Childfree | 2018-11-17
Childfree is a larp about owning one’s own body, about being empowered to make life-changing choices and pursue one’s dreams and projects. It is a larp about choosing to get an abortion.
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Vision
Childfree was born from the disturbing ascertainment that even though larps about voluntary termination of pregnancy weren’t generally designed in an anti-abortion perspective, by presenting abortion as part of the parenting process, not of the contraceptive process, and by emphasizing on the potential − and rare − trauma, they nurtured conservative views about abortion. This larp is, thus, a political manifesto: it is radical in its premises, and hopes to carry across a critique of the social order. Particularly, it aims at pointing out the ways in which the society appropriates the female body as an instrument to reproduce itself, denying the female-bodied persons mastery over their own bodies.
Structural choices
This game is radical, queer, and feminist, and can be played with or without a facilitator. The absence of outside facilitator is also a structural choice, destined to encourage horizontality, autonomy, and collective responsability. It was written for 5 to 7 players and lasts 4 hours, all included. To organize it, reading through the game document suffices: it doesn't require any prior preparation.
A chair in a dark room, lit by a spotlight (or regular lamp with cardboard to limit the lit area) is enough to play the game. A device on which to play an alarm is also necessary to set the gametime.
Download the game documents here: Download
Childfree in media
Childfree was cited and its author interviewed in an article by Laura Hudson in The Guardian, titled The female game designers fighting back on abortion rights
. Read the article
This game was written during a larp-writing week-end among Fennoswedish larpers in Oravais, Finland. It led to the author being interviewed about that game in a local Swedish-speaking newspaper Vasabladet by the journalist and larper Fredrik Westblom. Read the article (in Swedish)
Other mentions: