Anthology Scenarios
This anthology contains all the scenarios that premiered at Make A Scene 2021! On this page you can find a description of each game and some basic information about what you need to play it. Some scenarios utilize resources from the internet. You can find those resources linked here, as well as links to any sheets you need to print in order to play this game: Supplemental Materials.
You can buy this scenario anthology here!
Helvete
by Kate Hill and Charlotte Dragga
The Norwegian Black metal scene was known for its musical genius and its dark, violent acts. Step into the roles of the founders of this scene and explore how a passion for metal, a scorn for the mainstream, a love of iconoclasm, and sheer toxic masculinity can drive a group of late teenagers to create path-breaking, urgently emotional music and to commit horrible crimes and acts of violence. Over the course of three scenes, coupled with interstitial narration, you will explore the rise of underground second-wave black metal, starting from the catalyzing suicide of one of its most prominent vocalists, through its peak in phenomenal works of art, and culminating in its implosion as its ethos of malice turns inward. Will your characters break free from this vortex of hypermasculine hatred, or will they plunge eagerly into its awaiting maw?
Participants: 6–9 players (9 is ideal), 2 facilitators
Duration: 4 hours
Keywords: Black metal, toxic masculinity, music, underground subcultures, peer pressure
Content Advisory: Toxic masculinity, misogyny, suicide, violent rhetoric and actions (including murder), self-harm, depression, isolation, jockeying for social position, peer pressure, hatred of Christianity
Adaptability for Online Play: Medium
Space: Access to electricity and internet simplifies preparation
Preparation: Requires a way to stream music, some printed material
About the authors:
Kate Hill has been doing community organizing around games ever since her time at Macalester College. She now runs a larp community in Durham North Carolina, writes short form larps (including one in this book) and freelances for other larp properties. She is especially passionate about creating safe, sustainable larp communities and recently has been focused on how to bring that safety and feeling of community into online larping. She also is an academic librarian who has years of project management experience and has somehow managed the creation of another book in the past. She is excited to be working with the Make A Scene team to promote the writing, sharing, and playing of scenario larps across the world.
Charlotte Dragga is, by day, a software engineer and die-hard black metal fan living in North Carolina. By night, she’s an anarchist prison abolitionist who deeply enjoys freeform larp and who has written several along with her wife, Kate Hill, mostly for Golden Cobra; she’s also a diehard black metal fan here too. Helvete is by far the most ambitious project she’s worked on, and she’s thrilled to be a part of Make A Scene.
True Colors
by LolV Peregrin
“Surviving has been your task for so long, you barely have had time to learn who you are. Maybe you’ve always known you were different. Maybe it was a big sudden realization, or perhaps a slow, gradual one.
You feel like all this gender stuff, transition, whatever it is, is coming into your life a little too late. You should have known better. Yet you struggle with what to do with this awkward mind and body. You feel unloved and unworthy.
By joining this trans (body)positivity group therapy, you don’t know what to expect, but your hope is to find your place within yourself, your own narrative and the family of things.”
‘True colors’ is a chamber larp. It aims to invite players to construct a feel-good, healing narrative around the gender queer experience by exploring past traumas and potential presents and futures through drawing a special kind of a tattoo on oneself.
Participants: 3 to 10 players and 1 Facilitator
Duration: 4 hours
Keywords: Queer, peer group, tattoo, healing, transformative, found family.
Content Advisory: trauma, societal pressure.
Adaptability to online play: hard
Space: whether the venue is inside or outside, it must be comfortable so the players can explore their bodies, feelings, and the play space without any sensations of being cold or hot, constricted etc. I would like them to feel at ease to do things such as walk barefoot, roll, or lie on the floor. I think the game can be set both indoors and outdoors as long as the chosen place is a “safe,” calm space.
Preparation: Assemble a variety of writing supplies. Requires a way to play music.
Resources:
- Darkest Night by Tony Anderson
- A Body Was Made by Ezra Furman
- Do Whatever the Heck You Want by Rae Spoon
- Black Tie by Grace Petrie
- Weightless (Official Ten Hours version) by Marconi Union
About the author: LolV Peregrin Lacave graduated in Ancient Languages and Archeology and now works as a social worker in a non-profit association that focuses on learning through play. They are a queer autistic activist and performer who uses larp and arts to put narratives on disabilities, mental illness, community, and LGBTQIA+ in the spotlight and raise awareness on these particular subjects. Follow their art and project on instagram at @corbeauperegrin
Blue Collar
by Shawn Roske
Blue Collar is about men sometimes reaching out to each other. You are maintenance workers, cleaners, or security personnel. The work is often lonely and solitary. We are going to look at a slice of the lives of these working men. This game invites you to look at their lives a certain way. Problems arise and we will evaluate how these men deal with their struggles. Explore silent and hidden experiences by shooting the breeze at work in the break room. It is about masculinity, stillness, and integrity.
Participants: 2-6 players, 1 facilitator
Duration: 2-4 hours
Key Words: masculinity, working class drama, gritty contemporary
Content Advisory: Loneliness, judgement, guilt
Adaptability for Online Play: Easy
Space: A quiet space with 2 tables and some chairs.
Preparation: Print out materials. Works best if people bring some food or snacks.
About the author: Shawn Roske has been a front-line care worker and educator in Ottawa, Canada. He is best known for Last Item on the Agenda, a game about the corporate management of sex for workers and residents of adult group homes. His works 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.
The Emerald Chorus
by Pablo Valcarcel and Rosendo Chas
The Emerald Chorus is a David Lynch-esque Historical Fantasy set in Spanish Louisiana during the Revolutionary War. The players take on the roles of Acadian (French) and Isleño (Spanish) settlers whose quarrelling communities are about to be linked by marriage. Little do they know that the servants of the Emerald Chorus watch them closely. Who are they? And how will their boons shape the stories of those meant to live and love in a time of war?
Participants: 9-11 players, and 2 facilitators
Duration: 4 hours.
Keywords: Historical drama, family drama, surreal horror, southern gothic, magical realism, meta play, Brechtian estrangement
Content Advisory: Descriptions of war, famine, disease, physical injury
Adapting for Online Play: Medium
Space: At least, two differentiated play areas. One suitable for standing or walking, the other one suitable for seating.
Preparation: Print out materials, a few props.
Accessibility: Players are expected to stand twice in a circle for periods of 15-20 minutes.
About the authors:
Pablo Valcarcel is a Spanish larp writer and author from the Canaries. In Spain, he’s been an active contributor to the parlor larp scene for a decade. Additionally, he’s written for the TTRPG publisher Nosolorol. Internationally, he’s written for Larpworld Magazine and his larp, ‘The Other Voice Inside Your Head,’ was selected as a finalist at the Berlin WOD scenario competition in 2017. You can find him at @Awakedreamer.
Rosendo Chas is a Spanish pop culture tourist. Since its inception a contributor to the Nosolorol publishing house, he wrote world building stories for the ttrpgs sLAng, Inocentes and Cultos Innombrables, and co-wrote the game Blacksad, based on the graphic novel of the same name. Plus, he’s been a parlor larp writer since 2003 at every convention he could afford to attend. Find his work at medium.com/@rudesindus
Repro
by Nadia Gillitzer
Repro is about making the decision to parent in a world where everyone has enough and biology is no barrier. All family structures are expected and accepted. At birth, everyone is implanted with a fertility blocker, and if an individual wishes to become a parent, they go to Reproductive Services, or Repro. The final step of the process is an in-person retreat at any of the offices throughout the solar system. Counseling and preparation is provided to confirm the decision to become parents, and then the biology of becoming a parent commences. We find our characters on the train ride to such a retreat at one of the Martian offices of Reproductive Services. Characters include non-partnered people, a monogamous, married couple, and two members of a polyamorous household. The facilitator is a Repro agent and narrator, and also expected to ensure players are having a good time.
Participants: 4-6 players and 1 facilitator. Best played with 6. The facilitator is both narrator and Repro agent Zara, and also responsible for making sure players are having a good time (even if their characters aren’t).
Duration: 3-3.5 hours
Keywords: decision-making, relationships, parenting, sci-fi/space, gender and reproduction
Content Advisory: Fertility, difficult parents
Adapting for Online Play: Easy!
Space: A space with some chairs.
Preparation: Print out materials.
About the author: Nadia Gillitzer lives in Cedar Rapids, Iowa with her spouse and child. She is a technology trainer by day and an imaginer of better worlds always. This is her first scenario, unless you count the birthday party she had when she turned 10 where each guest was given a costume and character that Nadia created. You can find her on Twitter: @NStenSpid and at hobbittoes.itch.io .
Boldly Go
by Rav Simon
The year is 1965, humanity (America) has just sent a super groovy unmanned mission to a planet thought to have Goldilocks conditions. The AIs on-board the spacecraft, are programmed with everything there is to know about Earth and it’s (American) people in order to accurately gauge the new planet’s suitability. When they land, they are greeted by sun and surf and…aliens. How can they write a report home, about a culture they have nothing in their databanks to compare to?
Boldly go is a game that uses silliness to talk about hard subjects: gender, race, sexuality, economic systems are all things this game can touch on and is designed to handle. An amount of comfort with these topics is necessary to play this game, as well as an ability to communicate what your boundaries are about each of these topics with other participants. GMs will lead players through a number of situations before and after Robots have landed on an Alien planet.
Participants: 6 to 14 players and 2 GMs
Duration: 3 hours.
Keywords: Space, Satire, Robots, Aliens, Gender, Comedy, 1960s
Content Advisory: discussions of gender, race, sexuality, & economic systems
Adaptability to online play: hard
Space: The space you use for this game does not necessarily have to be large, but there should be enough space to effectively separate Robots and Aliens for the workshop portion, beginning, and end of the LARP.
Preparation: Print out materials.
Accessibility: There is a recommended aspect of movement workshopping in this game, the suggested workshopping is intense for the Robots and relaxation based for the Aliens.
About the author: Rav Simon is a Chicago-based larper, cosplayer, and writer. This is Rav’s first published scenario, but you can find their other published writing work in comic anthologies such as TOComix Press’ Wayward Sisters Anthology or in the Chicago based Ladies’ Night Anthology series, under the name Rachel Simon. A through line in Rav’s work are the ideas of communication and difference or as Rav says, “How society makes monsters of us.”
The Icarian Conundrum
by Jae Krehbiel
The final hour is at hand. After 11 breathtaking issues (and 36 exciting tie-in series), the great Icarian army is poised to conquer Earth, and only our greatest heroes have the power to stop them.
You are not one of these heroes. You’re involved, sure, but only in the sense that EVERYONE is involved, and some hack writer thought it would be interesting to throw you in to the mix, even though cosmic-level encounters aren’t really your speed. But who knows, this could be an exciting paradigm shift for you. Maybe you’ll finally be taken seriously as a character! Or maybe you’ll be one of several casualties cold-calculated to provide pathos, a brutal end to your short wiki page. That’ll all depend on fan reception. This scenario is about grappling with insignificance, imposter syndrome, and metatextual influence in comic books.\
Participants: 6 to 10 players, 1 facilitator
Duration: 2 hours
Keywords: Existential, Goofy, comic book characters
Content Advisory: Mentions of death, casual bigotry of all kinds
Adaptability for Online Play: Medium (some means to allow multiple conversations helpful)
Space: A moderate-sized room with some places to sit
Preparation: Print provided character sheets and tie in slips.
About the author: Jae Krehbiel is a creator in the Twin Cities area. They have been active in the larp community for three years, but have been writing and crafting games for most of their life. Their favorite larps are those with rich characters and complex interactions. Their works can be found at taquelli.itch.io.
This activity is made possible by the voters of Minnesota through a grant from the Metropolitan Regional Arts Council, thanks to a legislative appropriation from the arts and cultural heritage fund.