This page is for me to talk about the smaller LARPs I’ve written and co-written.
Memory Palace
- not yet available
Players: 6-33 | Runtime: 4 hours | Intensity: 2-3/5
This was my entry for the Golden Cobra Challenge 2022.
Memory Palace LARP by Olivia Montoya
The Monarch of Memories is holding a ball.
All of the monarchs attend.
None can remember, no, nothing at all,
Before the last ball reached its end.
Ten years of alliances, and enemies at war,
At last in the same jeweled palace.
Ten years of memories that bond and that mar
Love and friendship, hatred and malice.
A chance to change, make amends, and become someone new.
Leave behind your past woes and mistakes,
As the Monarch of Memories remembers for you,
Lest your histories repeat in your wakes.
Confront your past selves, monarchs, and choose your domains,
So the cycle continues for new ten year reigns.
Memory Palace is a dreamy fantasy LARP about identity and memory designed to be played in a proximity-based video chat platform like Gather.town where you can build interactive 2D environments and, most importantly, embed Google Docs into specific locations.
Right now, this game is still in playtesting.
Harry Potter Book Club Reunion (tentative title)
- not currently available
Players: 8 | Runtime: 2 hours | Intensity: 3-4/5
This game was co-written with a group as a part of Peaky Midwest 2022.
This is a game where you play a group of queer folks who trapped at the airport after a high school reunion where they failed to reunite. Having bonded around a Harry Potter book group in high school, you end up discussing your complicated feelings about the series now that it hasn’t aged well and the creator has become massively transphobic.
Right now, this game is still in revisions.
#BossBabe
Players: 4-7 PCs 4+ NPCs | Runtime: 3 hours | Intensity: 3-4/5
This was my entry for the Golden Cobra Challenge 2021.
#BossBabe is a game about multi-level marketing (MLM), and specifically how MLM companies prey on women’s hopes and fears and push them to be horrible to each other and their friends and families. It’s also about how MLM companies often operate like cults. This is before even getting into the financial impact of MLMs on the people who buy into them. Essentially, #BossBabe is about the road to hell being paved with good intentions… well, aside from the intentions of the people at the very top of the pyramid.
The game is played over Discord, with a combination of video chats and text chats, using Discord’s roles, permissions and different types of channels to simulate video calls, livestreams, social media, and group chats.
Right now, this game is still in playtesting.
Livescreamer
Players: 3-11 | Runtime: 1-3 hours | Intensity: 2-4/5
Livescreamer is an American Freeform horror LARP about livestreaming, playable over Zoom or any other video chat software that allows you to simultaneously video and private text chat. It’s inspired by the movie Unfriended, the board game Betrayal at House on the Hill, and Twitch livestreaming culture.
Right now, this game is still in playtesting.
Prisoners of Memory
Prisoners of Memory is a game about the price of immortality, and making difficult decisions with limited information. Characters will question everything about their lives as they regain access to forgotten memories.
In a world where medical science has advanced to the point of granting physical immortality with a single procedure available to all, but where understanding of the brain lags behind, memory is precious. It’s been hundreds of years since immortality became available to everyone, and hundreds of years since the discovery that the human mind can’t handle hundreds of years of memory. As a consequence, old memories begin to fade. Eventually, you can only remember the past ten years or so. Humanity has adapted. Society has adapted. But have you?
You are someone who lives in this society, going about your life as usual, when you receive a very old-looking letter in the mail, containing an invitation, a key, and coordinates. When the time comes you travel to that location and find an isolated cabin, and 5 strangers. Or at least they look like strangers to you… All six of you got an invitation. And based on what you discover inside the cabin, it seems that your past selves had something to hide.
Prisoners of Memory is a digital LARP for 6 players. Characters are pre-written. There is about 2.5 pages of reading per player during game. Runtime is approximately 90 minutes.
Prisoners of Memory is a game I co-wrote for Peaky Midwest 2021, which was run online. I was on a team with Elisa Ford and Jakob Weisblat. It was written over the course of three days, and may or may not be expanded and run again in the future. It’s been playtested once. The world of the game is inspired by my short visual novel, We Met Once, Perhaps in a Dream.
Little Saucer on the Prairie
You’ve all been pushed to the edge by the government, a member of a family in crisis. But with hard work, and a little luck, you can be safe and happy. This is a 2-hour game for eight players and at least 2 GMs with strictly timed 20 minute periods, one main puzzle, one main mystery, family conflict, and probably aliens. This game takes place in two locations, represented by two Discord rooms, which becomes integrated into one space during the course of the game.
Little Saucer on the Prairie is a game I co-wrote for the Iron GM 2021 LARP writing competition. I was on a team with Arthur Chu, Gaylord Tang, and Vivian Abraham. It’s very hard to blurb because of spoilers. There are two groups of players who each have very different opinions on the game’s main situation. It was written over the course of 24 hours, and may or may not be improved and run again in the future. We didn’t win any prizes, but players still enjoyed our game!
I created a Discord bot for the game that, when given an audio file and the name of a voice/video channel in Discord, will join that channel, play the sound, and then leave the channel.
The Confluence
Up until very recently, you thought you were a normal person. Then something changed inside you. Something woke up. Now you’re different, stronger, able to do impossible things, know impossible knowledge. You don’t know why, though. All you do know for sure, is that one day shortly after these discoveries, you felt powerfully drawn to somewhere in your world. You traveled there, only to find a window in the fabric of reality. Something felt so, so familiar about this place, about these circumstances. You approached the window, and through it you saw others like you, but could not reach them physically, only through your voice. That is where you stand now, drawn to the confluence of universes. Maybe now you’ll finally have some answers.
The Confluence is an American Freeform game where you play lonely gods that have recently regained their memories of what they are. They meet at a confluence of worlds that only occurs once every 100 years. As memories come to the surface, they realize that they have a terrible choice to make. This is a game about memory, love, loneliness, guilt, immortality, and making difficult decisions.
This was my entry for the Golden Cobra Challenge 2020. It’s a four page LARP intended to be played online, and uses a shared online deck of cards and has mechanics for players editing each other’s character sheets.
Content warning: death/murder, existential horror, relationship problems, character to character antagonism, player generated content
Tributaries
Tributaries is a scene-based roleplaying game following the story of a “spotlight character” and featuring a definitive outcome established before play begins. Players use cards to establish the outcome and several scenes that lead into the endpoint. Cards are also used by players filling the roles of side characters in each scene to influence how the scene plays out. The scenes leading up to the outcome are referred to as “tributaries” because they are like smaller rivers flowing into each other, converging at a confluence influenced by all of them.
This game was written as a part of a team (with Lauren Lenzen, Claire Cummins, and Jacki Trelawny) for the Clitical Hits Sex Education Game Jam in 2022.
Forgiveness
Forgiveness is a short experimental LARP (live action roleplaying game) playable in a 15 minute to 30 minute period (this may need to be adjusted depending on player styles.) There are three player characters and one NPC. These three people find themselves sitting together in an otherwise empty room. They remember nothing of who they are, how they got there, and have no memories whatsoever. A glowing humanoid entity enters the room. To say much more would spoil the story, but be aware that this game is written in such a way that it will likely provoke in-character arguments about religion.
Content warning: death, religion, violent fundamentalism, murder, harsh interactions, sex work and violence against sex workers, playing as a horrible person (This game will probably be edited to remove some problematic content.)
This game was written quickly as an assignment for a Game Studies class in Fall 2013, and has never been playtested as of the time of upload.
Double-Crossed
I wrote this with several other people as a part of a 2 week LARP writing boot camp. The plot revolves around two parallel universes colliding and characters meeting their doubles from very different universes, one ruled by science and one by magic. They have to figure out which of their universes they can save.
Blood Captives
I wrote this with several other people as a part of a 2 week LARP writing boot camp. The plot revolves around space vampires who traffick humans as a source of blood and make ghouls of their “favorite” historical figures, all while trying to hide their dirty deeds from space cops.