At the present time we have 535 posts made by 209 authors.
Chaos League
Chaos League was born in Abruzzo, Italy, in 1992. It is formed by boys and girls with different educational and professional backgrounds: actors, musicians, directors, educators, writers. In the course of time we have experimented with different larping formulas. Yet, as every event is a story in itself, the attention to interpretation and the experience of others have always been at the core of our larping philosophy since we believe larps are something profound, almost visionary. We set our stories in various historical contexts: during the First and Second World Wars, in a nineteenth-century phalanstery following the footsteps of philosopher Charles Fourier, in present-time locations, in an Italian monastery in the Middle Ages, in a dystopian post-atomic world of the near future. For the most part, we have organized events in Italy although recently we have crossed the national borders stretching as far as England and Sweden in the pursuit of culturally unfamiliar landscapes.
JC
I'm a larp-theory enthusiast and avid international larper. When not doing that, I can be found screaming into a microphone (check out my metal band Red Mourning!).
Hampus Ahlbom
The Black Prince of Swedish Larping - Hampus Ahlbom is known as a controversial game-designer challenging the social dogma surrounding Nordic and Swedish Larp. His own flagships are low-fantasy games like Granland or Krigshjärta 7, but also Tre Kronor – a campaign about the power elite of the 1940s.
Muriel Algayres
Muriel Algayres (b. 1980) is a French larp designer and academic. She is the creator of Harem Son Saat and designs larps that focus on history, representation, and pop culture.
Aladino Amantini
Computer science engineer, writing larps since 2013 with the Collective “Terre Spezzate”. His larps included different settings and, from fantasy, to contemporary, from historical to fairy tales. The main themes he has dealt with focus on oppression, conflict and revolt. Among his main works there are “La fortezza dei vinti”, “Black Fiday” and “I ribelli della Montagna”.
Ane Marie Anderson
Ane Marie Anderson (b. 1989) is a Norwegian larper, designer, and a doctor and PhD-student. She spends a lot of time producing live storytelling shows in Oslo, and is interested in how people work.
Frida Aronsson
Frida is a Swedish larper and keen traveler, who is often seen on fantasy, steampunk and contemporary larps. In 2013 she set up the conference and hostage larp PharmaTech. She has also survived an IRL Japanese scout camp zombie virus breakout. Frida got inspired to go Russia for a dedicated larp trip after attending a couple of Swedish larps with international participants.
Brodie Atwater
Brodie Atwater is a recent graduate of Goddard College's Psychology and Counseling program, where they studied larp as therapy. Their organizational and scholarly work centers around accessibility through safety design, bleed counseling, and engagement with cultural ideologies transmitted through play.
Johannes Axner
Johannes Axner is a Swede who loves to play and design larps, build community and blow things up. Creator and Editor in Chief of Nordiclarp.org.
Thomas B.
Thomas B. is a French roleplayer who lives in Switzerland. He wrote for Backstab, Casus Belli, Larpzeit International, Roolipelaaja, multiple Knutebooks, Radio Rôliste and the In Nomine Satanis / Magna Veritas RPG line. His 1997 larp script La croisière s’accuse (a Love Boat murder mystery) is still being run to this day. He later co-designed the larps In Cauda Venenum, Technocculte, Shadowrun and Afroasiatik. He stopped making his English-language larp reviews public in 2014. This article is an exception.
Sandy Bailly
Sandy Bailly (b. 1986) is a Belgian larper who occasionally also crews, writes, designs and organises larps. She is a firm believer in restoring people's self-confidence and autonomy, and aspires to carry this out in the mundane world as well as to do this for herself. They are interested in small, collaborative, feelgood and altruistic play in larp, as well as in movies, books and food. Sandy believes in re-imagining reality through play and in building communities of care.
Myriel Balzer
Myriel Balzer (born 1981) works as a freelance game designer and game researcher. In 2008 she completed her studies of sociology, psychology and peace and conflict research and graduated with a German Diplom (equivalent with a master’s or post-graduate degree) in sociology. Her thesis was published under the title Live Action Role Playing – Die Entwicklung realer Kompetenzen in virtuellen Welten (Live Action Role Playing: The Development of Real Competencies in Virtual Worlds) by Tectum Verlag. After a staff position as lead game designer she founded her own independent label in 2009, Phoenix Game Design, and currently concentrates on digital games. She organized her first live action role-playing event in 2001 and has had contact with role-playing and fantasy since childhood.
Lennart Bartenstein
Lennart Bartenstein (born 1991) is a psychologist with his own practice in Schleswig, Northern Germany. He has postgraduate training in cognitive behavioral therapy and EMDR (trauma) therapy. He started regular larping in 2016 and was enthusiastic about the therapeutic potential of larping right from the start. He mainly plays larp in a viking group. Beside he has published two fantasy novels. www.larp-therapie.de
Bettina Beck
Bettina Beck is a U.S. larp designer, organizer and player of 15 years. Working primarily in New England Sports Larp, her focus is on creating generative world systems and subverting the racist and colonial tropes of the form. As a player she enjoys blackbox and surrealist larps that draw on her background in theater, where she specialized in Augusto Boal-inspired improvisation.
Chris Bergstresser
Chris Bergstresser is an American larp player and designer. In his spare time, he works as a computer programmer in New York City.
Anita Berthold
Anita Berthold holds a degree in Psychology and is a certified Systemic Coach working as Talent Development Manager in a global semiconductor company in Germany. She is a german larp organizer and designer who started organizing in 2016 and becoming passionate about larp safety after volunteering as safety person in 2019 at the German larp “Villa Morgenrot”. Since then, she has worked as a Safety person in several national and international larps and tries to increase safety awareness in her home country as well.
Sharang Biswas
Sharang Biswas is a writer, interactive artist, and game designer, currently Game Artist in Residence at the Musem of the Moving Image in New York. He has showcased interactive works at numerous art institutions including the Institute of Contemporary Art in Philadelphia & Pioneer Works in Brooklyn, and has won IndieCade, IGDN, & Golden Cobra awards for his games. He has contributed essays to Dicebreaker, Eurogamer, and Unwinnable, and fiction to Fantasy Magazine, Lightspeed Magazine, and Neon Hemlock Press among others. He is the co-editor of Honey & Hot Wax: An Anothology of Erotic Art Games (Pelgrane Press, 2020) and Strange Lusts/Strange Loves: An Anothology of Erotic Interactive Fiction (Strange Horizons, 2021).
James Bloodworth
James Bloodworth (b. 1972) has been larping since 1990 and writing/running his own games since 1996. His larps are primarily Sci-Fi in nature taking inspiration from multiple sources and genres. He also builds larp props as he believes technology can enhance the larp experience (but not at the cost of the story). He is very interested in the design of both rules and practical mechanics that can both shape and enhance the LARP experience. He wrote a column for LARP magazine in the 90s and has also done presentations on various larp related topics. He has only recently started to experience what Nordic larp can offer but is interested in learning more. By day he works with two other people and a dog creating IT solutions.
Sarah Lynne Bowman
Sarah Lynne Bowman is a game scholar, designer, and organizer. She is currently a Senior Lecturer in Game Design at Uppsala University, a founding member of their Transformative Play Initiative, as well as the Program Coordinator for Peace & Conflict Studies at Austin Community College. Bowman also teaches as adjunct faculty in English, Communication, and Humanities. McFarland Press published her dissertation in 2010 as The Functions of Role-playing Games: How Participants Create Community, Solve Problems, and Explore Identity. She helped organize the Living Games Conference (2014, 2016, 2016) and the Role-playing and Simulation in Education Conference (2016, 2018). In addition, Bowman served as an editor for The Wyrd Con Companion Book from 2012-2015. She is currently a Coordinating Editor for the International Journal of Role-Playing and a managing editor at Nordiclarp.org.
Simon Brind
Simon Brind (PhD) is a writer, game designer, and larp researcher. His primary academic interest lies in the tension between the larp writer's vision and what the players make of it. His PhD thesis on ‘Combat Narratology: Strategies for the resolution of narrative crisis in participatory fiction' is available from the Digital Cultures Research Centre, (UWE), Bristol. He has been a larper since 1983 and a larpwright since 1986 and is a founding member of Avalon Larp Studio.
Alex Brown
Alex Brown is a larp designer and 3-sided football player from England, living in Oslo. He is interested in situationist practices and is attracted to larp as a liberation from cultural spectatorship. Often designing around political and environmental themes, his chamber larp designs include; Lost and Found: Belongings That Belong, Transmigration of Souls, and It Could Be You.
Maury Brown
Maury Brown is a storyteller, larp producer, game designer, and scholar who consults with educational institutions and companies about interactive storytelling experiences. She is known for her scholarly and practical work designing safety and calibration techniques for larp and participatory experiences and for helping larp communities improve their accessibility and inclusion. She wrote and produced several multi-day destination Nordic-style experiences, including New World Magischola, Immerton, and Beat Generation, and believes in the power of roleplay to empower individuals and transform societal norms.
Kamil Buchtík
Kamil Buchtík is a Czech larper, larp designer, co-organizer of a year-round Prague chamber larp festival HRAJ LARP and organizer of experiential events.
Martin Buchtík
Martin Buchtík has been playing larps since 2001. He designed number of games, recently he was head designer of Moon (2011) and Skoro Rassvet (2012). He is a director of the Public Opinion Research Centre at the Institute of Sociology of the Academy of Sciences and specialises in methodology of social research, non-standard techniques (including role-playing) of sociological research and public opinion forming.
Astrid Budolfsen
Astrid Budolfsen (b. 1995) is a Danish organizer. Solo head organizer on Krigslive XIV in 2018 (290 participants), and Co-Head Organizer on Krigslive XVIII in 2023 (530 participants), Endure and Survive in 2024, and From the Vault in 2025. My main interest in organizing work is creating fun for participants and political, environmental and social responsible event creation. Besides that I have a kid and I do politics and climate activism and I work in accounting. Recently finished a book about Krigslive, that will be available soon.
Sander Burger
Sander Burger (b. 1980) has been a Dutch larp designer and organiser since 2003. He combines his dayjob at Doctors Without Borders with various larps and larp projects, like Cirque Noir and On The Styx.
Björn Butzen
Björn Butzen is an educational consultant for volunteer services. He has been playing larps since 2014 and mostly co-organises events related to Minilarps. As a participant in workshops on the topic of safety in larp, he contributes the perspective of disabled people, especially with regard to the tension between personal responsibility and heteronomy. Among other things, he also advises larp organisers on design documents and concrete implementation in order to find inclusive ways of enabling disabled or restricted people to participate in events. Photo by Inge Faust.
Axiel Cazeneuve
Axiel Cazeneuve (b. 1994) is a French anthropologist, larpwright, and queer activist. They create sex ed games and community resources and are a board member of several French larping organization, including the national federation.
Quinn D
Quinn has over a decade of experience writing, running, and participating in roleplaying events in a variety of formats and styles. In addition to multiple staff positions at the Intercon larp convention, on the New England Interactive Literature board of directors and Peaky Midwest, Quinn is co-founder and convention organizer of the Be-Con larp convention. Quinn values larp for its ability to build empathy, educate, explore human existence and create social bonds. Quinn's recent focus has been on emotional content, identity exploration and empathy building in a visceral and safe manner. In addition to nordiclarp.org, Quinn has previously been published in the Wyrd Con 2015 and Knutpunkt 2018 books. Outside of roleplaying events, Quinn enjoys making things, spending time with friends, and volunteering time for a local community health clinic.
Carolina Dahlberg
Carolina Dahlberg is a larp writer from Sweden. She has a professional career in information design and educational games.
Johan Dahlberg
Johan Dahlberg is a Swedish larper and larp designer. He holds a PhD in molecular medicine, and he loves a good story.
Elin Dalstål
Elin Dalstål (b. 1986) has been a larper and organizer since 2002, based in northern Sweden. She has organized larps and convententions and been on the board of several larp organisations. https://boldandvulnerable.wordpress.com/
Elektra Diakolambrianou
Elektra Diakolambrianou (born 1984) is a Greek psychologist and researcher with post-graduate studies in person-centred psychotherapy, art therapy, and social psychology. She works as a psychotherapist, a lecturer at the Institution for Counseling and Psychological Studies in Athens, as well as an associate psychotherapist and researcher at NGOs that work with refugees, migrants and ex-convicts. Her journey in larp began in 2017, soon leading her to explore the psychotherapeutic, educational and political dimensions of larp. Since 2019 she is a member and co-founder of LARPifiers, a Greek-based larp designer non-profit company, where she works as a larp designer, organizer, and project manager for various larp-related projects within the Erasmus+ framework.
Cecilia Dolk
Cecilia Dolk is a storyteller, dreamer and a doer active in the larp community since 2002. She has both professional and volunteer experience from producing theater, participatory events, transmedial stories and larps.
Karin Edman
Karin Edman works full time with game culture for adults, and thus is one of few Swedish “professional larpers” with the privilege to have organized two of their dark and sapphic larps professionally. She runs a blog about larp theory and is published in several KP/SK books. They focus on queerness, physical experiences, disability, and body acceptance. Edman is a talented project lead and communicator with a master's degree in Library and Information Science. Pronouns are she/they interchangeably. Karin’s blog can be found at https://wonderkarin.wordpress.com/blog/
Lea Elias Isen
Lea Elias Isen is a Danish larper, musician and autism acceptance advocate. They have taught languages using edularp, worked for the Danish association of larpers, Bifrost, and are currently working on their degree in linguistics.
Rei England
Rei is a non-binary LARP designer and organiser from the UK. They have been primarily active in the UK Freeforms community, and has recently become interested in designing digital LARP. Rei likes to design games for inviting and exploring connection. Rei's games include 'Born This Way', 'Tale As Old As Space', and 'The Bathhouse', a Golden Cobra Honourable Mention game played online while players take a bath. Rei has written articles for Knutepunkt about online LARP design and non-binary inclusion in games.
Anna Erlandsson
Anna Erlandsson (b.1986) is a Swedish larper and journalist. She has organized many lectures, panel talks, and events on the area on inclusion, feminism, and the importance of gaming culture in the society. Photo by David Lagerlöf.
Daniel P. Espinosa
Daniel P. Espinosa is a Spanish novel writer. He also organizes literature workshops when stars are right and edits books when they are even more right. He has several novels and short stories published, like his medieval Spain horror and fantasy novel, Ad Infernum. When he is not writing, he is devoted to his other addiction, tabletop roleplaying games and larping.
Eirik Fatland
Eirik Fatland is a larpwright, theorist, and founding member of the Nordic larp movement. He is known as a designer of dark, ambitious larps with political themes (Europa, Inside:Outside, and PanoptiCorp), strongly narrative and occasionally comedic larps (Moiras Vev, Marcellos Kjeller), and as a speaker and educator specializing in matters of larp design. He is in possession of a Norwegian passport, a Master of Arts degree from the University of Art and Design Helsinki, and a job in financial services.
Karolina Fido-Fairfax
Karolina Fido-Fairfax is a Polish larp designer with 13 years of experience in collaborative storytelling. She is the lead narrative designer for the Wonderlarp Foundation and a member of teams working on larps such as Adventurers’ Academy, College of Wizardry, WereWar, Conscience, Odysseus, and Wards of Czocha. As a larpwright with a vast experience in game design and crew coordination, she holds Nordic larp as an example of inclusivity, creativity, and collaborative spirit.
Olivia Fischer
Olivia Fischer (b. 1981) has been an Austrian larp designer since 2002, and is a researcher and lecturer in education. She gives talks and workshops on edularps at conferences and universities.
Bjørn Flindt Temte
Bjørn Flindt Temte is a Narrative Designer, Interactive Storytelling Researcher, and Medialogist. He recently published a paper on roleplaying in virtual environments, and is currently doing research on multiplayer computer/larp hybrids, RPG player types, RPG cognitive processes as well as non-traditional emergent narratives. Bjørn is from '81, lives in Copenhagen, and has been playing and writing role-playing game scenarios since the late 80’s.
Kol Ford
Kol Ford is a writer and designer from London. He has been involved in larp since he was a child and has been involved in writing and producing larps for most of his life. He has worked with larp organisations across the UK and all over the world including Avalon Larp Studios, Notonlylarp and Atropos. When not designing and writing for Omen Star, Kol works with the Andover Estate Community Center and the Somalian Women’s Charity One True Voice, developing projects to deliver essential services to the community.
Johan Fors
Johan Fors is a game designer from Stockholm, Sweden, working at Lin Education. He creates transmedial stories, Alternate Reality Games (ARGs) and larps. He specializes in digital stories and local history, as in his project Berättelsemaskinen.
David František Wagner
David František Wagner Is Czech larper, larp author and organizer, one of founders of Rolling. Made De la Bete, Legion: Siberian story and 15 more games from battles to chamber larps.
Michael Freudenthal
Michael Freudenthal (b. 1985) creates and researches playful experiences with a focus on participation design. In Paris, they co-authored The Lost Generation, an immersive and interactive theatre play, and Madeleines, a silent contemplative jaunt.
Anneli Friedner
Anneli Friedner is a Swedish larper. She is passionate about larp, queer, feminism and sexuality. She works as a high school teacher, enjoys making workshops and writes the blog Jeu de rôles (in Swedish) about the things that interest her.
Taro Friman
Taro Friman has recently started a job as an occupational therapist. Previously they worked twenty years as a youth worker and special needs assistant for people with disabilities or mental health issues and with neurodiverse people. Taro has been larping for twenty years and has been part of several Finnish larp productions. They are actively trying to make the community more gentle. (Photo by Viima Strengell.)
Katrin Geneuss
Katrin Geneuss is a research associate at the Department for German Language and Literature at Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München, Germany. She holds a PhD with a qualitative study of modelling edu-larp as a curriculum-bound drama-tool in German lessons. Her main focus in research and teaching are drama-tools for teaching first, second and foreign languages. Further, she is the founder and of StarManufaktur, a company which facilitates holistic narrative simulation scenarios called STARS (Student Activating Roleplaying Games). The team of StarManufaktur consists of researchers, students and actors who design and facilitate the games in close cooperation with teachers. The STARS roleplaying games are also run in libraries and at festivals in the Munich area (more information on starmanufaktur.lima-city.de). Prior to working at Munich university, Katrin worked as a teacher and lecturer in Sweden (2008 - 1016). There, she was introduced to edu-larp for the first time. Being a passionate about drama in schools, she wanted to find out more about this learning tool, which nowadays constitutes an important aspect of her professional life.
Alessandro Giovannucci
Alessandro Giovannucci is an award-winning Italian larp designer and larp theorist. He co-founded the larp collective Chaos League and wrote the Southern Way Manifesto. His well-known international larps include Sahara Expedition, The Secrets We Keep and Miskatonic University. He is regularly invited to hold talks and workshops about larp and immersive experiences. His chamber larp has been translated into several languages. Curious, friendly, and proudly antifa https://chaosleague.org/
Andrea Giovannucci
Andrea Giovannucci (1977) is one of the founding members of Chaos League. Scholar of games and experienced player, he graduated with honors with a thesis on the history of larp in Italy. He has received a doctorate in history with a thesis on games and society in the nineteenth century. He has written and published profusely on games. He is currently a research fellow at the University "Alma Mater Studiorum" of Bologna.
Ole Peder Giæver
Ole Peder Giæver (born 1980) is a Norwegian larper and role player. He has co-authored the surreal story game Itras by and contributed to the Larps from the Factory book. Giæver makes a living by doing tabloid online news journalism for The Man, and daydreams of liberating his Soul at some point. But maybe not quite as intensely as the last time around.
Leandro Godoy
Leandro Godoy graduated in management processes and is currently a sociology student. He is one of the founders and producers of Confraria das Ideias, a Brazilian NGO that has been promoting the language of larp since 1999. Also known as Confrade Godoy, he was awarded by the “VAI” (project of the São Paulo Department of Culture) in the mid-2000s, and has contributed for RPG and larp to be recognized as cultural practices by the government, including larp in the cultural programming of the city and state of São Paulo since then.
Elina Gouliou
Elina Gouliou (b. 1977), a Greek in London, has been active in the larp community for over 10 years. Elina loves playing on emotions. She often helps write, edit, and project-manage larps and larp publications.
Hanne Grasmo
Hanne Grasmo (b. 1966) is a larp designer and sociologist from Norway. She published Larp – Levende Rollespill (1998), co-founded Knutepunkt, codesigned Just a Little Lovin’, and recently started her PhD on role-play and sexual arousal.
Julia Greip
Julia Greip (b. 1992) is a Swedish larper, writer, designer and organizer (best known for Pleasing Women, Stenrike and Libertines). The fine line (or long jump) between social realism and the sensually divine makes her tick. She is passionate about historical undergarments, meaningful eye contact and finding what truly connects people. She has a B.A. in behavioral sciences. She shares reflections on larp and other relevant subjects on the blog Flickers: https://flickers-blog.blogspot.com
Magnar Grønvik Müller
Magnar Grønvik Müller (b.1986) has lectured edu-larp design for various NGOs, educational institutions, and at the Larpwriter Summer School. He is currently finishing his BFA at the Oslo National Academy for the Arts.
Hallgeir Gustavsen
Hallgeir Gustavsen has been larping since early 2000 and after making his first larp in 2013 he kind of fell in love with the hobby once more.
Rosalind Göthberg
Rosalind Göthberg is a Swedish larpwright with a solid theatre background. She annually performs and produces plays with her own theatre society. She loves mixing larp and theatre, creating aesthetic, emotional larps with a strong story to tell.
Jojjon Hamrén
Jojjon Hamrén (b. 1985 and f.k.a. Johanna Nyberg) is a larper and organizer based in the northern parts of Sweden. They were one of the creators of the gaming convention FemCon.
Sanne Harder
'Sanne Harder’ (sometimes credited as Sanne Harder Flamant or S. Benarzi) is a Danish game designer, who has organized and written scenarios since 1994. As part of the Nordic Larp Talks in 2011 she gave a talk titled "Roleplaying as a Teaching Method."
Chris Hartford
Chris Hartford (b. 1968) is a British larper and gamer in his mid-fifties. He has worked in the tabletop role-playing games field since the early 1990s, notably on BattleTech but also Dark Ages: Vampire, Heavy Gear and Crimson Skies. He began larping in the 1980s, D&D games leading to fantasy larps in the Sherwood Forest of his native Nottinghamshire. He returned to larp in 2017 after a long break, playing or crewing many larps in the following years as well as helping with character and story writing for several.
Mátyás Hartyándi
Mátyás Hartyándi is a mental health specialist and organization development consultant. He researches human resource development and role-play-based experiential learning methods at the Corvinus University of Budapest, Hungary. He is a member of the Hungarian Psychodrama Association, and the International Simulation and Gaming Association. He published the first Hungarian academic paper on analog role-playing games and their application.
J. Tuomas Harviainen
J. Tuomas Harviainen (b. 1972) Associate Professor of Information Practices, and has been playing and writing larps since 1995. He is one of the editors of the journal Simulation & Gaming.
Jesper Heebøll Arbjørn
Jesper Heebøll Arbjørn first encountered larp around 25 years ago and in the last 20 years he has been into larp organizing and larp analyzing. He considers himself more a larp practitioner than a larp scholar and the thoughts presented in this article are actually some years old, but were filed in his desk drawer then. But recent discussions challenged him to find his old notes and rewrite them into this text. He also once built a 256 square-meter transportable wooden transportable wooden farm building for a larp.
Torun Hegre
Torun Hegre is a Norwegian larper. She has organized some larps and larp related events, but mainly she has participated in the world of larp as a player since 2010. When she is not larping, she works as a student advisor at a university.
Alex Helm
Alex Helm is a British/European designer of countless larps since 1998. During that time, Alex has played and designed just about every kind of larp imaginable, with their games being run across Europe and the US. Well known projects include a variety of Warhammer 40k larps, chamber larps, Batukh Hungers! and Sins of the Others, and the forthcoming Nordic weekender prison game 'Lockdown' (UK, 2024) These days, Alex is mostly interested in grand scale European/Nordic games, but frequently dips in and out of other kinds. Alex currently lives in Berlin, Germany with their two cats, works in video games, and will sell their soul for chocolate.
Hélène Henry
Hélène Henry is a video game producer at Ubisoft. She has also worked as an editor, author and passionate participant on tabletop roleplaying games, war games and larps for more than 15 years. One rule to link them all: collaborative storytelling. Based on those experiences and insights, she works at casting bridges between these fields to keep exploring new ways of building, living and sharing stories.
Nór Hernø
Nór Hernø is a Historian and literature major from Denmark with 20+ years larp experience. Throughout the years, they have lectured in narratology and larp design and worked professionally designing edu-larps, cultural events, exhibitions, and educational projects for museums. Their primary interest is developing workshops for larp and educational purposes, as well as supporting local larp designers and communities.
Mo Holkar
Mo Holkar is a British larp designer and organizer. He is part of the Larps on Location design collective, and was formerly an organizer of The Smoke and of The Game Kitchen. He is a member of the editorial board of nordiclarp.org.
Kjell Hedgard Hugaas
Kjell Hedgard Hugaas is a northern Norwegian game designer, organizer, writer, theorist, and trained actor. He has theorized the ways in which ideas impact players through the process of memetic bleed. He has also published on the transformative potential of games on their players. Hugaas writes and designs on a freelance basis for a number of different studios around the world and also creates chamber larps on his own.
Pawel Jasinski
Pawel Jasinski is a video game designer working for the Polish studio ATGames. He created his first larp in 2004. Years of experience in creating larps, pen and paper RPGs, and board games paved the way for his career in video game development.
Kanane Jones
Kanane Jones is an indie dev and creator of the video game Final Girls. She likes to make small personal games and is currently working on a haunted house game. She started larping before she knew there was a word for it, although she’s mostly been on hiatus for the last decade or so. She has lived in several countries, but currently resides in San Francisco with her sphynx cat, Teto.
Kaisa Kangas
Kaisa Kangas has been making larps for more than 20 years. She was one of the main organisers and fiction lead for the first run of the Palestinian Finnish larp Halat hisar in 2013 and the main organiser of the second run in 2016. She has also been involved in e.g. designing and running educational larps at University of Arts Helsinki. She is an editor of the 2016 Solmubooks Larp Politics and Larp Realia. She holds a B.A. in Japanese Studies and a Ph.D. in mathematical logic.
Sara Kannasvuo
Sara Kannasvuo is a Finnish larper, larp designer and a creative professional interested especially in conceptual and transformative larps.
Petter Karlsson
A Swedish larper, larp designer and producer. He is one of the owners of pedagogic larp production company LajvVerkstaden and he also produces the Nordic Larp Talks.
Jonaya Kemper
Jonaya Kemper (b.1985) is an activist, educator, games scholar, and designer whose work focuses on liberation through reflexive play. She is known for theorizing the concept of emancipatory bleed and encouraging intersectionality within the medium.
Troels Ken Pedersen
Troels Ken Pedersen is a Danish Freeform designer. He loves horrible games and doesn't seem to feel all that much. With those caveats, he is a sappy roleplaying hippie, and believes fiercely in roleplayers as co-creators. He blogs (in Danish) at the Plan B blog: https://planbrollespil.wordpress.com/
Shoshana Kessock
Shoshana Kessock is CEO of Phoenix Outlaw Productions and a Narrative Lead at the immersive art installation Meow Wolf. She is a live action roleplaying game producer, contributor to 25+ tabletop roleplaying games, author of games like Dangers Untold and SERVICE, and creator of multiple immersive events enjoyed worldwide. When she isn't producing live action games, she writes fiction, comics, and screenplays. She hails from Brooklyn, New York, now living in Santa Fe, New Mexico with her 19-year-old cat named Lilo. She can be found online at www.shoshanakessock.com or on Twitter @ShoshanaKessock. Her favorite X-Man is Phoenix and if she had a Pokemon, it would be a Bulbasaur.
Ruska Kevätkoski
Ruska Kevätkoski (b. 1983) is a Finnish larper and organizer who makes enthusiastic noises about transformative and slow larping, equality, and community-based practices.
Yeonsoo Julian Kim
Yeonsoo Julian Kim is a Korean American game designer and writer who splits their time between Arlington, Virginia and Austin, Texas. They graduated from the Interactive Telecommunications Program at NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts in 2015, where they studied interactive storytelling and became involved in writing and producing immersive theater pieces. Much of their current work is in tabletop and freeform games that explore some of the darker tropes in popular culture.
Johanna Koljonen
Johanna Koljonen (b. 1978) is a Finnish larp theorist, experience designer, and author. She lectures internationally on participation safety and on the development of the media industries.
Maria Kolseth Jensen
Maria Kolseth Jensen (b. 1995) is a Norwegian larper and larp designer. She is interested in how larps can be used for personal and leadership development, and wrote her bachelors degree on the topic of Larp in Leadership Development.
Noora Korppi
Noora Korppi (b. 1983) is an occasional larper, singer-songwriter, and emotional intelligence coach. Lately, she has organized freeform larps that offer a gateway to deeper self-knowledge for players.
Yaraslau I. Kot
Yaraslau I. Kot PhD, MBA, MPsych. Larper and larp scholar from Belarus. Author and co-author of hundreds larps, larp projects, articles and books. He lectures at Belarusian State University and Business School IPM. Heads few charity organizations (International Children’s Aid, Medicine and Chernobyl), Larp company Heroes’ Guild and a Law firm Business Advisers.
Sanna Koulu
Sanna Koulu (b. 1977) is a Finnish larper and gamer with an interest in the theoretical and social implications of play and games. Professionally, Sanna works as a researcher in child law and human rights. Photo by Henry Söderlund.
Katharina Kramer
Katharina Kramer has been playing larps since 2011 but has only organised an iFoL so far. Her daily life centres around her busy job as a doctor in an emergency room and travelling the world as much as she can afford. Profile picture by Fabian Gocht www.fabiangocht.de (photo has been cropped).
Petr Kuběnský
Petr Kuběnský is a game designer, author of several larps and larp theoretician. He is dedicated to Czech larp history, and collects all stories of larp fathers to his new book.
Mia Kyhn
Mia Kyhn (b. 1992) is a Danish larper living in London. She loves freeforms and international larps and ran her first larp at the larp festival The Smoke in January 2020.
Jasmin Lade
Jasmin Lade (b. 1988) is a Swiss larper, designer, and organiser. She’s the head of the larp organiser project Quicksandbox, under which she has published minilarps, and is running Stay.
Jenni Lares
Jenni Lares is a historian at Tampere University. She is interested in social and cultural history, history of food and drink, and public history. In her PhD thesis (2020), she studied social meanings of drinking in 17th-century Finland. In 2021–2022, she led a postdoctoral project on the use of history in larp, Talvikäräjät (eng. Winter Ting), funded by Finnish Cultural Foundation. She is also an active larper, larp designer, and historical reenactor.
Katri Lassila
Katri Lassila is a photographic and film artist, who explores the phenomenology of landscape through analogue photography and film. Lassila has exhibited her works in Finland and abroad since 1999 and completed her artistic doctoral thesis at Aalto University, Finland in 2023. Lassila has written and directed larps since 1998. In the early 2000s, she collaborated with Laura Kalli in developing the Adventure Romantic larp genre, which included a feminist approach and creative concepts later known as "rule of the greater drama" and "play to lift/lose". In recognition of their contributions to Finnish role-playing culture, Lassila and Kalli were awarded The Golden Dragon by the Ropecon Association in 2020. Photo by Natalia Kopkina.
Stefano Kewan Lee
Kewan has been playing larps since the early 2000s, and had their first international larp experience in 2013 with the Monitor Celestra. A few years later they picked up a camera in order to take pictures of their knit works, but ended up turning their lens to the streets first and then on larps instead. When not traveling around attending events they earn a living working in IT and enjoying the quiet sleepy countryside of northern Italy. They took pictures at 24 larps so far, but still have yet to make their first knitted product photo.
Elli Leppä
Elli Leppä (b. 1980) is a Finnish larper and poet with a particular interest in transformative larping and playing emotionally close to home.
Hilda Levin
Hilda Levin (b. 1987) is a Swedish larper living in Norway. She has a masters in dramaturgy and works both with storytelling in the theatre and with teaching young playwrights. Photo by Nicolas Tourrenc.
Shan Lind
Shan has been running hamburger LARPs for their entire 15-year career. They specialize in campaign style, low budget games with a heavy emphasis on improvisational comedy. They live in New York City with their partner and dog, and think deeply often about community, theater, and community theater. Also, they draw comics.
Anna-Karin Linder Krauklis
Anna-Karin Linder Krauklis is a larpwriter from Sweden. She is a theatre educator by profession and works for the Swedish youth organisation Sverok.
Petra Lindve
Petra Lindve has been organizing larps since 2017, writing for larps since 2016, and larping since 2014. She is a member of Atropos and has organized, among others, the Androids larps, Love and Duty, and The Forbidden History. Outside of the larp world she works as a print editor, and values clear communication and defined expectations.
Nadja Lipsyc
Nadja Lipsyc is a game designer, artist and PhD fellow at The Norwegian Film School with an education in neuroscience and audiovisual production. She works with videogames, film, VR stories, experimental theater, installation art, larp and teaches at the Oslo school of Architecture and Design. Her work often stages surreal and symbolic universes tied to contemporary critical questions.
Beatrix Livesey-Stephens
Beatrix (Bea) Livesey-Stephens is a researcher studying the perception and application of player calibration and consent in analog games, particularly those pertaining to romance and sexuality. Another of her main interests is the intersection of accessibility/disability and play. Bea is the recent recipient of the Optimist Award at the Canadian Game Studies Association Conference for her work on reimaginings of accessibility and calibration in play. She hopes to contribute further to understandings of player calibration, trust, and consent wherever she can.
Sergio Losilla
Sergio Losilla is a Spanish larper based in Finland. He works as a medical software developer.
Lauri Lukka
Lauri is a psychologist and game designer from Turku, Finland. As a psychologist he has worked in the fields of clinical, occupational and school psychology, and rehabilitation. At the moment he is employed at an adult psychiatric clinic. Professionally his interests lie in the psychotherapeutical treatment of mental disorders both individually and in groups, and personality research. During the last decade he has designed and organized numerous freeform, tabletop and live role-playing games, such as Prelude, The Cube and Black Rose, respectively. His game, Mikodine XA, won the Knutepunkt larpwright challenge of 2013. He haa also participated in the field of academic game studies with his candidate thesis and Knutepunkt articles. In the future, he would like to combine the fields of clinical psychology, psychiatry and role-playing.
Rasmus Lyngkjær
Rasmus Lyngkjær is a Master's student in Dramaturgy with a robust background in both formal education and voluntary work. He completed his Bachelor's degree in Dramaturgy in the summer of 2022. His expertise spans communication, theatre analysis, and arts management. He is a long-time organiser at the Danish larp campaign Fladlandssagaen (Eng. The Flatland Saga) and has some fledgling larpwright experience. He is a member of multiple boards, from The Union of Dramaturges in Denmark to Østerskov Efterskole.
Tara M. Clapper
Tara M. Clapper (she/her) is a writer, world builder, inbound content marketing expert, and digital larp innovator and designer from the United States. Tara runs The Geek Initiative, a website and community striving for inclusion. She has worked on dozens of larps and related blog posts and articles. Her work has been featured and used by High Level Games, Learn Larp Studios, The Game Theatre and larping.org.
James Lórien Macdonald
James Lórien MacDonald (b.1977) is a Finnish-Canadian stand-up comedian and performance artist. He has been working on crossovers between larp, theatre, and performance for over a decade.
Mirella Machancoses López
Mirella Machancoses is an archaeologist, historian and Larp designer from Spain. She is part of the collective Producciones Gorgona, where she has tried to made new formulas to integrate larp and family. She is very into historical background larps, utopias and distopias of any kind.
Erin Marsh
Erin Marsh is a games organiser and theatremaker based in Hull, UK, creating immersive and interactive experiences with a focus on innovative uses of digital platforms. Erin is part of the Bobbit Worm Games collective and interactive theatre company 1UPSTARTS.
Cindy Mikosch
Cindy Mikosch (born 1987) is a German larper and larp designer. Her main goal while hosting or playing a game is the safety of others and that everyone feels comfortable. Her first larp years she spent mainly in different Vampire larp chronicles, but since a few years, she started to explore the world of different genres. She hosts a few little one-shots throughout the year, all of which she designs herself. She is particularly interested in emotional, intense larp settings and in new innovative playstyles, such as immersive online larps. She works as an assistant director in the theatre for children and adolescence and loves to create interesting settings and playgrounds for participants, in larp and theatre alike.
Espe Montero
Espe Montero is a feminist, LGBTQ+ activist and a firm believer in larptivism, the potential of larps to raise awareness and inspire social change. She founded NotOnlyLarp and is usually the creative lead and project manager of their larps such as Conscience, Blue Flame, Mission Together or Red Center, among others. They have organized larps for over a thousand players the last 5 years. (Photo by Enrique Esturillo.)
Markus Montola
Markus Montola (b. 1978) is a Helsinki-based game designer, scholar, and entrepreneur, and a long-time contributor to the Nordic larp theory discussion.
Ben Morrow
Benjamin A. Morrow (b. 1976) is a US based larp designer who co-created New World Magischola with Maury Brown in 2016, which had a significant impact on US larp culture regarding inclusion and consent.
Thomas Munier
Thomas Munier is a French author of TTRPGs and of larps that take place mainly in the forest. He is inspired by marginal approaches and outsider art. He also creates content on game design and creativity.
Suus Mutsaers
Susan Mutsaers (b. 1990) is a Dutch larp designer and has been larping since 2008. She works in special education and focuses on larp for all abilities. Her designs often explore isolated communities.
Alva Mårdsjö
Alva Mårdsjö (born 1985) is a Swedish larper and creator. She has two main passions in life; to figure out what makes humans tick, and to create things digital and physical. Larping is the perfect outlet for those passions. She firmly believes that if more people got to play and explore different worlds and try being someone else every once in a while, the world would be a happier place. She has a MsC in Industrial Design Engineering, and works as a UX designer making the world an easier world to live in, one pixel at a time.
Marie Møller
Marie Møller is a Danish writer and larper with a Gender Certificate PLUS from the University of Copenhagen. Her focus areas include the fluid definitions of queer spaces as well as the relationship between communal play and personal development. As a body activist, she has written about the stigmatisation of fat bodies through language and visual representation. She believes in many types of magick, including the potential social impact of role playing and the power of the written word.
Wanja Neite
Wanja Neite is a larp designer, intermedial artist and dedicated shape shifter. Producing larps, participative installations and immersive performances over many years, Wanja has worked on bringing the different playforms together and on creating hybrid games for diverse audiences. They collaborate with several groups, e.g. ‚dos.fail‘, ‚Siebensprung‘ or ‚SV Szlachta‘.
Charles Bo Nielsen
Charles Bo Nielsen (b 1988) is a poser, poet and pirate. Mostly known for help founding the larp franchise College of Wizardry and teaching at the Larp Writer Summer School. Specialized in co-creative design and loves meeting and working with new organizers.
Martin Nielsen
Martin Nielsen (b.1980) is a larp designer and organizer of meeting places such as Grenselandet, Blackbox Deichman, and the Larpwriter Summer School. He is co-founder and the current manager of the Oslo-based larp company Alibier.
Elin Nilsen
Elin Nilsen is a larp designer and larper from Norway. She was the founder of the Trondheim Larp Factory, one of the editors of Larps from the Factory, and has been involved in making larps for both her local and an international audience.
Niina Niskanen
Niina Niskanen is a Finnish writer, larp designer and larper. She has been larping and creating games for over 25 years. In addition to acting as lead designer and organiser for such applauded street larp series as Neonhämärä (Neon Twilight, 2008–2012), Tonnin stiflat (Thousand Mark Shoes, 2015) and the Covid-stricken Ihmisen näköiset (Kinds of Human, 2020), she has written and lectured about different aspects of larp design, larp safety, and using literary techniques in larp design. She is a professional writer and has authored three novels. Photo by Sara Kannasvuo
Andrea Nordwall
Andrea Nordwall is a long-time larper, with a background in art and theatre and a Master’s degree in interaction design. She produced the first commercially available blackbox larp Force Majeure with Gabriel Widing in 2001 and co-authored Deltagarkultur in 2009 with the now defunct participatory art collective Interacting Arts.
Kristel Nyberg
Kristel Nyberg is a Finnish author and RPG designer. Her academic background is in New Testament exegetics, but she has recently taken an interest in role-playing games studies, and was among the first to complete the Certificate Track in Transformative Game Design at Uppsala University in 2022–23. Her upcoming projects include a supplement on religions to the Finnish tabletop RPG Praedor, and designing a roleplaying game for the University of Turku research project Between Science and Magic.
Oliver Nøglebæk
Oliver Nøglebæk (b. 1982) is a Danish landscape architect and gardener. But mostly a larper and organizer active for the last two decades, in a wide variety of formats and genres, from tabletop and freeform to blackbox and large scale larp. He is especially passionate about workshop facilitation, steering, and player safety. He has taught at the Larpwriter Summer School, created larp-dance hybrid theatre and was part of initiating the Blackbox CPH festival, among other things.
Alexander Orlov
Alexander "Gray" Orlov is a Russian larp-player and game-master of central region. Co-organizer of historical and fantasy larps such as “Second Age” (2010) and “Being a Monk” (2015). Philosopher, theologist.
Will Osmond
Will Osmond (b. 1981) is a British larper, organiser, and designer. He is completing his PhD in Theatre and Performance at the University of Surrey, focusing on the politics of larping. Photo by Oliver Facey.
Ylva Otting
Ylva Otting (born in 1978) is a long-time larper from the Netherlands and started organizing/ designing larps in 2015. She (co)organized and designed several Nordic style larps, both physical and online. Most designs contain interpersonal drama, and have some slightly absurd aspects.
Mo Mo O’Brien
Shortly after being born on the peak of a volcano on a full moon, to the god of death and a pink owl, Mo Mo O’Brien started a youtube channel. 3 years ago she attended her first lap event, documenting her adventures online, and since then has received wonderful responses to her videos about larp. Her channel has over 74,000 subscribers, 5 million views, and her endeavours have landed her opportunities like: cameos in webseries, a starring role in a candy commercial, and being privileged to travel the world to larp. She loves role play heavy games and hates writing bios.
Eino Partanen
Eino Partanen (b. 1979) is a researcher, a university lecturer in psychology, and an occasional larper.
Bjarke Pedersen
Bjarke Pedersen is the creative director of Participation Design Agency. His primary work is designing participatory events and experiences with a focus on strong stories. In the last twenty years he has worked on projects ranging from transmedia storytelling for television to real-world participatory games with more than 10.000 people playing at the same time. He is a world-leading expert in the design of bespoke larps for grownups. These immersive experiences include Inside Hamlet at the castle Elsinore in Denmark, and End of the Line, the first official collaborative style larp product from White Wolf, produced in Helsinki, New Orleans and Berlin. Bjarke teaches and lectures on participatory design and culture at universities, conferences and art festivals across Europe and USA. He is a co-founder of the Alibis for Interaction masterclass.
LolV Peregrin
LolV Peregrin graduated in Ancient Languages and Archeology and now works as a social worker in a non-profit association that focuses on learning through play. They are a queer autistic activist and performer who uses larp and arts to put disabilities, mental illness, community, and LGBTQIA+’s narratives in the spotlight to raise awareness on these particular subjects.
Inge-Mette Petersen
Inge-Mette Petersen was born in 1958. She is a trained teacher with a degree in pedagogy and has worked as an education officer at the Danish Open Air Museum since 1998. Inge-Mette has been larping since November 2016. She almost solely plays international larps and has played all over Europe.
Juhana Pettersson
Juhana Pettersson is a Finnish writer and roleplaying game and larp designer. His best-known larps are Luminescence, Halat hisar, End of the Line, Enlightenment in Blood, Parliament of Shadows, Redemption and Saturnalia. He has published over a dozen books, including the collection of essays about Nordic larp Engines of Desire. He currently works at Renegade Game Studios as the Lead Developer for World of Darkness releases. www.juhanapettersson.com
Simon James Pettitt
Simon James Pettitt has written over ten games for Fastaval, and several blackbox larps among others Waiting for Flight G0901. He's the main organizer of Black Box Horsens.
Joanna Piancastelli
Joanna Piancastelli (b. 1988) is a UK-based larp designer who specialises in bringing narrative experience design techniques to familiar genre stories, aiming for safety, inclusivity and accessibility in all her events. She has written and organised larps from small black box scenarios to large on-location productions, and as a participant she seeks out larps across a wide variety of traditions to learn from as many designers as possible.
Holger Pick
Holger Pick (b. 1972) is a German Murder Mystery Dinner actor and translator. Holger started larping and GMing when there were battle boards. Internationally, he wrote and edited characters for Midwinter and The Last Song.
Mike Pohjola
Mike Pohjola is a Finnish novelist, trans-media developer, game designer and entrepreneur. He has written and run dozens of larps, and several historical novels, YA books, theatre plays, and tabletop roleplaying games. His Master's Thesis Chorus Novus tried to understand the chorus of Greek tragedy through the lens of participatory art. He is also known for the Manifesto of the Turku School, published in 2000. He has founded two award-winning companies, that together have won an International Emmy Award, two Interactive Rockies, and a Prix Europa. Pohjola himself has been presented with the Finnish roleplaying scene lifetime award the Golden Dragon in 2010. Pohjola is a frequent speaker at media, fantasy, anime, role-playing conferences around the world including Poland, France, United States, Norway, Germany, and Italy. His topics include participation, trans-media, the roots of postmodern storytelling in prehistoric rituals, using games to change world, and almost driving his wife insane with a birthday game that turned into a human experiment. He has also designed the Age of the Tempest role-playing game, aimed for kids and beginners. The game is sold in book stores and toy stores around Finland, and will soon be published in English. Currently Pohjola is working on the environmental Baltic Warriors project. It will have seven larps and seven debates in seven Baltic Sea coastal cities. It is a trans-media story about the eutrophication of the sea... and zombie vikings.
Gerrit Reininghaus
Gerrit Reininghaus is a live-action designer from Bonn, Germany. His works tackle opportunities and challenges of live-action online games (LAOG). He is also writing Indie RPGs to organize his thoughts and experiences: from tuk tuk racing to the joy of putting on makeup together. Gerrit has won two Golden Cobras for his LAOG designs, and a FRED award for promotion of the German larp scene to a wider audience. His website is https://alles-ist-zahl.blogspot.com/
Tadeu Rodrigues Iuama
Master in Communication and Culture at University of Sorocaba, Brazil, where he has researched bleed in, under the title "Communicational processes in storytelling games: the relationship between player’s roleplay and life stories ". Member of the Mediatic Narratives Research Group, also at UNISO.
Juan Ignacio Ros
Juan Ignacio Ros is a Spanish writer, larp designer and proponent of the “play to flow” style who specializes in focused and experimental high resolution larps and has an interest in symbolism, alternative narratives, and their mixing with immersion. He has designed larps since 2004, when he co-founded Somnia, the spearhead group for vanguard larps in Spain.
Syksy Räsänen
Syksy Räsänen has roleplayed over three and larped over two decades. He has been a production assistant in the larps Halat hisar and Seaside Prison. He is also an activist. His email address is syksy.rasanen@iki.fi, his home page is http://www.iki.fi/syksy/ and he tweets as @SyksyRasanen.
Frederikke S. B. Høyer
Frederikke Sofie Bech Høyer is a larp designer with a master’s degree in communication studies. She works at the larp school Østerskov Efterskole in Hobro, Denmark, creating and facilitating larp events. She is responsible for training and coordinating volunteers, and also teaches larp and larp design. Frederikke has designed several black box scenarios and larp events, including conventions, and she has been an organizer at the larp campaign Fladlandssagaen since 2010. Email: frederikke@saturnv.dk
Eleanor Saitta
Eleanor Saitta (b. 1978) is a hacker, artist, designer, writer, and barbarian making a living and vocation of understanding how complex, transdisciplinary systems and stories fail and redesigning them to fail better.
Mia Sand
Mia Sand is a Swedish larper and former producer of the swedish Vampire chronicle Stockholm By Night. Has a past in the Swedish navy, a present as a free lance writer and hopes for a different, more solidaric future for Sweden after the election in september.
Siri Sandquist
Siri Sandquist has organised larps but more importantly worked as kitchen staff at larps for almost four years. She works as a larp pedagogue with LajvVerkstaden and believe in creating larp magic by using all senses of The body, even taste.
Alexis Sandrén
Alexis Sandrén (b. 1981) is a Swedish larper and parish pedagogue. He’s one of the writers behind Cabaret – The Larp Musical and ”winner” of Eurosing 2018 – The Eurovision Song Contest larp.
Usva Seregina
Usva Seregina is a trans non-binary visual and performance artist, art educator, as well as an interdisciplinary researcher with a background in consumer culture studies. Their artistic and academic practices currently focus on exploring lived experiences of immigration and queerness. Usva is interested in harnessing larp as a political and educational tool, which emerges as larp design that makes use of artistic approaches and academic research.
Anne Serup Grove
Anne Serup Grove (b. 1987) is a Danish larper and ethnographic designer by trade. In recent years, Anne has focussed on inclusive costuming and safety in larping.
Sophia Seymour
Sophia Seymour is a British journalist and award-winning documentary filmmaker living between Naples, Italy and London. She co-directed Teranga - Life in the Waiting Room, a documentary for the Guardian and BBC Africa Eye in 2020 and has since completed her masters at The National Film and Television school in the UK and produced documentaries for the Guardian, Netflix, BBC and Vice.
Lizzie Stark
Lizzie Stark is a US-based author, game designer, and playable theater creator. Her prize-winning game design and facilitation work has been shown at festivals such as Indiecade, E3, Stockholm Fringe Festival, Future of Storytelling, and Fastaval and includes collaborations with a variety of cultural institutions, including the Peabody Essex Museum and the Kennedy Center. She's best-known for her book Leaving Mundania, about the world of larp in the US and beyond.
Tereza "Ciri" Staňková
Tereza "Ciri" Staňková runs a larp workshop and a chamber larp festival, and is a co-organiser of several high-production outdoor larps, including “Za obzor” (Over the Horizon) that takes place on a sailing boat. She is an elementary school tutor for the primary prevention of drug abuse.
Morgain Kateřina Steiner
She’s been playing and organizing larps since 2003 and since 2007 she’s been a member of the larp association Tempus ludi, z.s. She took part in organising a lot of different types of larps in Czechia and found out that she likes experimenting with various modes of telling stories and discovering new options. After Dance Macabre she also codesigned the Cien Anos de Soledad larp, an experimental larp, which tested a number of new mechanisms for storytelling. Currently she works on Valley of Shadow larp, another game involving dance, but with a lot of new design choices.
Jaakko Stenros
Jaakko Stenros (PhD) is a game scholar working at Tampere University. He has published eleven books and numerous articles, has co-created a few larps, and has curated exhibitions at the Finnish Museum of Games.
Annica Strand
Works as a producer at the mobile game studio Rovio. Before she started there she studied digital media at the peculiar school Hyper Island in Stockholm and later worked as a production manager at Acne Play. She has been active in the larp hobby since 1999, and organized a number of major and minor events since. Treasurer of the association Ursula and one of three organizers for the project UnderStockholm that received funding from the Stockholm City Council in 2012.
Emma Ström
Emma is a Swedish larper with a penchant for games where one might learn more about oneself, about others’ viewpoints and the world as we see it. She has been seen as a larp organizer, aide and participant during the half of her life that has been devoted to larping.
Martine Svanevik
Martine Svanevik is a concept and content developer, game designer and writer. A founding member of Avalon larp studio, she is currently working for one of the largest publishing houses in Norway, and her work has featured in both AAA games and indie productions. She is published in both English and Norwegian.
Simon Svensson
Simon Lindman Svensson (born 1984) is a Swedish larper, larp designer and writer. He has a background in history and religion studies and holds a great interest in systems and social dynamics. He is one of the founding members of Atropos.
Marcin Słowikowski
Culture expert and communication specialist based in Poland. Larp player, designer, promoter, critic and judge of larp contests. Co-founder of LubLarp project, organiser of Kola Larp Conference, editor of several Kola companion books. Author of prize-winning System and Nightclub.
Maiju Tarpila
Maiju Tarpila is a Finnish artist and pedagogue. She designs, writes, facilitates and teaches collective artistic practices and playful participatory experiences especially through larp and theatre. Her work is often centered around questions of community, resilience and the imagining body as an experimental platform of living elsewise in times of ecocrisis.
Nina Teerilahti
Nina Teerilahti is a Finnish artist, comic artist, illustrator and graphic designer. In her art she uses the alias Nina Mutik. A few years ago Nina started larping again and is also creating larps. Nina has a producer’s degree and has worked both in producing events and in middle management in the IT-business before pursuing a career in art.
Leïla Teteau-Surel
Leïla Teteau-Surel is a French larp designer, translator, and player, and a queer feminist therapist with interests in magic, psychedelics, and other ways to shift consciousness.
Ian Thomas
Ian is a videogames writer, designer and coder. He's co-director of Talespinners, a story-for-games company that helps games studios with narrative. Ian started larping in 1990, and with his friends and partner runs ridiculously high-production-value events under the banner of Crooked House.
Ida Mia Thylstrup
Ida Mia Thylstrup (b. 1990) is an enthusiastic larper who plays to experience different parts of society and different social structures. She is currently working as a pedagogue with children in vulnerable positions.
Elisa Tognari
Elisa Tognari (b.1993) works with the association Secondi Figli focusing on spreading larp ”outside the bubble” via Open-Larp, a framework for games where passers-by can join and leave when they want.
Anni Tolvanen
Anni Tolvanen (b. 1982) is a Finnish composer, sound designer, and educator. She works internationally on participatory art and games projects, and has co-created various larps over past 20 years.
Evan Torner
Evan Torner (b. 1982) is an American professor of German and Film & Media who began doing larp theory and design a decade ago. He co-founded the Analog Game Studies journal and the Golden Cobra Challenge. Photo by Jenni Toivanen.
Lorenzo Trenti
Lorenzo Trenti (b. 1977) is a journalist, gamer and game author. He works in communication and media in Italy. He is one of the founders of the Flying Circus manifesto (www.flyingcircus.it). He has written, organised and studied RPGs and larps as a form of contemporary storytelling.
Sharon Underberg
Sharon Underberg lives and works in New Jersey as a pediatric radiologist. The first run of New World Magischola was life changing and transformative for her. Since then, she has dived headfirst into the larp scene, participating at College of Wizardry, NWM, Road Trip, Seventh Kingdom IGE, and others.
Sebastian Utbult
Sebastian is an occasional larp organizer, amateur archivist and science fiction buff. He regularly needs his dose of flashing lights and pounding basslines to feel alive. He has organized larps like Ingenmansland, Lotka-Volterra, Terra Incognita and Simbelmynë, and produced a couple of issues of the larp fanzine Sanningen. If at all possible he wouldn't mind seizing the means of production.
Aaron Vanek
Aaron Vanek survives Los Angeles with the help of his wife Kirsten, also a larp designer, and Missekat, a pussyfoot named in honor of Nordic larp. For a longer bio and free stuff, check out AaronVanek.com
Susanne Vejdemo
Susanne Vejdemo is a larp designer and larp producer based in Stockholm and New York, who has produced larps such as Frizon, Suffragett!, Grandma’s Tiara, So Mom I Made This Sex Tape, Aslan's Jyhad, and Athena's Chosen, among many others. She often runs larp design brainstorming meetups.
Olga Vorobyeva
Olga Vorobyeva (St. Petersburg, Russia), a PhD student in Cultural Anthropology (European university at St. Petersburg), a larper since 2008, and a larp theorist since 2013. One of few academic researchers of larp in Russia. Olga defended Master thesis on frame switching in Russian larps (2014) and goes on working on body and embodiment of larpers and their characters in-game. She participates in field larps in Central Russia (Moscow and St. Petersburg regions) and presents the results of researches on roleplaying conventions in Russia and abroad (e.g. Knutpunkt-2014 and 2015). Olga has articles on Russian larps published in English (Wyrd Con Companion Book, Knudepunkt Companion Book) and in Russian; she translates foreign articles for Russian annual larp books and is one of the editors of cross-cultural collection “Nordic-Russian Larp Dialog” (2015). She prefers historical larps on European and Russian history and fantasy ones.
Annika Waern
Annika Waern is a game and play design scholar, and professor in Human-Computer Interaction at Uppsala University. She has both professional and volunteer experience from designing and staging larp and pervasive games, and has written about larp both in and out of academia. She was a co-designer of the pervasive experiences Interference and Codename Heroes and the larp Cabaret, and has designed several shorter scenarios.
Matthew Webb
Matthew Webb is the creator of Planetfall science fiction larp and owner of its production company, Incognita Limited. As a larpwriter, he has designed a variety of games from blackbox to boffer. A native of Austin, Texas, he has presented on competitive economics and augmented reality in larping. He has strong opinions, some of which might even be correct.
Monika Weißenfels
The author lives and works in Germany. She published articles in the german print magazin “LARPzeit", co-authored Mini-Larps and co-organizes a 100 people larp group at the Mythodea campaign. She has written small and medium scale larp plots.
Josefin Westborg
Josefin Westborg is one of the world’s leading designers in edu-larps. She has a background in game design and pedagogy and is one of the founders of Lajvbyrån (previously LajvVerkstaden Väst). She now works as a Lecturer as part of the Transformative Play Initiative with focus on analogue games at Uppsala University at the Department of Game Design. Throughout her career she has met thousands of students of all ages, and run and designed larps for them. She has also been a teacher in game design at both Chalmers University of technology and the University of Gothenburg. She is passionate about designing for interaction, storytelling and learning. When she is not involved with games you will probably find her at the dance studio doing ballroom dancing.
Anna Westerling
Designer of A nice Evening with the Family, Fortune & Felicity, Love Stories by ABBA, Robin’s friends and more. Producer of Stockholm Scenario Festival and Knutpunkt 2010.
Berber Wierda
Berber Wierda (b. 1983) is a larper from the Netherlands.
Katrine Wind
Katrine Wind (b. 1988) is the founder of the Danish larp organization Narrators Inc., co-founder of the larp-design podcast Larping out Loud, main designer of Spoils of War, Daemon, co-designer of the upcoming Helicon with Maria Pettersson and several Danish-speaking larps.
Abbie Wolfe
Abbie (they/them) is a queer, disabled, UK & NL based larp designer and producer, heading up Belladonna Experiences, with a specialty in producing historical Nordic-style events. With a background in Social & Living History they focus on creating immersive games to allow players to experience the lives of others and develop empathy and understanding for how others lived, with a particular passion for including Queer & Disabled perspectives. Lately they have been tackling theological topics in larp, including designing games set in a 16th Century Monastery, a New Age Cult, and a post-apocalyptic society rebuilding their culture from scratch. They have been fixing LARPs for nearly fifteen years now, and are likely somewhere buried in a spreadsheet as we speak.
Lindsay Wolgel
Lindsay Wolgel is a professional performer and educator in NYC. She has appeared in numerous larp/immersive theatre hybrid productions such as The Mortality Machine (Sinking Ship Creations) and Calculations (Caro Murphy of Incantrix Productions). She is currently the middle school drama teacher at a charter school in Manhattan. She loves exploring how Edularp can be used to enrich students’ lives and learning. In her spare time, you can find Lindsay dancing up a storm or teaching voice lessons virtually via her business Voice Magic Vocal Studio.
Laura Wood
Laura Wood (she / they) is a British larper and larp designer. They are an organizer at Larps on Location. They have also designed several larps which have run in several countries throughout Europe including Here Comes a Candle, The Dreamers, and Inside. They love larp for its ability to explore relationships, ethics, and identity: and are currently interested in safety, consent, and community building.
Peter Woodworth
Pete is a New Jersey native and resides there still, happily teaching English at a small local college. He is the author of the Dead Heroes survival horror trilogy, and his short fiction has appeared in anthologies such as The Ministry Initiative, Gimme Shelter, and The Lost, as well as on websites such as Terrible Minds and 365 Tomorrows. Working for White Wolf, Evil Hat, Eschaton Media and others, he has also written a stack of role-playing books for both tabletop and live-action play, most notably serving as a writer and developer for White Wolf's legendary Mind's Eye Theatre line. He even enjoyed working as a rock journalist until his newspaper finally caught on that most newspaper readers are over fifty and do not know or care about Flogging Molly. When he isn't grading papers or writing novels, he reads a lot, runs too many RPGs, is seriously addicted to Fantasy Flight board games, and larps whenever he can swing it. (Photo by Joseph Falcetano)
Shuo Xiong
Dr. Xiong Shuo is an assistant professor in the School of Journalism and Information Communication, Huazhong University of Science and Technology. He received the Ph.D. and Master of Information Science in Japan Advanced Institute of Science and Technology. Dr. Xiong's research area focuses on game informatics; game theory and AI; Serious game and game design; etc. Recently, he wrote several papers about Chinese Murder Mystery Game (Jubensha) and translated the academic book “Computer Game Worlds” (written by Claus Pias) into a Chinese version.
Ashley Zdeb
Ashley Zdeb is the CEO of Eschaton Media Publications, Co-Founder of the Dystopia Rising LARP Network, and Co-Founder of the Imagine Nation Collective.
Gijs van Bilsen
Gijs van Bilsen is a speaker on the use of imagination, a Serious Larp designer, and an organizational development expert. He is currently collaborating with his partner, Anne, and together they design creative interventions based on Live Action Learning. His current passion project is their leadership training, where participants immerse themselves in a role specially written for them for four days. When he's not designing interactive training, he's on stage, explaining to his audience how to actively use imagination to discover and enhance empathy and personal qualities. Before partnering with Anne, he worked as Chief Inspiration Officer at a renowned organizational development consultancy and founded a foundation to help refugees find employment.
Karijn van der Heij
Karijn van der Heij (b. 1983) is a Dutch larpwriter and designer, contributing to dozens of larps in the Dutch and international scenes. She loves stories more than anything and is a character design geek.
Agata Świstak
Feminist, leader, larp organiser. By day, I work as a volunteer coordinator, facilitating blockbuster events like College of Wizardry and Larp Design Conference at Polish castles. I focus on building co-creative community, where everyone can participate and learn how to make larps by doing. I run workshop and lectures devoted to practical side of organising (logistic, coordination, prototyping), have short affairs with game design and strive to do as much globetrotting larping as I can!
