Alleged Entertainment is a Boston-area LARP writing collective I co-founded in 2003. The group has no central leadership body, but I have acted as the group's organizer as well as one of its de-facto public faces. I also set up and maintain its web site.
Intercon New England, along with its sister Intercons, is one of the foremost LARP conventions in America. In 2008, I was elected con chair for Intercon I, New England's twelfth Intercon. That year broke attendance records, topping 300 pre-registered members. We also held NEIL's first official Iron GM competition as well as the first-ever Thursday Thing, a day of panel discussions and workshops about LARP prior to the main convention.
In 2005 I started the BSCF LARP Conspiracy, a branch of Brandeis University's student gaming organization dedicated to LARP. The Conspiracy is set up to facilitate LARP events at Brandeis throughout the school year, as well as Festival of the LARPs, an annual convention held each Spring. I organized the first three Festivals, in 2006, 2007, and 2008, during which time it grew from 26 attendees the first year to 105 the third year. I left the Conspiracy in order to focus on running Intercon I when I was elected con chair.
Journey is a web application for creating and administering questionnaires. It features a user-friendly AJAX interface for creating questionnaires, the ability to style your questionnaire with custom HTML and CSS code, and a wide variety of question types to choose from. Questionnaire takers can fill out a questionnaire partially and return to it later, or (at your option) amend their responses after they've already submitted them.
Journey was purpose-built for creating casting applications for theatre-style LARPs, and is now one of the most popular solutions in its field.
Journey is written in Ruby on Rails, and is released under the GNU General Public License.
ProCon is an online event registration system featuring automatic waitlisting, hierarchical events, virtual domain support, and automatic generation of multiple schedules. It was designed for Festival of the LARPs 2007, and has been used by several conventions since then.
ProCon is written in Ruby on Rails, and is released under the GNU General Public License.
LarpML is a markup language for writing LARPs, and a production toolchain using XSLT and XSL:FO. The system features automatically switchable character genders, N-up or index card formatting, and highly flexible stylesheets. Many of Alleged Entertainment's LARPs and LARP books are written using LarpML.
An Alleged Entertainment LARP. Written by Susan Weiner, Vito D'Agosta, Nat Budin and Phoebe Roberts.
Some would call it the end of the world. It was certainly the most drastic change in human history - more devastating than the atomic bomb, and more revolutionary than the information age. The highly psychoactive "Resonance Virus" has swept the globe, leaving no-one uninfected. The bio-engineered disease distorts memory, dissipates ego, and has resulted in... in... you can't remember.
You know this place - this is the Pentagon, where politicos, military, and scientists have all gathered in the final days of the crisis.
What you can't remember is who you are, what you've done, and how the world came to ... this state. You look at the face of the person next to you, finding only a reflection of your own confusion.
Then, the memories flood in.
Resonance is an experimental amnesia/storytelling larp. You will play one of the few people instrumental in the end of the world, and you must determine what will rise from it. You will play out scenes leading up to the apocalypse, and your choices will not only reveal but determine who you were and what role you played.
An Alleged Entertainment LARP. Written by Viktoriya Fuzaylova and Nat Budin.
What do you want from your relationship? We all seek to find our other half, to experience trust and love and understanding from our partners. What do you do when trust is broken, when your partner seems more unreachable everyday, or when the pace of modern life simply does not allow time to really connect?
Join us at at the Harmony Quest Couples Retreat in the scenic hills of Central Massachusetts to get away from everyday distractions and focus on your relationship-its joys and difficulties.
Harmony Quest is an all-day retreat program for couples looking to create a stronger and deeper connection. Through our intensive approach to relationship counseling we aim to act as guides to those who find themselves at a crossroads in their relationship and as partners in the discovery of a more harmonious and intimate way of being together.
“Harmony Quest” is an experimental psychodrama LARP for 8 people. It involves an emotionally intense exploration of real relationship problems and will require players to maintain confidentiality and do a fair amount of self-disclosure. This is a game for players 18 and up only.
An Alleged Entertainment weekend-long LARP. Written by Susan Weiner, Vito D'Agosta, Nat Budin and Phoebe Roberts.
Everyone knows the history of the Civil War. The South seceded from the union but, defeated, was forced to rejoin. But what if things had gone differently?
Welcome to the world of The Labor Wars. The year is 1923. The continent is divided into seven nations. And in the Lone Star Republic, labor and management have been fighting a ground war for over a decade.
Respected politician Timothy Althaus has called a series of emergency meetings at his home. Althaus has invited the most important labor leaders, politicians, business owners, and mercenaries in a last-ditch attempt to end this war. But recent mysterious deaths, changes in leadership, and rumors of outside threats cast a pall over the negotiations.
Can the parties reach an amicable compromise? Or will this labor conflict destroy the Lone Star Republic?
An Alleged Entertainment LARP. Written by Susan Weiner, Vito D'Agosta, Nat Budin, and Joshua Sheena.
Why is this night different from all other nights?
The world is in turmoil. The waters are rising. Food is scarce. But still the traditions live on.
At the home of a controversial figure, thirteen friends gather to share a meal, to drink some wine, and to recall the story of the Exodus. Expecting the police at any time, the friends will spend their last few hours of freedom together, retelling the past and discussing the future.
A science fiction parable set in a dark version of the present day, The Last Seder is an interactive storytelling game (in the style of games such as Tales of Pendragon) with echoes to the stories of the Exodus and the Last Supper. Live the myth as it is made by playing out a series of scenes across the ages.
An Alleged Entertainment LARP. Written by Susan Weiner, Vito D'Agosta, Josh Rachlin, and Nat Budin. Released under a Creative Commons license and the LARPA GameBank License.
Tragically-killed puppies. Embarassing TV gaffes. Burned toast.
These everyday tragedies are relics of the past now that time travel has been invented! But who will safeguard the past from those who would tamper with it for malicious purposes?
On December 1st, the Time Travel Review Board of the NSF will review all applications for time travel permits leaving during the year of 2104. Please come prepared to explain your project and the larger impact of your work.
History will be made (and unmade) as a horde of would-be time travelers descend upon our beleaguered review board. What will the past be tomorrow?
Time Travel Review Board is a light comedy horde LARP dealing with everything from the politics of Ancient Egypt to the King of Rock and Roll.
An Alleged Entertainment LARP. Written by Nat Budin, Susan Weiner, and Greer Hauptman. Additional runtime work by Seth Christenfeld. Released under a Creative Commons license.
Ever been talking to a friend at Intercon and come up with the world's worst LARP idea that neither of you will ever, ever, EVER write? So have we. In fact, here's ten of them. From "Football: the Musical" to "Ku Klux Klan Press Conference" to "MetametametametametaLARP LARP," this game has it all.
WARNING: This is an adult game. It contains offensive themes, blatant sexuality, violence, racism, sexism, ageism, and pretty much any other "ism" that offends people. It's all in the spirit of lighthearted fun, though.
An Alleged Entertainment LARP. Written by Susan Weiner, John D'Agosta, Nat Budin, and Joshua Sheena.
25th Century, the planet Galleria II. This is the headquarters of the Interplanetary Association, a multi-world trading organization. Its flagship is the Petunia. Its four-year mission: to explore strange new worlds. To seek out new life-forms and new business opportunities. To justify the Association military budget! (And, oh yeah, to cart the General between important functions, i.e. parties.)
The flagship Petunia is a showpiece. Its crew are the most personable, elegant, the most beautiful, the most... useless... officers in the Association Combined Force.
Which is why nobody is quite prepared for what is about to unfold...
"Fire on High" is a comedic space operetta inspired by the works of Gilbert and Sullivan. Expect epic ship-to-ship battles, cheesy fake-looking monsters, and romance so thick you'll gag on it. Characters are heavily influenced by ...ahem... certain light operas.
This game WILL have a happy ending and WILL have lots and lots of romance. In exchange for a certain loss of the self-determination you may be used to in LARPs, we promise to give you lots of bad puns, heavy theming, epic encounters, and a full soundtrack.
An Alleged Entertainment LARP. Conceived by Josh Marcus. Written by Josh Marcus, Nat Budin and Josh Rachlin. Revised by Josh Rachlin, Nat Budin, Josh Marcus, Sam Hariton, Jon Sagotsky, Viktoriya Fuzaylova, David Durschlag, Andrew Militello, Joshua Sheena.
1996 - just southeast of Inverness, Scotland.
The highly-regarded technical college Snaf University is hosting a new students' open house. Professors from each of the college's departments are present. Students have come from all over the world to visit this highly selective and elite college.
But people are running late, strangers in trenchcoats with magnifying glasses have arrived, and the biology lab animals are agitated.
Snaf University is a light comedy/science fiction LARP set at a burgeoning scientific community filled with both geniuses and nutcases - well, all right, mostly nutcases. There's no telling what you might encounter as you try to navigate the open house weekend (you do have a copy of the schedule, don't you?). You might even get to talk to a lab animal, though as a disclaimer they have a infamous reputation for being atrocious conversationalists.
A Team No Pants LARP. Written by Sage Shepperd, Joshua Sheena, Josh Rachlin, and Nat Budin. Released under the LARPA GameBank License.
One year ago, Old MacDonald's farm animals rose up against him, threw off the chains of agricultural oppression, and founded the overtly fascist Free Animals' Republic of MacDonald. Today, on the first anniversary of that glorious revolution, the F.A.R.M. is holding a gala ball in celebration, culminating in the trial of a most notorious criminal.
But in the background, shadows lurk. Rumors fly that someone is running the illegal drugs Curds and Whey. The police are looking into talk of a prostitution ring. Why is Big Bird nowhere to be found? And who is this mysterious Chicken Little that nobody wants to talk about?
An Alleged Entertainment LARP. Written by Nat Budin, Susan Weiner, Greer Hauptman, and Joshua Sheena. Released under a Creative Commons license.
10 Bad LARPs in 100 Bad Minutes is back with a vengeance, tearing through genres and parodying everything in sight. These are the LARP ideas so bad, we wouldn't even include them in the original "10 Bad LARPs".
(OK, yeah, that's a complete lie. We came up with entirely new bad LARP ideas. So sue us. Just pretend, OK? It'll make us feel better.)
Just look at how much more awful it can get:
Play it, or come watch it... it will make you appreciate the rest of the con more.
An Alleged Entertainment LARP. Written by Susan Weiner and John D'Agosta. Revised by Susan Weiner, John D'Agosta, and Nat Budin.
Since 1981, Scearbridge University has been more of an eccentric community of intellectuals than a traditional institution of higher education. The distinction between students and professors is often blurry here, but it's well known that the University is home to about 200 of the most brilliant minds in the country. As a prominent member of the Scearbridge community, you'll be placed right in the middle of this controversial institution.
Unknown to many, Scearbridge hosts strange secrets. This weekend, at the University's 25th anniversary celebration, with press, local dignitaries, and new students in attendance, many of these mysteries risk being uncovered.
Welcome to Scearbridge University is a modern fantasy game with high interpersonal drama and roleplaying elements.
An Alleged Entertainment LARP. Written by Nat Budin, Susan Weiner, and Joshua Sheena. Additional credits to Josh Rachlin. Released under a Creative Commons license.
We've taken "10 Bad LARPs," put it through the meat grinder, distilled the essence of it, and boiled it down to a 40 minute pico-LARP. And this time, there's a twist. What twist? Well, that would be telling.
An Alleged Entertainment LARP. Written by Nat Budin and Seth Christenfeld. Released under a Creative Commons license.
It is the age of exploration. Battling navies roamed the high seas, looking for trouble and unaffiliated seamen.
Don't look at me like that. I said "seamen," not "semen."
"IMPRESSMENT!" is a game of stealth recruitment into four rival navies. You could be pressed into service by:
An Alleged Entertainment LARP. Written by Anna Bradley, Viktoriya Fuzaylova, Jon Sagotsky, and Nat Budin.
Several miles outside a small village in Brazil, Aiden Fisher and his intrepid crew set out to explore an ancient cavern. Local rumor holds that long-forgotten spirits and dark secrets lurk inside the cave - but the last archaeological dig here, in the 19th century, vanished mysteriously...
"The Fisher Expedition" was written as a 24-hour LARP writing challenge.