Nordic Larp

Author: Mo Holkar

  • Performance and Audience in Larp

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    Performance and Audience in Larp

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    Editorial note: This article was originally published in the Knutepunkt 2025 book Anatomy of Larp Thoughts, a breathing corpus. It has been reprinted from there with the editors’ and authors’ permission. It has not been edited by Nordiclarp.org.

    Introduction

    Definitions – what is meant by ‘performance’ and ‘audience’

    Many artforms have a distinction between ‘performer(s)’ and ‘audience’. The performer(s) enact the artform, and the audience members witness it as an experience. In arts such as theatre, there is (usually) a formal distinction between those people who are giving the performance, and those people who are being part of the audience. Generally, the audience are passive: art may happen within them, and may be affected by their reaction to the performance, but they are not usually actively contributing to it.

    In larp, though, there is rarely a performer/audience distinction for the duration of the larp: it is thought of as an artform where these terms are not relevant. In this article, however, we will argue that there are times when we might be closer to performing while larping; and times when we might be closer to an audience role.

    We aren’t suggesting that these are permanent states that participants may be in throughout the larp. It may be something that happens briefly during a short scene: the role of performer or audience may be with a given larper only for a short time, and they may be in both roles at different times during the larp.

    What has been said about larp, performance, and audience?

    Michael Such (2016) sees theatre as a special case of larp, in which performance and audience are present:

    “[T]heatre is a larp with a specific set of roles. These are split into those defined as ‘the performers’ and ‘the audience.’ The audience is a role because there are certain things they should not do such as walk on stage or talk. Having an audience role means two big things — that the experience is for the audience and the audience watches the performers.” (Such, 2016)

    Other commentators are more forthright about the absence of these roles in larp:

    “Live-action role-playing, then, just removes the passive spectator from the equation, so that all participants are performing simultaneously. It is improvisational and not just performed for an audience…” (Emma, 2013)

    “In all larps there’s an expectation of a high level of participation and interactivity. Larp ‘customers’ are active players, not audience members.” (Stenros and Sturrock, 2024)

    It seems clear that from the larp side and also from the theatre/performing arts side, people draw this distinction of function: larp does not have performers and audience, and that is what makes it different from the other related arts.

    But is that true?

    Our argument is that during much larp activity there will be times when one or more participants are ‘performing’, and others may be de facto ‘audience’ to them.

    Note that we’re not talking here about when one or more characters are performing to characters who are diegetically their audience – for example, playing music, singing, giving a sermon or a speech, performing an in-game play. That situation may happen to fall under our argument, but we have a different canvas.

    Rather, we are considering the broad case when a participant carries out an action in the larp with the consideration that other participants will be witnessing them. This may be conscious steering – “I’m about to do a cool thing, I will do it in a place where there are other people who will be able to see it happen” – or more at a subconscious level – “My character seems to be naturally gravitating towards a bunch of other people before doing the next interesting-to-watch thing on their journey” – but either way, during that action, one person is doing something watchable, and other people are watching.

    And perhaps, at a later stage, the roles will be reversed: you are watching someone else’s cool action, as a de facto audience to their de facto performance. At most larps, participants will be moving fluidly into and out of these roles during the natural course of play.

    We say that this should be considered as a performance/audience dynamic, even if it’s not the same clear-cut and ongoing separation of roles that are present in theatre.

    How performance and audience operate in larp

    As noted above, we aren’t in this article discussing diegetic performance during larp; nor are we considering ‘larps with an audience’ which are deliberately designed to have observers. When we talk about performance here, we are considering actions or scenes of the larp that are played for the benefit of being viewed by other participants, for a non-diegetic reason. This may be with the aim of conveying something about the character played, or to introduce a dramatic element into a scene: with a level of intentionality. An example might be an argument between two characters, played out in public so as to convey information about their relationship and about the matter under dispute, and to express drama, to other participants who are present. If it had been played out in private, the argument might have taken quite a different form.

    Someone being observed during a larp is not necessarily performing: however, someone acting in a way which encourages others to watch and respond may be considered as performing, even if in practice no-one actually is watching. For example, in many larps a death scene in a public place could be considered a performance, if the setting was chosen to draw attention. A death scene that happens to be played out in a public place because of venue layout, or because of the way that the scene evolved, might not be considered a performance, because the protagonist may have had no such intention: they were constrained to play the scene that way. Therefore, we need to consider that there are different levels of ‘performativity’ possible.

    Conversely, participants who are currently observing a particular larper with the intention of watching or possibly reacting, but who aren’t playing an active role in the scene or don’t have particular reason to be involved in it, may be considered as an audience. For example, a number of players might be an audience to the public death scene, passively watching it unfold, even when their characters might not have a reason to be particularly interested. If they are interested in it, they might still be considered as an audience, but they are more likely to want to react in some way. Or, the larp design might mandate participants to witness a particular scene, and might import constraints on what they are allowed to do while watching it. So, we also need to consider that there are a range of different levels of audience passivity.

    ‘Passivity’, here, can also vary considerably. Two participants might be silently and motionlessly watching the same scene playing out, but one is just casually spectating, while the other is deeply emotionally involved and experiencing intense internal play. So, a low level of passivity for the audience doesn’t mean just the power to disrupt the scene or to impose one’s own direction upon it. It is a broad spectrum of agency which can take many different forms.

    The two scales

    We suggest two scales which a participant can be considered to be on, in different places throughout the run time of a larp.

    The performativity scale is about intention or value in being seen while your character is performing a particular action. For example, if someone is deeply immersed in a character who is sweeping a room as a mundane part of their daily life, and would be acting just the same if they were alone, then they would probably be low on the performativity scale. Someone playing a cult leader about to lead the cult in summoning a demon at the climax of a larp centred around a cult summoning a demon will probably be at the higher end.

    The passivity scale considers how much agency the participants witnessing the scene have. If the audience has lots of agency to act and interrupt then they will be quite low on the passivity scale. If they are intended to be passive observers then they will be quite high.

    There is not a direct correlation between the two scales – it is not always the case that the more performative the action is, the more passive the audience must be. For example, a character performing a mundane part of their daily life may not in practice be very interruptible (eg. if they are performing an act of religious devotion, if they are performing a task of importance to the community, if they are a very high status character). Equally, there may be many participants who wish to interrupt the demon summoning, maybe because their character wants to summon a different demon, or because they want to be cult leader, or for any other reason: so at least some of the other participants in that scene might be quite low on the passivity scale. Also, the audience may be ‘playing to lift’ the performing larper in a more or less passive way.

    Performativity vs passivity, diagram by Laura Wood and Mo Holkar
    Performativity vs passivity, diagram by Laura Wood and Mo Holkar

    Examples

    • Demon summoning – high performativity for the cult leader and anyone else directly involved in the ritual. High passivity for people who are just watching and waiting; lower passivity for people who might be resentfully wishing that they were the cult leader; lowest passivity for people who are going to unexpectedly summon a different demon into the circle.
    • Sweeping the room as a mundane daily action – low performativity. Probably low passivity for most other people, as they can readily interrupt it. But maybe higher passivity as discussed above.
    • Public execution – high performativity for the monarch, the executioner, and the victim. High passivity for someone casually spectating; still quite high for someone who is seeing it as a demonstration of the power of the king, but doesn’t feel particularly moved one way or another. In the middle, the child of the victim, who has internal play around the execution and is probably also playing externally (deliberately not showing emotions, or acting as if they support the monarch, or supporting family, etc. They can’t stop the action or diegetically leave the scene but they can act within it.) Then at the low-passivity end, the rebel faction who are planning to disrupt the execution and overthrow the king.
    • Public conversation between two characters – low performativity if carried out at normal volume. Most likely high passivity, because by default others are not going to involve themselves in it. But some may want to listen in (less passive); and others may want to intervene, or to break it up (low passivity).

    Conclusion

    We are rarely entirely immersed all the time: and, while steering, we often think about what it is that we are conveying to co-players. We want to be aware of what we are portraying more widely about our character; we want to find a good time and place to interject something dramatic; or, we want to ensure that we don’t leave co-players at the high end of the passivity scale for longer than is interesting.

    When we larp, some of the time we are in a performing role, and some of the time in an audience role. And that is ok! It’s the same in real life, after all. We shouldn’t see this as larp falling short of an aesthetic ideal in which such concepts don’t apply. Larp doesn’t have to be ‘better’ than theatre etc in this way.

    Acknowledging that some of the time we are watching others, with a greater or lesser degree of passivity – and some of the time we are putting ourselves on show, with a greater or lesser degree of performativity – doesn’t at all detract from larp’s collaborative characteristics, or from its distinction from other forms. And perhaps retaining an awareness of the role of performance and audience in larp, rather than being in denial of it, will help us to make meaningful choices and so to enjoy larp even more.

    Bibliography

    Emma. “Nordic Larp: What It Is And Why It Matters (Part I)”. Applied Sentience, 12 April 2013. https://appliedsentience.com/2013/04/12/nordic-larp-what-it-is-and-why-it-matters-part-i/ (last accessed, Nov 2024)

    Stenros, Jaakko, and Ian Sturrock. “Spotlight on: Larp”. Immersive Experience Network, March 18, 2024 https://immersiveexperience.network/articles/spotlight-on-larp/ (last accessed, Nov 2024)

    Such, Michael. “Being in Two Cults: What Can Improv Learn from Larp?” Medium.com, 6 April 2016. https://medium.com/@shadeinshades/being-in-two-cults-what-can-improv-learn-from-larp-b04d1df38b3b (last accessed, Nov 2024)

    Cover image: Photo by Kai Simon Fredriksen, from the larp Spoils of War.

  • Challenging the Popularized Narrative of History

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    Challenging the Popularized Narrative of History

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    What is the popularized narrative of history?

    There is no such thing as an objective narrative of history. The context of the present-day, the lens of hindsight, and the impossibility of knowing or understanding the true thoughts, feelings, and motivations of people in the past, all conspire against it. Furthermore, any presentation of history is necessarily selective, and necessarily imposes a frame around those historical facts that are included – a frame dictated by the writer’s perspective and agenda. However, it can still be the case that some narrative approaches are trying harder to be objective than others; and that some are more successful at it than others.

    By default, unless you are trained as a historian, you will be receiving what we would like to call ‘the popularized narrative of history’. This is a mashup of what you typically learn at school, what you encounter in popular culture, and what you are told by those around you – both from their own experiences of recent history, and from the popularized learning process that they went through themselves. It may be that you were fortunate enough to have had an enlightened education, or to have grown up among people who had an informed view of history, or to have been trained to think critically about popular culture. But for most of us, this will not be the case. We will emerge into adulthood having imbibed a historical narrative that includes a range of stories about the history of our own community; about other peoples with which it has interacted; about the ancient world; and so on.

    This popularized narrative, as well as not being accurate, is not neutral: it serves a social purpose. The object is to bind citizens together in a communal national story. It may favour incidents in history when ‘we were the good guys’ – it may avoid situations where the behaviour of our forebears was more difficult for our modern selves to accept. It may stereotype, and it may harmfully ‘other’ – treating groups of people as different from ‘us’, and so not deserving of the same consideration. For example, in the popularized narrative in colonial nations, colonized people are said to be primitive, barbaric, and inferior – justifying the historical colonization process as one of bringing civilization and enlightenment to them. In general, we can characterize the popularized narrative as a top-down oligarchic narrative, dictated in the interests of those in power – so that they might rule us more effectively by controlling our view of ‘us’, of our historical role, and of our present place on the world stage.

    Through popular culture, a country’s popularized historical narrative may spread far outside its own borders. People from outside France understand the reign of Louis XIII through the lens of The Three Musketeers; people from outside the UK understand the Regency period through the lens of Jane Austen – or, more usually, from the host of films and TV shows based on or inspired by her work. And then, they (we) design larps about it.

    Politics of larp

    There is a traditional view that larping is just harmless fun – a form of entertainment, apolitical in nature, without responsibility towards its subjects. We believe that this is at best naive, at worst disingenuous: it works to undermine the unavoidably political nature of choices made within an ideologically-contested cultural sphere.

    What we choose to larp about, and how we choose to present it, are inherently political. Each option taken serves to exclude other possibilities. Each decision represents a commitment to one set of values, and a denial of another.

    If we design a larp set in the Regency period, what are we saying about gender roles? – about social class distinctions? – about racism? – about sexuality? – about slavery? The popularized narrative contains heavily-loaded answers to all of these questions. For example, it teaches that the UK’s relationship to slavery was a noble role of leading the world in abolishing the practice and in fighting to bring it to an end – ignoring the fact that during the Regency period, a large part of the country’s wealth, and that of the characters in Jane Austen’s novels, was derived from the ongoing exploitation and subjugation of enslaved people (see for example Ferguson 2003). We must not just accept these answers blindly.

    Mindful historical larping

    The narrative of the Regency era through Jane Austen and the TV show Bridgerton has spawned larps such as The Social Season (Germany, 2023) and Pride without Prejudice (UK, 2018). Both these larps represent a popularized version of the history of the Regency period for upper-class people. These versions of history ignore the reality of life for anyone who isn’t upper-class. In the world of the Bridgerton-style Regency era, money and success are symbols of status, not survival.

    The fact that the wealth of many families was gained through enslaving people is a topic that also has no place in either of these larps, despite being a real-world historical factor. The two larps mentioned take a different approach to handling this. Pride without Prejudice is set in an alternative reality where people were not enslaved and where queerphobia didn’t exist. The Social Season design document (Dombrowski Event UG 2023) states that play on racism is not allowed and that “conversations about slave plantations in the New World or the lucrative human trafficking that you or your imaginary friends engage in are also undesirable.”

    Fairweather Manor (Poland, 2015) is a larp inspired by the TV shows Downton Abbey and Upstairs, Downstairs. It focuses on key themes of gender and class, in a similar way to the ways they have been depicted in these shows, and aims to “balance the atmosphere of a historical setting with a highly immersive and playable experience” (Fairweather Manor website 2023). The larp ignored the reality of the class division meaning that it would be unlikely that the servants and the upper class families they serve would be friends and confidants, as well as ignoring the impact of the British empire and the way it was celebrated during this time period.

    This is not intended as a criticism of these larps: all of them state that they are representing a fictionalized account of history which is necessary for playability, and acknowledge the choices made about what to include and what to exclude.

    So none of this is to say that creators of larps are acting immorally by using a popularized, or otherwise limited, view of history to create larps. We are always making choices when we decide what the main focus of a larp is, and with limited time and a limited number of participants we can’t hope to explore all aspects of a historical period. And even if attempted, it is likely that our own biases and lack of information would lead to some aspects being missed anyway.

    Instead we need to make mindful choices about what to include, and about the statements we’re making with what we exclude. 

    This is not an argument that all historical larps should be exercises in exploring historical oppression. It is totally fine to create an alternative history where racism, or queerphobia, doesn’t exist, in order to focus on another aspect of the experience (see also Holkar 2016). In fact, choices to include things (e.g. a strict gender binary, sexual violence) because they are deemed to be historically accurate should also be made meaningfully.

    An important question to ask ourselves as designers is, if we are exploring a historical period that is portrayed in a specific way in the media and in general public understanding, are we leaning into that portrayal? If so, what has been omitted from that portrayal and should that be communicated to participants?

    For example Unnatural Allures is “a fictionalized and heightened version of the late Victorian and Edwardian era” (Design Document, Kraut.tales 2023) and plays with eroticism and horror. The writers acknowledge the nationalism, colonialism, and orientalism of the period, and suggest that there will be some play around it, although it will be framed in a negative light; while stating that racism is not a theme of play. They also include suggested readings in the appendix of the design document for potential players who want to contextualize the period.

    Just a Little Lovin’ (Norway, 2011), set in the 1980s, engages heavily with the time period. The themes of the larp are desire, in part represented through queer spaces and cultural movements of the time; and death, represented by the AIDS crisis and the social response to it. However, in the majority of runs of the larp, themes of racism – which was prevalent within and outside the queer community at the time the larp is set – were largely ignored, generally as a conscious design choice not to shift focus or add another axis of oppression. But in a run in the USA (2017), play on racism was included, as the designers then felt that it was essential not to erase the experiences of people of colour.

    Conclusion

    To state that all larps are political is not to state that all larps have to engage in difficult topics, to evoke negative emotions, or to be an exploration of the deeper injustices of society. However, we believe that there is a responsibility for designers to consider what they are including in, and omitting from, their larps; and what statements are being made by those decisions.

    The popularized narrative of history will always be tempting to draw upon, because it is what is most accessible and familiar: it requires the least work on the part of the designer. But it brings a load of cultural baggage and assumptions that may be unwanted – and that, we feel, should be investigated and challenged.

    Bibliography

    Fairweather Manor website: https://www.fairweathermanor.com/ Accessed 22nd September 2023

    Niall Ferguson (2003): Why We Ruled the World. In The Times, May 1, 2003. News Corp UK & Ireland Limited. Available at https://web.archive.org/web/20121019002140/https://www.niallferguson.com/journalism/history/why-we-ruled-the-world ref. Sep 8, 2023.

    Dombrowski Event UG (2023): Design Concept: The Social Season. Available at https://www.regency-larp.com/_files/ugd/8c5a78_1082147426a247a0b052a8dcb9694fb6.pdf ref: Sep 9, 2023

    Mo Holkar (2016): Larp and Prejudice: Expressing, Erasing, Exploring, and the Fun Tax. In Larp Realia – Analysis, Design, and Discussions of Nordic Larp, edited by Jukka Särkijärvi, Mika Loponen, and Kaisa Kangas. Solmukohta.

    Kraut.tales (2023): Unnatural allures: Design Document. Available at https://drive.google.com/file/d/1wXKKqGGTRY0RjNF0krXvLn8XSCmMGcqj/view ref. Sep 9, 2023

    Ludography

    Fairweather Manor (2015): Poland. Agata Swistak, Agnieszka Linka Hawryluk-Boruta, Akinomaja Borysiewicz, Alexander Tukaj, Beata Ploch, Charles Bo Nielsen, Claus Raasted, Dracan Dembinski, Ida Pawłowicz, Janina Wicher, Krzysztof “Ciastek” Szczęch, Krzysztof “Iryt” Kraus, Maciek Nitka, Mikołaj Wicher, Nadina Wiórkiewicz, Szymon Boruta. Rollespilsfabrikken and Liveform.

    Just a Little Lovin’ (2011): Norway. Tor Kjetil Edland and Hanne Grasmo.  

    Just a Little Lovin’ (2017): USA. Tor Kjetil Edland and Hanne Grasmo. Pink Dollars LLC.

    Pride without Prejudice (2018): UK. Amy Mason and David Proctor.

    The Social Season (2023): Germany. Dombrowski Event UG.

    Unnatural Allures (2024): Germany. Alexandra Vogel, Florian Hofmann, Marina Machaeuer, Christian Schneider, Germany. kraut.tales

    This article has been reprinted with permission from the Solmukohta 2024 book. Please cite as:

    Wood, Laura, and Mo Holkar. 2024. “Challenging the Popularized Narrative of History.” In Liminal Encounters: Evolving Discourse in Nordic and Nordic Inspired Larp, edited by Kaisa Kangas, Jonne Arjoranta, and Ruska Kevätkoski. Helsinki, Finland: Ropecon ry.

    Cover photo: Image by Mollyroselee from Pixabay

  • The Blue Ribbon Collective

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    The Blue Ribbon Collective

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    Blue ribbons tied with a safety pinTowards the start of Knutepunkt 2017 in Norway, we organized a workshop, High on KP, for people who were interested in avoiding or limiting their drinking of alcohol during the conference. The reasons for this choice were varied; perhaps they were drawn to using drink as a social enabler, or they felt social pressure to drink.

    This attracted a good mix of people. Some interesting personal stories and strategies were shared. We were also joined, and went on to be approached later, by a number of people who didn’t drink at all themselves but who wanted to help and support those who were avoiding alcohol.

    The project was informed in part by our related work on alcohol at larp and at larp-related social events, and the problems that can sometimes arise from it. It became apparent from responses to our survey that social pressure making people drink more than they were comfortable with was one of the factors causing adverse incidents.

    Two men display the blue ribbons pinned to their badges
    Members of the Blue Ribbon Collective at Knutepunkt 2017.

    As part of the project, we introduced the blue ribbon badge. This symbol is a light-hearted homage to the ribbon worn by those who took the temperance pledge in the 19th century, although our aims for it are rather different. This is what we intend wearing a blue ribbon to signify:

    1. I am sober;
    2. If you would like to stay sober, or to drink no more than you have done already, I can support you in that resolve.

    We anticipate offering blue ribbons and running workshops at future KPs – if organizers are happy with that. And we would be glad to see them being used at other social events where alcohol is generally part of the social structure. They’re not official emblems and don’t have anything special about them; any length of blue ribbon, held by a safety-pin, will send the same message.

    Finally, we should add – to avoid potential misunderstanding – that this project is absolutely not about trying to discourage people from drinking, or to shame drinkers, or to reduce the amount of alcohol at KP. It is simply meant to help people who don’t want to drink, or who don’t want to drink too much.

    The Blue Ribbon Collective

    Blue ribbons tied with a safety pinMoving forward, we are developing a Blue Ribbon Collective of participants who are interested in staying sober at events and helping others with alcohol-related issues. Anyone can be a part of the Collective: that just signifies being aware and supportive of our work. Then if someone chooses to wear a blue ribbon pinned to their clothing at a particular larp event, that signals their sobriety (at that event) to others. Being part of the Collective does not mean you should feel under any pressure to stay sober, or to wear the ribbon. Feel free to contact us if you would like to be included on the list.

    Current members of the Blue Ribbon Collective:

    Frederik Vindal Andersson

    Johannes Axner

    Sarah Lynne Bowman

    Banana Chan

    Jon Cole

    Liz Gorinksy

    Harrison Greene

    Charlie Haldén

    Sanne Harder

    Cleo Hatting

    Mo Holkar

    Kjell Hedgard Hugaas

    Torgrim Husvik

    Antti Kumpulainen

    Janusz Maxe

    Morgan Nuncio

    Stephanie Nudelman

    Tuomas Puikkonen

    Tadeu Rodrigues

    Pedro Rodríguez Marín

    Francesco Rugerfred Sedda

    Liv Kristine Slyngborg

    Susanne Vejdemo

    Melissa Whitlock

    Mila Ould Yahoui

    If you’re interested in the blue ribbon, or in the project generally, or would like to help in future, please get in touch!

    (Edited on 6th March 2019 to clarify details of the Blue Ribbon Collective.)

    Cover photo: A blue ribbon pinned to the lapel of a black leather jacket. Photo by Sarah Lynne Bowman.

     

  • High on Larp: Alcohol at Larp Events

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    High on Larp: Alcohol at Larp Events

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    In January 2017, Mila Ould Yahoui, Sarah Lynne Bowman, and I conducted an online survey about experiences with and attitudes towards alcohol at larps and at larp-related social events. The survey link was shared in various Facebook larping groups and it gained just over a thousand responses.

    This survey was not a representative or weighted sample, and it makes no claims to be scientific. Responders were self-selecting and might be assumed to have some interest in the topic of alcohol, either to support its use or to express concern about negative alcohol-related incidents. Even so, we feel that some of the findings are of interest and we hope they may stimulate discussion.

    Demographics

    Rather than asking which country responders came from, we asked which country they did most of their larping in. We felt that, with the increasing internationalization of the hobby, this question would be a more reliable indicator of a responder’s “larping culture.”

    pie chart showing a variety of countries

     

    The results showed considerable variation between countries. For example, the likelihood of having often or sometimes consumed alcohol at larp varied from 30% in the USA to 47% in Poland.

    Responders’ ages ranged from 13 to 63, but over 80% were in the 21-40 range.

    Pie chart of age ranges of respondents

    Frequency

    We asked a series of radio-button questions about frequency of various experiences with alcohol. Responders could answer Often, Sometimes, Rarely, or Never.

    • Have you larped while under the influence of alcohol?
    • Have you larped with other people who were under the influence of alcohol?
    • Have you been under the influence of alcohol at larp-related social events?
    • Have you been at larp-related social events while other people were under the influence of alcohol?
    graphs of alcohol use
    Participant experiences with alcohol use at larps and larp-related events.

    Experiences

    We asked two free-text questions about responders’ experiences:

    • “Have you done anything that you regretted (at the time, or later) while you were, or other people were, under the influence of alcohol at a larp or at a larp-related social event?” and
    • “Has anything been done to you that you wish had not been done, while you were, or other people were, under the influence of alcohol at a larp or at a larp-related social event?”

    24% and 29% of responses respectively were affirmative. As responses were given confidentially, we won’t quote from any of them here, but these are the types of experiences that were listed:

    • Examples of things that people regret:
      • Nausea; hangover; oversleeping; losing possessions and clothing; injuries to self; loss of memory; loss of focus on the game.
      • Inappropriate talking in-game; being offensive; bad moods; fighting.
      • Transgressing personal boundaries; inappropriate flirting/kissing/etc.; inappropriate sex; infidelity.
      • Several people mentioned drinking as a social facilitator or because of social pressure.
    • Examples of things done to people that they wish hadn’t been done:
      • OOC talking and action that harmed immersion; injury from another’s “playful” behaviour; drinking culture detracting from larping; boredom from drunken ramblings; rowdiness.
      • Homophobia; sober-shaming; insults; psychological abuse.
      • Being vomited upon; suffering violence.
      • Sexual harassment; had sexual photos taken with and without consent; sexual assault; rape.
      • Several people mentioned tens of such incidents. Some spoke of pressure to drink and of how once alcohol is present and open, it can take over the event.

    Many people said in their responses that the problems they’d experienced with alcohol weren’t particular to larp – that the same things could happen at any other party, etc. This detail makes the point that we can’t assume that larp is a safe bubble outside of society, where we are with our own tribe, and where bad things aren’t going to happen. Alcohol may not be in itself problematic, but a lot of people consume it in a problematic way, and so, trouble can be caused.

    Some respondents said that at their events, players knew how to drink responsibly, and so there were no difficulties. Which is great – but we have to recognize that at many larps, and at many social gatherings – including KP, where a number of responders reported having experienced assaults – that is not always the case. Also, just because an organizer has not received a report about an incident does not mean no incident occurred. Indeed, people may feel uncomfortable reporting incidents for various reasons, including fear of reprisal, shame, or ostracization.

    In Favour of Alcohol?

    Mo propping up the bar at the 2014 larp Café Casablanca. Photo by Charlie Paull.

    Finally we asked whether respondents were in favour of allowing alcohol at larps (60% said Yes) and at larp-related social events (92% said Yes).

    We did not ask about positive outcomes from the presence of alcohol, which gives a skew to the survey data. In the subsequent presentation at Knutepunkt 2017, we sought additional responses about positive experiences from participants in the session. People mentioned that alcohol can provide a pleasant social atmosphere; that it can help people relax; that it can add to realism of larping characters who are drinking alcohol; and that it can help shy people perform socially.

    To conclude: this survey and presentation are not part of a campaign to ban alcohol from larp, or from larp-related social events. However, we do feel that it demonstrates that real and measurable adverse effects can and do occur. It’s important for us all to be aware of the potential downsides and risks that alcohol can bring with it. We hope that this work will contribute to opening up a discussion around these topics.

    The Blue Ribbon Collective

    Moving forward, we are developing a Blue Ribbon Collective of participants who are interested in staying sober at events and helping others with alcohol-related issues. Members of the Collective may choose to wear a blue ribbon pinned to their clothing at larp events to signal their sobriety to others. Feel free to contact us if you would like to be included on the list.

    Current members of the Blue Ribbon Collective:


    Johannes Axner
    Sarah Lynne Bowman
    Banana Chan
    Jon Cole
    Liz Gorinksy
    Harrison Greene
    Charlie Haldén
    Sanne Harder
    Cleo Hatting
    Mo Holkar
    Kjell Hedgard Hugaas
    Torgrim Husvik
    Antti Kumpulainen
    Janusz Maxe
    Morgan Nuncio
    Stephanie Nudelman
    Tadeu Rodrigues
    Francesco Rugerfred Sedda
    Liv Kristine Slyngborg
    Susanne Vejdemo
    Melissa Whitlock
    Mila Ould Yahoui

    Cover photo: Cocktail Poured into Orrefors Balans Glass by Didriks on Flickr. Image has been cropped. CC BY 2.0.

  • History, Herstory and Theirstory: Representation of Gender and Class in Larps with a Historical Setting

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    History, Herstory and Theirstory: Representation of Gender and Class in Larps with a Historical Setting

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    Disclaimer: The opinions expressed herein are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of Nordiclarp.org or any larp community at large.

    Why Larp with History?

    Human history as a setting for larp goes back to the earliest days of the form – even to before larp was identified as a special kind of activity in its own right, in the committee games and fictionalized simulations that preceded the larp that we know today.

    What makes history so appealing?

    • The richness, range, and depth of the real historical tapestry is such as to make it inexhaustibly appealing as a source of larp material. From Ancient Egypt (Queen of Denial, Barnard and Holkar, 2014) to medieval Britain (The Lists of Avalon, Barnard, Jones and Jones, 2011) to the Industrial Revolution (Railways and Respectability, Barnard and Dall et al., 2007) to the Korean War (M*A*S*H: Brothers in Arms, Barnard and Dall et al., 2013), there’s something for everyone. And provided you avoid exoticization and respect the people involved, the whole spectrum is available to you.
    • Familiarity to participants is another advantage: they may already be familiar with the chosen historical milieu, or, if not, they can easily make themselves familiar by using readily-available reference materials. Compare the difficulty of communicating familiarity with a fictional setting whose details are only available in the minds of the designers.
    • Historical settings lend themselves readily to parallels and lessons related to life today, for the more instructive school of larp design. For example, the 1970s Berlin of “Heroes” (Holkar, 2016) studies attitudes towards the demonized Other, and how similarities, once exposed, may resonate more strongly than differences. The distance of the setting helps to make clear the significance of the themes in our own world.
    • And there’s no denying the emotional power and resonance of larping historical events — perhaps those in which one’s own ancestors, or national predecessors, might have been involved.
    • But a larp design that draws upon history has, perhaps, first to consider the limitations and biases of our societal defaults of historical understanding and analysis.

    The Problem with History

    We must recognise that our knowledge of history is filtered by the (necessarily limited) information that we have about it. We may have access to written accounts from the period: but who wrote them, and why? We may have artefacts, structures, and other physical remains: but who has interpreted them to us? What assumptions did those interpreters make?

    Photo of upstairs and downstairs characters in Fairweather Manor
    Fairweather Manor is an example of a larp based upon historical fiction that explores the dynamics between characters of different classes and genders. Photo courtesy of Dziobak Larp Studios.

    To generalise: surviving historical texts were largely written by educated and wealthy men. And these texts, and non-textual historical remains, have also until recently largely been discussed by educated and wealthy men. Even if the author of your direct source is not in that category, you have to ask: who then were that author’s sources and to what extent did they question them? So, for example, Georgette Heyer wrote a feminized take on the British Regency period((Georgette Heyer, Regency Buck (London: William Heinemann, 1935).)) in which women have a greater focus than in historical accounts of the period. But she restricted her scope to the same narrow upper section of society that had been depicted by Jane Austen; she also restricted her research largely to the use of materials left by educated and wealthy men and to the study of decor and costume, rather than establishing what might have been going on in the world outside those stately imagined drawing-rooms. Whether, as an educated and wealthy woman herself, Heyer had any interest in the lives of the poor and underprivileged of that period, we do not know, but she certainly didn’t write about them. If you draw your larp-design inspiration from historical fiction rather than directly from history, you run the risk of inadvertently being on the wrong end of a filter of this type.

    Other Histories

    The study of women’s history, and people’s history (ordinary people, as distinct from those in power), gives new and fascinating perspectives on familiar historical settings.

    “Other” history is of its nature a kind of revisionism: it asserts that traditional historical accounts are partial and/or incomplete. Women’s history draws attention to the roles of women throughout history; it studies the lives and works of individual women, and groups of women, “of note” and otherwise; it examines the effects of historical events on women; and so on. It necessarily questions the privileged values assigned by traditional history to the lives and activities of men. It may also identify situations where women’s actual contributions have been neglected or belittled, at the time or subsequently.

    In the same way, a people’s history, also known as a “history from below”, approach to historiography looks at historical events and developments from the point of view of ordinary people rather than leaders. It proactively focuses on the lives of the poor, the dispossessed, and those who in general have no access to power. And it seeks to demonstrate how historical changes that we traditionally ascribe to “great men” are often more the product of inexorable social forces rising from below.

    Women comforting each other in a prison larp
    Female characters in Winson Green Prison, a larp about women fighting for the right to vote. Photo by Vicki Pipe for the run at The Smoke Festival 2017.

    In A People’s History of the United States,((Howard Zinn, A People’s History of the United States (New York: Harper & Row, 1980).)) Howard Zinn (1980) says:

    The history of any country, presented as the history of a family, conceals fierce conflicts of interest (sometimes exploding, most often repressed) between conquerors and conquered, masters and slaves, capitalists and workers, dominators and dominated in race and sex. And in such a world of conflict, a world of victims and executioners, it is the job of thinking people, as Albert Camus suggested, not to be on the side of the executioners.

    In larp, even more than in history, positive portrayals of characters are important — because they must be playable. Endowing your female and poor characters with affordances that may not have been demonstrated in the traditional historical record is going to make them more interesting to play, as well as serving the political end of representation. For sure, larp the executioners. They’ll be interesting to play — but the victims don’t have to be just oppression-fodder.

    A straightforward example of this kind of “other” history in larp is Winson Green Prison (Sandquist and Göthberg, 2016). It portrays “the women who fought for the equal right to vote, and the men who loved them” — people who at the time were weak, oppressed and despised by society, but who have been vindicated by history. Their struggles are moving and affecting, but we know that they were in the right and that their descendants will see them as heroes. This makes for a good playable mix of struggle and satisfaction.

    Historical Responsibility in Larp

    Grownups in the Gere family: Dina, Gere, Aina (Post-game, Anna-Karin Linder Krauklis)
    Brudpris (2014-, Norway) is a larp that explores the dynamics of a patriarchal society. (Post-game, Photo by Anna-Karin Linder Krauklis)

    When looking at and working with historical events and settings via the medium of larp, designers may feel that they owe a responsibility to the people of those times to represent them fairly: to not skew or downplay the depictions of those who have been neglected or diminished by traditional historical accounts. This is not always easy, but it’s a worthwhile use of time. As well as helping to make your design more responsible and understanding, it will also help to make it more interesting and original. There have been countless historical larps in which powerful people make key decisions while lesser folk fill in the background around them; how much fresher and more entertaining would it be to find stories in which women, or ordinary common people can take focus? For example, Dulce et decorum est… (Rider Hill, 2012) depicts a noble family and their influential friends, engaging in political discussion around a dinner table in an English country house in the runup to World War II: a solid and well-proven style of larp setting. Meanwhile Love Letter (Curd, Gammans, McCormick and Perry, 2015) examines the lives of a group of ordinary English village dwellers as the same war impacts upon them — the effects on those who fight, and those who are left behind — caused by the decisions of remote politicians to whom the larp makes no direct reference. Both are successful designs in their own terms, but one is doing something much more unusual than the other.

    St Croix (Stamnestrø and Voje, 2015) opens the question of how a power disparity between characters — in this case, slaves and slave-owners — can generate good play for both parties. Slaves have authority over very little, not even their own bodies: how do you empower those players in the larp? What affordances do they have available? Brudpris (Linder and Dahlberg, 2015) partly answered this question by giving its oppressed female characters an unhistorical sexual dominance, so those players were able to compensate, during sexual encounters, for lack of agency in other areas of play.

    Beyond the Barricades (Wei and Göthberg, 2015) brings vividly to life the Parisian revolution of 1832. The sides are clear, but one’s relationship to the people alongside whom one stands might not be — especially when unity starts to break down. This design allows for a nuanced approach to social class, and to the development of trust.

    War Birds ((Moyra Turkington, Ann Kristine Eriksen, and Kira Magrann, et al, War Birds (Toronto, Canada: Unruly Designs, 2016).)) is a collection of six freeforms and larps looking at the war experiences of women; as aviators, refugees, internees, partisans, drivers, or factory workers. It ably demonstrates the range and variety of play experience that can be generated from examining a straightforward other-historical premise.


    Moyra Turkington talks, at Living Games Conference 2016, about the genesis of War Birds: following “redlinked” stories in Wikipedia to see the unwritten history of women’s wartime contributions.

    The Myth of Authenticity

    One argument sometimes given for the dominance of wealthy males in historical larps is that this exercise of privilege is authentic for the period being depicted, and that to show otherwise would be a falsity.

    Quite apart from the question of whether the “facts” about the period upon which this view is based are correct or not — as discussed earlier, the filter over historical materials is a highly selective one — it can be argued that the whole notion of authenticity is specious. It’s impossible to larp “the 16th century” from the point of view of the 21st century; all you can ever do is larp an approach to the 16th century, which emerges from the context in which you’re designing.

    Our contemporary view of the 16th century is very different from that of historians of fifty years ago; and in fifty years time it will be different again. And as an artistic creator rather than a simulator, a larp designer will draw out themes and messages that resonate particularly strongly with their own contemporary audience. Just as performances of the play Hamlet take on new directions and resonances depending on the political and social currents of the time when they’re being performed, so too do runs of the larp Inside Hamlet (Krauklis and Ericsson et al., 2000; Ericsson et al., 2015).

    Deliberate inauthenticity — for example, giving women more prominent and higher-status roles — should not be seen as a betrayal of historical truth. Rather, it can allow a designer to recontextualise history more effectively for their audience. For example, Oss imellom (Hatlestrand and Edland, 2015) includes working-class homosexuals in a middle-class-based organisation that historically would have excluded them, so as better to present the variety of homosexual experience in 1950s Norway. To skew your design in this way, against the power balance of the traditional historical message, is to raise up living underprivileged people against those dead people who have been privileged by the conventional narrative.

    faders for the Mixing Desk
    The Mixing Desk of Larp design tool features a Loyalty to World slider, where designers can adjust according to playability vs. plausibility. Developed for the Larpwriter Summer School.

    Media and Message

    It may be that, actually, designing larp directly from the historical record is not your approach. Rather, you might be designing to convey the flavour of media works (books, films) set in that period. A larp set in the Old West is perhaps more likely to be responding to a particular subgenre of Western movie than to the actual history of the period. And a larp set at the 17th-century court of Louis XIV is almost certain to be drawing more heavily on the (19th-century) Musketeers novels of Alexandre Dumas than on documents of the period.

    This is no bad thing — resonance with your intended players is more likely to be found within media with which they’re familiar — but it’s another filter to be aware of. Reading Dumas, one would think that all warrior men are strong and masculine, while women are weak, passive, or conniving. However, we know from the existence of historical figures such as La Maupin, Philippe of Orleans, and the Chevalier d’Eon that the 17th-century French court was a much more genderqueer world than the 19th-century novelist was happy to admit; we know that the cowboys of the real Old West were often black, and sometimes women. By looking into history as well as your entertainment-media sources, you can broaden your representation without moving too far away from the material with which your players are familiar. And you should be honest with yourself, and with your players, about whether your game is aiming primarily to be history-based or fiction-based.

    Hell on Wheels promotional photo with three male and three female characters
    The Czech Hell on Wheels is a Western genre larp adapted from the fictional television show. Photo by Potkani.

    Techniques for Representation

    • Look beneath the surface – Seek out “other” histories as well as mainstream ones. By now, women’s and people’s history are well enough established that a wide range of historical periods have been covered by these approaches.
    • Look at the sources – Take in actual history, as well as media depictions of the period. You may find that the way the history has been portrayed on the page or on screen is quite different from modern historians’ understanding of it.
    • Ask the logical questions – If women aren’t mentioned in the orthodox account, why might that be? Where were they, and what were they doing? What place did poorer people have in the economy?
    • Turn the familiar face of history around – For example, war histories often focus on men who are away fighting, or on the portrayal of the victors as uncontested heroes. How about those family members who stayed at home? – what can you find out about them, that could make for interesting larp?((Heroes of the Hearth (Stiainín Jackson, in Seven Wonders (London: Pelgrane Press, 2015) is a tabletop RPG that looks at this situation.)) How about the experiences of those who were defeated?
    • Turn over stones – Why are some periods of history frequently visited by larp, and others neglected? Whose stories are still out there, waiting for a larp designer to pick them up and reflect them as something wonderful?
    • Challenge your own assumptions – However well you think you know the period, you may without realizing it be stuck in a skewed account given by a partial historian or fiction writer. Find another source, and see if it backs up or counters your belief.
    • Don’t be afraid of inauthenticity – If you feel you need to, you should deliberately adjust the historical “truths” to better make the range of stories that you seek. It’s larp, not re-enactment.
    • Check in – If you are yourself wealthy and/or educated and/or male, make sure that you’re not inadvertently carrying your own society’s tacit assumptions into the design. Involve people from other groups in your work. Build more balanced perspectives by working together.

    The Ends of History

    A historical setting for a larp can be a wonderful thing, but it can also be a painful and betraying thing. You can make sure that you’re giving your design ideas, and the play aspirations of your larpers, the maximum opportunity to express themselves by engaging with history critically, by putting in the exploratory work around it, and by looking for stories that haven’t been told.

    When it all comes together just right, you can be sure that your larp design and its enaction will earn their own places in the history of the artform. Take a look at Just a Little Lovin’ (Edland and Grasmo, 2011), the story of an assortment of people with little in common apart from their relentless othering by the media and those in power, finding community together, turning suffering into love. Their stories are respectfully told, solidly researched, and thoroughly contextualised. A larp like this brings its history to raging, pounding life — and makes its messages speak to our hearts and to our minds.

    Thanks to Liz Lovegrove and Becky Annison for their help and ideas during the writing of this article.

    Ludography

    This article was initially published in Once Upon a Nordic Larp… Twenty Years of Playing Stories published as a journal for Knutepunkt 2017 and edited by Martine Svanevik, Linn Carin Andreassen, Simon Brind, Elin Nilsen, and Grethe Sofie Bulterud Strand.

    Cover photo: Characters in the 2015 run of Just a little Lovin’, celebrating their otherness (photo by Arvid Björklund).

  • What Does it Mean When Sex is Sexy?

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    What Does it Mean When Sex is Sexy?

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    Disclaimer: The opinions expressed herein are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of Nordiclarp.org or any larp community at large.

    Sex! Isn’t it great? And a significant and thought-provoking part of human experience. Interesting because of the effects it has on people; dramatic because of the emotional stories that can be woven around it; fun because it’s (usually) enjoyable, and we’re all grown-ups here, aren’t we?

    Larping succubi. Photo by flickr user danielle_blue Larping succubi. Photo by flickr user danielle_blue

    If you’re designing a larp about any aspect of human experience that’s not entirely abstract, and you’re working in anything like the Nordic tradition((It’s different in the US and UK traditions: and maybe in other countries as well, we don’t know.)), there’s a good chance that you’ll be thinking about the possibility for characters to engage in sexual activity of some sort. And, because this is a larp rather than a sex holiday, you’ll be thinking about what sort of technique(s) to use to represent different types of activity. Even in the most permissive of larp cultures, fully-indexical wysiwyg((What You See Is What You Get – ie. direct representation.)) dkwddk((Du Kannst Was Du Darstellen Kannst – ie. direct action.)) sex would generally be thought of as a bit extreme.

    So, then, there’s a whole spectrum of different techniques and meta-techniques available out there, in extant successful larps, for representing sexual activity – from flirtation up to various different modes of coition.

    Meta or Not?

    A brief digression. There’s a distinction here between diegetic representational techniques – where the players are doing something that is actually how their characters engage in sexual activity, but which has been designed to be different from the way normal humans do – and meta-techniques – which are in some way abstracted representations of sexual activity. So for example if you use Ars amandi as a way of representing your characters engaging in sexual intercourse, that’s a meta-technique. But if caressing each other’s arms and shoulders is actually how these characters have sex – as in Mellan himmel och hav – then that’s a diegetic technique. Your choice which you want to use! From the point of view of this argument, it doesn’t matter much: holding someone’s hand is holding someone’s hand, whether it’s diegetic or not.

    Okay Then, Back to the Spectrum

    We are going to argue that the most important thing about how you’re going to represent sex is: how sexy do you want it to be? So, as Kat Jones described in a talk((Jones, K. C. 2016. ‘Touching on Taboos: Exploring Sexuality and Intimacy Through Larp’, keynote address at Living Games Conference 2016. https://youtu.be/Whk-gsw3zFk [accessed 26 July 2016].)) at Living Games Conference, it might involve two players dropping out of the larp together for 15 minutes and killing time somehow in a part of the play space where the other players can’t see them: when they rejoin the larp, it is considered that they have had sex (in some way that’s unimportant to define in detail). That’s at the ‘not very sexy’ end of the spectrum.

    • Slightly sexier: the players sit aside together and agree, out-of-character, what sexual activity their characters are going to engage in. This is then decreed to have happened, without any attempt at actually representing it.
    • Slightly sexier still: the players hold hands and gaze into each other’s eyes while doing the above.
    • More sexy: they stroke each other’s arms and shoulders, or other not-generally-thought-of-as-erogenous zones, either schematically (me caressing you like this represents this particular sexual act) or just generally.
    • Also more sexy (in some ways but not in others): players agree on the sexual activity that’s going to happen, then play it out using a prop wooden phallus rather than making any actual sexual contact.
    • Potentially much more sexy: players use a red–yellow–green safety system, whereby they can represent any level of sexual activity by making ever closer and more involving physical contact, until one of them decides that’s enough.

    Perhaps you’re thinking here “Hold on a minute – holding hands, gazing into eyes, stroking arms and shoulders, that’s not sexy!” Well… maybe it hasn’t been for you, with the people who you’ve so far done that with in larp. But think: if you’re doing that with your real-life partner, then it’s a level of foreplay. Some people who you larp with, you will find attractive, whether you want to or not: or they may find you attractive. In that situation, there are no non-erogenous zones.

    From the 2014 run of Just a Little Lovin'. Photo by the organizers, from a talk at Prolog 2015. From the 2014 run of Just a Little Lovin’. Photo by the organizers, from a talk at Prolog 2015.

    But Why Would You Actually Want It to Be Sexy?

    Well, here are a few of the possible reasons:

    • More immersive: the closer that player actions can be to character actions – ie. the less abstract the representation – the less it breaks immersion. If your character is doing something sexy (or painful, or joyful, or angry, or whatever) then having something close to the same experience yourself as a player will help you feel your character’s feelings more closely and intensely.
    • More aesthetically satisfying: using a non-sexy technique to represent sex is generally pretty clumsy. It involves people dropping out of the game, it may involve elision of time, it may involve people coming back into the game not looking anything like they’ve just been having sex… and so on. If you pride yourself on the representation level of your larp, non-sexy sex is understandably unappealing.
    • More convincing and authentic: if your body is feeling genuine sexiness-related hormones and endorphins coursing around it, you’ll find it easier and more natural to relate to the person who is causing those as your sexual partner in the larp.
    • More ‘hardcore’: if you’re aiming for representation of ‘unfun’ sexual activity, involving suffering, coercion and other grimness, then using authentically sex-related physicality can sometimes make it more impactful than abstraction could.
    • More fun: what’s not to like about sexiness? People enjoy it! We are all adults here, and it’s not doing anyone any harm, as long as it’s all fully consented.

    So What’s Wrong with That, Then?

    Maybe nothing! But we would like to suggest that sexy sex in larp may not always be an unalloyed good thing. Not because we are repressed and joyless Puritans((Mo was brought up that way, it’s true, but he’s been doing a fairly good job of shaking it off.)) – but because we think there’s a need to be thoughtful about what you’re asking of participants, which isn’t always being addressed.

    Touchy Culture

    As larp becomes more international, larpers from a wide range of different cultures are becoming involved. We wonder if there is sometimes an unexamined assumption that being comfortable with touch, and happy to accept it as without actual sexual meaning – as is common in some European cultures – is in some significant way more progressive and enlightened than the caution around touch that’s present in other cultures. And that accordingly, players from those other cultures – or players who don’t identify with that aspect of their home culture – should learn to power through their discomfort; or else should just be prepared to exclude themselves from larps that are going to involve touch?

    Now if your larp is entirely designed around skin-on-skin contact, that’s one thing. But not many are… Much more common is that a player could comfortably go through a whole larp avoiding skin-on-skin contact, other than when it comes to use of a sex technique or meta-technique.

    Larp Is Not a Bubble

    Participants in larp also have an existence outside it, which will include loved ones of one kind or another – including sexual partners. Now, of course, there are many scenarios where partners are entirely happy with people engaging in sexytimes activity with others while on larp, for example:

    • There is no partner.
    • Relationship is an open one.
    • Partner is happy with ‘what happens on larp, stays on larp’.
    • Partner doesn’t want to know what happens on larp.
    • Partner thinks they know what happens on larp, but doesn’t actually know everything.
    • Partner has discussed boundaries for how sexy/unsexy a range of larp activity they are OK with.

    And then for younger players, these considerations may also apply to parents/guardians. It’s not enough to expect players to say to their significant others, when asked why exactly it is that they were smooching away like that at the weekend, “You don’t get it! It’s larp!”

    Communication

    Suppose that you’re in the ‘have discussed boundaries’ category. When you sign up for a larp, is it always made clear whether the sex techniques involved might transgress those boundaries? Organizers are impressively organized about communicating practical details of larps, these days, but something like “this larp will be using Ars amandi as a sex meta-technique” is not always seen in advance of signup. Should it be? – is that as important as letting prospective players know that the larp will be eg. physically arduous?

    From an ars amandi workshop at Living Games Conference 2016. Still from a video by Harrison Greene. From an ars amandi workshop. Still from a video by Harrison Greene.

    As a designer you want your players to be engaging with and exploring their relationship to the issues that your larp is bringing up; not spending emotion and energy on negotiating around the borders of their partner’s preferred physical boundaries.

    Exclusion

    We go to great lengths to make our hobby welcoming and inclusive for everyone who wants to participate. It feels wrong for people who don’t want to play out sexy sex mechanics to be the one group that it’s OK to exclude.

    So who are we talking about as being excluded here?

    • People who for cultural reasons are uncomfortable with touching those with whom they aren’t actually intimate.
    • People whose relationships have boundaries that don’t include sexy doings with others; or who haven’t fully discussed where such boundaries might be.
    • People who, perhaps because of trauma, are psychologically uncomfortable with physical intimacy in general.
    • People who find intimacy highly emotionally affecting, and so are wary of engaging in it.
    • People who just don’t want to be doing that sort of thing in their larp, for whatever reason.

    (Of course, you will probably have opt-outs available, intended to allow players to halt sexual activity before their boundaries are reached. But opting-out isn’t always easy or possible, in the heat of the moment: and discomfort, of participants or their partners, may also be caused by what other players are doing around them.)

    Now without those people present, you’ll still have a great selection of larpers. But is there a danger that they will fall into a relatively narrow psycho-social description? – even a stereotype?

    The Down-low

    We are not saying that representing sex in larp is a bad thing – far from it. But we are saying that it should always be a considered ingredient – like all design decisions, it would benefit from a debate and some questioning and not just be accepted as a default. Does your larp need to allow for sexual activity between characters? – if yes, then the next question is, how should that be represented in a way that supports the design needs and the larp aesthetic? And part of that question is: how sexy does it need to be?

    We feel that there are likely to be a range of answers to that question: and that, while for many larps, a high-sexiness technique or meta-technique will be entirely appropriate; for others, a low-sexiness one will be more applicable. And we also feel that, no matter how you turn and twist it, some methods are more inclusive than others. Sometimes at the cost of narrative effects; and sometimes at the cost of players.

    Cover photo: From the 2014 run of Just a Little Lovin’ (photo by the organizers, from a talk at Prolog 2015).

  • Real Men – Defining Gender Identities

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    Real Men – Defining Gender Identities

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    Take your mind back, I don’t know when
    Sometime when it always seemed
    To be just us and them
    Girls that wore pink
    And boys that wore blue
    Boys that always grew up better men
    Than me and you

    Joe Jackson, Real Men

    Real Men is a chamber larp for 4–8 players, lasting four hours, designed by Kevin Burns and Mo Holkar. It’s about the lives and friendships of men – taking a group of characters who meet as young adults, and following them through thirty years as events befall them and their relationships evolve and develop.

    Real Men

    The precursor to Real Men is a similar game, known variously as Women on the Verge… or These Are the Days of Our Lives, in which players build a group of female characters and trace their friendship as their lives develop.

    When we started working together on a parallel larp for men, we decided to focus on the challenges men have in friendship: in being vulnerable to each other; in showing their feelings; and in asking for and receiving help. Male difficulty in communicating, and the pressure that patriarchal society places upon men to behave in a certain range of ways, became major themes of the Real Men game.

    Manhood and Masculinity

    Kevin reflects on masculinity: “When I was young I didn’t feel that being a man in a patriarchal sense had much to offer, and it’s only since I turned 40 that I’ve begun to try to explore and reclaim an authentic masculinity. This has led me to participate in men’s groups, to playing the masculinity guru Kohana in Just a Little Lovin’ (Denmark 2015), and to writing Real Men with Mo.”

    One of the design problems in the larp was the confusion around ‘maleness’ and ‘masculinity’. As an example of this, consider these words by 1990s masculinity guru Marvin Allen((Quoted in Steve Biddulph Manhood (1998) p 33.)):

    I like to think what I do is masculine – when I hold a little baby and kiss it, that’s the masculine part of me holding that little baby. When I have tears because I’m scared, or because I’m full of joy, they’re all masculine. There’s not a female thing about them.

    Marvin Allen, quoted in Manhood by Steve Biddulph

    If a man can only have ‘masculine’ qualities, then masculinity simply means ‘anything pertaining to males’ and this makes it difficult to explore the question. In the 2015 runs of Real Men, in Lewes, UK and at Grenselandet in Oslo, we saw that the (all-male) players struggled with this problem.

    We had to find a way to displace the default gender.

    yinyangIt was not until the third run in Lewes (7th May 2016), after a major rewrite, that we were able to make headway with this. The ancient Chinese concept of Yin-Yang allowed us to decouple behaviours from physical gender. Instead of ‘masculine’ we used Yang, and ‘feminine’ became Yin. In Real Men, Yang behaviour is about dominance, status, outward expression and career; while the Yin aspect is a man’s inner life, his emotionality, his soulful quality, his sensitivity, his secret vulnerability and longing.

    We adapted the ‘metabox’ meta-technique, which allows players to give their character’s internal monologue, which we renamed the ‘Yin-Yang Meta-technique’. Players could be as Yang as they wished outwardly, and use this technique to show their hidden Yin qualities of vulnerability, fragility and self-doubt.

    The second important difference with this run was that it involved female players (4 men, 3 women). Having women involved meant spelling out what it meant to be a man. In the workshop players were taught how to be Yang – taking up space, dominating a room or conversation, establishing status. “At last, we felt we had found a way to play with being a man,” says Kevin.

    Gender and Sexuality

    It should be stressed that we talk about the characters in Real Men (and the related games with female characters) from the point of view of gender as binary, because that’s predominant in the 1980s culture from which the characters emerge. However, questioning binarity, and every other aspect of gender which young people take as given, is an important part of the larp’s potential. The characters start Real Men generally perceived as male, but that can cover or develop into a range of genderqueerness, which players may wish to explore. And players of any or of no gender can, we hope, get an interesting and valuable experience from the larp.

    We should also note that the characters’ sexuality isn’t prescribed or suggested. Each player can define their character’s sexuality as they wish, and again the journey of exploring that as it develops is one that we hope will be a productive one.

    The Game

    The game spans 30 years, beginning in the 1980s of the Joe Jackson song ‘Real Men’, redolent of that decade’s confusion around male identity, masculinity and sexuality.

    What’s a man now, what’s a man mean?
    Is he rough or is he rugged?
    Is he cultural and clean?

    …

    Time to get scared, time to change plan
    Don’t know how to treat a lady
    Don’t know how to be a man

    Joe Jackson, Real Men

    The characters are then aged nineteen and have just completed their schooling. Another innovation in the most recent run was that the first scene takes place following a meeting the characters have attended of the ‘Real Man Group’. This group is the brainchild of James Tyler, a post-feminist masculinity guru, and it opens the characters’ minds to new possibilities in being men. Tyler doesn’t have all the answers, and turns out to have feet of clay, but he has sown a seed in which some of the characters may grow.

    Subsequent scenes, each of 30 minutes, and accompanied by a period-appropriate soundtrack, were set in the 1990s, 2000s, and in the present day, as the characters, who have become friends, reunite in various situations to explore their relationships and reflect on their life’s journey over the previous decade. James Tyler’s suicide rocks their belief in him, leading some to question more deeply, and others to cynicism. Throughout, the song ‘Real Men’ is used as a focus. The meaning of the song’s lyrics – its questioning approach to the perception of masculinity – will shift for each player, as their character evolves through the scenes towards middle-age.

    Character Psychology

    Kevin, who has a background in psychotherapy, created a new approach to character psychology for the game. Each character (see example below) was assigned a secret fear which signified a deep psychological issue that would drive behaviour over a whole lifetime. The characters were offered two responses to the fear: The first was a fantasy, which was the vain hope that they could simply avoid dealing with the problem; and the other was a dream, which was a vision of life in which others would be less likely to suffer in the way that the character had.

    T_______

    The Showman

    Your secret fear (unknown even to yourself): ‘I’m worthless’.

    This compels you to perform and prove yourself constantly.

    Your fantasy is fame, success and adulation.

    The impossible dream is that your ordinariness will be accepted.

    So for example, a character with a secret fear of ‘I’m worthless’ would have the fantasy that he could convince others of his value, thus avoiding the pain of the wound; however, the dream would involve a deeper engagement with the fear of worthlessness, and perhaps inspire a life’s work helping people who are seen as worthless by mainstream society.

    The Future of Real Men

    In response to comments from players, we are in the process of developing Real Men from its current four-hour extent into a one-day experience. The pre-game workshop would consist mainly of a recreation of the imaginary ‘Real Man Group’, with exercises in which the characters talk to each other about their fears, fantasies and dreams. Afterwards we will leave time for a full debrief. Real Men will be aimed at the general public and at mixed gender groups.

    Kevin is working on a short film based on Real Men in collaboration with artist Christian Thompson.

    Player Responses

    We will end with some anonymised player responses, which say better than we can what the impact of Real Men was. All seven players in the latest run wrote at least one piece about their experience.

    Real Men

    On reflection there is something of my Dad in Peter. I didn’t feel loved by my father. He abused me when I was young. He thought I was there to serve him in some way I guess. He was dark and mysterious and very unavailable. He became more available when he had been drinking; only the next day to return to a dark, morose character, working hard and not there for his family. I feel such compassion when I think of my Dad and Peter. How would their lives be different if they had experienced a fully loving and present father; and how would mine be, too?

    ‘Peter’

    I’ve been feeling a lot of bleed about the larp… it was an interesting and intense play experience. The way that Shaun felt intimidated by Peter and Mick, and his discomfort when the banter and teasing turned towards him, flashes me back to my own youthful experiences of trying to fit in with groups of young men who were generally more yang-forward than me. And the way that gaining confidence with age led to him making a considerable arsehole out of himself, confusing arrogance with self-belief; that was I guess a writ-large version of the stupid and sometimes unkind things that I did, once I’d come into myself a bit more. (And, sadly, continue to do occasionally, when I’m not being thoughtful).

    ‘Shaun’

    The paradox is that his secret fear was overcome not by his compulsion or his fantasy (to dominate others), but by laying them aside. This paradox, however, would be unresolvable by Mick: he could not see that he had found the significance and status that he desperately sought. A conception of masculinity that became clear to me as I played, is that it is a suit of armour (or, more accurately, a variety of suits of armour) that one puts on.

    Mick simply could not bear the feeling of nakedness and vulnerability that came from being without his armour.

    …

    So what have I learned – if anything – about myself?

    Masculinity as armour: do I have this? If there is any doubt, one has only to read what I have written here. When trying to talk openly and sincerely about myself, I adopt a sort of hyper-formality (note the obsessive disinclination to dangle prepositions, for example). This is like a shield that keeps ‘too much truth’ at a distance, and protects my vulnerability. Perhaps this is something that I need to work on.

    (See what I did there?)

    ‘Mick’

    Yesterday was very emotional, powerful and touching. I can’t even begin to unravel it.

    I wrote a letter to Dean this morning asking him if he’d be my friend. I realised I have disowned the part of myself that is him quite substantially.

    He may need time to answer.

    I imagined climbing a mountain with him and holding his lonely hand as we looked at the view silently…

    My father, much like Dean’s character, was a runaway. I met him at 22. This week he wrote to me like a lost little boy to tell me his partner is dying.

    It’s hard to know how to support someone so not present… not even to themselves.

    All of my sadness around this played out in a colossal text argument with my boyfriend when I got home who is also going through huge father stuff. His father has cancer.

    The argument was good though. I let Dean speak and be his total arsehole self and it was a release.

    Something got released.

    ‘Dean’

    Real Men

    Real Men

    Credits: Designed by Kevin Burns and Mo Holkar; GMed by Kevin Burns

    Dates: 4 Oct 2015 (Lewes), 31 Oct 2015 (Grenselandet, Oslo), 7 May 2016 (Lewes)

    Length: 4 hours

    Players: 4–8

    Game Mechanics: meta-box for internal monologues; music for timing

    This article was initially published in The Nordic Larp Yearbook 2015 published by Rollespilsakademiet and edited by Charles Bo Nielsen, Erik Sonne Georg, et al.

    Cover photo: Tommy (centre) welcomes his friends to his beachside villa. Real Men playtest, Lewes, UK; by Kevin Burns. 4th October 2015. All other photos from the second Lewes run, 7th May 2016, by Christian Thompson. All photos provided by the authors.

  • Workshop Practice, in Practice – A Functional Workshop Structure Method

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    Workshop Practice, in Practice – A Functional Workshop Structure Method

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    The pre-game workshop tradition in Nordic larp is mostly oral, with little written material. People take part in workshops as players, then borrow and develop ideas from those experiences to construct workshops for their own larps. So I thought it might be useful to put together a method which looks at some of the different intentions and purposes that workshop activities can have, to help designers think about and plan their workshops more systematically.

    The table below lists and categorizes workshop activities that I use in my own practice, or that I will use if I run a larp that requires them. The sequence of the table is the sequence in which I use these activities: ie. first working on the players themselves, then working with them on their characters; start with warmup, move on to impro basics if required, and so on. There may be requirements to move back and forth (eg. perhaps a re-warmup will be needed partway through, or meta-techniques may be practised again in-character), but it’s this general direction.

    In practice you may use workshop activities that have more than one purpose: this may be desirable both for conciseness and for helping to reinforce the activity impact upon players. For example, flashback scenes can be used to calibrate players’ understanding of relationships with each other. Or the way to teach a particular technique could also serve as a trust exercise.

    I’ve given an example activity for each aim, but of course there are many different ways of achieving all of them: some will be more appropriate for some larps than for others; and you’ll have your own favourites. The useful Workshop Handbook site has a categorized collection of activities which give plenty more examples.

    A few of the items talk about ‘calibration’. This is a very important larp-preparation concept, introduced by Martin Nielsen (2014). The short definition is: “all participants adjust their interpretation of a phenomenon, so that all participants have more or less the same interpretation.” (Where I take “phenomenon” to mean something like: an aspect of the culture being portrayed/experienced in the larp.)

    (click to open PDF version of this table) (click to open PDF version of this table)

    * Safety exercises aren’t always included in workshops; indeed they’re quite rare in some larping cultures. But I personally feel that there should always be at least a minimum safety brief.

    Details

    Spelling each of these out in more detail:

    • Introduction– the frame through which players enter the workshop and the game. Welcome them, check off names if appropriate, tell everyone what the game is that they’re about to play, tell them that now they are in the pre-game workshop.
    • Practicalities – those useful things players need to know so they can be comfortable in the space. Where are the bathrooms, where are the exits, can they eat and drink, how long will the workshop and the game last, will there be breaks… etc.
    • Structure and purpose – explain why this game is preceded by a workshop, and what will be achieved during it. You may want to go into detail about the workshop activities – more likely, you’ll just give a general picture. (Or you may want to keep the activities secret for now, so the players aren’t expecting them.)
    • Warmup – important to get players relaxed, disinhibited, and moving freely. There are lots of great warmup exercises, such as Penguins and flamingos, Human knot, Jump in jump out, Shake hands… Choose exercises that are appropriate for your number of players and for the space that you’re using.
    • Impro basics – simple exercises to reinforce (or to introduce, if your players are new to this) the basic improvisation tools of Yes, and…, Not blocking, and so on.
    • Physicality – this may be important if the game requires physical contact, but your players are unaccustomed to it in their larp tradition, or are strangers to each other. The exercises should familiarize them with each other’s touch, proximity and presence. This doesn’t need to be any more intense than it will be in the larp itself.
    • Trust – particularly useful in emotionally intense games. If you can help players become comfortable entrusting themselves to each other’s care, it’ll make opening up emotionally that much easier.
    • Out-of-game – this won’t always be required, particularly if you’re going straight from the workshop into the game. But if you need to explain practicalities of travel, food, sleeping etc relating to the game, now is the time to do it.
    • Expectations of play – you may prefer to let these emerge naturally, of course, or to let players infer them from the material. But if you’re expecting a particular style or mode of play – for example, if the game’s intended as a farcical satire in which nothing makes sense; or if players are to act with grand, exaggerated gestures to communicate their emotions; or you expect them to act like hardened criminals who behave as if their every move is under watch – tell them so, and explain that you will be showing them how to do it later in the workshop.
    • Skills – some games may require the players to use out-of-game skills that they do not (yet) themselves have. If dancing is an important part of the game, you may need to teach them how to dance appropriately: and so on.
    • Safety – go through the safety policy and practice of the game, and act out examples where that’ll be helpful. Cut, Brake, ‘The door is open’, Traffic lights, Lines and veils – whatever you’re using. You need to make sure that the players are familiar and comfortable with the safety techniques, and (ideally) that they won’t hesitate to use them – or to interpret other players’ using them – during the course of the game.
    • Rules and system – where present. For example, in a combat larp, there may be rules about how many blows will cause injury or death. Or if there’s non-WYSIWYG magic, players may need to be told how to interpret its commands. Explain and practise until they are familiar.
    • Techniques – this covers unnatural things that players may have to do during the game for some (non-meta) purpose. So, for example, suppose your game features a fantasy culture who traditionally greet each other by clasping each others’ forearms between their backs. You want the players to learn this manoeuvre and to practice it until it comes as easily to them as it does to the characters that they’re playing.
    • Meta-techniques – techniques that are ‘meta’, ie. that operate outside the game reality and allow players to communicate directly (rather than as their characters) in some way. Maybe you want players to be able to deliver an internal monologue of their character’s current thoughts: they will need to learn the meta-technique that triggers it, such as standing in a designated part of the room, or having their glass pinged by another player.
    • Mutual understanding of game world — very important if the setting is not a familiar one. If players have differing internal assumptions about how the world works or of facts about it, that can cause problems in the game. This element of calibration is best carried out by discussion, followed by improvised scenes using the established knowledge. The GMs should provide guidance and suggestions.
    • Mutual understanding of relationships – if characters are already designed, the players need to make sure that they and the people with whom they have relationships (of any kind) have a shared understanding of what those relationships are and how they work. This is best done by discussion, and again can be followed by improvised scenes acting out the relationship (for the more important ones).
    • Creating characters from players’ own ideas – in some games, the players will invent their characters wholly, within the workshop. The GMs will have to explain how to do this, and facilitate the process.
    • Around a GM-designed skeleton – in other games, players may have been given a skeleton character that they fill out themselves. If you have time, one nice way of doing this is with a ‘prelude’ – a one-on-one GMed scene in which the player is led through decisions and statements about their character that combine to flesh it out fully and satisfyingly.
    • Practical – if there’s any system or rules (or numbers of any kind) applicable to character creation, GMs need to explain them and help players apply them.
    • Role exploration and definition – if the character is to play a particular narrative role in the game (eg. captain of the ship, mysterious stranger, disruptive toddler, Prussian spy) then GMs may need to brief the player on how to fulfil those duties.
    • Building character relationships – allow the players to mutually establish their characters’ attitudes towards, and history with, each other – where this is appropriate for the game. GMs might shape this strongly or leave it to the players: different activities will be appropriate.
    • Rehearsing those relationships – for newly-established material and also where characters have been designed in advance (by GMs or players) and players haven’t previously had the chance to explore them. A combination of discussion and playing out interpersonal scenes is generally effective.
    • Background filling-in – it may be desirable to add richness to players’ understanding of each other’s characters by the public provision of detail. Hot seat is a straightforward activity that allows players to question one another.
    • Take-off – you may wish to help the players get ‘into character’ so they don’t have to leap straight into the game (although that can work too: see Flying start). This might perhaps be a formal exercise where they assume their characters, or a quiet meditative space for them to do so privately or as a group.

    Reference

    Nielsen, M (2014). ‘Culture Calibration in Pre-larp Workshops’. http://nordiclarp.org/2014/04/23/culture-calibration-in-pre-larp-workshops/

    Acknowledgements

    Thanks to everyone who’s provided helpful suggestions and comments: particularly Steve Dempsey, Martin Nielsen and Cat Tobin.

    This article was initially published in The Knudepunkt 2015 Companion Book which was edited by Charles Bo Nielsen & Claus Raasted, published by Rollespilsakademiet and released as part of documentation for the Knudepunkt 2015 conference.

    Cover photo: Workshop at Metamorfozes 2014 larp festival in Vilnius, Lithuania. Photo by Johannes Axner.

  • Nordic Style Larp in the UK

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    Nordic Style Larp in the UK

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    The UK has a large and thriving larp industry, going back to the early 1980s and with an estimated 100,000+ current active participants. But awareness of larp traditions in other countries, and in the Nordic scene in particular, has been minimal until very recently.

    In particular, the few months since Knutpunkt 2014 have seen a flurry of Nordic-related activity. Twelve people attended the conference from the UK (and a few from Ireland), and several threads of action have spun off subsequently.

    SarcophagusAdam James has organized a series of short larps in London. From the Norwegian Larps from the Factory book, he first ran at two-weekly intervals The Hirelings, Limbo, A Mothers Heart and Sarcophagus. Next was The Checkerboard Crew, a game Adam himself wrote together with Nina Runa Essendrop, on 22 June 2014, which I blogged about; and the series concluded with ‘Fallen Stars’, again from Larps from the Factory, on 13 July 2014.

    Cat Tobin (who is Irish but currently based in the UK) has set up a group called The Game Kitchen (Facebook group here) – whose purpose is to “talk about the design of Nordic larp, freeform games (UK and American) and story games, and then – using what we learn from each other, and from what other people have done before us – we’ll create some games. We’ll then share those games, and our conversations about the process, online so that others can learn from what we’re doing.” So far The Game Kitchen has had three monthly meetings, in London: and Cat ran a Larp from the Factory, ‘What Happened in Lanzarote’, which I blogged about.

    (Cat was also responsible for writing and running The Outsiders, together with me, which I believe was the first Nordic-style larp to have been written and run in the UK.)

    Mothers HeartRichard Williams is prominent in both the above projects, and has also established a Meetup group to help coordinate activity. His hope is that this Meetup will be the one-stop shop to hear about everything Nordic-related that happens in the UK and in Ireland.

    Both Cat and Richard appeared on the story-gaming podcast The Twitching Curtain to talk about their experiences at Knutpunkt 2014, and the impact they expect it to have on the UK larp scene.

    Kevin Burns has started a blog about Nordic larp and related topics – its purpose is “to explore Nordic larp. Partly, I’m doing that from the point of view of a psychotherapist who wonders about how it could be used in therapy, and partly because I find the whole thing tremendously exciting and I want to PLAY.”

    LimboFinally, an excursion to neighbour country Ireland – where Carla Burns is organizing Nina Runa Essendrop’s and Simon Steen Hansen’s White Death (Hvid død) on 8–9 August 2014 in Limerick, and has already run the Larp from the Factory ‘Before and After Silence’.

    As you can see, Larps from the Factory has been a really powerful tool in helping us get Nordic larp off the ground here. We are very grateful to the authors, editors and publisher!

    (There’s bound to be other stuff that I don’t know about, too. Please get in touch and let me know what you’ve been up to and what you’ve got planned!)

    My own hope is that we will over time develop a strand of Nordic-style larps with a UK flavour. For that reason I’m particularly interested in what The Game Kitchen is doing, reaching out to other UK gaming styles and sharing with and learning from them: and in Adam James’s work with creative people from outside gaming. It’s a powerful brew!

    Photos provided by Adam James.

    This article has been edited to remove a reference to a known abuser.