It’s no secret that sometimes our staff meet their person at camp. Two summers ago I, along with many other community members, had the pleasure of attending two long time staff members’ commitment ceremony, which was a truly magical celebration of the playful love these two have. They navigated working together, long distance, and competitive […]

Welcome to our first in a new blog series, “Who are They?” where we interview current staff members to find out a little bit more about why they come back year after year to work for Wayfinder. Today we welcome Maya Ziv to the proverbial hot seat! Just like at camp, this interview was opened […]

It is often the case that when young people are given time, autonomy, and a safe environment, they are able to discover who they are, what inspires them, and what it is they want to do. At Wayfinder, we try to provide these opportunities that can be fundamental to a young person’s development. Andrew Murdock, […]

We last chatted with Brennan for the blog eight years ago, and since then things have really popped off. For those who don’t know (though it’s hard to believe anyone drawn to our camp wouldn’t), Brennan is the creator and executive producer of Dimension 20, which is an actual play tabletop RPG show, as well […]

We talk a lot at Wayfinder about the program building confidence in young people, but sometimes young people come to us already full of it, and we get to reinforce it, letting them know that no matter what the world might say, they should keep shining! Roy is a great example of this. When he […]

Wayfinder has a long history, running its first event in December 2001. Over the years many amazing people have been involved in contributing to the space, helping to shape the camp we have today. Many have gone on to do other amazing things out in the world, one of those people is David Volante, or […]

Finding your people, the ones that make you feel grounded and happy, is a huge part of life. Wayfinder, for many people, has been the place where they find their people. And that was just the case for Ruby, or as she is known around camp – Grub. “I met my long term partner, lots […]

When last we interviewed Molly, her award winning first graphic novel “The Witch Boy” had just come out. Now, 8 years later, she is a big name in the middle grade and young adult graphic novel world. “I proceeded to publish two more books in that series, The Hidden Witch and The Midwinter Witch. It’s […]

On Joining Wayfinder as an Adult Staff When I first interviewed for the Wayfinder Experience, before I knew much about it or LARP at all, one of the questions I was asked was how would I feel entering into a space that tended to be tight-knit and full of history well known to its members. […]

Held With Hope!: An Intro Game’s Flow When I was younger, I was terrified of flow. When I’d write games, I’d desperately try to avoid thinking about flow. I’d build everything that I could first, and then awkwardly stitch together some scenes in a linear order in order to create a flow. I knew about […]

What’s the Word?: Using Verbs to Make Better Flow Points Written by Milo Duclayan 5/2024 Imagine you’ve just written your first adventure game. The world is awesome, the characters are unique, the lists are gorgeous, and the flow is… well, the flow is written, to some extent. You know what you want the story to […]

Mailbag We wanted to know what you our readers were interested in knowing more about. Here are the first (of hopefully many) questions answered. Do you have a question you want answers too? Email them to Trine@Wayfinderexperience.com and check back here! 1.I’ve been to a couple different Larp camps/games, and a lot of them run […]

Campaign Style Play At Wayfinder, the majority of our Adventure Games are written as One Shots. We imagine worlds that we visit only once, stepping into them to shape the course of monumental events, before moving onto the next, carrying those stories and characters only in our memories. We do, on occasion, delve deeper into […]

Always Coming Back Home To You In all of the Where Are They Now interviews the interviewees (members of our community who have been away from the physical space of camp for some time now) have brought up an important facet of the Wayfinder community. The idea that you can leave camp for any amount […]

Life is an Adventure Game This is a transcript of a speech given by Trine Boode-Petersen at The Woodstock Day School on 5/30/18 for their senior presentation week: Life is an Adventure Game, albeit on a much bigger scale. An Adventure Game is what we at Wayfinder call the Live Action Role-Play part of our [...]

Steering Made Clear: Play Style and its Theory We play Adventure Games because we want a specific experience. We want to cry, we want to laugh, we want to look cool, we want to hit stuff with foam sticks. From filling out a character survey to the final moments of game, you as a player […]

Three Ways to Cut a Cake: Game Mechanics Part 1 Game Mechanics are one of the most complicated aspects of writing an Adventure Game, and it’s not because of the difficulty. Every single game has mechanical elements, with different degrees of prominence within a particular game. These mechanics develop together into systems – relationships of […]

You Win Or You Die: Political Games and You I’ll be completely honest – in my opinion, Game of Thrones is not a very good TV show. That doesn’t stop me from watching it (doing my best to avoid the constant misogyny and racism). The only actually enjoyable part of Game of Thrones is the […]

Environmental Storytelling It’s tough to judge games. So much of it can be determined by where in the game you are, who you interact with, and what happens to you. Even if you don’t have fun, the staff involved in it are skilled at making it an enjoyable experience for the majority of people. Generally, […]

Spooky Scary: How Horror Games Tick Late at night, JJ Muste and myself were staying up late after a Living Legend event I ran, and we were talking about horror games, and what makes them fun. We were bemoaning the lack of structure for how to write a horror game. JJ compared it to “a […]

Drawn With Courage…: Starting an Intro Game Intro games are, far and away, the most common form of game we run at Wayfinder. Of our 14 unique games run in 2017, 9 of them were intro games, and 8 of them were held at day camps. If you want to get a game run, especially […]

Camp’s Magic Circle Recently I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about play and what it is. I’ve been taking a class on play theory (one of many reasons my writing of this blog has lagged so heavily) in which we have been looking at different definitions of play that people have had throughout the […]

Location, Location, Location: How to Create Your Setting Every story, whether it’s a novel, a movie, or an adventure game, has a setting. Maybe that setting is a whole new world, with strange beings and stranger magics, or maybe it’s a complex network of planets in the distant future. Maybe it’s an apartment complex in […]

Choose Your Character How to figure out who the PCs should be in your game So you’ve got an idea for a game. Cool! You’ve got a setting, you’ve got some game mechanics, you might even have the beginnings of a flow coming together! But hold on, there’s one vital factor you might not have […]

Flows for Algernon What actually happens in your game? Tonight we’re talking about the structure of an adventure game. The individual scenes that compose it must spring from your imagination. But because games which are well-organized tend to run well and games which are poorly organized don’t, it’s useful for us to think about the […]

Why We Write Games Did you enjoy your holidays? Because the Story Board Blog is back, and will continue to post thought-provoking and helpful essays, hints and tirades about the art of writing adventure games, right up until the deadline for story submissions. Tonight, we set out to ask ourselves: What’s the point? Of game […]

Theme in Adventure Games What is a “theme”? What is a “thesis”? A theme is an idea that comes up a lot in a creative work. A thesis is the central idea around which a creative work is based. There are more comprehensive definitions available in dictionaries both online and off, but these definitions will […]

Three Character Sheets to the Wind Since we just had a conversation about characters, now seems like a good time to talk about character sheets. Character sheets are useful for some types of games, but in others they only serve to limit characters and gum up the works. How can we as gamewriters determine whether […]

Casting a Mold for Empowerment If you’ve read the previous entries here on the Story Board blog, you’ve already heard about empowerment, why and when it’s important, and even how to accomplish it. In this entry, we’re going to look into this last point in a little further detail: what goes into basic empowerment in […]

Making Magic (Or, Specifically, Making Magic Work For Your Game) Let’s talk about the Magic System! When our founding fathers laid out the Wayfinder magic system, they had a number of goals in mind. Jefferson wanted to make sure that it facilitated everyone having fun in game. Adams wanted it to contribute to making cool […]

Storywriter’s Guide to Dealing With Production Being a storywriter is a crazy, exhausting, and magical experience. The magic lies in seeing a world and characters who have previously only existed in your head come alive for the adventure game. Having strong production for your game can transport the players to an unrecognizable world, full of […]

The Gamewriter’s Glossary Wayfinder games can be very abstract, especially since we all tend to develop our own jargon when talking about them. So, here follows a massive listing of all the terminology you will need to write an Adventure Game! Hopefully this will make many things clear, and make many things that were already […]

A Good Tease So this year we’re bringing back teasers as a requirement for game submissions, which means it’s time for a crash course in the whys, hows, and which-end-ups of making a good game teaser! First, the basics: what the heck is a teaser? To quote our Gamewriter’s Glossary, a teaser is “a short […]

Lists, Lists, Lists! Do you want Production to like you? Of course you do. They’re the people who make your game beautiful, and make it even possible. Without them, you’re just a bunch of people running around in your normal clothes in some empty woods! You know what Production loves? Nicely formatted Production lists, that […]

The Big Finish: ending your game “GAME!” The shout goes up and everyone cheers and collapses into hugs, eager to tell their friends stories of their epic adventure. But hold on, let’s wind back a few minutes–not far, just a few–how did we get here? Today we’re going to talk about one of the hardest […]

Game Submission Samples Sample Intro Games The Blood Moon by Michael Phillips and Eamon Burdick (2013) A dark fantasy about an uprising against a long-reigning vampire lord. While this isn’t the most polished game submission, it’s a good example of how to provide a solid framework without having to go overboard on details. We love […]

Take It Home With You Closing circle at camp almost always includes a specific message and call to action: the things we do at camp can be brought out into your regular life. This isn’t to say that you’re going to get everyone you meet to break out into LARPing games at school or in […]

A Day in the Life: Survival Camp August 21st-27th We ended our summer season with an exciting new program: Survival Camp. This camp featured a close knit group of participants who soaked up a good deal of knowledge about and appreciation for the outdoors. The camp focused on teaching a variety of survival skills with […]

A Day in the Life: Advanced Camp August 14th-20th Advanced camp came and went with a flourish. We played three Adventure Games in six days, and while everyone was a little tired out, we had a great time doing it all. The games kept the camp living up to its name, with every game putting […]

Day in the Life: Immersion Camp and High Meadow 2 Aug 7th-13th The first week of overnights for the summer was a blast! An amazing, and immersive game and plenty of time together in community. Legendary Mafia runner, Brennan Lee Mulligan, was back in action. Each round of Mafia takes place in a different town […]

Seeing the World with Kyle Perler This week’s entry into the Where Are They Now series is centered on Kyle Perler. While Kyle is another creative type who came through Wayfinder, he works in a field where the connection to the work we do may seem a little less direct. Kyle runs his own photography […]

Living Through Stories with Nick Marini For this week’s Where Are They Now we had the chance to sit down with Wayfinder alumnus Nick Marini who is now living in Los Angeles and working as actor (and a tutor “in order to survive”). Nick has been in a number of independent films, some plays, and […]

Transformation While there has been a lot of discussion of “creating space” on this blog (and generally is at any Wayfinder event), little focus has been given to what kind of space Wayfinder is to begin with. It may seem kind of strange to try and diagnose a space which has no connection to a […]

Transcending Reality with Tigre Bailando The path from Wayfinder to the work our alumni do in their respective creative fields can often be an easy one to see. The connections between the work we do at camp and the work someone does writing, acting, or making art are all fairly clear. What is not always […]

Finding Confidence With Max Friedlich For this week’s entry into our Where Are They Now series I had the opportunity to talk with Max Friedlich, yet another creative type who credits Wayfinder as the place for the majority of his development. Max is a playwright, after his play Sleepover was put on at the Fringe […]

Where Are They Now: Molly Ostertag Molly was a joy to interview. She moved from upstate New York to LA just over a year ago, where she is a full time cartoonist and an animator for Disney. She draws a bi-weekly web comic called Strong Female Protagonist with another Wayfinder alum (Brennan Lee Mulligan), has […]

Always Coming Back Home To You In all of the Where Are They Now interviews the interviewees (members of our community who have been away from the physical space of camp for some time now) have brought up an important facet of the Wayfinder community. The idea that you can leave camp for any amount […]

Life Lessons with Brennan Lee Mulligan This week’s Where Are They Now features another Wayfinder alum who finds themselves immersed in a creative life in the world. We sat down with Brennan Lee Mulligan to discuss the ins and outs of his life, and the ways in which Wayfinder had helped him get where he […]

Trust in Adventure Gaming Obviously deep, intensely emotional, trusting relationships exist outside of LARP communities. The point here isn’t to claim that Wayfinder has some unique ability to provide participants with trust or friends or anything like that. The idea is more this: trust, like the realest kinds of trust, are formed through having intense […]

Finding a Home with Jenna Bergstraesser Being structured around an adventure game Wayfinder naturally provides skills that lend themselves to a wide variety of creative pursuits. In the last Where Are They Now feature we looked at Marika McCoola who had taken her experience and become a writer, and spoke very eloquently about how her […]

The Benefits of Friendship Community is a funny thing. We talk about the Wayfinder community as if it was a living entity when really it’s a web of interpersonal relationships and a kind of commitment you make to people you have not met yet, but who have occupied space in that same circle that you […]

Building Worlds with Marika McCoola Wayfinder has always lived in the written words of its community members. Any world we create and explore starts with someone hunched over a computer, furiously typing histories into existence. It seems natural then that Wayfinder have so many community members with a literary streak to them. We had the […]

Communal Trust There are a lot of words that get thrown around (both at camp and outside of it) until they become so called buzzwords and lose any semblance of meaning. Some of them particularly pertain to Wayfinder. Community. Trust. Fairy Realm. OK, that last one still means a whole lot, but the other two […]