Category: Knutpunkt 2018

Articles written as companion pieces to the larp conference Knutpunkt 2018.

The following tracks are represented in the articles:

Hearts – Designer and organiser reflections
Diamonds – Tools, tips and tricks for larp designers and organizers
Clubs – Tools, tips and tricks for players
Spades – Larp analysis, discussion and reflection
Joker – Discussions and reflections on the larp community

  • Emergence, Iteration, and Reincorporation in Larp

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    Emergence, Iteration, and Reincorporation in Larp

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    Embodied fiction has an annoying habit of taking on a life of its own. Real events in larp surge into fictional constructs like waves on a beach, altering its surface. Why then do we need to separate fiction and reality in our larp theory? Larp has been re-framed a number of times since its proper inception in the early 1980s: as a medium of pure escapism, as an artform, as a powerful means of immersion, as a form of interaction design. My goal here is to re-frame it yet again, this time in terms of a theory that combines narrative and play, in-game and out-of-game experiences.

    Despite decades of talking about tensions between larp narratives and larp experiences, we remain dissatisfied with our theory on the topic. Larpwright Juhana Pettersson (2017) recently posed the question: “What do we mean when we talk about story in larp? … [The] concepts we have for talking about the experience of story are weak” (83-84). The aesthetic framework for us to address what designers and players witness as the “experience of story” requires further articulation, which this essay provides. Specifically, it dwells on three ritualistic concepts: emergence, iteration, and reincorporation.((Almost immediately, one is prompted to think of studies of religious rituals. Indeed, there is a productive framework to be found in larps as rites of passage. Victor Turner, referring to Arnold van Gennep, talks of rites of passage as being divided into “separation, transition, and incorporation.” There is not space here to delve into ritual theory, but this author confesses that, indeed, a pregnant relation between narrative, ritual, and larp does indeed persist.))

    Theorists and practitioners of role-play often use the verb “emerge” to describe what happens to both narrative and player activity during a game: that the larp design elements and player embodiment enable the emergence (McGonigal 2003) of a thing both not wholly unexpected and nevertheless intensely engaging. Yet this basic synthesis itself remains underexamined. We use the verb “emerge” and the adjective “emergent” as though these were natural processes, rather than carefully cultivated within the design. Furthermore, the spontaneity of emergence in larp remains in dialogue with its counterpart: iteration, or the rhythmic repetition and slight variation of the same element throughout a game. Iteration permits the emergent content to interact productively with the intended themes of the larp. Finally, one can attribute much of the emotional impact of a given game or campaign when an emergent or iterative element from a previous part of a larp returns in a transformed state at a much later point, what I call reincorporation. Together, these three processes form a basis on which we might aesthetically appraise a larp: How did its design facilitate the production of new, unpredictable, thematically appropriate content? What story and/or embodied elements built upon each other to reinforce the themes or content of the larp? How was a component of the larp reincorporated in a narratively satisfying way?

    Some Examples

    Rather than get too esoteric too quickly, I would like to invoke a few play examples for reference. The first example involves a pervasive game of Steve Jackson’s Killer (1982), known to some as Assassin, which I ran in early 2000 in Iowa City, IA, USA for a group of 12 high-school students. Each player had the thinnest of characters: a terrorist cell and an Interpol squad trying to stop them. Every day, the terrorist cell had to drop off fake bomb components at a location, and every day, Interpol agents would follow me, as the gamemaster, to the spot for the handoff. The game correspondingly led to actual car chases, trespassing, and several close-calls with the law and authorities, although none of the above were intended. The second example involves a 2001 Vampire: The Masquerade larp of an auction among vampires of a living statue. Halfway through the runtime, a player got bored and ran off with the primary artifact in question. Early accusations regarding who stole it faded into player consternation about what had happened to the bored player and, indeed, why they had chosen to ruin many larpers’ evening, concluding in the scapegoating of the bored player’s character for most of the ills troubling that particular vampire community. The third example involves the 7th run of magic school larp New World Magischola (2017) in Williamsburg, VA, USA. One of the wizard professors unleashed, as a plot device, so-called “murder furniture,” including a “murder chair” that attacked people. NPCs quickly took a liking to the idea, and the plotline got so far as a player dressed up as a “murder lamp” being a character’s date to the closing ball. The fourth example involves the first 2015 run of international Nordic larp Inside Hamlet, in which my character Colonel Perdue, leader of the Stormguard –– the castle peacock regiment –– was killed by the head of the Companions –– the castle courtesans –– for choosing to stay and guard the castle but not King Claudius… and not run away with her. She in turn was killed by a fellow Stormguard member as revenge for being slighted earlier, which my character had misunderstood in his final gasping moments as showing loyalty to him. Each example above demonstrates relatively simple instances of player and character outcomes being affected by not entirely predicted paths of play. The rest of this essay is devoted to finding a language to apprehend those outcomes.

    Emergence

    Larp design incentivizes human behavior to produce some level of story out of the inherent messiness of human interaction and information distribution. To many, it looks like chaos. As Andrew Rilstone (1994) reminds us, however, “from this chaos, a more or less well realized story emerges” (11). The verb “to emerge” means to move out or away from something else. In the case of larp, embodied play of characters in a fictional reality produces a constantly shifting field of dynamics that move the game in countless directions away from not only the initial game state, but also within and beyond the scope of designer intention. In fact, the main way we can appraise emergent play is by seeing if it is both unexpected yet fits the design and themes of the game as implicitly agreed upon between the players and the organizers, but does not escalate into dangerous physical, mental, or legal territory.  My taxonomy poses the following four questions of each distinct moment of embodied larp play as the game unfolds:

    • Does the emergent play directly coincide with the themes, tropes, and even design intentions of the larp while staying within bounds of player safety?Cultivated emergence is emergent play delivering what is promised and expected within the game’s design.
    • Does the emergent play generally fit the themes & tropes of the larp but doesn’t stem directly from the design? Uncultivated emergence is unexpected by all parties involved, frequently including the players themselves. It prioritizes the impact of free play over the design itself, while still holding to the agreed-upon themes of the game.
    • Does the emergent play distract and diverge from the themes & tropes of the larp while not endangering anyone?Divergent emergence divorces itself from much of the intended content of the larp, often as the result of overt player action.
    • Does the emergent play, regardless of fitting the design and themes, actively escalate potential real-life dangers to the players? Unleashed emergence is the classic depiction of play getting “out of hand,” from the Hollywood-spun delusions of Mazes and Monsters (1982) to the in-game bullying that escalates to actual bullying.

    Players constantly negotiate the results of their own play with respect to the design of the larp. The fictional alibi of terrorists and Interpol in the Killer example led to parents real-life scolding their children and said children hiding from the police. This is unleashed emergence: incentives of the game escalated its stakes beyond designer intention and player safety to the detriment of all involved.((Although not necessarily outside the established themes of the larp. Indeed, real stakes heighten the sense of risk already inherent in the fictional scenario. What is endangered, of course, are players’ physical bodies and records with the law.)) The Vampire: the Masquerade example is a banal instance of divergent emergence: when an event produces story and player effects that do not align with any of the themes or intentions of the larp, for good or for ill. The NWM example could be construed as uncultivated emergence: murder furniture taking on a life and plotline of their own fits within the valence of Harry Potter-esque fictional tropes and provides play opportunities and adversity for larpers present.  Inside Hamlet delivers what one might even call cultivated emergence: the larp was specifically designed for characters to kill each other in the final Act –– and not before –– thanks to tragic misunderstandings and doomed choices made during play beforehand.

    This emergence model is agnostic as to whether or not events are diegetic or non-diegetic –– there are only events –– or whether one is talking about an individual character’s story or the whole story of the larp, as everything is presumed to feed into everything else. A larp’s events do not so much demarcate diachronic passage through time (as with coming-of-age rituals, weddings, funerals, etc.) than create spaces of synchronic play that offer commentary on the game and players. Within a delineated 10-day period, as in Killer, players engage themselves in an elaborate cat-and-mouse game of murder, and then their in-game and out-of-game actions are consigned to a murky, inaccessible past. My character’s epic Act III death in Inside Hamlet re-framed my player memory of a lackluster Act I to be actually prefiguring later player-character experiences. Events in a larp fit into complex systems–– systems that are “unpredictable but non-random” (Montola 2004) –– that then produce fuzzy narrative, physical, play, and social outcomes. But whereas Montola (2004) frames role-playing as oscillating between order and chaos –– integrative and dissipative –– I see emergence as a pragmatic aesthetic phenomenon concerned with designer vision and the affordances and safety of a specific larp design. Events emerge from a larp during runtime, and players steer (Montola, Stenros, and Saitta 2015) their play in their encounters with a mixture of diegetic and non-diegetic material, between interpretations of the design rules and personal whims.

    Iteration

    The design of a larp does not stop at emergence, however. Simply instigating and being surprised by both diegetic and non-diegetic events does not lend structure to a larp. That’s what iteration does. The repetition of a process or utterance, iteration takes emergent diegetic and non-diegetic facts and continues to bring them back in slightly different forms, so that player-characters can begin to narratively structure and even analyze emergent content. Players need reliable touchpoints and benchmarks to make sense of their play, with rituals and their variation critical to the flow and processing of information (Harviainen and Lieberoth 2011). Iteration from both the design and the players provides these touchpoints. Here, Eleanor Saitta’s (2012) temporality models of expansion, compression, and periodicity are useful: the rhythms of the larp design involve accentuating certain moments, shortening time in others, and “the manipulation of time that evokes the rhythms of everyday life, allows them to build, and then highlights how those rhythms change or break down.” (126) Iteration means such temporal repetition and manipulation become fine-tuned by both the designers and players over the course of the larp, with the latter often seeking the sort of variance to produce suspense and plot turning points, the former often seeking repetition as a maintenance of the larp’s core rhythms. Killer featured varied bomb-drop points, but the ritual of the drop-off remained refreshingly similar: a public space, an ambiguous package, a quietly watching terrorist player. Variations on the space and whether or not an Interpol player had also been following the drop-off became the main points of iteration on the emergent narrative. Sometimes the drop-off was quiet, introspective, and on a sunny day; other times leading to an intense gun battle at the drop of a hat. NWM iterated on the murder furniture, introducing it as an element and antagonist again and again until it became a central node in many players’ plotline. In each case, the reintroduction of the element or ritualization of a routine allowed player perspectives to form and in-game character strategies to coalesce.

    At its aesthetic core, iteration must maintain a delicate balance. Elements such as scenes, tropes, or characters can be repeated with variation, but too many times will instantiate the elements as an in-joke, rather than a weighty narrative component. Iterate too few times, however, and the elements in question do appear to be merely at the whim and caprice of the players and scenario, not the core experience of the larp. Iterating with little variation produces the effect of routine and ritual, whereas iterating with much variation produces outcomes of exception and arbitrariness. Good iteration allows designers and players alike to play with the themes of the larp without letting such thematic exploration deviate from a core, planned experience. Emergence with well-thought-out iterative mechanisms––act structures, daily routines, regular meta-scenes, recurring character motifs––gives the player space to chart their path through the story as it unfolds. But even themes and variation won’t clinch a narrative for a player without a sense of resolution.

    Reincorporation

    Reincorporation, or making something part of something else once more, remains one of the simplest and least appreciated aspects of role-playing aesthetics. As I’ve recently argued with respect to the literary-inspired PC game Planescape: Torment (Torner, forthcoming), reincorporation brings prior player actions and diegetic facts into meaningful dialogue with such actions and facts much later in the game’s runtime. Players feel as though they have had an impact on the narrative; that their decisions mattered. To reincorporate material from earlier in a larp into a later section is to create an arc that bridges over the chaos of emergence. Actual play could have been as messy and repetitive as one might expect, but the re-appearance of a disappeared letter, the familiar line from the beginning of the game delivered in different context, the fulfillment of a prophecy –– these tropes help structure and fulfill certain “promises” delivered earlier in the larp. Keith Johnstone’s Impro: Improvisation and the Theatre (1979) remains a core reference regarding reincorporation:((See: http://story-games.com/forums/discussion/6122/games-that-actively-support-reincorporation)) improv actors regularly find common ground with role-players in creating meaning amidst the chaos of human collaborative creativity by taking statements or details from earlier and citing or re-casting them at the end.

    Larp reincorporation can appear in a plethora of forms, In Killer, reincorporation happened when two players of the game knew of each other’s secret identity from the very beginning of the game, but chose not to reveal what they knew until they were the very last two characters alive. A fact known to the players and game masters alike was then redeemed by a satisfying fake public gun battle. Vampire: the Masquerade could provide no satisfying reincorporation: there was to be an auction, and then emergent events decreed that there was none. We struggled to give the experience meaning as a result. NWM saw the murder lamp as a date to the school dance, a redemption of the complexity of the murder furniture, thought to be merely lethal mundane objects. Inside Hamlet took the slighted soldier’s anger from Act 2 and channeled it into a murder that would have ripple effects during the final hours of Elsinore. Each larp mentioned had to engage with the simple logic of whether or not objects and events from early on would then appear in the final stages of the larp.

    Conclusion

    The model proposed above allows participants and designers to analyze their narrative progression in a larp, whilst also being able to pass aesthetic judgments on the overall experience. Emergence tracks against the flexibility of any given larp design, iteration and the rhythms thereof pin down emergent properties through routinizing and varying them, and reincorporation parses the stories told by reintroducing the familiar into a dramatically different game state of a given larp. Without having to distinguish reality from fiction, play from boredom, in-character events from out-of-character events, this model sees larp as a complex information system, “code that runs on humans” (Steele, 2016), and seeks nevertheless to give players the tools to make aesthetic sense of their experiences. The different forms of emergence allow game masters to calibrate the experience for the players, and players are aware that repeating and then sometimes varying an activity allows them to give form to the chaos that is larp. In order for us to expand upon and improve larp as a medium, it is high time that we use our aesthetic judgment to evaluate as many relevant characteristics of what we consider to be a larp’s “story,” and the tools offered here are but one way to spark that judgment. Other models exist and new ones are welcome to emerge, but the story architecture of a given larp event lends itself to so many diverse readings that there is merit in pinning down the basics for posterity.

    References

    Harviainen, J. Tuomas and Andreas Lieberoth (2011). “Similarity of Social Information Processes in Games and Rituals: Magical Interfaces.” Simulation & Gaming 43 (4): 528–49. doi:10.1177/1046878110392703.

    Johnstone, Keith (1979). Impro: Improvisation and the Theatre. New York: Faber & Faber.

    McGonigal, Jane (2003). “‘This Is Not a Game’: Immersive Aesthetics and Collective Play.” Melbourne DAC. https://janemcgonigal.files.wordpress.com/2010/12/mcgonigal-jane-this-is-not-a-game.pdf

    Montola, Markus (2004). “Chaotic Role-Playing. Applying the Chaos Model of Organisations for Role-Playing.” Beyond Role and Play, edited by Markus Montola and Jaakko Stenros. Helsinki: Solmukohta: 157-173.

    Montola, Markus, Jaakko Stenros, and Eleanor Saitta (2015). “The Art of Steering: Bringing the Player and the Character Back Together.” The Knudepunkt 2015 Companion Book, edited by Charles Bo Nielsen and Claus Raasted. Copenhagen, Denmark: Rollespilsakademiet: 106-117.

    Pettersson, Juhana (2017). “Hamlet, Vampires, and the Italian Alps.” Once Upon a Nordic Larp… 20 Years of Playing Stories, edited by Martine Svanevik, et al. Oslo, Norway: Knutepunkt: 79-84.

    Rilstone, Andrew (1994). “Role-Playing Games: An Oveview.” Inter*Action 1: 10-15.

    Saitta, Eleanor (2012). “It’s About Time.” States of Play: Nordic Larp Around the World, edited by Juhana Pettersson. Helsinki: Solmukohta: 124-128.

    Steele, Samara Hayley (2016). “The Reality Code: Interpreting Aggregate Larp Rules as Code that Runs on Humans.” International Journal of Role-Playing 7: 30-35.

    Torner, Evan (forthcoming). “Planescape: Torment Immersion.” How to Play Video Games, edited by Nina Huntemann and Matthew Payne. New York: New York University Press.

    Turner, Victor (1982). From Ritual to Theatre: The Human Seriousness of Play. New York: PAJ Publications.


    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.

  • The Operations Behind the Road Trip Experience

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    The Operations Behind the Road Trip Experience

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    In 2017 I was the business operations lead for the Roadtrip “rock band” larp that traveled across the United States, and never before have I dealt with such unique operations related complications in my life. The Roadtrip Experience was a joint project between the Imagine Nation Collective and Dziobak Larp Studios. In this pervasive larp / freeform experience the participants travelled from Chicago, Illinois to Santa Monica, California down the historic highway Route 66. The experience lasted for 7 days and six nights total.  The participants took on the personas of a touring rock band and its entourage for the duration of the trip. The story of the event included four band members, one relative, a drug dealer, spiritual guide, life coach, a conservative Christian who got on the wrong van, a video team, and a team of others made up a believable if far-fetched group. The larp also made use of “non-agency characters” and heavy steering woven into the experience.

    Genesis

    The project originally was genesis as a 1960’s Woodstock Tour larp concept created by Mikolaj Wicher, Jeff Moxley and myself. As the idea developed the group of three discussed the initial concept with Claus Raasted and the initial idea began to morph and change into a modern homage to rock and roll and Americana. Before the teams parted ways in Poland, the initial concept for the event was solidified and we each returned to our respective teams to start design work and schedule a number of international meetings.  The Imagine Nation Collective began the design and development while the Dziobak larp studios team began working on character development and media.

    With the event concept solidified and the teams dedicated to working on the project, each individual leg of the development design crews went to work. Jeff Moxley, as both the branch operations manager for Dystopia Rising larp Network as well as the front man on a number of bands and independent music projects began to work with Jessie Elsinger, an independent band booking manager from Connecticut, to begin virtually scouting potential tour date locations for the Roadtrip experience.

    Within a month, the web page was created for the event, initial videos were developed, content copy was produced, and documentation was created for the experience. We followed best practices of transparency, open communication, and open engagement regarding this experience due to the fact that we were unaware of anyone who had created anything of this scope, scale, or nature before. Fortunately for us we found that the public was just as excited for this experience as we were, and within a few weeks we were funded.

    Creating the Band and its Tour

    As funding came in the initial design and research that we had done needed to be translated to bookings, reservations, and confirmations. This leg of the development brought up the first unique situation we had to address regarding our Roadtrip operations planning: getting real clubs and bars to agree to let our fictional band of larpers perform at their venues. While our European counterparts encouraged that we should just “say it’s a larp” we here in the United States had a long standing negative history dealing with a culture of outsider distrust for the hobby. Booking sites as a larp would require us explaining the hobby to each venue booker, would increase the perception of chance they were taking (which is saying a lot about perspective in the US since the standard reliability that clubs deal with is musicians), and would potentially endanger the experience. Without wanting to explain the nuances of the situation each time we talked to a potential venue the decision was made to invest heavily into our social media presence for our fictional band, The Runaway Sound. While it was true that the individuals brought together for the “Runaway Sound” were for all extensive purposes a newly formed band, our existing social media connections and trans-media experience was able to generate hundreds of followers and Facebook “likes” for the “Runaway Sound” on social media before their first public performance. People saw that we liked a new band, saw the participants in the band, and responded by feeding the Facebook page with a startup positive social media presence. As the participants were working with the event staff to develop the experience, the media and creations team were farming music and event videos from music projects that some of the participants had been a part of in the past and creating an online narrative. The same way that new bands often refer to prior music projects to build a following for new projects, we were generating interest in a newly formed band by utilizing our existing social media presence and fan base. By the time that we were looking to book events The Runaway Sound had over 300 followers, a few video clips, audio samples, and even mockup album covers. In truth, the line between “a fake band” and “a real band” became very blurred as the participants came together in person and online to practice their intended set list.

    With a few months left until the event our combined marketing and media teams continued to work the promotion of the event to gain a few more participants for the Roadtrip experience. The majority of the “fictional” band was organized by Jeff Moxley to choose their setlist and practice before the event. When possible, members of the Runaway Sound would get together in person to have practice sessions in person. When physical face to face interactions were not possible due to distance and time, participants would do the best they could to practice together online or by themselves. As the band practiced, the teams assisted the participants in choosing the narrative that they wanted for their experience and build new “stage personas” that would take the place of traditional larp characters. As the shared narrative was finalized Jamie Snetsinger took care of last minute character development needs for the participants and communication of potential issues and solutions came from each branch of the event management team.

    With us having our story design, route, and gigs booked for the event experience the next step was to confirm the booking of the hotels for the event, to haggle prices for group rates, and to book the transportation that would carry us for the entire duration of the experience. Our videographer team was being flown into the area to not only record the event for future prosperity, but also to participate in the experience as the bands videographer and documentation team. The Runaway Sound had a video and audio team to record the live events, to document the experience on the road, and to eventually shoot a music video. In the last days, our event staff settled out (with a few participants falling in and a few falling out as needed), and surprisingly the organization of the event was relatively smooth.

    Behind the Curtain

    What made the event operations, the organization, and the development of this experience work out the way it did was all of the moving parts unseen by the participants. To the event participants it appeared that less than half a dozen individuals worked together to create (and manage this experience). However, for every person that was an up-front and present persona that directly engaged the participants there were one or two people supporting the experience that never made it to the tour busses. Our character writer Jamie was on call to assist if there were any narrative changes that needed to be handled on the fly. Our booking assistant Jesse was on call in the instance that venue had a complication or if we needed to adjust our booking schedule. The entire Imagine Nation team that wasn’t actively at the event were on call to assist with any issues that might have happened on the road. Seeing how few “faces” organized this event, others might be tempted to organize a similar event with a limited staff. However, given the potential for this experience to “go off the rails” even our veteran team (with decades of experience) needed nine in-house team members working on the project, three outside consultants (band bookers, media moguls, and professionals from the music industry), and roughly a few hundred manpower hours put into the project.

    As the event operations organizer, I was able to have the individual pieces of this experienced handled by professionals in each respective field, with very little concern that the individual components of the development would fall through. Zero volunteers were used for this experience, and the entire event from initial concept to completion was organized, written, and implemented by professionals in the field. Each staff member for this event has had over a decade of experience professionally running events, events media, and publication development. The only hurdle was that this project included two separate companies with different procedures, expectations, and practices coming together to work for the first time. Seeing this as the largest potential hurdle, the majority of my job involved organizing the individual team members to be able to work well together, to design functional budgets for each branch of operation to prevent overspending, to review and manage booking and rental contracts for the event, licensing music rights for our commercials, and to keep our in-house expectations high but realistic. While the ticket price for a Roadtrip experience was higher than the average US weekend long larp, the operations cost of the experience was also much higher than most living game experiences. With the costs of multiple van rentals, six nights of hotels, food, and material costs we felt the need to provide a life altering experience unlike any other larp experience in the world without implying more than we were fundamentally able to afford to provide. Expectations were already high for this experience event, in part due to the teams that were working on the experience together and the unique nature of the narrative, so we needed to be sure that what we promised the participants was as accurate as possible to what we provided.

    Lessons Learned

    There were a number of opportunities for improvement that we saw from on the road that we will take advantage of for future runs of the Roadtrip experience. There were also a number of small mistakes that we made that can easily be addressed for future runs of the experience as well to make the experience better for the participants and the operational teams.

    The first oversight for the project was the scope of how many live events a new band could play on a week-long tour. Our event designer and booking team treated the experience as you would treat a real traveling band and booked five performances over a seven-night stretch. While this schedule is doable for most road-grizzled veterans of the music industry, we did not completely consider the fact that the participants would come with more of a “I’m on vacation” mindset than a “I’m looking to make it big right now” mentality. For many of us who were organizing the event, we commonly spend months at a time on the road working conventions and events without stopping. It is not uncommon for us to be doing development work on two new projects while on the road overseeing the operation of a project that is running live. Our perspective of what is “pushing it” on the road was much different than what our participants had as their desired effort level. With the difference in purpose from the participants we ended up changing our gig schedule from five booked shows to three performances. This allowed much more time for the travel experience of the event, and allowed much more time for side adventures.

    The second mistake in event planning was an oversight in budgeting that will be easily addressed for future events. Our budget for the event included lodging and food for all of the participants. While it seems like a no brainer that you need to include costs for the staff food and lodging as well, with our history of running one location events where we do not manage meals for the participants, I failed to factor in the cost of hotels and food for the staff. With three operations team members and two videographers wracking up as many expenses as our participants, we needed to expand our budget to include covering the expenses for ourselves. In hindsight, an obvious oversight and one that is easily corrected in the future.

    One of the biggest successes of the event blossomed from something we feared might be an issue. In not planning each detail of each day during the experience, and purposely allowing for more time for in the field improvisation we were able to change plans on the fly as needed. During this experience, we originally planned on doing five booked shows, to have the band travel and stay true to the rock star experience, and to create a completely immersed living experience for our participants. We were very successful in doing this, but where we had some degree of limited forethought is in the following truth: Rock stars and larpers often both abhor schedules and keeping to itineraries.

    This ended up being adjusted while the larp was ongoing, and became one of the strong points of the experience. Changing the flow of the event and the bookings based on the overall desire and direction of the participants lead to some amazing (unplanned) adventures. The participants got to shoot a rock video at the Cadillac Ranch. The entire team spent part of a day partying in Uranus, Missouri (which was exactly as kitschy as it should have been) filming a music video and shooting guns. I planned a side trip to Meow Wolf in Santa Fe, New Mexico which turned out to be exactly as close to a religious experience as I had hoped. In the day leading up to the larp, our film crew came to us with a request to detour to Las Vegas so they could be married by Elvis which our participants in turn all but demanded happen. This became an adjustment we were thrilled to make to both make our participants happy, and to be a part of an amazing life experience for two great people.  This went so far that we cancelled two of our planned gigs, literally took a right turn in Albuquerque New Mexico, and ending up in Vegas where they were married by an Elvis impersonator at the Little White Chapel. For real.

    As we often joke, no larp plan survives first contact with the players. The ability and willingness to adapt made the experience more potent than we could have hoped for. Traveling with a large group of larpers for hundreds of miles is going to lead to dozens of unplanned side adventures, so you should plan the extra time to allow these things to happen. Events will cost more than you anticipate, in ways you cannot expect, and you must set aside a larger budget than you anticipate you will need.

    Was it a Larp, or a Tour?

    In closing there was a unique consideration that came from the Roadtrip larp that borders more on philosophical debate than operational design. Was Roadtrip a larp, or was it a tour? In the experience design we developed personas for the participants to embody, but the most earnest and rawest experiences from the road came when the real person completely bled into the persona they were portraying. The “fictional band” actually performed on stage for audiences, shot a music video, and really traveled down route 66 on tour. We had a professional media team, were interviewed by bloggers and radio personalities, and actually lived the life on the road. All of the issues that we handled as larp experience were issues that are commonplace in the music industry. Getting instruments, lodging, food, gigs, and hotels for the band. Working with music companies to get rights to use songs, dealing with complications at live venues, and dealing with inter-band drama (be it fabricated for the purposes of story or naturally occurring from the road) are all details that a band manager deals with for real bands. With all of the organization, development, and design work that went into creating the larp experience to be as realistic as possible we had to stop and ask “when did it just become reality?”

    The philosophical question of “when does it stop being pretend” provides us with the strongest development tool for the creation of events. If as designers we want to create experiences that are realistic, engaging, and powerful as event organizers we need to approach the experience from the same direction that real world event organizers would approach it. When we approach our Roadtrip larp design, we need to approach the development of the experience as close as we could to the same way that a real-world band manager would. In realistic development and design we should take advantage of the years of knowledge, experience, and trial and error experiences for event developers that came before us. This resource of experience and knowledge relating to people who work in the music industry relating to booking and band management is far more extensive than what exists in larp development archives, and as a business event manager, provides infinitely more insight in regards to successful event management. While there were hurdles that we needed to overcome due to the living experience nature of the Roadtrip larp, the vast majority of the potential difficulties we could have run into on the road were preemptively avoided by researching and following in the steps of professional tour managers. While larp documentation may help you manage the bleed, transparency, and expectations of participants we found that learning tour management help us much more when wrangling tour participants who decided to run naked through a cut corn field, or dealing with club owners pulling a bait and switch once we arrived at the venue.


    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.


    Cover photo: The opening of the first gig in St Louis, Missouri, at an open mic night. Photo by Nadina Dobrowska, in-game.

  • Let’s Play with Fire! Using Risk and its Power for Personal Transformation

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    Let’s Play with Fire! Using Risk and its Power for Personal Transformation

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    Immersive experience designers have been inspired by Ida Benedetto’s 2017 design reference work Patterns of Transformation (Benedetto 2017). The multi-part essay is the result of Benedetto’s personal involvement creating transgressive events such as The Night Heron (Sextant Works, 2013) coupled with her research on sex parties, wilderness survival treks, and unconventional funerals. She discovered similarities within all of these endeavors, and suggests these patterns catalyze personal transformation. She states in her introduction:

    In previous eras, social gatherings and ritual experiences were the domain of religious institutions, cultural organizations, or the state. Now, they increasingly fall within the realm of design as it expands to address challenges of human emotion and connection. Experience design offers a possible solution to our very human craving for connection and meaning in the face of increased isolation and diminishing social cooperation.

    Benedetto, 2017

    Undergoing a risky experience can be personally rewarding on a fundamental level far beyond an amusing narrative or fostering a friendship. For experience designers, there may be no higher calling than the possibility of healing humanity through one self-improved person at a time. Oftentimes government and business interests regulate our interactions with the world and other people. It may befall the artists and craftspeople who, through unpredictable experiences such as larp, break the artificial restrictions continuously plastered over us and allow our spirit to breathe again. But transformative experiences are both delicate and wild, easy to ruin and inherently uncontrollable. Like fire that can devastate a city or fuel a moonshot, risk is a powerful instrument that should not be bound and buried in the creative tool box. We hope this essay will cultivate a respect for risk and reveal the possibilities for healthy individual growth through intentionally risky adventures.

    What is Risk?

    All of life is risk. Living without taking risks is not really living. That would be half-living, under a spiritual anesthesia. This high-security society that is developing sees in risk a declared enemy, but in doing so, allows a sort of gangrene to develop. The idea that we can achieve zero risk is not only collectively harmful, but also toxic for individuals.

    Anne Dufourmantelle interview in Le Monde

    According to Benedetto, “risk is any threat to one’s current state that offers the potential to destabilize the way things are. Higher order risks can include financial, political, and legal risks. Primal risks threaten our emotional, social, or physical well-being.” (Benedetto, 2017). We will concentrate on the primal risks.

    An emotional risk jeopardizes one’s sense of self, a deeply-held belief, motivation, confidence, or one’s composure. Harm to your emotional state can lead to depression, anger, or compulsive thinking. It can leave psychological scars that can impact a person’s quality of life. The concept of bleed is a strong indicator of emotional changes, but change is not inherently negative. Benedetto suggests that facing risks can strengthen “one’s emotional range and resilience.” (Benedetto, 2017). Like physical exercise, we can use designed experiences to toughen our “ego muscles” through stressful exertion.

    Benedetto’s explanation of a social risk is “a threat to one’s standing with a group. A social risk could damage one’s image, sever one’s connections with others, or bruise one’s sense of self-worth. Confronting social risks can give someone new tools for creating and maintaining connections with others.” (Benedetto, 2017).

    A social risk can for example mean being judged and found guilty of something by peers. In larp, this can come from role-playing a character close to your real self. You can potentially reveal truths about yourself to others who may not accept them, resulting in ostracization and, thanks to social media and whisper networks, banishment from other events. Playing a villainous character may also be a social risk, even if that character was pre-generated. People might mistake the player for the character, and be negatively biased against the player. This risk increases if you play the same character or type of character repeatedly. You may also be judged for the actions your character takes, as others may ascribe “poor” choices to the player. Social risk often appears in larp communities that create and enforce a code of conduct. The energy and impetus that causes the community to form is also the energy that creates a social risk of exile from the group. When someone causes harm to another—intentionally or not—they may be banned from the community. Benedetto researched a sex party curated by The Dirty Gentleman (TDG), or Mr. Gentleman, containing high social risk. This excerpt may sound familiar to campaign larpers:

    When it comes to sexually permissive events, the risk is not only in being hurt but in doing the hurting. Enacting harmful behavior creates the social risk of shame and ostracization. “There is a term for deciding certain people are good or bad which is ‘Voting People off the Island’,” says Mr. Gentleman. “The idea is that you can be in this world until you do something wrong, and then you are dangerous and bad and need to go away.” The severity of a ‘Voting People Off the Island’ model is exactly what The Dirty Gentleman is designed to counter. The gathering focuses on social etiquette so that behaviors, rather than the individual participants, are the focus of potential improvement.

    Benedetto, 2017

    A physical risk is harm to one’s body. In the most extreme case, this results in death. Taking physical risks is common in mainstream activities such as skydiving, bungee-jumping, and most sports. Boffer larps feature physical risk and utilize many rules to mitigate it, e.g., no head or groin shots, maximum bow draw weight, weapon checks, etc. Benedetto writes “Confronting physical risk can reframe one’s sense of vulnerability in day-to-day life and change our relationship to the constructed environments we inhabit every day.” (Benedetto, 2017)

    It must be acknowledged that Benedetto stresses that any risk should be roughly equal between the participants, especially social risk. Reacting to a recent Vanity Fair article about Silicon Valley sex parties that enable stereotypical heterosexual male fantasies, she opines “If all participants do not need to risk rejection equally, and those least empowered to leverage their personal boundaries are those most likely to suffer consequences outside the party, you have a recipe for coercion and abuse.” (Benedetto, 2018). Further inquiry into the effects of imbalanced risk among participants is needed. For our purposes, we assume that any risk is generally the same for all involved, possibly including the designers and organizers.

    Each of these three types of risk can be actual or imagined, and this is not a duality but a spectrum. Our subjective perception can deceive participants into thinking risk

    • exists when it does not or is minimal, e.g., afraid of embarrassing oneself with “poor” role-playing among a group of supportive larpers.
    • is greater than it actually is, e.g., touching another person on the shoulder without their consent.
    • is less than it actually is, e.g., shooting an old padded arrow from a bow with 30-pound weight at 28” draw at a person when they aren’t looking (LARP Haven Facebook group query, based on over 60 responses, 2018).
    • does not exist when it does, e.g., getting food poisoning from a novice food preparer, or being unaware of the presence of bees and whether or not you are allergic to their sting.

    Unknown actual risks are the most perilous, and discovering the risk after the fact can be exhilarating or traumatic; the danger was unnoticed, survived by someone unprepared for the challenge.

    It is critical that experience designers understand the difference between actual and imagined or mis-perceived risk. This difference is particular to each participant as well—someone with an acute nut allergy has a greater actual risk in eating unidentified foods compared to someone who does not. Following a recommended transparency of expectation (Torner, 2013) the designers have a moral and possibly even legal obligation to inform the participants about the experience before undertaking it, whether it involves illegal trespassing, like Benedetto’s The Night Heron, or violence, like the Blackout Experience (Josh Randall and Kristjan Thor, 2009). Both events were up front in their marketing; The Night Heron was an intimate experience in a building’s empty water tower (without authorization to be there), and Blackout involves a single participant going through a series of scenes where they are grabbed, shoved, and choked by the actors (NPCs). Keeping actual risk hidden from participants means the designers are taking on their own undue risk, which may not be the purpose of the activity.

    There is considerable opportunity, however, in playing off the perceptions or misperceptions of the participants. Benedetto describes risk perception as “Relying on our unconscious to steer us away from risks makes life manageable, as long as we can trust our unconscious to properly identify the risks. Occasionally waking up from our unconscious steering can put us back in touch with something enriching and transformative.” (Benedetto, 2017). Competition, for example, is an easy method of suggesting risk—the characters might lose the battle and die—while controlling the actual amount of danger faced by adjusting the power level of the opponents. In a controlled, specific manner, duplicity can be quite effective in setting up the conditions for a transformation. More about deception is in the tips section.

    What is Transformation?

    Risk is a kairos, in the Greek sense of the decisive moment. And what it determines is not only the future, but also the past, behind our horizon of waiting, in which it reveals an unsuspected reserve of freedom.

    Éloge du risque, Anne Dufourmantelle

    Benedetto defines transformation as:

    A transformation is a fundamental change. The change can be big or small, but what makes it transformational is how close the change is to what makes someone who they are. Not all transformations are equal, and not all transformations come about in the same way. Transformation is hard if not impossible to measure because most measurements track the effects of the transformation, not the transformation itself. Sometimes whatever is worth measuring about the transformation isn’t evident until the transformation is well under way.

    Benedetto, 2017

    The main criteria for transformation is that it is personal. It is an interior redecorating of your psyche. Although any immersive, interactive experience can change your social circle, hobbies, discretionary income or vacation destination, those are not part of personal transformation. A personal transformation converts the human being through the process of the human doing. It can shatter parts of the previous self, and reconstruction takes time. Benedetto reminds us:

    If the experience is successful in delivering transformative potential, the participant cannot fully wrap their mind around what has happened; they cannot satisfactorily tame the splendor of the experience with serious judgment about what happened to them. Leaving an experience in a state of disoriented awe allows for the participant to reorder their world view and sense of self in order to make meaning out of what they went through. Transformation is an unraveling, followed by a slow and sometimes prolonged stitching back together.

    Benedetto, 2017

    Benedetto describes three ways that we can be transformed via a designed experience: acute, repetitive, and dramatic.

    Acute transformation is produced by a change that is imposed on someone without warning, against their will, or otherwise beyond their control. In this case, the purpose of the experience is to help the participants adjust to the change that has happened in their world and get past the shock of the change. Not transforming would mean being stuck as the world leaves them behind, often to their detriment.

    Benedetto, 2017

    Avant-garde funeral directors specialize in acute transformation because they design a ceremony unique to the aggrieved. Acute transformational larps are a minority of larps—possibly, too, of designed experiences in general. This is because of the time and care necessary to create something meaningful for a specific audience who already encountered something overpowering. Other people, especially strangers, may not understand or want to participate in something so personal to one or a few. Nevertheless, experiences have been designed as a reaction to an unexpected event, and it may be the creator who seeks transformation themselves. Siobahn O’Loughlin’s Broken Bone Bathtub (2015) is “an immersive theatre project taking place inside a bathtub, in an actual home. After a serious bike accident [the acute catalyst], a young woman musters up the courage to ask for help, and shares her story, exploring themes of trauma, suffering, human generosity, vulnerability, and connection. The audience takes on the role of Siobhan’s close friends; not only in listening but sharing in their experiences, and assisting the cast-clad artist in the actual ritual of taking a bath.” In this 2018 Knutpunkt Companion, larpwright Shoshanna Kessock describes her larp scenario, Keeping the Candles Lit, which became tied to an acute experience, the loss of her mother. Even as the creator, this fabricated experience (scenario) provided Kessock with a lifeboat to weather an unexpected tragedy. (Kessock, 2018)

    Repetitive transformation happens through repeat exposure to something over a series of experiences. The shift in the participant may be gradual or sudden but it comes about through habituating an experience that incrementally moves the transformation forward.

    Benedetto, 2017

    Benedetto refers to The Dirty Gentleman’s quarterly escapades as an example of repetitive transformation. For larps, clearly, these are our episodic events. There are many examples of people who have changed, often for the better, through recurring larp campaigns; enough that we assume this is prima facie.

    Benedetto defines the third type of transformation:

    Dramatic transformation happens at the end of a dramatic arc that has built the participants up to a change. A dramatic transformation happens as a result of an intense and concentrated experience. While dramatic arcs are often associated with fiction, they can happen in experiences of a profound confrontation with reality, too.

    Benedetto, 2017

    The likeliest larp candidate for this type of change is a weekend-long, one-shot event. Yet designed experiences can reach profound intensity within hours or even minutes, depending on the design and the participants. For example, Tobias Wrigstad’s formidable and transgressive larp Gang Rape (2008), which uses the fiat system wherein consenting participants (the rapists) verbally describe the physical act of rape to the victim, who verbally describes the emotions the rapist is feeling, lasts 45-90 minutes. By putting players in a highly-relevant, high-stakes, high-risk and pre-defined arc, it reduces the opportunity to escape from the serious subject matter of sexual assault, creating opportunity for dramatic transformation.

    Following the analogy of an ego gymnasium, acute transformation is like physical therapy after an injury, repetitive transformation would be daily jogging, and dramatic transformation would be a short but intense training regimen before a race or triathlon. Akin to what physical exercise can do for your body, so designed experiences can do for your soul.


    Experience Risk Type Risk Veracity Structure Transformation
    Just a Little Lovin’ Emotional Actual, depending on history with subject Exploratory Acute
    Vampire: The Masquerade (campaign) Social variable variable Repetitive
    Legion: A Siberian Story Physical Actual Progressive Dramatic

    Examples of different larps and their risk/transformative categories.


    Why Design a Risky Experience?

    In an interview with Kathryn Yu for the No Proscenium podcast #130, Benedetto states that “transformation requires risk. And real risk. And that it’s only in having the supportive structure of an experience, especially if it involves other people that you can go through it with, that you can even approach [a] risk that is too chaotic and too threatening to deal with outside the context of that experience. But by confronting that risk, some part of you reconfigures itself or becomes more alive.” (Nelson-Yu, 2017)

    This may be overstating the case. Transformation, at least an intentional transformation, i.e., change consciously desired by the individual, is possible without risk, real or imagined. Overcoming alcohol or nicotine addiction, for example, carries less risk, in most cases, than maintaining your dependence. However, Patterns of Transformation presents a strong case for using risk to make personal transformation easier. Her quote suggests that it is a shared experience that an intentional personal transformation requires, not necessarily a risky one—though that helps.

    The power of designed experiences, and larps especially, is their ability to create a space for the mind, body, and emotional self to work out in a controlled manner. Experience designers are like weight trainers and spotters for our spirit. They are there to help us better our ability to operate in a tumultuous era, and, consequently, better the world for everyone. This is a noble endeavor. Benedetto calls this “human enrichment.” (Benedetto, 2017)

    It is also probable that the designer will benefit from creating these experiences for others, either physically, mentally, emotionally, and financially. They, too, take a risk in the act of creation.

    Why Play a potentially Transformative Experience?

    Benedetto says “A lot of the transformation I looked at, where the transformation’s desirable in some way, is because we have been estranged from something, somehow […] I think the transformation gets you back in touch with something that you’ve been estranged [from], and that changes your relationship to the world in your everyday life. That can be super enriching.” (Nelson-Yu, 2017)

    An intense designed experience can create the psychological state known as “flow,” coined in 1975 by Mihály Csíkszentmihályi. It refers to a mental point in which a person undertakes a challenge that they understand and lies within their skill competency. When someone reaches this state, they become fully immersed and focused on the experience, losing their sense of space and time. It is innately enjoyable and yields long-lasting and positive after effects. He writes “the experience itself is so enjoyable that people will do it even at great cost, for the sheer sake of doing it.” (Csíkszentmihályi, 1990)

    Designed experiences just outside one’s comfort or skill level, too, are the basis for Lev Vygotsky’s (1896-1934) zone of proximal development and scaffolding pedagogy. By presenting a risk that seems insurmountable, yet including the tools or people in the experience that helps the individual complete the task fosters deep cognitive and emotional learning.

    According to one of the first attendees of the Blackout Experience, Allison F., “it was almost like they were tailoring every scene towards some type of issue to trigger somebody.” (personal interview, 2018) Going through Blackout by yourself, a participant can expect to experience abuse, torture, and sexual assault—depending on your perspective.

    Yet Russell E., also a repeat attendee, explains how repetitive visits affected him:

    Since Blackout is a show that adapts to each audience members’ emotional response, the shows became more intense each time I went. In my opinion, the creators and cast were able to recognize patrons who were “getting it” and sometimes altered a scene’s pacing or content to personalize the event and make it even more affecting… I often found myself contemplating my own emotional responses in real life to scenarios explored within Blackout scenes. It seemed to me I was discovering more compassion and more strength within myself than I had previously realized. By exploring heavy, troubling scenarios within an intense theatrical presentation, I found myself approaching everyday turmoil from a stronger foundation…I became [a] stronger person as a result of this exploration.

    Personal interview, 2018

    Allison shares the same sentiment: “…it’s extremely empowering for me to know that I still have that survival instinct or, for lack of better terms, I have it in me to survive…” (personal interview, 2018)

    It is important to note that transformative experiences are not for everyone, and not at every point in their lives. Benedetto says “Constantly being in transformation [makes] you lose sense of who you are, and it’s hard to establish things or gain momentum.” (Nelson-Yu, 2017) Although there should be a larp or designed experience for everyone, not every larp is for everyone, nor should they be. Not everyone always wants or needs to undergo a risky interactive or immersive experience. It is also true that not everyone always wants or needs to participate in a safety-stuffed event.

    It is beneficial, every once in a while, to reconnect with our estranged passions, to transform through a risky, designed experience.

    Guidelines for Designing Risky and Transformative Experiences

    Here are some tips on managing risk in a designed experience to create favorable conditions for personal transformation. Ida Benedetto outlined the first seven design steps in Patterns of Transformation. Due to space considerations, they are not reprinted here in full. It is strongly recommended you read these in detail on the Patterns website. We have included some examples from larping that we felt matched Benedetto’s terms and ideas. Following are our additional thoughts and ideas on the topic.

    For our purposes, a “designed experience” is any kind of planned real-world experience involving participant interactivity and engagement—things like alternate reality games (ARGs), immersive theater, escape rooms, extreme haunts and, of course, larps. Note that all three of the experiences Benedetto researched do not have a fictional component, i.e., at the sex party, funeral, or survival adventure you are YOU, really doing that real action in the real world. Yet the patterns Benedetto identified can also be applied to experiences that rely on fiction and role-playing.

    Before the experience (planning):

    1. Identify the Risk – “Drill deep and get as specific as possible about the risk facing the people you are designing for.”(Benedetto, 2017)
    2. Distill what is worthwhile in the Risk – “Be mindful of cultural mores, life stages, and personal agendas (yours and theirs) when taking this step.” (Benedetto, 2017)
    3. Commit to an Experience Structure (see below, with larp equivalent terms)
      1. Exploratory – freeform, sandbox, undefined goals
      2. Progressive – linear, railroad, pre-defined goals
      3. Cyclical – repetitive scenes, rituals, or actions, like boffer combat in battle larps (Benedetto, 2017)

    During the experience (runtime):

    1. Construct the Magic Circle (two types) – The “Magic Circle” is a concept inspired by Johan Huizinga’s (1872-1945) book Homo Ludens: A Study of the Play-Element in Culture (1938) and popularized by Katie Salen and Ryan Zimmerman in Rules of Play: Game Design Fundamentals (2003). A magic circle is a shared space and time mutually created by participants where things and people bounded by that time and space are not necessarily what they really are; it a sacred liminal space where play, and change, can happen. Benedetto describes two types:
      1. Conditioned – this type of Magic Circle includes the majority of larps where we learn rules, character backgrounds, etc. The Magic Circle comes into being due to our willing imposition of belief, e.g., a birdseed-filled packet is really a lightning bolt. (Benedetto, 2017)
      2. Embraced – “A Magic Circle is embraced when it is drawn around an existing reality that is too overwhelming to engage without the supportive structure of a designed experience. The magic circle helps participants embrace a reality they otherwise avoid or are estranged from.” (Benedetto, 2017). This type of Magic Circle, although rare, appears in response larps that address a difficult concept such as GR (2008), Active Shooter (Tim Hutchings, 2014), or A Mother’s Heart (Christina Christensen & Eirik Fatland, 2010). Here, a slight fiction (the larp, the Magic Circle) is imposed over a troubling reality. Embraced magic circles can also occasionally appear in immersive theater, flash mobs, 1960s Happenings, and Benedetto’s primary example, bespoke funeral ceremonies. Dublin2 (JP Kaljonen, Johanna Raekallio & Haidi Montola, 2011), a pervasive larp reaction to EU’s asylum seekers policy, was held in one of Helsinki’s main plazas where real people sometimes interacted with the participants. Interestingly, an embraced Magic Circle coupled with an acute transformation is largely unexplored territory for experience designers, or at least larp designers. Imagine designing a bespoke larp for someone who was recently laid off that directly addresses that issue using few fictional elements.
    2. Hold the space for transformation – Organizers need to respectfully maintain the liminal space to allow the time for transformation, recognize when more time is needed, when it is time to close, and when something is going wrong and it needs to close.
    3. Close the Magic Circle – There are many examples of rituals and symbolic actions from larps that represent the closing of the Magic Circle. In some respects, a debrief after a larp can be considered part of this closing. Running debriefs the same day as the end of the larp should accept, though, that if it was a transformational experience, participants might be confused and shaken, their sense of self, tattered. They might not have the words or ability to join or participate in the meeting.

    After the experience:

    1. Check in – This should happen days or even weeks after the event, and this is where the effects of the transformation can be identified, after the individual has had time to process the experience.

    From a larp design perspective, we propose the following additions to Benedetto’s seven design steps. We believe these techniques, some for designers, some for participants, heighten the transformative potential of an experience.

    Identify the type of transformation desired “The first step with figuring out your strategy for care is to identify what the nature of the transformation is. How are you going to about it? That helps you construct the Magic Circle, that helps you figure out what the experience structure is.” (Nelson-Yu, 2017). Besides identifying the risk, decide if the conditions for transformation should be acute, dramatic or repetitive. A typical dramatic larp is a one-shot, and repetitive usually indicates an ongoing event. Consider flipping those so a campaign leads to one final intense conclusion, and a one-shot repeats the same action or scene in its limited time.

    Once the risk is identified (tip #1) and the worthwhile part of risk determined (tip #2), minimize or eliminate all other risks. If you design towards a dramatic transformation through emotional risk, ensure that participants are shielded from social and physical risks. These other elements can detract from the power of transformational risk.

    Promote ideal conditions and encourage participants to transform themselves (tip #5), but do not force players into a transformational state, nor dictate to them what their new “self” should be. The more emphasis a designer imposes on participants to become or behave a certain way, the more the experience resembles a cult. The movie and book Fight Club (Chuck Palahniuk, novel, 1996, David Fincher, director, movie, 1999) is a fictive example of how physical risk presented as a transformative experience is deliberately used as a vehicle for creating an anarchist army. Organizers should only extrinsically set the conditions for transformation to occur; the actual act of transformation must be intrinsically activated.

    When marketing the experience, do not claim that it is or will be transformational. Let others do that for you with testimonials. It is hubris to think that your daring design will work every time for everyone. If you label it transformational in your marketing, someone may go in demanding that, and become upset if the experience fails to deliver. But do let people know about the risk (see point below on deception).

    Establish trust. “Trust is a prerequisite for enabling transformation.” (Benedetto, 2017). Constructing trust between participants, designers and facilitators is rightfully difficult. Once you have it and a community surrounds the experience, the bonds are often hard to break (Douglas, 2016). Additionally, greater trust facilitates the use of greater risk in the experience—though not necessarily greater transformative potential. To achieve the trust of participants before an experience has run, use different levels of transparency. For example, if participants sign waivers, have a “spoiler” and a “no spoiler” version for them to choose to read and sign. The spoiler waiver would include detailed descriptions of the risk, such as “you will unexpectedly have a cloth hood thrown over your head.” The no spoiler version would only mention physical contact, darkness, helplessness.

    If you have designed previous experiences, mention those. Be honest about the use of risk in the experience, but not necessarily exactly what the risk is, for some people are attracted to chancy, mysterious events. If there is some kind of independent group that can vouch for your experience (Southern California has a nascent organization called LEIA: League of Experiential & Immersive Artists that may do just this), contact them and let them know about your production; perhaps applying a seal of approval. This may be unwise if it’s a government entity; would The Night Heron have been as profound an experience if everyone had permission to be in the water tower? Benedetto suggests it would not. Conversely, funeral directors, even avant-garde ones, cannot legally operate without license. This is where your previous decisions about the worthwhile risk and transformative type are relevant—is it worth being an underground, unlawful experience, or would the imprimatur of officiality allow attendees easy access into and a lengthy stay within the Magic Circle?

    The H.P. Lovecraft Historical Society (HPLHS), an informal collective that created a number of legendary larps, made a point to let all participants know that nothing the organizers asked the players to do the designers had not done themselves. In his Master’s thesis, J. Michael Bestul describes The Mistress of Nyarlathotep (The H.P. Lovecraft Historical Society, Andrew Leman, 1991), a larp run by the HPLHS where players had to jump off a roof through a fabricated temporal gate not knowing what, if anything, would catch them on the other side.

    Only when a keeper can earn the trust of players are events like this possible. Under normal, everyday circumstances, a person would not jump off a roof into a prop time portal. They would most likely consider it an insane proposition. But, in a game setting, where the keepers have earned the players’ trust, that insane option is now a likely choice. The investigators, properly motivated, would jump in; the players, knowing the keeper would never ask them to do something exceedingly dangerous, can jump in.

    Bestul, 2006

    As an experience creator, too, you have to trust your players that they will engage to the best of their abilities. In larps, organizers entrust their players to carry out a plot and to role-play their characters as best they can. If you are designing for transformation, you also have to trust that the players will make themselves open and vulnerable.

    Paying the designers/organizers money can alter the risk and transformative power. One of the keys to The Night Heron was its exclusivity and price point: “The Night Heron was very much inspired by a design principle that we had hit on in doing our previous events, which was this notion of generosity. We looked at what we were doing as a gift to the guests or the participants. We never charged for tickets because we were doing this all illegally […] as soon as we had a ticket relationship with the guests, it felt like we were going to be in nebulous legal territory. The positive byproduct of doing that is that people were even more over the moon that this was this weird thing they got invited to and was spectacular. Because it had such a profound emotional effect, it ended up informing how people got to The Night Heron […] you could only come as a gift of somebody who had already been.” (Nelson-Yu, 2017)

    Similarly, the HPLHS usually did not charge their players money to play in their larps. “On the whole the Cthulhu Lives games [larps] we produced were never staged as for-profit enterprises and the Keeper would generally bear the cost of producing his/her own event. It’s possible that there may have been a couple of games where a Keeper asked players to chip in a few bucks to help defray expenses, but that usually wasn’t the case. Most of our Keepers would design their LARPs so they could be executed within the resources available to the Keeper.” (personal correspondence with Sean Branney of the HPLHS, 2018)

    Asking for money alters the relationship between organizer and participant. It does not eliminate the risk or transformative nature, but gaining the trust of others might be easier if the organizers also take a financial risk. Conversely, paying a higher fee could also prime people towards personal transformation; they are already taking a financial risk. The immersive play YOU by Hall & Mirrors costs $5000 for one night of bespoke performance and interaction. The high cost can influence our reaction (“Britt”, 2008). The monetary cost of a transformative experience should not be treated lightly. Benedetto says one of the core questions to consider is “What’s the risk, and what’s the gift?” (Nelson-Yu, 2017)

    Deceiving the participants: How much information do participants really need to know? Can you obfuscate parts of the adventure? In most experiences, certainly larps, there is a chaos factor that even the best-prepared organizers cannot expect. Since participants are by nature unpredictable, and more so in a risky, potentially transformative state, all variables cannot be accounted for and stated up front. But organizers owe it to their participants to inform them of at least the generalities expected in the experience. Do not forget that for first iterations or first-time participants, no precedent has been set, no foreknowledge provided, and that itself indicates a risk. Use this to your design advantage. An example from an immersive theater experience playing with transparency comes from Annie Lesser’s A(partment 8) (2016), the first chapter of The ABC Project. Although the waiver mentions nudity, physical contact, and darkness it did not put those together to say (spoiler alert) “participants with shut eyes will be kissed by a naked woman.” You can lose trust if you deceive too much, but if you have trust from the participants, there is a level of mendacity that you can use to a transformative advantage. Even with deception, any opt-out rules such as safe words should be apparent and honest; although this dictum has already been challenged by Frederik Berg Østergaard’s Fat Man Down (2009), which has a fake safe word and a real safe word. Where and when the safe words are usable should be carefully considered. How many positive personal transformations were ruined because someone took an early exit instead of breaking through to the other side? And of course, in some experiences it might be too late, e.g., using a safe word after you jumped out of the airplane.

    Give up control. As an organizer, you need to loosen the bonds of any agenda or plan that you have made. But be ready to intervene if a crisis occurs. Being prepared to interrupt might be enough, too. Some participants, knowing safety rules are in place, may be more willing to push themselves further than if they do not know where the line lies between reckless endangerment and regulated hazard. Others may not push themselves far enough.

    As a participant, you may need to relinquish control over your social, emotional, or physical safety to either the organizers, your own subconscious, or random chance. The latter two might be the most frightening of all. Be vulnerable.

    Lack of epiphany does not mean failure. It may come to pass that after everything a participant has gone through, they have not been altered in any demonstrable fashion. That is OK. Maybe they were not fully committed to the event. Maybe they were not the right person for this particular experience. Maybe the Magic Circle could not wait for one last person. It could be a design flaw. Hopefully the participant still had a satisfactory or enjoyable experience. Keep the discussion channels between designers and participants open, be honest, and compare the reflections of all attendees. If you followed the tip about marketing, you never promised a metamorphosis.

    For participants, avoid major decisions for approximately a month. Assuming the experience was transformative, you are different. The way things were in your former life will probably seem strange when viewed with a new perspective—and you might not like the way they look. While you put your pieces back together, refrain from making other major changes or decisions. You could lose a connection you may, years later, have wanted to keep. This sound advice is given at the end of Legion: A Siberian Story (Rolling, 2016), a Czech larp based on the historical past of Czechoslovakia’s army trapped in the Russian Revolution.

    Limitations on Safety and Consent

    The most stunning commonality among these experiences is that the risk posed to the participant also poses a chaotic and uncontrollable element to the guide that, if fully tamed, destroys the transformative potential of the experience.

    Ida Benedetto, Patterns of Transformation (2017)

    Safety and risk are obviously related. Risk can be increased simply by decreasing safety, but without corresponding conscious decisions regarding the risk, participants can be unintentionally hurt. Even if safety is elevated, serious risk can still lurk in an experience. In this section we explore some of the limits of safety and some conditions where safety inhibits the experience and its potential. For more information on safety techniques and calibration, read this manifesto, this article, these four posts, or these two entries from the 2018 Knutpunkt Companion. All qualities of larp safety techniques should be considered when deciding which mechanisms to adopt or eschew.

    Consent-Based Play Reshuffling

    While the word “consent” suggests that anything else is “non-consensual”, it is instead one of many social contracts that can be adopted by a group of people. Consent-based play moves the cognitive overhead of coordinating playstyle from the design and planning stage by the organizers to the players during run-time. This removes the possibility of errors in calibration, but it requires more work to be done during the larp itself.

    This is an approach many people enjoy and find freeing, but it is not a universal response. Communication and coordination take effort. We do not often think of emotional effort the way we count walking far or carrying heavy items, but it is work. In low-coordination, high-calibration larps where the rules of engagement and interaction are pre-set, this work is not undertaken, and playing takes less emotional effort. For example, larps that have established no-touch policies remove player deliberation during the larp on whether or not a particular instance of touch is comfortable: the pre-larp external calibration replaces run-time player coordination.

    Alliance, a New England sports larp organization, encourages players to be invested in their characters and play the same persona in many different games, with little to no preparation or specific connections. It is possible to travel across America to another chapter and drop in to play on a whim. This is supported because all Alliance events share a common rules system and constraints on the level of risk and reward, topics that are out-of-bounds, and elements of world design. Players who choose to play are opting in to a set of understood external requirements, and so dozens of strangers can play without so much as an introduction. Run-time calibration between players and a lengthy pre-larp workshop is not required.

    Calibration and Coordination Issues

    Although some people enjoy or find it easier to participate in run-time coordination rather than playing larps with a risk of mis-calibration, expecting players to be skilled in this effort limits the potential pool of players. If a game is designed such that one can play with people one wouldn’t trust to communicate accurately and effectively in the game (IG), there are far more people you can play with. Casual low-trust events are especially useful for reaching audiences who otherwise wouldn’t be exposed to larp at all. Adding mechanics and categories of interactions raises the barrier of entry for participation, and few non-larpers or untrained improvisation actors are used to an ongoing negotiation of play.

    Consent and safety mechanisms are sometimes presented as a matter of accessibility. Instead, they are a question of competing access needs: there is no design that will accommodate and enable everyone to play. Some people with mental health or physical concerns find that consent-based play enables them to safely participate. For other people who struggle with communication and coordination, consent-based play can require forms of interaction they find difficult or impossible, making the events inaccessible. Often consent mechanisms are built to serve those with the emotional intelligence to recognize when, for example, check-ins should happen, and who are able to easily swap from in-character (IC) and out-of-character (OOC) considerations.

    Someone with a nonverbal learning disability may have trouble interpreting facial expressions and body language (Petti et al., 2003). The expectation that they are responsible for successfully negotiating playstyle on the fly can be anxiety-provoking. This can be especially true with mechanisms such as the OK check-in that are exclusively visual, rather than audio and visual combined. Since this is an invisible disability, it is possible that someone who flashed a missed signal might think that the other person was unsafe to play with, even though they could safely play in systems that rely on expectations or verbal game interrupts to negotiate playstyle.

    Additionally, slipping in and out of a check-in is much easier for people with strong working memories and executive processing. People with Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder can be easily distracted and find interruptions or context-switching more disruptive than neurotypical people (King et al., 2007). Requiring coordination or task switching can reduce the probability of flow and the general enjoyment of players with ADHD. According to Pattern Language for Larp Design by J Li and Jason Morningstar (2016), “A typical person can only keep track of 5-6 unrelated things at a time, with concentration. Without concentration, that number is closer to 3-4. When trying to keep track of a set of potentially complex dynamics, a typical person will get lost if the set has more than 4 elements.” Combining consent-based play, where interactions are negotiated outside the Magic Circle, plus a litany of safety mechanics such as OK check, look-down, tap-out, cut, brake/largo, and pronouns can be overwhelming even for neurotypical individuals. These memorizations are layered atop your character’s life, your IC relations, the world setting, and real world considerations such as who the GMs are and where the bathroom is.

    This does not necessarily exclude neuroatypical players from playing emotionally risky larps where consent mechanisms mitigate risk, but such experiences may be less appealing or more challenging for such people. On the other hand, physically risky games that minimize the kind of work they find difficult may make transformative experiences more accessible to players with such difficulties. Remember to identify the worthwhile risk and eliminate or reduce the others. There is no single answer for “the most accessible” experience.

    Safety Mechanics and Play Styles

    Are we truly increasing safety by using risk-reducing mechanics? As described in Target Risk 3 by Gerald J.S. Wilde, humans tend to maintain “risk homeostasis”. He says

    …in any activity, people accept a certain level of subjectively estimated risk to their health, safety, and other things they value, in exchange for the benefits they hope to receive from that activity […] In any ongoing activity, people continuously check the amount of risk they feel they are exposed to. They compare this with the amount of risk they are willing to accept, and try to reduce any difference between the two to zero. Thus, if the level of subjectively experienced risk is lower than is felt acceptable, people tend to engage in actions that increase their exposure to risk. If, however, the level of subjectively experienced risk is higher than is acceptable, they make an attempt to exercise greater caution.

    This means that simply adding safety mechanisms does not inherently change the level of risk in a game. If a mechanic makes an experience safer, people are likely to adjust the level of risk they take to compensate.

    Calling these “safety mechanics” can suggest that larps with them are safer than those without, but that is not necessarily true. If a larp is not designed for risky play that would be padded by safety mechanics, adding unnecessary safety mechanisms can push people to adopt more risky play than the game as a whole supports. The context in which safety mechanics are seen as universally appropriate and universally adopted is one in which the riskiest possible play is seen as a goal, and every experience is expected to support such play.

    It can be disappointing for players if they are prepared to experience risky play that safety mechanisms inherently advertise and instead find themselves in low-risk play where the mechanisms were not needed. This could encourage players to circumvent or ignore safety mechanics, reducing their effectiveness when they would be useful.

    Additionally, with a consent-based larp where no consequence befalls a participant unless they agree to it, there is reduced possibility for growth because there is no conflict, struggle, or resistance. Our muscles grow due to tissue rebuilding after experiencing micro-tears (Goussetis, 2015). Emotions, like muscles, may need to be damaged in order for personal growth.

    Although designers usually desire a safe experience, safety mechanics and consent conflict resolution are not the only nor necessarily the best tools to use in all instances for all people. For example, using instead deception to suggest, or to actually include a risk higher than one participants feel comfortable with may make the experience safer—as participants adjust their role-playing to their acceptable risk tolerance—without an undue burden of excessive safety mechanics.
    As the philosopher Anne Dufourmantelle says, “We want intensity without risk. That’s impossible. Intensity is jumping into the unknown, that which was previously unseen, which has not yet been written, yet which is however attainable within us.” (Dufourmantelle, 2011)

    Caveats to Using Risk and Designing for Transformation

    The element of risk we discussed relates to that which is specifically embedded into the design. Risk outside the experience, such as the potential for harm to or from an experience or negative contact betwixt players and organizers between episodes, was not addressed.

    Designing an experience to be risky when the participants only expect entertainment can be extremely hazardous and should be avoided.

    Risk does not guarantee a transformative experience. Great peril can be faced, yet the person walks away unfazed.

    A risk-based transformation may not always end positively. It could cause trauma and lead to a stress disorder, anxiety, physical injury, even death.

    Not all larps should be made for personal transformation. It is infeasible and impractical to plan every one of your designed experiences to rewire every participant. For players, it is a fool’s errand to expect every experience you participate in be created with the purpose of transformation.

    Greater risk does not always correlate with greater transformation. Although the prospect certainly exists for “more risk means more change,” it is not a guaranteed formula.

    Transformative experiences are no substitute for psychological therapy, and should not be used as such nor made with that intent. They can be palliative, cathartic, eye-opening, self-consciousness expanding and perception shifting, but they cannot replace a licensed therapist or medically-trained psychiatrist.

    Objectively, risk-laden larps are no better nor no worse than risk-averse larps. The enjoyment, appreciation, or qualitative transformative benefit is purely subjective.

    Conclusion

    Risk scares people. It is a natural human response to perceived danger. But avoiding or blocking all risk in a designed experience, as in life, is like chasing rainbows, an uncatchable illusion. Designing to limit risk through safety mechanisms can exclude some people and overwhelm others. Reducing risk curbs the participants’ ability to attempt personal transformation in the experience. While risky endeavors and personal revelations are not and should not be the norm of designed experiences, it behooves all creators to not only look at safety mechanisms but also risk, and to use both in their creative vision. Ida Benedetto’s landmark work, Patterns of Transformation, provides an excellent guide for these bold, daring adventurers.

    In the first essay of the landmark Nordic Larp book (2010), “The Paradox of Nordic Larp Culture,” Jaakko Stenros and Markus Montola list four ways that larp can be used: to escape, to explore, to expose, to impose. Perhaps a fifth way should be added: to transform.

    Bibliography

    Benedetto, Ida. 2017. Patterns of Transformation. http://patternsoftransformation.com/ (Accessed multiple times, November 2017-February 2018)

    Benedetto, Ida. 2018. “Patterns of Transformation Q&A 6: What about those f’ed up parties in Silicon Valley?” Group email, accessed January 24, 2018.

    Bestul, J. Michael. 2006. “Cthulhu Lives!: A Descriptive Study of the H.P. Lovecraft Historical Society”. Thesis. Graduate College of Bowling Green State University

    Britt. 2008. “The Psychology of Money: We think higher-priced items are better.” Money and Values. Blog. http://moneyandvalues.blogspot.com/2008/03/psychology-of-money-we-think-higher.html (Accessed February 1, 2018).

    Christensen, Christina and Fatland, Eirik. 2010. A Mother’s Heart. Larp. http://larpfactorybookproject.blogspot.com/2013/10/a-mothers-heart.html (Accessed February 5, 2018). Run: Oslo, 2010.

    Csíkszentmihályi, Mihály. 1990. Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience. Published by Harper Perennial Modern Classics.

    Douglas, Amanda. 2016. “What We Talk About When We Talk About Community”. Larp World Magazine. Aaron Vanek, ed.

    Dufourmantelle, Anne. 2011. Éloge du risque. Payot. In French, excerpt translated by Korrine Stanley.

    Dufourmantelle, Anne. 2015. Entretien Libération Par Anastasia Vécrin. Liberation (http://www.liberation.fr/auteur/11435-anastasia-vecrin). In French, excerpt translated by Korrine Stanley.

    Duretz, Marlène. 2016. “Faut-il, comme Trump, jouer son va-tout?” Interview with Anne Dufourmantelle for Le Monde (in French). http://www.lemonde.fr/m-perso/article/2016/10/19/faut-il-comme-trump-jouer-son-va-tout_5016604_4497916.html. Accessed December 6, 2017. Translated by Korrine Stanley.

    Goussetis, Nicholas Andrew. 2015. “Sore Muscles and Lactic Acid, Concerning Exercise Pain.” SiOWfa15: Science in Our World: Certainty and Controversy. https://sites.psu.edu/siowfa15/2015/11/12/sore-muscles-and-lactic-acid-concerning-exercise-pain/ (Accessed February 2, 2018).

    Hutchings, Tim. 2014. Active Shooter. Larpscript. Golden Cobra. http://www.goldencobra.org/

    http://www.goldencobra.org/pdf/ActiveShooter_TimHutchings.pdf. Accessed February 1, 2018.

    Huizinga, Johan. 2016. Homo ludens : a study of the play-element in culture. Angelico Press

    Kaljonen, JP, and Raekallio, Johanna and Montola, Haidi. (2011). Dublin2. Larp. https://nordiclarp.org/w/images/a/a0/2012-States.of.play.pdf (Accessed February 1, 2018). Run: Helsinki, 2011

    Kessock, Shoshanna. 2018. “Keeping the Candles Lit, When the Light Has Gone Out.” Knutpunkt 2018 Companion. Johannes Axner and Annika Waern, editors. (Accessed February 8, 2018).

    King, Joseph A., et al. “Inefficient cognitive control in adult ADHD: evidence from trial-by-trial Stroop test and cued task switching performance.” Behavioral and Brain Functions 3.1 (2007): 42.

    Lesser, Anne Katherine. 2016. A(partment 8). Immersive experience. Part of the ABC Project. http://annielesser.com/abc (Accessed February 1, 2018). Run: Los Angeles, 2016

    Li, J and Morningstar, Jason. 2016. Pattern Language for Larp Design. http://www.larppatterns.org/ (Accessed February 1, 2018)

    Lovecraft Historical Society, The H.P. (1991). Cthulhu Lives!: The Mistress of Nyarlathotep (a.k.a. “The Epic”). Larp. http://www.hplhs.org. (Accessed February 1, 2018). Run: Urbana-Champaign and other locations in Illinois, 1991.

    Nelson, Noah and Yu, Kathryn. No Proscenium Podcast Episode #130-Ida Benedetto. December 22, 2017. https://noproscenium.com/nopro-podcast-episode-130-ida-benedetto-435d3c6a09ac

    (Accessed multiple times, December 2017-February 2018)

    O’Loughlin, Siobahn. (2015). Broken Bone Bathtub. Immersive experience. http://www.brokenbonebathtub.com (Accessed February 1, 2018). Run: Tokyo, 2015.

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    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.

  • The Narrative Experience

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    The Narrative Experience

    As larpers, we are world-class in making character immersion experiences. We have mastered it through years of larp making, and can apply this skill in many settings and with many different themes and end results. We can design experiences for bleed or even make them transformative.

    Yet despite such experiences, there are other types of experiences with which we are not as proficient. In fact, one in particular I’m thinking of, I choose to call the narrative experience.

    The narrative experience has roots in “narrativism,” or the disposition that rules and play should serve to tell narratives above all other goals. It comes from Ron Edwards’ (1999) reformulation of the “drama” component of the popular “Threefold Model” –– Game, Drama, and Simulation –– but narrativism and dramatism has been redefined, blurred, confused, and misunderstood many times since, such that today narrativism and dramatism is commonly not understood to mean the same thing. What separates them is difficult to define; I give a suggestion later on. Nevertheless, it should be acknowledged that a player perspective, play style or player goal exists called “narrativism,” and it is one of possibly many such perspectives in the complex field of preferences and motivations for play theorized by many, such as Robin D. Laws’ (2002) theory for pen-and-paper roleplay or Nick Yee’s (2005) work on motivations in MMORPGs.

    In the Nordic larp community, and to my knowledge in the larp world in general, we have yet to discover good ways to make full-scale larps, not freeform or chamber larps, focused on a narrative experience. Sure, there have been larps with narrativist ideas, and some went well, but generally I see full-scale larps struggling with their narrative aspects, and the community has not learned much to confront this fact. Personal observations by Juhana Pettersson (2017) and my own experiences tell me that we do not have a coherent understanding of narrativism, mostly due to getting lost in semantics of Edwards’ (1999) formulation or the Nordic interpretation The Three Way Model (Bøckman, 2003). There are many diverging views and preferences, and I doubt I completely understand all of them.

    Instead of focusing on narrativism in the abstract, I take a more hands-on approach to the narrative experience. In this article, I will talk about narratively inclined players and what they tend to do when they larp, recount some tools and methods with narrativistic leanings, then discuss a possible narrativistic redefinition of NPCs. Finally, I offer ideas for the structures of narrative larps as a foundation for further work.

    The narrative experience in larp design I loosely define as: “the object of the larp is for players to focus on the story (or stories) of the larp, and one’s character (or characters) are merely a tool to play out these stories”. This should be seen as contrary to the character immersion experience, loosely defined as; “the object of the larp is for you to immerse yourself into a character, the actions you take during the larp should be rooted in character motivation and coherence”. These two experiences are not necessarily opposites. Definitions here stress the difference between the experiences; they are not meant to establish a false dichotomy.

    My overall hope is that we as larp players and designers may become more skilled and versatile to play larps with any kind of mix between immersive and narrative experiences, and that we are more conscious about the choices we make in design and play style. At the same time, I want to expand our capabilities with new experiences within the narrative domain, as it is my notion there is a lot more to be gained there.

    Narratively Inclined Players

    Some larpers prefer to play with focus on stories and narratives and less focus on character feelings, motives or coherence. We all have our own preferences as to what we want from a larp, and there are definitely those for whom stories is the most important thing.

    Preference and skill usually go together, also in larp, so narratively inclined players are quite often adept story handlers, who like nothing better than when a good story comes together. When these players participate in larps, they most often get their greatest kick when they are able to steer their character’s story or the story of other characters. Narrative steering is explained later.

    To learn about the narrative experience, it makes sense to look at what narratively inclined players do when they play. In my experience, there are two types of narratively inclined players; those that like to create a good story centered on their own character, and those that like to manipulate the stories and characters of others. The first type is usually a master of drama and of setting the scene, while the second type is usually a master of intrigue and timely remarks. Both will have very good feel for the flow of play and “playing ball,” explained later.

    These are skills that have high status in most larping circles. Thus, you will usually see that narratively inclined players are regarded as skillful roleplayers in their local communities, which is ironic since narratively inclined players will often work to create stories and drama, even if it is not in their character’s personality to do so. In fact, they may find themselves breaking character coherence several times during a larp in order to advance stories, which, for many players that are more inclined towards character immersion, would otherwise be absolutely taboo.

    On the other hand, when narratively inclined players steer to advance stories in a larp, they do not go completely haywire. Even if they break character coherence, there are other things keeping them in check; some sort of narrative coherence or the instinctive feeling of a good story: This, to me, is what separates narrativism from dramatism.

    Narrative concepts

    Despite my earlier claim that we as a community haven’t experimented much with narrative experiences, we nevertheless have a long list of concepts with a possible narrativistic interpretation.

    “Playing to lose”

    “Playing to lose” is where a player increases drama though actively trying to have their character come out worse off following each engagement. It is employed in many Nordic larps so often that many players culturally assume it by default.

    “Playing to lose” can be interpreted as an anti-gamism or anti-powerplay rule to avoid players attempting to use the larp for character empowerment. More interestingly, however, it incorporates the sentiment that tragedies and stories about a fall from greatness are better stories, and this rule is in place to promote those stories by encouraging players to make sure they do not succeed in their characters’ goals without at least a dire cost.

    Steering

    Steering is simply the act of influencing your character’s actions for reasons that are extra-diegetic (Montola, Stenros, Saitta, 2015). As such, steering is itself not narrativistic, however in many cases these extra-diegetic reasons are. Whenever a player steers her character’s action with the aim to create a certain scene or promote a certain plot line, it is narrativism at work.

    “Playing ball”

    To “play ball” is a common expression for the concept of answering play with play; to see opportunities in the larp, to recognize plot points, or to register another player’s initiative and choosing to act upon it. A splendid article is written about this concept by Josefin Westborg and Carl Nordblom (2017).

    To “play ball” is a skill that can be practiced and mastered, and it is useful for roleplayers of all preferences. In a narrativistic interpretation, it is a skill that enables a roleplayer to see story points and choose how to best act on them in order to further the stories of larp. It is an essential skill for the narratively inclined player.

    Telegraphing

    The act of telegraphing is to communicate intent without specifically expressing it. In sports and other places telegraphing is typically unintentional and many times viewed as a bad thing, as it enables your opponent to read you. In larp, it is a good thing and can be used intentionally.

    Telegraphing in roleplay is the use of winks, intonation of words, and general body language to intentionally meta-communicate to your co-players. Note that this diverges from the technique of telegraphing as used in jeepform (Wrigstad, 2008).

    Telegraphing is typically used to communicate intentions and desires for the outcome of an interaction. Not all of these intentions are related to the plots of a larp, but a great deal may be. For instance, it may be used to communicate about the intended outcome of a scene. When used proficiently, it is a very useful tool for a larper.

    Play distribution

    Play distribution comes from the idea that play is a resource in larps that we create with our actions and share among each other, but this resource tends to gravitate towards the high-status characters of the larp, who are then supposed to make sure that it is distributed back to the characters of lower status, hopefully with some manner of fairness so that everybody gets a piece.

    This task of distributing play can be quite demanding to the point of being labor (Jones et.al., 2016), and usually the players that take it on will have their hands full the whole larp, leaving them with less time to pursue their desired larp experience. I would not consider play distribution specifically a narrative task, but it is interesting to note that it involves a great deal of steering and possibly narrative consideration as to how play should be distributed. Thus, the task of play distribution may easily quell the possibility of a good character immersion experience, but not the possibility a narrative experience.

    Foreshadowing

    Premonitions, forewarnings, or foreshadowing are gamemaster tools to hint at a future event within the confines of the fiction, so that the players react appropriately when the event does or does not come about. A classic example would be sending a messenger telling that the orcs are on the move some hours before the fantasy village is attacked, thus giving players time to discuss defense strategies and prepare for the fight.

    Especially in the case when a gamemaster wants to make some kind of plot twist, it is in most larping cultures plain good style to foreshadow it; otherwise, the players may very likely react negatively to it. Cases of players feeling wronged by an unsuspected plot twist are too many to count. The feeling of surprise is rarely positive, without the chance to have seen it coming.

    Foreshadowing can be made with varying degrees of bluntness, depending on the intent of the gamemaster. Sometimes you want to be very clear about what is going to happen, sometimes more subtle and cryptic, but the act of giving players hints of things to come is narrativism.

    Act structure

    The method of having an act structure in a larp is usually to promote some kind of story through those acts. Usually in larps, the different acts will have different themes ascribed to them in order to align players with the story. It is a rather blunt-but-effective way to enforce the story of the larp without having NPCs or high status characters directing it. Rather: if all players follow the themes of the acts, the story will emerge almost in its own.

    An act structure provides another important advantage to the average larper: it helps us structure the narratives of our characters to have the right escalation, climax, and resolution to fit with the larp. It helps with building a narrative experience, even for a player that is not particular narratively inclined.

    Fateplay

    Fateplay (Fatland, 2000) is a gamemaster tool to direct a player to take certain actions or pursue certain goals with her character. Typically, it will be in the form of a message, called a “fate,” that is given to the player before the larp starts, stating an action that shall be performed and a condition for when it must be done. The condition can either be a set time or it can be whenever something specific happens. With this kind of messages the gamemaster can make entire chains of events and thus make sure a plot is moving forward the right way.

    To my knowledge there are two types of fateplay larps: the strict fateplay as designed and played by the Oslo larp scene in the late 1990s, in which fates are imperative actions that must be undertaken, and the loose fateplay in which fates are merely suggested actions that a player can choose from.

    Although the idea behind fateplay is clearly narrativistic, it is often the loose fateplay type that is seeing use in modern Nordic larp design, and it does not necessarily bring much narrative experience with it. Strict fateplay can be seen as intrusive by players with character immersion preferences.

    But fateplay can yield great narrative experiences if, instead of focusing on the action that needs to be done and the problems with character coherence this may entail, one focuses on the story of the character that is going to do this action and what hidden agenda this character holds. Sometimes when playing narratively, it helps to see the character from the outside.

    Planned scenes

    In many larps it has become a common thing that players agree on certain scenes prior to the larp. Sometimes the organizer is involved, but in most cases players plan it among themselves. Especially in larps of a sandbox design, it is well-known that planning of plots, character relations and scenes to be executed during the larp will greatly increase the chances that you will have an awesome larp.

    In my experience, most scenes planned in this manner do not include specific actions or things that should happen during the scene, they are typically more in the form of interesting setups where things might happen because of the engaged characters.

    The whole planning of plots and scenes is narrativistic thinking, yet as long as it is done before the larp, most larpers are cool with it. For most larpers, the planning is done in such a way that what is agreed upon will seamlessly fit together with their character and not be a cause for distraction during the larp.

    Directed play

    In some larp cultures, it has become practice to create stories and tension in the larp though scenes of directed play. The idea is that these directed scenes will visualize to the players what is at stake in the larp, and it can be a good way to demonstrate to all when a story progress to a new stage, or when a new event changes the stakes for the characters.

    Actual directed play can be done in many ways, from the use of playbooks with lines and actions that players should perform to scenes that have been rehearsed before the larp, to an actual director on stage who tells people what to do and say.

    To many players, directed play feels like a brute-force means of advancing the story and they react strongly against it unless the implementation of the scene is done in way to fit with the overall design of the larp. A seamless transition to directed scenes or having the scenes in breaks between acts or simply having directed play as part of the larp’s premise all help make such actions fit.

    Break and assembly

    Break and assembly is a technique that pauses a larp at a certain time and has the players convene to talk about the current state of characters, relations and stories and where to take them forward when the larp is started again. Usually, break and assembly is used when there is traditionally low activity in the larp, for instance in morning hours, or between acts.

    Some players may feel that break and assembly ruins their flow in the larp, but it can do a lot more good than harm, though naturally the break should be made gently to minimize disruption.

    The assembly, which should always be facilitated by a dedicated person, gives a splendid opportunity to coordinate narratives in the midst of larp runtime. Even for players that lean heavily towards character immersion, the assembly can help them discuss their character’s motives and plots so they do not have be distracted by that during play.

    Non-Player Characters

    The saying that NPCs are players too, or even humans too, has been catching on the last few years. It is a topic that is emerging and I believe we will see more discussion aimed at finding good solutions to implement in larps.

    “NPCs are dehumanizing”, Jaakko Stenros said in his keynote talk at Knutepunkt 2017. In a related article (Stenros, 2013) he speculates that the meaning of the different words we commonly use to describe NPCs are insufficient and all of them relate to some unspoken expectation of a norm that the NPCs are not part of.

    Clearly that norm is the norm of what constitutes a player. NPC as an acronym for non-player character was coined in the early days of pen-and-paper roleplaying. It simply refers to the characters that are roleplayed by the dungeon master and not the players. Roleplay has evolved greatly since then, and somewhere along the way larp came and borrowed the acronym without thinking much about it.

    It is strange that the name was just copied directly, since the concept doesn’t really make sense in a larp context where you actually have to have individual people playing the NPCs instead of a dungeon master handling them all; they are, in fact, characters played by people.

    Since then, larp itself has changed; how larp is played and what we can do with it has nearly no resemblance to how it used to be, and the roles of both players and NPCs have changed with it. They have grown to become much closer to each other to the point where it is actually difficult to recognize a player character from a non-player character.

    Yet our thinking of NPCs has not changed that much. We still see NPCs as persons or entities that provide a service to the players. The experience of NPCs has ostensibly no significance –– only the experience of players is important. Therein lies the dehumanization.

    The norm of what constitutes a player is complex to define and probably consists of many things; one thing I believe is important is the type of experience a larp is aiming for, or a larp culture attributes value. Players make a social contract to aspire to the experience that the larp intended.

    For instance, at a larp made as a dungeoncrawl, players would be the people actually able to go down into the dungeon, solve puzzles, fight with monsters, and emerge victorious or die in the attempt, because that is the experience provided by the larp. The wizard providing the quest at the inn and the storekeeper providing options to buy magic potions are NPCs to the larp.

    Similarly, for sandbox larps and the majority of Nordic larps, one focuses on character immersion experiences, so players expect this experience. NPCs in this context are characters that only exist in the larp universe for a limited time or that are so heavily scripted that character immersion is difficult.

    Yet why are we indifferent towards NPC experience? It is clear that NPCs cannot experience what the larp is providing, but still their experiences should not be regarded as insignificant. Maybe it is worth to consider that larps may provide multiple experiences and as a larp culture to be open to attribute value to more than one type of experience.

    In their truest function NPCs are narrative vessels, it is the far most common reason to introduce an NPC that it serves a purpose for a plot in the larp. Yet we only focus on how the plot is experienced by the players, while the experience of relaying the plot, playing it, and making it work during larp runtime, in essence the narrative experience, is given no credit.

    But the narrative experience fits perfectly with NPCs, and if they are given the opportunity to explore it, to develop narratives and play them out in response to the players’ backgrounds and wishes, I am sure that it will give both the NPCs and the players a more fulfilling experience of the larp. As larp designers and players we are already proficient at applying NPCs in many different narrative constellations, but for NPCs to have a narrative experience they require to be given ownership of their experience and of making plots and narratives for the players.

    In the case of a sandbox larp, NPCs will have a lot to offer in terms of a narrative experience. There could be a lot of excitement in being the ones that manipulate the players and spin them around in a web of stories, intrigues and drama. But it requires that the NPCs are given autonomy by gamemasters and agency by the players.

    Indeed, another problem with the indifference towards the experience of NPCs is that they have been stripped of anything but their core functions in the larp; as such they are given very limited options to gain meaningful experiences at all. What NPCs need to be given are autonomy and agency.

    Autonomy to make plots instead of just heeding the call of a gamemaster, and agency to exert power over those plots and execute them on behalf of the players. For this to happen, there needs to be trust between all parties of the larp – especially between NPCs and players, who have to recognize that NPCs are in fact co-players instead of non-players.

    Narrativist Larps

    The Nordic larp community has not committed itself to narrativism, at least not compared to the large number of larps based on character immersion, simulation or other perspectives. But that’s not saying that we haven’t done anything.

    Below, I offer ideas for structures of larps that can offer a narrative experience to all or a part of the players. Some of these structures are well-known, and larps have been made with them before.

    Pearls on a string

    All players go for a narrative experience in this larp. The idea is that all players form groups before the larp to coordinate and rehearse a sequence of predetermined scenes, so as to form a story, like pearls on a string. During the larp, there will be time to execute the planned scenes, but there will be a lot more time in between the scenes where the characters are supposed find motivation and get to a point where the next scene seems plausible to the character.

    The interesting thing is that the predetermined scene will work as a guide for the story, but they will not in themselves be the story. The story will be built during larp runtime, and it is a question of building coherence in both story and characters, something that a lot of larpers actually love to do.

    Typically, when planning such a series of predetermined scenes, one tries to logically link scenes together into a well-known story. To make matters more interesting, however, one might try a set of scenes that have no apparent logical connection, just to make it a bigger challenge to play through the larp and make everything fit together in play.

    Larp as adaptation

    A good way to make a larp with some narrativist undercurrents is to base the larp on a book, theatrical play or movie. With varying degrees of adherence to the original material the larp can scale from “inspired by”, where players try to fit their stories with the original theme and mood, to “adaptation of”, where players play through the original story with a strict act structure and sometimes with scripted scenes.

    Larps based on a well-known story will always give a hint of a narrative experience, but it is up to the organisers how much they actually want to give players an experience of living the original story, or if they will rather give an experience of being with the theme and setting of the story.

    NPCs with agency

    Following the possible redefinition of NPCs above, these new NPCs would require testing in full-scale larps. This larp should provide narrative experience to the NPCs while character immersion and simulation experiences to the players as normal.

    Take an example of a standard character immersion larp with NPCs, make an agreement that the NPCs can decide themselves what they want to play and that they will have charge over the plot of the larp. Make sure that NPCs are a tight-knit group that have workshopped a lot together and have a good understanding of each other’s strengths and weaknesses. Give the NPCs insight into the player characters and relations and instruct them to play on these things. Finally make sure that the players are in agreement with this, as it will greatly influence their play and take away some of their autonomy.

    The melting pot

    In any Nordic larp, there are both players that look for character immersion experiences and players that lean more towards a narrative experience. The recognition and knowledge that not all wish for the same experience can be enough to alter the larp’s design. If the players are brought into that recognition it could probably also alter their play and give more room to different kinds of experiences.

    If organisers knew in advance what kind of experience the players were looking for, they could tailor characters after that and make the appropriate casting. It would also give the organisers knowledge of where in the network of characters they should give different kinds of input.

    This is however not as easy as it sounds. Casting characters on the basis of players’ preferences in terms of the Three Way Model has been attempted before with little success. The problem is, I believe, that character casting is simply not enough when a larp in itself is designed around one single type of experience. The creation of a multi-experience larp is difficult, but necessary.

    Shadow characters

    A larp could be built up in such a way that for each ordinary player character you would also have one or more shadow characters acting in relation to the player character, for instance as guardian angels, good and bad conscience, or anything else fitting with the theme of the larp.

    The purpose of the shadow characters would be to have them plan events and make setups for the player character, both good and bad, which should give the shadow characters a good narrative experience.

    Different rules should apply to these shadow characters; how they could communicate to the player characters, to the other shadow characters, and to other player characters, how they could make events, or if they can make impersonations and thus also act as NPCs. All this can be decided through the theme and setting for the larp.

    Conclusion

    With this article, I lay the foundation for creating narrative experiences in full-scale larp and finding out what we can do with them. It has been my goal to keep this text on a level where it is directly applicable to the larps we make and the larps we play in.

    I want to stress that I don’t rate narrativism or narrative experiences higher than any other player perspectives or experiences available from a larp. Within character immersion in particular, I find an enviable perspective, and I am proud of the excellence with which we can make experiences to fit with this play goal.

    I have however the belief that there are many good larp experiences that can be found in the realms of narrativism, if only we went looking for them.

    References

    Bøckman, Petter. 2003. “The Three Way Model; Revision of the Threefold Model”. As Larp Grows Up. Edited by Line Thorup, Mikkel Sander, and Morten Gade. Knudepunkt 2003.

    Edwards, Ron. 1999. “System Does Matter” Accessed December 11, 2017. http://www.indie-rpgs.com/_articles/system_does_matter.html

    Fatland, Eirik. 2000. “The Play of Fates”. Accessed December 11, 2017. http://fate.laiv.org/fate/en_fate_ef.htm.

    Jones, Katherine Castiello, Sanna Koulu, and Evan Torner. 2016. “Playing at Work – Labor, Identity and Emotion in Larp”. Larp Politics – Systems, Theory, and Gender in Action. Edited by Kaisa Kangas, Mika Loponen, and Jukka Särkijärvi. Solmukohta 2016.

    Law, Robin D. 2002. Robin’s Laws of Good Game Mastering. Steve Jackson Games

    Nordblom, Carl and Josefin Westborg. 2017. “Do You Want to Play Ball?”. Once Upon a Nordic Larp… Twenty Years of Playing Stories. Edited by Martine Svanevik, Linn Carin Andreasen, Simon Brind, Elin Nielsen, and Grethe Sofie Bulterud Strand. Knutepunkt 2017. Rollespilsakademiet.

    Pettersson, Juhana. 2017. “Hamlet, Vampires and the Italian Alps”. Once Upon a Nordic Larp… Twenty Years of Playing Stories. Edited by Martine Svanevik, Linn Carin Andreasen, Simon Brind, Elin Nielsen, and Grethe Sofie Bulterud Strand. Knutepunkt 2017. Rollespilsakademiet.

    Stenros, Jaakko. 2013. “Between Game Facilitation and Performance: Interactive Actors and Non-Player Characters in Larps”. International Journal of Role-Playing – Issue 4. Utrecht School of the Arts, Utrecht, The Netherlands.

    Wrigstad, Tobias. 2008. “The Nuts and Bolts of Jeepform”. Playground Worlds. Edited by Markus Montola and Jaakko Stenros. Solmukohta 2008.

    Yee, Nick. 2005. Motivations of Play in MMORPGs – Results from a Factor Analytical Approach. Presented at the Digital Games Research Association Conference, Vancouver, Canada.


    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.

     

  • Group Improvisation of Larp Rituals

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    Group Improvisation of Larp Rituals

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    The aim of this article is to equip you with all the practical knowledge you need to run good, impactful fake rituals for larps. We present a 30-minute workshop which will teach a group of larpers to on-the-spot improvise cool magicky-feeling rituals.

    This article does not aim to discuss larp rituals from a theoretical perspective – for a more theoretical take on larp rituals, see Bowman (2015).  The suggested workshop is based on workshops run in connection with several larps, including Coven (Häggström and Falk 2015) and Ekdahl 1995 (Fallsdalen and Holgersson 2017). The authors have run the workshop many times in several countries, and other larpers have run similar workshops for many years in the Nordic countries – see for example Fatland (2015).

    Larp rituals can create not only temporary psychological effects but also bleed. The human brain and its emotions are eminently hackable, and one way this can be done is through rituals, both everyday rituals and religious rituals (for more on human rituals, see Bell (2009). Even if we know that something is fake, the act of doing it can have a true impact on your psyche and your body (see Charlesworth et al 2017; Pierre 2017).

    Rituals are experience enhancers: they can take the emotional theme of the larp and dial up the impact factor. Think of them as dramatic loudspeakers, and use them carefully.

    Overall workshop structure

    The workshop is performed in seven (7) steps:

    Step 1: The anatomy of a ritual: explain the common core.

    Step 2: The ritual toolkit

    Step 3: Practice your first ritual

    Step 4: Roles in the ritual: ritual leaders and followers

    Step 5: Try another ritual

    Step 6: Post-ritual theory

    Step 7: (If there’s more time) More practice in small groups

    Step 1: The anatomy of a ritual: explain the common core.

    In order to make it easier to improvise rituals, this workshop works with one specific, set, core structure for all rituals. Explain this structure to the workshop participants. We suggest that you make this structure – diegetic: this is how all the rituals in the larp world in question works.

    A ritual consists of three main phases (in boldface below) and two optional phases (in italics).

    Make a circle((Why circles? This workshop relies strongly on the effect of circles. Standing in a circle makes us focus on the others in the circle. It creates a small, temporal world with special rules. We feel more connected and are able to easily play off of each other’s actions and reactions.))

    • E.g. with people holding hands, or salt, or rope, or draw it, or place bones in a circle around the participants. Whatever is most appropriate for the context, as long as it is a circle.
    • The ritual leader may state “The circle is now complete” to make certain that all participants are aware of this.
    • A circle protects those within from evil outside, and also protects the outside from evil inside.

    Summon forces (optional)

    • This is optional but usually adds a cool feel.
    • Summon appropriate forces for the scenario/larp. In one larp it might be the four elements, in another it might be an ancient Egyptian god, in another it might be a fantasy creature. These will aid you and you can play on receiving power from them in the Main Act.

    Main act

    • Before creating a ritual, it is important to know that the ritual is about. This should be clear in the main phase, which should bring the group together and create a cool experience by chanting, movement, light, but also acts and proclamations that make the narrative of the larp move forward. For example, you might be filling a protective amulet with forces or maybe you are summoning the dead to talk to them. Maybe you have a possessed person who you want to exorcise. Use props like incense, fake blood, candles, tarot cards, draw symbols on the floor (make sure you can remove them afterwards).

    Thank the summoned forces (optional)

    • If you summoned forces and forgot to thank them, then that is an excellent source for cool drama. What would the consequences be?

    Break the circle

    • Break the circle by removing a part of the salt, erase the pencil drawing, remove the rope etc. etc.
    • Again, this needs to be announced clearly so that all players are aware of this.
    • It is potentially very dangerous to leave a ritual before a circle is properly broken – use this as a potential source of drama.
    • Another good drama source is if the circle is broken incorrectly or too soon! Forces might be rushing in or out. Anything might happen.

    Step 2: The Ritual Toolkit

    There is a single basic rule in creating rituals: the more magic it feels, the more magic it is in the larp.

    We want to create the illusion that there is magic afoot.

    We want to create a joint experience of this magic

    We want to create something that looks cool and feels cool.

    We want to make all participants feel like they are involved.

    In step 2, introduce the tools below to your larpers. Tell them that things will become clearer in STEP 3, where you will practice making a ritual using these tools.

    • A foundational soundscape, created by the participants. Everyone in the circle mimics the ritual leader to create the basic soundscape. This soundscape can include:
      • A sustained tone that the group starts and maintains.
      • Whispers (maybe the dead are talking?), hushes, vibrating hummings (this can turn into words very easily).
      • Song (a simple and repetitive song works best)
      • Rhythmic clapping or finger snapping
    • A basic movement of the group / position in the room
      • Its simplest form is just people standing in a circle.
      • Or they could be moving in the circle, walking around.
      • They can also be repeating the same gesture (tearing power from the object in the center maybe?) over and over.
    • Supplementary sounds that illustrate the magic (and thereby create the magic) achieved by the ritual.
      • A single person sings a higher sustained note than everyone else, or moves up and down a scale.
      • A single person starts snapping their fingers
      • A single person starts talking in tongues
      • A single person blows air (maybe because they are channeling an air elemental?) or hisses (a water elemental?)
      • Supplementary movements that illustrates the magic and thereby creates the magic.
      • A single person claps their hands, stomp their feet, presses life force into someone else.
      • Use props! Stones, incense, bones, papers with words of power, wind chimes, bells etc. Remember – if it feels magical it is magical.

    Step 3: Practice your first ritual

    1. Put an object on the floor – tell the players that you are going to bless it.
    2. Tell them that this will feel ridiculous. That’s ok! Encourage them to let it be ridiculous. (You will do a more serious thing later)
    3. Tell everyone that once you start making sounds, they should mimic you to create the basic soundscape. That soundscape should then be kept going throughout the ritual.
    4. Tell them that when you point to a single person, they should add something of their own as a supplementary sound or movement atop the basic soundscape.
    5. The others don’t need to mimic them, but they MAY do so if it feels right.
    6. Tell them that you are doing a small ritual – only the three main stages (make circle, main act, break circle).
    7. Alright – now put them in a circle, make them hold hands. Stay inside the circle. Say “the circle is now complete”.
    8. Create the basic soundscape. E.g. a single buzzing tone and then a rhythmical clapping. The others will mimic you.
    9. Vary the basic soundscape, make the group feel the power and how fun it is to make noise together.
    10. Point to a single person, who starts doing a gesture or sound. Point to some others.
    11. Raise the intensity of the basic soundscape.
    12. Start pushing power (with gestures) into the object in the middle.
    13. Raise the intensity of the basic soundscape to a crescendo. Stop it with an abrupt shout and/or movement.
    14. Say “it is done”, and break the circle of hands.
    15. Alright – you’ve done your first ritual. It had three parts – repeat them for the participants. Ask them how that felt.
    Circles are core components of rituals.
    Circles are core components of rituals.

    Step 4: Roles in the ritual: Ritual leaders and followers

    In this step, you make your participants aware of two different roles in a ritual, and how those roles can be used to aid in improvising a ritual or make it more complex.

    Leader of the ritual

    • Has an out of game responsibility to help the ritual feel cool and magicky.
    • This responsibility can be shared among two or more people, but it’s usually easiest to do it alone.
    • Since the leader will be in control of what happens during the ritual, it might be necessary to go out of game to talk to participants out of character before the ritual is run. Depending on the larp tradition you come from, more or less transparency in this will be needed.
    • To determine (via game mechanics or pre-determined choice) if the ritual will succeed or not.
    • To determine if something particular is going to happen.
    • Is responsible for being clear during the ritual about what is happening so that the players can make their characters react accordingly. For example, the leader is very clear about making and breaking the circle, and informing participants about how to understand the ritual. For instance: “now, if she falls to the floor that means that we fail and the demon wins”.
    • May be a game master.
    • Has to be prepared to change the ritual on the spot if a participant adds something unexpected to the mix (“I sacrifice my life blood to do X…”). Roll with the punches – it’s fun!
    • Has to be able to defend the ritual from TOO MANY changes brought on by improvising participants (by saying “No!”, that usually works).
    • “Repeat after me” is a very good tool to make everyone feel connected and safe.

    Followers

    • Add to the ritual by sounds and movements and cool ideas that they interject
    • It’s both your right and your obligation to help create the ritual
    • Help make the narrative go forward through the ritual
    • Respect the decisions of the leader – there might be a grand plan that you’re not aware of.
    • If you get confused during the ritual, don’t hesitate. Ask! Either in character or out of character.

    Step 5: Try another ritual

    Practice making another ritual in which you are the leader. Tell the participants to look at you and to enhance what you are doing. This will be a ritual with the goal to create some particular magic that you have decided on in advance. The participant’s task is to illustrate the magic that you indicate with the way you roleplay. Then do this set exercise:

    1. Tell them that you are doing all five parts of the ritual (repeat them) to create a magic portal to another world.
    2. Remind them that first the group will create a soundscape, then you (as the leader) will point to individuals. They should add something to the sound or the movement.
    3. Make the circle with you inside it. Start the soundscape.
    4. Get four people to help you call on the four elements.
    5. Say “I call on EARTH”, point to one of them – they’ll improvise something. Do the other elements.
    6. Channel elements into a point in the circle. Let the chanting increase to a crescendo (indicate this with your own voice and with hand movements.
    7. Start sounding uncertain (oh no! I’m losing focus! No!) – the group will now, of its on, follow you and illustrate this with frantic sounds. (You should not need to tell them this, at this point, most larpers have the hang of this and will improvise beautifully in concert).
    8. Fall out of the circle, breaking it!
    9. Go “out of character” and remark that that wasn’t too good for these characters – you broke the circle. What are possible consequences – ask them!
    10. If you have some other magic you want to focus on, feel free to replace the portal with something else.

    Step 6: Post-ritual theory

    Talk to your players about Consequences!

    • What are some ways that characters can feel after a ritual? Tired, nauseous, giddy, high?
      • Did the ritual fail? Or succeed? How do I know?
      • The ritual leader can (often should) make this very clear. State it afterwards.
      • Or the ritual leader makes it clear that it is not clear what happened. The players can spend the next few hours worrying, and game masters can plan future events around this.
      • Usually if it FELT like the ritual succeeded, it succeeded. Other things to weigh:
    • Was the ritual interrupted? That might be bad.
      • Did you thank the summoned forces?
      • Did you make and break the circle correct?
      • What would give the most amount of cool play?
      • Did it feel magical? Then it was magical.
    • Clean up after yourself
      • Blow out any candles
      • Remove salt
      • Remove fake blood quickly
      • Use a plastic sheet if you know it’s going to get messy.
    • Summary. Remind your participants about what you’ve been doing the last half hour.
      • Make a circle
      • Summon forces
      • Main act
      • Thank forces
      • Break circle
      • Everyone contributes
      • The role of the leader of the ritual
      • Did you succeed?

    There is no absolute right or wrong in creating play pretend rituals. Go with your imagination! Use the dramatic power of consequences.

    Step 7: (If there’s more time) More practice in small groups

    Divide participants into small groups (around 5 in each group)

    Give them scenarios to improvise rituals around. Some suggestions:

    • Make an amulet that carries a blessing from each of you.
    • Let a ghost possess a character to reveal its murderer.

    Tell them that it’s better to OVERACT than UNDERACT. If they get that out of their system now, they’ll feel freer during the actual larp.

    If there is time, have them redo the ritual, but this time with less overacting and more serious.

    Some Final Thoughts

    Many typical rituals seen in larps mirror religious rituals. This might make some participants uncomfortable and might lead to unintentional bleed. Make sure your participants are aware that there will be rituals, and be prepared for the possibility that some of them will choose to opt out before or during the ritual. As in all other aspects of the larp, make sure that there are safety words and procedures that will let them leave discreetly and feel empowered enough to do so.

    Finally, let us reiterate that the goal of this workshop is to create fake rituals for theatre purposes. If you are reading this for any other purpose, this is not the text for you. For the rest of you, we wish to quote Granny Weatherwax from Pratchett’s books: “It doesn’t stop being magic just because you know how it works.”

    AcknowledgementsThe authors wish to thank all the wonderful organizers and participants who have had a hand in developing this workshop through the years. A special thank you to Annika Waern for very insightful editing and feedback on the final version of this article.

    Tarot cards can be good props.
    Tarot cards can be good props.

    References

    Bell, C. 2009. Ritual Theory, Ritual Practice. Oxford University Press: NY. Available at http://web.vu.lt/rstc/a.pazeraite/files/2014/09/Catherine-Bell-Ritual-Theory-Ritual-Practice-Oxford-University-Press-USA-2009.pdf  (Accessed December 8 2017)

    Bowman, S. L. Love, Sex, Death, and Liminality: Ritual in Just a Little Lovin’. Available at https://nordiclarp.org/2015/07/13/love-sex-death-and-liminality-ritual-in-just-a-little-lovin/ (Accessed December 8 2017)

    Charlesworth JEG et al. Effects of placebos without deception compared with no treatment: A systematic review and meta-analysis. J Evid Based Med. 2017;10:97–107. https://doi.org/10.1111/jebm.12251 (Accessed December 8 2017)

    Fallsdalen, E and C. Holgersson. 2017. Ekdahl 1995. Larp. http://ekdahl1995.wixsite.com/lajv (Accessed December 8 2017)

    Fatland, E. 2015. Notes on Ritual Improv. Available at: http://larpwright.efatland.com/?p=600 (Accessed December 8 2017)

    Häggström, E and S. Falk. 2015. Coven. Larp. https://www.coven.nu/ (Accessed December 8, 2017)

    Pierre, J. 2017. The Healing Power of Placebos: Fact of Fiction. In Psychology Today. Available at: https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/psych-unseen/201705/the-healing-power-placebos-fact-or-fiction (Accessed December 8 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.

     

  • Waiting Before the Beginning

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    Waiting Before the Beginning

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    What is your player’s state of mind when they arrive at the location of the game?

    What state of mind do you want your players to be in when the game begins?

    How do you get them from the first to the second?

    My design background is Fastaval, and in recent years the Danish black box scene. Fastaval is a roleplay convention with about 30 new games each year, each for about four to six players. You sign up for games beforehand. At Fastaval you gather in a room with all the other players. When people have arrived, an organizer divides people into groups, and each group is assigned a GM who then takes their group to another room to play the game.

    The black box scene works very much the same way. Again, it’s mostly centered on festivals with several short larps, the main difference being that the larps often have more players, around 10 to 20, so that everybody plays the same larp rather than being divided into groups. But both types of festival have a span of time before the game starts, where you wait for all players to arrive, perhaps for people from a reserve que to be found, or for the last preparations of the playspace to be done.

    You will mostly be waiting together with a mix of strangers and friends. People spend this time in very different ways. As player, I have experienced most of the thing you can do: joking with friends, being half asleep from an exhausting convention, being nervous about the coming game, the “Am I good enough?” feeling, aching to get on with it, giddy, fidgety, bored, impatient and so on. Suffice to say: players will be in many different states of mind while they wait for the game to begin.

    Designing the waiting time

    For the last three games I have designed, I decided that this waiting time could also be part of the experience. I have tried to design the waiting time just as I design the rest of the game. I do this by asking the three questions that I posed at the start of this article: where are my players? Where do I want them to be? And how do I get them there?

    For the first two games, Creatures (Pettitt, Simon J., 2015), and …And that’s it (Pettitt, Simon J., 2017), the solution to those questions were the same, so I will only describe one of them: …And that’s it.

    …And that’s it was my larp for Fastaval 2017. In this game, the characters face their own imminent death and the death of all their friends as a plague wipes out the last of humanity. This is a quiet larp about loss and death, about friendship and community. It’s uses drawing as a way of communicating and reflecting. The playstyle is very slow and meditative with the focus of creating together in silence.

    Fastaval on the other hand is a very busy place. Lots of things to do, lots of people to see. Very noisy, not much calm. At Fastaval you want to get as much as possible out of your time there, so often your program is packed. So, to answer the first two questions:

    The players are some degree of: busy, hectic, tired, full of noise and thoughts about what has happened and what will come.

    And I want them to be: calm, slow, meditative and silent.

    In an attempt to bring them from one to the other, the players, when they arrived, were given a piece of paper with a short presentation of the larp and this text:

    Dear player, welcome to …And that’s it

    Please read this, as you wait.

    From now on please don’t speak unless we ask you to.

    This game is about communicating and reflecting through drawings, so if there’s some waiting time, spend it drawing. It can be anything, it doesn’t have to be good.

    At the same time relax, and let all your tensions and worries slip to the back of your mind. This is a slow and dwelling game, so use this time to slowly sink into that mindset.

    This is a very simple low tech solution, but the result seemed to achieve my goals. When it came time to divide the players into groups I had a big group of absolutely quiet and attentive players. It was almost unsettling how loyally they had followed the instructions. I asked some of the players how it had been, and their response fit my experience:

    “It really help to get into the mood of the game. It was very calming to just sit and be quiet and think, and that gave a good look into how the game would be.”

    Bo Hjælm

    “As I remember it, we got a piece of paper, where we were asked to pick an object, that appealed to us. We were also asked to not speak any more until told that we could. It was very effective to be silent for so long. It really got me into the mood, to a degree where it even felt all wrong when we were allowed to talk during the workshop.”

    Anne Vinter Ratzer

    For both games where this preparation was used, the instruction to sit in silence and relax made sense in relation to the intended game experience. But in general, being relaxed and focused before a game starts is a good thing. So, what is yet to be tested is what to do if your game is different? What if it’s a comedy or an action piece? It will be interesting to see if this tool is just for this kind of game or if it can enhance the experience of all kinds of games.

    Getting into Different States of Mind

    I plan to test this at Fastaval 2018, where I will try to do the same but with a game that offers a slightly different experience. For Fastaval 2018 I’m designing Uledsaget (Pettitt, Simon J., 2018), a game about children fleeing from a civil war. It will be a dark fairytale rather than social realism. The players will be playing children that are thrown into extreme conditions. So the mood I want them to be in is a childlike state, but a bit apprehensive about the experience to come.

    This presents a new answer to the second question: I want them to feel childish but apprehensive. So far in the design process, my idea is to make the room feel like the waiting room of an official institution. Like the doctor or in a hospital. Stale, impersonal, silent, but with some toys and coloring pens for children. The players will be instructed, as they arrive, to wait while playing or drawing by themselves, as if they are children waiting for something, feeling nervous but still being a playful child.

    Whether or not this achieves the goal remains to be seen. Designing the waiting time for a larp is still new for me. And I would be very interested in hearing from others, who have tried to work with this waiting time as well. As designers, we need to design the whole experience from start to end, as we are by now designing experiences and not just the larps themselves.

    An important point to remember is, that this is not meant to be a compulsory activity. The whole point is, that any waiting time often works against the mood and play experience as we get nervous, impatient or just bored. But by designing the waiting time, by making it part of the experience, we alleviate this and even help the players get ready for the game.

    Getting into Mood vs. Getting into Character

    An important distinction to make here, is that this is not about getting into character. This is about getting into the mood of the game. Many larps have a ritual or transitioning phase where the players move from the real world and into the larp.

    The larps Just a Little Lovin’ (Edland, Tor Kjetil and Hanne Grasmo 2011) and Brudpris (Linder, Anna-Karin and Caroliona Dahlberg 2013) both had a theme song that played before game start,((I used these two examples because they are the two longer larps I have so far played.)) during which the players could get into character. The end of the song signal game start. Black box larps have worked a lot with transition using the tools of theatre. Both light and sound have been used help the players get into character and start the game.

    But this is about the mood of the game and should happen before any such ritualistic transition. Before the workshop for shorter games, and before the transition into role for longer larps. Both tools could be used in the same game.

    The Waiting Time before Longer Larps

    When I posted the original blog post in Larpers BFF((See the post and comment here (requires membership of Larpers BFF on Facebook: https://goo.gl/T4i7eo)), Karijn van der Heij made a good comment about how this might work in a longer larp:

    ”At longer games, in my experience, people will need a certain amount of time to greet friends, catch up, fool around, share the pepp etc.”

    This is like when I worked for an efterskole in Denmark. We had a yearly open house, where former students came and showed potential students around the school. We had to ask the old students to arrive an hour early, because they needed to spend the first hour reconnecting with old friends.

    So, I think what Karijn is saying is true. But it only enhances my point. We need to be aware of where our players are when they arrive, and how we get them to where we need them to be when the larp starts. That might mean creating a meditative atmosphere before a game at a stressful convention or remembering to ad in catch up time before a long larp.

    For the longer larps I have tried the start has been like this:

    1. Arrival with hang out and catch up.
    2. Workshop.
    3. Costume and character prep before gamestart.
    4. Game start.

    But between prep and gamestart there is always a span of time where more and more players are just waiting for the game to start. In my experience this is the point where people are the most nervous and you need them to feel the most ready, relaxed and confident.

    I think this period is equivalent to the waiting time at conventions, and you can design it too. Perhaps, you could create a space where players can go to when they are ready, where the setting and soundscape matches the feeling you want to set for the larp.

    For a larp like Just a Little Lovin you could make a disco where people could dance their nerves away, maybe even make it a silent disco so people can listen to whatever music they need to hear to connect to their particular character. For a larp like Brudpris a game about a stoic honor based patriarchal society, you could create a meeting area where players could sit in contemplative silence slowly letting the weight of this strangling society build up until everyone are ready.

    If you don’t do this, the state of mind your players are in when the game starts are out of your hands. Yes, some players will do this on their own anyway. But some will be rife with nerves or joking around perhaps due to being nervous. I believe if you create a space before a game starts that matches the state of mind you want your players to be in when the game starts, you can help alleviate that first difficult hour of play where you are still getting into character and finding your way into the magical circle that is a larp.

    Playtest of “Uledsaget” (Unaccompanied) at Østerskov Efterskole. Photo: Simon J. Pettitt.
    Playtest of “Uledsaget” (Unaccompanied) at Østerskov Efterskole. Photo: Simon J. Pettitt.

    References

    Pettitt, Simon James (2015) Creatures. https://alexandria.dk/data?scenarie=4582. Blackbox Cph V 2015.

    Pettitt, Simon James (2017) …And That’s It. https://alexandria.dk/data?scenarie=4958. Fastaval 2017.

    Pettitt. Simon James (2018) Uledsaget (Unaccompanied). https://alexandria.dk/data?scenarie=5324. Fastaval 2018.

    Edland, Tor Kjetil and Hanne Grasmo, (2011) Just a Little Lovin’ https://nordiclarp.org/wiki/Just_a_Little_Lovin’

    Linder, Anna-Karin and Carolina Dahlberg (2013) Brudpris https://nordiclarp.org/wiki/Brudpris


    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.


    Cover photo: Playtest of “…And that’s it” at Østerskov Efterskole. Photo: Simon J. Pettitt.

  • Play to Lift, not Just to Lose

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    Play to Lift, not Just to Lose

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    [This article is also available in Spanish, at: http://vivologia.es/jugar-a-elevar-y-no-solamente-jugar-a-perder/
    Thank you to Vivologia for translating it!]

    One of the best-known larp techniques (and/or buzzwords) to come out of the Nordic Scene is “Play to Lose”. It has been met with both enthusiastic welcome and wary scepticism in other larp communities – in the latter case, larpers often question how you would get dramatic potential from everyone just trying to make their characters as miserable as possible.

    I find that in order to explain how this technique is effectively used in practice, it is very helpful to mention another technique, which I have named “Play to Lift”.

    Play to Lose

    First off – what is “Play to Lose”? This is the definition from the Nordic Larp Wiki((Nordic Larp Wiki: Playing to Lose. Accessed 18 November 2017. https://nordiclarp.org/wiki/Playing_to_Lose)):

    Playing to lose is a technique or concept used by a player to create better drama by not trying to win, letting their character lose. It is used in a collaborative play style rather than a competitive play style

    A very similar definition can be found in Willer Piironen & Thurøe (2014, pp 35-36):

    When a player plays to lose she actively sets her character up to fail. (…). This strategy is used by many Nordic players to create interesting conflicts and personal drama in games. The concept is often used in opposition to a gameist player strategy where the player treats the larp as a contest that can be won through the character’s achievements, often at the expense of emotional depth in the story.((For a definition of “gameist”, see (Bøckman 2003).))

    “Play to lose” is thus when your main focus as a player is to create better drama. Your character is always ‘playing to win’ as the character understands a win: e.g. they don’t want their horrible secret to come to light, they don’t want to be drafted into the army, they don’t want to be discovered underneath their lover’s bed. By playing to lose you, the player, look for good chances to let your character lose, in a way that creates better drama. So you forget your character’s diary on the porch, you get drunk and stumble into the drafting party, you make a sound so that your lover’s wife notices that you are hiding under the bed.

    Play to Lift

    In practice in Nordic Larps, however, I find that a lot of the great play that seems to be generated by Play to Lose is often in fact a product of when Play to Lose is coupled with “Play to Lift”. Play to Lift means that the responsibility for your drama and your character also rests on all your co-players. You have to _lift_ each other. You don’t, off game, have to worry about delivering the best speech ever just because everyone knows that your character is the best orator in the country. The reason that you don’t need to worry is because the other players will lift your character up, and applaud loudly – they will give you a win. An alternative name to Play to Lift might actually be: “Play to Let Others Win”.

    Why is this so effective? Well, it is much easier for a particular individual to lose than to win. And it is much easier for me to give you a win (I happen to spill my secret in the middle of our heated argument) than for you to carve out a win (You must out-of-game-cleverly manipulate me into spilling my secret). The drama that we both want rests on the secret coming out, however – and the easiest way for us to ensure that to happen, is for me to lift you. So trust that the other players will lift you to wins, and you can focus on losing.

    Note that the win we are talking about is a win for the player, not for the character. It may very well be that I recognize that you clearly want your tragic character to fail horribly at the public speech she is giving. Well, then the way I would Play to Lift you is to throw a (verbal) rotten tomato at you and boo your character off the stage.

    Do not people sometimes read each other wrong, when it comes to what they want? Certainly. Just as in a dance, you can sometimes step on your partner’s toe or twirl him when he was really expecting something else. Just as in a dance, you get better at it with practice.

    The Principle of Shared Responsibility for Co-Creation

    Another worry that I have often encountered in non-Nordic larp communities is that these kinds of techniques will make larps boring.  If people’s horrible secrets are discovered, they’ll just be forced to sit, shunned, in the corner and no one will want to talk to them.

    It is true that both Play to Lift and Play to Lose need something else to work effectively. They are both fed by a social contract to co-create the best narrative. To make co-creation of drama and experience a shared responsibility. Sometimes Play to Lift and Play to Lose work seamlessly when two players click and just get each other’s needs – but often a bit of off game discussion doesn’t go amiss to compare notes on what kind of drama is wanted.

    Now, if you are sitting shunned and shamed and friendless in a corner, another player will be along to pull you into other, new drama – because they have to. Because that is what being a competent larper means according to this social contract – you take shared responsibility for the entire drama. Not everywhere all the time – but when you can.

    Acknowledgements

    A special thank-you to Charles Bo Nielsen for hunting down Play to Lose references and Mo Holkar for superb content and editing advice.

    References

    Bøckman, Petter. (2003) The Three Way Model: Revision of the Threefold Model. In Gade, Thorup, Sander. When Larp Grows Up – Theory and Methods in Larp. Pp 12-16. https://nordiclarp.org/w/images/c/c2/2003-As.Larp.Grows.Up.pdf

    Willer Piironen & Kristoffer Thurøe. 2014. An Introduction to the Nordic Player Culture. In Saitta, Holm-Andersen & Back: The Foundation Stone of Nordic Larp, pp 33-36. https://nordiclarp.org/w/images/8/80/2014_The_Foundation_Stone_of_Nordic_Larp.pdf


    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.


    Cover illustration: André-Jean-Jacques Deshayes as Achilles (being lifted) and James Harvey d’Egville as Mentor (lifter). Painting by Antoine Cardon, 1804. Cropped. New York Public Library.

  • 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.

  • Just a Little Lovin’ USA 2017

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    Just a Little Lovin’ USA 2017

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    On August 7-12, 2017 in Whitewater State Park, Minnesota, USA, 50 larpers and volunteers from five different countries took part in the sixth run of Just a Little Lovin’ (JaLL, 2011). This meant that Tor Kjetil Edland and Hanne Grasmo’s esteemed larp about friendship, desire, and fear of death at the dawn of the HIV/AIDS epidemic, finally found its way to the country of its diegesis: The United States. The run was the culmination of over two years of organizing and many hours of volunteer labor by a diverse team of Nordic and American larpers. It does not even count as hyperbole to say the larp exceeded all of our expectations: it absolutely did. The combination of ground crew, organizers, and excellent players allowed us to create a logistically tight yet deeply human collective experience. Below is an attempt to document one of the already most heavily discussed Nordic larps, albeit in a different fashion: from an organizer perspective, specifically that of the US team.

    A game. JaLL is a game, but seems hardly one at all. Does it even remotely belong in the same category as table tennis, Pac-Man (1980), and Dungeons & Dragons (1974)? Indeed, when talking about the larp on an LGBTQ radio show in Minneapolis, we skirted around the term “game” and used the word “experience.” In the US, HIV/AIDS is certainly not considered a topic about which one could create a game, titles such as That Dragon, Cancer (2016) notwithstanding. In addition, the epidemic itself has not really been properly processed in the American public consciousness. Larry Kramer (1983) screamed “plague” to save tens of thousands of lives in the mid-1980s, but even his early pleas to the gay community now seem distant and historical. Yet as HIV activist Andrew Schuster noted at our JaLL post-game workshop, HIV/AIDS still poses an ongoing threat to many communities, and AIDS awareness could not be more pertinent to the coming generations, despite advances in medical treatments and cures. We were larpers, but somehow we were also involved with a form of activism. Or maybe we were just having a US-based conversation that, characteristically, few of us actually have had among themselves.

    Site

    Perhaps we should start from the beginning. In July 2015, a handful of North American larpers, myself included (Torner 2015), took part in the second Danish run of JaLL. We found the larp so transformative that we vowed to bring it to the USA in the coming 1-2 years. Many locations were thrown around: Saratoga Springs in upstate New York (where the game is actually set), Austin, San Francisco, New Jersey. But the site bid that won was submitted by Jon Cole, a seasoned freeform organizer from the Twin Cities of Minneapolis and St. Paul representing the group Larp House. Jon had assembled a solid ground team, and had found the perfect modern group site at Whitewater, far from civilization and surrounded by natural beauty. Alexander Sandrén, a Swedish player who has been at many runs of the game, remarked that the site was, by far, the closest to what he eined the fictional Saratoga Group Center looked like. I silently noted this as a major victory. Jon’s bid for Whitewater was detailed, precise to a fault, and above all affordable; the US run had to be non-profit, and an inexpensive site with a good group of committed volunteers would alleviate financial and personnel pressures. We decided that, yes, JaLL USA 2017 would be in Minnesota. And so, the planning began in late 2015.

    Securing the site itself was, of course, already a problem. A beautiful campsite such as this one was in high demand and heavily booked. One had to call the Whitewater park office at precisely 8 am on particular mornings to book the site for exactly one year later. Several frustrated attempts at reserving our slot led to us finally landing our fifth choice of dates: the week before GenCon. August in Minnesota would mean heat and mosquitos (from which we were fortunately spared in the actual run). Yet we were relieved to at least have the site secured. We blithely posted the Save-The-Date announcement in August 2016 for the following year on social media in celebration.

    A leather harness hanging on a bench in Whitewater State Park. Photo by l.p. lade.
    A leather harness hanging on a bench in Whitewater State Park. Photo by l.p. lade.

    Controversy

    Then the Internet hit us like a ton of bricks. Or a train. Or a train made of bricks. Given the emboldening of far-right hate groups in 2016, one would think our main critics would have been anti-gay evangelical Christians and neo-Nazis. This wasn’t the case at all: it was, in fact, the progressive left that went into a social media frenzy over the game. Individuals directly affected by the AIDS crisis were ringing our phones in outrage against the ostensible insensitivity of running such a larp. We were called out as being unethical and patrolled for any language suggesting that we might make light of the topic.  We were told that the Norwegians, even gay Norwegians, had no right to this shared history, and that this was a “gay larp for straight people,” implying a kind of shameful blackface-level mimicry of a certain vulnerable community at work. The reaction came through closed circles, without even major press coverage of any kind.

    Even this private, contained negative backlash left many of us emotionally drained. We had answers for these American social media challenges, many of which had already been raised in the 2011 debate about JaLL in the Swedish newspaper Expressen (Gerge 2012). After all, the larp takes its subject matter seriously, has queer creators, and has, in fact, given queer players their own larp to cherish and in which to feel at home. Nevertheless, much of August 2016 was spent in social media damage control and creating a massive FAQ((https://jall.us/faq/ (Accessed January 2018))) explaining every facet of the larp to potential participants, as well as its detractors. We also withdrew plans to crowdfund the game and locked down major public releases of information about it, tapping JaLL allies such as Nicole Winchester and Morgan Nuncio to run interference on any discussions of the game that might come up so as to shield the organizers from further flak. Needless to say, organizing a game about which we had been proud suddenly became a curiously furtive endeavor. None of us wanted to be caught as the “leader” of the project, out of fear that we would be left holding the bag full of hate mail and death threats if a Vice or Geek and Sundry article was written about us and a social media storm erupted.

    Adaptation

    Meanwhile, the larp itself had to undergo its own transformation for the North American context. JaLL may have some of the best storytelling mechanics and complex characters seen in a larp (Waern 2012), but it was also a game that traditionally had white European players portray an almost homogeneously white American group of characters, with the exception of four Puerto Ricans. As admitted by Tor Kjetil and Hanne, this simply did not represent the racial and ethnic diversity of early 1980s New York City. Compounding this fact were developments in language around trans* individuals since the early 1980s: in the historical setting, trans* women and men would call themselves “gay” because there wasn’t yet a better term, and pronoun shifts and non-binary designations were many years to come. How would we balance avoiding the erasure of the non-white experience of the period, letting players of color to calibrate their level of comfort with respect to playing on racism, playing on and celebrating ethnic nuance, and not appropriating or unintentionally mocking any given gender expression, race, ethnicity, and culture? None of us assumed we knew the answers, so we reached out to trans*-folx and people of color to determine what larp solutions would theoretically make them feel comfortable and welcome, crediting them as consultants on the final version of the larp. Not everyone had the same response either. Kat Jones and Moyra Turkington spearheaded efforts to sort through these interviews and come up with an appropriate strategy. They chose to incorporate race and ethnicity into every character sheet, as well as to run an additional “Playing Difference at JaLL” pre-game workshop that helped calibrate player behavior with regard to class, race and ethnicity, including opt-out rules for even subtle play on racism. Such work will continue to be necessary in larps to come, we surmise, as the medium continues to grow up.

    Simon of the band Urban Renaissance performs. Photo by Jonaya Kemper.
    Simon of the band Urban Renaissance performs. Photo by Jonaya Kemper.

    Although many US players purported to be playing in the “Nordic style” thanks to franchises such as the magic-school larp New World Magischola (2016) or runs of the sensuous vampire party larp End of the Line (2016), much player calibration remained necessary. Many of the players had never done a blackbox meta-scene or used sex/intimacy mechanics before. In addition, the US impulse to figure out how to “generate plot” or “resolve storylines” sometimes came in conflict with the overall design of the larp: characters launched unrealistically successful campaigns against HIV/AIDS and talked loudly in-character during scenes that had previously been played silently in Nordic runs. Nevertheless, such conflicts constituted part of the intercultural experience and were mostly resolved when they came up. Incorporation of the OK Check-in safety technique from End of the Line (Koljonen 2016) and the lookdown technique from New World Magischola (Brown 2016) helped players from all backgrounds adjust to the safety norms of the JaLL community.

    Even pinning down the group of JaLL USA players proved challenging. As a non-profit, the game was relatively cheap: each ticket cost $300 to merely cover the operating costs of running a 5-day event. Multiple scholarships funded by generous outside donors helped some players from diverse or impoverished backgrounds get in at a free or reduced rate. Sign-ups were done based on a casting system, with a lottery prepared in case of too many players for the limited 70 slots. And it turned out we never had too many players. It was a nail-biter for us to see if we would get enough players. The length of time-off required for this larp––6 days minimum––accompanied by the relative secrecy of the advertising, as well as the usual scheduling conflicts and illnesses all but depleted our potential player base. Over 1/3 of all committed players dropped before the game began, many of whom had even responded “No” to the question “Do you foresee any circumstances that might prevent you from attending JaLL?” Faced with the infamous JaLL player drop-off that Tor Kjetil and Hanne had warned us about, we ran the larp with the absolute minimum number of players required to play, removing numerous social groups from the larp: a BDSM triad, the youth counselors, the Hi-NRG music triad, and the polyamorous co-op house were all initially not present in the run, with some only re-introduced after the death of other characters. The Casting Committee went from a team of matchmakers to a team of larp triage nurses, swapping around character configurations even up until a week before the larp to accommodate for drops and late additions.

    Success

    Nevertheless, the players owned the resultant game. They brought electrifying energy to both the larp itself, as well as the preparation and clean-up afterward. About four out of five in this player base lay somewhere on the LGBTQ spectrum, and they felt seen and appreciated in the larp space. Jonaya Kemper and l.p. lade played in-character photographers who took thousands of high-quality photos for posterity. Most important to us as organizers was the glut of testimony to the power of this larp and this particular run. One of the players was part of the NYC gay scene and said how accurately the feeling of the larp captured the spirit of the times. He commented how much we, as young and middle-aged larpers, reminded him of those in the community he belonged to, which moved many of us to tears. “Thank you so much for bringing this game to the US for all of us to play.” wrote another player in their post-game survey. “It was a life-altering experience.” The positive energy among the participants poured out in their comments:

    This larp ran beautifully. The organization was impressive. Doing this for the first time and having such a good handle on both the in game and logistical elements was a real feat. I felt the game handled very sensitive issues well, and that the organizers were also sensitive to the needs of the players and of issues relating to translating it to a USA context. … I am so grateful to the players for taking on such a challenge and being so loving toward one another throughout the game.

    JaLL is amazing. Plain and simple. The organizers worked very hard, and I just want to let you know that it was noticed. I will rank JaLL as one of the best games I have ever participated in, and it is solely because of your hard work and dedication to the players. Thank you!

    Hearing such words after two years of intensive organization brought us all back to the raw emotional core of the larp. The trials had been worth it, and the community we had helped build was real and resilient. People took care of each other through the post-game bleed and larp blues. Many of the participants got on the bus from Whitewater and later wound up at a Minneapolis drag show. New relationships blossomed, players came out or announced transitioning genders, and vows were made: JaLL USA needs to happen again. Just maybe not right away. Bids for a 2019 run remain in the works, despite our country’s steady and unfortunate turn toward radical right-wing and self-immolatory politics. We nevertheless look forward to lighting up the disco ball one more time and commemorate this precious chapter of our gay history with a masterpiece 1980s larp that celebrates friendship and desire in the shadow of hardship and death.

    Thanks to everyone who made this run the success we always hoped it would be.

    References

    Brown, Maury. 2016. “Creating a Culture of Trust through Safety and Calibration Larp Mechanics.” https://nordiclarp.org/2016/09/09/creating-culture-trust-safety-calibration-larp-mechanics/

    Edland, Tor Kjetil and Hanne Grasmo. 2011. Just a Little Lovin’. [Larp] Run 6: Whitewater, Minnesota, USA 2017.

    Gerge, Tova. 2012. “Larp and Aesthetic Responsibility: When Just a LittleLovin’ Became an Art Debate.” States of Play: Nordic Larp Around the World. Juhana Pettersson, ed. Solmukohta, pp. 42-47.

    Koljonen, Johanna. 2016. “Toolkit: The OK Check-In.”         https://participationsafety.wordpress.com/2016/09/09/toolkit-the-ok-check-in/

    Kramer, Larry. 1983. “1,112 and Counting.” New York Native. March 14.

    Torner, Evan. 2015. Losing Friends and the Stories We Tell Ourselves: Just a Little Lovin’ Denmark 2015. https://guyintheblackhat.wordpress.com/2015/07/15/losing-friends-and-the-stories-we-tell-ourselves-just-a-little-lovin-denmark-2015/

    Waern, Annika. 2012. “Just a Little Lovin’, and Techniques for Telling Stories in Larp.” https://annikawaern.wordpress.com/2012/06/16/just-a-little-lovin-and-techniques-for-telling-stories-in-larp/


    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.


    Cover photo: A group shot of all JaLL USA players and organizers. Photo by l.p. lade.

  • The Larp Domino Effect

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    The Larp Domino Effect

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    Many of us have seen it unfold before us in larps: a seemingly insignificant piece of information suddenly becomes the central topic of every conversation; one character’s personal business somehow becomes a topic for public debate; a rumor spreads across the larp, somehow becoming accepted Truth; a plot point intended for a small group of characters sweeps through the group, becoming the Big Plot of the weekend. Whether players or organizers, we may have even orchestrated such effects, catalyzing the larp in a certain direction.

    This article will discuss some of the pros and cons of this larp domino effect, in which content from one area of the game spreads throughout the fiction like a wildfire as the result of emergent play. In larps where the content is “seeded” by game masters through the character sheets or delivered via non-player characters throughout the larp, such a result may be desirable. But, in larps where a particular tone or theme is central, such emergent play can derail the emphasis of the design. In extreme cases, the larp domino effect can potentially upset or even trigger other players, if “surprise” content spreads throughout the larp without their consent.

    The goal of this article is not to criticize this domino effect, but rather to explore its pros and cons. The larp domino effect is neither positive nor negative at its core. Instead, I plan to discuss the ways in which organizers and players might either use it to their advantage in order to stimulate play, or work to contain it as needed. In addition, understanding and discussing the domino effect can help us strategize ways for larps to accommodate multiple styles of play, such as participants who enjoy “hardcore” violence versus those who prefer more philosophical, social play. The article will advocate for the use of zoning in these latter cases in order to help contain sensitive scenes to specific locations and players when necessary.

    Some games and larp situations may benefit from the domino effect, whereas others may suffer from it. This article uses examples from a variety of play cultures and formats, including one-shots, campaigns, boffer, theatre style, etc. Regardless of style, greater awareness of how the introduction of certain content might affect emergent play can help designers and players steer toward their optimal larp experiences. Note that all of the below examples are hypothetical and not specific to my own larp experiences.

    Organizer-Driven Dominos

    In some cases, the entire design of a larp event is intended to produce some degree of the domino effect. Some examples:

    • Organizers seed a particular piece of information to various characters through character sheets or rumors, hoping to spur some sort of group reaction, e.g. whispers of political corruption for a beloved ruler or intelligence that a ticking time bomb somewhere in the town requires defusing.
    • Organizers send out specific non-player characters meant to catalyze action, either as sympathetic or antagonistic agents, e.g. a crying mother hoping to find her lost child or a villain wanting to kidnap characters for ransom.
    • Organizers embed certain types of emotionally provocative content into the larp, e.g. explosive relationship dynamics between two characters or backgrounds with domestic violence, systemic abuse, or grief from the loss of a loved one.
    • Organizers create a setting that encourages a certain degree of volatility, e.g. a lawless state where “anything goes” or a political environment filled with characters with questionable ethics.
    • Organizers establish a “common enemy” in the setting in the hopes that the characters will mobilize against it, e.g. a warring state threatening to take over the town or a disease that the town doctors need to contain before it becomes an epidemic.
    • Depending on the design style, this type of content is typically deployed in one of three ways: 1) through the history of the setting itself, with various social practices that reinforce it; 2) through pre-written character sheets and other fictional briefs given to the players in preparation for the larp; or 3) through run-time delivery as physical messages, props, or embodied characters.

    In some cases, this embedded content ends up falling flat, failing to topple the rest of the dominos. Perhaps the players find the “plot” uninteresting, become distracted, or fail to pass on the information. Perhaps they steer their characters in a different direction. Organizers sometimes express frustration when their carefully orchestrated plots “go nowhere” with the player base.

    However, the best case scenario for some organizers is for such content to “go viral,” in the sense that it spreads throughout the larp, generating interest and engagement. In these cases, the organizers hope the larp domino effect will occur, because they want the players to feel immersed and captivated.

    Such plots can backfire, however, when a significant number of the players feel overtaken by them. Some players bemoan railroading, a practice in which the organizers have set up a plot train that everyone must jump upon in order to engage (Bowman 2013). The domino effect of a plot can also reduce a player’s sense of agency; if a player enjoys quiet, romantic play, but their kid brother has been kidnapped by the moustache-twirling villain, they may find it unrealistic to pursue their personal goals of play by ignoring this overarching plot. This domino effect is especially potent in larps that feature factions to which players belong; if a faction must mobilize to address a certain conflict, the individual player-character may feel pressured to engage with it, abandoning their personal character goals.

    Player-Driven Dominos

    In other cases, individual players introduce content that may cascade throughout the larp in unforeseen ways, such as:

    • Player-written backstories that feature difficult content, e.g. sexual violence, unwanted pregnancies, or the death of close family members.
    • Player-requested scenes, where the staff produces content by request in order to incite dramatic conflict, e.g. a character confronting their abusive parent or a violent encounter leading to that character’s planned death.
    • Players improvising scenes that unfold in unpredictable directions, e.g. a beloved couple’s dramatic confrontations leading to their breakup or a character’s unethical actions becoming common knowledge, forcing everyone in town to take sides.
    • Players introducing new content into the larp that does not match the design goals of the organizers or the setting, with the other players adopting it as fact, e.g. spreading rumors about a villain hiding in the town, causing everyone to become hypervigilant.

    Some larps thrive on player-driven content, with very little “plot” dispensed by the organizers themselves. In these larps, the introduction of player creativity through interactions, stories, rituals, events, or other spontaneous improvisations can become the lifeblood of the larp. In these cases, player-driven content can be deeply moving and personal for the players involved — even more so than generic plots designed by the organizers to keep players engaged.

    Other larps rely heavily on the players following along with the design of the game or on characters responding to organizer-driven content. In these cases, player-driven content may enhance the larp to some degree, but can sometimes overpower the design. For example, if players show up to a murder mystery dinner refusing to discover who committed the crime, but instead throwing a raucous in-game party, they may still find the experience enjoyable, but the organizers are likely to become frustrated. Similarly, other participants may grow frustrated if they were still invested in solving the mystery, but their co-players have decided to “derail” the larp. The common phrase, “No plot survives contact with the players,” often applies in these circumstances. To read more about the creative tensions inherent to emergent play, see Evan Torner’s “Emergence, Iteration, and Reincorporation in Larp” in this volume.

    Some larps feature a “sandbox” style, where both player-driven and organizer-driven content exist alongside one another. In these types of larps, characters often feel free to choose their own adventure, so to speak — to engage with the metanarrative or to focus upon their personal goals and stories. However, sandbox style larps can also domino. For example, if a beloved character dies — even if the player chooses it — the shock can ripple through the entire sandbox, affecting the narrative for many of the characters. That shock may be experienced as cathartic and powerful for some players, but others may find it frustrating or overwhelming, as they feel forced to respond to it authentically. As Eirik Fatland and Markus Montola describe in their article on brute force design in blockbuster larps (2015), plot trains disrupt the flow of play when “the emergent narrative of one group can easily disable the play of another group; crisis and conflict in particular trump subtler themes.” In such situations, some players do not feel free to steer (Montola et al 2015) toward their desired stories, whether due to conformity, peer pressure, or the fear of judgment for “playing incorrectly.” Indeed, in some play communities, intentional steering might be considered a form of cheating or poor role-play. However, character immersion advocate Mike Pohjola has explained how character fidelity and steering are not incompatible (Pohjola 2015).

    Complications with the Larp Domino Effect

    The larp ecosystem is delicate and chaotic. What one player might experience as the most epic moment ever, another might view as deeply upsetting on an out-of-character level. What one group might think to be an amusing or engaging plot to introduce, another might find boring or challenging. The smallest of actions can sometimes have dramatic effects throughout the larp.

    In extreme cases, this domino effect can impact players in a profoundly negative way. The content of certain plots or the ways in which they unfold may make certain players extremely uncomfortable. A common example of this sort of content is sexual assault. Some larps feature an “open world” setting, in which anything can happen as long as those actions are not expressly forbidden by the rules. Thus, a person can discuss sexual assault in their backstory, a character can threaten rape, or an actual assault can occur within the framework of the fiction. Other larps feature sexual assault as a central part of the setting in order to illustrate brutal power dynamics. In my view, such content is acceptable as long as everyone in the scene expressly consents to its inclusion and the parameters of enactment.

    Problems occur, however, when such content spreads via domino effect elsewhere to the larp to others who have not consented. For example, if a beloved character in the larp is assaulted and word spreads, the vengeance of righteous townspeople seeking justice for that character may become a central theme through emergent play. Such play may be extremely gratifying for those who consent to enacting it. However, some players may not wish to engage with sexual assault at all for personal reasons or due to past trauma. While the content did not technically happen to their character, they may still get triggered, feel alienated, or disengage if the content spills over into their play emergently. Thus, a scene that a player may not have even witnessed can still deeply negatively impact them as a result of the domino effect.

    On the other hand, such unintended ripple effects can also occur with positive experiences, such as an impromptu wedding raising the spirits of the group; feelings of relief if the local town guards fight off assailants; or feelings of pride if one’s faction is victorious in a competition. Perhaps the entire group celebrates their success in the streets as a result. Even if a character is not personally involved in those victories, they may experience vicarious pleasure via the domino effect. Ultimately, a great deal depends on the circumstances at hand and the comfort levels of the players involved.

    Another unintended consequence of emergent play involves larp muscle memory. Certain players may have learned how to larp in a particular style, such as boffer combat, secrets and powers, play-to-lose high drama, etc. Thus, even if the organizers work hard to set a certain tone, in some situations, the larp muscle memory from past play experiences may kick in — and all of a sudden, players are reacting in a manner common to their previous style. A light-hearted fantasy game may become a survival horror game if the players react to an external threat based on their larp muscle memory, particularly if players in leadership positions model that behavior. This muscle memory is not entirely conscious and relies on previous models of understanding how to problem solve or deal with conflict in larps. Issues arise when those models spread to other areas of the game, accounting for a dramatic shift in tone or playstyle against the intentions of the design. Such instances require conscientious steering and recalibration among the organizers and players in order to get everyone back on track.

    Zoning as Boundary Enforcement

    As mentioned above, the larp domino effect is neither negative nor positive as a force. Just as a crowd may take up the same chant started by one person at a music concert, the impact of one player’s strong role-play might ripple through the rest of the larp. Such effects can be powerful and profound. However, when the larp domino effect unfolds in an unchecked manner, some players and organizers alike may feel frustrated or upset by this emergent play. The question remains: how do we set boundaries around emergent play in order to contain these unintended consequences?

    One approach that some designers have found successful is zoning. With zoning, certain types of play are confined to specific areas of the larp space. Some examples:

    • In Convention of Thorns (2016) by Dziobak Studios, the castle was zoned according to the degree of “hardcore” play, with the lower floor designated mainly for social interaction and dancing; the middle floor allocated to political meetings and rituals; and the upper floor reserved for more graphic forms of violence, feeding, and/or sexual play (Bowman 2016).
    • Dystopia Rising chapters sometimes zone specific locations of the play space as “splatter mods” or “hardcore scenes,” with organizers standing guard to warn unsuspecting players about the content.
    • Conscience (2018) by NotOnlyLarp features specific areas of the town where sexuality, nudity, and sexual violence are permitted if off-game consent is negotiated among all parties.
    • In the United States run of Just a Little Lovin’ (2017), the organizers encouraged players to use the black box if they wished to play out planned scenes involving brutal marginalization due to the character’s gender, sexuality, race, and/or ethnicity.

    While zones do not ensure that everyone entering the space is comfortable, they do allow players to more consciously steer toward their desired intensity of play or type of content by physically marking off areas of the playspace for those specific experiences. Zoning makes it more difficult for sensitive players to wander into a scene that might trigger or upset them off-game, especially if the organizers are explicit about what sorts of activities take place in those areas. Zones also make it much easier for players to obtain consent in small groups or one-on-one, rather than playing out such content in public or easily accessible locations where others might accidentally witness it. Again, witnessing might create powerful play for some participants, but feel intrusive to others.

    However, the larp domino effect can still impact players, even if they are not present. As mentioned above, sometimes other characters may learn about events occurring within a zoned location, causing a chain reaction. In the example of a sexual assault in a “sandbox style larp,” while both players in the scene may have consented, the rest of the larp may not have made that social contract and may feel ambushed by that content. Alternatively, in a larp like Conscience, in which that theme is explicitly stated up front, the players are not necessarily consenting to experience sexual violence, but are agreeing to play in a fictional reality where such acts routinely take place.

    Thus, content advisories are also useful, both for specific scenes and for larps in general. Stating the sorts of content a player may potentially experience can help set expectations about whether or not that larp is right for the player in question. Many of the example larps mentioned above feature content advisories connected to particular zones. On a meta-level, a larp’s website may feature a content advisory that effectively zones the whole game as a space for those potential themes.

    Reality Hacking

    As players, organizers, and designers, larpers intentionally hack reality, adopting new identities and social conditions. This reality hacking is temporary and flexible, in that we can alter these conditions in order to optimize the experience for multiple types of players. While the larp domino effect is not always a negative condition for a larp, it can have unintended consequences. As larpers, we can develop tools to redirect the tide of play to make the experience more enjoyable for everyone.

    Upon reflection, our Western social reality is already zoned in certain ways. Acceptable behaviors in a bar may be unacceptable in a corporate boardroom. Just as we wear different social masks and adopt specific roles based on the demands of our default lives, so too are our social spaces coded in particular ways, affording certain behaviors while discouraging others. With awareness of the ways in which we operate on social stages, we can construct our larp spaces to create certain bounded experiences, redirecting the flow of the dominos as they fall.

    Bibliography

    Bowman, Sarah Lynne. “The New World Magischola Revolution.” Nordiclarp.org, July 4, 2018.

    Bowman, Sarah Lynne. “Social Conflict in Role-Playing Communities: An Exploratory Qualitative Study,” International Journal of Role-Playing 4 (2013): 4-25. http://www.ijrp.subcultures.nl/wp-content/issue4/IJRPissue4bowman.pdf

    Bowman, Sarah Lynne. “White Wolf’s Convention of Thorns – A Blockbuster Nordic Larp.” Nordiclarp.org. Last modified on December 16, 2016. https://nordiclarp.org/2016/12/06/white-wolfs-convention-of-thorns/

    Fatland, Eirik and Markus Montola. “The Blockbuster Formula: Brute Force Design in
    The Monitor Celestra and College of Wizardry.” In The Knudepunkt 2015 Companion Book, edited by Charles Bo Nielsen and Claus Raasted, 118-131. Copenhagen: Rollespils Akademiet, 2015. https://nordiclarp.org/w/images/2/27/Kp2015companionbook.pdf

    Montola, Markus, Jaakko Stenros, and Eleanor Saitta, “The Art of Steering: Bringing the Player and the Character Back Together.” In The Knudepunkt 2015 Companion Book, edited by Charles Bo Nielsen and Claus Raasted (Copenhagen: Rollespils Akademiet, 2015), 106-117. https://nordiclarp.org/w/images/2/27/Kp2015companionbook.pdf

    Pohjola, Mike. “Steering for Immersion in Five Nordic Larps: A New Understanding of Eläytyminen.”  In The Knudepunkt 2015 Companion Book, edited by Charles Bo Nielsen and Claus Raasted (Copenhagen: Rollespils Akademiet, 2015), 94-105. https://nordiclarp.org/w/images/2/27/Kp2015companionbook.pdf

    Torner, Evan. “Emergence, Iteration, and Reincorporation in Larp.” 2018. In Shuffling the Deck: The Knutpunkt 2018 Companion Book. Edited by A. Waern and J. Axner. 153-160.  ETC Press.


    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.