Inspiration for Live Role Playing Games (LRP,LARP)comes from many sources, written word such as books, Graphic novels, or simple poems. Film and TV, movies, series based on books or original content. Even music and song can inspire as much as live performances such as theatre and dance. The nature of LARP is such that even mixing these sources of inspiration is a thing that can be seen in events and ideas that never come to fruition.

Movie inspiration can be from any of the thousands you can find on resources such as IMDB, genre regardless. Some of our favourites being… wait what day is it, oh Tuesday! it’s hard to lock down a long term favourite, Aliens, Dog Soldiers, Shaun of the Dead, John Wick, the Magnificent Seven Harry Potter or Krull. New and old, all kinds of genre included.

TV inspiration can be as fleeting as the shows success. But film to TV cross overs such as Stargate series, and long running series such as Game of Thrones, Battle Star Galactica and Buffy have inspired as much as short run but hugely successful series such as Firefly, Dolls House, and Terranova.

We have games based in the world of Shakespeare’s Midsummer Nights, Rocky Horrors picture show, and St Trinians as examples of theatre inspired games.

Song Lyrics have inspired Films and LARPS alike. Karma Hotel from the Spooks provides a story of a hotel and casino run by a demon and effecting it’s clients in mysterious ways. Almost like a Tales of the Unexpected inspired LARP.

Some times these LARPS share their inspiration with things that have crossed all the boundaries of these mediums take a Musketeer LARP, inspired by the book, the film, a stage version, or the TV series!

Games also take inspiration mixing genres, H.P Lovecrafts Cthulhu horror as inspired writers and gamers in each medium, play, film, books and TV. Delta Green is a RPG series mixing espionage, world wars and conflict, and the Cthulhu mythos. There as even been Delta Green games inspired by 24 the popular TV series, but set in the UK, bring genre and setting crashing together to make something new.

You can and should take inspiration from anything and all you find, don’t be afraid to experiment gaming is the perfect medium for rapid proto types and development of these mixed, inspired ideas. But we’ll talk about that in another post.