Approved for release by the Golden Cobra Committee
Here's a list of the games submitted in 2023. Links are available below.
https://nordiclarp.org/wiki/Harry_Harrold
https://www.larpx.com/
Styles of Play: Freeform larp, Committee Larp, Streaming/Online Face to Face, Video/Transmedia, Hottub larp
After their spaceship crashes onto a planet, some of the remaining passengers and crew form a committee to discuss what to do next. They meet regularly in the Captain’s bathtub to decide.
But these lucky survivors are perhaps not ideally suited to rebuilding civilisation…
Tags: satirical, soft-hearted, sci-fi
Styles of Play: Freeform larp, Larp, Solo Play
Absolute Destiny Apocalypse is a solo LARP about traversing dangers and obstacles, via the medium of strenuous physical exercise and the thoughts of people who inspire you to keep going, in search for the thing that will let you revolutionize the world. Or, it’s about being a Black Rose duelist competing for the Rose Bride, also being a knight on a quest for the Holy Grail, and climbing a whole bunch of stairs.
Tags: revolutionary girl utena, knights, exercise, mysticism
Styles of Play: Larp, Chat/Message
3 player role playing game about the fractured mind of an artificial intelligence.
Tags: artificial intelligence, chatroom
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1hBq_jK62u-ZEI2z63aEa8qXOIoYBUk3SSdYXNvrtQmQ/edit?usp=sharing
Styles of Play: Freeform larp, Committee Larp
All of Earth is now an archeological site and you are scholars of how these ancient people played. Recently, during a dig the largest cache of fragments of a type of activity called “larp” have been found. You have been brought together to study this cache, decide what it tells society about this form of play, and, if you can, piece together the fragments into a more or less cohesive whole. All while making sure your own pet theory is the one that is correct, of course.
Tags: Academia, Meta, Archaeology, Larps about Larp
Styles of Play: chamber larp, LAOG
A wealthy American family has got a dark secret. For almost two hundred years it prospers thanks to the
blessing of the Beast. Once every 20 years, six young members of the family perform a gloomy ritual. In
a remote, family chapel, each of them fucks the Beast. Once they are done, they vote who will carry the
Beast’s offspring. The chosen one deeply changes, both physically and mentally. That is the price. But
no one ever opposes. Breaking the pact would unleash the wrath of the Beast. A risk not worth taking.
No one prepares you how it is to fuck a beast. No one told you how you will feel afterward.
Tags: supernatural, family, drama
Styles of Play: Freeform larp, Larp, Streaming/Online Face to Face
A free-form conversational game about themed dining and existential dread for 3-8 players
Tags: dolls, conversation, surreal
Styles of Play: Freeform larp, Larp, Arts & Crafts
This larp is about a group of medieval nuns who are told that in five days their abbey will be blessed with a visit from a traveling priest and miracle worker. The priest is making his way through the plague-ridden countryside to deliver a sermon. As they anticipate his benediction, the nuns ruminate on their feelings about themselves, the others, God, and the arrival of the vagabond priest, which has awakened in them unprecedented fears and desires.
Tags: nunsploitation, historical, dream visions
https://linktr.ee/coral.amarelo
Styles of Play: Freeform larp, Larp, Committee Larp, Pervasive Game/Public Play
It's hot. A particularly hot day, in the middle of a heat wave. An open-air meeting:sanitary measures to contain the spread of the disease. Disease, in fact, is the theme of this World Trade Organization meeting. The World Health Organization should be discussing the topic - and it must be, elsewhere - but everyone says that money, investment, resources are needed. You, holders of these resources, were compelled to meet and come up with a letter of intent, a list of ten proposals that aim to address the health alert.
Tags: Epidemic, WTO, Opression
Styles of Play: committee larp
THE CONCLAVE OF 1492 is a historical committee larp that delves into the intricate world of the Papal Conclave of 1492. As cardinals, players must navigate political intrigue, moral dilemmas, and historical religious practices. The fate of the Church hangs in the balance as they gather to select the next Pope. Each cardinal harbors secrets, alliances, and ambitions, making this game a compelling exploration of faith and power. Based on Beastfucker.
Tags: Historical, Political Intrigue, Moral Dilemmas, Religion
https://beatingthebinary.itch.io/
https://ben-ojanen.itch.io/
Styles of Play: Freeform larp, Larp, Tabletop/Pencil & Paper, Streaming/Online Face to Face
A comedic freeform LARP about child care and cryptids
Tags: humor, child care, cryptids
Styles of Play: Freeform larp, Larp, Chat/Message, Streaming/Online Face to Face
Eating Oranges in the Shower 🍊is a remix of The Bathhouse by Rex England. It is about the queer joy that can be found in online communities and the connections that can be found in stories on those platforms. Players will begin with their characters bonding the way they know best - debating recent reddit r/AITA and r/relationships posts. In the middle of the game, players will find out about the r/ShowerOrange subreddit dedicated to eating oranges in the shower. They will then go off and take a shower - during which they will eat an orange. They will then return and talk about how they found the experience.
Tags: reddit, oranges, showering
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1CrFUoAsakhh82j-MAfXQLbjyAfOlktsGZxGXiAsNwgs/edit?usp=drivesdk
Styles of Play: Larp
Five amateur paranormal investigators must find the most optimal route to escape a haunted manor.
Tags: Spooky, Timed, Debate
https://cayoung2k03.wixsite.com/christian-young
https://jacoblee.journoportfolio.com/
Styles of Play: Freeform larp, Larp, Horde Larp
Praise be! A God has descended upon Earth, and They are looking for something to represent Earth in their official "Collection of Non-Godly Things." They have selected a handful of devout fans to debate amongst each other and convince their new God that one of their fandoms of interest is definitely the best thing ever, or at least the best thing on Earth.
Tags: Debate, Fandoms, Non-Christian, Comedy
Styles of Play: Streaming/Online Face to Face, Zero Player
Fight Truck, but with social distancing.
Tags: queer, punk, political, satire
Styles of Play: Freeform larp, Larp
The world has ended some time ago, in a whimper. The last candle has been blown out. But the story goes on.
You are Potentialities: shadows of things to come, tasked with reimagining the next world and becoming part of it.
What will you make of this new world for humankind? Will you keep the fire burning?
"Fire from ashes" is a sequel/remix of "Burial by Ash" by Sadia Bies (Golden Cobra 2019), changing the tone to optimistic and using the ingredient destruction & rebirth from Golden Cobra 2017.
Tags: freeform, larp, hope, fire
Styles of Play: Freeform larp, Larp, Committee Larp, Chat/Message
A young, unmarried woman in your community, Carla Brambles, went missing a few weeks ago. This past Sunday, at church, she reappeared, naked, in a brilliant flash of light in front of the pulpit. You are members of a ladies’ prayer group at the First Baptist Church in town. You have some opinions about The Incident. Your goal is to convince everyone that your opinions are the right ones, because they definitely are.
A Committee LARP for 4+ players about religion, small politics, and, of course, the inevitability of human connection and upheaval. Optimized for in person play with a second scenario included for online play.
Tags: Religion, Feelings, Relationships
Styles of Play: Freeform larp, Larp, Committee Larp, Tabletop/Pencil & Paper, Letter Writing, Arts & Crafts
A great rabbi once said the gates of prayer are sometimes open, and other times they are closed. But who guards those gates? In this game, you’ll portray someone who serves a god or other mythic figure. Your job, along with your team, is to sort through a series of requests for your master. Only one of today’s petitions might make it to the Big Boss, but which will it be? And what rituals will your team prescribe for each petitioner?
The Gates Are Open is a freeform larp for 3 or more players. You can play it in-person as a silent committee / note-passing / gesture game, or remotely through the mail. It’s loosely based on "Dear God" by Halden Ingwersen, an elegant and poignant game that has lived rent-free in my head ever since I first read it. I hope this game preserves some of the reverence and mystery of the original.
The rules include a recreational version similar to the original game, and a ritual version you might play with your coven, chavurah, or other working group.
Tags: epistolary, silent, committee, mythic
https://thatonedumbguy.itch.io/
https://docs.google.com/document/d/14jYbSmtDLF7apQGeEC_tj2hSvPNmRpMt6cPT2KAMVyk/edit
Styles of Play: Freeform larp, Tabletop/Pencil & Paper, Performance (ie song, lipsynch, dance etc.)
4-8 people will take on the role of anthropomorphic goats who work a typical 9-5 office job. Every day on the job they will do their best to spread rumors that they know about the other coworkers. In between days promotion and demotions will occur which will only fuel the fire of these rumors until everyone has an intervention to argue the truth.
Tags: Rumors, Office, Secrets, Goats
https://doi.org/10.3998/mpub.12387128
Styles of Play: Freeform larp, Letter Writing, Chat/Message
In this collaborative creative writing game (netprov — networked, improvised role-play) on a threaded discussion platform, players experiment with AI image-making programs, but concentrate on the expressive, literary power of the verbal prompts they write. As language arts, image-making prompts are amazing! They are concentrated, evocative, use sentences, fragments, lists and non-sequiturs. In other words they are poetic (but don’t tell players that until later!). Come and write prompts with us! Join a community of prompt artists where you can collaborate and play! Join an art movement! Start an art movement!
Tags: Netprov, collaboration, creativity, community
Styles of Play: Letter Writing, Arts & Crafts
An epistolary game about relationships, distance and rocks.
Tags: Letter, Journaling, Rock
Styles of Play: Freeform larp, Larp, Pervasive Game/Public Play
Artificially-intelligent machines play Wigilia so they can better defeat the humans.
Tags: wigilia, simulation, sci-fi, broadcasting
Styles of Play: Freeform larp, Larp
It is the future. Humans are attempting to aid humanoid artificial intelligences into developing human-like personalities. At the same time, these robots seek to learn what it means to be human.
Tags: Serious, Interview, Robots
http://www.blackgreengames.com/
Styles of Play: Larp, Pervasive Game/Public Play, Journaling, Streaming/Online Face to Face, Solo Play, slow larp
Resistance fighters flee from their occupied homeworld, mourning lost relationships and dreaming of the future. Waiting in a space station on a sister planet. Features two person scenes, in present and flashback, as well as journalling.
Optionally includes Still Life (2014) by Wendy Gorman, David Hertz and Heather Silsbee, for parallel play by support/counter-players and/or a hack of After Life where you play ghosts inhabiting objects in a lost and found on the space station.
Tags: war, memories, grief, community, sci-fi
https://sites.google.com/view/heartiisoulstudios/home
https://heart-ii-soul-studios.itch.io/
Styles of Play: Freeform larp
A game about mistakes and the sometimes unresolved feelings of grief.
It’s Joseph’s birthday today, so Bonnie decided to surprise him with dinner at the upscale Italian restaurant, Separare, by renting out the entire restaurant. After the main course, the family decides to order torrone (a nougat confection with nuts) without knowing what it is.
The waiter is 16 years old and just started working the week prior. When the family asks the waiter if there are nuts in torrone, he tells them no, having confused torrone for tiramisu.
Joseph is deathly allergic to peanuts, and the next 20 minutes leading up to his consumption of the torrone are unknowingly his last moments. The fay invites the chef and waiter to sit with them to have a toast before they enjoy their dessert, which is the last moment of peace these people will have for a long time.
Tags: serious, grief, blame
Styles of Play: Freeform larp, Larp, Streaming/Online Face to Face, In-person or online
Last Steps on Mars is a near-future speculative hopepunk sci-fi game about a rescue mission to Mars whose primary objective failed. Includes elements of amnesia, scenes roleplayed in reverse chronological order. Lovingly inspired / adapted from "One Small Step" by Adam Flynn.
Tags: space, memories, reverse-time, humanism
https://dexposure.com/home.html
Styles of Play: Larp, Committee Larp
The vampire's deadliest adversary has always been other vampires, but recently it's been taken to a horrifying extreme. After all, vampire blood tastes the sweetest, right? In Last Vamp Standing, players take the roles of the last surviving vampires in the entire world, who have gathered to (hopefully) make peace. But not everyone wants that, and are here just to eliminate the competition. Dead players will take on the role of ghosts, infecting their attackers with the blood pacts they signed, along with ghostly whispered suggestions and angry demands. Last Vamp Standing is a bloody take on Small Monsters by Chad Wolf (winner of "Best Game for New Larpers" in 2019). However, instead of combining bodies peacefully, they battle for control - and the losers argue and conspire against their hosts!
Tags: vampire, blood, ghost
Styles of Play: Freeform larp, Larp
A larp about family, sobriety, and dropping quarters from your butt cheeks for 4-6 players, based loosely on my own game Wigilia and Alexis Rowland’s perfect game NecBromancer.
Tags: family, sobriety, quarters
Crowe Whitney (https://hexnoblesse.com/) Andrea Saravia Pérez (https://asaraviapt.wixsite.com/portfolio) Samuel Smyth (https://samsmyth.squarespace.com/) Armoni Boone (https://www.monihymn.com/)
Styles of Play: Freeform larp, Streaming/Online Face to Face, Solo Play
In this online LARP, you connect with friends and share stories from your very own mech. Through timed conversations you walk away with tales, memories and, potentially, a growing community in a chaotic world.
Tags: Mech, Social Sim, Conversational
https://agickler.myportfolio.com/
Styles of Play: Freeform larp, Larp, Streaming/Online Face to Face
A game where mortals debate which of their favors a god should grant.
Tags: Comedy, Debate, Arguing, Religion
Styles of Play: Freeform larp, Larp, Committee Larp
In a super hero universe there is the fundamental truth that there is no firm separation between human being and living weapon and there is nothing that can't be at the utter mercy of someone else who just happens to have the right genetics.
In this scenario about the powers of state, society and individuality the players take the role of a panel of genocidal AI, tasked with preserving society by determining who is too dangerous to live in a world where there are no good choices.
Tags: Metahuman, AI, Committee
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0BRLVSHKF
Styles of Play: Freeform larp
The Hathor Society has a mission: to bring peace to the restless souls of the deceased. At the stroke of midnight every Friday, a Medium (played by the facilitator) hosts the restless spirit in their body, allowing the Psychic Researchers (the other players) to make contact with the deceased's soul to discover who they were and what still binds them to this world. The ritual is very delicate because the deceased are often confused and irritable, so each psychic researcher participates remotely through an electronic device that also assists them in their investigations.
Tags: Memories, Grief, Investigation, Ghosts
Styles of Play: Larp, Chat/Message, Slow larp
A sequel to The Glimpse by Karolina Soltys, set a decade after the events of that game. Two players take on the role of Robin (the same person, but in differing realities), who has, once again, found a way of cross-reality communication. For 60 days, they both have access to an online notepad where they can talk - but after that point, it vanishes and the connection will be lost.
Tags: durational, intimate, identity
https://marinebiokitty.itch.io
Styles of Play: Freeform larp, Larp, Streaming/Online Face to Face, Periodic Play
An asymmetric game for 2 people about what is on the other side of the Looking Glass. Play in one shot, or over a series of nights, in person or over video call. Just be careful, you may not like what you find.
Tags: Psychological Horror, Escapism, Manipulation
Styles of Play: Freeform larp
A freeform larp for 4 to 6 people about the half-forgotten stuff of life where you play household tricksters called Junkkin, who hold a junk moot to swap items and memories from their humans' junk drawers.
Tags: junk, items, memories, tricksters
https://feelings-wave.itch.io/
Styles of Play: Freeform larp, Larp, Pervasive Game/Public Play
You are all cryptids, going about your days. Living as a cryptid is a pretty sweet deal. You get to hang out in the woods with your cryptid friends and watch the humans go about their days. In particular, the ones who come to the most beautiful places in your woods only to take pictures of themselves with their little picture boxes seem to have the most fun. You’d never tell your other cryptid friends this, but you secretly want to try taking pictures as well.
Luckily for you, today when you and your friends were out for a stroll, you bumped into a group of humans. While you didn’t get a chance to ask them what “like and subscribe” meant, they did leave their phones behind in their panic. It’s time to live your best cryptid influencer dreams. However, as a cryptid, you don’t know what goes into a typical social media post. You do know that you only show up in blurry and grainy photos, so that must be the key. Did you take a beautifully framed and focused shot? Get that nonsense out of here! Only the most unflattering selfies or the blurriest of landscapes will get likes for you and your friends alike.
Tags: hiking, cryptids, social media
https://metaparadox.itch.io/
https://www.oliviamontoya.com/
Styles of Play: Freeform larp, Larp, Chat/Message, Streaming/Online Face to Face
Stardust to Stardust is a LARP about death, grief, and possession by parasitic deities, in a weird sci-fi setting. Leave your shifting hive mind behind. The first death has severed you from your community, and only the second death remains. Or does it? Come to the Oasis and decide whether to accept a strange blessing.
Tags: death, grief, possession, transformation
https://nordiclarp.org/wiki/Karolina_Soltys
Styles of Play: Larp
A larp about cats sleepily pondering philosophical questions, and humans trying to herd them for a photoshoot. Inspired by the larp Still Life.
Tags: cats, philosophical questions, connection
Styles of Play: Larp
A larp about dealing with the fall of our civilization by talking to the plants who conquered the world, where you play the plants. And the humans on trial for our crimes against them.
Tags: Surreal, Houseplant, Tribunal
Styles of Play: Freeform larp, Larp, Performance (ie song, lipsynch, dance etc.)
A mostly silent game in which players practice environmental storytelling with their bodies while a couple other players wander through the ruins of the world.
Tags: quiet, environmental, exploratory, weird
Styles of Play: Committee Larp
Os samurais ajudaram os camponeses a derrotar os bandidos que queriam roubar a colheita. Mas os samurais sobreviventes querem continuar vivendo na vila salva. O jogo aborda o aumento do conflito de classes entre samurais e camponeses.
Tags: Política, samurai, luta de classes
Styles of Play: Freeform larp, Larp, Committee Larp
Your neighbour, Admiral Bang, is about to fire off their umpteenth 6 o'clock cannon blast within the hour. For the sake of your sanity and the neighbourhood at large, you must not let them.
Tags: Absurdist, Victorian, Fantastical Dramedy, Cannons
Styles of Play: Larp
Snoopy is dead and the Peanuts gang is in mourning
Tags: Silly, death, college
Approved for release by the Golden Cobra Committee