Two Giant Leaps is a LARP I wrote with Julian Blechner. Here’s more info about it:
Two alien species make first contact on a planet foreign to both of them, only to discover they have significantly different means of perception and ways of socializing. As a member of one of the species, you desperately need to find common ground. Both species have mastered technology necessary to safely interact physically without any fear of biological contamination. In a series of encounters, you will attempt to accommodate each other’s ways of thinking and interacting by creating a common form of movement and touch-centered communication.
Two Giant Leaps is a game about overcoming gaps between different ways of thinking, sensing, and socializing. The game utilizes simple, dance-like motions as improvised language. In between cross-species encounters, members of each species will be able to reflect, discuss, and plan. Through a sci-fi lens, players explore themes of human connection, social communication, and various types of empathy, performed with roleplay, movement, and platonic touch.
This game’s setting and play builds on lessons learned from disability and neurodiversity activism. It is for 6 to 16 players for about 3 to 4 hours, including the workshop and debrief. Players will be making physical touch in platonic ways, which will be practiced in the pre-game safety workshop. Social faux pas and miscommunications are a core part of the experience. The rules and workshop will include means for accommodating differences in physical ability. Default allowed touch includes hands, arms, shoulders, upper back, and side-to-side contact, and will be workshopped. Other types of touch are opt-in only and will be reviewed together. Species and characters will likewise be workshopped and created at game.
Two Giant Leaps was chosen and premiered at 2023’s Make a Scene! Scenario Festival. It has also run at Intercon V.
Content Advisories
This game uses sci-fi metaphor for neurodiversity and disability. No graphic or disturbing content is expected, nor should be part of game. Players will be expected to touch hands, arms, shoulders, upper back, and side-to-side contact, in a non-romantic way consistent with what one would expect at a social dance.