Nordic Larp

Category: Theory

  • Sceneing and Storying

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    Sceneing and Storying

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    This chapter might have been titled ‘How I Larp’ or, more accurately, ‘How I Conceive of My Larping.’ It arises from my own experiences playing a broad range of larps. Therefore, though it is presented as a general theory of larping, and is intended to help conceptualise playing in larp in a way that is constructive for others, it comes with the proviso that the particular play preferences discussed are personal to me, and may not be helpful to everyone. I hope, however, that others may gain benefit from it.

    The chapter is concerned with an apparent paradox about larping. The experiences and stories which we make in larping are collective. Not only does larping normally happen in groups, but it usually requires the input and action of others in the production of the experience and stories. However, it is perhaps equally obvious that no two players can share exactly the same experience, even if they are playing in the same scene together, and that the stories which we make are individual to our own experiences and the characters we play.

    So, larping is both collective and individual at the same time. That is to say, larping has both a collective dimension and an individual dimension. The individual dimension is related to Jonaya Kemper’s (2019) notion of larp anarchy. Larp anarchy is the freedom of players to take charge of and create their own experiences and stories while larping. So if, during a larp, a player is not having a good experience they have the freedom to forge new relations, and develop their character and plots in ways that are more enjoyable for them (see, e.g., Simon Brind’s chapter in this volume, Larp Hacking). Anarchy here refers to the rejection of political hierarchy and freedom from the rule of a leader: you as a player are free to do what you want with your character. It is not intended to denote a state of disorder, which the term connotes due to the spurious idea that a leaderless society would break down into chaos. Nor does it denote the political movement of anarchism, though, as we shall see, there are distinct similarities between cooperative anarchism and my conceptualisation of the individual and collective dimensions in larping. It is important to note here that larp anarchy and the individual dimension do not imply absolute individualism. Larping requires structure and balance in order to function well, and if every player’s individual whim were admitted into play it would almost certainly result in disorder, and possibly that breed of power-playing/powergaming in which one player creates the character or plot they want at the expense of other players’ enjoyment (see, e.g. Algayres 2019; Huw2k8 2011). Also, as Evan Torner (2018) points out, the emergent play and story that come from players anarchically taking control occurs always in relation to the larp’s design, which defines the set of parameters all participants have subscribed to. Towards the end of this chapter I will look more closely at the responsibilities we have towards each other in larping.

    The collective dimension is related to the fact that larping is an ‘ecological’ process, as expressed by Marjukka Lampo (2016). That is, larping is always relational — it is the relationships between things which bring about the creativity of experiences and stories: ‘larping can be seen as an ecological, reciprocal relationship between the participants and the environment of the event, i.e. the players and the game.’ (Lampo 2016, 35) Without the ‘environment’ of the other players, the setting, the design and backstory, etc. there can be no lived experience from which to produce our stories. It is fundamental to larping that we are acting as((In the sense of doing the actions of, rather than representing as in a play or film.)) the character, and not simply imagining, narrating or writing their actions((Though characters of course do all these things during a larp. The important distinction is that these are what the character is doing (I as my character am relating a story to other characters) and not the means of playing (I as a player am telling other players what my character is doing).)). While Lampo, in her article, focuses on the individual in the environment, what I suggest here is that this idea of larping as ecology highlights both the individual dimension and the collective dimension — it is about both the relationships between individuals and participation in a larger process. This participation is not taking part in an activity as an individual, but rather becoming part of a collective action which is not reducible to individual participants. In other words, in contrast to the individual dimension, the collective dimension in larping must be understood holistically, not as interacting singularities but as a plural whole.

    It is important here that we are discussing ‘larping’ rather than ‘larps’. A larp is a thing, either a design, or a particular instance of a design put into practice. Larping, on the other hand, is a process. As a process, larping is always in the flow of becoming rather than a state of being. That is to say, when we are larping things are not completely fixed, outcomes are not completely defined, and there are always many potentials((This notion of “becoming” rather than “being” as fundamental to existence and change is derived from process theory, such as that of Alfred North Whitehead (1978 [1929]) and Gilles Deleuze & Felix Guattari (1987 [1980]).)). I will break the process of larping down into two distinct but related processes. One process relates to the collective aspect of larping and the other to the individual aspect. The collective process I will refer to as sceneing, since it correlates with the collaborative generation of scenes. The individual process I will refer to as storying, since it correlates with each player’s production of a personal narrative. I will also demonstrate how these two processes are related and are necessary for each other.

    Storying

    Here I propose storying as the process of creating a narrative for your character. This narrativizing is done individually by each player. It is a private process, experienced by each individual separately and uniquely, compared with the collective and public process of sceneing. Storying is the process of experiencing and making sense of what has been given by the collective into the process of sceneing.

    If sceneing involves the dissolution of the players into the collective, storying is their reconstitution, through the integration and interpretation into their personal narratives of the process of sceneing in which they are participating. It is, to continue the analogy, the consumption of the ‘soup’ which is made in the process of sceneing. This ‘consumption’ is a process of experiencing, in which the elements making up the instance of sceneing (words, actions, expressions, gestures, both our own and those of others) are brought together in the individual experience of each player, made sense of, and turned into a narrative moment, which is also integrated into the continuous narrative produced by successive instances of storying.

    The process of storying does not ‘use’ the elements of sceneing as such; the process cannot be separated from its constituents, nor does it exist prior to the coming together of those constituents in the player’s experience. The ‘soup’ of sceneing becomes the organs of each player’s story. Just as an organic body is made from the nutrients it consumes, so storying is made from the ‘soup’ of sceneing. It is the lived experience of our participation which goes into building the narratives we make for our characters. Therefore, the potential for storying is limited by what is given to the player, the words, actions, gestures, and expressions of others, in the process of sceneing. The narratives in larping are made from our experiences.

    While storying is necessarily constituted by experiences of sceneing, that does not mean that every element of sceneing is prominent or even present in every player’s individual narrative. Rather, storying is individually self-determined from the data of our lived experience. Not everything in the process of sceneing will be relevant to every player. It is important that storying filters out in order to make a comprehensible narrative. Much of what is happening in the process of sceneing may be lost. Things which will be relevant to other characters and players may simply be noise. The conversation between two lovers which is overheard by chance might have no relevance to the narrative of your character, so even though it is registered it may be discounted. In a large larp with many different locations, much of the action and activity of other players won’t even be registered since they are not directly experienced, even though you might be aware that they are happening, or come to you indirectly through the ripples they cause.

    Importantly, storying is, or at least has the potential to be, anarchic. Our individual processes of storying are our own. There is no authority that can tell us to experience things in a particular way, nor how to construct the stories of our characters. We are free to interpret our private narratives for ourselves. There are qualifying factors to this, of course: the filter of the character, which may have been partially constructed by a designer; our assumptions about the expectations of organisers or other players; and internalised biases and prejudices which form constructs within us about the ‘correct’ ways to play, experience, and make stories. These can be constraints by which we do not allow ourselves the freedom of anarchy, which is why I say that storying is only potentially anarchic. As I will discuss below, some of these constraints might be seen as positive and produce responsible play. It is worth recognising, though, that these constraints are to a large extent self imposed.

    Whatever constraints we apply to our own processes of storying, what is certain is that no two players’ narratives will be identical. Even if they play in all the same processes of sceneing together, their experiences will be different. It is these different experiences and players’ interpretations of them which give rise to the intentions which will be given back to the process of sceneing through the ‘ingredients’ of actions, words, gestures, etc.

    Reciprocity

    The processes of sceneing and storying I have described above are reciprocal —each requires the other in order to become. This is because elements of sceneing constitute each player’s process of storying, and reciprocally, any process of sceneing is constituted by actions deriving from the multitude of interpretations from players’ storying. Lampo’s perceptual ecology shows how we can move from the individual to the collective and back again. The process of creativity in sceneing and storying is largely congruent to Lampo’s. That is, the individual player makes sense of the events they are participating in (or subject to) and then acts according to their interpretation. What Lampo refers to as ‘affordances’, and the embodied choices enacted by the player are both identical to the ‘ingredients’ given to the ‘soup’ of sceneing, while the gathering and making of choices is similar to what I propose with storying.

    Lampo captures the spirit of the reciprocal process between the individual and thecollective, though the process she proposes requires, for me, an excess of conscious analysis. The most intense and beautiful larping experiences for me have been when I have acted as the character without thinking, in a kind of flow state (Csikszentmihályi 1990, passim; and see e.g. Bowman 2018, 380). Therefore, the reciprocal processes I propose are rooted much more in feeling than in conscious analysis. While Lampo admits that ‘the choice-making process of the players in a larp ecology is affected by the emotions and feelings of the players as well as the somatic responses they experience,’ (Lampo 2016, 42) I suggest here that these factors are primary in the process of storying. In storying the other players and environment are first experienced physically and emotionally, and it is possible to react physically and emotionally, giving words, gestures, or actions back into the process of sceneing without the intervention of a conscious decision at all. Moreover, the reaction is already embodied in the physical and emotional effect of the experience. Meaning-making and action are more often generated preconsciously((In a Whiteheadian sense of before consciousness comes to bear on the storying process, rather than a Freudian sense.)) than consciously. The beauty of larping lies more in how it feels than how it appears.

    Of course, this does not preclude conscious decision making in appropriate circumstances, only that conscious, ‘rational’ cognition is not necessary to the process. For this kind of flow state I propose, you need to ‘be in it’, to participate fully in the process of sceneing. This is perhaps where we find the limit of the ‘soup’ analogy. Where I have said above that we give the ingredients for sceneing in the form of words, gestures, actions, etc., these elements cannot be separated from our physical, emotional, and psychological selves. So in fact it is ourselves we must give into the process of sceneing — we are the ingredients, becoming part of the ‘soup’, to some extent losing ourselves in play. We are both part of the ‘soup’, and at the same time the consumers of the ‘soup’.

    The narrative you create in the process of storying uses the relevant ingredients from the collective process of sceneing. Likewise, the individual process of storying feeds back into the collective process through the interpretation of events which gives rise to new decisions, intentions, and actions — the ingredients for the cauldron. Each process is necessary for the other, since each provides the constituents for the other. In other words, sceneing is made from storying and storying is made from sceneing. The holistic, collective process of sceneing feeds the multiple storyings experienced by the individual players, while those storyings in turn feed the collective sceneing through the expression of individual interpretation.

    While each process of storying becomes determined in the individual player to whom it belongs, the multiplicity of the storyings feeding the process of sceneing means that sceneings can never become completely determined. In other words, the larp can never be defined by a single player’s actions, nor a single player’s interpretation. The multiplicity of narratives arising in the oscillation from storying to sceneing and back again means that the meaning of the larp is always open: undecided and indeterminate. However, this does not mean that an individual interpretation is not valid; indeed, every player’s interpretation is valid, and moreover, each is equally as valid as all others. To take up the soup analogy again, each of us eats a portion of the soup to which we have all contributed, and makes up our own mind about it. This will necessarily be coloured by personal preference and prior experience.

    Responsibility

    This way of thinking about larping, as both a collective process and an organ for anarchic storymaking, necessitates a particular way of playing together responsibly. My notion of responsibility here is threefold. Firstly, it points to the fact that players are, in part, responsible for each other’s experiences in larping. Secondly, this responsibility for each other’s experiences makes us responsible to other players for creating enriching play experiences. And thirdly, it captures the idea of playing in response to others, as part of a collective. The first of these aspects of responsibility is a theory, the second and third are practices.

    We are responsible for each other’s experiences in that each player gives themselves into the process of sceneing, which is experienced by all the players in their storying. Therefore, the things we do and say become part of other players’ narratives. It should be obvious that this state of affairs is ripe for abuse, and it is where anarchy can become problematic. Each of us must make an ethical choice. You can choose to act only with regard for your own interests and experiences, or you can choose to with a sense of responsibility towards your fellow players. However, with the theory of sceneing and storying, one of these ethical modes becomes preferable. Since other players are to a great extent responsible for the experiences you will have, it is in your interest to work with them collaboratively, to give into sceneing words, actions, and gestures that will enrich everyone’s experience. The alternative may be that you find other players will avoid you, or will refuse to go along with the ingredients you give into the ‘soup’. Thus, your storying becomes malnourished; the experiences you have are less rich, less vibrant. It is better, then, to play with regard for others’ experiences, as well as in response to what others are giving to the process of sceneing. Do not disregard what others offer. Both give and receive generously.

    Sometimes, something feels right for my character. An event, an action, a speech. However, if that something involves other players’ characters and limiting or changing their potentials for play, I have a responsibility to ensure that they too want this kind of play. If my character dies, that will affect those with whom the character has relations. If my character euthanizes a patient with a terminal condition, that will affect not only the patient but the characters with whom they have relations too. I and my actions are in part responsible for their experiences. These examples are big, obvious cases, but it is true of the smallest actions too.

    It is in this principle of responsibility we see most clearly parallels between this model of playing and cooperative anarchism. Freedom (from authority and to pursue one’s own interests and desires) is the basic principle of all anarchism. What marks cooperative anarchism as different from more individualist forms like libertarianism is that it recognizes that individuals thrive together and that collaboration enriches the individuals involved as well as the relations between them. Likewise, in larping, we can create richer experiences through cooperation.

    With the idea of responsibility, I don’t want to say, ‘you are responsible for everyone’s experience, so you’d better do it right.’ On the contrary, everyone gives ingredients into the process, so it doesn’t matter if you do something ‘badly’. However an action or utterance is executed, it can be interpreted and integrated in any number of ways. This theory of sceneing and storying very much encourages ‘playing to lift’, since the production of, for instance, the relative status of characters is the responsibility of everyone who is participating in a process of sceneing. And on the other hand, the theory asserts that the things you do matter. Your actions will be felt, even if they are only relevant to a limited number of other players. In sceneing and storying, everyone is responsible, and we are all in it together!

    NOTE: This model of larping is inspired by Alfred North Whitehead’s process theory, or ‘philosophy of organism’. For more on this subject, refer to Whitehead’s Process and Reality: Corrected Edition (1978) and Ivor Leclerc’s Whitehead’s Metaphysics (1958).

    Bibliography

    Muriel Algayres (2019): The Impact of Social Capital on Larp Safety. Nordic Larp. Ref. 20th Jan, 2020.

    Sarah Lynne Bowman (2018): Immersion and Shared Imagination in Role-playing Games. Role-playing Game Studies: A Transmedia Approach.

    Mihály Csikszentmihályi (1990): Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience. Harper & Row.

    Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari (1987 [1980]): A Thousand Plateaus, University of Minnesota Press.

    Huw2k8 (2011): Powergaming Meaning, Friendly Players Roleplay Wiki, Fandom. Ref. 20th Jan, 2020.

    Jonaya Kemper (2019): No Plot. No (Game) Masters: The Case for Larp Anarchy. The Smoke: London’s International Larp Festival, ref. 5th Jan, 2019.

    Marjukka Lampo (2016): Ecological Approach to the Performance of Larping, International Journal of Role-playing.

    Evan Torner (2018): Emergence, Iteration and Reincorporation in Larp, Knutpunkt. Ref. 20th Jan, 2020.

    Alfred North Whitehead (1978 [1929]): Process and Reality: An Essay in Cosmology: Gifford Lectures, Corrected Edition. The Free Press.

  • Ensemble Play

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    Ensemble Play

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    Ensemble play has been part of Nordic larp discourse since 2003, but the community is yet to define its exact role in larp design. In this chapter we draw insights from different ensemble-driven art forms, and demonstrate how ensemble skills facilitate better play. We also discuss the most common challenges preventing ensemble play, and offer suggestions and tools for overcoming them.

    Ensemble play is most noticeable when a piece of art (music, story, dance, larp) is not defined in advance, but emerges in real time. A symphony orchestra or a Shakespeare troupe can, of course, be described as an ensemble even when their content is pre-defined on sheet music or a script. For the purposes of larp, however, we find it more relevant to look at ensembles that discover and create their piece in the moment.

    Musical jam sessions, devised theatre, and other co-creative art forms share a specific characteristic with larp: they all rely on the players’ ability to constantly calibrate their play, and collaboratively negotiate and renegotiate what belongs into the piece, and what is left out.

    In a collaborative ensemble performers actively give and take opportunities to shine, and derive enjoyment from their own contribution as well as from the contributions of others. They balance the attention they give to themselves, the group, and the piece, and focus on creating something together as well as on their individual performance. This, we find, is an accurate description of rewarding ensemble play in larp, too.

    How do we know when play is ensemble play? A good sign is spontaneous and mutual delight and surprise: what is happening right now is rewarding, meaningful, and unpredicted. Most importantly, we can see from the eyes of our co-creators that they are experiencing the same joy — even if outwardly our characters are screaming in rage. We have become partners in crime, sharing a unique moment in a unique reality, all facets of which are not necessarily visible to others.

    Larp Magic — or Ensemble Play in Action?

    Most larpers are familiar with the concept of larp magic: a scene, storyline, or chain of events that unravels in the most rewarding way possible, without anyone planning for that outcome in advance. Some larp magic certainly happens due to luck or coincidence — serendipitous occurrences like weather and random encounters can heavily impact our play — but preconditions for surprising and auspicious play can also be consciously created by a skillful ensemble.

    To a performer’s eye, larp magic does not look entirely incidental. Most professional performers learn through their practice that a well timed buildup towards a satisfactory resolution is a matter of applying specific skills, such as:

    • listening to co-creators;
    • anticipating opportunities;
    • picking up cues and impulses;
    • paying attention to content other than your own;
    • building for delayed gratification;
    • deciding when to act, when to take space, and when to step back.

    All of these skills are regularly employed at larps in order to create more rewarding and fluent play. Some of them are inherently codified in play instructions like play to lose and play to lift.((Play to lose/lift is an interaction guideline in Nordic larp, that instructs players to drive scenes towards the most interesting story, rather than success for their character. (Wilson 2019))) The notion of playing in ensembles is not new in the Nordic larp tradition, either. Johanna Koljonen refers to ensemble play when describing a particular playstyle in late 1990s Sweden:

    The ensemble player employs aspects of his role to support the initiatives of his co-players with the express purpose of creating satisfying dramatic situations for the group experience. The ensemble is collectively responsible for the dramatic arc in the whole game as well as each scene, and may choose to do something implausible or illogical to achieve the most moving narrative.

    Koljonen 2007

    The first Nordic larp to methodologically design for ensemble play was Mellan himmel och hav (Between Heaven and Sea, 2003). Played over three days in Riksteatern (The National Theater Company) in Stockholm, Sweden, the larp was preceded by three weekend-long workshops, during which the participants learned how to play as an ensemble: How to listen and react to each other’s feelings and impulses, and how to collectively mediate the larp’s artistic vision (Gerge 2004).

    In Mellan himmel och hav, ensemble workshops were not only a means to an end. The ensemble creation itself was an inherent part of the larp’s experience design. Ensemble members became fellow creators, contributing to every aspect of the larp, from character creation to narrative design and meta-techniques. The goal of this extensive process was to create an atmosphere of trust, and empower players to explore the intimate interpersonal themes of the larp. (Wieslander 2004)

    The co-creative ensemble play in Mellan himmel och hav facilitated unprecedentedly deep exploration of diegetic social roles, and formed a powerful connection between the players in the ensemble (Stenros 2010). Similar ensemble workshops were further explored and developed in several other designs, such as System Danmarc (2005), Totem (2007), and Delirium (2010) (see Stenros & Montola 2010). Today, a subset of ensemble methods are commonplace at larp workshops. Some typical practices include:

    • having structured discussions about needs, wishes, and feelings of co-players,
    • calibrating physical contact and body language,
    • co-designing character relations and social dynamics,
    • and making collective decisions about play styles and themes.

    While the word ‘ensemble’ is rarely used in Nordic larp discourse, the importance of ensemble play is still implicitly recognized in our design paradigm: If players do not know how to collaborate and collectively coordinate their play, our larps simply stop functioning. The designer vision of the larp is ultimately brought to life by players’ individual and collective actions and interpretations. The more collaborative and compatible those actions are, the more elaborate and nuanced play we can build on them.

    Successful ensemble play creates high resolution larping: subtle and nuanced character interaction of high quality and high detail (Nordgren 2008). Practicing ensemble skills makes us more open to different social cues, signals, subtexts, body language, and invitations to play – and the more details we notice, the deeper and more vivid our interpretation of the play becomes. Mutually observant high resolution play helps us see each other better and feel more seen ourselves. Consequently, playing in ensembles cultivates a culture of trust and inclusive co-creation.

    In summary, ensemble play in larp is a method that relies on active inclusivity and reflexivity. Any collaborating group of participants that recognizes the importance of each participant’s experience and takes collective responsibility of the scene and the larp, counts as an ensemble.

    An ensemble player is reflexive about their surroundings in order to support the initiatives of their co-players, and employs aspects of their character to facilitate both individually and collectively satisfying play.

    Ensemble Pedagogy in Art

    Many workshop methods used in Nordic larp, including the ensemble creation benchmarked in Mellan himmel och hav, are based on practices developed for and within pedagogical and artistic contexts. Ensemble exercises and methodologies have been explored and formalized by countless teachers, artists, authors, and gurus, and are used everywhere from art schools and universities to artist think-tanks, improv groups, drama therapies, team building retreats, creative communities, and even literal cults.

    While the exercises themselves have many inherent similarities from one context to another, there is a crucial difference to their use in larp: Larp does not have the established institutions, nor the gurus((Larp gurus, self-proclaimed or otherwise, are designers, organisers, and academics – not teachers of player skills.)). An art student and a larper may both engage with similar ensemble methodology, but only the former has their performance evaluated by a mentor or a teacher.

    A teacher has a mandate to observe students and suggest where their weaknesses and strengths lie. In larps we play with our peers, and evaluative feedback on someone’s performance is rare, and often socially complicated((Positive commendations for good play, such as Facebook threads after a larp, of course count as feedback. However, whilst reading about enjoyable and praiseworthy play can be empowering and inspire us to explore more of that kind of play, praise tells us nothing about our individual and collective weaknesses. At their worst, public commendations can give players with high social capital more of that capital, without addressing the problems associated with it.)). In certain ways this is a missed opportunity: Many of us appreciate advice on how to become better at something we love. Without external feedback, our means of learning new skills are limited to things we individually notice through self-reflection, or stumble upon by trial and error.

    The authors of this article have had the privilege of learning ensemble skills in professional contexts, both inside formal institutions and outside of them. During our years studying music and theatre we have come across multiple methods and exercises for practicing ensemble play. One of these methodologies, The Viewpoints (Bogart & Landau 2004), introduces a paradigm for co-creative ensemble work we find highly relevant to Nordic larp.

    Originally a composition method for theatre, The Viewpoints teaches real-time artistic collaboration through movement, space, sound, and gesture. The method has influenced performer training widely outside its formal contexts, and offers a framework for exploring ensemble play as its own skill set.

    The Viewpoints focuses on a spectrum of aesthetic principles: How to think about movement and sound in space and time. The simple act of walking across a room can be analysed in the vocabulary offered by The Viewpoints, eg. Tempo, Duration, or Spatial Relationship. This helps performers communicate what they see and hear, and also gives them tools to improve their skills by concentrating on one or more Viewpoints at a time.

    Training in the style of The Viewpoints often involves open improvisation sessions using specific limitations or instructions, such as:

    • Only five people on stage at any given time.
    • Everyone sits down at the same time. Nobody decides when, and nobody gives the signal.
    • Exactly three people have to be singing at all times.
    • When the facilitator gives a signal, the music must switch to a new key. Nobody signals the key in advance. The music must continue uninterrupted.

    The purpose of these exercises is to develop the performers’ ability to pay attention to the ensemble and the space, whilst at the same time making individual choices about actions and aesthetics within the piece. The reflexive analysis and the creative decision making required in the improv are very similar to the mental processing most larpers engage with during runtime in larps.

    Through improv, artists are taught to receive and react to external impulses — cues that initiate action. For example, if someone claps their hands, another person may use that as a trigger for their own unplanned reaction, eg. jumping, falling down, or yelling. While this is a very simple example, it forms the basis for more complicated co-creation. Being able to interrupt what one was previously doing in order to react spontaneously to new information is a useful ensemble skill. In larps, noticing and reacting to cues (both diegetic and non-diegetic) guides our interaction with other characters, and connects us to the play around us.

    The Viewpoints sessions and exercises are often done with a portion of the group observing as audience. This serves an important pedagogical purpose: Noticing interaction patterns that are hard to spot when we are in the middle of the action. In the action, we are often wrapped up in our own feelings of pleasure, anxiety, or wanting to make a good impression. We may feel like we are listening and reacting to others, but the observers can clearly see whether this is actually the case, and whether we succeed at collaborating with others. Feedback on our ensemble skills helps us become more observant of and reflexive about our co-creators.

    Observers also help performers think about their aesthetic choices within the piece. If everyone bunches up together in the center of the space, or all play the lead melody, observers may point out that the edges of the space, or specific harmonic layers, are left unused. Through this feedback performers can evaluate their contributions in a wider context. Next time, before introducing their initial idea, they may look for the gaps in the piece, and contribute to those instead.

    Observing the improv is also an active learning experience. From the audience we see the anxiety in the performer who is out of ideas — and their gratitude when others collaborate to support them. We see the beauty of a spontaneous flock of people moving as a group, with no apparent leader. We see the performer who consistently tries to control the way the exercise unfolds, and the one who breaks the flow by refusing to put themselves in the limelight. We see the collective frustration when something is fundamentally not clicking.

    In larp, we do not have formal structures for observing each other’s play — but that does not mean we cannot learn from it. Through methods suggested later in this essay (eg. switching between solo and accompaniment, embracing stillness and boredom) we can become more conscious of the multitude of cues and interactions around us, observe what kind of play they create, and adjust our own play based on what we learn.

    Forming Larp Ensembles

    Like any other aspect of larp, ensembles are a designable surface. As designers, we can explore methods that facilitate collaborative play and ensemble formation in our larp((A comprehensive selection of useful methods can be found from Larp Design (Koljonen et al. 2019), esp. “Designing the Mechanics You Need” (Wilson 2019).)). As players, we can think about our interaction with other players within the ensemble framework, and make conscious decisions about negotiating and calibrating ensemble play both before and during runtime. A good starting point for designers and players alike is to acknowledge that an ensemble is not simply created when players get along together naturally — it is formed and maintained through conscious efforts and skillful play.

    Most pre-negotiated larp ensembles are formed through character relations. Whether pre-written by designers or co-created between players, a diegetic friend circle, military squad, or secret society creates a natural premise for an ensemble. While the characters may have known each other for a lifetime, the players, however, often have not. They need to bridge that gap by employing ensemble skills: being reflexive about each other’s suggestions and cues, and collectively embodying the essence of the character group.

    Ensembles are also organically formed in individual scenes. During runtime, any combination of characters interacting with each other positions players into momentary ensembles. This is often where our individual ensemble skills become most visible: Even if we have no idea who these characters are and what they are up to, are we still able to join the scene, collaborate with other players, and allow something interesting to happen?

    Players failing to collaborate as an ensemble can easily wreck even the most carefully designed storyline or character group. Conversely, a successful ensemble can create amazing play even in the shoddiest of larps. For this reason it is understandable that some players prefer custom ensembles (i.e. playing with people they already know) and even custom scene content to those randomly created through casting and organic gameplay. While there is nothing wrong with a moderate amount of pre-planning and custom casting, overly opportunistic ensemble optimization can lead to unwanted exclusivity — or what Anni Tolvanen calls the dance card school of larping.

    Popularised in 19th century Vienna, a dance card was a system for booking partners in a ball: A lady would pre-plan her evening by accepting dance invitations from particular gentlemen, who would book specific dances from her dance card. In larps, players pre-negotiating content with pre-casted ensembles are metaphorically filling out their dance cards — and the fuller the card, the less availability there is for new, unexpected dance partners.

    Dance card larping produces ambivalent outcomes. If our attention is focused on exclusive plans with pre-casted ensembles, we are not open to impromptu invitations and reflexive serendipity. Furthermore, players who are not part of pre-negotiated cliques may feel excluded and rejected, especially if some of their plots or relations get pushed aside for more appealing dance card items.

    The core difference between dance card larping and successful ensemble play is inclusiveness. While both may contribute to amazing and powerful scenes and story arcs, only the latter creates open and equal opportunities for co-creation. Organic ensemble play — accepting and embracing the unpredictability of ensemble compositions — leads to mutually cooperative exploration and discovery, where everyone’s presence is acknowledged, and everyone has the possibility to join play they find interesting and meaningful.

    Understanding Solo and Accompaniment

    Conceptually, all players in an ensemble have equal agency in any given scene. The same is not true for the characters, as the narrative or dramatic spotlight is often focused on particular characters (e.g. a murderer and the police officer who just caught them), while other characters remain in the background (bystanders witnessing the arrest). Some characters may have more diegetic agency to impact the scene than others (the officer can give commands to the murderer as well as the bystanders).

    In order to be inclusive collaborators in an ensemble, we need to map((Mapping is the mental process by which a player tracks the overall structure of the larp and their character’s current position within the fiction. (Saitta, Koljonen & Nielsen 2020))) what is going on in the scene, and figure out whether we should contribute to it by solo or accompaniment.

    In the context of larp, a solo is best described as the initiative to set the tone or the direction for a scene, a plot, or a narrative. A soloist positions their character into a central role in the scene, and/or strongly steers towards specific interaction or outcome. A solo gets its power from accompaniment: Other players reacting to it, supporting it, and building on it. Without accompaniment the scenes and narratives we build become incoherent and meaningless. If no one acknowledges the murder of the queen, did it even happen?((In Nordic larp discourse this dynamic is also referred to as inter-immersion: the existence of a character being dependent on all players collectively treating the character as a part of the storyworld.))

    In an ensemble we have the privilege of expecting support for our solos, but also the duty to make sure everyone else’s solos are given the support they need. Essentially, the division between solo and accompaniment acts as a tool for self-reflection: Which role am I currently taking? Which role would best support the scene or my co-players? Which role would create more interesting play?

    Dynamic play relies on players introducing solos and giving new directions to plots and scenes. Concurrently, it’s useful to remember that refraining from a solo does not mean stepping into sidelines or being less important to a scene. Accompanying others requires as much (or even more) skill and focus, and can be as rewarding and enjoyable. Taking turns between solo and accompaniment means we can both boldly suggest our own ideas, and gracefully give space to others without the fear of being ignored or forgotten.

    Overcoming the Barriers to Ensemble Play

    Most of the barriers to successful ensemble play relate to our needs, desires, ego, and fears. The barriers are not unambiguously negative player traits — most are useful in the right circumstances and in moderation. In this section we talk about how to recognize the impact of our barriers to our play, and how to turn barriers into constructive player skills.

    The Desire for Perfectionism

    Ironically, the desire to create something flawless is one of the easiest means to prevent anything amazing from happening. Aiming for perfection, we may plan, practice, and steer our play to the point where we are no longer larping, but performing a script. If we fixate on avoiding imperfections and hold on to past failures, we are not open to unexpected challenges and invitations to play.

    So what can we do? Instead of dreading failures, embrace them. Some failures we can move past gracefully, while others will turn out to be gifts. If we are in sync with others, and engaged in mutually supportive play, even our unexpected fumbles can be collectively picked up and transformed into something beautiful.

    The Hunger to Play Big

    This barrier entices us to play our scenes with fierce commitment to our vision, without pausing to consider whether our play is in sync with others. Instead of looking for a way to collaborate with the ensemble, we focus solely on what works for our character.

    Some very talented players fall into this trap, and their performances can indeed be impressive — but are they listening to or playing with others as equals? Few players enjoy spending their whole larp playing second fiddle to someone else’s neverending solo, no matter how believable and powerful that solo performance is.

    The hunger to play big can be hard to solve on our own, because we are not always aware of how forceful our impact is on others. Luckily, there is an easy solution to test this in play: Instead of acting on every impulse and idea that pops up, try deliberately letting some slide by, and actively make room until others take initiative.

    The Fear of Standing Out

    Hiding inside an ensemble is another barrier to play, although an understandable one: We may fear appearing demanding, weird, or uncool, and rarely go for the play we truly want. We may feel easily rejected and would rather withdraw than ask to be included.

    Being part of an ensemble does not mean that good things will come to us without us needing to put our necks out. We have all met or personally been the devastated player in an afterparty who did not get the play they wished for. Sometimes that player was indeed lacking the support they would deserved, but sometimes they also did not step forward when they should have done so.

    The moment to claim our space rarely comes on a silver platter and with visible safety nets attached. It is simply on us to take the jump, and trust that our ensemble will catch us. To quote the beloved icon of audacity, Carrie Fisher: Stay afraid, but do it anyway. What’s important is the action. You don’t have to wait to be confident. Just do it and eventually the confidence will follow.

    The Obsession with Larp Magic

    The perfect can be a powerful foe of the good. If we chase the most magical scenes and the best exclusive plots, we often miss what is right in front of us. We may have a specific bar for satisfying play, and deem anything below it unworthy of our attention and effort. We can even become envious and frustrated if we think a better scene is happening elsewhere.

    For an ensemble to function, we must play the scene we are actually in, not the scene we wish we were in. Players pining to be somewhere else, doing something else, suck all the energy out of an ensemble. Treating the present as a hindrance to our preferred play is not only unconstructive, but also disrespectful towards our co-players. Larp magic always begins with interaction in the here and now: concentrating on the present brings us closer to it.

    The Terror of Silence

    One barrier is the fear of being still. We may want to make sure we have something going on at all times, to have our dance cards full, and avoid boredom at all cost.

    Silence, stillness, and empty space are essential ingredients in any work of art. Trying to fill every empty moment prevents us from noticing that something is already happening. A player who bursts in on a delicate scene with an outlandish agenda is often attempting to fix a problem that does not exist.

    A good ensemble player discovers the scene, instead of forcing it to happen. If we challenge ourselves to indulge in moments of in-character stillness and spend some time just observing, we are likely to spot something interesting. Others may even join our stillness and start something that turns out to be unforgettable.

    Disagreement Over Matters of Taste

    Differences over taste need not be barriers to a working ensemble. However, if we feel like others do not understand our play style or we do not understand theirs, this can become a hindrance. We may conclude that no functional play can come out of this situation, and give up on co-creation entirely.

    Taste differences will arise — but a generous ensemble player does their best to try out and support different kinds of play. Even in the rare situation where finding a functional compromise seems unlikely, it is good form to remain open to collaboration of some kind. Sometimes we just have to pick our battles, and that’s completely normal in creative work.

    Social Bias

    Most players put strong emphasis on player chemistry, attractiveness, verbal skills, or social status. This is human. However, remaining unaware of our biases creates barriers for play. If we do not challenge our prejudices and inhibitions towards people who do not fulfill our criteria, or who we think are unapproachable or “out of our league”, we needlessly limit the composition of our ensembles.

    Larping is an intimate activity, and it would be irresponsible to say that everyone can play as an ensemble with everyone else. Yet, sometimes our reluctance to play with others is a question of lukewarm chemistry or petty prejudice, not insurmountable social conflicts.

    A picky or suspicious attitude towards coplayers destroys the co-creative trust needed to form an ensemble. Unless there are serious real-life implications involved, we should never entirely ignore someone’s request for play. Being respectful and open-minded costs us very little — and may make a huge difference to someone else’s larp.

    “Today’s Just Not the Day”

    Finally, there are times when good ensemble players show up, are present and reflexive, contribute both solos and accompaniment, and have the desire to create and maintain the ensemble — and the magic still does not happen.

    Accepting things as they come is an inherent part of ensemble play: we need to let go of the things that are not working out. In any given larp we interact with several overlapping ensembles. They will not all be equally functional, nor will they all be equally good matches to our personal preferences. The natural ebb and flow of co-creation always includes weak, embarrassing, dysfunctional, and disappointing moments, and a strong ensemble, as well as a strong ensemble player, faces those moments with grace and acceptance.

    We Give and We Gain

    We all join ensembles with our personal challenges, inhibitions, talents, and resources. The task in ensemble play is not to perform perfectly in all areas simultaneously, but to calibrate our own fears and desires, and contribute in the moment with what we have.

    Ensemble play grants us moments of magic we cannot predict or design. It also makes us challenge our insecurities and inhibitions, and contributes not only to better player skills, but a better off-game community by creating play where players feel supported and able to take risks; fostering unexpected connections and rewards for cooperation; adding nuance to characters by giving them a wider array of interactions; providing the framework for a personal practice of social intelligence; and reducing the impact of off-game social hierarchies on who gets to play.

    Bibliography

    Anne Bogart & Tina Landau (2005): The Viewpoints Book: A Practical Guide to Viewpoints and Composition. Theatre Communications Group, Inc.

    Tova Gerge (2004): Temporary Utopias: The Political Reality of Fiction in Beyond Role and Play. Ropecon.

    Johanna Koljonen (2007): Eye-witness to the Illusion: An Essay on the Impossibility of 360° Role-Playing in Lifelike. Projektgruppen KP07.

    Johanna Koljonen, Jaakko Stenros, Anne Serup Grove, Aina D. Skjønsfjell & Elin Nielsen (eds.) (2019): Larp Design: Creating Role-Play Experiences. Landsforeningen Bifrost.

    Andie Nordgren (2008): High Resolution Larping: Enabling Subtlety at Totem and Beyond in Playground Worlds. Ropecon.

    Eleanor Saitta, Johanna Koljonen & Martin Nielsen (2020): Maps, Loops, and Larps in What Do We Do When We Play? Solmukohta.

    Jaakko Stenros (2010): Mellan himmel och hav: Embodied Amorous Queer SciFi in Nordic Larp. Fëa Livia.

    Jaakko Stenros & Markus Montola (eds.) (2010): Nordic Larp. Fëa Livia.

    Emma Wieslander (2004): Positive Power Drama: A Theoretical and Practical Approach on Emotive Larping in Beyond Role and Play. Ropecon.

    Danny Wilson (2019): Designing the Mechanics You Need in Larp Design. Landsforeningen Bifrost.

  • Know Yourself

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    Know Yourself

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    When I started larping in the 90’s, I remember we had an ideal for a good player: the one who was able to play any character, take on any role. A king or a beggar, the good larper was able to stretch themselves into any shape and the player behind the character faded into invisibility.

    As I’ve grown older and played more, I’ve come to understand the limits of this ideal. Sure, it’s probably good for any larper to try new things and play characters they have never tried before. However, personal aptitude, taste and desire play an important part in what works in a larp and what doesn’t.

    This way, self-knowledge becomes part of the skill of being a larper. Once you understand what you can and can’t do, want and don’t want to do, it becomes easier to have good larp experiences and to co-create them with others.

    Some realizations are extremely obvious, yet also hard to do anything about. I have severe dietary restrictions caused by illness. I know them very well but that knowledge only helps me if the organizers of the larp are willing to accommodate my issues. If not, no amount of self-knowledge will help me play that larp.

    Personally, the greatest insights for me have been subtle: There are themes and relationships, types of scenes and modes of interaction, that work well and less well for me.

    I interviewed other larpers to get different perspectives on self-understanding for this article. Most of them are from the Nordics. Some are my friends while others are larp acquaintances.

    Positive Self-Knowledge

    Let’s start with the positives: What works? What do I want to do? What kind of things do I want to enjoy and explore? Self-knowledge of this type allows us to direct our larp towards good, interesting and new experiences.

    One interviewee said: ”My upbringing, education and current job involve a lot of controlling my own presentation. I fulfill my need for acting impulsively and thoughtlessly through larp characters.”

    Larp offers a safe environment for acting out many characteristics that are not desirable in a person’s everyday or work life. The fictional framework of a larp can provide alibi for personal emotional fulfillment of a subtle kind that is not necessarily obvious to other players.

    Another respondent said that they’d unexpectedly learned to enjoy: ”…wrestling, falling and fighting that isn’t with latex weapons or nerfs. I am not a fighter, I don’t do martial arts, but the physicality of brawling, being dragged on the floor or getting hit by hard projectiles is quite enjoyable.”

    It’s not always obvious what proves to be enjoyable until you try it out. Larp presents an environment for us to try out all kinds of things to see what works for us. These lessons can then be taken into future larps, and sometimes to real life.

    Self-knowledge also helps to understand what you’re good at. It’s fun to do something very well, to show off. We see it in particular in how players find a creative outlet in larp. Then again, sometimes you specifically don’t want to do things you’re good at in a larp. Many people have professional skills they use constantly in their day-to-day lives, and thus don’t want to take into a larp for fear of making it feel too much like work.

    One interviewee said that they once unintentionally created a character with all the characteristics both of themselves and their ADHD, while coincidentally also going through the medical diagnostic process. ”It has been very therapeutic for me. The change is that I got a lot more compassion for myself, and also this character is being loved and cared for, even though it is full of all the faults I hate in myself.”

    Developing Self-Knowledge

    It’s easy! The only thing you have to do is to larp for a decade or two and reflect on your experiences. That’s what I did.

    Fortunately, most can learn a little faster than that. Still, practical experimentation and trying out new things are great methods for acquiring self-understanding. In my experience, one of the most common things you hear from first-time larpers is: ”I didn’t expect it to feel like that!”

    For the purposes of developing understanding, experience needs to be paired with reflection and analysis. One respondent said: ”In larps where my character experiences disappointment, failure, being set aside or being put down my first reaction is often withdrawal, cynicism and blaming myself. After reflecting on this, I realized it was because when I was young, this kind of behaviour got me sympathy, but it has also contributed to my depression. Realizing how this worked made it easier for me to develop my larping in another direction.”

    The same interviewee continued: ”Often when I larp, my first impulses feel immersive but later I realize they are very much about myself and what I need at that point in my life. Sometimes that leads to repeating my own stereotypes. Nowadays, I consciously avoid certain themes and plan my character’s reactions in advance to avoid accidentally falling back into an old, unsuitable role. Sometimes I also do this during the larp, for example going to the bathroom to be by myself for a few minutes and consider the emotional impact of various choices.”

    Taking time in the middle of larp to consider what you’re doing and how you’re playing is particularly useful. I recognize the experience: when I improvise in the heat of the moment, I make choices that feel spontaneous but are actually just repeating old patterns. Taking a bit of time helps to move beyond those.

    Failures

    What happens when self-knowledge fails? I’ve had a few experiences in my larp career where I’ve thought a type of game content was okay for me, and it wasn’t. I’ve gone to larps that didn’t work for me, which I could have seen in advance if I had applied my hard-won understanding of myself.

    In larping, we want to push our boundaries and learn to enjoy new things. Very often we also do learn, but sometimes it’s through failure.

    Failures from lack of self-understanding can happen when you purposely do something you’re not sure will work for you. These are the honorable failures. We want to expand what we’re capable of. Sometimes that works and sometimes it doesn’t. Either way we learned something about ourselves.

    For myself, the really dumb failures are when I should know something will not work for me, but I do it anyway, and it doesn’t work. The cases where I think: ”Maybe this time the sleep deprivation will be okay!”

    It will never be okay.

    These types of failure modes are very personal. We each have our own things that just don’t work for us, no matter what.

    Understanding only helps if it leads to active, good choices.

    Boundaries

    A lot of the discussion about safety and calibration in larp is about the setting of personal boundaries. However, for a player to be able to set boundaries, they have to know what those boundaries are. This often requires experience and understanding of the self. This is why self-knowledge goes so well with consent and calibration mechanics that allow for realigning boundaries on the fly.

    An example of a calibration tool that worked very well for this purpose was the ribbon system in use in the Spanish larp Conscience. Based on the TV series Westworld, the larp featured heavy themes of violence and abuse. To allow players to direct their play in a desired direction, everyone had two ribbons, a white and red one. The white ribbon denoted physical violence, the red one sexual violence.

    If you had the white ribbon on, it meant you could be shoved, grabbed and otherwise subjected to light use of force. If you had the red ribbon on, you could be approached for the purposes of scenes involving sexual violence. These scenes would then be negotiated further with other calibration tools.

    I started the larp with both ribbons on. I ended up removing the white one for a very banal reason: I jinxed my back during the first night. I was okay standing and walking but anything more complicated hurt like hell. I remember agonizing over the situation and then suddenly realizing that I had just the right calibration tool for the occasion. Taking off the white ribbon meant I wouldn’t be subjected to force and could play without the danger of pain.

    Other players used the ribbons for more complex reasons. A player took off the red ribbon after playing one or two scenes involving sexual violence. Not because those scenes had gone wrong, but because the player was exhausted with the subject matter and wanted to explore other aspects of the larp.

    To me, this was a great example of self-knowledge in action. The players who took off the red ribbon correctly assessed where their limits were and acted preemptively to direct their experience in a desirable direction.

    I’ve found new boundaries during larp, and conversely, realized that my limits were more rigid than I thought they were. In these situations, it pays to be able to make these kinds of judgments in the heat of the moment. This type of situational consent requires taking responsibility for your own experience, and seeking to actively steer it in a desired direction.

    Unfortunately, pushing your limits in the heat of the moment doesn’t always work. For me, the worst failures have been related to sex scenes when I thought that I could ignore my original limits. Once I’ve done so, I’ve realized that my original intuition had been correct.

    Setting boundaries is thus a player skill that is strongly related to self-knowledge. Once you know where your limits are, you can figure out how to make sure they are not crossed.

    One respondent offered an example of a nuanced handling of boundaries: ”After being offered a pre-negotiated scene in a campaign I realized I would be so uncomfortable playing it that I declined, and the scene was modified to become more suitable for me. My character would have been solely responsible for our small post-apocalyptic community being revealed to a group of possible enemies, due to her negligence and selfishness with a radio transmitter.

    While mentally preparing for the scene before the game I started to get very nervous about my character getting all the blame, up to my heart hammering and my hands shaking. I realized that my personal fear of failure (and being forced to admit it to everyone) was really messing me up, and I wouldn’t enjoy the ensuing events in the game. Bringing this up with the group, we agreed that the blame would be shared and my character’s involvement toned down. In the end all turned out well and I was glad I’d spoken up about my preferences.”

    Often when we talk about personal boundaries, it’s about sex and violence. However, it’s important to remember that there’s a wide variety of different subjects that can prove so difcult they make the larp unplayable for a participant. In this case, the issue is the emotional landscape around failure and blame.

    Stress

    I’ve had two burnouts. While truly miserable experiences that caused lasting damage, they did provide the benefit of teaching me something about my own limits when it comes to stress. This relates to all aspects of life, including larp as a hobby. From the perspective of stress management, it’s good to have a very wide view of larp. Instead of focusing on the event itself, we can look at larp as part of everyday life. Signing up for larps. Getting rejected. Costume panic. Uncertainty over what will happen at the larp. Post-game weirdness stemming from handling difcult emotions. Together, they create a tapestry of stress that can affect how you interact with larp.

    If I think about what larp-related things I’ve learned cause stress for myself, they include uncertainty about what I’ll be doing at the larp, uncertainty about sleeping arrangements, and peer pressure to start preparing and communicating with other players too early. To deal with these issues, I sign up to larps that work for me and have instituted rules for myself about only starting to prepare once the larp is relatively close.

    Other people have other issues that cause them stress. Once such factors are identified, they can be managed and avoided, leading to a more positive relationship with larp as a hobby.

    One respondent said: ”I’ve gotten more selective about the larps I attend. I’m a pretty high-energy player, and as I’ve gotten older, I’ve been more explicit about the cost-benefit calculus of expending that much energy. It’s not that I only attend expensive larps or blockbusters now — it’s more the system and the people playing it I select for. Some systems just aren’t my cup of tea (even if my friends are playing them), and some people take my energy without giving much back.”

    This also leads to a wider discussion about how larps can be run and designed so as to avoid common causes of player stress, but that’s beyond the scope of this article.

    The Right Larp

    Probably the most obvious use for understanding yourself as a larper is to choose the right larp. There are plenty of larps that are cool, wonderful and very well made yet I would have a bad time if I participated in them. Not every larp is for everyone and it requires self-knowledge to understand what works and what doesn’t.

    We are blessed with a large variety of different larps. Small and big, local and international, Nordic and non-Nordic, plot-based and sandboxy, serious and silly. Even the most versatile larper in the world won’t be equally comfortable in all of them. Like with all self-knowledge, understanding what works accumulates with experience.

    One interviewee said: ”I really, really hate larp mornings. I hate roleplaying on an empty stomach, I hate putting on a costume in an in-character environment, or in cramped and crowded areas. If a larp description includes waking up in character, now I just don’t sign up.”

    Antipathy to in-character mornings in larp is a pretty specific attitude. It demonstrates the kind of specific understanding of one’s own preferences that allows for selection of larps where play goes smoothly.

    The same respondent continued: ”I like short, scripted larps better than long, sandbox larps. Even if a longer game looks super cool, I will probably lose steam at some point, get bored or discouraged, and it will make the whole experience, the trip and the time investment not really worth it. It’s a challenge to find larps that match my requirements because I like kickass sites and 360° aesthetics, but I’ll take short and intense any time over long and diluted.”

    This preference is also rooted in experience and understanding of how the larper functions in a larp. They know how their energy lasts and tailor their preferences to that reality.

    Personally, I’ve learned that I can’t deal with sleep deprivation. I need energy to larp effectively and I don’t have it if I haven’t slept. Because of this, I avoid larps featuring such elements. That doesn’t mean that they wouldn’t be great experiences for other players with sturdier constitutions than what I have, or who enjoy pushing their physical limits.

    When the Finnish scifi larp Odysseus was announced, I decided that I wouldn’t sign up because I understood the larp would run around the clock. Then later the hype got so strong, I put my name on the waiting list. I didn’t get in and in retrospect that was good. When people came out of the larp I heard stories of many great experiences but it was clear it wouldn’t have been for me despite my momentary wavering.

    Hype is the enemy of admitting to yourself that the larp is not for you. If everyone is going to the larp, maybe you should sign up too? Even if your instincts are telling you that it’s not the right choice. That’s why the right moment for self-reflection is often when the hype is at its strongest.

    Implementing Self-Knowledge

    You have achieved a perfect understanding of yourself as a larper. What’s next?

    In ideal circumstances, you’d be able to leverage this knowledge to find the right larps for yourself and play them in a way that works for you. Sometimes this is possible.

    Often the circumstances are not ideal. Maybe the perfect larp experience that has been revealed through a process of introspection simply doesn’t exist, or is out of your price range. Perhaps it’s not available where you live. Sometimes the larp is worth compromising for, and other times it’s better to stay home.

    In a recent larp I played, there was an offgame break in the middle with the players given the opportunity to each say what they needed to make their game better. In this way, asking for help from others was baked into the design of the larp. Larp is a collaborative endeavor and it makes sense to work together to make it work for each of us.

    The issues that prevent you from having good larp experiences might not be personal but systemic. A classic example is the lack of interesting female characters. Self-knowledge can tell you that the reason larp doesn’t work for you is a lack of characters you want to play, but getting those characters is not a matter of personal choice. It requires systemic change.

    In this way, the navel-gazing of self-knowledge becomes something that can have a positive effect not only on your own larp experience, but the whole community.

    Playing Any Character

    Personally, my understanding of myself as a larper has changed and kept changing. The community ideals I shared when I started out proved to be unrealistic. I couldn’t play every character and I didn’t enjoy the attempt.

    At the same time, the process of self-discovery has also led me to new subject matter. I’ve tried new experiences and found that they work for me. In this way, self-discovery has both defined and expanded my horizons as a larper.

    For me, the most educational moments have often been failures. I thought something would work out a certain way and it didn’t. While this has been painful and sometimes embarrassing, it’s also helped me further triangulate on what works.

    Only you can truly know what works for you and acquiring that knowledge can be a lifelong process.

  • Emotions as Skilled Work

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    Emotions as Skilled Work

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    Larps are played for many reasons, but emotional experiences show up time and again as part of the pay-off. This makes the skills related to creating, shaping, managing and enjoying those emotional experiences crucial for taking part in larp as a hobby and as an artistic pursuit. These skills may be especially valuable or desirable in Nordic larp, as the Nordic larp tradition emphasizes emotionally impactful or emotionally complex experiences.

    Emotion work or emotional labor is also an important part of connecting and relating to others, and it connects to our intimate selves. As Arlie Russell Hochschild (1983) has argued, the commercialization of this work as the emotional labor expected of, say, flight attendants and bill collectors is worth studying for this reason: carrying out such work enacts a price that can be devalued and hidden away.

    In larp, we participate in very similar activities as those expected in commercialized emotional labor, but the context can make all the difference. In a larp context, the same activities are usually voluntarily chosen by participants, experienced as rewarding both for personal reasons and for their relational and community-supporting value. However, even voluntary work may turn out to be onerous or burdensome at times, and the risks might be particularly high if our expectations of who will carry out this work are constructed in divisive and discriminatory ways.

    This paper is focused on the social and cultural aspects of emotion work and on our understanding of the skills involved, rather than on the psychological impact emotion work may have. I first examine briefly what kinds of emotion work can take place in larp during runtime; then I introduce the key findings from Hochschild’s classic research and recast the emotion work in larp within that context as emotional regulation. Based on this, I examine the social and cultural expectations around emotional regulation in larp, and consider how the non-commercial nature of many larp cultures affects its pay-offs and costs. Finally, I will discuss emotion regulation in larp in the context of Hochschild’s “feeling rules” and highlight how those feeling rules are navigated in the Nordic larp tradition. I conclude by recapping and honing the key argument of this paper: that emotion work is an indispensable part of larp and that skilled labor in doing it is simultaneously valorized but also unseen.

    Emotional Regulation in Larp

    Emotional regulation is a key part of the mainstream way of engaging in Nordic larp (see e.g., Stenros and MacDonald 2020, in this volume). Emotional regulation is what allows the participants to create, enhance and experience desired emotional states, as well as suppress or downplay undesired ones.

    Marras is a small and intimate Finnish larp about a small community of survivors in post-apocalyptic Finnish forest. It is the kind of larp where you cry a lot. The larp examines the loss, despair, and grief after a virus wipes out most of the population, and engaging meaningfully with the design of the larp practically requires the players to feel at least some of those feelings. The design of the larp supports the players in adopting suitable emotional states by several means, such as deliberately writing the loss of a close friend or family member into most of the character backgrounds and including partly scripted blackbox scenes that play on that loss.

    Emotional regulation is also an important tool for the players to support, navigate or challenge the intended emotional design of the game.

    In Inside Hamlet, the act structure of the game works to drive home the contrasts between the decadent party of Act 1, the listless ennui of Act 2, and the heady destructiveness of Act 3. The players participate in the act design by adopting emotional states that they feel give artistic interest or verisimilitude to the experience. A player might steer their character to drunken shenanigans and outrageous flirting in Act 1, and strive for an audacious, sexual mood. That same player can then use the act breaks to reset that emotional state and adopt a tense and anxious mindset for Act 2; perhaps transforming the boldness of Act 1 into the character acting out in a futile struggle in Act 2. Emotional regulation is a way for the player to participate in the runtime design of the larp, as well as a way to provide continuity and contrasts in the character portrayal.

    Emotional regulation begins well before runtime, as players will start engaging with their character materials and building a mental map of the larp design. It also carries on after the larp itself ends, as players negotiate the emotional impact of the larp and sort out character-appropriate feelings and relations from those that belong to the player. In effect, sorting out “bleed”, such as managing romantic or sexual attraction derived from portraying an in-game romantic or sexual relationship, constitutes emotional regulation.

    Hochschild and the “Managed Heart”

    As a key part of larp participation and design, emotional regulation deserves a more thorough examination. The topic has been addressed in larp studies now and then; in some pieces moredirectly(Jones,Koulu,&Torner2016)and in others more indirectly via analyzing various related phenomena such as bleed and embodiedness (e.g., Widing & Gerge 2006).

    In the social sciences, the analysis of emotion work blossomed in 1983 with Arlie Russell Hochschild’s classic The Managed Heart. Commercialization of Human Feeling. In the book Hochschild examines how people manage emotions and carry out so-called emotional labor as part of “a system composed of individual acts of ‘emotion work,’ social ‘feeling rules,’ and a great variety of exchanges between people in private and public life” (Hochschild 2012, xviii). Hochschild is mostly focused on emotional labor, i.e., emotion work that is done for pay, especially in the service sector. She notes that emotional labor requires one to “induce or suppress” feeling in order to sustain the right kind of outward appearance, and that it can draw on resources that we consider very personal and private. Thus it can also be costly, leading to a feeling of alienation with the part of self that is used to carry out this labor.

    In this chapter, I have chosen to use the concept of “emotional regulation” rather than emotion work or emotional labor, since larp is a recreational pursuit that is rarely done for financial compensation. That said, it is clear that larp can involve emotional labor in the strict sense as well even if the larp context places an extra layer on the work. For instance, the organizers of a larp might hire someone to perform a specific role in the fiction. The emotion work required of the performer, as well as the benefits or pay-offs they gain from it, can be almost identical to that required of the fictional character. Along these lines Torner argues (2020, in this volume) that the work players do at larps is best examined as ”playbour” and notes that there is little benefit in distinguishing between play and work.

    I define emotional regulation as the management of emotion in order to create, enhance, or sustain desired emotional states or to suppress or downplay undesired ones. This definition leaves the question of compensation and cost deliberately open, as there may be several benefits but also costs to carrying out emotional regulation, and these probably vary quite a bit from larp to larp and community to community. Whatever the context, emotional regulation is about “managing the heart”. It requires skill, but skill that is paradoxically more valued as it is more invisible — much as in the case of the flight attendants Hochschild studied. The larp participant’s portrayal of a character’s emotions relies on an impression of “authenticity” even as the distinction between the character and the player is necessary for the larp to function. Players may employ several different strategies to achieve this sense of authenticity, but especially in Nordic larp perhaps the most valorized method is to “really feel” the character’s feelings. This demands a high level of skill at emotional regulation from participants, as they are expected to be able to feel things on command, or at least give the impression of doing so.

    Expectations, Costs, and Pay-Offs

    Emotional regulation in larp matches Hochshild’s description of emotion work in many respects. However, in larp emotional regulation is rarely done for financial payment but instead for less tangible pay-offs. Some potential pay-offs might be

    • personal enjoyment, such as when a participant hypes themselves up in order to get more engaged with what might be a somewhat boring and stale larp;
    • artistic expression, e.g., when a character gives a passionate and moving speech on their deathbed, and the participant leans into the feeling of tragic loss so as to experience the scene more fully or to affect other participants more strongly;
    • social approval and disapproval, asemotional regulation has a social dimension — expressing feelings that deviate from the expectations at a larp can lead to social disapproval, while being skilled and expressive at portraying authentic emotion that is in line with the expectations of the larp can garner attention and admiration both inand offgame;
    • community status, as gaining a reputation as someone who plays expressively and emotionally convincingly can bolster a person’s status in their own larp community; especially if that community values emotional expression and regulation.

    Even this short list shows an interesting dimension in emotional regulation: while it is carried out on a very personal level, it also connects to the social norms and expectations in the wider community. As Hochschild noted, emotion is not private or individual but part of a system that connects the individual and the social — and even the public. Thus the lack of financial payment may not distinguish emotional regulation in larp quite as clearly from emotional labor as such as we might wish. Insofar as emotional regulation is socially encouraged, valued or mandated, we may need to look at the structures and contexts in which it is being carried out. Those structures and contexts depend on the play cultures and communities involved. The need for emotional regulation may differ based on the types of larp that are played: a tight-knit community playing Vampire: The Masquerade will most likely have different expectations for emotional regulation and the expression of emotion than a community of hundreds of players participating mostly in combat-heavy boffer larps. At the same time, emotional regulation is socially and culturally contingent, and the communally originated expectations around it can solidify and become embedded in play cultures (e.g., Bowman 2010).

    The expectations on emotion work that exist generally in society do not suddenly vanish in a larp context, but instead are layered in with the larp-specific expectations. We might suspect, for instance, that emotional regulation like emotion work is not evenly distributed.

    We know from a lot of earlier research that many forms of emotional and caring labor are gendered, so it may be worth examining whether we expect more skill and more effort from female-presenting people in larp as well. For instance, one form of emotional regulation that may prove necessary during a larp is the management of one’s own emotion in order to help another participant process their feelings. It is worth interrogating whether we expect female-presenting players in particular to be more caring and more willing to do that work, so that when we need support or validation during a bad moment in game, we seek them out over other potential contacts. This is a kind of emotion work that is relatively invisible in general (Hochschild 2012, xvii, 200) and while larp communities are perhaps better at spotting it, is worth asking what kind of expectations we have around it.

    In addition to being gendered, emotion work in general is often racialized. Sociological research has noted that the racialized aspects of emotion work are often glossed over or silenced (e.g., Mirchandani 2003, Wingfield 2010) and larp scholars have indicated similar issues in larp and in larp scholarship. Jonaya Kemper has noted that larp communities have expectations around PoC participation and ”free backend labor” (Kemper 2018), in ways that seem to echo broader societal expectations. There are also similarities here with the self-regulation that Stenros and Sihvonen (2019) have indicated is often expected from queer persons. In very broad terms, expectations around emotion work are structured along normative and hegemonic lines, in that less privileged groups are supposed to do more of it for the benefit of the privileged. However, these structural similarities do not mean the expectations are identical; instead, they intersect in complex and socially impactful ways both during larp events themselves and in the broader communities that form around them.

    Here the larp context may prove significant in accounting for the structures around emotion work. Emotional regulation may involve downplaying and suppressing one’s own emotional state in order to support another participant – a typically gendered or racialized expectation – but it may also require adopting and expressing emotion for dramatic purposes – such as when a male-presenting player of an authoritative character is expected to perform their role in a decisive, ”masculine” manner. The same distinctions are of course present in emotion work in general, but the larp context would seem to highlight the performative aspects of emotional regulation. Different kinds of emotional regulation may also be valued differently in larp contexts, in that privileged, performative modes of emotional regulation are perhaps more visible than the emotional constraint expected from participants belonging to marginalized groups. Of course, as Widing & Gerge (2006) note, different play cultures have different norms around what is considered valuable or legitimate.

    Feeling Rules in Nordic Larp

    Emotional regulation constitutes an important part of one’s private experience of a larp. However, as with most socially mediated activities, it also has inherent social and community significance. Here the concept of “feeling rules” from Hochschild’s work comes in handy. Feeling rules, according to Hochschild, are “standards used in emotional conversation to determine what is rightly owed and owing in the currency of feeling” (Hochschild 2012, 18) and as scripts or moral stances towards feeling they are “one of culture’s most powerful tools for directing action” (ibid, 56). Feeling rules tell us what feelings are appropriate or expected, or conversely inappropriate or unconventional, in each situation or context.

    The concept of a feeling rule helps us examine larp on several levels. Scripts that lay out appropriate feelings are a great tool for designing fictional communities, and they can be tied to mnemonics, sound cues, or small actions that reinforce the script. In Baphomet, for instance, the cult’s refrain of “Praise Ardor” became a mnemonic reminding both players and characters of the need to accept serenely whatever bizarre and oppressive actions the cult’s leaders decree. In Odysseus, the spaceship’s diegetic jump sequence involved a great deal of out-of game sound and lighting tech in order to pace the emotional and narrative flow of the larp. And in House of Craving, the workshops before the game were deliberately used to re-program the players’ feeling rules about sexual relations, creating space for the metatechnique “I need some alone time” where a player could invite another for a scene about, essentially, masturbation with an audience.

    Here, we can lay out the different forms of feeling rules based on their relation to the diegesis of the larp. The categorization is of course somewhat arbitrary, as the categories often overlap one another and in intense social contexts there can be a vague but pervasive expectation to mirror others’ feelings.

    • Diegetic feeling rules
      Diegetic feeling rules are feeling rules that exist in the fiction of the larp. The expectation that cult members will love one another, or the expectation that a noble will never forgive an insult offered to their house, are examples of diegetic feeling rules. These kinds of feeling rules are often designed by the larpmakers, though of course their feasibility as design choices depends on the intended audience and context. The players’ responsibility is to accept the feeling rule as a social fact in the fiction and find ways for their characters to obey, enforce and challenge it — perhaps in order to support a “realistic” depiction of the fictional setting, perhaps in order to create dramatic and artistic scenes as in ”the late-stage capitalist fairytale” Midwinter.
    • Cross-over feeling rules
      Cross-over feeling rules are feeling rules that exist both inside and outside the fiction but have more or less different meanings in each context. They cross over from the out-of character context of the larp into the diegesis or vice versa, such as when the participants in the larp are expected to feel comfortable and brave with each other in order to support a diegetic relationship involving intimate interaction (see also Widing & Gerge 2006). Here, Inside Hamlet’s invitation to all participants to “act wicked and be beautiful” is a neat example (https://www.insidehamlet.com/is-this-larp-for-me). The feeling rules are not always verbalized, though. At the larp Odysseus, the aforementioned jump sequence was an impressive piece of design that resonated quite literally throughout the location. It was clear that it was meant to make an impression on players as well as on characters, and the quality of the execution made it easy to transfer that feeling over to the diegetic experience.
    • Non-diegetic feeling rules
      Non-diegetic feeling rules are feeling rules about how participants in a specific larp are expected to feel about their experience or about a specific part of it as players. One widely shared non-diegetic feeling rule concerns the use of safety mechanics such as “cut”. The player who receives a “cut” message is expected to manage their emotional reaction in a way that supports and validates the player who employed the mechanic. Other non-diegetic feeling rules might relate to challenging or resisting broader cultural norms, such as when the larp deals with sexual or violent themes. And of course, non-diegetic feeling rules are in force when participants engage in the non-diegetic activities at a larp, such as participating in workshops or in cleaning up the site after the larp ends (see also Stenros & Sihvonen 2019).

    Of course, while feeling rules can be used as a design tool for larp, larp does not take place in a vacuum. The communities built around larp form specific social and cultural contexts that can mediate between the larp-specific expectations on emotion and our broader cultural scripts. Larp communities can and do also develop their own feeling rules: rules about how we should feel about larp, how we should carry out the emotion work related to larp, and how we should feel about the community. Community-level feeling rules are somewhat outside the scope of this paper, however, but it is worth noting that they are crucial in determining who is a good player or community member.

    These feeling rules can be all the more powerful in being relatively invisible, and the feeling rules of individual larps exist against this background of community-level feeling rules. These higherlevel rules inform our understanding of what we can reasonably or fairly expect from our fellow players and community members e.g., in preparing in-game relationships or managing bleed. They can be implicit, as when we have ingrained expectations on how much pre-runtime negotiation between players is normal, or explicit, such as in the earlier mantra “the character is not the player” that tried to eschew the idea that the player would owe something emotionally to others based on their character’s actions. Implicit feeling rules in particular can be hard to assess. A socially and emotionally skilled player will often be more adept in perceiving these feeling rules accurately and in acting in accordance; but the feeling rules can also conflict with individuals’ preferences and make a specific community a bad match for a specific person regardless of any skill involved.

    Conclusion

    In this chapter, I have argued that emotion work is an indispensable part of larp. Larp is fundamentally an art form meant for the first-person audience (Montola 2012, 89, originally Sandberg 2004), and emotional experiences can be a large part of that. A kind of “authenticity” becomes valuable, in that many participants consider “really feeling” the character’s feelings to be key for their experience and many consider the impression of authenticity to be valuable and desirable in their co-players as well. Stenros & MacDonald (2020, in this volume) connect authenticity especially with presence and vulnerability and argue that it is a source of experiencing larp as beautiful. Here I would like to highlight the skills involved in experiencing yourself as authentic, present, or vulnerable, and in offering that authenticity as relational labor to other participants.

    The skill of doing emotional regulation well can be valued quite highly, but larp participants may not be any better at recognizing actual emotions than the general public. This leads to a disconnect between the experience of the emotion and the appearance of it, much like in Hochschild’s examination of emotional labor itself. While Hochschild discusses the estrangement deriving from performing/feeling emotion for pay, there can be a sort of estrangement in performing/feeling emotion in larp as well especially with the commodification of larp and larp labor as noted by Seregina (2019) and Torner (2020). Managing that disconnect between the performativity of larp, and the management of emotionalstatesforone’sownexperience,can then be an important skill in itself.

    Essentially, emotional regulation cannot be fully and completely distinguished from emotion work or emotional labor. Emotional regulation can be playful and creative, and it is mostly voluntarily chosen for personal or artistic reasons, but it also intertwines with socially enforced expectations on how we should behave and act. It is perhaps best to accept emotional regulation as a sliding scale between the playful and the effortful, between the telic and the paratelic (see Stenros 2015, 66–72), the voluntary and the expected. We might even go as far as to say that emotional regulation is a key element in navigating the tension between the playful and the effortful, in order to experience the larp as distinct from the work involved.

    Bibliography

    Sarah Lynne Bowman (2013): Social Conflict in Role-Playing Communities: An Exploratory Qualitative Study. International Journal of Role-Playing 4 (2013), 4–25.

    Thorbiörn Fritzon & Tobias Wrigstad (eds.) (2006): Role, Play, Art. Collected Experiences of Role-Playing. Föreningen Knutpunkt. http://jeepen.org/kpbook/, ref. Jan 26th, 2020.

    Arlie Russell Hochschild (1983/2012): The Managed Heart: Commercialization of Human Feeling. Updated with a New Preface. University of California Press.

    Katherine C. Jones, Sanna Koulu & Evan Torner (2016): Playing at Work. Ropecon ry. Larp Politics: Systems, Theory, and Gender in Action.

    Kaisa Kangas, Mika Loponen & Jukka Särkijärvi (eds.) (2016): Larp Politics: Systems, Theory, and Gender in Action. Ropecon ry. http://solmukohta.org/uploads/Books/book_politics.pdf, ref. Feb 29th, 2020.

    Jonaya Kemper (2018): More Than a Seat at the Feasting Table. ETC Press. Shuffling the Deck: The Knutpunkt 2018 Color Printed Companion, ref. Jan 26th, 2020.

    Kiran Mirchandani (2003): Challenging Racial Silences in Studies of Emotion Work: Contributions from Anti-Racist Feminist Theory. Organization Studies, 24(5), 721–742, ref. Jan 25th, 2020.

    Markus Montola & Jaakko Stenros (eds.) (2014): Beyond Role and Play – Tools, Toys and Theory for Harnessing the Imagination. The book for Solmukohta 2004. Ropecon ry, ref. Feb 29th, 2020.

    Markus Montola (2012): On the Edge of the Magic Circle: Understanding Role-Playing and Pervasive Games. Tampere University Press, ref. Nov 15th, 2019.

    Christopher Sandberg (2004): Genesi: Larp Art, Basic Theories. Ropecon ry. Beyond Role and Play – Tools, Toys and Theory for Harnessing the Imagination. The book for Solmukohta 2004.

    Usva Seregina (2019): On the Commodification of Larp. Nordiclarp.org, ref. Jan 26th, 2020

    Jaakko Stenros (2015): Playfulness, Play, and Games: A Constructionist Ludology Approach. Tampere University Press, ref. Nov 15th, 2019.

    Jaakko Stenros & James MacDonald (2020): Beauty in Larp. Solmukohta. What Do We Do When We Play?

    Jaakko Stenros & Tanja Sihvonen (2019): Queer While Larping: Community, Identity, and Affective Labor in Nordic Live Action Role-Playing. Analog Game Studies, Vol 6, No 4, ref. Jan 25th, 2020.

    Evan Torner (2020): Labor and Play. Solmukohta. What Do We Do When We Play?

    Annika Waern & Johannes Axner (eds.) (2018): Shuffling the Deck. The Knutpunkt 2018 Color Printed Companion. ETC Press, ref. Jan 25th, 2020.

    Gabriel Widing & Tova Gerge (2006): The Character, the Player and Their Shared Body. Föreningen Knutpunkt. Role, Play, Art. Collected Experiences of Role-Playing. http://jeepen.org/kpbook/

    Adia Harvey Wingfield (2010): Are Some Emotions Marked “Whites Only”? Racialized Feeling Rules in Professional Workplaces. Social Problems, Vol. 57, Issue 2, 251–268.

  • Metareflection

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    Metareflection

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    When larping, we are often aiming to feel immersed. This chapter shows how other internal processes are active as well when we are roleplaying. We may focus in on — immerse into — the experience of fiction while role-playing, but we may also choose to zoom out and observe both reality and fiction at the same time. This metareflection allows us to put the role-playing fiction in perspective with reality in different ways.

    The framework of metareflection helps us understand the complexities of what we actually do when we role-play. Built from interviews and theories on theatre and cognition((The framework of metareflection is based on my master’s thesis (Levin 2017).)), it explains how all players move between seeing fiction, reality or both at the same time during their role-playing experience, and how we may play with that to enhance experiences and designs.

    Connecting theory to practice, I have gathered examples of how we are already playing with metareflection in Nordic larp. By putting our practice into words, I hope to inspire more exploration and to allow for other art forms to learn from us. For example, our methods for metareflection as well as for calibration could be very useful in the immersive theatre.

    This chapter starts with theories behind metareflection. If you are looking for practical tools, you may go straight to Methods for Metareflection.

    From Brecht to Nordic Larp

    Coming from theatre, my interest in the different layers of larping was sparked by the apparent influence of theatre director Bertolt Brecht (1898–1956) in Nordic larp designs. His aesthetics are quite visible in the minimalistic blackbox larps, that are closely aligned with the Brecht-inspired movie Dogville (Trier & Windeløv 2003). If we look deeper, Nordic larp has not only been inspired by Brecht’s visual aesthetics, but also by his methods for breaking the illusion of fiction in order to comment upon it.

    In a time with a strong naturalistic theatre tradition, Brecht introduced the Verfremdung-techniques (alienation or distancing techniques) that make the audience question the narrative on stage. His goal was to make the audience aware that the outcomes of the stories were not predetermined but created by humans, and could be changed by humans: The audience for the Epic Theatre is expected to perceive alternatives to the events: different options open to the characters, different outcomes for the various events, alternative social systems or frames of reference. (Ben Chaim 1984) Through this work, he had a huge influence on the different forms of metatheatre that exist today, especially in political and feminist theatre.

    Metatheatre describes forms of theatre that play with self-awareness of form; theatre that plays with being theatre, such as actors stepping in and out of character, or switching between naturalistic and over-emphasized behaviour, or having a narrator commenting on the fiction such as in Dogville. In a similar way, the meta used in larp is describing that we are playing with our awareness of the role-playing as being role-playing, where the metatechniques can allow us to use more abstract levels of play, or comment on the fiction, or in other ways play with an interactive relationship between reality and fiction.

    While many larps today use minimalistic aesthetics without considering Brecht, the early blackbox larp When Our Destinies Meet (2009) directly quoted Brecht as the source for their design: We gather our inspiration from the director, playwright, and theater theorist Bertolt Brecht. […] We ask the player to interrupt their immersion into the character and story and start looking at what is happening and how it happens (Jarl & Karlsson 2013). Inspired by practices from theatre and other storytelling mediums, many different larp and freeform communities have experimented with methods for interrupting or adding other layers to the illusion of fiction for some time. Today, metatechniques are a common design tool with many areas of usage: From introducing sceptical distance, to the sharing of inner monologues, to allowing for simulations and calibration techniques. And still, there is a steady increase of creative ways of using the different layers of larping.

    Aesthetic Distance in Embodied Role-Playing

    Playing with the layers of larping draws on the ability to be aware of the real world at the same time as you are immersing into fiction. This ability has been observed by many role-playing researchers, among them Stenros (2013): When you are playing, you will see the world around in double vision. You will see the fiction as real through your character, but obviously you are also aware of the ordinary everyday world as a player. This player ability seems to be taken for granted — but how does it work?

    Bowman (2017) has described immersion as a state of creative flow, where the player is feeling emotionally absorbed by the experience. Although the term is sometimes used to describe 360° surroundings, the feeling of being immersed may be reached in both realistic and minimalistic aesthetics. Immersion is created through situations that the participants may believe in and respond to, be it through visual aesthetics or dramatic content. In any larp then, players may become emotionally absorbed, and still, they will be aware of their everyday world.

    This is connected to a fundamental rule of art called aesthetic distance (Ben Chaim 1984). We need to see something as different from our everyday reality, to recognize it as art. If we do not recognize the artwork as fictional, we will not respond to it as an artwork, but as an object of reality. We will react very differently to what we think is a real sword, or a boffer sword — or a boffer sword that we pretend is a real sword. Many types of artworks exist as objects regardless of how we interpret them. But in embodied art, real bodies, and real environments need to be seen in a different way for the artwork to exist at all. Even though aesthetic distance is part of all kinds of art, we may choose not to pay attention to it when watching a film or a performance. But when we participate physically, we need to take reality into greater consideration:

    […] in audience participation it is very difficult for this form to be invisible — we will pay close attention to the work that is done to make us participate, so that we will always be aware of our presence in the event, the way that the performers relate to us, and the differences between the participatory frame and the others in which we spend our time. Audience participation in this sense is always metatheatrical.

    White 2013

    This metatheatricality, the heightened awareness of reality while taking part in a fiction, is also found in larp:

    As a participant, you are experiencing the events as a character, but also shape the drama as it unfolds as a player. You have a sort of dual consciousness as you consider the playing both as real — within the fiction — and as not real, as playing […] you can play with that border, with the difference between the player and the character, play and non-play.

    Stenros 2013

    Not only can we use this double awareness constructively when playing with the layers of larping, but it seems crucial to how we take part in any embodied and participatory art.

    Role-Playing Through Interpretive Frames

    Following the principle of aesthetic distance, several role-playing theorists have described immersion as an interpretive framework (e.g Balzer 2011, Harding 2007, Järvelä 2019, Lappi 2007), where the larp experience can be understood as a change in how the player interprets the world (Harding 2007). By seeing the world through the frame of the larp fiction, the player will understand what is happening in a different way. Immersion is then created by focusing on the fictional perspective (Järvelä 2019).

    The concept of the interpretive frame of reality and interpretive frame of fiction, that the player can immerse (more or less) in, will help us to further understand how the player can uphold and move between immersion and awareness of reality during embodied role-playing experiences.

    In cognitive psychology, the ability to have several interpretive frames in our mind at the same time is called conceptual integration (McConachie 2013). This allows us to be simultaneously aware of different systems of interpretation, and to associate between them. This ability makes it possible for humans to think abstract thoughts, compare different experiences to each other — and to turn play into performative expression: Regarding performance, the key contribution made by conceptual integration is role-playing.

    When we have the possibility to see a situation through different interpretive frames, we may not only put them side by side and compare them to each other. We may also blend them, and try to align the frame of fiction more closely with the frame of reality — which is what we do when we play. By having put this fictional layer over reality through our own interpretation, we have the possibility to blend or un-blend our perspective at will. But, both audiences and role-players usually prefer to immerse into fiction, since it’s enjoyable to us:

    […] spectators may choose to stop the ‘flow’ of a performance by un-blending actor/characters to momentarily think about the work […] But usually not for long. The pleasurable effects of ‘flow’ generally pull spectators back into the cognitive activities of blending and empathizing.

    White 2013

    Immersing into the frame of fiction can then be understood as the player continuously trying to see the world through a specific perspective.

    The Myth of Total Immersion

    Since the frame of fiction is a layer that is put upon real material in theatre and embodied role-playing, we can blend fiction and reality, and unblend back to reality, but we may not unblend into a solely fictional perspective: We cannot will to accept or reject what we believe to be real, we can only become inattentive toward it (Ben Chaim 1984). To unblend into only believing in the fiction would mean to stop believing in reality, something that rarely happens through experiences of art:

    The ‘total identification’ which sometimes appears as a catchphrase of theorists and theatre artists, if psychologically possible short of insanity, therefore appears to be impossible aesthetically. To literally become one with the object would be to cease to ‘see as,’ to cease to sustain distance, to cease to be engaged in an aesthetic experience.

    Ben Chaim 1984

    As opposed to how fearmongers have presented the supposed risks of role-playing, a successful role-roleplaying experience is not one of total immersion, but rather a satisfactory blend between the frames of fiction and reality, where reality does not bother us: […] deep immersion takes place when the player is focused strongly enough on the larp so that it fills their consciousness […] However, all that which they are not focusing on — including their everyday selves — does not disappear anywhere (Järvelä 2019). Players may still end up in a larp with structures, actions, or content that they do not wish to take part in. But having trouble stepping out of such an experience is an issue that have more to do with social dynamics and previous life experience, than immersion.

    Even though many strive to experience immersion, the role-player is always responsible to not disregard reality more than what allows them to keep being considerate towards the other players. A certain amount of ’double vision’ is therefore, even in the most immersive of role-plays, both requested and expected. By highlighting that we are always somewhat aware of the fiction as fictional, I hope that we may lower the threshold for ‘breaking’ the illusion of fiction for calibration and confirming consensual play.

    Hopefully, the knowledge and methods for player safety that have been developed within the Nordic larp community can also be transferred to other participatory fields. The ambition to create the most immersive experience has burdened participatory art with ill-considered design. Examples range from performers not recognizing nonconsensual play, insisting on continuing playing with participants who try to disengage, and safety issues such as actually locked doors in escape rooms. These strategies derive from misunderstandings about immersion and its relationship to reality, where the thought of a real sword seems better than an imagined sharp edge. But this is to overlook that the knowledge of the drama as fictional is an important quality of how we may create as well as how we enjoy these experiences. Pushing a fiction onto the participants is often insensitive, sometimes dangerous, and always counterproductive — since what is needed for the fiction to come alive is the individual player’s will to see it.

    Immersion into fiction is less about losing touch with reality, and more about focusing your attention: According to many of the cognitive scientists who have studied it, attention is a lot like a follow-spot((A spotlight)) with an adjustable opening, allowing us to take in more or less of a visual field (McConachie 2013). Rather than forgetting reality while role-playing, we may try to zoom in on the fiction, and let it fill as much of our attention as possible. Following the idea of a spotlight of attention, we may also choose to zoom out into a larger perspective. From this expanded frame, we can observe both frames of reality and fiction at the same time, the blend that has been created between them and how they might relate to each other. This is the interpretive frame of metareflection((Meta as in transcending, encompassing (the role-playing fiction), a higher or more abstract level (of reflection))).

    The Framework of Metareflection

    When first considering aesthetic distance and reflection in role-playing, I looked at the player’s perspective of the real in contrast to that of the fiction, and how one might move between them. But to just unblend the role-playing experience and go back to the player’s everyday perspective during what is expected to be an immersive experience, will probably create boredom and disappointment, rather than interesting contrast. Through the expanded perspective of metareflection, we do not see the fiction as onlookers from reality, but in context with reality.

    Metareflections are reflections concerned with both reality and fiction during a fictional experience. This separates the metareflection from reflections that take place only within the role-play, such as how the noblewoman shall seize the throne, as well as from reflections that are only concerned with reality, such as when the player’s parking ticket will run out. Metareflection commonly means the consideration of various different points of view (Wiktionary 2017), pointing towards the frame’s interactive nature. The meta also connects the term to metatechniques as well as to metatheatre.

    A constructive metareflection puts the embodied role-playing (such as the fictional world, the character, the actions or the game structure) in perspective with the real world, which may concern narrative, personal, social, and/or political contexts. When the player is metareflecting, smaller and larger correlations between these categories can be found, that may inform the role-play or the perception of the everyday reality. The player may realize that the game structure reminds them of a certain power structure, or that they are following a narrative burdened by clichés, or be reminded of a childhood memory, all of which may influence their following play.

    Since the management of the interpretive frames of reality and fiction are premises for every embodied role-play, the frame of metareflection is also available to every player, regardless of the particular larp design. As the player chooses to interpret the situation through different frames, they can also change perspective continuously during play: […] once engaged in conceptual integration, spectators slip in and out of the blends of performance with little conscious thought (McConachie 2013). While players can metareflect at any time, larpmakers can also apply methods that encourage them to use this awareness of reality and fiction in a specific way.

    Although metareflection is an elevated perspective, it should not be simplified to a distancing view taking place at the expense of immersion. As with Brecht’s Verfremdung, some perspective may also result in more emotional engagement, as it may be used to bring the player’s own experiences into the fiction, or make the player realize that the fiction concerns their own life. Through our ability to make reality and fiction interact, we can create interesting experiences that touch us and affect how we see ourselves and the world around us.

    Embodied Role-Playing as Metareflexive

    Within drama theory, there are pre-existing terms that try to explain some of the same aspects of role-playing as metareflection((Such as aesthetic doubling (Grünbaum 2009) and metaxis (Boal 1995).)). But by trying to cover everything from aesthetic premise to learning outcomes with one word, they have ended up with being confusingly broad, mystifying and varying considerably in meaning between users.

    The interpretive frames of reality, fiction, and metareflection gives us a clearer understanding of which frames the design and the player may move between, and how these frames are interconnected. It does not only make visible the reflection that may occur while being immersed, and how this is not necessarily opposed to, but rather dependent on, the fiction to be constructive. It also distinguishes reality from metareflection: In the frame of reality, the player might try to immerse but does not manage to believe in the fiction, or chooses to take a break, or needs everyone to stop playing. The frame of metareflection may include the use of intrusive metatechniques, which might also break the flow of the play, but with offering contributions to the fiction. Very different contexts are introduced when someone breaks the illusion of fiction to add to it, or when someone breaks it to address a real issue.

    By allowing for variations in terminology, the framework of metareflection may distinguish the different aspects of role-playing with greater clarity than earlier terms, as following:

    1. the metareflexivity of embodied role-play; the aesthetic premise of the simultaneous presence of reality and fiction (which may be implicit or explicit in the design) within embodied art forms
    2. the frame of metareflection of the individual player, that make it possible to understand this premise and take part in embodied role-playing
    3. to metareflect, when the player is actively using their frame of metareflection to put the fiction into perspective with reality
    4. a metareflection, a specific comparison that the player finds between their role-playing fiction and their reality
    5. methods for metareflection that facilitates or encourages the player to metareflect
    6. methods that are using the metareflexivity of the embodied role-play with other purposes than to increase metareflection (such as to overcome the material premise of the embodied role-play (e.g. travel in time and space, act out violence and sex, etc.) and facilitate communication and calibration between players)

    By giving all these different aspects of role-playing more precise terms, we may play and design more precisely as well.

    Shifting Between Immersing and Metareflecting

    Many larp designs focus on conveying the fiction, and let the players manage the frames of reality, fiction and metareflection as they see fit. Metareflections can be used to reflect upon and contextualize the larp during runtime. However, this is not their main advantage, as the larp experience may also be processed and placed into real-life contexts after the larp.

    The main difference between reflecting after a larp experience and metareflecting during it, is that the latter may lead to meaningful insights that changes the direction of the following play. Moments of metareflection are thereby important for steering (Montola et al 2015), which grants the player greater control over their own narrative and experience. The player might become more aware of what kind of game structure they are playing within, and choose to go with or against it. They might realize that their story has become static and uninteresting to them, or remember a route that they have yet to explore. Nordblom & Westborg (2017) explains this through the metaphor of a football game: If the character is a football player, metareflecting would be to take on the perspective of the coach. By not only focusing on playing here and now, but also trying to foresee what strategies might be useful up ahead, we can see more play possibilities and create more exciting interactions.

    Even though we can metareflect at will, imposed metareflection might be useful to us. Our immediate ideas, especially in the flow state of immersion, might be full of stereotypes from our lives and from stories that we have heard before. Moments offering some perspective might provide us with constructive new input. When metareflections are facilitated through shared spaces, this also offers possibilities to calibrate the larp as a group.

    The human mind is generally better at focusing on one thing at a time than it is at multitasking. Rather than always staying in a middle ground, it may be more constructive for players to focus in on immersion and metareflection at different times. This is brought forward by larpmakers Bergmann Hamming & Bergmann Hamming (2017), claiming that the player may deepen their larp experience by shifting between diving into the immersion and coming up to the surface to breathe:

    Larpers need to breathe and dive […] we try to immerse into these scenes, dive as far down as we can, feel and act on what makes sense and what could be fun, and then resurface and breathe. Consider where it would be great to go and if we can set the next great scenes up on our own, then dive back in and live them out.

    But, shifting between deep immersion and more distanced reflection might be taxing to do often. Lukka (2014) points out that: Conscious immersion is first upheld by the attentive processes controlled by the player. Once immersion is deeper, it is upheld by automatic attentive processes and biases. When immersion becomes more subconsciously fueled, we might reach emotional landscapes and insights we didn’t know we had in us. Too many breaks might hinder this process, and a shift does not guarantee an interesting insight in itself. This makes it very understandable that many designs allow the players to immerse as much as possible during the larp, and leave reflections for later.

    Methods for Metareflection

    To help further experimentation with metareflexive designs, I’ve gathered some examples of methods for metareflection from Nordic larps. The methods mentioned here are used, mainly or possibly, to create deliberate design for contextualization, reflection and processing. Methods that use the metareflexivity of larping for other means than metareflection, such as simulations and safety techniques, are not included here.

    Explicit Shifts

    Act Breaks and Meta Rooms

    Act breaks give the opportunity to process, discuss, and calibrate the role-play in a shared metareflexive space. It’s a method that caters well to players who do not like frequent shifts, as the duration of acts and act breaks allows for more uninterrupted processes.

    Among others, the larp Just a Little Lovin’ (2011) uses act breaks to move the larp one year forward in time, allowing for collective calibration of how the characters’ intertwined lives have developed during that time.

    Meta rooms (where larpers can play out flashback scenes, dreams, etc.) and offgame rooms may offer some of the same space for shared metareflection, but only for the players who choose to enter these spaces.

    Editing: Stopping, Rewinding and Changing Scenes

    Although one great feature of larp as a medium is how easy it is to interrupt and modify, these strategies are more visible in our workshops than in our runtime designs. One of the few examples is found in the free-form scenario Lady and Otto (2005): In this comedic antidrama, every scene has to start all over again as soon as conflict arises.

    There are many methods for revisiting scenes that might be directly transferred from forum theatre and other drama practices. These kinds of methods may also be used to deconstruct a narrative, and allow several perspectives to be shown. It is also possible to play with switching characters between the players, such as in the larp The Family Andersson (2008), where two players share one character. As they take turns playing and observing the larp, the observing player will get a literal outside perspective on the character they just embodied.

    Monologues and Player’s Comments

    The inner monologue is a commonly used metatechnique that works slightly metareflexively, as the player will get more information about the other character than their own character, and may use that in steering the following play. More explicitly metareflexive is allowing the player, and not the character, to use the monologue to comment what they think about the fiction, as in When Our Destinies Meet (2009).

    Subtle Shifts

    Integrated Metacommunication

    These are methods that emphasize or comment on certain aspects of the play without interrupting it, such as exaggerated actions or behavior, gestures, coded words, or audiovisual communication. These strategies are often used to communicate efficiently between larpers without interrupting play, but they also hold great potential for metareflexive play. Looking to Brechtian and feminist theatre might be an inspiration, where emphasized behavior is often used to expose the performativity within social roles and other norms.

    In a larp about teenagers and peer pressure, En apa som liknar dig (2013), the players are instructed to “do the monkey” — goof around — whenever a situation turns emotional or serious, which exposes the goofiness as a compulsive flight behavior.

    In the larp Joakim (2011), which takes place at a party, every angst filled monologue is instructed to be followed by all players roaring with laughter before resuming play, emphasizing the collective upholding of the facade.

    Internal Metareflection: Sharp Choices

    Methods for internal metareflection are very common, as they are subtle enough to not break the flow of playing, and they allow the players to self-regulate how much they want to redirect their attention. But, as they occur within the player’s mind, they do not offer any shared reflections.

    Internal metareflections can of course happen at any time, but they may also be encouraged by the design. One such method is integrating sharp choices. These will present an imposed request for steering, where the player has to assess how the outcome of the situation will affect the following play. In the poetic larp Innocence (2014), this is created through symbolic props that the characters gain throughout the larp, that give them new abilities. The players will then need to choose between returning the props and the beloved abilities at specific times, or keeping them and giving up the character’s chances of returning home. Through this, the player has to decide if the abilities gained or the hope of home is most important to their character.

    Voting is also a way of enforcing contemplation, be it for the future outcome or for the past. By the end of every act of Just a Little Lovin’ (2011), everyone has to think through their character’s past behavior to be able to put down votes corresponding to their risk of having contracted AIDS. Have You Come Here To Play Jesus? (2013), a larp dealing with euthanasia, ends with a vote where the character has to come to a conclusion about what they believe is morally right in the difficult situation.

    Internal Metareflection: Moments for Processing

    Internal metareflection may also be encouraged by downtime, where the players can pause and process while still staying within the fiction. It is quite common to let the larpers pace this by themselves, but looking to other media such as slower montages in film, it is also a feature that may be designed for at certain times and in certain ways. In the larp Do Androids Dream? (2017) the players were instructed to wait for two minutes at “the bus stop” before moving on to the next scene, providing a short break to process and gather new ideas. The player may also process through certain activities, such as writing a letter, painting, etc., which may condense and deepen a specific part of the experience.

    Constant Metareflexive Layers

    There are also strategies that accentuate the metareflexive aspects of the larp to keep them more present for all the players throughout. One common strategy is transparency, where the player has more information about the fiction than the character, which will encourage the player to use this knowledge when navigating through the shared narrative.

    An opposing strategy is to give the players thin characters with little information, which may lead them to bring more of themselves into play.

    Characters playing characters will add an additional layer of fiction to the larp, such as in the larp The Solution (2016), or as some of the characters in Shakespeare’s Hamlet are a troupe of actors that put up a play. When having fictional characters portraying yet another fiction, the players will have to manage four interpretive frames (reality, fiction one, fiction two, and metareflection), and keep up with how they interact more frequently.

    In pervasive larps utilizing real surroundings, such as The White Road (2006), We Are Citizens (2015), and Home Planet (2019), the frame of reality will be more present and offer more direct interactions with the role-playing fiction. The presence of reality in larp may also be heightened by strong realistic and/or historical content, such as in 1942 — Noen å stole på? (2000), and Just a Little Lovin’ (2011). A player portraying what could have been an actual fate is likely to continuously compare their larp story to how it might have been in real life.

    Larps are Made of Interpretation and Participation

    The Nordic larp scene is well underway with developing metareflexive methods to refine the storytelling. Considering the interpretive frames of reality, fiction, and metareflection furthers a more dynamic understanding of what we do when we role-play, and how we can experiment with different variations of immersing and reflecting to deepen our experiences. There are many design possibilities yet to explore, and still plenty of inspiration to gather from other storytelling mediums.

    The framework of metareflection suggests that an important task for the larpmaker to create a successful experience, is to communicate their vision clearly so that the players manage to envision that particular fiction together. This also includes creating willingness to bring it to life: [Fictionality] rests on the prior condition of a willingness to engage ourselves with an unreality. […] it is a voluntary commitment to participate in the creation of an alternate universe (Ben Chaim 1984). The interpretive frames also point quite clearly to why sudden larp twists and surprises usually work so poorly — you have to get the players on board with what they are supposed to imagine, for them to be able and willing to see it.

    This also goes for how methods for metareflection are put to use. Larps are very pluralistic, as the players experience them through their individual character journeys. A too rigid method with specific insights to be drawn between larp and life will easily turn irrelevant to many players, while a design that allows players to draw their own connections between their particular larp and life experience will often prove more constructive.

    As embodied role-playing occurs by putting a fictional interpretation over real material and real bodies, it may directly invite players to new ways of seeing the world and themselves. Be it through an explicitly metareflexive sociopolitical larp, or an escapist immersive larp: Regardless of form, larps are made out of player interpretation and participation. Invite your fellow players to explore the different layers of larping, and they will put their interpretive skills to use to fill the larp with meaning.

    Bibliography

    Myriel Balzer (2011) Immersion as a prerequisite of the didactical potential of role-playing. International Journal of Role-playing, vol. 2, pg. 32—43.

    Daphna Ben Chaim (1984) Distance in the Theatre — The Aesthetics of Audience Response. Theatre and Dramatic Studies. Michigan: UMI Research Press.

    Jeppe Bergmann Hamming & Maria Bergmann Hamming (2017) Beyond Playing to Lose and Narrativism. In Linn Carin Andreassen, Simon Brind, Elin Nilsen, Grethe Sofie Strand & Martine Svanevik (eds.) (2017) Once upon a Nordic larp… Twenty Years of Playing Stories, pg. 357—364. Knutepunkt 2017.

    Augusto Boal (1995) The Rainbow of Desire: The Boal Method of Theatre and Therapy. Oxon/New York: Routledge.

    Sarah Lynne Bowman (2017) Immersion into LARP – Theories of Embodied Narrative Experience. First person scholar, ref Nov. 17th, 2019

    Anita Grünbaum (2009) Lika och Unika — Dramapedagogik om Minoriteter. Göteborg: Daidalos.

    Tobias Harding (2007) Immersion revisited: role-playing as interpretation and narrative. In Jesper Donnis, Morten Gade & Line Thorup (eds.) (2007) Lifelike, pg. 24—33. Projektgruppen KP07.

    Morgan Jarl & Petter Karlsson (2013) When Our Destinies Meet, ref Nov. 17th 2019

    Simo Järvelä (2019) How Real Is Larp? In Johanna Koljonen, Jaako Stenros, Anne Serup Grove, Aida D. Skjønsfjell, & Elin Nilsen (eds.) (2019) Larp Design: Creating Role-play Experiences. Copenhagen: Landsforeningen Bifrost.

    Ari-Pekka Lappi (2007) Playing beyond facts: immersion as a transformation of everydayness. In Jesper Donnis, Morten Gade & Line Thorup (eds.) (2007) Lifelike, pg. 74—79. Projektgruppen KP07.

    Hilda Levin (2017) Inifrån och utifrån — Immersion och reflektion i lajv och deltagande teater. Estetiska ideal och möjligheter för korporeala rollspelsupplevelser (Outside and within — immersion and reflection in larp and participatory theatre: Aesthetic ideals and affordances for embodied role-playing experiences). Master thesis in Dramaturgy, Aarhus University.

    Lauri Lukka (2014) The Psychology of Immersion. In Jon Back (ed.) (2014) The Cutting Edge of Nordic Larp, pg. 81—92. Knutpunkt 2014.

    Bruce McConachie (2013) Theatre & Mind. Basingstoke/New York: Palgrave Macmillan.

    Markus Montola, Eleanor Saitta & Jaako Stenros (2015) The art of steering: Bringing the player and the character back together. Nordiclarp.org, ref Nov. 17th, 2019

    Markus Montola & Jaako Stenros (eds.) (2010) Nordic Larp. Stockholm: Fëa Livia.

    Carl Nordblom & Josefin Westborg (2017) Do You Want to Play Ball? In Linn Carin Andreassen, Simon Brind, Elin Nilsen, Grethe Sofie Strand & Martine Svanevik (eds.) (2017) Once upon a Nordic larp… Twenty Years of Playing Stories, pg. 130—142. Knutepunkt 2017.

    Jaako Stenros (2013) Aesthetics of Action, ref Nov. 17th, 2019

    Lars von Trier & Vibeke Windeløv (2003) Dogville [DVD]. Zentropa Entertainments.

    Gareth White (2013) Audience Participation in theatre — Aesthetics of the invitation. Hampshire: Palgrave MacMillan.

    Wiktionary: Metareflection, ref Nov. 17th, 2019

  • Maps, Loops and Larp

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    Maps, Loops and Larp

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    Should I reveal the secret now, or wait? Should I say something, or stay silent? Should I go somewhere, or stay where I am?

    Questions like these are running through the heads and guts of players all the time when larping. Often, players don’t even think of them actively as questions, but are subconsciously making choices nevertheless. The actions of a player during runtime are consequences of a series of decisions. In this article, we will outline a framework for analyzing how the players decide on their actions moment to moment, as well as on longer time scales throughout the larp. To help understand how these choices are arrived at and structured, we will introduce the concepts map and loop.

    The map is the structure in the players’ minds of the current status of the fictional reality and their place inside it((While we are speaking about something larp-specific, humans use these types of structures all the time; for more information, look up cognitive maps or mental maps (Cognitive Map, Wikipedia, 2020).)). The map’s content can be spatial information, character relationships, the characters’ understanding of past events, and the kinds of actions the player sees as possible in the larp. The map also stores projections of event outcomes, and the schedule of acts, known predetermined events, and the end of play.

    Players often start to sketch their map before playing begins, for example gathering information in a pre-larp workshop or reading written materials. At the start of play, players are focused on coloring in((The initial printing of this essay used “warming up” as the metaphor here; on reflection, “coloring in” was clearly the better terminology choice.)) their maps and filling in enough detail that play flows easily and actions become self-sustaining.

    The other concept we will work with in this piece is the action loop. During a larp, participants are running at least one action loop — often a few, at different time scales. An action loop moves the participant through four steps: observing and understanding the situation, planning and assessing the possible actions they could take, deciding on a course of action, and performance. We call the process of repeatedly cycling through this set of steps as you make decisions and take actions “running a loop.” The loop is a metaphor for the player’s decision process((Loops are a common conceptual and practical tool in systems thinking and computer science. Credit for the decision loop metaphor goes originally to Col. John Boyd’s “OODA” loop (OODA Loop, Wikipedia, 2020)).

    A player might be running one loop as their character talks to another, interpreting the other character’s responses, seeing the conversational openings, and steering their responses toward the direction they find interesting for the scene. In another, higher-level loop they might be looking at how the scene is evolving, seeing the possibilities it opens up for future scenes, evaluating them with respect to their goals, and then changing the steering input in the shorter-term loop. The player might also have a much longer-term loop, where they reflect upon the arc of their experience thus far, and set strategic goals for how to shape that arc going forward. Especially on this level, they might also be thinking about their own life and how it is mirrored in the themes of the larp, and using that as input for their loop. This is called metareflection, and as you can read more about it in Hilda Levin’s chapter Metareflection elsewhere in this book, we will not go into it in depth here.

    As a player runs their loops, they refer to their mental map to interpret and understand what is happening in the larp. The players continuously update their maps, connecting new observations to existing information. Those connections are where players find possibilities for action, and provide the field for player creativity.

    Agency Regulation and Motivation

    To understand player decisions, we need to look at the concepts of player and character agency, and player motivations. Agency measures how much or little a person can affect a specific situation, how they can act, and whether they can change outcomes.

    The player’s agency is separate from the character’s agency. It is restricted by aspects such as what information the larp has given the players, which skills you have, legal restrictions, and play culture. Furthermore, agency is subject to social factors, such as body shape, performance skills, or status among your co-players. Aspects of the world that regulate player actions are constraints. To be specific, the constraint is not the aspect of the world itself — rather, the constraint is the relationship of the group of players with that aspect.

    Hard constraints cannot be changed by participants and are shared by all of them. For example, even if you play a character that can fly, humans cannot fly, so you are not able to represent the action directly. Hard constraints can be set by laws and common sense (not killing your co-players in combat), or by choices made by the designer and expressed through rules (“this is a non-verbal larp”). In the latter case the constraint is hard if the consequence of breaking the rule is that others will not view the action as part of the fiction (for example, talking when the fiction says you cannot talk).

    Soft constraints are different from player to player — for example, if your character wants to take off their clothes, but you hold back because you are afraid of others’ reactions or because you will feel ashamed. A constraint like this can limit your agency just as powerfully as a hard constraint. It can, however, be addressed in different ways both through the design of the event (for instance, of the player culture or the rules of the fiction), through adjustments during play (like changing the lighting in the space) or internally by the player (for instance, if your fears diminish as the co-players earn your trust).

    The constraints limit the affordances of the situation — what you as a player can do. However, within the constraints there are usually many options. While different players may see the same options as possible, there will not necessarily be the same cost or risk involved for all players. Agency-regulating constraints determine the perceived cost or risk of taking an action.

    Player motivations are the goals that direct player actions and shape which of the available options the player will view as most interesting.

    Motivations can be individual or communal, and have to do with either the larp experience itself or with factors outside the larp. Examples of individual motivations can be experiencing powerful emotions, wanting to win, or temporarily escaping into another world. Motivations outside of the play situation could be increasing one’s social status, understanding something better, or making new friends. Communal goals could be making experiences better for others, helping to build a community with certain values, or exploring and developing a genre or fiction together. Characters will also have goals for their actions, but player and character goals will not always coincide. It can, however, be a player goal to stay loyal to their character.

    The constraints regulate the agency of the player and the character. The actions that exist inside the constraints are — for you — the possible actions. Actions that are constrained are impossible, either literally, or because the player currently perceives them as such.

    The player’s decision of which action to pick among those that seem to be available is based on a cost/benefit analysis, taking into consideration motivation and constraints. We will examine this analysis below, as we explore different stages of the loop.

    Stages of the Loop

    Keeping the affordances determined by agency and motivations in mind, it is now time to describe the steps of the loop in more detail. The processes described are mostly automatic, which is to say you might be only vaguely aware of them as you larp (just as you are almost never aware of similar processes occurring continuously as you move through your daily life). Even at your first larp, you will perform the steps of the loop successfully, and as you larp more, you will become more skilled at different aspects of the process, such as identifying play opportunities or reading the emotional states of other players.

    Let’s go over the four stages of the loop in more detail.

    Observation and Understanding

    Your loop starts by observing yourself and the world around you (using all of your senses, not just vision), attempting to understand what you’re seeing in view of your map, and comparing what you see to the information in your map of the larp — and then possibly updating your map.

    In this phase, you’ll note things like your own emotional and physical state, where players are and what actions their characters are taking, the reactions of other players and characters to what you did in the previous loop, the emotional state of other players and/or the emotional state their characters are projecting, etc. You’ll evaluate these observations for offered play opportunities, power structures, the emotional reaction they bring up in you, their significance in the fiction, their resonance with the larp’s themes, the metatechnical meaning of actions (if metatechniques are used in the larp), etc. Drawing understanding out of what you observe in a larp is what we call literacy — things like your ability to recognize play offers from others, or check in with yourself to understand your own emotional state separate from the state you’re portraying with your character.

    Planning and Assessment

    Planning and assessing actions is a process where the player has to take into account what kind of agency they have, what motivation they have, how the rest of the larp will react, how much time is available, what restrictions are placed on the player by their own physical and mental state, and what the likely outcomes of the actions will be. The player will evaluate what actions are possible, desired, acceptable, and achievable.

    Possible actions: In theory, the list of possible actions is more or less endless. In practice, the player does not think about most of these — only a small number of possible actions will come to mind. The list of actions is composed based on the situation the player is already in. Often, a player will navigate the larp in order to get into a situation where more actions are possible. For example, if you are alone and want to interact with others, you first need to take actions to get together with other people.

    Because players aren’t just recording raw data about the world, but are actively reading the environment, the planning and assessment process in practice often occurs at least in part contemporaneously with observation and understanding. In particular, players will often not even consider actions they know aren’t possible, like flying down from a building. This is efficient, as considering those options would be a waste of time.

    Social rules can be internalised to a degree that the player might also not consider actions that are literally possible — these are what we refer to as soft constraints. Most players will, for example, rule out actually injuring another player as an action that is not possible; this is a soft constraint that is helpful. Unfortunately, social rules can also make a player see an action as impossible even when it is something that the larp offers, or even encourages. For example, if they have learned in the outside world that the kind of person they are perceived as, or perceive themselves as, will be socially or physically punished for some actions, the player may view those actions as impossible — for more on this, see Kemper, Saitta, and Koljonen’s Steering for Survival elsewhere in this book.

    In short, an action is possible if the player is conscious of it and feels able to pursue it.

    Desired actions: From the list of possible actions that the player is conscious of, they will identify which ones are desirable. In the previous step, we only took into account the agency regulating constraints. In this step, as well as the subsequent ones, the constraints still matter, but we also take motivation into account. Whether the action is desirable is dependent on player motivation as well as on soft constraints. Based on the player’s motivation, they will filter out actions that they deem will not support their goals. For example, a player wanting to be loyal to their character will not act in a way that goes against the character motivation — unless other player goals overshadow the desire to be loyal to the character. This leaves the player with a selection of actions that are both possible and desirable.

    Acceptable actions: The other players (and the organizers) of the larp will expect actions that maintain the coherence of the fiction and support content, events, and actions that are in line with what they want to experience or create. Usually, co-players will expect everybody to avoid actions that ruin the play for others, and to play their character as intended by the designers. In many play cultures it is also considered poor form to choose actions that significantly limit the agency of other players. Which kinds of actions have that effect varies between different kinds of larps and play cultures, making this a common cause of friction at international events.

    While players differ in how much they care about the acceptance of their co-players, all players take these norms of acceptable play into account. The play culture’s influence on which actions are acceptable shapes how a player’s agency is regulated by constraints, as does the player’s knowledge and understanding of this culture. The player’s motivation will affect the degree to which a player cares about how their choices are received by others. A player who is indifferent to how others view them will have a wider range of options at the planning and assessment stage, although social consequences are then likely to limit their possible actions later, for example if they become isolated in play.

    At this stage, the character’s agency becomes part of the decision even if the player isn’t motivated by being loyal to their character. If you are supposed to play an old and weak character, it doesn’t make sense to lift a heavy table above your head, even if you as a player are strong enough to do so and doing so could help take your larp where you want to go. The choice could be ruled out by your personal adherence to the coherence of the overall fiction, or by an understanding that breaking it is not socially acceptable.

    Achievable actions: Most actions will cost the player time and energy. As these are limited resources, it’s necessary to take them into account. Some actions (for example resting) may give you more energy for later play. When deciding between a couple of actions that are all possible, desirable, and acceptable, a player will take time and energy into account. Doing something always means you are not doing something else. For example, staging a big scene in front of everybody might drain your energy, and joining a group that will go away for a few hours means you will miss a lot of other play while being away. Sometimes you have to select an action which by itself is not the most desirable, in order to save time and energy, or because you do not have the capacity to carry out another behaviour right now.

    Outcome evaluation: Once you’ve got a set of possible, desirable, acceptable actions that you have the bandwidth to perform, you need to project forward to understand their likely outcomes. An action that may be desirable in the moment may not look desirable when you consider how it may shape player actions over time, or you may realize that it doesn’t make sense in the context of your goals in an action loop running on a longer timescale — for instance that it would make a great scene, but not support a good character arc.

    In practice, the planning and assessment phase will be compressed, and it’s rare that you’ll do all of these steps explicitly or even consciously. However, we believe that all of these factors are evaluated at some level in this phase, unless a heuristic — a mental rule — is used to skip over assessment and planning entirely. For more on this, see Magnar Grønvik Müller’s Introduction to Heuristics elsewhere in this book.

    Decision Point

    Once you have one or more viable plans, you need to decide between them, or commit to the one you have. At this point, you’ve likely already thought through the possible outcomes and their likelihoods for the plans, especially if you have more than one. The decision point is often subconscious or very fast, particularly if you’ve identified one obvious plan. In the case of multiple plans with significant consequences for your experience, you may spend some time in deliberation.

    Some players use heuristics to skip from observation to decision. They will have learned from experience that some situations lead to play they do or don’t want, and have established an internal rule that they will always take a specific type of action in a certain type of situation.

    The choices might have high stakes, or there may be too many viable options without a way to decide between them — or seem to be no options at all — or you may realize that you’re uncomfortable with what looks like the obvious choice on the basis of how it feels when it comes time to commit to it. In these situations, you might experience choice paralysis, and decide instead to to go back and replan, to take some time out of character to figure out what decision to make, or just make up your mind to passively follow some random external impulse (like listening to another character’s suggested course of action).

    Performance

    This is the phase where you act out whatever plan you’ve decided on. Some of your actions can be fully internal and visible only to yourself, but generally as you perform your actions, you will be observed by others. The other players will read you based on their maps, and update them. As you play out your plan, you’ll be noting their reactions and observing your own performance and evaluating whether your actions have interesting or meaningful consequences. This will lead you into the next iteration of the loop.

    A single loop is fairly straightforward. However, players run several loops simultaneously, which makes the concept a bit more complex.

    Multiple Loops: Working Across Timescales

    In any given larp, you will be running simultaneous action loops at different timescales.

    At the finest time scale, you run a loop that lets you manage your performance inside a scene; this is the performative loop. Here, you are for instance deciding what you’ll say next, or how long you should drag out these death groans, or how much of your character’s feelings you will allow your facial expressions and body language to reflect.

    If it’s useful, you can think of every scene as being composed of a series of phrases for each character, with each phrase corresponding to one iteration — repetition — of the loop, whether they’re verbal phrases, physical movements, etc. This is the loop where you evaluate situations and emotional reactions in the highest detail, and is generally what will take up most of your focus in a larp. If you are a player who prioritises character immersion, the mental state where you (pretend to) feel, act, and be as your character, this is the level where you will perform the emotion-following part of immersion.

    The next timescale is the inter-scene scale, where you think about the scene that you want to play next and how the scenes will stitch together. This is the tactical loop. In a very short larp, like some blackbox larps, this will be the highest timescale, since you can plan for the whole duration of the larp on this level. This is often the level where steering choices are made.

    Iterations of this loop are scenes. Depending on your play style, you may engage this loop more or less consciously. The evaluation process can be just as fast as in the mostly subconscious performative loop, but this level is more likely to slow down to a reflection you can become aware of. In the tactical loop, you will often focus on your intention as a player and your intention as a character for a given scene; these become the goals that you evaluate actions against in the faster performative loop.

    The largest timescale is the whole-larp, or strategic loop timescale; iterations of this loop are acts. Here, you evaluate your goals as a player for the entire larp (or the series of larps, if you’re playing a campaign), the dramatic arc of your character, etc. Having decided on the direction you want your arc to take, you are likely to stay on that course, but you might be sensitive to new input that would trigger reevaluation of that direction — like a better opportunity or a sign your chosen path might not work. While you may think about your arc frequently, consciously changing course is a less common occurrence.

    Different players have different strategies for playing larps, which may shape how they use their strategic loop. Some players will optimize for emotional intensity, some for narrative coherence, or some (in competitive play cultures) for winning the larp. If you are an immersionist player, this is the level where you make strategic choices to enable immersive play.

    If the larp you are playing is split up into acts by the designer, you will run at least one iteration of this loop per act, although if acts are long, you might step out of play mid-act (either internally or physically) to re-evaluate. Like the other loops, the strategic loop runs throughout the larp. But as this loop is more symbolic and goal-centric, and requires zooming out of the immediate situation, it can be useful to reserve dedicated time in the design of the larp itself for out-of-character strategic reflection.

    Bandwidth

    In this model, bandwidth is the term for how many things a player can think about, decide on, remember, and do at the same time — their capacity to process information and make decisions, or in other words, to work with their map and loops.((Simon Brind, in his piece Blue Valkyrie Needs Food, Badly! elsewhere in this book, talks about the various kinds of energy we use in play. Bandwidth here corresponds roughly to the categories of “social energy” he describes. As we’re primarily concerned with information processing here, we use a metaphor from that space, in part because we believe it makes clear the ways different activities can trade of a shared resource.)) When you are feeling overwhelmed during play, that is often the experience of being low on bandwidth.

    As players become more experienced, they build more efficient cognitive skills for managing information in their maps, and more efficient ways of processing their loops, including heuristics. They will also develop more fluency at jumping between the diegetic, real-world, and metareflective frames, and between different time-scales in the larp, meaning they spend less time on context switches. All this increasing efficiency adds up to more bandwidth to process nuanced information. Consciously developing your map or assessing your decision loops early in a larp may take up a bit of your bandwidth, but can be an investment that pays back in terms of more bandwidth later.

    Bandwidth is a resource that players can spend in different ways, and different actions are more or less costly for different players. Bandwidth also affects things like recall of less-salient parts of a player’s map, or cross-referencing between pieces of information, noticing available play opportunities, portraying emotional nuance when playing close to another character, maintaining an accent or physical habits, or language or physical skills. Better larp literacy skills also improve bandwidth, as relevant information will jump out at the player without time-consuming introspection or analysis.

    While experience can grant additional bandwidth, any number of things can reduce it. Players who are stressed or otherwise in vulnerable emotional states, cold, hungry, tired, handling social oppression, or dealing with disabilities often experience reduced bandwidth. Players who are not playing in their first language or their own play culture often become more fluent as play progresses, but still tire faster as they keep having to spend extra bandwidth on the effort of translation.

    Bandwidth limitations can have different effects: passive and reactive play, disconnecting from the fiction or the social dynamics of play for a while, or even needing to step out of or leave play entirely. Design choices can require more or less bandwidth, and cost or provide different amounts of energy. Designers should consider how their decisions will impact the available energy and bandwidth of different players through the larp. A design that inflicts player fatigue, for example through lack of sleep or food, might leave players more open to emotional impact — but it will also reduce their bandwidth. On the other hand, offering physical comfort even though the fiction is stressful, for example by providing an offgame space with coffee and sweets, may help players regenerate their energy and free up bandwidth.

    Your available bandwidth affects the choices you make during play. You might abstain from a desired action to save energy for complex play later, or rule out actions as impossible due to lack of bandwidth.

    Steering and Collective Decision-Making

    In The Art of Steering (Montola, Stenros, and Saitta 2015), steering is defined as “the process in which a player influences the behavior of her character for non-diegetic reasons”. In the context of action loops, steering can be viewed as a process of deciding which goals to bring into play — evaluating possible actions on the basis of which ones are desirable with respect to your personal goals.

    Steering is defined as something players do alone, on the basis of their own goals. Steering is both the act of identifying a goal (often on the whole-larp or inter-scene level) and the successive loops that the player performs to attempt to satisfy those goals (often on the scene level). It is possible for two players to agree that they both have goals that align, and for the two players to then steer their play in a coordinated fashion. However, the communication and collective decision-making whereby the players discover they have aligned goals and decide to act on them are just that — collaboration in their action loops, not steering.

    Players rarely execute their action loops alone. While solipsistically we may all be alone in our heads, each thinking in isolation, in practical terms larp is defined by collaboration at an extradiegetic((Communication that’s within the collective set of social norms that exists during runtime, but which is outside the diegesis, or shared fiction.)) level — the players are always collaborating, at minimum to maintain the fiction, regardless of what happens inside it. Explicit collaboration between the players may be done via some combination of body language and speech intended to carry meaning at both the diegetic and metadiegetic levels; via specific metatechniques; or even stepping out of play to negotiate or plan together. These collaborations often shape each player’s action loops at the strategic level, as they verbally negotiate the broad arcs they’re interested in playing out and loosely coordinate some of their goals.

    Often, the players informally calibrate how their desired paths of action are compatible at the tactical or inter-scene level to shape those loops. In some play cultures, this goes even further, with explicit extradiegetic planning overriding player and character improvisation down to the scene level. For instance, two players might decide not just that their characters will both vie for the favour of the prince, but that one character will call the other’s mother a hamster, leading to a duel that they will lose. As this playing style transfers creativity from the play situation to out-of-character coordination between players, it allows the players to shortcut decision loops on what to do, and significantly reduce the need for a map. It leaves the player to only make runtime decisions on details regarding how to enact the scene. This approach saves the player a lot of bandwidth, and may allow players to play many more dramatic scenes than without pre-planning. However, critics of this playing style would argue that one also risks undermining the emotional connection between player and character, and that it makes the player unreceptive to alternative play bids, which from another co-player’s point of view may be experienced as blocking play.

    Character Immersion as a Tactic Versus a Strategy

    This new model for looking at what kinds of decisions are made at what kinds of timescales in play can help provide a more nuanced understanding of immersion.

    When players talk about preferring to be immersed, they’re often talking about an experience that happens at the scene level, of emotional flow and an absence of thoughts readily identifiable as coming from the player. Intentionally achieving this state requires either luck or, often, conscious acts at the strategic level to set themselves up for immersive play. For some players, these choices will happen as a set of heuristics that they’ve learned over time. While a heuristic may allow them to shortcut the strategic loop evaluation, the loop does still occur.

    Even though immersion at the tactical level — within each scene — is desirable for many players, an overemphasis on it can cause problems. In the steering paper (Montola, Stenros, and Saitta 2015), it was raised that playing a larp often requires a certain amount of steering work from each player as they bring the experience into a coherent whole with a collectively desired arc. A player who only steers for immersion requires other players to do the work of steering for the good of the overall larp. That is, the player makes choices in their strategic loop to enable immersion, and then acts in their inter-scene and tactical loops to maintain flow above all else.

    Loop Failure Modes

    Thinking about how a player’s execution of steps in the loop can lead to unexpected or undesirable experiences helps us understand some of those experiences more clearly.

    The first set of failure modes in the loop is in the observation and understanding phase. There are any number of reading errors that can occur. The risk of reading errors depends on the player’s larp literacy. Issues here can include failures to recognize play opportunities being given to you, misreading the emotions of others, etc. Observation or literacy failures around misunderstanding are often sorted out in play, (or at least after the larp), but the failure to realize there was something to see at all is more likely to just lead to missed play opportunities. Players misreading the larp can lead to equifinality((Often, players have different understandings of parts of the diegesis. Two perspectives (or here, maps) are said to be equifinal if the consequences of players acting on them are indistinguishable enough that material conflicts in their interpretations do not derail play. (Montola, 2012))) problems (more on this below), and in some cases conflict between players.

    A number of failures come up during the planning and assessment phase of the loop, commonly either cost or risk estimation failures, where a player embarks on play that will either be too expensive (in terms of e.g. their available bandwidth or emotional energy) for them to follow through with, or that may fall flat with other players, not be seen as acceptable play (e.g. they have failed at assessing acceptable options), or not lead to the experience they were hoping for, or that they projected would evolve from their action. Risk estimation failures can go both ways, of course, as players can also avoid actions they would have been able to accomplish, or not do things from fear of social censure or out of a misreading of the social contract of the larp.

    Another failure mode, at the decision point of the loop, is choice paralysis, where a player has either too many possibilities to choose from or a small number of high-stakes options with uncertain outcomes and insufficient information to decide with.

    Most of the remaining failure modes are performance failures, which encompass most of what we traditionally think of as failures in play.

    The Map

    Maps have a life-cycle that mirrors that of the larp, from sketching before the larp begins to coloring in the map as the game starts, through flow during the bulk of play, and then narrativization after the larp ends.

    Sketching

    Sketching your map might mean reading background material from the organizers, getting a sense of the world you’ll be playing in and of the logic of that world — of how to think of and within the fiction. It might mean doing non-diegetic research, like watching documentaries about the history of AIDS before playing Just a Little Lovin’, or engaging with source documents, like reading a novel or playing a computer game before playing Witcher School. Such preparation can give you emotional touchstones to shape how you read events during play, or to fill in gaps in your understanding of relevant history that you can draw on in play.

    Genre and references to existing works are a fast way to sketch in the rough outlines of a map. “This game is Donna Tartt plus Dead Poets’ Society plus Cruel Intentions” provides a huge amount of information to a player who understands the references. So does “This is a satirical post-apocalyptic larp with 70’s leather gay aesthetics”. Being familiar with the design tradition the larp builds on can also provide such outlines, for example if you have played larps by the same designers before. This information provides starting points for the map, but is less likely to be relevant during play — and indeed, players who hold too tightly to their interpretation of genre and source material may find their maps in conflict with the larp as actually played.

    For many players, the process of sketching starts for real when you get (or create, depending on the design) your character. If you talk to your co-players before the larp, you may start layering in some initial information about your chemistry with that player and their play style, and also start collaborative decision-making around your intent for how to play your character relationship.

    During pre-larp workshops, the players are mapping the larp under the facilitation of the organizers. Often, this is when the possibilities for play become clear. Particularly if the larp content hasn’t been well-communicated beforehand, seeing what’s talked about in workshops, which mechanics are practiced, and what safety lines are drawn helps you evaluate what actions will be possible and desirable in play.

    Much map data is sensory — recognizing a person, knowing how characters move, knowing the layout of the play space, or building associations between colors and factions — and it’s hard to put this data into your map until you’re on site.

    Coloring In

    When play begins, your map is alive; now things can actually happen. This is the map proper — reactive terrain, not a static store of information and instead something you can use. During the coloring period, several things are happening — usually subconsciously. First, you’re getting comfortable with the rhythm of play and finding your character. Second, you’re figuring out which of the information you sketched into your map matters, what is irrelevant, and what is now incorrect for the larp-as-played. Third, you’re starting to try out play offers and see what is actually possible, what gets a response from your co-players, and what is interesting to you. Some things introduced in the pre-larp workshop or reading material before the larp may stand out as important, while others prove less viable. Fourth, you’re looking for, evaluating, responding to, and building up a library of social bids, or play offers from other players. As the map is colored in, you also start running one or more loops, making decisions and updating the map based on the new information you gather.

    Much of the awkwardness many players feel at the beginning of a larp comes from everyone coloring in their maps at the same time. Every action taken by each participant is a test: is this a reasonable action in this situation, culture, world? If it is, which players around me might be interested in the directions I’m suggesting, and for which characters would the actions be relevant? After playing a while, you will increasingly both offer and receive social bids that you can actually act on (see Edman 2019; Westborg and Nordblom 2017 for more on this). When you have enough character-specific possibilities that are established as playable for play to flow smoothly, your map is functional. With a functional map, it’s easier to play, and should you need to step out of character for a bit, it’s then easier to get back in compared to when you had to color in the map initially.

    Flow and Communication

    During play, players are constantly sharing parts of their maps with each other. This can be explicit, such as when characters tell each other things that they’ve seen happen, describe where to find things or people, or talk about things they might do together. This is only a small part of the sharing that goes on. While there are many other layers to the interaction, every time you see a character react to something you’ve done, that player is also (intentionally or not) sharing data about their map. When you do work to shape the emotional reaction you want to present to others, especially when you’re regulating player emotions to be able to portray character emotions, this is also intentional sharing of information.

    Conflicts between players driven by different understandings of the shared world (i.e. equifinality conflicts) are map conflicts. Two maps of a larp are equifinal if the players working from those maps can agree on the shape of the world where it matters to their choices. During map conflicts, player communication about their maps is likely to become more competitive, as each player tries to push the version of diegetic reality that they prefer. Charismatic players sometimes do this accidentally, shaping the diegetic world around them. This isn’t always bad, but can cause problems if they haven’t thought about how their map may affect the experiences of other players. Serious map conflicts can be hard for players to resolve at runtime. Stepping out of play to negotiate is sometimes the answer, but especially if players are low on bandwidth and the play style allows for less narrative coherency the players might also just split into groups, each with their own understanding.

    Narrativization

    When the runtime ends, the map changes again. A lot of what was being kept in the map — the emotional state of your and other characters, predictions about things that might happen, an understanding of the options for what you can do — becomes irrelevant, as you are no longer making choices about what to do. For some players, this shift in information processing can be disorienting. It can also happen simultaneously with an emotional reaction (often grief) to no longer having access to the social world where their performances as their characters are reflected back to them, and to the other characters they cared about. Depending on the larp and the player, all of this can be overshadowed by post-game celebrations and collective congratulations among the ensemble, but some players will still feel both grief and disorientation intensely.

    Once the map is no longer living, you can’t act upon it, but the meaning of what happened can still change. The process of turning a live map where stories exist as collections of events and action-possibilities into chronologies that have a specific meaning and interpretation is narrativization.

    Narrativization is a collective process. For a player’s narrative to have social meaning, it needs to be shared and reflected back to them by the other players who are part of it; this too is a kind of negotiation. In this stage, players are still sharing information from their maps, sometimes with the goal of persuading each other that their version of the map is the most correct; often to provide more high-resolution nuance for each other. Some players prefer to reflect on the meaning and experience of their larps in private, and some types of larps, like very abstract or poetic ones, generate maps that differ so significantly from each other that a collective narrativization process has no relevance for the experience of the piece (although comparing experiences might still be interesting).

    Epilogues, or short stories that some players write about what happened to their characters after the game ended, occupy an interesting place in narrativization. This contested practice((There are both larp cultures and individuals that consider epilogue-writing a forced imposition of one set of outcomes and meanings upon one’s co-players; the epilogue writers would argue no one is forced to read them.)) provides players with one last chance to exercise agency within the game world, often as a way to find emotional closure for where the game ended, or to resolve emotional complexity that springs from the way narrativization shifted the meaning of their individual story. Epilogues are sometimes shared as an explicit part of the collective process by players who engage in this practice; some of their co-players will engage with their epilogues, while others will not.

    Things to Put in Your Map

    Every player will focus on different things in their maps, but some things are likely to be in the maps of most players. The categories are a rough guide, as many larps will sequence things differently.

    Before a larp, you might think about the following:

    • Pre-larp motivations: Why am I at this larp, what kind of play experiences am I looking for?
    • Information about players: What are their names? How do they play, if you’ve played with them before? Do you like them, want to get to know them better, or want to avoid them?
    • Information about characters: What are their names, their group allegiances (if relevant) or general dispositions? How can you recognize this character if you don’t know their player already? What is your characters’ relationship, and is it likely to be important?
    • Diegetic information: What’s the historical era and specific fiction of the larp? What fictional information looks like it will be core to your ability to understand the actions of others? What do you know about the setting?
    • Metadiegetic information: Themes of the larp, what genre you’re expecting to play in, and your understanding of the culture of the larp and its players. Experiences from other works by the same designers.
    • Planned play progression: Acts, schedule, expected play flow, etc.
    • Practical concerns: Food, bathrooms, temperature/weather, first-aid, access to power or communications, coffee, sleeping, hazards, and your own planning around these.
    • Costuming: What am I planning on bringing? What are the affordances of these objects and clothes? How do they relate to the fiction?
    • Skills: Are there particular skills needed to play this (e.g. a particular dance, fencing or a reading a rune alphabet)? If there are, do you have these skills?
    • Out of character concerns: Are there things you already know about that will require you to plan around during play, like times you will need to step out of character, etc.

    Once you’re on site, you’re likely to change and re-evaluate many of your answers to the previous section, and also start adding some new things:

    • More information about the players: What faces belong to what names? What groups or cliques do you see among the players? What kind of chemistry do you have with people you’ll be playing with? What kind of emotional space do they seem to be in? Are there players who you think may need extra support whom you might be able to help?
    • The space: Recognizing places. How long it takes to get around, what’s expected in different spaces in and out of game, what’s visible from where, what spaces afford which actions, who is likely to be in which spaces, where you are comfortable.
    • Costuming: What did you end up taking with you? How does your costume look compared to others? What does that tell you about players and characters? Will your costume constrain your actions in the space? Is there anything you should change before the larp starts?
    • Rules: What are they? How do they work? What are your options if they don’t?
    • Calibration: What tools does this larp offer to calibrate interactions with others? How does what you’re hearing in the workshops or before the larp starts change your understanding of what you expect to happen in play? What does it look like the play style will be? Which intentions are expressed by players you’re calibrating with?
    • Movement: Once you’re in costume, how does your character move? How do other characters move?
    • Agency regulating constraints: What actions feel like they’ll be acceptable here? Especially if you’re a gender or sexual minority, how might other players identify? Does the room feel like it’s likely to be racist or sexist, etc., or to tolerate those actions?
    • Self-knowledge: What is your motivation right now? Your goals, and your physical and emotional state?

    When play starts, the map kicks into high gear, first during coloring, and then in flow. You’ll re-evaluate things above again, or confirm your judgements, and start adding things like:

    • Actions: What has happened so far, and what does it mean?
    • Character state: What mood is your character in, what are their goals right now, and what are they thinking about? Does this feel right, or do you need to adjust it?
    • Story: What arc is your character on and where are you trying to steer it?
    • Engagement and energy levels: To what degree do others seem to be immersed in play? What’s the mood in the room? Which way is it going?
    • Projections: How are players and characters likely to react to your potential actions? How would an action change the arc of your character, affect your group of characters, or the larp as a whole? Are players likely to accept your social bid, and what if anything will it cost you, socially or emotionally? Are there problems this action may cause or help resolve?
    • Knowledge level: What do you know you don’t know? What might you be wrong about? Where are places where you think your map may differ from that of other players, and will this cause problems?

    Conclusion

    How players manage information and how they make decisions during runtime was becoming an increasingly prominent blindspot in larp theory. The two questions are inseparable. The two questions are inseparable. The decision process of the loops must be informed by mapped information about the world, and the lifecycle of that information is shaped both by the experience of that world in play and by the decision process itself. The idea of maps and loops provides a sketch of a cognitive model with the affordances we need to talk about and reflect on the way we think in play.

    There are a number of secondary concepts and explorations in this piece — player bandwidth, extradiegetic collaboration as the collective partner to steering, understanding how immersion works at the tactical versus strategic level, and the rhythmic split of a larp into phrases, scenes, and acts as something native to the medium, not just a design structure present in some larps. These are subjects we have been in need of more conceptual tools to tackle.

    Larp literacy in particular, touched on in passing here, is ripe for more work, as are agency-regulating frames. Both of those ideas, along with maps and loops, came from the Player Skills Retreat held in Helsinki in May 2019; credit for them is owed to everyone in that room.

    Bibliography

    Markus Montola, Jaakko Stenros, and Eleanor Saitta (2015): The Art of Steering. Knudepunkt. The Knudepunkt 2015 Companion Book.

    Markus Montola (2012): On the Edge of the Magic Circle. Understanding Role-Playing and Pervasive Games. Doctoral Dissertation, University of Tampere.

    Hilda Levin (2020): Metareflection. Solmukohta. What Do We Do When We Play?

    Karin Edman (2019): “Social bid”-method of playing on oppression in larp. WonderKarin, ref February 5th, 2020.

    Josefin Westborg and Carl Nordblom (2017): Do You Want to Play Ball? Knutepunkt. Once Upon a Nordic Larp… Twenty Years of Playing Stories.

    Jonaya Kemper, Eleanor Saitta, and Johanna Koljonen (2020): Steering for Survival. Solmukohta. What Do We Do When We Play?

    Simon Brind (2020): Blue Valkyrie Needs Food, Badly! Solmukohta. What Do We Do When We Play?

    Wikipedia (2020): Cognitive map. Wikipedia, ref. Jan 1st, 2020.

    Wikipedia (2020): OODA loop. Wikipedia, ref. Jan 1st, 2020.

  • Leaving the Magic Circle: Larp and Aftercare

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    Leaving the Magic Circle: Larp and Aftercare

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    Every time the bandwagon “tell me about a strong memory we shared” runs through my Facebook feed, a big amount of the memories told are from larps. Strong immersive larp experiences stay with us. Lending out our physical bodies and our real emotions to tell stories will of course make these stories stay with us players, as memories integrate with our own pasts, tying us together as a community.

    Because this transition from larp to everyday life can be messy sometimes, it may require aftercare. And because larp is what brings our community together, I think more of aftercare as a collective than an individual issue.

    The term aftercare is borrowed from the BDSM community, and basically means taking some time after a BDSM scene to recover, transition from intense play back to normal, and take care of each other’s physical and emotional needs. Larpers sometimes talk about the same thing as defucking (Bindslet and Schultz, 2011) or debriefing.

    The idea to use the term aftercare in a larp context is hardly new (Grasmo 2011), but after listening to two related talks at Solmukohta 2020: Sarah Lynne Bowman’s keynote on integration and Julia Greip’s talk on safewords for brave spaces, I came to think about it again and wanted to write something on it. So in this text I will share some thoughts on aftercare in a larp context: how to do it and why.

    two people holding hands
    Photo by Kat Jayne from Pexels.

    Applying the Campsite Rule to Larp

    When we larp together, we are responsible for each other’s experience. We have the capacity to give each other very strong positive emotional experiences and to mess each other up quite badly. In my opinion we can absolutely apply the Campsite Rule to larping: “You should leave your co-players in the same, or better, condition than you met them in.”

    I learnt the Campsite Rule from sex advice columnist Dan Savage, who coined it about relationships with big age or power differences, as a responsibility the older person has towards the younger. This aspect of it can be meaningful in a larp context as well. Differences in age, larp experience or social status can create power imbalances when we larp, and we have to take them into account whenever we talk about safety and consent. This is perhaps extra important towards young or new players, or players from marginalized groups.

    Any participant that leaves a larp disappointed, traumatized, or hurt will have an impact. Both personally — these feelings can be hard to get over and haunt someone for a long time — and for the community as a whole, since these things often end up as inflamed conflicts, or with players leaving the hobby.

    Another important aspect to me is that this care primarily is a player responsibility — nothing we should demand as a service from the organizers. They will have their own aftercare needs. Take care of your organizers and prevent them from burnout, and we will get even more amazing games.

    two people clutching pillows to their chest on a bed
    Photo by @thiszun from Pexels. Photo has been cropped.

    Designing for Leaving the Magic Circle

    But when do we actually leave a larp? We enter a magic circle and establish a social contract when we larp together, and for successful aftercare, we need to find common expectations of how far this social contract extends.

    I don’t know about you, but I’ve been through “the train station scene” after multiple larps: the larp is over, the venue is cleaned out, and the participants are about to scatter off to their respective travels home. And we pretty often just end up standing aimlessly and confusedly in a big group of people, reluctant to leave. Most larpers are used to ritually leaving the first layer of the magic circle — going from characters back into players. But I still haven’t been to one larp where leaving this second layer of the magic circle has been smooth or thought out. Transitioning from a player group sharing trust and care for each other into our everyday selves at many different places is often really confusing. And this is one area where many aftercare needs could be acknowledged and handled better if we knew when and how our social contract ends. When do we actually leave the magic circle?

    I have experienced a multitude of ways this social contract confusion makes people feel bad after a larp. I have been the player who desperately wants to talk more with my bleedy larp crush, but feels too needy and clingy to ask them. I have been annoyed that my co-player wants to talk with me much more afterwards than I do with them. I have felt bad for not wanting to engage in post-game group hugs, meetups, and lovebombing, and I have felt really alone and believed no one wanted to hang out with me after larps.

    I know I’m not alone in having had these kinds of feelings. And I think we could save ourselves a whole lot of trouble if we talked more often and more openly about aftercare needs and where to go from here before we leave the magic circle of a game.

    two people holding each other on rocks by the water
    Photo by Anna Shvets from Pexels. Photo has been cropped.

    Aftercare Needs: There is No One-Size-Fits-All

    So, ok. Aftercare is important. But how do we implement it? Well, unfortunately there is no one-size-fits-all for aftercare. But predicting one’s own aftercare needs and being able to communicate about them is a great player skill to have. And it is a skill that we can get better at with more experience and practice.

    Most importantly: Yes. Some larps will require aftercare. Sometimes predictably and sometimes in unpredictable ways. This is normal and this is ok. There is a great deal of useful further reading about different aftercare needs and moods. Some people get post-larp drop, feeling intensely sad after leaving a game (Bowman and Torner 2015). Sometimes it’s post-larp charisma — being filled up with intense positive feelings after a larp, maybe getting braver, bolder, or filled with self-confidence. Many of us have experienced bleedy larp crushes on our co-players, great love and sense of community with people we just met and shared a larp with, the Knudeblues when we have to leave our new amazing friends, or strong feelings of rejection and alienation when “everyone else had a great larp and I didn’t” (Harder 2018; Nilsen 2015).

    Over the last 16 years of larping, I have learned a few things about my own general aftercare needs and patterns. Preparing for aftercare beforehand makes me feel better and more safe when I larp.

    I know that I usually have a strong need to write down my thoughts or story after the larp, so I make sure I’ll have time and equipment to do that. I also know that I often want to be alone or choose my company very selectively right after a game, so I usually book train tickets in the silent compartment where I won’t feel forced to talk with anyone. Even though I enjoy international larps, another need I usually have after an English larp is to speak my native Swedish, so another comfort is the ability to do that with other players or friends.

    Back home, I often make post-game playlists where I mix music related to the game experience with my own soundtrack, as a way to integrate the larp feelings in my own memory. I also generally have a need to indulge in the story told afterwards. For example, I spend lots of time in the participant Facebook group, starting lots of threads and sharing memories and experiences. It does help me to feel safe and really engage during a larp if I know there will be a possibility for me to have these aftercare needs met after the game is over.

    Most texts I’ve read on the subject of taking care of oneself emotionally after a larp naturally has a self-care focus. And while self-care comes first, and also is much more predictable and valuable to learn to do than waiting for someone else to take care of us (Dalstål 2020), I also want to share some thoughts about how to aftercare as a player ensemble.

    Here, once again, although many good articles have been written on post-play activities and debriefing, there is no one-size-fits-all. Cry it out, do physical labor, tell epic stories, cuddle pile, get drunk together, or dance the night away — any one strategy might be what someone needs and someone else really doesn’t. I assume the keys to good post-play is to base the activities on consent and opting-in, and not try to cast all players’ aftercare needs or wants into the same mould.

    two people cuddling with lights in their hands
    Photo by Matheus Bertelli from Pexels.

    One thing I want to advocate for, though, is to communicate about how we want the social contract to extend afterwards before we leave the game site. Maybe decide with co-players when and how we will talk the next time, and try to be open about it. For example, tell your co-players if you feel a need for some distance and to go back to your everyday life without engaging in post-larp discussions. Tell them if you are likely to be very emotional and want to connect a lot. It could be a good idea to talk with people you will be playing close with about your aftercare needs even before the game.

    I like the idea of sharing hopes and fears with one’s closest co-players or group before the game. A central part of building a safety to culture is finding trust to be honest and open about what we want to experience in a game and part of that is also communicating about what we fear will happen (Friedner 2019). Talking through the experience afterwards and reviewing those hopes and fears might also be a good debriefing exercise. Many of my larping friends have mentioned this in the context of playing evil or antagonistic characters. A common fear is that people will be afraid of or hurt by you out-of-character, and then it becomes even more important to get picked up and aftercared by co-players.

    Also remember that for many players the aftercare needs doesn’t come only two hours after the game, but two days or weeks later. For this reason I like the idea of assigning everyone debrief buddies, because they are a predictable extension of the social contract after the larp has ended that doesn’t depend solely on one’s own ability to reach out and ask for a check in.

    To summarize, I think aftercare is a collective, not just an individual issue. Leave the magic circle consciously and honor the Campsite Rule. If we make some shared efforts to make sure larp experiences integrate with the players in a positive and meaningful way, we build trust in the community and get more chances to be bold, brave, safe, and wonderful together. Let’s do that.

    two people cuddle on rocks looking at the sunset
    Photo by Arthur Brognoli from Pexels. Photo has been cropped.

    References

    Bindslet, Tobias, and Pernille Schultz. 2011. “De-Fucking.” Playground Magazine 2: 30-33.

    Bowman, Sarah Lynne. 2014. “Returning to the Real World.” Nordiclarp.org. Last modified December 8.

    Bowman, Sarah Lynne. 2020. “Solmukohta 2020 Keynote: Sarah Lynne Bowman – Integrating Larp Experiences.” YouTube. Last modified April 9.

    Bowman, Sarah Lynne, and Evan Torner. 2015. “Post-larp Depression.” Nordiclarp.org. Last modified on January 11.

    Dalstål, Elin. 2020. “Self Care Comes First: A Larp and Convention Policy.” Bold and Vulnerable. Last modified February 17.

    Friedner, Anneli. 2019. “The Brave Space: Some Thoughts on Safety in Larp”. Nordiclarp.org, Last modified October 7.

    Grasmo, Hanne 2011. “Take Care.” Playground Magazine 2.

    Greip, Julia. 2020. “Solmukohta 2020: Julia Greip – Safewords for Brave Spaces.” YouTube. Last modified April 9, 2020.

    Harder, Sanne. 2018. “Larp Crush: The What, When and How.” Nordiclarp.org. Last modified March 28.

    Nordic Larp Wiki. 2013. “Aftercare.” Nordic Larp Wiki. Last modified November 14.

    Nordic Larp Wiki. 2014. “Debrief buddy.” Nordic Larp Wiki. Last modified May 30.

    Nilsen, Elin. 2015. “A Beginner’s Guide to Handling the Knudeblues.” Nordiclarp.org. Last modified February 17.

    Q, Dan. 2008. “Savage Love Readers Talk About the Campsite Rule.” Scatmania. Last modified May 14.

    Cover photo: Photo by Samantha Garrote from Pexels. Photo has been cropped.

    Editing by: Elina Gouliou

  • On the Commodification of Larp

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    On the Commodification of Larp

    Written by

    Note: a French translation of this article appears at https://ptgptb.fr/marchandisation-du-gn

    This article explores the development of larp as an activity and a community in the face of a growing tendency of contemporary culture to become commodified. Through presenting the wider cultural setting of consumer culture and its impact on larp, the article proposes a variety of characteristics and developments that have lead to the commodification of larp. The author investigates the positive and negative influences of commodification on larp and questions whether this is a direction we wish to be taking as a community.

    In recent years, we have witnessed a definitive growth of the larp community and a growth in recognition of larp in wider culture as a legitimized activity. As larp begins to be more present in society, the wider culture also penetrates the social structures of larp as a community and an activity, one of the central outcomes of which is the commodification of larp. In this article, I discuss how larp is becoming commodified, what that means, and what the repercussions of this development are for specific events as well as the community at large.

    To begin discussing the commodification of larp, it is first important to define commodification. Commodification is the process by which an object, a behaviour, an interaction, or really just about anything becomes a commodity that we consume in the role of a consumer. Consumption is often mistakenly equated with buying or with accumulating material possessions, but the purchase of goods is only a small element of consumption, with the desires, values, and experiences that we interact with via an act of consumption taking a more important role. Consumption is an act of establishing one’s self, one’s agency, and one’s place in the world through a process of making choices and evaluating alternatives. It is at its core a relationship to the world: a power structure, in which the consumer appropriates the commodity. In this setup, commodification can be seen as the process of objectifying something with the aim of appropriating it. Such consumption-oriented logic largely penetrates contemporary Western society, forming what is often called consumer culture. The power structures of consumer culture emerge in previously non-commercial settings, such as citizenship, public services, local communities, and interpersonal relationships (following Slater 1997; Baudrillard 1998; Bauman 2001; Cohen 2003). I believe that such consumption-oriented logic is also seeping into larp.

    Larp has largely managed to ideologically exist on the outskirts of consumer culture, mainly due to its previously marginalized and almost hidden nature from the perspective of mainstream culture. Perhaps because of small budgets and a lack of existing blueprints for organization, larp has always been a very communal activity, in which everyone has been required to pitch in and thus literally create events together. This includes both the content of the larp itself as well as many of the practicalities surrounding event organisation. As larpers often stress, no one has a “lead part” in larp, but it is rather working together and supporting one another that is the main attraction of the activity. This allows for an extremely egalitarian power structure, as individuals co-create the performance together and thus share power, responsibility, and benefits.

    A commodified larp sees a change in the relationship between a larper and a larp, where the larper becomes a consumer that appropriates the larp as a commodity. The power structure shifts significantly, as larpers now relinquish their power to co-create in return for social legitimization, wider accessibility, growth, and development of larp as an activity. This is not a power structure that is necessarily consciously taken on, but one that is enacted through changed responsibilities and focus of engagement. In practice, commodification emerges through how we approach a larp, how we engage in its performance, and what we expect from the event as well as its participants and organizers.

    a treasure chest with many coins

    How is Larp Becoming a Commodity?

    I propose that there are a number of factors that have contributed to the commodification of larp. Firstly, I believe that media coverage as well as a wider acknowledgement of larp as an activity aids its commodification. In acceptance by the wider culture, we have inadvertently begun to be a more intertwined part of it. We naturally begin to take on forms of consumer culture, as this is what we have all been acculturated into. Media coverage is by no means a bad thing: it has helped larp gain a better standing in wider society, allowed for novel funding and collaboration opportunities, and eased access into the community. At the same time, however, media coverage helps to objectify larp (as I will elaborate below) and bring in a wide array of actors from outside the community, most often with profit-making aims. For instance, we now see larp-like events organized by companies run by individuals with little knowledge of larp. The most prominent example of this is Disneyland’s Star Wars: Galaxy’s Edge, the designers of which have taken on elements of larp to create interactive theme park experiences.

    Secondly, larp has seen a growth in interest toward it, which contributes greatly to the commodification of larp, as a growing demand requires us to reconfigure how events are organized and pushes us toward professionalization. If an event is geared toward hundreds of people rather than dozens, commodification becomes an issue of handling practicalities. Instead of communal cooking, it becomes more logical to hire catering; instead of having everyone clean up together, it is easier to pay a cleaning company; etc. Bigger larps also become more ambitious in terms of providing a more realistic experience, engaging detailed propping, make-up, lighting, machinery, and space construction to name a few. As Harviainen (2013) has explored in detail, any larp event requires management, even if it is not often acknowledged as such. Yet bigger larps require acknowledged professional organization for them to work.

    We can see a clear strive toward professionalization of larp through an influx of high-budget, high-production value larps, which have ironically been given a commodified name of “blockbuster larps.” These are often either directly based on or at least heavily borrow from popular media franchises, such as Harry Potter, Downton Abbey, X-men, or Hunger Games (on blockbuster larp, see Fatland and Montola 2015). In line with the common misconception of consumption as purchasing, it is important to stress that the commodification of larp does not go directly hand in hand with the professionalisation of larp. Hence, I do not believe that blockbuster larps are the cause of commodification so much as they are a symptom of the commodification already taking place. Nevertheless, the growing presence of blockbuster larps clearly supports further commodification of larp. Such larps take place in bigger and fancier venues, with large groups of staff and/or volunteers that take care of cleaning, catering, decorating, and propping. Consequently, the expectations for customer service rise, with larp slowly becoming more of a service rather than a communal experience. The large scale of production also raises standards and expectations for larp, as well as sets certain “procedures” for events, thus further objectifying the practice by solidifying the form larp should take.

    As larps become more and more professionally organized, the role of a participant diminishes in terms of any practicalities surrounding an event. It may seem silly to say that larp becomes commodified because we are less involved in doing chores, but such lack of physical engagement leads to less time forming bonds among participants and with the space that we interact in together. Similar issues can be seen in wider consumer culture, where we increasingly “buy back” our leisure time through convenience commodities such a microwave meals or cleaning services. We become seemingly free from chores, but we also lose touch with the materiality of our world and our ability to engage in it practically, as we no longer know how to create or fix many of the things that surround us (Frayne 2015).

    a pocket watch, treasure chest and many coins

    The attitude of diminished responsibility easily transfers from the practicalities surrounding larp organization to activities involving the content of the larp. For instance, while previously larps would assume for you to obtain your own costume, there is now a growing possibility to rent or buy ready costumes from organizers. Of course, organizer-provided costuming can in itself become a communal endeavour or help alleviate stress about high standards for props, yet such ”add-on services” do make it easy to just show up to the event without preparing much, without talking to other larpers, without taking the time to read up on larp materials. In the same way that we buy back our free time from practicalities, we seem to buy back our time from preparation for larp, making more “efficient use” of our resources.

    Many new participants may also not be fully aware of what they are signing up to and what they are expected of at events. This results in situations where more experienced larpers feel as if they are providing entertainment for those who only engage passively. This seems to be especially common for larps based on popular media franchises, as they attract fans wishing to purchase an experience of their favourite fantasy world. Of course, it is completely okay for newcomers to need an introduction to the practices of a new activity they are engaging in and it is the role of any community to mentor its new members, but this can become an overwhelming task when expectations clash violently.

    Thirdly, we are objectifying larp more and more, which makes it easier for larp to be commodified. The most obvious examples include things like “fan products,” such as t-shirts or patches that are now visibly present at larp events. The marketing of larps is also taking on new levels, with larps often having trailers, distributed print ads, as well as planned and timed social media communication plans (e.g., every week new information about a larp is revealed). On a wider level, larp also becomes the focus of various social media channels, such as video blogs, with individuals gaining the possibility to experience larp though photos and videos without actually being there.

    We can also see objectification in how our language is changing in regards to larp. For instance, larpers will now talk about “buying a ticket” to a larp rather than “signing up” to a larp. Larpers will also refer to events fulfilling intended experiences or expectations, as if they were purchasing a service. Language both reflects and influences our mindset and attitudes, pointing to the shifting nature of our relationship to larp.

    More subtle forms of objectification can be seen in the documentation of larp. It is now extremely common for larps to be photographed or even filmed. One of the defining aspects of larp has always been its ephemeral nature: it only exists while it is being performed, with its meaning emerging in the interaction among participants (Auslander 2008). In documenting these fleeting performances as much as we do, we begin to condense and fragment the live performance, freezing it in time to concretize its meaning. Larp now gains an objective truth to its experience, which can be revisited at one’s convenience. Documentation is further used for marketing purposes to sell tickets to larps, as well as to secure funding and expensive venues for future events. Such objectification can easily slip into repeatability of experience or even its mass production, which may cause us to lose creative and lively aspects of larp.

    A person's hands over a plant growing out of coins

    Fourthly and perhaps most importantly, commodification is driven by our own wish to be recognized and legitimized as a community and as an activity, which demands taking on power structures of consumer culture. This is especially visible in how we are organizing and communicating about larp. Larp is clearly becoming legally and financially much more organized, with various companies emerging that either organize larp events or help cater to them on some level. The foundation of companies has been explained by a need to get “ahead of the game,” which is completely understandable. With larp becoming more commonplace, many larpers rightfully fear that people outside the community will come in to create and take over a commercialized larp field. And we do see this happening, as I noted above. It is, however, unclear what it is that we fear they will steal from us. Money? Potential “customers?” The “brand name” of larp? Moreover, are we merely responding to an “outsider threat” or are we actually building larp into an activity geared toward efficiency and profit-making?

    In line with the above, there is a clear drive to make larp something to live on. Many individuals are striving to create jobs out of larp, with the formation of companies being the first clear step in that direction. While this is a noble idea, in practice we must face the issue of transformation of power structures and the nature of interaction within the larp community once certain individuals begin to profit from larp. This brings us back to the cultural context that larp exists as part of. In our society, work is seen as the ultimate form of status and legitimization, which leads to a setting, in which activities and individuals performing those activities are not seen as valid before they are made productive and profitable (Frayne 2015; Mould 2018). As a result, many fields that are not originally commercialized see a clear development towards “careerization” of practices, that is, the creation of careers out of non-work activities. This allows for legitimization, but comes with a multitude of psychological and community disrupting issues (see e.g., Seregina and Weijo 2017). When larp becomes a job, the power structure between organizer and player shifts from shared responsibility for creating to one of exchange of an objectified and potentially repeatable experience.

    Larp always has and always will involve a lot of labor. As Jones, Koulu, and Torner (2016) describe, this involves a variety of activities, such as emotional labor, labor aimed at fulfilling self-actualization off-game or in-game, and labor aimed at fulfilling physiological and safety needs. It is important to stress that labor is not the same thing as work. Work is a formalised type of labor, which is done for a producer in exchange for capital and the result of which is a commodity that can be exchanged for capital by consumers. Labor, however, can exist outside of a work setting and its power structures. Hence, in making larp work, we transform the nature and power structures around the labor done as part of it.

    Jones, Koulu and Torner (2016) further note how problematic the organisation, distribution, and acknowledgement of labor is in larp, as many tasks go unnoticed while others require very specific skills or resources. Building on this, in professionalizing larp, duties previously open to any member of the community may become limited to professionals of that specific field. Moreover, as skilled workers become booked for professional projects, they may not have time or energy for other projects, heavily skewing the ability to organize larp to those with more economic and social capital. Who will be able to do labor (both in-game and off-game) in larp in the future if larp continues to be commodified and professionalized?

    Bucket of coins

    The Impact of Commodification

    If larp is indeed becoming commodified, what kind of impact does that have on the activity and on our community? To begin with the positive impact, a commodified larp becomes much more widely accessible and approachable. More people are able to access information about events, and it becomes easier for new larpers as well as larpers with various accessibility needs to engage in the activity. Moreover, larp becomes much more recognized and legitimized by the wider culture, giving larpers much more social capital in terms of what they spend their time, money, and energy on, as well as allowing the activity to be taken seriously in wider society. Larp as commodity further allows us the individualistic freedom that comes with consumer choice: we become absolute sovereigns in deciding what we want to gain out of the experience and how. This allows for steering and personalizing experiences to be in line with our desires.

    Commodification goes hand in hand with raised standards and expectations, as well as formalization of structures and organizational practices. Standardized, formalized practices allow for safer, predictable spaces of interaction for participants, both in terms of how to act themselves and what kind of behaviour to expect from others. The result is larp with better protection from harassment and less stress about preparation and/or expectations. At the same time, in building on existing blueprints for creating and managing experiences, organizers gain better tools for designing larp and engaging in more ambitious projects.

    Reflecting the above, consumption was intended to be an avenue for individual freedom and equality, as all parts of culture now become supposedly accessible to all regardless of class or status (Slater 1997; Cohen 2003). In reality, in its focus on liberal freedom, consumption is inherently individualistic and classist, leading to alienation, collapse of communality, and growing differences between layers of society. Following this, a commodified larp becomes chained by the limitations of consumer culture. Such larp involves focus on personal experience and personal gain, which leads to a lack of attachment or perceived responsibility, with individuals merely drifting from fancy to fancy. In the long run, this can lead to the collapse of a sense of connection and communality, as larpers begin feeling alienated in their focus on their own experiences. With no obligations to others, larp slowly turns into just one of the many consumer experiences that can be purchased and consumed at one’s leisure. A community can still be born in such a setting, but it becomes a subculture of consumption (Schouten and McAlexander 1995) or a brand community (Muniz and O’Guinn 2001), where connections are built through our link to the same commodity rather than through our direct relationships to one another.

    person with wrench moving a large gear
    Power house mechanic working on steam pump by Lewis Hine, public domain.

    Standardization of larp brings many advantages, but it also causes larp to become objectified and thus easily repeatable. In other words, larp runs the risk of becoming a service that can be replicated on an assembly line, thus losing much of its improvisational, creative, and lively nature. Similar developments have taken place in many creative fields, such as design of public space and academic research. Mould (2018) describes how creativity as a practice in general has become commodified and commercialized in today’s culture, with only specific, capitalised forms of creativity being valid. In becoming formalized, larp becomes easy and efficient, but may also lose many of its creative aspects.

    Professionalization of larp and the resultant raising costs associated with larp further encourage growing class differences among larpers, with certain high-profile larps becoming inaccessible to those without economic means. While at this time there are larps requiring different economic investments (with many larps being low-cost or even free), it is important to acknowledge that the inaccessibility of certain parts of larp as an activity strongly shifts the egalitarian power structures within the larp community. In effect, some larp becomes upper class and other larp becomes lower class. While sponsor tickets do exist and are a noble cause, they further mark us as participants of a different nature and a different class. Such tickets are also often of little help to larpers with less economic means, as inaccessibility does not always rely on the cost of the larp itself, but is also associated with such things as travel, planning of the care of dependants, or time taken off work. Yet the sponsorship itself may come along with praise, freebies, or sometimes even guaranteed spots and preferred characters, further raising the status of sponsors.

    In light of growing interest toward larp, the activity may also develop into a scarce commodity and hence become more coveted, objectified, and high-class. Scarcity is a central tool of commodification (Slater 1997), as it makes commodities more desirable and thus fuels our need to consume, often making something feel in short supply within a fragmenting context of abundance. If some larps become accessible only to the few because of economic and social difference and the number of potential participants for each event grows disproportionately to the available spots, we face the increasing problem of how to choose participants fairly. The rejection and disappointment associated with not getting into events can break communality and create different classes based on social capital among larpers. Algayres (2019) shows that differences in social capital influence how we interact within larp and the extent to which we can influence the direction that a larp takes. Hence, by enforcing structures that strengthen class differences, we further a context in which individuals cannot engage on equal terms.

    We witness a continued drive for growth in larp, which is another clear symptom of consumer culture. A culture focused on commodification involves an incessant drive to grow and develop, yet for no other purpose than growth itself (Slater 1997; Baudrillard 1998). We are driven by desire for more, for something new, for something different, and this desire is never satiated (Campbell 1987). Reflecting this, we see a push toward making bigger larps, more expensive larps, more ambitious larps. And while there is nothing wrong with exploring and developing the creative boundaries of the activity, I sometimes wonder what the end goal of this growth is? Are we just caught in a capitalist frenzy for development?

    Lastly, commodification may lead to the exploitation of labor, especially in contexts where individuals involved in creating larp come in with a mixture of commodified and non-commodified perspectives toward larp. Making use of a background of communal event creation, many profit-oriented larp events only succeed through the labor of unpaid (and often overworked) volunteers. These volunteers are only paid in social capital or “exposure,” just like those working in already heavily commercialized creative industries (Mould 2018). Jones, Koulu and Torner (2016) propose that larp organizers need to rethink what is defined and proposed as work, what kinds of skills are necessary to organize or engage in larp, as well as who can be asked to do labor and to what extent within larp. As larp grows, we will see more and more instances of complex power structures around labor and possible exploitation of labor. Hence, we need to be aware of and reflect on how we will develop as a community and an activity.

    stacks of coins getting progressively taller

    Questioning Linear Development

    As I near the end of my article, I want to stress that the aim has not been to moralize or to spell out a better or worse form of larping. Consumption is beyond any moralization: it is in itself merely a form that a power structure can take. Commodification of larp further emerges as normal linear development of an activity within consumer culture and one that feels logical, as this is the way anything progresses in our world today.

    Commodification is structural, but it is also an internalized power structure and a logic via which we interact with objects, people, spaces, and the world. Whether or not a larp becomes a commodity is thus a matter of balance of structure and individual attitude toward larp and other larpers. As a result, I do not think it is possible to fully steer toward a commodified or non-commodified type of experience either as an organizer or a participant. Yet I believe we have a responsibility to be aware of how we potentially help along the process of commodification, whether we are for or against it.

    As I outlined above, commodification of larp comes with both positive and negative aspects. However, the positive aspects of commodification tend to mask the negative impact that it brings along, with many proponents of commodification arguing that the benefits outweigh or can be taken on without the drawbacks of this development. But commodification is always a packaged deal. It is foolish to think that commodified larp can be reaped only for its positive values and that it will not influence the community at large. Commodification has a long history of crushing anything in its way through firing up endless desire and an incessant need for growth until the entirety of an activity is set up to work for its purposes.

    What becomes important now is to become aware of the development that is happening and that we enable through our actions. One of the biggest issues that living in consumer culture has caused is the seeming impossibility to imagine any other form of existence. Yet in its roots at the margins of consumer culture, larp has the potential to provide emancipatory and utopian visions of alternatives (e.g., Kemper 2017; Bowman and Hugaas 2019; Hugaas and Bowman 2019). Let’s not squander that in hopes of being legitimized and normalized by a culture that will only use us up.

    We must question what commodification does for and to our community, and we must be aware of and ready to accept all the repercussions that come with our decisions. I do not think it is feasible for our growing community to exist in consensus of what larp is and how it should be approached. As a result, we will most likely see an increased fragmentation of our community and our practice. Some will think commodification is the right direction for development, while others will combat it. At the same time, I do not believe it is possible to fully stop the commodification process, as the wider context of consumer culture will continue to push our community into that framework. Larp will continue to develop, but we can set the tone to this development.

    coins in and outside of a heart-shaped container

    What we need to do is to try to imagine what we intend to see as the goal for our need to commodify and grow. We need to question the linear development that consumer culture provides us and think about what kind of future we want to carve out for larp. What will engagement in larp look like as an organizer and as a participant? How will we treat each other and larp events? What kinds of responsibilities will we have to ourselves and to others? Moreover, what will accessibility look like? Will we exist among increasing economic, social, and cultural inequalities? Will we see a juxtaposition of upper class and lower class in larp? Who will be able to participate and how?

    Furthermore, we must strive to understand why we want to develop larp into a certain direction and whether the outcomes of such a development are what we really want to end up with. Why do we strive for more social acceptance? Why do we aim for higher production value and better marketing? Why do we want more media coverage? Who will profit and what will it cost? As we begin to give up our power as co-creators of larp experiences, who are we giving power to? And how will they wield it?

    References

    Algayres, Muriel. 2019. “The Impact of Social Capital on Larp Safety.” Nordiclarp.org. Last modified October 29.

    Auslander, Philip. 2008. Liveness: Performance in a Mediatized Culture, London: Routledge.

    Baudrillard, Jean. 1998. The Consumer Society, London: Sage.

    Bowman, Sarah Lynne, and Kjell Hedgard Hugaas. 2019. “Transformative Role-Play: Design, Implementation, and Integration.” Nordiclarp.org. Last modified December 10.

    Bauman, Zygmund. 2001. ”Consuming Life.” Journal of Consumer Culture 1, no. 1: 9-29.

    Campbell, Colin. 1987. The Romantic Ethic and the Spirit of Modern Consumerism, Oxford: Basil Blackwell Ltd.

    Cohen, Lizabeth. 2003. A Consumers’ Republic: The Politics of Mass Consumption in Postwar America, New York: Knopf.

    Fatland, Eirik and Markus Montola. 2015. “The Blockbuster Formula – Brute Force Design in The Monitor Celestra and College of Wizardry.” Nordiclarp.org. Last modified May 6.

    Frayne, David. 2015. The Refusal to Work: The Theory and Practice of Resistance to Work, London: Zed Books.

    Harviainen, J. Tuomas. 2013. “Managerial Styles in Larps: Control Systems, Culture, and Charisma.” In Wyrd Con Companion Book 2013, edited by Sarah Lynne Bowman and Aaron Vanek, 112-124. Los Angeles: Wyrd Con.

    Hugaas, Kjell Hedgard, and Sarah Lynne Bowman. 2019. “The Butterfly Effect Manifesto.” Nordiclarp.org. Last modified October 20.

    Jones, Katherine Castiello, Sanna Koulu, and Evan Torner. 2016. “Playing at Work: Labor, Identity and Emotion in Larp.” In Solmukohta 2016: Larp Realia and Larp Politics, edited by Kaisa Kangas, Mika Loponen, and Jukka Särkijärvi, 125-134. Helsinki, Finland: Ropecon ry.

    Kemper, Jonaya. 2017. “The Battle of Primrose Park: Playing for Emancipatory Bleed in Fortune & Felicity.” Nordiclarp.org. Last modified June 21.

    Mould, Oli. 2018. Against Creativity, London: Verso Books.

    Muniz, Albert M. and Thomas C. O’Guinn. 2001. “Brand Community.” Journal of Consumer Research 27, no. 4: 412-432.

    Slater, Don. 1997. Consumer Culture and Modernity, Oxford: Polity Press.

    Schouten, John W., and James H. McAlexander. 1995. “Subcultures of Consumption: An Ethnography of the New Bikers.” Journal of Consumer Research 22, no. 1: 43-61.

    Seregina, Anastasia, and Henri A. Weijo. 2016. “Play at Any Cost: How Cosplayers Produce and Sustain their Ludic Communal Consumption Experiences.” Journal of Consumer Research 44, no. 1: 139-159.

    Editor: Elina Gouliou

    Photo selection: Kjell Hedgard Hugaas, All photos free use from Pixabay.

  • Transformative Role-Play: Design, Implementation, and Integration

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    Transformative Role-Play: Design, Implementation, and Integration

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    Role-playing has the potential to have profound transformative impacts on participants. Over the years both personally and professionally, we have received hundreds of stories from players who have experienced dramatic expansions in their worldview, their understanding of others, and their ability to affect change in the world around them as a result of role-play. In our own backgrounds, we can both point to several role-playing experiences that have altered the course of our lives as a result of the realizations and interpersonal connections resulting from them. The sheer number of people interested in implementing role-playing and simulation as tools for education, empathy-building, and skill training attests to the methods’ potential potency (Bowman 2014a). Whether through virtual play, tabletop, or larp, role-playing can change people’s lives for the better when participants are open to expanding their perspectives.

    Following our Butterfly Effect Manifesto (2019), we believe that the insights gained from role-playing can become powerful tools to help participants become more self-aware, process “real life” experiences in a community that feels safe, and transform their lives and the world around them for the better. When role-playing achieves any of these goals—whether in subtle ways or with greater magnitude—we call these instances transformative experiences. However, in our view, the role-playing experience itself is only truly transformative if it impacts the participant’s life in some meaningful way after the event. Thus, while an experience may feel transformative in the moment, the integration of that experience is the wider-reaching impact that we are most interested in cultivating. In other words, for a complete transformation to occur, the impact should expand beyond the bounds of the original experience and integrate into one’s daily frames of reality and identity.

    bufferfly on a petal drinking water

    We propose that although transformative effects might occur—and certainly do occur—by chance or as a result of intuitive choices that designers and participants make, we can seek to maximize the potential of such impacts through intentional design, implementation, and post-event integration. We argue that designers and players who wish to maximize the potential for transformative impacts should consciously and transparently focus on the following goals throughout the entirety of the process:

    1. Establishing a clear vision explicitly detailing the desired impacts,
    2. Providing environments that feel safe, and
    3. Offering structures and resources for post-event integration at the end of play.

    While this article focuses mainly on design and implementation, individual players also can use these suggested approaches independently to increase the likelihood of undergoing transformative impacts from any given role-play experience.

    Before we proceed, we should note that careful consideration and implementation of these concepts and processes will not ensure a transformative impact will take place. Experiences vary from person to person and event to event. However, we believe that the more intentional the choices that designers and organizers make in accordance with these principles, the more likely at least some participants will experience a profound shift in their sense of self, perspective, or agency in the world. We strongly recommend that designers and organizers explicitly state their goals before and after the experience in order to create a deeper sense of investment, increased trust with the participants, and clearer focus upon these impacts for everyone involved.

    Finally, we believe that informed consent and safety should be at the forefront of this design philosophy. In other words, we trust players to judge for themselves the extent to which they feel comfortable leaning into certain types of content or experiences based on their own emotional, psychological, and physical thresholds. While growth often involves facing our own resistance to change, we do not advocate for pushing participants beyond their limits. Therefore, while we believe that transformative impacts should always be at the forefront of design and implementation choices, concerns about safety and consent are inextricably linked to creating a secure-enough container for such experiences to transpire.

    Below are some suggestions for how to intentionally and systemically design for transformative impacts, followed by some examples from our own design backgrounds.

    woman in space holding a galaxy in her hand

    Designing for Transformative Impacts

    When seeking to design for transformation, the first step should be establishing a clear vision explicitly detailing the desired impacts upon participants. Although additional categories likely exist, we propose the following impacts, which fall under four broad groups: Emotional Processing, Social Cohesion, Educational Goals, and Political Aims. Note that designing for certain types of impacts—such as therapeutic aims—may require advanced training, consultation with experts, or increased safety measures.

    Emotional Processing

    Social Cohesion

    • Increasing empathy
    • Teamwork
    • Leadership
    • Holding space
    • Conflict resolution/Transformation
    • Prosocial communication
    • Perspective taking
    • Collaboration/Co-creation/Cooperation
    • Building understanding
    • Exploring intimacy/Relationship dynamics
    • Exploring community dynamics

    Educational Goals

    • Intrinsic motivation
    • Content exposure/Mastery
    • Promoting active engagement
    • Self-efficacy/Perceived competence
    • Multitasking
    • Problem solving
    • Scenario building
    • Creative thinking/Innovation
    • Critical thinking
    • Skill training
    • Understanding systems

    Political Aims

    We recognize that any such list can never contain every possible impact that a role-playing experience can invite and any single design can likely only address a few of these aims. Our goal is to provide a concrete tool that enables participants to make conscious choices during the design and implementation processes.

    Practical Implementation

    As one gets further into the design process, a number of choices are made that can affect the transformative potential of a role-playing experience. Some examples are the setting, format, game structure, practicalities, mechanics, character concepts, safety tools, workshops, and debriefing structures. Conscious implementation is key if designers seek to maximize the potency of these potential impacts.

    While choices relating to the larger structure of the game — such as concept, setting, and format — can have a clear influence, in this article, we will limit our focus to the categories of Safety, Workshops/Debriefing, and Character Design.

    Safety

    Feeling safe to stretch beyond one’s comfort zone without exceeding one’s boundaries is called a growing edge in personal development. Implementation requires creating a secure-enough container for participants to feel that they can surrender into the experience and feel held in the process by the facilitators and co-players. Some recommended structures for intentionally designing safer spaces include:

    * The process by which sign-up lists are screened for players whose previous actions have marked them as either unsafe (red flag) or on watch (yellow flag) by the organizers.

    ** For example, casting players who have a good reputation for providing safe and consensual play in the more sensitive or antagonistic roles.

    orange kitty looking in a puddle and seeing a lion reflected back

    Workshops and Debriefing

    We believe that designing for transformative impacts requires creating an intentional framework for transitioning into and out of the game frame. This framework can include steps for establishing: a sense of communal trust, a shared reference point for the game’s themes, explication of the game’s transformative goals, methods for expressing preferences for play, safety culture and tools, and norms around communication of participant and organizer needs. Workshops before and during the game can help to achieve these goals. Debriefing after the game can aid in the transition back to the frame of daily life.

    With these goals in mind, we have constructed the following suggestions for workshopping and debriefing activities:

    Pre-game

    • Safety briefings and practicing tools
    • Trust building exercises
    • Establishing character relations
    • Explaining game mechanics/tools
    • Practical/Logistical briefings
    • Contextualization discussions*
    • Pre-game consent negotiations
    • Discussing or playing backstory scenes

    Mid-game/Breaks

    • Calibration discussions or exercises
    • Narration of events occurring between acts
    • Mid-game consent negotiations
    • Contextualization discussions*
    • Self-care or downtime for participants
    • Co-player care or emotional processing
    • Organizer care

    Post-game

    • Structured or informal debriefing
    • De-roling or formalized shifting from character to player
    • Contextualization discussions*
    • Narrativizing events taking place after the game, or Epilogues
    • Integration practices (see below section)

    * One important step that is often overlooked in design is contextualization, which can take place at any stage during the off-game periods of role-play. For example, in the larp Just a Little Lovin’, which is about HIV/AIDS in the 1980s, the organizers provide contextualization sections during the workshops before and after each Act break. Contextualization helps the group filter their experience through the lens of the larger social context within which it takes place, an especially important step for role-plays that feature historical, personally sensitive, or politically-charged content.

    Character Design

    Much of the transformative potential of role-playing lies in the character design, particularly in the relationship between the character and their player. Whether the character is designed by the organizers, by the participants, or both, several considerations are important to keep in mind during character creation and enactment:

    • Strong alibi vs. Weak alibi: How much responsibility do players feel that they have for their character’s actions?
    • Close to home vs. Far from home: How close are the characters to the players’ identities and experiences?
    • Fictional vs. Autobiographical: How close to a player’s actual life events is the character’s story?
    • Deep character immersion vs. Light role-play: How deeply, intensely, or seriously are players expected to immerse into their character?
    • Fantastical abilities vs. Mundane: Do the characters and setting have fantastical qualities or are they representative of social realism?
    • Personal themes vs. Unfamiliar concepts: Are the themes relatable to the players or are the themes new to them?
    • Bleed management – Maximization vs. Regulation: Does the game intend to maximize the potential for bleed or attempt to regulate it?
    • Existing social dynamics vs. Constructed: Do the interactions mirror ones familiar to the participants’ lived experiences or are they unique constructions?
    • Playing with strangers vs. Playing with familiar people: How well do the players know one another?
    • High status vs. Low status: How much status and responsibility do the characters have in relationship to one another?

    As with any of these implementation considerations, we cannot be certain that a particular design choice will lead to a transformative impact. For example, we cannot assume that playing a character similar to the self with a particular set of emotionally-charged life circumstances that the player finds relatable will inevitably lead to bleed or deep insights about one’s daily self. However, we find it important to recognize that certain design choices can influence the way in which a character is experienced by the player and the potential impacts those experiences may have on the person moving forward.

    boy sitting as he disintegrates into pixels

    Facilitating Integration

    The discussion about “when a role-play ends” is ongoing. Some players argue that play ends when the organizers decree that players should drop character. Others consider the processing that players undergo in the days, weeks, months, and even years following an event to also be part of the experience. Extreme views posit that a role-play ends the moment the last person to participate passes away, as all living memory would have passed with them. For our part, it seems evident that many external and internal processes do not end the moment that play does, which means that these processes have the potential to lead to a transformative impact if the participant sufficiently integrates insights gleaned from the role-play into daily life.

    Thus, we believe that conscious implementation of integration practices after a role-play is crucial to support these transformative changes. Integration is the process by which players take experiences from the frame of a game, process them, and integrate their new awarenesses into their self-concept or the frames of their daily lives. Integration can range from small observations that shift one’s worldview to large-scale changes in identity or the structure of one’s life after the experience.

    Below are examples of integration practices in which players may engage on their own initiative or guided by organizers. In an attempt to provide structure, we propose the following six broad categories: Creative Expression, Intellectual Analysis, Emotional Processing, Returning to Daily Life, Interpersonal Processing, and Community Building.

    Creative Expression

    Some players choose to integrate their experiences by creating new works of art, including:

    • Journaling
    • Studio art
    • Performance art
    • Game design
    • Fiction writing
    • Storytelling
    • Co-Creation

    Intellectual Analysis

    Players may also engage in cognitive processing where they seek to analyze their experiences on an intellectual level, including:

    • Contextualization
    • Researching
    • Reframing experiences
    • Documentation
    • Theorizing
    • Applying existing theoretical lenses
    • Reflection

    Emotional Processing

    Participants often find valuable the ability to emotionally process their experiences, either individually, one-on-one, or in a group setting:

    • Debriefing
    • Reducing shame
    • Processing bleed
    • Ego development/Evolution
    • Individual or Group therapy
    • Validating own experiences
    • Identifying and acknowledging needs/desires/fears
    • Identifying and acknowledging Shadow aspects
    • Distancing identity from undesirable traits/Behaviors explored in-character

    Returning to Daily Life

    On a psychological level, participants sometimes find a variety of practices useful in helping them transition from the headspace of the game frame to that of their daily lives and identities:

    • De-roling
    • Managing bleed
    • Narrativizing role-play experiences
    • Distilling core lessons/Takeaways
    • Applying experiences/Skills
    • Engaging in self-care/Grounding practices
    • Transitioning between frames of reality
    • Incorporating personality traits/Behaviors

    Interpersonal Processing

    Some participants find social connections important after a role-playing experience, which helps them transition from the social frames of the game to their off-game interpersonal dynamics:

    • Connecting with co-players
    • Re-establishing previous social connections
    • Negotiating relationship dynamics
    • Sharing role-playing experiences with others
    • Engaging in reunion activities

    Note that some role-play experiences can dramatically shift a player’s interpersonal life, e.g. romantic bleed leading to a daily life relationship, new friendship groups forming, etc. Other times, existing relationship dynamics may help players ground back into their daily life while the new experiences from role-play are being integrated and processed.

    Community Building

    Some players take the lessons learned in role-playing further, deciding to create or transform the communities around them:

    • Networking
    • Planning events
    • Collaborating on projects
    • Creating new social systems
    • Sharing resources and knowledge
    • Establishing safer spaces
    • Creating implicit and explicit social contracts
    • Engaging in related subcultural activities
    • Evolving/Innovating existing social structures

    These lists are not intended to be exhaustive and no participant is likely to wish to engage in all of these activities after role-playing. However, our goal is to provide a framework for designers, organizers, and players to use in order to intentionally integrate their experiences into the flow of their lives after an event.

    Woman with a red leather jacket blowing magic dust from her hands

    Examples of Designing for Transformative Impacts

    We shall now discuss ways in which we have designed for transformative impacts in our own work to provide concrete examples of how one might consider this process from start to finish.

    In the larp Epiphany (2017), co-written with Russell Murdock and Rebecca Roycroft, Sarah Lynne Bowman included concepts from White Wolf’s Mage: the Ascension within the framework of a weekend-long spiritual retreat. Epiphany invited players to enact characters who were quite similar — in some cases, nearly identical — to their daily selves. These characters were designed in collaboration with the organizers; players detailed which personal content they wished to explore through an extensive questionnaire, which the writers translated into a character sheet. While the characters had magical abilities, the goal of the larp was for players to explore their own spiritual and philosophical beliefs and share their personal perspectives and practices with one another within the fictional framework. This goal was explicitly stated in the first paragraph of the design document, meaning that players knew they were explicitly opting-in to close-to-home, personal play:

    The setting is a weekend self-help Epiphany Retreat where adults learn how to access their inner potential. Over the course of the larp, mentors will guide initiates through an Awakening into their own magical power through a series of classes and rituals. Participants will socialize and discuss metaphysical principles with one another as they learn to expand their consciousness and personal power. The goal of Epiphany is to play characters similar to ourselves that explore issues of philosophical paradigm, empowerment, and enlightenment. (Bowman, Murdock, and Roycroft 2017)

    This slippage between character and player allowed some participants to explore aspects of themselves within the frame of the larp that led to insights and even life changes after the event was over. The larp featured: safety mechanics, consent negotiations, a post-larp Reflection Hour where participants could make art, write, or contemplate their experience, formal debriefing, and informal sharing in the Facebook group and chat after the event. These aspects of the design were intended to establish a secure enough container for players to lean into exploring growing edges within themselves through the frame of the game and character, while also giving participants tools to process and integrate those experiences after the event. For an example of such processing, see the documentation piece by Clio Yun-su Davis, Morgan Nuncio, and Jen Wong. Documentation itself can be an important integration process for participants, along with journaling, story writing, and other forms of creative output.

    Another quite different example is how Kjell Hedgard Hugaas and Karijn van der Heij are in the early design stages for a larp called The Mountain, inspired by the song of the same name by Steve Earle. Set in a small mining community in American coal country, the larp centers on a mining accident that captures the world’s attention and promises to change the way of life in the sleepy town forever. While the expected participants are likely to be mostly middle class and quite politically progressive, the characters that populate the town are almost exclusively working class conservatives. As such, The Mountain aims to educate the participants on a subject matter that is most likely unknown to them, broadening their understanding of actions taken by people that they perceive as being very different from themselves, and increasing their understanding of the lived experiences of others.

    In order to achieve these aims, the larp leans heavily on concepts and structures that are already familiar to the participants, such as family, romantic love, shared dramatic/traumatic experiences, and so on. By applying these already familiar concepts, the designers hope to create a sense of belonging that allows for emotional connection and intensity to occur even in a somewhat unfamiliar setting for the participants.

    By allowing players to connect with experiences far from their own, the larp’s intended impacts are to increase empathy, promote prosocial communication, and build cross-cultural understanding. Additionally, by highlighting the oppressive systems that underpin the setting on both a social and a political level, the designers aim to raise awareness, promote political activism, and build bridges across a deep political divide. Thus, The Mountain will focus upon several transformative impacts in one larp experience, while still providing a tightly focused narrative concept and setting.

    person standing on rocky ledge gazing toward a portal with light emanating from it

    We’ve Only Just Begun…

    Although role-playing is enjoying a Golden Age at the moment, we believe that our communities have only begun to scratch the surface of the potential of the medium. While we acknowledge that desiring to role-play for entertainment is an entirely valid motivation, we seek to provide tools for participants to use role-playing experiences as a means to transform themselves and the world around them in positive ways. We look forward to what the future will bring in terms of role-play design, innovation, and integration.

    Selected Bibliography

    Below are a few recommended resources to consider when designing for transformative impacts and building safety structures. We also suggest joining the Facebook group Larping for Transformation for more discussion.

    Algayres, Muriel. 2019. “The Evolution of the Depiction of Rape in Larp.” Nordiclarp.org. Last modified May 20.

    Algayres, Muriel. 2019. “The Impact of Social Capital on Larp Safety.” Nordiclarp.org. Last modified October 29.

    Andresen, Martin Eckoff, ed. 2012. In Playing the Learning Game: A Practical Introduction to Educational Roleplaying. Oslo, Norway: Fantasiforbundet.

    Beltrán, Whitney “Strix.” 2013. “Shadow Work: A Jungian Perspective on the Underside of Live Action Role-Play in the United States.” In Wyrd Con Companion Book 2013. Edited by Sarah Lynne Bowman and Aaron Vanek, 94-101. Los Angeles, CA: Wyrd Con.

    Bowman, Sarah Lynne. 2010.The Functions of Role-Playing Games: How Participants Create Community, Solve Problems, and Create Community. Jefferson, NC: McFarland & Co.

    Bowman, Sarah Lynne. 2014a. “Educational Live Action Role-playing Games: A Secondary Literature Review.” In The Wyrd Con Companion Book 2014. Edited by Sarah Lynne Bowman. Los Angeles: Wyrd Con.

    Bowman, Sarah Lynne. 2014b. “Returning to the Real World: Debriefing After Role-Playing Games.” Nordiclarp.org. Last modified December 8.

    Bowman, Sarah Lynne. 2015. “Bleed: The Spillover Between Player and Character.” Nordiclarp.org. Last modified March 2, 2015.

    Bowman, Sarah Lynne. 2016. “A Matter of Trust – Larp and Consent Culture.” Nordiclarp.org. Last modified February 3.

    Bowman, Sarah Lynne. 2017a. “Active Imagination, Individuation, and Role-playing Narratives.” Tríade: Revista de Comunicação, Cultura e Midia 5, no. 9 (Jun 2017): 158-173.

    Bowman, Sarah Lynne. 2017b. “Immersion into Larp: Theories of Embodied Narrative Experience.” First Person Scholar. Last modified March 8.

    Bowman, Sarah Lynne, Russell Murdock, and Rebecca Roycroft. 2017. “Epiphany: A Mage: the Ascension Larp Design Document.” Google Docs. Last modified December 12.

    Branc, Blaž, et al. 2018. Imagine This: The Transformative Power of Edu-Larp in Corporate Training and Assessment. Edited by Michał Mochocki. Copenhagen, Denmark: Rollespilsakademiet.

    Brown, Maury. 2016. “Creating a Culture of Trust through Safety and Calibration Larp Mechanics.” Nordiclarp.org. Last modified September 9.

    Brown, Maury. 2017. “Safety Coordinators for Communities: Why, What, and How.” Nordiclarp.org. Last modified April 17.

    Brown, Maury. 2018. “Safety and Calibration Design Tools and Their Uses.” Nordiclarp.org. Last modified November 29.

    Clapper, Tara. 2016. “Chasing Bleed – An American Fantasy Larper at Wizard School.” Nordiclarp.org. Last modified July 1.

    Davis, Clio Yun-su. 2019. “Writing an Autobiographical Game.” Nordiclarp.org. Last modified September 11.

    Davis, Clio Yun-su, Morgan Nuncio, and Jen Wong. 2018. “Epiphany – A Collaborative Mage: the Ascension Larp.” Nordiclarp.org. Last modified February 1.

    Davis, Clio Yun-su, Shayna Cook, and Lee Foxworthy. 2018. “Walking the Talk: Working Disability into Gaming.” Roundtable at Living Games Conference 2018. YouTube. Last modified August 16.

    Fatland, Eirik. 2013. “Debriefing Intense Larps 101.” The Larpwright. Last modified July 23.

    Harder, Sanne. 2018. “Larp Crush: The What, When and How.” Nordiclarp.org. Last modified March 28.

    Hugaas, Kjell Hedgard. 2019. “Investigating Types of Bleed in Larp: Emotional, Procedural, and Memetic.” Last modified January 25.

    Hugaas, Kjell Hedgard, and Sarah Lynne Bowman. 2019. “The Butterfly Effect Manifesto.” Nordiclarp.org. Last modified August 20.

    Kemper, Jonaya. 2017. “The Battle of Primrose Park: Playing for Emancipatory Bleed in Fortune & Felicity.” Nordiclarp.org. Last modified June 21.

    Kemper, Jonaya. 2018. “More Than a Seat at the Feasting Table.” Nordiclarp.org. Last modified February 7.

    Koljonen, Johanna. 2016. “Safety in Larp: Understanding Participation and Designing For Trust.” Last modified September 18.

    Leonard, Diana J. and Tessa Thurman. 2018. “Bleed-out on the Brain: The Neuroscience of Character-to-Player Spillover in Larp.” International Journal of Role-Playing 9: 9-15.

    Mendez Hodes, James. 2018. “Best Practices for Historical Gaming.” Jamesmendezhodes.com. Last modified November 12.

    Montola, Markus. 2010. “The Positive Negative Experience in Extreme Role-playing.” Proceedings of DiGRA Nordic 2010: Experiencing Games: Games, Play, and Players.

    Nilsen, Elin. 2012. “High on Hell.” In States of Play: Nordic Larp Around the World. Edited by Juhana Pettersson. Helsinki, Finland: Pohjoismaisen roolipelaamisen seura.

    Paisley, Erik Winther. 2016. “Play the Gay Away – Confessions of a Queer Larper.” Last modified April 15.

    Simkins, David. 2015. The Arts of Larp: Design, Literacy, Learning and Community in Live-Action Role Play. Jefferson, NC: McFarland & Co.

    Stark, Lizzie. 2012. “Mad About the Debrief.” Leaving Mundania: Inside the World of Larp. Last modified October 22.

    Cover photo: Photo by Stefan Keller, Kellepics on Pixabay.

    Edited by: Elina Gouliou

     

  • The Impact of Social Capital on Larp Safety

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    The Impact of Social Capital on Larp Safety

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    Introduction

    This article is partially a complement to the recent ”The Brave Space” opinion piece, but is more generally fueled by long standing discussions regarding status and social dynamics in larp communities, both at the local and wider international scale. It represents my opinion alone and does not mean to establish a universal truth regarding these issues. I will first present a definition of safety and expand it using the notion of zone of proximal development, an education theory proposed by Lev Vygotsky. I will then reintroduce the notion of social capital to argue why imbalances of power between participants should be taken into account while discussing safety and player negotiation of boundaries. I conclude with the idea that you can’t discuss a culture of trust without addressing social capital and the imbalances of power between all people involved.

    The Ideal Purpose of Safety

    Safety techniques as they exist at the time of this writing provide means to both opt-out of sensitive issues of scenes or to opt-in to certain types of play. Furthermore, communication around safety has become essential to establish the role and positioning of the larp organization on safety and inclusion of all players. We can admit that talk of safety mostly focuses on opting out mechanics, such as clear author statements with explicit trigger warnings, safewords, white zones, stating boundaries, etc. However, opt-in mechanics also exist, such as the signal light colors (red/yellow/green), okay check-in, pre-scene negotiations, opt-in color ribbons, and the more recent zoning, which creates opt-in spaces within the physical space of the larp. While the possibility to calibrate opt-out and opt-in is obviously central to giving participants the opportunity to experiment and step out of their comfort zone, each participant has different needs and boundaries in that regard.

    Women cheer and clap for a smiling white man
    Photo: Laflor for Getty Images/iStockphoto.

    In education, Vygotsky’s zone of proximal development (Harland 2003) is considered the ideal space to learn. The zone refers to the space between the comfort zone of what you already know and a yet unattainable zone where the difficulty would discourage or overwhelm you (see Figure 1). We can apply this frame to understand how players can develop skills in larp, such as speaking in public, brawling, handling sensitive issues or emotionally charged conflicts, and even intimacy or sexual scenes.

    Let’s keep in mind that the zone of proximal development is unique to each individual, in the same way as triggers and boundaries are (Brown 2014). As in education, if a player stays too much in their comfort zone, they might miss the opportunity to grow, experiment, and learn. And in larp, some people explicitly prefer to stay within their comfort zone for a variety of reasons, such as escapism, socialization, or love of a certain genre, all of which are absolutely valid. Furthermore, pushing someone out of their zone of proximal development too quickly can be damaging to the players’ development by forcing them to engage with problems that they are not ready for or that could be triggering for them. Brown (2014) especially underlines how triggers exist on a wide spectrum, and how they can be detrimental to their player’s whole experience and impact the player’s agency.

    Therefore, the core idea is that you need a solid comfort zone before you can expand it. The scope of your zone of proximal development is completely personal and calls for personalized handling. Another educational parallel can be drawn here with the notion of scaffolding in education, where progress is built through progressive steps, support from educators, and interactions with other learners. Applied to larp, in order for a person to feel brave and explore out of their comfort zone, they need to feel safe and supported by their environment, which is not a given in larp communities for many players.

    graph of embedded circles demonstrating the zone of proximal development between what a person can do, can do with help, and cannot do Figure 1: The Zone of Proximal Development. Figure by Dcoetzee (CC0).

    There is no denying that larp can provide powerful transformative experiences. Jonaya Kemper (2017) coined the term emancipatory bleed to reflect on the process of steering towards a specific type of play that would reflect one’s own life experience of oppression. Players should be allowed the opportunity to steer towards that kind of play, and designers can support emergent play along those lines. However, how can we support transformative play and exploration while still ensuring safety for those players who most need it? This question usually brings up issues of consent, pre-game or in-game negotiation, and personal boundaries.

    We are Not Equal in Setting Boundaries and Tone

    In the international larp community, we usually remind participants that the players are more important than the game, make sure that enthusiastic content is given and can be revoked at all times, and support negotiation and opt-in mechanisms. Our goal is to build a collective culture of trust. However, to build such a culture, we need to be able to negotiate it as equal participants. I don’t believe that every negotiation and every discussion is carried on an equal footing.

    Games going through reruns and several iterations can sometimes be played more violently or intensely from one session to another. Framing the game experience with hard limits or requirements for consent negotiations in such a way that it sets up cohesive boundaries for the whole experience remains an organizers’ prerogative. However, I would contend that the collective level of intensity is also influenced by the players through their collective interactions. Since we tend to take cues and ideas from other players, I believe that participants are unequal in influencing the tone and intensity. Outspoken participants with a wider comfort zone can influence the game atmosphere more, sometimes for the better, by inspiring others and creating unexpected interactions.

    On the other hand, a single or small group of participants who decide to play for their own agency and to disregard the collective buildup of the game can just as easily derail the tone and cohesion for the whole larp. These are rare occurrences where the domino effect can negatively impact the experience of many players (Bowman 2017). My previous article (2019) on the depiction of rape scenes in larps showed how the introduction of scenes featuring sexual violence used to be the province of a dominant group who used it for power play. Only the introduction of restrictions and safety regulations enabled the minority group — women players in this instance — to refuse playing these scenes if they were not negotiated. Further down the line, we found women participants were willing to play rape scenes for dramatic purposes or to support intense narratives because they feel empowered to choose to do so. This empowerment, though, was entirely contingent upon a corrective intervention upon the social imbalance that had originally prevented these players from voicing their discontent. Thus, safety culture was the crucial thing that allowed these women to feel comfortable to play this content.

    Social Capital in Larp

    Social capital is a notion popularized among others by Pierre Bourdieu as the product of resources conferred due to integration into a certain network and the capacity to act in society (Siisiainen 2003). The chart below illustrates social capital as an aggregate of these resources that allows an individual access to favors or greater resources.

    chart showing how social capital is fed by various aspects of status such as reputation, accomplishments, etc.
    Figure 2: A synthetic representation of social capital (Algayres 2019).

    Since larp groups or organizations are part of society, they are also prone to the same biases that affect us in daily life. Although efforts have been made to support the integration of minority or marginalized groups in larps, some players still accrue social capital by virtue of being or passing for white, straight, cis-, or because of their class and education level. Another major point in the international context is their mastery of English, which will confer advantages to native English speakers and players from countries where English proficiency is especially high, as well as highly educated and internationally-integrated professionals. Finally, social capital as we will discuss it is also dependent on larp-specific criteria: being geographically anchored as Nordic, clout as an organizer and/or larp theorist, visibility on social media, participation at international larp conferences and conventions, playing high status characters, and involvement in high-profile games with a lot of hype.

    I would claim that larpers with higher social capital are in a position to influence their co-players’ choices or leverage their own desires when boundaries are negotiated. Has anyone ever been accidentally pushed out of their comfort zone for fear of missing out certain parts of the game or the opportunity to hang out with this cool larper they’d read a lot about? Could peer pressure and “hardcore larp culture” ever push some people to willfully step out of their zone of proximal development because that’s what a “good larper” would do? I would contend that this can happen, and that it is very easy to be blind to your own social capital, as it can intersect with other forms of oppression. For example, as a woman, I have to contend with sexism and have even been the subject of sexual violence. However, since I hit almost every other marker of status, I have often been in situations where I benefited from my higher social capital and I was sometimes blind to it to my own detriment. I believe it is important for us to acknowledge our own degree of social capital and how it may influence our relative abilities to push play in our desired direction. It is also important for us to listen to people with lower social capital when they request greater safety culture around sensitive topics.

    Regarding the Creation of Safe Spaces and Trust Culture

    I think that safety must be used both as a way to opt-out and opt-in of specific themes and scenes. However, safety also has been used to protect minority groups and players with specific triggers and limits from play that would be oppressive to them, and is especially beneficial to players with lower social capital (Kemper 2017). In larp scenes where safety was introduced more recently, resistance to safety techniques usually comes from the more dominant and entitled groups of players. These groups sometimes feel that safety techniques are not necessary because they feel safe enough not to need them. They may have sufficient trust and familiarity within their local communities of play to feel safe without negotiation, which is a form of privilege that is not afforded to many in the international larp community, who may enter larps without the benefits of established group trust. Only active communication by the organizers compensates for this imbalance of power between groups that feel confident to play without safety rules and those who need to be sure of the implementation of safety structures before they will even sign up for the larp. In other words, players with this social capital privilege may not realize that lack of safety culture in a larp may be actively dissuading players from marginalized backgrounds from ever signing up, which further contributes to issues of inclusion in the international larp community.

    A person feels excluded from a group of people who appear to be talking badly about them

    I don’t believe we can discuss expanding our boundaries, reducing the need for scene negotiations, or exploring out of our comfort zones without taking into account imbalances of social capital, influence, and power. Discussion around opt-out safety was once framed around the protection and benefit of marginalized groups and players most in need of it. I would therefore wish for discussions around trust culture to be built around this issue: how can we build a trust culture that will above all benefit players with the lowest social capital and the greatest need for it?

    I hope that we will develop tools that can enable players to explore and expand their comfort zone. However, when we develop these tools, we should measure their value on how much they actually empower those with the lowest social capital and facilitate a sense of psychological safety. I believe that our capacity to build a collective sense of trust will only be as big as our capacity to compensate for these imbalances and support all players to feel safe doing so.

    References

    Algayres, Muriel. 2019. “The Evolution of Rape Depiction in Larp.” Nordiclarp.org. Last modified on May 20, 2019.

    Bowman, Sarah Lynne. 2018. “The Larp Domino Effect.” Nordiclarp.org. Last modified on February 14, 2018.

    Brown, Maury Elizabeth. 2014. “Pulling the Trigger on Player Agency.” In The Wyrd Con Companion Book 2014, edited by Sarah Lynne Bowman. 96-111.

    Kemper, Jonaya. 2017. “The Battle of Primrose Park: Playing for Emancipatory Bleed in Fortune & Felicity.” Nordiclarp.org. Last modified June 21, 2017.

    Harland, Tony. 2003. “Vygotsky’s Zone of Proximal Development and Problem-based Learning: Linking a Theoretical Concept with Practice through Action Research.” Teaching in Higher Education 8, no. 2: 263-272.

    Siisiainen, Martti. 2003. “Two Concepts of Social Capital: Bourdieu vs. Putnam.” International Journal of Contemporary Sociology 40, no. 2: 183-204.

    Cover photo: FreeImages.com. For illustrative purposes.

    Content editing: Elina Gouliou