Wildlands South


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 […]


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 […]


D&D 5e: Three New Elf Cultivars 2

A recent conversation over in the social medias (join my Dungeons & Dragons 5e group in MeWe) with Cam Banks has me thinking about other takes on elves. In particular, he was looking for lower-magic elves with no cantrips or teleports. There’s not a lot of official content that points […]


Five Tips for Time Travel Stories

Quite a while back, a friend suggested that he’d like to see a post on how to run good time-travel stories in roleplaying games. I’m finally writing one – if not an exhaustive guide, then five pointers to make your time travel adventure as cool as possible. I’ve always loved […]


Instigator Characters and Self-Destructive Arcs 2

“Instigator” may not appear in the seminal Robin’s Laws of Good Game Mastering, but it has been recognized as a significant player type for a long time all the same. Today I want to talk about how GMs, and especially LARP game runners, can engage this kind of player, and a […]