Month: November 2023

  • Listen 2 Your Heart Season 8: An Unexpectedly Bleedy Experiment

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    Listen 2 Your Heart Season 8: An Unexpectedly Bleedy Experiment

    By

    Sarah Lynne Bowman

    This article is first in a series on Larping Intimacy and Relationships.

    From October 28-29, 2023, I participated in Listen 2 Your Heart Season 8 (L2YH), an online larp (or LAOG, Reininghaus 2019) based on the Netflix show Love is Blind (2020-). The game was organized by JD Lade and took place on Discord between Saturday evening and Sunday evening, with enforced off-game sleep hours. We played 8 characters, plus the robot-voiced “Production” who gave us instructions at each stage of the larp. 

    The following article describes the reality show genre within which this adaptation was placed, addressing its fascinating but also problematic nature, as well as its similarities and differences with larp. I then discuss the potency of playing romantic relationships as vulnerable and potentially transformative experiences, as well as the pitfalls that can arise. I briefly discuss Oliver Nøglebæk’s (2016, 2023) “4 Cs of Larping Love”: context, consent, communication, and chemistry. Finally, I explore how a larp’s design can impact player experiences of romance, situating Listen to Your Heart’s game design and my play experience as a case study. I discuss the surprise twist of this particular run and consider it with regard to safety and consent.

    Is Love Really Blind?

    As a binge-watcher of many shows related to intimacy, relationships and marriage, Love is Blind is one of my favorite concepts. Single people are invited to take part in an experiment to see if love truly is blind. An equal number of cis-het men and women who all ostensibly are ready to get married are grouped in living quarters according to gender. Then, they take turns dating each person from the other group with a twist: they cannot see each other and can only communicate through a thin partition between them. They spend hours on end in these rooms called “pods” and they can choose to share or not share aspects of their physicality to the person on the other end. However, most avoid such talk, as the premise of the show is to date people without judging them immediately based on looks alone. Of course, some of the cast are there to get on TV and get famous, but some earnestly want to find a life partner through the show. 

    If one of the cast proposes to another — always heterosexual pairings, with usually the cis man proposing in the traditional fashion — and the woman accepts, they prepare for The Reveal. The two are placed on opposite sides of a room with the partitions slowly rising. The anticipation is intense — will they be attracted to this person who they only knew by voice, and vice versa? After they propose, they rush to the center of the room, where they embrace, and if he still wants to propose, the man drops to a knee and asks again. 

    They are then thrown into a honeymoon with the other newly engaged couples, which can be intensely romantic or disastrous depending on the couple’s compatibility and each partner’s ability to handle insecurities or shallow habits, such as focusing overmuch on physical traits that are not their usual “type.” If they make it past the honeymoon, they have three weeks to live together back in the “real world,” then have a wedding with their friends and family watching. At the altar, they find out if the other person will actually marry them, which makes for high-stakes and intense television. A year later, they come back to the show for the reunion, sharing how life has unfolded for them since they made this big decision. 

    Emotional Extreme Sports and Consent

    I have seen many seasons of the show, as well as its spiritual predecessor, Married at First Sight (2014-), which is made by the same production company. In Married at First Sight, the cast members are matchmade by experts (a sexologist, a pastor, and a sociologist) and are subject to extensive questionnaires and interviews before, during, and after meeting their spouse at the altar. The experiment in this show is to see if love can grow over time. At times, these experts intervene in times of conflict, which is viewed as inevitable, and guide the couples through marriage counseling. The experiment is predicated on research developed at the Gottman Institute (2023), where psychologists have studied the formula for long-lasting relationships. The show emphasizes how love can grow through moments of intimacy and connection, even if attraction is not present, as attraction can fade, while intimacy needs tending over time. In this way, Married at First Sight is educational, and my view is these counselors deeply want these couples to be happy and have healthy marriages.

     The Love is Blind experience has little to none of that concern. No one intervenes on camera, although occasionally the fourth wall breaks and you can see a producer or camera person trying to persuade the person to stay in the relationship. Cast members have recently revealed shocking filming conditions, including being abandoned with no food, sleep-deprived, and forced to stay on set for 20 hours straight at a time (Hogg 2022). As a larper, this makes total sense to me: of course you would deprive people of their basic needs in order to push for intense emotional reactions (Leonard and Thurman 2018) — and many larpers willingly push these limits regardless of the game’s design, and some larps consider such deprivation a feature, not a bug. Larpers who enjoy this type of intense experience or even edge play (Poremba 2007; Montola 2010) often refer to their play activities as emotional extreme sports. Furthermore, such extreme experiences, especially when paired with romantic play, often do lead to romantic feelings between players, as they experience the catalytic container of the liminal space of the larp and the altered, paradoxical state of being themselves-yet-a-character. 

    However, although these cast members signed a contract and receive the benefits of being on the show, such as instant fame, they clearly are not privy to the kind of consent and safety mechanics we encourage in the international larp community. That contract also states that they must stay legally married for one year and can only get divorced after the reunion is filmed, which is a surefire way to ensure psychological damage if the relationship is dysfunctional. They risk the humiliation of being turned down at the altar not only in front of their friends and family, but the world. It’s exploitative, problematic, hetero-, mono-normative, although not necessarily more so than other Hollywood products sadly.

    Nonetheless, I can’t help watching and being fascinated by the human struggle to relate to one another playing out in all these different dynamics. What is remarkable about these shows is the way in which cast members open their relationships to be inspected and consumed by millions of people. Relationships are the places in which our deepest insecurities can be revealed, including any prior wounds or attachment trauma, such as a tendency to fear abandonment (anxious attachment) or engulfment (avoidant attachment) (Levine and Heller 2011). As the show airs, fans around the world watch every (edited) moment of their relationships at their ecstatic best and excruciating worst. Furthermore, the edits they receive tell a narrative that is more of what the producers want to portray, which may not accurately reflect the actual dynamics and happenings between the participants. Many have difficulties dating non semi-famous people after the show airs, instead dating other people from the show or from other reality TV shows, especially if fame was indeed their objective. However, it’s clear that being on the show changes their lives forever; one cast member recently claimed he has been turned down for jobs in his profession due to his participation on Love is Blind, although other cast members have found these claims dubious (Brathwaite 2023).

    I think what fascinates me most about this show in particular is the idea of only knowing someone by voice and spending many hours with them, learning all about them, without the distraction of examining their physicality or the anxiety of them examining yours. When I think about concepts that would be appealing to larp, a Love is Blind-themed game was on the top of my list. Could “the experiment” be replicated in a serious way in larp form, or would it devolve into the familiar (and safe) realm of satire, as in The Upgrade (2004) a jeepform larp by Tobias Wrigstad, Thorbiörn Fritzon, and Olle Jonsson about couples deciding whether or not to “trade up” for a different partner? Would players experience emotional bleed (Montola 2010; Bowman 2015) or relationship bleed (Harder 2018) they find triggering or exposing? Or perhaps have a breakthrough as a result of playing out a trial relationship under these circumstances? As a result of this fascination, when JD Lade posted in Larpers BFF that late spots were open to Listen 2 Your Heart Season 8, I jumped right into playing that evening.

    Photo by Efe Kurnaz on Unsplash.

    Romantic Play and Personal Development

    One of the things that interests me most about romantic play is the way it can open opportunities for players to explore relationship dynamics that are unfamiliar, but might reveal parts of themselves, their desires, and their patterns that were less clear to them before. They can experience hypercolor moments of relationship intensity that they may never have felt safe, worthy, or brave enough to try to achieve before. They can play characters that are more sexually or romantically confident and experience what that feels like; alternatively, they can play deeply insecure people who employ manipulative tactics in order to gain power over one another. They can watch in horror as their character takes their own attachment trauma into dysfunctional extremes, or practice playing out a more healthy relationship dynamic. They can experience what true love is — for their characters, at least. What happens to the relationship between the players and any lingering feelings afterward, i.e. the larp crush (Harder 2018), is an often taboo, but necessary topic to openly discuss within larp circles and between players. Ultimately, such experiences can be spaces for healing, learning, personal, and interpersonal growth if handled with care (Baird, Bowman, and Hugaas 2022).

    Aware of the vulnerable space that romantic play can open, I am always curious how larps will handle issues of attraction, consent negotiations, storylines, and relationship dynamics. A tendency in role-playing game design in general and romantic games specifically is to design for conflict and tension — the more explosive, the better, especially in communities like Nordic larp that emphasize playing to lose or playing for drama. I am often dubious and even bored of such dynamics — beginning play at the height of conflict means next to nothing if there was no relationship developed between the characters beforehand, no embodied sense of what being “in love” with that person might feel like. For that reason, I have often favored preparatory scenes (Holkar 2021), also called backstory play, in which the basic dynamics of the relationship, including the excitement, the tenderness, and the passion can be experienced, therefore making any drama that unfolds meaningful. 

    Furthermore, the idea of trying to play out functional relationship dynamics can be equally fascinating, as conflict often arises in human interaction whether we pre-plan it or not. Being asked by the larp’s design or by organizers to overperform drama in order to keep things exciting for other players has often annoyed me, as sometimes the best play in my view is in the quiet, gentle moments of subtle intimacy. I am also careful about bleed, as I am aware that angry or shaming words said in-character when in such a vulnerable state can often reach us as players, especially if the dynamics we are exploring are relatable to our own lives.

    The Four C’s: Context, Consent, Communication, and Chemistry

    Of particular sensitivity are matters of chemistry and attraction. According to Oliver Nøglebæk (2016; 2023), “four Cs” are important to consider when larping romance (and, arguably, when engaging in relationships in general):

    1. Context: Considering the context of the larp as a whole, its themes, and the experiences of other players when approaching romantic play;
    2. Consent: Making sure all players enthusiastically consent to play within stated boundaries;
    3. Communication: Directly, openly, and regularly communicating what types of experiences each player would like to have;
    4. Chemistry: The inexplicable spark of connection that can be instantaneous or cultivated over time.

    Regarding this last point of chemistry, many larpers will understandably lean more into in-game relationships with people to whom they are emotionally, intellectually, physically, or spiritually attracted; that sort of bleed can be experienced as pleasurable and may even lead to relationships with the other player in daily life (Bowman 2013). Chemistry from this perspective need not be rooted in sexual desire. On the other hand, if one only plays for chemistry, one might end up rejecting play from others, which can emotionally impact other players, especially if they consider themselves outside the bounds of conventional attractiveness, or as Karijn van der Heij (2021) calls it, appearance-based prejudice. Rejecting such connections can also negatively impact the larp, e.g., in larps with a strongly narrativist structure like Fortune & Felicity (Harder 2017; Kemper 2017), where a specific arc is meant to be played out over time with one’s assigned co-players. However, when considering the importance of consent, we arrive at a conundrum: should we force players to engage with one another in romantic play at all if they are not enthusiastically consenting? When considering the ethics of larp, this sort of peer pressure to perform romance can be a bit murky. In such cases, trying to find mutually satisfying ways to adjust the narrative through larp hacking might be kinder for everyone involved. Larp hacking involves subverting the game’s parameters such that it is more playable or enjoyable for participants but does not “break the game” completely (Svanevik and Brind 2020).

    Nøglebæk’s (2016, 2023) view on chemistry is “You can’t force it. But you can grow it, if both of you are willing to open up – it takes a little work and communication to build up mutual trust and connection.” This philosophy is quite similar to the stance taken by the Gottman Institute and, by extension, Married at First Sight and Love is Blind. Laura Wood (2022) has given a Nordic Larp Talk on the topic, advising much the same, discussing the way larpers can cultivate chemistry through “emotional bids,” as Gottman describes. It is certainly possible to foster such connection in a startlingly short amount of time in larp through workshop activities such as eye gazing; ars amandi, a technique developed by Eliot Wieslander for playing out sexuality through touching arms (Nordic Larp Wiki); or asking each other 36 Questions intended to help you fall in love (Aron et al. 1997).

    Listen 2 Your Heart: Salem Edition

    The run I experienced of Listen 2 Your Heart was called Season 8 diegetically and was the eighth iteration of the larp non-diegetically. The title of the larp refers to the Roxette song by the same name; the Glee (2009-2015) version of the song (2015) was played at the beginning of the larp, ostensibly as the theme song for the show. The setting was realistic in principle: all characters were given their own apartment and were communicating through chat rooms, audio, and video conferencing. This practice made it easier to immerse through the interface, which can be challenging in online larps. Furthermore, the online format took any anxieties around physical touch or intimacy off the table, which was a nice change of pace from physically embodied larp.

    By this point in the larp’s evolution, certain rules were in place in order to try to avoid the pitfalls of larp romance described above, which was a pleasant surprise. I am particularly sensitive to issues of chemistry; people’s feelings can get hurt if romantic gestures are not reciprocated or they can feel violated if forced to play out relationship dynamics without the option of opting out. Such issues can lead to larp ghosting, in which players drop their pre-arranged relations to seek out more fulfilling play. 

    Listen 2 Your Heart dealt with this conundrum in several ways. Most importantly, it broke with the cis hetero-normative formula endemic to many of these mainstream shows. The setting document states, “All characters are some flavor of bisexual / pansexual. They may have preferences, but none of the characters are to be played as straight or homosexual with only one gender preference” (“L2YH Schedule and Rules”). This rule tries to solve issues that can emerge in larps, such as queer players being forced to play straight romances (Paisley 2015; Stenros and Sihvonen 2019; Wood and D 2021), players steering away from players that their off-game self would not normally consider “their type,” etc. However, the rules also explicitly state that this world is mono-normative and that the dilemmas inherent to dating in groups cannot be solved through polyamory or dating outside of the pods. Such solutions break the premise of the game. In addition, the setting document states that all characters want to be on television and consented to the possibility of marrying someone. 

    I played Melaina, a young adult Fantasy author who believed she could do magic. The last part was a tweak I added to the original pre-written character concept when I started noticing the twist (see below). The in-game experience toggled between playing in the pods in a series of dates with members of the other group (audio only), in my case, Group B, then communicating with one’s group about what unfolded (audio and video), in my case, Group A. Though the larp was fairly long for the online format at approximately 13-14 hours of play over a 28 hour period, the pacing was such that while we were asked to interact with co-players through these “pod dates” played out in a series of Discord channels with camera off, we were not interacting with any one person for more than 20-30 minutes at a time. This kept the pace going and the format allowed for players to make any choice with regard to their character’s romantic storyline, although they were not allowed to unalive themselves, as that kind of choice can negatively hijack the narrative for everyone. 

    Group meetings featured different stimuli in addition to talking, such as prompts for us to go to the “confessional camera,” prompts to vote on characters in specific ways, e.g., “Most Likely to Receive the ‘Hero Edit’,” “Least Favorite Date.” This input was gathered in practice in Google Forms, then the larp adjusted in some way. For example, characters could request all the confessional quotes from a particular character, or were given anonymous confessional quotes to decipher. Votes were tabulated and winners (even in “losing” categories), were sometimes invited to choose the next series of dates, including to benefit themselves and either thwart or assist others. This practice kept us always on our toes and the game flowing nicely. Consistently shifting between interactions ensured that even if the setting was mono-normative, the play was more a collective negotiation.

    Many larps these days have rules against larping rejection of someone based on personal appearance for the reasons van der Heij (2021) described. L2YH had a particularly interesting approach to this rule, stating: “Don’t play negatively on someone’s OFF-GAME looks / age / etc. Everybody is hot, that’s the fun of the show, right? Somebody might not be your character’s type, but they are still objectively hot (“L2YH Schedule and Rules”). In practice, this was quite lovely after Reveal scenes, in which each of us were sent on dates where the camera suddenly came on, like the barrier lifting in Love is Blind. Cast members on Love is Blind often comment on how jarring it is to finally connect this new face with the voice they fell in love with and the physicality they imagined, which I found to be true as well, but still a pleasant surprise. In fact, these scenes were even more potent for me perhaps than the several of the other players, who seemed to play the larp together often I presume as new characters each time; I only know one of the players previously so I had an authentic experience of curiosity and surprise.

    When Group A would reconvene to gossip after these Reveals, we would play to lift (Vejdemo 2018) the other players, talking about how hot they were and how confusing it made everything, which we would then also sometimes reveal to characters in Group B. This practice can potentially lead to positive experiences of bleed that might counteract feelings of insecurity present in the player.

    The game encouraged players to amp up the interpersonal drama, which I sometimes struggle with being forced to do considering my preferred playstyle of keeping intensity growing at a slow boil  rather than exploding for the sake of narrative drama. However, off-game calibration with other players in terms of boundaries and the direction of storylines was strongly encouraged. In practice, this worked quite well, especially when communicating with experienced larpers who are conscientious of other player’s experience. 

    However, from my perspective, a major issue with such calibration occurred due to in-game secrets embedded in this particular run of the larp. While most runs focus on the traditional relationship trajectory storyline, this run of L2YH had a twist due to its proximity to Halloween: all the characters in Group B were actually vampires. Furthermore, it was revealed through play that if anyone in Group A does not choose to get married, they will be hunted and killed on the vampire television network on which the show now airs. Furthermore, they would then be forced to become a vampire themselves or die, thus becoming the monster themselves, now implying an additional meaning to the word “bleed.” This plot was hinted at in our briefing, in which the facilitator alluded to spooky things being afoot due to the game running close to Halloween and placed in Salem, Massachusetts, the location of the famous witch trials in colonial America that were unfortunately all too common in Europe.

    In terms of a plot, it was intriguing and my character figured out some of what was going on fairly early, but the secrecy of the game led to some cognitive dissonance around genre. On Love is Blind, you might end up with someone with narcissistic or abusive tendencies, but on this show, you would most certainly end up with a serial murderer, which is a steep escalation. Players in Group B were instructed to try not to reveal the secret until the Reveal, ostensibly to stir up the aforementioned drama. However, as it leaked early, I had to make a choice as a player: I could lean into the premise as horror or as the aforementioned satire/mockumentary style of play, similar to What We Do in the Shadows (2014, 2019-). I ended up doing what my characters often try to do when playing romance in larp: attempting to redeem or save the “troubled, misguided” abuser. My storyline started off fairly seriously, as I wanted my character to be earnestly looking for her life partner, as befits the genre of the show, but ended up in a dysfunctional love triangle between murderous psychopaths in order to amp up the drama for the finale. Furthermore, as Vampire fiction is often considered a metaphor for sexual violence, this twist did not entirely line up with the rule, “Do not play upon child- / sexual abuse / non consensual sexual encounters” (“L2YH Schedule and Rules”).

    I decided to lean into the absurdity and still had a good experience. However, this example illustrates the problems with secrecy in larps in terms of player consent (Torner 2013), as I may have declined playing upon such themes or negotiated a less severe storyline through calibration if I had known ahead of time. My understanding is that the next runs of this larp will revert to the typical Love is Blind format and will therefore likely not have such issues.

    A further hiccup revolved around the opt-out mechanic, a semi in-game phrase, “I’d rather not…”  We were instructed to say or chat the phrase and use the X-arms to the camera if we wanted to take the scene in a different direction. “I’d rather not…” could also be used to indicate a desire to change the topic of conversation, similar to an X-card (Stavropoulos n.d.), meaning that topic was off-limits. In practice, remembering such phrases during play can be quite difficult, as can remembering to signal, or remembering to check the chat to see if someone had sent an off-game message. These issues are ongoing with regard to safety. Cues can be missed whether in-person or virtual play, and in-game phrases meant to be immersive can sometimes be missed. In future runs, I would recommend workshopping such techniques to make sure all players had some embodied experience with them before play rather than only receiving them in the rules document and having them explained at a briefing.  

    A Successful Experiment

    Despite this narrative twist at the end, overall Listen to Your Heart Season 8 provided an authentic-feeling experience that strikes me as similar to what it might feel like to be in the pods of Love is Blind. I very much enjoyed being able to focus only on the voice as a means of communicating, whether the topics were flirtatious or deeply metaphysical, which is where my play tends to go. The experience of listening to the character’s voice on headphones strikes me as particularly intimate, as well as the pressure of attuning to every nuance the person was communicating explicitly or implicitly in order to ascertain in a short amount of time whether or not the relationship would work. Overall, I think the designer made smart choices in terms of the parameters of the larp. 

    References

    Aron, et al. 1997. “The Experimental Generation of Interpersonal Closeness: A Procedure and Some Preliminary Findings.” Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin 23, no. 4: 363-377.

    Baird, Josephine, Sarah Lynne Bowman, and Kjell Hedgard Hugaas. 2022. “Liminal Intimacy: Role-playing Games as Catalysts for Interpersonal Growth and Relating.” In The Magic of Games, edited by Nikolaus Koenig, Natalie Denk, Alexander Pfeiffer, and Thomas Wernbacher, 169-171. Edition Donau-Universität Krems.

    Brathwaite, Lester Fabian. 2023. “Love Is Blind star Nick Thompson says he’s applied for 400 jobs, is Two Months Away from Losing Home.” Entertainment Weekly, August 2.

    Bowman, Sarah Lynne. 2013. “Social Conflict in Role-playing Communities: An Exploratory Qualitative Study.” International Journal of Role-Playing 4: 17-18. https://doi.org/10.33063/ijrp.vi4.183

    Bowman, Sarah Lynne. 2015. “Bleed: The Spillover Between Player and Character.” Nordiclarp.org, March 2.

    Gottman Institute, The. “The Gottman Institute: A Research-Based Approach to Relationships.” Gottman.com.

    Harder, Sanne. 2017. “Fortune & Felicity: When Larp Grows Up.” Nordiclarp.org, June 13.

    Harder, Sanne. 2018. “Larp Crush: The What, When and How.” Nordiclarp.org, March 28.

    Hogg, Ryan. 2022. “‘Love is Blind’ Contestant Sues Netflix After Being Forced to Work ‘Inhumane’ 20-hour Days without Enough Food or Sleep.” Business Insider, July 17.

    Holkar, Mo. 2021. “Larping Before the Larp: The Magic of Preparatory Scenes.” In Book of Magic: Vibrant Fragments of Larp Practices, edited by Kari Kvittingen Djukastein, Marcus Irgens, Nadja Lipsyc, and Lars Kristian Løveng Sunde. Oslo, Norway: Knutepunkt, 2021.

    Kemper, Jonaya. 2017. “The Battle of Primrose Park: Playing for Emancipatory Bleed in Fortune & Felicity.” Nordiclarp.org, June 21.

    Lade, JD. 2023. “Schedule and Rules. Listen 2 Your Heart, Google Docs.

    Leonard, Diana J., and Tessa Thurman. 2018. “Bleed-out on the Brain: The Neuroscience of Character-to-Player. International Journal of Role-Playing 9: 9-15.

    Levine, Amir, and Rachel Heller. 2011. Attached: The New Science of Adult Attachment and How It Can Help You Find — and Keep — Love. Jeremy P. Tarcher/Penguin, 2011.

    Montola, Markus. 2010. “The Positive Negative Experience in Extreme Role-playing.” In Proceedings of DiGRA Nordic 2010: Experiencing Games: Games, Play, and Players. Stockholm, Sweden, August 16.

    Nøglebæk, Oliver. 2016. “The 4 Cs of Larping Love.” Olivers tegninger om rollespil, August 18.

    Nøglebæk, Oliver. 2023. “The 4 Cs of Larping Love.” Nordiclarp.org, November 14.

    Nordic Larp Wiki. 2013. “Ars Amandi.” July 11.

    Nordic Larp Wiki. 2014. “Jeepform.” May 29.

    Paisley, Erik Winther, 2015. “Play the Gay Away: Confessions of a Queer Larper.” In Larp Politics: Systems, Theory, and Gender in Action, edited by Kaisa Kangas, Mika Loponen, and Jukka Särkijärvi, 170-177. Helsinki, Finland: Solmukohta 2016, Ropecon ry.

    Poremba, Cindy. 2007. “Critical Potential on the Brink of the Magic Circle.” In DiGRA ’07 – Proceedings of the 2007 DiGRA International Conference: Situated Play Volume 4. Tokyo: The University of Tokyo.

    Reininghaus, Gerrit. 2019. “A Manifesto for LAOGs – Live Action Online Games.” Nordiclarp.org, June 14.

    Roxette. 2015. “Listen to Your Heart.” Perf. Lea Michele and Jonathan Groff. Glee.

    Sedillo, Joaquin, dir. 2015. “S6.E11. We Built This Glee Club.” Glee, May 13.

    Stavropoulos, John. N.d. “X-Card: Safety Tools for Simulations and Role-Playing Games by John Stavropoulos.” Google Docs, accessed January 13, 2019. http://tinyurl.com/x-card-rpg

    Stenros, Jaakko, and Tanja Sihvonen. 2019. “Queer While Larping: Community, Identity, and Affective Labor in Nordic Live Action Role-Playing.” Analog Game Studies: 2019 Role-Playing Game Summit (December 23).

    Svanevik, Martine, and Simon Brind. 2020. “Larp Hacking.” Nordiclarp.org, February 2.

    Torner, Evan. 2013. “Transparency and Safety in Role-playing Games.” In The Wyrd Con Companion Book 2013, edited by Sarah Lynne Bowman and Aaron Vanek, 14-17. Los Angeles, CA: Wyrd Con, 2013.

    van der Heij, Karijn. 2021. “We Share This Body: Tools to Fight Appearance-Based Prejudice at Larps.” Nordiclarp.org, June 14.

    Vejdemo, Susanne. 2018. “Play to Lift, not Just to Lose.” In Shuffling the Deck: The Knutpunkt 2018 Color Printed Companion, edited by Annika Waern and Johannes Axner, 143-146. Pittsburgh, PA: Carnegie Mellon University: ETC Press.

    Wood, Laura. 2022. “Larp Chemistry – Laura Wood.” Nordiclarp.org, September 11.

    Wood, Laura, and Quinn D. 2021. “Sex, Romance and Attraction: Applying the Split Attraction Model to Larps.” Nordiclarp.org, February 22.

    Wrigstad, Tobias, Thorbiörn Fritzon, and Olle Jonsson. 2004. The Upgrade. Jeepen.org.


    Photo by Efe Kurnaz on Unsplash. Image has been cropped.

  • The 4 Cs of Larping Love

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    The 4 Cs of Larping Love

    By

    Oliver Nøglebæk

    This article was originally published on Olivers tegninger om rollespil blog on August 18, 2016.

    So Karin Edman published a wishlist from the ladies of the Swedish Larp Women Unite (LWU), who wished more men would be interested in playing romantic relationships with them, which has spawned a lot of interesting discussion in the larposphere on Facebook.

    I’ve had a lot of fun out of romantic storylines in a lot of different larps, it’s a really powerful area to explore. There’s so many possibilities for intense emotions and meaningful stories:

    I’ve played Romeo and Juliet in a prison camp, a can’t-live-with-you-can’t-live-without-you story in utopia, been set up in an arranged marriage doomed to tragedy and been magically drawn back to life by my true love.

    I’d like to share my observations on what I think makes for good romantic play (or any intense interpersonal drama, really).

    Just to be catchy and bloggy, I’m basing it on four pillars: Context, Consent, Communication and Chemistry.

    Context

    No man is an island; neither does two make an archipelago. So if you are making the romance from scratch, explore the context of the whole larp to see what relationships are possible and encouraged. Find an angle that supports the intended experience of the larp; don’t just go for fulfilling your personal fantasies.

    Also make sure the play has room in between the other stuff you’re doing, I’ve seen so many romances neglected by players too busy to focus on them and an equal amount of players stuck with only the romance to play on and no one at the other end.

    Find someone to play with who has a genuine desire to be the other half, who has the possibility to prioritize the play with you, so you don’t end up disappointed.
    Oftentimes your character comes with a romantic story attached and you just have to make the best of it. Here the best approach is to try and see what function the plot has in the larp and where you get to decide yourself in the relationship.

    The players around you are also an important part of the relationship. Find ways for your relationship play to contribute to their experience as well, and see that they have meaningful positions in regards to the relationship. Romeo and Juliet are boring without the Capulets and Montagues.

    Consent

    I have this thing where I cannot engage with play if the other person is not actually into it – call it neurotic. If I sense they are not enjoying themselves, my body has ways of shutting it all down.
    Seriously though, consent is a basic requirement for me. If I don’t feel that the other person is excited about playing romantically with me, I steer clear of that play. I don’t just want a lukewarm “okay, that sounds fine.” I need enthusiastic consent and shared ownership if I am to play it at all.
    I’m also aware of giving my own enthusiastic consent early and often; I’d rather be overbearing than not get the conversation started. You should at least have a vague idea about your personal lines. Saying “I’m not sure exactly where my lines are with physical play” is a good start; “I don’t have any lines” shows that you are an idiot.

    Personally I have used the last many larps to develop an elevator pitch about my personal limits, to get started:

    I really enjoy bringing physicality and touching into play, so I’m good with most normal stuff as long as you stay away from groping the swimsuit area. You can give me a slap or light physical molestation if that becomes relevant. I have a weak immune system, so anything with mucus membranes and bodily fluids is out, that means actual kissing, spitting, fingers in the mouth and such. But Ars Amandi works wonderfully for me, so I suggest that for intimacy, but if you prefer something else, I’m sure we can make that work too.

    I also need to have consent reaffirmed during play. Especially when thing get heavier. If I can’t tell that you are enjoying play, I’m not going to take it further. This means we go off-game and check in, and preferably also talk about where we want play to go. Blackbox scenes are a good excuse.

    If you fail to build the relationship on mutual off-game consent, you’re bound to end up in territory where you or someone else feels violated or unsafe. The stuff we play with in romantic scenes is the natural habitat of trauma, so we need the extra care not to trigger old scars or create new injuries. Sometimes we do so by accident, in which case it is going to be a lot less horrible to work out, if you have already shown that you care about consent.

    Communication

    Talk. With. Each. Other. A lot. You can’t really consent if you don’t know what is going on. Also there’s a lot of layers and meanings we might miss when it comes to intense relations, so it’s good to know what the other side is focusing on and what is making them excited. Talk about the type of scenes you’d be into. Talk about the kinds of stories you love. Talk about the kinds of affection that work for you. Talk about your characters. Talk about what you want to go wrong. Talk about which songs you could have as theme song for the relationship. Make up pointless bits of backstory.

    And once play starts, you keep the lines open. You take time to listen to each other and sense what works for the other. You go off-game and check in. You tell how you feel as a player.

    I’ve enjoyed using meta room or blackbox play to calibrate with my partner, we’ve done abstract scenes with stuff like inner monologues and free association to communicate our thoughts and feelings in ways that open up for new and more nuanced play afterwards.

    I nearly always follow the basic model of mutual escalation in order to keep it feeling safe all the way through. Make a move, wait for the other to respond and reciprocate before moving on. If you get positive feedback, move up the intensity, if not you step back to a safe place and try something else.
    If you want to be discreet, you can do things in-game and then check if the other player plays into the move or around and get useful info. If someone isn’t actively playing reactions to your play, you’re better off going for something else. You can tell a lot from the level of engagement.

    Chemistry

    This is actually the most important bit: You need personal chemistry to play love. Without chemistry, play becomes a sucky chore. You need at least a spark of connection. And it better be mutual. Also, it has infinitely less to do with what makes your pants tingle, than it does with subconscious trust and genuine interest in the other person.

    You can’t force it. But you can grow it, if both of you are willing to open up – it takes a little work and communication to build up mutual trust and connection.

    Chemistry is also awfully fragile. So many things can ruin it, so you have to put in the work, to be someone people can connect with. A lot of the points in the list from LWU is personal deal breakers that ruin the chemistry. You can’t guarantee that it works, but you can start it up.

    Also, chemistry is impossible to detect without meeting in person. You might have great fun on skype before play, but once you meet a wrong pheromone can break the spell. Likewise, sometimes you build up an incredibly meaningful thing out of 15 minutes at a workshop. It’s a bit of a lottery really, so you just go to try an up your odds and hope for the best.

    If you’re stuck larping a romance without any chemistry, you’re gonna want to minimize the damage. A good place to start is to acknowledge the awkward with your partner and talk about what to do about it. If possible, simply play the relationship to a breaking point and end it. Go your separate ways. Otherwise see if you can transform the relationship into something you’re both comfortable with. Going through the motions should be a last resort.

    How to Get Started

    You ask. Ask out aloud in the Facebook group of the larp, if anyone is up for a romance. Suggest it to someone personally. Be prepared for rejection, so don’t just aim for one perfect relationship – that is a losing strategy. Be open to whatever comes up and be prepared to shape it yourself.

    The big problem is that for a lot of us, asking someone to play out romantic stuff is pretty much the same terrifying prospect as asking someone on a date in real life. The rejection is very much the same punch in the gut. There’s no big trick here, but to make it start out as low stakes for everyone involved. I’d suggest starting out talking about play in general, move onto your characters relationship potential in general, before asking about adding a romantic layer. Worse case scenario is you might get a rejection, but still an interesting potential for play.

    Be honest about what you want. Don’t just go along with what you get offered, take ownership of your half of the play. It’s a lot more attractive when it comes to building the intense stuff we all want. Romance is really not that different from most other play, at the end of the day.

    And my pet peeve:

    Don’t you dare hook up with the other player. You’re failing to larp if you do. You’re putting your own base needs ahead of community safety.

    I can’t count the number of times I’ve had to give up on opening romantic play, because the other person assumed I was only into if to get into their pants. I usually make a point of mentioning my off-game partner during introductory talks, to discreetly position myself.

    The reason I’ve managed to get to some insanely intense levels of intimacy in larp, is the simple fact that off-game there is nothing but friendship awaiting us. Even if we feel like we connect on soul-level or hormones rage during Ars Amandi. Off-game we’re not going to pursue this further. That’s part of the contract and the magic circle.

    At least keep your pants on through play and the after party, if you can’t wait that long, you are not grown up enough to larp.


    Cover photo by Filipe Almeida on Unsplash.

  • Jaakko Stenros: Retrospective: Documentation, Community, and Research

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    Jaakko Stenros: Retrospective: Documentation, Community, and Research

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    Jaakko Stenros

    In the Knutepunkt scene there is a history of larp designers and producers giving retrospectives, where they discuss all of their work. In this talk, here presented in two parts, Dr Stenros takes that format and expands it to other aspects of the community. He gives an overview of the work he has done around larp relating to documentation, community, and research during the past 25 years.

    Part 1:

    Part 2:

    Cover Photo: screenshot from the video. Photo by KP SK on YouTube.

  • Elements of Larp Design

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    Elements of Larp Design

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    Eirik Fatland

    What is it larp designers actually design? How do players actually respond to design decisions? Are there any truths that apply to all the different kinds of larp design? Eirik Fatland presents his unpublished yet influential mid-level theory of what the big picture in larp design looks like. An updated re-run of a classic KP presentation.

    Cover Photo: screenshot from the video. Photo by KP SK on YouTube.

  • Bringing Larp to the Larpers

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    Bringing Larp to the Larpers

    By

    Mo Holkar

    Katrine Wind has worked with local producers to re-run her larp Daemon in different countries. The reasons to do so are many! Sustainability, accessibility, and co-creation. In this presentation she shares her experiences from the US, UK, Denmark, and Belgium together with some of the collaborators: Sandy Bailly who is the producer of the Belgian run and Mo Holkar who is the safety person. Mo has also brought larps abroad from his local scene, and provides insights from those experiences. The aim is to hopefully inspire people to bring larps to other communities. It is easier than you think, and we should re-run more larps!

    Cover Photo: screenshot from the video. Photo by KP SK on YouTube.