Nordic Larp

Month: February 2018

  • The Narrative Experience

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    The Narrative Experience

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    As larpers, we are world-class in making character immersion experiences. We have mastered it through years of larp making, and can apply this skill in many settings and with many different themes and end results. We can design experiences for bleed or even make them transformative.

    Yet despite such experiences, there are other types of experiences with which we are not as proficient. In fact, one in particular I’m thinking of, I choose to call the narrative experience.

    The narrative experience has roots in “narrativism,” or the disposition that rules and play should serve to tell narratives above all other goals. It comes from Ron Edwards’ (1999) reformulation of the “drama” component of the popular “Threefold Model” –– Game, Drama, and Simulation –– but narrativism and dramatism has been redefined, blurred, confused, and misunderstood many times since, such that today narrativism and dramatism is commonly not understood to mean the same thing. What separates them is difficult to define; I give a suggestion later on. Nevertheless, it should be acknowledged that a player perspective, play style or player goal exists called “narrativism,” and it is one of possibly many such perspectives in the complex field of preferences and motivations for play theorized by many, such as Robin D. Laws’ (2002) theory for pen-and-paper roleplay or Nick Yee’s (2005) work on motivations in MMORPGs.

    In the Nordic larp community, and to my knowledge in the larp world in general, we have yet to discover good ways to make full-scale larps, not freeform or chamber larps, focused on a narrative experience. Sure, there have been larps with narrativist ideas, and some went well, but generally I see full-scale larps struggling with their narrative aspects, and the community has not learned much to confront this fact. Personal observations by Juhana Pettersson (2017) and my own experiences tell me that we do not have a coherent understanding of narrativism, mostly due to getting lost in semantics of Edwards’ (1999) formulation or the Nordic interpretation The Three Way Model (Bøckman, 2003). There are many diverging views and preferences, and I doubt I completely understand all of them.

    Instead of focusing on narrativism in the abstract, I take a more hands-on approach to the narrative experience. In this article, I will talk about narratively inclined players and what they tend to do when they larp, recount some tools and methods with narrativistic leanings, then discuss a possible narrativistic redefinition of NPCs. Finally, I offer ideas for the structures of narrative larps as a foundation for further work.

    The narrative experience in larp design I loosely define as: “the object of the larp is for players to focus on the story (or stories) of the larp, and one’s character (or characters) are merely a tool to play out these stories”. This should be seen as contrary to the character immersion experience, loosely defined as; “the object of the larp is for you to immerse yourself into a character, the actions you take during the larp should be rooted in character motivation and coherence”. These two experiences are not necessarily opposites. Definitions here stress the difference between the experiences; they are not meant to establish a false dichotomy.

    My overall hope is that we as larp players and designers may become more skilled and versatile to play larps with any kind of mix between immersive and narrative experiences, and that we are more conscious about the choices we make in design and play style. At the same time, I want to expand our capabilities with new experiences within the narrative domain, as it is my notion there is a lot more to be gained there.

    Narratively Inclined Players

    Some larpers prefer to play with focus on stories and narratives and less focus on character feelings, motives or coherence. We all have our own preferences as to what we want from a larp, and there are definitely those for whom stories is the most important thing.

    Preference and skill usually go together, also in larp, so narratively inclined players are quite often adept story handlers, who like nothing better than when a good story comes together. When these players participate in larps, they most often get their greatest kick when they are able to steer their character’s story or the story of other characters. Narrative steering is explained later.

    To learn about the narrative experience, it makes sense to look at what narratively inclined players do when they play. In my experience, there are two types of narratively inclined players; those that like to create a good story centered on their own character, and those that like to manipulate the stories and characters of others. The first type is usually a master of drama and of setting the scene, while the second type is usually a master of intrigue and timely remarks. Both will have very good feel for the flow of play and “playing ball,” explained later.

    These are skills that have high status in most larping circles. Thus, you will usually see that narratively inclined players are regarded as skillful roleplayers in their local communities, which is ironic since narratively inclined players will often work to create stories and drama, even if it is not in their character’s personality to do so. In fact, they may find themselves breaking character coherence several times during a larp in order to advance stories, which, for many players that are more inclined towards character immersion, would otherwise be absolutely taboo.

    On the other hand, when narratively inclined players steer to advance stories in a larp, they do not go completely haywire. Even if they break character coherence, there are other things keeping them in check; some sort of narrative coherence or the instinctive feeling of a good story: This, to me, is what separates narrativism from dramatism.

    Narrative concepts

    Despite my earlier claim that we as a community haven’t experimented much with narrative experiences, we nevertheless have a long list of concepts with a possible narrativistic interpretation.

    “Playing to lose”

    “Playing to lose” is where a player increases drama though actively trying to have their character come out worse off following each engagement. It is employed in many Nordic larps so often that many players culturally assume it by default.

    “Playing to lose” can be interpreted as an anti-gamism or anti-powerplay rule to avoid players attempting to use the larp for character empowerment. More interestingly, however, it incorporates the sentiment that tragedies and stories about a fall from greatness are better stories, and this rule is in place to promote those stories by encouraging players to make sure they do not succeed in their characters’ goals without at least a dire cost.

    Steering

    Steering is simply the act of influencing your character’s actions for reasons that are extra-diegetic (Montola, Stenros, Saitta, 2015). As such, steering is itself not narrativistic, however in many cases these extra-diegetic reasons are. Whenever a player steers her character’s action with the aim to create a certain scene or promote a certain plot line, it is narrativism at work.

    “Playing ball”

    To “play ball” is a common expression for the concept of answering play with play; to see opportunities in the larp, to recognize plot points, or to register another player’s initiative and choosing to act upon it. A splendid article is written about this concept by Josefin Westborg and Carl Nordblom (2017).

    To “play ball” is a skill that can be practiced and mastered, and it is useful for roleplayers of all preferences. In a narrativistic interpretation, it is a skill that enables a roleplayer to see story points and choose how to best act on them in order to further the stories of larp. It is an essential skill for the narratively inclined player.

    Telegraphing

    The act of telegraphing is to communicate intent without specifically expressing it. In sports and other places telegraphing is typically unintentional and many times viewed as a bad thing, as it enables your opponent to read you. In larp, it is a good thing and can be used intentionally.

    Telegraphing in roleplay is the use of winks, intonation of words, and general body language to intentionally meta-communicate to your co-players. Note that this diverges from the technique of telegraphing as used in jeepform (Wrigstad, 2008).

    Telegraphing is typically used to communicate intentions and desires for the outcome of an interaction. Not all of these intentions are related to the plots of a larp, but a great deal may be. For instance, it may be used to communicate about the intended outcome of a scene. When used proficiently, it is a very useful tool for a larper.

    Play distribution

    Play distribution comes from the idea that play is a resource in larps that we create with our actions and share among each other, but this resource tends to gravitate towards the high-status characters of the larp, who are then supposed to make sure that it is distributed back to the characters of lower status, hopefully with some manner of fairness so that everybody gets a piece.

    This task of distributing play can be quite demanding to the point of being labor (Jones et.al., 2016), and usually the players that take it on will have their hands full the whole larp, leaving them with less time to pursue their desired larp experience. I would not consider play distribution specifically a narrative task, but it is interesting to note that it involves a great deal of steering and possibly narrative consideration as to how play should be distributed. Thus, the task of play distribution may easily quell the possibility of a good character immersion experience, but not the possibility a narrative experience.

    Foreshadowing

    Premonitions, forewarnings, or foreshadowing are gamemaster tools to hint at a future event within the confines of the fiction, so that the players react appropriately when the event does or does not come about. A classic example would be sending a messenger telling that the orcs are on the move some hours before the fantasy village is attacked, thus giving players time to discuss defense strategies and prepare for the fight.

    Especially in the case when a gamemaster wants to make some kind of plot twist, it is in most larping cultures plain good style to foreshadow it; otherwise, the players may very likely react negatively to it. Cases of players feeling wronged by an unsuspected plot twist are too many to count. The feeling of surprise is rarely positive, without the chance to have seen it coming.

    Foreshadowing can be made with varying degrees of bluntness, depending on the intent of the gamemaster. Sometimes you want to be very clear about what is going to happen, sometimes more subtle and cryptic, but the act of giving players hints of things to come is narrativism.

    Act structure

    The method of having an act structure in a larp is usually to promote some kind of story through those acts. Usually in larps, the different acts will have different themes ascribed to them in order to align players with the story. It is a rather blunt-but-effective way to enforce the story of the larp without having NPCs or high status characters directing it. Rather: if all players follow the themes of the acts, the story will emerge almost in its own.

    An act structure provides another important advantage to the average larper: it helps us structure the narratives of our characters to have the right escalation, climax, and resolution to fit with the larp. It helps with building a narrative experience, even for a player that is not particular narratively inclined.

    Fateplay

    Fateplay (Fatland, 2000) is a gamemaster tool to direct a player to take certain actions or pursue certain goals with her character. Typically, it will be in the form of a message, called a “fate,” that is given to the player before the larp starts, stating an action that shall be performed and a condition for when it must be done. The condition can either be a set time or it can be whenever something specific happens. With this kind of messages the gamemaster can make entire chains of events and thus make sure a plot is moving forward the right way.

    To my knowledge there are two types of fateplay larps: the strict fateplay as designed and played by the Oslo larp scene in the late 1990s, in which fates are imperative actions that must be undertaken, and the loose fateplay in which fates are merely suggested actions that a player can choose from.

    Although the idea behind fateplay is clearly narrativistic, it is often the loose fateplay type that is seeing use in modern Nordic larp design, and it does not necessarily bring much narrative experience with it. Strict fateplay can be seen as intrusive by players with character immersion preferences.

    But fateplay can yield great narrative experiences if, instead of focusing on the action that needs to be done and the problems with character coherence this may entail, one focuses on the story of the character that is going to do this action and what hidden agenda this character holds. Sometimes when playing narratively, it helps to see the character from the outside.

    Planned scenes

    In many larps it has become a common thing that players agree on certain scenes prior to the larp. Sometimes the organizer is involved, but in most cases players plan it among themselves. Especially in larps of a sandbox design, it is well-known that planning of plots, character relations and scenes to be executed during the larp will greatly increase the chances that you will have an awesome larp.

    In my experience, most scenes planned in this manner do not include specific actions or things that should happen during the scene, they are typically more in the form of interesting setups where things might happen because of the engaged characters.

    The whole planning of plots and scenes is narrativistic thinking, yet as long as it is done before the larp, most larpers are cool with it. For most larpers, the planning is done in such a way that what is agreed upon will seamlessly fit together with their character and not be a cause for distraction during the larp.

    Directed play

    In some larp cultures, it has become practice to create stories and tension in the larp though scenes of directed play. The idea is that these directed scenes will visualize to the players what is at stake in the larp, and it can be a good way to demonstrate to all when a story progress to a new stage, or when a new event changes the stakes for the characters.

    Actual directed play can be done in many ways, from the use of playbooks with lines and actions that players should perform to scenes that have been rehearsed before the larp, to an actual director on stage who tells people what to do and say.

    To many players, directed play feels like a brute-force means of advancing the story and they react strongly against it unless the implementation of the scene is done in way to fit with the overall design of the larp. A seamless transition to directed scenes or having the scenes in breaks between acts or simply having directed play as part of the larp’s premise all help make such actions fit.

    Break and assembly

    Break and assembly is a technique that pauses a larp at a certain time and has the players convene to talk about the current state of characters, relations and stories and where to take them forward when the larp is started again. Usually, break and assembly is used when there is traditionally low activity in the larp, for instance in morning hours, or between acts.

    Some players may feel that break and assembly ruins their flow in the larp, but it can do a lot more good than harm, though naturally the break should be made gently to minimize disruption.

    The assembly, which should always be facilitated by a dedicated person, gives a splendid opportunity to coordinate narratives in the midst of larp runtime. Even for players that lean heavily towards character immersion, the assembly can help them discuss their character’s motives and plots so they do not have be distracted by that during play.

    Non-Player Characters

    The saying that NPCs are players too, or even humans too, has been catching on the last few years. It is a topic that is emerging and I believe we will see more discussion aimed at finding good solutions to implement in larps.

    “NPCs are dehumanizing”, Jaakko Stenros said in his keynote talk at Knutepunkt 2017. In a related article (Stenros, 2013) he speculates that the meaning of the different words we commonly use to describe NPCs are insufficient and all of them relate to some unspoken expectation of a norm that the NPCs are not part of.

    Clearly that norm is the norm of what constitutes a player. NPC as an acronym for non-player character was coined in the early days of pen-and-paper roleplaying. It simply refers to the characters that are roleplayed by the dungeon master and not the players. Roleplay has evolved greatly since then, and somewhere along the way larp came and borrowed the acronym without thinking much about it.

    It is strange that the name was just copied directly, since the concept doesn’t really make sense in a larp context where you actually have to have individual people playing the NPCs instead of a dungeon master handling them all; they are, in fact, characters played by people.

    Since then, larp itself has changed; how larp is played and what we can do with it has nearly no resemblance to how it used to be, and the roles of both players and NPCs have changed with it. They have grown to become much closer to each other to the point where it is actually difficult to recognize a player character from a non-player character.

    Yet our thinking of NPCs has not changed that much. We still see NPCs as persons or entities that provide a service to the players. The experience of NPCs has ostensibly no significance –– only the experience of players is important. Therein lies the dehumanization.

    The norm of what constitutes a player is complex to define and probably consists of many things; one thing I believe is important is the type of experience a larp is aiming for, or a larp culture attributes value. Players make a social contract to aspire to the experience that the larp intended.

    For instance, at a larp made as a dungeoncrawl, players would be the people actually able to go down into the dungeon, solve puzzles, fight with monsters, and emerge victorious or die in the attempt, because that is the experience provided by the larp. The wizard providing the quest at the inn and the storekeeper providing options to buy magic potions are NPCs to the larp.

    Similarly, for sandbox larps and the majority of Nordic larps, one focuses on character immersion experiences, so players expect this experience. NPCs in this context are characters that only exist in the larp universe for a limited time or that are so heavily scripted that character immersion is difficult.

    Yet why are we indifferent towards NPC experience? It is clear that NPCs cannot experience what the larp is providing, but still their experiences should not be regarded as insignificant. Maybe it is worth to consider that larps may provide multiple experiences and as a larp culture to be open to attribute value to more than one type of experience.

    In their truest function NPCs are narrative vessels, it is the far most common reason to introduce an NPC that it serves a purpose for a plot in the larp. Yet we only focus on how the plot is experienced by the players, while the experience of relaying the plot, playing it, and making it work during larp runtime, in essence the narrative experience, is given no credit.

    But the narrative experience fits perfectly with NPCs, and if they are given the opportunity to explore it, to develop narratives and play them out in response to the players’ backgrounds and wishes, I am sure that it will give both the NPCs and the players a more fulfilling experience of the larp. As larp designers and players we are already proficient at applying NPCs in many different narrative constellations, but for NPCs to have a narrative experience they require to be given ownership of their experience and of making plots and narratives for the players.

    In the case of a sandbox larp, NPCs will have a lot to offer in terms of a narrative experience. There could be a lot of excitement in being the ones that manipulate the players and spin them around in a web of stories, intrigues and drama. But it requires that the NPCs are given autonomy by gamemasters and agency by the players.

    Indeed, another problem with the indifference towards the experience of NPCs is that they have been stripped of anything but their core functions in the larp; as such they are given very limited options to gain meaningful experiences at all. What NPCs need to be given are autonomy and agency.

    Autonomy to make plots instead of just heeding the call of a gamemaster, and agency to exert power over those plots and execute them on behalf of the players. For this to happen, there needs to be trust between all parties of the larp – especially between NPCs and players, who have to recognize that NPCs are in fact co-players instead of non-players.

    Narrativist Larps

    The Nordic larp community has not committed itself to narrativism, at least not compared to the large number of larps based on character immersion, simulation or other perspectives. But that’s not saying that we haven’t done anything.

    Below, I offer ideas for structures of larps that can offer a narrative experience to all or a part of the players. Some of these structures are well-known, and larps have been made with them before.

    Pearls on a string

    All players go for a narrative experience in this larp. The idea is that all players form groups before the larp to coordinate and rehearse a sequence of predetermined scenes, so as to form a story, like pearls on a string. During the larp, there will be time to execute the planned scenes, but there will be a lot more time in between the scenes where the characters are supposed find motivation and get to a point where the next scene seems plausible to the character.

    The interesting thing is that the predetermined scene will work as a guide for the story, but they will not in themselves be the story. The story will be built during larp runtime, and it is a question of building coherence in both story and characters, something that a lot of larpers actually love to do.

    Typically, when planning such a series of predetermined scenes, one tries to logically link scenes together into a well-known story. To make matters more interesting, however, one might try a set of scenes that have no apparent logical connection, just to make it a bigger challenge to play through the larp and make everything fit together in play.

    Larp as adaptation

    A good way to make a larp with some narrativist undercurrents is to base the larp on a book, theatrical play or movie. With varying degrees of adherence to the original material the larp can scale from “inspired by”, where players try to fit their stories with the original theme and mood, to “adaptation of”, where players play through the original story with a strict act structure and sometimes with scripted scenes.

    Larps based on a well-known story will always give a hint of a narrative experience, but it is up to the organisers how much they actually want to give players an experience of living the original story, or if they will rather give an experience of being with the theme and setting of the story.

    NPCs with agency

    Following the possible redefinition of NPCs above, these new NPCs would require testing in full-scale larps. This larp should provide narrative experience to the NPCs while character immersion and simulation experiences to the players as normal.

    Take an example of a standard character immersion larp with NPCs, make an agreement that the NPCs can decide themselves what they want to play and that they will have charge over the plot of the larp. Make sure that NPCs are a tight-knit group that have workshopped a lot together and have a good understanding of each other’s strengths and weaknesses. Give the NPCs insight into the player characters and relations and instruct them to play on these things. Finally make sure that the players are in agreement with this, as it will greatly influence their play and take away some of their autonomy.

    The melting pot

    In any Nordic larp, there are both players that look for character immersion experiences and players that lean more towards a narrative experience. The recognition and knowledge that not all wish for the same experience can be enough to alter the larp’s design. If the players are brought into that recognition it could probably also alter their play and give more room to different kinds of experiences.

    If organisers knew in advance what kind of experience the players were looking for, they could tailor characters after that and make the appropriate casting. It would also give the organisers knowledge of where in the network of characters they should give different kinds of input.

    This is however not as easy as it sounds. Casting characters on the basis of players’ preferences in terms of the Three Way Model has been attempted before with little success. The problem is, I believe, that character casting is simply not enough when a larp in itself is designed around one single type of experience. The creation of a multi-experience larp is difficult, but necessary.

    Shadow characters

    A larp could be built up in such a way that for each ordinary player character you would also have one or more shadow characters acting in relation to the player character, for instance as guardian angels, good and bad conscience, or anything else fitting with the theme of the larp.

    The purpose of the shadow characters would be to have them plan events and make setups for the player character, both good and bad, which should give the shadow characters a good narrative experience.

    Different rules should apply to these shadow characters; how they could communicate to the player characters, to the other shadow characters, and to other player characters, how they could make events, or if they can make impersonations and thus also act as NPCs. All this can be decided through the theme and setting for the larp.

    Conclusion

    With this article, I lay the foundation for creating narrative experiences in full-scale larp and finding out what we can do with them. It has been my goal to keep this text on a level where it is directly applicable to the larps we make and the larps we play in.

    I want to stress that I don’t rate narrativism or narrative experiences higher than any other player perspectives or experiences available from a larp. Within character immersion in particular, I find an enviable perspective, and I am proud of the excellence with which we can make experiences to fit with this play goal.

    I have however the belief that there are many good larp experiences that can be found in the realms of narrativism, if only we went looking for them.

    References

    Bøckman, Petter. 2003. “The Three Way Model; Revision of the Threefold Model”. As Larp Grows Up. Edited by Line Thorup, Mikkel Sander, and Morten Gade. Knudepunkt 2003.

    Edwards, Ron. 1999. “System Does Matter” Accessed December 11, 2017. http://www.indie-rpgs.com/_articles/system_does_matter.html

    Fatland, Eirik. 2000. “The Play of Fates”. Accessed December 11, 2017. http://fate.laiv.org/fate/en_fate_ef.htm.

    Jones, Katherine Castiello, Sanna Koulu, and Evan Torner. 2016. “Playing at Work – Labor, Identity and Emotion in Larp”. Larp Politics – Systems, Theory, and Gender in Action. Edited by Kaisa Kangas, Mika Loponen, and Jukka Särkijärvi. Solmukohta 2016.

    Law, Robin D. 2002. Robin’s Laws of Good Game Mastering. Steve Jackson Games

    Nordblom, Carl and Josefin Westborg. 2017. “Do You Want to Play Ball?”. Once Upon a Nordic Larp… Twenty Years of Playing Stories. Edited by Martine Svanevik, Linn Carin Andreasen, Simon Brind, Elin Nielsen, and Grethe Sofie Bulterud Strand. Knutepunkt 2017. Rollespilsakademiet.

    Pettersson, Juhana. 2017. “Hamlet, Vampires and the Italian Alps”. Once Upon a Nordic Larp… Twenty Years of Playing Stories. Edited by Martine Svanevik, Linn Carin Andreasen, Simon Brind, Elin Nielsen, and Grethe Sofie Bulterud Strand. Knutepunkt 2017. Rollespilsakademiet.

    Stenros, Jaakko. 2013. “Between Game Facilitation and Performance: Interactive Actors and Non-Player Characters in Larps”. International Journal of Role-Playing – Issue 4. Utrecht School of the Arts, Utrecht, The Netherlands.

    Wrigstad, Tobias. 2008. “The Nuts and Bolts of Jeepform”. Playground Worlds. Edited by Markus Montola and Jaakko Stenros. Solmukohta 2008.

    Yee, Nick. 2005. Motivations of Play in MMORPGs – Results from a Factor Analytical Approach. Presented at the Digital Games Research Association Conference, Vancouver, Canada.

    This article is part of Re-Shuffling the Deck, the companion journal for Knutepunkt 2018.

    All articles from the companion can be found on the Knutpunkt 2018 category.

     

  • Group Improvisation of Larp Rituals

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    Group Improvisation of Larp Rituals

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    The aim of this article is to equip you with all the practical knowledge you need to run good, impactful fake rituals for larps. We present a 30-minute workshop which will teach a group of larpers to on-the-spot improvise cool magicky-feeling rituals.

    This article does not aim to discuss larp rituals from a theoretical perspective – for a more theoretical take on larp rituals, see Bowman (2015).  The suggested workshop is based on workshops run in connection with several larps, including Coven (Häggström and Falk 2015) and Ekdahl 1995 (Fallsdalen and Holgersson 2017). The authors have run the workshop many times in several countries, and other larpers have run similar workshops for many years in the Nordic countries – see for example Fatland (2015).

    Larp rituals can create not only temporary psychological effects but also bleed. The human brain and its emotions are eminently hackable, and one way this can be done is through rituals, both everyday rituals and religious rituals (for more on human rituals, see Bell (2009). Even if we know that something is fake, the act of doing it can have a true impact on your psyche and your body (see Charlesworth et al 2017; Pierre 2017).

    Rituals are experience enhancers: they can take the emotional theme of the larp and dial up the impact factor. Think of them as dramatic loudspeakers, and use them carefully.

    Overall workshop structure

    The workshop is performed in seven (7) steps:

    Step 1: The anatomy of a ritual: explain the common core.

    Step 2: The ritual toolkit

    Step 3: Practice your first ritual

    Step 4: Roles in the ritual: ritual leaders and followers

    Step 5: Try another ritual

    Step 6: Post-ritual theory

    Step 7: (If there’s more time) More practice in small groups

    Step 1: The anatomy of a ritual: explain the common core.

    In order to make it easier to improvise rituals, this workshop works with one specific, set, core structure for all rituals. Explain this structure to the workshop participants. We suggest that you make this structure – diegetic: this is how all the rituals in the larp world in question works.

    A ritual consists of three main phases (in boldface below) and two optional phases (in italics).

    Make a circle((Why circles? This workshop relies strongly on the effect of circles. Standing in a circle makes us focus on the others in the circle. It creates a small, temporal world with special rules. We feel more connected and are able to easily play off of each other’s actions and reactions.))

    • E.g. with people holding hands, or salt, or rope, or draw it, or place bones in a circle around the participants. Whatever is most appropriate for the context, as long as it is a circle.
    • The ritual leader may state “The circle is now complete” to make certain that all participants are aware of this.
    • A circle protects those within from evil outside, and also protects the outside from evil inside.

    Summon forces (optional)

    • This is optional but usually adds a cool feel.
    • Summon appropriate forces for the scenario/larp. In one larp it might be the four elements, in another it might be an ancient Egyptian god, in another it might be a fantasy creature. These will aid you and you can play on receiving power from them in the Main Act.

    Main act

    • Before creating a ritual, it is important to know that the ritual is about. This should be clear in the main phase, which should bring the group together and create a cool experience by chanting, movement, light, but also acts and proclamations that make the narrative of the larp move forward. For example, you might be filling a protective amulet with forces or maybe you are summoning the dead to talk to them. Maybe you have a possessed person who you want to exorcise. Use props like incense, fake blood, candles, tarot cards, draw symbols on the floor (make sure you can remove them afterwards).

    Thank the summoned forces (optional)

    • If you summoned forces and forgot to thank them, then that is an excellent source for cool drama. What would the consequences be?

    Break the circle

    • Break the circle by removing a part of the salt, erase the pencil drawing, remove the rope etc. etc.
    • Again, this needs to be announced clearly so that all players are aware of this.
    • It is potentially very dangerous to leave a ritual before a circle is properly broken – use this as a potential source of drama.
    • Another good drama source is if the circle is broken incorrectly or too soon! Forces might be rushing in or out. Anything might happen.

    Step 2: The Ritual Toolkit

    There is a single basic rule in creating rituals: the more magic it feels, the more magic it is in the larp.

    We want to create the illusion that there is magic afoot.

    We want to create a joint experience of this magic

    We want to create something that looks cool and feels cool.

    We want to make all participants feel like they are involved.

    In step 2, introduce the tools below to your larpers. Tell them that things will become clearer in STEP 3, where you will practice making a ritual using these tools.

    • A foundational soundscape, created by the participants. Everyone in the circle mimics the ritual leader to create the basic soundscape. This soundscape can include:
      • A sustained tone that the group starts and maintains.
      • Whispers (maybe the dead are talking?), hushes, vibrating hummings (this can turn into words very easily).
      • Song (a simple and repetitive song works best)
      • Rhythmic clapping or finger snapping
    • A basic movement of the group / position in the room
      • Its simplest form is just people standing in a circle.
      • Or they could be moving in the circle, walking around.
      • They can also be repeating the same gesture (tearing power from the object in the center maybe?) over and over.
    • Supplementary sounds that illustrate the magic (and thereby create the magic) achieved by the ritual.
      • A single person sings a higher sustained note than everyone else, or moves up and down a scale.
      • A single person starts snapping their fingers
      • A single person starts talking in tongues
      • A single person blows air (maybe because they are channeling an air elemental?) or hisses (a water elemental?)
      • Supplementary movements that illustrates the magic and thereby creates the magic.
      • A single person claps their hands, stomp their feet, presses life force into someone else.
      • Use props! Stones, incense, bones, papers with words of power, wind chimes, bells etc. Remember – if it feels magical it is magical.

    Step 3: Practice your first ritual

    1. Put an object on the floor – tell the players that you are going to bless it.
    2. Tell them that this will feel ridiculous. That’s ok! Encourage them to let it be ridiculous. (You will do a more serious thing later)
    3. Tell everyone that once you start making sounds, they should mimic you to create the basic soundscape. That soundscape should then be kept going throughout the ritual.
    4. Tell them that when you point to a single person, they should add something of their own as a supplementary sound or movement atop the basic soundscape.
    5. The others don’t need to mimic them, but they MAY do so if it feels right.
    6. Tell them that you are doing a small ritual – only the three main stages (make circle, main act, break circle).
    7. Alright – now put them in a circle, make them hold hands. Stay inside the circle. Say “the circle is now complete”.
    8. Create the basic soundscape. E.g. a single buzzing tone and then a rhythmical clapping. The others will mimic you.
    9. Vary the basic soundscape, make the group feel the power and how fun it is to make noise together.
    10. Point to a single person, who starts doing a gesture or sound. Point to some others.
    11. Raise the intensity of the basic soundscape.
    12. Start pushing power (with gestures) into the object in the middle.
    13. Raise the intensity of the basic soundscape to a crescendo. Stop it with an abrupt shout and/or movement.
    14. Say “it is done”, and break the circle of hands.
    15. Alright – you’ve done your first ritual. It had three parts – repeat them for the participants. Ask them how that felt.
    Circles are core components of rituals.
    Circles are core components of rituals.

    Step 4: Roles in the ritual: Ritual leaders and followers

    In this step, you make your participants aware of two different roles in a ritual, and how those roles can be used to aid in improvising a ritual or make it more complex.

    Leader of the ritual

    • Has an out of game responsibility to help the ritual feel cool and magicky.
    • This responsibility can be shared among two or more people, but it’s usually easiest to do it alone.
    • Since the leader will be in control of what happens during the ritual, it might be necessary to go out of game to talk to participants out of character before the ritual is run. Depending on the larp tradition you come from, more or less transparency in this will be needed.
    • To determine (via game mechanics or pre-determined choice) if the ritual will succeed or not.
    • To determine if something particular is going to happen.
    • Is responsible for being clear during the ritual about what is happening so that the players can make their characters react accordingly. For example, the leader is very clear about making and breaking the circle, and informing participants about how to understand the ritual. For instance: “now, if she falls to the floor that means that we fail and the demon wins”.
    • May be a game master.
    • Has to be prepared to change the ritual on the spot if a participant adds something unexpected to the mix (“I sacrifice my life blood to do X…”). Roll with the punches – it’s fun!
    • Has to be able to defend the ritual from TOO MANY changes brought on by improvising participants (by saying “No!”, that usually works).
    • “Repeat after me” is a very good tool to make everyone feel connected and safe.

    Followers

    • Add to the ritual by sounds and movements and cool ideas that they interject
    • It’s both your right and your obligation to help create the ritual
    • Help make the narrative go forward through the ritual
    • Respect the decisions of the leader – there might be a grand plan that you’re not aware of.
    • If you get confused during the ritual, don’t hesitate. Ask! Either in character or out of character.

    Step 5: Try another ritual

    Practice making another ritual in which you are the leader. Tell the participants to look at you and to enhance what you are doing. This will be a ritual with the goal to create some particular magic that you have decided on in advance. The participant’s task is to illustrate the magic that you indicate with the way you roleplay. Then do this set exercise:

    1. Tell them that you are doing all five parts of the ritual (repeat them) to create a magic portal to another world.
    2. Remind them that first the group will create a soundscape, then you (as the leader) will point to individuals. They should add something to the sound or the movement.
    3. Make the circle with you inside it. Start the soundscape.
    4. Get four people to help you call on the four elements.
    5. Say “I call on EARTH”, point to one of them – they’ll improvise something. Do the other elements.
    6. Channel elements into a point in the circle. Let the chanting increase to a crescendo (indicate this with your own voice and with hand movements.
    7. Start sounding uncertain (oh no! I’m losing focus! No!) – the group will now, of its on, follow you and illustrate this with frantic sounds. (You should not need to tell them this, at this point, most larpers have the hang of this and will improvise beautifully in concert).
    8. Fall out of the circle, breaking it!
    9. Go “out of character” and remark that that wasn’t too good for these characters – you broke the circle. What are possible consequences – ask them!
    10. If you have some other magic you want to focus on, feel free to replace the portal with something else.

    Step 6: Post-ritual theory

    Talk to your players about Consequences!

    • What are some ways that characters can feel after a ritual? Tired, nauseous, giddy, high?
      • Did the ritual fail? Or succeed? How do I know?
      • The ritual leader can (often should) make this very clear. State it afterwards.
      • Or the ritual leader makes it clear that it is not clear what happened. The players can spend the next few hours worrying, and game masters can plan future events around this.
      • Usually if it FELT like the ritual succeeded, it succeeded. Other things to weigh:
    • Was the ritual interrupted? That might be bad.
      • Did you thank the summoned forces?
      • Did you make and break the circle correct?
      • What would give the most amount of cool play?
      • Did it feel magical? Then it was magical.
    • Clean up after yourself
      • Blow out any candles
      • Remove salt
      • Remove fake blood quickly
      • Use a plastic sheet if you know it’s going to get messy.
    • Summary. Remind your participants about what you’ve been doing the last half hour.
      • Make a circle
      • Summon forces
      • Main act
      • Thank forces
      • Break circle
      • Everyone contributes
      • The role of the leader of the ritual
      • Did you succeed?

    There is no absolute right or wrong in creating play pretend rituals. Go with your imagination! Use the dramatic power of consequences.

    Step 7: (If there’s more time) More practice in small groups

    Divide participants into small groups (around 5 in each group)

    Give them scenarios to improvise rituals around. Some suggestions:

    • Make an amulet that carries a blessing from each of you.
    • Let a ghost possess a character to reveal its murderer.

    Tell them that it’s better to OVERACT than UNDERACT. If they get that out of their system now, they’ll feel freer during the actual larp.

    If there is time, have them redo the ritual, but this time with less overacting and more serious.

    Some Final Thoughts

    Many typical rituals seen in larps mirror religious rituals. This might make some participants uncomfortable and might lead to unintentional bleed. Make sure your participants are aware that there will be rituals, and be prepared for the possibility that some of them will choose to opt out before or during the ritual. As in all other aspects of the larp, make sure that there are safety words and procedures that will let them leave discreetly and feel empowered enough to do so.

    Finally, let us reiterate that the goal of this workshop is to create fake rituals for theatre purposes. If you are reading this for any other purpose, this is not the text for you. For the rest of you, we wish to quote Granny Weatherwax from Pratchett’s books: “It doesn’t stop being magic just because you know how it works.”

    AcknowledgementsThe authors wish to thank all the wonderful organizers and participants who have had a hand in developing this workshop through the years. A special thank you to Annika Waern for very insightful editing and feedback on the final version of this article.

    Tarot cards can be good props.
    Tarot cards can be good props.

    References

    Bell, C. 2009. Ritual Theory, Ritual Practice. Oxford University Press: NY. Available at http://web.vu.lt/rstc/a.pazeraite/files/2014/09/Catherine-Bell-Ritual-Theory-Ritual-Practice-Oxford-University-Press-USA-2009.pdf  (Accessed December 8 2017)

    Bowman, S. L. Love, Sex, Death, and Liminality: Ritual in Just a Little Lovin’. Available at https://nordiclarp.org/2015/07/13/love-sex-death-and-liminality-ritual-in-just-a-little-lovin/ (Accessed December 8 2017)

    Charlesworth JEG et al. Effects of placebos without deception compared with no treatment: A systematic review and meta-analysis. J Evid Based Med. 2017;10:97–107. https://doi.org/10.1111/jebm.12251 (Accessed December 8 2017)

    Fallsdalen, E and C. Holgersson. 2017. Ekdahl 1995. Larp. http://ekdahl1995.wixsite.com/lajv (Accessed December 8 2017)

    Fatland, E. 2015. Notes on Ritual Improv. Available at: http://larpwright.efatland.com/?p=600 (Accessed December 8 2017)

    Häggström, E and S. Falk. 2015. Coven. Larp. https://www.coven.nu/ (Accessed December 8, 2017)

    Pierre, J. 2017. The Healing Power of Placebos: Fact of Fiction. In Psychology Today. Available at: https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/psych-unseen/201705/the-healing-power-placebos-fact-or-fiction (Accessed December 8 2017)

    This article is part of Re-Shuffling the Deck, the companion journal for Knutepunkt 2018.

    All articles from the companion can be found on the Knutpunkt 2018 category.

     

  • Waiting Before the Beginning

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    Waiting Before the Beginning

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    What is your player’s state of mind when they arrive at the location of the game?

    What state of mind do you want your players to be in when the game begins?

    How do you get them from the first to the second?

    My design background is Fastaval, and in recent years the Danish black box scene. Fastaval is a roleplay convention with about 30 new games each year, each for about four to six players. You sign up for games beforehand. At Fastaval you gather in a room with all the other players. When people have arrived, an organizer divides people into groups, and each group is assigned a GM who then takes their group to another room to play the game.

    The black box scene works very much the same way. Again, it’s mostly centered on festivals with several short larps, the main difference being that the larps often have more players, around 10 to 20, so that everybody plays the same larp rather than being divided into groups. But both types of festival have a span of time before the game starts, where you wait for all players to arrive, perhaps for people from a reserve que to be found, or for the last preparations of the playspace to be done.

    You will mostly be waiting together with a mix of strangers and friends. People spend this time in very different ways. As player, I have experienced most of the thing you can do: joking with friends, being half asleep from an exhausting convention, being nervous about the coming game, the “Am I good enough?” feeling, aching to get on with it, giddy, fidgety, bored, impatient and so on. Suffice to say: players will be in many different states of mind while they wait for the game to begin.

    Designing the waiting time

    For the last three games I have designed, I decided that this waiting time could also be part of the experience. I have tried to design the waiting time just as I design the rest of the game. I do this by asking the three questions that I posed at the start of this article: where are my players? Where do I want them to be? And how do I get them there?

    For the first two games, Creatures (Pettitt, Simon J., 2015), and …And that’s it (Pettitt, Simon J., 2017), the solution to those questions were the same, so I will only describe one of them: …And that’s it.

    …And that’s it was my larp for Fastaval 2017. In this game, the characters face their own imminent death and the death of all their friends as a plague wipes out the last of humanity. This is a quiet larp about loss and death, about friendship and community. It’s uses drawing as a way of communicating and reflecting. The playstyle is very slow and meditative with the focus of creating together in silence.

    Fastaval on the other hand is a very busy place. Lots of things to do, lots of people to see. Very noisy, not much calm. At Fastaval you want to get as much as possible out of your time there, so often your program is packed. So, to answer the first two questions:

    The players are some degree of: busy, hectic, tired, full of noise and thoughts about what has happened and what will come.

    And I want them to be: calm, slow, meditative and silent.

    In an attempt to bring them from one to the other, the players, when they arrived, were given a piece of paper with a short presentation of the larp and this text:

    Dear player, welcome to …And that’s it

    Please read this, as you wait.

    From now on please don’t speak unless we ask you to.

    This game is about communicating and reflecting through drawings, so if there’s some waiting time, spend it drawing. It can be anything, it doesn’t have to be good.

    At the same time relax, and let all your tensions and worries slip to the back of your mind. This is a slow and dwelling game, so use this time to slowly sink into that mindset.

    This is a very simple low tech solution, but the result seemed to achieve my goals. When it came time to divide the players into groups I had a big group of absolutely quiet and attentive players. It was almost unsettling how loyally they had followed the instructions. I asked some of the players how it had been, and their response fit my experience:

    “It really help to get into the mood of the game. It was very calming to just sit and be quiet and think, and that gave a good look into how the game would be.”

    Bo Hjælm

    “As I remember it, we got a piece of paper, where we were asked to pick an object, that appealed to us. We were also asked to not speak any more until told that we could. It was very effective to be silent for so long. It really got me into the mood, to a degree where it even felt all wrong when we were allowed to talk during the workshop.”

    Anne Vinter Ratzer

    For both games where this preparation was used, the instruction to sit in silence and relax made sense in relation to the intended game experience. But in general, being relaxed and focused before a game starts is a good thing. So, what is yet to be tested is what to do if your game is different? What if it’s a comedy or an action piece? It will be interesting to see if this tool is just for this kind of game or if it can enhance the experience of all kinds of games.

    Getting into Different States of Mind

    I plan to test this at Fastaval 2018, where I will try to do the same but with a game that offers a slightly different experience. For Fastaval 2018 I’m designing Uledsaget (Pettitt, Simon J., 2018), a game about children fleeing from a civil war. It will be a dark fairytale rather than social realism. The players will be playing children that are thrown into extreme conditions. So the mood I want them to be in is a childlike state, but a bit apprehensive about the experience to come.

    This presents a new answer to the second question: I want them to feel childish but apprehensive. So far in the design process, my idea is to make the room feel like the waiting room of an official institution. Like the doctor or in a hospital. Stale, impersonal, silent, but with some toys and coloring pens for children. The players will be instructed, as they arrive, to wait while playing or drawing by themselves, as if they are children waiting for something, feeling nervous but still being a playful child.

    Whether or not this achieves the goal remains to be seen. Designing the waiting time for a larp is still new for me. And I would be very interested in hearing from others, who have tried to work with this waiting time as well. As designers, we need to design the whole experience from start to end, as we are by now designing experiences and not just the larps themselves.

    An important point to remember is, that this is not meant to be a compulsory activity. The whole point is, that any waiting time often works against the mood and play experience as we get nervous, impatient or just bored. But by designing the waiting time, by making it part of the experience, we alleviate this and even help the players get ready for the game.

    Getting into Mood vs. Getting into Character

    An important distinction to make here, is that this is not about getting into character. This is about getting into the mood of the game. Many larps have a ritual or transitioning phase where the players move from the real world and into the larp.

    The larps Just a Little Lovin’ (Edland, Tor Kjetil and Hanne Grasmo 2011) and Brudpris (Linder, Anna-Karin and Caroliona Dahlberg 2013) both had a theme song that played before game start,((I used these two examples because they are the two longer larps I have so far played.)) during which the players could get into character. The end of the song signal game start. Black box larps have worked a lot with transition using the tools of theatre. Both light and sound have been used help the players get into character and start the game.

    But this is about the mood of the game and should happen before any such ritualistic transition. Before the workshop for shorter games, and before the transition into role for longer larps. Both tools could be used in the same game.

    The Waiting Time before Longer Larps

    When I posted the original blog post in Larpers BFF((See the post and comment here (requires membership of Larpers BFF on Facebook: https://goo.gl/T4i7eo)), Karijn van der Heij made a good comment about how this might work in a longer larp:

    ”At longer games, in my experience, people will need a certain amount of time to greet friends, catch up, fool around, share the pepp etc.”

    This is like when I worked for an efterskole in Denmark. We had a yearly open house, where former students came and showed potential students around the school. We had to ask the old students to arrive an hour early, because they needed to spend the first hour reconnecting with old friends.

    So, I think what Karijn is saying is true. But it only enhances my point. We need to be aware of where our players are when they arrive, and how we get them to where we need them to be when the larp starts. That might mean creating a meditative atmosphere before a game at a stressful convention or remembering to ad in catch up time before a long larp.

    For the longer larps I have tried the start has been like this:

    1. Arrival with hang out and catch up.
    2. Workshop.
    3. Costume and character prep before gamestart.
    4. Game start.

    But between prep and gamestart there is always a span of time where more and more players are just waiting for the game to start. In my experience this is the point where people are the most nervous and you need them to feel the most ready, relaxed and confident.

    I think this period is equivalent to the waiting time at conventions, and you can design it too. Perhaps, you could create a space where players can go to when they are ready, where the setting and soundscape matches the feeling you want to set for the larp.

    For a larp like Just a Little Lovin you could make a disco where people could dance their nerves away, maybe even make it a silent disco so people can listen to whatever music they need to hear to connect to their particular character. For a larp like Brudpris a game about a stoic honor based patriarchal society, you could create a meeting area where players could sit in contemplative silence slowly letting the weight of this strangling society build up until everyone are ready.

    If you don’t do this, the state of mind your players are in when the game starts are out of your hands. Yes, some players will do this on their own anyway. But some will be rife with nerves or joking around perhaps due to being nervous. I believe if you create a space before a game starts that matches the state of mind you want your players to be in when the game starts, you can help alleviate that first difficult hour of play where you are still getting into character and finding your way into the magical circle that is a larp.

    Playtest of “Uledsaget” (Unaccompanied) at Østerskov Efterskole. Photo: Simon J. Pettitt.
    Playtest of “Uledsaget” (Unaccompanied) at Østerskov Efterskole. Photo: Simon J. Pettitt.

    References

    Pettitt, Simon James (2015) Creatures. https://alexandria.dk/data?scenarie=4582. Blackbox Cph V 2015.

    Pettitt, Simon James (2017) …And That’s It. https://alexandria.dk/data?scenarie=4958. Fastaval 2017.

    Pettitt. Simon James (2018) Uledsaget (Unaccompanied). https://alexandria.dk/data?scenarie=5324. Fastaval 2018.

    Edland, Tor Kjetil and Hanne Grasmo, (2011) Just a Little Lovin’ https://nordiclarp.org/wiki/Just_a_Little_Lovin’

    Linder, Anna-Karin and Carolina Dahlberg (2013) Brudpris https://nordiclarp.org/wiki/Brudpris

    This article is part of Re-Shuffling the Deck, the companion journal for Knutepunkt 2018.

    All articles from the companion can be found on the Knutpunkt 2018 category.

    Cover photo: Playtest of “…And that’s it” at Østerskov Efterskole. Photo: Simon J. Pettitt.

  • Play to Lift, not Just to Lose

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    Play to Lift, not Just to Lose

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    [This article is also available in Spanish, at: http://vivologia.es/jugar-a-elevar-y-no-solamente-jugar-a-perder/
    Thank you to Vivologia for translating it!]

    One of the best-known larp techniques (and/or buzzwords) to come out of the Nordic Scene is “Play to Lose”. It has been met with both enthusiastic welcome and wary scepticism in other larp communities – in the latter case, larpers often question how you would get dramatic potential from everyone just trying to make their characters as miserable as possible.

    I find that in order to explain how this technique is effectively used in practice, it is very helpful to mention another technique, which I have named “Play to Lift”.

    Play to Lose

    First off – what is “Play to Lose”? This is the definition from the Nordic Larp Wiki((Nordic Larp Wiki: Playing to Lose. Accessed 18 November 2017. https://nordiclarp.org/wiki/Playing_to_Lose)):

    Playing to lose is a technique or concept used by a player to create better drama by not trying to win, letting their character lose. It is used in a collaborative play style rather than a competitive play style

    A very similar definition can be found in Willer Piironen & Thurøe (2014, pp 35-36):

    When a player plays to lose she actively sets her character up to fail. (…). This strategy is used by many Nordic players to create interesting conflicts and personal drama in games. The concept is often used in opposition to a gameist player strategy where the player treats the larp as a contest that can be won through the character’s achievements, often at the expense of emotional depth in the story.((For a definition of “gameist”, see (Bøckman 2003).))

    “Play to lose” is thus when your main focus as a player is to create better drama. Your character is always ‘playing to win’ as the character understands a win: e.g. they don’t want their horrible secret to come to light, they don’t want to be drafted into the army, they don’t want to be discovered underneath their lover’s bed. By playing to lose you, the player, look for good chances to let your character lose, in a way that creates better drama. So you forget your character’s diary on the porch, you get drunk and stumble into the drafting party, you make a sound so that your lover’s wife notices that you are hiding under the bed.

    Play to Lift

    In practice in Nordic Larps, however, I find that a lot of the great play that seems to be generated by Play to Lose is often in fact a product of when Play to Lose is coupled with “Play to Lift”. Play to Lift means that the responsibility for your drama and your character also rests on all your co-players. You have to _lift_ each other. You don’t, off game, have to worry about delivering the best speech ever just because everyone knows that your character is the best orator in the country. The reason that you don’t need to worry is because the other players will lift your character up, and applaud loudly – they will give you a win. An alternative name to Play to Lift might actually be: “Play to Let Others Win”.

    Why is this so effective? Well, it is much easier for a particular individual to lose than to win. And it is much easier for me to give you a win (I happen to spill my secret in the middle of our heated argument) than for you to carve out a win (You must out-of-game-cleverly manipulate me into spilling my secret). The drama that we both want rests on the secret coming out, however – and the easiest way for us to ensure that to happen, is for me to lift you. So trust that the other players will lift you to wins, and you can focus on losing.

    Note that the win we are talking about is a win for the player, not for the character. It may very well be that I recognize that you clearly want your tragic character to fail horribly at the public speech she is giving. Well, then the way I would Play to Lift you is to throw a (verbal) rotten tomato at you and boo your character off the stage.

    Do not people sometimes read each other wrong, when it comes to what they want? Certainly. Just as in a dance, you can sometimes step on your partner’s toe or twirl him when he was really expecting something else. Just as in a dance, you get better at it with practice.

    The Principle of Shared Responsibility for Co-Creation

    Another worry that I have often encountered in non-Nordic larp communities is that these kinds of techniques will make larps boring.  If people’s horrible secrets are discovered, they’ll just be forced to sit, shunned, in the corner and no one will want to talk to them.

    It is true that both Play to Lift and Play to Lose need something else to work effectively. They are both fed by a social contract to co-create the best narrative. To make co-creation of drama and experience a shared responsibility. Sometimes Play to Lift and Play to Lose work seamlessly when two players click and just get each other’s needs – but often a bit of off game discussion doesn’t go amiss to compare notes on what kind of drama is wanted.

    Now, if you are sitting shunned and shamed and friendless in a corner, another player will be along to pull you into other, new drama – because they have to. Because that is what being a competent larper means according to this social contract – you take shared responsibility for the entire drama. Not everywhere all the time – but when you can.

    Acknowledgements

    A special thank-you to Charles Bo Nielsen for hunting down Play to Lose references and Mo Holkar for superb content and editing advice.

    References

    Bøckman, Petter. (2003) The Three Way Model: Revision of the Threefold Model. In Gade, Thorup, Sander. When Larp Grows Up – Theory and Methods in Larp. Pp 12-16. https://nordiclarp.org/w/images/c/c2/2003-As.Larp.Grows.Up.pdf

    Willer Piironen & Kristoffer Thurøe. 2014. An Introduction to the Nordic Player Culture. In Saitta, Holm-Andersen & Back: The Foundation Stone of Nordic Larp, pp 33-36. https://nordiclarp.org/w/images/8/80/2014_The_Foundation_Stone_of_Nordic_Larp.pdf

    This article is part of Re-Shuffling the Deck, the companion journal for Knutepunkt 2018.

    All articles from the companion can be found on the Knutpunkt 2018 category.

    Cover illustration: André-Jean-Jacques Deshayes as Achilles (being lifted) and James Harvey d’Egville as Mentor (lifter). Painting by Antoine Cardon, 1804. Cropped. New York Public Library.

  • Designing the Volunteer Experience

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    Designing the Volunteer Experience

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    During Knutepunkt 2017 I followed a debate that was of particular interest to me. Volunteering was presented by some as something evil; a way to make people work for free without any reimbursement. However, as a community which constantly talks about creating experiences I believe we should start treating volunteering as an experience in itself, which we can design and market in itself, not just as a way to get into a larp that is full or too expensive.’

    In this article, I would like to propose alternate ways of looking at volunteer work, and how these can help our community, our volunteers, and our businesses to grow.

    Volunteering as a learning experience

    There are several skills a volunteer may pick up at a larp. From leadership to game running and from costume design to writing, there are many valuable learning experiences available.

    If you market your volunteer experience as a learning experience, make sure you can actually make learning happen! Firstly, this means that you will not always have the most effective and experienced people on your crew. Although it is tempting to let the volunteer who is a tailor by trade do all the costume fittings, it might benefit the less experienced volunteers if that professional can coach them while they learn how to do it themselves.

    Secondly, people do grow more from being told the theory and thought behind the job they are doing. This takes a little more time than it would to just tell them where in the room they need to put every single prop. But it will help fuel their own creativity and understanding of why things are done a certain way.

    Thirdly, people learn by making mistakes. When you give responsibility to volunteers who are learning new skills it might mean that it takes a couple of tries to get it right. This costs time but will teach valuable lessons, especially if you take the time to assess the results together with your learners and explain where and how they can improve.

    Offering well-tailored learning experiences will benefit the entire larp scene in the long run. You will be contributing to raising a new generation of organizers; be it those coming of age or those bringing larp to new areas of the world. If we invest more in offering our knowledge, skills and experience to others. It might be a little faster to have the job done by someone more experienced, but when learners have completed their learning objective you will have another capable volunteer on your team.

    Volunteering as a payment for the player experience

    With prices of larps rising, volunteering spots are often given to players who otherwise could not attend the larp. In this case, the volunteering experience must be the same or at least similar to the player experience. There are two ways volunteering like this most often works out in practice:

    • A volunteer spends a certain number of hours before or after the game on tasks either from home or on location. When the game starts the volunteer is no longer considered a volunteer but is treated as a player.
    • A volunteer does a certain number of shifts during the game (for example npc or tavern work.) Outside of those scheduled tasks, the volunteer is treated as a player.

    Off course a combination of these two is also possible.

    Volunteering as an alternative to paying can make a volunteer feel included in a community where he or she would otherwise not be able to participate. The emphasis lies on providing a player experience as a reward for the volunteer work done. This is a classic case of providing extrinsic motivation; behavior that is driven by external rewards such as money, fame, grades, and praise (Ryan, and Deci 2000) and especially the first type is very similar to a paid player experience.

    The second type relies on a similar extrinsic motivation but still requires the volunteer to step out of their player experience in order to do some work. It is suggested that labor which is in conflict with the experience a player desires or expects from the larp may make the event less rewarding (Jones, Koulu, and Torner 2016, 125-134) This is especially relevant for larps with a high level of secrecy. In many cases volunteer work before or during the larp might take away some of the games secrets and surprises, in practise this might heavily impact the player experience. It is therefore important to negotiate the volunteers’ tasks and time in order to reach a balance between the work done and the reward received. In many cases, it is also reasonable to sign a contract between volunteer and organiser containing the amount of work (in tasks and/or hours) and the reward applicable.

    Volunteering as an alternative to the player experience

    This case differs drastically from the one above in the fact that the volunteer participates as a full-time crew member, and does not get the same experience as a player at any point during the game. In this case, the volunteer is a part of the design- or production team community but most often serves as an npc or practical helper during the game.

    When this is done, it may cause confusion as to the role of volunteers during the game. Are they there to be solely in service of the game and its players, or are their experiences completely their own in the same way as the players?

    In this case, clear communication before sign-up is key. It saves a lot of problems on location and before the larp if all parties involved know what is expected of them. When marketing these type of volunteer experiences, it is key to emphasize the differences between the volunteer and player experience. But a lot can be won by emphasizing the similarities as well!

    Volunteering as free labor

    When volunteers are recruited to commercial production companies, they are sometimes held to the standard of the paid crewmembers. They do however hold a different position on the status ladder of a larp organization, and need to be treated differently.

    It is completely fair to have expectations of your volunteers, if they know what they signed up for. It is super important to clearly communicate anything they MUST or MUST NOT do, be it before during or after their volunteer engagement. If there is some kind of reimbursement scheme in place, they should be aware of its requirements. If the reimbursement scheme differs per person or job, this should be known beforehand. It is advisable to have transparency in place, when it comes to reimbursements in order to make sure everyone is reimbursed based on their contribution, and not based on their relationship with the person who decides on the reimbursements.

    A well-informed volunteer who consciously signs up to volunteer within a business structure, who is treated well and has all their basic needs met will be more likely to be happy with their experience (Swistak 2017).

    This is especially important for specialist volunteers. Volunteers who get brought on board due to a particular set of skills are often put to work on just that one task. It is not uncommon to recruit volunteers foreshadowing an all-round experience, so if you want to bring in a volunteer due to their specialist skills (like sewing or cooking) be communicative about that. Check if your expectations are the same as theirs, and see if you can reach a consensus with them before they get to the location and are taken by surprise.

    When working with volunteers and paid employees in one team there might be some friction between these two parties. Where volunteers are usually brought in for a short period of time during a peak period in production they can focus their energy on that serie of tasks. Paid employees are often spending longer periods of time on a project and therefore have less peak moments. Paid employees are often more secure in their skills being up to the desired level needed for the larp and do not necessary need to bring extra time, labor or energy to the table. This difference in approach can lead to friction within a crew and needs to be addressed as soon as noticed by the responsible organizers both with volunteer and paid crew members. After all during the production of the larp they will work as one team.

    Part of this friction might be prevented by clearly dividing responsibilities in a way that is visible for both volunteers and paid employees. When dividing tasks both volunteers and paid employees need to be aware of a clear baseline that is established for the task at hand and be made aware of the fact that everything above that baseline is optional and therefore every individual’s own responsibility. This might still mean that some volunteers will put a lot of extra work in specific aspects, but it will also mean that they can be pointed at the desired baseline which was reached by the paid employees as well. However, any work above that baseline should be praised and if possible rewarded making it more tempting to put in extra work for all parties involved.

    Volunteering for fun

    Beside hard work, volunteering is a fun and social activity and can definitely be marketed as such. Don’t be afraid to emphasize social activities, free time and amenities the location might have. Designing for fun is definitely a thing when organizing our volunteers’ free time, lunch, dinner or social activities. By becoming more aware of these and using these as a tool to build a dedicated and enthusiastic volunteer team, chances are they will return, and next time they might bring a friend.

    I think we can conclude that there are several ways of designing the experiences for our volunteers. I have certainly not covered all of the options and I dare anyone to come up with new creative solutions. Just make sure that you know what you have to offer and be honest and clear about communicating it to those people interested in working with you.

    I am aware of the fact that designing volunteer experiences is yet another job for an organizer crew who are chiefly concerned with designing the larp. But I strongly believe it pays off in the long run, both through happy (and thus returning) volunteers, as well as in more experienced and better skilled volunteers.

    References

    Jones, Katherine C., Sanna Koulu, and Evan Torner. 2016. “Playing at Work.” In Larp Politics – Systems, Theory, and Gender in Action, edited by Kaisa Kangas, Mika Loponen, and Jukka Särkijärvi, 125–134. Helsinki: Ropecon ry.

    Ryan, Richard M., and Edward L. Deci. 2000. Intrinsic and extrinsic motivations: classic definitions and new directions. Contemporary educational psychology 25.1 (2000): 54-67.

    Swistak, Agatha. 2017. “Keeping volunteers alive.” In Once upon a Nordic Larp… Twenty Years of Playing Stories, edited by Martine Svanerik, Linn Carin Andreassen, Simon Brind, Elin Nilsen, Grethe Sofie Bulterud Strand, 102–105. Oslo: Knutepunkt 2017.

    This article is part of Re-Shuffling the Deck, the companion journal for Knutepunkt 2018.

    All articles from the companion can be found on the Knutpunkt 2018 category.

  • Just a Little Lovin’ USA 2017

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    Just a Little Lovin’ USA 2017

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    On August 7-12, 2017 in Whitewater State Park, Minnesota, USA, 50 larpers and volunteers from five different countries took part in the sixth run of Just a Little Lovin’ (JaLL, 2011). This meant that Tor Kjetil Edland and Hanne Grasmo’s esteemed larp about friendship, desire, and fear of death at the dawn of the HIV/AIDS epidemic, finally found its way to the country of its diegesis: The United States. The run was the culmination of over two years of organizing and many hours of volunteer labor by a diverse team of Nordic and American larpers. It does not even count as hyperbole to say the larp exceeded all of our expectations: it absolutely did. The combination of ground crew, organizers, and excellent players allowed us to create a logistically tight yet deeply human collective experience. Below is an attempt to document one of the already most heavily discussed Nordic larps, albeit in a different fashion: from an organizer perspective, specifically that of the US team.

    A game. JaLL is a game, but seems hardly one at all. Does it even remotely belong in the same category as table tennis, Pac-Man (1980), and Dungeons & Dragons (1974)? Indeed, when talking about the larp on an LGBTQ radio show in Minneapolis, we skirted around the term “game” and used the word “experience.” In the US, HIV/AIDS is certainly not considered a topic about which one could create a game, titles such as That Dragon, Cancer (2016) notwithstanding. In addition, the epidemic itself has not really been properly processed in the American public consciousness. Larry Kramer (1983) screamed “plague” to save tens of thousands of lives in the mid-1980s, but even his early pleas to the gay community now seem distant and historical. Yet as HIV activist Andrew Schuster noted at our JaLL post-game workshop, HIV/AIDS still poses an ongoing threat to many communities, and AIDS awareness could not be more pertinent to the coming generations, despite advances in medical treatments and cures. We were larpers, but somehow we were also involved with a form of activism. Or maybe we were just having a US-based conversation that, characteristically, few of us actually have had among themselves.

    Site

    Perhaps we should start from the beginning. In July 2015, a handful of North American larpers, myself included (Torner 2015), took part in the second Danish run of JaLL. We found the larp so transformative that we vowed to bring it to the USA in the coming 1-2 years. Many locations were thrown around: Saratoga Springs in upstate New York (where the game is actually set), Austin, San Francisco, New Jersey. But the site bid that won was submitted by Jon Cole, a seasoned freeform organizer from the Twin Cities of Minneapolis and St. Paul representing the group Larp House. Jon had assembled a solid ground team, and had found the perfect modern group site at Whitewater, far from civilization and surrounded by natural beauty. Alexander Sandrén, a Swedish player who has been at many runs of the game, remarked that the site was, by far, the closest to what he eined the fictional Saratoga Group Center looked like. I silently noted this as a major victory. Jon’s bid for Whitewater was detailed, precise to a fault, and above all affordable; the US run had to be non-profit, and an inexpensive site with a good group of committed volunteers would alleviate financial and personnel pressures. We decided that, yes, JaLL USA 2017 would be in Minnesota. And so, the planning began in late 2015.

    Securing the site itself was, of course, already a problem. A beautiful campsite such as this one was in high demand and heavily booked. One had to call the Whitewater park office at precisely 8 am on particular mornings to book the site for exactly one year later. Several frustrated attempts at reserving our slot led to us finally landing our fifth choice of dates: the week before GenCon. August in Minnesota would mean heat and mosquitos (from which we were fortunately spared in the actual run). Yet we were relieved to at least have the site secured. We blithely posted the Save-The-Date announcement in August 2016 for the following year on social media in celebration.

    A leather harness hanging on a bench in Whitewater State Park. Photo by l.p. lade.
    A leather harness hanging on a bench in Whitewater State Park. Photo by l.p. lade.

    Controversy

    Then the Internet hit us like a ton of bricks. Or a train. Or a train made of bricks. Given the emboldening of far-right hate groups in 2016, one would think our main critics would have been anti-gay evangelical Christians and neo-Nazis. This wasn’t the case at all: it was, in fact, the progressive left that went into a social media frenzy over the game. Individuals directly affected by the AIDS crisis were ringing our phones in outrage against the ostensible insensitivity of running such a larp. We were called out as being unethical and patrolled for any language suggesting that we might make light of the topic.  We were told that the Norwegians, even gay Norwegians, had no right to this shared history, and that this was a “gay larp for straight people,” implying a kind of shameful blackface-level mimicry of a certain vulnerable community at work. The reaction came through closed circles, without even major press coverage of any kind.

    Even this private, contained negative backlash left many of us emotionally drained. We had answers for these American social media challenges, many of which had already been raised in the 2011 debate about JaLL in the Swedish newspaper Expressen (Gerge 2012). After all, the larp takes its subject matter seriously, has queer creators, and has, in fact, given queer players their own larp to cherish and in which to feel at home. Nevertheless, much of August 2016 was spent in social media damage control and creating a massive FAQ((https://jall.us/faq/ (Accessed January 2018))) explaining every facet of the larp to potential participants, as well as its detractors. We also withdrew plans to crowdfund the game and locked down major public releases of information about it, tapping JaLL allies such as Nicole Winchester and Morgan Nuncio to run interference on any discussions of the game that might come up so as to shield the organizers from further flak. Needless to say, organizing a game about which we had been proud suddenly became a curiously furtive endeavor. None of us wanted to be caught as the “leader” of the project, out of fear that we would be left holding the bag full of hate mail and death threats if a Vice or Geek and Sundry article was written about us and a social media storm erupted.

    Adaptation

    Meanwhile, the larp itself had to undergo its own transformation for the North American context. JaLL may have some of the best storytelling mechanics and complex characters seen in a larp (Waern 2012), but it was also a game that traditionally had white European players portray an almost homogeneously white American group of characters, with the exception of four Puerto Ricans. As admitted by Tor Kjetil and Hanne, this simply did not represent the racial and ethnic diversity of early 1980s New York City. Compounding this fact were developments in language around trans* individuals since the early 1980s: in the historical setting, trans* women and men would call themselves “gay” because there wasn’t yet a better term, and pronoun shifts and non-binary designations were many years to come. How would we balance avoiding the erasure of the non-white experience of the period, letting players of color to calibrate their level of comfort with respect to playing on racism, playing on and celebrating ethnic nuance, and not appropriating or unintentionally mocking any given gender expression, race, ethnicity, and culture? None of us assumed we knew the answers, so we reached out to trans*-folx and people of color to determine what larp solutions would theoretically make them feel comfortable and welcome, crediting them as consultants on the final version of the larp. Not everyone had the same response either. Kat Jones and Moyra Turkington spearheaded efforts to sort through these interviews and come up with an appropriate strategy. They chose to incorporate race and ethnicity into every character sheet, as well as to run an additional “Playing Difference at JaLL” pre-game workshop that helped calibrate player behavior with regard to class, race and ethnicity, including opt-out rules for even subtle play on racism. Such work will continue to be necessary in larps to come, we surmise, as the medium continues to grow up.

    Simon of the band Urban Renaissance performs. Photo by Jonaya Kemper.
    Simon of the band Urban Renaissance performs. Photo by Jonaya Kemper.

    Although many US players purported to be playing in the “Nordic style” thanks to franchises such as the magic-school larp New World Magischola (2016) or runs of the sensuous vampire party larp End of the Line (2016), much player calibration remained necessary. Many of the players had never done a blackbox meta-scene or used sex/intimacy mechanics before. In addition, the US impulse to figure out how to “generate plot” or “resolve storylines” sometimes came in conflict with the overall design of the larp: characters launched unrealistically successful campaigns against HIV/AIDS and talked loudly in-character during scenes that had previously been played silently in Nordic runs. Nevertheless, such conflicts constituted part of the intercultural experience and were mostly resolved when they came up. Incorporation of the OK Check-in safety technique from End of the Line (Koljonen 2016) and the lookdown technique from New World Magischola (Brown 2016) helped players from all backgrounds adjust to the safety norms of the JaLL community.

    Even pinning down the group of JaLL USA players proved challenging. As a non-profit, the game was relatively cheap: each ticket cost $300 to merely cover the operating costs of running a 5-day event. Multiple scholarships funded by generous outside donors helped some players from diverse or impoverished backgrounds get in at a free or reduced rate. Sign-ups were done based on a casting system, with a lottery prepared in case of too many players for the limited 70 slots. And it turned out we never had too many players. It was a nail-biter for us to see if we would get enough players. The length of time-off required for this larp––6 days minimum––accompanied by the relative secrecy of the advertising, as well as the usual scheduling conflicts and illnesses all but depleted our potential player base. Over 1/3 of all committed players dropped before the game began, many of whom had even responded “No” to the question “Do you foresee any circumstances that might prevent you from attending JaLL?” Faced with the infamous JaLL player drop-off that Tor Kjetil and Hanne had warned us about, we ran the larp with the absolute minimum number of players required to play, removing numerous social groups from the larp: a BDSM triad, the youth counselors, the Hi-NRG music triad, and the polyamorous co-op house were all initially not present in the run, with some only re-introduced after the death of other characters. The Casting Committee went from a team of matchmakers to a team of larp triage nurses, swapping around character configurations even up until a week before the larp to accommodate for drops and late additions.

    Success

    Nevertheless, the players owned the resultant game. They brought electrifying energy to both the larp itself, as well as the preparation and clean-up afterward. About four out of five in this player base lay somewhere on the LGBTQ spectrum, and they felt seen and appreciated in the larp space. Jonaya Kemper and l.p. lade played in-character photographers who took thousands of high-quality photos for posterity. Most important to us as organizers was the glut of testimony to the power of this larp and this particular run. One of the players was part of the NYC gay scene and said how accurately the feeling of the larp captured the spirit of the times. He commented how much we, as young and middle-aged larpers, reminded him of those in the community he belonged to, which moved many of us to tears. “Thank you so much for bringing this game to the US for all of us to play.” wrote another player in their post-game survey. “It was a life-altering experience.” The positive energy among the participants poured out in their comments:

    This larp ran beautifully. The organization was impressive. Doing this for the first time and having such a good handle on both the in game and logistical elements was a real feat. I felt the game handled very sensitive issues well, and that the organizers were also sensitive to the needs of the players and of issues relating to translating it to a USA context. … I am so grateful to the players for taking on such a challenge and being so loving toward one another throughout the game.

    JaLL is amazing. Plain and simple. The organizers worked very hard, and I just want to let you know that it was noticed. I will rank JaLL as one of the best games I have ever participated in, and it is solely because of your hard work and dedication to the players. Thank you!

    Hearing such words after two years of intensive organization brought us all back to the raw emotional core of the larp. The trials had been worth it, and the community we had helped build was real and resilient. People took care of each other through the post-game bleed and larp blues. Many of the participants got on the bus from Whitewater and later wound up at a Minneapolis drag show. New relationships blossomed, players came out or announced transitioning genders, and vows were made: JaLL USA needs to happen again. Just maybe not right away. Bids for a 2019 run remain in the works, despite our country’s steady and unfortunate turn toward radical right-wing and self-immolatory politics. We nevertheless look forward to lighting up the disco ball one more time and commemorate this precious chapter of our gay history with a masterpiece 1980s larp that celebrates friendship and desire in the shadow of hardship and death.

    Thanks to everyone who made this run the success we always hoped it would be.

    References

    Brown, Maury. 2016. “Creating a Culture of Trust through Safety and Calibration Larp Mechanics.” https://nordiclarp.org/2016/09/09/creating-culture-trust-safety-calibration-larp-mechanics/

    Edland, Tor Kjetil and Hanne Grasmo. 2011. Just a Little Lovin’. [Larp] Run 6: Whitewater, Minnesota, USA 2017.

    Gerge, Tova. 2012. “Larp and Aesthetic Responsibility: When Just a LittleLovin’ Became an Art Debate.” States of Play: Nordic Larp Around the World. Juhana Pettersson, ed. Solmukohta, pp. 42-47.

    Koljonen, Johanna. 2016. “Toolkit: The OK Check-In.”         https://participationsafety.wordpress.com/2016/09/09/toolkit-the-ok-check-in/

    Kramer, Larry. 1983. “1,112 and Counting.” New York Native. March 14.

    Torner, Evan. 2015. Losing Friends and the Stories We Tell Ourselves: Just a Little Lovin’ Denmark 2015. https://guyintheblackhat.wordpress.com/2015/07/15/losing-friends-and-the-stories-we-tell-ourselves-just-a-little-lovin-denmark-2015/

    Waern, Annika. 2012. “Just a Little Lovin’, and Techniques for Telling Stories in Larp.” https://annikawaern.wordpress.com/2012/06/16/just-a-little-lovin-and-techniques-for-telling-stories-in-larp/

    This article is part of Re-Shuffling the Deck, the companion journal for Knutepunkt 2018.

    All articles from the companion can be found on the Knutpunkt 2018 category.

    Cover photo: A group shot of all JaLL USA players and organizers. Photo by l.p. lade.

  • The Larp Domino Effect

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    The Larp Domino Effect

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    Many of us have seen it unfold before us in larps: a seemingly insignificant piece of information suddenly becomes the central topic of every conversation; one character’s personal business somehow becomes a topic for public debate; a rumor spreads across the larp, somehow becoming accepted Truth; a plot point intended for a small group of characters sweeps through the group, becoming the Big Plot of the weekend. Whether players or organizers, we may have even orchestrated such effects, catalyzing the larp in a certain direction.

    This article will discuss some of the pros and cons of this larp domino effect, in which content from one area of the game spreads throughout the fiction like a wildfire as the result of emergent play. In larps where the content is “seeded” by game masters through the character sheets or delivered via non-player characters throughout the larp, such a result may be desirable. But, in larps where a particular tone or theme is central, such emergent play can derail the emphasis of the design. In extreme cases, the larp domino effect can potentially upset or even trigger other players, if “surprise” content spreads throughout the larp without their consent.

    The goal of this article is not to criticize this domino effect, but rather to explore its pros and cons. The larp domino effect is neither positive nor negative at its core. Instead, I plan to discuss the ways in which organizers and players might either use it to their advantage in order to stimulate play, or work to contain it as needed. In addition, understanding and discussing the domino effect can help us strategize ways for larps to accommodate multiple styles of play, such as participants who enjoy “hardcore” violence versus those who prefer more philosophical, social play. The article will advocate for the use of zoning in these latter cases in order to help contain sensitive scenes to specific locations and players when necessary.

    Some games and larp situations may benefit from the domino effect, whereas others may suffer from it. This article uses examples from a variety of play cultures and formats, including one-shots, campaigns, boffer, theatre style, etc. Regardless of style, greater awareness of how the introduction of certain content might affect emergent play can help designers and players steer toward their optimal larp experiences. Note that all of the below examples are hypothetical and not specific to my own larp experiences.

    Organizer-Driven Dominos

    In some cases, the entire design of a larp event is intended to produce some degree of the domino effect. Some examples:

    • Organizers seed a particular piece of information to various characters through character sheets or rumors, hoping to spur some sort of group reaction, e.g. whispers of political corruption for a beloved ruler or intelligence that a ticking time bomb somewhere in the town requires defusing.
    • Organizers send out specific non-player characters meant to catalyze action, either as sympathetic or antagonistic agents, e.g. a crying mother hoping to find her lost child or a villain wanting to kidnap characters for ransom.
    • Organizers embed certain types of emotionally provocative content into the larp, e.g. explosive relationship dynamics between two characters or backgrounds with domestic violence, systemic abuse, or grief from the loss of a loved one.
    • Organizers create a setting that encourages a certain degree of volatility, e.g. a lawless state where “anything goes” or a political environment filled with characters with questionable ethics.
    • Organizers establish a “common enemy” in the setting in the hopes that the characters will mobilize against it, e.g. a warring state threatening to take over the town or a disease that the town doctors need to contain before it becomes an epidemic.
    • Depending on the design style, this type of content is typically deployed in one of three ways: 1) through the history of the setting itself, with various social practices that reinforce it; 2) through pre-written character sheets and other fictional briefs given to the players in preparation for the larp; or 3) through run-time delivery as physical messages, props, or embodied characters.

    In some cases, this embedded content ends up falling flat, failing to topple the rest of the dominos. Perhaps the players find the “plot” uninteresting, become distracted, or fail to pass on the information. Perhaps they steer their characters in a different direction. Organizers sometimes express frustration when their carefully orchestrated plots “go nowhere” with the player base.

    However, the best case scenario for some organizers is for such content to “go viral,” in the sense that it spreads throughout the larp, generating interest and engagement. In these cases, the organizers hope the larp domino effect will occur, because they want the players to feel immersed and captivated.

    Such plots can backfire, however, when a significant number of the players feel overtaken by them. Some players bemoan railroading, a practice in which the organizers have set up a plot train that everyone must jump upon in order to engage (Bowman 2013). The domino effect of a plot can also reduce a player’s sense of agency; if a player enjoys quiet, romantic play, but their kid brother has been kidnapped by the moustache-twirling villain, they may find it unrealistic to pursue their personal goals of play by ignoring this overarching plot. This domino effect is especially potent in larps that feature factions to which players belong; if a faction must mobilize to address a certain conflict, the individual player-character may feel pressured to engage with it, abandoning their personal character goals.

    Player-Driven Dominos

    In other cases, individual players introduce content that may cascade throughout the larp in unforeseen ways, such as:

    • Player-written backstories that feature difficult content, e.g. sexual violence, unwanted pregnancies, or the death of close family members.
    • Player-requested scenes, where the staff produces content by request in order to incite dramatic conflict, e.g. a character confronting their abusive parent or a violent encounter leading to that character’s planned death.
    • Players improvising scenes that unfold in unpredictable directions, e.g. a beloved couple’s dramatic confrontations leading to their breakup or a character’s unethical actions becoming common knowledge, forcing everyone in town to take sides.
    • Players introducing new content into the larp that does not match the design goals of the organizers or the setting, with the other players adopting it as fact, e.g. spreading rumors about a villain hiding in the town, causing everyone to become hypervigilant.

    Some larps thrive on player-driven content, with very little “plot” dispensed by the organizers themselves. In these larps, the introduction of player creativity through interactions, stories, rituals, events, or other spontaneous improvisations can become the lifeblood of the larp. In these cases, player-driven content can be deeply moving and personal for the players involved — even more so than generic plots designed by the organizers to keep players engaged.

    Other larps rely heavily on the players following along with the design of the game or on characters responding to organizer-driven content. In these cases, player-driven content may enhance the larp to some degree, but can sometimes overpower the design. For example, if players show up to a murder mystery dinner refusing to discover who committed the crime, but instead throwing a raucous in-game party, they may still find the experience enjoyable, but the organizers are likely to become frustrated. Similarly, other participants may grow frustrated if they were still invested in solving the mystery, but their co-players have decided to “derail” the larp. The common phrase, “No plot survives contact with the players,” often applies in these circumstances. To read more about the creative tensions inherent to emergent play, see Evan Torner’s “Emergence, Iteration, and Reincorporation in Larp” in this volume.

    Some larps feature a “sandbox” style, where both player-driven and organizer-driven content exist alongside one another. In these types of larps, characters often feel free to choose their own adventure, so to speak — to engage with the metanarrative or to focus upon their personal goals and stories. However, sandbox style larps can also domino. For example, if a beloved character dies — even if the player chooses it — the shock can ripple through the entire sandbox, affecting the narrative for many of the characters. That shock may be experienced as cathartic and powerful for some players, but others may find it frustrating or overwhelming, as they feel forced to respond to it authentically. As Eirik Fatland and Markus Montola describe in their article on brute force design in blockbuster larps (2015), plot trains disrupt the flow of play when “the emergent narrative of one group can easily disable the play of another group; crisis and conflict in particular trump subtler themes.” In such situations, some players do not feel free to steer (Montola et al 2015) toward their desired stories, whether due to conformity, peer pressure, or the fear of judgment for “playing incorrectly.” Indeed, in some play communities, intentional steering might be considered a form of cheating or poor role-play. However, character immersion advocate Mike Pohjola has explained how character fidelity and steering are not incompatible (Pohjola 2015).

    Complications with the Larp Domino Effect

    The larp ecosystem is delicate and chaotic. What one player might experience as the most epic moment ever, another might view as deeply upsetting on an out-of-character level. What one group might think to be an amusing or engaging plot to introduce, another might find boring or challenging. The smallest of actions can sometimes have dramatic effects throughout the larp.

    In extreme cases, this domino effect can impact players in a profoundly negative way. The content of certain plots or the ways in which they unfold may make certain players extremely uncomfortable. A common example of this sort of content is sexual assault. Some larps feature an “open world” setting, in which anything can happen as long as those actions are not expressly forbidden by the rules. Thus, a person can discuss sexual assault in their backstory, a character can threaten rape, or an actual assault can occur within the framework of the fiction. Other larps feature sexual assault as a central part of the setting in order to illustrate brutal power dynamics. In my view, such content is acceptable as long as everyone in the scene expressly consents to its inclusion and the parameters of enactment.

    Problems occur, however, when such content spreads via domino effect elsewhere to the larp to others who have not consented. For example, if a beloved character in the larp is assaulted and word spreads, the vengeance of righteous townspeople seeking justice for that character may become a central theme through emergent play. Such play may be extremely gratifying for those who consent to enacting it. However, some players may not wish to engage with sexual assault at all for personal reasons or due to past trauma. While the content did not technically happen to their character, they may still get triggered, feel alienated, or disengage if the content spills over into their play emergently. Thus, a scene that a player may not have even witnessed can still deeply negatively impact them as a result of the domino effect.

    On the other hand, such unintended ripple effects can also occur with positive experiences, such as an impromptu wedding raising the spirits of the group; feelings of relief if the local town guards fight off assailants; or feelings of pride if one’s faction is victorious in a competition. Perhaps the entire group celebrates their success in the streets as a result. Even if a character is not personally involved in those victories, they may experience vicarious pleasure via the domino effect. Ultimately, a great deal depends on the circumstances at hand and the comfort levels of the players involved.

    Another unintended consequence of emergent play involves larp muscle memory. Certain players may have learned how to larp in a particular style, such as boffer combat, secrets and powers, play-to-lose high drama, etc. Thus, even if the organizers work hard to set a certain tone, in some situations, the larp muscle memory from past play experiences may kick in — and all of a sudden, players are reacting in a manner common to their previous style. A light-hearted fantasy game may become a survival horror game if the players react to an external threat based on their larp muscle memory, particularly if players in leadership positions model that behavior. This muscle memory is not entirely conscious and relies on previous models of understanding how to problem solve or deal with conflict in larps. Issues arise when those models spread to other areas of the game, accounting for a dramatic shift in tone or playstyle against the intentions of the design. Such instances require conscientious steering and recalibration among the organizers and players in order to get everyone back on track.

    Zoning as Boundary Enforcement

    As mentioned above, the larp domino effect is neither negative nor positive as a force. Just as a crowd may take up the same chant started by one person at a music concert, the impact of one player’s strong role-play might ripple through the rest of the larp. Such effects can be powerful and profound. However, when the larp domino effect unfolds in an unchecked manner, some players and organizers alike may feel frustrated or upset by this emergent play. The question remains: how do we set boundaries around emergent play in order to contain these unintended consequences?

    One approach that some designers have found successful is zoning. With zoning, certain types of play are confined to specific areas of the larp space. Some examples:

    • In Convention of Thorns (2016) by Dziobak Studios, the castle was zoned according to the degree of “hardcore” play, with the lower floor designated mainly for social interaction and dancing; the middle floor allocated to political meetings and rituals; and the upper floor reserved for more graphic forms of violence, feeding, and/or sexual play (Bowman 2016).
    • Dystopia Rising chapters sometimes zone specific locations of the play space as “splatter mods” or “hardcore scenes,” with organizers standing guard to warn unsuspecting players about the content.
    • Conscience (2018) by NotOnlyLarp features specific areas of the town where sexuality, nudity, and sexual violence are permitted if off-game consent is negotiated among all parties.
    • In the United States run of Just a Little Lovin’ (2017), the organizers encouraged players to use the black box if they wished to play out planned scenes involving brutal marginalization due to the character’s gender, sexuality, race, and/or ethnicity.

    While zones do not ensure that everyone entering the space is comfortable, they do allow players to more consciously steer toward their desired intensity of play or type of content by physically marking off areas of the playspace for those specific experiences. Zoning makes it more difficult for sensitive players to wander into a scene that might trigger or upset them off-game, especially if the organizers are explicit about what sorts of activities take place in those areas. Zones also make it much easier for players to obtain consent in small groups or one-on-one, rather than playing out such content in public or easily accessible locations where others might accidentally witness it. Again, witnessing might create powerful play for some participants, but feel intrusive to others.

    However, the larp domino effect can still impact players, even if they are not present. As mentioned above, sometimes other characters may learn about events occurring within a zoned location, causing a chain reaction. In the example of a sexual assault in a “sandbox style larp,” while both players in the scene may have consented, the rest of the larp may not have made that social contract and may feel ambushed by that content. Alternatively, in a larp like Conscience, in which that theme is explicitly stated up front, the players are not necessarily consenting to experience sexual violence, but are agreeing to play in a fictional reality where such acts routinely take place.

    Thus, content advisories are also useful, both for specific scenes and for larps in general. Stating the sorts of content a player may potentially experience can help set expectations about whether or not that larp is right for the player in question. Many of the example larps mentioned above feature content advisories connected to particular zones. On a meta-level, a larp’s website may feature a content advisory that effectively zones the whole game as a space for those potential themes.

    Reality Hacking

    As players, organizers, and designers, larpers intentionally hack reality, adopting new identities and social conditions. This reality hacking is temporary and flexible, in that we can alter these conditions in order to optimize the experience for multiple types of players. While the larp domino effect is not always a negative condition for a larp, it can have unintended consequences. As larpers, we can develop tools to redirect the tide of play to make the experience more enjoyable for everyone.

    Upon reflection, our Western social reality is already zoned in certain ways. Acceptable behaviors in a bar may be unacceptable in a corporate boardroom. Just as we wear different social masks and adopt specific roles based on the demands of our default lives, so too are our social spaces coded in particular ways, affording certain behaviors while discouraging others. With awareness of the ways in which we operate on social stages, we can construct our larp spaces to create certain bounded experiences, redirecting the flow of the dominos as they fall.

    Bibliography

    Bowman, Sarah Lynne. “The New World Magischola Revolution.” Nordiclarp.org, July 4, 2018.

    Bowman, Sarah Lynne. “Social Conflict in Role-Playing Communities: An Exploratory Qualitative Study,” International Journal of Role-Playing 4 (2013): 4-25. http://www.ijrp.subcultures.nl/wp-content/issue4/IJRPissue4bowman.pdf

    Bowman, Sarah Lynne. “White Wolf’s Convention of Thorns – A Blockbuster Nordic Larp.” Nordiclarp.org. Last modified on December 16, 2016. https://nordiclarp.org/2016/12/06/white-wolfs-convention-of-thorns/

    Fatland, Eirik and Markus Montola. “The Blockbuster Formula: Brute Force Design in
    The Monitor Celestra and College of Wizardry.” In The Knudepunkt 2015 Companion Book, edited by Charles Bo Nielsen and Claus Raasted, 118-131. Copenhagen: Rollespils Akademiet, 2015. https://nordiclarp.org/w/images/2/27/Kp2015companionbook.pdf

    Montola, Markus, Jaakko Stenros, and Eleanor Saitta, “The Art of Steering: Bringing the Player and the Character Back Together.” In The Knudepunkt 2015 Companion Book, edited by Charles Bo Nielsen and Claus Raasted (Copenhagen: Rollespils Akademiet, 2015), 106-117. https://nordiclarp.org/w/images/2/27/Kp2015companionbook.pdf

    Pohjola, Mike. “Steering for Immersion in Five Nordic Larps: A New Understanding of Eläytyminen.”  In The Knudepunkt 2015 Companion Book, edited by Charles Bo Nielsen and Claus Raasted (Copenhagen: Rollespils Akademiet, 2015), 94-105. https://nordiclarp.org/w/images/2/27/Kp2015companionbook.pdf

    Torner, Evan. “Emergence, Iteration, and Reincorporation in Larp.” 2018. In Shuffling the Deck: The Knutpunkt 2018 Companion Book. Edited by A. Waern and J. Axner. 153-160.  ETC Press.

    This article is part of Re-Shuffling the Deck, the companion journal for Knutepunkt 2018.

    All articles from the companion can be found on the Knutpunkt 2018 category.

  • Larp as Life

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    I have been a larper for over 20 years. Yet before I discovered the international larp community, I had no clue such experience was in demand. Thanks to that fateful meeting, people encouraged me to go farther with larp. I forever will be thankful to the team of edu center POST for opening those doors for me.

    Now, as an internationally known larp scholar and the owner of a larp company, I would like to share some further encouragement. How larp can become part of your life without distracting from it.

    Larp’s future looks brighter than ever. As larpers, we often do not want to stop larping. Many of us feel that, as larp adepts, we should “spread the gospel” and with that, hopefully, make everyone’s life better, easier, and more fun.  A fascinating number of amazing projects and new forms of larp have blossomed throughout the world as a result. And larp as a business as well.

    Having my own share of endeavors in this area, I considered that some of this accumulated experience could actually be of use to few other curious larp practitioners.((Most of this essay is based on lectures: “Faces of Larp” read at Palac Krobielowice in Poland on the 2nd of September at the Larp Design Conference 2016 and “Going Pro in Larp: how and where we can use it” read on Gniales 2016 “Passerelles”  on the 30th of October that year in Paris.)) In Belarus, I own a larp company that has many ongoing projects. As a dedicated larper since 1996, it was only a dozen years ago when moral encouragement from J. Tuomas Harvianien prompted me to shove larp into every corner of my life. In time, I began to earn some money with it.

    Here are some bits of lore I have accumulated as a professional larpwright and organizer.

    Ethics

    Going from being a regular larper to a professional larper, I had to change my approach toward larp design. In some larp cultures, these are normal everyday principles, but moving from larping with friends to larping with clientele reminds one of some basics. Our workers, the NPCs, need to know them too.

    Respect: First and foremost, the cornerstone: respect.  One should respect the clients and treat all accordingly. Lack of it demonstrates a lack of professionalism as much as disrespectful communication does.

    Obligation and Responsibility: These two words should become part of your core. They should not be feared or avoided. They should be embraced and worked with.  No one should go pro without as from now on you have obligation before you clientele and responsible for than at your event.

    Pro-Growth: Never stop learning. Much of what we call “larp” actually borders many practical disciplines. Learning more about them is essential to evolve and get better. The world’s specialists in all fields never stop growing and changing –– why should larpers?

    Distance: Keep a professional distance from your clients, the players. This is informed by many generations of professionals and their own introspection about their mistakes. It is important to present a clear message about the nature of your relations with others on a specific project in order to avoid misunderstandings in the future and frustration on all sides. All should be clear and explicit.

    Subculture

    In most cases, your own larp subculture should never be considered your primary or only market. The larp subculture is our family, where we were born and nurtured as future larp professionals, and we should treat it accordingly. In having business relationships with larpers, you should already be at a somewhat higher niveau in your work in a way that they cannot immediately compete with you. To put it simply: to transcend the subculture and go professional, you should already act as a professional out of the gate and be a tough pro larp organizer with which to compete. Larp society can form one source of income, but shouldn’t be the only one.

    Here are some categories related to the subculture and pro larp profits.

    Larpers

    Larpers are the source of most of your value: specialists, partners, laborers, NPCs. Yet my own experience and those of other organizers from around the world tell me that larpers are very difficult to work with on a professional level.

    Events

    Any larper will gladly pay for high-quality events such as festivals, conventions, balls, tournaments, competitions, larps, etc. Such events are always in demand and may attract quite a crowd if appropriately packaged.

    Products and Services

    Owning a larp company, you might have your own products you could sell or rent such as crafts, costumes, scripts, scenography and other things. Your larp company might even gather specialists who would want to offer services to larpers and larp designers: classes in fencing, kung fu, dancing, acting, costume making and other fields, for example. One can make objects, costumes, and other artwork that then could be packaged and sold.

    Entertainment

    The most popular area where larpers are starting to go pro is the entertainment industry. Yet it is very different from doing larps for fellow larpers. Once you get the hang of it, there are different types of income with different approaches and demands in this industry.

    Corporate

    You are invited to sell your larp project to a company as entertainment. Well done, if that is the case! If you attract desirable clientele and do well, it might just get better and better from there. But if you do not do well, it might have consequences difficult to recover from. So before going this route, ask yourself if your larp company is mature enough to play in that league.

    Regular

    This means the regular events which you promote and to which you sell tickets. The principle is comparable to concerts in clubs or movie theaters. You need to find, groom, and manage your customer. The good thing is that it often can form a form of subculture community which, if you “feed the flames”, will guarantee you will not go out of demand.

    Popular

    If you become known and form good connections, you might get invited to a festival, convention, birthday party, concert or some other event where you will be one of the many activities. It also may be something you haven’t done before, so you will have to think of how to format your larp in a way that makes it  quick and easy to get into. Such events are not only good for advertising and promoting your company, but, with a proper approach, could also be a good source of income.

    Elite

    In this category, I consider irregular events for which you prepare a long time. It could be a big larp, festival, convention and your main efforts are focused on maintaining a high quality to make your mark.

    Education

    From my perspective, education is the noblest area for larp. It is also the most demanding, and the sphere in which larp has been used for the longest time and has thus the most theory behind it. Working in edu-larp is not profitable, but it does grant us the tentative understanding of many powers and effects of larp.

    Clientele

    There are three systems I had to develop to describe difference in approaches required for specific larp projects. One system means dividing up the audience by target group, while the others are the target clientele and target educational goals.

    While designing a larp, it is important to keep in mind who is this larp for:

    Children

    Larp business for children is one of the most high-demand areas and good for the professional growth of the larp company. But if you think dealing with children is an easy feat, think again. Cuddly, smiling, fun kids are also the most legally protected group in any country. If you cause any kind of harm to any of them, their legal guardians may eat you alive. All the more if you, for some reason, decide that documentation of procedures are unnecessary, safety measures are for “softies” and amateurs, and the quality of the larp may vary. Here, we need to understand that we are responsible for every single effect on children our larp has experienced as a result of the larp –– not only legally responsible, but as a decent human being. And if you are not willing to accept that level of responsibility –– both good and bad –– then perhaps the professional larp and edu-larp industry are not for you. Stay in your comfort zone, larping for and with friends.

    Teenagers

    In many legal respects, teenagers are similar to children. But on a larp level, one can do more complicated plots, expect higher quality from the larp, and go to more interesting property. With older teenagers, one can go further and deeper with storylines and communication, among other things.

    College Students

    Educational larp for students should have definite and specific goals they can “grasp” by the end. Such games can be more complex, challenging, and informative. But one also has to make lengthier and more thorough workshops and debriefs, as much of the lesson depends on those working well. Often such larps emphasize knowledge already acquired during lectures or through homework.

    Adult

    Adult educational larps I usually use when working with clientele such as parents of kids in school, seniors in business schools and during some business projects.

    Special

    Larps can also be made for people with special needs as the target audience. These larps pay the least perhaps, but yield the most moral satisfaction.

    Among the target clientele inviting our company to do larp projects, the approaches differ among them.

    Educational System

    By this, I mean the educational establishment, part of institutionalized public educational system. In some countries, everything incorporated into the curriculum could be regulated by norms and rules of many sorts. It is best to have an official representative of the institution look through one’s larp plans to avoid undesirable misunderstandings.

    Private Educational: Some education takes place outside of the establishment. Here, one has more freedom and it is less regulated.

    Business Educational: What I mean by “business educational” is reminding oneself of the fact that, for business-oriented clients, a certain degree of slick packaging is preferable.

    All larps, whether the organizers comprehend it or not, have many dimensions of personal development. For my own convenience, I have divided these into three emphasis areas:

    • Moral: The social and moral education of values and psychological pursuits of self-consciousness and self-awareness is a sphere of development.
    • Intellectual: Information and knowledge and mental skills can also be developed.
    • Physical: Athletic and action learning are also potentially developed.

    Psychology

    As a practicing psychologist, I provide the following services through larp: Diagnostic, Therapy, Prevention, Correction, Development.

    Corporate

    Larp could be used within different companies, frequently proving effective at fulfilling company goals. Even within such serious institutions as the Investigative Committee of the Republic of Belarus, larp can be used. To acquire corporate clientele, or even work inside a company, one might want to look into following areas where I found larp very applicable: HR, Simulations, Skills, Knowledge, Athletics.

    Theatre

    Many useful skills for larpers and larp designers come from the infinite rich and beautiful world of theatre. Larp communities have lost so many to this world. They crossed to other side and, engulfed by the theatre world, could not cross back into larp. Many professionals one could not even imagine are found here, and they can bring your company, and perhaps the whole community, to a whole new level. Larp and theatre are different. However, theatre skills as stage fencing, acting, public speaking, playwriting, character development, actor management, stage management, deroling, etc. are there to enhance the arsenal of tools at your disposal.

    Art

    At some point, larp manifests the many creative impulses of all participating in it, and reaches the level of art. Admittedly, not right away. Admittedly, not with most larps. But when organizers and NPCs, like music conductors or movie directors, manage emotions and experiences in people, then it creates a certain picture and transfers experience. Many larp projects I have worked on are nowhere close to being called “art,” and I am aware the medium is still evolving. But I can vouch for the fact that going professional with one’s larp activities is the best way to get on the art track.

    Research

    Finally, one essential area for larp to develop is the preservation of all knowledge and theory accumulated. No other field preserves it beyond those who do larp research.  Thanks to this field, I started my ascension into the professional larp world in the first place. One joins this conversation through Conferences (academic, gaming conventions, etc.), Publications (articles and periodicals mostly), and Projects (international and local research, etc.)

    Thank you

    and

    Larp On

    This article is part of Re-Shuffling the Deck, the companion journal for Knutepunkt 2018.

    All articles from the companion can be found on the Knutpunkt 2018 category.

     

  • Immerton

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    Immerton (Brown, Bowman, D, Jones, and Nativ 2017) is a four-day immersive larp held in Joshua Tree, California. The larp is designed to explore what it means to be a woman in a variety of contexts and intersectionalities, and to focus on woman’s ways of knowing, doing, being, and relating. Participation in the event is restricted to those who identify as a woman. A broad definition of woman is used, and organizers and participants welcomed and celebrated all expressions of womanhood. Twenty-three women took part in Immerton’s inaugural run in 2017.

    Immerton is a place and a society entirely of women, existing outside of space and time yet with portals or connections to every world and point in time. Across history, women of all races and ethnicities, social classes, cultures, and universes experience a breakthrough and find their way to Immerton. There are no men there, and women may stay as long as they like or need. Immerton is intended to be akin to Themyscira from the Wonder Woman franchise, but with a more multi-faceted approach to womanhood than a society of warriors is. The goal of Immerton was to create a sanctuary for women players without the concerns that many women experience in spaces that include all genders. A socially conditioned behavior for most women is to perform for the male gaze (Mulvey 1975); being in the presence of men changes women’s behavior, as their concerns about their own safety and relative value move to front of their minds. Immerton is an experiment in feminist and woman-centered game design.

    We were keenly aware of the issues surrounding the US run of the Nordic larp, Mad About the Boy (Edland, Raaum, Lindahl 2010), organized by Lizzie Stark in October 2012. The larp received a great deal of criticism for excluding men, and in particular for categorizing men chromosomally and the design element that annihilated all people with the Y chromosome. Immerton was deliberately designed with several key distinctions to Mad About the Boy.

    First, the larp was not about being without men; it was instead about a complete society of women. This is important, because rather than being a larp about loss, about what is missing, it was a larp about the fullness of the society, of what was included: the multitude of women who chose to attend and whose characters were chosen to find Immerton. Second, we did not make a chromosomal distinction that defines men and women, thus being inclusive to women of any biological body and genetic typing. This separated gender from biological sex, and ensured we did not get into arguments (as had happened with Mad About the Boy) about the definition of woman and who could play. It also demonstrated a commitment to trans-inclusion and safe-space for genderqueer women. Giving people the opportunity to search themselves and determine if they fit an identity of woman was more liberating and accepting than an organizer-determined definition of woman. In addition, the all-woman design team included several feminist intersectionalities, which made it easier for women of many identities to feel included. Third, we openly declared that no man would be showing up in the game, which happens in Mad About the Boy. Men exist in characters’ pasts and futures, but during the larp they were off-stage, appearing only in memories, backstories, or narration.

    Design and Playstyle

    The concept and initial design of Immerton was created by Maury Brown, and expanded and brought to life by an all-woman team of organizers and designers. The team included Sarah Lynne Bowman, Quinn D, and Kat Jones who were writers, designers, and runtime organizers. Orli Nativ acted as Art Director for the game, creating masks and costuming, inspiration art, collages, and scenography for the event, as well as assisting with ritual design and runtime game-mastering. Tara Clapper and Caille Jensen assisted with character writing and world building, and Jess Comstock designed a set of sigils that were used for the different vocations that defined character groups.

    Immerton’s design was sandbox-style, allowing participants to make choices about actions and topics to explore. Structuring this open design were scheduled rituals that took place each evening and in the final morning, representing the forces of four goddesses. The site – a remote retreat center in the high desert of southern California – was integral to the other-worldly feel for the game, and was replete with indoor and outdoor spaces for group and private play. Designed by Frank Lloyd Wright and his son, Lloyd, the building was made of natural desert sandstone, and players’ rooms were adjacent to one another and surrounded by a central hall, where altars to the goddesses were assembled and players gathered for meals and other activities. The site also had a labyrinth, a warm and cool swimming pool, groves of cacti, joshua trees and other native plants, and several fountainscapes and water features. The event took place during the full moon, and bonfires were lit each night.

    A design centerpiece was The Goddess Chamber, a converted bedroom suite adjacent to the large main gathering room. While not a true blackbox1 chamber as it contained furniture, The Goddess Chamber was a meta room2 where participants could spend time with other Immerton sisters and meet the goddesses. Players or organizers (who were also player-characters game-mastering from within the game) portrayed or “aspected”3 a particular goddess by donning her mask, and, at times, her robes. In the Goddess Chamber players could gegine and role-play a memory, dream, alternate choice, or future hope. They could call upon a goddess to guide, to encourage, support, chide, or convict, as needed. The design intentionally drew upon mask theory and altered consciousness as introduced by Keith Johnstone (1987) and advanced by Clayton D. Drinko (2013).

    Play focused on personal journeys, relationships, and exploration of womanhood in a polytheistic goddess pantheon. The game used no numerical rules or combat mechanics, but unfolded through role-play, rituals, art and other media, and meta-techniques. The fictional world and the player community emphasized self-care and a celebration of autonomy in a Culture of Care and Trust (Brown 2016). The intention was to make Immerton a sanctuary for women both in and out of character. The game allowed players to choose their own pace of play and level of engagement, reduce feelings of FOMO4 or Fear of Missing Out, and slow the frenzied feeling that many highly plot-driven larps can create. It was very possible to play a mostly internal game and have a transformative experience. That said, the larp had a central premise: Immerton had become tethered in space and time as a result of an anomaly, and players could determine the cause and whether or how it should be resolved. Some players identified with this plot element personally, with the idea of being “stuck” or unable to move forward resonating strongly with them. Participants’ collaborative solution involved returning a cast-out Trickster goddess to the pantheon and creating rituals to heal Immerton. Those elements, of being trapped and being cast away, combined with a reclamation of play and child-like qualities that are too-often left behind in adult womanhood, led to a lot of bleed and personal processing of emotions by participants (Jones 2017).

    Characters and Bleed

    The design team encouraged participants to portray characters that shared personality traits or portions of backstory with themselves. We deliberately wanted to make the alibi of character5   thin, so that participants could explore shadow or repressed aspects of their lives or selves in the safety of the community and role-play. In this way, the game was designed to deliberately chase bleed (Bowman 2015) that would be empowering and revelatory for participants. The character creation team, led by Quinn and consisting of Sarah, Kat, Tara, and Caille, asked participants to complete a casting questionnaire that sought to inspire careful reflection on one’s own past, fears, blockages, hopes, and desires. Each participant had a primary character writer who discussed the character questionnaire with the participant, and together they created the character for Immerton. For example, one player wanted to explore her anger stemming from several recent events in her life. She and her character writer created a lone survivor from a planet that had recently been annihilated, with no home to return to outside of Immerton. The character’s defining trait was rage at this personal and societal destruction, which allowed the player to explore the emotion without reliving details of her own trauma.

    Each character was connected to three others, a Pillar to provide support, a Crowbar to push for change, and another character-specific relationship. The Pillar and Crowbar design element was inspired by Simon Svensson’s Essence/Nihil relationship mechanic, which was also adapted as the Hope/Despair connections in The Quota by Simon Brind, Charlotte Ashby, Helly Dabill, Martine Svanevik, and Rob Williams (2018).

    Items depicting or representing Innara, goddess of creation. Photo by Sarah Bowman.
    Items depicting or representing Innara, goddess of creation. Photo by Sarah Bowman.

    Mythology and World-Building

    Immerton exists in its own mythos, created by Maury Brown with the goddesses expanded by Sarah Lynne Bowman. This choice was made to avoid cultural and religious appropriation and to ensure the goddesses encompassed a multitude of bodies and identities. We were also seeking to move beyond the tropes of woman as defined by their physical beauty and body, and particularly by their reproductive cycles. Not all women have children, and not all women have wombs or vaginas. We chose to move away from the maiden, mother, crone archetypes and instead were inspired by Lasara Firefox Allen’s book, Jailbreaking the Goddess. Women in Immerton may be in the Child/Daughter, Siren, Amma, or Sage stages, which are not about reproduction but about states of mind or wisdom. They are also non-linear, as one can channel or return to any stage at any time.

    The goddesses were created as a synthesis of many mythologies and share some traits of eastern, western, indigenous, and pagan cosmologies. The four goddesses are of four forces: creation, destruction, reclamation, and fortification, which are Innara, Ellishara, Tohtma, and Rahdira respectively. They represent four ways of experiencing the world and forces to invoke when confronted with challenges and opportunities. Each goddess is associated with a season, direction, element, gems, scents, colors, shadow and light aspects, rituals, and tarot suits. Thus, these new goddesses became connected to and evocative of goddesses from other traditions. Ellishara, for instance, has elements of Sekhmet, Kali, Durga, or Hel, but is her own entity. Every character has a primary Devotion, a particular goddess they are most drawn to, but they could also invoke or worship another goddess. One’s primary Devotion may also change throughout one’s life, and some players used a devotional change as a narrative arc for their character.

    Vocations were created in order to break up what is often “woman’s work” and combine callings in interesting ways. Players could choose Warrior, Shaman, Seer, Mender, Tender, Keeper, or Vigilant as a primary vocation. These vocations categorized similar skills or impulses. For example, menders included welders, tailors, and healers, while Keepers include librarians, teachers, historians, or builders. Each Vocation was an impulse or a calling to leave a mark in a particular way, a diverse gathering of women who are driven by similar goals and ways of interacting in the world. The design goal was to break down stereotypes and tropes that can pigeonhole women and femininity by instead exploring a multitude of expressions and intersectionalities.

    Multimedia Experiential Design

    Immerton’s design engaged participants in individual and group-based physical and artistic activities. These included art, mask-making, journaling, hiking, meditation, swimming, dancing, kata practice, and cooking. These were used both as parts of everyday life in Immerton, but also as ways to explore characters and their relationships through more than verbal role-play. The various activities were opt-in and typically framed as “offerings” that a devotee shared with other acolytes. Participants also tattooed each other with the sigil of their vocation, braided each other’s hair, and traded massages as part of group bonding and reciprocal care.

    Of course, larp has featured these activities since the beginning, but often they are ancillary or incidental activities rather than a central focus of the experience. For example, a tailor at a medieval larp might sew to heighten immersion. Such behavior isn’t typically about making clothes, but about appearing to be a tailor. The story at Immerton was told not only through words and actions, but also through artifacts created by participants. Each participant made a mask that they used in at least one ceremony, and participants collectively wrote a scroll that documented their experience. Some participants also wrote poems or journal entries, drew, painted, or created food together. Other artifacts were ephemeral, such as food, ritually made and shared together. Fire and water were used as physical transmutational elements in multiple rituals.

    One participant noted that the art and artifact elements of Immerton, “emphasized creative and nurturing elements as central to play,” while another stated that they felt these design aspects “gave places for people to engage in valuable, alternative ways with themselves, each other, and their characters.” The boundary between player and character grew thin during these immersive activities (Bowman 2017), and occasionally off-game conversations between participants creeped in. These were valuable to community building and were intense moments for some participants in their own right, but were off-putting for others who wanted stronger immersion into character (Bowman 2017; Lukka 2014). One player stated, “This game was not about simple character immersion – it was about creating spaces to reflect, be introspective, and to examine myself and my issues through the lens of my character. The multimedia aspects gave me different tools and experiences that very much enhanced the experience.”

    An acolyte contributes to the scroll, rewriting Immerton history. Photo by Sarah Bowman.
    An acolyte contributes to the scroll, rewriting Immerton history. Photo by Sarah Bowman.

    Woman-Only Space

    Being in an all-woman space was profound for participants and organizers alike. Although the game was not explicitly about gender identity, many of us live and adjust to a society that treats people whom they label as  “men” and “women” differently, with different expectations and burdens. Participants noted that the space of Immerton, since it was specifically all woman-identified, relieved participants of those expectations, or at least made them less important and influential. One participant said: “The space lightened a load I didn’t realize was so heavy; it was freeing, and it was safe. I think it is important to note that I know many wonderful people who are not women in life that I trust, that I feel free around; this isn’t about not-women being unsafe, it’s about the interplay between who is present, and the influence of society’s gender system on all of the participants. It’s about a pervasive system which has so much influence in our lives, and taking a time and a space to try to remove parts of it and see how that feels and develops. And it was powerfully different.”

    Another participant said, “I usually play with wonderful men who are good at giving space to others and are sensitive to their privilege. But, there were conversations that I think just wouldn’t have happened in other spaces. Women were openly talking about their experiences with patriarchy, relationships, menopause, childrearing, trans issues, etc. in ways that I think were afforded by the female-only space. We could discuss these issues both in- and out-of-character and it felt like a supportive and understanding atmosphere, even when women had very different views on these things.” A third participant said, “having a community of women made the space feel much safer for some of the personal exploration that I did during the game,” including “the commonalities and differences in women’s experiences, opinions, etc.”

    Participants ranged in age from 24 to 55 and showcased various expressions of womanhood and an appreciation for their beauty and diversity. They portrayed characters from across cultures and time periods, some of whom, such as Cleopatra and Emma Goldman, were women from history. One participant reflected, “There was freedom there to exist in whatever state you’re in, and a lot of support all around from fellow ‘sisters’ in a shockingly swift-developing community. It wasn’t an environment I can recall being in before, at least not for an extended duration, and I didn’t entirely recognize going in how powerful this would be.” Some participants discussed how their posture changed, how they stopped worrying as much about their personal appearance and body, how they felt they could go without a bra or other shapewear, how they felt they could sit and take up space in ways where they didn’t have to be conscious of whether they were conforming to “proper” or “ladylike” decorum.

    The woman-only community was not without its conflicts. Women disagreed with each other in- and out-of-character, and personalities clashed over sharing space, language, tone, and actions. Since players participants played close-to-home (Piironen and Thurøe 2014), the alibi between player and character was sometimes very thin, and it was difficult to know whether a character or a player was upset — or both. However, one participant noted, “while power dynamics and differentials were unavoidable, it did not have the same character as when men are involved (for instance I never worried that conflicts would result in violence). I was constantly impressed at how we were able to work through or around these conflicts in a way that helped preserve the community.” Some of this was done in-character, other times through group out-of-character calibrations, and other times through one-one in/off-game consultations with organizers.

    Immerton began as, and continues to be, an experiment. We will run a 4-hour exploratory version at several conventions in 2018, using The Goddess Chamber as the central portion of the experience and include an initiation and a closing ritual. Since conventions disallow single-gender games, these runs will be open to all gender identities, as long as players are willing to respectfully engage with the material and with the expectation that they will portray a woman. We are committed to keeping the destination experience for women only, believing that the all-woman space over the duration of the longer event creates many benefits for players. Immerton’s deliberate choice to remove men from the experience allows it to focus on being a woman in a community of women, and by creating a thin boundary between character and player, it provides a chance to explore the self. Immerton represents an uncommon or even unique opportunity for a woman-only larp space and community, one that has its heart in feminist design focusing on choice, collaboration, non-hierarchical spaces and relationships, empowerment, and communication. One of the takeaways was the power of the mask and of speaking as a divine force, speaking truth with force and authority. That central core of aspecting a Goddess will be brought into the convention larp version. Immerton will be re-run in 2018, and we will continue to tweak the design to allow for even better relationship play and exploration of the intersectionalities of woman.

    References

    Allen, Lasara Firefox. (2016). Jailbreaking the Goddess: A Radical Revisioning of Feminist Spirituality. Llewellyn Publications

    Bowman, Sarah Lynne. (March 2, 2015). Bleed: The Spillover Between Player and Character. Nordiclarp.org. https://nordiclarp.org/2015/03/02/bleed-the-spillover-between-player-and-character/

    Bowman, Sarah Lynne. (March 8, 2017).  Immersion into Larp: Theories of Embodied Narrative Experience. First Person Scholar. http://www.firstpersonscholar.com/immersion-into-larp/

    Brind, Simon; Ashby, Charlotte; Dabill, Helly; Svanevik, Martine; and Rob Williams. (2017). The Quota Design Document. https://www.quota.cymru/

    Brown, Maury (September, 2016). Creating a Culture of Trust through Larp Safety & Calibration Mechanics. https://nordiclarp.org/2016/09/09/creating-culture-trust-safety-calibration-larp-mechanics/

    Brown, Maury; Bowman, Sarah Lynne; Jones, Kat; D, Quinn; and Orli Nativ. (2017). Immerton. Learn Larp LLC. www.immerton.com. Run: 2017, Joshua Tree, CA.

    Drinko, Clayton D. (2013). Keith Johnstone: Spontaneity, Storytelling, Status, and Masks, Trance, Altered States. Theatrical Improvisation, Consciousness, and Cognition. Palgrave Pivot, New York. pp. 64-91.

    Edland, Tor Kjetil, Raaum, Margrete and Trine Lise Lindahl. Mad About the Boy. 2010. Run: Connecticut, 2012.

    Johnstone, Keith. (1987). Impro: Improvisation and the Theatre. Routledge.

    Jones, Kanane. (October 28, 2017). Immerton: A Fire in the Desert. https://nordiclarp.org/2017/10/28/immerton-fire-desert/

    Koljonen, Johanna. (September, 2016). “Toolkit: the OK Check-In.” Participation Safety Blog. https://participationsafety.wordpress.com/2016/09/09/toolkit-the-ok-check-in/

    Koljonen, Johanna. (September, 2016). “Toolkit: The ‘See No Evil’ or Lookdown.” Participation Safety Blog. https://participationsafety.wordpress.com/2016/09/18/toolkit-the-see-no-evil-or-lookdown/

    Lukka, Lauri. (2014). The Psychology of Immersion: Individual Differences and Psychosocial Phenomena Relating to Immersion. The Cutting Edge of Nordic Larp. Edited by Jon Back.

    Mulvey, Laura. (1975) Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema. Screen.

    Piironen, Helene Willer and Kristoffer Thurøe. (2014). An Introduction to the Nordic Player Culture. The Foundation Stone of Nordic Larp. Edited by Eleanor Saitta, Marie Holm-Andersen and Jon Back.

    Stark, Lizzie. (2012). Mad About the Techniques: Stealing Nordic methods for larp design. Wyrd Con Companion Book, Aaron Vanek & Sarah Lynne Bowman, ed. http://www.sarahlynnebowman.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/10/wyrdconcompanionbook2012.pdf

    This article is part of Re-Shuffling the Deck, the companion journal for Knutepunkt 2018. All articles from the companion can be found on the Knutpunkt 2018 category.

    Cover photo: Devotees meet with the goddess of destruction, Ellishara, in the Goddess Chamber. Photo by Sarah Bowman.

    1. Black Box. Nordic Larp Wiki. https://nordiclarp.org/wiki/Black_Box ↩︎
    2. Meta Room. Nordic Larp Wiki. https://nordiclarp.org/wiki/Meta_Room ↩︎
    3. Aspecting. https://moonlightmagick.wordpress.com/2012/01/07/a-is-for-aspecting/ ↩︎
    4. Fear of Missing Out (FOMO). (2017).Wikipedia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fear_of_missing_out ↩︎
    5. Alibi. Nordic Larp Wiki. https://nordiclarp.org/wiki/Alibi ↩︎
  • More Than a Seat at the Feasting Table

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    More Than a Seat at the Feasting Table

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    After finishing a short introduction to my thesis during a graduate forum at New York University Gallatin, curious students and bystanders surrounded me. I got asked the same barrage of questions I hear from people of color often. Where can they larp? How can they larp? Is larping for them? Is it just fantasy stuff? How much is it? Can you larp as anything you want?

    Mostly importantly though, “Where can you larp?”

    I had answers for some of those questions, but not all.  Answering these questions require me to think intersectionally, especially within a US concept. The history of colonialism, means that race, gender, and class are linked together in a way that one cannot think of one without the other. In recommending larps to people of color, I must think of cost and location in addition to interest. For instance, I hesitate to send people of color into all White spaces. Many boffer larps can be notoriously problematic, with their sects, “races”, and factions which routinely perpetuate racial stereotypes in coded language. In addition to this, in the US, race and wealth are intrinsically linked together. This means some forms of larp are more accessible than others. Parlor larps, freeform, jeepform, and Intercon styled larps are all far more accessible than a big budget international larp, but even in those styles, there is a distinct lack of writers, players and spaces which are helmed by people of color. In short: As is stands, larp is very White, and if it is to go truly international, to reach communities the world over and back, it’s going to need to be more inclusive of non-Western, non-European, and non-White people.((This assumption is backed up by Christopher Amherst’s findings in his 2016 Solmukohta article about the 2014 larp census. “Therefore within our cohort population the “default” is a White male between the ages of 20-34, who participates as cast/crew in live combat fantasy campaigns…”)) This means, it’s not enough to put the few larpers of color on your brochures, we must encourage, support, and nourish larpers of color and encourage them not only to play, but to create. In encouraging more diverse involvement at all levels of larp, larp’s international appeal will not only reside in a few select areas, but spread far enough so the benefits of larp can be extended to those who are systematically oppressed.

    My own (Jonaya Kemper's) character for Dying Kingdoms: A’isha Elvenhart. A’isha is a direct outcome of me being able to create the character I always wanted to see in a fantasy novel. Photo by Jonaya Kemper.
    My own (Jonaya Kemper’s) character for Dying Kingdoms: A’isha Elvenhart. A’isha is a direct outcome of me being able to create the character I always wanted to see in a fantasy novel. Photo by Jonaya Kemper.

    There Were no Wardrobes for Children Like Us

    If I close my eyes I can still see myself pedalling my purple 10 speed bicycle, my clunky scuffed sneakers caught in the rhythmic cycle of going forward. On Saturdays, I escaped to the “good park”, past the “bad park” where broken glass and drug dealers clumped together among 200-year-old trees and a ripped-out gazebo whose wires still stick up like metal snakes. The good park is where most of the wealthier (and ostensibly, White) kids lived, and since I was 14, I could go all by myself, so I can be weird in peace.((I should note that in this case, weird is not a derogatory term. Indeed, the word itself comes from the Anglo Saxon wyrd, meaning someone who control’s their own fate. I intended to control mine.)) I carried a large leather bag with a Portuguese roll (papa secos) with thick fresh butter and honey that I will dub “journey bread”, some cheap chocolate, and a can of ginger ale I will say is ale. Inside that bag was also a journal. A complicated thing written in pseudo-medieval fantasy code, so that later, it will be indecipherable to anyone except myself. I pedal hard and fast, and dream myself on a horse riding through the countryside. But I have never seen a countryside. Nor have I been on a horse. I dream of swords, ball gowns, castles, pyramids, tricksters, and fairies. I rewrote everything I read so I could find myself. I wrote stories of girls who looked like me, or my cousins, or my friends. I put us at the center of the universe, and found something that gnawed ever at my heart.

    This fantasy was not made for me. The feasting table where heroes came to from adventures did not include me. It was reinforced with every book cover, with every fantasy race described as “beautifully pale with flaxen hair”. I wanted so badly to be among the heroes laughing and feasting together, but I quickly found out that I was not invited to play in these fantastic worlds, simply because I did not exist in them.

    In most of the books I read, which are the basis for much of the fantasy genre, people of color were either nonexistent or portrayed as evil. White children found Narnia. White children fell through tree knots, found secret keys, and became royalty in unknown lands. They were the chosen ones who inherited magic powers, danced with the Fae during the full moon, and were called to perform wild serenades to powers eldritch… There were no magical Kingdoms for children who looked like me, and it went even further than erasure from fiction.

    Our faces were not only blocked from the very stuff of imagination, they were erased from actual history. The tales of Africa, Asia, and South America were all left out of our instruction, or only spoken of in terms of colonialism. This effectively curtailed large swathes of my own imagination. I could no more imagine a free Black woman in 18th century England as I could imagine a Black Lucy shooting arrows. The former was as fantastical and improbable as the latter.

    “What if though,” I thought, “What if could just make up my own stories?”

    And so I did. Under that tree in the park, I wrote myself the stories I wish I could play and see. I wrote the characters of color I so desperately needed, and eventually I began to wonder. What if people could play dress up and actually become their own stories? I brushed this notion off as a dream, another strange fantasy. It took almost fifteen years before I heard the term, “Larp.”

    Diana Leonard as Wallad Mustakfa, a warrior poet and ambassador based on Wallada bint al-Mustakfi, a 11th century Andalusian poet. Diana was integral to drawing me into the story, and encouraging me. Photo by Jonaya Kemper.
    Diana Leonard as Wallad Mustakfa, a warrior poet and ambassador based on Wallada bint al-Mustakfi, a 11th century Andalusian poet. Diana was integral to drawing me into the story, and encouraging me. Photo by Jonaya Kemper.

    The first larp I attended was an American Boffer larp based in Southern California, known as Dying Kingdoms. Indeed, the number one way my friends convinced me to go, was by saying I wouldn’t be alone as the only PoC. It is a universal truth that when entering an unfamiliar space, a person of color (PoC) hopes to not be the singular person of color in attendance. PoC have been taught that when you place your body in a space where you are the only PoC, you are potentially opening yourself up to discrimination, harassment, tokenism, and possible injury.

    This internal knowing can be described as having multiple consciousnesses. These multiple consciousnesses were first talked about by critical race theorist W.E.B Dubois who coined the term double consciousness, which refers to the inability of Black Americans to be seen in the singular, rather each individual must carry the history of their oppression and what others view them as. (DuBois, 1994) This theory was made an international theory when another critical race theorist, Frantz Fanon explored the concept in other countries. Fanon posited that people of color carried not only themselves this way in their own countries of birth, but wherever they went in the world. (Fanon, 1968)  PoC are not truly allowed to live by just their nationalities, they can never be just an American, Norwegian, or Briton. To Western hegemonic society, PoC telegraph our otherness, and that otherness lives in a seemingly unescapable narrative of Western colonialism and White Supremacy.  To live and survive, we must follow unspoken rules, which include giving up playing pretend, and any hobbies left outside of what the mainstream prescribes for.

    For PoC who remain locked into the small boxes placed upon our bodies, playing outside of normative boundaries and seeking joy in the face of overwhelming oppression is a revolutionary act. It is my belief that larp is not only play, but also a method. It is a tool to discover and explore different roles and selves. For PoC this is vital, and the combination of systemic oppression, media misrepresentation or complete lack of representation allows larpers of color to take on those roles they would never ordinarily be allowed to take on. Creating a narrative of liberation for oneself is a revolutionary act. Larp as a medium is not a luxury to be discarded, it is a tool for self-liberation. It is among the ever-growing proudly geeky hobbies of PoC, all of whom are striving for recognition in the world we share.

    Encouraging all people of color to see themselves outside of the confines of what they are told they must be, rather than what they individually are according to the dominant narrative, is very important, and drives many new areas of scholarship within popular culture. This includes Afrofuturism.

    Afrofuturism is a movement that seeks to redefine Blackness for the future ever looking forward and backward in history for inspiration. As art curator and Afrofuturist Ingrid La Fleur said in her TedTalk Visual Aesthetics of Afrofuturism, “I see Afrofuturism as a way to encourage experimentation reimagine identities, and activate liberation.” (LaFleur, 2011) I believe that larp can absolutely fit this description. Larp provides what Sarah Lynne Bowman calls “trying on different hats” of self-hood. (Bowman, 2010) She states, “Role-playing environments provide a safe atmosphere and experience for people to collectively enact new modes of self-expression and experience a sense of ego permeability while still maintaining their primary identity in the ‘real world.’” The ability to not give up ones’ inherent identity as a person of color, while still being able to explore different modes of self is a direct pushback to a society that says you only have one sense of self.  Larp brings exploration and joy, and allows us to recreate ourselves and communities.

    How We Can All Eat at the Feasting Table

    If larp can be a tool for investigating self and breaking out of the confines of the hegemonic dominance of White Supremacy placed on players of color, how then do we invite more potential larpers of color to the table? How do we make larping an activity that is welcoming and exploratory for all? We have seen larp media become slowly more diverse, but the larps themselves, the organizers, the variety of larps, and who is playing them needs to be further considered. Below, are my suggestions for making larp more accessible to PoC.

    Blackface is not a Homage

    Let’s start at the thorniest of problems. One of the most frequently asked questions and debates when it concerns people of color and larp has to do with painting one’s skin to be perceived as other. There have been arguments made that painting oneself in Mehron burnt sienna is fine because the White player in question wanted to “authentically” play a Black person, or an Arab person. To this we say something simple.

    No.

    The history of painting one’s skin in cork or paint to stereotype and lampoon people of color is not just an American problem, and no matter how many times large swathes of PoC explain that it is not remotely okay to do so, inevitably someone pushes back and says, “But it’s a homage!”

    It is not a homage. If you would like to welcome players of color, the first thing one should do is make them feel safe and welcome, which means avoiding race facing.

    Race facing, the act of changing one’s skin tone or facial characteristics to play a different race is unacceptable as it draws upon a legacy of ridicule, subjugation, and racism. If you are painting yourself brown to play an Arab, you are in the process of being ignorant. PoC come in all shades, including shades that include White people. By painting yourself you aren’t being more authentic, you are at best being insensitive, and at worse being racist. So, put down the dreadlock wig and the brown greasepaint.

    A game or gaming culture that encourages face painting to portray the “other” is one that is unwelcoming to PoC.

    Stop Asking for Free Labor and Start Encouraging Designers of Color

    By the time you’ve read this article, at least one White person has signed up to a Larpers of Color group to ask the question, “Hey can someone check my game out and tell me if it’s racist?”

    PoC, whether they are larpers or not, tend to continually do this type of free labor. We will pour over scripts, manuals, art, and all game material to make sure there is one less accidentally or intentionally racist game in the world. Larpers of color want other PoC to larp, so very often no matter if we are busy, working on our own projects, tired, out of resources or just plain broke, we are checking and rechecking people’s work all for a simple, “Thanks for the Help.” Meanwhile the game receives some invisible shield, (“Hey, a POC said I could do it!”) and the person of color barely gets a nod in the margins of the creation.

    If we want to truly write expansive and diverse stories, then we must stop expecting people of color to do free backend labor and start inviting them to the planning in the first place. If you are going to write about radical werewolves from Mexico, maybe ask around and see if there’s a Mexican larper who has had that idea and wants to collaborate and then pay them if you can. Or even better, do that and offer to mentor larp designers of color so we can create more expansive worlds. Instead of writing about PoC, provide a community which invites PoC to write about themselves.

    Case in point, Abrihette Yawa’s Intercon styled larp, The Droid Auction is based on the Afrofuturist mythology created by singer and actress Janelle Monae. Set in Monae’s world of Metropolis, the players, many of whom were PoC, were charged with dealing with the death of Cindy Mayweather, a charismatic droid leader. The various factions played against and with each other using the dance, music, and a created mythos which included people of color. This game alone, brought me to Intercon, a larp convention that has been running for in the Northeast for the last 25 years. By its very existence and the creator behind it, I thought that the larp would be welcoming to me, and it was.

    Once there, I found greater connections to other players of color who are now collaborators and friends. I felt so confident after the larp that the jacket I wore as a part of the Electro-Phi Betas (my faction) was the jacket I wore to Knutepunkt. That piece of ephemera gave me confidence to enter a space I was unfamiliar with.

    Truly Understand Oppression Play

    In Mo Holkar’s excellent 2016 Solmukohta article Larp and Prejudice: Expressing, Erasing, and Exploring the Fun Tax, Holkar explains, “Larp designers who choose a real-world setting – historical or contemporary- are faced, whether they realize it or not, with a set of decisions about how to portray the social prejudices (based on gender, race, sexuality, class, age, etc.) of that setting.” (Holkar, 2016) I agree with Holkar when he speaks later of the notion that players for whom these are actual marginalities in their real life may have some bleeding in when these are portrayed. This type of bleed is not fundamentally a problem. Writers however need to inform players beforehand and give them consent, and do their due diligence to actually understand how fundamental oppression is in PoC’s daily lives.

    Oppression play is not something to be engaged in lightly, especially if you plan to open larp to international audiences and invite PoC. You cannot just invent factions that call for racist stereotypes, and then say, “These aren’t racist, we just wanted to introduce oppression play.”  One can’t simply write a larp about the Western expansion in America and then conveniently tell players that people of color are available to play without understanding what oppression play around that entails. Trying to escape it by handwaving away racism, ends up erasing PoC and their histories as well.

    If one is seeking to include oppression play that deals with racism against a group, it would behoove you to understand that oppression is never just on the surface, inside and outside of game. Oppression is physical and mental. It is all encompassing and suffocating. It is deadly even when it seems benign. Instead of trying to write about an oppression that you cannot grasp, instead ask a player of color to the table when you design.

    For an example of this, see Kat Jones’ excellent work when rewriting characters for the American run of Just a Little Loving (Edland & Grasmo, 2017). In reflecting the more diverse cast of the American run, Jones allowed players to play on their own race within the game which did not detract, but enhanced the setting and reflected the realities of living as a person of color in New York during the early aids crisis.

    Write for Your Own Communities

    Over the summer, I got the truly heart wrenching experience of playing Troels Ken Pedersen’s Gargantuan (Pedersen, 2016). The work on the surface looks like a fun romp that combines steampunk and fantasy with Elves and Goblins at each other’s throats. However, this is a roleplaying scenario that is much more. As you play, the racism and horror of this world begins to wash over you, and the strict game mastering drives you to the dark places of complacent racism that makes you see things in new ways.

    The Game was not written for me, even though I played it with a certain fatalistic glee. The Game was ostensibly written for those well-meaning White people who do not truly get how deep and horrifying racism can be. As a scenario, it exists to me as one of the best ways White people can write within their own communities. In this Pedersen is not seeking to liberate PoC, but rather speak to his own community about the insidiousness of racism.

    In designing larps meant for social justice, well-meaning White designers will write what they think is apt social commentary that includes PoC and seeks to liberate them. To this notion, I will put forth an activist saying that has been said by writers and actvists of color from Audre Lorde to Augusto Boal: Liberate yourself.

    Write games that explore racism within Whiteness. Write Games that explore prejudice within Whiteness. I would rather see a million games about White feminism and its lack of intersectionality than see another fantasy parable about racism that is directed toward “freeing” people of color and “seeing the other side”. How can you see the other side when you haven’t investigated your own yet?

    We are Not a Monolith

    People of Color are not one massive group that agrees on everything. In fact, I hope some disagree with me, as surely I have disagreed with them. People of Color are not a monolith. It is impossible to get a rubber stamp of “not racist” on any of your games even if you consult a PoC. Latinx, Black, Middle Eastern, Indigenous, and Asian diasporas are massive, and though some may overlap, they can’t wholly speak for each other. I cite my Blackness, but that Blackness itself is specific to a context of the Black diaspora and to the Black American diaspora. It can inform generally about the struggles of PoC, but it cannot be used to rubber stamp your portrayal of Chinese people in the Western expansion.

    Listen

    Let’s try and assume the best intentions, and listen. If PoC can continually try to see missteps as non-malicious, then the folks who make those missteps can at least listen. Being informed that something you’ve done is racist is not actually the worst thing that can happen to you. Having someone say, “Hey, this thing you designed is racist,” is not the worst thing that could happen. Refusing to listen and becoming defensive is much worse, and even then, one can come back from this by listening and understanding. If someone is talking to you about cultural appropriation, it is not actually going to help you by talking about how people dress up as Scandinavians. Theoretically there were PoC in Viking dress, as the Vikings were a people who traveled widely and intermingled with others. That’s plausible. You needing to put on greasepaint in a Wild West larp for “accuracy” is not.

    Listen to PoC when they tell you that something is not okay. Listen to PoC when they tell you they are uncomfortable. Reach out hands to players of color. The moment you stop listening, larp stops growing.

    When People of Color Come to the Table We All Benefit

    Imagine a larp written based on Chinese Wuxia films and steampunk aesthetics set in San Francisco in 1910. Imagine a larp based on the Nautch girls in Lucknow, India who fought against the British Raj by creating a matriarchal system that bypasses inheritance laws. Imagine a larp created by PoC that explores the heights and joys of being alive and living with freedom. These are not far flung ideas.

    As larp grows we need to realize that we are at a turning point. If we design intersectionally, and are inclusive and supportive of people of color, we can truly allow larp to grow beyond a hobby for some, and blossom into strong liberational and exploratory tool for all. Encourage players of color to come to larps, encourage them to write. If you are a PoC, reach out to other players and designers, and do not be afraid to speak up when you see injustice. We deserve to create ourselves just as much as anyone, and it is a necessary and revolutionary act to do so.

    When people of color are invited to the table we are bringing vast amounts of new thoughts, ideas, and growth. To go global, to be international, we must realize that people of color exist and are here to play. We deserve to find the doors to Narnia, to duel at dawn in Regency garb, to bash back with foam shields as Elves, to bring Bruja magic to your wizarding schools, to see ourselves as whole and valued members of an ever-growing international community. When you invite us to the table, you are inviting the world to play. To this we say from the table that we can all share, “Skål!”

    Naui Ocelotl. Aswahi Warrior, played by Ruben Garcia in Dying Kingdoms. Due to the way Dying Kingdoms allows players to co-create “cultures”, players of color are supported and often feel welcomed when playing within their own culture and others. Photo by Jonaya Kemper.
    Naui Ocelotl. Aswahi Warrior, played by Ruben Garcia in Dying Kingdoms. Due to the way Dying Kingdoms allows players to co-create “cultures”, players of color are supported and often feel welcomed when playing within their own culture and others. Photo by Jonaya Kemper.

    References

    Amherst, C. (2016). Representation and Social Capital: What the Larp Census Reveals About Community. In M. L. Jukka Särkijärvi, Larp Realia: Analysis, Design, and Discussions of Nordic Larp (pp. 120-124). Ropecon ry.

    Bowman, S. L. (2010). Role-Playing as Alteration of Identity. In S. L. Bowman, The Functions of Role-Playing Games: How Participants Create Community, Solve Problems and Explore Identity (pp. 127-154). McFarland & Co.

    DuBois, W. E. (1994). The Souls of Black Folk. Mineola, NY: Dover Publications.

    Edland, T. K., & Grasmo, H. Just a Little Lovin’. [Larp] https://jall.us/ (Accessed 12/18/17) Run: Minneapolis, Minnesota, USA: 2017

    Fanon, F. (1968). Black Skin White Masks. New York : Grove Press.

    Heinig, Jesse, Shippey Adam, Huggins William, and Fox, Edward. Dying Kingdoms. [Larp] http://dyingkingdoms.com/ (Accessed 12/18/17) Run: Los Angeles, CA USA: 2007-

    Holkar, M. (2016). Larp and Predjudice: Expressing, Erasing, Exploring, and the Fun Tax. In M. L. Jukka Särkijärvi, Larp Realia: Analysis, Design, and Discussions of Nordic Larp. Ropecon ry.

    LaFleur, I. (2011, September 25). TEDx Fort Greene Salon: Visual Aesthetics of Afrofuturism. Fort Greene, New York, USA. Retrieved from Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x7bCaSzk9Zc

    Pedersen, T. K. (2016) Gargantuan. [Scenario] Run: USA 2017

    Yawa, A. (2017) The Droid Auction. [Larp] Rhode Island, USA: 2017

    This article is part of Re-Shuffling the Deck, the companion journal for Knutepunkt 2018.

    All articles from the companion can be found on the Knutpunkt 2018 category.

    Cover photo: Collage of larp character portraits, assembled by Jonaya Kemper.