Learning from Bleed

Editorial note: This article was originally published in the Knutepunkt 2025 book Anatomy of Larp Thoughts, a breathing corpus. It has been reprinted from there with the editors’ and authors’ permission. It has not been edited by Nordiclarp.org.

Kai, photo by Prison Escape

This is Kai. Kai taught me how to overcome my fear of heights. Or rather, by playing the character of Kai, I was able to find a new part of myself. And later, that new part enabled me to face my fears. I learned from bleed.

I didn’t play Kai with this intention. But Kai inspired me to develop ways to intentionally learn from bleed and that lead to the formation of our company, Live Action Learning. In this article we’ll write about how you can learn from bleed yourself and how you design a larp in such a way that your participants can learn from their bleed, if they want to.

What happened with Kai

Kai wasn’t a kind man. But Kai possessed an unshakable inner strength, grounded in a calm conviction that nothing could sway him. This kind of inner strength and resilience was new to me, and playing Kai had given me access to this. In other words: I learned something through bleed.

First, let’s define bleed. According to Hugaas (2024) “Bleed occurs when feelings, thoughts, emotions, physical states, cognitive constructs, aspects of personality and similar ‘bleed over’ from player to character or vice versa.” There are several types of bleed, as presented by Hugaas:

• Emotional bleed (Montola 2010; Bowman 2015), in which emotional states and feelings bleed between player and character.
• Ego bleed (Beltrán 2012), in which fragments of personality and archetypal qualities bleed between player and character.
• Procedural bleed (Hugaas 2019a), in which physical abilities, perceptual experience, motor skills, traits, habits, and other bodily states bleed between player and character.
• Memetic bleed (Hugaas 2019a), in which ideas, thoughts, opinions, convictions, ideologies and similar cognitive constructs bleed between player and character;
• Relationship bleed, in which aspects of social relationships bleed between player and character. Romantic bleed (Waern 2010; Harder 2018; Bowman and Hugaas 2021) is the most frequently discussed subtype.
• Emancipatory bleed (Kemper 2017, 2020), in which players from marginalized backgrounds experience liberation from that marginalization through their characters.
• Identity bleed (Hugaas 2024), which deals with the sense of self and with how different parts of the self (“multiplicities of identities”) bleed between character and player.

In the case of Kai, the bleed can be classified as emotional bleed (the calm emotional state), but also as identity bleed (It did something with the way I think about myself; ‘I’m someone who can stay calm under stressful circumstances’).

Why is learning from bleed interesting?

To effectively integrate new behavior in your system, you need a couple of things: Opportunities to experiment with the behavior, feedback to fine-tune it, time to integrate it into your system, and a safe environment that allows for mistakes.

In a regular training session, you’ll have the opportunity to try new things, but often confined to a few minutes or maybe an hour. Training by practicing new behavior solely in your real life isn’t a safe environment in which you can make multiple mistakes or suddenly behave completely differently. But using larp and bleed… Well, talk about having it all!

But, of course, there are difficulties. For one, bleed is personal; you can’t make bleed happen. However, you can inspire bleed (Edu-larp conference, 2024). The level at which bleed is present, but also the level of bleed that is noticed, differs per person and even over time. This is called the “bleed perception threshold” (Hugaas 2024). This means you might not notice any bleed at all. Or you can be completely overwhelmed.

The ingredients: designing for bleed

So when designing for bleed, whether it is for you personally or for a group of participants, be aware. Random, unfocused bleed can be very unhelpful, to put it mildly. In order to learn from bleed, you need direction, agency, priming, safety, time and space (Edu-larp conference, 2024). Using bleed on purpose, especially to learn, should always be with informed consent of what bleed you are designing for, preferably with agency of a participant to choose their own bleed and learning goals. Direction, agency, and priming shape bleed into something useful, while safety and time enhance immersion.

In our four-day Live Action Leadership training we’ve made very conscious decisions on these elements. The main theme was very clear: Leadership. The complete setup revolved around situations and scenes which required leadership skills, integrated in an overarching story about a failing management team. The participants were actively involved in formulating their personal learning goals and how those goals were translated into a character. The concept of bleed was clearly explained at the beginning, during the workshops. This made the participants aware of the signs of bleed and what they might experience. Having multiple opt-out options, and very openly discussing them as a safe and viable option to leave the game, made participants comfortable enough to immerse themselves.

And then, last but not least, the ‘thin alibi’, or ‘playing close to home’. Bleed occurs more quickly when the character you are playing resembles your real-life persona. For example, we might deliberately choose names for the characters that are close to their own. Björn might play a character called Bjarke, or Susanne might play a character called Suzette. We also thinned the border by choosing a realistic and recognizable setting. It is very possible to have bleed and learn from bleed from characters and settings that are further away from you. But the further away you are, the harder it is to find an applicable use in everyday life.

The timeline: Three phases of integration

We believe that learning from bleed is not about pretending to be someone else in your everyday life, but about finding a different version of yourself through playing. Therefore, especially in longer experiences, we have three phases for the participant to go through during play:

1. finding the character
2. challenging the character, and
3. integrating to a competent version of the character.

Finding the character

How can you help the participant exhibit the traits that they want to learn? Experimentation is key in this phase. When not playing or designing for bleed, we might want to prioritize portraying the character consistently. But if you’re focusing on a specific character trait that is not natural to you, it’s important to experiment with different strategies to find a way that works for you. So if somebody wants to learn to be more outspoken, this phase is about finding multiple ways for them to play that outspoken character.

Challenging the character

This phase is about trying to entice the participant to exhibit the opposite behavior of what they want to learn, so that they can notice this and return to the character. Ways to do this can be to introduce a high pressure environment, such as a quest with a specific deadline, or by designing more emotional scenes. If you opt for this approach, it is good to have ways to remind the participant that they are slipping into old behavior. Having them choose one gesture, word or feeling that symbolizes their character is a good way for them to be able to go back to their character again.

Integration

The third phase is integrating the character into a competent version: a sort of mix between the character and the participant. Instruct the participants during an offgame calibration, to let go of a negative trait of the character and to replace that with a positive trait of their own. This will bring the character closer to resembling the participant and helps them to associate positively with the character. This can also be described as ‘learning to love the character’. If participants dislike their character, it is harder for them to want to learn from things that the character did. However, if you want to achieve the opposite effect, unlearning unwanted behavior, disliking the character works well.

After playing: Separation and anchoring

After de-roling and debriefing, we start the separation and anchoring phase. There are three questions central to this:

• Separation: What traits do you want to keep, and what will you let go?
• Anchoring: What anchor will help you summon these traits?
• Summoning: When do you want to summon these traits?

Separation:

We want our participants to take a ‘version of themselves’ home, not the complete character, because characters have negative traits as well, traits that we don’t want to keep. Kai, the example from the beginning of the article, was a very powerful character with a deep source of inner strength and resilience. But, as you can see from the photo, he was also a criminal. So after playing that character, I separated the useful characteristics (inner strength and resilience) from the rest of the character. I found a way to access that inner strength by playing Kai, but now I needed only that part.

Anchoring:

After separating comes anchoring. Here we build on the word, gesture or feeling that participants already have chosen to symbolize their character (see: Challenging the character). It can be a simple thing that helps you find this version of yourself. And from that thing, more of the behavior you associate with that version will follow. Besides a gesture, word or feeling, other possible anchors are:

• A name: the characters name, a nickname (‘the professor’) or an adjective, coupled with your own name (‘curious Gijs’)
• Music, from a short tune you can hum/whistle to an entire playlist which helps you find the character
• An object, preferably one that you can carry with you
• A smell, such as a perfume, that differs from your normal one
• A piece of clothing that you can put on in special circumstances
• A location where you want to have access to the character.
• A posture you adopt when you need it.

Summoning:

It is important to think about when you want to have access to the talents you learned from bleed. There are three ways to determine when to summon your characters:

1. Triggers. Think of a sudden situation where you might need it, and identify a trigger that will remind you. For example, I played Kai, who was calm and resilient. Traits I can use when I start to feel my fear of heights taking over. When I feel my knees getting weak, that’s the trigger to summon that calm, focused part of myself.
2. On purpose beforehand. If you know you will go into a situation where that version of yourself might help you, you summon your character on purpose just before going in. For example, just before an important meeting or social event.
3. Integrating it into yourself. Finally, you can integrate this version of yourself into yourself, meaning that it becomes an unconscious part of you. This takes time and practice. It generally goes from noticing well after the fact that you would’ve wanted to use what you’ve learned, to noticing it shortly after the fact, to adjusting your behavior during the situation and finally to before the situation. The final step is that it has become something you do without thinking about it.

Learning from regular larp experiences

The above steps detail how to design for others. But you can easily use these at a larp that is not designed for learning, even if you’re only using it after the larp. Kai was not intended as a character for self-learning, but by separating and anchoring aspects of him, I found playing him highly valuable.
In short, the steps to take if you want to learn from the larp as a player, are:

• Decide what you want to learn.
• Decide where you want to make the border between you and your character thinner.
• Take some time to reflect on your learning experience so far.
• If possible, use the three phases (finding, challenging and integrating your character).
• Afterwards, separate and anchor what you want to keep/learn.
• Finally, summon the new version of yourself whenever you need it.

We hope this article inspires you to learn more from larp and learn more from bleed yourself and, if you’re a larp designer, introduce parts of the design process into your larps so you give your participants the option of learning from it.

References

Beltrán, Whitney “Strix.” 2012. “Yearning for the Hero Within: Live Action Role-Playing as Engagement with Mythical Archetypes.” In Wyrd Con Companion Book 2012, edited by Sarah Lynne Bowman and Aaron Vanek, 89-96. Los Angeles, CA: Wyrd Con, 2012.

Bowman, Sarah Lynne. 2015. “Bleed: The Spillover Between Player and Character.” Nordiclarp.org, March 2.

Bowman, Sarah Lynne, and Kjell Hedgard Hugaas. 2021. “Magic is Real: How Role-playing Can Transform Our Identities, Our Communities, and Our Lives.” In Book of Magic: Vibrant Fragments of Larp Practices, edited by Kari Kvittingen Djukastein, Marcus Irgens, Nadja Lipsyc, and Lars Kristian Løveng Sunde, 52-74. Oslo, Norway: Knutepunkt, 2021.

Harder, Sanne. 2018. “Larp Crush: The What, When and How.” Nordiclarp.org, March 28.

Hugaas, Kjell Hedgard. 2019a. “Investigating Types of Bleed in Larp: Emotional, Procedural, and Memetic.” Nordiclarp.org, January 25

Hugaas, K. H. (2024). Bleed and Identity: A Conceptual Model of Bleed and How Bleed-out from Role-playing Games Can Affect a Player’s Sense of Self. International Journal of Role-Playing, (15), 9–35.

Kemper, Jonaya. 2017. “The Battle of Primrose Park: Playing for Emancipatory Bleed in Fortune & Felicity.” Nordiclarp.org, June 21.

Kemper, Jonaya. 2020. “Wyrding the Self.” In What Do We Do When We Play?, edited by Eleanor Saitta, Mia Makkonen, Pauliina Männistö, Anne Serup Grove, and Johanna Koljonen. Helsinki, Finland: Solmukohta.

Montola, Markus. 2010. “The Positive Negative Experience in Extreme Role-playing.” In Proceedings of DiGRA Nordic 2010: Experiencing Games: Games, Play, and Players. Stockholm, Sweden, August 16.

Waern, Annika. 2010. “‘I’m in Love With Someone That Doesn’t Exist!!’ Bleed in the Context of a Computer Game.” In Proceedings of DiGRA Nordic 2010: Experiencing Games: Games, Play, and Players. Stockholm, Sweden, August 16.

This article is republished from the Knutepunkt 2025 book. Please cite it as:
van Bilsen, Gijs and van Barlingen, Anne. 2025. “‘Learning from Bleed.” In Anatomy of Larp Thoughts, a breathing corpus: Knutepunkt Conference 2025. Oslo. Fantasiforbundet.

Cover image: Photo by Jenna Hamra on Pexels.