River Rafting Design

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.

Let’s get right into the action! Literally. Because “River Rafting” is a larp design methodology to help catapult larpers into play without a slow start. The purpose of this design model is to help the players experience more moments of emotional impact as well as to increase intensity and meaningful experiences throughout the whole duration of the larp.

I am a strong believer in the idea that when we act, we experience. River Rafting design helps the players to act immediately. This article is a further development of the design concept of frontloading^[1]The idea of frontloading appeared in my realm of design thoughts in 2016 when Alexander Bakkensen and I were designing the Danish larp Victorious which I later made an iteration of to become the international larp Spoils of War. It is a bespoke larp inspired by A Song of Ice and Fire, The Tudors and several other similar sources. I have also later tested and developed the concept further, based on the thoughts we had together back then. We talked about it in the 2018 version of the Danish roleplay convention Forum in the talk: “Toolbox of drama designers” which was repeated at Knudepunkt 2019. and covers pre-larp design, workshops and the pacing of the larp. It will explore how to do it intentionally and why designing for River Rafting can enhance the larp experience for your players. I will use perspectives from the three larps Spoils of War (Wind, 2018-), Daemon (Wind, 2021-) and Helicon (Pettersson and Wind, 2024-) to provide specific examples.

What are we trying to solve?

I have often noticed that most of the meaningful scenes on an individual level clump together at the end of a larp, but that the emotional impact of these often turns to disillusion when witnessing or participating in a cascade of dramatic scenes/deaths/reveals in the last hours. This phenomenon, Alexander Bakkensen has called “The Twilight Avalanche”. I usually feel too numb to react to yet another person screaming or crying by then.

This experience regularly contrasts with the first few hours of a larp involving mostly polite introductions and surface-level interactions like saying “greetings” and small talk for hours. In some cases, there is not a lot of emotional impact during the middle of the experience either, and often I don’t feel I have the tools to push the experience along as a player.

I think a number of design choices are supporting the slow start and place (too much) emphasis on the end of larps. One of these is if written character drama/conflicts/dilemmas are not very complex or have just one big scene in them. Another issue can be creating a setting that only provides an interesting framework late in the larp, or that builds up to a “Big Plot Ending”. This kind of ending is sometimes introduced late in the runtime, overshadowing previously built up character conflicts and tensions. It could be “end of the world”, “we are suddenly being invaded”, “we all have to die” etc. While such grand conclusions can be effective, they are not always consciously integrated into the rest of the larp’s structure. It can be frustrating as an individual player if such an ending isn’t tied meaningfully into the story of your character. A “big bang” finale can even leave players wondering what could have been if the larp had started with this level of intensity. In fact, the larp might have been a lot more interesting if it started with its ending as its beginning.

Furthermore, many players will, no matter the quality of the written setting and character, instinctively save the most interesting parts of a relation and the character until very late in a larp, playing towards a resolution only at the end unless you provide tools for them to do otherwise. We also miss the opportunity to help the players effectively use these tools to create early impact play this specific larp if workshops are not spent on practicing key mechanics and relationships. Often, on-location workshops will contain long briefings with repetition of the website instead. This approach means that players are not ready to get the full potential for emotional impact out of the written content right from the beginning. How they use the tools is up to the players, but if we don’t coach on how to unlock the usefulness of the mechanics in this specific larp, the players will spend a lot of the in-game time learning how to use the tools, or – worse – never use them at all.

Lastly, many larps have a pacing that structurally supports very few and late points of emotional impact with minimal structure and setup during the early and middle part. A slow start can make it harder to connect with the experience, relations and character early on.

All of these factors (low playability of characters/setting, poor practicing of mechanics and backloaded pacing) encourage players to save secrets or conflicts until the very last hours of the larp. Let us name this common combination of design choices the “Waterfall”^[2]Not to be confused with the waterfall method in project management. method since it creates a slow start, a quiet flow of the boat on a broad river and a dramatic finish.

What we want instead of a waterfall is a more turbulent flow of the water within the themes of the larp. This doesn’t mean full intensity all the time. If we want many wavetops (experiences of emotional impact), we also need slower paced periods. But fluctuations are hard to achieve if you are already on a low point of pacing at the beginning of the larp, as this is also the time when you are practicing enacting the character in the setting and using the mechanics. If we don’t make the early rapids coming from pacing powerful enough for the players, there is a tendency that the larp experience itself will be backloaded.

What is River Rafting design?

River Rafting is a design philosophy that supports a turbulent flow of the larp experience with many opportunities of emotional impact from the beginning of the larp and throughout. I chose this term because river rafting starts slowly for a short time (pre-game and workshops) and then you hit a lot of rapids right away as well as during the rest of the trip (beginning of the larp until the end). We want to throw the boat around early and for the whole duration of the larp to offer an alternative to a Waterfall experience. If there are more rapids and more opportunities for movement, it is less important if some of it doesn’t result in a lot of impact.

In this maritime analogy, the larper’s experience of drama and emotional impact is the boat being moved. The characters, setting and mechanics are the paddles, life vests, ropes to other boats and other tools that the larper can use to make their own boat and the boats of others move at different paces down the river, and to create rapids for each other from many different angles at once. The workshops need to focus on teaching players to use these tools.

But since it takes time to learn to use the tools, early rapids must be created by providing a narrow river and intentionally plotted obstacles (frontloaded pacing/structure). Later, the river broadens and we design fewer obstacles to create rapids, but by then the players use the setting, characters and mechanics to make their own and each others’ boats move in a meaningful way.

Fig 1 – Illustration of River Rafting Design. Image by Katrine Wind.

As designers, we have three arenas where we can significantly influence the potential for emotional impact of our provided material: Highly playable characters/setting, mechanics and workshops, and pacing/structure.^[3]I realise a lot of things influence a player’s experience: Co-player chemistry, off-game mood, room design, communication style of organisers and crew, feeling of safety, physical needs being met etc. But the focus of this article is purely on how to provide tools for the players to get the biggest emotional impact out of your writing and structure.
What you want to achieve by this is to help the players get going right away, keep and vary intensity and take the interplay between the overall arc and the arc of the individual player into account.

So the three key elements of River Rafting design are:

1. Highly playable characters and setting: Focus on crafting characters and a setting that encourages immediate action. Emphasize extensive and complex character relations and highly playable dynamics. Please notice that I don’t say “long character backgrounds” or “as many pages of lore as possible”. It is about the volume and complexity of highly playable content.
2. Mechanics and workshops: Provide a few key mechanics for the players to create impact. Workshops should ideally quickly go from instructional briefings to a more tool based and practice heavy approach where players practice core mechanics of the larp, embrace important themes and actively play on character relationships early in the larp. Encourage the players to dive into conflicts and dynamics from the outset – and keep reminding them. Make a safe environment to help players to be brave. Additional workshops in act breaks can support this.
3. Early impact pacing: Start the larp with compelling events or tense scenarios, supported by a lot of designed structure and tense content in the very early parts of the larp.

Below is an illustration of how I perceive each design approach’s attempt to structurally influence emotional impact throughout the runtime of a larp.

Fig 2 – Emotional Impact Potential from the Design. Image by Katrine Wind.

The wavetops in River Rafting design don’t have to be at exactly these points of the larp. The later spikes symbolise how structured content and potentially mid-game workshops etc. can make extra rapids. However, the expectation is that the potential of provided content and structure to help create meaningful emotional impact is much less later in the larp because the players have practiced the characters, relations and mechanics and create the rapids themselves by then.

Please note that the illustration is not a visualisation of the individual player experience. Many players will experience climaxes at the end of the larp, and that is great. The point is also having a lot of potential emotional impacts earlier – the aim is to increase the volume and frequency, not just to move the curve.

I will go through the three different aspects of River Rafting design in detail and with examples below.

Setting and Characters

If you write a setting and characters for your players, you are already frontloading this part of the design to some degree. Well done! Sending out characters as well as facilitating workshops are the gentle start that can teach the players how to use the paddle and steer with the tools they have been given. This means that when you start the larp, the players are already in the water, can create movement in the boat and feel brave and ready to do so.

But what is necessary for a specifically River Rafting design is for you to provide an engaging setting right at the end of an interesting time which creates a setup and something to talk about. You also need complex, highly playable characters containing dilemmas that will lead to more drama while dealing with them. The intention is to provide all players with a springboard for their personal stories supported by an engaging narrative framework.

Spoils of War opens with this engaging setting; the interesting part to play is happening right now.^[4]The idea for the setting was originally created together with Alexander Bakkensen for the Danish larps Victorious 1 and 2 in 2016 and 2017. We are at the very end of a brutal civil war. The characters have already experienced the horrors of it, but the emotional impact hasn’t fully hit them yet. The players know that their characters are either on the losing or the winning side, and that the war will end early in the larp. They don’t spend time playing the lead-up to the war or competing over who will win. Because all the characters will be in a state of turmoil with many options for the aftermath, the setting gives us something recent and impactful to play on right away. Furthermore, the characters contain complex relations with slights, dilemmas, heartbreaks, love, despair and uplifting camaraderie happening right now, combined with shared history from before the war.

Another example which illustrates the design principles regarding characters and setting is Helicon (Maria Pettersson and Katrine Wind, 2024).^[5]Maria Pettersson and I had no conversations about the term River Rafting design in the design process of Helicon, and she cannot be held accountable for any of my theoretical descriptions of the perspective as I hadn’t conceptualised my design preferences in this way at the time. We completely agreed on the need for complex/highly playable characters and setting – and we have an equal part in the design of all aspects of Helicon itself. But the description of what I perceive we did when looking back and any criticism of the conceptualisation thereof is completely on my own account. Helicon is a larp about a group of artists, scientists and leaders who have captured the Muses of old to keep all of the inspiration in the world for themselves. The larp is based around dyadic play where the couple has a deep relation with each other. Some of the Muses want to be there or are even emotionally in power, and this setting of ambivalent slavery is relevant to every single player. It is significant and interesting to have Helicon play out at exactly this point of time in the setting, since it is time for the yearly binding ritual to keep the Muses caught.

To give plenty of content to play with on a character level, the humans (the Inspired) have fifteen years of complex history together. Also, the Muses are thousands of years old, they are all siblings and they have significant relationships with one another. As the Muses have been prisoners for fifteen years, there are also extensive relations across the two groups: Characters are lovers or ex-lovers; many of the Muses have stolen artists from each other over the years; some are currently best of friends with their captors etc. Thus, you have dilemmas all across the base of characters as well as with your dyadic partner.

A misinterpretation of the frontloading concept, in my opinion, is writing extensive characters but where the most interesting content is in the past (or in the future after the larp). Why would you write that a conflict or dilemma is already dealt with or easily resolved, unless it has led to an even more interesting conflict? We have to give players the opportunity to have the most meaningful experiences while they are in play. Therefore, I am not advocating for long characters. Instead, I recommend putting in a lot of playable content in the provided material no matter the length of the text. This could be complex, unresolved conflicts, established and significant relations, challenges to the character, dilemmas, goals etc.

A great way to help players be ready for River Rafting is providing the setting and character material a long time before the larp. That also entails the pacing structure and schedule as well as other forms of expectation management that helps them structure their own experience no matter which degree of transparency you want for what actually happens in the larp. For example: Do you expect the players to talk to co-players before the larp or will you allow time for that on location? Do they sleep off-game? What will they physically do with their bodies and spend their time on during this larp? When is a good time to take a break?

Workshops and Mechanics

Setting and characters take time to learn to use. I often find that organisers underestimate the value of structured time for people to talk with co-players about their relations during the workshop time as a means to enable players to use the material right away. If you provide a highly playable setting and characters, the players will do wonders for themselves to be ready to play intensely right from the outset of the larp, if they just have time to talk with each other. Talking about their relations and maybe even trying out flashback scenes is also practicing to use the written material before the larp instead of practicing and finding each other when the larp has already started. No matter how many online meetings you have for calibration before a larp, I find that players meeting each other just before the larp is where they have the best opportunity to find each other and create the trust it takes to play bravely together – and be ready to do so. This is more valuable for the emotional impact of their experience than more instructional briefing about the setting.

Furthermore, I suggest that you introduce one or a few core mechanics to support the experience you want the players to have, and to practice them during workshops. This enables the players with more tools to move their boat and the boat of others. Structured practice of the tools given to the players is an excellent way to help them get going from the start of the larp. If you don’t do this, most of your opportunity as a designer to meaningfully influence the emotional impact on the individual player experience (before the larp) will rely on just the characters and setting.

For the workshops, I encourage not providing information pieces and practicing mechanics until they are needed. If you have act breaks, and a tool is not used before act 3, then wait to provide this information until it is necessary. If you have a debriefing, don’t instruct about that at the beginning of the larp.

A mechanic that I use in several of the larps I am involved in is Dinner Warfare (Wind, 2024). It is a way of designing meaningful mealtime situations and using seating plans to create subtle but strong emotional pressure based on specific relations. But I introduce it differently for each larp depending on the purpose and importance of the tool. I use it extensively in Daemon and provide off-game instructions before the larp as well as an in-game alibi that has to do with classicism to stay in the seats of the horrible seating plan. It is a less prominent mechanic in other larps I am involved in and therefore not introduced as thoroughly.

Instruction and Coaching

As a larp runner you have to consider when to give instructions and when to let the players practice tools themselves in a more coaching style of leadership. While I strongly emphasize the value of the latter, there is no shame in being instructive: “You must use this mechanic in the game”. The coaching approach is letting players know that the rest is up to them: “You decide what to do within the framework”. This will help them be more comfortable using them from the beginning of the larp by practicing. A combination of the suggestions above is illustrated in Spoils of War. The players know before the larp which side has won or lost, but the characters don’t. The first night starts with the siege of the last standing castle. The losing side has been caught inside for three months but hasn’t quite given up yet. It is hard to start right in the middle of a siege and be ready to react to what it has been like being at a standstill for three months. Everybody is frustrated.

We try to explain it briefly at first and underline that the frustration is a specific mechanic for the very beginning of the larp (instruction), and then we lead the players into the game by making a “frustration workshop” where we play the same scene three times (coaching). First, it is at the beginning of the siege: The losing side has plenty of hope and food and the winning side is patient. Then we jump a month and the players are prompted to escalate how annoying it is being around the same people and that food is scarce. Finally, we play the same scene where three months have passed and everyone is desperate. The scenes only take about five minutes each, but it underlines the feeling we start the larp with. After the last scene, the intro song plays and the larp begins with this exact feeling of frustration. Almost right away there is an inspection of prisoners of war where the two sides meet, which means that the players are more ready to play the emotional rapid of seeing their loved ones but not being able to save them from imprisonment than if they just started cold.

It is almost impossible not to have some degree of briefing with instructions when you start the workshops, but I encourage going from instruction to coaching as soon as possible.

Mechanics take time to learn

In Daemon, the core vision is experiencing being two people who together portray one character. Daemon is inspired by the trilogy His Dark Materials by Philip Pullman (1995–2000) where humans live with their soul outside of their body in the form of an animal. Daemons are the expression of the inner lives of the characters and the human and daemon can’t move very far away from each other.

It might seem like an obvious mechanic that one player is portraying the human itself and the other is portraying the inner life of the character. But if I was mostly interested in the universe or characters of the books instead of the human-daemon relation, I could have decided mechanics-wise that the players just have a toy animal on their shoulder and then play in the setting. However, I wanted to make a larp where you could experience dyadic play in a way where you together portray one character.
The other core mechanic I chose to support the vision is that the player can’t go more than two meters from their dyadic partner the whole in-game playtime, which requires immense attention to what your partner is doing.

Dyadic play is a new way of larping for most people – and if they didn’t play Daemon before, they probably never had to play this physically close to another player for such a long time before. We also have to practice how the daemon player acts on a continuum from underlining and mirroring what the player of the human is portraying to showing what is really going on inside or between two humans when they interact. So in the workshop I explain briefly about the bond, and we then practice it extensively.

I have seen players struggle with the mechanics during Daemon despite extensively trying it out – my workshops were not enough. The players spent too much time worrying about the mechanics and moving too far away from each other/not mirroring enough instead of focussing on the character and what was happening around them. What has really helped in later iterations is saying to the players in the instructional part of the workshops right before the first act of Daemon that the first night will be clunky. I tell them that I realise that even though we have practiced the mechanic, we have to try it out during the first night before we know how we want to play it with our partner and in our dyad together towards others, and then we calibrate before act two. I find that verbally validating the fact that the key mechanic takes time to learn has made some larpers braver – especially when it is a tool not usually used in other larps. I have witnessed this bravery helping players to bring out interesting content from very early on in the larp in later runs of Daemon.

But if prewritten characters, setting, mechanics and workshops – no matter the quality – were enough to achieve rapids in the river in the beginning of the larp, more larps would feel like a River Rafting experience instead of feeling slow and backloaded.

For Daemon, the physical closeness is a good example of a mechanic that becomes much more impactful later in the larp when they have had time to get used to it. I often hear people forgetting right after the larp that they don’t have to stay within two metres of their dyadic partner anymore. But it is obvious that the players benefit from something else to create opportunities for emotional impact until the mechanics work for them and they have a feeling for their characters. What is lacking is a strategy for pacing. As mentioned before, I think that more larps would structurally support emotional impact early if they had a frontloaded pacing.

Pacing

As a designer, you have the best opportunity to provide a meaningful overall structure early in a larp. Later and by the end of the larp, most players will have been practicing, utilising and developing the character drama, setting and mechanics, making overall pacing and structured content much more irrelevant – or at worst – meaningless. By then, the main part of the emotional impact should come from the larpers themselves, the co-players and utilisation of the mechanics.

River Rafting design encourages establishing a high intensity starting point pacing-wise for the players to react to and talk about as well as more structured content in the first parts of the larp – to create “the narrow river and the first rapid”. Structured and intense openings help to actualise the tools and encourage players to take action early because their boat is already moving. We learn even more from our first actions in a larp than in the workshops about utilising the characters, setting and the mechanics. But if nothing pushes us to act, it is harder to convert this to meaningful experiences, and the emotional impact is also postponed.

The opening of the larp does not have to be the same for all players but should in general tie into the themes and core experiences as well as be relevant to the individuals.

It is not an original idea to start in mediās rēs. It is just not very prevalent in larp designs in my opinion. Or at least the opening scene is often not meaningful for the individuals or coherent with overarching themes, in the way the River Rafting design suggests.

This leads me to what I think really happens when “backloaded” pacing is the choice in so many larps following the Waterfall design model and why I don’t want to design like that.

Backloaded Pacing

Pacing in larps often mirrors the “Hollywood model” of storytelling.

The “we start slow and everything only climaxes in the end, and something even more interesting happens at the end of or after the larp” structure outlines schematically the progress of a classical “good story” split into (usually three) different acts. It makes sense that we consciously or otherwise use this structure in our medium: It’s how we usually see stories unfold in the content we consume.

Here are a few examples of the classical Hollywood model. I would argue that often larp pacings (not necessarily the individual experiences) will stop at the climax.

Fig 3 – Classical Narrative Arc (Hollywood Model) 3 Act structure

In video games, there are examples of a very similar pacing curve:

Fig 4 – Pacing Curve example for a Video Game. Images source: http://jorgenboge.wikidot.com/hollywood-model

I think the Hollywood model is fine. It can be a good way to tell a story – why else would so many pieces be structured like that? Movies, video games, plays etc. can benefit greatly from this approach, because when you have a predetermined outcome you can structure the whole experience around this pacing. However, at larps, pacing needs to accommodate the double-layered structure: The overall story arc and the individual character arcs. So you can’t make this structure work for a majority of the players just by making a larp end in a certain way or culminating everything in the overarching arc in the end.

Even for the pop culture pieces that start out in media res, my point would be that this rarely accounts for all individual characters – it’s mostly for the overall story. Because of the improvisational nature of larp, since we have so many moving pieces and because we care about every individual player’s experience, the backloaded pacing or Hollywood model is less applicable to larp if you want more emotional impact for the individual.

With River Rafting design, you can more easily design for the players to be hit by so many different waves and rapids on their path down the narrow river that they have had enough meaningful experiences along the way, so that it doesn’t matter if their ending is a waterfall, a whirlpool or a quiet stretch of river – none of the players will have their whole experience be dependent on the ending.

Daemon as a pacing example

Below is an example of how the pacing for the overall larp works for Daemon (Katrine Wind, 2021–). This is not the model of River Rafting pacing design. That can take a lot of different forms – this is just the general visualisation of the pacing in a larp with a lot of structure and planned events in the beginning more than in the end.

Fig 5 – Katrine Wind (2024): River Rafting Pacing Design for Daemon larp

In Daemon, the setting is the aftermath of a war where we have just killed God. The characters themselves are centered around themes like creating meaning, victory/defeat, grief/relief and building a new future. A lot of the characters are already gathered in the castle of one of the nobles on the winning side (facilitator character). The guests are there to celebrate the war heroes, mourn the fallen and exploit the opportunity created from the fall of a controlling theocracy to experiment with scientific projects that have up until now been illegal. But the theocratic power has thrown one last bomb of a biological weapon in the form of a powder that affects the bond between human and daemon (a core mechanic of the larp).

The opening scene creates a sense of urgency and immediate possibility for the players to take action, as enemies and people with complex relations to the guests originally invited for the celebration are evacuated to and quarantined in the castle. They have just been hit by the powder. These people are soldiers from the war, former fiancées, traitors and other people whose relations are significant, complex and problematic to the original guests. The scientists present immediately need to start working on helping those affected.

The next structured event comes almost right away when the hostess and an original guest continue to award medals to people who have killed family members of the newly arrived characters’ families. Very soon after this, everybody is thrown into an excruciating three course dinner where they have to endure each other but have a lot to talk about from the workshops, characters and starting scene. The social structures as well as the urgency of the powder situation force the adversaries to be around each other (see Dinner warfare, Wind 2024).

The peak in the third act is again a reflection on a Dinner Warfare scene, but it is disruptive in the pacing as the hostess creates a last, unhinged seating plan fuelled by a retaliation where she surrounds herself with other peoples’ daemons. They are placed almost too far away from their humans to make it physically uncomfortable to be at dinner and stay polite. For a larp to be designed for “frontloading” as part of River Rafting design, this would not be necessary as the concept focuses more on the first part of the larp, but the structured spike in intensity is a design choice for other reasons than overall pacing.

In the pacing overview from Daemon, you also find another tool. The act structure cuts up the pacing in three, and I choose to put in off-game breaks between the acts to allow more opportunities for me as a designer to add structured content in the beginning of act 2 as well as have more workshop time which enables me to make more rapids. I deem that it is not necessary with an intense start scene for the beginning of act 3, as the mechanics and characters drive the emotional impact almost solely by then.

For River Rafting design, you don’t have to have a quiet ending as a player. Don’t be fooled by the fizzling out of structured content in the third act of Daemon. This refers only to the larp pacing itself – for some players it will still be the most dramatic part of the larp.

But by not pressuring structured content into the end, in my experience, it will help avoid some of the “Twilight Avalanche.”

You can still facilitate a dramatic ending

Maria Pettersson and I decided to make a structured ending of Helicon (2024–) with focus on a highly dramatic situation, even though I still consider it a “frontloaded” larp which follows the principles of River Rafting design. We wanted to include a specific end scene where a choice is required, shifting certain dynamics. However, the key element for me that makes this ending meaningful for each individual is that they have influence over their own arc in relation to this scene. We also provide the tool that each player can be informed of the ending and the choice that they will face (transparency) during the final act break, or they can choose to be surprised.

However, I still consider the opening scene and structured content in the beginning of Helicon to be much more significant design aspects to the players’ experience of emotional impact as they set the tone of the larp and help the players to get into the characters and mechanics right away.

Fig 6 – Katrine Wind (2024): River Rafting pacing design for Helicon larp (larp designed with Maria Pettersson)

Already in the character descriptions, an intro scene is added where the players have to act on their relations. It is described how last night, the Muses tried to escape and failed. To establish the uneven power dynamic that is so central to the larp, Helicon begins with a ritualised, common punishment scene for this slight with each couple focussing on each other, and the significance of this intro scene is already emphasized in each individual character. Bowman describes this scene and its significance to kick off the larp in her article about Helicon (Bowman, 2024). Since ritualistic content is very important to the experience, we practise the rituals in the workshops. In this case, the Inspired have practiced this specific Punishment Ritual but the Muse players don’t know what is going to happen. All of the individuals and couples have a huge stake in this scene, no matter if the Muse was an instigator of the escape attempt or urged along by their siblings. Thus, the event is meaningful to each individual character (and hopefully player) when we start with high drama.

This is another point of River Rafting design. I don’t advocate just throwing in any action scene or dramatic beginning to kick off the larp in a frontloaded manner. The intro scene should emphasise the themes of the larp and be relevant to the players. Something can be meaningful and dramatic without being loud.

During the Larp

Once the larp is running, you obviously have to execute the plan for events and structure which can take a lot of work. You might even be able to make little adjustments in your design plan if you see a need for it during a pre-planned event. You learn a lot from rerunning larps, and there have been plenty of pacing events that have not worked as intended in larps I have been involved in.

Despite our intention to make Dinner Warfare a mechanic all the way through Helicon, Maria Pettersson and I decided during the first run to loosen our plan so the seating was only very tense for everyone on the first night. We had planned to do it for all three meals, but we decided for the two other in-game meals to just provide the opportunity for players off-game to wish for people to sit with or not sit with. We didn’t deem it necessary to place the rest of the players to create the most possible tension as other structured content was more impactful in the later part of the experience. Granting player wishes for seating plans is the most advanced version of Dinner Warfare, and we still deemed that the mechanic served a purpose enough to not scrap it completely even though we adjusted our plan.

Act changes with off-game breaks are your greatest chance of affecting the larp significantly as a designer later in the larp. Act break calibrations can for example be helpful to catapult the players into the new part of the larp. Many players will do this themselves with individual relations, act breaks or not, which is wonderful, but structuring time for it can be a helpful tool for some to ask something from the group. This works best in smaller or medium sized larps or in smaller groups.

For Daemon (28 players) and Spoils of War (58 players), I do a calibration round in each act break where I ask if anyone needs something generalized from the group. Either you say that you don’t need anything or you can for example ask for: “Could someone oppress me about my class” or “I need someone to have more quiet conversations with”. Then I will ask if someone can see themselves doing this, and usually some other players are happy to help provide this type of play. I specify that you should only raise your hand if you are really going to commit to it so the player asking actually gets what they need. Chances are that when I try to make people accountable and three raise their hand to help, at least one of them will actually cast the rope from their boat to their co-player’s.

You can also choose to provide a new workshop piece or a significant and possibly dramatic event in the beginning of a new act. In Daemon, act two starts with a cutting edge science presentation with shocking discoveries with all characters present. After this, there are spikes in the pacing but the larp includes less and less content that I design because the impact of the individual character arcs take over. I also signify this with my facilitator character being less and less important and prevalent to create pressure.

Final Remarks

River Rafting design can help create a more engaging and dynamic player experience from the very beginning of a larp with a higher chance of many moments of emotional impact instead of very few towards the end. By designing highly playable characters and setting, focussing workshops on practicing the tools you provide and designing your pacing for immediate action, you empower players to experience and create more emotional impact.

Whether you choose to put more content in the beginning of the experience or not, I encourage you to consider how pacing can shape your larp and communicate these design intentions to players. Even if you don’t want your larp to follow the River Rafting design methodology, you can help your players by making your choices clear. That will enable them to better structure their larp experience and engage with your vision more effectively.

Happy designing!

References

Bakkensen, Alexander, and Wind, Katrine, “Toolbox of the drama designers”, Forum convention, Denmark, 2018

Bowman, Sarah Lynne, “Helicon: An Epic Larp about Love, Beauty, and Brutality.” Nordiclarp.org, January 26 2024. https://nordiclarp.org/2024/01/26/helicon-an-epic-larp-about-love-beauty-and-brutality/

Wind, Katrine, “Dinner Warfare”, Nordiclarp.org, September 12 2024. https://nordiclarp.org/2024/09/12/dinner-warfare/

Ludography

Daemon (2021): Denmark, Belgium, USA, UK. Katrine Wind. Daemon.narrators.eu

Helicon (2024): Denmark. Maria Pettersson and Katrine Wind. Helicon.narrators.eu

Spoils of War (2019–2025). Denmark. Katrine Wind. Spoilsofwar.narrators.eu

Victorious 1 + 2 (2016–2017). Denmark. Alexander Bakkensen and Katrine Wind.

This article is republished from the Knutepunkt 2025 book. Please cite it as:
Wind, Katrine. 2025. “River Rafting Design.” In Anatomy of Larp Thoughts, a breathing corpus: Knutepunkt Conference 2025. Oslo. Fantasiforbundet.

Cover image: Helicon larp. Photo by Kai Simon Fredriksen.