The Larp

Larp (live-action roleplaying) is a collaborative roleplaying experience acted out by the players, often while in costume or props. Players are usually in character for the majority of the event. It's similar to immersive theatre, except everyone present is participating; there is no audience in most larps.

A player character (PC) is a character acted out by a participant. 

A non-player character (NPC) is a character acted out by a staff member.

Further reading

• What is LARP? by Lizzie Stark at Leaving Mundania

• What is Nordic LARP? by Lizzie Stark at Leaving Mundania (Note: While The Once and Future Court is not a Nordic larp, it does largely meet the descriptions in this article, thus making the article a great introduction to The Once and Future Court's larp style.)

• Larp Glossary at Intercon X

The Court of Camelot is reborn throughout the ages, lifetime after lifetime, with all its fractured bonds. Now it gathers once more, drawn together by dreams, invitations, and the whisper of hidden memories.  

You’ve always had the indescribable sense of something missing, a feeling of not quite fitting into the modern era. But then—strange dreams of battles, castles, and sorcery invaded your sleep. Intrusive personality shifts and uncharacteristic behavior disrupted your relationships. Foreign emotions and impossible memories from a bygone age of knights and noble ladies interrupted your ordinary life. And somehow, those memories bore an odd resemblance to the legends of Camelot and King Arthur’s knights of the Round Table. 

 Recently, a curious invitation arrived—one that only made sense if the sender knew. It’s uncanny enough to provide a glimmer of hope that you don’t have to keep living like this: disoriented, unsettled, haunted. 

 The Court gathers each lifetime to make a choice: renew their age-old bonds and memories, or forget and return to a quiet mundane life. But this lifetime is different. This time, the choice to Remember or Forget may be permanent.  

Will you take up the mantle of the past or shed it for a quieter eternity? Is it possible to mend the old wounds between comrades-in-arms, star-crossed lovers, and sorcerers, or is King Arthur’s Court ever fated for tragedy? 

• Pre-written characters. Players fill out a Casting Survey. They are matched with a 6-12 page character sheet to accommodate their preferences and the needs of the game as much as possible. From there, players will work with staff and other players during pre-game workshops to further develop their connections with other player characters. 

  • Modern character gender, sexuality, etc may not match that of the character’s past life, and preferences for this can be indicated in the casting form. Character roles will be cast and distributed before the larp.

  • You do not need to be knowledgeable about Arthuriana to play, though it may enhance your experience. A list of wholly optional source material readings that are relevant to your character will be provided on your character sheet.

• Pre-game workshops. Workshops are part of the structure of the game and are included in the schedule. All players must attend pre-game workshops in order to participate. 

• Collaborative storytelling. Event staff will play the characters that are hosting the event and will provide the framework of the story, but players will develop the bulk of the interpersonal story together. The majority of the larp emerges from the conflicts and conversations driven by the player characters.

This larp is...

• For players over 18 years old, due to mature themes and content.

• Relationship-centered and player-driven.

• Designed for high emotion and interpersonal drama.

• Negotiation-based and rules-light. Players pre-negotiate character relationships and some scenes with open communication.

• Queer. The queer subtext in the source material is highlighted and amplified in this larp. Gender identity is a significant element of many people's play.

• Mid-transparency. Players are given a lot of information that their characters do not have, and the event plot is laid out ahead of time, but there are still a few secrets on character sheets and in the storyline. Players do not have access to character sheets other than their own.

• High autonomy. Players can choose their character's story outcome and co-create their own experience. Players have responsibility for their own story choices. 

• Likely to end in a bittersweet way. Even if your character has a happy ending, other characters around you may have tragic endings, and their fates may be out of your control.

• Filled with complicated relationships. Almost all Arthurian romantic relationships involve some element of infidelity, tragedy, love triangles/webs, abuse, or unrequited love. 

This larp is not...

• Competitive; there is no win/lose condition, and there is no clear "right" or "wrong" answer or outcome.

• Light-hearted; there are no happy, untraumatized characters by the end of the Arthurian source material. All characters will have at least some element of tragedy, angst, or trauma in their backstory.

• A problem-solving experience; there are no puzzles, there are very few secrets, and there are minimal non-relational problems to solve.

• Focused on epic quests, swashbuckling adventures, or combat; this is an emotion-forward, relationship-focused story.

  • While the Holy Grail plays a part in the larp's setting, characters will not find, attain, connect to, or achieve the Grail during the game.

• A staff-driven plot; the focus of the plot is the relationships between characters, and thus it's largely created by players from the elements of their character sheet and negotiations with other players.

• Contemporary, modern Arthuriana. Arthurian literature is a giant pile of referential stories building on each other, written over the course of centuries. Characterization of Arthurian past lives in game may differ from the legends you’re familiar with due to the many different versions of the character in the literature. 

  • This is doubly true if your familiarity is related to Sir Thomas Malory's Le Morte d'Arthur, Tennyson's Idylls of the King, T.H. White's Once and Future King, or Marion Zimmer Bradley's Mists of Avalon.

  • If you're not familiar with Arthurian literature pre-Le Morte d'Arthur (Sir Thomas Malory), please know that it is far more queer and gender non-conforming than you might expect. 

Themes

• Belonging, kinship, and competing loyalties 

• Relationship rupture and repair 

• Past trauma (from battle, betrayal, abuse) 

• Grief, loss, and mourning 

• Destiny vs choice 

• Faith, belief, and skepticism 

• Memory (gained, lost, and its impact on identity)  

Content warnings

While you can opt out of certain content being in your character sheet, and we will highly prioritize opt-out requests when casting characters, you are still likely to encounter any or all of the below themes during the larp itself. You can always excuse yourself from a scene or conversation if it becomes too intense for you.

• Discussions of bigotry (mentioned in backstories, canon-typical gender dynamics, homophobia, and classism; in modern times, not as applicable but the historical backstory experience may come up in conversation) 

• Discussions of abuse (canonical, mentioned in backstories, may show up between characters in game if players have negotiated it) 

• Realistic simulations or descriptions of verbal aggression (e.g. cursing, shouting) and physical violence (canon-typical in backstories, may show up between characters in game if players have negotiated it) 

• Content involving suicidal ideation or self-harm (canonical, in backstories) 

• Content involving rape (canonical, in backstories only, opt-out of backstory content available but it may still come up in conversation with other characters) 

  • Please note that we will not cast any perpetrators of or enablers of sexual assault as player characters (PCs)

  • Also note: Two characters will be in-game as non-player characters (NPCs) played by staff; these characters canonically used magic to enable an off-stage NPC to commit sexual assault of an on-stage PC in the form of the bed trick

• Character histories may include canon-typical Christian themes, which may or may not play into modern incarnation portrayals

• Modern and Arthurian character histories may contain themes of faith and belief (in religion, magic, folklore, legend, and mythology)

• Additional possible content includes: adoption, alcohol consumption and abuse, arranged/forced marriage, being compared to one's abuser, being imprisoned/captured, being othered, being rescued, child abandonment, child loss, childhood neglect, family rejection or estrangement, foster system, guilt/shame, hallucinations-that-might-be-visions, housing insecurity, incest (unintentional), infanticide, infidelity, lack of autonomy, loss of limb, marital separation/divorce, parental death or illness, parentification, physical disability, purity shaming, religious conversion, social rejection, social masking, torture victim, unrequited love, victim-blaming, abortion (unlikely/incidental, but two characters volunteer at planned parenthood)

The Safety Policies document (forthcoming) elaborates further on the above content warnings.

The genders of the Arthurian past life and the modern incarnation may not match. Sometimes this may involve dysphoria pre-written into the character sheet; other times it’s left open to player choice as to how it impacts the character.   

When Arthurian memories return, characters are likely to refer to other characters by the gender, pronouns, and names that they were known by in their Arthurian lifetime. Characters will be grappling with, reconciling, sharing, and asserting their own identities with one another as their Arthurian past selves surface and mix with their modern selves.  

This may lead to an experience of being misgendered and is part of the game design. If you are uncomfortable with this possibility, please request a character whose modern gender and Arthurian gender match each other. There will be an option for this in the Casting Survey.  

Due to the nature of mixing past and present lifetimes, identities, and relationships, pronouns will not be listed on nametags.   

We will provide blank labels as an option for anyone who would like to write down a pronoun set and attach it to their nametag, and you are of course welcome to wear your own pronoun pin or label if you have one.

Safety and calibration techniques

• The door is always open; players are welcome to leave the larp space or larp at any time. There is a Sanctuary space available for a quiet break. Safety staff will be available for safety purposes, to collaborate around calibration, and to aid with navigating difficulties that arise during play. 

• OK check-in, which can also be used for calibration purposes (pre-emptive thumbs-up to indicate willingness to increase the intensity of a scene, or pre-emptive wavy-hand to indicate that you’re at your limit of intensity) 

• Lookdown/bow-out, which can also be used for calibration purposes (a brief shading of the eyes to indicate that you’d like to “pass” on the content being offered to you by your scene partners) 

• “Game Halt” to stop everything, freeze/pause everyone in the vicinity and check in with what’s happening; this is especially used for safety issues of any kind. Say "3, 2, 1, game on" to resume play.

• Fist-on-head as an out-of-game hand signal to speak out-of-character.

Game mechanics

The “Let me clarify” mechanic of the Accelerant system will be utilized to communicate when something is factual out-of-game as well as in-game without breaking character, such as, “Let me clarify: please talk to Merlin or Vivienne in order to access the Cauldron of Memory” to indicate that players should talk to the Storyteller characters before engaging with the prop. 

"Remember when" is an improvisation approach to building a shared memory. If someone says “remember when…” that’s an invitation to build a memory together using yes-and, such as:  

• Merlin: Vivienne, remember when you turned me into a tree? For three decades? 

• Vivienne: That’s because you didn’t learn your lesson when I turned you into a rock.  

Recognition: Nametags will have symbols on them. If a symbol on your nametag matches the symbol on another character’s nametag, you have a sense of recognition with that person, even before your memories return - you might feel drawn to them, or have a nagging sense that you’ve met them before. You can’t quite place who they are or how you know them until your Arthurian memories return in the opening ritual. 

Cauldron of Memory: A bowl sits by the water station. Take a drink of water and scry into the bowl, a cauldron connected to Vivienne’s Lake, and the Lake will show you what you need to see. Sometimes it will require multiple people to be present before it will show you anything; you will see names floating across its surface, and once all those people are in attendance, the Lake will show you all the relevant memories.  

• • Out-of-game, there are envelopes with names on them. When all the characters with the relevant names are present at the Cauldron, open the envelope and share the contents with everyone. Please move away from the Cauldron to process the experience / roleplay about it so that other players can use the Cauldron after you. 

Crystal Cave: A circle of crystals provides a space to connect to Merlin’s Crystal Cave. Meditate within it along with another person or a small group, and you can share the visceral experience of a memory together.

• • Out-of-game, this is a memory you craft together through improvised storytelling (you can use the “remember when” mechanic, negotiate it out of game beforehand, or act it out in-game as if it’s recurring in the moment while you are in the Crystal Cave). These memories are not provided by gamerunners, but rather fully improvised and co-created by players.

  • Note: The description or in-game conceit for this mechanic is subject to change based on venue configuration (we may use a  Chapel instead).

Dueling Ring: A space to duel one another under the eye of a Marshal.

• • Out-of-game, you can duel one another in the dueling ring with the provided foam or latex swords. Make sure a Marshal is present. Marshals are represented by a white nametag ribbon.

Spiced Sensuality: Fruit and cloves arrayed on a table provide an opportunity for courtship. Make a pomander by studding a fruit with cloves and offer it to your intended. 

• • Out of game, sharing clove-studded fruit (or vegetables) is the mechanic for representing intimacy (sexual or nonsexual). 

The Once and Future Court is primarily based on the Vulgate Cycle, also known as the Lancelot-Grail (written c. 1210-1235). This is not required reading and is presented only to credit the source material.

• • Vulgate vol I

  • Vulgate vol II

  • Vulgate vol III

  • Vulgate vol IV

Additional influences include:

• • The Post-Vulgate Cycle (c. 1230-1240)

    • Vulgate vol IV, including Post-Vulgate pt 1

    • Post-Vulgate pt. 2

  • Culhwch ac Olwen (c. 11th-12th century)

  • Sir Thomas Malory’s Le Morte d’Arthur (c. 1485), referenced minimally

Written by: Dani Higgins

Designed by: Dani Higgins, Mina Milk

With contributions from: 

• Devorah H. Clements: Fisher King PNPC design, dueling mechanics, and assistance with so much brainstorming and troubleshooting.

• Tory Root: Wrote several Cauldron of Memory memories in the scenario version (adapted for the 2-day version), assistance with brainstorming, and enthusiastic support. 

• Hannah Lipsky: Corrected heraldic errors, created heraldry art for several of the characters.

Special thanks to:

• Jamey Patten, whose beautifully written larp Measure Twice inspired the ritual opening/closing of the larp, how to establish stakes and connection at the very beginning, and showed me what character sheets could be.

• CharonsBudgetPsychopomp, whose Arthurian fanfiction series Took My Boat Down to the Hotel Road was the original inspiration for the core concept of The Once and Future Court larp.

• All the players of the scenario version (Intercon V, Summer Larpin’ 2024, BeCon 2024, Tapestries 2025) who played their hearts out, gave feedback that allowed the scenario version to be polished to a high sheen, and provided such enthusiasm as to make a 2-day version worth trying.

• Playtesters of the 2025 Once and Future Court 2-day playtest, whose participation and feedback led to so many improvements, and who showed that a 2-day version was a viable option.

• Mina Milk, whose support, collaboration (hours upon hours of phone and video calls and in-person sessions), and brilliant portrayal of the Lady of the Lake made this larp possible.

• Tory Root, who is largely responsible for the 2-day version existing thanks to a mutual challenge. I did my part; you now owe me a 2-day version of Carnival of Glories!

• The Arthurian Theatre discord server for a font of resources, memes, entertainment, and deep discussions of characters and themes in Arthuriana.

• L of The Arthurian Preservation Project for tireless, extensive archival work with Arthurian literature and media.