Nordic Larp

Author: Suus Mutsaers

  • Let Me Look into Your Future

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    Let Me Look into Your Future

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    A few years ago, I was cast as a character linked to the paranormal in a Victorian game played over several instalments. The organisers allowed us to choose our own preferred play-style and specialisation. I quickly decided that I wanted to play a character who led seances. I was interested in exploring themes of real mysticism against fake seances. I wanted to use a very visual way of running the scenes and decided that I wanted to do something using fortune-telling cards or tarot.

    Playing the expert

    My character was supposed to be an expert on the subject of card readings. She did both real readings with the intention to actually help the subject and fake ones, which were merely used to tell the rich customers what they wanted to hear. Initially, I thought to bring a regular tarot set to the game, but I quickly stepped away from that idea for two reasons;

    1. I was not an expert on tarot. It would have been an option to study regular tarot cards very thoroughly, but I knew that there would likely be more knowledgeable players around.
    2. Many people object to the use of real tarot sets at games. After all, for many people tarot actually serves a purpose akin to religion so it is not necessarily right to bring a real tarot set to a game. I wanted to respect this.

    For a while, I debated whether a store-bought card set would work fine for my purposes, but I eventually decided against taking something that was readily available.

    Building my own cards

    That brought an entirely new challenge: building my own set of cards and making them suitable for the game. I’ve researched existing fortune-telling methods and came to realise that the perfect number for cards was somewhere between 30 and 50. It would mean there would be enough variation to not draw the same card every single time I’m but it would also mean that I didn’t have to learn the meaning of too many cards and I could make it look like my character actually knew exactly what she was doing.

    To figure out what to put on the cards, I contacted the organizers to learn more about this Victorian setting with a hint of Steampunk. I wanted to know how present those elements would be and if they would be represented in cards that were made to fit the world. I tried to find items that were very ambiguous meaning wise, so they could be explained in many different ways.

    I ended up photographing 40 different items that were appropriate for the setting, like an hourglass, a Venetian mask and a pearl necklace. I then edited the photographs to look like paintings and had the set of cards professionally printed.

    Interpreting

    I love making small-talk before a card reading, especially if I don’t know the other character. It gives you some hints on what to play with, much like actual fortune-tellers do. While drawing cards onto the table I’d attempt to watch the other person’s body language. It’s often hard for the person across from you to suppress their initial reaction to a card. Sometimes characters (and even players) would clearly display surprise, shock or excitement when you drew a card that they had strong feelings about.

    Once I laid out the cards I would always ask the other character for a quick interpretation. I’d ask them whether any cards stood out to them or whether they believed the spread was ‘’right’’ for them. They’d often start talking about topics relevant to them which then gave me very easy hooks to progress the conversation with.

    After that, I’d spend some time interpreting the card spread as a whole. Sometimes it would be very easy to make up a story on the go and sometimes I needed to check my booklet which contained example card spreads and interpretations of each card. I created the booklet primarily for my own peace of mind, so I could have consistent interpretations and always had something ready to go even when I was low on inspiration.

    I’d often intentionally fall quiet during interpretation, which meant that the other player would likely start to talk a little bit more about what they were seeing. I’d weave those verbal and physical cues into my story as well. As the game progressed card readings became easier to do, I knew quite a lot of the characters and had an idea of what made them tick, which made it easier to actually give them a relevant story.

    The magic of the game

    The cards ended up being way more popular during the game than I had initially expected. I thought that at most I would be doing one or two readings each time but people actually really loved the idea and requested seances and card readings constantly. This was partially due to the fact that the paranormal themes of the game were much more physically present in play than most players initially expected. Many characters struggled with feelings of uncertainty and anxiety about the “unknown factors” and were desperately seeking some sort of comfort and direction.

    As the story of the game unfolded I discovered that the items were much more suitable than I could have imagined. Some items on the cards turned out to be present in the game in their most literal sense. In one case there was a tiny boat that would lead us to an island in the middle of the lake – which we were forbidden from accessing. While determining our strategy for the upcoming days we kept drawing the card with the sailing boat and eventually, the characters decided they could no longer ignore their destiny and to just break the rules, so they did row to the island anyway.

    Even though it was, especially in such circumstances, sometimes hard to resist, I never forced a hand of cards or prepared a card layout. Part of the fun of playing with the cards was allowing myself to be surprised and challenging myself to spin an appropriate interpretation.

    There was even one reading where a player went to check with the organizers afterward. They were so surprised by the reading they were wondering whether I had read their (secret) background.

    Staying flexible

    One of the best parts about having my own cards meant that nobody knew the rules that applied to them. I decided early on to allow myself total creative freedom and whenever I had a fun idea I would just execute it.

    Throughout the game I’d whip out the cards for advice, like drawing a single card to determine whether something was a good idea or not. On one occasion a new character who seemed to have some shady business going on appeared. As we tried to figure out whether or not to trust them we drew a card. The card indicated they had noble intentions so we as characters decided to trust them completely.

    Or I’d ask people to just draw me a card and then analyze their personality based on that card. Characters who were close to my character became more familiar with the cards and their meaning and I would sometimes ask them to interpret for me or pick cards for specific situations. This led to a lot of play as I could constantly adjust the flow of the readings and adjust their length and severity to what I thought the game or the player needed or wanted on an out-game level.

    That freedom also became visible in the option to re-interpret cards on the fly. In one case my character decided that a card with a pearl necklace stood for monetary riches as the character was a rich factory owner even though that was originally not a noted interpretation. My character lied about the meaning of the card as she believed that it was what the man whom she feared greatly wanted to hear. It led to a much more consistent story as a whole and a character (and player) who was convinced that I had stacked the deck to get a specific outcome.

    Looking back on the game now and the role the cards played in shaping the journey of not only my own character but also that of those around her, I dare to say there was definitely “magic” in play. Some of it was created by us as the players as we read the stories in the cards but a large part of it was more serendipitous. We wouldn’t have the stories we have now about crazy adventures in boats fueled by a random card draw if we hadn’t opened ourselves up to that.

    Cover photo: Image by cottonbro on Pexels. Photo has been cropped.

    This article is published in the companion book Book of Magic: Vibrant Fragments of Larp Practices and is published here with permission. Please cite this text as:

    Mutsaers, Susan, and René van den Berg. “Let Me Look into Your Future.” In Book of Magic: Vibrant Fragments of Larp Practices, edited by Kari Kvittingen Djukastein, Marcus Irgens, Nadja Lipsyc, and Lars Kristian Løveng Sunde. Oslo, Norway: Knutepunkt, 2021.

  • Designing the Volunteer Experience

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    Designing the Volunteer Experience

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

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

    Volunteering as a learning experience

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

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

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

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

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

    Volunteering as a payment for the player experience

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

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

    Off course a combination of these two is also possible.

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

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

    Volunteering as an alternative to the player experience

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

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

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

    Volunteering as free labor

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

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

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

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

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

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

    Volunteering for fun

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

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

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

    References

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

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

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

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

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