…a careworn family quilt, stitched together across multiple generations… nomads spin tales of the world’s beginnings and destiny in the bright stars above… a tumultuous relationship’s moments of repair or retreat… the library of Alexandria… to fire into permanence or render back into clay… a spider spins a beautiful trap… sixty seconds to make our pitch… a game that destroys itself… “We’ll show them! We’ll show them all!”
Make a Scene! 2024 focuses on MAKE // BREAK moments of creation and destruction. What courage or mistakes are needed to bring something new into the world? What fears or wisdom are needed to eradicate it forever? Let’s explore the process of collaboration, courage, costs, mistakes, and consequences of making and remaking the world anew.
What do you want to see in the world? What would it be better off without?
Make something. Break something.
Make a scene!
The following scenarios debuted at Make a Scene 2024!
A Mirror of Dark Water
by Carly Dwyer
A Mirror Of Dark Water is a larp about human sacrifice. How does a community decide who from their tight knit and non heirarchal society is worthy enough to appease nature even if they emotionally can’t live without them? How do they balance giving up what they value most to potentially save their own existence? How do you ask someone to go into the water knowing everything they leave behind? How do you prepare for this loss when you know it was a choice? How do you look your loved one in the eye as you both prepare for a death that was preventable? Can violence ever be the ultimate act of love?
Based in the Northern Eurpoean Iron Age this larp uses both science and history to frame the world of the community and anchor the subject in a past reality, one we only know about because of those who were put into dark water. Sacrificed to preserve their communities they have also become ambassadors for a people who left us no written record. Can we reach back and understand them and what can they teach us about ourselves?
Players will develop action and ritual elements through workshopping periodically during the LARP
This game features themes and game play around death, loss of a loved one, right to die and will feature in game violence.
About the author: Carly is a larp designer, professor of game design, theatre maker, intimacy coordinator, founder of Intramersive Media, and amatuer burial archeologist. A narrative designer to the core, Carly has always combined her love for folklore, anthropology, theatre, and games as a way to explore and speculate the interconnections between past, present, and future. As a queer artist she is deeply passionate about identity and methods of inquiry about queerness when we examine our past. Through her games, which often utilize time travel as a thematic device, Carly encourages players to introspect, learn, and shape their personal narratives by engaging with history and envisioning potential futures.
Body Properties
by Margo Gray
Humans have had the technology to swap consciousness between corporeal forms for decades, but only in the past few years have Vitalcorp’s extensive lobbying efforts created an exciting new opportunity. Vitalcorp is pleased to offer its signature “Re-generation” procedure to discerning buyers. Choose from our pool of eager donors and transfer your consciousness to a vessel that fits your lifestyle. You can enjoy your new vessel worry-free knowing that your old vessel with its new donor consciousness will be closely monitored by Vitalcorp to ensure that its occupant adheres to all the conditions set forth in your contract. Call today, and find the new life you deserve!
In this game of capitalist dystopia, play a character hoping to either buy or sell a corporeal form. Explore what your character wants out of a swap, connect with other characters who might be competition, and face the moral dilemma of assessing the value of your own or another’s life. Expect emotionally immersive gameplay and opportunities to choose and shape your character based on what you’re interested in exploring in this scenario.
Content advisory:
These are people trading away their bodies, so something akin to suicidal ideation, coercive circumstances, ability/disability, uncomfortable class dynamics, general capitalist dystopia content, and issues of bodily autonomy. Single-character plotlines include terminal illness, gender dysphoria, bad boundaries, familial estrangement, impending child death, and reproductive rights. This content is possible to minimize by not choosing the affected character. If there’s content in that single-character plotline list you’d really like to avoid, let a facilitator know and you won’t be placed in one-on-ones with that character.
One thing we won’t be doing is assessing each other’s actual corporeal forms. The player’s body is not the character’s body. There will not be in-character discussion of players’ own body characteristics.
About the author: Margo Gray is an experience designer based in northern Minnesota. They create games, performances, and installations that put participant agency at the center of the story. As the Producing Artistic Director of Playable Artworks, they design original work and consult on immersive and interactive experiences and public interactive art. John Darnielle of the Mountain Goats once called a game of theirs “fantastic,” and now they can die happy. Their work includes a zoom larp about angels, a site-specific adventure where you text with trees, and a tabletop game for community development professionals about alien blob people. Find out more at margogray.com or @playableartworks.
Desaparecides
by July Pilowsky
The year is 1977. A far-right military dictatorship has taken over Argentina and established a series of secret concentration camps throughout the major cities. All over the country, people are taken by soldiers on the bus, in their workplaces, from their beds in the middle of the night. Some of them will be released, battered and hollow-eyed, weeks or months later. The rest will never be heard from again. These people taken away without a formal arrest, charges or trial are known as desaparecides.
In the world of this larp, there is a magic in tango. Forbidden by the dictatorship, tango allows people who love and care for each other to dance together in a space beyond physical reality, no matter how far apart they may be.
Desaparecides is a dance larp that alternates between verbal scenes with partnered tango and nonverbal freeform dance scenes. You will play as an ausente (one of the desaparecides) or a presente (someone whose loved one is a desaparecide.) You will also play a side character one-third of the time who is the opposite of your main character (a presente if your main character is ausente or vice versa.) If you wish, you may like to sign up with a trusted co-player so you can play an ausente–presente pair.
This game carries a content warning for torture. All players will play a character, either the main or the side, who experiences torture during the larp. You will hear a list of descriptions of torture and decide which ones your character experiences, then react to them. No one, PC or NPC, will be playing a torturer. The larp also has content warnings for state terrorism, homophobia, transphobia, ableism, antisemitism, sexism, pregnancy, and tragic outcomes of pregnancy (most of these CWs vary by character.)
About the author: I am a Chilean-American scientist who has larped on three continents. I bring an international perspective to my game design, mixing disparate styles to make something new.
“Dude, The Head Shop’s Closed!”
by Evan Torner
It’s Midwest USA in the 1990s and a group of 3 or 4 skaters show up to the head shop to “see what’s happening,” only to find out that it’s closed. What else are they going to do with their evening? Maybe they’ll need to come to grips with themselves instead. We dunno. A 2-hour blackbox larp experience for 6-8 players, preferably aged 18+.
Content warnings: Drugs, relationships in one’s 20s, the police
About the author: Evan Torner (he/him) is an American professor of German who began doing larp theory and design in 2010. He co-founded the Analog Game Studies journal and the Golden Cobra Challenge. His scenarios have been nominated for and won awards at Fastaval and the World of Darkness Scenario Competition.
The Gods We Create
by Peregrin Lorimer
In a land where misfits and outcasts have found their own patron god, what will they do when the community they create is threatened by invading forces? There will be arts and crafts involved!
Content warnings: religious/spiritual themes, a wedding, a funeral, discussion of food, possible yelling, religious persecution, mentions of violence and death, the creation of religious art, the destruction of religious art, imperialism/colonialism
About the author: A cryptid also known as Pip, very close to achieving their final form as an ultranerd, the chrysalis of which is writing their first LARP scenario.
The Sternest Good Night
by Lizzie Stark and Jason Morningstar
A family in crisis has an extraordinary experience on the way to a family gathering.
The Sternest Good Night is a blackbox game about family drama and UFOs. The UFO encounter is, in fact, a meta technique for the things the family can’t discuss – and, like Roshomon, it happens again and again with different color – both emotional and physical.
About the author: Six of Hounds is a US-based writing team of award-winning game designers. Jason Morningstar is best-known for designing Fiasco, while Lizzie Stark is best-known for her monograph and blog series Leaving Mundania.
Who’s a Pretty Bird
by Shawn Roske
Fly into ‘Who’s a Pretty Bird?’, a short form bird larp. Be an escaped pet bird navigating the wild for the first time. Armed with only a handful of human-taught phrases, you’ll face the challenge of communicating with other bird talking species in your quest for survival and belonging. This game tests the limits of language and asks: can you forge connections and express your true self within these constraints? Struggle to build bonds of new friendships, and explore creative ways we can understand each other when words fail us. Join us for an adventure that explores the essence of communication and freedom in the wild unknown.
About the author: Shawn Roske is known for Last Item on the Agenda, a game about the corporate management of sex for workers and residents of adult group homes. His larps can be found at vasistha.itch.io. He is the founder of Playstories Canada. He has given talks and sat on panels at conventions, including Gen Con and PAX Unplugged about running RPGs in schools for kids in behavioural programs and autism support programs. He has a Masters degree in Anthropology and post-graduate certification in Behavioural Science and Autism.