Review of Burning Orchid

In larp, my tastes swing towards theatre-style, parlour larp, and UK freeform. One of the most common subsets of that style is the "secrets and powers" game, in which prewritten characters compete to achieve incompatible goals, often by using various abstract abilities. But while I enjoy such games, I've found that what I actually enjoy in them is often not the strongly goal-directed plots, but the ones focusing on the characters' ideas and relationships: what they think and feel. There's a style similar to secrets and powers, which focuses on this aspect: it has plenty of secrets, but no real powers, and the plots are things like "work out how you feel about X", or "understand the reason for Y's actions".

Peaky's Burning Orchid is an example of such a game. Set in 1930's Guatemala at the wrap-party for a Hollywood blockbuster, it is a short tale of romance, passion, and regret for ten players. The filming has had a few problems, and the investor, scriptwriter, and a publicist have turned up unexpectedly. Meanwhile, the cast have issues of their own to work out. The larp plays in about 90 minutes, using a two-act structure, the first act at the wrap party and the second later in the evening. It is best played with costumes, a set-dressed room and sound-effects, but can be run costume-light for those who prefer that style.

The game is sold as a digital download consisting of 13 PDF files: an introduction and organiser guide, a casting quiz, a page of name badges, and ten character booklets. The introduction has a complete guide to producing and running the game, including game setup, a printing guide, information on casting, a timetable, pre-game briefing, and run-time advice. It also has suggestions for background sound effects if you are that way inclined. While it is missing an overall plot summary, one doesn't seem necessary: this is a game where the organiser largely gets to sit back and watch, and doesn't need to know the details of everything the characters are up to. The material does assume that the organiser knows what a larp is and broadly how to run one, so its not suitable for complete beginners, but it provides enough information for its target audience.

The casting quiz is aimed at players, and asks for various information and preferences. How useful it is depends on your local larp culture, player expectations, and your opinions on survey design. Personally, I prefer bounded rather than open questions, and a focus on content warnings and player redlines (material they do not want to interact with), but at the least the provided quiz provides a starting point.

The character booklets are all formatted to be printed as A5 booklets. Each includes a castlist and a summary of the film the characters have been working on, plus the usual material on character background, plots, relationships and goals. The sheets themselves are clear and well-written, though the formatting is a bit simple. The ten characters are all hard-gendered, with five men and five women. Given the historical setting and content, hard-gendering is appropriate, but it does mean the game lacks flexibility.

The game is romance-heavy, with the characters having complicated and messy relationships which invite drama. Lots of "romance plots" in larps are about making an initial connection, in part because the characters or writers are young. Burning Orchid has a little bit of that, but for most characters the focus is on maintaining, repairing, or rediscovering relationships. There's also some material about the dark side of Hollywood's "golden age" — bigotry and intolerance, ageism, and a culture of sexual exploitation — which provides more scope for drama and is mostly handled well. Overall, the plotlines are focused on producing an emotional response, and seem effective at producing that in play. After running it, players said that it was a satisfying and emotionally intense experience.

When reviewing a larp, the three core questions I ask are whether there is enough information for the organiser to run the game, whether the players will have enough to do for the expected play time, and whether it has enough parts for women. Burning Orchid passes all three tests. But it is not without problems. The big one for me was that the casting information missed an issue — date rape — which would be a major redline in my larp community (and I think in many others), while the quiz solicits information on player redlines with open questions ("is there anything you don't want to play?") rather than presenting prospective players with a clear list of sensitive content so they can make an informed choice. However, these problems are easily fixable by the organiser, and so not fatal, while the strengths of the game outweigh this comparatively minor weakness. Overall, I highly recommend this game.