Our Canterbury Tale - 1485

RPG system: LARP
Participants: 8-15 players

By

The Smoke (2026), Theatre Deli, 107 Leadenhall Street, EC3A 4AF London, United Kingdom

Dave Wetherall

Description

A historically-themed LARP in 5 Acts about pilgrimage, storytelling, change and loss at the end of The Wars of The Roses in England.

You and your fellow players will play characters on a pilgrimage to Canterbury in August 1485. Your characters have all heard of ‘The Canterbury Tales’ which was written by Geoffrey Chaucer around a century ago and recently became the first book printed in England when William Caxton brought the newly-invented printing press to London a few years before your characters’ pilgrimage.

Like Chaucer’s diverse band of pilgrims a hundred years earlier, you and your fellows have gathered at a tavern before leaving London. Meanwhile Henry Tudor, Earl of Richmond, a descendant of the House of Lancaster, has landed in Wales and is heading towards London to claim the throne of England. King Richard III of the House of York is marching to meet him in battle near Leicester. Some of you bear scars from previous battles between the Yorkists and Lancastrians, others have friends or family who now march to war in the opposing armies; none of you are untouched by these tumultuous events.

What rumours or news might reach you during different stages of your journey? Will the forthcoming battle end a generation of civil war? Will rivalries with your fellow pilgrims be resolved? How might the war, the spread of printing and the pilgrimage change lives? What tales will your characters tell?

The game is about co-creating a story or stories about the characters’ pilgrimage experience – it is not intended to involve characters telling formal lengthy stories as if they were the pilgrims in Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales – although they might refer to tales that they plan to tell or have told or heard during the 8 or so days the pilgrimage will take off-game. The game has no predetermined conclusion or dramatic climax. However, the focus on the final act is the characters discussing what they have learned during their pilgrimage, how they and the world have changed. This may take the form of individuals reflecting together on what tales they will tell others when they arrive home, or it may take the form of a more structured joint storytelling. It is up to the players to decide how their characters will bring their pilgrimage to an appropriate conclusion, with the emphasis being on ‘play to lift’.

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Additional info on Format:

The game will be preceded by a briefing and workshop during which players will use prompt cards to create characters, relationships between them, connections to the Wars of The Roses, and decide why they are undertaking the pilgrimage. The Workshop should take just under an hour.

The game itself is structured around 5 Acts of 20-25 minutes at different stages of the pilgrimage, each a couple of days apart: Acts 1 and 5 are set in a tavern in London at the start and end of the pilgrimage; Act 3 is set in a tavern in Canterbury just before visiting the Shrine of St Thomas à Becket; Acts 2 and 4 are set on the road between London and Canterbury and are designed to be played outside whilst walking gently together (if players are able to do so and the weather is not too bad). Some rumours or news about the outcome of the Battle of Bosworth and those involved will be randomly determined before each Act after the first - this may even change the course of history.

Played at