Pipe dream time. These are games that we're planning, plotting, or possibly scheming. Maybe even writing bits of. But there's no guarantee any of these are actually going to happen. We did at least pull down the ancient ossified really stupid ideas from eight years ago that had built up on the previous version of this page, so this is only recent semi-stale stupid ideas at worst.
Everybody's writing boffer litform games these days, and we have so many ideas for them that they're going to be scattered throughout this page like candy. Like we spawn a new one practically every time we talk. Okay go: Boffer litform magical girls.
Come, all you who gather here round the Caves of Shadow, in this time when day and night stand in perfect balance, when the harvest ripens and the geese fly and all things must change towards winter and war.
Come, Speaker for the Republic of Cataja Del Sol. Come, new-crowned Demon Queen of Ashitun. Come, self-declared Emperor of Kritos reborn. Come, death-singers of the Skellywoods, raiders of Blood Ridge, stormriders who serve the Wraith of Salt in the deep desert. And come, all you that wander without home and hearth, and you who bring solace through the Golden Spiral.
We who wield shadow invoke this council and hold this festival. Let trade and creation flourish. Let duelists and chefs compete for the acclaim of nations. Let old friends be reunited and new friends be made. Let enemies have one last chance to negotiate before planning their winter campaigns. And let all who come here find what they seek and bring forth their true selves, for the last day of summer is a day of profound change.
The Last Day of Summer is an eight-hour, forty-four-player secrets & powers larp with themes of destruction and recreation, trauma and recovery, obsession and power, and other fun things. Expect plenty of chances for feelings, discovery, drama, and shenanigans, with the extended playtime for deeper roleplay and denouement. Gameplay will include both player-driven and GM-driven conflict. This game takes place in a post-post-apocalyptic science fantasy setting where social constructs of gender are typically loose to nonexistent. And yes, there will be a break for dinner!
There's also a side game, set in the same world as The Last Day of Summer, that's much less plotty and more feelings-and-characters-driven, and is pretty much an inpatient group therapy game except in a fantasy setting.
Speaking of "same world", The Carnival of Glories went so well that Tory has like four other ideas for games set in the same world. A Dance and the Dawn style game set at a high society dating ball in the D/s-is-service-and-devotion culture? A semi-amnesia ambiguous-reality scenes-based game of mages in training learning to walk through each other's minds? A small intimate game of a polycule wrangling their feelings through god-channeling? Heck, she wasn't even the one who suggested the insanity that would be the political larp set in the culture where your polycule is also your political power base, but then it siezed upon her. And is actually more comedy of manners and poly drama than political larp, but it all entwines around there anyway.
Remainder:
Once, you were six normal high school students. (Don't most stories begin this way?)
You meant well. (Doesn't everyone?)
You fucked up.
Most stories don't end with two of you dead and alien weapons of mass destruction pointed square at Earth.
No, I mean you really fucked up.
But maybe your story doesn't have to end this way.
When things were at their worst, the four of you remaining were contacted by a mysterious being, who claimed they could turn back time. You were given a second chance. But power demands sacrifice, and second chances all the more so.
The Remainders is freeform game which makes use of some meta-techniques. It contains semi-pervasive themes of suicide and PTSD, so caveat emptor.
IN A WORLD...WHERE EVERYBODY, SOMEWHERE, HAS A DESTINED SOULMATE...WHO THEY WILL RECOGNIZE THE MOMENT THEY SEE THEM...what is this actually like for people, personally and culturally? a.k.a. Tory and Lily have a lot of feelings about romantic soulmate tropes in fiction and ways in which they can be interesting.
Boffer litform magical ritual where everybody gets tortured and judged, since people like getting tortured in boffer games and Tory feels like she can accomodate that.
Lily is working on, or at least back-burnering, a ten-player game about initiation rites, guilt, holding people's lives your hands, destiny, and other fun things. Which may or may not include hallucinogenic drugs. On the parts of the characters. Or maybe Lily. We're not sure.
So one day we found ourselves sitting around and asking "how could we write a parlor murder mystery involving poncy people in a poncy house where characters are actually motivated to take the law into their own hands and become paranoid and shank-happy instead of poncing about solving a murder in a civilized fashion?"
We're reasonably sure we have a tight game outline. Though Tory made a typo when saving the notes file, so now we can't talk about it without giggling because it's called "muder at loser island."
So our friend Jamey is semi-single-handedly creating a genre of larps we call "dance'n'cry" (see Measure Twice or Free Skate if you've seen those go by), and Tory's wanted to write one for a while. And then her brain took the play-in-pairs thing from daemon games, since a few of those have cropped up, and combined those ideas: two of you are playing one character, one the socially acceptable face and one the repressed feelings, and the second is your dance double like you're in Jagged Little Pill.
Boffer litform that had a mutant child with that group therapy game somewhere back up there, which is a different group therapy game that involves fighting crunchies who make calls like Paralyze by Dissociation.
COOKING COMPETITION REALITY SHOW: THE LARP
a.k.a. the first second time we've ever considered writing a game with workshop character creation.
We do still know pretty much exactly how we'd go about writing a prequel to The Sound of Drums, though whether we ever will is another question.
We also know how exactly how we'd go about writing a prequel to A Crown of Hearts. It's a boffer game set during a Russian-fairy-tale-themed twilight of humanity. Surprise boffer litform entry!
Tory is also chewing on a game which is in no way a sequel to The Exponents of Love, and in fact takes place in an entirely different universe and genre. (Trekkish space opera, date some aliens, have brainsex.) But very similar structure and vibes.
So something we love doing when we have a group of characters we're analyzing (usually a fandom lol) is think about what would happen if the same personalities were born into each other's lives. Like character A had character B's parents and upbringing and magical powers, and so on. It brings up a lot of interesting nature vs. nurture questions and can lead to some really fun AUs.
We're still trying to figure out how to do that in a larp, but if we ever do pull it off, you'll sure know about it.
Litform boffer game that has kind of the same vibes of The Exponents of Love except with combat challenges and Ars Amandi as your elevator recharge.
It has also just occurred to us that an old-style locked-in-your-hotel-room Iron GM writing session could make for a great locked-room murder mystery, especially with some meta/freeform elements.
Excuse us, muder.
When thee is a child, thee is singular, alone, growing. When thee has grown enough, thee goes to the sacred circle and appeals to the high spirits, until one chooses thee and alights within thee and becomes one with thee. From then on, thee becomes complete. Thee becomes you. You are a greater being, and you carve the mask of your spirit, and you wear it until your dying day. And this is how you become an adult...
That was--years ago, though, wasn't it? You're already an adult, so why is your mind so empty? Why can't you remember who you were--both of you, all of you? These people around you...you feel as if you should know them, but you don't, and your masks lie at your feet, your faces naked in your shame, and you can't even remember which one was yours...
The Twelve Masks of Autumn is an amnesia game with no set characters, where your actions and choices in-game determine what you remember and who you become.
So there's an entire subgenre of litform boffer game that is "it's cyberpunk and you're doing a raid on this evil facility that various of you have painful ties to." Which is to say there are three of them, but that's not an insignificant percentage of the genre. Tory was contemplating how to take that same schtick and make it work in a fantasy setting, and since she's also been playing Baldur's Gate 3, the obvious answer is "vampire castle." And let's focus on the important part: not only can we traumatize a lot of people, but the soundtrack would SLAP.
Tory still reserves the right to write her idea for a serious horde game, which is to say probably the most fucked-up and trauma-ridden game she'd ever write, because in her opinion, the way to do a serious horde game is a truth and reconciliation committee.
Litform boffer horror one where a bunch of college students get sucked into a nightmare realm and get to sacrifice pieces of their soul for power. Like you do.
Weekend-long time-loop game. Your characters are bouncing back through the same stretch of time, again and again. Only each time they're different, because the entire pre-game continuity is a Chrononauts timeline, and chunks of your character sheets are the cards. Oh, and the way to flip cards involves murder.
Excuse us, muder.
And, to combine literally every repeating theme on this list, there's also the boffer litform timeloops game where you're in a muder maze.