Caligo Mundi

A Melbourne LARP Community

History

To many members, Caligo Mundi is not just an organisation, but a collective which holds the memories and history of the art styles and people who’ve made our events what they are today.

That history is deeply grounded in the Australian gaming convention scenes. Freeforms, or theatre-style LARPing, spread to Melbourne from the 1983 Cancon gaming convention in Canberra1. Many of Caligo’s original and founding members were and are members and game-runners of these local convention communities, which have continued to hone the art of freeforms across the last 40-odd years.

These convention-style games have long experimented with the possibilities of roleplaying, focussing mostly on ‘in-depth characterisation, atmosphere, and […] exploring emotional or moral dilemmas’2. While these games are often fiercely independent in nature, they have also been heavily influenced by published tabletop game IPs across the years as a constant source of inspiration and new audiences. Caligo owes its official legal formation as an organisation to these influences.

In 1996, the success of freeforms in Australia allowed a US World of Darkness LARP group and official fan club of White Wolf – known then as the Camarilla3 – to establish an Australian branch, including a chapter in Melbourne, which drew in many seasoned convention roleplayers.

In 2007, part of the Melbourne chapter broke away from the international organisation in pursuit of more creative freedom in telling stories4. On the 17th of July that year, the first official Caligo Mundi game took place, continuing the love affair with World of Darkness (WoD) in a fresh new campaign that branched out beyond Vampire: the Requiem and into the rest of the WoD universe. Meanwhile as the club grew into its independence, it expanded beyond a single game and format.

Since hosting the first Caligo Presents in 2011, it has become an established space for more experimental games and events, inclusive of freeforms, multiforms (where improv theatre-style roleplaying is combined more heavily with structured tabletop-game inspired mechanics), oneshots and long-forms or campaigns, weekend camps, and even forays into Nordic styles. Though some of these styles have been summarised occasionally by the term chamber larp or parlour larp, this term has not always been associated with local identity or play styles, but has seen increased use5 in recent times to distinguish freeforms and associated play styles from battle games and other re-enactment or SCA-influenced larps. But Caligo’s oneshots especially remain tied to the freeform format and guides for best practice established in 1995 at Necronomicon, Melbourne6.

Whilst Caligo has always embarked on the project of recording unique games and discussions around what our larps are or could be, unfortunately, many game archives and discussions were lost to the rapidly changing landscape of social media across the new millennium, and in particular, the closing of Yahoo forums. Since 2009, our games have been recorded in and preserved in our Wiki, often being updated by both storytellers and players alike with live game updates and rich networks of character information. While the club continues to use a variety of social media platforms to connect with players, in order to avoid overly relying on the whims of those platforms, our wiki (and now our website!) exists as a tool to preserve our memories. Yet larps exist in defiance of any attempts at archival work, as larp documenter Johanna Koljonen7 once beautifully put: ‘This is the challenge that faces the role-playing community, and especially larpmakers: we are writing novels which dissolve upon completion.’

And so, getting involved continues to be the best way of experiencing our stories for yourself, before they dissolve, and the next tale begins!

References

  1. Anonymous, (1983) Freeform roleplaying, Arcanacon ’83. https://web.archive.org/web/20110904065059/http://www.arcanacon.org/1983/page10.html ↩︎
  2. John Hughes (28th June 1992) Systemless Roleplaying: History and Definitions. https://myth-o-logic.org/systemless-roleplaying/1086-2/examples-history-definitions/ ↩︎
  3. Madmaudlin, MickSavGel & Kfoxirl (2023) Modern Enigma Society, Unofficial White Wolf Wiki site. https://whitewolf.fandom.com/wiki/Modern_Enigma_Society – see also 4 for more details on the Camarilla. ↩︎
  4. The Camarilla continued to exist in Melbourne for a number of years, eventually changing its name to Beyond the Sunset (BTS) and breaking ties with the overseas organisation. BTS remains as a national organisation to this day. Many local role players have enjoyed membership of both groups across the years, though at this time of writing there is no longer a Melbourne chapter. Yet Vampire continues to be a popular IP amongst Melbourne role-players, and other groups have sprung up since the closure of Melbourne BTS to satisfy that thirst. ↩︎
  5. Penny Sullivan [published as Sevenbe] (18th May 2021) How Many Different Kinds of Larp Are There? https://medium.com/roleplaying-games/how-many-different-kinds-of-larp-are-there-7edaf4ef4974 ↩︎
  6. Kyla Ward, Mr. X, Siggy, Michael Hitchens, Jacinta & Stu. (1995) 5 Rules of Freeforms. https://gamingknack.blogspot.com/p/5-rules-of-freeforms.html  ↩︎
  7. Johanna Koljonen (2008) ‘The Dragon Was the Least of It: Dragonbane and Larp as Ephemera and Ruin’, in Markus Montola, Jaakko Stenros (eds) Playground Worlds – Creating and Evaluating Experiences of Role-Playing Games, Ropecon ry, Finland. ISBN 978-952-92-3580-3 ↩︎