Icebergs

Rarely can I find the origin of a larp phrase so easily and clearly as “boutique larp” — Mo Holkar coined it in the Larpers BFF Facebook group on January 21, 2017. It’s been nearly a decade since that post, and while the term is not common, it’s been used a decent amount. Personally, I’m quite fond of it, because boutique larps are having a moment. 

For ten years, I made larps that made people bawl. I felt like I really created something special. Then everyone started running “crying” larps. More accurately, I met more people who were already doing the same thing. And I realized I wasn’t special, or brilliant, or a larp god. Because the thing about tears is that it’s really not that hard to make a larper cry.

If you’re a larp organizer, Facebook is an unfortunate fact of life... which has a lot of us asking, "can we drop Facebook?"

When we talk to people about their larps, we ask about the design, not the writing... because we want to know what people do at the larp.

When larpers talk about race, we often fail to include actionable plans, so we’re reviewing a key step in our process-hazard identification.

There's a reason why we enjoy them... we've done them before. Let’s start with this: there are lots of very good larp designers creating...