Nordic Larp

Category: Opinion

Disclaimer: The opinions expressed in these texts are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of Nordiclarp.org or any larp community at large.

  • Why I hate post-larp compliment threads

    Why I hate post-larp compliment threads

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

    It is a quite common phenomenon after a larp. In the larp FB-group, or other social media platform, a thread is created. ”Comment with a picture of your face,” it says, ”and let people compliment you on your larping!” Then the thread explodes with pictures, and lots and lots of compliments. Such a lovely trend, right? So why does it always make me slightly uncomfortable and anxious?

    The reasons are many, and I will try to detail them here. As the title suggests, this is an opinion piece. It is meant to identify a problem that I experience, and that I think I am not alone in experiencing. It also suggests alternatives that I think might work better for people who share my experience. 

    Unequal distribution

    One of the core issues is that there will inevitably be an unequal distribution of compliments. Some will get many, some will get fewer. And while comparing is rarely something that makes us happier, it is hard to resist, especially if we are already feeling vulnerable and self-conscious. 

    The reasons for uneven distribution are many. One might of course be the quality of your larping (as well as casting and style, which we will return to below), and how many people you interacted with. Another is timing: those who are quick to post their picture in the thread will get more comments, while those who join the party after a few days might not get as many, as some people will already be ”done” commenting. On top of that, those who diligently compliment many others will themselves get more compliments back – which is not wrong in itself, but risks giving the compliments a transactional nature.

    What is good larping?

    When comparing how many, and how enthusiastic, compliments people receive, it is easy to see it as an unofficial rating; the ”best” larpers will get more positive attention, and if you do not get as much praise that means you larped poorly. However, in my experience the people who get many compliments are also the ones that were noticeable and easy to remember. People who are cast as characters who are seen and heard, or who have a more expressive, extroverted playstyle, are more likely to receive a lot of compliments. And the people with a subtle playstyle, who play subdued characters, and mainly have intensive play with a few close relations, are more likely to have gone unnoticed by many at the larp. 

    Personally, I quite value the more subtle playstyles, the brilliance that is mainly visible when you get up close. And while more showy playstyles are often very valuable for larps as well, most larps thrive when they have a balance of different playstyles, and the right kinds of players as the right characters. But looking at the overall picture created by compliment threads, it is easy for the less noticeable larpers to suspect that they are simply not a very good larper, and that if they were showier and took up more space, they would become a better larper.

    Doubting authenticity

    People approach it differently, but there is a general understanding that you should compliment as many people as possible. As mentioned above, there is also a trend of reciprocity – people try to compliment the people who complimented them. And while it is a good principle to be generous and compliment everyone, an anxious mind like my own will often doubt: is this a genuine compliment, or are you just saying something because you had to come up with something.

    Why it is so tempting

    After a larp, many of us are still completely absorbed by the experience. We can think of little else. And many of us yearn for connection. We want to know that we were seen, that we mattered to others. We want to feel that we were as important to our co-players as they were to us. We want to spread positivity and let people know how awesome they are, and we want them to think we are awesome too. This makes it very hard to resist the compliment threads, especially when we see the love bombing happening. There have been many times where I have initially resisted participating in a compliment thread, but eventually gave up and participated anyway, even though I know it makes me anxious.

    So what am I saying?

    “Are you just sore that you don’t get complimented enough for your immersive, introverted shenanigans? Just don’t participate in the compliment threads, if they’re so terrible, and let people enjoy them!” Well, this is exactly what I do. However, I thought that others that share my discomfort might feel some comfort in knowing that they are not alone, and perhaps get perspectives on what makes them uneasy.

    I also do have a suggestion of what I think is a far better practice. I tend to give compliments directly – either after the larp, in person, or reaching out to them via social media. A fellow anxious friend mentioned to me how this can be really difficult and intimidating (reaching out to someone when you weren’t invited). While I absolutely understand this, I am happy that it is something I feel able to do. I rely on the fact that most people relish compliments and honest appreciation, and I try to do it in a way that is not imposing, or seems to demand reciprocation or further interaction. Something along the lines of ”hey, I just wanted to let you know, I really liked the way you played [scene]. You portray [emotion] so beautifully. It was great to see, thank you!”.

    The benefits of doing this are many. For one, a spontaneous compliment is great to receive, and it usually makes people happy. It also feels enjoyable for me to give compliments in this way. Another great benefit is that there is no comparison, you don’t have to wonder if other people are noticing you more or less than others.

    It should be mentioned that some people enjoy compliment threads a lot, and enjoy the benefits without any of the anxiety or overthinking that I describe. It is not necessarily something that we should all stop doing. But I think it is worthwhile to consider the options, and what feels best for you, and if there are other ways you can spread the love and appreciation after a larp. 

    This article is republished from the Knutepunkt 2025 book. Please cite it as:
    Greip, Julia. 2025. “Why I hate post-larp compliment threads.” In Anatomy of Larp Thoughts, a breathing corpus: Knutepunkt Conference 2025. Oslo. Fantasiforbundet.

    Cover image: Photo by Nataliya Vaitkevich on Pexels.

  • Grief in Larp: Bleeding Through Two Lives

    Grief in Larp: Bleeding Through Two Lives

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

    For Mike, may he rest well.

    When I learned that a dear friend and mentor had passed away, I was at home, scrolling through social media. In that moment, a part of me that usually stays quiet—my other self, the character I embody in another world—rose to the surface, refusing to remain in the background. My grief seemed to split in two. As myself, I mourned the loss of a kind and dedicated man who had spent years creating a space where imagination thrived. As my character, I froze, feeling the absence of a mentor who had guided me, encouraged me, and helped shape the person I had become in that world. I did not know Mike for as long as others, but he always had a smile and an open ear for me. Our fantasy and real-life selves often shared a space at the same time; while he mentored my character as a ritualist and taught her how to command a circle, he also mentored me—ensuring that I would not be lost under the weight of others’ wants and needs.

    Even now, as I write this, I can still feel myself trying to hold back tears. Two selves wrestle for control of my thoughts: one grounded in reality, and the other still standing at my mentor’s wake, deep in a forest, where a tree now grows in his honour. The UK larp community lost a very good man the day he passed; a man who pushed the boundaries of what could be in a game, yet even when he was busy, he always gave more than just a moment of his time for others.

    It wasn’t the first time I had encountered death in this hobby, but it was the first time the loss felt so permanent. There would be no new character bearing his face with a different name, no scholar sipping tea near the College of Magic, no kind smile waiting at the Watchers’ table to open the circle for me. I miss his smile.

    This death was quiet. Those of us who loved Mike gathered to mourn. His closest friends shared stories of how he had helped shape Curious Pastimes; a UK larp that has been running since 1996, and currently runs four mainline events a year set in its game world. We listened, sometimes laughing in remembrance, but mostly sitting silently on the late summer grass, holding hands, hugging, crying, and honouring a man who had given so much and asked for so little in return.

    The memorial was meant to be entirely out of character. We came together, ostensibly as ourselves, to grieve him. Yet, looking around, I noticed most of us weren’t dressed as ourselves. We wore the clothes of our other selves—the characters Mike might also have met through his own alter ego. It was an unusual wake, held during a time when the event itself was in full swing, laughter echoing through the trees on the hillside. But in that space, we were caught in a strange in-between, neither fully in-character nor fully out of it. Two selves occupied one body, coexisting in shared grief.

    I did not walk to the wake alone, and I am forever grateful for that. A friend—a brother, really, as he has been to my heart for many years now—walked from our faction’s camp with me. I am, by nature, an emotional person, but I—perhaps foolishly—hoped that I could witness this event with the strength of an unbending face. Instead, I found strength in those around me who also allowed themselves to feel this loss.

    I remember my heart-brother taking my hand as I cried. In that instant of vulnerability, he was every version of himself I had known, and I was every version of myself he had known. New friends, old friends—the Claw and his cub, the brother and sister—all of them were present in the way only this community could allow. Letting him wrap his arm around me brought far more comfort than forcing a brave face or pushing any part of myself aside. He has long been a safe place, across so many lives.

    The Emotional Complexity of Larp

    Death is a frequent part of larp, but it is rarely permanent. In Al’Gaia, one of the factions in Curious Pastimes, the primary belief is that when someone dies, they return to the cycle—the eternal loop of life, death, and rebirth. While the specifics vary depending on the character’s beliefs, path, and connection to the deities of Al’Gaia, the core idea remains the same. For many, this belief offers comfort, something often reiterated by those in positions of authority during in-character funerals.

    When someone in Al’Gaia dies, their body is carried back to camp and laid to rest in the glade where we set up our shrine at the start of the event. We gather, sometimes packed tightly into that sacred space, mourning the loss of one of our own. Yet, we are always reminded not to grieve but to rejoice—because the departed has returned to the cycle, and we will meet them again in another life.

    I’ve always found it a complicated kind of comfort to hear those words.

    I’ve attended many larp funerals. In both of the larp games I play—Curious Pastimes and Wilde Realms—I’ve taken part in these ceremonies as both an active and passive participant; someone who was directly affected by a loss and spoke on the individual whose spirit was now in the stars, and as a listener there to pay my respects to another that I may not have known as well. I’ve sung beneath the trees with others as fallen comrades “disappeared” (stepped out of play). I’ve stood with my herd, setting fields of the dead ablaze with violet fire. I’ve stood among the bodies, pleading with my in-character family to remember the fallen and continue the fight in their name.

    Death in real life is not as dramatic, but it is just as deeply emotional. I cry the same tears, hold the same hands, and think the same thoughts in both of my lives. The key difference is that death in larp is not supposed to be permanent. You mourn a character as though they were a real person—because, in many ways, they were. They had a family, a personality, a story. You fought beside them, bled with them, and waited anxiously for their return after a battle. It feels almost cruel to experience loss so frequently in larp, knowing it’s temporary, yet still feeling the full weight of grief as if it were real.

    This is, perhaps, one of the limitations of the magic circle—the invisible boundary that separates the world of play from the real world. (Huizinga 1938, 10) In larp, though we grieve our loved ones, we eventually see their face again in another body and continue living with them. In real life, death is final. My friend will not return.

    This stark difference can intensify the phenomenon of “bleed”; a concept I am deeply familiar with, originally coined by Emily Care Boss in 2007 at Ropecon. In ‘Bleed: The Spillover Between Player and Character’, Sarah Bowman defines this concept by writing that “role-players sometimes experience moments where their real-life feelings, thoughts, relationships, and physical states spill over into their characters’, and vice versa.” (Bowman 2015) Bowman states that bleed can occur intentionally or unintentionally, and its effects range from catharsis to profound emotional devastation.

    Bleed can be observed in three ways:

    • Bleed-in: when the player’s emotions, thoughts, or experiences affect their character.
    • Bleed-out: when the character’s emotions, thoughts, or experiences affect the player.
    • Bleed feedback loop: when the boundary between player and character dissolves, especially in overwhelming emotional moments. (Bowman 2015)

    What I experienced during Mike’s wake—and even when I first heard the news of his passing—was undeniably a bleed feedback loop. I could not tell you who I was as I sat listening to his dearest companions recount their memories. I entered the wake as myself, but my body was dressed as another, and the distinction between the two identities blurred. Or perhaps they didn’t blur at all. Perhaps they simply merged, becoming one.

    I often say that playing at larp is a way to explore and embody facets of yourself—ideals, dreams, or fragments of your personality that you bring to life. In moments like these, the boundary between the player and the character collapses, creating an experience that is simultaneously beautiful and overwhelming.

    The Fragility of the Magic Circle

    The magic circle in larp serves as a boundary between fiction and reality, creating a space where players can safely embody characters and explore narratives. Central to maintaining this boundary is the concept of alibi; originally discussed by Markus Montola, Jaakko Stenros, and Annika Waern in 2009 in ‘Philosophies and strategies of pervasive larp design’, in Larp, the Universe and Everything, (Montola, Stenros, Waern 2009, 214). It is further deliberated by Bowman in her work on bleed from 2015, and again by Bowman and Hugaas in their 2021 article ‘Magic Is Real: How Role-Playing Can Transform Our Identities, Our Communities, and Our Lives’. Alibi acts as a psychological shield for players, allowing them to place blame for their actions directly on their character when engaging in situations that might otherwise feel emotionally or morally fraught. (Bowman 2015) (Bowman and Hugaas 2021)

    But although alibi allows for emotional and mental distance between a player and their character, this tool of detachment is not infallible. The strength of alibi can vary depending on the story’s proximity to the player’s real life—playing a character who experiences grief, love, or loss that mirrors the player’s own can weaken the alibi, making it harder to maintain a sense of separation. In these cases, bleed—where the emotions, thoughts, and experiences of the player and character intertwine—becomes almost inevitable.

    This fragility became glaringly apparent at Mike’s wake. I entered the space carrying the raw weight of personal grief but dressed as someone else entirely—a character who also mourned. My usual reliance on alibi, the assurance that my emotions were distinct from my character’s, crumbled. Instead, my two selves began to blur. My character’s performed grief became my own, and my own feelings deepened their reaction. It didn’t matter that my character hadn’t been “let out to play” yet, I could feel their emotions just as solidly as my own. They were just as real. The magic circle, meant to protect and isolate, instead amplified the collision between fiction and reality.

    This breakdown of alibi wasn’t simply jarring—it was transformative. The safety net of the magic circle exposed me to an emotional intensity that might not have been as deeply felt outside of it. I wasn’t sure where I ended and my character began. I didn’t just mourn for Mike as myself—I mourned for him through my character. This merging of identities exemplifies how bleed can erode the structures we rely on in larp, creating profound, often overwhelming emotional experiences.

    The Duality of Grief and Bleed

    Grief within larp exists on a unique emotional spectrum, heightened by the phenomenon of bleed. Bleed, as players know, blurs the line between character and self—emotions from one spilling into the other. This becomes particularly pronounced during moments of grief, where the loss of a character or even a fellow player can create a shared sense of vulnerability among participants. We all felt it when we lost Mike; we weren’t alone in that field, listening to his dear friends talk about him. We were together in our grief, whether we knew each other personally or not, that moment connected us; Mike connected us. In ‘Why Larp Community Matters and How We Can Improve It’, Laura Wood highlights how larp evokes intense emotions and provides spaces for connection, amplifying empathy and deepening bonds. These spaces allow grief to feel communal and cathartic but can also make players more emotionally exposed. (Wood 2021)

    Grieving alongside others in a larp setting can strengthen a sense of belonging, as moments of vulnerability bring participants closer. However, this same openness can exacerbate emotional overwhelm when grief spills over, especially if the loss feels personal on both in-character and real-world levels. Without adequate support, these heightened emotions may lead to unintended consequences, leaving players feeling isolated in their dual mourning.

    Promoting Safety and Awareness

    Mike ensured that I knew I was more than a ritualist with powers for others to use. He spoke to me about the importance of saying “no”, and helped me manage my anxiety about being in such a prominent position. Because of Mike, I learned to be powerful and powerless; my job was to lead the players in the circle, but the outcome of a ritual was not up to me. He was my touchstone in the Watcher’s box; someone I could count on to be fair, but to encourage me with positive criticism. He was, in my opinion, the best Watcher that Curious Pastimes had. He looked beyond the play and saw the player, and I think that is something that is missing now.

    We may have lost Mike, but we haven’t lost his beliefs or his words. I can do my best to advocate for myself at larp and encourage others to do the same. Together, we can create an element of larp culture that is dedicated to wellbeing, we can manage the challenges of subjects like grief and bleed, we can understand that safety—physical, emotional, and mental—must become a cornerstone of our games. Wood’s call to normalise safety tools like safe words and exit mechanics are just the start. (Wood 2021) These tools allow players to protect themselves without disrupting the experience for others, making it easier to process complex emotions such as grief. Educating both organisers and players about these tools—and creating environments where their use is encouraged and introduced to players before a game and during pre-game briefings—can help safeguard everyone’s emotional well-being.

    Self-awareness is crucial when engaging with grief in larp. Players should understand their emotional limits and approach topics thoughtfully, recognising that their fellow participants may be carrying their own burdens. Community-wide education on managing grief and bleed—through workshops, post-game discussions, or even casual conversations—can create a culture of care and responsibility.

    By weaving empathy, safety, and self-awareness into the fabric of larp, participants can transform grief from an overwhelming experience to an opportunity for collective healing and deeper connection. As Wood suggests, this is the magic of community: learning to protect each other’s vulnerability while embracing the shared humanity that grief uniquely reveals. (Wood 2021) I can’t help but feel that Mike would share the same sentiment.

    Bibliography

    Huizinga, Johan. 1938. Homo Ludens: A Study of the Play-Element in Culture. Angelico Press. 10.

    Bowman, Sarah Lynne. 2015. “Bleed: The Spillover Between Player and Character.” Nordic Larp. https://nordiclarp.org/2015/03/02/bleed-the-spillover-between-player-and-character/.

    Montola, Markus, Jaakko Stenros, and Annika Waern. 2009. “Philosophies and Strategies of Pervasive Larp Design.” In Holter, Matthijs, Fatland, Eirik & Tømte, Even: Larp, the Universe and Everything. The book for Knutepunkt 2009. Knutepunkt. p214.

    Bowman, Sarah Lynne, and Hugaas, Kjell Hedgard. 2021. “Magic Is Real: How Role-Playing Can Transform Our Identities, Our Communities, and Our Lives.” Nordic Larp. https://nordiclarp.org/2021/03/09/magic-is-real-how-role-playing-can-transform-our-identities-our-communities-and-our-lives/.

    Wood, Laura. 2021. “Why LARP Community Matters and How We Can Improve It.” Nordic Larp. https://nordiclarp.org/2021/03/22/why-larp-community-matters-and-how-we-can-improve-it/.

    This article is republished from the Knutepunkt 2025 book. Please cite it as:
    Greenwood, Lyssa. 2025. “Grief in Larp: Bleeding Through Two Lives.” In Anatomy of Larp Thoughts, a breathing corpus: Knutepunkt Conference 2025. Oslo. Fantasiforbundet.

    Cover image: Photo by Wouter from Pixabay

  • Savoring Sameness: Hamburger larps

    Savoring Sameness: Hamburger larps

    I offer you a new term, a new definition in the ever-expanding lexicon of larp gaming and design. Necessary because as the hobby expands around us into genres and culturally-defined practices, new language creates definitions around these expressions and allows us to capture and discuss what otherwise might drift into obscurity uncommented on. Anyways – I’m calling it Hamburger larp. 🍔

    Why am I calling it hamburger larp?

    Well, everyone wants a hamburger sometimes. It’s tasty, it’s filling and it’s familiar. Maybe you want cheese, or pickles, maybe sometimes you want fantasy, and sometimes you want the post-apocalypse, but at the end of the meal you want to pat your belly, sigh in relief and say “wow, what a great hamburger that was” and go home.

    Am I making sense yet?

    Larp is big; inasmuch as it is difficult to pin down definitionally, so we’ve invented words like “Nordic”, “parlor” and “blockbuster” to describe particular kinds of experiences provided under particular circumstances. So what’s the definition of the experience I’m trying to evoke when I call it, of all things, a hamburger larp? Well, simply put, something routine and enjoyable, like a hamburger.

    Recurring festivals like Drachenfest, or Neotropolis, weekly combat larps like Amtgard, monthly Dystopia Rising games and Vampire: the Masquerade yearly national events; these are all hamburger larps in their own right. Every event has the same premise, and every time you go – you’re ordering a hamburger, made by whichever organizer is in the kitchen that month, but according to a logic that’s cultural and shared.

    Hamburger larps are community-building machines. Every time the players come back for another serving, they return with their previous experience and expectations, and those enhance the experience of new participants. Often this can be observed in the form of physical reinvestment (props, costumes etc.) or emotional reinvestment (mentorship, networking, community aid etc.). By their very nature, that they recur at frequent intervals with low barriers for entry, hamburger larps become natural third places, which are physical spaces where people can connect with their community not unlike a coffee shop or a library, for low and middle income players.

    The result of the proximity and consistency of the hamburger larp itself, is often the development of a large and complex community of players whose mutual interest in the larp create the foundation for their relationship as friends and peers. This can, occasionally, put the gamerunner in a position where they must manage both the complex design and production process of a recurring event, while governing a population of players while not necessarily having the education or credentials to do it well. I compare this phenomenon to the local and bustling hamburger restaurant; wherein regardless of the restaurant’s purpose to sell burgers, the living human beings that pass through will inevitably create community. And that community, sooner or later, will experience conflict.

    Like the aforementioned restaurant, a hamburger larp relies on its location. Likely the players have a relationship not just with the characters they play, but with the locale and trappings of a recurring event. In the case of some weekend-long games, many hamburger larp communities have held a monthly event at the same scout camp for over a decade. To the same point, other evening-long events held at the same hotel every year generate the same sense of continuity. By providing the players the same backdrop upon which to perform at each event, the gamerunner creates a canon setting in which immersion, pre-scripted scenes and complex modules can more effortlessly take place.

    On the flip side, when a hamburger larp’s ability to perform at their preferred location is disrupted, it is my experience that event sales and ratings plummet. This is demonstrated effectively by my experiences organizing the American larp; Dystopia Rising. Successful chapters of this national-scale organization depend on running their events at the same location every month. When changing location, either temporarily or permanently, the drop-off in players has been proportional to the change in routine. The safety and consistency that the players of a hamburger larp crave, simultaneously makes them resistant to change in procedure. Expectation, and expectation fulfillment over and over, is baked into hamburger larp, where the consistency of the recipe is a major selling point.

    As a final note on hamburger larps, they’re universally cheaper than one-time blockbuster style games. As monthly events, the player expectations around props, costumes and location should be lower. As community is a natural expression of the hamburger larp model, prioritizing it creates a self-sustaining system wherein the attention and effort of the player base uplifts the value of the game far beyond what the financial model would otherwise allow. Hamburger larps are, at their core, folk art – and always expressions of a local scene, even at their highest level of production value.

    Whereas a blockbuster larp might be compared to attending a Broadway show one time, a hamburger larp is the pub you go to after work, or the community center at which you meet your friends on weekends. The expectation for transcendence and performance at a hamburger larp, while offered as an implicit function of the roleplaying experience, is diluted by the surety that the opportunity will come again, and again.

    In conclusion, “hamburger larp” encapsulates a recurring, familiar, and community-centered experience. Its framework thrives on consistency, and offers players a sense of comfort and belonging, much like their favorite burger joint. The draw of a hamburger larp isn’t in grand, one-time experiences but in the steady, ongoing opportunities to engage, build relationships, and create memories in a familiar setting. It’s illustrative of how the simple, routine pleasures in gaming can be just as fulfilling as the most elaborate productions. And like a well-made burger, it’s something players can savor again and again.

    Cover image: Illustration by Ester Pérez Ribada from Pixabay

  • Debauchery: Fantastic

    Debauchery: Fantastic

    Recently an article was republished from this year’s Solmukohta book, “Debauchery: Meh” (Anonymous 2024), that caused quite a stir in the community, on the subject of “erotic larps”, that is larps with sex as a central theme. Plenty of people within our community have made their own assessments over this week, but I’d like to take the time to offer up some thoughts. And naturally, the shorter the original comment, the more I have to say about it.

    So, why do we larp?

    A simple question to be sure, and perhaps a bit pretentious for the start of an essay talking mostly about filthy sex, though as anyone who has played a larp can say, the answers are broad and complex. No shortage of ink has been shed across this very outlet on the topic, and yet my anonymous friend in the original comment has surmised that in the case of “erotic larps” that the principal, and perhaps even sole, driver for people attending is sexual gratification. 

    Whilst it is no surprise that many people had some quite robust criticisms of this idea, I think it’s worth exploring not just why this is wrong, but the range and diversity of why these larps may appeal to people.

    A Confession

    Here is the point though where I need to make a confession: I haven’t actually ever been to an “erotic larp”. I have played sexually-charged characters and stories in other larps, such as being the paramour of a doomed warrior and part of her polyamorous entourage, to playing the latest “acquisition” to a sexy vampire cult, amongst others; but I have never been to a larp where sexual or kink themes were central to the design.

    So I should probably stop writing now then, eh? I don’t know the genre in question intimately (heh), I haven’t experienced the plotlines, the events, the hype; I don’t know what I’m talking about. Well, perhaps, and if that is your opinion then I bid you a good day. But I feel whilst I haven’t had much to do with “erotic larp”, I am both (in my own humble opinion) a fairly experienced larper across a range of genres, and would like to share some credentials in a vain attempt to restore some credibility.

    Hi there, my name is Abbie, and I have been at various times in my adult life: a sex worker, both escort and porn, a volunteer at a sexual health service, a trans and disability sexual liberation activist, an organizer and host of a series of sex parties, and a sex & kink communicator, including getting to be on radio to talk about the Sex Without Shame campaign we ran some years ago. I’ve also happily had no shortage of romantic and sexual experiences in my life, so when it comes to that topic, I think I am broadly qualified.

    Exploring Ourselves

    But it’s my time with the Sex Without Shame campaign that I’d like to talk about most here. This was, as the name suggests, a campaign set up to encourage people, mostly queer and LGBTQ+ people, to explore their sexuality freely, and hopefully feel more comfortable and confident in experiencing sex and kink. My part of it (aside from doing a sexy photoshoot with a lovely Leather-Daddy named Frank, where we both admitted that it was to us the most heterosexual thing either had done in a long time) was mostly presenting seminars and workshops as part of the women’s programme. These workshops covered all sorts of topics, from sexual health and contraception to exploring sexual attraction and alternative relationships, but one important one was the ‘Wall of Kinks.’

    In this exercise, everyone would anonymously write a kink, fetish, sexual fantasy, or anything similar onto a post-it note, and place them into a bag at the start of the session. I would then empty out the notes, and put them up on the wall, and we’d discuss them. Part of the exercise was to break the taboo a bit, both personally and as a group, to show that these are the things the people in this room are into, and how that’s okay, natural, and can be explored and experienced safely and confidently. It was often a highlight of the series for me, as it was often the most transformative bit for participants.

    So this is a bit of a long personal ramble before I get to how-to-make the lasagne, but I think it’s important. Because the biggest point I wanted to make before getting to the other topics is this: if you use larp as a place to explore your own sexuality, in whatever form that takes, then that’s absolutely fine. If you communicate and are open about what you’re looking for, then you go right ahead. Because I know from the experience of running those workshops, that there aren’t a whole heap of places to safely explore parts of who you are, and sexuality is absolutely a core part of ourselves. So if you’re communicating, seeking consent, and being honest, then you’re doing larp right, and I don’t want anyone telling you otherwise. 

    And I don’t really think my anonymous friend would disagree, but I really wanted to make that part clear.

    Exploring Others

    Okay, so that’s one reason people might play “erotic larps”, to explore themselves and their own feelings in a safe environment. So what are the others? Well, they’re as myriad as the reasons people play any other sort of larp. And for that I’d like to share about why I don’t, or more accurately haven’t, been to any “erotic larps”. Because from reading my little CV up there you might well say “these larps look like they’re right up your street, Abbie,” and in some ways you’d be right. But that’s sort of the point isn’t it.

    A common reason for why we larp is to get to experience the lives of others. I will never forget, to my dying breath, the fear and loneliness of being a WW1 nurse, or the righteous fury of being a maniacal paladin, or the crushing loss of being a cursed raider doomed to be hunted for eternity through the forests. These experiences, these emotions, these deep and resonant lives of people I’ve lived, even for a short while, will stay with me forever, just as I know they do in the minds of fellow larpers. I will probably never in my life get to really experience the anxiety and love of shepherding a gaggle of nurses across Siberia, or the confidence and bravery of charging into a battle I know will kill me. That’s a big part of larping: to experience things from lives we will never see ourselves.

    Now this is also a big part of why I don’t often play disabled characters at larps. I live that, every day of my life. Whilst playing a disabled person in a very different context to my own is neat, and I’ve done that on occasion, on the whole, playing what I experience (and usually a bad experience) in life isn’t all that fun. Just for the same reason I don’t often play trans or non-binary characters at larp, a sentiment I have heard echoed by other larpers from those demographics. However, I do pretty much always play gay or bisexual characters, because that part of my life is pretty damn great, and so getting to be that in different contexts and in new and exciting ways is brilliant.

    But sexual liberation falls somewhere between the two. It’s certainly not a bad experience whatsoever for me, far from it, but it’s also not really much of a departure from who I already am. There wouldn’t be tremendous appeal to me in playing a character that was about being sexually confident, liberated, and getting to experience those feelings. But to someone for whom that isn’t a part of their everyday, I can see how that would be an especially enticing premise, just as getting to live any other life beyond our own is in larp. Experiencing the deep empathy of living another person’s life is one of the most amazing things about this medium, and I’m sure this can be a real draw to people to play “erotic larps”.

    Experiencing the life and perspective of others with a vastly different outlook from us, perhaps an outlook we admire, or one we are glad we don’t share, allows us to reframe how we see the world and the people in it. And whether that is seeing social interactions, positive and negative, through the mind of someone with a different outlook on sex and sexuality, can be a hugely moving adventure.

    So people might want to explore their own lives through “erotic larp”, they might want to explore lives of others… what else? Well you’ll notice that I didn’t actually give a proper answer in that section as to why I haven’t been to any “erotic larps”, and you might surmise that it was that they don’t differ from my own life enough to be appealing. But you may also recall me saying earlier that I have played sexual and romantic characters and stories in larps, so there must be something there that interests me?

    Well that’s because the honest answer is that I haven’t been to any “erotic larps” because of the very usual reasons: expense and travel. Most of the ones have been overseas, and my budget for international larp is limited, and none of them have ever broken the threshold of interest to make me want to commit my precious time and money to them when other priorities existed. Except one.

    Exploring Power

    I did in fact, some years ago, try to go to an “erotic larp”. This being Nocturne (2022) by Atropos Studios, a historical larp set in a brothel during the American Revolutionary War. In the end I didn’t get a place as numbers were quite tight, but I’d like to talk about what appealed to me in this larp over others. Firstly, for anyone who knows me, I am an absolute slut for a historical larp. They’re the main genre I play, write, and work on, and as a historian by background it’s fairly obvious why. So that alone already moved it up above the threshold of interest, but it wasn’t all of it.

    And I think this is where I make my biggest departure from the thoughts of my anonymous friend, because now we’re getting into the territory of “what does sex mean?” And that is a very interesting question that I think larp is an exceptional medium to explore. In the two cases I outlined at the start where I played a sexual story at a larp (there are others naturally, but these two I think best exemplify my point) the meanings they each had were quite different.

    For the romance with the doomed warrior, myself and the other members of their entourage were engaged in the traditional hedonistic lifestyle. The warrior knew she was bound to die soon, as did most of us around her, and so the sex there was about attraction, living for today, and the platonic ideal of hedonism. In the other, the being an “acquisition” to the vampires, that was much more about power, dominance, the symbolic expression of sex in possession and control. And my interest in Nocturne, skewed towards the latter.

    Now I want to reiterate, I didn’t end up playing the game, and beyond signing up and reading the provisional material for the first run I have no knowledge of the design or the actual content of the game, so I don’t really have anything to say on the game itself. But I do want to talk about what it was that appealed to me in the premise.

    It was specifically one character, the sister of one of the soldiers. So in the outline, the players are split into two cohorts, the brothel workers, being women, and the soldiers, being men. But there was one woman amongst the soldiers, being the sister of one of them who I presumed would be something of an assistant to the soldiers, what we would call a “camp-follower”. And reading that made me go “Oooh, that’s interesting”. 

    I am sure I would’ve had a plenty good time playing amongst the women of the brothel, as there’s a whole range of personalities and stories you could explore in that setting. You’ll perhaps notice that the two cases I’ve mentioned had me playing in a more submissive role, which to someone who is more often on the dominant side of the dichotomy has its own appeal, that would be present here. But that one character, the woman who would be split in loyalty between fellow women and the soldiers to whom she was bound, that would make for one compelling plotline.

    And of course there’s many ways one could play such a character and I didn’t get any more information on how she was written or eventually played by anyone. But for me, my intention was (if I was successful in getting a ticket and then in getting that character, neither of which came true) was to take the character in quite a dark direction, to be a willing, perhaps even slightly sadistic participant in the oppressive play that would no doubt have been central to the content of the game. And that exploration of themes, in a historical setting was very enticing to me. Everything after all, to get my obligatory pretentious quote in for the article, is about sex; except sex. Sex is about power.

    And maybe my anonymous friend agrees, maybe they feel that the “erotic larps” should be about so much more, that they could explore themes of dominance, power-structures, the leveraging of sex as a means of social control both in limiting and embracing it. Larps could give players a window into what sex means, exploring the deeper questions of morality and power, and let them live the lives of both those elevated and those crushed by sex. Whether they do or not alas lies out of my experience to say.

    Sex Sells

    Yet they still seem to feel that despite these important and meaningful topics to explore, “erotic larps” remain an “overrated” genre.

    Whilst I must admit, in my own circles I haven’t experienced much of this rating, as I don’t find “erotic larps” to be held with the sanctity they appear to be in other circles, there certainly is a perception from parts of the community that this is so. Where the prestige and prominence these types of larps seem to hold comes from is an important topic, but perhaps best explored by someone from those corners.

    Though I might offer a simple thought at least on the point of popularity, rather than prestige, and it is the evergreen notion that sex sells. From working in marketing on a few occasions, I can say from personal anecdote, that depictions or even mere implications of sex sell products, whether that be films like I was selling, or larps as here.

    I think it would be arrogant for me to claim that larpers are somehow not susceptible to those same hooks in our monkey-brains as everybody else. And whilst I absolutely do not believe that any larp producer is using sex as a marketing hook to sell tickets, it’s hardly outside the realm of possibility that in a sea of available larps, for some of us, those that light up the horny neuron in our brain might subconsciously seem a little more appealing. And in the current environment, where budgets are tight, and so many larps are struggling to make ends meet, it may only take a little bit of a marketing bump to take a larp from the edge of feasibility into safe territory, where other larps struggle to get exposure.

    So between this appearance of popularity, real or imagined, and the prestige they carry in certain circles, I can at least begin to understand why my anonymous friend might feel upset at these productions, even whilst I profoundly disagree with their assessments. Times are hard, and we all want to elevate the sort of experiences we enjoy and cherish, and it is demoralizing seeing projects you care for fall by the wayside to productions you’re not enthused by. 

    Though, it seems there are at least a fair few reasons besides sexual gratification that someone might want to play a larp with sex as a central theme, and no shortage of stories, meanings, and levels of emotion to explore through them. So I hope if it is your thing, or think it might be, that you’ll give them a go, and I have no doubt that those producing them will continue to improve their craft, as we all do.

    And to my anonymous friend: I hope you find forms of larp, and people to experience them with, that speak to you, and get to enjoy your favourite flavours with joy and abandon. I could wish nothing more for any of us.

    References

    Anonymous. 2024. “Debauchery: Meh.” Nordiclarp.org, August 7.

    Cover photo: Photo by Emojibater and Rosie Simmons on Unsplash. Image has been cropped.

  • Nordic Larp is not ”International Larp”: What is KP for?

    Nordic Larp is not ”International Larp”: What is KP for?

    Editorial note: Any views expressed in an article published in Nordiclarp.org do not necessarily represent the views of the editors or an endorsement of the article.

    This anonymous article was originally published in the Knudepunkt 2023 underground book larp truths ready to see the light (editors unknown). It was then republished in the Solmukohta 2024 book, and has been reprinted from there with the editors’ permission. It has not been edited by Nordiclarp.org.

    * * *

    Forward by editor Kaisa Kangas for the 2024 Solmukohta book: It has been a tradition to publish a book like this one in connection with SK/KP – a tradition so honored that the lack of an official book last year caused a small outrage (see Pettersson 2023). Even then, there was an underground pdf book known as The Secret Book of Butterflies that consisted of short essays by anonymous writers. I have decided to republish some of them here.

    * * *

    Some years ago, a wonderful thing happened.

    Larpers in the four Nordic countries developed a remarkable community and discourse around this phenomenon called ”Nordic larp.” At KP/SK, they met each year, to talk about it and to share thoughts and experiences with each other.

    Over time, larpers in other countries heard about this: they read the Nordic larp writings, and imported some of what they found there into their own domestic larping scenes.

    Some of them attended KP, and made their own contributions to the developing conversation. They were made welcome by the regulars, who were (mostly) glad that their ideas were being shared more widely. Now, as a result of this, we have a scene that might be called Nordic-inspired international larp.

    All over Europe, in the USA, and perhaps elsewhere too: larps are being run for people from a wide range of countries, in the English language, incorporating design and practice elements that were originally developed in Nordic larp.

    Who takes part in these ‘international larp’ events?

    Usually, a mix of people from the local larping scene, and cosmopolitan types who enjoy larping in other lands.

    These include some people from the original Nordic core.

    Meanwhile, ”Nordic larps” in the traditional sense are still taking place in the Nordic countries. But they are dwarfed, in number and in coverage, by this new international scene.

    The child is devouring the parent.

    The same thing can be seen at KP. Not so long ago, it was a 200- 300 person event that was 80% Nordic: now, it’s a 500-600 person event that’s majority non-Nordic.

    And, although the superstar system ensures that keynotes and other high-visibility items are still in Nordic hands, the bulk of the programme is provided and presented by international larpers, for an international audience. Is this good or is it bad?

    All we can really say is: it’s different.

    But is it time to recognize that international larp is its own thing, and deserves its own annual get-together – rather than progressively cannibalizing KP?

    Why not a conference that rotates around the countries where international larps take place – or that’s at one fixed location centrally within Europe?

    It would probably be cheaper to hire a suitable venue and accommodation in a non-Nordic country, for one thing. And it would probably be easier for most internationals to get to.
    And then, what might it mean for KP to get back to being focused on Nordic larp, in the Nordic countries?

    Of course, it shouldn’t be oblivious to the rest of the larping world.

    But nor should it be dominated by it.

    International larp is a tremendous thing, and it deserves to thrive and grow. But not at the expense of the Nordic larp that it borrows so heavily from.

    And perhaps KP should not be facilitating such a takeover.

    References

    Pettersson, Juhana. 2023. “The Wisdom of the Community.” Nordic Larp Talks. YouTube, May 28.

    Please cite as:

    Anonymous. 2024. “Nordic Larp is not ”International Larp”: What is KP for?” In Liminal Encounters: Evolving Discourse in Nordic and Nordic Inspired Larp, edited by Kaisa Kangas, Jonne Arjoranta, and Ruska Kevätkoski. Helsinki, Finland: Ropecon ry.

    Cover photo: Image by Kelly on Pexels.

  • Debauchery: Meh

    Debauchery: Meh

    Editorial note: Any views expressed in an article published in Nordiclarp.org do not necessarily represent the views of the editors or an endorsement of the article.

    This anonymous article was originally published in the Knudepunkt 2023 underground book larp truths ready to see the light (editors unknown). It was then republished in the Solmukohta 2024 book, and has been reprinted from there with the editors’ permission. It has not been edited by Nordiclarp.org.

    * * *

    Forward by editor Kaisa Kangas for the 2024 Solmukohta book: It has been a tradition to publish a book like this one in connection with SK/KP – a tradition so honored that the lack of an official book last year caused a small outrage (see Pettersson 2023). Even then, there was an underground pdf book known as The Secret Book of Butterflies that consisted of short essays by anonymous writers. I have decided to republish some of them here.

    * * *

    There’s a longstanding tradition of larps that foreground sexually-transgressive behaviour in play: from Hamlet to Pan to BAPHOMET to Nocturne to Redemption to House of Craving to…

    We might call these ‘debauchery larps’, because it seems that the main selling point is ‘you will get to do cool degenerate sexy stuff in this larp, where conventional morality has been subverted within the fictional play space’.

    It probably is in theory possible to design, and to participate in, this kind of larp from the purest of motives: to seriously investigate what happens to human values and feelings, when the moral structure that we take for granted in the real world is removed – and so on. This is usually the official pitch.

    But that’s not, in general, why people do it. For most participants, it’s seen simply as fun to take advantage of the opportunity provided, and to use character alibi to do things that offgame would be socially difficult or impossible. Be it nudity, diegetic sex, kink play around D/s and consent, or whatever.

    Which is fine! – if everyone has that understanding, then great, let’s not judge or shame anyone.

    It’s just that it seems like debauchery larp is accorded an unearned status within the hobby – portrayed as the ultimate kind of larp experience, edgy, boundary-breaking, redefining what larp is, are you even a real larper if you don’t dare to try it, etc. When really from a more objective point of view, it’s just a bunch of people getting their jollies, in the most predictable way.

    Anyone can come up with an excuse to put a bunch of people in a house to lust after each other, and call it a larp: and they will not be short of applicants. It’s a pity that debauchery larp takes the spotlight away from other larps that are genuinely interesting.

    References

    Pettersson, Juhana. 2023. “The Wisdom of the Community.” Nordic Larp Talks. YouTube, May 28.

    Please cite as:

    Anonymous. 2024. “Debauchery: Meh.” In Liminal Encounters: Evolving Discourse in Nordic and Nordic Inspired Larp, edited by Kaisa Kangas, Jonne Arjoranta, and Ruska Kevätkoski. Helsinki, Finland: Ropecon ry.

    Cover photo: Image by Engin Akyurt from Pixabay

  • Inclusion in Larp: Between Challenge and the Experience of Limits

    Inclusion in Larp: Between Challenge and the Experience of Limits

    Personal note: In this article, I give my personal opinion. In doing so, I must refer to the article by Shoshana Kessock The Absence of Disabled Bodies in Larp, as it addresses some basic things regarding game design which I wholeheartedly support, especially the point about the representation of disability by non-disabled people. What is needed is not more non-disabled people in larp portraying disability (whether to make the character cooler and more interesting or something else), but more people with disabilities larping.

    1 billion disabled people in the world
    6% of the world’s population affected by deafness or hearing loss
    1% of the world’s population need a wheelchair
    2.6% of the world’s population have an intellectual disability
    17% of the world’s population affected by blindness or visual disability

    Our world is becoming more and more diverse. Realities of life can finally find a place and we are every day socially responsible to deal with and react to people’s most diverse needs. This hard-won achievement does not stop at a hobby like ours.

    This means that all those who are active in the field of larp, as organisers or players, have to face the fact that needs arising from diversity have to be recognised and accommodated. It is irrelevant whether a person is disabled or not. Every person has needs arising from their background. Our task as larpers is to meet these needs as best we can, provided that we have the opportunity to do so.

    In this article, I try to show that the limit of my imagination due to the awareness of my self means a break with immersion and has an impact on inclusion in larp in terms of self-determination and informed choice. In the course of the article, I draw attention to communication and expectations from the perspective of the vision of a larp event and the resources of all participants, and which courses of action can result from this.

    So let’s have a look together at what points we still need to work on.

    At the Limits: Our Imagination

    A central element of our hobby is the oft-praised immersion. We can immerse ourselves as completely and holistically as possible in situations we encounter in the game and not be distracted. Immersion is an element that is supposed to help us get as close as possible to a realistic experience or feeling.
    It is a fact that we succeed in immersion to a greater or lesser extent depending on the situation, location, participants, or unexpected events. The fact that we often portray supernatural beings and abilities and have to imitate these abilities without actually possessing them is already a break with immersion.

    So on some meta-level we are fully aware that what we are doing is a game. Yet we engage with it and ignore the fact that it is merely a representation. So we build representation into our immersion for the benefit of the flow of the game. Why is it nevertheless possible to get the impression that this is a bigger problem in interaction with disabled people than, for example, in the representation of a superpower.

    My personal experience and assumption is: because despite immersion, we think of ourselves mentally on the meta-level as the real me and thereby include social contexts, assumptions, as well as learned knowledge and ignorance in situations. We are moving in ableist systems, which, in addition to the disability itself, constitutes the true core of disability: non-participation in society.

    Ableism is the “discrimination and social prejudice against people with disabilities. Ableism characterises persons as defined by their disabilities and as inferior to the non-disabled” (Kessock 2017).

    The lack of accessibility is a central element of the non-participation of disabled people in social interactions. It is irrelevant whether this discrimination happens consciously or unconsciously. The decisive factor is whether measures and actions are taken to eliminate this situation once the discrimination has been recognised.

    In doing so, we realise that in many cases we have little contact with disabled people in everyday life. This realisation often brings with it insecurity, which then shows itself in play and interactions. However, we also fail to realise that disability is not a condition that prevails from the beginning of life. Only 3% of disabled people are disabled from birth. All other disabilities are acquired in the course of a lifetime. We fail to realise that at some point in our lives we ourselves may belong to the group of people with disabilities that, according to the WHO (2023), makes up about 16% of the world’s population. That is roughly one in six of us. This figure does not stop at larpers and is not linked to a specific population stratum.

    Lise Wagner (2021) - Disabled People in the World: Facts and Figures at Okeenea - Inclusive City Maker
    Source: Lise Wagner (2021) – Disabled People in the World: Facts and Figures at Okeenea – Inclusive City Maker

    It is beyond our imagination to suddenly no longer be able to do things we were previously good at, for whatever reason. This limitation of abilities is often understood as a loss of quality of life. It is accompanied by assumptions about what disabled people are able to do. This is where the greatest danger of acting ableist lies: we cannot imagine what disabled people are capable of doing, and also we think we have to make decisions without including disabled people in the discussion.

    Often the boundary between external responsibility and personal responsibility is crossed in an encroaching way. A supposed protective space is built up for disabled people that protects no one but ourselves – from experiences that could take us further.

    The diversity of forms of disability is obviously a big problem for many people. Facing many forms of disabilities means that I cannot develop a patent remedy for dealing with them all. As a result, I have to reposition myself in every situation, at every event, in every conversation, according to the needs of my counterpart.

    Even though this last sentence applies to practically every situation in my life, even without people with disabilities, it takes on a special meaning for me when dealing with people with disabilities. In this context, if inclusion would be really implemented, it would mean that it is just not a special event. I deliberately avoid the term normality here, because this is a fallacy regarding the diversity of people we encounter in the course of a lifetime.

    The special nature of the situation is made clear for many by the fact that they are afraid of possible embarrassment in direct contact with disabled people. They are afraid that they could do something wrong out of ignorance. Therefore, they often do not do it at all and thus deprive themselves of the opportunity to learn and to overcome that very limitation of imagination.

    At the Limits: Communication

    If there is no meeting or exchange, larp will not be able to develop in this. area. One often feels that disabled people are not taken into account at larps. For example, if I can’t find any information in advance of an event that helps me as a disabled person about the location, the game, the expectations of the organisers, etc., I have to expend additional energy on top of my personal effort, which is regularly caused by my disability anyway, in order to be able to make an informed decision.

    What does informed choice mean?

    According to the NC Department of Health and Human Services in North Carolina,

    “individuals with disabilities have the right to make choices over where they work and how they spend their days. However, people with disabilities too often have limited experiences on which to base choices. Informed choice is what we call the process of choosing from options based on accurate information, knowledge, and experiences. Core principles include:

    • Everyone is capable of making choices, regardless of their limitations, and needs opportunity, experience, and support to do so.
    • Choice means selecting among available options, and clearly defining what those options are.
    • Choices have consequences and it is important to clearly understand what those consequences are.
    • Choices are made within the overall context of cultural and societal expectations and some choices are viewed as more acceptable and more positive than others.

    Informed choice occurs when a person, with or without reasonable accommodations, understands all the options available to them, including the benefits and risks of their decisions. The process of informed choice doesn’t have an end and doesn’t just occur one time. Informed choice is part of an ongoing process of engaging people in person-centred conversations about their goals.” (NCDHHS 2023)

    Especially with regard to organisers, it is desirable that people with disabilities can be involved in the run-up to an event. This means that I either have people with disabilities in my environment that I can integrate into my team, or I make an effort to recruit people with disabilities as experts for my event.

    Here I should just briefly point out that counselling, in the sense of “I educate myself further”, is something I pay money for in my working life. It should be noted at this point that disabled people owe nobody free education.

    Low-barrier access to information on the event’s website is also something that not only benefits people with disabilities. Clear structures of the page layout, bundled and brief information, pictures of the location, and references to the sanitary facilities are just a few examples to help people in general make informed decisions.

    It seems to me that an important point is the agenda of the organiser. As a disabled person, I want to be able to get an idea of who I am dealing with on the organiser’s side:

    • Personally, I would like to meet people who have not already made up their minds about me and my disability.
    • I want to meet people who trust me to do things, as they would trust non-disabled people.
    • I want to meet people who trust that I can make decisions for myself just like non-disabled people instead of organisers who have already made decisions for me without knowing what I am capable of.
    • I want to meet people who want to look at situations with me and find a solution together.
    • I want to meet open-minded people who are aware in their communication that they don’t have to know everything (and probably can’t), but are willing to learn and educate themselves
    • I want to meet people with whom I can build a trusting relationship in order to be able to discuss needs that may also require more intimate knowledge in one situation or another. For this I need a protected space.
    • I want to meet people who recognise where there is a need in play situations (be it through physical barriers or in interaction with other participants) and are not afraid to solve the problem with the necessary knowledge and calmness and above all, clarity and unambiguity.

    This sounds like a lot of work at first, but on closer inspection it turns out to be demands that we in the field of larp already implement in many other things and that we try to incorporate into our thinking and actions on diversity issues anyway. Often, experiences of marginalisation arise from the same or at least similar behaviour of counterparts in encounters, so intersectionality is a clear building block of a diverse world for marginalised people, but one that needs to be remembered again and again.

    Nevertheless, we need to be aware that there are people who are already overburdened by these demands.

    At the Limits: Our Own Vision and Our Resources

    Does this mean that I, as an organiser, can no longer organise an event that is not barrier-free, such as a castle larp? Does every event I organise have to be inclusive and diverse?

    Those who ask themselves such questions have failed to understand what inclusion and diversity actually mean and what added social value their own events derive from them.

    First of all, there are not only physical hurdles when I organise a larp in a castle. Running a larp in Czocha Castle in Poland, for example, has driven an organiser bankrupt and ticket prices have risen out of reach for many larpers.

    One question I should ask myself as an organiser is whether the location I have chosen is a compelling element for what my larp will ultimately be. In the course of developing a larp, I have to think about which of my visions will ultimately become reality due to various circumstances. Sometimes the process involves painful decisions. Inclusion can seem like another hurdle that prevents me from realising my visions.

    Even though I personally find this assessment regrettable, it seems to me to be a valid attitude if I am eager to implement a certain vision. Here it is important to know that I can (and should!) also communicate this accordingly, but then also have to face consequences and counter-positions. This means above all that I have to be prepared for criticism and accept it, listen to it, and process it.

    But maybe I also have to admit to myself that my own resources may not be sufficient to implement inclusion. This also needs to be communicated. It would be important to remain open to the process, to accept help if necessary and to include people in my team with whom I can better implement inclusion. However, if my resources are not sufficient, the most important advice is not to promise what I cannot deliver. This only leads to frustration on both sides, as expectations and implementation efforts clash and cannot be resolved. The worst-case scenarios are that someone is at an event that I, as the organiser, cannot help or I, as a disabled person, am sitting at an event and cannot take action because the circumstances are not as they were announced to me.

    In my opinion, organisers must be able to clearly communicate what resources they have available for which processes. They must provide resources in their event organisation structures to be able to address the issue of inclusion appropriately and provide contact persons. In my experience, it helps enormously if this person is a person with disabilities themselves, as this already offers a less barrier-laden approach, which can be of great importance for communicating the own needs of people with disabilities.

    Beyond the Limits: Accepting the Challenge

    Perhaps the most important conclusion that can be drawn from this article is that there are no easy answers to how best to implement inclusion. The human species is diverse and each of us, regardless of whether it is a person with a (visible) disability or not, or if it’s just personal preferences that matter to us: we have to try to engage with our counterpart.

    When it comes to disability, both Shoshana Kessock (2017) and Lizzie Stark (2014) have made suggestions years ago about great ways to implement their own game design as an organiser and take further steps from there. For example, the idea of an avatar taking the place of the player in certain situations is one way to create an element of participation in certain situations. Lizzie Stark rightly writes: “Since the world is big and people and their needs are complex, it’s unlikely that any one technique is going to work for everyone all the time” (Stark 2014). Dann Lynch (2023) has also given suggestions on how to make larp more accessible.

    People with disabilities will not give you a one-size-fits-all answer to the question: what do I have to do to be inclusive? None of us can avoid thinking about it ourselves in exchange with affected people.
    There are already many people with disabilities in the field of larp – but not all of their disabilities are visible. These people must be allowed to gain the courage and be offered the opportunity to talk about it without prejudice and in a self-determined way. Larp designers must credibly and honestly assure and emphasise that disability in larp is treated neither as a cool feature of a character such as an eye patch nor as a burden regarding the efforts I have to put in my larp because someone is disabled, but as a part of the personalities that live in the game world in which I currently find myself.

    Real participation means that people with disabilities can also immerse themselves in play worlds in order to have new experiences like everyone else, and to escape from everyday life for a while.

    Bibliography

    Lise Wagner (2021): Disabled People in the World: Facts and Figures at Okeenea – Inclusive City Maker

    WHO: Disability (2023)

    NCDHHS: Informed Choice (2023)

    Shoshana Kessock (2017): The Absence of Disabled Bodies in Larp in Once Upon a Nordic Larp… Twenty Years of Playing Stories

    Lizzie Stark (2014): A Wheelchair Ramp for Larp

    Dann Lynch (2023): Accessibility – More Than Just Wheels

    This article has been reprinted with permission from the Solmukohta 2024 book. Please cite as:

    Butzen, Björn. 2024. “Inclusion in Larp: Between Challenge and the Experience of Limits.” In Liminal Encounters: Evolving Discourse in Nordic and Nordic Inspired Larp, edited by Kaisa Kangas, Jonne Arjoranta, and Ruska Kevätkoski. Helsinki, Finland: Ropecon ry.

    Cover photo: image from Pixers.

  • Good Cakes, Bad Cakes: Character and Contact Design as a Factor of Personal Game Experience

    Good Cakes, Bad Cakes: Character and Contact Design as a Factor of Personal Game Experience

    In Finland, children playing in their sandbox with their plastic buckets and shovels, chant a traditional rhyme: “Älä tule paha kakku, tule hyvä kakku!” (Don’t become a bad cake, please become a good cake).

    A good sand cake stays whole when the bucket is turned upside down. It is affected by lots of things: moisture and quality of the grain, evenness of the platform, and swiftness and steadiness of the baker’s hand. Sometimes the cake collapses no matter how hard the baker tries.

    Playing with sand cakes reminds me of preparing for a larp as a player. There is an element of randomness in every game, no matter how conscientious or detailed the design is or how dutifully the players create their contacts. The sand may appear nice and moist, but in the end, it’s too loose. We think we succeed in compressing the sand in the bucket snugly enough, but one edge fails to fill up. Maybe the handle of our bucket is broken and it betrays us at the most crucial moment.

    Contacts as the most important ingredient

    I come from the Finnish larp tradition, where characters and their relations are usually carefully planned and written, balanced, and of equal value. Their personal and inter-character story arcs are meaningful and dramatically coherent, and aligned with the themes of the game. Organisers usually choose their players from a pool of applicants, based often on an extensive background information form. The character is chosen for each player with their personal wishes and experience in mind. I call this the micro-level of character design.

    Micro-level character design operates on the level of individual players and characters: What does this particular player want and wish? What are they capable of? What can they personally bring into the game? What is the dramatic arc of the character? What kind of tensions does the character have with other characters; what are their desired outcomes? What are they going to do in the game? Do they have balanced plots that support their personal story?

    Many big, international blockbusters use either brute force design (see Fatland & Montola 2015) that relies on the maxim “More is more” and offers the players a well-supplied smorgasbord of plots, or sandbox design where players are invited and often expected to create their own content. These are cost-effective ways to create large commercial games. Some of these games offer well-constructed and carefully thought out characters, but often the players are given only a loose draft of character and their network. The personality and contacts are more like suggestions, and they might be open for change if the player feels like it. Players can even choose to discard them entirely. This I call the macro-level of character design.

    Macro-level character design operates on the level of groups and bigger constructions: character groups, big plots in the background, public scenes open to everyone, action free to join.

    In my 25+ years of larping, the strongest element to either build the game to excellent heights or make it fall has been contacts and inter-character relationships. Thus, choosing very light, sketch-like character design or making contacts fully flexible according to players’ ideas, inspiration, or time, burdens me with potentially pointless shovel-work and increases the chance for the sand cake of the game to collapse.

    My argument is that when game designers lead character designing work or, if players are given responsibility for it, facilitate its processes, the experience is more likely to be successful for a bigger number of players. This is because purely player-driven character and contact design potentially has several problems and challenges.

    Embrace the chaos?

    Next I will discuss four specific problems and challenges of macro-level character and contact design. Many of my points echo Anni Tolvanen’s (2022) Nordic Larp Talk on dance card larping.

    It’s easy, fun and safe to play with friends and people with similar play styles. Players can plan their character relations and plots together, and make use of their previous common play history: whereas contacting several strangers, feeling their play styles, negotiating content, and trying to fit it all to the larp can be much more stressful and time-consuming. Playing with friends is natural and understandable and, at least to some extent, one of the points of larping: but it can, however, lead to exclusivity. My first point is that players who have no friends to gravitate to in the game or who feel difficulty making new contacts, may be left out from designing game content.

    Secondly, player-driven contact design can also lead to collecting as many interesting contacts as possible. This is also known as contact shopping. In the process, common content is brainstormed, inter-character history drafted, plots agreed on and even scenes planned. But in the game, the contact shopper has no time to play with all their contacts, so they have to choose: maybe the most interesting ones, those with friends, or those easily at hand. To co-players, these pre-planned relationships can, however, be crucial. These players may not have their friends aboard, or they may not be prepared for the play culture of contact shopping. The content now thrown overboard may play a big role in their planned game content or character story, which now deflates.

    Thirdly, when there is no coherent, personal story and view of the character’s arc during the game, play can easily become chaotic and coincidental.

    In many Finnish larps, each plot is specifically designed for a certain character or group of characters. However, in some international larps, it is a choice of design to provide many potential plots that are not tied to any particular character. The player can then freely choose which ones they want to engage with during gameplay. When this design choice is communicated to potential players, they can choose whether they feel up to it or not.

    If players find themselves in this situation unexpectedly, they can try grabbing whatever plot or action they can get in the fear of missing out and being bored, whether it is something the character would do or not. Personally, in these kinds of situations as a player, I have felt pretty desperate. I’ve tossed aside all logic and the story of my character, and I’ve just tried to squeeze myself into anything. Immersion is long gone, numbness and indifference linger close. Embracing the chaos might keep me from getting bored, but it seldom offers impressive experiences or feelings of meaningfulness for a player, who is seeking a personal story.

    As a fourth and combining element: players are not equal when it comes to social capital, skills, and status. When the organiser’s hand doesn’t balance characters’ weight in the fiction, the most popular, charismatic, socially and verbally skilled players often reign. That can offer little or at the worst case no room to more subtle tones, quieter players and more delicate stories.

    Not easy for everyone

    Larping is an extreme social sport. Contact creation and plot design with a dozen strangers from other play cultures can be fruitful and awesome, but it can also be socially extremely straining and strenuous. Introverted or shy players, players with bad experiences or occasional problems with social situations, or players who know no other players in advance, may feel really anxious and uncertain. Also, players who can’t use hours of their free time for pre-larp random contacting in the hope of finding plots, can struggle.

    Behind my text are my own experiences from international sandbox or brute force blockbusters. I spent a lot of time contacting, brainstorming and plotting. From some players I never got answers. With many of them, I didn’t succeed in communicating the balance and equal weight of our content plans or character relationships. With some, I never ended up playing because they seemed too busy with other stuff. That made me feel meaningless and disappointed. I was also ashamed: I couldn’t follow the plans I participated in making, and I was unsure if I should push more or just give up. Diegetically, I felt not welcome in several plots, or, when suggesting hooks or action, didn’t necessarily get an enthusiastic response. When I gathered my strength to force myself in, my character was often merely a bystander, the audience witnessing others’ play. Here, despite the fear of missing out, I started to realise that these design styles are sadly not for me – or, rather, I am not for them.

    My larps were saved by friends with whom we had pre-planned contacts, and with whom we had an understanding that we are really going to play the planned content. I’ve also been lucky to have several really nice encounters and meaningful play with new acquaintances.

    For an introvert with some insecurities in social relations, the trying, the uncertainty, the negotiating, the forcing, and the continuous alertness for potential content was exhausting. I longed for knowing where to concentrate, being able to trust that there is a reason for my character’s existence. I felt envious and missing out: I did not get in or feel like an essential part of the cast.

    As far as I know, operating on the macro-level of character design is easier, lighter and less laborious, and that’s why it’s practised in big games. As a designer, though, I can’t help observing how things could be done a bit more inclusively. In each blockbuster I’ve attended, I have noticed many places where organisers could relatively easily have connected the spots to insert inter-character content, such as: both of these characters have nubile children, they should absolutely meet and discuss marriages! This character has violated a member of a leading gang, the information has to be shared for drama to happen! These characters have both recently lost someone important, the players would get a kick out of a séance session!

    Creating together or purchasing an experience?

    I see larping as creating together. Thus it also includes player responsibilities, not just rights. Especially in commercial blockbusters, some participants may see themselves as paying customers, and game designers as customer service providers. Can customers be asked to mind their co-players’ experience, answer messages in time, stick to pre-planned contacts, drop their immersion to help others, do something that doesn’t feel fun? Usva Seregina’s (2019; see also Seregina in this volume) article on commodification of larp discusses this and related topics in more detail.

    Personally, I fear that commercial games may lack the true communality that comes from committing to supporting other participants’ play and stories, and the vision that comes from comprehensive, dramatically solid, designer-led character arcs. I’m aware that I’m not purchasing an experience but a possibility of one. If I get a spot and choose to participate, I don’t expect to be fully catered, but I wish to know how to focus my available time and energy.

    Safety and stability make a better cake

    To decrease the problems and challenges of exclusivity, contact shopping, vacuous chaos, and inequality in social status, I, an introvert player, need some information or guidelines about these things: Why is my character important in this game, what can I expect from the game? Which players are my most important contacts and do we have time to play together? What kind of tension is planned inside the relationship? In short: I want to be as sure as possible that my experience is going to be as good as possible. I’m also willing to work for it, as long as I know what are the tools best for this playground.

    Compared to free player-driven contact creation, contact design by the organisers is a stronger promise to me and other players struggling with uncertainty on whether we too will be relevant and included. Knowing that designers have created full, meaningful characters and their relationships, I’m much more confident that the cake will stay whole.

    Bibliography

    Eirik Fatland and Markus Montola (2015): The Blockbuster Formula – Brute Force Design in The Monitor Celestra and College of Wizardry. ref. November 27, 2023

    Usva Seregina (2019): On the Commodification of Larp. ref. November 16, 2023

    Anni Tolvanen (2020): A Full House Trumps a Dance Card. Nordic Larp Talks. ref. November 16, 2023

    This article has been reprinted with permission from the Solmukohta 2024 book. Please cite as:

    Niskanen, Niina. 2024. “Good Cakes, Bad Cakes: Character and Contact Design as a Factor of Personal Game Experience.” In Liminal Encounters: Evolving Discourse in Nordic and Nordic Inspired Larp, edited by Kaisa Kangas, Jonne Arjoranta, and Ruska Kevätkoski. Helsinki, Finland: Ropecon ry.

    Cover photo: Image by Pexels on Pixabay.

  • Seeds of Hope: How to Intertwine Larp and Ecological Activism

    Seeds of Hope: How to Intertwine Larp and Ecological Activism

    What could we bring into larp from the climate crisis and what can we take home that could have an actual influence on how we act to mitigate the disaster we are living in?

    I awoke late to ecological conscience, relatively speaking. Despite all the available information about climate change, I felt pushed to action only after the scorching summers from 2017 onward. At that point I became interested in ecoactivist groups and started speaking out about the climate catastrophe as well as including it in my poetry. Contemporaneously ecological themes were taking root in the Finnish larping scene. The first ecologically themed larp I played in was Ennen vedenpaisumusta (Finland 2019, Eng. Before the Deluge). The larp designed by Minna and Mikko Heimola was a story about a Christian ecotheological present-day community; the members were seeking a way to live in balance with the ecosystem and exploring what it would be like to extricate themselves from modern society and modern ways of thinking. Many characters had plot lines that placed them in contrast to the society they had left behind, and everyone had to make their peace with the separation of their past lives from the new way of life they had chosen to be a part of.

    The general aim of the community was to decrease individual value and egoistic ideals and consequently to strengthen the ties between community members and the ties that connect humans to other beings. My character Halma had already gone to great lengths to change her mindset and aimed toward a kind of dissolving of her sense of self as an individual human being, up to and including rejecting the use of words “I” and “mine”. The community we brought into being was vibrant and the location of the game, a remote country villa with expansive woods, fields and seashore in the vicinity supported the themes seamlessly. We as players were responsible for the care of a small herd of sheep for the duration of the larp, and there were beehives in the yard for honey. The characters had no particular antagonism toward the wider society, but nevertheless set themselves clearly apart from it. They were planning sustainable and self-sufficient ways of energy and food production. The group had an independent set of rules for self-government that relied on altruistic ethics based on religious beliefs.

    Ennen vedenpaisumusta (2021): caring for sheep. Photo by Mikko Heimola. Ennen vedenpaisumusta (2021): caring for sheep. Photo by Mikko Heimola.

    What made the experience so particular to me was the implicit, calm acceptance that the characters would not be able to make a huge difference in the world as a whole; but that by resolutely living differently they could make our shared home a little bit healthier, despite not turning the global tide of destruction. That not having the final key to everything was no reason to stop doing what good they could.

    This is essential.

    A year later I started in the larp campaign Kaski (Finland 2021 –, Eng. Swidden). Kaski is a three-part series, in which two larps have been played and one remains in the future. In the co-creative larp, facilitated by the creator of the campaign Maiju Tarpila, the players have significantly built and influenced the fiction, milieu and characters in discussions, workshops and short ingame scenes preceding the larps. The end result reflects the ecological attitudes, thoughts and values of the players in a major way. The stated aim of Kaski is to explore the eco crisis and find methods to manage the manifold emotions that arise from the darkening times we are living in; and also, importantly, to ask what kind of action could result from the possible conclusions the participants arrive at.

    The first part, Roihu (Torch) centered around a group of eco activists preparing for an action against a forest industry company. For three days we planned the action, discussed its moral and ethical legitimacy, disagreed, argued, came to agreement and grieved the necessity of having to take direct action at all. The personal histories and interrelationships of the activists heavily affected the process and provided the backdrop for the community. Compared to Ennen vedenpaisumusta, where I felt the direction of change was inward, toward the community itself, in Roihu the aim of the characters was very much to incite the world surrounding them to change. This also affected the lessons I took home from each larp.

    In Roihu, real-life activist methods were brought into the planning by characters experienced in the field. What to consider if you want to climb up a high building, how to plan a subvertising campaign. Where to put your phone while you are planning an illegal action so that it can’t be used to tap you. Based on the pre-game workshops in which we had pooled all our player knowledge on these subjects, my older character Sini was able to instruct the overeager youngsters in the dangers of being underprepared. As a player I was not at all familiar with the topic. The youngsters’ questions were sobering: What to do if you are taken by the police, how to treat facial burns from tear gas, what to look out for when blocking a street? Using this real world information in-game felt serious and grim, while at the same time world-weary Sini had gone through these things innumerable times already.

    During the preparations for the first Kaski game, members of the Finnish Extinction Rebellion got attacked by the police during a nonviolent street block. We all read about it in the news. A person in the Kaski co-creation group was involved and injured. Due to our prolonged focus on activist themes we players were shocked and devastated to see the fiction play out in front of us, as it were. For me it brought home the realism of the situation: the themes we would be covering in the larp were harsh.

    Climate change is here, it’s happening, and we can’t escape from it. Our society isn’t taking the necessary action to mitigate the effects of the change, and those who try to raise awareness are persecuted. From then on it would be increasingly difficult to close my eyes or look away from these things.

    After a lengthy preparation phase in which we had planned and fleshed out our community in several workshops, the larp was played, late in August of 2021 (coincidentally in the same location as Ennen vedenpaisumusta). It was very good. Coming out from it I felt changed, as can happen after any particularly poignant experience. As a larp, Roihu was excellent, with devoted, skilled players who paid particular attention to the cohesion of the community. This time however, the warm but transient glow of post-high feelings gave rise to something different and more permanent. Immediately after the larp we were contextualizing our experience as a group, when in a polite and casual side note some players extended everyone an invitation to come join Extinction Rebellion, which they already were a part of. I usually make a point of not making far-reaching decisions right after a larp, when my head is still full of fumes from the game, but this time I overruled my habit and decided to accept the invitation.

    Since then I’ve participated in a number of road blocks, demonstrations, flash mobs and other types of protests. Stepping from the curb into a blocked street for the first time was electrifying. It felt like my hair stood on end. At the same time I felt strong echoes from what Sini had been doing her whole adult life. I was such a newcomer to the scene, while she had seen and done so much. In a very concrete way I was following where she’d already been and finding courage from having portrayed her. The threshold had been lowered by my imaginary experiences.

    While this is undeniably larper naivetë, imagining you have an actual grasp of real world situations after merely having played them, at the same time it’s still taking action for something I believe in, action which may have effects in the real world, spurred by the ingame fiction.

    Ecological larps, as well as other larps that deal with the current ills of the world, are exceptional in that they can be so tightly enmeshed with the prevailing reality as to have actual, concrete influence for good, by how players are changed during them. Whether the players purposely use their participation to accelerate their existing sympathies or whether they arrive at new convictions unbidden as a consequence of their experience, the changes can be real and long-lasting.

    The second part of the Kaski campaign, Tuhka (Finland, 2021, Eng. Ash) was situated in a near future when ecological destruction had rendered large parts of Finland uninhabitable. The characters were a different group from those in Roihu, but thematically part of the same chain of events. In the fiction, cities were struggling, infrastructure had collapsed and small rebel communities called Beacons were hanging on by their fingertips in remote areas, trying to incite action against the system, which even while collapsing was still perpetrating crimes against its citizens as well as the ecosystem. We portrayed inhabitants of the Seventh Beacon, a ragtag company of survivors ranging from radio technicians and soldiers to sea captains and students. My character Sarka was a Buddhist mystic trying to find universal connections in a world that was changed beyond recognition and was in the process of shaking humans off its back.

    Kaski: Tuhka (2022): Sarka didn’t wear shoes. Photo by the author. Kaski: Tuhka (2022): Sarka didn’t wear shoes. Photo by the author.

    The Seventh was an impossible home, a temporary haven in a darkening landscape. We practiced living differently, making conscious choices that would take us on a new course, away from the society that had driven itself off the cliff. We argued vehemently over what kind of roles would be needed in the new world we hoped would come in time. We came to agree that not everyone had to be a fighter; some could focus on gardening, some on building solace and maintaining connections. We found that to share a touch, a song, a breath, could be enough to fan a fluttering hope. Even though we were not able to stop the catastrophic change, we could survive and adapt. After the larp, this felt like an enduring truth.

    Because larp is embodied, the insights that are reached can be personally real to players. They can carry over as something more than what we usually call bleed.

    Taking part in ecological activism after having played it is exciting. It feels like entering the fictional glamour our characters were in the middle of. Going back to playing ecological activism after having engaged in it for real is eerie. The larps can take you to dystopic vistas that lie at the end of the road our society is currently traveling, and the experiences of character and player mingle until they seem somehow parts of a single continuum. The interweaving of character and player mindsets can produce odd feelings, particularly concerning hope. Only hindsight will show whether the real-life road blocks, mass demonstrations and other actions will have changed anything; whether I’ll have been a part of something historic.

    Working toward change, as a player as well as in-character, feels gratifying, feels like accomplishing something. In the fiction of the Kaski campaign what the characters did wasn’t enough, they failed in reversing the direction of the change. The Tuhka characters were living in the middle of the devastation the earlier generation had left them. The only option they had remaining, besides giving up, was adaptation. Any hope that the previous activists may have fostered had evaporated, it was a luxury the people of the Seventh Beacon could not afford, so they continued onward without it.

    My experiences in these games have been tangible enough to produce a glimmer of a vision of what it would be like to strive towards these communities in real life. Immersing into these mind-scapes, I’ve felt such sorrow for the atrocities we as a species have committed, but also joy: if a small group of players can imagine ways of living differently profoundly enough to make them come alive for the space of a few days, it will not be impossible for us as a society to find our way there when we finally must.

    (I say when).

    I think there’s going to be a crash.

    In the work of trying to mitigate it we need goals that are both realistic and reassuring. We need to believe that there are good times ahead, and that despite, or even because of, all the comforts we will have to give up, there are lovely things awaiting us. But they might look very different from our current idea of comfort and loveliness.

    Some things I’ve come to realize and accept as a result of participating in ecological larps and concurrent ecological activism: There are no easy solutions. If there were, the problems would have been solved already. I’ve learned that activists are not some other people somewhere else, with a complete dislike and disregard for the way people around them are living. Activism can begin in the middle of everyday life, with small choices, small acts of daring. It can stem from deep love and deep sorrow, a thorn in your side, a persistent discomfort that can only be alleviated through acting for what you love.

    I’ve realized that authority need not always be obeyed. That by engaging in civil disobedience I did not suddenly become a hardened criminal, an immoral person. That sometimes the most moral thing you can do is disobey.

    There is no consensus of the best way to go forward, of the scale of the changes that need to be made. The crises are an interlinked web of vicious problems which may not be resolved in our lifetime, or ever. The downhill may continue until the landscape is unrecognizable. There might not be any hope that we can salvage our present way of life.

    But there will still be beauty and joy. After letting go of hope, the work still continues. Making food, fixing radios. Sowing seeds, picking berries. If there are ruins, we will live in ruins and make our gardens there.

    Ludography

    Ennen vedenpaisumusta (2019): Finland. Minna Heimola, Mikko Heimola.

    Kaski: Roihu (2021): Finland. Maiju Tarpila.

    Kaski: Tuhka (2022): Finland. Maiju Tarpila.

    This article has been reprinted with permission from the Solmukohta 2024 book. Please cite as:

    Leppä, Elli. 2024. “Seeds of Hope: How to Intertwine Larp and Ecological Activism.” In Liminal Encounters: Evolving Discourse in Nordic and Nordic Inspired Larp, edited by Kaisa Kangas, Jonne Arjoranta, and Ruska Kevätkoski. Helsinki, Finland: Ropecon ry.

  • For Design

    For Design

    A recent article entitled “Against Design” (Nordwall and Widing 2024), republished here from this year’s Solmukohta book Liminal Encounters (Kangas, Arjoranta, and Kevätkoski eds. 2024), was the inspiration and provocation for this article, and whilst naturally I thank its authors for their frank and lively debate, I have to resoundingly disagree with just about everything said in it.

    Naturally, I would encourage you, my dear reader, to give it a read here, and then perhaps come back to read the thoughts of one who proudly claims the mantle of “designer”.

    Firstly, my most important point: designers are not the enemies of artists. In fact, I would go a step further, and say that there is no real line between designers and artists, which is one of the things I most profoundly dislike about the article. No person, filled with the spirit of the muses, is sitting in a pine forest somewhere, hewing larps from great pieces of monolithic marble. Every person who writes, weaves, conspires, or conceives of larps is doing so considering their audience, to the materials, the spaces, the minds, and to the resources they have available to them. Whether it be decisions about communicating the message of a larp, the ways it is expected to be run, or even (and hopefully so) the ways to keep their participants safe and happy.

    We create larps for human beings, real people who dwell on this earth with fears, and delights, and backstories, and jobs, and houses, and a preciously limited time to share with us. So the thought that “design”, spat out as a dirty word, as the antithesis of art, as the enemy of the artist, is in any way a bad thing, quite frankly baffles me. It would baffle me in just about any medium, be it painting, or cinema, or music, but most profoundly does it baffle me in larp.

    Because unlike all those other mediums, larp is entirely unique. I might ask the philosophers to leave the room for a moment while I say this: a sculpture remains sculpted even when no one is looking at it, paintings do not cease to be when the gallery closes for the night, the cellulose in a film doesn’t melt if it hasn’t been watched in a decade, and the air still bends to the plucking of a violin even if that air should touch no person’s ears.

    But a larp? A larp as a medium, as an artform, only exists, and can only exist, in the fleeting moments amongst a group of people, playing it, living it, creating it, in real-time, and only for as long as those people are there and building that story together. You can write the most fantastically beautiful, upliftingly soul-wrenching larp that has ever been conceived, but unlike a painting that may well be considered complete at the final stroke of the artist’s brush, a larp is not complete until the last word passes a player’s lips, until the last breath of someone, inhabiting the life of another, is taken.

    I’m sure some may argue over whether trees falling in the forest make a sound, (and perhaps by some assessments as a mere “designer” I could be seen as unfit to have those discussions). But regardless, for now I believe it can stand without question that a larp is nothing without its players, and that we have in this medium of ours possibly the most collaborative, the most actively participatory medium that has ever been devised.

    And I’d reckon that the authors of the article would agree with me, at least in broad principle, and they seem immensely passionate about protecting what they see as this special and unique medium. They might wish to hide it away, shelter it from the corrupting influences of capitalism, of commercialisation, keep it sacred, tucked away in the hills, whispered of only from the lips of ordained monks raised from birth to know the meaning of “true larp”.

    But alas, I don’t live in those hills, I live in capitalism, I live in commercialisation, I live in a society, with grit under my nails, a cheap keyboard at my finger-tips, and smog in my lungs. And don’t get me wrong, sometimes I dream of running off to those forgotten places of the Earth and rejecting the modern world and all its trappings. If I didn’t need the medicine that this modern world creates to even stay alive, maybe I would’ve done so already. But for now, I still live amidst the concrete, where money talks, and the traditional ways of living have been gutted by the gods of industry.

    And so when I can, I escape. I escape into TV, I escape into video games, I escape into movies, and even on occasions I have the brain space to escape into a book. I don’t think that’s too rare, all in all. But when I am escaping, sometimes I feel like I want to escape just a little bit more, y’know? To push that boundary just a smidge further, to immerse myself just a little bit more, in another life, in another place, in another reality…

    And on occasions, I do.

    Me and a group of my friends will get together in some field somewhere, or a scout hall, or some community centre, and dressed in cheap costumes, maybe a prop or two, and some garishly written characters, and together, we escape. And in those times, I am very glad that somebody was being a designer, because unfortunately I don’t come from a country with centuries of tradition in collaborative storytelling, at least not any that survived the Industrial Revolution. I didn’t have the opportunity to immerse myself in this artform from childhood. I don’t even generally have the luxury of knowing half the people I am playing with most of the time.

    In the article, the authors make a reference to the Norwegian term for larp creating, lage, meaning ‘to make’, and reference it being the same word as used for when one makes soup. Now I realize at this point I am committing the sin of media analysis and introducing a food metaphor, but I hope you’ll forgive me. But it does seem as though the authors feel that everyone should only be eating soup. A carefully crafted, small home-cooked larp soup, made from fresh home-grown ingredients, lovingly cultivated in some little farm somewhere.

    And I’ll be honest, that sounds delicious. But I don’t have a little farm somewhere; I live on a council estate in Manchester. My food comes in packets and tins, and sure, I could maybe spend lots of money on trekking out to produce markets, and then lots more time on making a beautiful fresh soup every day, and sometimes I do. But I can’t do that most of the time. To do so is a privilege that I, and most of the people I know, are not afforded. And so, when I am tired from work, when I am poor, when I am lonely, and when I am above all else: hungry, I’ll go get a burger.

    And that’s what we designers are: we’re burger-flippers. We make things people can get easily, as cheaply as possible, have a good time doing it, and get value for their money. And sure, it ain’t the healthiest, it ain’t the best for us, hell it ain’t even probably the cheapest most of the time. But it’s meeting people where they’re at. Because far too many people I know are tired, poor, lonely, and hungry for a bit of respite from this world that was built around us.

    So we design mechanics that allow people to jump into games without weeks of prep. We write games based on popular properties so that everyone has a baseline understanding of tone and content. We build safety systems so people can feel alright having deep personal conversations with strangers. We craft experiences that can run and give people an immersion in someone else’s world for a little while. We flip burgers. We “design”.

    And when it comes to making larps that can run, I think it’s about time we talked about the elephant in the room: selling tickets. It’s a dirty business, I’d reckon there’s no larp writer in the world who really likes it, but we have to face the facts. People only have so much money, they only have so many days off work, they only have so much time they can take away from children and pets and families, they only have so much energy at the end of the working week. And larps cost money.

    You combine these two facts, what do you get? The nemesis of my existence, the boss-fight at the end of every larp development process, the big bad horrible beast: the break-even number. How many tickets do I have to sell to cover my budget? How many butts in seats do I have to reach to allow this project to be a reality? Now you can have all the artistic craft in the world, you could craft the most effervescently perfect creation in larping history, but if you don’t get the people, you ain’t got nothing.

    And so I do marketing. In the first few months of a larp’s creation, I’m not writing characters or doing world building or thinking up mechanics, no. I’m building a website, I’m calculating budgets, I’m pricing up venues, I’m designing graphics, and I’m figuring out how to say to people, “Hey, this is a cool larp that you should come to.” And I hate it, oh boy do I hate it, and I reckon the authors of that article hate it too, if they’ve ever done it.

    So what’s the solution? Well I could just stop. I could never build another website, never create one more fancy graphic, put Facebook away, and just whisper the existence of my purely crafted larp into the breeze. Cool, well now I have a larp with no players, which as we’ve said before is less than worthless.

    Alright, so we’ll appeal to the hearts of our players, implore them to stop being so picky. Why do you have to be so demanding? Just sign up to every larp you hear about, go to them all, give us all your money! Now wouldn’t that be nice, but I won’t belabour the point, it’s not really feasible, is it.

    So what do we do?

    Well the authors of that article have a suggestion: “stop designing”. Stop making larps that haven’t been grown organically in the forests by sustainable larping communes with at least forty years of pedigree and blessed by Idunn herself. Retreat into the wilderness and just, please, stop making larps for people. Well, I’d say that’s just about as impractical as the previous two.

    Now, as said, I would love to go live in a forest for the rest of my life, with a small group of fellow larpers who I’ve known for decades and only create and share together, and let the rest of the world go kick rocks. But unfortunately for me, I was born in a failed industrial town where the smog is baked into the bricks, and where that was never really an option for me. My culture has a vibrant tradition of storytelling, mostly through song, and I am very proud that I get to carry it on into the future, and do genuine work in preserving and sharing it.

    Because contrary to the implication of the article there, we aren’t all godless barbarians in these cities, we aren’t all traditionless, religionless heathens bashing rocks together for entertainment. We have a culture, we have a history, and we want to share that. And part of the way we share that is through larp.

    This is very much close to my heart, as the sort of larps that I predominantly write are historical and theological larps, where I try and give people an opportunity to experience the lives and the beliefs of those that came before us. I feel it’s essential to understanding yourself and your world to be able to relate on a personal level to the lives of others, be that others who live with us now, or others who lived in the past. And larp is of course an unsurpassed tool for this, to allow someone to immerse themselves in the feelings, the life of another person. If that isn’t art, then I don’t quite know what is.

    And even if we’re not making the world a more harmonious place, even if we’re not giving people the opportunity to develop empathy and all we’re doing is giving people an escape: that’s okay too. I am so proud to see this medium of ours grow ever larger. It fills me with such profound joy at every event we run where there is someone who hasn’t larped before and gets to take their first steps into this brilliant community. And I love it even more when those people get a chance to contribute to the story, to bring in their experiences and their knowledge and their feelings and ideas.

    In the article, the authors accuse design of stifling innovation. They claim that designing one’s larps and focussing on the experience of participants leads to stagnation and intellectual decline. And I again, frankly, could not disagree more. Design lowers the bar to entry, it brings people in, from more places, from more backgrounds, from more peoples, and from more cultures. And that is how you innovate. By offering more people a seat at the table, from learning, and growing, and sharing, and mixing, and giving everyone you possibly can a voice to contribute and create something beautiful.

    We have in our hands an artform that is unique, because it relies on the hands, the hearts, the voices, and the souls of everyone in the audience to make it what it is. Not only to experience it, but to craft it along with us. Most of the people I play larps with or make larps for wouldn’t consider themselves artists, and yet that’s entirely what they are. And so are we, the designers. Because we are making art, by getting people there, by giving them the tools to engage with the game, to play with other people, to feel safe and supported and free to create according to where they are at. If a larp is an artistic medium, then making a larp happen is art, designing a larp is artistic.

    And I shall come at last to the final paragraph of that article, in the penultimate of my own. Therein they say, “Larps can happen through community building, collaborative creation, or even serendipity.” And in this I agree, larp and collaborative experience-centred design can come from anywhere. But I am led to another quote I once heard, by Plutarch, saying, ”No man ever wetted clay and then left it, as though there would be bricks by chance and fortune.”

    Well, I and my fellow designers aren’t gonna just wait around for larps to pop out of the ground, or be handed to us on gilded tablets by our Scandinavian cousins. We are the brick-makers, and we are working very hard, with the clay we have, to build a community of wonderful players and incredible experiences, out of those bricks.

    Cover image: Photo by yazriltri on Pixabay.