Morgenrøde (Morning Red) was our take on the Danish hippie movement. Through three acts, 31 players portrayed the peak of the Danish hippie community and their endeavors to establish Denmark’s first grand commune: Morgenrøde – the utopia of their dreams.
Spanning the late 60’es and the early 70’es, the game showed the communes rise and fall. From an initial summer of love to the grinding frustrations of clashing ways of life to a final collapse, when the distance between Marxist revolutionary and flower power protagonist became too great.
Our aim was never to re-enact the heyday of the Hippie, or give the players an experience of actually being there. Rather, Morgenrøde was focused on the overarching story. We tried to sketch out a social movement and – more importantly – the consequences for the people who lived that movement.
A Dialogue with Parents and Traditions – Making Morgenrøde
We had many reasons for making Morgenrøde. First and foremost, we shared a fascination of the time. Most of our parents were young when the rebellion against everything established was driving the counter culture forward. Some were a part of the struggle. Others watched from the outside.
But none of them can escape the influence stretching from The Summer of Love over the hazy days of Woodstock and all the way to the present. In all their handicraftiness, the hippies made a permanent mark on our culture, which we wanted to explore with equal parts love and critique. We love living in a world of freedoms won by the pioneers of past generations, but we do not agree with all their ways of changing the world. In that way, Morgenrøde was a personal game for all of us.
Furthermore, we were very much inspired by both recent larps from the Nordic scene – such as Just a Little Lovin’ – and by the Danish free-form tradition, as it is seen at the convention Fastaval. We did not start with the intention of making a hybrid between the two scenes, but that is more or less what we ended up with. The game was split into acts with workshops before, after and in-between, something that has been seen many times before in the Nordic scene.
We started two of the acts with a free-form scene, meant to capture the vibe of a joint meeting in the commune, where every minute detail of daily life was discussed and voted on. These scenes were run by an organizer who assumed the role of a game master not present in the fiction of the game. By mixing and matching the two traditions, we sought to make a game with the narrative focus of a Fastaval free-form game and the immersive and physical qualities of a Nordic larp.
Morgenrøde was thus created as a dialogue between both the world of our parents and the present, and between different schools of larp and role-playing.
Love, Liberation and Revolution – The Themes of Morgenrøde
The more we dug into the time period and the counterculture the more we realized that the hippies were far from one group. It was a far-ranging movement of everything from Marxist revolutionaries over flower-power spiritualists to bra burning feminists fighting for women’s right to equal opportunity.
Most spoke about a revolution, but what that meant ranged from the violent seizure of the means of production to the dawning of the Age of Aquarius and New Age of spirituality. We chose to limit the themes of the story to love, liberation and revolution, which still gave a number of different interpretations of the purpose of Morgenrøde. The characters were all pre-written and the themes – and clashes between them – were thus worked into the very core of the game. In the end, it was these differences that tore the commune apart.
One Pill Makes You Larger… – The Mechanics and Design of Morgenrøde
We tried to make our triad of themes as pervasive as possible. We kept love, liberation and revolution as the guiding principles for all design decisions. In our game design, this led us to designing a series of mechanics, which should enable the players to act out the three themes.
One common thread with these mechanics was a high degree of voluntarism. The players could choose which mechanics to use when, which in turn helped them steer their game experience towards one of the three themes.
For the political theme we applied house rules for Morgenrøde which the political characters could enforce, mostly via self-criticism, inspired by a quite vicious form of social control, practiced by the Maoists of the time.
We tried to give the die-hard political a micro society to shape and manipulate. The rules were modified during the free-form scenes of the joint meetings and applied to the inhabitants of Morgenrøde as guidelines on how to live their lives. The three basic rules, which we wrote pregame, were:
Love your fellow inhabitants of the commune.
Fight capitalism in all its forms, together with your comrades.
Expand your mind, and always be ready to experience new things, together with the rest of the commune.
Seeing as hallucinogenic drugs became somewhat popular among the hippies, we chose these as the game mechanic backbone for the spiritual theme. In our experience, pretending to use drugs during a larp, whether it is snorting powdered sugar or eating candy that symbolizes pills, and trying to fake the high afterwards, never really works all too well. Thus we needed a way for the characters to take LSD without the players having to fake the following high. This became the Drug Box.
We decided that marijuana and anything like that was recreational and as such would have no effect on the characters, just as drinking a beer (which was nonalcoholic). All other substances were equal to LSD, symbolized by small squares of eatable paper with a white rabbit print on it. Taking LSD was never done alone and affected the relationship between the two or more characters taking part.
The trips themselves were played out in the Drug Box – a black-box with a white sheet wall which had psychedelic visuals projected on to it and a matching soundscape. An organizer played a spirit guide and game mastered the session.
The essential thought was that a trip could be good or bad, and that the nature of the trip would decide how the personal relation which the players brought into the trip, would be affected. The art for the spirit guide was to match the psychedelic story of the trip to the changing relationships. This ended up including, but far from limiting itself to: Deer grassing in a grove, two souls trapped in a cellar being flooded, a mother-of-the-revolution carrying her child across the ocean in a train and some forty-odd trippier scenes.
For the theme of personal liberation we implemented two game mechanics. One was the option for the players to be undressed during the game (with some limitations). This was very optional and not treated as a game mechanic as such. Rather, we tried to create a safe atmosphere, where it was possible for those who wanted to explore that part of the movement. Then there was the “love room” where characters could always go to have sex.
Many of the original hippie communes actually had these love rooms and as such it seemed like the obvious choice, but it also provided a way for the players to play out sex scenes in relative public, without it being frowned upon. As such we hoped for the sexual liberation to add to the stories.
Three Things We Learned from Morgenrøde
To us, Morgenrøde was a success. We were happy with the outcome and loved the look and feel. But that, we suppose, is what most organizers would say. So instead of the usual anniversary speech-style finale, here are three things we learned as game designers:
Continue to explore the crossovers. The free-form and Nordic larp-scenes have been merging for some years now. Find the interesting interactions and try the impossible. For us, this meant free-form scenes with thirty players and a highly specialized (and we dare say awesome) way of simulating drugs.
Remember that history is also last year. Historical games are hard and demanding when it comes to gear and accuracy. Games about contemporary cultural history are easier and the players’ knowledge can be a lot more nuanced than is the case with most of the medieval counterparts. We are certainly not the first, but more and more games are exploring recent history. It’s worth it.
Clash of playing culture should concern you. Perhaps the Nordic larp scene is becoming so homogeneous, that we’ve stopped to consider it. But a lesson is that you should always be very clear about how a game is played, the characters should be read and what can be expected when combining players from different national and/or international scenes.
Morgenrøde
Credits: Anders Lyng Ebbehøj, Astrid Andersen, Silas Boje Sørensen, Troels Barkholt-Spangsbo, Søren Lyng Ebbehøj, Klaus Meier Olsen and Jonas Trier-Knudsen. Date: August 12-15, 2014 Location: Græsrodsgården, Kalundborg, Denmark Length: 2 days Players: 31 Budget: €6,900 Participation Fee: €110 Website:http://morgenrode.dk/
Cover photo: One of the joint meetings where everyone was present to discuss everything from buying a saw to taking away the right of individuals to their own body (Play, Jonas Trier-Knudsen). Other photos by Jonas Trier-Knudsen and Bjarke Pedersen.
In 2014, I conducted a survey about attitudes towards photography and video in larp. I got nearly 500 responses from many different countries, and while I would love to publish the full results here, they’re a bit long for the scope of this KP book. The numbers are available at ars-amandi.se instead, and they’re really quite interesting, so I suggest you take a look if you’re organising or photographing any time soon. What I will do here is outline some of the different arguments and thought processes concerning the way we play and the way we document.
Images and the Nature of Larp
For good, bad, or ugly, we’ve all been photographed in larps. Someone has managed to catch that moment where your costume looked brilliant and you’re screaming at someone, and damned if you don’t look like a movie star. As organizers, we’ve also probably felt the crushing stupidity of not having recorded anything at a larp, and about three months later finding out that nobody cares about our larp if there aren’t pics.
We take images, share images, store images, publish images, broadcast images, and print images, in both still and moving form. So we should talk about images in larp.
Particularly in larp, because as it happens, larps are semi-private (and sometimes transgressive) events. One feature of larp that allows us to play some very interesting things is that the larp is a contained and (ideally) safe space, both physically and temporally.
Our collective understanding seems to be that transgressive play is at times fun and desired, so we make it possible through a space that is contingent – it only exists here and now, and in the context of a game. You might even wonder whether larp is safe so it can include transgression, or if larp became transgressive because it was “safe”.
The contingency of a larp is an important feature for many kinds of play, but also for many kinds of people.
What one player considers transgressive may be less remarkable to another player, and this may simply be a matter of life experience or taste, but can also relate to one’s situation in real life. A schoolteacher may want to play a murderer; a politician might want to play a coked-up rock star; a person in a committed relationship may want to play a fantasy romance; a judge might want to play a slave owner. Larp can offer some freedom of expression and play not only for transgressive or illegal acts, but it offers this to people whose real world lives impose restrictions on what they’re publicly allowed to consider “fun”.
We like to ask “what if” our world had different norms – for violence, sexuality, social structure, or pretty much anything else we can imagine. I, for one, am an artist and frankly can be photographed doing pretty much anything and it will only help me.
But I have seen people do things in larps that, if taken out of context, would ruin their career. I have seen people standing next to other players who were doing things that, if photographed, could ruin that person’s career. A third of the survey respondents reported that some in-game photos could cause trouble for them.
(Speaking of standing next to someone, one of the reasons why Facebook’s own facial recognition software is more accurate than the CIA’s is because Facebook knows who you know, and recognizes who you’re likely to be standing next to.
Just a fun fact for anyone who thinks that not tagging people by name on Facebook is sufficient to protect anonymity.)
Larp, as we have been doing it, is not a public performance; everyone present is complicit in the course of action and has both interest and agency in where the story goes. When you sign up, you might have a ballpark idea of what you’d like to do and what kind of activities you’ll indulge in, but I think most players would agree that if you knew beforehand exactly what was going to happen, there would be no point to larping at all.
Combine this with larp’s famous alibi for indulging in things we can’t do in real life, and this makes most players likely to do or say things that they can’t vet beforehand, and which might not be palatable if taken out of context – in part because the whole point of the larp was to create a context that would not be possible or morally defensible to live out in our real lives. This makes organizers responsible for at least some degree of privacy.
It’s not exactly a completely private event, either: we trust others – some of them near strangers – with our play. We work towards building this trust in person. And yet, we trust people who are potentially hostile with our images. Images do a great deal of violence to the safeness of a larp. They bring something from within the frame of the larp, outside that frame. They are objects that expand the agreed safe space in a way that is not predictable.
They have the potential to expand it very far geographically as well as temporally, and they very quickly collapse the context. They take a private-ish event and bring it into public consumption.
One recent example of this is the Czech larp Hell on Wheels, the first few runs of which included players who darkened their skin to play characters of African descent. This was largely unremarkable until photographs reached the larp community in the United States, where putting dark makeup on white skin to play a black person is inescapably racist and very offensive indeed.
The ensuing conversation saw accusations of racism towards the Czechs, imperialism toward the Americans, and rather a lot of publicity for the larp in a way that the Czech organisers likely never even considered.
Was the dialogue useful? Hard to say. On one hand, it often takes an outsider to an in-group to point out where your blind spots are. On the other, can the piece be condemned on the strength of its images alone, without hearing how the topic was handled in-game? Expect this issue to show up again:
72% of respondents said they’re okay with photos of themselves playing a different social group, class, or culture.
The Public Image of Larp
It’s curious that photographs from a larp get taken out of context so quickly – it almost seems as though people are waiting to find something. But perhaps that’s human nature. A photograph of the larp only recalls the event for someone who was actually there; for anyone else, the context stands only on the weight of what is visible in the picture.
The public does not (yet) understand larpers to be like actors. If Brad Pitt plays a Nazi, we all understand that Brad Pitt is a very cool guy for playing such a hardcore character; in interviews he can even discuss the humanity and interestingness of that role, and we will still understand Brad Pitt to be a pretty cool guy. However, Prince Harry dressing up as a Nazi to go to a costume party is apparently a problem, because for some reason the public feels that it sends an ambiguous message as to how he feels about Nazis; after all, he dressed up as one for fun.
Larpers seem to fall somewhat more on the Prince Harry side at the moment. If you are photographed playing a person dying of AIDS, or wearing black-face, the photograph does not in itself convey any information as to whether this photograph was cultural production (i.e. art) or “fun”, and the overwhelming impression seems to be that you will give off an air of endorsement. And then there’s the Daily Mail (see below):
Ironically, headlines like this one are exactly why photographs and videos from larps are also needed. The popular view of larps (sorry, ‘LARPS’), which to this day retains the hint of Satanism it’s enjoyed since the 1980s, is one in which a bunch of well-meaning but sadly broken people get together in the woods and push each other psychologically until they can’t tell what’s real anymore.
Then someone dies, and it’s the plot of a blockbuster movie.
There will always be a misrepresented “popular view” for those who are outsiders of any activity, just as there is one for contemporary art (“My six year old could’ve painted that”) or sport (“Team sports are just a sublimation of the war impulse”). All of these are created by a combination of images and ignorance. Larp could benefit from having more images in the public – good images, attached to positive advocacy.
Interestingly, Cosmic Joke’s teaser and 18 min. documentary about College of Wizardry (2014) seemed to attract the “right” kind of press: admiration for a job well done, cool costumes and setting, and respect for the sheer crazy guts to put 120-200 people (depending on which article you read) in a castle for 2-5 days (depending on which article you read) to play as Harry Potter/in Hogwarts/in the Potterverse/in the Polandverse (depending on which article you read).
It appears to be the first single larp to get global media attention – and what’s more, positive media attention. The trailer and teaser combined had over one million hits on YouTube, among them Warner Brothers execs who had a few words to say about intellectual property – but that’s another essay entirely.
It should be noted that even the “wtf-type” attention garnered by the documentation of Panopticorp (2013) also caught the eye of people internationally who were interested in running the game; so clearly larpers know how to read between the lines of the Daily Mail. It seems that video documentation in particular is useful for getting media attention, and media attention is, we assume, good for the larp scene. It is certainly helpful for getting venues, financing, and interest for one’s next big project.
What to Record, When, Why, and How
It’s quite clear that players love photographs of themselves and their friends; particularly in the 48-or-so hours directly after a larp, players cry out for the visual proof that tells them yes, they were really there and they looked beautiful with all that snot running all over their faces after all their friends died and they had a desolate epiphany about their own existence. Most of us are guilty as charged here.
No organizer I spoke to would dream of letting a larp go un-photographed. For grant money, for pitches, for clout, for academic research, for being able to contribute to the ongoing creation of the Nordic larp canon, evidence is simply essential. It’s participation.
Video is a bit more fraught. Most respondents are okay with or enthusiastic about video so long as they know beforehand that it’s going to be there. My biggest beef here is that video crews and larpers aren’t used to each other – the boom operator will put a mic in the middle of a scene, and half of the larpers will shut up because it suddenly feels like filming a TV show and they don’t want to mess it up, or they’ll move out of the shot because they don’t want to be on camera. Video crews can literally alter the plot this way.
But either way, larp documentation is here to stay. So I’ll finish up with a little bit of advocacy and again invite you to check out the survey.
Should I Have In-game Photographs?
Yes, in general. People love them. If you want to be a bit sensitive and avoid affecting play, only photograph public scenes – or have your photographers playing characters, so we can interact with them, pose for them, or tell them to go away.
Should I Have Off-game Photographs?
Even better. A surprising number of people (67%) reported they were willing to recreate scenes afterwards for the purposes of photography. I would love to see an organizer design for this – it’s opt-in, and to anyone who wasn’t there, it’s not likely to make a lick of difference. Also, players are often quite happy with one or two decent character portraits.
When Should My Photo and Video Plans Be Communicated to the Players?
Before sign-up. A quarter of respondents reported they’d been photographed in-game without knowing there would be cameras present. The same amount agreed that we need photography policies as part of the sign-up process.
How Many Photographs Do I Need for Documentation?
I think there’s such a thing as too many photographs. If you want to make a film, go make a film. If you want to make a larp, for goodness’ sake leave players alone and let them play.
Should My Photographers and Video Crew Be In- or Off-game?
Respondents slightly favor in-game, by a factor of about 20%.
Can I Photograph Sensitive Scenes?
Ask your players. Maybe agree that interrogations or sex scenes won’t be photographed. Don’t assume everyone has the same common sense. Players (60%) reported their immersion gets really interrupted by the presence of a camera in a tough scene.
Is It the Player’s Responsibility to Tell a Photographer to Go Away?
Tricky. Some players will not want to go off-game to do this. Some will be playing characters of low agency, and this can affect the agency they take as a player.
Can I Use Hidden Video Cameras or Gopro’s to Be Less Intrusive?
Merlin’s Beard, no. Unless you’ve communicated it to your players and they either know where the cameras are, or they are totally okay with playing with hidden cameras, don’t do this. Always allow players to review hidden camera footage.
Can I Post to Instagram During Run-time?
No. Unless it’s part of your design, no no no.
Do Players Really Need to Vet Pictures Before They’re Published?
It’s a pain in the ass, but it’s their face you’re using, and you might not know what’s okay for them. It’s polite to do so.
But I Want to Do a Larp Where Photography Is Part of the Meta/rules/world!
Of course! Most players (78%) would love to play something where photography works as a game mechanic.
Photos and videos have the power to delight us, make our larps better, improve the scene and help us convince outsiders to take us seriously. Because of the nature of what we sometimes do together, photos and videos – and even just the act of taking them – have the power to violate the trust we place in each other. Larp is not a public performance – 69% of you agreed with this statement. It’s up to us to find ways to keep our hobby dangerous while we show it to the world.
How we created a Firefly larp, not exactly about Firefly
One day the world became too small for all of us. Then we started to settle other planets. Terraformation begun. Things changed. Lot of us became adventures, seeking freedom and independence. But with great power comes great responsibility… None of us had an idea of what the “Alliance” would be capable of…
Take my home, take my land,
take me where I cannot stand.
I don’t care, I’m still free,
you can’t take the sky from me…
Words from The Ballad of Serenity, the Firefly theme song.
What is Moon?
Moon is a chamber larp (3 hours + 1 hour debrief) for 10 players, situated in the Firefly universe. But the essence of the game lies in something else than in a cool sci-fi/western setting, and knowledge of Firefly is not necessary for playing the game.
After nearly four years of running Moon, we have decided that it’s time to capture moments from the life of this game. From the first idea that came to mind, to the last weekend when we put our grown-up child in the hands of other teams. This will not be a complete walk-through of the game, but an outline of useful tools for other game designers. We’ll try to describe features in enough detail that anyone can copy them.
Game Design & Tricks
First of all, we wanted to write a game not only to entertain people but also to make them think about a certain topic. That is why the whole Firefly setting is just scenery for our metaphor. Beyond a cool surface there is a very-much-discussed topic; the decision made by the Czechoslovakian president Edvard Beneš after the Munich Conference in 1938 (where he decided not to fight against Hitler and to let the country be occupied).
We wanted to show this difficult decision- making process as it applies to everyday life (“Would I risk the life of my spouse?”) at macro-level political circumstances. Players were not aware of the parallel before playing the game.
This is also the backbone storyline of the larp which drives the flow of the game and makes it cohesive, but it is followed by a number of smaller relationship-based plots. There were also three time points in the game which served as bottleneck for the players.
All of these were speeches, which redefined the situation and focused characters back on the main story plot. In the last one, the governor could choose one of the pre- written texts to decide whether the Moon colony would go to war or accept the occupants. That is the way we ensured a dramatic ending of the larp.
To make the game more authentic all the speeches were based on real historical materials (the Munich Agreement for example). It was a kind of easter egg for players, just like the names of the characters, which referred mainly to important Czechoslovak politicians or characters from well known books of the given period. This was surprisingly highly appreciated by a number of players afterwards.
The second interesting game design aspect is the storyline itself.
The whole scenario contains five smaller compact chapters linked together mainly by interpersonal stories and the history of the Moon colony itself.
Each character took part in 4 of 5 chapters. From the game designers’ perspective it worked well. It was easier to indicate if a certain character had enough content to deal with during the game, and the plot lines were logically coherent.
We accomplished coherence by a quite simple trick. There was a rule for adding any object or person to the plot: It has to be connected to as many characters as possible. So, for example there were messengers who were carrying important medicine and some message was given to them. But they were killed by another character, who stole both: the message and the medicine.
There were also someone ́s friends, who were furious about their death. Finally, the fate of the messengers was important for every character. And this brought to the game a sort of complexity where unintended conflicts and links between characters emerged (we used this technique in a more developed way in our newer games).
However, the chapters and connections were used only as a game design tool; for the players they were invisible. We wrote all the characters in the form of a story. As they were quite long (about 5 – 10 pages), each storyline or important information was repeated at the end of the text.
Meta-techniques in Moon
Our intention wasn’t to have a game full of rules, but some game tricks were necessary. After some discussion we picked three (four, after few reruns) of them.
First of all, there was an “intro” made of three scenes, which were written by us, and so became more like coordinated drama scenes. The reason, why we have decided to use this was in our experience of slow booting of chamber larps in that period and we didn’t want to have a game with a slow beginning.
This sadly proved that we probably weren’t able to manage them in the right way anyway, because in almost every run of the game, there was someone, who failed to do what was asked. It is possible that just writing a set of non-specific instructions on a piece paper and leaving the rest to the players wasn’t such good idea. The basic problem was probably in the strong chain of specified actions spread among different players.
A second meta-technique was special costume props. Aside from flags, hats, and so on, we had grey berets and brown pelerins. According to the Firefly universe (and our intention) there are two opposing sides of the conflict, and we needed players to have the possibility to show their affinity to the Browncoats or the Alliance explicitly. Anyone, who was wearing one or another, was for that moment publicly declaring “I am on side of…” This was also used to escalate conflicts between players subconsciously (and was also pretty and cool).
A third special rule was using a bit of music. For the whole runtime, there was music playing in the background (we’ve spent a significant amount of time picking music that would be fitting – surprisingly using the “shuffle” mode during the first few runs came up with mind-blowing scenes combining tough situations with precise lyrics). And when we wanted to intervene in the game (like radio broadcasts and booting scenes) we’d just turn the volume up, which intuitively made the players listen up for what would come next.
A fourth added technique was the rule of non-specific informations. It turned out, that players were forced by the large amount of information we had given them to investigate issues in detail. But that wasn’t our intention. So we added a simple rule of “the character who is the expert in a certain field is always right in discussions about that field”. So when the players were talking about something we did not write into the game, it was up to them. We wanted a dramatic game, not an investigation of specific actions in an exact time and space.
The last specific thing was running a beta test of Moon. We weren’t sure, if everything would go right or not, so we needed feedback to improve the game.
We picked a group of selected players we knew and ran it in small clubhouse. These players were chosen to fit the characters we’d written and also by their ability to give us the feedback we needed. Thus we were able to improve the game after the beta test.
Reflection / Feedback
The structured feedback was divided into two parts. The first was rather quick. Each player got a chance to briefly summarize their current impressions and emotional state. This simple step helped the players to concentrate themselves on the next parts, as they were given space to express what was close to their hearts.
This step also served as the first psychological safety check for organizers. More detailed questions followed. We focused on the highlights of the game:
”What was the most interesting scene that they did not take part in?”, “When did the character reach the final decision?”, “What was the key argument?”.
The second part reflected the topic of the game. We created a line, where the ends represented the two poles of a decision: war against a much stronger enemy or acceptance of occupation. Participants were at first asked to choose their character’s place and then their own. Usually it was followed by a spontaneous (but mediated) discussion where a lot of arguments and points of view were mentioned. The last activity was a structured discussion in couples to ensure everyone got time to formulate his or her opinion.
Afterwards the participants responded that this experience was far away from the prevalent rational historical discussions about what Edvard Beneš should have done at that grave moment of Czech history. It brought before them a completely new perspective to the problem, as they were forced to make a decision themselves in the context of arguments which were all around them. We ha ve never mentioned it explicitly, but as you could see above we implemented a number of indices into the game.
Moon Release Session
After approximately 30 runs of Moon we came up with an idea of releasing the game to the public. When we started out, we had decided not to, but time changes things.
We had been enthusiastic about doing more and more re-runs of the game. But at some point the next year this enthusiasm left us. So we decided, that we’d send it into the world, but not just by uploading it online. That was the birth of the “Moon release session”.
The idea was to get some fans and capable promoters together and teach them how to work with Moon. We had written an article about what we were up to, and published it on the website larp.cz (and of course pushed it through Facebook).
We had enough applicants to choose from. Finally, there were 12 people from across the whole of the Czech Republic who learned how to promote Moon. The whole thing took place in a cottage, where we had prepared several activities. From learning the story background, to diving into the game mechanics; both game design and technical stuff. And partying, of course!
We did not have any proper timetable for running the game, so the participants also had to make their own notes about timing, and how to do it all (the fact that there was no timing for the game was one of the reasons, why we did the weekend session, since none of us wanted to write that terribly long instruction manual).
Costumes were discussed, and now there is more than one set of the props in existence in the republic. After this session, there have already been several re-runs of Moon not done by us. Which means we’ve reached our goal – the game lives on.
Conclusion
We are proud that Moon is still able to compete with newer chamber larps, because the Czech chamber larp scene is evolving a lot and dozens of chamber larps have been written in the last four years. So far, more than forty runs have been done.
And it’s still flying.
Moon
Credits: Martin “Pirosh” Buchtík, Jindřích “Estanor” Mašek, Petr “Drrak” Platil, Filip Kábrt and Roman “Gordhart” Čech. Date: February 2011 – till now (more than 40 runs in total) Location: Various Length: Game 3 hours, debriefing 1 hour Players: 10 per run Budget: ~€6,500 Participation Fee: €2 – €7 Website:http://moon.madfairy.cz/
Cover photo: Despair and frustration. That’s the impact of those situations. (Play, Martin Buchtík). Other photos by Kristýna Nováková and Martin Buchtík.
Larp is traditionally participatory in nature. Fortunately, there’s been a great introspective and analytical tradition accompanying the continuing push against the ever moving boundaries of what’s possible and what’s been attempted. Yet it seems that our vocabulary has not grown at the same rate as the art form itself.
This article will attempt to cover some of the recent strides towards enriching that vocabulary. It presents the findings of several projects each exploring the nature of larp by investigating how the play and narrative experience change when mediated through computer/larp hybrids. These projects have investigated the interactive digital narrative academic literature, and have come away with a range of terms and concepts directly applicable to larp.
It is my hope that this article will both provide the community with an enriched vocabulary for conversing about our art form, and an expanded analytical toolbox for designing and researching larps.
Before jumping into the murky waters of terminology, let’s first ensure that we’re on the same riverbank. There’s been many endeavours to define role-playing, and I’d like to add my voice to the cacophony. But it’s my hope that by refining and combining the current definition attempts, we can turn the cacophony into a choir instead.
Can’t You See I’m Role-playing?
Based on my experience with the different forms of role-playing, the definitions of Hitchens & Drachen((Hitchens,M.,& Drachen,A.(2008).The many faces of role-playing games.International journal of role-playing,1(1),3-21.)), Arjoranta((Arjoranta, J. (2011). Defining Role-Playing Games as Language-Games. International journal of role-playing, 1(2), 3-17.)) and Montola((Montola, M., 2008.The invisible rules of role- playing.The social framework of role-playing process. International journal of role-playing, 1(1), pp.22–36)), as well as the results from my thesis projects((Temte, B. F. (2014). I, Herosmaton? Unpublished Master Thesis, Department of Architecture, Design and Media Technology, Section of Medialogy, Aalborg University Copenhagen. Supervisors: Bruni, L.E. & Eladhari, M.)) ((Temte, B. F., & Schoenau-Fog, H. (2012). Coffee tables and cryo chambers: a comparison of user experience and diegetic time between traditional and virtual environment-based roleplaying game scenarios. In Interactive Storytelling (pp. 102-113). Springer Berlin Heidelberg.)) ((Temte, B. F. (2011). Project Restless Sleep – An Experimental Framework for Investigating the Change in User Experience of Roleplaying Games in Virtual Environments. Unpublished Bachelor Thesis, Department of Architecture, Design and Media Technology, Section of Medialogy, Aalborg University Copenhagen. Supervisor:
Schoenau-Fog, H.)), I would argue that there are a number of different processes to what we are currently calling role-playing:
Textoring (Lit: weaver): Exploring the potential story evolution possibilities, I.e. the story-space((The complete set of potential story evolutions for the story in its current state)), and consequently manufacturing a personal, curated story-subspace instance, focused on the nodes deemed favourable to an engaging story evolution.
Auctoring (Lit: authoring, acting, originator): (Re)defining the character itself, including personality traits and background. This is both done as part of the initial character creation process, performed by either the player or an author, and at runtime by the player and possibly also the GM.
Ductoring (Lit: guiding, leading, commanding): Determining the appropriate actions/utterances for the character in the given situation. Performed at runtime, with some ductoring taking place during character creation regarding background events.
Rectoring (Lit: ruling, directing, mastering): Directing the story through the actions/utterances of the character. Only at runtime, arguably some planning during initial character creation.
Cantoring (Lit: acting, playing, poet): Portraying/acting out the character physically, including body movements, tone of voice, facial gestures etc. Only at runtime. While one could argue that cantoring may be contemplated prior to runtime, in order to best get a sense of the character’s physical mannerisms, I would label such contemplations as auctoring. However, it is quite common for role- players to explore the mental exercise of imagining their character in various situations, and so a degree of overlap is theoretically possible.
Quod-core
With these processes as a foundation, it’s now possible to formulate a new definition of Role-Playing:
A type of Pretence-Play where Participants interact, often through rules, with a diegetic world through the continuous ductoring and possibly cantoring, rectoring and auctoring, of distinct characters, thus collaboratively co-textoring an emergent, ephemeral narrative.
The core of role-playing is thus, in the presented definition, not the playing of a role per se. Rather, it’s the ductoring of the character(s) you control, the continuous process of evaluating the appropriate and relevant actions for the character and situation, that is the heart of our artform. Whether you then describe or act out the chosen action(s) is of lesser importance, and covered by the definition as well. One would argue that ductoring could also happen e.g. when you read a book or watch a movie. I completely agree, and posit that these examples are also to a large extent role-playing, the only major difference being the degree of interactivity offered by the medium.
Basing media interaction on reader- response theory, the definition also takes this into account through mentioning ‘participants interacting with’.
However, ductoring doesn’t say anything about whether you actually act upon these evaluations. You may be ductoring with/by yourself in a cupboard for 12 hours, without ever moving or saying anything. When larping, a more important concept is thus to which degree you’re acting on behalf of your character or yourself. I define this as the degree of herosproxy.
When exhibiting a low degree of herosproxy, you’re essentially playing and acting as yourself in the given situations, with little regard for your player character’s motivations and personality. Reversely, a high degree of herosproxy signifies both a large amount of ductoring, and that said ductoring is being reflected and acted upon. Therefore, herosproxy is the most relevant real-world measure of role-playing.
What IDS Brought along…
I’d now like to present some of the terminology that the interactive digital storytelling academic community has developed for better understanding and researching their, and to a large extent our, field.
Aarseth((Aarseth, E. (2012, May). A narrative theory of games. In Proceedings of the international conference on the foundations of digital Games (pp. 129-133). ACM.)) divides narrative elements into Kernels and Satellites, kernels being story elements/events which define the story, and satellites being elements/events without which the story would still be recognisable. Clearly, this distinction does not take into account the ephemerality of role-playing stories, but it still gives us terms to distinguish between primary and secondary events/elements. Likewise, one could argue that a larpwright should focus on kernels, letting the satellites happen on their own.
1. The Network – A partially connected, cyclic graph with uni- and bi-directional paths
2. The Complete Graph – Fully connected bi-directional paths
3. The Tree – Unidirectional (from top to bottom), every traversal is a well-formed plot.
4. The Vector with Side Branches – One main direction, with bi-directional subplots.
5. The Maze – Structure typical for adventure games.
6. Directed Network (“flow chart”)
7. The Hidden Story – Plotting navigation on to time.
8. The Braided Plot – Events and destiny lines.
9. Action Space or Epic Wandering – System defined plot with user choices for action.
Figure 1: Ryan’s 9 interactive narrative structures((Ryan, M. L. (2001). Narrative as virtual reality. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press.)). Illustrations from ((Temte,B.F.,Aabom,H.T.,Bevensee,S.H.,Boisen,K.A.D.,& Olsen,M.P.(2013).Aporia:Codename Still LakeValley – Exploring the Merge of Game-play and Narrative through Multiplayer Cooperation and Storytelling.Unpublished project report,Department of Architecture, Design and Media Technology, Section of Medialogy, Aalborg University Copenhagen. Supervisor: Bruni, L.E.)).
Ryan((Ryan, M. L. (2001). Narrative as virtual reality. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press.)) presents nine different interactive narrative structures, along with their individual characteristics, with a tenth added by myself((Temte, B. F. (2014). I, Herosmaton? Unpublished Master Thesis, Department of Architecture, Design and Media Technology, Section of Medialogy, Aalborg University Copenhagen. Supervisors: Bruni, L.E. & Eladhari, M.)), this being ‘Instigating Event with Conflict-laden Characters’. The nine original can be seen on figure 1.
I have yet to come up with a suitable illustration for Instigating Event with Conflict-laden Characters. The ten structures can work as tools for designing and framing conversations about larp structures as well.
Ryan((Ryan, M. L. (2008). Interactive narrative, plot types, and interpersonal relations. In Interactive Storytelling (pp. 6-13). Springer Berlin Heidelberg.)) also proposes two different types of immersion in interactive narratives, these being ludic and narrative immersion. She also distinguishes between spatial, temporal and emotional narrative immersion.
Additionally, Ryan suggests three distinct types of plot in interactive stories, with each plot type primarily suitable for a specific narrative immersion:
Epic: Focuses on the struggle of the individual to survive in a hostile world – Spatial Immersion
Dramatic: The evolution of a network of human relations – Emotional Immersion
Epistemic: The desire to solve a mystery – Temporal Immersion (components of which are curiosity, surprise and suspense).
We’re also given a tool for categorising player actions/utterances, where Theune, Linnsen and Alofs((Theune, M., Linssen, J., & Alofs, T. (2013). Acting, Playing, or Talking about the Story: An Annotation Scheme for Communication during Interactive Digital Storytelling. In Interactive Storytelling (pp. 132-143). Springer International Publishing.)) construct a scheme:
This works very well for categorising e.g. player utterances when analysing larp play (see((Temte, B. F. (2014). I, Herosmaton? Unpublished Master Thesis, Department of Architecture, Design and Media Technology, Section of Medialogy, Aalborg University Copenhagen. Supervisors: Bruni, L.E. & Eladhari, M.))).
Reference
Perspective
Story
Game
Reality
Character
CS: In-character utterances and imitations
CG: In-character references to game elements
CR:In-character references to events or objects outside play
Player
PLS: Action suggestions and proposals referring to the story
PLG: Communication about game aspects
PLR: Including real-life events or objects in the game frame
Person
PES: Observations about events that happened in the story
PEG: Observations about the interface, opinions about the game
PER: Communications about events or objects outside play
Figure 2: Theune, Linnsen and Alofs PxR annotation scheme((Theune, M., Linssen, J., & Alofs, T. (2013). Acting, Playing, or Talking about the Story: An Annotation Scheme for Communication during Interactive Digital Storytelling. In Interactive Storytelling (pp. 132-143). Springer International Publishing.)). Illustration from((Temte, B. F. (2014). I, Herosmaton? Unpublished Master Thesis, Department of Architecture, Design and Media Technology, Section of Medialogy, Aalborg University Copenhagen. Supervisors: Bruni, L.E. & Eladhari, M.))
Mine, My Own, My Propositions
In ((Temte, B. F., & Schoenau-Fog, H. (2012). Coffee tables and cryo chambers: a comparison of user experience and diegetic time between traditional and virtual environment-based roleplaying game scenarios. In Interactive Storytelling (pp. 102-113). Springer Berlin Heidelberg.)), I define Diegetic Adherence to be the degree to which diegetic time equals real time, i.e. whether the larp is running on a 1:1 time, or e.g. features flashbacks/slow motion. This term can both be used for describing/discussing/designing larps, and for analytic purposes.
Hulk, Meet Spock
I also here propose two non-opposed play styles/attributes; Cerebral and Embodied. The distinction here is whether the player seeks out the intellectual challenge(s) or instead strives to be physically/emotionally affected by the larp/situation. Cerebral gamists thus enjoy the intellectual challenge of a mystery or tactical battle, whereas embodied gamists thrive on e.g. the adrenaline response of the battle itself. Embodied immersionists aim for becoming their character, whereas cerebral immersionists are more akin to simulationists, aiming instead for experiencing being in the diegetic world.
Dramaticists with a cerebral focus, enjoy shaping the story and influencing/ experiencing its fl ow and aesthetics, whereas embodied dramaticists instead seek the emotional response from entering the story. I do not see these terms as necessarily being directly in opposition however. Larps/situations where you’re both intellectually and emotionally engrossed are easily imagined.
Exploding the Player Character
In ((Temte, B. F. (2014). I, Herosmaton? Unpublished Master Thesis, Department of Architecture, Design and Media Technology, Section of Medialogy, Aalborg University Copenhagen. Supervisors: Bruni, L.E. & Eladhari, M.)), I define the ALHFa-PAV categorisation (pronounced Alpha-Paw) as a way of dividing and discussing the components of a player character:
Avatar: Physical manifestation of person in another reality. Navigational and ludic focus in games. In larps, the avatar is ourselves.
Locus: The visual appearance of a particular avatar. How we look, with costume, makeup, expression and props.
Herosmaton: The specific contents of the person schema of a player character, including personality traits, goals, background etc.
Facies: The countenance/appearance of a particular herosmaton. How the herosmaton looks inside the imagined diegesis.
Player Character: The combined avatar, locus, herosmaton and facies, along with its more ludic characteristics, e.g. strength score, hit points etc., and the actions available to it, defined below as Ago and Vis.
Ago: The verbs available to the particular PC, such as run, jump, shoot etc.
Vis: The ludic stats associated with the PC, such as hit points, strength score etc.
It’s my hope that our community may adopt some or all of the terms, hereby easing the joint communication and understanding of the player character elements.
Picking Nits
There is little doubt that bleed as a larp term and concept is both relevant and real (for a given definition of real).
But given the pre-existing uses and meanings associated with bleed as a term outside the role-playing community, and the fact that I’m a nerd when it comes to terms/classifications, I would propose to rename the concept Flusentio (in/ex) [Lit: Flow/bleed of feelings]. Influsentio would thus be emotions, characteristics and/ or opinions flowing/bleeding from player to character, with Exflusentio denoting flowing/ bleeding from character to player.
Concerning Genres
Usually, when discussing larps, we refer to the genre as based on those of Hollywood movies. The Danish larp theorist Jacob Nielsen proposes that we instead/additionally adopt the vocabulary of the art world as a way of discussing our works and the intentions of the authors.
For instance, playing a social realism drama expressionistically will yield a very different play through than the exact same larp played abstractly, impressionistically or post-modern. Therefore, I strongly encourage you read Jacob Nielsen’s thought-provoking article on styles in larp in this book.
I hope that the usefulness and relevance of these terms are clear, and encourage further debates about and expansions of our shared vocabulary. I also hope that the term-nado I’ve just unleashed has either blown you away, or at least ruffled your feathers enough that a productive debate will ensue, at whichever decibel level you prefer.
It’s time for another edit-a-thon! Previous events made many qualitative new articles and changes in the Wiki.
An edit-a-thon is an event where we gather and work very focused on putting in content into the Nordic Larp Wiki. Let’s make the great Nordic Larp Wiki even grander!
Our story took place aboard the M/S Lyckan, a former German navy freighter with a horrific history of atrocities. A research expedition to Kirkenes in Norway had unearthed a strange statuette, which was brought on board during M/S Lyckan’s last journey out of Kirkenes for the winter. Aboard were the expedition, the crew and captain, a group of workers, a doctor and nurse, a group of dilettantes and adventurers and a few others.
Mare Incognitum was a larp set in Lovecraft’s Cthulhu Mythos, aboard the decommissioned destroyer HMS Småland. We wanted to create a claustrophobic horror larp that relied more on atmosphere and “slow pressure” than shock and jump scares; more on subtle, personal horror than on monsters and gore. We chose, unconventionally, to do a 1950’s Lovecraft larp rather than the classic 1920’s setting, both because it fit the actual ship better, but also to be able to use the Second World War as a tapestry for much of the background, something we think worked out very well.
We realized early on that we were going to have to do multiple runs of the larp in order to be able to finance it properly, and we decided on doing three runs of the larp for 26 players each game. Wise from the experiences of our last Mythos larp Terra Incognita we tried our best to have a fifty-fifty ratio of women to men, and to let chance dictate who got the spots for the larp (with a few exceptions).
This strategy proved to be successful, both in terms of equal representation and in terms of players we didn’t personally know – you can get comfortable as an organizer and mostly cast people already known to you. Most of the final participants were from Sweden, but we also had participants from Denmark, Norway, Finland, Estonia, Great Britain, the US and Spain.
We also tried to have at least 20 percent beginners at the larp. However, quite a few of the beginners dropped out before the larp, so the 20 percent was not fully realized.
Creating a Horror Story
The location, the ship, made many decisions about the story for us, which is how we like to work – do something within a set of limitations. It was going to be claustrophobic and dark, and the players were going to be cut off from the outside world; all great components for creating horror. We first decided on the basic outline of the story: first some normality onboard the ship, followed by the ship getting stuck in the ice, then taking away comforts like lights and food, a slow escalation of weirdness, clues, handouts and events leading up to a crescendo in which the players are confronted with their doom.
It was quite a challenge writing twenty-seven interesting, multifaceted characters and fitting them all together in the story, making sure to give all the players both agency and internal logic. It was important to us that we created characters that would be fun to play even if we completely removed the horror and supernatural elements. We had utilized skjebner (fate-play) before, and for Mare Incognitum we gave all the characters several fates and triggers (“if x happens, do this/react in this way”) in order to create hooks for the players nudging towards insanity or to create potential for scenes or conflict. Once we had assigned players to the characters we tweaked those characters who were not Swedes (different background texts).
Characters were divided into groups; an expedition of scientists, a group of workers, a group of dilettantes and adventurers and their servants, etc. A big help here was a drawing board, where you could connect the different characters and how they related to each other in order to visualize possible plots, twists and subgroups.
As we said earlier, we used the Second World War as a background for many of the characters, and the war itself was used as an underlying subplot; the ship had previously been the stage of some atrocities during the war, and many documents, letters and signs produced for the larp and spread around the ship contained info on this backstory which we think added another layer of horror underneath the Mythos horror.
This also offered us the opportunity to treat the ship itself as a character in the drama and the ship’s history was lent physical form as shadows from the past via odd messages on the radio but also as actual Shadows (NPCs giving suggestions or insights to the players, but being invisible to the characters).
Producing Horror
Early on, we decided to aim for a creeping, slow horror rather than “in-your-face” jump-scares. As is the key to most Mythos horror, the horror is ancient, does not care at all about humanity, and is more or less impossible to understand – and there can be no defeating the horror, only a short respite.
The key things that made this larp were, we think, the ship itself (i.e “the stage”), the handouts (handwritten diaries, letters, photos, documents, etc) that gave background and increased the sense of horror onboard, the characters (pre-written and designed for drama, conflict and a slow descent into madness) and a combination of creative NPCs and on-the-spot game-mastering.
The sound system used onboard greatly helped in creating mood and atmosphere. Having great players also helped a lot.
Creating horror, we believe, is a very delicate and sensitive thing.
Pace it too slow or too fast and you burn out the players or destroy the narrative, show too much of the horror and you risk it losing it’s power. Give the players too much to do – like reading handouts and completing tasks – and they can become too focused on doing and not feeling.
But on the other hand, if you give the players too little to do the sense of “developing” story or of getting anywhere might be lost and the players may become tired or bored.
Our larp had its fair share of pacing issues (which we tried correcting during subsequent runs), and as an organizer you have a hard time gauging what the players are feeling or currently doing, and you might panic, thinking the players are bored, and start doing things that screws up what might be an excellent atmosphere for the players.
We had a radio room, where the players diegetically could speak to other ships in the area as well as the coast guard, and we think it worked out better than we had imagined.
At first it functioned as a source of information and safety for the players (there was always an “external party” they could talk to), but as the game progressed the voices on the radio increased the feeling of isolation and the problematic situation the passengers were now in – coastal stations reporting that the storm was gaining in intensity, ships reporting that they could not reach them to help, etc.
Players in the radio room could also experience semi-meta gameplay; strange voices from the past, weird monster sounds, voices speaking to them from beyond the grave etc, which worked really well – especially so since the room was rigged with a night vision camera so we could identify players and simultaneously read up on their back-stories as we spoke to them.
Lessons Learned
Gender Roles and Equality
We put some effort into making sure all the characters for the larp were as gender neutral as possible. Any character should be playable by anyone without any (or very little) modification. We were also very strict in keeping the ratio 50/50 between (self-identified) males and females. We realize that we need to actively work more to create a game with actual equality in regards to gender, and this is something we’ll have to keep discussing and working on.
Tech
Tech never works flawlessly. It will break, or you’ll have great problems getting it to work right. Always plan for that if you intend to have a tech-enhanced larp. Keep an “analog” option for your players. Also make sure tech is dead simple to understand, then dumb it down even further. Test the tech in extreme conditions. Try everything beforehand, multiple times, to find the glitches. Our sound system gave us extreme headaches until we managed to get it working right.
Railroading
We railroaded the end too much, which felt weird and out of place. This is bad design. Try to avoid that unless you have a kick-ass ending that you feel works no matter what state the players are in.
New Blood
Bring in new players, and people you’ve never worked with before. Don’t be afraid. You might just be amazed (like when the new blood don the wellingtons, and take on the monumental task of cleaning out the poop floating all over the kitchen). Make sure you have a great team of NPCs and functionaries to back you up when you get tired or busy.
Don’t Be Afraid to Break the Diegesis
We are somewhat stuck in the 360 design model, and we were sometimes hesitant to break the diegesis in order to spook players or use meta techniques to further the game, but once we did it was universally well received and really worked out well. We need to stop being afraid of breaking the 360 illusion.
Information
Keeping players up to date is very hard, even if you just choose one single channel for that information (email for instance). Do NOT rely on Facebook at all, but also keep in mind that players will miss emails and will not read all your text. Be very, very clear in writing, and repeat everything that is important several times.
The Verdict
In the end we’re happy to have created the larp together with the kick ass participants and our excellent crew, to have run three fairly different runs. The participants humble us with relevant feedback, making us wanting to continue, and also letting others learn from our mistakes (and successes). It was a great larp for most, but it could have been better, and we’ll work on that until next time!
Mare Incognitum
Credits: Olle Nyman, Sara Pertmann, Sebastian Utbult, Andreas Sjöberg and Simon Svensson. Crewed by 15 additional NPCs and deckhands. Date: November 28-30, 2014 Location: HMS Småland, Gothenburg, Sweden Length: 10 hours Players: 78 (26 per run) Budget: ~€6,500 Participation Fee: €65 – €110 (depending on income) Game Mechanics Diegetic Game Mastering, Honour System, Slow take- off, Slow Landing, Soundtrack, Pre- written characters,Shadows, Narrative Voice-Over, Playing to lose, Brems, Kutt, Pre-larp Workshop Website:http://iäiä.se/
So far, Nordic larp has produced two games that have become international news stories that all kinds of sites cannibalize and copy from each other: the Danish 2013 rerun of Panopticorp, and the Polish-Danish Harry Potter game College of Wizardry. In both cases, the attention was fueled by solid documentation and good video from the game.
In both cases, your private larp experience of co-creating and having fun with your friends suddenly had an audience literally in the millions. Even if only as a glimpse in a video on the website of the Daily Mail. If you don’t document games, they become forgotten ephemera that will live on only in the memories of the participants. If you do document and publish, private experiences can become public in increasingly impressive ways.
The documentary filmmakers Cosmic Joke were present at College of Wizardry. Participants reported after the game that the game was changed and people played differently because of the cameras. Video footage and good photos are essential for fueling mass media coverage, but they also influence the game as it is being played.
Secret Larp
Identlos was a Finnish larp held in Helsinki on the 26th of October, 2014. It was organized by Jamie MacDonald and Petri Leinonen. The larp was about identity in the modern surveillance society. One of my most interesting experiences as a player was leaving my cell phone home.
The last time I was without my cell phone was in the spring of 2013. It fell on the sidewalk and the screen cracked. The superfast, express repair took an hour. An hour I had to spend phone-less. The time before that was in 2009.
I was in North Korea for a week, and left my phone and other electronics in a strongbox at a hotel in Beijing.
I never forget my phone. I get jittery if I have to be without something to do for longer than three minutes. When I have my phone with me, I’m completely trackable to any surveillance entities or curious phone company employees who might be interested. The phone can be used to listen to me remotely. Its list of contacts is a straightforward run through of everyone I associate with.
Because of all this, going to Identlos was a no-brainer for me. It was a game about some of the most pressing issues of our time. It was also an interesting contribution to the discussion going on in the Nordic larp scene concerning documentation. Identlos wasn’t a secret game in the sense that it was hard to find out about it. It was advertised for potential players. Rather, all documentation during the event was forbidden. No photos, no video. Because of this, it’s secret in the sense that it’s hard for a person who wasn’t there to find out how it was. This is part of the design of the game.
Meta
In Identlos, most of the characters had escaped the surveillance networks of modern society, or wanted to do so. To do this, they had to leave behind most of the electronic niceties of the world we live in: social media, cell phones, massive media access.
During the larp, the characters in the organization called Identlos did not have their phones with them, or credit cards or similar items connected to a network. Because of this, the players had to do without as well. We had to pay cash if we wanted to go to the bar.
Despite the ban on documentation, apparently even radical anti-surveillance games are subject to the demands of the outside world. The game was held as part of the arts festival Mad House Helsinki. A photographer unconnected to the larp set up shop directly outside the main game area, separated from the action only by a curtain. We ran past him all the time, and many chose to participate in his portrait project, including myself. Considering the theme and the rules of Identlos, his presence seemed supremely ironic.
Technically, his presence wasn’t against the rules, since he wasn’t in the game area. To the best of my knowledge, the ban on photo documentation of in-game action held.
As a player, I couldn’t but help noticing that this also changes the power dynamics of how we talk about the game afterwards. Centrally-controlled photo policy and documentation is a useful tool for organizers who wish to influence the life their game has after it’s over. In the case of Identlos, no such tool exists. The only records are the words of the players and the impressions of the organizers.
On Display
Baltic Warriors: Helsinki was probably the opposite of Identlos when it comes to documentation and how exposed the players were to outside view. It was the first in a projected series of larps under the wider Baltic Warriors transmedia project. The principal design of the game was by Mike Pohjola. I did additional design and practical production.
The game was played in the center of Helsinki in an outdoor cafe area on the 30th of August, 2014 in the middle of a Saturday afternoon.
The characters were politicians, lobbyists and activists talking about ecological issues related to the Baltic Sea, unaware of a zombie threat that would soon emerge.
The public could just walk into the game area. The game was documented in the photos of random passerby, by journalists we had invited, and by our own documentation team. In short, it was total documentation anarchy. A picture from our game could be anywhere, and we had little control over it.
In Baltic Warriors, this maximalist attitude towards documentation was mandated by the political nature of the project and the demands of making a game in this particular location with these particular partners. In future games, we will probably experiment with different kinds of photo and privacy policies, depending on the individual demands of each game.
Our lax attitude towards being in public was criticized by some players after the game, especially regarding the political speeches that characters made on stage. Since the setting was contemporary and the issues real, larp could easily be mistaken for reality. At least until the zombies attacked. Baltic Warriors: Helsinki demonstrated that privacy and control over documentation are deal-breakers for many players. I have heard from many people who were fascinated by the project, but decided not to participate in what was essentially a public performance.
You Have to Write
Nowadays it’s not enough to play in a larp. You also have to write a 30.000 character essay about it, with original thoughts and profound reflection.
Halat hisar was a political game. As organizers, we wanted to use it to get media attention for issues in Palestine, in addition to creating a meaningful game experience. The political side of the project made documentation a no-brainer. While the game itself would be played in a secluded location away from the public, it would be photographed. There would be video. After the game, we published a documentation book and a short documentary film.
Our photographers Tuomas Puikkonen and Katri Lassila did excellent work documenting the game, but individual player experiences are essential for any true effort to understand what happened. That requires some effort on part of the players.
I spent a lot of time after Halat hisar hounding our players into writing about the game and appearing on camera talking about it. Because of its political content, Halat hisar might be an extreme case, but ordinary ambitious Nordic games have these demands too. As a participant, you have the artwork lodged inside your brain after the game is over. For history to know what happened, that experience has to be drilled out.
Of course, when the documentation effort is led by an organizer, like with Halat hisar, its content is also controlled by the organizers. As the person mainly responsible for the documentation, I tried to be honest, but all documentation entails choices of what to include and what to leave out.
Documentation always has an angle and a perspective: What to shoot during the game? Whom to ask to get something written material about it? What to include in edited versions of the material, such as books and films?
The Danish larp KAPO is an example of a game where the documentation was a player-led process. The documentation book published for the game was curated by a player, and though the organizers supplied photos and some words for it, they had no control over it.
This is a great thing to happen to a game, but personal experience suggests that normally, a documentation effort has to be led pretty aggressively for it to happen. The motivation to do this tends to default to the organizers.
So here’s the question: Is writing about your experience, appearing in photos and on video, part of the responsibility of playing in a game? Do you as the player have to accept the task of framing and expressing your inner processes for the consumption of a wider, non-playing audience?
Reach
In Identlos, I played a successful indie game designer apparently modeled after someone like Minecraft’s Markus Persson. I had escaped normal society because of the amount of hate among videogame fans. I lived in the secluded and small Identlos settlement, still making games but with a much smaller audience and less resources than before. I was happy with this.
In some ways, the difference between what my character had left behind and what he had now was similar to experiences from my own life. I have personally felt the difference by making television for mass audiences and making larp for a small scene.
Getting into character, I thought about how it would feel like to go from an audience of millions to an audience of hundreds. In some ways, the change would be small: You would still get your best feedback and comments from your friends. At the same time, it was hard to see how it wouldn’t be disappointing. Having a mass audience means you get to be part of the conversation on a wider level. You matter. Of course, making games for a limited audience means you still matter to those people. But scale is seductive.
Scale is a classic problem of larp design. Given the extremely personal nature of larp, how to scale it up? How to reach a mass audience? These questions are further complicated by issues of safety and privacy. In Identlos, my character had chosen safety over reaching a mass audience. He had limited his horizons because he didn’t want to live in a world with no privacy. It was an interesting dichotomy, because usually in modern political discourse safety is presented as the result of obliterating privacy. The larp argued the opposite, or at least complicated the issue.
Memory
Due to the lack of photos, Identlos only exists in the memory of its participants. Since there has not been any text-based documentation either, the story of what the game was is left to the underground of folklore in the player community.
When I started larping in the mid- Nineties, this was normal for all larps. There was very little documentation, even photos. Nowadays, it seems to me there’s photos from most larps, at least to some extent. What would have been normal in 1995 is experimental now that it was done by Identlos in 2014.
That’s a facile statement, of course, since Identlos’ choices were informed by a larger political and theoretical apparatus about issues of privacy. Still, the result can be the same: Identlos can join the legions of games that will not be remembered. Does it matter if it’s by design or not, if the end result is the same?
In terms of penetration into larp culture, my most influential game was probably Luminescence, which I organized with Mike Pohjola. I still see jokes about flour games in the most surprising places. It seems to me that the idea of the game, the “flour larp”, has become a meme of sorts, divorced from the original context. I suspect something similar happens when games like Panopticorp and College of Wizardry go through the distorting lens of global mass media.
With political games like Baltic Warriors and Halat hisar, the goal is to change the world. Documentation and publicity are necessary parts of the project. But Identlos is a political game too. It’s just that it prioritizes its art over its politics, and makes us ask the question:
Livsgäld, translated roughly as “the price you pay for your life”, was a low-fantasy larp held in November, 2014, in Halmstad, Sweden. The larp was played in Swedish, had 40 participants, three non-player characters and four organizers. The spots for the players were given out through a lottery process, where participants first signed up over the span of a week after which a draw was made to see whom among the players would receive spots. The larp used two criteria to divide the various players into different pools – we first divided the player group into self identified men, women and non-binary individuals, with a goal of as many self identified men as women in the player group. After this division was made, we went on to divide by age. Ten spots were reserved for the 25% who were youngest of the player group, twenty spots were reserved for the 50% in the middle and ten spots for the oldest 25% of players.
Despite our efforts to achieve this balance, when drop-outs were taken into account, we did not have enough reserve players among men in the latter stages of the process and the actual game ended up with a skewed ratio, with more women than men attending.
Setting
The setting for the larp was a world known as Xaos, constructed by organizer Simon Svensson.
The larp itself was centered around an isolated culture that had been existing on its own for hundreds of years in a single village. The culture entirely lacked a social sex-based gender, the focus was instead on four elements that were seen as part of your biological entity in the same way as gender is for us today. The concepts ‘man’ or ‘woman’ did not exist, even if the members of the culture were physically identical to us.
Story
The story played with themes of survival, both literal in avoiding starvation, but also cultural survival when the old ways did not work as they used to. The food stores were low and for many years, the fields had gotten more barren, the hunting had diminished and tensions were on the rise. During the larp, the People, as they were called, had to confront whether they would rely on the extremely conservative foundations of their entire people, the cultural values they held sacred, or brave the dangers of the unknown.
The unknown also held the mythological threat from a civilization that once held the people as slaves and were said to roam the wilderness in search for them.
The culture was one of shame and guilt, where the personality traits that are often seen as good today were considered destructive and bad (bravery, creativity, being outspoken, self-confidence), while atypical leader abilities – intuition, empathy, carefulness and cowardice – were seen as positive and constructive traits. Conflicts were solved by smoothing over and handling the fallout rather than the cause.
If the main storyline was the food crisis, the actual focus of play was the social pressure that was a natural part of such an isolated society; a society where the equilibrium rests on shame and the silencing of dissenting voices. When the crisis became more outspoken, all the tension that was stored in the various dynamics between the collectives (the family units of the game), individuals and between element-genders rose up to the surface. Love was lost, forbidden love was uncovered and the young members of the village were initiated into their collectives, to live with them for the rest of their lives.
During the larp, three unknown spirits also appeared, brought into the village by some of the fire-gendered, the most oppressed of the four elements. These spirits turned out to have different agendas that they tried to pursue through affecting the people and their ways.
In the end, a choice was made. Their existence doomed, they refused to go quiet into the night and fade away. The village abandoned their ancestral home to face the unknown on a great exodus, knowing well that most of them would not make it.
Designing Livsgäld
Calm gazes with the power to silence loud voices. Tears that are swallowed, hidden away to uphold the illusion of well-being. A collective where everyone is included. Yet, some are still left outside, isolated. Love filled with demands exists side by side with the search for acceptance. To be loved, not for the person who I am but despite of it. Livsgäld. One larp, many emotions followed by important insights. I was not poor when I went there but I left richer than I was before. My new found riches are thoughts and a new way to view the world.
Player, Air-gendered
These thoughts by one of the players include some of our core design elements. When we created Livsgäld, we had three major design goals. They were:
A gender-equal larp
Reversing fantasy stereotypes
Narrow focus
The first point was one of the first that we decided on and our philosophy towards gender was based around the thought that, in order to achieve gender equality in a larp, you could not simply remove gender inequalities and otherwise keep the same traditional fantasy or modern setting. We would still have hidden patterns and behavior that were modelled on inequality. Instead, you have to remove them and replace them with something else that could take their place. This philosophy guided us as we created the Livsgäld world.
The second idea was based on the observation that fantasy worlds are often inherently conservative. They are worlds where uprisings are bad, where feudalism works, where power is rightfully inherited and where loyalty to authority is something noble.
They are worlds where individual bravery and vigilantism is held as the norm of heroic behavior. We wanted to challenge these concepts and show a world that worked differently from how we expected a fantasy world to work. We knew this would be a challenge for our players since we had already removed so many other familiar points from the players’ horizon of expectations and recognition, but we did not want to create a gender-equal world only to reproduce the normative, traditionally masculine traits as superior.
The third point, narrow focus, was something we’d learned from the countless fantasy games that exist out there in the more mainstream fantasy genre. Many of them present a whole fictional world for the prospective larper with nations, maps, cultures and religions all presented in short written format, easily overwhelming their players. We wanted Livsgäld to exclusively present relevant information for the players, where every piece of information was something that had an impact for the People and the experience at the larp.
Inspirations from the Nordic larp tradition were games such as Mellan himmel och hav, for a different way to construct gender and personality traits, Hemligheten, for the way it portrayed a low-key fantasy setting, and Brudpris for handling a culture of shame and invisible barriers.
Reactions
There were many things that did not happen as planned or expected and there were many story elements that were identified as flawed or working in an unintended way. Even as the game came to a close, we had already learnt a lot. After the game, the players were asked to give the organizers a week of stories, a week where feedback and criticism could wait.
When this week had passed, a document was published with our the organizers’ design thoughts, containing thoughts on what had gone wrong and what could be improved, along with a feedback form for the players. We felt that this approach helped players focus on areas that we had not already reflected over.
The feedback form received answers from roughly half of the participants. The most widespread reaction which was echoed by nearly every feedback form, was that the participants had experienced a sense of leaving their own social gender behind. No longer did they feel the internal or external pressure to act their gender.
Despite of this, several individuals noted that actual behavioral patterns still conformed to those they had been taught all their lives. It is not surprising that players did not adapt entirely new patterns of behavior simply from two days gametime and a day of workshop.
However, it is noteworthy that the expectations to behave in the same ways were perceived as lacking. It was more out of comfort and habit that the players acted out their off-game gender identity, rather than a feeling of pressure or expectation.
Another common point of feedback was that the elements had felt like castes, rather than gender. There had been a lack of sexualization or the tension that exists between genders attracted to each other and they had felt like ‘roles’ in society, rather than something natural you were born to.
Many felt that a workshop for translating typically gendered behavior, like flirting, sex and attractive stereotypes, into the Livsgäld world, would have been a boon to the larp. That was, according to the players, the most difficult part of the setting.
The biggest lesson we learned was to trust in the setting and the characters to provide the content. An element was introduced early on that was meant to be kept low-key: the three foreign spirits. However, their occult nature and mystery quickly spiraled it up to the top and it became a major plot. Many players reacted as if they had to solve it, rather than use it as background material. Had we informed everyone about the element beforehand and kept its function transparent, we feel that it would have filled its function more properly.
We are glad that we created Livsgäld and in many ways, it felt like a success. However, it also felt like a game that explored relatively unknown territories and in doing that, left a lot of room for improvement.
Closing Thoughts
Everything points to the fact that Livsgäld changed the way people thought about gender, if only for a little while. In this, we hope that Livsgäld can be an inspiration to others and that we will see more games exploring similar themes.
As a closing statement, here are some thoughts from one of the participants, taken from their blog post about the larp:
It was scary, in a way, to see how effectively we changed our way of thinking and behaving over a mere weekend. It showed me how easy it is to create oppression on completely arbitrary grounds, and how real those feelings provoked can be even though you know it’s just play-pretend. But most of all it gave me hope. If we could change our way of thinking and behaving so easily over such a short period of time I have no doubts about that it can be done on a much larger scale. All it takes is that most of us play along.
Player
Livsgäld
Credits: Kajsa Seinegård (main organizer), Simon Lindman Svensson (co-organizer), Carl Nordblom (co-organizer) and Jennie Nyberg (co-organizer) Date: October 30 November 2, 2014 Location: Primus Vicus medieval village, outside Halmstad, Sweden Length: 60 hours in-game, 16 hours pre-game workshop Players: 40 Budget: ~€5,000 Participation Fee: €70 standard fee, €50 for low income participants and €90 for high income participants Website:http://projekt-xaos.zaramis.se/
Tell me, and I will forget.
Show me and I may remember.
Involve me, and I will understand.
Confucius
The next generation of teachers will be expected to possess a broad spectrum of competencies and skills. They are faced with a seemingly impossible task: today, classroom instruction should teach not only content but also competence. It should be as interdisciplinary as possible and it should take the heterogeneity of students into account. In addition to hard skills, classroom instruction should also teach soft skills. It should encourage and include the use of the learning material in a variety of situations that students will face in the real world. At the same time it should also be problem-oriented, varied and interesting, and sustainable. And of course, it should motivate students to learn!
While it seems as though new teachers are being asked to square the circle, the Danish boarding school Østerskov Efterskole and others like it have demonstrated that this challenge can be met and mastered((Cf. Hyltoft, Malik, 2008.)).
How? With Edularp.
But just what is Edularp?
Edularp
Edularp((The term Edularp stands for “educational live action role-playing game”.)) is live-action roleplaying used to impart pre-determined pedagogical or didactic content.
Why is Edularp ffective? Why do children, high school students, college students, and seminar participants learn better, faster, more sustainably and more easily with Edularp?
Edularp as Game
The chief art is to make everything that children have to do, sport and play too.
John Locke
Firstly, Edularp is always a game. And games are usually fun((Henriksen (2008) argues for the contrary opinion, according to which learning games neither must nor should be fun.)). Those who have fun learn more easily((Cf. Corbeil, 1999, pp. 173.)), are more motivated((Cf. Hyltoft, M., 2010, pp. 48.)), and are more likely to tackle larger challenges without reticence((Suits (2005) has even made the overcoming of unnecessary obstacles the core of his definition of games:“Playing a game is the voluntary attempt to overcome unnecessary obstacles.”)). Additionally, players participating in an Edularp — like players of games in general — often forget that they are actually doing something sensible. For them, fun — often fun as part of a group — is in the foreground((Baer, U., 1982.)).
Secondly, in games in general and in Edularps in particular, a kind of secondary reality((Authors from different fields have described this alternative reality in a number of different ways, but often mean the same thing or at least a similar thing: the “situation of the second degree” in Brougère, G., 1999, the “frame” in Goffman, E., 1977, pp. 52, the “surplus reality” in Moreno, 1965 or the “magic circle of gameplay” in Huizinga, 1938/1939.)) takes hold. It is a special reality that not only lifts the players out of their complex and often trivial or boring everyday existences for a brief time, but that also delivers them into a new world that is often exciting, epic and comprehensible in ways that the real word is not. While “normal” classroom instruction is often dry, Edularp is usually the highlight of the day. This provides enormous motivation to players((Cf. McGonigal, J., 2012, pp. 119ff.)). It is simply far more exciting to investigate a murder mystery than to listen to a lecture about chemistry, English or mathematics.
Furthermore, when we play, we are only acting “as if” something were the case. We, and the other players, are only pretending. This results in a kind of sanction-free experimental zone, a safe framework in which we can try out new ways of thinking or beha ving, reasoning or feeling — without fear of negative consequences((Cf. van Ameln, F. and Kramer, Josef, 2007, pp. 397; Hyltoft, M., 2010, pp. 45ff; Vester, 1978, pp. 184.)). After all, it is “only” a game.
This is especially true of role-playing games in which we act “as if” we were knights, elves or orcs. But even in games in which we do not slip into obvious game roles, as is the case in alternate reality games (ARGs), we nevertheless do adopt a role in the sense that we act “as if” something were “real” even though we know that it is not.
It could be a bomb from which we recoil in panic and then attempt to defuse with all the seriousness of someone facing a real explosive device. Or it could be a person who we treat with respect because they present themselves as a police officer, even though we know that they are really just an NPC (a non-player character — the game equivalent of an extra in a film).
Participants in games are often less likely to be discouraged by setbacks; indeed, after “failing” they often return to the challenge with even more motivation than before((McGonigal, J., 2012, pp. 64ff.)).
Edularp: Learning by Doing
For the things we have to learn before we can do them, we learn by doing them.
Furthermore, Edularp is what we refer to as an action-oriented method((Cf. Balzer, 2009, pp.13.)). That means that participants learn not through flat theories or lecturing from the blackboard but rather that they truly become active in the lesson or subject matter by trying it out themselves, through their own actions. Edularp is, in the truest sense of the word, learning by doing((The expression “learning by doing” comes to us not, as is often claimed, from John Dewey, but
rather from the English translation of Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics, 1985, p. 27f.)).
That means that the participants learn with all their senses. When they viscerally experience the content, when they physically exert themselves, when they smell the appropriate smells and see the appropriate visuals, their entire bodies act as sounding boards both for the experience itself and for their reflections on what they have experienced and learned((Cf. van Ameln, F., Kramer, J., 2007, pp. 393.)).
With Edularp it is possible to present topics that are typically dry or theoretical in ways that make them accessible to sensible experience or allow them to be expressed in symbolic ways((Cf. van Ameln, F., Kramer, J., 2007, pp. 392.)). If, for example, one is on a spaceship and the navigation computer suddenly malfunctions, so that the only way to plot a new course is to solve a differential equation; or if one has to infiltrate and analyze a new cult in order to prevent them from carrying out a terrorist attack; or if one is maltreated by inhumane prison guards((The first example (spaceship) is taken from a game from Østerskov Efterskole, the second example (cult) is taken from a game designed by the authors, while the third example comes from “Prisoner for One Day”, cf. Aarebrot, E. et al., 2012, pp. 24–29.)); what might have been abstract content is instead placed in a concrete, practical context and takes on tangible relevance.
Thus, participants in an Edularp learn not only with their heads but with their guts, with their emotions, senses, and intellects. It is by simultaneously addressing the cognitive and the emotional faculties that the learning content becomes truly relevant and emotionally meaningful to the learner. This means that they can learn more easily and, above all, with greater retention((Cf. van Ameln, F., Kramer, J., 2007, pp. 395.)).
Until now most “knights of education” have been pedagogues, teachers, trainers, social workers, caretakers, therapists and psychologists who typically stumbled upon the larp hobby in their private lives and who independently recognized the huge didactic and pedagogical potential of live- action role-playing((Cf. Balzer, 2009.)) — even in its hobby variant.
They were often pioneers in their fields and had to expend enormous effort to be able to offer their students, patients or participants active learning — live, dynamic and in color.
Nearly 35 years after the first known larp((As the history of larp is often contentious I would like to refer the reader to the English-language Wikipedia article on the topic, which is actively and internationally edited: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/larp)) we found the time ripe for making it easier for young, interested teaching students to utilize the method. To that end we developed a teaching seminar for the University of Siegen Department of Education.
The goal was not just to inform teaching students about the theoretical advantages of live action role-playing in general and Edularp in particular — in the practical seminar we explicitly concerned ourselves with putting the students in a position to develop and run their own Edularps((With our draft seminar we were able to obtain a teaching commission from the University of Siegen. After submitting the written application and presenting the concept to the Department of Education a commission selected our proposed seminar for the didactic module in its 2013/2014 winter semester course offerings.))
Gamification vs. Edularp
In addition to presenting the subject in as practical a manner as possible, our goal was to prepare our students to implement playful learning in real classroom situations in their later careers. Thus our goal was that our students would leave the seminar equipped not only with the theoretical and practical skills to take their children on a two-week “class trip” to Middle Earth, but that they would also be able to employ individual elements of gameplay in their teaching in whatever measure they might find effective and appropriate. That is, that they would be able to use the whole Edularp method as well as smaller elements of games and gameplay.
For this reason we began with an overview of the full breadth of the topic of playful learning, which ranges from learning games (including Edularp) on one end to gamification on the other.
While participants in learning games are normally aware of the fact that they are playing a game((The so-called alternate reality games (ARGs) represent prominent exceptions: players do not necessarily always know if they are really playing a game. Cf. Gosney, J., 2005)) and thus entering into a kind of alternative reality, this is not the case with gamification. Rather, gamification simply attaches individual elements of games — like badges or a ranking list — to normal reality((Deterding, 2011.)), or uses game design techniques to modify everyday processes and procedures((Cf. Werbach, Kevin, https://class.coursera.org/gamification-002/lecture/22.)).
The user of a gamified process does not enter into another reality or game world but rather remains fully and completely in the real world. This means that a gamified process is not a game! The goal of gamification is to make everyday processes more interesting, motivating and seemingly more rewarding. A prominent example of gamification is the app Foursquare, in which users can share their current locations (a restaurant, an event, etc.) with friends and in so doing be rewarded with badges. Another non-digital example from a time before the term gamification was coined is collecting frequent flyer miles, which American Airlines introduced in the early 1980s((The customer collects so-called frequent flyer miles with each flight and, if and when they have collected enough, they can then exchange them for prizes, discounts or access to airport lounges. Microsoft’s Rob Smith, who gamified the software testing process for Windows 7, provides another example. He managed to transform the normally very difficult and trying process of finding and notifying translation errors in the dialogue boxes into a fun experience for a total of 4,500 voluntary participants among his coworkers. Cf. http://gamification-research.org/wp-content/ uploads/2013/03/Smith.pdf.)).
There are also several very successful role models for the use of gamification in the classroom, like the Canadian project World of Classcraft((For more information see: http://www.classcraft.com/en/#intro.)), which gamifies individual school subjects; or the Quest to Learn school in New York City((For more information see: http://q2l.org/.)), which is run according to a fully gamified teaching plan. The didactic method that we taught to our students in the teaching seminar was explicitly intended to prepare them to utilize the entire spectrum between gamification and comprehensive learning games. Thus, the didactic methods we teach enable our students to not only conduct fully-realized Edularps, but to also include individual quests((The term“quest”originates in the classical hero’s journey (cf.Campbell,1999),but in contemporary usage in fantasy literature and computer games it means a task or a puzzle.)) in their normal teaching, as well as to “gamify” their normal lessons.
Our thinking is that by integrating individual game elements in their lessons they can gain experience teaching with games in school and then, bit by bit, take on larger projects.
Playful Learning: Learning in Games | A Practical Seminar
In order to teach the students in our seminar not only the necessary practical competencies for developing and conducting Edularps but also the necessary theoretical knowledge, the seminar was divided into four phases:
Theoretical and practical introduction
Development of the students’ own Edularp
Playing the Edularp
Reflection phase
The individual phases were divided into a total of ten sessions lasting an average of four hours each. The theoretical and especially the practical presentation of the content was important, but it was also important to impart to the students the knowledge and competencies necessary for successfully developing and realizing projects, like project planning and project management, efficient and sustainable communication within a project, etc.
Another consideration was that the students should work independently after the introductory phase, but that they should not be left to face the structuring of the process on their own.
Phase 1: Theoretical and Practical Introduction
The first phase of the seminar consisted of three sessions. In the first session we introduced the theoretical concept of games, larps, Edularps and alternate reality games (ARGs), as well as the didactic potential of Edularps. Our seminar participants were mostly new to larps, and so we introduced them to the topic by presenting successful examples of Edularps and gamification((We selected Østerskov Efterskole’s Harry Potter game (cf.: Hyltoft, M. and Holm, J.T., 2009) as an example of a successful Edularp. As an exceptional example of gamification we chose the Quest to Learn school (cf. http://q2l.org/). As an example of experience-based learning in a larp we selected “Prisoner for a Day” (cf. Aarebrot, E. and Nielsen, M., 2012).)).
In order to impart to our students on a practical level what Edularps are and how it feels to take part in one, in the second session we enacted the four-hour interdisciplinary Edularp “Der Kreuz des Wotans” (Cross of Odin)((In the Edularp Der Kreuz des Wotans players must foil a cult’s plans for a terrorist bombing. The
Edularp was written by Myriel Balzer, Julia Kurz and Tinke Albach.)) so that they would participate in one themselves.
For the third session the participants prepared an elevator pitch((An elevator pitch is a very brief and pointed presentation of a project intended to persuade the
listener to support it.The name comes from the fact that in an elevator one only has the duration of the ride to win the other party over.)) as a homework assignment. Their task in preparation for the session was to think of a gripping story idea for an Edularp and to sketch out a learning quest and the intended learning content. They then had five minutes each to present their ideas at the start of the session as concisely and compellingly as possible, with the intent of persuading the others of the value of their own story ideas.
The goal of this introduction was that the students would be able to begin the development phase with a pool of ideas, rather than have to be creative “on demand” at the start of the practical phase. Building on the pitches, we then discussed what makes a good story, what elements a good game requires, and how a good learning quest should look.
In the second half of the session we presented the core of the seminar, the so- called game organization document (GOD), with which the students would have to develop and conduct their own Edularp in the subsequent practical phase. (A current version of the GOD can be downloaded from www.phoenixgamedesign.de free of charge.)
Phase 2 and 3: Development and Implementation of the Edularp
Since most of our students had no experience with larps or Edularps, it was important for us to give them a guide for their independent work. It was intended to guide them through the various phases of development, provide them with a concrete timeframe and schedule, and help them as much as possible to avoid overlooking any relevant steps or decisions. The game organization document (GOD) arose from these concerns.
The GOD is a form that asks the game developers to specify and explain all the key criteria for the game. In the course of defining and explaining the parameters specified in the generalized GOD, a specific game design document (GDD) for the Edularp under development begins to take shape bit by bit.
The game organization document is divided into seven categories:
Constraints
Project planning
Learning content
Storytelling
External setup
Game design
Documents, materials, props, resources
Category 1: Constraints
The category Constraints includes all the requirements that the game absolutely must fulfil and that have already been specified or must be specified before the start of development. They may include conditions specified by third parties as well as requirements set by the developers themselves. They include things like the number as well as type(s) of participants (age, degree of fitness, etc.) and also factors like the resources that are available (e.g. budget or team strength) and the planned development time.
Category 2: Project Planning
The category Project Planning covers the composition of the team and the division of labor as well as the schedule, the communication pipelines((Communication pipelines are the ways in which the various members of a team should communicate with each other.)), and plans for documentation and data management.
Category 3: Learning Content
In the category Learning Content the developers are asked to define concretely the learning content that is to be conveyed by the game. This is also where the type of learning content (soft skills, hard skills, competences, experience, etc.) is specified. Our teaching students were also required to refer to the school curricula they were using in specific parts of the game.
Category 4: Storytelling
The category Storytelling includes all the elements that deal with the game’s story. This is where the developers formulate the plot. Its development and progress are delineated on a timeline. This is also where they define the setting, genre and topic of the game and specify the staging and dramaturgical elements.
Category 5: External Setup
In the category External Setup the developers are charged with determining all the elements of the game that are not immediate components of the actual game. That means all the elements that take place before the beginning or after the end of the actual game, like pre-workshops, warm- ups, debriefings, the transfer of learning content, the evaluation of the game, and/ or pervasive elements((Cf. Montola, Stenros, Waern, 2009.)). Not every Edularp requires all the elements listed under this category. But it makes sense to consider all the elements and whether or not one’s own game requires them.
Category 6: Game Design
The category Game Design contains the template for the core of the future game design document. This is where the developers describe and visualize the construction of the game and its degree of linearity. This is where they define the victory conditions and determine whether the game can be won cooperatively or competitively.
They define possible game rules — both regulative rules and constitutive rules, as well as possible rules of irrelevance((Regulative rules are those that we typically refer to as the rules of the game. Constitutive rules,
as the name suggests, constitute the game and, for example, define roles and specify key rules or
victory conditions.The rules of irrelevance state that certain objects or facts should be ignored and
thus allow the actual gamespace to exist (cf. Denker and Ballstaedt, 1976, pp. 58).)). They formulate the call to action as well as the intended player motivation, and define points of interest((In this context, a point of interest is the next “point” on which the player should focus. For instance, finding the key to a locked door.)).They determine whether the players take on roles during the game, and who writes them; and they define the game world. In this category the developers explicitly define all the quests that occur in the game, describing their construction, learning goal(s), style, necessary additional knowledge, etc.
The final category Documents, Materials, Props, Resources determines what items are required for the game. All the texts that the players will have access to before, during or after the game, as well as those required for dealing with players, NPCs and game masters (such as in-game contacts or NPC briefings) are also attached here.
This explicit querying of all the important points of the Edularp successfully prevents inexperienced students from overlooking one or more points or failing to give them enough attention. In this seminar we also used the GOD to provide the students with a structured time frame. Thus each of the seven categories had its own deadline, specifying when each unit had to be presented to the instructors in its most-finished version. We thus made it impossible for the students to procrastinate and then attempt to get everything done at the last moment((Experienced planners need not adhere to the order in the GOD, though it will often make sense to do so. And of course, it is not possible to work out all the points separately from each other.)).
While relying on the GOD and the deadlines, the students developed their own Edularp as independently as possible over the course of the following five sessions. We were present during the work sessions and instructed the students that they should create a goal-oriented agenda for each session and ensure that they followed it. Upon completion of each point on the agenda, the students briefly presented their results and we gave them feedback. We also intervened in discussions or development processes here and there when they were in danger of heading in the wrong direction, and we were always available for questions. At the end of the practical phase we played through the Edularp with the students step by step a couple of times (on a theoretical level, without the full staging, etc.), checked it together for logic and consistency, and developed answers for worst-case scenarios.
An Edularp of Their Own
The students’ Edularp was played on the penultimate session and lasted almost exactly four hours. Our students took on all the relevant duties themselves, with the exception of one NPC role. Two of our students served as gamemasters and four others played NPC roles. They also arranged for a student from the university to play an additional NPC and for six others to take part as players; our students organized their participation independently.
In general the process of conducting their first independently designed Edularp was surprisingly smooth and went impressively according to plan. Their tightly-planned schedule functioned very well, and the players managed to work through the entire plot by approx. 5:30 pm (the plan called for them to finish between 5:20 and 5:45 pm). We only intervened once, at the request of both gamemasters, and guided their players back to the right path with a spontaneous NPC improvisation.
Otherwise we simply observed the entire run-through — while making ourselves available for consultation in case of uncertainty on the part of the gamemasters and NPCs — and we tried to avoid getting involved as much as possible.
The game design document for their Edularp — which describes the story and design of the game, etc. — can be downloaded from the author’s website (www.phoenixgamedesign.de) free of charge.
The Reflection Phase
In the last session we all sat together and discussed the seminar in general as well as the students’ Edularp In the course of the seminar we had our students fill out numerous reflection questionnaires regarding the seminar, the GOD and the initial Edularp that we conducted for them: our students also had their own players fill out reflection questionnaires regarding their own larp.
Edularp and Back Again
In principle it can be said that the seminar was a complete success. However, with the benefit of hindsight and feedback there are also some things that we would surely do differently in a future session. We have thus drastically shortened the theoretical portion of the first session for future seminars based on the students’ feedback. Naturally, those students who have no experience with larps must first be properly introduced to the topic.
But the ability to absorb information, especially in the course of a four-hour session, is limited and the primary emphasis of the seminar is on practice rather than theory. According to the students it was the Edularp that they played in the second session that really awakened their interest and their desire to try it out themselves. The examples of successful Edularps in the first session were less important.
Many of them wrote in their reflection questionnaires that it was only through their own participation that they really understood what an Edularp is. Many found the theoretical portion “unimportant” for the independent game development that followed. In the reflection questionnaires the game development process using the GOD was generally described positively, even though the responses did draw attention to a few stumbling blocks.
The students had particular trouble with the Learning Content category, which they felt appeared too early in the GOD. They would have preferred to specify the learning content in the course of developing the quest. However, since teachers must work according to prescribed curricula, we consciously chose this particular sequence to better reflect the realities of the job.
The students also had trouble with the new terminology. Although at the beginning of the practical phase we went over the GOD with them in detail and explained all the terminology in detail, the meaning of individual terms was nonetheless quickly forgotten because they were not documented. Today we would thus distribute a sort of glossary along with the game organization document.
The majority of the students wrote in the questionnaire that the Project Planning category was especially helpful. At the same time, they noted that they only gradually came to understand the importance of well-structured and explicit project management.
In our opinion the most central element of the success of the seminar was the game organization document and the clear scheduling requirements it prescribed for the individual tasks.
Additionally, it was important that the students were required to work in an organized and structured manner, and that they received guidance in doing so. The regular reflection and feedback rounds helped identify and confirm good ideas while rooting out as early as possible ideas that fell outside the scope of the Edularp.
Works Cited
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Aristotle, Die Nikomachische Ethik. Auf der Grundlage der Übersetzung von Eugen Rohfes herausgegeben von Günther Bien. 4. Auflage. Hamburg: Meiner, 1985.
Baer, U., Spielpädagogik: Arbeitsblätter zur Spielepädagogik, Robin Hood Versand, Remscheid, 1982.
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Brougère, G., Some Elements Relating to Children’s Play and Adult Simulation/ Gaming. Simulation & Gaming, 30(2), 134-146., “Surplus Reality” in Moreno, J. L. (1965). Therapeutic Vehicles and the Concept of Surplus Reality. Group Psychotherapy and Psychodrama, 18, 211- 216, 1999.
Campbell, J., Der Heros in tausend Gestalten, Insel-Verlag, Frankfurt am Main, 1999.
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Deterding, Sebastian et. al., Gamification: Toward a Definition (PDF; 136 kB). In: Mindtrek 2011 Proceedings, ACM Press, Tampere, 2011.
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Gosney, J., Beyond reality: A guide to alternate reality gaming, Thomson Course Technology PTR, Boston, MA, 2005.
Henriksen, T.D., “Extending Experiences of Learning Games. Or Why Learning Games Should Be neither Fun, Educational nor Realistic”, in Leino, O., Wirman, H. and Fernandez, A. (Eds.), Extending Experiences: Structure, analysis and design of computer game player experience, Lapland University Press, Rovaniemi, pp. 140–162, 2008.
Huizinga, J., Homo ludens: Vom Ursprung der Kultur im Spiel, rororo Rowohlts Enzyklopädie, Vol. 55435, 21. Aufl., Rowohl Taschenbuch- Verl., Reinbek bei Hamburg. 1938/1939.
Hyltoft, M., “The Role-Players’ School. Østerskov Efterskole”, in Montola, M. and Stenros, J. (Eds.), Playground Worlds: Creating and Evaluating Experiences of Role-Playing Games, Published in conjunction with Solmukohta 2008, Ropecon ry, pp. 12–25, 2008.
Hyltoft, M. and Holm, J.T., “Elements of Harry Potter. Deconstructing an edu-larp”, in Holter, M., Fatland, E. and Tømte, E. (Eds.), Larp, the Universe and Everything: An anthology on the theory and practice of live role-playing (larp), published in conjunction with Knutepunkt 2009, pp. 27–42, 2009.
Hyltoft, M., “Four Reasons why Edu- Larp works”, in Dombrowski, K. (Ed.), LARP: Einblicke, Aufsatzsammlung zum Mittelpunkt 2010, Zauberfeder Verlag, Braunschweig, pp. 43–58., 2010.
McGonigal, J., Reality is Broken: Why Games Make Us Better and How They Can Change the World; [includes practical advice for gamers], Vintage Books, London. pp. 119ff, 2012.
Montola, M.; Stenros, J.; Waren, A., Pervasive Games – Experiences on the Boundary Between Life and Play, Morgan Kaufmann Publishers, 2008.
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van Ameln, F. und Kramer Josef, “Wirkprinzipien handlungsorientierter Beratungs- und Trainingsmethoden”, Zeitschrift für Gruppendynamik und Organisationsberatung, Vol. 38 No. 4, pp. 389–406, 2007.
Bleed is neither inherently negative nor positive. Some players erect strong mental boundaries between themselves and their characters in order to avoid bleed. Others consciously seek bleed experiences by “playing close to home.”((Jeepform Dictionary, “Bleed,” Jeepen.org.)) Similarly, some games are designed with the intention of drawing people as far outside of their normal lives as possible through fantastic elements or improbable circumstances. Others are built with the specific goal of inducing a strong emotional reaction in the players and encouraging them to contemplate how the fiction relates to their own lives.
Regardless of player or designer motivations, sometimes bleed occurs without prompting. These experiences can often come as a surprise, especially when the players are unprepared and have no tools for how to discuss about or manage bleed. This article will explain the phenomenon from a theoretical perspective, detail some of the types of bleed, examine the debates surrounding the concept, and suggest some strategies for managing bleed experiences.
Alibi has a direct correlation with bleed: the stronger the alibi, the weaker the bleed. Alternately, playing close to home provides an inherently weaker alibi. For example, if a player has children in real life, playing a parent in a game will likely produce greater bleed and lesser alibi. The player might strengthen the alibi by establishing very different relationship dynamics between the character and the fictional children, thereby affording added distance. Alternately, the player can choose to push toward a greater degree of bleed by using the real names of his or her real life children in-game.
A character at the post-apocalyptic game Dystopia Rising: Lone Star in Texas mourns the death of his in-game wife, an event that took months to emotionally process. (Play, Sarah Lynne Bowman) Characters at DR Lone Star comfort someone after she finds out her in-game family member just died. All photos by Sarah Lynne Bowman. (Play, Sarah Lynne Bowman)
Types of Bleed
Bleed comes in two major forms: bleed-in – when the emotions, thoughts, relationship dynamics, and physical states of the player affect the character – and bleed-out, the opposite process.((Montola, “Positive Negative”; Bowman, “Social Conflict.”)) A bleed feedback loop is also observable, when it becomes difficult to tell where the player begins and the character ends, especially in emotionally overwhelming situations. For example, in games where players experience sleep deprivation and constant attacks from enemies, the exhausted mind may have difficulty distinguishing between a “fake” attack and a “real” one. This phenomenon does not mean that the player is incapable of upholding the magic circle, but rather that the intensity of emotion has become overwhelming to the mind, causing confusion and difficulties with immediate processing and distancing.
Bleed is most often described in terms of emotional experiences, as emotions are the least conscious and most spontaneous aspects of enactment. However, other factors are connected with emotional reactions. Out-of-game thoughts are often interwoven with emotional responses, e.g. “I can’t believe Johnny is insulting my character. He always acts this way when we play together,” which may later induce an angry outburst in-character. Also, relationship dynamics can affect bleed. If two players are best friends out-of-game, they may unconsciously replicate that dynamic within the magic circle.
Physical states can also produce bleed, especially sleep deprivation or exhaustion, which weaken the mental defenses of the players and makes them more susceptible to impulsive emotional responses. Many games, such as high-immersion combat larps, are built upon this principle, though the designers may not realize that they are creating a game designed to produce a bleed effect.
At its most positive, bleed experiences can produce moments of catharsis: when the player and character emotions are synced in a powerful moment of emotional expression. Most often, these experiences manifest in great displays of joy, love, anger, or grief; in-game crying is often associated with bleed.((Sarah Lynne Bowman, “Bleed: How Emotions Affect Role-playing Experiences,” Nordic Larp Talks Oslo, 2013.)) Regardless of their original intentions for alibi, players often call these cathartic experiences their Golden Moments, perhaps because the alibi of the game is still strong enough to allow them the opportunity to express emotions they might otherwise feel inhibited to share in real life.
A character in DR Lone Star experiences a cathartic moment, crying for the death of his mother during his baptism scene into a new religion. (Play, Sarah Lynne Bowman) Other characters comfort him, letting him know he has friends and is not alone. In-character support can help lessen the negative impact of bleed. (Play, Sarah Lynne Bowman)
However, not all bleed experiences are considered positive.((Bowman, “Social Conflict”)) Players may, for example, feel lasting aggression toward someone who acted antagonistically toward their character in-game. Such feelings may do damage to their out-of-game relationships. Intimate love connections can also form in games as the result of bleed. While some of these relationships may translate well to the outside world, with happy couples forming as a result, in-game relationships also run the risk of damaging existing intimate bonds by complicating established boundaries or invoking jealousy.((Gordon Olmstead-Dean, “Impact of Relationships on Games,” in Lifelike, edited by Jesper Donnis, Morten Gade and Line Thorup (Copenhagen: Projektgruppen KP07, 2007), 195-210; Bowman, “Social Conflict.”))
In-game wedding at DR Lone Star after a year of in-character courtship. The characters are romantically involved, but the players are not. (Play, Sarah Lynne Bowman) In-game wedding at DR Lone Star after a year of in-character courtship. The characters are romantically involved, but the players are not. (Play, Sarah Lynne Bowman)
Finally, distinguishing between bleed and psychological triggers is important. As Maury Brown explains, psychological triggers in role-playing occur when some sort of stimuli activates a previous traumatic memory and induces a response.((Maury Brown, “Pulling the Trigger on Player Agency: How Psychological Intrusion in Larps Affect Game Play,” in TheWyrd Con Companion Book 2014, edited by Sarah Lynne Bowman (Los Angeles, CA: Wyrd Con), 96-111.)) Trigger responses can range from mild to severe. While triggers are a form of bleed-in, as they represent aspects of the player’s psychology affecting the character experience, not all bleed moments are “triggers.” Safety precautions such as in-game signaling and safe words can help community members distinguish between a player having a cathartic bleed moment and reliving the disruptive triggering of previous trauma.
Debates Surrounding Bleed
Some role-playing communities consider bleed a taboo subject. Because of the so-called Satanic Panic((Stark, Lizzie. Leaving Mundania: Inside the Transformative World of Live Action Role-playing Games. Chicago, IL: Chicago Review Press, 2012.)) and other alarmist outside perceptions of the dangers of role-playing – e.g., Mazes and Monsters, The Wild Hunt, Knights of Badassdom – many participants have endured decades of stigma. Fears around role-playing center upon the assumption that immersion into another person and fictional world will make the individual lose touch with reality and forget who they are. On the extreme end, religious conservatives fear that role-players will become involved in the occult and start using magic “for real” (see the Chick Tracts, recently dramatized in the film Dark Dungeons).
Therefore, role-players are extremely sensitive to these allegations and often wish to distance themselves as much as possible from the perception of becoming “too close” to the character. Individuals who experience bleed and suffer negative consequences, such as players who feel long-term grief as the result of losing a character, might get shamed or otherwise ostracized from certain gaming groups. Some role-players refuse to admit that bleed exists and become defensive at the concept itself, wishing to reinforce the alibi at all costs. Often, these individuals do not wish to be held personally responsible for anything that their character does in-game, which is understandable. However, an airtight alibi can promote a dismissive attitude toward communal problems such as in-game bullying by individuals and cliques. Denying that participants can become personally impacted by game events erases the experience of many players and silences their ability to ask for help.
Ultimately, I believe that denying the existence of the real phenomenon of bleed is not an effective strategy to manage it in role-playing communities. Instead, I suggest that groups adopt a common terminology and a set of techniques to help people experience greater emotional depths in-character and return back to their lives with minimal negative impact.
Strategies to Manage Bleed
Whether or not participants intend to play for bleed, the impact of bleed experiences can become quite intense for some individuals. Players with a strong distance between self and character may find themselves mystified when another participant feels long-lasting emotional devastation at the loss of an in-game companion, for example. I believe that we should acknowledge that the perspectives of both of these types of players are valid: those who experience strong bleed and those who do not. Furthermore, as a community, we can learn strategies to help individuals recover who feel emotionally overwhelmed or confused after a game is done.((Johanna Koljonen, Peter Munthe-Kaas, Bjarke Pedersen, and Jaakko Stenros, “The Great Player Safety Controversy,” Panel at Solmukohta 2012, Nurmijärvi, Finland, April 13, 2012; Johanna Koljonen, “The Second Great Player Safety Controversy,” Presentation at Knutepunkt 2013, Haraldvangen, Norway, April 19, 2013; Johanna Koljonen, “Safety in Larp,” Presentation at the Larpwriter Summer School 2013, Vilnius, Lithuania, last modified Aug. 1, 2013, YouTube, Fantasiforbundet, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qho9O_EMG34; Johanna Koljonen, “Emotional and Physical Safety in Larp – Larpwriter Summer School 2014,” Presentation at the Larpwriter Summer School 2014, Vilnius, Lithuania, last modified Aug. 3, 2014, YouTube, Fantasiforbundet, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g-cPmM2bDcU.))
One such strategy is called in-game signaling. During role-playing, in-game signaling techniques help players communicate to one another if bleed has become too intense. Games may employ hand gestures, safe words, “okay” symbols, written check marks, or other methods that enable players to indicate to one another whether or not they are overwhelmed or in need of a break. In order for these signals to be effective, the organizers and role-playing community must reinforce and encourage their use. In other words, players should feel safe to opt-out of a scene at any time and should not feel pressured to continue in order to avoid “ruining” the game for others.
At a briefing before the Planetfall larp in Austin, Texas, organizers explain how to signal backing away from a scene by placing a hand behind the neck. (Play, Sarah Lynne Bowman) In DR Lone Star, an NPC player signals being off-game with a hand over her head and a whooshing sound, to be interpreted by characters as “the wind.” (Play, Sarah Lynne Bowman)
An important post-game strategy is creating rituals of de-roleing. De-roleing is a method by which the player ritually casts aside the role and re-enters their former identity. Some strategies for de-roleing include: players removing an article of their characters’ clothing and placing it before them in the circle; participants stating what they want to take with them from the character and what they want to leave behind; organizers leading players through a guided meditation to ease their transition; etc. These symbolic actions allow players to switch from the frame of the character to the player in a manner that is less jarring than a hard stop.
Debriefing is another useful strategy to help players process their emotions. Creating a formal space after the game for players to express their feelings and share stories in a serious manner often helps contextualize bleed. Additionally, assigning a “debriefing buddy” provides players with a safety net for private communication after the larp with another participant. Positive, out-of-character communication with other players who were part of intense scenes may help alleviate lasting negative feelings, e.g. “I’m sorry that my character was so cruel to you in-game. Would you like to talk about it?” For a more extensive discussion on debriefing, refer to my article in this series, “Returning to the Real World.”((Sarah Lynne Bowman, “Returning to the Real World: Debriefing After Role-playing Games,” Nordiclarp.org, Dec. 8, 2014.))
Informally, players also can engage in out-of-game socializing, such as dinners, afterparties, charity events, etc. These events help players feel connected to the community outside of the context of the fiction and their characters. Social events reinforce the co-creative nature of the role-playing experience and open up spaces for dialogue about the game, allowing for greater communication. Online forums and social media can also work toward this aim if used with the intention of building out-of-game community.
Some players find writing a useful strategy for managing bleed. Examples include journaling in- or out-of-character, writing a letter to one’s character, creating new stories around that persona, sharing written game memories with other participants, etc. Telling war stories to each other is another popular method of sharing. Externalizing the experiences in a linear fashion, whether verbally or on paper, seems to help immensely by allowing players the chance to reframe their story in a manageable way.
Further strategies include becoming immersed in other experiences. Some people can easily throw themselves into their work, while others have difficulty returning back to daily life. Often, the first 48 hours after a weekend-long game can prove difficult in terms of adjustment. Playing video games, another role-playing game, or immersing into another fictional reality like a television show can help ease this transition. Most importantly, adequate sleep, eating, and hygiene can help reset a player’s psychological state to some semblance of normality. For more information, see my article with Evan Torner on “Post-Larp Depression.”((Sarah Lynne Bowman and Evan Torner, “Post-Larp Depression,” Analog Game Studies 1, no. 1. (1 Aug 2014).))
A Collective Experience
Regardless of the degree of immersion or bleed each player feels, ultimately the role-playing experience is a co-creative and collective one. Understanding bleed and developing tools for compassionately managing intense emotional reactions can help role-playing communities reach deeper levels of trust and collaboration. Recognizing that each individual contributes an important part to the whole is an important step in this process. A healthy community is made up of individuals who feel safe and able to openly communicate with one another about their experiences.
Cover photo: Characters at DR Lone Star attend an in-game funeral to mourn their lost friends. In-game ceremonies are one way of coping with strong emotions within the frame of the magic circle (Play, Sarah Lynne Bowman).
We had many reasons for making Morgenrøde. First and foremost, we shared a fascination of the time. Most of our parents were young when the rebellion against everything established was driving the counter culture forward. Some were a part of the struggle. Others watched from the outside.
The more we dug into the time period and the counterculture the more we realized that the hippies were far from one group. It was a far-ranging movement of everything from Marxist revolutionaries over flower-power spiritualists to bra burning feminists fighting for women’s right to equal opportunity.
We tried to make our triad of themes as pervasive as possible. We kept love, liberation and revolution as the guiding principles for all design decisions. In our game design, this led us to designing a series of mechanics, which should enable the players to act out the three themes.
The trips themselves were played out in the Drug Box – a black-box with a white sheet wall which had psychedelic visuals projected on to it and a matching soundscape. An organizer played a spirit guide and game mastered the session.
