Nordic Larp

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  • Design for young adult players: The relevance of designing for hope, agency and inclusion

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    Design for young adult players: The relevance of designing for hope, agency and inclusion

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

    As larp communities evolve, it becomes increasingly important to consider how we include young adults (12-18 years old) in our communities and at our larps. This article explores how larp designers can design larps that span generations and include young adults as co-creators and peers in the design and play processes. The article’s approach is practice-based, utilized at Østerskov Efterskole as well as at our mythical fantasy larp campaign Fladlandssagaen (Denmark 2006-, Eng. The Flatland Saga), which means that its tools and insights are created in a Danish context. The article touches upon themes such as accessibility, connections, workshops, hopeful narratives, and presents practical strategies to empower young adult (and new) players and provide safe spaces for self-exploration. It emphasizes the relevance of designing for hope, agency, and inclusion for young adult players as well as integrating and respecting popular young adult tropes and themes.

    A young adult-only scenario or an intergenerational larp

    The first step in the process is to determine whether the larp you are designing is targeted towards young adult players only, targeted to young adult players with the possibility for other age groups to participate, or if it is intended as part of an intergenerational larp, for example including children, teens, and adults. Different formats offer different advantages, and all have merit – being aware of this from the outset will clarify your needs as an organizer. 

    Larps for young adults only can be comforting and empowering. To play alongside peers at a similar level creates a safe space wherein they can explore and be braver than they would normally be. In addition it builds a strong bond with peers they can mirror. Playing in an intergenerational larp can help build relationships across age groups, expand one’s perspectives on life and forge an understanding of hopes and dreams for the future no matter what the participant’s age is. Regardless of the format, when designing a larp with young adult participants in mind it can be an advantage to include a co-organizer or consultant who is a young adult themselves to make sure their experiences and perspectives are included in the design of the larp. Your format and the age gap among players will need to be considered when you help your players calibrate, understanding their responsibility in relation to each other, together with your larp’s themes and meta-techniques.

    Off-game accessibility

    We The Lost (2024). Photo by Luka Safira Søndergaard. Larp preparations. We The Lost (2024). Photo by Luka Safira Søndergaard.

    When you have chosen your format, it is important to reflect upon how to make it possible for youths to

    participate in your larp, both economically and practically; young adults typically have less spending power than adults with stable income and they usually have less experience with the practical aspects of attending a larp, such as coordinating transport and costume. If possible, try to find ways to make the larp accessible for low-income players. This could for example take the form of lower ticket prices for specific target groups, or easily accessible (or low requirement) costumes. You can also have a designated person who is visible and easy to contact if they have any practical questions or problems, or design your larp so that every group has an experienced player who has the offgame responsibility to coordinate the group and its members; just make sure they know how to give space and agency to the group’s young adults.

    You should also take the implicit knowledge one gains from earlier larp experiences into account when designing and communicating with young adults. Some in the target group might be just entering the community, and it can be challenging to find information and navigate the scene without connections who have knowledge of how larps are structured. Here it can be beneficial to consider whether you communicate on the appropriate social platforms, whether there are social connections you can engage with to help spread information about the larp, and whether the materials you develop are presented in language that is both accessible and relevant to young adults.

    If you have an age limit for the larp, make it clear why the limit is set where it is, whether exceptions or accommodation are possible, and what expectations exist for the young adults in relation to other age groups. For instance, do they have additional responsibilities toward children in the game, or are there types of play they are not allowed to join because they are intended for adults?

    Familiarise yourself with the player group

    When designing a larp aimed at young adults, especially if you are not part of that age group, it is often beneficial to immerse yourself in media, stories, and life experiences that resonate with them. This helps you to understand the narrative conventions, themes, and tropes they are familiar with. If you are unsure where to begin, the best step is to find someone within the age group and ask for their guidance to get started. This could be a family member, a student, a friend’s child, or someone from your local community. Ask them questions about which media they consume, which social media they are on (and how they work) and how they prefer to be part of a story when they larp, and let them provide examples from their own life.

    Creating meaningful narratives

    An essential part of developing a young adult larp is crafting the narratives so that it is clear and transparent what the stories are about, which outcomes the players can experience when they interact with them, and how they can follow the plotlines. Surprises and unexpected revelations are of course welcome, but it is crucial that players feel they can trust the designers – that they will not be tricked or exposed if they fail to understand something, especially when the designers are from outside the target audience. This is particularly important because designers often hold greater social power and influence within our communities.

    Some designers favor larps that teach young adults about life’s darker sides: about the political challenges of our world, injustice, and how one can do everything right and still lose. While it is undoubtedly important to engage with and learn about the realities of our world – especially issues like the climate crisis, famine, wars, and systemic injustices, most of the young adults I design with and for are already acutely aware of how much darkness exists. Many of them feel a profound sense of helplessness, believing there is little they can do to make a difference. As designers, it is not enough to simply highlight the darkness. We have a responsibility to design in a way that conveys hope, that creates spaces of possibility, that demonstrates how even small actions can hold value in a larger context, especially when we design with and for young adults. Of course, we can use dark narratives and themes in our designs, but then we should balance it with aspects and plotlines that show that factors like age, gender, or background need not be barriers to making an impact, give the young adults self-confidence, teach them how to handle real-life situations and give them trust that they can make a real change in the real world. Therefore, we have a duty to design for hope and agency.

    Themes, characters and relations through workshops

    Often, our larps end up revolving around themes such as identity, self-discovery, tension between duty and freedom, relationships and responsibilities, together with social and ethical dilemmas. Essentially these are all themes involving choices and changes that the young adults in our community like to explore. These themes challenge players to reflect on morality and consequences, allowing their characters to win or lose something meaningful without any real-world repercussions for the player. For some, larps with these themes become a mirror, a transformative experience in which they can see themselves more clearly, and then use their experiences as guidelines for the direction of their lives. Especially if you include a debriefing wherein the players can reflect, by themselves and collectively, upon the shared experience of the larp.

    When we use these themes, one of our recurring tropes involves young adult characters who see the world as it really is, not as they are told it is, and who strive to challenge authorities to change the status quo or the adults’ pessimistic worldview. This provides an alibi to practice speaking up, standing one’s ground, collaborating, and forging paths forward.

    In addition, we write characters for young adults in which they act as protectors, leaders, explorers, healers, teachers, or gatherers; the characters have clear goals and believe they can influence the world around them together. These characters are connected to qualities like empathy, wisdom, strength, ingenuity, courage, and hope, giving players agency and opportunity to influence the larp and its outcomes without being hindered by their age or existing knowledge. We give their characters something to stand up for, even when all seems dark. This gives them an alibi for action, something to fight for.

    To support this, we focus heavily on workshops aimed at building strong relationships between the player characters. Every character is integrated into multiple group dynamics to ensure they have several connections if one set of relationships fails to generate meaningful play. Furthermore, we typically create four core relationships: one with a best friend, one with a nemesis, one sharing a common dream, and one sharing a common fear. This layered approach ensures characters are deeply embedded in the world, with clear, impactful roles that empower young players to explore and affect the story meaningfully.

    Thoughtful use of clichés in your design

    Some seasoned larpers speak negatively about clichés and stereotypes, not because they did not at first enjoy them, but because they have seen them repeated across numerous larps and therefore end up dismissing them as a sign of “lazy design”. While the frustration of encountering a trope or narrative element you have experienced many times before is understandable, I find that clichés hold value and have their merit as design tools. I’m not advocating for their exclusive use, but thoughtful clichés that are incorporated and embedded in your design do have their worth. Why?

    Clichés create an accessible and recognizable entry point for players to step into and explore the larp, by making it easy to decode the structure, story, and roles through shared cultural references among designers and players (even though there are different clichés in different cultures and age groups). They can work like a gateway into the larp and immersion by giving players predetermined patterns of actions, role developments and opportunity spaces that players know from other media. They can use these in the larp without doubting whether they are playing “correctly” or fearing being judged by the rest of the players.

    Through the familiarity of the cliché, players have a safe platform from which they can choose to follow, challenge, or even break the stereotype when they feel ready. Overall, clichés can help free up the player’s mental energy so they can use it on engaging with the larp and getting to know the rest of the players, as well as working on being confident in the medium itself. When designed right, clichés give new players access while older players can be reminded of their first encounter with them and experience the bittersweet nostalgia of reunion. Clichés you use should be empowering, intriguing, slightly quirky, or familiar, and used to develop the characters, narratives, and experiences you offer. Avoid those that do not align with the larp’s ideals and values, ensuring you do not compromise your vision by recycling harmful stereotypes that maintain toxic beliefs and behaviours.

    We The Lost (2024). Photo by Helle Zink. We The Lost (2024). Photo by Helle Zink

    Clear activities, groups, and functions

    Clear activities with tangible consequences and rewards serve as fallback options for those inexperienced players who may feel less confident, are overwhelmed by choices, or lack energy to take active initiative in the larp. These could include puzzles, smaller quests, brief blackbox scenes, or other elements that still support the goals of their groups and characters but require less initiative and larp know-how. We use this in our designs because many experience fluctuating energy levels and even though they deeply want to be part of the play, they have not yet developed larp endurance to play a full day of larp without breaks. Well-defined activities make it easier to navigate those situations, since they are just as meaningful and helpful for the rest of the team if one decides to influence the plots, develop relationships with others, immerse themselves in their character’s inner emotions or to take a break. To support this, when a player has an in-game ​​responsibility, they share it with at least one other player. This way, one can take a break without feeling guilty about the possibility that it hinders the rest of the play. Important responsibilities often have an non-player character (often shortened as NPC) attached, in case both players need to take a break or need to reflect upon what the next right move is, so the players know that someone has their backs if they find themselves in deep water.

    In some larps it can be a great option to use role models as clear examples of how to play and portray roles, showing the players what to do. If you have two or more opposing factions, it works well when the adult role models clearly show how one could choose to play. This works best if you train the role models to switch between standing behind the participants, giving them the confidence to take center stage, and taking center stage themselves to drive the story forward when the players need guidance. It is often interesting to let the role models disappear during the larp, losing their power or giving the important positions to the players. For example, the mayor could be forced by the players to arrange a new election and lose, or the leader of one clan could die in an attack from another, so the young ones need to step up and take charge.

    To make sure that the young adult players feel real freedom to choose their larp experience and take needed breaks, we articulate clear expectations, objectives and success criteria as a framework for them to play and navigate in. We measure success in initiative and participation, based on the good enough attempt rather than focusing on the perfect performance with the right in-game outcome. For example, it would be enough to take part in a ritual, opposed to running one, or to dare to act politically in front of the others, as opposed to ending up as the mayor.

    To emphasize this, we design our stories so that the characters only face consequences in-game that their players understand off-game. If the players somehow do not understand the consequences when played out, we make time, space and alibi to reflect and to help them with what they can do next, if needed. These framings are crucial, as without them some feel pressured to prove themselves to others to feel validated, or out of fear of not being welcome at a larp again.

    The best way to help the participants when their energy levels fluctuate and they need a break, is to not make a big deal out of it and just give them time to get to a place where they are able to rejoin the larp. A designated break room is a good way to explicitly communicate that it is okay to take a break during the larp. Players may, rightfully or not, worry that taking too many or long breaks can result in them losing touch with the narrative of the larp. To remedy this problem it may be beneficial to structure the larp in acts with clear endings and beginnings, possibly with planned breaks in between so that players as well as organizers can recharge. These bookend scenes can then be used to summarize the act, and ensure that everyone is on the same page, as well as provide a natural point at which to rejoin the action!

    Let us start the talk

    There is a gap between children’s and adult larps. To bridge this gap and seriously work on the integration of young adults in larp communities, it is crucial to take their experiences seriously and make them feel involved as teenagers. To do so, we must take active steps to include the next generation by initiating dialogue, and that includes having some difficult discussions about the communities we have built. Some of the questions we should ask ourselves and each other are:

    • Could we lower the age limit of an event from 18 to 16?
    • Could our larp events include less alcohol?
    • Is it necessary to include this adult-oriented theme?
    • How do we talk to and about young larpers?
    • How do we address the topics, themes, and narratives that captivate younger audiences without ridiculing them or being dismissive of their fascination?
    • Which themes can young adults and adults explore together? Which are adult only themes, and which themes can youth play on without adults?
    • How do you communicate with young adults so they feel involved, being at eye level with the rest of the play and being respected as human beings?

    Healthy, growing, and stable communities require ongoing integration of young and new people who, with passion and vibrant energy, feel at home among the older and more experienced players, and who dare to both be a part of the communities and to challenge the pre-existing canon so we can evolve together.

    We have a responsibility to make it easy and safe for young (and new) people to become part of our community, and we have the power to make it happen. To include these new larpers we must design for hope and agency, using larp to tell stories that make them confident that they have a voice to be heard and choices to make in this world.

     

    Ludography

    Fladlandssagaen (2024): Denmark. The organizer team of Fladlandssaga.

    Tin Soldiers (2024): Denmark. The Blackbox Project Liminal.

    We The Lost (2024). Denmark. Østerskov Efterskole’s study trip scenario. 

    Østerskov Efterskole (2024): Denmark. The Larp School, Østerskov Efterskole.

     

    Editor 

    Elin Dalstål.

    Reviewers

    Gijs van Bilsen, Laura op de Beke, Maya B. Hindsberg, Mathias Oliver Lykke Christensen, Paul Sinding, and Rasmus Lyngkjær.

    Young consultants

    Asta Hansen, Artemis Torfing, Eva Fernandes, Frida I. L. Grøfte, Nicolai Lindh, and Sam Hvolris.

     

    This article is republished from the Knutepunkt 2025 book. Please cite it as:
    Høyer, Frederikke S. B. 2025. “Design for young adult players: The relevance of designing for hope, agency and inclusion.” In Anatomy of Larp Thoughts, a breathing corpus: Knutepunkt Conference 2025. Oslo. Fantasiforbundet.

    Cover image: Larp photo from the blackbox larp Tin Soldiers, played during Project Liminal (2024). Photo by Kalle Hunnerup. Photo has been cropped.

  • The Emotional Core

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    The Emotional Core

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    Sometimes in larps – and I suspect this happens to most of us – I get bored and disconnected. When this happens, I’ve noticed what I need is usually not more to do, but to get better in touch with what I feel about the game. Before I start looking for something to happen – I need to start by looking for something to care about. 

    This has led me to the idea of the emotional core. I think of it as something that makes me as a player care, which helps to emotionally connect my character to the story. With a clear emotional core in place, my character has something that matters to them. It can provide a sense of purpose or a feeling of connectedness with the game – both for my character and for myself as a player.

    In rhetorics, the presence of an emotional core would be part of the art of pathos – appealing to the audience’s emotions. Of course, there are many ways to do this. Some people tend to go there with a more-is-more approach and find it through heavy themes and big drama – dragons, disasters, damsels in distress. Some go for a less-is-more approach, where intense emotions are built around mundane themes, like conflicts in your friend group or intensely hoping your crush likes you back. Either approach can create deeply meaningful stories, because they matter to the players and the characters present.

    Without an emotional core, though, it is easy as a player to simply not care, but to feel bored and disconnected. Then, an intense pressure-cooker story turns into boring “dry-larping”, and a truly epic story ends up feeling like telenovela-style melodrama.

    Emotional core – the who, what and where

    Compared to other designable surfaces of a game, what I find interesting about the emotional core is that it is internal to the players, and thus something the designers have limited control over. This is one thing that separates it from the theme, setting and plot of a game. As emotions are inside our heads, emotional core content is usually found in the internal conflicts of a larp, while a plot more often focuses on external conflicts.

    When I write a speech and consider how to use pathos to appeal to the audience’s emotions, I can make assumptions about what will make these specific listeners care about what I’m saying (loud or silent, overdramatic or understated), as well as decide what emotions I want to invoke in my audience (guilt, fear, hope, trust, anger etc). In the same way, larp designers can give conditions for an emotional core to appear in a number of ways – by themes, plot, conflicts, the characters and their relationship to each other, and by making sure every character has something meaningful to do that connects them to the story of the larp. But just like I as a speaker can’t control which emotions (if any) my audience feel while listening to me, larp designers can’t fully control what emotionally connects each player to the story of their larp.

    The emotional core doesn’t necessarily have to be the same for all players of the same larp. 

    Sometimes, this varies between players in the same game, and that is fine. It can however also be an area where players get very out of sync with each other in frustrating or unintentionally comical ways – like someone dying from an overdose while their friends have a serious argument about the benefits of different kitchen appliances.

    This is where the emotional content grid comes in. The idea of it is to provide a tool for understanding the emotional core in a game. In this article, I use it to analyse how different larp designs can provide different kinds of emotional core content. It might also be used by designers to communicate what kind of larp you’re making, or by players to figure out your preferred playstyle and find others with similar preferences. 

    The content axis – what is going on?

    The content axis is about how light or heavy the emotional core content of the larp is. Will the internal conflicts of this larp centre around things like “does my crush like me back?” or “how do we deal with slavery and torture?”. 

    The emotional core content is not the same as the setting, theme or external conflict of a larp. Different larps can have the same theme (eg. a search for love) and external conflicts (eg. who will end up with who?), but different positions on the emotional core content axis will decide if these are played out as a dark dystopian fight for survival, a social realist critique of the patriarchy or a lighthearted romantic comedy where everyone gets a happy ending.

    Contrasting the emotional core content with the setting or theme can also be a really interesting design choice, like in Our Last Year where I spent the last hour on earth mending my character’s sore relationship with her teenage daughter. Here, lighter emotional core content (human connections and search for meaning) became more powerful when combined with the heavy setting (waiting for the pending apocalypse). 

    Different positions on this axis will likely appeal to different players, just as different rhetorical strategies appeal to different audiences. As a designer it is, however, good to communicate to your players where your larp is placed on this scale.

    The emotional realism axis – how does it feel?

    This axis is about what level of realism the emotional themes are handled with. Is the violence frightening and realistic like in a Nordic noir tv drama, or symbolic and theatrical like in an action movie? A position on this axis can be created through communicating an intended degree of realism – like if “my whole family were killed by orcs” will be treated as a character alibi for being alone and carrying a sword, or a source of deep trauma.

    Emotional realism can be approached using both a high degree of realism, and wysiwyg (What You See Is What You Get) aesthetics, or by using meta-techniques and mechanics. This is not about how a larp looks, but about how it feels to play it. And while some players might find these to be connected (like having an easier time to immerse in a character if they’re in a 360 environment), they are not the same thing.

    The emotional realism axis connects to what Andie Nordgren describes as high/low resolution larping, which is defined by the detail level of the interactions. In a high resolution playstyle, we can use subtle gestures like looks, pauses and small shifts in tone to enact a conflict in an emotionally realistic manner. A low resolution playstyle requires conflicts to be acted out with bigger brushstrokes and more theatrical gestures, like obviously snide remarks or a full blown bar fight, in order to be recognised as a conflict by the co-players. It subsequently requires less realistic simulation mechanics, so that the bar fight can be enacted without anyone getting hurt.

    This is, once again, an area where different design choices will be suitable for different games, and where players have different preferences.  In this article, Mo Holkar and Monica Hjort Traxl discuss the “sexiness-level” of different sex mechanics, and their consequences when it comes to different aspects (feelings, looks, accessibility) of the larp. A game with high emotional realism is more likely to contain some degree of unsimulated physicality and simulation mechanics chosen to feel real. On the other hand, a game with low emotional realism might have simulation mechanics chosen based on whether they look good, or which are completely symbolic.

    To me, this also seems to be a somewhat common source of conflict between players, like when more realism-oriented players accuse theatrical-oriented co-players of “over-acting” or treating emotional scenes as slapstick, while more theatrical-oriented players might find it uncomfortable to immerse in realistic feelings like sadness, anger, affection or arousal.

    Many ways to make it work

    Sometimes, the axes of the grid are directly connected to each other – the heavier and darker the content, the more immersive and realistic the violence. But they certainly don’t have to be, and it seems possible to make intensely emotional games in all the different quadrants. Let me give some examples:

    A classic genre of larping – the boffer fest larp – is one good example of heavy content, theatrical playstyle. These battle larps are usually centered around wars and battles, but the main appeal of them is that it is fun to play war with your friends. This works because they generally treat heavy content like wars in a low-realism way, where battles are played out as joyful boffer fights with lots of abstraction mechanics involved.

    Larp campaigns like Krigshjärta or Granlandskampanjen have tried to bring more Nordic-style elements like higher realism, heavier content and more grimdark oppression into this genre – but to get the players onboard they still have to compromise with the idea that while war is awful, it should also be entertaining to play. My friends’ war stories from these games are usually adrenaline-filled anecdotes from fights, or happy retellings like “I cried in mud a lot and had an epic death scene” – the emotional core is usually about getting to be an action hero, or antihero.

    Hurt soldier getting help away from the battlefield at Krigshjärta 9 Hurt soldier getting help away from the battlefield at Krigshjärta 9. Photo by Johan Nylin.

    Another category of larps that would fall into this category are the high-abstraction ones. At Beasts We Fight Against, we played hospitalised children, who had learnt to talk about their cancer as a beast within themselves. While the narrative of this larp was about children battling cancer – what we did in practice was to switch between the beasts doing abstract representational dancing, and the children painting with crayons and exchanging small talk. In this way, we could find the emotional core in a story about a heavy theme, without it turning realistic or melodramatic.

    Many Nordic-style larps seem to fall in the category of heavy content, high emotional realism. These might be games like Nocturne, The Circle or Snapphaneland, combining heavy themes like sexual violence, manipulative cults, oppression and racism with high-realism mechanics. Players of this kind of larps often seem to talk about “type two fun”, and the emotional core often seems to be around the catharsis of feeling strong negative emotions within a safe framework. 

    I am personally very fond of light content games, and had an eye-opening experience at Klassefesten when it ran at Prolog in 2012. The game is about teenagers forming cliques, having popularity contests and making out. I ended the larp comforting the crying birthday girl, feeling lonely and left out as all my friends were hooking up on the dance floor. This opened my eyes to the power of light content larps, and not having to turn the heavy content level up to max to get an emotionally fulfilling experience.

    The scenario format lends itself well to meta-techniques and mechanics which could make the game more abstract and symbolic, but simultaneously create alibi which helps the players immerse more in their characters’ feelings and thus get a stronger emotional realism. For example To the Bitter End, which follows a couple through their cycle of meeting, falling in love and breaking up, does this by giving the players action-cards (like “give your partner a pet name” or “make unreasonable demands”) to play out. I’ve played it a few times with results ranging over a spectrum from low-realism romantic comedy to heart-wrenching realistic drama. 

    My own scenario As Long as We Don’t Tell Anyone is even more mechanics-heavy and abstract, with the GM giving the players new and limiting instructions every few minutes. The content of the game is light and mundane – two people with a complicated relationship that they can’t really talk honestly about. The abstract mechanics however seem to help the players focus on the emotional core of the game by exploring a lot of different aspects of this relationship (casual flirting, deep talks, restrained longing, rejection, dreams and fears), which often creates vulnerable and intense stories. 

    I recently played Fragment of a Novel, which deliberately placed itself high up in the far left corner of the grid, as a light content, high realism game. It centered around a group of young people celebrating a school break together, and was designed as a very wysiwyg game with close-to-zero simulation or off-game calibration techniques. It was so lifelike that it was an almost meditative experience, which built immersion and a strong connection to the characters slowly over multiple days. This provided me with a mundane, yet intense, emotional core in moments like the satisfaction of finishing a drawing, the love felt while peeling potatoes together, or the adrenaline rush of a first slow dance.

    Fragment of a Novel, polaroid photo taken in-game by Carl Nordblom. Fragment of a Novel, polaroid photo taken in-game by Carl Nordblom.

    Melodrama and hyperbole – when it doesn’t really work

    Sometimes, being out of sync with co-players or the design in regards to this grid, seems to create negative experiences. I’ve for example at multiple occasions heard players complain about others taking serious or heavy content (rape, war, drug addiction etc.) too lightly, creating an understated effect. This can on the one hand become hyperbolic and silly, like the sandbox fantasy games of my early teenage years which were full of orphans threatened with being married off to old men, demon cultists performing ritual sacrifices, murderous orcs, happy hookers and sexy slaves. On the other hand,it might also become hurtful and offensive, as when some players’ real life trauma becomes entertainment or misery-tourism for others. 

    I’ve – unfortunately on a few different occasions – had other characters subjecting my character to sexual violence by quickly initiating it without checking for consent first. This seems like something that happens much easier in games with a theatrical playstyle or low degree of emotional realism – as it is easier to introduce a scene like this if your emotions don’t step on the brakes. I definitely suspect that if violence felt more like violence and sex felt more like sex, my co-players would have gotten the feeling that “wait, stop, this is really icky” and been better at slow escalation and checking for consent. 

    I’ve also experienced pretty bad cognitive dissonance at larps where player groups have different ideas on where to place themselves on the theatrical-realistic scale, or on how heavy and gritty the violence should be. Like a disturbing public execution scene right before the troops are about to leave for boffer o’clock – Are we still the heroes? Or the villains? Are we supposed to react negatively to this or cheer? Or similarly, a few co-players barging in, throwing someone on the table and shouting for medical help in the middle of some simmering low-key emotional drama.

    Conclusion

    I believe that the emotional core of a game is an important designable surface, and something to consider for both players and designers. Just like when building pathos in general, there are many ways to achieve it, and the “best practice” will depend a lot on the larp and the target audience. Hopefully, the grid could help provide a bit of an explanation to why some will find a scene deeply meaningful, while it will look bleak and boring to co-players, or why one player’s satisfying emotional drama feels hyperbolic and over-dramatic to others. At least, I’ve discovered that finding my own personal preferences on the grid is helpful to find which larps and co-players I will easily vibe with, and which ones I won’t.

    References

    Holkar, Mo and Monica Hjort Traxl. 2017. “What does it mean when sex is sexy?“ Nordiclarp.org 2017-02-03.

    Nordgren, Andie. 2008. “High Resolution Larping – Enabling subtlety at Totem and beyond“. In Stenros and Montola (red) Playground Worlds, Solmukohta 2008.

    Ludography

    Angelico, Adrian, Anne Marie Stamnestrø (2019), Emilia Korhonen, Petra Katarina (2022). Nocturne.

    Fragment of a Novel. Atropos. 2024.

    Friedner, Anneli. As Long as We Don’t Tell Anyone. 2021.

    Granlandskampanjen (campaign, 2008 – 2018)

    Grasmo, Tyra, Frida Sofie Jansen, Trine Lise Lindahl. Klassefesten. 2012.

    Göthberg, Rosalind, Mimmi Lundqvist, Alma Elofsson-Edgar. Snapphaneland. 2022.

    Karachun, Masja, Zhenja Karachun, Olga Rudak, Nastassia Sinitsyna. Beasts we fight against. 2017.

    Krigshjärta (campaign, 2006 – present)

    Our Last Year (Reflections larp studio, 2019)

    Skriver Lægteskov, Louise, Stefan Skriver Lægteskov, Jofrid Regitzesdatter and Troels Barkholt-Spangsbo. The Circle. 2024.

    Stark, Lizzie and Bjarke Pedersen. To the Bitter End. 2019.

    Cover image: Image by Pexels from Pixabay.

     

  • Workshop Design: A Guide

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    Workshop Design: A Guide

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    Workshops are a staple of many Nordic larps, playing a crucial role in preparing participants to step into their roles, engage with the narrative, and collaborate effectively. While learning is a central aspect, workshops are more than just an educational prelude to the game; they are spaces where boundaries are negotiated, skills are honed, and the magic circle of the larp begins to take shape. 

    Designing a workshop, however, requires a different set of tools than those used in larp design. Here, the focus is on learning outcomes rather than narrative, and on facilitating participants’ transition into the fiction of the larp. 

    This article serves as a guide for designers, outlining a series of steps that will take you from the initial idea to the final plan for a learning design. While the focus is on workshops, a complete learning design often incorporates other formats, such as briefings and exercises (see “WEB: Workshop – Exercise – Briefing“). The steps described here can be applied to the entire learning design process. They are, however, particularly useful for workshops, which require more intensive design effort and work. In this context, a workshop is defined as: 

    “An interactive and co-creative session focused on participants’ hands-on interactions” 

     Step 1: Examining the participants’ needs 

    The first step in creating a learning design that aligns with your vision and the narrative framework of your larp is to consider what the participants need in order to play it.

    To guide the process of identifying these essential elements, there are three key aspects to focus on:

    • What participants need to know
    • What participants need to create
    • What participants need to do
    The key aspects
    The key aspects– diagram by Nór Hernø

    Knowing: 

    The knowledge you require the participants to have needs to match the learning outcome of your design. Is there any foundational knowledge they must have to engage meaningfully with the larp? This could include everything from safety mechanics to character memories, or the social dynamics of the setting. 

    Creating: 

    Consider what aspects of the larp you want the participants to contribute to and have ownership over. Creating together fosters co-ownership, and by allowing the participants to generate elements of the larp, there is a good chance they will be more personally invested and have an easier time remembering those design elements.  

    However, be mindful of the limitations: There are things that you may not want the participants to create. For example, they may design aspects of their characters and relationships, but you might want to ensure that the framework and key narrative elements remain under your control to maintain coherence with your larp design. 

    Doing: 

    You can facilitate how the participants start to larp, work together, act and interact with each other, and feel safe doing so, through your learning design. This can be both explicit and implied: 

    Explicit: You might need the participants to have specific skills or take certain actions. For example, if your larp includes tasks or jobs, you can create a learning design that explicitly teaches the participants to do it. 

    Implicit: You might want the participants to have a certain behavior, for example if your larp emphasizes a specific form of interaction or mood, you can model the participants’ behavior implicitly through your design, by having them do the workshops in a certain way or by implementing themed tools like music, photos, directed movement patterns, etc. 

     Create a list, mind map, or whatever feels right for you, of the elements necessary for the participants to play your larp. If you already have specific ideas you want to include in your learning design, add them to this brainstorm too. 

    Step 2: Sorting your ideas 

    The next step is to start sorting through the brainstorm and ideas, considering the relevancy of the elements, determining if they can be combined, and identifying which formats best support the learning outcome you want from your design. The article “WEB: Workshop – Exercise – Briefing” covers the three learning formats, as well as a model for visualizing the balance between them. 

    Do this sorting however you prefer. For example, if you have created a list, underline the most important elements and add their relevant learning formats. Alternatively, if you have done a mind map, grab some coloured pens and start circling. 

    Sorting your brainstorm, focusing on synergies and learning formats
    Sorting your brainstorm, focusing on synergies and learning formats– diagram by Nór Hernø

    “Know” might be better supported with a briefing, “do” may play a greater role in exercises and workshops, and “create” is often a central element of workshops. However, this is not always the case. You might be able to integrate several elements of knowing into a workshop – for example, knowing the social dynamics of the setting, a shared cultural action, and so on – if it overlaps with what the participants need to create and do. 

    When you have finished this sorting process, you will know what needs to be planned (briefings and exercises) and what needs to be designed (workshops). 

    Step 3: Finding inspiration 

    When you are aware of what kind of workshops you need to support your larp, you can start designing them. Luckily, you don’t have to start from scratch, as there are countless places you can draw inspiration from, including: 

    • Other workshops: Examine workshops, both for larps and not, you have experienced, which have been successful in similar contexts. Think about what they consisted of, how they facilitated learning, and what kind of atmosphere they created. 
    • Other people: Conversations with other larp designers, facilitators, or participants can be a valuable source of inspiration. Ask others how they design specific workshops, what their favorite workshops and -tools are, and what they have learned from experience. 
    • Educational materials and exercise books: Look to educational resources such as teaching guides and manuals, or the many books on physical and team-building exercises. While these might not be directly related to larping, they often offer valuable inspiration, you can build on. 
    • Online sources: The internet is an endless resource – Also when it comes to workshop ideas. From the specialized articles found at Nordic Larp to a simple Google search, type in keywords relating to your workshop needs and you get more ideas than you have time to read. 

    While inspiration can come from many sources, it’s crucial to tailor it to the specific needs of your larp. You should never attempt a 1:1 replication of a workshop. Every larp is unique in its narrative, setting, and participant dynamics, and your workshops need to reflect that uniqueness. What worked in one context may not be directly applicable in another. 

    Step 4: Adapting, designing, and describing 

    After gathering inspiration and ideas, you need to start adapting and designing the workshop, transforming your ideas into a concrete plan. Start describing the workshop step by step and let the following questions guide you in this process, adapting the workshop to the participants’ needs and your larp design: 

    • Does it align with the larp? Do not use a workshop just because it is fun or interesting. It needs to align with the required learning outcome, so be prepared to kill your darlings. 
    • Does it fit with the mood and setting of the larp? If your larp is light-hearted and fun, you want different workshops than if it is dark or emotionally intense. Aligning your workshops with the mood of the larp helps participants immerse themselves. 
    • Does it support the desired participant behavior? The workshop should foster behavior and interactions that align with your previously defined “doing” elements. If the participants’ behavior during the workshop can mimic how they are expected to behave during the larp, you can help facilitate their transition into the fiction of the larp. 
    • Can it be adjusted for practicality? Not all exercises are suitable for every group or available time and space. Ensure that the workshop is feasible for the available space, time, and the size and composition of the group. 

    Considering these questions when describing the workshop can help guide your design process. A well-designed workshop supports your game by guiding participants toward engagement with the narrative and their roles within it. By designing and adapting with that in mind, you can create a workshop that is both unique to your larp and effective in helping participants immerse themselves in the experience. 

    Step 5: Structuring your learning design 

    The final step to creating a learning plan is structuring all the learning formats and sessions. This includes both the briefings, exercises, and workshops you have planned. Establishing a structure helps you organize the content and further develop it by uncovering oversights or additional potentials. 

    To guide this step, use the 6W-Structure: 

    • When 
    • Where 
    • Who 
    • What 
    • How 
    • Why 
    The 6W-Structure to develop and organize your learning plan
    The 6W-Structure to develop and organize your learning plan– diagram by Nór Hernø

    The first three Ws cover the practical information you need for running the learning plan: When and where will the learning session be held, and who is involved (both facilitator and participant group). This will help you map out the plan and identify most logistical issues, such as whether the schedule works (remember everything takes more time than you think) or if the location fits the planned session. This is especially necessary for more complicated learning plans with several locations and facilitators but is also useful as a framework for simple plans. 

    The next three Ws cover the content, descriptions, and your design choices: What is the headline of the session and what materials are needed, how is the session is conducted (described step by step), and most importantly – why it is done. Asking why you are doing said learning session helps you reflect on your design choices and easily share these reflections with others. It also helps you discover if you have overlooked something in step 4, such as whether your chosen workshop aligns with the larp or if something in the workshop actively works against your design. 

    As a rule of thumb, always ask “why” 3 times to get from the surface descriptive level to the conscious design level. Through this process, you might discover a flaw in your design and fix it before the plan meets the participants, or realize that, by changing a few elements, you can achieve an even better outcome. An example could be the following workshop:

    Ask Why three times
    Ask Why three times– diagram by Nór Hernø

    This difference in the reason behind the workshop can help you design for that specific purpose. In the first example, you might want to instruct the participants to collaborate during the ritual, aiming for impressive and empowering aesthetics, whereas the second example might shift the workshop’s focus to clearly define the individual participants’ tasks and how they can fail.

    The final result can be presented in table as the following (short) example: 

    The finished learning plan
    The finished learning plan – diagram by Nór Hernø

    This table functions not just as your finished design overview, but also as a runtime plan ready to use.

    By following the steps outlined in this guide – examining participant needs, sorting ideas, finding inspiration, adapting designs, and structuring them – you have the tools to create a purposeful learning plan with workshops tailored to your specific larp. By aligning your learning design with not only the learning needs, but also the narrative, mood, and desired behavior, you ensure that every element of the workshop contributes meaningfully to the overall experience of workshop as well as larp.

    Cover image: Panopticon workshop, photo by Christian Kierans

  • WEB: Workshop – Exercise – Briefing

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    WEB: Workshop – Exercise – Briefing

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    “This workshop could have been an email” 

    This is a statement I have encountered in the larp community quite a few times by now, which is rather tragic to someone who has worked professionally with learning design for years and has a deep passion for it.  

    Designing and organizing a larp requires skill. The same applies to designing the learning experience required to play said larp: It necessitates a distinct focus on learning output and the methods required to achieve that goal. Creating a learning design equal to that of our larp design will help us facilitate the participants’ transition into the fiction of the larp, as well as better their recollection of important information.  

    The first step of creating a learning design is to consider what the participants require to play your larp. The next step is to take the available learning formats into account, figuring out what format will best allow that to happen. Often, everything we facilitate for the participants prior to the start of the larp (and sometimes during) is referred to as “workshops”. The problem with using “workshop” as a blanket term is that workshops are a specific kind of learning format, and this term does not encompass everything we do prior to a larp. This can cause a clash of expectations, making the participants feel like expressing the opening sentence of this article. After all, the worst workshops are those that aren’t actually workshops. 

    Instead of using “workshops” to describe the time before a larp set aside for the participants’ learning experience, I suggest using a more neutral term like “larp preparations” or, as I prefer appreciating alliteration, “pre-play-prep”. 

    The most common learning formats used for the pre-play-prep before a larp are: workshop, exercise, and briefing. The WEB model described below is a visual tool in two parts, created to define, distinguish, and summarize these three types of learning sessions. In this context, the three formats are defined as follows: 

    Workshop: An interactive and co-creative session focused on participants’ hands-on interactions. 

    Exercise: An activity where participants, individually or in groups, practice a given technique or skill. 

    Briefing: An orientation session that informs and instructs participants before they are to do something. 

    Each type is suited to specific learning goals and participant engagement levels, and understanding these differences can help create better experiences for the participants. 

    The WEB Model: Definitions
    The WEB Model: Definitions – diagram by Nór Hernø

    The WEB Model: Spectrum 

    The three types of learning sessions can be positioned on a spectrum indicating the participants’ level of activity, agency, and degree of co-creation.”

    The WEB Model: Spectrum
    The WEB Model: Spectrum – diagram by Nór Hernø

    The learning sessions have a shared purpose, which defines their focus and design – Learning – Although they approach learning in different ways, using different tools and techniques to facilitate the process. 

    It is important to note that the model is a spectrum and not a scale. The spectrum does not indicate value or learning output, as none of the learning sessions is inherently better than the others. Each one is best for different purposes: 

    • Workshops can give participants co-ownership of a given project, as participants co-create the content. They are ideal for creating shared narratives, culture, and routines, which are not previously defined by the larp designer.
      Examples: Creating (fully or in parts) characters and relationships, developing rituals, establishing the cultural customs of the group, etc.
    • Exercises give participants the opportunity to practice and train a given technique or skill, making them comfortable repeating and reproducing it in another context.
      Examples: Practicing meta-techniques and game mechanics, rehearsing a ritual, practicing specific interactions and behaviors, etc.
    • Briefings are good for clear and direct distribution of information, where every participant or participant group need the same instructions necessary to participate in the larp or a different activity.
      Examples: Giving the participants practical information, explaining setting, rules, meta-techniques, game mechanics, etc.

    In some cases, it can be impossible to distinguish clearly between the three types of learning sessions, as they might overlap or mix different approaches, e.g., when the participants rehearse the ritual they just created together, when the explanation of a meta-technique transitions to practicing it, or when participants practice specific interactions and behaviors by embodying their characters while co-creating the scene in which these interactions occur. 

    In other cases, the difference between the three types of learning sessions is clear to the point it can be comical to imagine using the wrong one: You would not workshop the location of the toilets or the schedule of the larp. 

    The reason why it is important to be aware of the type of learning session is two-fold: 

    1. It helps you be aware of your pre-play-prep design choices and what kind of learning output you might want for a given session. Do you want your participants to co-create something new? Do you want them to repeat something you have created? Or do you want them to listen to and understand a set of instructions?
    2. It helps you and the participants manage expectations, such as energy levels and the type of engagement required.

    The WEB Model: Pre-Play-Prep Sum 

    In a learning design consisting of multiple learning sessions, the sum of the sessions can be represented in the following figure:

    The WEB Model: Pre-Play-Prep Sum
    The WEB Model: Pre-Play-Prep Sum – diagram by Nór Hernø

    For example, if your learning design consists primarily of briefings combined with a few exercises, the sum of the sessions might be represented as follows in the figure:

    The WEB Model: Pre-Play-Prep Sum, example 1
    The WEB Model: Pre-Play-Prep Sum, example 1 – diagram by Nór Hernø

    The sum of learning sessions is again not an indication of value or learning output but solely a depiction of variation in the pre-play-prep. If there is a strong tendency toward placement in a corner of the triangle, as in this example, consider whether this aligns with the desired learning design or if more variation is needed. 

    For example, if greater participant activity and agency are required, one or more suitable workshops can be added to the pre-play-prep, altering the figure:  

    The WEB Model: Pre-Play-Prep Sum, example 2
    The WEB Model: Pre-Play-Prep Sum, example 2 – diagram by Nór Hernø

    This approach to pre-play-prep provides a structured framework for designing larp learning experiences and helps visualize the balance of learning sessions. This can support the designer in making informed choices about how to engage participants effectively and ensure the desired learning outcomes. A clear understanding of the different learning formats allows both designers and participants to manage expectations about the level of participation and the type of engagement required in each session, leading to a more enjoyable and cohesive experience – and fewer workshops that could have been an email. 

    Footnote/anecdote regarding the model: 

    The WEB Model was created on the final night of the 2023 Danish Larp Designers’ Summer School in response to participants repeatedly asking me about the difference between a workshop and an exercise – a situation prompted by a dare. The finishing touches and the English translation of the model (originally titled “BØW” in Danish) were completed in preparation for my 2024 Solmukohta talk and workshop on the subject. Subsequently, the model was reintroduced to the Danish Larp Designers’ Summer School as part of my workshop design class in 2024.

    Cover image: Panopticon workshop, photo by Christian Kierans

  • Building Player Chemistry

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    Building Player Chemistry

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    At Knudepunkt in 2019 I attended a panel discussion, You Look Like I Want To Play With You, hosted by Karijn van der Heij, where participants shared their experiences of co-players refusing to play on pre-written relations. According to the participants, the excuse often used by said co-players was them feeling “a lack of chemistry”. Disregarding the problematic nature of such a judgement, the argument inherently states that chemistry is something which either exists or doesn’t between people, even though we have multiple examples of the opposite being true. Just take something as common and widely discussed as relational bleed: You might never have met the person playing your best friend or one true love before, but after a larp weekend of holding hands and/or gazing into each other’s eyes, they seem awfully nice. Or look to Hollywood and the number of romantic leads ending up in real-life relationships after having starred in a movie together, no matter their relationship status going into it.

    All in all, chemistry is not something that either exists or doesn’t, it is something that can be built between people, doing certain things together. Which also means it can be workshopped.

    While it took a few years, some research and testing, I created a workshop method aimed to do exactly that: Building player chemistry.

    The goals for the method are:

    • Building trust and a feeling of safety between participants.
    • Having participants tune in on each other, becoming aware of their workshop partner.
    • Having participants model behavior that creates closeness, attention, and appreciation between them.

    The method is based on 6 steps, continuously adding degrees of interaction ranging from being distant to touching and from non-verbal to verbal. It can either be run as a workshop by organizers before a larp, to help support players with intimate relations, or used by players portraying intimate relations before the start of the larp (or during the larp if your relation play just doesn’t work out). In this context, intimate relations refer to relations where love, romance, or simply physical and emotional closeness is one of the primary forces. This includes romantic partners, lovers, close friends, and family members, as well as abusive relationships based on the perception of love or closeness.

    The method is based on, and inspired by, elements from:

    • Studies of the effects of eye gazing and related exercises
    • The Meisner and Lucid Body drama schools/techniques
    • Ars Rego (created by Maria and Jeppe Bergman Hamming for Spellbound, 2018)
    • Ars Amandi (created by Eliot Wieslander for Mellan Himmel och hav, 2003)

    Disclaimer: The workshop includes both extended eye contact and touch, which the participants must be comfortable with. 

    Running the workshop:

    Total runtime of the workshop is approximately 40 minutes, not including exercise instructions. Start by dividing the participants into pairs. Instruct them on all steps of the workshop, prior to starting the exercises, so that the workshop can be run as one continuous flow, facilitated only verbally by the organizer.

    Step 1: Eye contact

    Time: Approx. 5 minutes

    This step consists of four rounds. Participants sit in front of each other with some distance between them (1-1.5 meters), eyes closed. On cue, they look into each other’s eyes, for a set amount of time, then close their eyes again and rest for a moment. Every round has an extended duration of eye contact:

    1: 5 seconds

    2: 10 seconds

    3: 30 seconds

    4: 2.5 minutes

    Remember to give the participants breaks with their eyes closed, between the rounds, as this kind of prolonged eye contact can feel overwhelming at first.

    Step 2: Coordinated breathing

    Time: Approx. 5 minutes

    Participants stay seated and keep eye contact throughout this step. This step combines coordinated breathing and movement. One participant starts, stretches their arms out in front of them and draws in breath, simultaneously moving their arms towards their body (as if drawing in their breath with their arms), and then exhales while moving their arms back towards stretched (as if pushing out the air with their arms). The other participant continues this movement, drawing in their breath, while moving their arms towards their body, followed by exhaling, while stretching their arms out – returning the breath and movement to the first participant, who then continues.

    This will create a circular movement and breath, from one participant to the other and back.

    Let the pairs find a rhythm, without verbally communicating it.

    Throughout this exercise, create variation by asking the pairs to slow their coordinated breathing/movement down together, let them then go back to normal, ask them to speed it up, and end this exercise by letting them go back to normal again.

    Step 3: Ars Rego Movement

    Time: Approx. 15 minutes

    This exercise is based on the method Ars Rego by Maria and Jeppe Bergman Hamming.

    Short description of the mechanic: Ars Rego is a Nordic larp mechanic created for simulating magical physical control. With this mechanic a “leader” controls one or more “followers” by using hand signals. A connection between leader and follower is created by participants establishing eye contact and raising their hand(s). The follower must now follow the leader’s hand at a distance and be led around the room, while keeping their hand up and the connection intact. They are to mirror the leader’s hand movements (e.g. The leader “pushing” them down, “lifting” them up, making them move to the side, spin, etc. by using hand gestures). The leader is always responsible for the follower’s safety and comfort, while moving them around the room.

    Note: This exercise does not use touch at any point, and doesn’t include the hand movement to signal to your partner to get closer, as demonstrated in the link above.

    The pairs split up (momentarily) and all participants start moving around the room, walking amongst each other. Let the participants get comfortable moving around on their own, before asking them to start noticing their partner: Where they are in the room, how they are moving, their expression, etc.

    Ask participants to make eye contact with their partner and at their own pace establish the touch-free “connection” with their hand. The pairs should continue to keep some distance between themselves, moving around between other participants in the room.

    The participants are allowed to break off the contact and reestablish it, getting used to the “connection”, before they are encouraged to “lock in” and slowly get closer to each other, without ever touching. Let the participants play around with the connection for a while, trying out changing hands, using both hands, moving their partner around, both from side to side, down towards the floor and up again.

    Important note: The participants are responsible for their partner. It is their responsibility to make sure their partner doesn’t bump into furniture, walls, or other people. Make that responsibility very clear to the participants – It is necessary to keep eye contact during the exercise, but at the same time be aware of the other’s surroundings.

    Throughout the exercise, create some variation in the participants’ movements. Ask one person in the pair (e.g.: the person who started the breathing exercise) to take control of the other, then change the roles. It is also possible to add elements from your larp design, like asking participants to move as their character and interact with each other based on their ingame relation. Consider how this could potentially affect the building of chemistry – If the relation is not inherently positive, this could interfere with the result of the workshop itself.

    For the final approx. 5 minutes of the exercise, ask the pairs to get close to each other, if they haven’t already. Invite them to move together as if dancing in a ballroom setting (or if something else fits your larp better).

    As the final step, ask participants to use both hands in their movement together, so that the transition to the next exercise happens fluently.

    Step 4: Shared Moment

    Time: Approx. 3 minutes

    Ask the participants to stop in their movement, still with their hands held up “connected” to each other. The participants then move closer together, so close they can feel the heat from their partner’s hands, without touching. Ask them to close their eyes, take a deep breath and focus on the feeling they have in that moment. Ask them to visualize something, it could be an image, a thought or emotion, and keep their focus on what they are visualizing. Give them a few moments to get grounded, then ask them to open their eyes and at the same moment let their hands touch.

    The pairs now get a minute to share what they thought of and visualized.

    Step 5: Touch

    Time: Approx. 7 minutes

    This exercise is based on the method Ars Amandi by Eliot Wieslander.

    Short description of the mechanic: Ars Amandi is a Nordic larp mechanic used for simulating romance or sex in larp. The mechanic uses touch of permitted zones (often hands, arms, and shoulders) between two or multiple participants. The touch is often in the form of stroking, massaging, grabbing, or exploring with one’s fingers/hands.

    The pairs sit down in front of each other again, this time knee to knee. They establish eye contact and slowly start touching both of each other’s hands. The area of touch slowly increases, as the participants have time to get comfortable, by first moving the touch up to the lower part of the arms, stopping at the elbows, then the upper part of the arms, stopping at the shoulders. The participants should be allowed to tap out, if increasing the area of touch is not wanted, thereby keeping the touch to the previous level (e.g.: hands or lower arms).

    The participants can play around with this touch, either by expressing the kind of relation their characters have, or by the organizer creating variation in the types of touch (e.g.: asking participants to change their touch to portray siblings, parent-child, lovers, etc.)

    Again, be aware how portraying ingame relations can potentially affect the building of chemistry if the relation is not inherently positive.

    Step 6: Appreciation

    Time: Approx. 5 minutes

    Continuing the touch exercise from step 5, the participants simultaneously start verbal appreciation of each other. They take turns commenting on facts they appreciate about the other, using the following sentence form: “I like… XXX” (e.g.: “I like your curly hair”). The receiving participant continues with: “You like… XXX” (e.g.: “You like my curly hair”) and adds their own comment (e.g.: “I like your blue shirt”), returning the appreciation and continuing the exercise.

    Important note: No derogatory or hurtful comments are allowed. Clearly instruct participants to only state objective and neutral facts about each other (e.g.: colors of eyes, hair, etc.), chosen aspects of their appearance (e.g.: choice of clothes, jewelry, tattoos, etc.), or experienced behavior during the exercises (e.g.: their movement, smile, eye contact).

    Wrapping up

    The workshop can either end with step 6 or with a repeat of a moment of silent eye contact.

    Either way, it is encouraged to give participants a few minutes after the workshop to talk with their partner about the experience and how they are feeling.

    Final notes on the workshop design

    As mentioned, the workshop can be run either by organizers or used by players themselves. Especially in the case of organizers running the workshop, it is important to consider the impact it can have on the participating players. As the workshop aims at modelling participants’ behavior to create closeness and build player chemistry, the risk of relational bleed can increase. It is the responsibility of the organizers to consider the ethics of using this or similar methods, as well as making sure the participating players are consenting.

    The workshop was first run and tested in its entirety at Knutpunkt 2022 in Linköping, Sweden. Thank you to everyone who participated and gave their feedback, as well as everyone who checked the workshop description for read- and run-ability.

    Cover photo: Photo by Bjørn-Morten Vang Gundersen. Image has been cropped.

  • Rules, Trust, and Care: the Nordic Larper’s Risk Management Toolkit

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    Rules, Trust, and Care: the Nordic Larper’s Risk Management Toolkit

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    In 2018, I brought a friend to A Nice Evening with the Family (Sweden 2018). I was concerned, because he had very little experience with role-playing games, let alone with a very emotionally intense game. Despite my efforts to discourage him, he insisted that he wanted to join. The morning after the larp finished, he was a crying mess and it took him quite some effort to convince me that he would be fine and that I should not regret having brought him over. The next time we spoke, he told me that several friends had confronted him about this new hobby that left him shaken for several days. 

    It was his first larp. Since then, he has chosen to become a crying mess several times. It does not look like he will stop any time soon. What might look reckless from the outside is actually a well planned process: he knows his limits, but when he ventures to cross them, he is aware of the scars he may bring back, and prepares as well as he can to alleviate the consequences. This is the same process he goes through when he goes rock-climbing, an activity arguably more dangerous, which does not raise such concerns.

    As larp has evolved, pushing for new limits of intense play, we have developed a wealth of expertise to larp more safely. However, this is not limited to larp: as humankind’s ability to cause catastrophes has increased, so has our ability to avoid causing them. Pharmaceutical companies, nuclear power plants, financial institutions, airplane manufacturers all have had to change their ways of working (enforced by legislation, obviously) not to bring about tragedy. The most critical part of it is the object of this article: how to come to terms with the fact that risks cannot be eliminated, and how to manage them instead.

    In practice, there is nothing revolutionary about risk management. It is just a systematization of common sense. This article will hardly reveal anything new. However, I will hopefully provide a new perspective that will help to view larp safety in a new way, and shine light on how powerful the tools are that we already have at our disposal.

    Risk

    Attempting to find a definition of “safe” that everyone will agree on is futile. Any communication relying on the word “safe” will be misleadingly dangerous. Any financial adviser, surgeon, engineer, or martial arts or scuba diving instructor worth their salt will never claim that something is safe. Instead, they will try to clearly explain what the negative consequences might be, and let their client make an informed decision. Similarly, a larp organizer that promises that their larp is safe, implying that no harm will happen to any participant, is promising something that they have no control over.

    Risk, on the other hand, is a word most people can agree on. There may be disagreement if a certain risk is worth worrying over or not, but if somebody says “This rusty nail is a risk” or “There is a risk that we will run out of money”, everybody understands it the same way: something bad may happen.

    Risk means that harm, more or less severe, has a certain likelihood of happening.

    Harm

    Harm is something that we do not wish to happen. Harm is the ultimate negative consequence of a series of events. Falling off a cliff is not harm, but getting injured as a consequence of a fall is. Being yelled at is not harm, but becoming emotionally distressed is. Hazards are the direct sources of harm: fire, physical impact, toxic chemicals, and verbal abuse are examples of hazards.

    In larp, there are many things that we do not wish to happen: trauma (physical or mental) and property damage are the first that come to mind, but other things can be also regarded as harm: damage to reputation, loss of friendship, or even boredom. From a risk-management perspective, they are all the same, and you must decide what to focus on.

    In Nordic larp, the focus has been centred on psychological harm. Psychological harm is a slippery concept, and to my knowledge there is no conclusive source to refer to. Because of that, most of the examples I will use throughout this article will be about physical harm, which is much easier to agree on. Hopefully, it will become clear that the same techniques that can be used to manage one can be applied to manage the other.

    Severity

    Harm presents itself in varying degrees of severity. We think of a bruise as less serious than a broken rib, which is itself less serious than the loss of a limb. Often though things are not so clear-cut, and determining the severity of harm is context-dependent, subjective, and hence challenging.

    Generally speaking, severity should correlate to how longer-term prospects are negatively impacted. For example, in a medical context, severity is assigned depending on the consequences to patients, from a minor nuisance to permanent disability or death; broken bones are usually considered minor injuries, since the prognosis for total recovery is often excellent. Financial risk could be quantified not just in terms of how much money might be lost, but how likely it is to be able to recover from such loss; structural risks could be related to the ease of repairing a building; environmental risk measured by how likely it is that the previous situation can be recovered, etc.

    As many have experienced, larp can cause serious emotional harm. However, let us admit that larp is, by definition, a simulation, and hence the severity of emotional harm is going to be always lower that being exposed to the real situation: a larp about prisoners at the Guantánamo Bay detention camp, as harrowing as it may be, will hardly ever be an experience as horrifying as being imprisoned at the actual camp. In a way, larp is an exercise in risk management, eliminating most sources of harm when mimicking extreme real-life situations.

    Likelihood

    Severity is not the only thing that matters about harm. A meteorite crashing on your larp location would certainly be catastrophic, but it is so unlikely that it is not worth considering. On the other hand, a mosquito is normally considered a minor source of harm, but it becomes a concern if it happens constantly: having a bunch of larpers going back home covered in bites after spending a weekend by an infested swamp is something that everyone would want to avoid.

    The likelihood of harm can be understood either in terms of how probable it is or how frequently it will happen. Such probabilities are difficult to estimate accurately. In any case, knowing that the probability of falling off the staircase at your larp is 1.3% is not very useful compared to “I would be surprised if no one trips here over the weekend”. As with severity, organizations normally simply assign terms in a scale, corresponding to qualitative likelihoods. One common example is to have five levels of likelihood: improbable (not expected to ever happen), remote (it would be very exceptional if it happens, but it is not impossible), occasional (rare, but given enough time, it will happen), probable (nobody will be surprised if it happens), and frequent (it would be surprising if it did not happen).

    A quick introduction to risk management

    Risk management, as daunting as it may sound, is a fairly straightforward process which consists of three steps: analysing the risks, deciding whether to accept the risks or not, and mitigating the risks. 

    Analysing risk

    The starting point to manage risks is to analyse them: finding as many things as possible that can go wrong and figuring out how severe and likely they are.

    Risk analysis requires honesty to be useful. It is hard to admit that we are putting people in danger, but dismissing a risk without careful consideration is a recipe for disaster. Airplanes rarely crash because of saboteurs, and drug dealers are not planning to hurt their customers when they cut their product with rat poison: behind all these cases, there is somebody who believes everything will be fine. Crooks are a piece of cake to catch and stop in time compared to reckless optimists who take everyone down with them.

    In any case, identifying risks is never easy. Reality always finds ways to surprise us, no matter how thorough our analysis was. So, how much effort should you spend analysing risks? The unsatisfactory answer is “as much as reasonably possible”. One way to evaluate your analysis is to think about how you would view it in the future if something goes wrong. Was it reasonable not to reach out for an expert? Was it reasonable that you did not check out your larp location in advance? Was it reasonable to conclude that no serious mental distress could be expected? All of this is context dependent. If you have doubts, maybe you can try to run your analysis by somebody else.

    Analysing the risks that lie beyond the limits may seem impossible, but it is not: we may not know how things may go wrong, but at least we know what wrong means. In other words, we know the severity, but not the likelihood. The safest approach is to assume that the likelihood is higher than you expect.

    Accepting risk (or not)

    After identifying and determining the severity and likelihood of a risk, a natural question arises: can we live with it? Some risks are obviously intolerable, and some are so trivial that it is even hard to consider them as risks. But quite often this is not clear at all.

    Deciding when we can accept a risk is a tricky question. Even after bad things have already happened, people often disagree on whether the risk was worth taking. Even the same person might have doubts about it. So, how to decide about something that may not even happen?

    The methods used in risk management (risk matrices being the primary example) help us very little here: they have been designed to leave a paper trail which can be used as evidence. They are too bureaucratic to use in larps, but most importantly they are not much of a moral reference we can adhere to. Sadly, nobody can give you any easy answers here.

    Whatever you consider as your criteria, they should fulfil two conditions. First, a criterion has to be systematic: if you find yourself adding exceptions one after the other, it is probably not a very good criterion. Secondly, it must be easy for anybody to understand the criteria and agree that they are reasonable.

    One criterion that you could use is the following: a risk is acceptable if, even when harm happens, we expect nobody to regret having been part of the larp.

    This implies that the organization did everything within reason to analyse and mitigate the risks, all participants understood and accepted those risks, and whatever harm happened was either predicted and handled as well as possible, and nobody can be blamed for having been reckless. In reality, this goal is not achievable: but since it is clear, and the absolute best one can hope for, it is a good target to aim at.

    If we decide that a given risk is acceptable, we can move on to the next one. But if we conclude that it is not, then it must be mitigated.

    Mitigating risk

    Mitigating a risk means reducing its likelihood, its severity, or both. Risk mitigation (also referred to as risk control) must be continued until we decide that the risk is acceptable. Let us review several strategies.

    If you encounter a risk which you have tried mitigating by all means possible, but it is still unacceptable, there is one way to completely remove the risk: just do not do what you were planning. If it looks like in your larp something horrible might happen which you have no control over, and you have no idea on how to fix the problem without it becoming a different larp, the best idea is to cancel the larp.

    The second approach is to change the design, that is, adding, removing, or modifying elements of your original plan. Moving to a different location, locking doors, removing game content, forcing off-game breaks, adding non-diegetic safety elements (such as mattresses), or changing your player selection process can all be used to mitigate risks. If you are lucky, your larp may be unaffected – possibly even improved! However, it is more likely that the changes will impact your larp, possibly even to the point that you feel it is not worth organizing.

    If there is nothing you can change, the next thing you can attempt is to affect how people will behave. You can instruct them not to enter an area under any circumstance, or remind them to stay hydrated under the scorching Tunisian sun. Since this relies on participants’ efforts and attention, you may want to go through these procedures during a workshop. Do not hesitate to make participation compulsory, if absence would lead to risks that you cannot accept. Of these behavioural mitigations (called administrative controls), the weakest form is what we can call, in general, labelling, which is any kind of passive, static visual information, such as signs, warning messages in manuals, pop-up windows, safety brochures, and actual labels found in packages, control panels, etc. If the only thing between a player and disaster is a paragraph somewhere on your website, or a danger sign that looks perfectly diegetic, get ready for disaster.

    The final option is protective equipment. Unfortunately, as effective as they may be for other purposes, helmets and hazmat suits will do very little to protect your participants from emotional harm.

    The Nordic larper’s risk management toolkit

    By now, you hopefully have a good idea about what risk management is. In this section, we will zone in into the peculiarities of emotionally intense larp.

    In emotionally intense larp, like in combat sports, enjoyment is inextricably linked to the potentially harmful things that players do to each other. Somewhat counterintuitively, risk management in both cases revolves around the same key concepts: the restrictions to what participants can do, the measures to ensure that participants will follow such restrictions, and the contingency plans to be used if something goes wrong. In other words, rules, trust, and care.

    Rules

    If you run or design larps, you should appreciate that you have a huge control over players: if you can convince them that they are capable of throwing fireballs by extending both index fingers, you can surely convince them that they cannot touch each other at all, thereby creating a world where the risk of hurting other people is non-existent. This is what rules are for.

    By “rules” I refer to all the constraints on the things that can possibly happen during a larp. From a risk management perspective, rules are control measures which either reduce the likelihood of risks – or remove the risks altogether – or replace hazards with different ones. Rules define what may or may not happen in- and off-game. Sometimes larp rules are introduced for other purposes than risk mitigation, and in some cases, rules may control risks at the same time as they contribute to a more interesting game experience.

    Perhaps the most representative rules of larp are those used to represent violence: I have never heard of any larp with WYSIWYG violence, that is where violence between characters is not governed by restrictions of some kind. Requiring padded weapons, using rules systems similar to table-top role-playing games, theatrical representation – where the outcomes are either pre-planned or improvised during play using some signalling mechanic, or even removing violence altogether from the game, are all different ways of reducing the severity or likelihood of harm, or even eliminating it altogether.

    Sex seems to be the other major perceived source of risk. In this case, the hazards are not so clear-cut as getting a broken nose, but it is generally accepted that sex requires a state of vulnerability which opens the gates for extremely severe psychological harm. Again, the forms in which sex appears in a game are restricted, from total avoidance to “dry-humping”, including more abstract mechanics, such as the Phallus technique used in Just a Little Lovin’ (Norway 2011), or Ars Amandi which, after its introduction in Mellan himmel och hav (Sweden 2003, Eng. Between Heaven and Sea), has been used in numerous larps of many different genres.

    In the daring type of play of many Nordic larps, characters are often exposed to many other sources of emotional harm, which are often a central part of the game: family abuse, workplace harassment, discrimination, slavery, imprisonment, political repression, torture, manipulation, etc. Harm happens when these emotions exceed the level the player is willing to experience. This may lead to emotional distress, and even trauma. These, in their turn, may be worsened because of triggering past traumatic experiences.

    Interestingly, it is rare to find rules to handle emotional risks arising from something other than physical violence or sex in a specific manner: and these other elements are usually supposed to be represented realistically. For example, players playing prison guards are expected to shout at other players’ faces, and to represent mental torture scenes as they would think would happen in reality.

    Instead, emotional risks are managed generically by check-in, de-escalation, and game interruption mechanics. These mechanics are forms of inter-player communication to avoid harmful situations. Check-in mechanics are used to verify, during or after a risky scene, that players are doing fine. A popular one is using the OK hand sign to silently ask a co-player if they are OK when it is difficult to tell if a negative display of emotions (grief, anger) is a sign of an emotional distress that the player cannot handle. De-escalation and interruption techniques function in the opposite way, providing signals (like safe words or taps) to ask co-players to not escalate further or to lower the intensity of the scene, or to stop the game altogether.

    These techniques have become standard. If you decide not to include any of them in your larp, it is a good idea to explain your alternative risk management plan before players sign up.

    It is important that safety rules are, in the first place, clear. But it is equally important that you, as an organizer, as well as every other participant, get a clear picture that everyone has understood them.. I strongly recommended practising them explicitly in a workshop before runtime, particularly in case of subtle diegetic mechanics, which may be easily missed. The number of safety mechanics should be kept to a minimum to prevent confusion. Well-meaning players may spontaneously suggest adding their favourite mechanics to your game: it is preferable to firmly – but kindly – not allow this. An overabundance of mechanics may have the same effect as too many warning signs: none of them are meaningful in the end.

    Trust

    Trust is the degree of the certainty we have in our predictions that no harm will happen to us. Trust is critical in daring larp, because participants will compensate for lack of trust by acting as if risks were worse (either more probable or more harmful) than in reality, refraining from fully engaging with the content.

    When we trust someone, we know that they will not hurt us, neither by directly causing us harm, nor by neglecting doing their part in keeping us safe. When we do not trust someone, it is because we suspect they may fail at the moment of truth, or because they actively seek to hurt us. Trust has two components: a cognitive one and a primal one. Having enough information to make predictions is critical, but so is having the “gut feeling” that we are right. These two aspects need to be considered all the time.

    The first step is building trust. In other words, convincing every participant that nobody will hurt them. Easier said than done.

    For starters, participants must be on the same page about the possible risks. Make sure that you provide enough information during the sign-up process so that everyone has an understanding of risks as similar to yours as possible.

    Another important aspect is the player selection process. A player may wish not to play with another player, for a variety of reasons. It is reasonable to publish a list of players and offer a channel for players to give feedback. Flagging, which consists of assigning a colour to other players to indicate the level of trust (from “will not share scenes” to “will not attend same larp”), is a popular approach. It may put you in the difficult position of leaving people out. In such a case, remember that your goal is to ensure a less risky game, and not to act as a moral judge. If you believe that your larp may present such risks that it requires that you completely trust all the players – trust that they can care for themselves and others – then you may need to do something more drastic, such as hand-pick your players or have an invite-only run.

    Once your players have arrived at the larp location, the most effective way to create trust is pre-game workshops. On the cognitive side, you should cover all your rules and mechanics thoroughly, and rehearse them as necessary, until players are convinced that everybody can play their part. Safety-critical workshops should be compulsory, not just opt-in. A bit like how beginners are required to show that they can do an 8-figure knot before they are allowed to start top-rope climbing. Finally, do not rush through safety workshops: besides failing to communicate critical information, players may get the impression that you do not care enough about safety, and that you included the safety workshop as a nuisance that must be there.

    On the primal side, you need to tickle the brains of participants to convince them that they are of the same tribe. Things like physical contact, or locking eyes and smiling, may help. Baphomet (Denmark 2017) used a simple and powerful technique where participants hug each other randomly in silence for a very long time. This had a profound effect in creating a trusting atmosphere. These exercises are not a replacement for the safety rehearsals discussed above, and can be counterproductive if they create a sense of false security.

    When someone causes us harm, either directly or indirectly, we immediately lose trust, to a larger or smaller degree: our predictions that they would not hurt us failed, which means that they may hurt us again. Our brain will then activate the alarm and deploy its defences. Suddenly we will dislike, fear, or lose respect for those people. This defence mechanism is quite clever: even if our feelings for those people are unfair (for example, they tried to protect us and failed), our brain will override our reasoning, tricking us into being convinced we are absolutely right, pushing us to avoid that person.

    Restoring trust is not easy. At a cognitive level, we need to know that the other person is sensitive to our pain – that’s the purpose of a (real) apology —, and that we can accept that something bad happened exceptionally, that is, that either the other person didn’t know something important or simply made a mistake, or that there was actually a very good reason we did not know about. The primal level also needs to be readjusted to lift the defences after they are not needed. For example, a hug or a smile can have a magical effect after a fight. However, be careful when using this approach: I can tell from my own experience that a forced hug from a perceived aggressor has the opposite effect, and can cause even more harm. In case of doubt, do not push it and simply try to figure out a way for the larp to continue with everyone feeling safe. This, in extreme cases, may require removing players from the game.

    Care

    Care is a particularly versatile tool, because it can reduce the severity of harm which we had not even predicted could happen. In our quest for pushing the limits of daring larp, it is very valuable to deploy a solid care infrastructure, in the same way that a campaign hospital will help dealing with all kinds of physical harm, without needing to predict its exact nature. Making participants part of a care infrastructure is similar to demanding that everybody must take first-aid training before joining an expedition.

    Similar to trust, it is possible to enforce care using rules. Off-game rooms and dedicated staff to support players are very common; although it may not look like such, giving players the option to walk out of the game into guaranteed support is just a larp rule. In many larps, each character has a connection with whom they have a positive relationship. This connection can be used to seek in-game support, which translates into support for the player. This could be further exploited by means of explicit rules, for example adding a hand sign directed at the support connection which forces them to go play a blackbox scene reminiscing of happier times. A larp designed around one-on-one abusive scenes could impose that after every such scene the players must go off-game together to provide mandatory after-care.

    Care rules could take many forms: the key is that larp designers should not be afraid to impose such seemingly awkward game elements, because the fact is that this can be much more effective than leaving care to the skill and initiative of the participants.

    Conclusion

    Nobody – including, first of all, me – expects that larp organizations will start conducting formal risk review meetings, performing external audits, filling risk matrices, and writing down risk mitigation plans.

    Let’s be daring! But daring does not mean reckless. Let’s learn from the lessons of the past and, for those disasters yet to come, let them be the kind that, despite the pain they cause, leave us with the feeling that it was worth trying.

          Take home messages:

    • Be brave! At least as much as you want to.
    • Be honest. Do not fool participants, but most of all do not fool yourself.
    • Be open. Your level of risk is not the same as most people’s. You do not want to drag anyone into something they will regret.
    • Be kind. If other people fail, and they honestly tried their very best to avoid disaster, be thankful that they discovered for all of us where the hard limits are.
    • Be creative. Pushing the limits will demand of you to come up with new techniques to go where no larper has gone before, and come back in one piece. Hopefully, you know now that you have more tools at your disposal than you thought before.

     

    Bibliography

    Anneli Friedner. 2019. “The Brave Space: Some Thoughts on Safety in Larps“. https://nordiclarp.org/2019/10/07/the-brave-space-some-thoughts-on-safety-in-larps/ , ref. Dec 12th, 2023.

    Ludography

    Anna Westerling & Anders Hultman. 2018. A Nice Evening With the Family. Sweden. (Originally En stilla middag med familjen (2007): Sweden. Anna Westerling, Anders Hultman & al.)

    Eliot Wieslander & Katarina Björk. 2003. Mellan himmel och hav. Sweden.

    Linda Udby & Bjarke Pedersen. 2016. Baphomet. Denmark. 

    Tor Kjetil Edland & Hanne Grasmo. 2011. Just a Little Lovin’. Norway.

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

    Losilla, Sergio. 2024. “Rules, Trust, and Care: the Nordic Larper’s Risk Management Toolkit.” In Liminal Encounters: Evolving Discourse in Nordic and Nordic Inspired Larp, edited by Kaisa Kangas, Jonne Arjoranta, and Ruska Kevätkoski. Helsinki, Finland: Ropecon ry.

    Cover photo: Photo by Eamon up North on Pexels.com. Photo has been cropped.

  • Accepting Limits: The One-Hour Online Role-Play Experience

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    Accepting Limits: The One-Hour Online Role-Play Experience

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    “An hour?!” someone asked me the other day, incredulous. “How can you run a whole tabletop RPG session in an hour?!”

    I’m all too happy to answer that question.

    My recent practice of running one-hour-length role-playing sessions over voice channels on the online social platform Discord apparently baffles people. What else can I say? I am proud of the format and, furthermore, know of many folks who might benefit from adopting it as their own. In this short piece, I describe how I run one-hour sessions, whilst also painting a portrait of what “role-play” looks for me now at present.

    Let’s start with the “why.” Why do this brutally short format with my players? Don’t I enjoy their company? Isn’t role-play supposed to be a many-houred, luxurious affair, with chips and conversation aplenty?

    As with anything, we can blame society for my current constraints. With the advent of not only the Covid-19 pandemic but also pressures of modern parenthood of two small children under late capitalism, it has been difficult for myself and others to larp or even schedule regular RPG sessions. Larp seems largely consigned to a life I once led, now rapidly receding into the past.

    Nevertheless, I’ve refused to give up role-playing the past several years, as I’ve kinda devoted my life to it and am disinclined to give up my favorite medium in the world. Moreover, Nordic larp design principles emphasizing that “everything is a designable surface” help us accept our seemingly-impossible limitations as simply constraints on design. Live-action online games (LAOGs) have also normalized this form of play, for which Gerrit Reininghaus and the Open Hearth Gaming Community (formerly known as The Gauntlet) can take credit (see also Reininghaus and Hermann). And almost no one in my circles can find a proper 2-4 hours to spend online and role-playing, but everyone seems to, at least, have an hour to spare.

    The simple constraints of compressed time and remote play have forced me to prioritize the following principles:

    • Scheduling, the great beast that every successful role-playing group must slay
    • Grace in negotiation, or assuming the best and remaining affirmative with the group
    • Efficiency of play, in which the group voluntarily adopts different norms of speaking and turn-taking to facilitate a memorable hour of role-play
    • Minimalism, both in the systems used and in “special time” situations, such as combat
    • Externalized memory, because you never know when you might play next

    Putting these principles into practice means choosing to accept the limits on one’s time, energy, and format, in exchange for regular, rich hours of role-play with folks all around the world. 

    It works as follows. I gather everyone who has communicated interest in playing in a regular one-hour session into a single private Discord channel. This “general” chat will be used for scheduling, logistics, meme-posting, etc. A second Discord text channel is created for campaign notes, which will become the externalized memory of the group. A third “voice” channel is created for the actual play of the campaign. In the “general” logistics chat, we then attempt to find a shared hour in our schedules within the next month. 

    screen shot of discord chat
    Getting everyone together for an RPG session can be tricky, and flexibility is important. Screen shot of discord chat taken by Evan Torner.

    Scheduling happens with the pre-understanding that it is a difficult task, often crossing many time zones! If one month doesn’t seem to have availability for everyone, we skip it and go to the next month. For example, a recent game went on hiatus for 18 months on account of a baby’s birth, and then resumed as soon as players gradually found a shared hour to resume play. Because the time unit is only an hour in length, no major child care or babysitter needs to be pursued, and any players who need to drop the session last-minute are easily forgiven: a game that’s one hour in length can always be rescheduled, no questions asked. This is what I call grace in negotiation, which always assumes the best of others. Players should in no way be punished or shamed for scheduling issues. It should remain a pleasure to show up, sit down, and play.

    Play itself will be regulated by the principles of efficiency of play and minimalism. Players cannot make overlapping table conversations on Discord, so everyone must wait their turn to speak. Contributions must therefore be kept short, meaning that one should  think about one’s 1-3 sentences of description beforehand. Dialogue is conducted like a fanfic table read, with players being very transparent about their characters’ motivations and actions as they speak. Dramatic irony is a great tool to create tension between what a player knows and what a character says and does. 

    Above all, the facilitator must keep track of time. Resolve any fights within 30 minutes, or maybe within two full character actions by a player, whichever way is quicker. Your own system of distributing player agency over combat, and the fiction in general, is worth far more than following the letter of the rules for every game. Every player should get the spotlight on their character at least once during a session, and that spotlight should be reasonably evenly distributed. This also means the maximum group size is usually four or five players. Short scenes that are cut abruptly are magnitudes better than ones that drag on in the hopes of more drama.

    Critical to this model is the externalized memory of writing down the general results of a session in the appropriate Discord channel. Who knows when you’ll get your next hour together? Preferably on the same day as the play session, you will write down a brief summary of what “happened” in the fiction during the session, tracking in particular characters, locations, and actions taken. Make sure there’s an easily accessible link to any shared character sheets, either on a platform such as Roll20 or an online character keeper.

    screen shot of externalized memory chat in discord
    Example of the externalized memory log. Screen shot taken by Evan Torner.

    In summary, the one-hour online role-play experience helps us busy adults “fit in” role-play while accepting limits on our time, money, patience, and memory. It acknowledges care-givers, overburdened employees, and neurodivergent adults. It celebrates the fact that even smaller campaigns shared among a few people are just as valuable as more-ambitious projects and, for some isolated by their circumstances, can indeed serve as a lifeline to the hobby and communities they cherish. Open your Discord and see if anyone is up for an hour of role-play.

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

    Torner, Evan. 2024. “Accepting Limits: The One-Hour Online Role-Play Experience.” In Liminal Encounters: Evolving Discourse in Nordic and Nordic Inspired Larp, edited by Kaisa Kangas, Jonne Arjoranta, and Ruska Kevätkoski. Helsinki, Finland: Ropecon ry.

    Cover photo by Sadia from Pixabay. Image has been cropped.

  • Flagging: A Response

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    Flagging: A Response

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    This article was prompted by the recent republication on Nordiclarp.org of the article ‘Flagging is Flawed’ (Brown and Teerilahti 2024) from the Solmukohta 2024 book Liminal Encounters.

    In the article, the authors describe the practice of circulating a list of names of participants prior to a larp event, and inviting ‘flagging’ – the indication of safety concerns about fellow-participants, privately to the organizers. They discuss problems that they perceive with the tool.

    Our perception is that the article itself is flawed, because it doesn’t discuss the commonest flagging practices that are actually widely used in contemporary Nordic and international larp (in those cases when flagging is used at all).

    The authors seem to assume that the only flagging indication possible is a ‘red flag’, meaning that the named person should be considered unsafe and should be prevented from attending the event. They go on to suggest that this is misapplied, with participants flagging for reasons other than serious and absolute safety concerns meriting a ban from the event.

    That would indeed be a problem – which is why larp organizers don’t, in general, ask solely for red flags. Instead, they usually ask for a range of different indications of concern, with only the most severe meriting a red flag and hence exclusion.

    For example, a ‘yellow flag’ is commonly used to indicate that one wishes to avoid playing closely with another person, but does not consider them a general danger. Brown and Teerilahti seem to be unfamiliar with this practice, or have chosen to ignore it for the sake of their thesis. Either way, it invalidates a large part of their argument, because in their article they seem to assume that flagging because of a wish not to play closely will necessarily lead to automatic removal of the flagged person from the larp. But in practice, larp organizers for the most part do not act in such a way: a yellow flag simply means that the flagger and the flagged person will be cast in roles that are not closely connected.

    Some of the difficulties of communicating about flagging relate to its dual purpose. Red flags are intended as a safety tool – we want to keep people who have hurt others out of our larps. This is a method of mitigating risk at the events we run.

    But organizers may also feel the need to offer a comfort tool. Casting two players who dislike each other in an intense relationship is likely to result in a poor larp experience for them, and perhaps for everyone else, too. Therefore it’s useful to have methods for participants to indicate those people who they will be uncomfortable if cast closely with. It is important that the difference between this and a red flag is communicated clearly.

    The authors, larping together in safety and comfort. Photo by Oliver Facey.
    The authors, larping together in safety and comfort. Photo by Oliver Facey.

    Flagging in Practice

    Flagging as a system has evolved and developed over the last ten years or so, and we feel that it’s valuable to share details of practice, so that organizers can learn from one another, and participants can understand how the system can work.

    Here is the default flagging system that we use at Larps on Location. This is a work in progress, which has been refined and tweaked, added to and taken away from, over the years. Other organizers use similar systems, and we feel that overall there is a general coalescence around certain practices.

    The gist of it is that people should only be excluded for absolute safety concerns. For serious interpersonal disputes not related to general safety, one or other party will self-exclude; for lesser differences, the parties will be cast apart where practical.

    “The names of everyone who has signed up to the larp will be circulated to everyone who has signed up. You will have the option to:

    • Red-flag – means ‘I believe that this person is unsafe to larp with.’  Examples of behaviour that might deserve a red flag include bullying, harassment, or abuse. Someone who has been red-flagged will not be allowed to attend the larp. We will not tell them who red-flagged them, or why. We will not tell them that they’ve been red-flagged without the consent of the person who flagged them.
    • Orange-flag – means ‘I’m unable to attend if this person is participating.’ Choose this if you don’t believe that that person is unsafe, but for personal reasons you are unable to attend an event that they’re at. In this case, whichever of you or them is allocated a place first will be prioritized.
    • Yellow-flag – means ‘I don’t want to play in a close relationship with this person.’ Choose this if you don’t believe that the person is unsafe, but for personal reasons you are unable to play closely with them. (An example might be a difficult personality clash.) In this case, we will prioritize not casting you and them together in relationships; even if that means that as a result of this one or both of you aren’t cast. We will not tell someone that they have been yellow-flagged. If someone receives several yellow flags, it may be impossible to place them in the larp, especially if it’s a small one.

    You don’t have to tell us your reason for giving a flag (although you may do so, if you wish to).

    IMPORTANT: Don’t use a yellow flag when it would be more appropriate to: 

    • Request not to play closely with a specific person – this is for when you prefer to play away from someone perhaps because you often play closely together, or you are real-life partners, or because you want to explore play with different participants, or because of a clash in play styles, etc. We will do our best to honour these requests, but they won’t be prioritized. We will not tell them that you have made this request.”

    Our practice is to circulate the signup list, before asking about flags – rather than, as some organizers do, asking during the signup process if there are any people who the prospective participant wishes to indicate in advance as unsafe. We operate in this way because we feel that it creates an emotional burden on a prospective participant to name the people that they find dangerous – perhaps, their abuser(s) – each time they sign up to a larp, just on the basis of a possibility that those people might try to take part in that event.

    The details of what ‘request not to play closely’ involves will differ from larp to larp, as there’s a wide variation around what kinds of close play the design requires. For example, in a pair larp, play might be extremely close with one other person, not especially close with others. It’s important that these expectations are spelt out to participants when inviting them to submit such requests.

    Inviting requests of this type can also allow participants to introduce nuance, if that will be helpful – for example, there might be someone who they are happy to play some forms of close relationship, but not others (e.g. romance). The details will depend on the needs of the larp – but in general, it will always be the case that the more participants understand about what will be involved in play, the more they can help organizers to help them in return.

    We would be very glad to see the practices of other organizers shared in this way, to prompt further discussion.

    Weaponization

    The other substantive point that Brown and Teerilahti make in their article is that a flagging tool can be misused maliciously, to deliberately exclude others from larps for reasons that are not related to safety concerns. They consider this bad-faith flagging to be such a widespread and pervasive practice that it causes unacknowledged damage to the community.

    We have not seen evidence of such ‘weaponization’ of flagging in our own limited experience (we have organized about a dozen international weekend larps of various sizes, plus five large larp festivals, that have used some sort of flagging tool) – and other, larger, organizers of Nordic and international larps have indicated that they also have had few or no encounters with it. And that they, like us, have in general received very few red flags, and none that seemed unjustified.

    This is not to dismiss the authors’ concerns – no doubt, malicious flagging may be more common in some areas of larp, and in some communities, than others. But our overall impression is that it is a minor issue compared against the value of being able to flag up genuine malefactors – who have previously taken advantage of modern larp’s internationalism to move to operate in new areas where the organizers may be unfamiliar with their records.

    Critiques such as these seem to argue that the benefits of flagging are not worth the risk of potentially ostracizing flagged people undeservedly. To set against that, flagging may have saved larger numbers of people from being harassed or worse at larps – but those accounts are quiet and invisible, as the threat has been avoided thanks to flagging.

    Additionally, concerns have been expressed, including at a panel on this subject at Solmukohta 2024, that flags could be abused to create systemic prejudice in the community. An example discussed was that of a neurodivergent person being excluded because another participant misunderstood their communication style. We feel that this can be addressed by giving clear examples of what does or does not constitute cause for a flag, and by emphasising that a red flag should only be raised if the flagger believes that the other person is unsafe to larp with.

    There are many people in our community who identify as neurodivergent in a variety of ways – including one of the authors of this article – and, as noted above, we ourselves have not seen evidence of red-flagging being used as a weapon against them.

    Anonymity and Emotional Labour

    There has been considerable discussion about the responsibilities of organizers towards those who have been flagged against, and those who have submitted flags. (This is particularly important for red flags, which result in the exclusion of the flagged person. But, it may also be relevant to orange flags, if organizers have a policy that involves choosing which of the people involved to exclude.)

    We feel that the highest of these responsibilities relates to protecting participants at the event – including those who have raised flags as part of the process. They are to be protected by not sharing their identity with those who have been flagged against. It’s of the utmost importance to protect people from experiencing further serious harm.

    It is possible to also consider a responsibility towards those who have been flagged against. If they have done something wrong, for they deserve to be given a chance to mend their ways? Or if they feel they have been unjustly flagged, do they deserve a chance to clear their name?

    Then, is there a responsibility to the larp community as a whole, to provide the opportunity for offenders to be rehabilitated; or at least to provide them with the information that they may need to be able to take that journey?

    Our feeling is that these aims will be hard to accomplish without risking breaching the anonymity of the flagger. And they will involve organizers in emotional labour that they may be reluctant to take on in addition to all the other burdens involved in making larp events happen – or that they may find difficult to handle objectively, if personal friends are involved. For these reasons, at our own events we do not undertake such work. If other organizers are able to do so successfully, then we applaud them. But we feel that it needs to be made clear in advance, if this kind of engagement with flagged parties will be taking place: because participants who have been victims of malefactors may seek to avoid such a situation.

    We need to bear in mind that attending a larp, or even being part of a community, is not a human right guaranteed to participants. Larps are private events, usually run by volunteers in their spare time. There is absolutely no onus on larp organizers to make their events available to those who they feel are unsafe to attend – and there is also no right to have such decisions explained or justified.

    Flagging is clearly not a suitable tool for rehabilitation of people who have unintentionally caused harm. Is there a better method, in which everyone involved consents to the emotional labour, and to any potential risk? Possibly. But we feel that rehabilitation needs to be considered as separate from the issue of finding optimal ways to keep participants safe. Restorative justice is a big topic in its own right – but it is better managed by friends of the abuser than by random larp organizers. And it is definitely not something that victims should get caught up in when they thought they were just signing up for a larp.

    Communication in Advance

    And this leads to a more general point – which is that all policy and practice around flagging must be communicated clearly to all prospective participants, in advance of seeking signups. Otherwise, no-one can be confident of what they will be encountering. Like any other aspect of safety, a flagging system is only as good as the culture around it – and clear and direct communication is essential to this.

    Evolution 

    Brown and Teerilahti (2024) end by stating:

    We recognize that there is no easy answer to the important issue of protecting player safety, and that this is a difficult conversation. Sadly, bad actors will learn to weaponize any safety system put in place, so the system must evolve in order to stay relevant and continue to do the greatest good possible.

    There is no question that we should continue changing and evolving our practices, as we find ways to improve them. And we do understand that flagging is an uncomfortable topic, which brings up fears around exclusion and ostracism whenever discussed. However, it is vital to keep in mind what the main goal for the system is: and to ensure that sight of that is not lost, as we look at ways of addressing other associated harms. Flagging systems were introduced as a way of addressing manifest and persistent abusive behaviour from predatory individuals within the increasingly internationalizing larp community. Any suggestion of removing them must be accompanied by tools that are at least as effective at this.

    References

    Brown, Maury, and Nina Teerilahti. 2024. “Flagging is Flawed.” In Liminal Encounters: Evolving Discourse in Nordic and Nordic Inspired Larp, edited by Kaisa Kangas, Jonne Arjoranta, and Ruska Kevätkoski. Helsinki, Finland: Ropecon ry.

    Cover photo: Photo by Hawksky on Pixabay. 

  • SIGNA’s Performance Installations: Walking the Liminal Border Between Larp and Theatre

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    SIGNA’s Performance Installations: Walking the Liminal Border Between Larp and Theatre

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    In the narrow hall of an old county hospital building, two rows of people stand facing each other. The Open Heart organisation has sent out an invitation to the general public to meet and stay with the people in their care. To foster empathy, they say. To become compassionate. The people in the hospital’s care stand in one line; The Sufferers, they are called. People on the fringes of society. Drug addicts, homeless people, criminals. Every single sufferer is a tragic tale of how life can beat you down. In the other line, the Compassionates stand, looking around with mixed emotions; curiosity, pity, regret. The sufferers will each choose compassionates to live their lives. Wear their clothes, sleep in their bunk, and become them for the evening and night to come.

    This is the opening scene of the performance installation Det Åbne Hjerte (Eng. The Open Heart), created by the artist collective SIGNA in Aarhus, Denmark 2019. The sufferers are paid actors and the compassionates are their audience. You might, like me, see the similarities this performance piece bears to larp. The experience requires active participation from everyone, which eliminates the border between actor and audience that is usually found in theatre. If I replace the term “actor” with “non-player character” and “audience” with “players”, it would look like a larp. Both groups exist fully within the fiction, but while the audience are there to experience it, the actors are there to facilitate and steer the experience. 

    In this article, I aim to look into the overlap between larp and theatre, with SIGNA’s performance installations, that bear resemblance to both practices, serving to guide my exploration of this liminal space. In addition I aim to tease out approaches SIGNA use, that might be gainful for our development of larp. To gain insight into the methods and intentions of how SIGNA creates what they term performance installations, which I will introduce in the upcoming chapter, I asked them for an interview, which they generously granted.

    The Performance Installation

    When I experienced Det Åbne Hjerte in 2019, I was chosen by a young, too-skinny man with bleached hair and pale skin, named Blondie. While I was being dressed in his clothes, he told me about himself, and his life. He was open, brutally honest and believable. I quickly forgot that Blondie was a fictional character.

    ”Our point of departure is to create universes that are a sort of reality simulation. Not necessarily copies of reality, but simulations of hermetically sealed universes […] These universes are then populated by characters who improvise with the audience in processes that, depending on the given work, are more or less planned. However, what they say is up to the individual participant in accordance with the framework.”

    This is how Signa Köstler describes the artform of performance installations, a concept of her own devising. With her background as an art historian, she had previously worked with the concepts of performance and installation, and the combination of these seemed to encapsulate what she did.

    The power of performance installations, according to the Köstlers, lies in the heightened engagement they elicit. This emerges from three factors: participants navigate labyrinthine spaces, experience sensorial stimuli, and build relationships with characters. In Det Åbne Hjerte, the old county hospital had doors open into washing rooms, offices, cantinas, bedrooms and so on, and it was full of smells, sounds and actions. These were tied together through the relationships. As my sufferer, Blondie, chugged a whole beer, puked all over the floor, mopped it up with his shirt and led us through the tunnels of the hospital to the washing rooms, all senses were stimulated. The unique quality of these interactions allows for genuine emotional connections, akin to the impact of cinema or theatre but with the added dimension of direct engagement from the audience.

    These real emotions and feelings, created by deep immersion and interaction with a fictional universe, begin to sound exactly like what we argue for, when we talk about the value of larp. In fact, when Simo Järvelä (2019) describes the magic circle and alibi in the article “How real is larp?”, he writes: 

    ”Designing a larp is about constructing an artificial situation that is completely real. The players treat it as fictional – which it is – but it is also something fully embodied by the players” (Järvelä 2019).

    That these two descriptions line up so well, gives us a look into the landscape where theatre and larp can meet. It is interesting to look at how the audience’s relationship to the characters are formed. Is it passive, as with traditional film and theatre, where an audience relates to the situation happening on stage, or is it active, as with larp and performance installations, where the audience builds relationships based on the actions they personally take in the fake reality? 

    There isn’t a clear cut between these two categories. In the more experimental forms of theatre, the audience often has an active role that comes near to larp or performance installations. For example, in Punchdrunk’s Sleep No More (London 2003), the audience is allowed to move about freely in a six-storey building transformed into a set for Shakespeare’s Macbeth, though they are separated from that reality by plastic masks. Although the audience members have little actual power to influence the experience, they are not just passively sitting and observing. This illustrates how temporal media – that is media which we experience live – can range from traditional theatre to sandbox larps. 

    Three permance artists from the SIGNA piece "Det Åbne Hjerte" sit on a bench
    Three performers from the SIGNA performance installation “Det Åbne Hjerte”. The performers depicted from left to right: Arthur Köstler, Larysa Venediktova, Stine Korsgaard. Photo by Erich Goldmann.

    Manipulation of the audience

    After arriving in the afternoon and moving among the sufferers, learning about their pain, it is time for bed. We compassionates share bunk beds with our sufferers. It quickly becomes clear that this will be no easy night. Many of the sufferers have difficulties, mental or otherwise, that trigger at night. The worst comes in the middle of the night, as one of the sufferers starts screaming. It startles me awake and as staff rush past, my curiosity battles with tiredness. As the screaming continues, curiosity wins and I drag myself out of bed to find the source. 

    SIGNA employs diverse strategies to guide the audience through specific scenes and emotions. The masterplan is a carefully orchestrated framework that serves as a roadmap for performers to interact with participants. SIGNA has different approaches to the masterplan depending on the performance installation. Sometimes the masterplan includes instructions for sending the audience between performers in predetermined patterns, other times it is almost like an itinerary that the performers follow, while the audience are free to move around in the spaces where the performance happens, as was the case with Det Åbne Hjerte. Interestingly, Signa Köstler notes that more recent plays have proven that the most optimal format is for the audience to be attached to specific performers:

    ”… Audience members are attached to one or two characters, whom they will always gravitate towards. When this attachment has been created, either of loyalty, security or the like, they [the audience member] will always come back to it. Then they can be set free a little, and they can be with others, but you can always pull them back in again pretty quickly. Then you can move about with an invisible masterplan, while they are satellites you can pull along with you.”

    The Köstlers say that the actors need to be in a “hyper-aware” mindset when they follow these master plans. Their focus is split between ensuring the picture of the scene stays in place, that the acoustics of the installation are balanced, and that the minds of the audience are engaged with the fiction. In other words, the actors need to keep in mind how the audience sees a scene and hears a scene, and to be aware of how engaged they currently are. Reading the body language of the audience becomes a crucial skill to balancing the experience, as this is a core tool in understanding what the audience currently experiences emotionally. As Signa puts it, the constant mindset is ”What can I contribute with? What needs do the audience members I am responsible for have, right now?”

    This relates interestingly to another scale of variances between larp and traditional theatre. The performers don’t need to improvise reactions to audience responses unless the audience actually has a certain degree of freedom to respond to the stimuli. In traditional theatre, the audience is expected to sit still, and clapping or crying out are the strongest responses the audience is expected to have to the events on the stage. The smaller, more nuanced reactions are usually visible only to other audience members. While they may create liveness in the room, they do not directly affect the action on stage. 

    Experimental theatre and performance installations have a higher degree of audience freedom, which introduces an element of uncertainty into the artwork. Most larps fall into the opposite end of the scale compared to traditional theatre. In larp, audience interaction is expected and needed for the artwork to progress at all. Det Åbne Hjerte performance installation is slightly more towards the larp extreme on the empathic response scale, as the audience participates actively in the action. However, it is slightly more towards the traditional theatre extreme on the audience influence scale, as the plot is made for the audience to explore it, rather than to influence it. An audience member might try to influence a cast member’s actions, but usually the cast member will still be at the next spot on their master plan itinerary. 

    Performer from the SIGNA performance installation sits on the floor surrounded by trash
    Performer from the SIGNA performance installation “Det Åbne Hjerte” sits on the floor. Depicted performer: Arthur Köstler. Photo by Erich Goldmann.

    Character handling

    One of the sufferers sits in a hallway, with a blanket with random low-quality goods spread out before her. Plastic toy dinosaurs, old DVDs and lighters. I strike up a conversation with her. She wishes to sell the goods, not to profit from it herself, but because she is at the bottom of a pecking order that The Open Heart has allowed to persist amongst the sufferers. The meagre profits she gets from selling her wares go to another sufferer. Seeing this suffering, upheld by the system of The Open Heart, I get angry. I storm into the manager’s office to tell him off. 

    In SIGNA’s universes, there is a rule we rarely see in larp: no-one ever breaks character. I first assumed there were exceptions, but there aren’t any. The rule can be upheld, because the performers have a lot of practice before stepping into character, and because safety is mapped out in advance. In fact, I asked the Köstlers if they could give one tip to the roleplaying community, based on their experiences. Their answer was to try this out. There are two parts to safely upholding this rule. Allow the characters to be fallible and take responsibility for any action you take: and have an order of command in the fiction, that allows for safe response to real-life emergencies.

    First of all, the character is seen as a whole, and should be made to withstand any emotion, action, and the like. The situation they wish to avoid, as Signa puts it, is to ”feel that the character only exists when you have everything under control”. The character should be allowed to have any response you could have, from being tired or overwhelmed, to having a headache or an upset stomach. If the character can take responsibility for those situations – that is, if it can still be the character who feels them and acts upon them – it allows for a flexibility that can ensure that the fiction is a whole, simulated world. Or, as Signa puts it:

    ”And maybe it’s also about, when working with these forms, being prepared to let go of control and let go of perfectionism.”

    Secondly, SIGNA has procedures that allow staying in fiction when an emergency strikes, for example if someone breaks a leg or the building catches fire. They have carefully planned these in advance. In any given universe, accidents like broken bones or fires can occur. Creating a chain of command that is ready to handle these kinds of problems, just as they would in real life, makes it a natural part of the story being told. If there are hospitals in the storyworld, an injured participant’s character will be taken there within the fictional world of the performance installation. If the installation is set in the front lines of a war, the performers would speak about the hospital as a lazaret. As a part of the administrative preparation, SIGNA makes sure to keep all the health insurance certificates alphabetized in a box, along with money enough for taxis and lists of relevant phone numbers, so that the character who is responsible in the fiction can access and efficiently handle the out-of-character parts required without breaking the fiction. This also extends to audience emergencies. 

    “When it happens to the audience, we have experienced that it is worse to go out of character for them. When they, for example, have an emotional breakdown or the like, it is much better to take care of them in-character. We have a room, where you can sit down with them and make them a cup of tea.”

    When someone gets aggressive, they meet them with an equal measure of calm, to de-escalate the feelings. Arthur Köstler especially promoted the concept of being prepared to nip any breakdowns in the bud – reading up on communication theories and learning about body language to see potential breakdowns coming. 

    When I heard this, it felt like a very high bar to aim for, but SIGNA noted that they do have a significant advantage to most larps. They have five weeks to practice up to the performance installation itself. When talking about it, I explained that we often do workshops before a demanding larp. Using the Sigridsdotter 2018 run in Denmark as an example, I explained the day-before workshopping for internalizing the gender-norms we were to play, as well as for introducing the storyworld and setting common boundaries for the larp. The Köstlers noted that their practice corresponds to five weeks of constant workshops, attending to all the potential need-to-knows of the performers and forming the installation together.

    The interview left me inspired to see how I could work all that I had learned into my larp praxis. With time, we will hopefully be able to find more points of connection between artforms, to explore how the borderlands and liminal spaces are formed and how we can use them to create unique, creative experiences.

    As I barge into the manager’s office, he meets me with a calm expression and tone of voice. I yell about how fucked up the system is, how unfair it is to allow the discrepancy in power to persist among the sufferers and how The Open Heart should take responsibility for the people they are claiming to help. In a slow, measured cadence, the manager answers all my worries with corporate speak. It only makes me more angry. But his tone of voice, and the cup of tea he offers me, gets the edge off and at some point I sink into the futility of trying to convince these people that they are doing anything wrong.

    Later, I talk to the sufferer who chose me and express interest in helping. He gives me his phone number. He texts me once, after the performance installation is over, but nothing comes out of it. Weeks after the final performance, I hear from another audience member, that a blonde sufferer had dropped out of the program and died from a drug overdose. I text to hear if Blondie is okay, but in the end he never responds.

    Bibliography

    Järvelä, Simo. 2019. “How real is larp?”. In Larp Design – Creating Role-Play Experiences. Edited by Johanna Koljonen, Jakko Steenros, Anne Serup Grove, Aina D. Skjønsfjell and Elin Nilsen. Landsforeningen Bifrost.

    Ludography

    Barrett, Felix & Maxine Doyle. 2003, 2009, 2011–2024. Sleep No More. New York.

    Köstler, Signa & Arthur Köstler. 2019. Det Åbne Hjerte. Denmark. 

    Renklint, Lukas, Kaya Toft Thejls & Anna Emilie Groth. 2018. Sigridsdotter. Denmark. 

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

    Lyngkjær, Rasmus. 2024. “SIGNA’s Performance Installations: Walking the Liminal Border Between Larp and Theatre.” In Liminal Encounters: Evolving Discourse in Nordic and Nordic Inspired Larp, edited by Kaisa Kangas, Jonne Arjoranta, and Ruska Kevätkoski. Helsinki, Finland: Ropecon ry.

    Cover photo by Erich Goldmann. Photo has been cropped.

    All photos in this article are used with permission from the artistic collective SIGNA.

  • Flagging is Flawed

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    Flagging is Flawed

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    The current common safety practices of flagging someone as unsafe to attend a larp were created to handle predators in the scene, specifically to protect sexual assault survivors. However, flagging is also commonly used to prevent people from attending a larp for lesser reasons, such as a bad breakup, disliking someone’s communication or playstyle, simply feeling uncomfortable around someone, or loyalty to a friend who experienced bad behavior from the person. Our goal with this article is to bring these issues into the open for further discussion.

    While created with the best of intentions, flagging as the main safety practice has helped create several undesirable consequences that negatively impact the larp community. These include: an imbalance and misuse of anonymous, concentrated, and hoarded power; a toxic culture of pre-emptive or retaliatory flagging to avoid any potential interaction outside a narrow comfort zone; and a requirement for organizers to become police, judge, jury or relationship therapist for attendees.

    The current common flagging practice used to ensure event safety in many international larps consists of providing a list of participants to everyone planning to attend. Participants then can anonymously flag other players as unsafe, meaning people who should not be at the event at all, or as someone they don’t want to play with. Typically, people who are flagged unsafe are removed from the event while the flagger gets in. The flagging is not questioned and stays anonymous, although sometimes organizers will investigate and discuss the matter as much as they can without risking the anonymity of the flagger.

    Although this practice helps protect the flagger, it is increasingly problematic because anonymity creates space to abuse the system, not unlike how discourse degrades in online forums where a person’s identity is hidden. Additionally, the scope and intention of the flagging system, built to stop sexual assaults, has changed. It has  become a system to protect one’s comfort zone instead or to shift responsibility for managing one’s emotions and interactions to a third party. As a game organizer, Nina for example has seen flagging reasons such as: ”They sent me too many messages after a larp and I felt uncomfortable”, “They are my ex and it’s awkward.” and ”They always complain after a larp and cry too often.” Maury has also seen reasons for flagging including “They have a big ego and dominate play” and “They were abusive to my friend in a past relationship.” 

    When these types of reasons are used – and succeed in removing others from a larp – flagging is no longer about player safety. Flagging is being used to avoid resolving conflict that is an inevitable part of human contact in any community and to create cliques of players who ostracize others. People whose behavior is disliked in any way, especially cis men, get dropped from larps and, in worst case scenarios, ostracized from the larger larp community, because they may have behaved in a way that made someone uncomfortable. Flagged players generally do not get information on how to improve, denying them the opportunity for restoration. 

    Knowing that you can get someone removed from a larp simply by anonymously clicking a cell in a spreadsheet leads to a misuse of power. A player who does not like another player can simply flag them and ensure they will not have to see them at an event. The threat of weaponizing the flagging safety practice is also unfortunately common. Nina for example, has been threatened that they will be flagged as an unsafe player from now on unless they stop talking about an issue in the community, online and outside of larp events. Misusing the power inherent in the system for your own gain is all too easy. Being flagged once can also lead to a cycle of continued flagging, using the rationale that if another larp removed them, there must be a valid reason.

    Flagging creates problems for organizers too, who need to act as investigators, mitigators, police, judge and jury unless they simply drop all flagged people without question, which leads to the problems already described. Organizers may also be asked to perform hours of emotional labor listening to players in conflict. Adding the responsibility to guarantee safety of participants to this is a huge amount of work that is highly biased, mainly based on rumors, and ultimately thankless. Any larp organizer who does not drop a flagged person, for whatever reason, risks being called unsafe themselves, leading to backlash, ostracization and even abuse from players who disagree with an organizer decision.

    No set of safety tools and player support systems will guarantee that every moment of every larp is free of situations that may be problematic or outside of a particular player’s comfort zone.

    We recognize that there is no easy answer to the important issue of protecting player safety, and that this is a difficult conversation. Sadly, bad actors will learn to weaponize any safety system put in place, so the system must evolve in order to stay relevant and continue to do the greatest good possible.

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

    Brown, Maury, and Nina Teerilahti. 2024. “Flagging is Flawed.” In Liminal Encounters: Evolving Discourse in Nordic and Nordic Inspired Larp, edited by Kaisa Kangas, Jonne Arjoranta, and Ruska Kevätkoski. Helsinki, Finland: Ropecon ry.

    Photo credit: Image by Julien Tromeur from Pixabay. Image has been cropped.