Insurrection LRP was conceived and written by Oliver Beck and Joe Rooney, and the Design Team (responsible for all aspects of event organisation) now consists of Helen Dixon, Joe Rooney and Nathanael Rouillard. We’ve all been roleplaying since the early 90s and we bring together a lot of influences from across the spectrum of fantasy and cyberpunk, plus conspiracy theory, real-world politics and much else besides. Our aim is to create what we hope is a dynamic and involving LRP campaign, which breaks some of the conventions of traditional high fantasy and empowers players to make consistent and significant change within the gameworld.

As events are run on a not-for-profit basis, all income goes directly into supporting current and future events. We also aim to keep the core costs of events low, by offering discounts for timely payment. Crewing at events is free, and we will do our best to make you feel welcome. If you play or crew Insurrection and would like to see our financial records, please just ask.

All published Insurrection LRP material is licensed under the Creative Commons. In the spirit of this licence, we have compiled an admittedly incomplete list of the various sources which have influenced or otherwise impacted on the design of Insurrection. If you feel that we have missed something off, please let us know.

• Succession: a short-lived campaign run by the Portly Pixie (see below) that inverted the set-up of their Kingship campaign and had players taking the role of rebels against an elven dictatorship. It was through fond reminiscence of Succession that Insurrection was born.
• Portly Pixie: Coventry-based LRP club where most of the Design Team got their start in the hobby. We took the simplified version of the Pixie system used for Kingship and Succession as our starting point when writing the system. We reference several Kingship and Pixie characters throughout our material. Consider it an homage.
• Kingship: their draft economic system was a huge influence on the Insurrection downtime system, as was the Lupine Lord.
• Bladelands and Resistance: their respective spirit strength and soul bead mechanics both fed directly into our Stamina bead system. Plus Resistance’s feel of struggling against oppression with very few resources is another big influence.
• Shadowrun: our Artifice and Talismongering systems both owe a lot to this awesome table-top game. Plus some of its ideas about orcs and elves in particular have found their way into the setting.
• Valkyria Chronicles: a PS3 game that really influenced the mass combat system.
• Eos: taught us a lot about event organisation because of their awesome levels of organisation and the really inclusive approach they take towards their crew.
• Profound Decisions: also taught us lots about event organisation, but more importantly they showed us what a really well-done downtime system looks like.
• The Story Matrix by John Newton, Encouraging Emergent Stories by Ryan Paddy, Players Who Suit MUDs by Richard Bartle, and a lot of Ron Edwards’ work at The Forge, plus innumerable discussions on Rule 7, helped us really establish what we were trying to achieve with the game and how we were going to do so.
• We often suspect that Exalted influences us more than we’d like
• The PS1 game Vagrant Story lent some names and ideas too
• The book One No, Many Yeses: A Journey to the Heart of the Global Resistance Movement by Paul Kingsnorth, and the 2005 protests against the EU Constitution were both strong influences on our faction set-up: five groups united in opposition to the Commonwealth but each with a different (and hopefully mutually exclusive) vision of what should come afterwards
• The works of H.P. Lovecraft and the Cthulhu mythos more generally have certainly influenced our portrayal of some aspects of the supernatural within Insurrection. The tabletop RPG CthulhuTech has also influenced some of our design decisions.
• We share a certain spiritual kinship with War On Terror, the board game as well

Racial influences:

• Dwarves: owe a lot to Israeli collective communities, our experiences in modern academia, and this story by Jason Kuznicki
• Elves: Tir Tairngire and Tír na nÓg (FASA) and the hermetica all fed in quite heavily to Insurrection’s elves. Our Wood Elves’ culture owes more to Games Workshop than to Tolkien, but is also heavily influenced by the idea of an eco-terrorist network organised into paramilitary bands fighting a guerilla war.
• Orcs: The Killing Spirit by Sean-Michael Argo, The Ork Nation of Cara Fahd(FASA), Grunts by Mary Gentle, Orcs by Stan Nicholls, Awakenings: New Magic in 2057 (FASA), and Orkworld by John Wick all feature heavily.

Faction influences:

• Dawning Light: Spanish and Italian anti-fascist fighters in the 1920s and 30s, May 19 Communist Organisation, The Weather Underground, Black Panthers, Red Army Faction, Heaven’s Gate, Seventh Day Adventism, and Aum Shinrikyo.
• Fangs of Karg: Maoist Theory of People’s War, a bit of Die Hard 2 and The Rock for their NPC leader, and now with the stirrings of Hordism there are shades of the Islamic Revolution (Iran) and the rise of the Taliban (Afghanistan).
• Free Thought Radicals: Socialist Workers Party, National Union of Students, the trade union movement generally, insurrectionary anarchism .
• Velvet Glove: Mission: Impossible, Metal Gear Solid 2, Illuminati, Templars, NWO and Majestic 12.
• Wayfarers’ Guild: the Guild from Exalted, the film Lord of War, plus Halliburton, Blackwater and elements of the Mob
• Woldscar Volunteer Force: Paramilitary groups in Northern Ireland and the Middle East, the struggles for the foundation of the Republic of Ireland, and the Good Friday Agreement for the Provisional Government, and an exaggerated form of militant trade unionism for their enemies.

If you have any questions about Insurrection which are not answered by this site, feel free to contact us using the email address below.