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''{{Quote|text=We have come far from beyond the point of no return and even though human kind is not threatened with extinction, the things that made us human are disappearing. Consciousness, soul or free will, whatever it is that made us different from beasts, is almost gone. […]
''{{Quote|text=The cultures were developed from A4 presentations to something that the players had an intuitive sense of, rather that a set of rules and norms. The workshops and the big effort made to work with cultures and matching of expectations had a central role in making the larp as succesfull successful as it was.'' (male |author=Male player, post |source=Post-larp)}}
''{{Quote|text=I looked at Tyr and he looked back. At first I looked away, but looked angry so I looked at him again. We gained eye contact and stared at each other for a long, long time, and I think people noticed. Then he stood up, and I jumped down from the tree I was sitting in and stood before him. We stood there for a long time. Then he raised his arms and I followed…then I started to snarl and he shouted, we growled and snarled for a long time, while we held each others heads…but I was the first Nappa, I was Ulvs first mate. So I had to win.''
''We shouted and walked around each other, while holding on to the other, while we shouted and pushed each other. It went on for a long time. Then the Ka started to stand up…fist Ild placed herself behind Tyr and I got angry and shouted even louder. Then Må placed herself behind me, then Lo and then Eg. Then he started to give up. First he stopped shouting, then he collapsed and suddenly he was sitting on the ground howling and hitting the ground.''
''I turned around while the Ka sat down. I looked down at him and I growled at him. I stood above him. Then I snorted and snarled while I walked around him. He still howled submissively. I took a hold of him to get him up. To get him to stop. He was still second Nappa, but he did not want to. I wheezed at him “stop behaving like a non”. I picked him up, took hold of his arm, nodded at him and let go. Then I climbed the tree and stood up, snorted and then sat again.''(|author=Male player, post |source=Post-larp evaluation)|multiline=y}}
''{{Quote|text=When the relationships in the game feel real, the game world feels real. You have the ability to pull the action in the game from the clunky levels of kings and politics, down into the very subtle shifts and processes in the group.|author=[[Andie Nordgren]]|title="High Resolution Larping: Enabling Subtlety at Totem and Beyond"|source=''[[Playground Worlds]]'' (Nordgren 2008Ropecon ry), [[Markus Montola]] & [[Jaakko Stenros]] (ed.)}}
''{{Quote|text=I wish I could explain it to outsiders, but I doubt that they will ever understand. They have missed so much and therefore you [Totem] will always have a special place in my heart. We have experienced this with and against each other. We have built up and teared down, but first of all we have done it together.'' (female |author=Female player post|source=Post-game) ''It was very hard to let go of the Totem. It has been wonderful to achieve some distance to it. I am now thinking that it was a positive experience. I have no doubt that it was the craziest experience in a hundred years. I did not know that a larp could hit me this hard. It was a brutal experience.'' (female player post-game)}}
In {{Quote|text=It was very hard to let go of the context of Danish larp, Totem . It has been wonderful to achieve some distance to it. I am now thinking that it was a bold experiment positive experience. I have no doubt that it was the craziest experience in exploring how far you can push your participants physically and mentallya hundred years. The notion of workshops as I did not know that a central tool of communication and planning of larps has also spread and one of the most significant outputs from the larp is a workshop handbook (workshophåndbogen) describing the thoughts and tools behind the workshops in could hit me this hard. It was a simple and practical waybrutal experience. |author=Female player|source=Post-game}}
== Further Reading ==[[Andie Nordgren|NordgrenIn the context of Danish larp, Andie]] (2008): High Resolution Larping: Enabling Subtlety at Totem was a bold experiment in exploring how far you can push your participants physically and Beyondmentally. In Montola, Markus & Stenros, Jaakko (eds.): The notion of workshops as a central tool of communication and planning of larps has also spread and one of the most significant outputs from the larp is [[Playground WorldsThe Workshop Handbook]]. Ropecon ry(workshophåndbogen) describing the thoughts and tools behind the workshops in a simple and practical way.
Andreasen, Peter; Høgdall, Rasmus; Kromann, Mathias; Munthe-Kaas, Peter; Thurøe, Kristoffer (2009) Workshophåndbogen== External Links ==* [https://workshophandbook.wordpress.com/ The Workshop Handbook][[Category:Larp events]]
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{{LarpInfobox larp event|imagedate={{start and end dates|date=2007-07-|7|18|2007|7|22}}|location=Burnt down farmyard near Randers|country=, Denmark
|name=Totem
|english_name=Totem|motto=|number_of_runs=1|number_of_players_per_run=28|number_of_players_totalparticipants=28|duration=54 hours (2 days´n days and nights + 6 hours)|homepage_urldesigners=|homepage_link_text={{unbulleted list|full_credits=Designed by [[Peter Andreasen]], |[[Kristoffer Thurøe]], |[[Mathias Kromann]], |[[Peter Munthe-Kaas]], |[[Rasmus Høgdall]].}}|budget={{currency|45000 DKR|DKK}}|participation_fee={{currency|1000 DKR|DKK}}, {{currency|2000 DKR |DKK}} with costume|game_mechanicstechniques={{unbulleted list|[[Ars Amandi]] and |[[Ars Ordo]]}}
}}
''Adapted from the text "Totem - Bodylanguage, Tribalism and High Definition Larping" by [[Peter Munthe-Kaas ]] originally published in [[Nordic Larp(book)|Nordic Larp]], edited by [[Jaakko Stenros ]] and [[Markus Montola ]] (2010, [[Fëa Livia]])''
== Info ==Full credits: [[Peter Schønnemann Andreasen]], [[Kristoffer Thurøe]], [[Mathias Kromann]], [[Peter Munthe-Kaas]], [[Rasmus Høgdall]] Date: July 18 to 22 2007 Location: Burnt down farmyard near Randers, Denmark Length: 54 hours Number of players: 28 Budget: 45.000 DKR Participation fee: 1000 DKR, 2000 DKR with costume Game mechanics: [[Ars Amandi]] and [[Ars Ordo]] == BodylanguageBody Language, Tribalism and High Definition Larping ==''{{Quote|text=Må was painted the first time by her love from last summer. It became a last fleeting memory of what had been, and a sort of good-bye ritual for the two…When Må woke up on the second day at the ritual site, somewhat late, she knew that it was now allowed for her and the other females in the tribe to take mates…Ulv, the alpha female has taken three mates, and since there are only seven men in the tribe and four women all in all, Må quickly realizes that if she wants to keep her position as second in command she needs two mates for herself. One she took out of love, the other one for pure status reasons.'' (|author=[[Andie Nordgren]] |title="High Resolution Larping: Enabling Subtlety at Totem and Beyond"|source=''[[Playground Worlds]]'' (2008Ropecon ry), [[Markus Montola]] & [[Jaakko Stenros]] (ed.)}}
Totem was an experimental post-apocalyptical larp about tribes. The participants experienced life in a society without civilization, a tribal culture where taboos and rituals dominated life. Play focused around a rite of passage where body language, status and hierarchy, producing a very intense experience for the participants.
Totem was a tragedy, a story about mankind forgetting its culture. But it was also a story of personal tragedy for the participants who, in this extremely hierarchic society, had to see former lovers taken as mates by others, or personally ending up at the bottom of the hierarchy. As the game centred on a liminal ritual where the young become adults and the old adults leave the tribe, everybody had the burden of knowing that they one day, when they themselves were ending adult life, they would pass on the fragments they remembered from the rituals to the children of the tribe.
The post-apocalyptic setting was only used to emphasize the premise of Totem; that the process of civilization had reverted and was now at the last stages of degeneration. The participants would enact two tribes who had travelled traveled far to gather on their sacred ritual grounds, where the young from each tribe would enter adulthood through a rite of passage.
We want to create a story about a degenerating culture. Human kind got further than we could have ever dreamt dreamed of, but the tide of progress turned and civilization started to degenerate. In this future people again live in nomadic tribes without written language or significant remnants of the lost civilization. Instinct takes over where there are no longer rules or explanations. Meaning and depth is redundant, words are forgotten and songs are hummed instead…'' (|source=Totem website)|multiline=y}}
== Arts for Loving and Building Hierarchy ==
Totem was preceded by a half a year of collaborative preparatory work of players and organizers. Three weekend workshops were staged. The first working with and the central aspects of the larp (bodylanguagebody language, loving, hierarchy), the second with relations in the two groups and the third one was mostly used for small-talk about the game and making costumes. The methods used were inspired partly by experiences as participants in other larps (especially [[Mellan himmel och hav]]), partly built on the game organizer crew's previous work in [[System Danmarc]] and partly inspired by [[Forum Theatre]].
A central part of the workshops was creating a safe environment for the participants to work and play in, in order to prepare the players for the demanding larp. Work was carried out on creating positive group dynamics and empowering and including the participants in the creative process. Both body language and spoken language were worked on, as the idea was to hamper the use of speech without reverting to “caveman language”. Thus, it was decided that only the present could be addressed in speech, as the ability to think hypothetically was lost. Body language was practiced by creating still pictures (drawing on impro exercises) of potential in-game situations. The participants worked with correcting postures, and with the expressions of the physical image they wanted to project and thus created a collective understanding of how they wanted body language to work in the larp.
The workshops also worked very well in introducing and playing around with the diegetic tools of the larp. We borrowed the [[Ars Amandi]] method for amorous simulation from [[Mellan himmel och hav]], and created [[Ars Ordo]] for resolving conflicts without using violence by using eye-contact.
== Sacred Grounds ==
The larp was driven by planned rituals, competitions and moral dilemmas led by elders of the tribes (game masters). They were carriers of culture and tradition, leading the young into adulthood. In the beginning of the larp the elders played a central role, but as the larp proceeded their influence diminished, until the participants were left with the full burden of adult life.
The first day of the larp was oriented towards introductions of the area and the cultural traditions, common and different, of the tribes. The participants were cleansed in a sweat lodge, where they also went through a spiritual dream journey to find their totem animals and names (prepared in one of the workshops). During this day the young also learned to mix the sacred colourscolors, which the tribes used in body painting, symbolizing adulthood and the right to mate. Constant painting and repainting of each other's bodies was a central activity during the rest of the larp.
The second day evolved around the exploration of the possibilities, burdens and responsibilities of adulthood. Every initiate crafted a symbol of youth, which was burned at the end of the day. They received necklaces as a symbol of their adulthood, while the elders died socially, symbolized by the donning of [[masks]]. From this moment on, the initiates could fight, love and mate as adults.
The beauty of Ars Ordo is in that one party invariably yields, and the losing side of the contest feels the loss very personally: After all, this kind of a masculine contest is always also a nondiegetic contest between players.
The body-painting was also a central part of the hierarchy in the larp. As painting oneself was a taboo, the amount of attention given to your paintings was a visual status symbol. Also, the dominant gender established ownership by painting their sign on their mates.
These two elements, in addition to several other aspects, made Totem a very real experience, a tangible and visceral experience for the participants constantly aware of each other's actions as part of the status game. Andie Nordgren (2008) has named this detailed interaction as high resolution larping. She argues that the building a strong ensemble through diegetic rules and workshops enabled a lot of high resolution interaction, as the participants received both a framework and tools to maneuver in the larp.
== Beyond the Rite of Passage ==
The wall dividing the participant from the character in Totem was very thin and thus many participants were very personally affected by the experience. Right after ending the larp we worked a lot with debriefing, to allow the players to resume their everyday identities in a calm and safe fashion.
