A hot-tub larp anthology.
Hot tubs aren’t just for soaking in!
Here are 16 larps – live-action role-playing experiences – that you can try out in your hot tub.
Are you not using your hot tub anymore? What was nice when it was new is no longer enough?
It sure is hard with all the preparations only to then sit there, sweaty and bored.
With our book Bubbles, your hot tub gets a new life!
16 short live action role-plays*, all set in a hot tub. Invite your friends over for an experience. Buy our instruction book for a more fun hot tub life.
*live action role-play – a kind of adult game, both inspiring and fun. The live actions in our book are suitable for both beginners and the more experienced live action role-players.
These are the authors:
Elina Gouliou
Elina Gouliou (b.1977), a Greek in London, has been active in the larp community for over 15 years. Elina loves playing on emotions and character development. She often helps write, edit, and project-manage larps and larp publications.
#Princesses #Therapy #Comedy
Princesses in Therapy
When you strip away the colourful animation and cheerful music, the stories of princesses are quite bleak. These are women with difficult issues to address – and who better to help them than their fellow princesses?
Alex Helm
British/soon-to-be-German designer of
roleplaying games, larps and video games.
I have tried just about every kind of larp that exists over the last 25 year.
#Monsters #Discussion #Humorous
Scheduling Clash
Hot-tub larps are often played at a UK larp convention called Consequences. The idea for this one came from a meme web cartoon originally posted to Twitter in 2020 by Webcomicon. The cartoon shows Cthulhu and Godzilla rising from the depths at the same time. As they discuss the clash, Galacticus also appears. You’ve probably seen the cartoon online somewhere! This scenario seemed ideal for a hot-tub larp, so I created this game.
Harry Harrold
Harry first participated in larp in 1983 and started running games the year after. He’s very proud of his work for UK fest larps: in player-
facilitating NPC roles, and helping design Profound Decisions’ Odyssey.
#Satirical #Sociological
#Soft-hearted
The 572nd Meeting
of the Colonisation Committee
To say this larp owes much to the work of Douglas Adams is a huge understatement. The Golgafrincham Ark Fleet Ship B appeared in:
The novel The Restaurant at the End of the Universe.
The sixth episode of the 1981 television series.
Fit the Sixth of the Original Radio Series.
(The film will not help you.)
Leandro Godoy
Leandro Godoy is one of the founders and producers of Confraria das Ideias, a Brazilian larp group that has existed since 1999 and was formalized as an NGO in 2009.
He is also a writer, and has articles published in the Knutpunkt book (2021 and 2022) and is currently a Sociology student.
#Comedy #MedievalFantasy #Fun
The Entourage and the Dragon
(or, In the Dragon’s Stomach)
for The Entourage and the Dragon, where I wanted to create an idea that was mainly fun and that gave a new meaning to the hot tub itself – it’s our tradition to transform the larp location into something totally different with few resources, so the stomach of a dragon seemed like a very interesting idea to me.
Laura Wood
Laura is a British larp designer and organizer. They have designed several chamber larps which have run in countries throughout Europe,
including Here Comes a Candle, Inside and The Vision.
#Reality #Fake #Persona
Authentic Lives
Authentic Lives aims to explore how we present ourselves to
the world and how that differs from who we consider ourselves
to be. A hot tub seemed to lend itself well to a reality TV setting
which adds pressure on characters to present themselves as a
simple concept that the ‘audience’ will understand, instead of as
a complex and nuanced person
the world and how that differs from who we consider ourselves
to be. A hot tub seemed to lend itself well to a reality TV setting
which adds pressure on characters to present themselves as a
simple concept that the ‘audience’ will understand, instead of as
a complex and nuanced person
David La Rush
I am new to the Nordic LARP style, but have 28 years of experience running and playing Vampire, Mage, Changeling, and World of Darkness LARPs. I’ve also been working on my own space diplomacy themed megagame for an embarrassingly long period of time.
#Hollywood #Pitch #Competitive
Big Shots
Big Shots was inspired by every big-screen depiction of
Hollywood producers; Tropic Thunder, Argo, Barton Fink
– and by Brian Michael Bendis’ Fortune and Glory.
Hollywood producers; Tropic Thunder, Argo, Barton Fink
– and by Brian Michael Bendis’ Fortune and Glory.
Simon Rogers
Simon Rogers (b. 1967) co-owns Pelgrane Press Ltd., which has published RPGs and larps for 20 years including GUMSHOE, 13th Age, and #Feminism. He is the co-writer of Naptime, and an experienced short- and long-form larper.
#Gangsters #Violence #Comedy
Costa del Crime
Costa del Crime is a light-hearted take on films such as
Sexy Beast and Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels.
Mo Holkar
Mo Holkar is a British larp designer and organizer. He is part of the Larps on Location design collective, and was formerly an organizer of The Smoke and of The Game Kitchen.
He is mostly interested in larps that look at different ways of being a person.
#Evolution #Physical
#Non-verbal
Primal Soup
Primal Soup was basically the first idea I came up with when
Elina asked ”what kind of larp could you run in a hot tub?”
My mind went straight to the hot, bubbling oceans of primeval
Earth. Mix in the opening sequence of 2001: A Space Odyssey,
and David Attenborough’s nature documentaries on TV, and
there you have it
Martina Ryssel
Laura is a British larp designer and organizer. They have designed several chamber larps which have run in countries throughout Europe,
including Here Comes a Candle, Inside and The Vision.
#Siblings #Birth #Hopeful
Rebirth
Rebirth was a spontaneous idea at first, that sprang into my mind when I heard about this hot-tub larp anthology. It’s a game where characters are undefined at the start, and character creation is the game. That mechanic seemed interesting enough for me to actually want to create the larp.
Agnes Hultén
Agnes Hultén is a Swedish larp designer.
She and her colleague runs Lajvbyrån,
a non-profit company that creates and runs larp for both educational purposes and as a leisure activity. Agnes thinks that feelgood larps are underestimated.
#Evolution #Physical
#Non-verbal
Siblings in a Womb
I’ve wanted to write a larp for a hot tub ever since we got one many years ago as a family Christmas present. When I got an assignment to write a potentially transformative larp for Uppsala university as part of a course there I finally got around to doing it.
Rei England
Rei is a non-binary LARP designer and organiser from the UK, and is primarily active in the UK Freeforms community.
Rei has written articles for Knutepunkt about online LARP design and non-binary inclusion in games.
#Gangsters #Violence #Comedy
The Pool of Making
Like many people my age, I’ve been thinking about legacy. What makes my life meaningful? Is it the joy I give to loved ones?
This is a game about legacy and the choice to stay in serenity or to strive and make an impact.
Jamey Patten
Jamey lives in Boston, and has been playing and writing larps (mostly in the New England theatre-larp scene centered around Intercon) since the early 2000s.
His larps tend to focus on the inner or interpersonal, often with elements of ritual, touch, or dance.
#Ritual #ComingOfAge #Conflicted
Before the Ordeal
Playing Athena’s Chosen, I had the singular experience of being initiated into something that I knew my character would likely regret, based on the support (and pressure) of my fellow initiates. I wanted to capture that feeling of inner conflict/ambivalence (and closeness!),
Anne Marchadier
nne is a French larper living in Belgium. She has been dabbling in larp organising for a number of years, this is her first
attempt at writing a (bath)chamber larp.
#Frogs #Hubris #Cooking(OrDeath?)
Fableous
When discussing this book in a park with Mo, the fact that frogs don’t realise water temperature is rising until it is too late came up as a fun but grim setting. I didn’t particularly want to make it a serious metaphor about climate change, but maybe the fable setting will make participants extract a moral conclusion from their experience?
Agnes Hultén
A couple of years ago we got a hot tub for our garden. I’m not very good at sitting still, not even in a hot tub, so I immediately started thinking about things to do while bathing.
As a long-time larper, that thinking evolved mostly around a couple of larp ideas: but I never got around to putting them on paper.
I’ve been involved in a couple of cookbook projects in the past, involving food from many different countries.
As there are probably at least as many larp cultures and traditions ascountries, I figured that an anthology would probably capture at least something for everyone’s larp tastes.
Mo Holkar
I have to say that this is all Agnes’s fault. It would never have occurred to me to try to put together an anthology like this. But here we are; this is what she can do. She is a wonderful and inspiring person!
For me this all started back in 2018, when Consequences, a chamber larp festival in the UK, added some hot tubs to its
accommodation. Elina Gouliou had one of these for the weekend, and we talked about maybe designing a larp to run in it.
Since then, it’s become a tradition, broken only by the pandemic. I love hot tubs, and I love larping, so it’s a great combination!
Share the Bubbles!
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