Link Love: Larp Magazines

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I wanted to start out the year with some good karma, by throwing out link love out to all the hard-working larp magazines out there.

From Abroad:

International Journal of Roleplaying — where the big kids of roleplaying theory come out to play. I wish their site had permalinks, though.

LARPzeit — a German (?) larp magazine with an international edition printed in English. Even includes some costume patterns.

Playground Magazine – an international magazine originally based out of Norway about the “new wave” of roleplaying. You can subscribe or purchase .pdf copies. A nicely-produced magazine with some pretty interesting articles. UPDATE: Apparently, Playground will not be closing as previously reported. Rather, as a commenter pointed out, it’s continuing under new Danish management.

Interacting Arts — OK, not really a magazine so much as a collective of larpers, based out of Sweden, I think. But they’ve got some interesting theory up.

Rolle|spil — I hope you read Danish, because if you don’t, you can’t read this.

 

Meanwhile, in the US…

While there are some (largely corporate-linked) US tabletop RPG magazines out there — Kobold Quarterly, The Crusader, Dragon, etc. — for the most part, I haven’t been able to find any active American larp magazines. Examiner.com’s larp vertical is the notable exception. In addition to the national column, Examiner.com has regional columnists in Minneapolis, Los Angeles, Albany, and more.

Otherwise, the best I’ve got are the archives of some now-defunct ventures:

Metagame — this larp magazine ran from 1988-2000; it was the official magazine of the Society for Interactive Literature (SIL), a predecessor of LARPA. Full archives available.

LARP Magazine — ran from 2006-2007. It’s got practical tips on how to larp and a little coverage of the US scene. Full archives available.

The Larper — a magazine that ran for two issues in 2001. Appears to be associated with LARPA.

Dreaming Larp Magazine — a nicely-designed one-time magazine that documents a larp run at SUNY from 2002-2010.

Interregnum — a roleplaying magazine that covered some topics in larp, ran from 1995-2001 out of Cambridge, MA, before folding. Some articles and a sample back issue are available at the link.

Alarums and Excursions — I can’t tell what sort of content this California-based magazine has, since there’s none on the website, but it appears to be a tiny magazine that is still issuing subscriptions.

Maybe this is an opportunity for some enterprising US larper to cater to a new market.

 

Know of more larp mags? Hit me up in the comments.

15 thoughts on “Link Love: Larp Magazines”

    • No link, but I’ve emailed some secret contacts over at Playground, who inform me that Danish larp magnate Claus Raasted and co are taking over.

  3. Finally… the Swedes are waking up again. And soon a Swedish web-based magazine called “inlajv” which would translate to “ingame” (lajv is Swedish for LARP).

    Also… I think you should starting Playground Lizzie 😉

  6. we too were thinking the USA needs a mag. again. We have the equipment to do large format printing and we do print our own realms maps, tri-folds for larp clubs and fliers.

    It would be nice to keep it general like many of your articles (and others) where you don’t really get into a specific system, but rather talk about the game in general.

    I would like to add your blog RSS feed to our scrolls if that is ok on larpcraft.com. Your information and writings are well done!

    • Thanks for all the kind words.

      I think it’d be great to have a US-based larp mag. Might not have to be print — though print does have a wonderful tactile romance to it — since I know how that quickly complicates business model.

      And yes, I’d love to be added to your scrolls! Many thanks.