Je ne l'ai pas fait exprès, by Lily Benderskaya
You, Marie Antoinette, are dead.
Once you were queen of France. Then the Revolution happened and, well, we all know how that went.
Now you find yourself in a rather plebeian sitting room with five identical strangers and a dilemma.
Who is the real Marie Antoinette? Which story will be told?
Je ne l'ai pas fait exprès is a LARP about arguing and finding common ground, about the intersections of personal identity and the stories others tell about you. It strongly benefits from the players' willingness to tell their stories and spill their secrets. It is very, very loosely inspired by the Marlow/Moss musical Six.
Content warnings for this game include the discomfort of being perceived as somebody very different than who you are (there’s probably a word for that in German!), identity crises, potential discussion and perhaps judgement of sexual history, and being aware of your own grisly death and the deaths of your loved ones. And false accusations of incest. ...Thanks, history.
"I am not an Austrian spy."
"I am not an Austrian spy."
"I do not wish to be remembered as an Austrian spy."
- Marie Antoinettes
So, Tory and I saw Six at the A.R.T., and it was cool. And then Tory dared me to finally write a solo LARP like I've promised, and she would, in turn, write Exponents. I feel like I got the better part of the bargain. This game's run twice, once in our living room and once at an event that we couldn't even make it to due to illness, and can pretty easily run again with minimal cleanup.
December 14, 2019, at a private residence in Watertown, MA.
September 17, 2022, at a larp day in Canton, MA.
Je ne l'ai pas fait exprès is currently a game for six players (all characters are women) which runs for about two hours, in one small room, under the direction of one GM. Average character sheet length is under two thousand words, and players are encouraged to Wikipedia-surf for further historical context. It could probably be cast at the door in a longer time slot.
The game is runnable with some updates. It does not have any GM information written at the moment.