Shattered Isles


LARP Design: The In-Town Game

Thanks to a long list of complicating factors, I had to miss almost every LARP event of 2023 before September. Since the start of September, I’ve played an Eclipse event, an Altera Awakens event, and two Alliance events (one Atlanta chapter event, one National event run by Crossroads TN), I’ve […]


LARP Design: A Further Five Field Battles

It has been more than two years since my last post in this series, in part because we spent two years not LARPing. We’re back at it now, and that makes it easier to write. In the first two posts, I talked about ten field battle models I’ve seen. Today’s […]


LARP Design: Five More Field Battle Models 1

Back in January, I wrote about five common field battle designs, and it sparked an interesting couple of days of conversation among my LARPing community. This time out, I’m talking about five much less common (but still highly reusable) models. Image by Christian Körtke from Pixabay 6. Long-Distance Escort If you also play […]


LARP Design: Five Field Battle Models 3

It’s been a long time since I’ve talked LARP design. Quarantine has of course put games on hold for the last year, though as vaccines roll out, we might be stirring again from that long slumber. Anyway, in this post I’m talking about field battle models and implementation guidance for […]


LARP Design: Wandering Monster Design 4

Oh, wow, I haven’t written about LARP design since December, how about that! Anyway, even before that when I talked about active locations in boffer LARPs, I knew I wanted to talk about how to design good wandering monsters for LARPs. Creature narrative, costuming, powers, and deployment are major elements […]


Additional Fey Charms 4

Back in January, I wrote about Fey Contracts, including new charms you can gain from those contracts. In this post, I’m expanding the list of charms, in preparation for turning this into a DM’s Guild release. Image: Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=727057 Charm of Green Bounty When you receive this charm, your […]


How to Write a Boffer LARP Module 2

Treasured Patreon backer Ryan McCorkle asked for a guide to writing modules for boffer LARPs. Since I freely acknowledge that there are others out there who can do better at this than I can, I hope the comments section will become a useful resource in its own right. For readers […]


LARP Design: Wandering Monsters and Active Locations 3

In a boffer LARP campaign, it does a lot of good for the wandering-monster gameplay experience if the players have a steady supply of reasons to move around the game site in small groups. That is, it both improves the experience of being a wandering monster (and yes, people playing […]