Full Cow: Edge Talks Leather and Kink
Join Edge as he shares his 30+ years of experience in leather, kink, and BDSM. Each episode centers around a theme, explored through several segments. In the first, Edge shares his leather journey in relation to that theme in order to draw some larger lessons about the leather community. In the second segment, the focus is on practical knowledge and history. Then, we speak with another member of the community who shares their knowledge and experience in relation to the theme. Occasionally, there will also be bonus segments, like erotic story time or kink centered meditation. Come learn more about leather, kink, and BDSM with Edge.
Full Cow: Edge Talks Leather and Kink
LARP!
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A leather bar reopens, the music is loud, the basement dungeon is calling, and everyone is carrying a name they can’t say out loud anymore. That’s the emotional engine behind “Cruising For Sex In A Burning Building,” the live action role-playing game Jon and Moss designed to explore leather bar culture at the height of the HIV/AIDS crisis. We talk about why LARP is more than costumes and foam swords, and how immersive storytelling can become a powerful tool for queer history, community memory, and honest conversations about risk.
Jon and Moss walk me through the game’s premise, the research behind it, and the design choice that makes it both intense and playable: adapted Ars Amandi style mechanics that translate kink and cruising into minimal but meaningful touch. We get specific about what can be represented well in a short run time, why they avoid gamifying HIV transmission, and how teaching techniques player to player turns “transmission” into a theme about knowledge, care, and legacy. We also dig into how physical space shapes immersion, from a plain room with dim lights to a real dungeon setup with unexpected historic artifacts.
Then Ask Edge gets practical. I answer listener questions about shifting from sub to Dom headspace, affording leather events when hotels and travel are brutal, and what to do when your leather persona feels stuck in the garage. If you care about BDSM consent culture, leather history, LARP design, or the way queer communities keep finding joy under pressure, this one will stay with you. Subscribe, share it with a friend who loves games or kink, and leave a review so more people can find us.
Relevant links:
- Cruising for Sex in a Burning Building event website
- joncole.itch.io
- beatingthebinary.itch.io
- Ars Amandi
- Just a Little Lovin'
- Twin Cities Leather
- Stockholm Scenario Festival
Ask Edge! Go to https://www.speakpipe.com/LTHREDGE to leave ask a question or leave feedback. Find Edge's other content on Instagram and Twitter. Also visit his archive of educational videos, Tchick-Tchick.
Welcome And Content Warning
SPEAKER_02Let's talk about RP. This podcast contains material intended for a mature audience. For procedure, perfect art. Welcome to Folk How podcast about Leather Ink and PDSM. My name is Edge. My pronouns are EM. And I'm your host. And this has got to be one of the most unique episodes of Folk How in the entire four seasons. We're going to be talking about live action role-playing, LARPing, in the context of a leather bar at the height of the HIV pandemic. You know, I get emails every now and then. People telling me, oh, thanks for the podcast, thanks for the podcast. One day I get this email. Thanks for the podcast. It helped us create this LARP about leather bars in the 80s. And I'm like, what? What? I followed up with John and Lost, and they agreed to come on the show and tell me about what they were doing. So this is going to be a really interesting episode because I know a lot of you who listen are gamers of various sorts. And therefore not far away from this world of LARPing. And now we're going to dive right in at the intersection of LARPing, leather and kink. I love that. We also have some great ask edge questions, so I'm also excited for that. And I'm thrilled for this episode. I think it's one of my most unique episodes ever, and I'm hoping you enjoy it as much as I do. So let's get started.
SPEAKER_03And oh
Meet The LARP Designers
SPEAKER_03my god, I am so excited to have John and Moss joining us here on Full Cal. John and Moss, welcome to Full Cal.
SPEAKER_01Thank you, and it's just wonderful to be here.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, thanks for having us. Yeah, so John, could you introduce yourself, name, pronouns, and who you are?
SPEAKER_01I'm John Cole. I use he, him, his pronouns. I'm uh a sex educator and LARP designer. Uh yeah, I'm a cis man. And a bye.
SPEAKER_05And Moss, can you do the same?
SPEAKER_04Yes, I am Moss Mognoveho Bosch. I use they, them, theirs pronouns. Uh, yeah, I am a tabletop and LARP designer. I've worked in various facets of education for about a decade, including but not limited to sex and relationship health education. Uh and yeah, I'm a I'm a non-binary trans mask person who loves nerding out about games and pink and the intersection thereof, especially between pink and LARP, because there's a lot happening there.
SPEAKER_03I love that. And I will say, you know, when I look, the only place I get really good metrics, quote unquote metrics on my audience is Instagram. And it's always my key demographic is 25 to 34. And I know, and actually, everyone in my orbit is a gamer of some form. So I'm thrilled to have you here because I think my audience is really going to identify with you.
SPEAKER_04I'm a creo gamer. You you got us. I guess.
What Live Action Role-Playing Is
SPEAKER_03Uh, but I do have other demographics who may not know what LARPing is. So could one of you, both of you, tell us what exactly LARP is?
SPEAKER_01Yeah. Um, LARP is a short way of saying live action role-playing. And so the content I think most people have seen in like a movie or at the park or people running around with padded swords in the woods. Um, so that's blank pretend. And I would say, like film, there's a whole spectrum of what LARP is from like the artsy end of the community that makes interactive experiences about weird or real-world topics. And then there's also like the great old-fashioned fun fantasy adventure, swords in the woods. Uh, Moss and I are from the sad crying about feelings, like having big thoughts about politics, world of LARPing. Uh yeah.
SPEAKER_04Yeah, we don't mind a little fantasy adventure, but we usually end up getting some politicking in there at some point. Uh yeah, I would also say I agree with everything John said. I, in my daily life, especially in the talking with coworkers about your hobbies kind of experience, have had to figure out how to shorthand LARP for people who don't know it. I often really quick shorthand what I'm doing, especially as immersive storytelling games. Um because I think there's a whole bunch of different ways you can describe it, but that covers a lot of the kinds of things that I'm doing. It is essentially just lightly formatted playing pretend. And I think it's something that people keep doing in a bunch of different ways without knowing that they're doing it, and in some cases actively reinvent in different communities and spaces because the desire to play pretend is potent. It's also a great educational tool. John and I have both done work around the concept of edge of art, you know, short for like educational art, talking about ways you can use that kind of immersive role-playing to teach a concept or engage with a piece of history or reflect on something intentionally, you know, with like a an intentional formatted setup and debrief to help contextualize it. Um, and so there's a lot of tasty, tasty potential. And I especially, in a lot of my different education work I've done, I've done a lot of things that weren't described as LARPing, but definitely were, because lots of interactive training tools and scenario practice are very literally LARP. They're going, hey, here's your little character sheet, and you're supposed to act this out immersively so that everyone else gets to practice, for example, how to do wilderness first aid on someone who is panicking in the woods. Um who is LARP?
SPEAKER_03Awesome. I love that. I love how expansive that definition is. I think a lot of people will find an entry point.
Setting A Leather Bar In 1980s
SPEAKER_03So, and you talked about being sort of on the emotional, sad side of LARPing, and we're really here to talk about the LARP you made, um, cruising for sex in a burning building. So, and I'll start like calling on you because for people who are at home, you may have figured out we're there are three of us here, and who's going to answer? That gets confusing. John, can you give us the elevator pitch for what cruising for sex in a burning building is?
SPEAKER_01Uh in cruising for sex in a burning building, you can connect, cruise, and mourn as uh gay 80s leathermen in the just reopened leather bar uh at the peak moment of the of the HIV AIDS crisis, where your characters have to decide where they're gonna go at the end of the night. Are they going hard with other men in the basement dungeon or are they going home in light of the risks of HIV transmission?
SPEAKER_03Powerful. And so, Moss, this all started because I got an email out of the blue, like, oh, thanks for full cow. Great podcast. We made a LARP, and then that blew my mind.
Researching Queer Leather History
SPEAKER_03So can can you tell us how the the sort of trajectory from how did full cow lead to this, or what other sources were you pulling from to assemble this LARP?
SPEAKER_04Oh, yeah, we we pulled from a lot of sources. So this LARP happened for a lot of reasons, one of which is just that John and I were already connected in the LARP scene. We're both in particular, like people with a sex education background and people who focus on COVID consciousness in like our hobbies and gameplay spaces. And so we had become internet friends and then in-person friends and been in a lot of the same kinds of overlapping game spaces, both for online edge-alp events run in connection with Planned Parenthood at one point, and also the in-person, COVID-conscious uh Twin Cities LARP scenario festival make a scene, which happens every summer in Minneapolis. Um, but yeah, we were both thinking about different dimensions of EdulARP uh perspectives on kinds of games we might want to do. And I in particular, um, I was raised by 1980s uh like comic nerds. My parents collected a whole bunch of weird indie comics in the 80s, which included a lot of comics that we're actively commenting on and engaging with the HIV AIDS crisis. Uh, including there's there's this amazing, for me, one of the anchor points that led to the large arc that looped in full cow was this 80s fundraiser charity comic anthology called Strip AIDS USA, that had a multi-editor panel, it brought together comic artists, everyone from like the guy who makes Doonesbury to like Kate Worley and Reed Waller, who wrote what's considered one of the now, in retrospect, original furry comics before furry comics were a term, a term. Um, and they were all making comics that were commenting on this particular like political, cultural, social, sexual moment. Um, and so I, as a young person who then became like a peer, like youth sex educator in my teens, that historical context was so huge, getting the chance to see art made by people in the middle of this really particular moment. Um and so when John and I hit a point where we were, we realized, hey, we have kind of a game premise we want to chew on here. We want to play around with what it would look like to set a game in this really specific moment in history. And how would we want people to embody that? And how would we want to engage with that thoughtfully and intentionally, knowing that we weren't there, we didn't live that specifically, and our LARP players either weren't there or aren't there now. Um, so what are the tools we want to pull from? And so we were using a range of current and historical sources. So I went down a rabbit hole reading multiple like anthologies of people's writings about bar culture historically, and John went on some podcast scouting and found your podcast. And so we were pulling together this lovely chaotic resource list. Uh, we were kind of pulling this from everywhere we could, and you especially, I believe, helped John contextualize the Leatherman's handbook as a particular historical resource connected to that moment.
SPEAKER_03Awesome. John, did you want to add anything to that?
SPEAKER_01Yeah, um, I appreciated the episodes where you, I forget the person's name, but like the person who was researching leather current and historically, and like had multiple layers of information about definitions. And Moss and I are, neither of us are like cis gay men. So like coming from a podcast that comes from more from that perspective was important for us to talk about uh the leather and kink aspects of this game.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, if people are curious, that's Dr. Ty, who is a sexologist with a PhD and who was doing research on uh and made the first sort of academic definition of old card, and I think that's exactly who you're talking about.
Building Safe Sensual Play
SPEAKER_03Uh, crazy for sex at a burning building. People show up, uh, they step into character, and then you've developed a way for them to have touch, but obviously not have sex, right? So can you talk about this ours, ours of mundi, I think it's called, right? Um, John, can you tell us about it and how you developed it and what it does and how it works?
SPEAKER_01Yes, I guess I should first say that assuming that uh there wouldn't be any sex is not necessarily an assumption. There are LARPs where people do do real sex or have real kink. Uh this, however, is not one of them. Um we wanted this LARP to uh involve players in exploring or rediscovering sensation now that their character's relationship to sex has been transformed due to the due to the haze crisis. And because we want to have people have multiple, I'm using your quotes, sexual encounters, extra kinky encounters over the course of play over just four or five hours, we decided that pretend was best because it's so much faster and people don't need a lot of real recovery time from real kinky encounters, real sexual encounters. And so we have a delicious constellation of techniques that are sensory, involve touch, and feel a little uh physically and emotionally like sex, while not involving real-world genital contact. And those are based on a LARP technique called Arzabandi, created by, oh gosh, like Elliot Weislander and other lovely people from the Nordic countries whose names elude me. Um, a technique originally developed for a LARP where everyone is part of an alien society where there are no human beings and there are four genders, and every family is composed of four genders, and your genitals are your arms. So you sensually, mutually touch each other on the arms, fingertip to collarbone, uh, to have space alien sex. And that was created for a very specific need about a game about aliens living their little polyamorous lives. And um, it has become popular in the ARP community to uh stand in for regular sex between regular humans. That may be way, way more context than you and your listeners need. No, that's correct.
SPEAKER_04I don't think even every LARP knows that that's part of the origin of Arzumanti. Plenty of people learn it without the space alien context is the origin.
SPEAKER_03Yeah. And and so and and so you've you you translated specific kinds of touch to different kinks, or can you tell us about how, like, how does kink get translated into alien sex techniques? Let's start there. Moss.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, do you want to stick this one, Moss?
SPEAKER_04Happily,
Turning Kink Into Minimal Touch
SPEAKER_04yeah. So essentially, it's interesting too, because also in making the decisions around these mechanics, there was a lot of brainstorming back and forth. I would say John was the overall like mechanics master and final decision maker, but we were both riffing and trying to pull concepts and figure out essentially, do we need to reinvent the wheel here? We probably don't. Like we have made tools for so many things. There's almost certainly going to be stuff we can pull from. It was then just a question of what flows best, what seems to work in a play test, and also what relates thematically to the context and era that we're playing with. And so I would also say definitely like the kink techniques that we ended up picking are extremely non-exhaustive and are based, I think, at least a little bit in part on what we felt we could develop useful LARP tools for enacting, where it's learnable and playable within that time frame. So key uh like kink dynamics we ended up landing on included impact, breath play, boot blacking, power exchange, uh, and bondage, because those were all things where we could take elements connected to the flavor of Arzumandi and find pretty direct ways to translate them using minim minimal but meaningful touch. So, for example, in boot blacking, you don't literally have a whole kit. You don't, you're not literally immersively cleaning leather, but you might be ritualistically buffing a piece of scrap leather with a piece of soft cloth, or even just ritualistically buffing or touching a part of someone's body or some other part of their clothing. I'd had my I had my shoes boot blacked, I was wearing sneakers. Um it was not literal boot blacking, but the the symbol focused engagement with a particular item, treating it as a site of care and a site of intimate focus, that could still translate over by the same by the same tool. Bondage, we're not having people do literal bondage, both because it would be very time consuming. And also, frankly, I've I haven't uh I don't know if this has come up specifically on your show, but I wouldn't be surprised if it has. But a lot of bondage can be much more edge play than people realize. Uh there are a lot of like nerve damage and suffocation risks and fall risks, depending on what you're doing. Um, but people can, you know, slowly and meaningfully like draw a bandana or a scarf around someone's hand, twine it between their fingers, or even just hold someone's hands together and then tell them, like, bound, like it's now your job to hold yourself here as though you have been tied up. Obviously, within the safety limits of you can stretch, move, drop your hands if it's no longer sustainable for you to hold them there. But yeah, everything we did was kind of anchored on finding ways that we can enact this where it works with minimal meaningful touch pulling off of Arzumondi. Um But yeah, it was a lot of brainstorming, and I can definitely imagine there being versions of the game where if we built it with a different mechanical basis, it might end up with a different kink array as the focus, too. But having Arzumandi as sort of a guiding structure helped us figure out what kinks worked well within that format.
unknownYeah.
SPEAKER_03John, would you add anything to that?
SPEAKER_01No, thank you, Moss. You've covered it well. I guess I might say that we wrote this LARP um to premiere at the Smoke Festival in London. So this is a LARP by LARP people for LARP people. So also people in the LARP community, some know Arzumandi and can leap right in, though this LARP has had meaningful interest from people in the overlapping LARP and Kink communities or just in the Kink community because of its subject matter.
SPEAKER_04But yeah, so there is also a lowered cognitive load factor that is a little bit of a boost from building something based on Arsamondi.
SPEAKER_03Right. So this uh emerges out of your background as educators and sex
What The Game Aims To Change
SPEAKER_03educators. What was what's the outcome you were hoping for from this experience for participants? And what sort of outcomes did you see? And I'll start with John and then we'll go to Moss.
SPEAKER_01I mean, the I would say I don't want to project this to every LARP organizer, but I certainly wanted people to connect with this uh ace, the I don't know the right word for it, this aspect of queer history that even if someone is young and they haven't directly touched is a thing that resonates throughout time to queer people. I want people to be to find for the first time we're reminded about their feelings of this unfolding tragedy of the AIDS crisis causing us to lose so many queer elders and leather elders. Um I wanted people to cry about the real human tragedy of an it pre an entirely preventable disease epidemic that that we in the world fumbled that resulted in great death and loss of knowledge. I wanted people to feel a little sad and a little sexy. How about you, Moss?
SPEAKER_04I think that's an incredibly good summary. I would say that, yeah, this game is very actively like it is a dance with the dead written with love. Um like we are writing it for people who are not here, who we do not get a chance to know. And it is in part motivated by grief that we will never know them, but also in wanting to honor like everything that has been left behind. There are people who are who survived, there are people who wrote about the people they loved and lost. Uh, there are people documenting this and working really hard to do it, even when it is made actively hard by historical and cultural obfuscation and the things that were lost and destroyed. And I think also, again, we're also writing it in the context of like COVID-conscious game designers writing it during an ongoing current pandemic that is not precisely the same as that historical moment, but we are certainly not the first people to point out its resonances. And so I think it is also very actively and intentionally a game about how to find like intimacy, community, and joy while you are also engaging with risk uh of like death and illness and like structural marginalization and violence, because all of those are things that are in no way limited to one particular moment in a club in the 1980s. Those are things that ripple across time and space, and we are living in different aspects of them right now.
When Partying Meets Mourning
SPEAKER_03And I mean, uh, what what outcomes did you observe from participants? Do you feel like were people crying? I mean, do you did you get feedback on what people were taking away from this experience? Did it match what your goals were? And we'll start with gloss and then we'll go to John.
SPEAKER_04Yeah, I feel like it is a real range of experience. And I think something that I think we were definitely hoping for that I feel like I have seen in the playthrough I got to be a part of is people moving back and forth between like the partying and the grief and the partying and the grief getting to exist together. You know, people were hooking up on the dance floor and then stepping aside to make like little memorial altars for lost loved ones. And by the end of the night, we were picking up the memorial altars and bringing them onto the dance floor to like party with lost loves and comrades again in the ways that we could. And so I think that intentional engagement with just the messy dimensionality of things, I love that. I feel like it's also been just great to get to see people engage with the tools that we created and have experiences that do involve kink and intimacy, even if they're not the literal kinks that are being represented by the more abstract forms, and that people are taking time to be bold and make interesting, messy connections with other people. I think that was definitely one of my hopes. We're inviting people to do some very interesting and vulnerable things, and I've seen people extremely go for it, uh, which warms my heart in terms of uh kinksters and LARPers and the overlap between. John has been present for a lot more of the playthroughs than I have, and I think you've even got pulled some quotes for folks who played. Is there stuff that you would highlight from that, John?
SPEAKER_01Yeah, I've run it a couple times in the US and in Europe. Uh let's let's see, what comes to mind? I guess for your purposes, Edge, during runtime of a LARP, everyone's in character, so no one's really stopping to tell me how they're doing. I just kind of have to hope they're doing okay. So the intel I get comes from the debrief where people said, hey, I was, you know, when I was quiet in the corner, I was really in my character's head, stressing about my dead lover or whether or not to go into the dungeon tonight. Um but I without quoting any one specific person, yeah, people did feel connected to that history that both is and isn't theirs, or really valued the chance to be a sexy leather man uh one for one night only, uh, even if that's a little fraught in real life at times, especially for queer trans people um who are not fitting in necessarily as well. Do I have a specific story to share, though? Um, I guess just anecdotally, uh also people I reached out later to say, hey, based on the experience of this LARP, I I went to this much for the first time, or I Googled some stuff or switched up my profile for the first time. So I'm also this wasn't the goal, but I'm very glad that people are using it as a way to explore who they are or could be personally and letting the discoveries through their character maybe affect what they want to do in their life outside the LARP.
SPEAKER_03That's beautiful. And I mean I I suspect I may break into tears at some point during this episode because you know, I came out in the early nineties. So I was like I I came out in a time when sex was death. But I did, I didn't lose all my friends. But because I was into older men, I was connecting with men who lost all their friends. And my first husband, when I met him, he was in his 40s. He didn't have any friends because they all died, right? So um, and I I saw the the AIDS Memorial quilt on the Washington Mall. Like, and so what I loved about what you're doing is like a lot of these, particularly something like the AIDS quilt, which isn't displayed, can't really be displayed as totality anymore, isn't really as much displayed around the country. These visual markers of history are not are not there for this younger generation, for you to create a kind of accessible in a language they're used to, role-playing games, right? This is what they do, for them to enter into that history and experience that. I am so grateful that you're doing that because I went through it and and I and that shapes how I move through the world as a queer man. And I would love for them to have a sense of what that's like. So thank you for bringing that history forward.
SPEAKER_01You're very welcome. And we ourselves are inspired by other great works in the same genre. The uh legendary game Just a Little Love In um is like a really big three-day-long version of our LARP. Um, it's widely regarded as one of the best LARP in the world by Hannah Grasmo and uh TK Edland, uh two Norwegians making a LARP about the Americans. Um it's been run many times in Europe and come to the US once. Um, it's such an inspiration because it's a party where people connect with this experience and connect with the loss associated with the AIDS crisis.
SPEAKER_04Yeah, our game would absolutely not exist without just a little oven.
SPEAKER_03Um and I want to pick up uh part of
Designing Around Transmission Themes
SPEAKER_03what I was talking about. There's a there's an underlying theme here of transmission, right? So within the LARP, players have to like teach each other these R Zamondi kink moves. So there's a transmission of knowledge there in the context of this disease transmission going on all around them. And then y'all are also creating this transition, transmission of historical knowledge. So, can you speak to this theme of transmission, how much y'all were playing on it and being conscious of it or how much it emerged? How did transmission work into your design of full art?
SPEAKER_01Yeah, I can jump in on that. Um, yes, Edge raises an important part of the design, which is each player learns one of these kink techniques. You just learn bondage or you just learn boot blacking at the start of play. And if you want to learn or explore the other kink techniques, you have to find somebody and convince them to teach you, maybe have a scene with you where they show you how to uh you know do breath play or whatever. Um, that's because we wanted people to explore and discover and learn from one another. Um, but we did decide, Moss and I together decided to shy away from any sort of mechanical representation of HIV transmission. We didn't want people handing each other HIV tokens or to minimize uh something real and sensitive. So the most people engage with it is in the epoch in the private epilogue when the game is done, people can privately decide what happens to their character, which may or may not include, you know, serious conversion. Um that's a wonderful theme, this idea of transmission. Did uh I think that's what I have to say about it. Would you want to expand on this?
SPEAKER_04Yeah, uh absolutely. I think I think it was definitely a theme in acting on multiple layers because, again, yeah, transmission of knowledge is so much at the heart of what our vision was for this, and also kind of like complicated co-creation of knowledge, I think, is part of that too, both in that we are not in this particular historical moment, we are creating, we are creating this kind of complicated historical fiction pastiche of a moment and inviting people to build it with us, because part of the the terror and wonder of LARP is that however you design it, you are then not totally in control of it. It is going to get co-created with your players every time that it runs. Um, and I think especially the theme of transmission of knowledge, it played out in an engaging way uh in terms of the technique teaching, because it was a way of encouraging people to bond and connect and interact in character, while also smoothing the flow of game setup. There's a lot of workshop because we're trying to set people up with this context about the world they're going to enter and also the safety tools to enter it in a thoughtful and intentional way. Um yeah, I would also say I hope I hope the transmission goes beyond the games. It is in part, we're in places like this talking about it on a podcast. I I definitely hope that it's a game that people talk about and that the thoughts they take from it get to ripple out into how they're engaging with the world and how they're engaging with other people, and maybe even how they're engaging with, say, for sex and kink, um, by creating kind of an intentional focal point uh for chewing on that with other people.
SPEAKER_03And I'm also curious, you've done it in you've done this game, you've run it in a couple of different kinds of venues,
How The Room Shapes The Story
SPEAKER_03right? So black box theater here, hotel conference room there, Phetoshop basement. Have you found that the venue, the physical space impacts the way the game emerges and how the people and John's taking you said very strongly. So I think he has a strong opinion. We'll start with John and then go to Moss.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, we designed this for working in random rooms, uh, as the world of uh like LARP conventions works. Uh, but yeah, for the the hometown run here in Minneapolis, we rented the basement of uh beautiful Twin Cities Leather, which has a content creation uh studio, which happens to include a St. Andrew's Cross, a spanking bench, a massage table, buckets and buckets of gear for people to use, um, and uh beautiful LED lighting. So that lent um a verisimilitude. Um, and indeed, they even had this was uh such a wonderful discovery that we found out day of while setting up. Um, the Twin Cities Knights of Leather, uh, a gay men's uh leather organization that disbanded in like the late 70s, I think, or in the 90s to start in the 70s. Um, the Twin Cities Leather bought a real glory hole that they created and used all throughout that time, and we got to prop it in a corner and have people stick their arms through the larger glory hole slot and have the cruising play in our game. So it had both real historical elements and also just uh more gear uh to goof around with. Uh, we're of the opinion, or I won't speak from us, I'm of the opinion that you can have role play anywhere you choose to play pretend, no costumes required. Uh, but it's fun to have uh cool costumes for everyone to put on their leather and levi stuff for the purposes of playing a leather and levi bar. But uh I've run this in places just where we dim the lights a bit, and it it still works. Um, shout out to the St. Paul, Minnesota Library System to let us rent, uh I guess use for free their basement uh for some early playtests, and it still had a leather bar energy where we're able to play. Um yeah, that's what comes to mind.
SPEAKER_04Yeah, it is very fun to be able to say from experience that everywhere from library basement to literal dungeon can work as a play space. Because yeah, I agree with John. I feel like this is a thing that comes up in LARP in many formats too, where again, it is playing pretend. And so you can, if if you're able to enter it together with the suspension of disbelief, you can make almost any space work as long as it just meets the literal physical logistical requirements of we can fit the people in here and they have enough space to talk and hear each other. I have I played a LARP that was set in an illicit uh nightclub for androids, and it was in a narrow back hallway in one of like the main building spaces of a community college, I believe, uh, with absolutely no special props or equipment, and the only in-character costuming elements were colorful ribbons that indicated our detachable body parts, so that we could tie and untie ribbons from around each other's limbs to indicate uh illicit body part swapping at our funky underground Android club. So the range of possibility is broad, but also I think many LARPers' costuming brings us a lot of joy. Uh, it's very fun to get to add props and flavor and elements, and it was very cool to see at the at the session that I was in in uh the Twin Cities that people had a real range of costuming, but everyone was doing something intentional with their vibe. Not everyone was literally in leather, but everyone had dressed in something that was going to make them feel centered and engaged with how they were going to play the game that day. And there's a lot of delight in that. But it's balanced with the complicated delight of it's also amazing to be able to just wander into an empty room in your street clothes and create something totally different than the energy you
Leather Legacy Through A Gifted Vest
SPEAKER_04entered with.
SPEAKER_01So Moss, can you tell the story? Oh, sorry. Can you tell the story of uh someone who recast their personal vest as a character's vest and the play they made out of that?
SPEAKER_04Oh my god, that was amazing. Yeah, there was a as we've kind of noted, one of the elements in our game is that this is a club that was closed and then reopened. One of the two owners of the club died in of AIDS, and their partner is reopening it with the complicated tragedy of that loss. And there are a lot of other people in the community that have been lost too, and you can make little memorial altars for them and reflect about them with other people. Part of game setup involves clustering up with a random group of other players and deciding together what are key memories you had of this person. Um, and those memories are then yours to continue holding on to because you physically black out everywhere that it was written down on your reference sheet uh to represent the loss of that death. Uh, they are held together by your stories and your memorialization. And one of the players in our Twin Cities game uh was wearing a leather vest and decided this is a piece of leather that they got that was gifted to them from one of these people who had been lost. And so this character who was already in the play space as an intimate collective memory of, I think, at least four players initially, uh, that influence of Roy, this lost, this lost friend, rippled out through the ways people were doing kink. People were touching something that was part of the intimate memory of Roy and Roy's body and Roy's presence in the space. And that was an amazing play decision. It rippled through a lot of people. And I was playing like an older character too, who was internally grappling with the possibility of early death and ended up having a lot of discussions about like leather legacy and sort of joking that, you know, I know I'm gonna I need to stay alive long enough to gift all my leather on to like all these young, beautiful men. Like that's that's an important part of this process. So you're not you're not done with me yet because I haven't gifted everything away. Um, but yeah, it created this really like complicated, hot and intimate and sad dimension to the world we were building together. And it was a really beautiful, beautiful character decision.
SPEAKER_03I'll just add, I mean, uh, first of all, that brought tears to my eyes because I I have gifted leather from people who are no longer with me. And so that's not just that, that's not a game. I mean, you were able to really bring in a core element of how leather culture transmits itself in a very beautiful, sacred way. And so I'm glad you were able to do that. And then the other thing, you know, the your ability to turn any space into a dungeon, that is also very leather. Like, not everyone has a dungeon. Dungeons take up a lot of space in tiny houses, right? So sometimes your bedroom is the dungeon, sometimes you're camping in the woods, and that's the dungeon. And so the kind of space building you're doing in the LARP is very leather. It is very accurately leather. And I don't know if you know that, but you should know that. Did you know that?
SPEAKER_01Thank you, Edge. Um, yeah, the there's uh there's a a bit of a uh an old joke that's like the Renfair community, the kink community, the whole playing for fun community, they're kind of a big overlap. So, yeah, of course, we know that there are many uh uh LARPers who have kinky interests who are attracted to this LARP. And of course, uh yeah, that's I guess what I'll say about that. Uh thank you for this validation.
SPEAKER_03Yes, it is validation because you know, these elements that are the game elements, for me, not in the gaming community, but deeply in the leather community, you have managed to select things that are very leather, very true to leather culture now and in the 80s. So, whatever due diligence you were doing with your research, it paid off because these are elements that are really I feel connected to.
Where The LARP Goes Next
SPEAKER_03Um, what's next? Where do you want this to go? Are you still running this game? What do you want next? Moss will start with you.
SPEAKER_04I absolutely hope to run it in Seattle. I attempted to do a playtest in Seattle previously and didn't get together quite enough people for it during the playtest phase. But now that I've fully been in a run of the game, that gives me an even stronger sense of how to facilitate it. And also I have even more past gameplay experiences I can share about to hype people up. So I definitely hope to run it in Seattle in future. I also believe one of our longer-term goals is get it to a place where it is a shareable game that other people can run. We have a lot of the materials ready for that already. It's, you know, a matter of finessing and fine-tuning. A lot of our things exist in multiple documents that would need to be consolidated and reviewed for clarity to make sure that they're as easy as we can make them for someone else to pick up and play. Uh, because, you know, so much of the writing process exists in your own head. And especially with game facilitation, I feel like it is a lovely and complex gift to get to see someone else facilitate your game if you get the chance, because it reveals so much about what about this is actually on the page, and what about how this is supposed to work is living in our heads. Uh, and we're just filling in the gaps as we go. Um but yeah, we recorded some instructional videos about how to do the adapted Arzamandi techniques so that there's a key reference for anyone who's setting up to facilitate that. Yeah, we want we want this game to get to be picked up by other people and live on in different dimensions and get explored in different ways. Um, and yeah, no, we haven't we haven't made all our logistical decisions. I believe part of the vision with that too is this is not a project we are uh wanting or expecting to particularly make money on. Uh so if we put it out online, it will be sort of, you know, free with suggested donation to relevant charities, you know, like don't donate to a place that is doing work related to HIV AIDS, related to leather history, or something else of resonance in your community if you know about something local that we don't.
SPEAKER_01And my immediate next steps is uh going to the Stockholm Scenario Festival in Stockholm, Sweden in November 2026. So if any uh European listeners of Full Cow want to come play this game, as well as a lovely selection of other great LARPs, uh maybe I'll see you in Stockholm.
SPEAKER_03I mean, I do have European listeners, so I hope someone does show up for you. And I'm assuming like if people want to find you options too. Well, I have I do have Seattle listeners. Uh if people want to find you, if they want to find the game, you'll give me resources I can put in the show notes. Is that right?
SPEAKER_01Yeah, um, we'd probably put it on itch uh so that I what you we can link each other's profiles on it, but mine is uh j-o-n-c-o-le-itch.io, where you'll find all my other games about interesting historical subjects. And maybe in winter 2026.
SPEAKER_04Hopefully in future. And yeah, mine is beating the binary uh.itch.io. I also have I write a lot of weird little tabletop game zines and also lots of little like solo reflective larks about everyday experiences, like writing public transit or cooking, or dealing with anxieties about places that stress you out when you were a kid. So if you want much smaller, weirder little larks that you can pick up and play with no prep, uh we we both write things at a range of scales.
Itch.io And Sharing Indie Games
SPEAKER_03What is itch?
SPEAKER_01Uh fun question.
SPEAKER_04You want to take this or shall I jump?
SPEAKER_01Yeah, um, I'm trying to think of a good metaphor. I I'm lost. Oh, it's it is a website.
SPEAKER_04Yeah, it's a it's a web platform that was designed initially, I think, more around a place for developing and sharing indie computer games. But essentially, it is a platform where you can share files for a project that you made directly and also do lots of fun web formatting for it and get comments and reviews and also run and participate in game jams where people work on projects around a specific theme in a specific time range. And so uh quite a few years back now, in internet time anyway, there was an explosion of tabletop and LARP creators realizing that Itch also works great for sharing their small projects because it doesn't have to be a big digital game file. It can be a PDF of your rules for how to go LARP something in person. People also share their comics and illustration projects on there too. I got involved in Itch kind of when the tabletop game renaissance boomed there, and people started realizing you could do tabletop design game jams using this platform. And so a lot of people who had not designed games before uh or were looking for new ways to engage with design, jumped on this very lively bandwagon, and a whole bunch of people ran jams because it was very easy to run. I ran one for making business card-sized mini games designed to exchange at game conventions, and over 80 people, most of whom I had never met before in my life, submitted uh games to the project. Uh my biggest uh singular just made by me game project was also the product of a game jam. It was a game written for uh one of the record collection jams, which encouraged people to make uh games inspired by songs or albums of music. So I took an angsty queer folk punk album, uh Tempest in a Teacup by Mal Blum and made a game about being an angsty queered or trans 20 something who's badly processing a recent breakup. Um that's how This Party Sucks came into being, um, which also definitely is part of the historic cultural DNA of R LARP because specifically making games about having complicated, multi-dimensioned emotions at a party that you're maybe trying to ignore so that you can party is uh part of the arc of how I became a game designer to begin with.
SPEAKER_01Now, we do hope to release this game in the near future, but uh to all the researchers and academics who created works that let us make this game at all, feel free to just shoot us an email. We're happy to share, you know, a heap of documents that aren't uh beautiful if it is valid or important for your research.
SPEAKER_03Uh yeah, I don't know. I don't know who's listening to this. I don't really have a good sense of who's on the full call audience, but academics for sure. I think probably a lot of gamers who are probably going to be excited to think about how their gaming lives and their kink lives continue to connect and intercept in ways. So I'm glad you've opened that conversation.
Final Thanks And Invitations
SPEAKER_03And I'm so grateful for having you here. Is there anything else you want to share with the audience? Anything else you want to say now that you have my platform? John, we'll start with you.
SPEAKER_01Um we based the bar in R of ARP uh significantly on uh Chicago's first leather bar, the Gold Coast. Uh and I I hope I'm not giving the names mixed up, but I had a real basement dungeon that was a really direct inspiration uh for the fictional the fictional stuff in our game.
SPEAKER_04Yeah, I'm trying to think if there's anything, yeah, trying to think if there's anything super specific uh I want to call out. I feel like we're definitely gonna be sending sending you links to put in show notes uh for things that inspired us. Yeah. I would say uh in terms in terms of just general shout-outs, I just also want to thank again so much Twin Cities Leather uh for hosting us for that game. We got to play in the Twin Cities. They were charming. They seemed mildly surprised by just how set up we were to run an event. I don't think they'd rented the space to LARPers before, and so we came in with a bunch of gear and then didn't really need much of anything, um, other than a couple of logistical double checks and some ice water to put in a large picture. Um but they were gems to work with, and I also just straight up bought a bulldog harness from them in between the workshop prep and gameplay and wore it for game. And the picture of me moodily smoking a fake cigarette through my through my high-quality mask, wearing a harness and leaning on a historic uh glory hole that they just happened to have in their basement is an extremely treasured memory for me now. If you are ever in the Twin Cities, please go check out Twin Cities Leather. They also have a mini leather library you can hang out and read in their cafe.
SPEAKER_03Oh, that part's very cool. Uh, I will also add, yeah, you know, I I've been to Mid-Atlantic Leather and stood in the lobby watching a bunch of people in leather playing Magic the Gathering. And I think events like Claw, IML, MAL, these big leather gatherings that often have social kind of aspects. If if you're a volunteer for one of those, this sort of LARP would be amazing at one of those sorts of events. So hopefully they'll reach out to you. In the meantime, I'm going to say thank you so much for making the time to be on Full Cal. This has been mind-blowingly interesting.
SPEAKER_02And
Ask Edge Starts Here
SPEAKER_02now it's time for AskEdge, the segment where I answer questions from all of you. If you would like to submit a question, you can leave me a voicemail at speakpipe.com slash leatheredge, L-T-H-R-E-T-G-E-F, or you can send me an email at ask at fullcile. And both of those are available as links in the show notes. We have three questions this time. Ironically, not a single one of these came through either SpeakPipe or through ask at fullcile.show, but they reached me and I'm happy to
Moving From Sub To Dom
SPEAKER_02answer them. We're gonna start with a question from Mike in Portland.
SPEAKER_00Hi Edge. Longtime listener, first time caller. I'm Mike in Portland, Oregon, and my pronouns are he they. I've identified as a leather boy for decades now, and I recognize the actions and rituals that can help guide me into subspace. You know, kneeling before a leather man, feeling him secure a collar around my neck, uh worshipping his boots. You get the idea. As I enter middle age, I'm suddenly feeling an urge to exercise my dom top muscles more. How did you make that transition from sub to Dom? And do you have any rituals now that help you get into the Dom headspace? Thank you so much.
SPEAKER_02These are two great questions, and thank you for sending those in. You know, how did I make that transition? First of all, you need to recognize that you are on a very common evolutionary path. A lot of us sort of begin on the bottom slash submissive side and eventually grow into the top slash dominant side. So kudos and welcome to the club. For me, that transition in part was made for me. Like there came a point where I ran out of men who I felt could handle me, who could give me new experiences, new intensities, the things I was craving on the bottom. And as that was happening, I started having other men approaching me and calling me, sir. So you may find that as well. Like there's just a kind of turn that happens where people naturally start approaching you. And you want to kind of key into that. It's also entirely possible to kind of consciously make that movement. And I remember quite distinctly how strange it felt to wear my keys on the left. So there's a bit of discomfort in making that transition, physical discomfort as you make that shift. But it's really in part going to be made for you, and part is something you can decide to do. And as you make that transition, you know, my general piece of advice is you already know what to do because you have that boy's mindset. You know the floor plan of a boy's head because it's your head. And so you already know how to act, how to move, what to do, what to say. In terms of specifically transitioning into that mindset prior to a scene, I think that's something I do less now because that dominance has in some ways permeated every fiber of my being. And that doesn't mean I go barking orders at people at work, but it means there's a way I carry myself in the world that is reflective of that energy. And so it's always kind of there with me. And I don't know if that's been all the work I've done around decompartmentalizing or if it's just sort of I've done it so enough it's saturated me. I will say, in general, I think for a lot of dominant peoples, the preparation before a scene is that ritualistic moving into headspace. And that might mean both planning the scene, it might mean getting certain items of cure out, it might mean setting up the playroom, it might mean getting into your gear. And all of those things can have beautiful effects on the way you inhabit the space and the way you inhabit your body, and it can summon that dominant energy. So in part, welcome to this transition. It is beautiful. I'm glad you're making it. And in part, think about the way you prepare for that boy to approach, for the boy to arrive at your place, to go meet the boy. And I think a lot of it tends to be geared in, geared into uh gear. Much like you said, kneeling at boots might activate a submissive headspace. Putting on the boots, putting on the chaps, putting on the gloves can have a similar aspect from the other side. And so I hope I hope those were useful. I hope your transition into dominance is smooth and easy and rewarding and fulfilling. And thank you so much for the question. For the next question, we have one moment, let me
Paying For Events Without Going Broke
SPEAKER_02find it. We have a question from David. And as someone who has been in the leather scene for a while, it's awesome to see when leather events promote inclusivity. But one thing I don't see folks talk too much about is how cost prohibitive some events are. I was looking into attending a Pride event next month, but after seeing how expensive the hotel is alone, not including event registration and food/slash travel expenses, it gave me a lot more hesitation about saying yes to attend it. My question to you is, for people that are new or wanting to grow within the scene, how do you pick and choose which events to attend? And more so, how do you plan ahead for events that come with a heavy price tag? Great question. The first piece of advice I have is start local. So find the event that is closest to you. There are a lot of smaller local events or regional events that both don't have all the same costs as some of the bigger events and can be within driving distance or within bus distance. So you can lower the cost of travel. So the first piece of advice is find something, find the event closest to you. Second piece of advice is go with lots of people. You can scram a lot of people into a hotel room, and having roommates in the hotel room both gives you a built-in social network, people to hang with, people to support you, and lowers the costs. Stock supplies in the hotel room so that you're not paying for expensive hotel water, you're not going out for meals, find a local CVS, find a local grocery store, stock up the room on drinks, snacks, and food. The other tip that I think a lot of people don't realize is that for a lot of events, a lot of the bigger events in particular, they're usually desperate for volunteers. And if you volunteer, you often will get a free or discounted package for the event. And this means, first of all, when you volunteer, you meet people. You meet people at the event. It's a great way to force yourself to meet people. It's a great way to support the event, and it lowers the cost. Events are always going to be expensive, and that's not necessarily a uh function of the event as much as a function of worldwide economics right now. People have been asking me what events I'm going to. Well, I've cut back a lot because the last time I was looking at going to Mates in Provincetown, one of my favorite events. And the airfare alone was so cost prohibitive that I just couldn't do it. So this is something we're all going to struggle with. And obviously, I have a I have a lot of access, I have a lot of privilege, but even I am starting to cut back on events. And so this is something we have to cope with. And I think some of those coping strategies really has to do with being able to drive to an event, getting roommates, getting food in the hotel room, and finding ways to volunteer. And those are all strategies that will reduce your costs. For some of the big events, then you know you may save up a couple years to go to some event that you're really, really, really want to go to if you think it's worth it. But start local, start cheap, and start by rooming with people and start by volunteering.
Finding Your Leather Persona Again
SPEAKER_02Last question is from Jonathan, and he writes, Edge, I've always enjoyed your podcast and have gained a lot from you. I've been trying to formulate this question. Here goes. What has helped you maintain your leather edge persona? Leather has a bit of character as well, can't dom the cashier at Publix. That's a grocery store. So we have to know how to deploy and retract it. Mine's kind of gotten stuck in the garage for a while, and I miss that side of me. There are a couple of questions here that are worth unpacking. And the first is very much like Mike's question, which is what are the rituals you use to step into that, to deploy it? So be mindful of things like that. I will tell you, during the pandemic, I consciously chose to wear gear periodically as a way of keeping that side of me alive. I had to kind of force myself to gear up, and doing that kept that connection going. So there might be a particular item of gear, there might be a particular scene, there might be a particular fetish that if you engage in really activates the neural pathways that then activate that side of you. And so forcing yourself to do that, forcing the body and the mind will follow. If I force myself into actions where my dominance or my submission has been really active, then I am able to access that energy. The other thing I really want to share with you, because you talk about yours getting stuck in the garage for a while. I've gone through long periods where I don't feel connected to leather, I don't feel connected to edge, and that's okay. And sometimes that's because I'm working through mental health issues. Sometimes it's been I have other things going on in my life, and I just don't have the energy for that side of me. And what I've learned is that inevitably it returns. Inevitably it returns. So in the immediate, for the immediate time being, you may want to think about forcing your body into actions that are connected to that energy, and your mind will follow. But you might also say, you know what? I'm okay with not being able, with the fact that it's stuck in the garage. I'm okay with that for now. I'm not gonna panic about it for now. I'm gonna monitor my overall physical well-being, my overall emotional well-being, my overall spiritual well-being, and see if this is connected to larger issues that may need addressing with a mental health professional. And if it's not, I'm just gonna let myself rest here. And I'm gonna let that stay in the garage. I promise you, it will still be there when you're ready for it. And so you can try to force it out of the garage. I don't lure it, you can try to lure it out of the garage by doing actions, or you can just find some peace in that, put some energy into something else in your life, knowing that it will come back and you will return to it. And I certainly hope that is a useful, helpful answer for you. And that's all we have for Ask Edge. These were three great questions. I'm so grateful for people. Please consider leaving me a voicemail at speakpipe.com/slash leatheredge, or sending me a question at ask at fullcal.show. Thanks so much. And that's
Closing Thoughts And Goodbye
SPEAKER_02it for this episode. Thank you so much for joining me. Please consider subscribing, or you can send feedback to edge at fullcow.show. As always, may your leather journey be blessed.