Grimmoire Productions

Hawkins is inspired by (but not directly adapted from) media from and about horror in small towns in the 1980s. We’ve drawn from a lot of different media to build this world, including…

• Stranger Things – “Nobody normal ever accomplished anything meaningful in this world.”
• Stephen King’s It – “Home is the place where when you go there, you have to finally face the thing in the dark.”
• The X-Files – “I’ve often felt that dreams are the answers to questions we haven’t yet figured out how to ask.”
• The Goonies – “Don’t you realize? The next time you see sky, it’ll be over another town.”
• Heathers – “When teenagers complain that they want to be treated like human beings, it’s usually because they are being treated like human beings.”
• Twin Peaks – “The owls are not what they seem.”
• Pet Sematary – “It’s probably wrong to believe there can be any limit to the horror which the human mind can experience.”
• Riverdale – “Fear. It’s the most basic, the most human emotion. As kids, we’re afraid of everything. The dark. The boogeyman under the bed. And we pray for morning. For the monsters to go away. Though they never do. Not really.”
• The Lost Boys – “If all the corpses buried around here were to stand up all at once, we’d have one hell of a population problem.”
• And other 80s classics, such as The Breakfast Club, Stand By Me, Pretty in Pink, Dirty Dancing, etc.

Hawkins is home to the everyday people of a small Wisconsin town, each living their own story.

Adults are parents, business owners, and community leaders—people with responsibilities and roots. High schoolers stand on the brink of adulthood, facing the pressures of graduation, personal dramas, and decisions that could shape their futures. Meanwhile, junior high kids, full of that 80s latchkey spirit, dive headfirst into mischief and adventure, as long as they’re back before dinner.

Your character may not always make the most heroic choices—they’re flawed, complex, and sometimes morally gray. But at the end of the day, they’re human. And those weird things? They’re just rumors, tall tales whispered around town. Urban legends that can’t possibly be real… right?

In Hawkins, your story is shaped by the choices you make navigating life’s challenges in a place where strange things are starting to feel a little too real.

In Hawkins, you can play an Adult, Teenager, or a Kid. All players are required to be 21+, so you are encouraged to play characters of any age group.

80s media is complicated. Some tropes are charming and quirky (latchkey kids running around unsupervised, evil land developers, musical montages), while others have not aged well (unproblematized stalking, sexual harassment as romance, casual homophobia). For Hawkins, we’re taking selectively from our inspirational media and the history of the time period. Here are some notes on how we’re approaching certain topics, both in backstory and in active plot.

• Law enforcement — There will be law enforcement represented in Hawkins in the form of both local Player Character law enforcement officers and in the nebulous form of outside law enforcement agencies such as the FBI or US Marshals. The local sheriffs both are perceived as and actually are decent people in the context of this story. Even though, you know, ACAB. The town sheriff gets called when your cat is up a tree, when your deadbeat boyfriend won’t leave you alone, and when your kid goes missing.
• Racism — Hawkins will not be directly including racism as a plot point or underlying point of concern. Issues of race may be part of individual character stories based on player interest with the consent of all parties involved. We recognize that there is a fine line between ignoring/minimizing societal issues and forcing people to engage in unpleasant issues and we will address this with care.
• Homophobia — A lot of 1980s media includes both casual and serious homophobia. This will not be a primary component of our characters/plots. I’m gonna be real with you, this is a pretty queer LARP production company, we don’t want to put a lot of effort into setting up fictional homophobia when there’s plenty of real homophobia in the world. As this is the 1980s, this also extends to HIV/AIDS. HIV/AIDS will not be present in this game. (There are good LARPs about the history of the AIDS crisis out there, we do not need to fill that gap). There will be queer characters, and there may be individual character stories featuring homophobia based on player interest, with the consent of all parties involved, but homophobia will not be a general plot point.
• Stalking/Sexual Assault — 80s media often treats behaviors such as spying on people, sexual assault through deception, or sexually harassing behavior as charming and romantic. This is not the case in Hawkins. There will not be any sexual assault or abuse in this game.
• Child Abuse & Harm to Children — We can’t say that no children will be harmed in this LARP, after all, middle schoolers running around after monsters may run into trouble. Do keep this in mind. There may be harm to children in both backstories and plot, including from monsters or from parents.