Each year, we debut a batch of brand new scenarios around a theme. If you are interested in writing a scenario, check out how to Submit a Scenario! 2024’s theme will be announced in mid-January and submissions will be open until March 6th.
The following scenarios will debut 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 body that fits your lifestyle. You can enjoy your new body worry-free knowing that your old body with its new donor consciousness will live out the rest of its days safely contained in our certified cruelty-free work colony. 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 shape your character based on what you’re interested in exploring in this scenario.
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. They hold an MFA from Carnegie Mellon, a BA from Grinnell College, and are a graduate of the Odyssey Works Experience Design Certificate program. 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.
By A Thread
by LolV Peregrin Lacave
They used to be one of us, but they are no more. How can we weave together the story of their life and our own now that they are gone?
“By A Thread” is a short larp scenario centered around the experiences of loss and grief in the context of friendship.
About the author: LolV Peregrin graduated in Ancient Languages and Archeology and now works as a social worker in a non-profit association for trans and non-binary people.
They are a queer, disabled, autistic activist and performer who uses larp and arts to put disabilities, mental health, community and LGBTQIA+’s narratives in the spotlight and raise awareness on these peculiar subjects. They have submitted scenarii for Make a Scene before.
Desaparecides
by July Pilowsky
Under the repression of the military dictatorship in Argentina in the late 1970s, desaparecides and their loved ones use the forbidden magic of tango to connect, to give each other hope, and to say goodbye.
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!
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.
Harbingers of Life
by Killian Harris and Deryn Eugene
It’s the end of the world for Planet #2651 and you’ve been sent to recycle it and build a new one by the folks upstairs at Celestial Management Inc. Play as a deity with all the powers of creation and destruction at your fingertips, arguing with your fellow deities in a conference room about whether you should keep the humans, create a new cow mutant, or start a brand new religion dedicated to you.
About the authors:
Deryn Eugene (they/them) is a Chicago-based writer, LARPer, and overall nerd with their fingers in too many creative pots. In addition to LARP writing, they love songwriting, crocheting, bingeing animated shows, and existing in space with their queer/queerplatonic polycule.
Killian (they/she) is your friendly neighborhood queer nerd that drinks too much Red Bull. When they’re not writing LARPs, you can find her obsessing over music, being a menace to her polycule, and pontificating over the meaning of life. They’re also kinda cute (Deryn-approved).
Deryn and Killian recently made their LARP writing debut at Intercon’s Iron GM competition, placing third with their game “In the Mind of a Beast.” They are creative partners at In The Corner Productions, and they’re also in gay together.
On the Other Side of the Bars
by Andrea Humez
Scenario: Two friends grew up together in a mining community in the asteroid belt, became refugees, and worked together to lead a revolution against the oppressive space-station-based government. Their shared dream was to create a more just society. But as they faced the hard choices of revolution and governing, disagreements drove the friends apart. One became the leader of the new government, while the other eventually helped to depose them. In the aftermath of this second regime change, the ex-leader is in prison, with their fate still to be decided. Their former friend has come to visit them in prison. This is their last chance to talk about what lies unresolved between them, and perhaps to bargain over a few remaining things each wants from the other.
Themes: This is a story about two people who once loved each other and maybe still do, but have a fundamental conflict of principles, as well as anger and regret towards each other. Core themes are having irreconcilable differences with someone you love, having been betrayed by someone you trusted, and grief at the breaking of a partnership. There is the potential for the story to go in more or less hopeful directions, depending on how players choose to steer.
Play experience: In this scenario, players play out the climactic emotional scene of a longer narrative. There will be short pre-written character sheets describing key events in the characters’ shared history and points of conflict, which players will have time to read before play starts. The two-player, short-intense-scene structure gives players an opportunity to deeply engage with relationship play and complicated feelings between intimately-connected people.
About the author: Andrea Humez started playing and running LARPs with the MIT Assassin’s Guild, back when dinosaurs roamed the earth. She wrote a weekend-long LARP, Three-Edged Sword, as her thesis for her undergraduate creative writing program. Her recently-written LARPs include Friends Help You Pack; The Last Time (Not The Last Time), co-written with Kristen Patten, Between The Penthouse and the Lobby, co-written with Alyse Leung; and The Buried Paths of Siru Kisal, co-written for the Luminary Roleplay Society with Amanda Stowers, Matt Fisher, Sarah Terman and Daniel Whalen. Andrea is one of the founders and current officers of the Greater Boston LARP Society.
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 blackbox 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 has been a front-line care worker and educator in Ottawa, Canada. He 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.