit skeptical, curious but skeptical going into it, and more of a like, oh, this is a, this is a type of experience people have, let me try this, and then came out of being like, this is amazing, I want to play these games, I want to design these games. And It's just that embodied all in character play is just such a magical thing that there isn't enough of in the world.
And I think that people will surprise themselves by how much they like that mode of creative play.
Sam: yeah, I think there are a lot of people who really are playing role playing games to embody their character. And I think a lot of the rules around like Dungeons Dragons or pick your game are ,here's another LARP word for ya, giving people the alibi to do that. To say, yeah, I'm gonna just pretend to be a little turtle guy now.
And I think that that is really fun. That is like the core thing for so many people, and LARP just being honest about that is really refreshing in a lot of ways. That like, yeah, that's the thing we're kinda going for here, is like, let's get into talking this shit out. With purely playing pretend. Like, I do need the setup, I do need the context. But yeah.
Randy: Yeah, I think alibi, which you said is absolutely one of the right words here. And especially like within LARP, it's an alibi to either play somebody very close to yourself but in a way that, like, you might not feel as vulnerable if you're not normally as comfortable being vulnerable, but, like, it empowers you to explore some of those themes or trends or ideas or history.
And it also allows you, empowers you, gives you an alibi to play somebody radically different than you and see what that's like without having to, feel so nervous of, like, oh, am I screwing this up? It's like, no, it's within the bounds of the game, and you're supported, and there's safety tools, and yeah,
Sam: yeah, yeah. Another thing I want to talk about with this is how it's not just the cards that are doing this kind of, like, support, it's the really tight framework of the initial premise, of the, like, Judge Judy reality TV show courtroom premise, and how because that is a formula and a situation that the vast majority of Americans, at least, are very familiar with, it is really easy to just show up and kind of like go through this existing framework in culture and like play a role inside of that framework. And that like acts almost as exactly the same thing that the cards are doing right that you you know the track that you're on.
Randy: You get all this free scaffolding, all this free almost like world building or setting building that like, and it doesn't matter that this is in a fantasy ish setting with ghosts, because
Sam: it actually does matter because it lowers the stakes of it, right? It makes it sillier and It makes it so that, like, if you get something wrong, well, there's ghosts here too, right? And, like, you know, in this world, it works like that because there's
Randy: Right, how do laws work with ghosts? We're gonna make it up, we're gonna figure it out as we go. So totally, totally, and I think that, like, one of the best ways to dip your toe into designing LARP can be, like, design a thing that happens in the real world that people are familiar with, like, take that, add a little bit of a twist or fantasy element to it, And, you know, give players some good scaffolding and go.
you and I were talking earlier before the call about we are roommates now, which is a short, simple LARP where you are negotiating a roommate contract, it just happens to be that half the roommates are aliens, who are, and half the, the roommates are humans. The rules of the game are very simple um, it's two single pages of paper, one for the aliens, one for the humans and gives you a little bit of context as to, like, why in spirit of, like, inter species cooperation, you're gonna be living together, but more to the point, here are the, like, handful of very clear questions you need to answer to hash out as part of your roommate contract.
But some of the things are very simple, and some of the things are, use like alien words that nobody knows, nobody at the table, none of the players know what it is. But the idea is like, okay, we've all been, many of us have been in situations, we know what like figuring out norms and who does what with a roommate might be like. But now there's aliens in the mix. Cool. Let's go.
Sam: Yeah, yeah, yeah,
so Ghost Court, great starting place for people getting into LARP. Is this what you recommend? Are there other games, like if Judge Judy with Ghost is into people's taste, but they are interested in the idea of LARP at large, what other games might be out there that you think people might be interested in?
I will say, to give you time to think we mentioned We Are Roommates Now, which I think is a pretty similar vibe to Ghost Court, but I often see as a, a recommended game.
I mentioned Jason's Space LARPs. I think there's six of them now on the Bully Pulpit Games Patreon, and maybe another product in the future, that I think are really nice if you have exactly four people and are interested in a much more dramatic experience. They are melodrama, I would say for the most part, in a way that I find very fun. And if you don't like Ghost Court, but you do like melodrama, maybe you would enjoy that. If you like Dune, maybe you would enjoy those.
But yeah, do you have other suggestions?
Randy: I mean, so much of Jason's catalog is a great fit here. So I would almost say like pick something that you and your friends are excited about the theme. And, and that's probably a good bet. So, you know, if you want to be a family of cannibals trying to figure out which of two hitchhikers you want to maybe have join your family slash be eaten by your family, Welcome Guests does that.
Or if you want to be like ice mountaineers who are maybe going to die on their way to a summit, the Climb does that. So you can almost like start from that. And that's like the really juicy, Oh, cool. Now we get some buy in. Maybe even from folks who are a little more wary about LARP, they go, Oh, we're playing a game to tell this type of story. I'm in.
Sam: So there's another one that I know I've heard of called So Mom I Made This Sex Tape which you are now holding in front of you. Can you tell us about that one?
Randy: Yeah, so it follows a, a focus character who made a sex tape with their boyfriend. That sex tape has been submitted to and is about to win an award at a, like, adult film show. That means it's going to be made more public, and so the, the game itself is them having a very awkward conversation with some of their immediate family members, saying, hey this thing's about to go public, want to give you a heads up.
And so it's very, very tightly scoped with pre written characters. There's the mom, the grandmother, the aunt, and the sister. Oh, and the and then the main character is the daughter. And each character has their own, like, are you sex positive? Are you porn positive?
The game also already includes, like, some arguments. So, again, it's heavily, heavily scaffolded. This doesn't need to be a topic you've ever thought about before, and you can just jump right in, as well as, like, some other, like, character points that you might want to bring up. But again, so tightly scoped takes less than an hour to play.
Sam: yeah. And so I feel like that's a good range of potential LARPs too, right? You have the goofy comedy and ghost court. You've got the like dune melodrama of these space LARPs. You've got the family drama, like, this is a really wide range of places that you can start with your first LARP.
And I, I just, I hope people go do it. And I hope people take the lessons of these LARPs and bring them back to tabletop. That, like, most of the games we talked about today you can just play around a table. You don't need to get up and act things out. It's just the thing that we're already doing, but you're in character the whole time talking. Like, that is how I played We Are Roommates now, is we literally just eight people sat around a table, and It, it's fun.
Randy: One of the main subgenres, clusters of these games is called Committee LARP, because it's effectively people getting in a room as a committee to make a decision, the game ends when the decision is made. And again, like that fits that sort of same structure of like, you could pick so many things from the real world that mapped to that, put the twist on it and you're good to go.
Sam: I should recommend my LARP too. We can each do one of our own also. So I made one for the Golden Cobra a few years ago called the Hench Union LARP where you're all henchmen, you're trying to unionize against your, like, super villain boss, the Professor Von Docter, and that was a Golden Cobra game a few years ago when it was, the theme for the year was committee LARPs, so every LARP that year was a committee LARP.
And that includes this one where you're just basically coming into the bargaining table and someone's the boss and a bunch of people are henchmen and you're just, like, hashing it out.
What about you? You got a good intro LARP, you think, Randy?
Randy: Behind the Magic is a fantasy mockumentary game where you play incompetent adventurers who are trying to save the world and probably gonna fail. It plays heavily into the reality TV show and documentary mockumentary tropes so players can sort of bring that instinct from them and they can also
Sam: there's like a mechanic in it where you get to like talk to the camera right and do a confessional
Randy: So you could do that at any time but it's a it's a game played in three acts with like very different scene prompts in each act. And in between each act and at the beginning of the game and the end of the game, you do a round of confessionals with the bard, where the bard is asking very pointed questions, so it's like, so who do you think screwed up the most and why, or, yeah,
Sam: Yeah
Randy: and I'd say Behind the Magic is, I don't know if it's an amazing first LARP because it asks a little more of the players from a like, improv standpoint, you're hamming it up a little bit more, you have a strong scene prompt but if you're, there is not a just read the card mechanic, but if you're like a little more comfortable or want to edge a little bit more into like, let's bring improv skills to the table without an audience I'd say it's still very easy to run and facilitate, the whole game takes 90 minutes to two hours to play. So it's quick.
Sam: Yeah, it feels to me like a great choice if you are In a 10 year long D& D campaign and like really comfortable with that kind of like well mostly we don't roll dice We just sort of talk to each other while we play D& D. It's a game that where those skills are gonna be really transferable.
Randy: Absolutely. Or likewise, if you really like improv and are trying to figure out a little more structure to it, it will help you tell a very specific type of story with, with giving you still tons of room to stretch your improv chops.
Sam: totally I think we're gonna call it there. I I feel like this is such an introductory episode, right? There's so much more to say about all of this. This is why I'm doing like a ton of episodes about lrp. I hope everyone will follow along with that that journey with me and really like take a listen to everything else that is coming.
And, I also hope that I've made it clear that like, my goal for this is like, let's as tabletop designers strip this medium for parts, right? Like, even if you don't like LARP, I think there's so much here to learn about designing in our medium also. There's so much to take from LARP, and I think trying out a few LARPs will make you a better tabletop designer as you sort of see what's going on with them.
Randy: Go play LARPs, play different kinds of LARPs. And as you said, stripping for parts, but mostly fall in love with it and then design your own LARPs.
Sam: Yeah. As Tristan Zimmerman once said to me, one LARP a year is good for the soul.
Randy: Minimum,
Sam: Minimum. Yeah, now I say minimum. Yeah. Randy, thanks so much for being on Dice Explorer. This was a treat.
Randy: Thanks for having me on.
Sam: Alright, folks, your homework this week is to just pick a LARP, any LARP, and read it. better yet, extra credit, play it. but if that's gonna be tough for you, then here's a little essay question you can noodle on. What is Ghost Court's core resolution mechanic? Or, if you don't think it has one, why doesn't it need one, and what does it have instead?
That's it.
Thanks again to Randy for being here. You can find Randy on bluesky at randylubin. com or at diegeticgames. com. His platform for online games, StorySynth, is also really just an incredible resource for playing games online that I highly recommend. Especially if you're a designer, you can design games right for it.
It's just great. As always, you can find me on BlueSky at DiceExploder. I have been saying S. Dunnewold for months, but it's at DiceExploder, And come on down to the DiceExploder Discord. You can order my design memoir, DiceForager, at DiceExploder. com, and you can find my games at S.
Dunnewold. itch. io. our logo is designed by Sporgory, our theme song is Sunset Bridge by PurelyGrey, and our ad music is LilyPads by my boy, Travis Tesmer. And thanks to you for listening. I'll see you next time.