I have had a “Bad Company LARP” file sat in my drafts since 2017. It contained the title, some tags and absolutely no useful thoughts. That is not a design document. It is, at best, evidence that I liked the idea.
I still do. Bad Company has the sort of violent, strange military science-fiction atmosphere that could work very well in a small Live Action Role Play (L(A)RP) event. I use L(A)RP as my preferred term here; there is a little more on that in my glossary.
This would not be a game about asking players to portray the comic’s established characters. They belong to the comic, and trying to reproduce them exactly would make the event narrower rather than richer. I would much rather play a different intake of recruits: people who have heard the stories, perhaps who served alongside somebody like Mad Tommy, but who have their own very short chance to become legends.
The references are a mood board, not a plot
The comic is the obvious starting point, but I would also look to Aliens and Outpost for the feeling of a small unit being sent somewhere it really ought not to be. The former gives me exhausted soldiers, industrial spaces and a team that has to work together. The latter is useful for its grim, enclosed pressure.
For the staging, I would borrow from neon noir: hard pools of coloured light, deep shadows, wet-looking surfaces and silhouettes. That does not mean every field needs to become a cyberpunk film set. A few practical lamps, coloured gels, a dark corridor and careful control of what is visible can do far more than trying to light an entire site.
The point is not to reenact a particular strip. It is to make the players feel like a group of recruits who have been dropped into the same sort of brutal universe: under-equipped, uncertain what their commanders know, and very aware that the briefing may have left out the important bit.
Small field, small player group
I think this concept becomes less interesting as it gets bigger. A small group of perhaps eight to sixteen players, plus crew, means each absence is noticed. If one person is separated from the squad, everyone feels the missing body. If the medic is hit, it becomes a problem rather than an announcement over a radio.
The field of play should be equally contained. A woodland boundary, a small industrial-style airsoft site, or a handful of connected rooms gives the crew control over distance and information. It also prevents the game becoming a long walk between occasional firefights. The squad needs to believe it can see the way out, while being unable to reach it safely.
That scale also makes a first run realistic. I would rather make one defended compound, one dangerous route and one objective work properly than promise a planetary war and deliver a few disconnected skirmishes.
Airsoft or laser tag, with atmosphere doing the heavy lifting
The science-fiction setting invites either airsoft or laser-tag combat. Which one I choose would depend on the venue, the people involved and the safety framework, rather than on a claim that one is more authentic. Airsoft has the useful physicality of cover, magazines and uncertainty. Laser tag can make night play and obvious futuristic equipment much easier to run.
Neither is the game on its own. Clear briefings, marshals, safe prop standards and a written combat policy would matter more than the choice of replica. I would need to decide how hits work before writing the plot: immediate return to base, a limited wound state, or a short chance for a squadmate to recover someone. The answer changes the whole pace of play.
Weather could be an ally, within sensible safety limits. Rain on a corrugated roof, mud under boots and a cold evening all help make a tiny site feel hostile. I would not rely on weather, or deliberately run people into unsafe conditions, but I would design the event so that an overcast day adds texture rather than ruining the plan.
Similarly, smoke and lighting need restraint. A small amount of venue-approved atmospheric smoke, used where it cannot hide trip hazards or obscure exits, could make a short approach genuinely tense. Light should direct attention, not make players unable to see their feet. These are tools for staging scenes, not excuses to make an unsafe field.
A game where death is expected
The most interesting design problem is that Bad Company feels like a setting where people die. That does not mean a L(A)RP should casually remove players from their only activity. It means being honest, before booking, that casualties are part of the premise and making a replacement or post-death role interesting.
For a one-day game, I would set expectations in the booking information and the opening briefing: a character might not make it to the final objective. When that happens, the player should have somewhere to go. They might return as a wounded recruit with limited information, join a small opposing force, or play a newly arrived replacement who has missed the camaraderie that made the first squad work.
A twelve-hour event could make this rhythm more deliberate. The early phase builds the unit through routine patrols and poor jokes; the middle removes certainty; the final few hours ask whoever is left to decide what the mission was worth. A high fatality expectation is only dramatic if the players have time to care about the people being lost.
I would make the end condition survival-adjacent rather than a simple body count. Extracting intelligence, getting one person through, or deciding not to follow an impossible order can all be meaningful outcomes. The recruits may not win, but their choices should still matter.
The first prototype
The sensible first version is not a campaign. It is a short test: a single squad sent to investigate a silent relay station, with one route in, one unreliable contact and a clear extraction point. The crew could test the combat rules, the lighting and the replacement-character process without needing an entire fictional war behind them.
If that works, there is space for a series of linked recruit groups: an earlier intake, the survivors of a failed mission, or people who once served with Mad Tommy and now have a story they are not sure they believe. That gives the source material room to cast a shadow without requiring anyone to play the comic’s protagonists.
This is still only a design idea, and any public use of the setting would need the appropriate permission from its rights holders. But as a small, intense fan-event concept, I think it has more life in it than that empty 2017 draft suggested.