Editorial note: This article was originally published in the Knutepunkt 2025 book Anatomy of Larp Thoughts, a breathing corpus. It has been reprinted from there with the editors’ and authors’ permission. It has not been edited by Nordiclarp.org.
We larp because we want intense emotional experiences. We want to shiver with fear, cry over tragedies, give in to the rage, and laugh with joy. Yet such feelings are not sustainable without crashing afterwards. Intense emotions might come in waves, but they leave exhaustion in their wake.
In contrast to those feelings we also need less intense, more subtle feelings. Worry, annoyance, companionship or gentleness for example. Less intense feelings offer just as rich play experiences and are needed to contrast and complement the more intense emotional spectra.
In addition we need emotional downtime, to reflect, recover, and rest – particularly during a longer larp – as larping is emotionally, mentally and sometimes physically demanding. This enables players to have the energy to really engage with the story.
This article is about how you both as a player and organizer can plan and execute your larp for maximal emotional impact as well as emotional sustainability. So how do you do it?
My suggestion is that you draw a squiggly line, but we will get to that later.
How intense do you want the larp?
First, consider how emotionally intense you want the larp. As a designer this is a big choice that will affect all players. Choose baseline intensity to fit the overall design, but be aware that there will be players both above and below whatever baseline you chose. When you make this choice as a player, you make it in relationship to whatever baseline the larp design aims for. Some larps are low-key by nature, and some larps strive for the most intense experience possible. No matter what, I think all larps benefit from some variation in intensity. Even a low-key experience about baking bread needs some variation, even if it is just an acknowledgement that some stages of baking bread are more stressful than others.
It is easy to imagine that “more intense = better”, as if larp was an extreme sport about always climbing the tallest mountain possible. It is not. Sometimes you might want to climb a tall mountain, but sometimes you just want to go on an easy hike and enjoy nature, and sometimes you might want to visit a specific site. Striving for maximal intensity is a valid agenda, but only one among many.
Decide what you want for the larp you are going to, or the larp you are designing. What mix of high and low intensity play do you want? What range of experiences would make you happy? This might be a bit hard to think about, so let me help you.
Four levels of intensity
One way to think about this is dividing the emotional intensity into four rough levels, and that is how I am going to talk about it for the rest of the article. This scale is not absolute but relative to the playstyle at the larp. At a very low-key bread-baking larp “high intensity” might mean harsh words being spoken, while at a super-dramatic save-the-world larp it might mean the possible end of humanity.
High intensity
These are the most intense scenes. If a character is angry they are as angry as they get, if they are sad they are a heartbroken mess, and if they are happy their joy couldn’t be greater. The absolute highs and lows.What this looks like might differ, as we as people express and experience emotions differently. But this might be weeping uncontrollably over your father’s lifeless body, or the primal scream of rage and betrayal, or absolute fucking panicked horror.
Mid intensity
In this one emotions and activity level might be a bit heightened, for example your character might be pissed off, but they are not raging. A character might be curious but not desperate in their search for knowledge, for example. Much of a larp might be happening on this level, because many of us want to spend most of our play at this level.
Low intensity
Here things are even more chill. There will be emotions, but the emotions are not pressing. Here you find characters that are relaxed, or a bit thoughtful, or “meh”, or displeased about something. A lot of meaningful play can be found here in the form of deep and meaningful conversations. They are just not emotionally intense.
Recovery
At this level players are actively resting. Either in character, or out of character. It might mean having a nap, doing some task like chopping firewood or going on a walk to clear their head. Or doing some very low-key relaxing play, for example I had wonderful scenes laying half-dozing in a tent next to my in game companions listening to musicians play. Some players might need to go out of character (at least mentally) to disengage from the feelings of their character to recover, either because they can’t fully relax in character or because what is going on in character is too intense to allow them to relax. As a designer you don’t always plan for this level, because this is something the player must choose to do for it to happen. But you can communicate to players when they have a chance to rest without missing out. It might be something as simple as communicating “after meals there will be a bit of a lull, so if you need to rest or go out of character it is a good time to do so”.
Check out other media
One way to help you with this analysis is to watch a movie, especially a movie with a lot of intense feelings, and try to keep track of the emotional tension in the scenes that play out. You will see that the emotional intensity comes in waves. Even a horror movie that is all about causing intense feelings will have low intensity scenes interlaced with the more tense ones, as contrast and to not exhaust the watcher emotionally and make them disengage. Try to identify where on the scale different scenes fall.
Length of the larp
Secondly, consider the length of the larp. The shorter a larp is, the less of an issue emotional sustainability is. All larps can benefit from giving some thought to emotional pacing, but a short larp faces less risk of exhausting the players. For an 1-2 hour larp many of us can maintain maximum intensity and come out on the other side of it without ever having to pull on the brakes. You probably won’t need to recover emotionally during the larp because the experiences will be over soon and the natural ebb and flow of the game will offer enough micro pauses in itself.
The longer a larp gets, the more you have to think about emotional sustainability. Already at a 3-5 hour larp you probably need some variation in the intensity of play, because very few of us can keep playing the same level of emotional intensity for hours. We want and we need some variation at this point.
Anything longer than that, especially multi-day events, larps need an emotional pacing to create the best possible experience. We will want high intensity, mid intensity and low intensity scenes and some chances to recover to be able to best engage with the story.
Draw a squiggly line
Thirdly, draw a squiggly line. Do it before the larp as a player, or during the design stage as a designer. Divide a paper into two axes. One is time, and one is intensity. On the intensity scale divide it into four zones. High intensity, mid intensity, low intensity and recovery. Then map out the larp roughly.
You are striving for waves of intensity. Ebb and flow. The map should look like a mountain landscape with peaks and valleys, where you switch between the different zones (high, mid, low and recovery) and don’t stay all the time in one zone. Like this for example:
Diagram by Elin Dalstål
As an organizer
Depending on the style of larp it might be possible to make a very detailed outline or a very rough one. For a sandbox larp, where you have a lot of factions acting independently, it can be very hard to guess what and when things are going to happen both as a player and as an organizer. Just make a rough guess based on what you know. It is helpful to plan around meals, as their timing is something you generally know. Often you can make an educated guess at the meal’s intensity as well. (Breakfast is usually a low intensity meal, while a banquet with entertainment might be a high intensity scene.)
On the other end of the spectrum you can, as an organizer, plan the curve almost down to the minute, if you have a lot of planned events and probable outcomes. Here I zoomed in on the Friday in the previous example to show what a very detailed curve might look like, dividing the two big waves into even smaller ones.
If you have a different group of characters at a larp that will have very different larp experience with different timings, draw separate curves for those groups and see how they play out.
Diagram by Elin Dalstål
Of course, whatever line you draw, it won’t work out that way. There will be delays and things happening out of sync. Every individual player will on top of that follow their own dramatic curve due to all the small events and interaction that make up a larp. Also they will find different things emotionally intense. That is natural. Going through the trouble of having drawn this squiggly line will help you troubleshoot your larp design and create at least a rough plan for the pacing.
Try to pace the low intensity scene so that if the players want to withdraw to rest they can do so at those occasions without missing out on much.
As a player
When you are a player, there are usually a lot of unknowns. You might have no idea what the organizers or your co-players are planning. I still think it is best that you draw a squiggly line to make a rough game plan. For example, try to kick off strong on Friday, round off with some calmer play late at night, head to bed, start out strong Saturday morning, try to find some time to rest on Saturday afternoon, go hard again until you head to bed and go for low or mid intensity play on Sunday because you have a long drive home.
That is still a plan that might help you get the best possible experience out of the larp. If you made a plan you can also figure out if there is anything you want to communicate with your coplayers. In this example you might want to tell them that you plan to take it a bit easy on Sunday because you have a long drive home, so the big dramatic confrontation might happen on Saturday evening instead.
Diagram by Elin Dalstål
Go for variety
While we larp it can be tempting to just go for the high drama, the high intensity all the time both as designer and as players.. Chasing the next high until we run off a cliff or into a wall. Unless the larp is very short, don’t do it. Be a boring adult and pace yourself. Remember that less intense play is just as meaningful and rewarding. It is not always the most dramatic scenes that are the best ones. On top of that you need some less intense scenes to give meaning and contrast to the dramatic scenes. Unless you establish your character’s relationship by having scenes where you just hang out and talk about nonsense, your friend’s dramatic death won’t mean as much to you if it happens later. The low-key scenes are instrumental to give the high intensity scenes meaning.
At the same time others have a tendency to hold back. Always staying at low to mid intensity, playing it safe and never getting into the strong feelings also means that they are missing out. Having a squiggly line plan can help some players actually go for more intense play without being afraid of crashing afterwards.
Either way, pace yourself and go for variety in the emotional intensity.
Abandon the squiggly line!
Lastly, no plan survives contact with the enemy. Once play starts, throw your carefully made plan out of the window, or at least revise it. You never know how things are going to play out during a larp.
Revise your plan and create a new squiggly line. As a player, if you had low intensity play, jump at the next chance to up the intensity. If you had very intense play, seek out something more low key or go have some rest. Feel your energy levels and plan ahead.
As an organizer feel out the pacing of the game. If things just unexpectedly exploded, then create space for more low key play. If there has been a long lull, see if you can turn up the heat.
Closing words
Pace yourself and pace your design. Intense emotional experiences become more available to you and more sustainable if you have variety to the intensity of your play, both as a designer and as an individual player. Enjoy the whole intensity range, low intensity scenes can be just as beautiful and captivating as high intensity scenes.
Draw a squiggly line to create a plan for the larp, and abandon your squiggly line when it doesn’t work out but still try to pace your play based on the new circumstances.
I hope this mindset helps. Pace your larps however works for you, because variety in how we design and play larps is just as important as any other type of variety.
Editorial note: This article was originally published in the Knutepunkt 2025 book Anatomy of Larp Thoughts, a breathing corpus. It has been reprinted from there with the editors’ and authors’ permission. It has not been edited by Nordiclarp.org.
“Daddy, tell me a story? But not that scary one!”
My father kindly let my brothers and I lie down on his bed in the space between him and my mother. He liked to start by telling a short story about how things were in his and his father’s time, and then continue with the terrifying stories that we supposedly didn’t want to hear. All of them were told as if they were real stories, events that had actually taken place many years ago somewhere in the interior of São Paulo – and they usually involved fantastic creatures that stealthily tried to deceive the living and take their souls to the afterlife.
This was part of my early childhood. It is known that the tradition of oral storytelling is one of the oldest and most powerful forms of cultural transmission, but curiously, until much later in my adult life, I had never realized how much this had manifested itself within my own history, and not only in what we learned in books.
The years passed, and my father became harder and more bitter due to the traumas, fears and frustrations of life, and I followed my own distinct paths in life, trying not just to survive, but to find my place in the world. And these paths led me to a peculiar way of telling and experiencing stories, larp!
“Father, I tell stories!”
I don’t think he ever really understood what I was doing. Nor had I been able to see any kind of connection between my larp-making and listening to these stories when I was little.
I had already spent about fifteen years doing larp. To be more precise, it happened in October 2015, a week before the opening of a larp of the group I am part of, and my father had to be rushed to the hospital. I took turns with my brothers to accompany him during his stay in the hospital.
I remember most of all the day before he was discharged from the hospital. He was excited because he was going home soon, so he had put aside some of the bitterness of life. We talked a lot and I had the opportunity to talk a lot about what I had done in the larps.
And at some point in the night I felt like I could ask again: “Dad, tell me those stories you used to tell when we were little?”
And he told me not only one of the chilling stories, but also a new one, one that I didn’t know – or didn’t remember. And it was the best one of all! I listened intently, not just to each word, but to the way he told it, the dramatic pauses, the intonation of the words, the rhythm of the speech and the plot of the story.
My father recovered and at that time he was able to return home.
As for me, I went to the place where the larp would take place. And now I had a new story in my head, one that carried a lot of meaning. I had reconnected with my father. And on top of that, I had received a very valuable gift, one of those that cannot be bought.
Self-portrait of the author and his father
My father was discharged on Thursday and the larp had its first session on Saturday.
It was a larp about national folklore. The theme spoke directly to the stories my father told. So I suggested to my partners in organizing the larp that I tell the story my father had taught me as part of the game’s immersion. But it ended up being much more than that, for that session and for all the following ones.
The two forms of storytelling connected, perhaps in an encounter like the moment my father and I had. I began to tell the story as a character who, around the campfire, enchanted the participants just as parents enchant their children on unpretentious evenings, awakening their capacity to imagine. By the end of the story, all the characters had already been transported directly into the game setting and were experiencing the larp. Of course, the work on scenography, sound and the larp text itself also supported this immersion.
The various stories of Brazilian folklore have already been portrayed in many books, films and plays, but there are many of them that have no record other than oral transmission that passes from generation to generation.
The larp in question was “A Peleja dos Vivos na Noite dos Mortos” (The Fight of the Living on the Night of the Dead), in which the characters gather, in the 1920s, and camp in search of protection to survive the night of the dead, when the dead and other entities from beyond are said to walk among the living.
And the stories my father told me had this same aspect, of fantastic beings walking among the living, testing them.
“Guys, I’m going to tell you a chilling story.”
By immersing the players and telling the newly learned story, I was able to express the oral tradition in the larp and enrich the experience, not only calibrating the game’s expectations, but also adding drama and resources for the characters’ interactions.
Photo by Thomaz Barbeiro, from larp A Peleja dos Vivos, na Noite dos Mortos, by larp group Confraria das Ideias (Sesc Bauru, 2018)
After that moment, my father lived for another eight years, but his stories will live forever as long as someone tells them, whether around a campfire or during a larp.
Oh, and what story did my father tell me? It’s a scary story with lots of twists and turns, but if you want to hear it, you will need to be lucky enough to find a storyteller who knows it in the interior of the State of São Paulo, or go and play this larp with the Confraria das Ideias, at some time and some place, because that is the tradition!
Cover image: photo by Thomaz Barbeiro, from larp A Peleja dos Vivos, na Noite dos Mortos, by larp group Confraria das Ideias (Sesc Bauru, 2018).
Editorial note: This article was originally published in the Knutepunkt 2025 book Anatomy of Larp Thoughts, a breathing corpus. It has been reprinted from there with the editors’ and authors’ permission. It has not been edited by Nordiclarp.org.
At the recent re-run of the larp Snapphaneland, I slipped into a very deep, immersive and solitary play on religion. As a fan of historical larps, I have of course played a Christian before, but never before have I had religious play as deeply immersive and moving. It made me get a glimpse of the importance that the Christian worldview had in history, and it made me want to explore and discuss these experiences. My focus in this text is describing my own experiences, and what contributed to finding that religious immersion. To do this, however, I first need to explain both the larp and the historical context, for those unfamiliar with it.
The larp Snapphaneland
Snapphaneland is a larp set during the Scanian War in the 17th century. Specifically, it focuses on the rebellion and guerilla war waged by Scanian resistance fighters (snapphanar) against the Swedish authority, the measures taken by the Swedish government and army to suppress the rebels, and how Scanian civilians were oppressed and punished, regardless if they aided the snapphane rebels or not. The larp is set in a Scanian village, and the characters in play are villagers, snapphane rebels and Swedish soldiers.
A life of toil
At the larp, I was a kitchen helper with a written character. This meant that I worked long, busy days, but could go out and play scenes now and then, and play while working in the kitchen. The kitchen was a mostly in-game area, and although it had some modern-ish equipment, many of the tasks were quite appropriate for the era – fetching water, keeping fires burning, chopping vegetables, and so on. It was also heavy work, with endless lifting, standing and walking. Although this was of course quite tiring, it also meant that the days were filled with manual labour, in a way that is quite realistic for rural life in the 17th century.
Snapphaneland. Photo by Tindra Englund.
The character I played was a farm maid (piga). Since she came from a large family, had no hopes of inheriting and slim chances of being married, this was how she would most likely spend her entire life, working very hard at someone else’s farm for food and board. Her days would be endless toil. Of course, everyone in a rural village worked, to the best of their abilities, but the farmhands (dräng) and farm maids got the heavier, dirtier tasks compared to the farmer’s family.
Most of the players at the larp did not have much work to do. There were some tasks that they could do if they chose – there was wood that could be chopped, sometimes things needed carrying, and they were always welcome to come help in the kitchen. Many of the people playing women brought knitting and similar handicrafts, to keep their hands occupied. But there were very few things that they had to do, and they could spend a lot of time sitting around talking, when not in the middle of Cool Scenes.
All this to say that while being in the kitchen for most of the larp, and not having much free time to pursue play, the benefit of my role was that the work was deeply realistic and immersive. My body ached from hard work. I was exhausted when going to bed in the evening, and then rose in the morning to do it all again. It was easy to lean into the knowledge that for my character, every day would be like this.
The Christian worldview
In Sweden in the 17th century, everyone (except minority groups of other faiths, of course) was a Christian Protestant. Belief in God was universal, it was a natural part of how the world was perceived. Not everyone was a good Christian, of course, and it was not uncommon that people did things that were considered sinful. However, everyone knew that sinning was bad, and had to somehow relate to this. Similarly, belief in an afterlife in heaven or hell was a natural part of life, and a very big part of the Christian worldview. Life on Earth was considered to be largely filled with suffering, toil, and hardship: and only those who lived good, pious lives would be rewarded with eternity in heaven.
This was a deeply important part of my experience. As described above, my character’s life really was full of toil and hardship, with no hope of becoming easier. These hardships were only increased as the oppression escalated, and life seemed almost unbearable. The thought of one day, when her life was over, being able to finally have comfort, rest and happiness in heaven was deeply important. Without it, life would just be a pointless struggle.
Snapphaneland. Photo by Tindra Englund.
Loneliness and love
Love is of course one of the great joys in life for a lot of people, something that makes life beautiful and brings meaning and hope to our lives. In the case of my character, there was not much of that to be had, however. She was the kind of person that no one really fell for, the person in the background who was perfectly nice, but just… not the girl anyone dreamed about. She herself fell in love pretty easily, but had never had her feelings answered. On top of this, she had lived most of her life away from her own village, away from parents and siblings. She was a very lonely person.
For a person like this, the thought of God and Christ was deeply comforting. Through God, there was the feeling of an ever-present love. A parent figure that, though stern and forbidding, was also full of grace and forgiveness, and would reward her if she was good enough. And someone who saw her, all of her, and cared about her deeds.
Suffering – God’s trials
Since the larp took place in a part of the country where the civilian population were tormented by both the Swedish army, and sometimes the rebels, there was a lot of suffering. Some characters (including my own) had in their background the ransacking and sometimes even burning of their homes, and having to look for a new home. There was hunger and poverty, due to soldiers and rebels taking food from civilians. And as the larp progressed and the army cracked down harder to quell the rebellion, there were beatings, rapes, and other kinds of violent cruelty.
Snapphaneland. Photo by Tindra Englund.
This created a vast wealth of internal play, with struggling with the age-old questions around God and evil. If God is good and all-powerful, why does he permit terrible things to happen? In Christianity, however, the reply is usually that God is testing your faith, and that enduring and remaining firm in your belief is how you succeed. This was beautifully illustrated and brought into play by my co-player and kitchen boss Kim Bjurström. My character had just been subjected to rape and abuse at the hands of the soldiers, and was quite broken. Kindly and gently, his character simply said: “God only gives us the struggles he knows we can bear.” It was all that was needed for my character to feel even more strongly connected to her faith, and to see meaning even in the absolutely terrible things she had endured. In a way, this is of course kind of weird and fucked up, as it can easily be construed as saying “You should really be happy that this happened to you, because it means that you are actually a really good Christian!” But, nonetheless, it was a very strong, moving, and immersive experience.
Sin
The concept of sin is great for roleplay, as it creates a strong incentive to not do things that might otherwise be very tempting to do. During the larp, my character often struggled with whether it was alright to lie – if you lied to protect someone, or if you were forced to lie by someone threatening you with violence.
Even more powerful was the thoughts around suicide and abortion. After my character had been raped, she was both traumatised and terrified of a pregnancy. On top of this, she had no future employment, and would soon be without food and housing. It was quite a heavy and hopeless situation, and the thought occurred to her more than once that she would be better off dead. But as suicide was a sin, this was of course out of the question. Similarly, if she did end up pregnant, then aborting the pregnancy would be a sin. This meant that she would simply have to submit to whatever God chose for her, and continue bearing it as well as she could.
Submitting, come what may
And this, I suppose, is the core of it: to submit. To keep faith. To suffer the sins of others, without turning to sin yourself. To bear a life with endless hardships and toil, trusting that after death all that suffering would go away, and you would be rewarded by an eternity in heaven.
Snapphaneland. Photo by Tindra Englund.
I felt this very deeply all through the larp, in a way I never have before. And it was a quite moving experience. It was also exceptionally suited to solo play, even when I was too busy working, or couldn’t find play for other reasons. The immersive relationship to God was ever-present. This is why I claim that Christianity is an excellent immersion closet.
What to take away from this article
In this article, I have focused on Protestant Christianity, since that was the religion at the larp in question. However, I think that the same playstyle can be relevant to explore in relation to other religions as well.
As a larper, I feel that it is very valuable to immerse deeply into experiences different from your own. It gives us a little bit of understanding and empathy for others, and humility before the manifold ways to live and understand life. I feel this to be even truer when it comes to getting a new perspective on religion, which is as important to many people today as it was centuries ago. I encourage other players to explore this, and to do so in an immersive, introspective way. Find your own Christian immersion closet, and/or religion as the lens through which you interpret and understand both everyday and extraordinary events.
As an organiser, I encourage designing for religious play, and not focusing solely on the outward expressions of religion – the rituals, the prayers, and so on. These things are great reminders to have during the larp, but they are not enough. Consider how you can design for religion to be always present in the back of the characters’ minds, to be informing the everyday moral choices and interpretations that they make. In short: design for more people to have religious play as their immersion closet.
Ludography
Snapphaneland (2024): Sweden. Rosalind Göthberg, Mimmi Lundkvist and Alma Elofsson Edgar (Bread and Games). https://snapphaneland.org/
This article is republished from the Knutepunkt 2025 book. Please cite it as: Greip, Julia. 2025. “Christianity is an Immersion Closet.” In Anatomy of Larp Thoughts, a breathing corpus: Knutepunkt Conference 2025. Oslo. Fantasiforbundet.
Cover image: Photo by Nataliya Vaitkevich on Pexels.
Editorial note: This article was originally published in the Knutepunkt 2025 book Anatomy of Larp Thoughts, a breathing corpus. It has been reprinted from there with the editors’ and authors’ permission. It has not been edited by Nordiclarp.org.
Let’s get right into the action! Literally. Because “River Rafting” is a larp design methodology to help catapult larpers into play without a slow start. The purpose of this design model is to help the players experience more moments of emotional impact as well as to increase intensity and meaningful experiences throughout the whole duration of the larp.
I am a strong believer in the idea that when we act, we experience. River Rafting design helps the players to act immediately. This article is a further development of the design concept of frontloading((The idea of frontloading appeared in my realm of design thoughts in 2016 when Alexander Bakkensen and I were designing the Danish larp Victorious which I later made an iteration of to become the international larp Spoils of War. It is a bespoke larp inspired by A Song of Ice and Fire, The Tudors and several other similar sources. I have also later tested and developed the concept further, based on the thoughts we had together back then. We talked about it in the 2018 version of the Danish roleplay convention Forum in the talk: “Toolbox of drama designers” which was repeated at Knudepunkt 2019.)) and covers pre-larp design, workshops and the pacing of the larp. It will explore how to do it intentionally and why designing for River Rafting can enhance the larp experience for your players. I will use perspectives from the three larps Spoils of War (Wind, 2018-), Daemon (Wind, 2021-) and Helicon (Pettersson and Wind, 2024-) to provide specific examples.
What are we trying to solve?
I have often noticed that most of the meaningful scenes on an individual level clump together at the end of a larp, but that the emotional impact of these often turns to disillusion when witnessing or participating in a cascade of dramatic scenes/deaths/reveals in the last hours. This phenomenon, Alexander Bakkensen has called “The Twilight Avalanche”. I usually feel too numb to react to yet another person screaming or crying by then.
This experience regularly contrasts with the first few hours of a larp involving mostly polite introductions and surface-level interactions like saying “greetings” and small talk for hours. In some cases, there is not a lot of emotional impact during the middle of the experience either, and often I don’t feel I have the tools to push the experience along as a player.
I think a number of design choices are supporting the slow start and place (too much) emphasis on the end of larps. One of these is if written character drama/conflicts/dilemmas are not very complex or have just one big scene in them. Another issue can be creating a setting that only provides an interesting framework late in the larp, or that builds up to a “Big Plot Ending”. This kind of ending is sometimes introduced late in the runtime, overshadowing previously built up character conflicts and tensions. It could be “end of the world”, “we are suddenly being invaded”, “we all have to die” etc. While such grand conclusions can be effective, they are not always consciously integrated into the rest of the larp’s structure. It can be frustrating as an individual player if such an ending isn’t tied meaningfully into the story of your character. A “big bang” finale can even leave players wondering what could have been if the larp had started with this level of intensity. In fact, the larp might have been a lot more interesting if it started with its ending as its beginning.
Furthermore, many players will, no matter the quality of the written setting and character, instinctively save the most interesting parts of a relation and the character until very late in a larp, playing towards a resolution only at the end unless you provide tools for them to do otherwise. We also miss the opportunity to help the players effectively use these tools to create early impact play this specific larp if workshops are not spent on practicing key mechanics and relationships. Often, on-location workshops will contain long briefings with repetition of the website instead. This approach means that players are not ready to get the full potential for emotional impact out of the written content right from the beginning. How they use the tools is up to the players, but if we don’t coach on how to unlock the usefulness of the mechanics in this specific larp, the players will spend a lot of the in-game time learning how to use the tools, or – worse – never use them at all.
Lastly, many larps have a pacing that structurally supports very few and late points of emotional impact with minimal structure and setup during the early and middle part. A slow start can make it harder to connect with the experience, relations and character early on.
All of these factors (low playability of characters/setting, poor practicing of mechanics and backloaded pacing) encourage players to save secrets or conflicts until the very last hours of the larp. Let us name this common combination of design choices the “Waterfall”((Not to be confused with the waterfall method in project management.)) method since it creates a slow start, a quiet flow of the boat on a broad river and a dramatic finish.
What we want instead of a waterfall is a more turbulent flow of the water within the themes of the larp. This doesn’t mean full intensity all the time. If we want many wavetops (experiences of emotional impact), we also need slower paced periods. But fluctuations are hard to achieve if you are already on a low point of pacing at the beginning of the larp, as this is also the time when you are practicing enacting the character in the setting and using the mechanics. If we don’t make the early rapids coming from pacing powerful enough for the players, there is a tendency that the larp experience itself will be backloaded.
What is River Rafting design?
River Rafting is a design philosophy that supports a turbulent flow of the larp experience with many opportunities of emotional impact from the beginning of the larp and throughout. I chose this term because river rafting starts slowly for a short time (pre-game and workshops) and then you hit a lot of rapids right away as well as during the rest of the trip (beginning of the larp until the end). We want to throw the boat around early and for the whole duration of the larp to offer an alternative to a Waterfall experience. If there are more rapids and more opportunities for movement, it is less important if some of it doesn’t result in a lot of impact.
In this maritime analogy, the larper’s experience of drama and emotional impact is the boat being moved. The characters, setting and mechanics are the paddles, life vests, ropes to other boats and other tools that the larper can use to make their own boat and the boats of others move at different paces down the river, and to create rapids for each other from many different angles at once. The workshops need to focus on teaching players to use these tools.
But since it takes time to learn to use the tools, early rapids must be created by providing a narrow river and intentionally plotted obstacles (frontloaded pacing/structure). Later, the river broadens and we design fewer obstacles to create rapids, but by then the players use the setting, characters and mechanics to make their own and each others’ boats move in a meaningful way.
Fig 1 – Illustration of River Rafting Design. Image by Katrine Wind.
As designers, we have three arenas where we can significantly influence the potential for emotional impact of our provided material: Highly playable characters/setting, mechanics and workshops, and pacing/structure.((I realise a lot of things influence a player’s experience: Co-player chemistry, off-game mood, room design, communication style of organisers and crew, feeling of safety, physical needs being met etc. But the focus of this article is purely on how to provide tools for the players to get the biggest emotional impact out of your writing and structure.))
What you want to achieve by this is to help the players get going right away, keep and vary intensity and take the interplay between the overall arc and the arc of the individual player into account.
So the three key elements of River Rafting design are:
Highly playable characters and setting: Focus on crafting characters and a setting that encourages immediate action. Emphasize extensive and complex character relations and highly playable dynamics. Please notice that I don’t say “long character backgrounds” or “as many pages of lore as possible”. It is about the volume and complexity of highly playable content.
Mechanics and workshops: Provide a few key mechanics for the players to create impact. Workshops should ideally quickly go from instructional briefings to a more tool based and practice heavy approach where players practice core mechanics of the larp, embrace important themes and actively play on character relationships early in the larp. Encourage the players to dive into conflicts and dynamics from the outset – and keep reminding them. Make a safe environment to help players to be brave. Additional workshops in act breaks can support this.
Early impact pacing: Start the larp with compelling events or tense scenarios, supported by a lot of designed structure and tense content in the very early parts of the larp.
Below is an illustration of how I perceive each design approach’s attempt to structurally influence emotional impact throughout the runtime of a larp.
Fig 2 – Emotional Impact Potential from the Design. Image by Katrine Wind.
The wavetops in River Rafting design don’t have to be at exactly these points of the larp. The later spikes symbolise how structured content and potentially mid-game workshops etc. can make extra rapids. However, the expectation is that the potential of provided content and structure to help create meaningful emotional impact is much less later in the larp because the players have practiced the characters, relations and mechanics and create the rapids themselves by then.
Please note that the illustration is not a visualisation of the individual player experience. Many players will experience climaxes at the end of the larp, and that is great. The point is also having a lot of potential emotional impacts earlier – the aim is to increase the volume and frequency, not just to move the curve.
I will go through the three different aspects of River Rafting design in detail and with examples below.
Setting and Characters
If you write a setting and characters for your players, you are already frontloading this part of the design to some degree. Well done! Sending out characters as well as facilitating workshops are the gentle start that can teach the players how to use the paddle and steer with the tools they have been given. This means that when you start the larp, the players are already in the water, can create movement in the boat and feel brave and ready to do so.
But what is necessary for a specifically River Rafting design is for you to provide an engaging setting right at the end of an interesting time which creates a setup and something to talk about. You also need complex, highly playable characters containing dilemmas that will lead to more drama while dealing with them. The intention is to provide all players with a springboard for their personal stories supported by an engaging narrative framework.
Spoils of War opens with this engaging setting; the interesting part to play is happening right now.((The idea for the setting was originally created together with Alexander Bakkensen for the Danish larps Victorious 1 and 2 in 2016 and 2017.)) We are at the very end of a brutal civil war. The characters have already experienced the horrors of it, but the emotional impact hasn’t fully hit them yet. The players know that their characters are either on the losing or the winning side, and that the war will end early in the larp. They don’t spend time playing the lead-up to the war or competing over who will win. Because all the characters will be in a state of turmoil with many options for the aftermath, the setting gives us something recent and impactful to play on right away. Furthermore, the characters contain complex relations with slights, dilemmas, heartbreaks, love, despair and uplifting camaraderie happening right now, combined with shared history from before the war.
Another example which illustrates the design principles regarding characters and setting is Helicon (Maria Pettersson and Katrine Wind, 2024).((Maria Pettersson and I had no conversations about the term River Rafting design in the design process of Helicon, and she cannot be held accountable for any of my theoretical descriptions of the perspective as I hadn’t conceptualised my design preferences in this way at the time. We completely agreed on the need for complex/highly playable characters and setting – and we have an equal part in the design of all aspects of Helicon itself. But the description of what I perceive we did when looking back and any criticism of the conceptualisation thereof is completely on my own account.)) Helicon is a larp about a group of artists, scientists and leaders who have captured the Muses of old to keep all of the inspiration in the world for themselves. The larp is based around dyadic play where the couple has a deep relation with each other. Some of the Muses want to be there or are even emotionally in power, and this setting of ambivalent slavery is relevant to every single player. It is significant and interesting to have Helicon play out at exactly this point of time in the setting, since it is time for the yearly binding ritual to keep the Muses caught.
To give plenty of content to play with on a character level, the humans (the Inspired) have fifteen years of complex history together. Also, the Muses are thousands of years old, they are all siblings and they have significant relationships with one another. As the Muses have been prisoners for fifteen years, there are also extensive relations across the two groups: Characters are lovers or ex-lovers; many of the Muses have stolen artists from each other over the years; some are currently best of friends with their captors etc. Thus, you have dilemmas all across the base of characters as well as with your dyadic partner.
A misinterpretation of the frontloading concept, in my opinion, is writing extensive characters but where the most interesting content is in the past (or in the future after the larp). Why would you write that a conflict or dilemma is already dealt with or easily resolved, unless it has led to an even more interesting conflict? We have to give players the opportunity to have the most meaningful experiences while they are in play. Therefore, I am not advocating for long characters. Instead, I recommend putting in a lot of playable content in the provided material no matter the length of the text. This could be complex, unresolved conflicts, established and significant relations, challenges to the character, dilemmas, goals etc.
A great way to help players be ready for River Rafting is providing the setting and character material a long time before the larp. That also entails the pacing structure and schedule as well as other forms of expectation management that helps them structure their own experience no matter which degree of transparency you want for what actually happens in the larp. For example: Do you expect the players to talk to co-players before the larp or will you allow time for that on location? Do they sleep off-game? What will they physically do with their bodies and spend their time on during this larp? When is a good time to take a break?
Workshops and Mechanics
Setting and characters take time to learn to use. I often find that organisers underestimate the value of structured time for people to talk with co-players about their relations during the workshop time as a means to enable players to use the material right away. If you provide a highly playable setting and characters, the players will do wonders for themselves to be ready to play intensely right from the outset of the larp, if they just have time to talk with each other. Talking about their relations and maybe even trying out flashback scenes is also practicing to use the written material before the larp instead of practicing and finding each other when the larp has already started. No matter how many online meetings you have for calibration before a larp, I find that players meeting each other just before the larp is where they have the best opportunity to find each other and create the trust it takes to play bravely together – and be ready to do so. This is more valuable for the emotional impact of their experience than more instructional briefing about the setting.
Furthermore, I suggest that you introduce one or a few core mechanics to support the experience you want the players to have, and to practice them during workshops. This enables the players with more tools to move their boat and the boat of others. Structured practice of the tools given to the players is an excellent way to help them get going from the start of the larp. If you don’t do this, most of your opportunity as a designer to meaningfully influence the emotional impact on the individual player experience (before the larp) will rely on just the characters and setting.
For the workshops, I encourage not providing information pieces and practicing mechanics until they are needed. If you have act breaks, and a tool is not used before act 3, then wait to provide this information until it is necessary. If you have a debriefing, don’t instruct about that at the beginning of the larp.
A mechanic that I use in several of the larps I am involved in is Dinner Warfare (Wind, 2024). It is a way of designing meaningful mealtime situations and using seating plans to create subtle but strong emotional pressure based on specific relations. But I introduce it differently for each larp depending on the purpose and importance of the tool. I use it extensively in Daemon and provide off-game instructions before the larp as well as an in-game alibi that has to do with classicism to stay in the seats of the horrible seating plan. It is a less prominent mechanic in other larps I am involved in and therefore not introduced as thoroughly.
Instruction and Coaching
As a larp runner you have to consider when to give instructions and when to let the players practice tools themselves in a more coaching style of leadership. While I strongly emphasize the value of the latter, there is no shame in being instructive: “You must use this mechanic in the game”. The coaching approach is letting players know that the rest is up to them: “You decide what to do within the framework”. This will help them be more comfortable using them from the beginning of the larp by practicing. A combination of the suggestions above is illustrated in Spoils of War. The players know before the larp which side has won or lost, but the characters don’t. The first night starts with the siege of the last standing castle. The losing side has been caught inside for three months but hasn’t quite given up yet. It is hard to start right in the middle of a siege and be ready to react to what it has been like being at a standstill for three months. Everybody is frustrated.
We try to explain it briefly at first and underline that the frustration is a specific mechanic for the very beginning of the larp (instruction), and then we lead the players into the game by making a “frustration workshop” where we play the same scene three times (coaching). First, it is at the beginning of the siege: The losing side has plenty of hope and food and the winning side is patient. Then we jump a month and the players are prompted to escalate how annoying it is being around the same people and that food is scarce. Finally, we play the same scene where three months have passed and everyone is desperate. The scenes only take about five minutes each, but it underlines the feeling we start the larp with. After the last scene, the intro song plays and the larp begins with this exact feeling of frustration. Almost right away there is an inspection of prisoners of war where the two sides meet, which means that the players are more ready to play the emotional rapid of seeing their loved ones but not being able to save them from imprisonment than if they just started cold.
It is almost impossible not to have some degree of briefing with instructions when you start the workshops, but I encourage going from instruction to coaching as soon as possible.
Mechanics take time to learn
In Daemon, the core vision is experiencing being two people who together portray one character. Daemon is inspired by the trilogy His Dark Materials by Philip Pullman (1995–2000) where humans live with their soul outside of their body in the form of an animal. Daemons are the expression of the inner lives of the characters and the human and daemon can’t move very far away from each other.
It might seem like an obvious mechanic that one player is portraying the human itself and the other is portraying the inner life of the character. But if I was mostly interested in the universe or characters of the books instead of the human-daemon relation, I could have decided mechanics-wise that the players just have a toy animal on their shoulder and then play in the setting. However, I wanted to make a larp where you could experience dyadic play in a way where you together portray one character.
The other core mechanic I chose to support the vision is that the player can’t go more than two meters from their dyadic partner the whole in-game playtime, which requires immense attention to what your partner is doing.
Dyadic play is a new way of larping for most people – and if they didn’t play Daemon before, they probably never had to play this physically close to another player for such a long time before. We also have to practice how the daemon player acts on a continuum from underlining and mirroring what the player of the human is portraying to showing what is really going on inside or between two humans when they interact. So in the workshop I explain briefly about the bond, and we then practice it extensively.
I have seen players struggle with the mechanics during Daemon despite extensively trying it out – my workshops were not enough. The players spent too much time worrying about the mechanics and moving too far away from each other/not mirroring enough instead of focussing on the character and what was happening around them. What has really helped in later iterations is saying to the players in the instructional part of the workshops right before the first act of Daemon that the first night will be clunky. I tell them that I realise that even though we have practiced the mechanic, we have to try it out during the first night before we know how we want to play it with our partner and in our dyad together towards others, and then we calibrate before act two. I find that verbally validating the fact that the key mechanic takes time to learn has made some larpers braver – especially when it is a tool not usually used in other larps. I have witnessed this bravery helping players to bring out interesting content from very early on in the larp in later runs of Daemon.
But if prewritten characters, setting, mechanics and workshops – no matter the quality – were enough to achieve rapids in the river in the beginning of the larp, more larps would feel like a River Rafting experience instead of feeling slow and backloaded.
For Daemon, the physical closeness is a good example of a mechanic that becomes much more impactful later in the larp when they have had time to get used to it. I often hear people forgetting right after the larp that they don’t have to stay within two metres of their dyadic partner anymore. But it is obvious that the players benefit from something else to create opportunities for emotional impact until the mechanics work for them and they have a feeling for their characters. What is lacking is a strategy for pacing. As mentioned before, I think that more larps would structurally support emotional impact early if they had a frontloaded pacing.
Pacing
As a designer, you have the best opportunity to provide a meaningful overall structure early in a larp. Later and by the end of the larp, most players will have been practicing, utilising and developing the character drama, setting and mechanics, making overall pacing and structured content much more irrelevant – or at worst – meaningless. By then, the main part of the emotional impact should come from the larpers themselves, the co-players and utilisation of the mechanics.
River Rafting design encourages establishing a high intensity starting point pacing-wise for the players to react to and talk about as well as more structured content in the first parts of the larp – to create “the narrow river and the first rapid”. Structured and intense openings help to actualise the tools and encourage players to take action early because their boat is already moving. We learn even more from our first actions in a larp than in the workshops about utilising the characters, setting and the mechanics. But if nothing pushes us to act, it is harder to convert this to meaningful experiences, and the emotional impact is also postponed.
The opening of the larp does not have to be the same for all players but should in general tie into the themes and core experiences as well as be relevant to the individuals.
It is not an original idea to start in mediās rēs. It is just not very prevalent in larp designs in my opinion. Or at least the opening scene is often not meaningful for the individuals or coherent with overarching themes, in the way the River Rafting design suggests.
This leads me to what I think really happens when “backloaded” pacing is the choice in so many larps following the Waterfall design model and why I don’t want to design like that.
Backloaded Pacing
Pacing in larps often mirrors the “Hollywood model” of storytelling.
The “we start slow and everything only climaxes in the end, and something even more interesting happens at the end of or after the larp” structure outlines schematically the progress of a classical “good story” split into (usually three) different acts. It makes sense that we consciously or otherwise use this structure in our medium: It’s how we usually see stories unfold in the content we consume.
Here are a few examples of the classical Hollywood model. I would argue that often larp pacings (not necessarily the individual experiences) will stop at the climax.
I think the Hollywood model is fine. It can be a good way to tell a story – why else would so many pieces be structured like that? Movies, video games, plays etc. can benefit greatly from this approach, because when you have a predetermined outcome you can structure the whole experience around this pacing. However, at larps, pacing needs to accommodate the double-layered structure: The overall story arc and the individual character arcs. So you can’t make this structure work for a majority of the players just by making a larp end in a certain way or culminating everything in the overarching arc in the end.
Even for the pop culture pieces that start out in media res, my point would be that this rarely accounts for all individual characters – it’s mostly for the overall story. Because of the improvisational nature of larp, since we have so many moving pieces and because we care about every individual player’s experience, the backloaded pacing or Hollywood model is less applicable to larp if you want more emotional impact for the individual.
With River Rafting design, you can more easily design for the players to be hit by so many different waves and rapids on their path down the narrow river that they have had enough meaningful experiences along the way, so that it doesn’t matter if their ending is a waterfall, a whirlpool or a quiet stretch of river – none of the players will have their whole experience be dependent on the ending.
Daemon as a pacing example
Below is an example of how the pacing for the overall larp works for Daemon (Katrine Wind, 2021–). This is not the model of River Rafting pacing design. That can take a lot of different forms – this is just the general visualisation of the pacing in a larp with a lot of structure and planned events in the beginning more than in the end.
Fig 5 – Katrine Wind (2024): River Rafting Pacing Design for Daemon larp
In Daemon, the setting is the aftermath of a war where we have just killed God. The characters themselves are centered around themes like creating meaning, victory/defeat, grief/relief and building a new future. A lot of the characters are already gathered in the castle of one of the nobles on the winning side (facilitator character). The guests are there to celebrate the war heroes, mourn the fallen and exploit the opportunity created from the fall of a controlling theocracy to experiment with scientific projects that have up until now been illegal. But the theocratic power has thrown one last bomb of a biological weapon in the form of a powder that affects the bond between human and daemon (a core mechanic of the larp).
The opening scene creates a sense of urgency and immediate possibility for the players to take action, as enemies and people with complex relations to the guests originally invited for the celebration are evacuated to and quarantined in the castle. They have just been hit by the powder. These people are soldiers from the war, former fiancées, traitors and other people whose relations are significant, complex and problematic to the original guests. The scientists present immediately need to start working on helping those affected.
The next structured event comes almost right away when the hostess and an original guest continue to award medals to people who have killed family members of the newly arrived characters’ families. Very soon after this, everybody is thrown into an excruciating three course dinner where they have to endure each other but have a lot to talk about from the workshops, characters and starting scene. The social structures as well as the urgency of the powder situation force the adversaries to be around each other (see Dinner warfare, Wind 2024).
The peak in the third act is again a reflection on a Dinner Warfare scene, but it is disruptive in the pacing as the hostess creates a last, unhinged seating plan fuelled by a retaliation where she surrounds herself with other peoples’ daemons. They are placed almost too far away from their humans to make it physically uncomfortable to be at dinner and stay polite. For a larp to be designed for “frontloading” as part of River Rafting design, this would not be necessary as the concept focuses more on the first part of the larp, but the structured spike in intensity is a design choice for other reasons than overall pacing.
In the pacing overview from Daemon, you also find another tool. The act structure cuts up the pacing in three, and I choose to put in off-game breaks between the acts to allow more opportunities for me as a designer to add structured content in the beginning of act 2 as well as have more workshop time which enables me to make more rapids. I deem that it is not necessary with an intense start scene for the beginning of act 3, as the mechanics and characters drive the emotional impact almost solely by then.
For River Rafting design, you don’t have to have a quiet ending as a player. Don’t be fooled by the fizzling out of structured content in the third act of Daemon. This refers only to the larp pacing itself – for some players it will still be the most dramatic part of the larp.
But by not pressuring structured content into the end, in my experience, it will help avoid some of the “Twilight Avalanche.”
You can still facilitate a dramatic ending
Maria Pettersson and I decided to make a structured ending of Helicon (2024–) with focus on a highly dramatic situation, even though I still consider it a “frontloaded” larp which follows the principles of River Rafting design. We wanted to include a specific end scene where a choice is required, shifting certain dynamics. However, the key element for me that makes this ending meaningful for each individual is that they have influence over their own arc in relation to this scene. We also provide the tool that each player can be informed of the ending and the choice that they will face (transparency) during the final act break, or they can choose to be surprised.
However, I still consider the opening scene and structured content in the beginning of Helicon to be much more significant design aspects to the players’ experience of emotional impact as they set the tone of the larp and help the players to get into the characters and mechanics right away.
Fig 6 – Katrine Wind (2024): River Rafting pacing design for Helicon larp (larp designed with Maria Pettersson)
Already in the character descriptions, an intro scene is added where the players have to act on their relations. It is described how last night, the Muses tried to escape and failed. To establish the uneven power dynamic that is so central to the larp, Helicon begins with a ritualised, common punishment scene for this slight with each couple focussing on each other, and the significance of this intro scene is already emphasized in each individual character. Bowman describes this scene and its significance to kick off the larp in her article about Helicon (Bowman, 2024). Since ritualistic content is very important to the experience, we practise the rituals in the workshops. In this case, the Inspired have practiced this specific Punishment Ritual but the Muse players don’t know what is going to happen. All of the individuals and couples have a huge stake in this scene, no matter if the Muse was an instigator of the escape attempt or urged along by their siblings. Thus, the event is meaningful to each individual character (and hopefully player) when we start with high drama.
This is another point of River Rafting design. I don’t advocate just throwing in any action scene or dramatic beginning to kick off the larp in a frontloaded manner. The intro scene should emphasise the themes of the larp and be relevant to the players. Something can be meaningful and dramatic without being loud.
During the Larp
Once the larp is running, you obviously have to execute the plan for events and structure which can take a lot of work. You might even be able to make little adjustments in your design plan if you see a need for it during a pre-planned event. You learn a lot from rerunning larps, and there have been plenty of pacing events that have not worked as intended in larps I have been involved in.
Despite our intention to make Dinner Warfare a mechanic all the way through Helicon, Maria Pettersson and I decided during the first run to loosen our plan so the seating was only very tense for everyone on the first night. We had planned to do it for all three meals, but we decided for the two other in-game meals to just provide the opportunity for players off-game to wish for people to sit with or not sit with. We didn’t deem it necessary to place the rest of the players to create the most possible tension as other structured content was more impactful in the later part of the experience. Granting player wishes for seating plans is the most advanced version of Dinner Warfare, and we still deemed that the mechanic served a purpose enough to not scrap it completely even though we adjusted our plan.
Act changes with off-game breaks are your greatest chance of affecting the larp significantly as a designer later in the larp. Act break calibrations can for example be helpful to catapult the players into the new part of the larp. Many players will do this themselves with individual relations, act breaks or not, which is wonderful, but structuring time for it can be a helpful tool for some to ask something from the group. This works best in smaller or medium sized larps or in smaller groups.
For Daemon (28 players) and Spoils of War (58 players), I do a calibration round in each act break where I ask if anyone needs something generalized from the group. Either you say that you don’t need anything or you can for example ask for: “Could someone oppress me about my class” or “I need someone to have more quiet conversations with”. Then I will ask if someone can see themselves doing this, and usually some other players are happy to help provide this type of play. I specify that you should only raise your hand if you are really going to commit to it so the player asking actually gets what they need. Chances are that when I try to make people accountable and three raise their hand to help, at least one of them will actually cast the rope from their boat to their co-player’s.
You can also choose to provide a new workshop piece or a significant and possibly dramatic event in the beginning of a new act. In Daemon, act two starts with a cutting edge science presentation with shocking discoveries with all characters present. After this, there are spikes in the pacing but the larp includes less and less content that I design because the impact of the individual character arcs take over. I also signify this with my facilitator character being less and less important and prevalent to create pressure.
Final Remarks
River Rafting design can help create a more engaging and dynamic player experience from the very beginning of a larp with a higher chance of many moments of emotional impact instead of very few towards the end. By designing highly playable characters and setting, focussing workshops on practicing the tools you provide and designing your pacing for immediate action, you empower players to experience and create more emotional impact.
Whether you choose to put more content in the beginning of the experience or not, I encourage you to consider how pacing can shape your larp and communicate these design intentions to players. Even if you don’t want your larp to follow the River Rafting design methodology, you can help your players by making your choices clear. That will enable them to better structure their larp experience and engage with your vision more effectively.
Happy designing!
References
Bakkensen, Alexander, and Wind, Katrine, “Toolbox of the drama designers”, Forum convention, Denmark, 2018
Victorious 1 + 2 (2016–2017). Denmark. Alexander Bakkensen and Katrine Wind.
This article is republished from the Knutepunkt 2025 book. Please cite it as:
Wind, Katrine. 2025. “River Rafting Design.” In Anatomy of Larp Thoughts, a breathing corpus: Knutepunkt Conference 2025. Oslo. Fantasiforbundet.
Cover image: Helicon larp. Photo by Kai Simon Fredriksen.
Editorial note: This article was originally published in the Knutepunkt 2025 book Anatomy of Larp Thoughts, a breathing corpus. It has been reprinted from there with the editors’ and authors’ permission. It has not been edited by Nordiclarp.org.
Kai, photo by Prison Escape
This is Kai. Kai taught me how to overcome my fear of heights. Or rather, by playing the character of Kai, I was able to find a new part of myself. And later, that new part enabled me to face my fears. I learned from bleed.
I didn’t play Kai with this intention. But Kai inspired me to develop ways to intentionally learn from bleed and that lead to the formation of our company, Live Action Learning. In this article we’ll write about how you can learn from bleed yourself and how you design a larp in such a way that your participants can learn from their bleed, if they want to.
This article is based on the workshop “Learning from bleed” at the 2024 Edu-Larp Conference by Gijs van Bilsen and Kjell Hedgaard Hugaas, and all participants of that workshop, who discussed the topic together. It’s also based on the professional development training “Live Action Leadership” that we, Anne van Barlingen & Gijs van Bilsen with our company Live Action Learning, ran in April 2023 and November 2024, and the keynote speech “Summon your talent”.
What happened with Kai
Kai wasn’t a kind man. But Kai possessed an unshakable inner strength, grounded in a calm conviction that nothing could sway him. This kind of inner strength and resilience was new to me, and playing Kai had given me access to this. In other words: I learned something through bleed.
First, let’s define bleed. According to Hugaas (2024) “Bleed occurs when feelings, thoughts, emotions, physical states, cognitive constructs, aspects of personality and similar ‘bleed over’ from player to character or vice versa.” There are several types of bleed, as presented by Hugaas:
Emotional bleed (Montola 2010; Bowman 2015), in which emotional states and feelings bleed between player and character.
Ego bleed (Beltrán 2012), in which fragments of personality and archetypal qualities bleed between player and character.
Procedural bleed (Hugaas 2019a), in which physical abilities, perceptual experience, motor skills, traits, habits, and other bodily states bleed between player and character.
Memetic bleed (Hugaas 2019a), in which ideas, thoughts, opinions, convictions, ideologies and similar cognitive constructs bleed between player and character;
Relationship bleed, in which aspects of social relationships bleed between player and character. Romantic bleed (Waern 2010; Harder 2018; Bowman and Hugaas 2021) is the most frequently discussed subtype.
Emancipatory bleed (Kemper 2017, 2020), in which players from marginalized backgrounds experience liberation from that marginalization through their characters.
Identity bleed (Hugaas 2024), which deals with the sense of self and with how different parts of the self (“multiplicities of identities”) bleed between character and player.
In the case of Kai, the bleed can be classified as emotional bleed (the calm emotional state), but also as identity bleed (It did something with the way I think about myself; ‘I’m someone who can stay calm under stressful circumstances’).
Why is learning from bleed interesting?
To effectively integrate new behavior in your system, you need a couple of things: Opportunities to experiment with the behavior, feedback to fine-tune it, time to integrate it into your system, and a safe environment that allows for mistakes.
In a regular training session, you’ll have the opportunity to try new things, but often confined to a few minutes or maybe an hour. Training by practicing new behavior solely in your real life isn’t a safe environment in which you can make multiple mistakes or suddenly behave completely differently. But using larp and bleed… Well, talk about having it all!
But, of course, there are difficulties. For one, bleed is personal; you can’t make bleed happen. However, you can inspire bleed (Edu-larp conference, 2024). The level at which bleed is present, but also the level of bleed that is noticed, differs per person and even over time. This is called the “bleed perception threshold” (Hugaas 2024). This means you might not notice any bleed at all. Or you can be completely overwhelmed.
The ingredients: designing for bleed
So when designing for bleed, whether it is for you personally or for a group of participants, be aware. Random, unfocused bleed can be very unhelpful, to put it mildly. In order to learn from bleed, you need direction, agency, priming, safety, time and space (Edu-larp conference, 2024). Using bleed on purpose, especially to learn, should always be with informed consent of what bleed you are designing for, preferably with agency of a participant to choose their own bleed and learning goals. Direction, agency, and priming shape bleed into something useful, while safety and time enhance immersion.
In our four-day Live Action Leadership training we’ve made very conscious decisions on these elements. The main theme was very clear: Leadership. The complete setup revolved around situations and scenes which required leadership skills, integrated in an overarching story about a failing management team. The participants were actively involved in formulating their personal learning goals and how those goals were translated into a character. The concept of bleed was clearly explained at the beginning, during the workshops. This made the participants aware of the signs of bleed and what they might experience. Having multiple opt-out options, and very openly discussing them as a safe and viable option to leave the game, made participants comfortable enough to immerse themselves.
And then, last but not least, the ‘thin alibi’, or ‘playing close to home’. Bleed occurs more quickly when the character you are playing resembles your real-life persona. For example, we might deliberately choose names for the characters that are close to their own. Björn might play a character called Bjarke, or Susanne might play a character called Suzette. We also thinned the border by choosing a realistic and recognizable setting. It is very possible to have bleed and learn from bleed from characters and settings that are further away from you. But the further away you are, the harder it is to find an applicable use in everyday life.
The timeline: Three phases of integration
We believe that learning from bleed is not about pretending to be someone else in your everyday life, but about finding a different version of yourself through playing. Therefore, especially in longer experiences, we have three phases for the participant to go through during play:
finding the character
challenging the character, and
integrating to a competent version of the character.
Finding the character
How can you help the participant exhibit the traits that they want to learn? Experimentation is key in this phase. When not playing or designing for bleed, we might want to prioritize portraying the character consistently. But if you’re focusing on a specific character trait that is not natural to you, it’s important to experiment with different strategies to find a way that works for you. So if somebody wants to learn to be more outspoken, this phase is about finding multiple ways for them to play that outspoken character.
Challenging the character
This phase is about trying to entice the participant to exhibit the opposite behavior of what they want to learn, so that they can notice this and return to the character. Ways to do this can be to introduce a high pressure environment, such as a quest with a specific deadline, or by designing more emotional scenes. If you opt for this approach, it is good to have ways to remind the participant that they are slipping into old behavior. Having them choose one gesture, word or feeling that symbolizes their character is a good way for them to be able to go back to their character again.
Integration
The third phase is integrating the character into a competent version: a sort of mix between the character and the participant. Instruct the participants during an offgame calibration, to let go of a negative trait of the character and to replace that with a positive trait of their own. This will bring the character closer to resembling the participant and helps them to associate positively with the character. This can also be described as ‘learning to love the character’. If participants dislike their character, it is harder for them to want to learn from things that the character did. However, if you want to achieve the opposite effect, unlearning unwanted behavior, disliking the character works well.
After playing: Separation and anchoring
After de-roling and debriefing, we start the separation and anchoring phase. There are three questions central to this:
Separation: What traits do you want to keep, and what will you let go?
Anchoring: What anchor will help you summon these traits?
Summoning: When do you want to summon these traits?
Separation:
We want our participants to take a ‘version of themselves’ home, not the complete character, because characters have negative traits as well, traits that we don’t want to keep. Kai, the example from the beginning of the article, was a very powerful character with a deep source of inner strength and resilience. But, as you can see from the photo, he was also a criminal. So after playing that character, I separated the useful characteristics (inner strength and resilience) from the rest of the character. I found a way to access that inner strength by playing Kai, but now I needed only that part.
Anchoring:
After separating comes anchoring. Here we build on the word, gesture or feeling that participants already have chosen to symbolize their character (see: Challenging the character). It can be a simple thing that helps you find this version of yourself. And from that thing, more of the behavior you associate with that version will follow. Besides a gesture, word or feeling, other possible anchors are:
A name: the characters name, a nickname (‘the professor’) or an adjective, coupled with your own name (‘curious Gijs’)
Music, from a short tune you can hum/whistle to an entire playlist which helps you find the character
An object, preferably one that you can carry with you
A smell, such as a perfume, that differs from your normal one
A piece of clothing that you can put on in special circumstances
A location where you want to have access to the character.
A posture you adopt when you need it.
Summoning:
It is important to think about when you want to have access to the talents you learned from bleed. There are three ways to determine when to summon your characters:
Triggers. Think of a sudden situation where you might need it, and identify a trigger that will remind you. For example, I played Kai, who was calm and resilient. Traits I can use when I start to feel my fear of heights taking over. When I feel my knees getting weak, that’s the trigger to summon that calm, focused part of myself.
On purpose beforehand. If you know you will go into a situation where that version of yourself might help you, you summon your character on purpose just before going in. For example, just before an important meeting or social event.
Integrating it into yourself. Finally, you can integrate this version of yourself into yourself, meaning that it becomes an unconscious part of you. This takes time and practice. It generally goes from noticing well after the fact that you would’ve wanted to use what you’ve learned, to noticing it shortly after the fact, to adjusting your behavior during the situation and finally to before the situation. The final step is that it has become something you do without thinking about it.
Learning from regular larp experiences
The above steps detail how to design for others. But you can easily use these at a larp that is not designed for learning, even if you’re only using it after the larp. Kai was not intended as a character for self-learning, but by separating and anchoring aspects of him, I found playing him highly valuable.
In short, the steps to take if you want to learn from the larp as a player, are:
Decide what you want to learn.
Decide where you want to make the border between you and your character thinner.
Take some time to reflect on your learning experience so far.
If possible, use the three phases (finding, challenging and integrating your character).
Afterwards, separate and anchor what you want to keep/learn.
Finally, summon the new version of yourself whenever you need it.
We hope this article inspires you to learn more from larp and learn more from bleed yourself and, if you’re a larp designer, introduce parts of the design process into your larps so you give your participants the option of learning from it.
References
Beltrán, Whitney “Strix.” 2012. “Yearning for the Hero Within: Live Action Role-Playing as Engagement with Mythical Archetypes.” In Wyrd Con Companion Book 2012, edited by Sarah Lynne Bowman and Aaron Vanek, 89-96. Los Angeles, CA: Wyrd Con, 2012.
Bowman, Sarah Lynne. 2015. “Bleed: The Spillover Between Player and Character.” Nordiclarp.org, March 2.
Bowman, Sarah Lynne, and Kjell Hedgard Hugaas. 2021. “Magic is Real: How Role-playing Can Transform Our Identities, Our Communities, and Our Lives.” In Book of Magic: Vibrant Fragments of Larp Practices, edited by Kari Kvittingen Djukastein, Marcus Irgens, Nadja Lipsyc, and Lars Kristian Løveng Sunde, 52-74. Oslo, Norway: Knutepunkt, 2021.
Harder, Sanne. 2018. “Larp Crush: The What, When and How.” Nordiclarp.org, March 28.
Hugaas, Kjell Hedgard. 2019a. “Investigating Types of Bleed in Larp: Emotional, Procedural, and Memetic.” Nordiclarp.org, January 25
Hugaas, K. H. (2024). Bleed and Identity: A Conceptual Model of Bleed and How Bleed-out from Role-playing Games Can Affect a Player’s Sense of Self. International Journal of Role-Playing, (15), 9–35.
Kemper, Jonaya. 2017. “The Battle of Primrose Park: Playing for Emancipatory Bleed in Fortune & Felicity.” Nordiclarp.org, June 21.
Kemper, Jonaya. 2020. “Wyrding the Self.” In What Do We Do When We Play?, edited by Eleanor Saitta, Mia Makkonen, Pauliina Männistö, Anne Serup Grove, and Johanna Koljonen. Helsinki, Finland: Solmukohta.
Montola, Markus. 2010. “The Positive Negative Experience in Extreme Role-playing.” In Proceedings of DiGRA Nordic 2010: Experiencing Games: Games, Play, and Players. Stockholm, Sweden, August 16.
Waern, Annika. 2010. “‘I’m in Love With Someone That Doesn’t Exist!!’ Bleed in the Context of a Computer Game.” In Proceedings of DiGRA Nordic 2010: Experiencing Games: Games, Play, and Players. Stockholm, Sweden, August 16.
This article is republished from the Knutepunkt 2025 book. Please cite it as:
van Bilsen, Gijs and van Barlingen, Anne. 2025. “‘Learning from Bleed.” In Anatomy of Larp Thoughts, a breathing corpus: Knutepunkt Conference 2025. Oslo. Fantasiforbundet.
Editorial note: This article was originally published in the Knutepunkt 2025 book Anatomy of Larp Thoughts, a breathing corpus. It has been reprinted from there with the editors’ and authors’ permission. It has not been edited by Nordiclarp.org.
This article describes our artistic practice and design principles focusing on the bodily experience. First, we theorize what we are doing and then give a practical overview of some of our pieces.
We have worked mainly in the Finnish art field as an artistic duo. As artists, we look at larp from a slightly different angle, and there is no perfect word for our approach. Our interdisciplinary artistic works are not quite like larps are usually understood. We call them instruction-based performances, built around short directed scenes emphasizing a particular theme or experience. Embodily design often plays a big role in our pieces, both in creation and the final piece.
Vili and Nina on one of the actual sites where a coven did rituals working on a larp about them. Photo: Vili Myrsky Nissinen 2024
What we mean by embodied art
Larp is the art of experience, but not all larps are embodied art. For us, embodied art is art created by researching bodily experiences and trying to find ways to replicate them for the participants. Embodied art designs the bodily experience directly.
Larp designers often focus on fiction, information, and physical objects to create an immersive setting, skipping thinking about the participants’ bodies beyond keeping them safe and accommodating basic physical needs like food and sleep. Larp designers expect emotions and experiences to emerge from the information and setting they have created, and many times they do. But, larp is first and foremost experienced through the participants’ bodies, and what happens in the participants’ bodies creates the piece. In larp, participants strive for certain emotions, narratives, and human experiences. All things humans start from our body and senses. The bodily experience can be designed; bodies guided and prompted towards the emotions we aim to create to support our narrative. We as creators believe that body-focused design is a very direct and reliable way to achieve the experience larp designers want to create and that it significantly accommodates participants in achieving it.
The body as a design tool
Our pieces in the art scene are mostly based on the history of queers and other oppressed. For us, a crucial part of doing background research on certain groups or events is recreating their footsteps and actions using our bodies to understand what they were doing. We aim to understand how the events felt in the bodies of the people whose stories we are telling. This is crucial for us to tell their tale respectfully and in the right tone.
For example as preparations for Fenezar! (2024), a larp about a working-class witch coven that radicalized and did horrific acts in 1930s Helsinki, we visited two of the coven’s actual ritual sites and did spells there based on their rituals. The other ritual site is not easy to reach, as it is far away from the center of Helsinki and in the middle of an overgrown grove. But it was important for us to follow down the witches’ road to the sacred wellspring and sink an offering there, just as the coven did. We got a glimpse of what they might have felt during the exhausting trip and while practising their magic and this bodily experience we tried to transfer directly into the piece we created.
After bodily experimenting and researching, we verbalize what our bodies experienced and figure out how to translate those experiences into exercises and meta techniques so that our participants can safely get the right feeling. In test runs, we try out these exercises and evolve them when needed. If test runners express that they felt the feelings we aimed for, it is a sign that our body-based exercises are working and that the design is reaching its final form.
Experiencing the right bodily reactions and emotions is a powerful tool for the participants to understand the tale we are telling. We, as creators, don’t find larp an unpredictable and uncontrollable medium like many larp designers do, and we think this is because of our focus on bodily experience. Embodied design can do miracles in finding the core of the piece and giving the players the tools to reach it.
Easy things to design from the body perspective
We think the bare minimum of bodily design all larp creators should do is to check that your participants’ bodily experience is not against aimed content. For example, being cold or hungry makes it hard to feel like you’re in a comedy, or being on a tight schedule and in a hurry makes it hard to drop into the feeling of being in a slow-paced slice of life experience, or uncomfortable and complicated costumes may make it impossible to engage in a free form dance improvisation larp. Make sure your participants can easily engage in the emotions you want them to feel and that their bodies will not be against it by design.
Examples of bodily design from our pieces
In Inner Domain players draw together on the floor. Photo: Nina Mutik 2024
In this section, we will give several practical examples of how we have used our bodies as design tools, and how this has been transformed into exercises or meta techniques and the experience replicated in the actual piece.
Finding Tom (2020) tells the story of Tom of Finland’s (1920-91) art’s effect and meaning on the freedom fight of Finnish gay men of his time. We researched a lot on how it was being a gay man between 1940 and 70s in Helsinki. In Finland, homosexual acts were a crime until 1971 and homosexuality was classified as a disease until 1981. Homosexuality was a shame and not a lifestyle choice or an identity, but rather a heavy burden. Gay men mostly met at parks, finding contacts for sex in secret. After reading history and documentation from those times and interviewing researchers and gay men, we went to the actual cruising sites and followed Tom of Finland’s routes. We re-enacted finding company in the shadows of the parks and tried to embody the fear of getting caught, the shame of being ill this way, the strong sexual urge, and the short relief of relieving the symptoms. We immersed ourselves in the stories we found and tried to feel how being torn between sexual need and shame under heavy oppression felt.
To embody the shame of being gay and the pressing feeling of hiding your true self we created a prop that we call the oppression jacket, a relative to a straitjacket. It is a trench coat with straps sewn into them over the chest and stomach. The straps can be pulled tight so that it is a bit hard to breathe. The oppression jacket does not restrain the participants’ movement but gives a pressing feeling around the chest and stomach. Each participant wears one during the larp. The jacket represents the feeling of shame, fear and being oppressed and at the start of the piece the participants have the jackets closed, the collars pulled up to hide their faces and the straps pulled as tight as they are still comfortable with. As the piece progresses and the characters start slowly finding community and identity, the jacket’s straps gradually loosen and open, until the jackets are dropped off and left behind completely as the characters go into Finland’s first Pride parade. The oppression jacket has gotten a lot of thanks from participants as they help get into the right emotions. They are both great metaphors and cause parts of the right emotions directly in the participants’ bodies.
Inner Domain (2024) tells the story of an all-female esoteric group gathered around the Swedish artist Hilma af Klint at the start of the 20th century. These women used theosophy and spirituality to create a safe space for women to break gender norms and to explore same-sex romance and sexuality in a time when women’s roles and possibilities in society were extremely narrow. We picked one method from their rituals, automatic drawing, to be the center of our piece. Drawing together, close to each other on the floor, guided by the spirits allows exploring things that can not be voiced in another way. Communication through touching creates a wordless way to experience the sensual and fragile erotic tension and emotional relationships we were looking for. The touches while drawing could be gentle, shy, brave, flirty, or even violent. All the character communication in the piece happens only through touching and drawing, there is no talking. During the workshops, participants go through a series of touching exercises, so that it is easy and safe to touch and communicate wordlessly during the larp. This piece has also received a lot of thanks and has surprised its participants on how safe it felt to engage and how intense narratives they lived through in such a short time.
Part of Fenezar!’s design aims to imagine how it was to be poor, suffering from illness, pain, and hunger and existing with no hope of finding anything better, all added to the shame of being poor as it was considered to be your fault by authorities. Endless meaningless physical labor that leads to nothing permanent became the core of this experience. In the larp, we give players some carpet rag to crochet with their fingers as they sit around a table over empty plates and talk. After each act, we unravel the crocheting, and they have to start the same roll of rag from the start again. The constant crocheting also physically narrowed down what they could do, so the meaningless work was restricting them in play. Our participants felt the frustration and the repetitiveness of manual labor well through this tool. In Fenezar! we also discuss radicalization. As the coven does rituals and magic to improve their situation in life and nothing happens, the magical acts become more and more severe to keep up the hope that things will improve, and these people have agency in their lives. To embody this we created props based on actual sacrifices the coven sank into the well-spring, and they become physically heavier and larger as the story progresses. Carrying your more and more extreme deeds was concretely heavier and harder. This had a direct emotional impact on participants they found easy to engage with.
These are some examples of how to affect player bodies directly as a medium for the larp to create the emotions and narrative you are aiming for. These tools can not be invented without experiencing the emotions or events you’re trying to tell with your own body or without testing and iterating with test participants.
This article is republished from the Knutepunkt 2025 book. Please cite it as:
Mutik, Nina & Vili Myrsky Nissinen. 2025. “Larp As Embodied Art.” In Anatomy of Larp Thoughts, a breathing corpus: Knutepunkt Conference 2025. Oslo. Fantasiforbundet.
Cover image: Doing rituals at the actual wellspring the coven used to create Fenezar! Photo: Nina Mutik 2024
A new generation is slowly joining the Nordic larp community. This fact is undoubtedly true; it can be seen at Knudepunkt/ Solmukohta/ Knutepunkt/ Knutpunkt and at the local smaller larps. But why are so few of them joining the multinational Nordic larp community and why are they not attending as many Nordic larps as previous generations? These are burning questions that I was sitting with, so I did the most logical thing. I asked them. I visited multiple Danish larps and larp organizations, where I conducted short semi-structured interviews with about 30 larpers aged 15-25, to try and get answers to my questions.
The two most common answers to the question were, “I can’t afford to attend Nordic larps” and “It’s not inclusive enough, because there is not enough info beforehand.” While talking about lowering larp prices,
the thing that really stuck with me was, “It’s not inclusive enough.” Having been part of the Nordic larp community for some time, this statement really shocked me. This shock naturally leads to curiosity and so the hunt for more answers began. What did they mean when they said it wasn’t inclusive enough?
There is an old saying, that answers often come when we least expect them. While working on a website for an unrelated project an email arrived asking about content warnings. Having worked with content warning before as part of a larp I was organizing, I wrote back only to realize that we were thinking of content warnings in different ways. In the past, I had used content warnings to
warn about sensitive themes. However, she was asking about content warnings for the actual physical mechanics, like a content warning for prolonged eye contact, because she had sadly had a bad experience in the past where this was only brought to her attention at the pre-larp workshop. Because this hadn’t been shared beforehand it basically prevented her from playing the larp.
Hearing about this experience guided the path towards further stories from newer players and their
experiences with Nordic larp (Editors n.d.). Another theme also arose in regard to spoiling a scenario vs. keeping players informed. Organizers sometimes want a big twist in their games to surprise their player and keep them on their toes, but in keeping the twists hidden, especially twists with hardcore themes, can be very damaging to the player experience. For this new player, the twist was so out-of-left-field that they ended up leaving the scenario midway, because they simply weren’t prepared for this experience.
So now comes the central question, “How can we design larps for this new generation of younger larpers?” While there is no central answer to this question, there are tip and tricks you can integrate into your larp design to include this newer generation of larpers. I have here tried to formulate 3 tips and tricks to use in your larp design based on the interview responses, as well as my experience designing for this audience for over 10 years.
1. Remember your content warnings, also for your mechanics.
If you are not already using content warnings for your themes, you should consider using them to make
sure your players are prepared for what your larp is about (Koljonen 2016). Remember all the pre-workshop information you give out is both to attract the players you want, while also giving players enough information to opt-out of your larp if your themes are not for them. If you are using content warnings for your themes, consider expanding your practices to also include your mechanics. Does your larp involve long periods of eye contact? Are you expected to be physically intimate with other players? Will other players touch each other without immediate consent because negotiations occur at the workshop beforehand? Then include that information as content warnings on your website. All of these mechanics are okay to have in your larp, but letting your players know before the workshop will give everyone a better experience.
2. Prepare your players, even for the twists!
Continuing on the content warnings, they are all about preparing your players for what your larp is about.
While it can feel great to shock your players with a twist in the story of the larp, this can also lead to a really bad experience for your players (Torner 2013). I am not saying that you should tell your players about all the twists and turns, but you should prepare them for these surprises. If someone is suddenly murdered in front of all the players during the larp, then it should be clear beforehand that this is a possibility either in the form of content warning or as some text available on the website. You don’t necessarily have to spoil your twist in order for your players to be prepared for them.
3. Have this information available on your website.
While for some it might go without saying, but remember to have all this information on your website or at least make sure your players have access to this information before they sign up. There is nothing worse than a player having a truly horrible experience because something wasn’t spelled out beforehand. Therefore, it is very important to have everything ready before signup to make sure you get a great player base that is ready to play your larp.
There are many more things you can do to design larps for newer generations, but the hope is that this has been a stepping stone for further ideas and an interest to delve deeper into the subject of designing larps for a new generation.
Torner, Evan. 2013. “Transparency and Safety in Role-playing Games.” In The Wyrd Con Companion Book 2013, edited by Sarah Lynne Bowman and Aaron Vanek, 14-17. Los Angeles, CA: Wyrd Con, 2013.
After the world started opening up post-pandemic, many of us were eager to reconnect and larp together again. But when restrictions allowed us to meet in small groups, we faced a dilemma: no one had designed a larp ready to be played. With many pre-COVID games cancelled and organizers burnt out from the uncertainty of future lockdowns, we decided to improvise—a full weekend of larping, made up on the spot. It sounds like a wild idea, but surprisingly it worked better than expected. Since then, nine different improv larps have been organized in various countries with more coming up. But what exactly is an improv larp, and why should you consider running or playing one?
The improv larps we’ve run were for a small group of about a dozen people. This small size made the experience adaptable and accessible for the individual needs. Who are we? Rumo played one of the international runs and made this article happen. Gijs thought of the idea 4 years ago and has participated in 10 improv larps so far.
What is an improv larp?
An improv larp is a live-action role-playing event that’s designed and played within the same weekend. There’s no months of pre-planning, intricate world-building, or character sheets written in advance. Everything is created in the moment and on location. This method was purposefully invented to be easy to organize, removing the pressure of long-term preparation. It’s a collaboratively built experience co-created by all the participants together.
While improv larps are designed to minimize effort, they do come with some compromises: Everyone has their own preferences, so naturally, expectation management is very important. There is no thoroughly pre-designed game, so there is a risk that the larp will fail. This process can lead to wonderful experiences full of unexpected larp magic but is no guarantee for it. Sometimes, things don’t go exactly as hoped.
With the tendency of bigger, more thought out designs and the professionalisation of larp organising, improv larp is a way to go the opposite direction (and quite possibly away from orga-burnout): minimal effort, no scripts, no huge logistics, just a group of people with a shared desire to play. While the logistics need to be facilitated, everybody gets to play the game equally. As soon as the larp starts, there is no organiser role.
Photo from Guardians of the Dawn.
All the improv larps so far
There have been 11 improv larps so far. 7 of them were initiated by Gijs van Bilsen, with a small returning group of Dutch players. 2 of them were initiated by Miriam Dik, recruited from a large group of players. And 2 were international events, in Germany and Denmark, initiated by Gijs and with a changing cast of players. These are the names and short descriptions of the events.
Dutch, initiated by Gijs
For the Order!: About a failed mission by a secret society of eco-activists.
Everybody Happy?!: About a start-up that has to test its own relationship matching algorithm.
The Union: About a correctional facility in a collectivistic society, aimed to get rid of individualistic tendencies of the inmates.
Joa: About a family of flamboyant refugees from the big city, in hiding at a very traditional farmers family in the second world war.
The Film Crew: About the making of a movie in 80’s Hollywood.
Guardians of the Dawn: About two families who have been kept apart from society by their fanatical father. The larp started with the father introducing the two families and then disappearing, forcing these two families to live together.
Dittlinger’s Glory: About the last days of a dictatorial family. They know it is their last day alive, as the rebellious masses will find them in the morning. Only, the masses never come and the family has to deal with all the things they said and did when they thought it was their last day.
Dutch, initiated by Miriam
8 days, 8 months, 8 years: About a group of astronauts who were supposed to spend 8 days in the international space station, but ended up spending 8 months. Now, 8 years later there is a reunion for a Netflix documentary, where all the old secrets surface.
Immortals: A group of immortals needs to pull off a heist in order to decide who gets to be immortal.
International, initiated by Gijs
The Gay-triarchy: What if there actually was queer revolution? A queer utopia turned dystopia by a government that now oppresses straightness.
What about Maria: A wholesome larp about strangers who inherit a lovely house together, bonded by their respect and love for the former owner, Maria.
How to facilitate an improv larp
In the following 10 steps we explain how the improv larps have been successfully run.
On Trust and Collaboration
Here are some basics about improv larps that you should keep in mind for it to work: It’s a collaborative process. The whole game is co-created and a lot of decisions are based on compromises. For this to work, you need trust among the players. They don’t necessarily have to know each other before but focus on building trust in the group from the very beginning. It also helps to have a shared vision of the type of larp you want to play. It’s best to have some idea of the type of game you want early on and communicate this to everyone so the group has a common base to start off on.
Proposed schedule
Step
Time estimate
STEP 1: Invite the people for the game you want
2-6 months before
STEP 2: Preparation
1 month before
STEP 3: Pre-meeting
2 weeks before
STEP 4: Coming up with setting
Day 1, 16.00h
STEP 5: Deciding on game techniques & safety
Day 1, 21.00h
STEP 6: Coming up with characters
Day 1, 23.00h
STEP 7: Character relations
Day 2, 10.00h
STEP 8: Get dressed and go play
Day 2, 13.00h
STEP 9: Half-game calibration
Day 3, 10.00h
STEP 10: How it ends
Day 3, 19.00h
Step 1: Invite the people for the game you want
An improv larp works best with 8-12 people. That’s big enough to have several stories going on at the same time and small enough to do the brainstorming session effectively. You want to invite people who like the same kind of game. You decide if it’s going to be a modern day larp in a luxury villa or a fantasy setting in tents. However, the kind of story that works best is one where the dynamics within the group are interesting enough. Improvising a larp where the problems come from ‘outside’ (such as the horde of orcs that invade a village) will not work as well.
Other types of play such as puzzle plots or rituals that you want to be guided by a game master are not ideal, but possible. In that case, there must also be people who like to take on that facilitating role and can come up with it on the fly.
In terms of which players to invite, aim for herd competence (see Lundqvist 2015): meaning that in the group as a whole, you need to have enough people who bring skills with them that are useful for improvising a larp. Skills like:
Being able to generate play for others
Pacing the story
Knowing what a scene needs
Play to lift (see Vejdemo 2018).
You can invite people you think are a good addition to the group or let the people who are joining also invite one or more players. In this way, more people already have a relationship of trust with at least one of the participants. Doing this with an established group of friends also works very well.
Photo from Joa.
Step 2: Preparation
The logistical arrangements — date, location, food, clothing and props — are all made together as much as possible.
You first decide on a date with the people you have invited in Step 1. Then you can decide on a location together that fits the financial and geographical needs of all participants. Because it is a small group, many cottages or small group locations are possible. Keep in mind that a good larp location needs some privacy from non-participants such as neighbours.
The chores for the weekend get divided: Everyone who wants to cook prepares a meal, someone does the grocery shopping, and the rest take care of the other tasks such as washing dishes and cleaning up. Cooking or doing the dishes can be done in- or out-of-game, depending on setting and characters.
Instruct everyone to take as many clothes and props as they can manage (especially the people who come with their own car). It’s best to loosely agree on a time period to play in, so that everyone can bring costume pieces accordingly.
Step 3: Pre-meeting
If the people in the group do not know each other well, do an (online) meeting beforehand. People can introduce themselves; they can talk about what kind of game they would like to play and what they are hoping to get out of it. If the expectations are too far apart, you can already pick a direction, so people can get used to the idea or make the conscious choice to drop out. For example, if some people want ‘feel good’, Type 1 fun and others are hoping for more darker Type 2 fun (Nordic Larp Wiki 2023), pick one of those. In the pre-meeting, you can already come up with some ideas for settings, but these meetings are just to get the creative juices flowing. Do not choose the setting yet; leave that to the weekend.
If you have enough time during the weekend, you can also do this on the first day together, but we’ve found a pre-meeting to be very fun and helpful.
Step 4: Coming up with a setting
Take some time for everyone to arrive on the first day. After the group has settled, start a brainstorm session to come up with a setting. Start with wishes and boundaries, e.g., what types of play would you want and what type of play do you absolutely not want? Then start brainstorming. Settings can be short, one sentence larp ideas, like:
A group of terrorists meet after a failed attack,
Hippies try to live together unsuccessfully, or
Astronauts stuck together on a spaceship.
A good brainstorming technique is brainwriting. Write down different ideas for a setting on a piece of paper for a couple of minutes. Then pass around the paper so you can read another person’s ideas and associate more ideas from that. Repeat until you’ve passed all papers around once. This technique works because people have already read most ideas and it doesn’t depend on all participants being verbally quick and spontaneous.
You can also use other creative methods to generate even more ideas. You then select the ideas with the most interest with green stickers for the best and red/orange for a veto/preferably not. Pick the three most popular ideas and have three smaller groups each work out the details of one of these different one sentence ideas into a longer format of what the larp could look like. Include at least:
Who will be playing,
Where will the game take place, and
What is the central conflict of the larp.
Pitch these longer settings to each other. After this process, choose the best one and try to incorporate ideas from other popular ideas to create the full larp you are going to play, e.g., what do you like about this idea?
This process can take 1.5 – 2.5 hours and will probably have a moment where you think, ‘We’ll never get out of this,’ but eventually you’ll get there. Being open to each other and trusting in an idea, even if you don’t quite understand it yet, are important qualities to have. It is good to have someone who is experienced in facilitating group meetings or brainstorming sessions. Having one person keep an eye on time and group dynamics, as well as being able to make decisions, is good.
Step 5: Decide on game techniques and safety
Once you have chosen the setting, you can start detailing it out and think about game techniques. Game techniques that are important are ways to give in-game and off-game input. This can be anything that suits your game, e.g., a flip chart at the toilet for off-game questions and requests, a laptop with in-game news messages on it about how close the police got to the terrorists, or on which emails come in from the investor behind the start-up. You can use anything you know from previously played larps or come up with new mechanics.
Finally, safety in the group is very important. You are even more dependent on your fellow players to make something of the story than in a pre-designed larp. And where you can avoid another player within a larger group, it is much more difficult in a smaller game.
Fortunately, safety in a smaller group is also easier to achieve, especially if you agree in advance what kind of game you want. Talk about what safety mechanics you want to use in your game and adjust them accordingly; as with other techniques it’s easiest to use mechanics from other larps the participants have already played.
Calibrating on the emotional and physical intensity you are aiming for and sharing personal boundaries in the group is important. Talk about how intimate you want the larp to get — especially in regard to sexuality and violence — and what tools you want to use to steer this in-game. For us, the safety discussions also gave us the space to look for more intense play than is possible in many other larps. This is one of the reasons why these larps meant so much to a lot of us.
Photo from The Gaytriarchy.
Step 6: Coming up with characters
After this, you’re going to think about the characters that each would like to play in the setting. As it’s probably late in the evening now, some people will go to bed and others will stay up. People can think about who they want to play on their own or brainstorm together, but it’s important to not decide on any relationships between characters if not everyone is present. For the first ideas of who you want to play, you don’t have write anything down, as the idea might evolve over time. Everybody thinks about characters until after breakfast on the next day, when we move to relations.
Step 7: Character relations
Start with everyone together and have them describe their ideas about their characters. After this you can either do an unstructured period of time where people will develop their mutual relationships in groups of two or three, or you can do a structured exercise. This could for example be standing in a circle of people who point to others to indicate they have an idea about a potential relationship with that person, throwing a ball of yarn to make the relationships visual (see Hernø 2019), writing the relationships down or doing a ‘Hot Seat’ where every person is asked questions about their character.
One example of a structured exercise that we use is based on ‘systemic constellations’ or ‘family constellations’, inspired by the work of Sandy Stiles Andersen (‘Storyweave workshop, Knudepunkt 2023), in which, without speaking, we make a visual representation of the relationships between characters in the room. In short, it goes like this:
Everyone stands to the side of the room.
One person steps into the middle of the room. Possibly a character who might be central to the group such as ‘the mother’ or ‘the leader’.
The next person joins in and determines how they will stand in relation to the first person. Will they stand close by or far off? Facing the other or with their back towards them? Touching or not? Standing up or sitting down, etc.
After every new person, the people already standing in the middle or the room get a chance to move slightly, if they prefer.
Continue doing this until everyone is in the middle of the room. This can take quite some time and that’s okay. In the original ‘systemic constellation’ moving around is based on intuition (‘Do I feel like moving?’), but this can also be done based on thoughts like ‘where would my character sit in relation to the others’).
After everyone is in the middle, have everyone explain why they are there in that specific position and what the main relationships are.
Then move into talking in twos and threes to flesh out these relationships.
Step 8: Get dressed and go play
You put all the costumes everyone brought in one room and use them to dress up as characters. If everybody takes some things, you end up with heaps of stuff that people can sift through. Usually this leads to fun, communal dressing up, with people getting clothes for each other, using each other as mirror, and getting costume advice.
And then? Then you play! Let your imagination go wild, go with the flow and most of all: have fun!
Step 9: Half-game calibration
About halfway through the game — in our time schedule, just after breakfast on Day 3 — take a moment for off-game calibration. Pause the game and do a quick round: How do you feel about the game? What do you still need today? During the calibration, you also agree on what seems to be a logical moment for the end — before or after dinner — and how you will announce it. We use music that lasts half an hour and builds up to crescendo, so that we know that the final phase has begun. After this process, continue with the game.
Step 10: How it ends
End the game in the way you agreed on in Step 9. Take some time to come down, have some food, maybe debrief however you feel the need to. Have a nice off-game evening together and clean the house together before leaving the next day.
Vejdemo, Susanne. 2018. “Play to Lift, not Just to Lose.” In Shuffling the Deck: The Knutpunkt 2018 Color Printed Companion, edited by Annika Waern and Johannes Axner, 143-146. Pittsburgh, PA: Carnegie Mellon University: ETC Press.
This article will also be published in German on teilzeithelden.de and in Dutch on larpplatform.nl.
Jesus did it. So why don’t you? Create drama during dinner, that is. Saying that one of your best friends will betray you while you are having your last meal is a pretty dramatic way to create pressure in an eating situation. The Danish Dogme 95 film The Celebration (1998) is another example of great drama happening at a dinner. Many of our favorite stories can make it work, so let’s do that in larp as well. We waste so much time eating during longer form larps. At least, that was my experience for a very long time, until I figured out a solution that worked for me both as a player and designer. Food and food design in larps is in and of itself an interesting subject. But more than the actual food, I very much enjoy larps that make something special of meal situations.
Examples of larps where specific meals have been well thought into the design are the last dinner at the Atropos larp Libertines (2019-2020)and the meals at House of Craving (2019-). At Libertines, the last meal is a culmination of building pressure within the group of characters, and it seems completely normalized that there isn’t any cutlery, plates or cups, and people are not properly dressed while the food is served so it becomes messy and very physical.
At House of Craving, meals become more and more absurd; some players portray a representation of “The House” (so your character doesn’t see these people) and they will move around the food and your cutlery in a haunting way, making you start to question why things are not in the places you put them. The further into the meals you get, you feel more and more like you are going insane while the House starts to interact more directly with you.
These examples contain wonderful scenes designed to enhance an atmosphere and specific actions that connect to the larps’ themes in their own way.
A way I most often utilize meals to become an actual Dinner Warfare situation, is by creating subtle but strong emotional pressure based on specific relations instead of mostly atmosphere in designing eating situations.
From Daemon (2023): Katrine Wind. Photo: Bjørn-Morten Vang Gundersen.
Dinner Warfare
Dinner Warfare is, primarily, a tool to design meal situations that contain emotional relevance for the players individually and, secondarily, a way of underlining the atmosphere and themes of the larp. As an organizer, I most often utilize Dinner Warfare to enhance conflict, but it can also be meaningful in positive relations between characters.
Putting each other under pressure as well as subtly poking in polite circumstances gives another dimension to a personal relation than when you are not forced to spend time together. It can both kickstart a conflict and help decide the pacing of a larp. This tool can also provide much longer scenes than usual. It’s not often that you get to spend hours together with the same characters at a larp, which has at least the potential to deeper and more layered conversations and therefore relations. In the best cases, this ignites embers that can burst into a fire later in the larp as well.
An important lesson in larp design is that we can’t teach everyone everything during workshops, but we can “train” our players and provide them with new player skills. A way of doing this regarding Dinner Warfare is simply stating that they have the obligation as players to sit in a place that is meaningful to your character and where it might create the most play during one or more meals. Putting the responsibility with the players is the first step on the “The table of Dinner Warfare.” If you want to take more responsibility as a designer, you can ensure organized meals, make seating plans or even dynamic seating plans.
Illustration of “The table of Dinner Warfare” by Iris van Blijderveen (2024).
Brief players and make organized meals
The table above (or figure as it rightfully is) makes it possible for anyone to point out that they want dinner warfare at their larp no matter their resources. If your players eat in-game, give them the responsibility to be meaningful. If you want to help them even further, you can make specific mealtimes. Then you ensure that they are all gathered and that they then have an easier time finding people to sit with that are meaningful. There you go — you already completed two courses on the “Table of Dinner Warfare.”
The next part of the article is about how you as a designer can enhance and help the players use this tool, if you want to do more.
Seating plan
A seating plan is essential in the Dinner Warfare concept if you as a designer want to heavily affect the pressure this tool can put in a larp. People who have problematic relations as well as terrible secrets together make very good Dinner Warfare seating partners. To actually utilize Dinner Warfare effectively as an organizer, you have to know the characters very well and I can imagine that it takes clear and strong (as well as well-written) relations. You have to have an idea of the intricacies of why it would be terrible for these two characters to be forced to eat a three course meal together.
A helpful set-up is a setting including very strong social norms like nobility adhering to old-timey table-manners or creating families with harsh social structures. In these settings, there is an expected air of at least surface-level civility. So while there might for example be a threat of violence, it is kept under wraps, leading to tension (and possibly even better scenes that couldn’t have been happening without these external circumstances).
It is important to have an alibi for why you have to stay in your seat and not leave the person you are put next to. This is something I often combine with some of the elements that Karijn van der Heij and I described in the article “Playing an Engaging Victim” (2020). In this article, we argue that it can be tempting for victim players to simply run away or physically hide from their oppressor, but with Dinner Warfare, you can actually provide both parties with an alibi to spend extensive time together.
In Spoils of War (2019-2024), I utilize this by having the winning and losing side of a war celebrate the sacred Feast of Life together: one day a year where you have to celebrate Life no matter the circumstances. Thus, the queen of the side that will lose the war later in the game will invite everybody who is in the siege camp outside into the castle for a long meal. The written characters are long and the relations complex, so the seating plan is made off-game by me, while in-game it is Her Majesty’s. Prisoners of war sit with their captors and the family that is desperate to have them back. Former lovers sit next to the one that broke their heart — you get the sentiment. The cultural and religious agreement that we don’t attack each other during a meal provides the alibi here.
The author creating a seating chart in Helicon Run 1 (2024): Katrine Wind and Maria Petterson. Photo: Anna Katrine Werge Bønnelycke.
Daemon
In my larp Daemon (2021), Dinner Warfare is a core design element. The larp is inspired by the His Dark Materials trilogy by Philip Pullman (1995-2000) where humans have their soul outside of their body in the form of an animal. Daemons are the expression of the inner lives of the characters and can either underline what the human players are portraying or show what is really going on between the two humans. In the larp, this is represented by two people playing the same character (human and daemon, respectively) and that they can’t go more than two meters from each other.
The larp takes place in the aftermath of a war in which many of the characters helped kill the God of this world. The characters have gathered at the mansion to celebrate the victory. But not everyone wants to be there. Not all of the heroes see themselves as that and because of a last attack from the losing side, even adversaries from the war have had to flee to this exact place. The war has brought together people from all classes. Class differences are an important part of the experience. Everybody present experiences the pressure of social norms because of the nobility present — and we kick that off very early into the game with a three course dinner.
In this particular setup, the hostess is setting the table and forces the seating arrangements on the guests. This is usually an organizer controlled character. A player can absolutely be the host in-game like in Spoils of War, but it is important to be willing to keep the pressure on the other players and have a lot of insight into the characters and relations as there are only 30 people in this larp. You also have to consider that it can be time consuming for a player the more responsibility they have, possibly taking them out of the game.
In-game enemies or problematic relations can be placed together because of malicious intent or unknowingly. For example, the hostess at Daemon purposefully doesn’t put her own sister at the high table because they have a conflict; instead she is placed with the lowest classes. This provides tension for all. The hostess’ greatest enemy, who she has always been very jealous of, is, on the other hand, placed beside her former fiancée who has publicly denounced her and had her put in house arrest.
Daemon (Belgium 2023): Katrine Wind. Photo: Ork De Rooij.
Another option is that the pressure is unintentional in-game but intentional off-game. An example of this is the high table, where the hostess Lady Philippa Blackett has placed her best friend Lord Richard Wiltshire, whom she has always dined with and who is a hero of the war and their daemons of course. The nobles are chummy, making others uncomfortable by familiarity, obvious privilege, and status. At that table is also placed Richard’s younger sister Evelyn, who was engaged to Philippa’s deceased brother. Richard and Philippa pity her, try to make her mourn as much as possible for the lost fiancée, and feel guilty for his death as a war hero. The last person at the table is Professor Rowan, whom Richard has been sponsoring for years. What Richard doesn’t know is that the professor has a long running affair with Evelyn, who doesn’t mourn her fiancée at all. The daemons of Evelyn and Rowan are placed next to each other. They will then play out the romance as subtly as they can under the dangerous attention of Philippa and Richard while the daemons often choose to telegraph more visibly the feelings that the humans are trying to keep quiet. I often find that transparency helps here — if the players know what is at stake between Evelyn and Rowan, it is easier to pick up the hints.
All of this emotional, meaningful drama can make it a very “pressure cooker”-like experience, which for some larps is completely fine. That the characters are not exploding on each other and mostly suffering internally while being prodded and provoked by the people they sit together with. If you want to avoid this atmosphere, you can choose to encourage a more rowdy atmosphere with e.g. toasts or speeches. This mostly works if it is briefed or workshopped; not many will make toasts if they aren’t suggested to do so.
Daemon (Belgium 2023): Katrine Wind. Photo: Ork De Rooij.
The last example from Daemon to create more pressure, is an element where the hostess wants to get the conversation going. By each seat, there is an envelope titled “A little game.” When the guests open it, there are really hard questions like: “How do you think you are going to die?” and “If you could change one thing about how you grew up, what would you change?” This makes it easier to start the conversations and everybody can see the inappropriateness of the questions — especially across classes. But no one can protest this early in the game because of polite society.
So, where religious and cultural norms offer the alibi in Spoils of War, class differences are the kicker in Daemon.
Player wishes
If you want to make it more difficult for yourself (why wouldn’t you? Organizing is so easy, right?), take player wishes into account. That is the last course on the “Dinner Warfare table”. If someone enjoys the Dinner Warfare situations, it can for some be interesting further into the game to have some influence over who it would make sense for their game to be placed next to. There might be someone that your character would want to avoid, but that would enhance your experience to be pressed by social norms to spend time with.
Helicon
For Helicon (2024) by myself and Maria Pettersson, a larp about the Muses of old being trapped by humans (the Inspired), class differences can’t be much of a pressure point for Dinner Warfare, as the Inspired are pretty much equal with a few exceptions. Class differences are utilized for other kinds of conflicts. Instead, we use traditions as an alibi for the seating plan (for play accounts of Helicon, see Bowman 2024; Nøglebæk 2024; Pettersson 2024).
The social dynamics in this larp are complex and layered and are utilized and enhanced by the Dinner Warfare by physically putting one’s Muse next to one’s ex-wife and love interests while the Muses are former lovers/close friends. The Muses are connected to their Inspired and can’t go more than 100 m away from them. The ritual of keeping them with the human will have to be renewed every year, making ritualistic content an important part of the design. The first ritual is directly followed by a three course dinner, so that there has just been a dramatic escape and punishment scene and then we go directly to the traditional welcome dinner. We also make the larp feel a bit like a time warp by making characters going back to the same dynamics over and over during the larp — and this doesn’t only include the seating plans.
We put people who have been divorced next to each other with the alibi that they used to sit like this 15 years ago, and if we change anything — even the seating — the sealing of the capture of the Muses might not work. With so much pressure, sometimes the atmosphere can be very serious, strained and quiet unless you workshop it not to be and give tools to change it.
Toasts are great tools for setting the mood and getting more active meal situations during Dinner Warfare but as mentioned earlier, people will not necessarily do that in-game unless encouraged. Maria Pettersson and I use a tool called “Please stand up” to overcome the possible hesitation. It is basically just the very known game “Never have I ever…” A character can at any point stand up and say: “Please stand up if…” and often it will be used to either celebrate good qualities in oneself or slander another character. An example could be: “Please stand up if you also hate your Muse.” This way the players can affect if the atmosphere should be more vicious, cruel, or maybe celebratory.
For this larp it is also much more beneficial that people can actually walk around and switch seats during the meals as they are all old friends, lovers, and enemies and dramatic interactions are encouraged.
Helicon (2024): Katrine Wind and Maria Pettersson. Photo: Bjørn-Morten Vang Gundersen.
Downsides to Dinner Warfare
Anecdotally, quite a lot of larpers have difficulty eating at larps. I don’t personally prefer for people to not have eaten at the larps I design, as I find hungry people in many situations to be worse larpers. The kind of pressure that Dinner Warfare provides can make it difficult for some to eat and I acknowledge that. One of the antidotes to that on my behalf, is making the dinners very long. If you have to sit for 2½ hours and are served three different courses, almost anyone will have eaten something at the end.
Serving the food buffet style takes away the pressure as well. When people have to get up to grab their choice of food, they will spend more time away from each other and experience relief of pressure. The disadvantage of serving by the plate or family style on the tables, which I would argue gives the best physical circumstances for Dinner Warfare, is that it takes a lot of extra effort from the kitchen and serving staff. Servers can also raise the cost of a larp, making it even more financially inaccessible. However, bearing these possible disadvantages in mind, I highly recommend Dinner Warfare as a design tool
In summary, meals don’t have to be empty design spaces in a larp or something you just have to get over and done with to get on with the real larp. Real larping canhappen while eating. Bon appetit!
Wind, Katrine, and Karijn van der Heij. 2020. “Playing an Engaging Victim.” In What Do We Do When We Play? Solmukohta 2020, edited by edited by Eleanor Saitta, Johanna Koljonen, Jukka Särkijärvi, Anne Serup Grove, Pauliina Männistö, and Mia Makkonen, 244–53. Helsinki: Solmukohta.
Ludography
Daemon (2021): Denmark, Belgium, USA, UK. Katrine Wind.
Helicon (2024): Denmark. Maria Pettersson and Katrine Wind.
Spoils of War (2019-2024). Denmark. Katrine Wind.
Libertines (2019-2020): Denmark. Atropos and Julie Greip.
House of Craving (2019-2023): Denmark. Tor Kjetil Edland, Danny Wilson, Frida Sofie Jansen, and Bjarke Pedersen.
Cover photo:From Spoils of War (2022): Katrine Wind. Photo by Elvinas Rokas.
When cast in a relationship with another player, — meaning any kind of relationship, such as family, friendship, enmity etc., as well as romantic/sexual relationships — it is customary (but usually not mandatory) to reach out and calibrate before the larp. At times like these, there are a few questions I usually ask my co-player. A friend recently mentioned that she found my questions very helpful, and always used them when calibrating. At first I thought that they were nothing special, probably everyone used questions more or less the same? But, pre-game calibration definitely is a skill that can be developed and refined, just like most other parts of larp. So, perhaps in this text you can find some tool that will help you in your pre-game calibrations.
These questions are based on a larp designed with a Nordic, collaborative playstyle, prewritten characters and prewritten relationships. Usually, characters are available for all players to read, and it is common to read at least parts of your co-players’ character descriptions. The questions work for other design choices as well, but may have to be adapted accordingly.
It is of course not necessary or expected that you always ask all of these questions every time you do pre-game calibrations with someone. They are to be considered as a tool-box, and you yourself will notice which ones will seem most useful, depending what larp you are going to, what kind of relationship you have been cast in, and what you know about your co-player beforehand.
Question: How much time and energy do you have for calibration, and what methods of communicating work best for you?
Why it is useful to ask: Some people have very busy lives, and many larps lined up. Others have a lot of time, and want to spend weeks or months planning and discussing play. Calibrate this first, and try to find what works for both of you. If there is less time and energy, you might have to focus on only the most important questions.
Question: What are your hopes and wishes for this larp?
Why it is useful to ask: This will give you the chance to understand your co-player better: their playstyle, why they signed up for this particular larp and what kinds of scenes they enjoy. It may also offer insights into how you can create rewarding play for them within the character relationship.
Question: What is your understanding of the relationship between our characters?
Why it is useful to ask: An important early step is to have a shared idea of what kind of relationship you are going to be portraying. This is especially relevant if you have not been reading the same texts (e.g. if you have only been reading your own character descriptions, and the relationship described from their point of view). But even reading exactly the same texts, interpretations may vary. If you do not have the same idea about what the characters’ relationship is (at least at the start of the larp), it may make things much more frustrating, both to calibrate and play.
Question: What themes and aspects of this relationship are most interesting to you?
Why it is useful to ask: Partially, this question allows you to delve deeper into the relationship, to analyse it deeper. But, more importantly, it is how you start to make the relationship your own, focusing on the things that appeal to you both. Hopefully, you have shared interests, and want the same things – but if not, this is also a good time in the discussion to politely tell your co-player if you are uninterested or uncomfortable with certain areas of the relationship. This can be hard, but hopefully you will be able to create something that appeals to you both, and fits in the framework of the larp and relationship.
Question: What are your worries and fears going into this larp?
Why it is useful to ask: Playing together is also taking a level of responsibility for one another. If you know what your co-player worries about, you might help make sure that their fears do not come true – especially if this relates to the relationship between your characters. And, if doing anything about them is out of your power, then it can sometimes be good to just share your fears with someone.
Question: Do you have any triggers, or anything else I should be mindful of?
Why it is useful to ask: This one is self-explanatory. We do not want to distress our co-players off-game, if it can be avoided.
Question: What level of physical play are you generally comfortable with?
Why it is useful to ask: If there is a possibility that we might play scenes with violence, romantic/sexual intimacy or platonic closeness, having a rough idea of what to expect is a good thing. However, this reply is not about how you will be playing (see below).
Why it is good to ask in this particular way: We usually know what level of physical play we are normally comfortable with, and if we have any boundaries that we never cross. However, I do not think it is good practice to decide beforehand, days or weeks before the larp and with someone you have not played with before, what is ok and what is not. What might have felt good when planning, might not seem at all good when the larp is about to start. It might be due to how you are feeling on the day, how it feels when you actually meet your co-player, or some other reason. I therefore think it is best to not commit to anything, but rather talk about what usually works, and then do more calibration on the day of the larp.
How not to respond: If your co-player says ”I don’t have any boundaries, you can do anything!”, I think it is fully reasonable to say ”Oh, okay, so can I break your arm?” We all have boundaries of some sort. Some people who do not state boundaries simply have not considered things that might happen at the larp. Personally, I only feel safe with co-players who state some sort of boundaries – at the very least, ”Don’t do anything that leaves lasting damage on my body”. You might think, ”But this is obvious, you shouldn’t have to say that!”, but that’s just the thing. There are very different cultures and norms in different larp communities. To some, it may be just as ”obvious” that you would never play out a realistic-looking sex-scene, or do things that are actually painful to others; those are common elements of some larps. So, try to be explicit, think about what your boundaries are, and be comfortable communicating them.
Question: What level of emotional intensity do you generally prefer?
Why it is useful to ask: Some larpers want to feel deeply when larping, and feel that larp is best when it breaks their heart, and they can immerse deeply into feelings for the entire larp. Others have a playstyle focused more on cool scenes, interesting plots, or simulating an alternate reality, and are not very interested in having their hearts roughed up in the process. Although it can be difficult to specify what is a high or low level of emotional intensity, it might be relevant to calibrate if you are unsure.
Why it is good to ask in this particular way: Just as with physical play, we can never know for certain what we want or need during an upcoming larp. It is also not always possible to plan how intensely you are going to feel during the larp.
Question: What is your preference when it comes to transparency?
Why it is useful to ask: Transparency refers tolearning the other characters’ thoughts and motivations, or possible things that might happen at the larp. Since it is part of the tradition I larp in, I think transparency is a very good thing. Lack of transparency usually just makes it more difficult to pick up on things. The transparency of reading others’ characters is generally very useful. However, I do love a good curveball from time to time. If my co-player springs an unexpected scene on me, or reveals a hidden corner of their character’s mind, it can be a very impactful experience. However, not everyone enjoys this. So, discuss with your co-player what level of transparency you prefer.
When to ask: This question might be one you want to ask very early in the conversation, or it might only feel relevant later on. This, of course, depends on how many non-transparent secrets there are that might become relevant, and you should be able to assess this based on the information you have. Ask before disclosing in-game information that is most likely unknown to your co-player!
Question: What are your preferences on if/when/how to be off-game?
Why it is useful to ask: We have very different needs in this regard. Some players want to be in-game all through a larp, while others have a need for little breaks to decompress, laugh a bit, or rest. If larping in very close proximity with someone (for example, sharing a room) and having very different styles, this can prove problematic – especially if unaware of your different needs beforehand. If you find that you have differing needs, discuss how to deal with this.
There are of course countless more questions that can be asked, focusing on the specifics of the characters and how they relate to each other, and it is probably neither possible nor useful to try to list them all here. These questions usually tend to arise as the conversation continues, and your shared understanding deepens.
Why do pre-game calibrations?
Do you have to do pre-game calibrations? No, you don’t. Some people do not have any need or desire for it – others simply don’t have time. Usually, it works out alright. However, pre-game calibrations have many potential benefits.
Building trust: Having talked to someone, getting an idea of them as a player and person before diving into the larp and your characters, makes it easier to feel comfortable and trust them. You have an idea about the person behind the character, and have established an atmosphere of wanting to collaborate for a good experience.
Being careful: It happens from time to time that one is cast in a relationship with a person we don’t click with, or whose style of communicating, larping, or similar is incompatible with our own. Sad as it is, it happens, and it is better to notice this before the larp, than in the middle of it. You can then decide how to work around it, or if you need help dealing with it.
Less stumbling in the dark: Without calibration, the risk is greater that we spend valuable larp time not quite feeling like we’re getting our money’s worth. We might spend time doing small-talk, not quite knowing where the scene is going, or be brought out of immersion because we are confused about important parts of the characters’ shared story. Good calibration means that we are more likely to know how to engage with the relationship from the beginning, and what to focus on for an enjoyable and impactful experience.
Get to know your own character: Talking about the relationship isn’t only about the relationship. It also gives you plenty of opportunity to think about your own character – how they think and feel, how they behave in various situations, and so on. Getting to know and understand your character makes it more likely that you will feel connected to it during the larp.
A final word on responsibility (and feminism)
Many women larpers of my acquaintance mention that they are usually the ones who initiate calibrations with male co-players, and that they are the ones that take responsibility for asking questions and directing the conversation. This is an experience I definitely share. Although there are of course many great and responsible male larpers, the trend is there. I would like to encourage men to take on more of the responsibility, to take initiative and to be the ones asking questions. With the toolbox provided in this text, perhaps it might be slightly easier.
Cover photo: Players at Fairweather Manor: The Titanic Prelude (2024). Photo by Nadina Dobrowolska.
Daemon (Belgium 2023): Katrine Wind. Photo: Ork De Rooij.
Helicon (2024): Katrine Wind and Maria Pettersson. Photo: Bjørn-Morten Vang Gundersen.