Tag: Gothic

Together, Apart: Dyadic Play in Larp
Nordic larp thrives on intimacy. Whether through whispered conspiracies at a dinner table, a dramatic breakdown in an argument with a sibling or silent devastation in a lover’s embrace, the magic of larps often hinges on the connections between players. For me, relations between characters are at the core of what enables connection when it’s narratively driven and not purely based on player chemistry.

This article started as a reflection on why I design relations the way that I do. You may also already write relations. I hope this article serves as an inspiration piece for one of the very interesting ways to enable intense relations in a larp: dyadic play. In this framework, characters are designed in pairs and two people are locked into a singular dynamic which shapes the experience around them.

What is Dyadic Play?

Dyadic play is a larp design structure where two players embody characters deeply entangled with each other (Bowman, 2024). This pair can take many forms: lovers, enemies, siblings, rivals, or even two halves of the same character. Dyads are not always romantic; friendships, rivalries, and toxic dynamics are equally valid. For me, the defining element is that their narratives and/or experience are not just intertwined but interdependent.

The Inspired of Comedy, Christian Schönburg, and the Muse of Comedy Thalia at Helicon. Photo: Bjørn-Morten Gundersen.

Variations

Some larps, like Baphomet (2015), have used dyadic play to explore themes of marriage and partnership, ensuring that each player always has a deeply connected co-player. Delirium (2010) went even further by requiring five workshop days where pairs who signed up together built their shared culture, relationships, and character dynamics before stepping into the game itself.

Many blackbox larps and chamber larps have also used an intimate pairing where you could for example be a ghost of a deceased family member following the character around or the internal monologue of the person. In larps where one character exists in a liminal state – such as a ghost tethered to their living counterpart – this dual perspective also provides a unique means of influencing the external world without direct interaction.

Cecilia, the snake, and Professor Rowan McMillen at Daemon showing different sides of the professor. Photo: Bjørn-Morten Gundersen.

In Daemon (Wind, 2021-) I wanted to both push the dyadic design element to its extreme and detach it from the conventional themes of romance and sexuality. The dyadic structure forms the vision and the core of the experience by casting players as two facets of the same person: daemon and human. All other design choices tie to this vision of experiencing being two people who together play the whole character. The daemon, manifested in an animal form, embodies the human’s subconscious and deeper self: the soul. A key design priority for me was ensuring that both players were physically present within the diegesis and that communication between them remained fully audible and intelligible to all participants. This is coherent with the novel series that inspired the larp, His Dark Materials (Pullman 1995-2000).

Daemon also adds enforced physical proximity: players in a dyad can never be more than two meters apart. This heightens both the narrative tension and the interdependence between the two parts of the character. I added a further mechanic to enhance the complexity and special form of dyad by introducing a physical taboo — it is absolutely a transgression to touch another person’s daemon — making the dyad create even more narrative weight in the larp. I call this extreme form of dyadic play symbiotic which was also the term I used for years when describing the core mechanic of Daemon before I learned of the term dyadic.

A beautiful part of playing two aspects of the same character is the transformation of internal monologue into external dialogue both through conversation between human and daemon and externalised through the daemon’s actions. This mechanic particularly appeals to players like myself, who prefer collaborative, spoken roleplay over introspective play. Obviously, these aspects can exist within the same experience, but I have often felt alone and bored with too much time without verbal or non-verbal contact with other players, and the symbiotic dyad-mechanic ensures that this never happens.

Diegetically, the humans can hear everything the daemons are saying and vice-versa but we practice to not treat everything too literally. If two daemons are fighting on the floor while the humans are having a pointed but polite conversation, it is more a sign that the humans don’t like each other than the daemons actually wanting to kill each other. It is very hard to describe this subtlety in writing and it is always an intuitive understanding that has to be built with exercises before the larp and by practicing during the first hours of Daemon.

House of Craving. Photo: Martin Lindelien.

With this extreme form of dyadic structure, even moments of inactivity become opportunities for co-creation; if one player feels disconnected from the action, they still have a partner with whom to discuss their next move, react to the unfolding story, or voice their character’s internal dilemmas. Because of this complete interdependence, in Daemon I would never offer that you can sign up without a partner and I then cast people together; for me there needs to be a pre-existing agreement between the players and a firm wish to play together like this. In other dyadic larps, I do offer to connect people who don’t sign up together or even know each other.

The players are encouraged to talk about their dyadic relation beforehand and we workshop the dynamic at the location, doing connection enhancing eye contact exercises and using two-meter-long strings to explore proximity and connection. More about this later.

In Helicon (Wind and Pettersson, 2024-), we choose a version of a dyadic structure somewhere in the middle of the extremes and assign characters in pre-designed duos, exploring power imbalances, control, exploitation, and inspiration through enforced dynamics. Unlike the mutual relationships of a marriage in Baphomet, Helicon pairs players in a non-consensual pact — a human Inspired in a drug-like dependency with their enslaved Muse, mirroring themes of artistic obsession, addiction, and subjugation. We strive to create a deep narrative cohesion between the dyadic characters as they both represent the same artform/science/leadership type. Rituals reinforce the hierarchical bond, deepening the emotional weight of the connection. You could call it a co-embodied narrative. As Sarah Lynne Bowman describes in her analysis of the larp (Bowman, 2024), these relationships highlight the tension between devotion and control.

There can also be options for playing with something like this in a very close ensemble with more than two people. In Helicon, we have a triad where two Inspired siblings share a Muse. However, for the rest of the article, I will only describe this kind of dynamic as dyadic.

Prime minister of Britain and the Inspired of Politics, Percy Shaw, and his Muse of Politics, Kallistrate. Photo: Kai-Simon Frederiksen.

How to determine “how dyadic” you want your larp

The chart below shows Axes of Attachment and is intended to provide some clarity of how different larps work regarding character relations (see Figure 1). It attempts to provide a way you could think about how and why you design certain kinds of relations. It’s basically about seeing the larp as a room: how do you place the players inside of the room together with the mechanics, space, physical conditions, setting etc.?

Figure 1. The Axes of Attachment model charts intersections of relative degrees of relational interdependence and shared identities in dyadic play.

X-axis (Dependency → Independency): How much a character’s arc depends on their dyadic partner-character. This could be emotional, practical, physical, narrative, or social dependence. How dependent are you on the other person being present? How closely do we bind the characters and to how many (it doesn’t have to be two).

Y-axis (Shared identity/concept -> Individual identity/concept): How closely the characters are tied internally. How much are your characters the same being? For example, Daemon has two people playing one character, while Helicon has two distinct characters with connected fates and arts. So both are more “shared” than completely individual, but Daemon is more extreme.

All larps on the left side of the figure have in my opinion some kind of dyadic design.

Another example is House of Craving (Edland, Wilson, Jansen and Pedersen 2019-). On the first day, you are playing a character and then on the second day, the same character but as a ghost in the house who is very attached to your own living person’s story. As a ghost, you can affect your own human and the others more and more as the larp moves further, and since you have the same identity as the human, you have preferences as to what they should do — and try to push them there. You could call this dynamic parasitic more than symbiotic. But the reason why I chose to define it as slightly less shared than Daemon is that you are not playing the character together and you can still walk away from each other not having to share most specific scenes. They also don’t share a consciousness. There is also a very interesting dyad complexity in House of Craving in the fact that you are knit tightly together in smaller groups as humans where the experiences are actually dependent without you sharing an identity or concept.

The Inspired of Dance, Danielle Lafontaine, holding her Muse of Dance Terpsichore during a ritual at Helicon. Picture: Kai-Simon Frederiksen.

Interestingly, it has been hard to find examples that fit into the top right quadrant where you are relationally and narratively independent but share the same identity or concept. Gothic is a good example, however, as it has a form of shared concept and identity of the characters even though it isn’t designed specifically for dependency between two characters. The two are dependent as you have just played the poet the day before and then you play the servant of the same poet the day after. As lead designer Simon Brind notes in a personal conversation (2025): “The characters were written as reflections of the poet, looking at the flaws of the poets and playing them back in different ways. Byron’s servant – Tita – is everything that Byron wants to be for example.” Simon also mentions that there is a one way dependency from the poet to the servant later in the larp as the servant has influence over the fate of the poet. So in my purely analytical opinion, you share more of an identity in Gothic (also because of off-game affiliation to a character you just played yourself) than a dependency on the individual experience, which places this experience in the top right quadrant. And this is interesting, because maybe off-game factors can also make some play experiences dyadic. If you provide the option of signing up together with someone, and you offer a lot of dependency with mechanics and/or pre-designed character relations, you might not have shared identity and/or concepts, but you move the experience further to the left on the x-axis, getting it closer to dyadic play.

Most larps will be in the bottom right quadrant and not have any dyadic play in the design. That doesn’t mean that you can’t have intense relationships without dyadic play. The chart is just meant as a help to conceptualise which kinds of relations you provide in your larp.

You might be thinking, “But you can just write a dyadic relation yourself with a friend in a larp where you write your own characters.” Yes, you could and maybe you already have. You could get some kind of a dyadic experience even playing a larp with almost no pre-written ties between characters and nothing in the design to support it. You don’t even have to sign up together for it to be a dyadic experience. However, in this article, I am more interested in the design-heavy Nordic style of thinking through coherent design on many levels and creating a clearly communicated larp experience. So while I describe here a specific philosophy for designing relations in a whole larp, you can use these strategies as individual player preferences as well.

Lady Evelyn Wiltshire and her snow fox daemon Atlas at Daemon. Photo: Bjørn-Morten Gundersen.

The next part of the article shares the experiences I have made by adjusting my larps along the two axes in the chart. There are also some things I haven’t adjusted. So here are the vulnerabilities and what you win by engaging in dyadic character relation design.

The power of playing in pairs

Dyadic play is a purposeful design choice that serves multiple functions:

1. Guaranteed connection

Unlike most larps where relationships emerge organically or are written but dependent on player chemistry (Nøglebæk 2023), dyadic play ensures that each participant has a deeply connected co-player. This prevents isolation and guarantees intimate interaction throughout the larp. If there is an option to sign up together, you are also guaranteed to play closely with someone you really want to play with, which is devastatingly hard to be able to in lottery based larps.

2. Catering to specific themes

Certain themes — dependency, rivalry, obsession, or supernatural bonds — are, in my opinion, best explored through tightly structured relationships. Daemon exemplifies this by requiring players to act as two entities within the same being, forcing them into an intricate push-pull dynamic.

From Baphomet. Photo: Carl Nordblom

3. Physical and emotional presence

Dyadic play externalises internal struggles, turning them into performative, tangible elements in the diegesis depending on the degree of dependency on each other for the larp experience. In Daemon, the constant physical presence of one’s partner heightens the sense of being truly two minds in one body. Many players report that they accelerate their closeness with their co-player exponentially and that they quickly get used to the closeness. Even though the Muse has a bit more free range in Helicon, the Muse’s lack of autonomy and physical proximity required by the narrative — that Muses have to stay within 100 m of where their Inspired commands them to be — creates an embodied experience of control and restriction, which are core themes of that larp.

4. Built-in narrative depth

Pre-established relationships provide immediate emotional stakes. The weight of history between the characters and expectation add layers to every interaction, making the experience feel dramatic from the outset. Non-dyadic relations can do this as well but dyadic relations enhance the probability of it actually happening in practice at the larp.

5. Emotional safety

Navigating intimacy in larp can be complex. Dyadic play provides a structured framework where trust is central, making high-intensity scenes safer and potentially more rewarding. In the most extreme versions of dyadic relations like Daemon, you will always be at least four people when you have a conversation with another character and you will physically have experienced almost exactly the same scenes as your dyadic partner. This design makes it much easier to connect off-game over the more difficult aspects of your larp experience like an interaction with a co-player you didn’t like or feeling ostracized in the larp. Dyadic design might even make it a good experience for newer larpers as they will be able to lean on their dyadic partner and are never left alone.

6. High stakes drama

When your character’s fate is intertwined with another’s, every action becomes consequential. A betrayal isn’t just a plot beat — it’s devastating. A declaration of love isn’t just a moment — it’s a turning point. This goes for all kinds of dependencies; they are guaranteed to a higher degree with dyadic play.

7. Carrying the story together

You are not alone in developing and experiencing a narrative in dyadic play. When you run out of ideas, there is another person to carry the story onwards. The ghost version of you in House of Craving might push you as a human to do something in your story that you didn’t anticipate. The Daemon version allows an excellent excuse to portray an energetic or extroverted character even though you aren’t such a person off-game if your co-player is portraying it for both of you.

The Inspired of Dance, Danielle Lafontaine, trying to strangle her Muse of Dance Terpsichore during Helicon. Picture: Kai-Simon Frederiksen.

Challenges and potential pitfalls

1. The risk of isolation

The intensity of dyadic play can create an insular bubble. If the game world revolves too much around the pair, broader interactions may suffer. Daemon players, for example, may become so immersed in their internal struggle that they disengage from external narratives. It’s not often that I have seen it happen, but it is a potential issue to be aware of in dyadic play. This is more risky the more dependent the relation is. If the dyad does not have a fulfilling dynamic for both players, that can also be further isolating especially when witnessing other dyads highly engaged together in enjoyable play.

2. Strain in the sign-up process

If you have to sign up together, finding the right partner can be stressful. Some larps allow players to sign up together, while others assign partners based on casting. The latter requires trust in organizers to balance chemistry and compatibility of wishes for the experience. You also have to make sure that you agree on energy levels and that you are okay with the playstyle the other person wants.

3. Unequal Investment

Not all players engage at the same level with specific activities or themes. If one seeks deep psychological introspection while the other prefers a light dramatic arc, friction can arise. Establishing expectations beforehand is essential — much more so than if you are free to flow through the larp to engage with whatever you find the most interesting.

4. Limited Agency

Solo players can pivot their stories at will. Dyadic players, however, must consider their partner’s trajectory. This can feel restrictive if the dynamic doesn’t align with evolving personal goals. In a completely solo experience, you can be affected by other players, your own exhaustion, etc. But the other person’s tiredness is an immaterial factor. The characters are closer than other relations in the network. Several times during Daemon, the partner had to leave. What do you do? What are the rules?

Douglas Eden and his cat daemon Haze at the Belgian run produced by Sandy Bailley. Photo: Ork De Rooij.

5. Relationship Bleed

The depth of dyadic play can be emotionally overwhelming. The sustained investment in one relationship can lead to burnout if not managed well. Ironically, there can also be disappointment if you don’t have that close feeling with your play partner afterwards. Some of this can be attributed to relationship bleed in which aspects of social relationships bleed between player and character. Romantic bleed (Waern 2010; Harder 2018; Bowman and Hugaas 2021) is the most frequently discussed subtype (Bowman qtd. in Hugaas 2024). For example, some characters in both Daemon and Helicon are rewritten with pre-existing and complicated romantic entanglements that have the potential to enable romantic bleed.

Many dyadic larps, including Daemon, Helicon and House of Craving, integrate voluntary debriefing and aftercare to help players process their experiences.

6. Predators and safety

As with all larps where we try to be brave, safety is of the essence. Preventing predators from accessing such a vulnerable type of relation requires a strong safety set-up from the organisers as well as a responsible group of players (Rotvig and Wind 2019 in Wind 2019; Brown 2017a; 2017b). This is not any different from larps with sensitive themes in general but you have to be aware that the dyadic play design choice exposes players to specific risks of emotional impact, which can be taken advantage of by problematic people.

Making dyadic play work: Expectation management, mechanics and workshops

Designing an effective dyadic experience requires structured preparation, ensuring that players feel safe, engaged, and emotionally attuned to one another. Here are key methods I use to make it work.

1. Consider which kind of experience you would want the players to have with your dyadic design

There are different ways to create dyadic experiences. So consider what you actually want to design into. Is it:
- A shared physical experience?
- A shared narrative?
- An intensely interdependent emotional bond?
- A shared consciousness?
- All of the above? (Not always possible).
One or more of these factors may appeal more to you than others, so consider carefully what you design for.

2. Expectation management between the players before the larp

The Devil You Know. Photo: Daniel Andreasson.

One of the most critical steps in dyadic play is ensuring that both players are on the same page about their engagement levels. Besides communicating specifically that this is a larp with dyadic play and what that means, players should discuss a few specific things before signing up together or playing together in an organiser-determined dyadic relation:
- Emotional intensity comfort levels: Are both players interested in exploring deep emotional drama, or do they prefer lighter interactions?
- Scene preferences: What kind of interactions (conflict, care, degree dependence) are desired?
- Narrative flexibility: How much improvisation is expected versus structured interactions?
- Off-game communication plans: Establishing ways to check in during the game without breaking immersion on the level that both prefer.
- Energy levels: How do you usually function during a larp to have the best experience? There could also be health reasons for you needing breaks from the larp. Should your co-player be aware of these needs?
By clarifying expectations in advance, dyads can avoid misalignment that might disrupt immersion during play.

3. Mechanics to reinforce dyadic interaction

You can choose to implement a dyadic dynamic simply by writing a dependent narrative for the characters and possibly some degree of shared identity. However, some larps integrate mechanics that actively support the dyadic dynamic. It is a general design point of mine that mechanics provide more tools for the toolbox of the player to experience emotional impact from the written material (Wind, 2025). Here are some examples:
- Physical proximity rules: In Daemon, players must remain within a two meter radius, reinforcing their reliance on each other. In Helicon, Muses need to stay within 100 m. of where their Inspired commands them to be. This doesn’t create a physical proximity in the larp experience itself but it creates an experience of imprisonment.
- Shared resources or abilities: In Helicon, Muses can only give Inspiration to their own Inspired unless allowed otherwise, ensuring that their power remains tethered to the dyadic relationship.
- Same character identity: In House of Craving, as a ghost, you can affect your own human and the others more and more as the larp moves further, and since you are the same identity as the human, you have preferences as to what they should do — and try to push them there.
- Restricted autonomy: Preventing one character from making major decisions without the other’s involvement (e.g., Inspired in Helicon dictate where Muses can go).
From the larp Thyself. Photo: Kai-Simon Frederiksen.

4. Workshops to build trust and connection

I have a very strong sentiment that when we act (that is: do something), we experience. The ability to play in a dyadic way is emergent, so we have to just try to play in our dyads, and then our perception of the dynamic forms when we do it. For example, I stress at Daemon that we practice the first day and that it is okay if the dynamic is wonky. We have to try it out. Before play begins, workshops can help partners develop their dynamic and understand the expectations of their shared experience. Effective exercises include:
- Eye contact exercises: Building comfort with intimacy and presence. They really have to be longer than you think!
- Movement mirroring: Practicing responsiveness and fluidity in interactions.
- Physical boundaries training: Establishing safe ways to express physical connection or distance.
- Practicing the dyadic specific mechanics.
In Daemon, for example, players use a two-meter string during workshops to simulate the forced closeness of their characters, gradually adjusting to the physical restrictions of the play experience. In Helicon, we practice the core mechanic of taking/giving Inspiration in Helicon in the workshop by using a sash that is the representation of the transferral of Inspiration, which the players will also use during the larp.

5. Safety and debriefing measures

In general in many Nordic larps, we are offering people the opportunity to participate in an emotional extreme sport. Therefore, I think we have a responsibility to at least think of what we offer regarding emotional safety in general. But specifically for dyadic play I have found that it can touch a lot of people in an impactful way. Here are some suggestions for how you could handle it.

The witch and broken war hero Loviisa Raisanen and her peacock daemon Kaligas. Photo: Bjørn-Morten Gundersen.

Safety regime: I find we sometimes forget that the feeling of safety is not only important for its own sake. The right safety regime helps us feel brave; makes us less afraid to play on challenging themes. I often find that safety mechanics that are not designed or introduced in a good way are more restrictive, frustrating, and meaningless. They don’t create a good feeling about daring to make brave choices. Especially in Nordic larp, many people are very considerate and careful, and while you need safety measures, I often find it equally important to remind people that if you are worried about doing something, it is better to do it than not to do it, so you don’t regret it after the larp. The safety measures are just there to ensure that you know within which boundaries you can explore this larp experience. Feeling safe is particularly important for dyadic play to work. I do it by building what I call “The House of Bravery.”

In practice, I introduce this concept in one way or the other in all my larps by building the foundation of the house before the larp with the flagging process, transparency, expectation management, and an explicit code of conduct on the website. I also provide a floor of the house: “This is what you should at least be okay with” and the ceiling of the house: “This is the most you can encounter here.” I publish this on the website and then build on it during the safety workshop. In larps, experience designers often only actually provide a “ceiling” OR a “floor.” I have observed that the greatest houses of bravery are built when people feel more free because they know the whole boundary of the house. So just be considerate about which measures you put in place to create a sense of safety and be a bouncer to keep predators out of the house.

Structured debriefs: Facilitated discussions to reflect on the experience in order to address lingering discomfort can be a good way to get out of a very bleedy experience. I think that debriefs should mostly be voluntary, as you can easily feel out of place if you are not bleedy or didn’t have a mind blowing experience (Pedersen 2017). I realise that not all organisers want their participants to get out of the bleed but I think it is responsible to at least offer the tools if the players would like to. Then they can choose for themselves if they want to take the offer.

Buddy check-ins: Encouraging dyads to support each other after play, discussing what worked and what felt challenging. Specifically, I always ask players to check what their dyadic partner needs right after the larp and encourage them to try to find common ground. Some might want a lot of hugs, and others might want a shower and alone time. I also ask players to contact their partner in the next couple of days. Most will do so, but some are just completely over a larp right away and wouldn’t necessarily contact their co-player a few days after the larp. You can read more about after care needs in the article “Leaving the Magic Circle: Larp and Aftercare” by Anneli Friedner (2020) and other resources about how to deal with post-larp emotions.

After party: It is an organiser’s choice if you want to offer as much larping time as possible and running the event right until everyone has to leave the venue. I prefer to offer time for common off-game socialising after the larp — preferably with an extra night before leaving the venue. For dyadic partners, I have often found it beneficial for their experience of the whole event and for aftercare that time is provided for hanging out out of character after the larp ends.

Decompression exercises: Movement exercises, journaling, or lighthearted interactions to transition out of character. (Note: I never use any of these myself, but they are resources you can use).

Two connected dyads. The married human couple basically share two Muses. The Inspired of Music, Maximillian Stern holding his Muse Euterpe while Sophia Newton, the Inspired of Sculpure is being held by her Muse Athanasia at Helicon. Photo: Bjørn-Morten Gundersen.

Conclusion: The beauty of togetherness

For those willing to embrace the intensity of a dependent narrative, the rewards can be unforgettable. So, the next time you sign up for a larp, ask yourself: Who do you want to be — and who do you want to be with?

Dyadic play can offer a uniquely immersive experience using strong narrative tools, but it isn’t for everyone. Before committing, also ask yourself:
- Are you comfortable with emotional intensity and intimacy?
- Do you trust your partner (or trust the organisers to pair you well)?
- Are you okay with a storyline that depends heavily on someone else’s choices?
- Do you prefer restricted narratives, or do you like to explore more freely?
Dyadic play isn’t just about roleplaying with another person—it’s about exploring the fundamental truth that we are deeply influenced by our relationships. Whether soulmates, rivals, or two halves of a whole, these larps remind us that no one stands alone.

The two lovers, Lord Alistair Dormer and the commoner born star scientist Yosaphine Darling observe their daemons Luca and Ramchii showing what is going on beneath the facade of the humans. Photo: Bjørn-Morten Gundersen.

Bibliography

Bowman, Sarah Lynne. 2024. “Helicon: An Epic Larp about Love, Beauty, and Brutality.” Nordiclarp.org, January 26.

Brown, Maury. 2017. “19 Truths about Harassment, Missing Stairs, and Safety in Larp Communities”. Nordiclarp.org, March 14.

Brown, Maury. 2017. “The Consent and Community Safety Manifesto”. Nordiclarp.org, March 14.

Friedner, Anneli. 2020. “Leaving the Magic Circle: Larp and Aftercare”. Nordiclarp.org, April 15.

Hugaas, Kjell Hedgard. 2024. “Bleed and Identity: A Conceptual Model of Bleed and How Bleed-Out from Role-Playing Games Can Affect a Player’s Sense of Self.” International Journal of Role-Playing 15 (June): 9-35. https://doi.org/10.33063/ijrp.vi15.323

Nøglebæk, Oliver. 2023. “The 4 Cs of Larping Love”. Nordiclarp.org. November 15.

Pedersen, Troels Ken. 2018. “Tears and the New Norm”. Nordiclarp.org, February 13.

Rotvig, Klara, and Katrine Wind. 2019. “Tryghed.”Larping Out Loud podcast, March 29.

Wind, Katrine. 2025. “River Rafting Design.” In Anatomy of Larp Thoughts: A Breathing Corpus, edited by Nadja Lipsyc et al. Knutepunkt Conference 2025. Fantasiforbundet.

Ludography

BAPHOMET (2013-2019): Denmark, Linda Udby and Bjarke Pedersen.

Daemon (2021-2025): Denmark, Belgium, USA, UK. Katrine Wind. Daemon Larp

Gothic (2023, 2024): Denmark. Simon Brind, Anna Katrine Bønnelycke, Maria Østerby Elleby, Halfdan Keller Justesen, Laurie Penny, Martine Svanevik, and Sagalinn Tangen. Gothic Larp

Helicon (2024-2025): Denmark. Maria Pettersson and Katrine Wind. Helicon Larp

House of Craving (2019-2023): Denmark. Tor Kjetil Edland, Danny Wilson, Frida Sofie Jansen, and Bjarke Pedersen

Spoils of War (2019-2025). Denmark. Katrine Wind. Spoils of War

Cover photo: War hero Sgt. Theresa Williams and Nico, her antelope daemon. Photo by Bjørn-Morten Gundersen.
2025-06-18
The Immortal Legacy

In high school, I had a phase where I was really into the Romantic poets. I read about Percy Bysshe Shelley in particular and was struck by his “The Masque of Anarchy,” a rabble-rousing political poem:

And many more Destructions played

In this ghastly masquerade,

All disguised, even to the eyes,

Like Bishops, lawyers, peers, or spies.

Percy Bysshe Shelley is one of the most famous poets of the Romantic period. I found the world of the Romantics fascinating. In the biography Shelley: The Pursuit by Richard Holmes I read about his personal life, which even as a high schooler I understood to be a truly amazing trainwreck.

Gothic is a 2023 larp by Avalon Larp Studios inspired by the Ken Russell movie of the same name, featuring the Romantic poets in a story of gothic horror. I signed up and got lucky, playing first Percy Bysshe Shelley and then the servant William Fletcher.

This was because Gothic was based on an unusual production model pioneered by another intimate horror larp, House of Craving. There are five overlapping runs of the event. Played in a mansion in the Danish countryside, the larp runs continuously as a repeating one-day instance which each player experiences twice, first as a poet and then as a servant.

When I was playing Percy, the person who had played Percy yesterday was now my manservant. The next day, I was the servant and a new player was portraying Percy.

Photo by Simon Brind.

Horror Stories

At any given time, Gothic only has five poet characters and five servant characters. The ensemble is small and tight. The division between the social positions of the characters meant that the focus of play is on the five players who arrive together each day. When I was Percy Bysshe Shelley, my primary focus was on my co-players who played Mary Shelley and the others, and when I was Fletcher, I interacted most with my fellow servants.

This allowed for nuanced, interesting social and internal play. The schedule keeps things moving with events such as afternoon tea, a séance and dinner but there is space to explore ideas and build scenes together.

The fact that they share a design structure made me initially compare Gothic to House to Craving, a larp known for its extravagant, depraved madness. During play, I realized that Gothic was quite a different experience, more focused on the depth of the themes, characters and the setting than the visceral, bodily experience of House of Craving. The Romantic poets allowed for an unusually thorough examination of the various ideas connected to the larp because the characters themselves were quite capable of both discussing and implementing them.

The poets were intellectually ambitious, and that meant we as players could explore things like the difference between an ideal and reality, or conversely the problems caused by strict, heedless application of ideals to reality.

In the fiction, the larp was set in Villa Diodati where Lord Byron famously stayed in the summer of 1816, spending three days together with Dr. John Polidori, Mary Shelley, Percy Bysshe Shelley and Claire Claremont. The time spent by the poets at Villa Diodati is famous for Lord Byron’s challenge that each should come up with a horror story. It is this prompt that gave Mary Shelley the push to come up with her idea for Frankenstein, a landmark work of horror literature.

Our group of poets approached this task diligently, each of us coming up with a story. This meant that not only was gothic horror the genre of the larp, we as characters were also telling each other horror stories in the dimly lit, creaking mansion in the middle of the night. There were layers upon layers of horror, building to an escalating level of unreality as the night progressed.

The themes of artistic legacy and creative immortality influenced my play strongly. There was an unusual space for playing on the complex real-life legacy of the characters because the design facilitated it, key details brought into focus in the excellent character writing. To prepare for the larp, I’d read Miranda Seymour’s excellent biography Mary Shelley and was surprised how directly applicable it was, especially in the surreal late night scenes where talking about the future was as sensible as talking about the past. I’d done extracurricular reading beyond what was suggested by the organizers because I enjoy it, but it paid off.

There was an interesting creative tension between the themes of poetic and creative immortality for the characters, a group of legendary artists, and larp as an artform. Larp is ephemeral by its very nature. Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein lives on although she and even the society she came from have disappeared.

A larp lives on in the memories of its players, and shadows persist in documentation such as photos and this essay. Otherwise, it’s lost the moment it ends. Yet what larp loses in the pursuit of immortality it gains in the immediacy of the experience.

Photo by Simon Brind.

Noises in the Dark

When you go to international larps, you end up staying at a lot of mansions available for rent in different countries across Europe. They’ve been built to the specifications of a certain culture of servants and masters. The living quarters of the family in residence are separate from the discreet, narrow staircases and attic rooms of the servants needed to keep the household functioning.

Playing Gothic was the first time I experienced an old mansion through the social context it was actually made for. Since the larp had a number of partially overlapping runs, the players of each run had to arrive discreetly so as not to disturb ongoing play. Thus, a taxi left me and several other players outside the grounds of the Danish country manor where the larp took place and an organizer came to fetch us, guiding us discreetly to a servant’s entrance. This way, we’d be as invisible as possible to the players who were at that moment gazing forlornly out the windows as the poets.

We spent the evening doing workshops and then retired for the night, all on the basement floor of the expansive building. The next day, we had more workshops before we’d start play at 14:00 as the poets.

Lord Byron and Percy Bysshe Shelley were both aristocrats. As the poets, we’d be sleeping in the magnificent first floor bedrooms so before play started, we bundled up our linens and carried them up the stairs to where we’d sleep the second night, in grand style. We moved from the servant side to the public facing side.

Our third day onsite, our second day of play, it was our turn to play the servants. Thus, we bundled up the linens from our beds again. Most of the servant’s rooms were in the attic. We shifted back to the servant side both inside the fiction and physically inside the mansion.

At night, the mansion was extremely atmospheric. Waking up to go to the bathroom, I was walking the corridors alone, listening to the strange sounds of the building, pitch black doorways and creaking windows looming over me.

It’s a common human experience that when you wake up, your brain misconstrues something you see in the dark. The shape of a coat hanging from a doorframe looks like the silhouette of a human. For one reason or another, I’m very prone to this. It happens all the time and I don’t really get an emotional reaction from it anymore. Seeing something looming in the dark just after waking up, I know it’s just my brain being stupid again. The vision goes away when I turn on the lights.

I was sleeping in my room the third night, on my side cradling a pillow with my left arm, my hand resting against my face.

As I woke up, I saw a hand holding my hand.

Turns out, I wasn’t quite as blasé as I’d thought. It took a while to fall asleep again after I’d frantically grabbed for my cellphone light.

Who Is Remembered

One of the key moments of the larp is a séance involving prophetic statements about the futures of the poets. The themes of who gets remembered and who’ll have a legacy are brought into the open.

As players we knew the statements were true and we knew which applied to which character. This meant that the unfairness of how these people’s lives proceeded was integral to the experience, both in terms of character history and future fate.

The Romantic poets are long dead and the versions we play are fictional, calibrated to the questions we are interested in exploring. From the biographies I knew the larp’s take on history was surprisingly faithful. Perhaps the poets had led such dramatic lives that it was easier to adapt them to the purposes of the larp’s design. Still, I also knew the versions we played were romanticized and exaggerated to make the larp function.

Photo by Simon Brind.

The question of who is remembered and how was explored both explicitly and implicitly. It was an ongoing topic of conversation for our characters who operated on what they knew at that moment: Lord Byron was famous, while the others were unknowns, although Percy Bysshe Shelley had written poems that could go somewhere. Other works, like Frankenstein, were still in the future.

Our characters didn’t know that in terms of popular impact, Mary Shelley would in time be the most enduring of the writers present. Although Lord Byron and Percy Bysshe Shelley both continue to be read, it’s no exaggeration to say that Frankenstein is in a completely different category. As players we knew this and were able to play on it, even as it remained outside the frame of the fiction.

From her biography, I knew that Mary Shelley’s relationship with success was complicated. Her creative career was overshadowed by the difficult fact that her biggest hit was her first book. She wrote many others but never managed to capture lightning again.

Percy Bysshe Shelley was never particularly popular during his lifetime. His poems became iconic only after his death, and one person who put a lot of work into making that happen was Mary Shelley. You could almost say that the idea of Percy Bysshe Shelley as the archetypal ethereal elf-poet was created by Mary as she curated and contextualized his work.

A play based on Mary’s Frankenstein made her novel a pop culture phenomenon already during her lifetime and accelerated sales of the book. After Percy’s death, she exercised significant control over how his legacy should be remembered. In all this, although she suffered many indignities and setbacks made worse by 19th century gender discrimination and the travails of being a professional writer, she also exercised power of her own. She was an active participant in the shaping of literary memory.

Of the poet characters in Gothic, I find the most tragic to be Claire Clairmont and Dr. Polidori. The latter was the only one alongside Mary who actually completed the story he came up with during those fateful days at Villa Diodati, called The Vampyre, a progenitor of the romantic vampire genre. Although not as famous as Frankenstein, it too has remained in the canon of horror literature.

Dr. Polidori based the vampire of his story on Lord Byron and when he got it published, the publisher decided to attribute it to Byron instead of its true author. Although Byron himself demanded that his name be removed, this and other setbacks eventually depressed Polidori so much that he took his own life at the age of 25.

The author as the servant Flecher. Photo by Juhana Pettersson.

Working people barely get remembered at all. The servant characters were also based on real people at least to some degree, but the problem is that records about their lives are limited. The servant I played, William Fletcher, was probably the one of whom the most complete picture is available from historical sources because he stayed with Byron for such a long time and enjoyed a very close relationship with him.

As each day of play ended, we received letters informing us of the future fates of our characters. Percy’s letter didn’t have a significant effect on me because I already knew his fate. Reading Fletcher’s letter was a much more emotional experience. Although he might have felt an inkling of power and control amidst the terror-infused chaos of midnight at Villa Diodati, in the end he was just a poor man living in an age that wasn’t very kind to those without money, title and connections.

In the end, all the famous people around him failed to take care of him.

This was the fate of Claire Clairmont too, a lover of Lord Byron and Percy Bysshe Shelley who ended up betrayed by both and having to make her own way in a cold, uncaring world. Still, some of her perspective remains. Even before the larp, I’d already become familiar with her voice because her writings were used extensively as source material in the Mary Shelley biography.

Living Words

Playing a famous poet is intimidating for those of us not capable of writing great poetry on demand and Gothic had a clever solution for this problem: The off-game room had a stack of poems and you could grab one and just decide that it was something your poet had just created.

As a player, you had what you needed to make a scene work.

That was my experience of the larp in general. The production model of overlapping small runs used in Gothic is difficult to pull off and requires that everything runs smoothly. This was the case and if there were any hiccups backstage, you didn’t really see them.

Similarly, I was blessed with a cohesive group of co-players who shared similar priorities for what we wanted to do. You could sign up for the larp either as an individual or a group. The run I played in was the only one composed of individual sign ups while the other runs were groups who had signed up together. Due to luck or good casting, I felt our group shared a similar level of interest in exploring the mythology of the Romantic poets and their legacies.

Emotionally, the heaviest scenes were all when I was playing Percy Bysshe Shelley. I got confronted with my failures as a man, a poet, a husband, a lover and a radical, but all that is much easier to deal with when you’ve spent the day as a poet of immortal genius.

The most meaningful scene I played was at the culmination of a game of hide and seek instigated fairly late at night. I ran after Mary, thinking that we could hide together, but the hiding place she chose in the servant’s quarters was for one person only. Realizing I needed a place of my own, I used the same hiding place that had worked for me the last time I’d played hide and seek, probably thirty years ago: Behind the door.

Lord Byron’s hired companion Tita rushed into the room with a baying crowd and noticed Mary. Someone even banged on the door I was hiding behind, but they didn’t notice me and eventually left the servant’s quarters altogether, leaving behind Mary and her maid.

I revealed myself and Mary, supported by the maid Elise, let me have it, all the poison in our relationship, everything that was wrong, pouring out in one powerful, eloquent torrent. I was staggered by it and needed a moment to take it all in. At that point, Elise left, leaving me and Mary alone. I sat on the bed and the conversation continued, slowly shifting gears until it’d moved from the emotional fireworks of gothic horror into a more realistic emotional register.

My key to playing a Romantic poet was that they were very young, precocious teenagers given agency by status and wealth. Lord Byron came across as an elder statesman and he was just four years older than Percy Bysshe Shelley. How come the poets were so irresponsible, so extra? Well, they were barely adults!

When I had my Percy Bysshe Shelley phase, I was at an arts high school where you had a lot of peer support if you wanted to be dramatic. The first time I got drunk in my life, it was with absinthe smuggled from Portugal by my grandmother. (It was illegal in Finland at that time.) We did the whole ceremony with a friend and I got so wasted, I couldn’t take the bus home in the morning without puking on the sidewalk.

Who knows, if I’d had the wealth and fortune of a Percy Bysshe Shelley or a Lord Byron, what heights of folly I would have managed at that age?

Photo by Simon Brind.

Gothic

Gothic was produced by the Avalon Larp Studio collective.

Main organizers: Simon Brind, Halfdan Keller Justesen, Laurie Penny, Martine Svanevik, and Sagalinn Tangen.

Content writers: Aina S. Lakou and Charlie Ashby.

Website feedback and proofreading: Alexis Moisand, Alma Elofsson Edgar, Esperanza Montero, Eva Wei, Andreas Markehed, and Siri Sandquist.

Location Scouts: Julie Streit Pilegaard (main location), Ragnhild Hutchinson, Tidvis (playtest one) and Laurie Penny (playtest two).

Food Design: Anna Katrine Bønnelycke and Maria Østerby Elleby.

Playtesters: Lars Kristian Løveng Sunde, Jørn Norum Slemdal, Frida Sofie, Danny Meyer Wilson, Tor Kjetil Edland, Aina S. Lakou, Ingrid G. Storrø, Kerstin Örtberg, Halfdan Keller Justesen, Kol Ford, Emmer Felber, Rebel Rehbinder, James De Worde, Dominika Kovacova, Jorg Rødsjø, Martine Svanevik, and Charlie Ashby.

Onsite Crew: Maria Kolseth Jensen, Sascha Stans, and Søren Werge.

For additional acknowledgements see the larp website.

Cover photo: The larp location. Photo by Simon Brind.

2023-10-11