Caligo Mundi
Caligo Mundi
A Melbourne LARP community
- Location
- Melbourne, Victoria, Australia.
- Genre
- Pan-genre club. Campaigns, one-shot freeforms, and other experimental formats.
- Established
- 17th July 2007
- Website
- Caligo Mundi website
Mission statement
Caligo Mundi is a non-profit volunteer organisation, run by our members, for our members. We are limited by guarantee and registered under the Corporations Act 2001. Our community is dedicated to the running of role-playing events, board game days, and other social gaming activities for adults, 18 years old and over. We are most known for our live action roleplaying events.
History
The official start of the club is in 2007, but the club draws many stylistic and historical influences from the local history of roleplaying prior to this point. Many founding members were involved in the Australian freeform scene which began in the early 80's, and draw its beginnings to back then. Later, in 1996, a US World of Darkness LARP group and official fan club of White Wolf – known then as the Camarilla – established an Australian branch, including a chapter in Melbourne, which drew in many of these seasoned convention roleplayers. Then in July 2007, part of the Melbourne chapter broke away from the international Camarilla organisation in pursuit of more creative freedom in telling stories, and founded this club.
At the time, the club dedicated itself to an expanded World of Darkness campaign, and this is reflected in the club's chosen name (Latin for "world of shadows/mist" or other connotations, depending on your translation source.) But over the years, the shape of the club has changed.
Since the hosting of the first "Caligo Presents" in 2010 at Northcote Town Hall in Melbourne - a 'taster' of different one-shots in the style of Australian freeforms - the club expanded to other genres and styles and became a home for games that many locals couldn't find anywhere else (simulated combat excepted). Each month Caligo played host to between 1-3 ongoing campaigns, spanning usually anywhere between 4 sessions long to 2 years long before different storyteller teams took breaks to rest and consider what they wanted to run next. Many of these games were multiforms, combining social roleplaying with text roleplaying elements, board games, wargames, or in one case a phone app designed specially by one of the storytellers to interface with players as a 'ship computer' in a sci-fi game. In 2015 these experiments led to the club's first weekend camp event. This was inspired by a popular ongoing campaign that sought to expand beyond its usual format, and then became another home for one-shots in a new setting. The camp was popular enough that the events and one-shot extravaganzas continued on annually for another 4 years until the Melbourne lockdowns put a pause on all larping activity.
Since resuming, the club has returned to running two campaign larps each month so far, resuming our special one-shot showcase events in 2026, and looking forwards to what comes next.
As for crediting this history to significant folks: there are too many people who have been involved in this club as volunteers to name. Some have moved on from the club to other pursuits, making it difficult to contact those folks for permission to name and credit them amongst our history, and we respect the 'right to be forgotten', especially as a reflection of some of our members' personal values. But many storytellers can be found by looking through our archive or other special events. You can also find out our current list of board volunteers here on the Position Holders page. What has helped make us work as a sustainable organisation is having some separation between 'storytellers' and the board and executive, who provide logistical support so that games can keep running. While the venn diagram of who's running a game vs. who's helping run the club often has crossover, many games have gotten off the ground a lot easier by not having to worry about venue bookings and other overheads.
External links
Proof of existence - Caligo Mundi mentioned in the Sydney Morning Herald, a local newspaper.