Grandma's Resting Place

Written by Quinn D, Kathleen De Smet, Katie Giacomini, Eva Schiffer, and Gaylord Tang

A live action role-playing game (larp) for 6 players and 1  game master that takes 3 to 4 hours. All materials needed to run the game are included.

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It’s been three years since Grandma Dot’s cancer diagnosis, and the last two annual family beach parties have been centered on her long—and happy—goodbyes. Now she’s passed away in a hospital far from home. Rather than turn her body over to the usual pipeline of hospital to funeral home to cemetery, the family took it and drove off in their RV to take her home and decide what to do.

Grandma’s Resting Place is a game about coping with the loss of a loved one by sharing and reliving memories spanning three generations. The game is set in a realistic modern time. This is a serious game including a mix of joyful, funny, and sad memories. The focus is on roleplaying the characters involved, with no goals.

Play takes place primarily in a scene in the “present time” of 2016 shortly after Grandma Dot’s death. This scene is intermittently punctuated by flashback memory scenes and monologues from a player portraying the memory of Grandma Dot. The flashback scenes look back earlier into the lives of the characters and explore their complicated relationships with Grandma Dot. 

Content warning: This game has themes including lack of respect for the dead, death of family members, terminal cancer, divorce, and neglectful parenting.

Grandma’s Resting Place is for players age 16 and up.

The game takes 3 to 4 hours including briefing and debriefing.

Includes 1 female player character, and 5 player characters that can be flexibly gendered (all 5 have male and female versions, and 3 also have gender neutral versions using they pronouns).