Credits

When TNT Productions (Jennifer Diewald, Susan Giusto, Tim Lasko, and Barry Tannenbaum) was working on various LARPs like You'll Be Safe Here and The Stigmata of Thomas Enfield, Tim would occasionally cite a fictional LARP to make some theoretical point.

"For example," he'd start, "in Dustpan: the LARP..."

He'd go on to explain his idea, all in terms of this nonexistent and undefined example. We'd argue LARP theory back and forth, and Dustpan: the LARP was used as the example time and time again.

Late in 2003, Jennifer had one of those frightening brainstorms, where she just knew what Dustpan: the LARP was all about. She sat down and sketched out the original set of notes for the game.

After The Stigmata of Thomas Enfield and Intercon D, it was time for TNT Productions to choose what new LARP Jennifer was going to write. Dave Clarkson was also interested, so she pulled out her notes for Dustpan: the LARP. She pulled out several completed characters.

They all looked at Jennifer like she was nuts. This was nothing new; she was very used to it by this point. Nevertheless, they agreed to the project. Everyone started contributing character ideas. Jennifer would take them and start writing, with the rest of TNT contributing suggestions as she typed.

We hold Barry responsible for the singularly brilliant pun that made us all groan. There are other, lesser puns in the game, but you'll know the one we're talking about when you hear it.

Dave had other things to deal with, so he left the effort after producing the guts of one character and helping plot several of the others. Lynn Anslow joined TNT along the way, unable to escape the process. Besides knitting all the pieces of fuzz in the game, she contributed more than she knows.

Jordan Diewald read through most of the material and laughed a great deal. Then he said something to Jennifer, which immediately led to two more characters. Tara Halwes made an offhand comment in LiveJournal which led Jennifer to write yet another character. Another giddy moment and really awful pun by Jennifer led to number fourteen. Susan Born took her time signing up for the con and the game, ending up on the waitlist. Since she'd said some nice things about the concept, and since Jennifer had yet another goofy idea, she got in with character number fifteen. That left one person on the waitlist, which seemed a shame. Lynn and Susan had a brilliant idea, which got morphed into the outline of character sixteen over a dinner with Barry, Jennifer, Lynn, and Tim. The character was fleshed out and finished by Jennifer in a mad TNT rush with a little over two weeks to runtime.

And, as we say around here, Bwa-ha-ha-ha-ha!

For Intercon K, it was karma that we had two people on our waitlist that we really wanted in the game. So, crazy as it might seem, we dusted off our notes and Jennifer wrote two more characters for the game. That's TNT for you! Bwa-ha-ha-ha-ha!

When TNT Productions went their separate ways in 2018, Dustpan: The LARP went back into the collection of Jennifer's LARPs that really should be run more often. In August of 2024, Autumn Graham-Walker, a wonderful LARP writer from New Zealand, reached out to Jennifer about LARP writing. Autumn had watched Jennifer's LARP Theory 101 seminar, used it to help write their LARPs, and wanted to thank Jennifer for it. Autumn then asked if they could run Dustpan: The LARP at one of their local conventions. Jennifer took a look, decided that, with a little work, it could be made good enough to be given to someone else! Jordan threw in another wonderful punny connection, so that went into the game. The denizens of the dustpan will live again!