Changes

==Impact==

Early concepts, techniques, and perceptions of [[playingstyle]]s in [[Norway]] are deeply rooted in the everyday situations that arise from playing non-stop for days in a forest, living in cabins heated with firewood, and making and taking food together as a large family, tribe, clan or [[ætt]].

The winterlarps moved the action away from running in the woods with rubber swords into classic home and family situations, including negotiating between groups about marriages, resources or religion. Girls were often more clever and conspicious than the young male participants in improvising and driving the interaction between the characters in such situations. These larps were a crucial factor for the relative gender-balance of participants in Oslo; they helped recruit a majority of the first female organisers of Norway.

The traditions among both organisers and participants of the Winterlarps in Oslo provided the foundations for [[iconic larp]]s such as the 2nd World War larp [[1942]], and the westernlarps [[Wanted]] and [[Once upon a time]].

[[1942]] and [[Once upon a time]] are included in the [[Nordic Larp Book]].

[[Image:Enighet02 viking94.png|thumb|right| Daily life was depicted, friendship and marriage central themes. From Winterlarp 2002 and 1994.]]

As [[360]] degree larps, the winterlarps avoided [[off-game]] time by including every facet of character life -- including time spent sleeping -- within the game, requiring players to provide seemingly period underwear, nightcaps and the like for a real [[in-character]] experience. [[Non-diegetic]] items not belonging to a character's environment were banned from the location. This included watches, flashlights, cameras, walk-mans and, after some years, beepers and cellphones.

Participants stayed [[in character]] while sleeping, eating, and visiting toilets. This made almost every location an active part of the game. Occasionally, players making dinner or doing dishes might make the kitchen temporarily or permanently into a [[off-game]] area, but apart from the kitchen and the organisers' own sleeping quarters, the ideal was that all the time and space avaible would be a part of the larp. Since the cabins were relatively crowded with people, the idea that any indoor location was not part of the [[diegesis]] was viewed as limiting to the game. It might not have been a conscious choice of the organisers, but the relatively young playergroup would get so agitated anyway, that it was difficult to ban participants from sneaking around other sleeping players, or from kidnapping people when they went to the traditional outdoor toilets in the dark. On the contrary, the designers of the games promoted these kind of activities, urging participants to play with the borders of the [[diegesis]] by the design of secret cults of kidnappers, and by secret ritual brotherhoods that would demand that characters wake up at night to perform secret activities, hidden from eachother.

Organizers tested the limits of participants' expectations and their commitment to the [[diegesis]] and [[360]] illusion, for example, by breaking a glass window as a part of the start of the game. [[In-game]], a couple of mercenaries shattered a window and crawled into the kitchen (deemed by a few players by habit to be an [[off-game]] space). What really happened was that the participants playing the mercenaries' characters were told to crawl through the open window into the kitchen of the forest cabin in question.

On the inside of the window, inside the kitchen, an organizer waited in the dark with an old window frame. When the mercenaries starting climbing into the window, the organizer banged the old window frame into the floor so the glass broke all over the place, and the racket woke up all the other players. Before anyone noticed, the organizer blended into the many people waking up and start the game and check what was going on inside the kitchen.

==Plotlines==

==Origin==

Changing the climate and the physical environment from tents and grass, to snow and cabins affected the content and pace of these games.

Many of these larps were played during the Easter Holidays.

Traditionally Norwegian families go into the mountains and visit old family owned cabins or farms during the Easter holidays.

The cabins often have poor sanitation facilities, no electricity and are heated with firewood.

These are holidays where the family spends a lot of time outdoor during daytime, and gather around a long table to share common meals evening time. Singing and playing cardgames is often also a part of this holiday. The winterlarps can be viewed as the larpers of Oslos mimicking these traditions into their larp tradition.

==Flying Start==

* A Winterlarp usually had a typical element of a [[flying start]]. Participants would go to bed [[out of character]] with the instructions that the larp will start when they wake up. Often the organisers would stage a scene early morning when everybody were asleep that would wake people up and kickstart the [[story]]. This would allow the [[characters]] a reason to feel alarmed, and also allowing the players excuses within the [[diegesis]] for their character to be confused or insecure about how to react believable [[in character]] for the first hours of the larp.

==List of Larps==

==Documentation==

Tv-report made by the Youthdepartment of the National Broadcasting of Norway (NRK) in 1992 from the first Oslo Winterlarp {{#ev:youtube|_siS2M_h95g}}

Slideshow of photos from The Black Death larp in 1995 - {{#ev:youtube|nv4OP1I5QnE}}

[[Category:Larps]]