Each year we debut a curated selection of new scenarios written for our annual theme.
Tempo
“Do you feel it?” … Momentous rhythms, That irregular pulse… you’re slowing down or catching up… speeding along and out of order… hurry, breath, there’s something to feel… there’s no time… Follow the beat… find “your speed”
Make a Scene! 2026 scenarios focus on Tempo, how we use and prioritize time. With not enough or nothing but how will you use your time? What’s the cost of indecision? Explore the pressures of generating, moving against or maintaining momentum.
Let’s Sync up, Let’s Sing along and dance away. Let’s see what we find.
Together, apart, in order, or not let’s…
Make. A. Scene!
Battery Low
by Seraphina Garcia Ramirez
In Battery Low you’re labor androids, escaped from a corpo factory and holed up in an abandoned warehouse. Without the proprietary batteries that fuel you, there’s only an hour left till battery runs out. Will you conserve it and hold on to every minute, or will you live what’s left to the fullest?
Explore what it means to spend time when time is a limited resource, in this scenario about seeking community and connection in the midst of tragedy and loss. Embrace the fact that seeking joy in the face of oppression comes with risk and danger. Spend your time cautiously and slowly, or move with urgency while you still can.
Be together, before the end.
This scenario includes themes of loss, grief, chronic illness, death, and the persecution of marginalized people.
About the author: Seraphina Garcia Ramirez is a writer, developmental editor, and lover of games. She started playing Pathfinder and D&D in high school, before discovering the magic of indie game design. When Sera’s not online talking about her most recent hyperfixation game or design theory, she helps facilitate the local Community Game Night and recently volunteered on the board of FLAG Con in upstate New York. You can learn more via her blog and Bluesky yapping.
This Room Full of Voices
by Laura Wood
This Room Full of Voices is about a group of people who feel like outsiders, yet come together every week to practice singing for a community choir. When they learn the choir is ending for good the characters mourn and grow from that loss. Over the final three sessions characters will explore their different relationships with the people in the group and their place in the community. It’s also about moving from isolation to interdependence and is designed to end on a note of realistic hope. It involves singing (no musical ability required).
About the author: Laura Wood (they/them) is a British larper and larp designer. They are an organizer at Larps on Location. They have also designed several larps which have run in several countries throughout Europe including Inside, The Vision and Slimming Smartly. They love larp for its ability to explore relationships, ethics, and identity: and are currently interested in safety and risk, consent, and community building.
Photo Finish
by Alejandro Tey
It is the final milliseconds of the Automania Grand Prix. While most of the cars have been left behind in dust and debris, our final competitors race toward glory! In these last few precious moments, when even the tiniest advantage can make the difference…. as time slows to a crawl and all the personal triumphs and defeats that led us here play across our racer’s minds… what shocking reveal will put a gleaming golden cup in our victor’s hand? What secret shame will be unearthed that costs the losers that .001/th of a second they needed to come in first?
Take on the role of a driver or their vehicle and play out the extended slow-motion, high drama finale of thrilling race movie. Every push to win will provoke a flashback to that racer’s past, and the many heartbreaks and triumphs that led them to this pivotal moment.
About the author: Alejandro Tey is a Cuban-American, South Texas-raised theatre maker and teaching artist whose artistic practice focuses on collaborative creation, narrative immersion, and participation: working with an ensemble to invite and guide audience into the role of protagonist. Tey is the Associate Artistic Director of Mixed Blood Theatre, through which he has led the process of Upstream, a participatory play about climate change for middle schoolers and their families; created discussion guides for the Equitable Dinners, a series of plays followed by facilitated conversation around complex topics; and co-directed (with Artistic Director Mark Valdez) The Happiness Gym, an event that turns the research on happiness into exercises for an audience aimed at improving well-being. Tey also directed the world premiere of Fallenstar: The Watchoverers, a play about Native teen superheroes produced by New Native Theatre, and the final sharing of Willmar, a verbatim play about the interlocking communities of Willmar, MN produced by The Neighborhood Theatre Project. Tey is an ensemble member of Sojourn Theatre, through which he has performed & directed plays, led workshops, and facilitated conversations across the country. He is also the creator of The Isle of Sugar, a hybrid roleplaying game/theatrical event based on his grandparent’s experience of the Cuban Revolution.
My Immortal: A Fanfic Adventure
by Tony McGinn
Have you ever read a book and thought it would be way better if there was a needlessly overpowered self-insert with a dark and tragic backstory?
It’s the early 2000s, and a handful of teens at Woodrow High have been made a once-in-a-lifetime offer. Their fanfiction OCs have been brought to life and they can finally meet them! The only issue is that the OCs have been mixed up. They have one night to find their OTP and make their fantasies into a reality.
In this scenario, teenage writers and their “Mary Sue” vampire power fantasy creations will meet and mingle, swapping stories, guarding secrets, and seeking their perfect match. This angsty teen drama is a story about finding comfort, community, and healthy coping mechanisms in a difficult world.
This scenario includes themes of death, death of family members, divorce, maiming/self-harm, homophobia, xenophobia, ableism, drug use, dysfunctional family homes.
About the author: Tony is a 37-year-old biologist-turned-writer, living and working in sunny CA. He is happily married with two dogs, one son, and an Iron Man tattoo. He’s a sommelier, cosplay nerd, book clubber, and hamster enthusiast who firmly believes that pineapple belongs on pizza.
Swansong
by Hannah J. Gray
You are the beast. The beast is dying. It is time to sing yourself to your sleep.
Swansong is about the passing of a wounded animal and its internal struggle to accept its fate. Play as the beast’s organs (as The Mind, The Heart, The Lungs, The Breath, The Blood, or the mortal Wound itself) as they wrestle with their bodily tasks, their growing fear, and their waning strength as the certain end comes.
Explore the body’s tempo as it rises and falls as emotions are stirred and vitality fails. Experience this ritual of dying through free-form movement, music and vocalization.
This scenario includes (animal/character) death and the process of dying, injury, fear and panic (panic attacks), fast-paced and loud noises for prolonged periods, potentially distressing noises.
About the author: Hannah J. Gray (she/her) is a Scottish storyteller and she makes games, sometimes.
Ready, Set, Switch!
by Micah Amundsen
How are you supposed to meet your goals, make friends, build relationships, when you’re missing out on 2/3rds of your own life? In Ready, Set, Switch!, groups of players take turns playing the same character while multiple scenes play out in parallel. This struggle doesn’t have to last forever, once you meet the others you share your life with and learn to work together. This scenario explores what it’s like to be plural, and intentionally creates feelings of disorientation, dissociation, and dysphoria, but it also explores the relief and empowerment that comes with learning to work together in a plural system.
About the author: Micah Amundsen (aka the Symphony System) has participated in MAS since the beginning, and has been threatening to write a scenario for a few years, and now they’ve finally done it. Larping has helped them explore and understand their own system, and now presents an opportunity to share these unique feelings for others. Very little media, besides their own webcomic The Roommate from Hell, and maybe Steven Universe, actually explores positive feelings and experiences in being plural, so that was a primary goal for this scenario.
The Intergalactic Autogyro EXPERIENCE
by Evan Torner
The Intergalactic Autogyro EXPERIENCE is an album-length dance-party game in which players take on the roles of future-city pilots who are suddenly separated from Earth by extraterrestrials. Set to The Prodigy’s 1992 Experience album, the game feels like being in an extended music video, combined with a superficial Saturday morning cartoon and a Playstation video game. After workshops and orientation regarding the characters & play procedures, the group hits “play” on the album and an accompanying deck of slides, which prompts a few important decisions. This is a silly game best played 100% straight.
This scenario involves future police, prolonged dancing, queer romance, body-and-mind transformation, natural disasters
About the author: Evan Torner is a professor of German and Film & Media who began doing larp theory and design in 2010. He co-founded the Analog Game Studies journal and the Golden Cobra Challenge.
Until the End of Time
by Elise Catibog
The mission was meant to be simple. Get in a spaceship with supplies to re-stock the space station and refresh the crew. But then you lost contact with mission control, and what was meant to be a short two day journey has stretched into weeks as your ship missed its mark and now drifts aimlessly through space. You’ve been able to keep the ship functioning by resetting and re-adjusting its inner workings every hour, but it was only meant to be temporary. Tension grows on the “Defiance” as supplies dwindle and the silence from Mission Control stretches on. Will you ever hear from them again?
This game deals with themes of futility, survival, and the endurance (or not) of the human spirit.
About the author: Elise is a Toronto based mixed race creator with a deep love for larp. They are new to the art of writing, but seek to create thoughtful, immersive games that give people space to explore emotionally.
Un/sanctioned Songs
by Michelle Hofeldt
You are a group of musicians and producers trying to make art under an authoritarian regime’s censorship. Listen to and curate protest music, and talk about the impact music can have when performed. Shape your character’s story as you navigate the consequences of state censorship, grapple with the spectre of self-censorship, and try to stay true to your artistic vision and your ideals–or perhaps change them, in the face of your experiences. Can you collectively organize a resistance strong enough to speak out against the Regime?
This scenario includes censorship by an authoritarian state (including censorship and oppression of queer- and transness), institutional racism and how it intersects with censorship, and self-censorship. Transphobia and homophobia will not be acted out between players, nor will arrest or brutality by law enforcement.
About the author: Michelle Hofeldt is a Minneapolis local and nonbinary, transgender, and queer musician, instrumental music teacher, and community co-organizer. They were introduced to Larp House in 2023 and Make a Scene in 2025 by great friends who know they love roleplay-heavy games of all kinds. Un/sanctioned Songs is their first larp, and it was written while they were living through and educating in the midst of the [ongoing] ICE occupation in Minneapolis, the repercussions of which are still being felt by their students and much-loved community, and the [ongoing] resistance against which was a central spark of inspiration to write this larp.