Nordic Larp

Author: Annika Waern

  • All Cards on the Table

    All Cards on the Table

    The theme of this year’s Knutpunkt is shuffling the deck. With this theme, the organizers aim to rethink some of the ways in which the Nordic larp conference has traditionally been staged and perceived. Inspired by the theme we took on the challenge to rethink also the Knutpunkt / Knutepunkt / Knudepunkt / Solmukohta publication. This year the Knutpunkt companion is primarily an online publication, with pieces being published one by one from now until the week of Knutpunkt 2018.

    The content has been divided into five sections named Hearts, Diamonds, Clubs, Spades, and Joker respectively. Under Hearts you will find designer and organizer reflections on specific larp productions. As Diamonds, you find larp designer and organiser tools and tips. As Clubs, we have collected tools and tips directed towards players. The Spades section contains articles that go broader and deeper in their analysis; these texts are also mostly academic. Finally, under Joker you will find the meta-discussions on the Nordic larp community – a community that today stretches around the globe and engages in a very wide range of larps.

    Hearts

    We are perhaps particularly happy about the Hearts section, where designers and organisers write about their passion and their struggles to realize their larp visions. These are all reflective pieces, written after the larp has successfully played out. Nina Teerilahti’s Freak Show: An Autopsy highlights how larp truly is an ephemeral art form, and how ephemerality can be embraced as the core of larp design. Two U.S. productions are covered: Immerton, a women-exclusive larp and the U.S. staging of Just a Little Lovin’ in August 2017. Shoshana Kessock writes about her personal struggle with re-telling and re-experiencing valued family traditions and memories in the form of a larp scenario, while Juhana Pettersson writes about larp at the grand scale, staged in the heart of European politics, the EU parliament. These pieces contribute with the ends of the scale, Kessock representing the small-scale and personal scenario design and Pettersson the grandiose and political, emphasizing how both are equally valid as artistic contributions.

    Diamonds

    On the other hand, we are equally amazed by the contributions to the Diamonds section. Juhana Pettersson present a tool for letting players co-create their characters, Maury Brown about larp mechanics for escalating and de-escalating play, and Daniel P. Espinosa about the benefits of using highly scripted interactions in a larp scenario. Simon James Pettitt looks upon how to design not just the larp but also the waiting time before the larp, in order to create a complete experience.

    Several articles reflect how larp productions are increasingly being done professionally. Suus Mutsaers writes about how to make professionals and amateurs work together as a team, and Yaraslau I. Kot about the various elds in which larp design can be done professionally and where larp designers are sought-after professionals. Ashley Zdeb tells an amazing story about how to organise a larp as a band tour – or a band tour as a larp–and how in the end, it may not have been much of a difference.

    Clubs

    There are fewer Clubs in our deck, but that does not make them less valuable. Here, we have gathered articles that are primarily directed towards players rather than designers. Elin Dalstål presents some tips on how to play nasty or evil characters, something that many players nd overwhelming or scary. Susanne Vejdemo contributes to our understanding of “play to lose” by a discussion of what other players can do, to help each other play to lose. Finally, Susanne Vejdemo and Elli Garperian present a workshop which can be used by designers or organizers to let players learn to improvise larp rituals on the spot.

    Spades

    Under Spades, we find three more analytical texts. Sarah Lynne Bowman writes about the volatility of larp design, and how very small design decisions or random events can have profound e ects on how a larp plays out. Evan Torner moves away from larp into table-top RPG, to analyse some key play experiences that become relevant also in larp. Jesper Heebøll Arbjørn writes about how narratively oriented players contribute towards the larp narrative, and how their strategies can be incorporated into larp design striving specifically for narrative experience. The three contributions are closely aligned, as they all centre on the somewhat unpredictably co-creative nature of larp and on how to create slightly more predictable experiences while retaining player agency.

    Joker

    The final section of the book is perhaps the most important one: here we find reflections on the Nordic larp community and its emerging practices. Simon Brind and Martine Svanevik challenge the quest for safety, through interviewing multiple designers that have created larps that are intentionally challenging, one way or another. Jonaya Kemper writes about the opportunities and challenges that meet people of color when attempting to play and design larp. These articles both contribute to a lengthy and sometimes heated debate with carefully thought-through discussion pieces.

    The Dealt Hand

    With such a diverse collection of contributions, it is hard to find one common trend or theme. There are, however, some particular experiences and perspectives that shine through. One is how the old safety discussion takes a new turn this year, when Simon Brind and Martine Svanevik and the designers they interview challenge the quest for safety, asking us how we can at the same time play safe, and inspire reflection and change. Very similar issues are brought up by Aaron Vanek in his longer and online-only contribution to the KP companion. Contrasting with these two pieces is Maury Brown’s investigation of mechanics for escalation and de-escalation, designed precisely to encourage a culture of safety and trust. That these can be beneficial also in promoting self-inspection and change is illustrated by the accompanying designer re ection on Immerton. All of the authors have their points. What is clear is that this is a healthy discussion which leads to new and interesting design solutions; also, that the discussion is not likely to end anytime soon!

    However, a more problematic trend also emerges in this year’s collection, related to who gets to realise their larp visions. Evan Torner and Nina Teerilahti both report how their productions met with intense online criticism even before realized, based on the risk that they would end up treating their themes with insufficient sensitivity and care. The designer team behind Immerton tell us in detail how they went about to avoid any online criticism. Here, we are not speaking about large-scale commercial productions. They were produced by volunteer teams driven by enthusiasm and emotionally ill-equipped for massive backlash, especially before the larp was staged and the teams were at the same time busy with organizational and design issues.

    These particular productions were realised anyways due to dedicated and resourceful organizers, but they left the teams emotionally drained. But this type of online criticism can effectively jeopardize a production, should e.g. a venue owner become scared of the controversy. That this may happen is well illustrated by how the WorldCon organizers decided to cancel a larp scenario, when exposed as controversial (Stenros and Montola 2017).

    As editors of this year’s companion, we would like to take the opportunity to call for action: the Nordic larp community must become better at protecting its artists and designers. They are our visionaries and our risk-takers; they will make mistakes and must be allowed to make them. To challenge an established designer for poor design choices and other actual mistakes is one thing, criticizing people for potential design mistakes they may make altogether another. Aiming to censor what themes a designer can address is particularly problematic, and more generally, reserving judgement until the larp has been played is a good idea. Furthermore, we must collectively step up to protect artists and designers against unfounded and hostile criticism. Save them some emotional energy. The latter is critical if we are to answer Jonaya Kemper’s call, and open up for marginalized groups to both play and design. A larp exclusive for people of color run the same risk as Immerton of an extensive wave of criticism, from groups that are very good at Internet harassment.

    Raising the Stakes

    We take it back. We are equally amazed by all contributions to this year’s Knutpunkt companion. Whether they are practical, reflective, critical or theoretical they all have in common that they allow us as a community; as larpers, organisers, and designers, to reflect and to grow.

    We wish end this introduction by urging you to read, share, reflect on and talk about the articles being published here during the coming weeks. Maybe you’ll find a new idea, point of view or question to bring with you to Knutpunkt!

    References

    Jaakko Stenros and Markus Montola. How Worldcon Banned a Larp. Blog post, August 2017. https://jaakkostenros.wordpress.com/2017/08/13/how- worldcon-banned-a-larp/ (Accessed Jan 2018)

    Acknowledgements

    A book like this is not the sole work of anyone. The chapter authors, of course, deserve our first and deepest thanks; the enthusiasm, time, and enormous knowledge you put into the chapters humble us and dwarf our efforts.

    Furthermore, we were not alone even in editing this volume. Each of the individual chapters have had an assigned editor, who had the main responsibility for giving comments and feedback to the author during the writing process. Most of the editors are part of the fabulous Nordiclarp.org crew. We are deeply grateful for the enthusiasm, energy and care you put into editing, Sarah Lynne Bowman, Mo Holkar, Evan Torner, and Suus Mutsaers. Special thanks go to Jaakko Stenros who does not usually edit for Nordiclarp.org, but who still kindly agreed to take on two chapters for this book. Without our co-editors this book would not have happened, period.

    The book manuscript as such was put together over a few intense days in early January 2018. This would not have been possible without the precious Jon Back and Sofia Stenler, who helped with proofreading the articles and formatting them to be ready for typesetting. You gave us a full day of your precious vacation hours together – and we can’t thank you enough!

    Finally, the beautiful card symbols used for the cover and section introductions were done by Mia Häggström for this year’s Knutpunkt.

    (We are not sure what we did, except write the introduction. Only that it took a lot of time to do, whatever it was.)

  • Gertrudes möhippa – A Near-successful Crossover of Larp and Theater

    Gertrudes möhippa – A Near-successful Crossover of Larp and Theater

    Recently, the Royal Dramatic theater (Dramaten) in Stockholm staged its first larp ever. Gertrudes Möhippa (Gertrude’s Bachelorette: for brevity I’ll use Gertrude) was designed and produced by Jesper Berglund and Christopher Sandberg and staged twice on successive days, with a maximum of 180 participants in each run. I participated in the second run.

    A Crossover Design

    Gertrude was a fascinating production, balancing between theater and larp and the expectations of mainstream theater reviewers, newcomers and experienced larpers. Briefly, Gertrude staged the bachelorette party for Hamlet’s mother Queen Gertrude, taking place on the evening before her wedding to Claudius, brother of her former husband. Gertrude herself was played by Arja Saijonmaa, a well-known Finnish singer and actor. Her bridesmaids, Claudius, and some other roles were also played by actors, and throughout the larp, there were also ghosts present; shadow players played by actors, who were invisible to the characters and could whisper to players to direct their play. The audience/players were all guests at the bachelorette. Players had full-fledged characters and belonged to different cliques – smaller groupings of players (about 25–30 in each) that had their own backstories (not from Hamlet).

    The central theme of Gertrude was guilt and redemption. Anyone who has read or seen Hamlet knows that Claudius has murdered his brother, and this is of course the backdrop of the theme – the players do not know if Gertrude was an accomplice in the murder. The cliques had similar back stories; dark events where it was unclear whom to blame.

    The larp was heavily railroaded, partly as a result of the merge of larp and theater, and partly to make it easier for newcomers. There was no off-game workshopping or clear larp start: some people went into character right on arrival at Dramaten, whereas others eased into their roles more gradually. On arrival, we signed in with the bridesmaids and met our cliques for a while, to prepare for Gertrude’s arrival at the party. Next, we were seated in the main theater salon, and allowed to interact with the main bridesmaid Nila who gave us some instructions (Don’t break anything! Be kind to each other!) and instructed us on what to do when Gertrude arrived. This whole scene was pretty much standard interactive theater: we had some things to do (throw stuff on-stage and cheer), and we could interact with the actors. Gertrude herself was happy and welcoming, and very much in love!

    The next scene was played outside Dramaten, where we staged bachelorette-style pranks for Gertrude and her bridesmaids. This also gave us time to interact with other players (and with people on the streets who wondered what was going on). Back inside the theater, we were all called onto the main stage (it is HUGE and fit us all!) to stage a final prank for Gertrude, now joined by Claudius. This scene got nasty. Egged on by the actors, players started to question Gertrude and Claudius about the late king’s death, and eventually the king and queen fled, angry and hurt. The bridesmaids also left at this time, which allowed the players to go into a more sandbox style of larping. For a couple of hours, we were free to play on the storylines of the cliques, conspire to replace Gertrude and Claudius with a new ruler, or just ad-lib plotlines of our own. The larp ended with another scripted on-stage scene, leading up to the beginning of Hamlet.

    While Gertrude mixed larp and interactive theater elements, I would argue that it is hard to find another term than larp to describe it (although my Facebook friend who called it a “selfie larp party” was not far off). All participants had characters and backstories, and there was a fair amount of time allotted for sandbox-style play. It shared both the railroaded storyline and the use of theater scenes with Inside Hamlet, and that was definitely still a larp. It also matters that Gertrude was marketed as larp: the producers used this term to distance their artistic vision from that of immersive theater such as Punchdrunk’s Sleep No More.

    Review

    I think it is fair to assume that Gertrude was designed to be accessible to people who had very little larp experience, who expected to interact with something theatrical, and who had no interest in reading, or intention to read, complicated instructions beforehand. From this perspective, I find the overall design brilliant. Starting and ending with theater scenes made the overall structure that of a theater play. The strongly controlled activities in the beginning, greeting Gertrude on-stage and staging pranks in the city, allowed players to ease into their roles and the interaction with other players. When most of the actors left the larp about halfway through, all participants were well into larping. The final scene was intense and well-acted, and worked well to end the larp.

    Personally, I had a lot of fun playing Gertrude. Just think about it: “I have actually been playing on the big stage at Dramaten!” I had tweaked my character to be geared towards rapid development of scenes with just about anybody I met (she was an ugly but filthy rich crook constantly looking for new lovers of all genders), and this created a lot of brief, fun moments during the larp.

    Despite this, Gertrude was not an entirely successful design. The main problem was that it was confusing: it was unclear when the larp started, and it was difficult to understand what was going on in the ending scene. It was difficult to understand when we were expected to obey the actors, and when we could interact freely with them (this is a very typical problem for interactive theater). We who played ‘central’ and ‘court’ roles were instructed to take responsibility to drive play for others, but doing so was very difficult when we know so little about when that was appropriate, and what was going to happen. It was difficult for cliques to arrange meetings in-larp to play out their internal plots. And so on.

    Even the fact that Gertrude was fun, and fun throughout, was actually problematic. When Gertrude came back in the last scene, she had changed from the initial loving and welcoming woman into a bitter and vengeful queen who did not shrink from murder. To make that change effective, the sandbox larp would have needed to develop somewhat similarly, to become gradually more uncomfortable, oppressive or outright scary. Instead, most of us just went on partying.

    Gertrudes möhippa (play, Annika Bäckström)

    Communication Issues

    Claus Raasted recently published an excellent blog post with tips to organizers. All of his tips are gold, but the one that I want to focus on here is this one:

    “Communication matters. A lot. A lot a lot. In the end, larps (mostly) come alive because the players make them do so, just like a film actor makes a character description become a living, breathing character. The tricky thing here is that we (usually) don’t have directors standing around telling us precisely what to do.”

    The tickets to Gertrude were sold from the home page of Dramaten, and it is important to understand that this was the only web page for the production. During recent years, it has become more or less standard for larp to rely on a carefully produced website, where players can find information on practicalities, the diegetic setting, the design vision, roles, rules and meta-techniques, and the larp schedule including potential pre-game workshops. The communication format for larp has been standardised this way because it works. Needless to say, the Dramaten home page does not support this, so for Gertrude the organizers had to rely on a number of other information sources. The most important information came in the role manuscript and the 65 page Bachelorette magazine, both distributed about a month before the larp. Other information resources included a Pinterest board for costume inspiration, links to documents with information about how to read the role manuscript, tips on how to play the larp, and many information posts in the Facebook group for the larp. Effectively, the lack of information on the website turned into a massive information overflow problem: very often I would vaguely remember that I had read something important somewhere – with no chance of finding it again.

    Adding to the information issue was that the larp was not transparent (as we were supposed to follow along with the railroaded structure) and that central information was written as in-game information. In particular, the Bachelorette magazine existed in the fiction and we could talk about it in-game. Also the role manuscripts were partly written from a first-hand perspective of the character. Now, communicating within the fiction was common in the nineties as well as in the Alternate Reality games from about ten years ago, but has fallen a bit out of fashion, as clear off-game information is currently seen as more supportive of play. This meant that the lack of clear off-communication upset many players (including me) prior to the game. In hindsight, I think this may again have been an aesthetic design choice inspired by the desire to be accessible to novice players. While clear instructions and off-game information may be useful for shaping play, but they are also a pretty boring read…

    I think this was a mistake. Effectively, the lack of clear off-game instructions meant that most of the rules and meta-techniques were not communicated beforehand, but left to us to figure out during play. The use of ghosts was the only rule that was communicated in advance, and even that rule was somewhat unclear (more about that below). Despite this, the game was actually quite rules-heavy. Here are some examples of rules that were not communicated beforehand:

    • When seated in the main salon, obey the actors on the scene as well as the ghosts.
    • Every clique has their own meeting place, signified by their totem.
    • Black glasses contain poison.
    • Black paper flowers have some kind of meaning (I never figured that one out).

    Some of these I figured out during play, others I only understood after the larp when talking to other players.

    The Ghosts

    The design motivation for leaving so much out might have been the use of ghosts. Both the role manuscript and the Bachelorette magazine contained a page about ghosts, with the instruction “don’t talk about them, pretend that they are not there, mimic their emotions, listen and obey”. They were also nicely demonstrated during Nila’s introduction scene. Notice how Claus wrote that “we (usually) don’t have directors standing around telling us precisely what to do” – but when shadow players are present, there is actually a direct way to instruct larpers in their play. But again, this brief instruction above was all the information that we got about them. Their role in the larp was unclear. Were they there to teach us the rules? Were they there to suggest interesting developments for a player or group, or were they there to control the overall dramatic arc? This lead to some players refusing to take instructions or avoid playing with them. What I found most difficult was how to work with the instructions from a ghost after interacting with them. For example, when entering Dramaten after playing outdoors, the ghosts were standing at the entrance mimicking wind sounds. We played this as a moment of chill, maybe a foreshadowing, but we immediately threw off the feeling to maintain a party attitude – and the event was soon forgotten.

    This brief moment illustrates the strong role that ghosts could have had, not only to introduce inspirations and create moments of interesting play, but to affect the overall mood and dramatic curve of the larp. In Cabaret, we used a thin form of fate play to control the overall dramatic arc, by separating the larp into three acts with explicit mood themes. In Gertrude, there was no such development (at least not in the run in which I participated) – but the ghosts could have been used for this purpose. Their role could have been to influence play to become gradually more unforgiving and oppressive, preparing the players for the final scene. However, this would have required players to cooperate – and we didn’t know enough of their purpose to do so.

    Conclusion

    To conclude, I see Gertrude as a missed opportunity. Through being staged at Dramaten and through its central design choices, the production came close to becoming that hybrid form between larp and theater that would open up larp to a wider audience. But as usual in play design, the devil is in the detail – and for larp, this very often comes down to careful pre-game communication.

    Gertrudes möhippa (play, Annika Bäckström)

    Cover photo: Gertrude and the bachelorette party out on the town (Play, Annika Bäckström). All other photos by Annika Bäckström.

    Gertrudes möhippa (Gertrude’s Bachelorette)

    Production: Jesper Berglund (Writer & Director), Christopher Sandberg (Writer & Director),

    Make-up: Barbro Forsgårdh & Nathalie Pujol

    Costume: Bea Szenfeld (Gertrude’s outfit), Carina Bornsäter, Mikael Mohlin, Linnea Brun, Barbro Hellsing, Anna Karin Henriksson, Karin Victor, Annelie Johansson, Ewa Johansson, Pia Pernhem, Monica Jansson, Jan Johansson, Kerstin Jeppson, Lotta-Maja Öhman & Cassandra Sandberg

    Music: Lilla Lovis (Vocals) & Niclas Lindgren (audio)

    Actors: Arja Saijonmaa (Gertrude), Malin Arvidsson (Nila, Best Woman), Karin Bengtsson (Ghost), Filip Alexanderson (Ghost), David Book (Ghost), Majken Pollack (Ghost), Anette Skåhlberg (Ghost), Ola Wallinder (Ghost), Niklas Hagen (Ghost), Anna Mannerheim (Bridesmaid), Anna Svensson Kundromichalis (Bridesmaid), Rebecka Pershagen (Bridesmaid), Cecilia Klingspor (Bridesmaid), Josefine Tengblad (Bridesmaid), Maja Frydén (Bridesmaid), Per Lasson & Magnus Hammer

    Date: June 7 & 8, 2016

    Location: Dramaten (Royal Dramatic Theatre), Stockholm, Sweden

    Duration: 5 hours per run

    Participants: 180 per run

    Participation Fee: €35 (simple character), €55 (advanced character) & €75 (most advanced character, including costuming)

    Game Mechanics: Shadows, cut-scenes, diegetic information

    Website: http://www.dramaten.se/Repertoar-arkiv/Gertrudes-mohippa/