In Finland, children playing in their sandbox with their plastic buckets and shovels, chant a traditional rhyme: “Älä tule paha kakku, tule hyvä kakku!” (Don’t become a bad cake, please become a good cake).
A good sand cake stays whole when the bucket is turned upside down. It is affected by lots of things: moisture and quality of the grain, evenness of the platform, and swiftness and steadiness of the baker’s hand. Sometimes the cake collapses no matter how hard the baker tries.
Playing with sand cakes reminds me of preparing for a larp as a player. There is an element of randomness in every game, no matter how conscientious or detailed the design is or how dutifully the players create their contacts. The sand may appear nice and moist, but in the end, it’s too loose. We think we succeed in compressing the sand in the bucket snugly enough, but one edge fails to fill up. Maybe the handle of our bucket is broken and it betrays us at the most crucial moment.
Contacts as the most important ingredient
I come from the Finnish larp tradition, where characters and their relations are usually carefully planned and written, balanced, and of equal value. Their personal and inter-character story arcs are meaningful and dramatically coherent, and aligned with the themes of the game. Organisers usually choose their players from a pool of applicants, based often on an extensive background information form. The character is chosen for each player with their personal wishes and experience in mind. I call this the micro-level of character design.
Micro-level character design operates on the level of individual players and characters: What does this particular player want and wish? What are they capable of? What can they personally bring into the game? What is the dramatic arc of the character? What kind of tensions does the character have with other characters; what are their desired outcomes? What are they going to do in the game? Do they have balanced plots that support their personal story?
Many big, international blockbusters use either brute force design (see Fatland & Montola 2015) that relies on the maxim “More is more” and offers the players a well-supplied smorgasbord of plots, or sandbox design where players are invited and often expected to create their own content. These are cost-effective ways to create large commercial games. Some of these games offer well-constructed and carefully thought out characters, but often the players are given only a loose draft of character and their network. The personality and contacts are more like suggestions, and they might be open for change if the player feels like it. Players can even choose to discard them entirely. This I call the macro-level of character design.
Macro-level character design operates on the level of groups and bigger constructions: character groups, big plots in the background, public scenes open to everyone, action free to join.
In my 25+ years of larping, the strongest element to either build the game to excellent heights or make it fall has been contacts and inter-character relationships. Thus, choosing very light, sketch-like character design or making contacts fully flexible according to players’ ideas, inspiration, or time, burdens me with potentially pointless shovel-work and increases the chance for the sand cake of the game to collapse.
My argument is that when game designers lead character designing work or, if players are given responsibility for it, facilitate its processes, the experience is more likely to be successful for a bigger number of players. This is because purely player-driven character and contact design potentially has several problems and challenges.
Embrace the chaos?
Next I will discuss four specific problems and challenges of macro-level character and contact design. Many of my points echo Anni Tolvanen’s (2022) Nordic Larp Talk on dance card larping.
It’s easy, fun and safe to play with friends and people with similar play styles. Players can plan their character relations and plots together, and make use of their previous common play history: whereas contacting several strangers, feeling their play styles, negotiating content, and trying to fit it all to the larp can be much more stressful and time-consuming. Playing with friends is natural and understandable and, at least to some extent, one of the points of larping: but it can, however, lead to exclusivity. My first point is that players who have no friends to gravitate to in the game or who feel difficulty making new contacts, may be left out from designing game content.
Secondly, player-driven contact design can also lead to collecting as many interesting contacts as possible. This is also known as contact shopping. In the process, common content is brainstormed, inter-character history drafted, plots agreed on and even scenes planned. But in the game, the contact shopper has no time to play with all their contacts, so they have to choose: maybe the most interesting ones, those with friends, or those easily at hand. To co-players, these pre-planned relationships can, however, be crucial. These players may not have their friends aboard, or they may not be prepared for the play culture of contact shopping. The content now thrown overboard may play a big role in their planned game content or character story, which now deflates.
Thirdly, when there is no coherent, personal story and view of the character’s arc during the game, play can easily become chaotic and coincidental.
In many Finnish larps, each plot is specifically designed for a certain character or group of characters. However, in some international larps, it is a choice of design to provide many potential plots that are not tied to any particular character. The player can then freely choose which ones they want to engage with during gameplay. When this design choice is communicated to potential players, they can choose whether they feel up to it or not.
If players find themselves in this situation unexpectedly, they can try grabbing whatever plot or action they can get in the fear of missing out and being bored, whether it is something the character would do or not. Personally, in these kinds of situations as a player, I have felt pretty desperate. I’ve tossed aside all logic and the story of my character, and I’ve just tried to squeeze myself into anything. Immersion is long gone, numbness and indifference linger close. Embracing the chaos might keep me from getting bored, but it seldom offers impressive experiences or feelings of meaningfulness for a player, who is seeking a personal story.
As a fourth and combining element: players are not equal when it comes to social capital, skills, and status. When the organiser’s hand doesn’t balance characters’ weight in the fiction, the most popular, charismatic, socially and verbally skilled players often reign. That can offer little or at the worst case no room to more subtle tones, quieter players and more delicate stories.
Not easy for everyone
Larping is an extreme social sport. Contact creation and plot design with a dozen strangers from other play cultures can be fruitful and awesome, but it can also be socially extremely straining and strenuous. Introverted or shy players, players with bad experiences or occasional problems with social situations, or players who know no other players in advance, may feel really anxious and uncertain. Also, players who can’t use hours of their free time for pre-larp random contacting in the hope of finding plots, can struggle.
Behind my text are my own experiences from international sandbox or brute force blockbusters. I spent a lot of time contacting, brainstorming and plotting. From some players I never got answers. With many of them, I didn’t succeed in communicating the balance and equal weight of our content plans or character relationships. With some, I never ended up playing because they seemed too busy with other stuff. That made me feel meaningless and disappointed. I was also ashamed: I couldn’t follow the plans I participated in making, and I was unsure if I should push more or just give up. Diegetically, I felt not welcome in several plots, or, when suggesting hooks or action, didn’t necessarily get an enthusiastic response. When I gathered my strength to force myself in, my character was often merely a bystander, the audience witnessing others’ play. Here, despite the fear of missing out, I started to realise that these design styles are sadly not for me – or, rather, I am not for them.
My larps were saved by friends with whom we had pre-planned contacts, and with whom we had an understanding that we are really going to play the planned content. I’ve also been lucky to have several really nice encounters and meaningful play with new acquaintances.
For an introvert with some insecurities in social relations, the trying, the uncertainty, the negotiating, the forcing, and the continuous alertness for potential content was exhausting. I longed for knowing where to concentrate, being able to trust that there is a reason for my character’s existence. I felt envious and missing out: I did not get in or feel like an essential part of the cast.
As far as I know, operating on the macro-level of character design is easier, lighter and less laborious, and that’s why it’s practised in big games. As a designer, though, I can’t help observing how things could be done a bit more inclusively. In each blockbuster I’ve attended, I have noticed many places where organisers could relatively easily have connected the spots to insert inter-character content, such as: both of these characters have nubile children, they should absolutely meet and discuss marriages! This character has violated a member of a leading gang, the information has to be shared for drama to happen! These characters have both recently lost someone important, the players would get a kick out of a séance session!
Creating together or purchasing an experience?
I see larping as creating together. Thus it also includes player responsibilities, not just rights. Especially in commercial blockbusters, some participants may see themselves as paying customers, and game designers as customer service providers. Can customers be asked to mind their co-players’ experience, answer messages in time, stick to pre-planned contacts, drop their immersion to help others, do something that doesn’t feel fun? Usva Seregina’s (2019; see also Seregina in this volume) article on commodification of larp discusses this and related topics in more detail.
Personally, I fear that commercial games may lack the true communality that comes from committing to supporting other participants’ play and stories, and the vision that comes from comprehensive, dramatically solid, designer-led character arcs. I’m aware that I’m not purchasing an experience but a possibility of one. If I get a spot and choose to participate, I don’t expect to be fully catered, but I wish to know how to focus my available time and energy.
Safety and stability make a better cake
To decrease the problems and challenges of exclusivity, contact shopping, vacuous chaos, and inequality in social status, I, an introvert player, need some information or guidelines about these things: Why is my character important in this game, what can I expect from the game? Which players are my most important contacts and do we have time to play together? What kind of tension is planned inside the relationship? In short: I want to be as sure as possible that my experience is going to be as good as possible. I’m also willing to work for it, as long as I know what are the tools best for this playground.
Compared to free player-driven contact creation, contact design by the organisers is a stronger promise to me and other players struggling with uncertainty on whether we too will be relevant and included. Knowing that designers have created full, meaningful characters and their relationships, I’m much more confident that the cake will stay whole.
Bibliography
Eirik Fatland and Markus Montola (2015): The Blockbuster Formula – Brute Force Design in The Monitor Celestra and College of Wizardry. ref. November 27, 2023
Usva Seregina (2019): On the Commodification of Larp. ref. November 16, 2023
Anni Tolvanen (2020): A Full House Trumps a Dance Card. Nordic Larp Talks. ref. November 16, 2023
This article has been reprinted with permission from the Solmukohta 2024 book. Please cite as:
Niskanen, Niina. 2024. “Good Cakes, Bad Cakes: Character and Contact Design as a Factor of Personal Game Experience.” In Liminal Encounters: Evolving Discourse in Nordic and Nordic Inspired Larp, edited by Kaisa Kangas, Jonne Arjoranta, and Ruska Kevätkoski. Helsinki, Finland: Ropecon ry.
Cover photo: Image by Pexels on Pixabay.
