Editorial note: This article is a slightly updated version of one that was originally published in the Knutpunkt 2026 book Seasons of Larp. It has been reprinted from there with the editors’ and authors’ permission. It has not been edited by Nordiclarp.org.
Introduction
Can larp stimulate deep reflections on how democracy works and how it can and should function? Can larp make us more inclined to value and engage in democracy? Can it even help us develop democratic skills? These questions underlie the Larpocracy project, an EU-funded collaboration project run by academics and larp practitioners in Europe. The project started in January 2025 and is still just in its infancy – much work remains to even begin to answer these questions.
One of the first questions that emerged in the project was a very basic one: What do larpers even mean when they say democracy? To untangle this, we performed a series of workshops with larp designers and participants, aiming to explore how they saw democracy and democratic themes being approached in larp.
It turns out that larpers stress as important aspects of democracy such as activism and resistance. But at the same time, they ignore or pay less attention to pivotal considerations that make up the core of democracy, such as fairly managing conflicts in a shared community (Dahl 2008).
Democracy, in a broad sense, is a means of peacefully managing and resolving social conflicts. It allows those affected to express their views and take part in the decision-making process. Ideally, the chosen solutions are accepted by everyone, at least provisionally, including those who did not support them from the start. However, accepting a solution does not mean that those who disagree should remain silent. The right to organize opposition in order to influence political direction and change previous decisions is a central part of a well-functioning democracy. This complex understanding of democracy is rarely reflected in larp, and the activities that larpers and larp designers mainly associate with democracy do not fully capture its power or purpose.
Workshops on democracy in larp
During the spring of 2025, six workshop sessions on democracy and larp were run, both physically in Sweden (2) and Norway (1) and online (3). The workshops involved around 100 people total from over 15 countries, most with at least some larp design experience. The participants provided interesting insights that can help broaden discussion on democracy as a theme within the larp community, as well as design inspiration for future larp design with democratic themes. This chapter focuses on how the workshops shed light on what larpers mean, when they talk about democracy.
The workshops, both online and physical, followed a set structure designed by Sarah Lynne Bowman, Elektra Diakolambrianou, and Karin Johansson. They consisted of a short intro and then a series of exercises building on each other. These served to subsequently deepen the participants’ reflections on democracy and the link to larp. Most exercises started with the participants first reflecting individually on a question, writing down their thoughts on post-it notes. These were then shared with the group who would order and sort them, discuss, and possibly add more notes. The exercises included:
- Listing synonyms to Democracy
- List emotional relations to democracy.
- Finding art, artistic examples and imaginations that exemplify democracy
- Identifying moments of democracy
- Evaluating examples of democratically themed larps
- Listing examples of activities they associate with democratic skills
- Do a small design of a democratic larp
It is worth noticing that we did not supply a given definition of what “democracy” is. Instead, the purpose was to let the participants articulate their own understanding of democracy, both intellectually and affectively, before exploring the concept of democracy in relation to larp.
The results of the workshops were analysed through thematically grouping the post-it notes generated for each exercise. In this chapter we discuss the results from task 5, evaluating examples of democratically themed larp, and task 6, listing examples of activities associated with democratic skills.
For the activities associated with democratic skills (task 6), the thematic analysis revealed themes related to practicing, experiencing, and reflecting on one or more of the following:
- Institutional democracy (e.g. voting, formal decision-making)
- Informal forms of democracy (e.g. collaborating, organising, and participating in meetings, dialogue, and/or debate)
- Resistance (e.g. civil disobedience)
- The perspective of others (empathy)
- Co-creation, which included both co-creating within a larp (e.g. forming a new societal system) or co-creating a larp or a larp event.
In task 5, the “listing larp” exercise, over 100 larps were mentioned total. We restricted our analysis to the larps that came up in multiple discussions, since many of the larps in the full list were unknown to us and difficult to find documentation for. The larps that were mentioned multiple times were either well-known, or run sufficiently recently so that multiple workshop participants had experience of participating or organising them. Hence, it was also easy to find documentation of these to understand their themes. These were: 97 Poets of Revachol (2024, Czech Republic), Halat hisar (2013, Finland), Just a Little Lovin’ (2011, Norway), Odysseus (2019, Helsinki), Polytropia (Krakow, 2020), Road to Edinu (Berlin, 2018), Strangers (2016, Copenhagen), School Council (2019, Finland), Suffragette (2018, Sweden), and Superhero Union (2020, Greece)[1].
The themes reflected in these larps were very similar to the ones found for activities associated with democratic skills, only the larp would frequently reflect more than one theme. For example, a larp that explored social fragmentation could include both activities of empathic engagement and resistance (as in Polytropia) but also training aspects of democracy (as in The Road to Edinu) or co-creation (as in Strangers).
- Social fragmentation (Road to Edinu, Strangers, Polytropia)
- Oppression and resistance (Suffragette, Halat hisar, 97 Poets of Revachol, Polytropia, Odysseus)
- Enacting (some aspect of) institutionalized democracy (Road to Edinu, School Council, SuperHero Union, Odysseus)
- Empathy, “walking in somebody else’s shoes” (Halat hisar, Just a Little Lovin’, Polytropia)
What we found particularly interesting was how often the themes of resistance and oppression came up, both as larp themes and as larp activities. The theme of resistance covered all of the following types of activities:
- Resisting oppression
- Standing up to authority
- Civil disobedience
- Rioting, uprisings
- Organizing resistance
- Mocking or bashing fascists
These activities are about active resistance as well as voicing opinions, and seem to be directed at what is perceived as non-legitimate decision-making or a non-democratic procedure.
Political, yes! Democratically themed? Not so much…
There is a discrepancy between the themes expressed by larp designers in the workshops, and central concepts in democratic theory. An observation is that some comments seemed to relate to running larp as a form of activism and/or the desire to highlight various forms of oppression. This may indicate that the participants were referring to political larp more generally, and not to larp specifically focused on democratic themes.
Larp as activism
In parallel with our workshop series, we are also interviewing larp designers from around the world about their perspectives on democratic engagement in larp. In these (ongoing) interviews, it is commonly brought up how a youth audience[2] will often express having a lack of a say in the political discourse. Depending on their background and context, some designers bring up the importance of learning how to organise resistance under authoritarian regimes. The designers that bring this up see larp as a resource in providing agency as well as training resistance. This might be one reason why larp and larp-adjacent activities related to resistance were so commonly brought up during the workshops.
There is no question that such larps are needed. For example, we interviewed a larp designer from Belarus who described how the skills they had learned from designing and participating in larp had been directly applicable to organising street protests. But resistance, while an interesting political topic and an important skill, can be both democratic and anti-democratic depending on framing. Activism also definitely has a role in democracy, as accepting a decision does not mean that those who disagree should remain silent. Rather, they should actively participate, raise their voices in protest, and present their arguments to convince enough people to bring about change. The right to organize opposition in order to influence political direction and change previous decisions is a central part of a well-functioning democracy.
A particularly interesting political theory in this context is ‘agonistic pluralism’ (Mouffe 1999), since it maps well to the way in which activism is brought into larp. This strand of political theory considers consensus fundamentally impossible, no matter if the political system is democratic or authoritarian, due to how political decisions create shifts in power structures to favour some groups at the expense of others. Agonistic pluralists also argue that conflict can be considered a resource for renewal in democracies – as long as it is somehow “tamed” so that the combatants do not seek to destroy each other, but respect each other’s right to exist. Larp, and games more generally, can potentially provide this “taming” of agonist conflict[3], through the protective frame of the magic circle (Stenros 2014). The fictional context, and the way roles allow participants to explore alternative positionalities, contribute to this taming.
However, democracy, at its core, is a system for peacefully coming to collective decisions. While resistance has its role in democratic systems, the act of resistance does not in itself further a decision-making process. There is a gap between what resistance can accomplish and what democracy is fundamentally supposed to achieve; a gap that can, and should, be interesting to explore in larp. One example of how institutional democracy can be explored through larp was Parliament of Shadows[4], which explored the role of lobbying in institutional democracy through the setting of vampire larp.
Help, help I’m being oppressed
A related issue is that so many of the larps depicted oppressive and authoritarian regimes, rather than democratic rule. Among the larps mentioned in our workshops, several touched on the theme of political occupation and oppression (e.g. Halat hisar), and a few on identifying with groups experiencing oppression in society (e.g. Just a Little Lovin’). Many also played out in dystopian and post-apocalyptic settings (e.g. 97 Poets of Revachol). One might speculate that the Nordic larp community’s prevalent value of playing to lose[5] as a way to achieve emotionally intense scenes (Nilsen 2012) contributes to the prevalence of themes of oppression and dystopia.
But playing on oppression will only teach what democracy is not. It can map out its contours, learning vigilance and how to look out for signs of failing democracy and the slippery slope towards an authoritarian rule, but it leaves its inner workings and conditions uncharted.
Is democracy too boring to larp?
Let’s be honest. “Larp democracy” is a rather pejorative term among larp designers. For starters, players dread the “council meeting” effect – boring meetings that drag on forever with participants focusing more on telling their characters’ back stories than coming to a decision. But designers also dread the “larp revolution”. If you design a nice, oppressive culture for your larp, chances are that at least some of the players will bond together to create a revolution, ending up with a tight community where everyone is nice to each other, and spend the rest of the larp sitting around the campfire telling war stories. Essentially, we have two versions of democratic engagement that both are prone to generating quite boring play activities; these we can call the Vampire and the Campfire versions of democratic engagement.
Vampires – four hats and an effort to collaborate
Larps tend to lean towards heightened drama, conflicts, and disagreements. This has been acknowledged for a long time in the larping community, such as in the 2016 Solmukohta book on larp politics (Kangas et al. 2016).
One reason this is so common is that it is easy to design for polarization and conflict. Commonly, a larp design will split the players into something like three to five groups, each with their own characteristics, with the groups preferably told apart by different hats or other visible traits. The characteristics can be mostly about shallow differences, or more complex conflicting interests and opinions. Such prompts are easy to design, and are easy for the players to pick up, inspired by the differences to create conflicts between the groups. (“Hats are pretty! Caps are shitty!”) The conflicting groups’ designs can be placed in most settings, such as: pirate crews under different flags; sci-fi world with androids, humans, and mutants; fantasy larps with elves, villagers, and orcs; and so on.
The basic division of characters into factions has commonly been used in larps that aim to discuss democracy. These designs split the characters into factions but give them a topic to collaborate around, looking for peaceful ways to come to agreement, and in this sense coming fairly close to a democratic process. The approach is in legion in the larps brought up as democratically themed in the workshops, including all of Road to Edinu, Strangers, Polytropia, Suffragette, and Odysseus. We call this the ‘Vampire’ strategy towards designing democracy in larp, as (although challenged even within the genre), many will recognize it from the traditional faction- and intrigue-oriented setting of vampire larp.
The reason why this strategy works is that one of the more interesting challenges for democracy is to enable decisions on solutions despite belonging to groups with sometimes radically different opinions, values, and interests.
However, while this design strategy manages to create drama and narrative while exploring some aspects of democracy, it falls prey to another simplification. It implements a “diplomacy” version of deliberation in which focus is placed on debate and negotiation between (and in the case of classic Vampire larp, back-stabbing within) pre-defined factions where each try to optimize their own gains. The model mirrors well theories of politicized social identities (Simon and Klandermans 2001) developed in social psychology, which describes how people tend to associate themselves with collective identities that struggle for power within a specific societal context. The problem with implementing politicized social identities in larp is that they very easily become fixed, ingrained in the character design, with little or no opportunity of changing (other than, possibly, switching to another faction). There is very little room for working together to find new solutions to problems, and even less for finding out or changing your mind on a topic. In this kind of setting, changing your mind means losing the competition between factions or (maybe worse), losing parts of your character.
In a larp where the identities are fixed, drama is generated through conflict, and changing your mind means losing, meetings can drag on forever because there is simply no point in reaching a decision.
Campfires – conflating deliberation with consensus
At the other end of the scale, the “sitting around the campfire” larp exemplifies another trap in designing democratic engagement: that of over-emphasizing consensus. Wouldn’t it be nice if we could all agree? It is easy to see how a larp that primarily considers democratic engagement to be about achieving consensus could end up being – extremely boring.
There is drama inherent in democracy, in how we have different opinions, values, and needs. It is possible that a deliberative process can end up with entirely new solutions to a joint problem, solutions that make outcomes acceptable to all. But most political decisions cannot serve the best interests of everyone, and in the real world, a deliberation process will not always end up in consensus. Sometimes, the best result one can hope for is that everyone gets to voice their opinions and needs, while a decision must be taken anyways with the understanding that the needs cannot all be met. This aspect of democracy is very seldom reflected in larp design.
Resisting negative outcomes
Most of us share a common-sense understanding of democracy as a generally nice thing to have, and that both designers and players frame democracy in a very utopian sense; as a system where people are able to listen to each other, empathise, collaborate, and collectively find solutions to all problems. Apart from making for fairly boring larps, an unreflected utopian vision of democracy does not prepare us well for real-world democratic problems and processes. As has been mapped out by a number of political theorists, democracy comes with a range of risks, such as the tyranny of the majority (Nyirkos 2018). Democracy always occurs within a context of conflict, and there will always be decisions made that do not take every perspective into account, this even if all perspectives have been heard. Both contestation and consent lie at the heart of democracy.
In larps, we frequently see how players will resist decisions no matter how they were made. As an example, in the SciFi larp Eclipse[6], it is narratively written into the instructions to players that the decisions made are the objectively best possible decisions for humanity. All characters have a chance to influence the course of action based on their knowledge about the current situation, and based on this information a computer system generates a course of action that will enable humanity to survive. Only, there are no decisions without bad consequences. Even though the players know that their collective votes contributed to the outcome rather than the actions of the organizers or a few key players, the larp frequently ends up with factions trying to create a revolt, changing decisions in hindsight.
While there is a need for activism and resistance within the democratic system, if the ideal is for decisions to always be obstructed this indicates support for a form of government other than democracy. It could be argued that many larps implement an anarchistic political standpoint, in the sense that they resist all forms of institutions that yield power and authority. The larp revolution that ends up at the cozy campfire exemplifies this really well, in how it manages to replace an (oppressive authoritarian) state with a voluntary, free association – a group sitting around the campfire telling war stories but not running a society.
Potentials for designing democracy in larp
We believe that there are some things we can do to make democracy a more interesting element in larp design, that at the same time produce a more accurate and critical perspective on democracy. Larpocracy wants to explore whether larps that, to a greater extent than before, address democratic challenges could broaden the larping community’s understanding of democratic processes – and still be engaging and fun larps. We propose two strategies towards this goal: we can work with designs that present a more accurate and critical picture of democratic challenges, and we can work with more faithfully implementing deliberative processes.
Playing on democracy as conflict
One idea is to emphasize more explicitly that democracy always plays out within a context of conflict. Larps that involve resolving conflicts in legitimate ways can be more challenging than simply allowing conflicts to be expressed and perhaps even fuelled. Drama can, for example, be generated by being overruled and still having to accept that the decision was democratically made, or by accepting decisions that affect yourself both positively and negatively. Here, there are plenty of opportunities for “playing to lose”.
Second, as mentioned earlier, there is room for resisting even democratically made decisions, such as if democratic rules are abused by a democratically elected majority. Even the winners in a democracy cannot do whatever they want, but must exercise their power under the community’s rules and laws. However, it is not straightforward to determine when power is abused or what constitutes a proportionate response. Larps could include disagreements about whether resistance is legitimate, and which actions of resistance can be considered proportionate.
Third, and related to the previous point, if an action is not considered a violation of democratic rules, and one deems others’ protests disproportionate, how should one respond? When and how to exercise democratic self-defense? How is democratic self-defense organized? There is dramatic power available both in designing larp that defend democracy, but also in designing larp that explore when and why the legitimacy of a democratic system ends, potentially drawing on debates in political theory to explore various criteria for what constitutes a legitimate democracy. As an example, a larp about the January 6th Capitol Hill protests in the U.S. could surface many of these questions in one and the same setting.
Playing on the full scale of deliberative activities
Deliberative democracy is a democratic theory that argues that democratic decisions are legitimate if all relevant considerations are equally reflected upon. It is a normative ideal in which people come together on the basis of equal status and mutual respect to discuss political issues and decide on policies that will affect their lives. This means that legitimate democratic processes are not merely about stating preconceived and stable preferences; rather, they are communication-centred processes in which these preferences are formed. Empirical deliberative research (Dryzek et al. 2019; Curato et al. 2017; Bächtiger et al. 2018) has shown that citizens have the capacity and desire to participate in deliberation and that deliberative processes work well, but only under certain conditions.
Over the last few decades, deliberative democracy and its normative, empirical, and practical research fields, including the development and implementation of various citizen assemblies, have taken a strong position in democratic research and theory. However, this field of research is not without controversy. On the contrary, it is challenged by alternative viewpoints, and the internal discussion of virtually every component of the theory is lively.
Aware of the critiques and ongoing controversies, we suggest that larps related to deliberative democracy could encourage reflection on democracy, including contestation and temporary consent, because deliberation presupposes both. As a first and fairly central design challenge, foreshadowed by Rantanen (2016), Larpocracy is experimenting with designing such larps.
Put simply, deliberation is based on equal participation in a respectful exchange of considerations (Bowman et al. 2026), which means that the main components of democratic deliberation are:
- Opinion stating, justifying, and explaining what one wants to happen or believe to be true, based on one’s own experience and gathered evidence. It is important that such statements are done honestly and authentically rather than participants trying to be strategic, manipulative, or coercive.
- Listening, trying to understand, and avoiding intentional misinterpretations of the statements of others.
- Openness to change or adjusting one’s claim, if (and only if) convinced by others’ considerations.
As can be seen from this list, most larp meetings don’t implement deliberation fully. In the Vampire larp intrigue setting, strategic, manipulative and coercive statements are legion. Active listening is made harder in most larps through the double-layered interpretation that players have to engage in, having to at the same time understand what is said and figuring out how their character would react. Finally, negotiation between set factions leaves little room for changing or adjusting one’s own standpoint. Fixed factions do not mirror well the fundamental constructivist premise for deliberation; that interests and preferences regarding political issues are not predetermined but formed through social interaction.
Modern deliberative theory also acknowledges the need for including forms of expression that are not just rational argumentation. Marion Young (Young 2002) has pointed out how overly demanding deliberative practices can exclude marginalized voices in particular as well as reinforce (or even create new) unequal power relations. Larp can be a particularly powerful tool in this regard, as it is possible to create both characters and cultures that support personal storytelling and self-expression. From this perspective, it is not so strange that raising awareness and fostering empathy comes up as democratic themes in our workshops, despite being only marginally related to the democratic decision-making processes as such.
We could, conceivably, turn this relationship around. Instead of designing larps that incorporate deliberative processes, we can use larp as a form of self-expression within such processes. For example, we could let people design small larp activities as a form of self-expression in the context of deliberative events such as citizen assemblies. There have been successful attempts to bring roleplay into deliberative events (Gordon et al. 2017) and these could be enhanced by larp practice.
In order to explore deliberation fully, characters need to be designed with a range of nuances, so that they can develop their positionality as part of the deliberative process. Characters can have social positions and experiences that influence, but do not determine their interests and preferences regarding the conflict to be resolved. This requires characters with different experiences, interpretations of reality, and contrasting views on what constitutes a reasonable solution to the specific social conflict at hand. These interests and preferences will then form a basis for developing their positionality throughout the process, through interaction with other characters. Since there is no real deliberation without contestation of various considerations and justifications, such an exchange of considerations may produce mutual understanding to varying degrees. Therefore, a deliberative larp should allow for different endings. While a consensus solution is possible, it may be an extreme or at least rare solution, as research on citizens’ assemblies has shown. More likely outcomes include meta-consensus (mutual agreement on relevant considerations) and agreement on parts of a solution. The Larpocracy larp The Assembly[7] (Sweden 2025) has been designed to train and experience deliberation.
Reflections
The larp community of today is already very good at designing larp for political purposes, raising awareness and strengthening agency among players. However, we are less good at designing for democratic engagement, and we may not be very good at reflecting on what that involves. Even within the Larpocracy project, we repeatedly come up against questions related to how to design for dialogue between participants with vastly conflicting political views, and if we would even want to do so.
Still, if we want to protect democracy as a political system and not as a general ‘niceness’ in society, we have a duty to understand what it means and what it requires of us as citizens. Larp can help us do so. While both ‘vampire’ and ‘campfire’ larps have their merits, larps that thoroughly engage with key democratic challenges could be at least as interesting and dramatic to play, if not more.
Acknowledgements
This research was funded by the European Union’s Horizon Europe project Larpocracy: Developing Spaces for Deliberation and Democratic Skills through Role-playing, Project no. 101177307.
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Ludography
97 Poets of Revachol (2024) Bláha, M., Blank, K., Delachenal Obritin, C., Holan, J., Morgan, J., Tomášková, K., Vávrová, I., Wagner, D. F. Terezín, Poland. https://revachol.rolling.cz/
The Assembly (2025) Bowman, S.L., Öberg, P-O, Rydberg J., Hedgard Huugas K. Stockholm, Sweden
Eclipse (2025) Chaos League. Krakow, Poland. https://chaosleague.org/eclipse-larp-en/
Halat hisar (2013) AbdulKarim, F., Arouri, F., Kangas, K, Mustafa, R., Petterson, J. Petterson, M., Rabah, M. Finland. https://www.nordiclarp.org/wiki/Halat_hisar
Just a Little Lovin’ (2011) Edland, T.K., Grasmo, H. Norway. https://www.nordiclarp.org/wiki/Just_a_Little_Lovin%27
Odysseus (2019) Kröger, L., Hautala, S., Kumpulainen, A. Helsinki, Finland. https://www.odysseuslarp.com/
Parliament of Shadows (2017) Maria Pettersson, Juhana Pettersson & Bjarke Pedersen. Brussels, Belgium. https://www.nordiclarp.org/2018/01/23/lobbying-dead-vampire-larp-european-parliament/
Polytropia (2020) Diakolambrianou, E. and Janczukowicz, Z. Krakow, Poland. https://share.google/LiCRf54qKxnaFAJtm
Road to Edinu (2021) Road to Edinu. In Dive In: The Manual for Educators and Youth Workers on EduLARP Methodology. https://www.edinu.eu/
School Council (2019) Bandhoesingh, A., Dallas, O. and Diakolambrianou E. (Larpifier) Rovaniemi, Finland. https://www.larpifiers.com/games/.
Strangers (2016) Essendrop. N.R. Blackbox Cph VI, Copenhagen, Denmark. https://www.ninaessendrop.com/strangers/
Suffragette (2018) Vejdemo S., Armyr D., Sandqvist, S.,Billskog, C. Stockholm, Sweden. https://suffragettelarp.wordpress.com/
SuperHero Union (2020) Bandhoesingh, A., Dallas, O. and Diakolambrianou E. Athens, Greece. An election in a country of superheroes. https://www.larpifiers.com/games/
[1] 97 Poets of Revachol: A larp about an increasingly more polarised society. Just a Little Lovin’: A larp about the outbreak of AIDS in New York in the 1980’ies. Halat hisar: A larp about the Palestine occupation. Odysseus: A Battlestar-Galactica-inspired larp about re-creating society on-board a starship fleet. Polytropia: A Blade-Runner-inspired larp about humans and androids. Road to Edinu: A postapocalyptic larp where several factions come together to re-create society. Strangers: A wordless larp depicting a refugee situation. Suffragette: A larp about organising a protest in the suffragette movement. School Council: A school council scene in a school for superheroes. SuperHero Union: An election in a country of superheroes.
[2] The concept should here be understood quite generally, referring to children of school age and young adults.
[3] https://wanais.substack.com/p/agon
[4] A larp staged in the European parliament, in which players took on characters as lobbyists for vampires. https://www.nordiclarp.org/2018/01/23/lobbying-dead-vampire-larp-european-parliament/
[5] https://www.nordiclarp.org/wiki/Playing_to_lose
[6] A space base larp. https://chaosleague.org/eclipse-larp-en/
[7] A larp about community members engaging in democratic deliberation about issues related to tensions between bodily autonomy and public safety. https://scenariofestival.se/scenarios-2025/the-assembly/.
This article is republished from the Knutpunkt 2026 book. Please cite it as:
Waern, A., Johansson, K., Szatkowska, W., and Öberg, P. 2026. ‘Beyond Vampires and Campfires: Engaging with Democracy in Larp.’ In Seasons of Larp eds. Erlandsson, A., Svanevik, M., Holkar, M., and Brind, S. Gothenburg. Knutpunkt.
