Perspectives on Collaborating (Respectfully and
Productively) with Creatives – and Why it’s Still Worth
it in the AI-Era
Editorial note: This article 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.
If you’re a larp organiser, you probably sometimes find yourself wanting something done for your larp that is either a little outside your own area of expertise or just more work than you and your team have hours in the day. This is where you find someone to collaborate with, who can do that work for you. Initially, this text was supposed to be advice on how to find the right sort of person for the task, as well as how you should treat them and what you should offer in return – from two creatives who have collaborated with a lot of larp organisers and also work professionally in our fields. It still does that, focused on creative work. But, this being 2026 and all of us learning to navigate the currents of the cyberpunk future-present while they’re rising around us, we’re now also going to tell you why you cannot simply replace us with ChatGPT.
The clankers do pretty fast (for free)
Let’s get one thing out of the way. There is no artificial intelligence, at present. What is commonly known as AI, or sometimes more precisely as large language models (LLMs), image generators, and similar, is predictive technology. It doesn’t think. It guesses what word or pixel is statistically likely to appear next. Regurgitating data sets, it neither imagines nor dreams (of electric sheep or anything else).
A series of problems is connected to this type of technology.
Some have to do with quality
Being statistical, AI content can and does lie to us, because it isn’t about presenting facts but probability. This is how we get human figures that have too many fingers and chatbots telling teenagers that lethal doses of toxic substances are safe, as was the case for a teenager in California recently (Black and Council, 2026). We ask for facts and get approximations.
LLMs specifically are trained to reconstruct what different texts have in common, which is not primarily messages, but wording. This magic formula can structure sentences prettily. Sure, they may become a little bit repetitive, because the technology has learned that certain patterns, such as [rhetorical question] + [denial] + “but” [alternative poetic idea] + [something presented as deeper meaning], are the best way to ensure satisfaction.
Can AI alone surprise and delight you? Perhaps not, but it can satisfy your need to get something down on paper that looks impressive at first glance—and is that not, in the end, what art is all about? [it isn’t]
The end result is that AI text often has no real message at all, or simply communicates the most common denominator of all other messages in its genre. And without a message, the text becomes empty. The tricky thing is that this isn’t always obvious if you are the kind of reader who fills in what you expect text to say (which, when we’re in a hurry, might be most of us).
But then, the reverse can also be true, as generated text may sometimes only appear to be empty. Unplanned racism and dated tropes may be some more common ideas introduced by LLMs that try to do as asked. But sometimes you get a policeman turning into a frog, as in a January case from Heber City Police Department in Utah, where the automated report program mixed dialog from the movie The Princess and the Frog playing in the background with body camera footage (Constantino, 2025). Writing totally without contextual understanding doesn’t always result in excellence.
Maybe none of that matters to you. Maybe you’re happy to fact-check and analyze your generated texts, ignore uncanny valley-type touches on aesthetics, or you’re specifically looking for “all vibes no plot” kind of content that’ll allow your potential players to project meaning where there isn’t any. However, human creators do have context awareness and creative intelligence, and if you want depth, originality (of both style and ideas), and soul, you may consider investing in human creativity.
To check what a text says, take a pen and look for the messages in it. Underline where they are. You might just discover that you only thought there was a message, or that it is something other than you expected. It may be something which is only hinted at.
Wonder why. Could it be because the message would be offensive to say outright? Or because the writer doesn’t want to actually promise anything?
To check the strength of the message, if indeed it’s there, look for supporting arguments. Are there any?
Conveniently, this method should make you better both at navigating totalitarian propaganda and avoiding signing up for larps that you’ve projected your own hopes into, but which actually offer something totally different.
Other problems have to do with ethics
It’s no secret that there are environmental costs to the increasing use of AI. Like the Matrix, AI isn’t purely digital, but has its physical home in large specialized data centers, of which there are, by November 2025, more than 12,000 globally (Leichter, 2025). One issue with this is water consumption. According to EESI, the Environmental and Energy Study Institute, a large one consumes 19 million litres of water per day for cooling, equivalent to the consumption of a city of 10,000–50,000 people (Yañez-Barnuevo, 2025). According to scientists from the University of California, this translates to roughly one water bottle per 100-word search (Verma and Tan, 2024). It may not be the water from your city, but it’s coming from somewhere, and the locals are starting to have to go without (Fleury and Jimenez, 2025).
Another issue is that AI training is largely done on stolen content, as evidenced by the mangled watermarks of artists that still sometimes appear in “freshly generated” pictures. If we consider larp art, and many of us do, is it defensible to build it using stolen content that we cannot even credit? That may potentially contribute to the general displacement of creative work as AI content is increasingly normalized?
And then of course, there are the optics to consider
It sends a message when you use AI, even where there isn’t one within the content itself. The question is if it’s the message you want to convey. It can seem to your potential audience like you don’t prioritize quality, putting in the effort, or considering ethical concerns when you use it in your materials. A common protest here is that not everyone is a professional or has the means to acquire high-quality content in other ways. This is why we include some tips on what you can do instead at the end of this text.
Creative work in a larp context
Creativity is the necessary punk to the cyber surrounding us, passion-driven resistance to corporate greed, which would have us merely produce. But that doesn’t mean creative work shouldn’t be rewarded and supported in such a way that it can continue. Artists, photographers, composers, and writers need to eat just as accountants and producers do, and what we contribute often involves the use of skillsets that have taken years to develop. It should be worth it to us as a community to value that. Valuing means rewarding creative work, in whatever way makes sense, and we’re here to help you figure out how to do that. Whether it’s with free food, a ticket to your larp, or actual cash.
“But anyone can create”
Yes. And everyone who wants to should. Maybe even those who don’t. But larpwriting is not the same as any other type of writing. A great journalist doesn’t necessarily think in terms of playability and alibi. A novelist might never consider branching plot or co-creation. Depending on how much of your design is anchored in text, you might need your larpwrights to take on design responsibilities, or at least to understand how to translate your vision into actionable content.
Visual art can strengthen your vision for possible attendees. It helps them visualize the world they will inhabit and grow enthusiastic about co-creating it. What they see on the website conveys the level of professionalism a project has, and tells the players how much you’re ready to invest of time, effort, and/or money in the quality of your larp.
A skilled larp photographer captures emotional moments without interrupting them and creates lasting value for partici-pants. A well-composed theme song can manipulate the heartstrings of your partici-pants years after they have forgotten most of what happened at the larp itself.
Creatives who are just starting out may have a wealth of ideas and enthusiasm that old rats do not. They probably also come cheaper. A professional photographer isn’t necessarily going to want to cancel three days of wedding shoots to take pictures of your larp for nothing, nor should you expect them to. The trick is to figure out what you need, who you need for it, and how you can compensate the artist – accounting for the fact that value, within our hobby, comes in many different forms.
So, you need something created for your larp?
Step one: figure out what you need
You gotta know what you’re making, to know who should make it. Are you creating an international 800 Euro Blockbuster larp, or running the next installation of a local school larp where everyone on the team is paying to attend because otherwise the budget doesn’t work? One is no better than the other, but projects with high production value are easier to pull off if the majority of your team has experience.
If you need art for your website, it might be easier if you collaborate with an artist who also understands how best to reach your audience visually, unless you know exactly what you want. Or maybe you can make do without, relying on existing photography, stock photos, symbolism, and colour use in ways that still support your message. Simplicity can be a powerful tool, especially when it’s intentional. If you need 120 8-page characters that specifically support your design vision, you probably want some experienced larpwrights involved, or at least a very visionary team of fresh creatives.
Ask yourself which parts of your larp are carried by the creative work you need done, and how important those parts are. If core parts of design or marketing rely on it, and your vision is something of high production value, consider investing in someone who has the experience that matches. If the creative work is more decorative and/or your project is low budget, you probably don’t need a lot of expertise, and the energy of fresh enthusiasm may actually be worth more to your project. Experimenting together to develop something fresh can be a reward in itself and lead to super interesting results.
Step two: figure out what you can offer
What you offer should match what you need, and everyone involved should get something out of co-creating for your project. Yes, even if they don’t ask for it. The good news is that there’s a lot that you can offer.
Most of us are here because we love this hobby/art form. A ticket to your larp is a very real commodity. And if we can’t go, and that’s what you would offer, then a ticket to another larp or payment of the value of the larp ticket are reasonable offers, depending on the workload (you can always ask how much that would get you). If we’re professionals, it’s going to be a lot less than we’d make in our actual jobs, but most larps aren’t commercial projects. When you want to collaborate with professional-level creatives, payment of some sort is more about recognizing that we’ll need to take time off from paid projects to make larp work because there’s only so much writing or drawing one can do in a day.
For others, who are just starting out, it’s nice to offer a larp ticket, if you can, but the experience itself may be of great value as well, if improving is their priority. Maybe it isn’t. Maybe they’re only interested in joining the project for social gain, and then what you want to offer is a spot in the car going to Germany and a bed on location the last night, so they can stay for the afterparty. This is all a bit fluffy, but the point is that you should consider what your creative collaborator wants and needs, as well as what everybody else is getting, and adjust accordingly so it’s fair. You may need to adjust your needs and wants at this point, and that’s okay.
Do you need:
- Enthusiasm, fresh new perspectives, willingness to learn -> a fresh creative is great for this
- Company in the artistic process -> personality may be most important
- Original idea development/design on a high artistic level -> you need someone experienced
Are you offering:
- The opportunity to get experience and guidance -> may have value to fresh creatives
- Exposure for creative work -> new creatives can need this (if the exposure is real)
- Helper role, transport costs, food, lodging (friendship and socializing) -> this has value to someone who wants to spend time with you or others on location, or just wants to be there
- Money in the form of larp ticket or actual cash -> this has value to most people
- Creative satisfaction (they get to co-design the larp) -> of value to the artistically inclined
What to do if you’re on your own?
If you can’t find anyone who fits the bill of what you want, need, and can offer, we suggest you reach out to your community. If you’re feeling lost but you’ve got little to offer, it’s also an option to look for an advisor. Many of us are happy to help out with advice on how to make creative decisions for your larp without any other reward than the satisfaction of contributing. Often, anchoring your vision in some strong key themes, whether visual or thematic, does a lot. As long as it feels intentional, you can get away with using content such as stock images, creating characters from fragments of existing literature, or using tools that heighten efficiency by re-using paragraphs across characters – in the vein of Larpweaver, which is not commonly available, but did exactly this (Pettersson, 2022).
In brief
With the danger of sounding capitalist, there is a cost to everything. The difference is how visible it is. The cost of giving over part of your creative work to AI may not be immediately obvious, but it reveals itself eventually. Choosing to work with human creatives means knowing what you pay from the get-go, and we do suggest you budget for it, because the better we support our creatives, the more sustainable our community becomes. We’ll be better equipped to continue making art even when the world around us doesn’t always value it.
But shouldn’t everybody be rewarded?
Yes, they should be.
“But I think AI art is fine”
With all kinds of love, if what you would create with AI isn’t something you could create yourself, or have the related education and experience to understand, you most likely do not have the level of critical artistic thinking required to understand if it is actually good. Also, oftentimes in larp, we reward love of the game higher than something that appears surface-level impressive but did not involve human creativity. Even something that isn’t as pretty as AI content can be more emotionally engaging. It calls out to us because it’s genuine.
We’ve all been beginners. Just give it your best, know what to ask for, and remember to expect what you deserve as well. That way, we can keep supporting our community’s continued development going forward.
Bibliography
Constantino, M. (2025) ‘Ribbit Ribbit! Artificial Intelligence Programs Used by Heber City Police Claim Officer Turned Into a Frog.’ FOX13 [online]. 19 December. Available from: https://www.fox13now.com/news/local-news/summit-county/how-utah-police-departments-are-using-ai-to-keep-streets-safer [Accessed 13 January 2026].
Black, J and Council, S. (2026) ‘A Calif. Teen Trusted Chatgpt For Drug Advice. He Died From an Overdose.’ SFGATE [online]. 5 January. Available from: https://www.sfgate.com/tech/article/calif-teen-chatgpt-drug-advice-fatal-overdose-21266718.php [Accessed 13 July 2026].
Fleury, M and Jimenez, N. (2025) ’”I Can’t Drink the Water” – Life Next to a Us Data Centre.’ BBC [online]. 10 July. Available from: https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cy8gy7lv448o [Accessed 13 January 2026].
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Pettersson, J. (2022) ‘Basics of Efficient Larp Production’. Nordic Larp [online]. 22 January. Available from https://www.nordiclarp.org/2022/01/22/basics-of-efficient-larp-production/ [Accessed 15 January 2026].
Verma, P. and Tan, S. (2024) ‘A Bottle of Water Per Email: The Hidden Environmental Costs of Using Ai Chatbots.’ The Washington Post [online]. 18 September. Available from https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2024/09/18/energy-ai-use-electricity-water-data-centers/ [Accessed 13 January 2026].
Yañez-Barnuevo, M. (2025) ‘Data Centers and Water Consumption’. EESI [online]. 25 June. Available from: https://www.eesi.org/articles/view/data-centers-and-water-consumption [Accessed 13 January 2026].
This article is republished from the Knutpunkt 2026 book. Please cite it as:
Ihalainen, T. C. and Gyldenstrøm, F. 2026. ‘How Do You Value Creative Work?’ In Seasons of Larp eds. Erlandsson, A., Svanevik, M., Holkar, M., and Brind, S. Gothenburg. Knutpunkt.
