My son is turning 13 next month and wants a fantasy-themed LARP for his birthday of about 14 kids (ages 8-14). This is something we would run ourselves at our house or local park, so we’re not looking for a LARP event in our area.
Most of the kids have done some tabletop RPG, and we did a murder mystery for his last birthday, but this would be our first LARP. So, a rules-light system is preferable.
I’d be grateful for any system/scenario recommendations!
I’m really interested in this because I think the scene lacks an accessible line between the regimented boffer combat of the SCA and the abstracted rock-paper-scissors resolution of Instant RPG…and I’d love to offer a simple, safe LARP in the park outside our convention.
So far, I’ve found this link but I’m sorry that I’m not offering anything here you couldn’t find yourself:
https://mylarpworld.com/how-to-start-roleplaying-and-larping-with-your-kids/
After doing some more research we couldn’t find anything that fit my son’s requirements. So he and I brainstormed a bit. We’ve landing on a flavor of Capture the Flag with some additional mechanics layered on top, grounded in a fantasy campaign world he developed. I’ll post the rules as we flesh it out further, and then an event report (his birthday is early June) once we’re done.
Good choices! Good luck with it, looking forward to hearing more.
Try Freeform Games?
While they’re pitched as “murder mystery party games”, this is branding for the mundanes. They’re larps, written by larpers. They’re intentionally simple, usually light-hearted, and have good information on the logistics of running.
I’m aware of parents who have written larps for their kids, and they’ve tended to be one part treasure hunt with NPCs, one part live combat. Unfortunately, they didn’t write everything down for publication or sharing…
My game Superhero Bakery doesn’t exactly match your need, but it gets played every year at Camp Nerdly by kids of all ages and is always popular. They run it in the commercial kitchen and actually bake cookies and cakes while playing. It is very silly.
It’s not what I’m looking for, but it looks awesome. I’ll definitely find an excuse to play this… I mean, to get my kids to play this.
PS: I’ve only just learned about Camp Nerdly through John Sheldon’s Twitter. It was too late for us to sign up this year, but I hope we’ll make it next year!
Friends, for the sake of closure, I’m posting the rules for a game my son and I developed. We’ll play it at the local park. It’s capture the flag with heavy modification and a homebrew theme injected. Of course, I’d be honored and grateful for your feedback. Take a look at the rules here:
Did we miss any glaring holes/cheats?
Is the balance between the two sides OK?
Any suggestions for how we referee this thing (which I acknowledge will be total chaos)?
This looks like a great deal of fun!
My one comment is that it took me, an adult, several reads to understand that maimed and wounded were totally different conditions, with different causes, signals, and escape clauses. I wonder if the kids will experience the same confusion? It’s possible a name and flavor change for one of the conditions would help disambiguate them. What if wounded were frozen, instead?