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.
For Mike, may he rest well.
When I learned that a dear friend and mentor had passed away, I was at home, scrolling through social media. In that moment, a part of me that usually stays quiet—my other self, the character I embody in another world—rose to the surface, refusing to remain in the background. My grief seemed to split in two. As myself, I mourned the loss of a kind and dedicated man who had spent years creating a space where imagination thrived. As my character, I froze, feeling the absence of a mentor who had guided me, encouraged me, and helped shape the person I had become in that world. I did not know Mike for as long as others, but he always had a smile and an open ear for me. Our fantasy and real-life selves often shared a space at the same time; while he mentored my character as a ritualist and taught her how to command a circle, he also mentored me—ensuring that I would not be lost under the weight of others’ wants and needs.
Even now, as I write this, I can still feel myself trying to hold back tears. Two selves wrestle for control of my thoughts: one grounded in reality, and the other still standing at my mentor’s wake, deep in a forest, where a tree now grows in his honour. The UK larp community lost a very good man the day he passed; a man who pushed the boundaries of what could be in a game, yet even when he was busy, he always gave more than just a moment of his time for others.
It wasn’t the first time I had encountered death in this hobby, but it was the first time the loss felt so permanent. There would be no new character bearing his face with a different name, no scholar sipping tea near the College of Magic, no kind smile waiting at the Watchers’ table to open the circle for me. I miss his smile.
This death was quiet. Those of us who loved Mike gathered to mourn. His closest friends shared stories of how he had helped shape Curious Pastimes; a UK larp that has been running since 1996, and currently runs four mainline events a year set in its game world. We listened, sometimes laughing in remembrance, but mostly sitting silently on the late summer grass, holding hands, hugging, crying, and honouring a man who had given so much and asked for so little in return.
The memorial was meant to be entirely out of character. We came together, ostensibly as ourselves, to grieve him. Yet, looking around, I noticed most of us weren’t dressed as ourselves. We wore the clothes of our other selves—the characters Mike might also have met through his own alter ego. It was an unusual wake, held during a time when the event itself was in full swing, laughter echoing through the trees on the hillside. But in that space, we were caught in a strange in-between, neither fully in-character nor fully out of it. Two selves occupied one body, coexisting in shared grief.
I did not walk to the wake alone, and I am forever grateful for that. A friend—a brother, really, as he has been to my heart for many years now—walked from our faction’s camp with me. I am, by nature, an emotional person, but I—perhaps foolishly—hoped that I could witness this event with the strength of an unbending face. Instead, I found strength in those around me who also allowed themselves to feel this loss.
I remember my heart-brother taking my hand as I cried. In that instant of vulnerability, he was every version of himself I had known, and I was every version of myself he had known. New friends, old friends—the Claw and his cub, the brother and sister—all of them were present in the way only this community could allow. Letting him wrap his arm around me brought far more comfort than forcing a brave face or pushing any part of myself aside. He has long been a safe place, across so many lives.
The Emotional Complexity of Larp
Death is a frequent part of larp, but it is rarely permanent. In Al’Gaia, one of the factions in Curious Pastimes, the primary belief is that when someone dies, they return to the cycle—the eternal loop of life, death, and rebirth. While the specifics vary depending on the character’s beliefs, path, and connection to the deities of Al’Gaia, the core idea remains the same. For many, this belief offers comfort, something often reiterated by those in positions of authority during in-character funerals.
When someone in Al’Gaia dies, their body is carried back to camp and laid to rest in the glade where we set up our shrine at the start of the event. We gather, sometimes packed tightly into that sacred space, mourning the loss of one of our own. Yet, we are always reminded not to grieve but to rejoice—because the departed has returned to the cycle, and we will meet them again in another life.
I’ve always found it a complicated kind of comfort to hear those words.
I’ve attended many larp funerals. In both of the larp games I play—Curious Pastimes and Wilde Realms—I’ve taken part in these ceremonies as both an active and passive participant; someone who was directly affected by a loss and spoke on the individual whose spirit was now in the stars, and as a listener there to pay my respects to another that I may not have known as well. I’ve sung beneath the trees with others as fallen comrades “disappeared” (stepped out of play). I’ve stood with my herd, setting fields of the dead ablaze with violet fire. I’ve stood among the bodies, pleading with my in-character family to remember the fallen and continue the fight in their name.
Death in real life is not as dramatic, but it is just as deeply emotional. I cry the same tears, hold the same hands, and think the same thoughts in both of my lives. The key difference is that death in larp is not supposed to be permanent. You mourn a character as though they were a real person—because, in many ways, they were. They had a family, a personality, a story. You fought beside them, bled with them, and waited anxiously for their return after a battle. It feels almost cruel to experience loss so frequently in larp, knowing it’s temporary, yet still feeling the full weight of grief as if it were real.
This is, perhaps, one of the limitations of the magic circle—the invisible boundary that separates the world of play from the real world. (Huizinga 1938, 10) In larp, though we grieve our loved ones, we eventually see their face again in another body and continue living with them. In real life, death is final. My friend will not return.
This stark difference can intensify the phenomenon of “bleed”; a concept I am deeply familiar with, originally coined by Emily Care Boss in 2007 at Ropecon. In ‘Bleed: The Spillover Between Player and Character’, Sarah Bowman defines this concept by writing that “role-players sometimes experience moments where their real-life feelings, thoughts, relationships, and physical states spill over into their characters’, and vice versa.” (Bowman 2015) Bowman states that bleed can occur intentionally or unintentionally, and its effects range from catharsis to profound emotional devastation.
Bleed can be observed in three ways:
Bleed-in: when the player’s emotions, thoughts, or experiences affect their character.
Bleed-out: when the character’s emotions, thoughts, or experiences affect the player.
Bleed feedback loop: when the boundary between player and character dissolves, especially in overwhelming emotional moments. (Bowman 2015)
What I experienced during Mike’s wake—and even when I first heard the news of his passing—was undeniably a bleed feedback loop. I could not tell you who I was as I sat listening to his dearest companions recount their memories. I entered the wake as myself, but my body was dressed as another, and the distinction between the two identities blurred. Or perhaps they didn’t blur at all. Perhaps they simply merged, becoming one.
I often say that playing at larp is a way to explore and embody facets of yourself—ideals, dreams, or fragments of your personality that you bring to life. In moments like these, the boundary between the player and the character collapses, creating an experience that is simultaneously beautiful and overwhelming.
The Fragility of the Magic Circle
The magic circle in larp serves as a boundary between fiction and reality, creating a space where players can safely embody characters and explore narratives. Central to maintaining this boundary is the concept of alibi; originally discussed by Markus Montola, Jaakko Stenros, and Annika Waern in 2009 in ‘Philosophies and strategies of pervasive larp design’, in Larp, the Universe and Everything, (Montola, Stenros, Waern 2009, 214). It is further deliberated by Bowman in her work on bleed from 2015, and again by Bowman and Hugaas in their 2021 article ‘Magic Is Real: How Role-Playing Can Transform Our Identities, Our Communities, and Our Lives’. Alibi acts as a psychological shield for players, allowing them to place blame for their actions directly on their character when engaging in situations that might otherwise feel emotionally or morally fraught. (Bowman 2015) (Bowman and Hugaas 2021)
But although alibi allows for emotional and mental distance between a player and their character, this tool of detachment is not infallible. The strength of alibi can vary depending on the story’s proximity to the player’s real life—playing a character who experiences grief, love, or loss that mirrors the player’s own can weaken the alibi, making it harder to maintain a sense of separation. In these cases, bleed—where the emotions, thoughts, and experiences of the player and character intertwine—becomes almost inevitable.
This fragility became glaringly apparent at Mike’s wake. I entered the space carrying the raw weight of personal grief but dressed as someone else entirely—a character who also mourned. My usual reliance on alibi, the assurance that my emotions were distinct from my character’s, crumbled. Instead, my two selves began to blur. My character’s performed grief became my own, and my own feelings deepened their reaction. It didn’t matter that my character hadn’t been “let out to play” yet, I could feel their emotions just as solidly as my own. They were just as real. The magic circle, meant to protect and isolate, instead amplified the collision between fiction and reality.
This breakdown of alibi wasn’t simply jarring—it was transformative. The safety net of the magic circle exposed me to an emotional intensity that might not have been as deeply felt outside of it. I wasn’t sure where I ended and my character began. I didn’t just mourn for Mike as myself—I mourned for him through my character. This merging of identities exemplifies how bleed can erode the structures we rely on in larp, creating profound, often overwhelming emotional experiences.
The Duality of Grief and Bleed
Grief within larp exists on a unique emotional spectrum, heightened by the phenomenon of bleed. Bleed, as players know, blurs the line between character and self—emotions from one spilling into the other. This becomes particularly pronounced during moments of grief, where the loss of a character or even a fellow player can create a shared sense of vulnerability among participants. We all felt it when we lost Mike; we weren’t alone in that field, listening to his dear friends talk about him. We were together in our grief, whether we knew each other personally or not, that moment connected us; Mike connected us. In ‘Why Larp Community Matters and How We Can Improve It’, Laura Wood highlights how larp evokes intense emotions and provides spaces for connection, amplifying empathy and deepening bonds. These spaces allow grief to feel communal and cathartic but can also make players more emotionally exposed. (Wood 2021)
Grieving alongside others in a larp setting can strengthen a sense of belonging, as moments of vulnerability bring participants closer. However, this same openness can exacerbate emotional overwhelm when grief spills over, especially if the loss feels personal on both in-character and real-world levels. Without adequate support, these heightened emotions may lead to unintended consequences, leaving players feeling isolated in their dual mourning.
Promoting Safety and Awareness
Mike ensured that I knew I was more than a ritualist with powers for others to use. He spoke to me about the importance of saying “no”, and helped me manage my anxiety about being in such a prominent position. Because of Mike, I learned to be powerful and powerless; my job was to lead the players in the circle, but the outcome of a ritual was not up to me. He was my touchstone in the Watcher’s box; someone I could count on to be fair, but to encourage me with positive criticism. He was, in my opinion, the best Watcher that Curious Pastimes had. He looked beyond the play and saw the player, and I think that is something that is missing now.
We may have lost Mike, but we haven’t lost his beliefs or his words. I can do my best to advocate for myself at larp and encourage others to do the same. Together, we can create an element of larp culture that is dedicated to wellbeing, we can manage the challenges of subjects like grief and bleed, we can understand that safety—physical, emotional, and mental—must become a cornerstone of our games. Wood’s call to normalise safety tools like safe words and exit mechanics are just the start. (Wood 2021) These tools allow players to protect themselves without disrupting the experience for others, making it easier to process complex emotions such as grief. Educating both organisers and players about these tools—and creating environments where their use is encouraged and introduced to players before a game and during pre-game briefings—can help safeguard everyone’s emotional well-being.
Self-awareness is crucial when engaging with grief in larp. Players should understand their emotional limits and approach topics thoughtfully, recognising that their fellow participants may be carrying their own burdens. Community-wide education on managing grief and bleed—through workshops, post-game discussions, or even casual conversations—can create a culture of care and responsibility.
By weaving empathy, safety, and self-awareness into the fabric of larp, participants can transform grief from an overwhelming experience to an opportunity for collective healing and deeper connection. As Wood suggests, this is the magic of community: learning to protect each other’s vulnerability while embracing the shared humanity that grief uniquely reveals. (Wood 2021) I can’t help but feel that Mike would share the same sentiment.
Bibliography
Huizinga, Johan. 1938. Homo Ludens: A Study of the Play-Element in Culture. Angelico Press. 10.
Montola, Markus, Jaakko Stenros, and Annika Waern. 2009. “Philosophies and Strategies of Pervasive Larp Design.” In Holter, Matthijs, Fatland, Eirik & Tømte, Even: Larp, the Universe and Everything. The book for Knutepunkt 2009. Knutepunkt. p214.
This article is republished from the Knutepunkt 2025 book. Please cite it as:
Greenwood, Lyssa. 2025. “Grief in Larp: Bleeding Through Two Lives.” In Anatomy of Larp Thoughts, a breathing corpus: Knutepunkt Conference 2025. Oslo. Fantasiforbundet.
The smell of candles and chalk mingles with the scent of brimstone and incense as shadows dance around the geometric patterns of the sigil inscribed on the floor. In the center of which stands the looming figure of the infernal patron you wish to appease, its ancient name transcribed onto a scroll from the book of diabolical knowledge you keep by your side. You smile. The Demon smiles. You both know that this is exactly the point at which things get interesting.
Summoning demons is often given a bad reputation by people who do not appreciate the rare and special gifts given to us by the agents of the infernal. Rarely are we given an opportunity to cause chaos and calamity on a scale that will satisfy our need for destruction, and demons never fail to satisfy. They are fun, dangerous, and extremely good value for money. You can achieve a lot on your own; you can achieve a lot more with the aid of a diabolic patron.
For many of us the days of summoning looming monsters to fight off knights with swords are behind us. We live slightly more refined lives of hotel lobbies and hidden manor houses. Armies of the damned have been largely replaced with cults dedicated to sex and death, and our demon summoning practices have moved along with it. Where once we may have led rituals to summon vast diabolical monsters to fight armies, we now look for something more subtle, more pervasive.
That is not to say there is not a time and a place for an actual physical manifestation of supernatural malign intent; it certainly adds spice to any basement supplication orgy, we can assure you. These days we are more inclined to want to summon manifestation of demonic interference into our own chosen vessels. Today we explore the alternatives to creating physical gateways into hell dimensions and focus instead on the subtle arts of accepting evil into our soul.
Masks and Personas
Playing a character can be hard enough on its own without all of the extra baggage of supernatural possession. Even those who play thinly veiled versions of themselves wearing funny hats have to put some work into attempting to portray a personality that is different to themselves, even if they always seem to be roughly the same. Once we allow ourselves to become possessed, the demonic entity —cool as they may be— is an extra layer of complication we need to prepare for.
We suggest that having a clear understanding of the difference between the character you are portraying and the possession can help you be clear in how you are going to portray your new, even more exciting alibi for bad behaviour. Take the time to meditate on the persona of the character you are playing and the persona of the demon that you are handing over control to. The differences between the two are the things that are going to stand out the most so make a note of those differences and play the hell out of them! If you’ll pardon the expression.
Once you have a clear idea of those personality differences you can allow the demon to take up some residency in your own soul. Try to embody the physicality of the demon and how they will move your meat vessel through this world of exciting opportunities for evil. Don’t be embarrassed! Your demon is perfectly equipped to take the blame for all manner of absurd postures and walking gaits you decide to adopt. What will help is having a clear idea of the internal rhythm and tempo of the demon.
We will often repeat the name of the demon in our heads at a speed that suits the creature. Once we feel our thought processes match the tempo of the demon we can let ourselves go and allow the demon to run riot, which they will, every time. The important question is “How quickly?” For the more somnolent demons you can slow your pace down and adjust your breathing to match, lazily opening your eyes when your inner languid evil is ready to face the world. For a more galvanic transition into easily excited or hyperactive demons you can repeat the name in your head, speeding up with each repetition until you have no choice but to open your eyes with a scream.
A substantially different tempo and rhythm will often work on its own to emphasise the difference between demon and host, but we still need to be able to interact with other people. Being very clear about what the demon wants and how they want to get it helps us emphasise the differences between the host and the demon. The demon will rarely be that bothered by the impact of its desires on its host and will exploit the possession ruthlessly. This is your opportunity to create a catastrophic mess that will take hours for you to fix once the demon is done with you. Enjoy it while it lasts and feast on the mayhem. Don’t forget to cry when your character realises what the demon made them do; or at least pretend to be sad.
Circles and Words
The ritual is an important part of the process of allowing demons into your heart. Taking the time to prepare properly gives you the time to make sure that you are ready to channel multiple character personas at once. It also helps with the immersion into the roles if you have some sort of ceremony that can help focus your mind. These ceremonies do not need to be elaborate but having some sort of process can make the whole thing a little easier by giving you time to really think about what it is you will be doing once the ritual is complete.
Small cards, scrolls and books can be useful reminders of key information about the demons you are inhabiting if that is required. Usually the only thing that matters is how the demon changes the persona of your character, so you will only need some things to do while you are getting ready to perform the transformation. Establishing a space in which you can sit in order to do the summoning is a good start, with or without a circle of some sort. You can then close your eyes and effectively perform a diegetic workshop in which you welcome the new spiritual intruder into your heart and soul.
Turning our own body into a physical vessel for the transubstantiated soul of a malevolent spirit is thirsty work and not something to be undertaken lightly. Make sure you hydrate and take breaks if you need to. Once you have mastered the art of the single possession there are other exciting opportunities that await those looking to surrender their bodies to the dark powers. A straightforward possession is draining and difficult, but with enough preparation you can expand your demonic entourage to multiple demonic interventions.
Possession, Legion and Pandemonium
Legion is the practice of being inhabited by many demons. You may not know the names of all of the demons you have allowed to inhabit your soul, but this should not stop you from enjoying the experience. We have found it helpful to always remain aware of the tempo of the various demons to keep track of how they interact with people. Your somnolent demons will keep a slow, regular pace with their interactions, interrupted by lively galvanic demons who can burst into your interactions with screams and outbursts.
Play on the differences between them, occasionally letting out bursts of grief, outrage and upset from the shattered remains of your original character. There does not need to be many of them, two or three is typical, but don’t let that stop you from implying that there are many more in there. Make sure that amidst the chaos you are staying calm and in control yourself. When you need to take a break do so. I have never been in a situation where I am channeling demons where I cannot just collapse in order to collect my thoughts before returning to the drama, usually with a slow paced adagio demon dragging my body back into the fray. This also provides an opportunity for your friends to try to help you, which is always funny.
Should you wish to escalate this to a state of Pandemonium you will have demons seemingly coming in and out of you at random. Your body is no longer a tool or even a temple, it is now a playground that is inhabited as and when these creatures need it. Throw yourself violently between the different tools with ridiculous abandon, shifting vocal tone, tempo and physical at every opportunity. Try to maintain the impression of a body that is being controlled, while also staying aware of the broad agenda behind the possession. This is difficult for others to interact with meaningfully, so should be kept extremely short; it can create tense scenes where the host has lost control of their channeling.
Whatever happens, remember to be kind to yourself when it is over. Have that drink, take that rest, and recharge your batteries. In larps the only reason to summon all the demons is to enhance the drama for everyone else around you. If you do it well you can create a complex situation that you can then enjoy trying to get out of. The satisfaction of allowing the dark forces to take control for a short while is its own reward. Something you can consider as the smell of wax and incense fades, and you are left with nothing but fear, ruin, and the fading afterglow of an intoxicating rush of endorphins.
This article is published in the companion book Book of Magic: Vibrant Fragments of Larp Practices and is published here with permission. Please cite this text as:
Ford, Kol. “Summon All the Demons: The Exciting World of Larp Demonology.” In Book of Magic: Vibrant Fragments of Larp Practices, edited by Kari Kvittingen Djukastein, Marcus Irgens, Nadja Lipsyc, and Lars Kristian Løveng Sunde. Oslo, Norway: Knutepunkt, 2021.
This article, by Thomas Munier, was initially published in French on ElectroGN on February 8th, 2021. It was translated into English for publication here by JC, with the approval of the author and with the permission of ElectroGN.
Introduction
For alibi to really help the participant play their role freely, an aura of legitimacy needs to be built. In other words, a social, narrative and game system needs to be established that legitimizes the participant in their role. This aura reinforces alibi and allows them to play roles that are independent from their social constraints or individual capacities, while still feeling credible. The aura also validates to the group the participant’s legitimacy to play their chosen role. To this end, we propose a number of tools, ranging from larp design, to roleplaying, to an encouraging group attitude, to a global system supporting alibi from pre-larp briefing to post-larp debriefing.
How do we build an aura?
In the previous article, ‘It Wasn’t Me’, we established that the concept of alibi (“It’s not me, it’s my character”) is what allows larps to be wonderful spaces for expression and experiencing self and otherness. By allowing participants to let go, alibi allows them to meet their character, and temporarily free themselves of the place and limits society has assigned them.
There are times when this implicit tool works perfectly. But alibi can sometimes be fragile. Alibi alone is sometimes not enough for participants to feel that they can legitimately play their role. Others sometimes use alibi as a pretext for abusive behavior. The group sometimes doesn’t respect our alibi. And we can never completely escape other people’s judgement.
If we want to ensure that a participant can experience another perspective, they need to be able to give in to their alibi, and the group needs to give it legitimacy. In other words, the participant must feel empowered by an aura that makes them, if not credible, at least accepted or acceptable in their role.
Building the aura is thus a conscious and explicit process that supports alibi, which is implicit. This involves the larp’s design, but also both the participant’s and the group’s attitude.
Character Sheets
Alibi must be written into character sheets. This goes both ways: if you are playing the Viking chief, your character description should mention that you are feared and respected, but the character descriptions of all Vikings (with perhaps one or two exceptions) should mention this too. These other character sheets participate in the inception of the chief’s aura of fear. Depending on the character relationships, love, hate, trust, etc. can also be mentioned.
The character sheet’s literary quality is also important: it immerses the participant in their role, which they will then be able to play more confidently. The romanesque larp style uses character sheets that are often 30–80 pages long, so that all characters already know how fearsome the Viking chieftain is when they approach.
But a long character sheet, written like a novella, can also make the message less clear. And the length can contribute to the cognitive overload mentioned in the previous article. In any case, long character sheets of this type are mainly suited to larps based on secrecy and revelations.
Larp creators don’t all have to go that far. However, it is always important to pay attention to one’s writing style to allow the participant to establish an emotional connection with their character, understand their relationships with other characters, and be ready to go before the larp starts. Even if one doesn’t write a novella for each character, it’s important to pay attention to supporting alibi, for example by describing relationships.
Larp Design
The way in which larps are designed plays a big role in the creation of aura and in the compensation of any human errors. Reinforcing a larp’s design is less risky than depending only on participants’ good will, because that good will might be lacking in certain larp cultures.
As mentioned previously, character sheets are larp design tools. But other tools exist to be used when participants come together.
Workshops
Before the larp, workshops can help to build aura by encouraging participants to act in a way that is coherent with their role, and with the way their character feels about other characters.
For example, gender expression workshops can be organized like this: the participant attempting to play a character of a gender other than their own will work on their physical and verbal expression, while others will practice talking about them, and discuss their vision for the character, using the character’s gender (not the participant’s gender).
Circles are another, more usual example of workshops that work for most larps. Participants take turns standing in the center of the circle. Each person then states what their character thinks of the character of the person standing in the center of the circle. The participant can also answer questions from the circle about their character, or present their character to the circle.
Briefing
The briefing is another indispensable tool to remind everyone of specific roles, but also to encourage everyone to show understanding and avoid judging. I can, for example, imagine that in the briefing of a larp including characters expected to do artistic or acrobatic feats, it would be crucial to reassure participants who were going to do live performances. It’s important everyone understands it’s not a talent contest. Reminding participants to have fun rather than looking for the perfect performance seems like an important aspect of creating aura.
Stats
I would also like to rehabilitate a larp technique that has often been despised by “freeform” or “immersionist” larpers: character stats. A character that is capable of inflicting huge amounts of damage, another with an outstanding charisma or negotiation stat: these are simple tools for building aura.
Photo by JD Hancock on Flickr
Freeform Techniques
Other, more freeform, techniques can replace stats. For example, in a larp with a strong hierarchy, “inferior” characters can be directed to freeze in place and must await instructions as soon as a “superior” character touches them on the forehead.
The larp Les Sentes goes further, with two rules: “Believe anything you’re told” and “Do anything you’re asked to.” This relieves participants of any pressure to be persuasive. Participants can further their character’s objectives by getting others involved in them, without the need for convincing role-playing.
Smart overall larp pacing can also ensure that character narratives don’t all peak at the same time, since this tends to create a cacophony where no one is interested in other characters’ grandiose or tragic destiny. For example, the Harry Potter-inspired short larp Seven Years in Poudlard is divided into acts, and the last act focuses on the crucial actions of two characters. Participants don’t know in advance who these two characters will be, but they know that the other characters will be of secondary importance. This formula works: when the two characters are identified and do their thing, all eyes are on them, with a definite aura effect. Other larps could learn from this example to give each participant their 15 minutes of fame. (In the context of heavily scripted larps, where lots of organizer input into the dramatic curves of each character.)
That said, a larp’s dramatic climax does not necessarily need to happen publicly. It can also be “decentralized,” where each small group (or even each individual) gets a separate climax. This is frequent in “improv larps,” where the larger meta-plot often takes a back seat to people’s “little stories.”
Hand and Verbal Signals
Meta-techniques, such as hand signals, are a language that can grease the wheels of larp. For example, crossing your fingers means “It’s my character thinking/saying/doing this, not me,” allowing one to yell at another character while indicating it’s the character that is upset, not the participant. I also like the converse technique, where for example saying “really really” indicates that it’s the participant speaking, not the character.
Paradoxically, the possibility to clearly differentiate between participant and character without fully breaking immersion allows one to use alibi more fully, since you can dissipate any ambiguity for others. This works even when you yourself are unable to totally separate participant and character, for example when trying to reassure another participant while experiencing intense bleed.
But the main role of larp design is larger: to establish a “third place” (not home, and not the workplace) where ordinary social conventions no longer apply. In the larp Le Lierre et La Vigne, polyamory is the norm. In the larp Les Sentes, everyone suffers from amnesia and identity is a very fluid concept. In the larp The Quota, participants play migrants. Ritualizing the act of entering and leaving the magic circle that marks the limits of this third place in time and space allows everyone to truly let themselves go to alibi, without social norms holding them back.
Overall, meta-techniques can act as a substitute for the participant’s role-playing performance, making them credible in roles that society or their own capabilities would not allow. By organizing space and time, a virtuous larp design facilitates role-playing by limiting cognitive overload and creating an area of non-reality and new possibilities.
Does this mean that, with a good larp design, participants don’t need to make any role-playing efforts? Yes and no.
Yes, because I believe reducing the stress associated with role-playing is one of the prerequisites for liberation. Larping is not theatre and participants are not competing for an acting prize.
To larpers doubting their legitimacy, either because they are a beginner or because their character is far from their actual social status or comfort zone, I would recommend that they just go with the flow of events without aiming for theatrics or the group’s assent. This seems like a good way for them to have fun, feel part of the group, and meet their character.
However, I would recommend the larper stay somewhat grounded in role-play. To meet your character, you have to take at least a step in their direction and find at least some convergence, be it through costume preparation, mannerism work, or memorising goals.
If a participant wants to sing during the larp, rehearsing the song three or four times will surely help, especially if they want to sing without reading the lyrics off a piece of paper. But beyond this bare minimum, alibi takes over. Making more of an effort should only result from the participant’s desire to come closer to their character, not from social pressure. To clarify: social pressure can sometimes help a participant to push their limits, but it’s a source of stress for those who suffer from social anxiety. Therefore, design document statements such as “we expect your larping to be strongly motivated” or “we expect a high level of role-playing” are fine for some larps, but should not be considered as inclusive.
It seems to me that the right balance to strike stems from self-knowledge. You can tell the other participants before the larp that you will be playing their leader but that you are not good at shouting. Or you can adapt your role-playing to your abilities by playing a cold type of leader rather than a shouty one. Aura will do the rest.
No larp design or participant effort will make your alibi legitimate if the others don’t do their part. They need to go beyond judging performance and fully participate in creating aura. This starts a virtuous circle that will enable all participants to fully live their role. The group’s mission is to create aura instead of judging.
The Audience-Participant and the Performer-Participant
We often hear that in RPG or larp the other participants are an audience. While useful in many ways, this idea is risky for two reasons: one is that participants may be discouraged from playing their character for fear of falling short of the audience’s expectations, and the other is that participants may become mere consumers of others’ role-playing.
To avoid these two risks, we must deconstruct the idea of ourselves as an audience: in larp, we are not just an audience, but an engaged audience.
When trying to impersonate someone else, the desire to do well can run into the impossibility to do well, either because we don’t know the other perspective well enough, or because we think we don’t. Take for example Alquen, a heterosexual cis-male. Even though he is open-minded about the characters he is willing to play, he is reluctant to play cis women or trans characters because he feels he doesn’t know enough and is afraid he will play them badly. I don’t think this type of reluctance can be overcome with a simple “it’s just another character with another gender.” The group needs to make the person feel legitimate and be indulgent, accepting that they will make mistakes or even be stereotypical. Workshops and debriefs can help the person to do better next time. With this indulgence, I think we are limiting people who, in good faith, are trying to be open to a greater variety of roles.
We larp to encourage others in their performance and to respond to it, not to evaluate it or to profit from it.
That is where play to lift comes in. This way of larping is different from “play to win” or “play to lose,” which are both centered on one’s own character. Play to lift means using one’s character to make others shine. In this context, the character is seen as a tool to provide an ideal antagonist or associate to another character, in order to make them look good. A few “play to lift” participants in a larp greatly increase the aura of the other characters. Furthermore, when a majority of participants play to lift, everyone becomes a support or spotlight for everyone, which creates a constructive and harmonious larp dynamic.
In her blog JenesuispasMJmais(IamnotGMbut), Eugénie introduces two notions inherited from improv theatre that strongly contribute to aura: play to serve (my character is at the service of other participants and the plot) and playing impact (through my reactions, I show that other characters’ actions have an impact on bodies and minds).
Eugénie also has a gesture that I would include in “playing impact”: making a heart-shape with your hands (other, more immersive equivalents exist, such as striking your heart with your fist) to signal to other participants that you enjoy what is going on. It’s important to turn as you are making the gesture, so that everyone can see it. This is exactly the type of validation that can make an alibi legitimate, as long as you accept the meta side of this technique. It seems that performances (including artistic ones) are objectively better when the audience gives the performer signs of approval. This same mechanic operates with the heart-shaped fingers: more than simply positive thoughts, it really has a positive impact on the quality and intensity of people’s role-playing.
It seems to me that being a fan of the other characters and cultivating indulgence towards other participants, instead of considering we are here to “be a good role-player,” leads to a more fulfilling role-playing experience for everyone.
To go further:
[Article] ‘Play to serve‘, by Eugénie, on the JenesuispasMJmais blog
[Article] ‘Playing impact‘, by Eugénie, on the JenesuispasMJmais blog
Maintaining Trust
The Meta Prerequisite for Character Immersion
The concept of playing to serve, described above, creates a meta paradox. For people to have confidence in their alibi, participants need to trust each other out-of-character. You need to be socially confident to be able to forget the participant and focus on the character. This brings us back to the importance of the “OK Check-in” mechanic, where you ask other participants if they are OK out of character with a hand signal, and ask them what you can do for them if they are not OK.
Emotional Safety Techniques
Emotional safety techniques protect both the participant’s emancipating alibi and psychological well-being by putting limits on alibi. One person’s alibi stops when it infringes on another person’s emotional comfort. Inside this limit, you are totally free and legitimate. Emotional safety techniques such as safewords help us to go beyond this limit and also to protect us from the most clumsy or toxic participants.
To go further:
[Article] ‘Emotional safety‘, by Muriel Algayres, Marianne Caillous, Hoog & Skimy, on the Electro-GN blog
Mid-Larp Debriefings
As soon as a larp lasts longer than two hours (outside of briefing/debriefing), it seems interesting to me to add in intermediary debriefing phases. In the larp Les Sentes, we ask before the larp for one volunteer per group to represent said group in these out-of-character intermediary debriefings. This person explains how the participants in the group are doing, what is going well and what is going wrong. The volunteers then look for a solution together. In the “Nuclear Winter” session of the larp Les Sentes, these intermediary debriefings allowed participants to identify an issue: the Militia group wasn’t scary enough, which was a problem for all groups. Together, we reminded everyone of the leadership tools that the Militia had, and encouraged participants from other groups to increase their dealings with the Militia.
To go further:
[Larp debriefing] ‘Nuclear Winter‘, by Thomas Munier
Note that none of these tools is enough by itself to create the necessary aura. But they all help in creating the feeling of trust, where we see that we all want the same thing: that everyone can play their character to the fullest.
It seems to me that we all face the same difficulties when trying to let alibi take over and express ourselves: we are afraid that others will think we are crazy, ridiculous, or boring. I think these fears can disappear once trust is established and maintained.
Clarity of Information
None of the prerequisites for aura creation seem possible to me without clarity on the social contract during pre-larp communication. Being clear on what to expect (and, even more importantly, on what not to expect) is key in letting alibi take over.
Transparency techniques (i.e. giving participants information that their character doesn’t know about) can also help: it’s easier to play to serve if you know what is expected of you, and it’s easier to fully immerse in a scene when you know exactly what it is about.
Transparency is not a sine qua non condition, but it does favor co-creation and trust, and also saves time. A larp based on secrecy will take more effort with regards to briefing and meta-techniques.
The Importance of Gratitude
“Thank you” seems like a good final contribution to building trust. “Thank you for taking part” is a great phrase during briefing and debriefing. It’s more a “Thank you for being here” than a “Thank you for your larping”: it’s the participant’s presence that is appreciated. We leave the characters alone: we are not here to judge them; they are part of the untouchable world of transgression. It seems to me that, in order for characters to keep their aura, we have to not expect too much from the participants, whatever happens. People want to perform most when performing is optional.
Conclusion
Yes, alibi offers a great pretext to experience and to experiment with oneself through a character. But it only works if the participant has an aura that makes them feel legitimate to themselves and to the other participants. This aura can be built through larp design, through a certain approach to role-playing, through a benevolent attitude by the group, and through a general atmosphere of trust. When all these factors are present, we get what kF calls creative de-responsibilisation, when the creative task in front of us seems just right: not too large, not too small, but just the right challenge to get us to jump into the unknown.
Creating aura is part of attaining “alibi for all.” This makes aura a useful tool for anyone aiming to live or produce an immersive and inclusive experience.
This article, by Thomas Munier, was initially published in French on ElectroGN on January 18th, 2021. It was translated into English for publication here by JC, with the approval of the author and with the permission of ElectroGN.
“It’s not me, it’s my character.”
In larp and tabletop roleplaying, this justification of our actions is called alibi, and it allows us to dare to try new experiences. Alibi is a key factor in benefitting from what larp has to offer.
However, alibi is not always accepted: either because the participant does not see any difference between themself and their character, or because the other participants refuse to forget about the participant when considering the character.
This article will categorize several definitions of alibi, consider the ways in which it is emancipating, and finally the situations when alibi is not enough. Another article will follow, focused on ways to strengthen alibi.
Summary
The common contract of “it’s not me, it’s my character”, also called alibi, allows the participant to experience both themself and otherness, which is both enriching and liberating.
However, the simple fact of knowing about this process keeps us from really abandoning ourselves to the role. We are aware of the concept’s limits: the larp remains part of reality and so there are some things we do not allow ourselves to dare.
Furthermore, even when we fully wish to abandon ourselves to the character, this remains very difficult if other participants do not consider us fitted to play them. We see this when the group does not manage to distinguish the character’s social category from the participant’s; or when it refuses to recognize a character’s ability that the participant does not have. This stems from a larping perspective where “the character is what the participant does and says”, which keeps participants from being seen as able to play characters too different from themselves. The cognitive load, which can be significant in certain larps, also sometimes keeps participants from giving the actions of others the consideration they deserve.
These cases where alibi is not enough motivate us to search for tools to reinforce it. These will be studied in a follow-up article, Building the aura.
Definitions of Alibi
Dico GN (written by Leïla Teteau-Surel and Baptiste Cazes) states “Alibi is making your in-character actions legitimate through your larp character and the larp context”.
Axiel Cazeneuve states: “The basis of the social contract in a roleplaying game is alibi. Alibi is what allows us to say: it’s not me, it’s my character. It’s a contract because, by taking part in the roleplaying game, we in a way commit to not holding other participants to account for their in-character actions. This is an essential aspect of roleplaying, because without this alibi, it’s impossible to really play someone else, including when this someone else commits morally reprehensible acts. Playing a war-criminal or a narcissistic manipulator is only possible because we trust others to differentiate between my actions as a character from those as a person. This is even more true in larp, where we are directly involved in our character’s actions and cannot simply represent or describe them.
To go further (in French):
[Video] Axiel Cazeneuve, LOIDOROS – Alibi, on the Larp in Progress channel
The basic principle is that alibi is a form of social contract that stipulates that participants are not held responsible for what their characters do and say (and, in return, that they accept to not hold other participants accountable for their characters’ words and actions). In other words, “What happens in Alibi-land stays in Alibi-land”: once the larp is over, no participant has to answer for what their character did.
The larp constitutes a “magic circle”, an imaginary space where we cease to be ourselves to become the characters, or, at least, where we change social masks. In that space, participants agree to dissociate the actions and words of other participants from what those participants do and say outside of the larp space.
In reality, things are of course often quite different. In practice, alibi implies a tolerance margin (how far can I go before I go “too far”) rather than actual freedom from responsibility.
Firstly, freedom from responsibility only covers a limited number of situations (participants are, for example, still legally liable). These limits are often informal and implicit (participants are responsible for each other’s physical and psychological wellbeing). They are also often unclear and arbitrary: while some have no issue with being spat on, others will consider the contract broken as soon as someone raises their voice.
The tolerance margin is also often (implicitly) linked to how different the other participant’s character is from that participant: oppressive insults by a cyber-pirate on amphetamines will go down better than if they come from a modern-day character that is similar to their participant.
Finally, the freedom from responsibility is only formal, because despite the alibi contract, the human psyche creates subconscious transfers between “participant–participant” relations and “character–character” relations. Participants who play friends tend to be more mutually friendly after the larp. Our thoughts end up conforming to our actions.
Alibi and its practical manifestations lead participants to exploit it. Abuses of the tolerance margin are easy to find: abusively extending the margin (for example, harassing other characters despite your character not fitting that profile) or abusively reducing the margin (for example, being vindictive towards a participant because their character disobeyed).
There are also abuses of alibi’s porosity. These can be “bleed in”, from outside towards the larp (for example, becoming close in character with real-life friends), or “bleed out”, from the larp towards outside (for example, becoming close in character to someone you would like to meet in real life).
Used well, alibi is emancipating, in a way that the larp community almost unanimously defends, letting participants act without fear of being personally judged (for example, allowing them to speak or sing in public).
Of course, alibi does not grant total immunity. Even inside the magic circle, participants must obey the law (some laws may be broken in character, for example with insults). They must also respect a number of usually implicit rules regarding the physical, material and psychological well-being of other participants (we will see later that the psychological aspect is the most ambivalent, since that is where the participant/character distinction is least obvious).
Alibi is one of the almost systematically assumed social contracts when participating in larp. But it is one of its tacit components. Alibi is considered as self-evident and is rarely explicitly expressed in design documents or larp briefings. In most larps, “you are playing a character” is supposed to be enough, and participants are expected to infer “what the character does cannot be attributed to the participant” by themselves.
Those were, hopefully, the more rigorous definitions of alibi.
Now here are some of the fallacious ways alibi is defined in practice, and which are the cause of the problems we will detail later on:
Alibi is an excuse to justify certain behaviours, in good or bad faith.
Alibi is an authorization to be “rude”, as defined in improv theatre (to refuse the character or situation the other person proposes, or to impose a character on them).
Alibi is a state of deep immersion (we believe in the situation and in our character).
As we can see, alibi is, in its most rigorous definition, most often an implicit concept. Therefore, it is not always known or understood. Other, fallacious definitions of alibi are also implicit and can generate misunderstandings, which we will see later can be quite damaging. But let us first take a deeper look at the benefits of alibi, when the concept is well understood and mastered by participants.
Emancipating Alibi
The concept of character, which was initially a gaming construct, allows us to inhabit another person’s identity for the duration of a larp or RPG.
This allows for escapism but also for the experience of oneself. After all, in reality, when we do or say things in an RPG or (even more so) in a larp, we have really done and said them, simulation techniques aside. The role was a pretext to do it, both making us disinhibited and helping us get legitimacy from the group.
Axiel Cazeneuve confides that they are afraid to sing in public. But when, in the larp OSIRIS/Wish You Were Here, they are supposed to play a renowned artist, they can finally go for it. Axiel explains how the audience (the other larpers) fully supports them. Alibi has attained its goal: it has given Axiel the ideal excuse to try a new experience.
Playing a role is an opportunity to experience oneself. We are still ourselves, but we try different things.
And this makes our real life richer. By experiencing polyamorous relationships and making art in the larp “The Ivy and the Vines”, some participants revisited what they allowed themselves to do in art and love.
Because playing a role is doing, says Marie Olivier in her anthropology memoir of that title on roleplaying (unpublished). Thanks to the alibi it procures, the character is a wonderful tool to construct our identity, by giving us a safe space to experiment before drawing conclusions to use in real life.
But all is not simple in Alibi-land. Alibi mostly works, for participants used to the concept: but it is more fragile in novices – as well as, paradoxically, in some participants who are very experienced or focused on others’ well-being, because alibi’s limits are hard to pinpoint accurately. Alibi can also be exploited for abuse by people who are clumsy or have bad intentions.
When participants self-sabotage
Participants themselves are not always convinced by alibi. Many fail to suspend disbelief when the character sheet lacks coherence, or when they don’t think they have the necessary ability or self-confidence to play their character. If a participant does not believe in their character or feel credible when playing their character, they cannot immerse in their role and reach the experience of self and of otherness promised by alibi.
Misunderstood alibi
It may also happen that alibi, being an unspoken social contract, is not well understood by beginners. These participants then will not “dare” to act in character in a reprehensible or socially charged way.
Alibi demystified
This concept of alibi, progressively popularized in articles and discussions, has become demystified. Let there be no misunderstanding: it is important that concepts like alibi be discussed far and wide. Most participants can finally “go all out” once they really understand the implications of alibi. But for some, learning the tricks kills the magic. We end up understanding that alibi is just a pretext, and that if roleplaying is doing, then we are just playing ourselves. Alibi made us not responsible for our actions, making it possible and acceptable to experiment. But now that the concept has been explained, we are once again responsible for our in-character actions.
Larps reveal themselves to be political spaces. These larps are more than games and they aim to transform the participants through their characters. It therefore becomes difficult to really dare to go beyond one’s comfort zone and social markers, because alibi, considered a scam, no longer operates. Some larps aim to denounce alibi. In Love Is All by Yannis, for example, participants kiss each other. Can anyone really consider that that kiss only happens between characters? This is perhaps only an issue for larp veterans that tend to over-analyse, but it was worth mentioning.
Hacking alibi
“It’s not me, it’s my character” actually becomes a suspicious sentence as we ponder a new question: emotional safety. Because if alibi can be a pretext for experimentation with oneself, it can also be one for abusing others, if there is no consensus on the limit between participant and character responsibility. Anecdotes abound of people using their character and gameplay to simulate aggressions, that are felt by the victims as real ones. This is a case of rudeness or alibi hacking, since the participant knowingly or unknowingly uses their character as cover to exert actual physical or psychological pressure.
Because we know that the border between participant and character is porous. Because if alibi allows us to get invested in our fictional life, it also implies an emotional back and forth between participant and character.
There are cases where the simulation is too far removed from reality to impact us emotionally (even so, some feedback from mass-larp battles relate incredible emotions), but in other cases, the difference between doing and pretending is very small.
When you say “I love you” or “I hate you” in character, you really say it. It has an impact on us and on others. For example, a larper who had to play out a love story with someone they did not really like testified they were still a little bit in love with that person at the end of the larp. It is not so easy to erase the impact a role has on us. I personally avoid larping love stories (less so in tabletop, which seems more abstract) because it makes me feel like I’m cheating on my wife, which goes against my wish to be faithful to her. And I also do not want to run the risk of falling in love.
Alibi’s unclear limits
We have seen previously that the unspoken social contract that creates alibi is limited to ensure that the physical, material and emotional wellbeing of other participants is protected. But how does one discern those limits when it is hard to distinguish the participant from the character? The previous example about romantic relationships is relevant, but here is another one: is it OK for me to shout at another participant? They might find loud noises painful, or they might find getting shouted at difficult to deal with on an emotional level. So yes, alibi should allow me to shout since it’s my character, not me, but by shouting I might be jeopardising the other person’s physical or emotional wellbeing.
As a consequence, out of precaution and in a bid to be inclusive, larpers have no choice but to pull their punches. I would also like to remind everyone that videos of larpers shouting at each other in a historical larp were used to criticise larp in the French Zone Interdite TV show (by people who did not give alibi any consideration). So how can we truly play a character with intensity when it can hurt another participant or impact our hobby’s image negatively?
To go further (in French):
[Video] Zone Interdite, Roleplaying games (1994)
No alibi, no transgression
In short, even if we were at one time fooled by alibi, we no longer are once we calmly think about it. By recognising the artificial nature or the unwelcome effects of alibi, we remove the opportunities for transgression that it offered us.
Photo by aripborip, cc-by, on Flickr
When Others Ignore Our Alibi
If it can be difficult to believe in one’s own alibi and so to really let oneself go, it can also be difficult for others, because of:
cultural and social barriers;
an unwillingness to see the participant as legitimate;
a larping culture that reduces the character to the participant;
a cognitive difficulty in giving importance to the actions of all characters.
Cultural and social barriers
It does not seem to me that respecting the alibi of other participants is part of the social contract of all tabletop RPGs and larps. It depends on the culture, the people and the organisations. Here are some examples where a participant’s alibi is not recognised, preventing them from legitimately playing the role of someone different, and sometimes even of someone similar to their real identity!
In the Harry Potter at the School of Masculinity podcast, Axiel Cazeneuve talks about their experience on a Harry Potter larp where character creation was quite free, including choice of gender. Gendered as female at birth, Axiel decides to present their character as male. They then change their mind, explaining their character is in fact genderfluid.
During the larp, Axiel plays their character as masculine, in a way they deem convincing. Despite this, most participants gender Axiel’s character as female. Axiel explains that, even though most of these larpers were from a progressive environment, accustomed to issues of gender, they still ignored Axiel’s alibi, gendering their character not as neutral or male, but as female, their socially assigned gender. This can be explained by determinism that remains strong within the group, as well as by Axiel changing their mind during character presentation, which might have confused people.
My point is not to blame anyone for what happened in that particular example. I am simply trying to show that alibi is not always a given and that certain factors can lead a group to ignore your role to see you as your usual self instead.
This is also something we see during boffer fights in larp. If combat is touch-based, without a system that codifies damage or magic that could give you an advantage, you can only play a dangerous adversary if you are indeed good at boffer fighting. Even with a character background and roleplaying that say you are the finest swashbuckler in the land, if you are a beginner in boffer fighting, you will probably lose your fights, because the mechanisms of boffer fighting keep your opponents from taking your character background into account.
We see here that the problem comes less from people than from design. Systemless boffer fighting is a legitimate part of larping, but it is not a tool designed to support alibi. If you do not assign yourself a role that aligns with your actual boffer fighting skills, we observe ludonarrative dissonance. We will not here delve either into the fact that boffer fighting is a form of sports combat and is thus different from real fighting (where touch-based victory makes no sense), or into larps using metal weapons instead of boffers (which support alibi even less).
The concepts of authority and hierarchy between characters are also often problematic in terms of support for alibi. In a rules-light larp, if you are lacking in natural leadership, there is a risk that characters that are supposed to be under your orders will not show you respect. Even if their character backgrounds indicate that they fear and obey you, the participants will quickly forget this if they don’t find you charismatic enough.
The problem with the search for convergence
In these cases, longstanding sexism and ableism can of course be involved, but the problem comes essentially from an approach to roleplaying based on “roleplaying is doing”, or convergence.
Convergence is a technique that guarantees simplicity, immersion and bleed. It is sought after for its many advantages, but does not support alibi.
Convergence is making what the character and the participant feel and do as similar as possible. In larp, this is close to a “what you see is what you get” approach. In other words, the main source for the virtual experience is the actual experience. Simulations such as “let’s pretend I’m very athletic even if I’m not in real life” or “let’s pretend that stick in front of you is actually a dragon” or “let’s ignore these electric wires” are put aside.
In other words, when you interact with a participant, you mostly take into account how you see them and their real-life background. Anything in their character sheet that contradicts this is hard to take into account, and the mechanics of convergence tend to erase as much as possible any dissonance (this is a caricature, because a larp can be convergent on some aspects and divergent on others). This means you will gender a character based on the participant’s roleplay and real-life background, you will only lose a boffer fight if they are more skilled than you are, and you will respect them only if their roleplay and real-life background confirm their status.
Convergence completely blurs the distinction between participants and characters. Here, roleplaying is more than ever doing, and there is no room for make-believe, abstraction, or taking into account character background information that is not corroborated by roleplay, the participants real-life background or reputation.
When we see participant and character as one and the same, we can sometimes bear a grudge towards the participant for something the character did or said, for example because the character hurt us, humiliated us, turned us down, foiled our plans, etc. It seems difficult for anyone to just forgive, even if some participants thank others “for having been a great antagonist”. But within populations who are new to alibi, grudges can appear that outlast the larp.
When we also see some participants using their character to assault others, it seems all the more reasonable to say: “Wait a second, what your character did to me was not OK.”
In other words, whether for reasons legitimate (assaulting the participant via the character) or not (lack of familiarity with alibi), alibi does not magically grant immunity or forgiveness for everything we said and did as a character. Other participants will not automatically forgive everything, and this can hold us back.
The issues of cognitive load
I wanted to finish on one last instance of ignoring alibi, which does not necessarily have to do with participant–character confusion, but rather with the issues of cognitive load.
To go further (in English):
[Article] Anonymous, Cognitive load, on Wikipedia
You may know these climactic scenes that frequently occur in larps, where many issues are resolved at the same time. While you are declaring your love to the duchess, two sisters are challenging each other to a duel nearby… and that is when the zombies attack.
In general, it is difficult to roleplay a strong emotional reaction to several things happening at once. So we concentrate on our personal roleplaying objectives, which for example lead us to continue a trivial conversation even as the baron just dropped dead from poisoning.
This creates dissonance in our own experience, but also ignores other participants’ alibi. When you challenge your sister to duel to the death, you expect everyone to react – this is your moment – but unfortunately no one does. Alibi is definitely impacted!
Conclusion
Alibi is an implicit part of the social contract, that removes responsibility from the participants for the things their character does and says.
When the participant is familiar with alibi, they can abandon themselves fully to their role and so access experiences that would otherwise be inaccessible. Alibi is a real tool for emancipation through an experience of self and of the other that is deep and without judgement.
But the physicality of larp and our flawed humanity catch up with us in the end. Some participants do not believe in alibi any more, either because they do not feel able to play their character, or because they lack knowledge of the concept of alibi, or have analysed it too far to still believe. Still others use this concept to commit abuse, knowingly or not.
The community can also be a hindrance. Alibi’s “non-judgement clause” is not always respected and others can sometimes confine us to our social constraints, refusing to let us legitimately roleplay the character we have chosen.
For us to roleplay someone different from ourselves and for the group to acknowledge it, we would need to be surrounded by some kind of aura that gives us legitimacy.
So, how can we build this aura? That’s what we will see in the next article!
What is magic? From our perspective, at its core, magic is a form of manifestation: the ability to alter the self and the world around us through the power of intentional thought, force of will, and creative action.((Mat Auryn, Psychic Witch: A Metaphysical Guide to Meditation, Magick & Manifestation (Woodbury, MN: Llewellyn Publications, 2020).)) At the root of this magic is the power of transformation — and the collective agreement within the community to support it.((Bowman, Sarah Lynne, and Kjell Hedgard Hugaas. “Transformative Role-play: Design, Implementation, and Integration.” Nordiclarp.org, December 10, 2019.)) Magic also involves deeply immersive ritual states in which people take on aspects of other identities in order to draw status, strength, power, or insight through embodiment.((Victor Turner, The Ritual Process: Structure and Anti-Structure (Piscataway, NJ: Transaction Publishers, 1969); Émile Durkheim, The Elementary Forms of Religious Life, trans. J. W. Swain (George Allen & Unwin LTD, 1964).))
These rituals often require the collective efforts of the community to uphold the potency of a magic circle that contains the experience, with each person adhering to this temporary liminal state and supporting one another in co-created immersion.((Mike Pohjola, “Autonomous Identities: Immersion as a Tool for Exploring, Empowering, and Emancipating Identities,” in Beyond Role and Play, ed. Markus Montola and Jaakko Stenros (Ropecon ry, 2004), 81-96; J. Tuomas Harviainen, “Information, Immersion, Identity: The Interplay of Multiple Selves During Live-Action Role-Play,” Journal of Interactive Drama: A Multi-Discipline Peer-Reviewed Journal of Scenario-Based Theatre-Style Interactive Drama 1, no. 2 (October 2006): 9-52.)) Rituals are playful spaces in which participants cross a threshold from the social reality of daily life. They enter into an agreed-upon reality with different rules for a bounded amount of time, thereby creating a new social contract. While role-players may not perceive their actions within play as a form of ritual magic, experiences within this magic circle often do impact them in powerful ways that can have lasting effects.
Simply put: when we imagine ourselves becoming someone else, we tap into our latent potential as human beings and as a community. When the group agrees to “pretend to believe” in these transformations, we create space in our consciousness for an expanded sense of our own identities.((Pohjola, “Autonomous Identities.”)) Through the power of imagination, we are able to conceptualize ourselves as capable in areas in which previously we may have felt limited. Some examples include expansion in one’s abilities, such as leadership and physical prowess; one’s personality qualities, such as extraversion and openness to experiences; one’s interpersonal capacities, such as empathy, intimacy, and connection; and one’s experiences of emotional release, such as catharsis, anger, desire, and grief. We can also explore our shadow sides — those unconscious and scary parts of ourselves and of our collective humanity that arise when we play characters that reveal undesirable character traits and behaviors.((Whitney “Strix” Beltrán, “Shadow Work: A Jungian Perspective on the Underside of Live Action Role-Play in the United States,” in Wyrd Con Companion Book 2013, ed. Sarah Lynne Bowman and Aaron Vanek (Los Angeles, CA: Wyrd Con, 2013), 94-101.)) As a result, many of us have experienced powerful impacts from role-playing and may even continue to hunt for these peak experiences, returning to larp after larp in the hope of immersing in moments of exquisite intensity once more.((Elin Nilsen, “High on Hell,” in States of Play: Nordic Larp Around the World, ed. by Juhana Pettersson (Helsinki, Finland: Pohjoismaisen roolipelaamisen seura, 2012), 10-11.))
But what happens when the magic circle fades, we return to daily life, and are faced with the sometimes brutal facts of the social and physical reality within which we usually exist? What role can bleed play in our ability to create “magic” outside of larp contexts: that uncanny phenomenon in which emotions, behaviors, physical states, and relationship dynamics sometimes spillover from character to player?((Beltrán, “Shadow Work”; Bowman, 2015; Diana J. Leonard and Tessa Thurman, “Bleed-out on the Brain: The Neuroscience of Character-to-Player,” International Journal of Role-Playing 9 (2018): 9-15; Kjell Hedgard Hugaas, “Investigating Types of Bleed in Larp: Emotional, Procedural, and Memetic,” Nordiclarp.org, January 25, 2019; Sarah Lynne Bowman, “Solmukohta 2020 Keynote: Sarah Lynne Bowman – Integrating Larp Experiences,” Nordiclarp.org, April 4, 2020.)) Our belief is that the “magic” discovered through role-playing can persist long after an event concludes when supported by integration practices — not as a form of delusion, but as a valid facet of the role-player’s social and psychological life.((Carl Gustav Jung, The Portable Jung, ed. Joseph Campbell, trans. by R.C.F. Hull. (New York: Penguin Random House, 1976); Stéphane Daniau, “The Transformative Potential of Role-playing Games: From Play Skills to Human Skills,” Simulation & Gaming 47, no. 4 (2016): 423–444; Sarah Lynne Bowman, “Active Imagination, Individuation, and Role-playing Narratives,” Tríade: Revista de Comunicação, Cultura e Midia 5, no. 9 (2017): 158-173; Sarah Lynne Bowman and Kjell Hedgard Hugaas, “Transformative Role-play: Design, Implementation, and Integration,” Nordiclarp.org, December 10, 2019; Jonaya Kemper, “The Battle of Primrose Park: Playing for Emancipatory Bleed in Fortune & Felicity,” Nordiclarp.org, June 21, 2017; 2020).))
With this position in mind, this article will include an in-depth discussion of the “magical” potential of role-playing. We will describe some of the barriers to transformation that can arise from alibi, cognitive dissonance, role-distancing, and the pressures of conformity. We will then examine role-playing from two quite different lenses:
a) Conceptualizations of ritual, aspecting, and manifestation in occult and metaphysical traditions; and
b Research in the social sciences about the power of thought and narrative upon self-concept, behavior, performance, and well-being.
This preliminary exploration of concepts that might help explain the potential of role-playing as a form of postmodern “magic” is by no means exhaustive or detailed. Rather, we present vignettes of thought from various areas of spiritual practice and social science. We explore how role-playing, perspective taking, narrative, ritual, and the conscious use of specific imaginative practices can directly impact people’s performance at tasks, their self-concepts, and their perceived agency. Then, we examine different models of bleed theory, investigating ways that we can raise awareness around bleed effects and consciously steer toward or away from them as needed.((Markus Montola, Jaakko Stenros, and Eleanor Saitta, “The Art of Steering: Bringing the Player and the Character Back Together,” Nordiclarp.org, March 29, 2015.))
If we intentionally emphasize responsibility, safety, and growth in our communities, we can imagine the role-playing space as a transformational container within which we can explore our edges and mold our self-concepts through play. We can use alibi as a tool to permit greater experimentation, while decreasing its strength when we wish to transfer skills, insights, and personality traits outside of the magic circle. Finally, through conscious and deliberate integration practices, we can distill these insights and more permanently infuse our lives with this magic, manifesting new conceptions of self, of community, of relationships, and of our life potential.
Many role-players claim to have experienced powerful impacts from play within the magic circle, whether they describe these moments in mystical terms or not. Yet, some scholars remain skeptical about the generalizability of such claims and may even demean such stories, relegating them to the rather dismissive and even derisive category of “anecdotal evidence.” In other words, if such accounts cannot be measured and quantified in ways that are predictable and generalizable to meet social, psychological, and neurological scientific standards, then they lose tangible credibility in the world of the “real.” Similarly, some role-playing communities still maintain strong boundaries between in- and off-game, distrusting or even scorning players who experience bleed or who express the need to process their experiences after an event.This dismissiveness can lead players to question whether or not their experiences had lasting meaning and may lead to shame and alienation.
In spite of such critiques, we suspect that the majority of participants who continue to role-play and scholars who devote their lives to understanding the mechanics and dynamics of playful spaces do so because, at some point in their lives, role-playing was transformative for them. Yet, when players attempt to make sense of their experiences outside the frame of game even within playful communities, they may have difficulty perceiving or admitting that these powerful play moments were “transformational.”((Matthew M. LeClaire, “Live Action Role-Playing: Transcending the Magic Circle through Play in Dagorhir.” International Journal of Role-Playing 10 (2020): 56-69. )) Why do some players reject the notion of play as a vehicle for transformation?
In the following section, we posit that this tendency to interrogate and ultimately diminish the importance of role-playing as a vehicle of personal transformation is a defense mechanism intended to protect the self from identity confusion and social shame. In order to make sense of the liminal ritual space of play — which is often erratic, contradictory, and ephemeral — role-players undergo the following processes, whether consciously or unconsciously. Players:
Establish alibi to engage in playful activities that remain bounded by the magic circle,
Resolve cognitive dissonance through off-game role-distancing, and
Conform to mainstream social norms after role-play events conclude.
While such processes may enhance a player’s sense of safety, they can also disrupt a participant’s ability to integrate key experiences and revelations emerging from play into daily life.((Simo Järvelä, “How Real Is Larp?,” in Larp Design: Creating Role-play Experiences, ed. Johanna Koljonen, Jaakko Stenros, Anne Serup Grove, Aina D. Skjønsfjell and Elin Nilsen (Copenhagen, Denmark: Landsforeningen Bifrost, 2019).))
Alibi
According to Erving Goffman, all social interactions take place on a specific social stage — or frame — that requires the enactment of predictable roles.((Erving Goffman, The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life (Anchor Books, 1959); Erving Goffman, Frame Analysis: An Essay on the Organization of Experience. Boston, MA: Northeastern University Press, 1986.)) From this perspective, identity becomes a much more fluid concept than many of us might recognize. Since we must perform appropriately on different social stages, our self-presentation must remain adaptable to the constraints and expectations required by each frame. In Western productivity-focused societies, we have certain predefined roles that we are expected to perform, such as teacher, sibling, parent, colleague, etc. Playing roles and creating fictional realities without a socially acceptable purpose is often frowned upon and even demonized by mainstream groups attempting to uphold these norms.((Lizzie Stark, Leaving Mundania (Chicago Review Press, 2012); Joseph P. Laycock, Dangerous Games: What the Moral Panic over Role-Playing Games Says about Play, Religion, and Imagined Worlds. (University of California Press, 2015).))
As Sebastian Deterding has described at length,((Sebastian Deterding, “Alibis for Adult Play: A Goffmanian Account of Escaping Embarrassment in Adult Play,” Games and Culture 13, no. 3 (2017): 260–279.)) in order to play, we need to feel safe from the embarrassment of performing social roles inadequately or transgressing norms of acceptable behavior.((Cf. Cindy Poremba, “Critical Potential on the Brink of the Magic Circle,” in DiGRA ’07 – Proceedings of the 2007 DiGRA International Conference: Situated Play Volume 4 (Tokyo: The University of Tokyo, 2007); Jaakko Stenros and Sarah Lynne Bowman, “Transgressive Role-play,” in Role-Playing GameStudies: Transmedia Foundations, ed. Sebastian Deterding and José P. Zagal (New York: Routledge, 2018), 411-424.)) Such moments of embarrassment threaten the stability of our sense of belonging and safety; our behaviors become unpredictable and others may feel uncertain how to react. When we role-play, our communities create in-game spaces that act as temporary social frames within which such behavior is no longer transgressive. In other words, we create an alibi for adult play, which allows us to present identities and behaviors that would otherwise be inconsistent with the expectations of our normative social roles.((Deterding, “Alibis”; Pohola, “Autonomous.”))
Game systems, lore, mechanics, design documents, character sheets, social contracts of play, social media groups, event sites, workshops, and debriefs all serve the purpose of creating alibi. They facilitate the construction of what many game scholars call the magic circle: a frame within which playfulness can transpire.((Johan Huizinga, Homo Ludens: A Study of the Play-Element in Culture (Boston, MA: Beacon Press, 1958); Katie Salen and Eric Zimmerman, Rules of Play: Game Design Fundamentals (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2004); Markus Montola, On the Edge of the Magic Circle: Understanding Role-Playing and Pervasive Games (PhD diss, University of Tampere, 2012); Jaakko Stenros, “In Defence of a Magic Circle: The Social, Mental and Cultural Boundaries of Play,” in DiGRA Nordic 2012 Conference: Local and Global – Games in Culture and Society, Tampere Finland, June 6-8, 2012, ed. Raine Koskimaa, Frans Mäyrä and Jaakko Suominen.)) For our purposes, both the off-game social contract and the in-game magic circle afforded by it create a holding container for spontaneous co-creative play and shifts in identity presentation that can feel intensely liberating.((Wilfred P. Bion, Experiences in Groups (Tavistock, England: Tavistock Publications, 1959); Donald W. Winnicott, “Theory”; Kemper, “Battle.”)) However, these framing devices can also lead to cognitive dissonance, especially in communities where discussion of bleed and the transformative impacts of play are discouraged. In other words, playing with one’s self-presentation can only transpire within frames that have been established by and protected by alibi.
Cognitive Dissonance, Role-Distancing, and Conformity
Due to these expectations of proper performativity, the mind is often in a state of vigilance in social interactions as it attempts to regulate and adapt to the demands of the group. When we enter the magic circle of play and we allow ourselves to surrender into the experience, we are still aware and cognitively engaged, but our minds tend to relax some of this vigilance. We place some measure of trust in the group and experience varying degrees of immersion.((Sarah Lynne Bowman, “Immersion and Shared Imagination in Role-Playing Games,” in Role-Playing Game Studies: Transmedia Foundations, ed. Sebastian Deterding and José P. Zagal (New York: Routledge, 2018), 379-394; Leonard and Thurman, “Bleed-out on the Brain”; Lauri Lukka, “The Psychology of Immersion,” in The Cutting Edge of Nordic Larp, edited by Jon Back (Denmark: Knutpunkt, 2014), 81-92.)) We may experience intense moments of vulnerability and intimacy within our play groups, which can lead to a rapid sense of bonding. Yet, we also experience a paradoxical cognitive space in which parts of our brain perceive the game events as real,((Järvelä, “How Real Is Larp?”)) while other parts work hard to reality test by discerning fact from fiction and organizing information accordingly.((Sigmund Freud, “Formulations Regarding the Two Principles in Mental Functioning,” in The Standard Edition of the Complete Psychological Works by Sigmund Freud, ed. James Strachey (London: Hogarth Press, 1958), 13-21.))
When we leave the magic circle, the mind often returns to a more vigilant state, moderating self-expression in order to conform to social norms. Memories of in-character events may feel hyperreal, meaningful, and profound, i.e. peak experiences. Yet, the mind must accept that they are not “real,” despite these feelings of profundity. Even within a supportive community, role-playing can be a confusing process in which previously solid notions of selfhood, proper behavior, and social rules are challenged. In order to manage this cognitive dissonance, the mind often erects defense mechanisms — ways in which it unconsciously attempts to protect itself from identity confusion, emotional dysregulation, challenges to paradigm, and social shame. In order to transition into daily life without major emotional disruption, the mind must find a way to resolve this cognitive dissonance.
Additionally, we are expected to key our off-game behaviors and self-presentations as decidedly different from our playful ones through a process of role-distancing. When we role-distance, we indicate that we understand the difference between fantasy and reality, signaling that we will adhere to social norms outside of the frame of play.((Sarah Lynne Bowman, “Educational Live Action Role-playing Games: A Secondary Literature Review,” in Wyrd Con Companion Book 2014, ed. by Sarah Lynne Bowman (Los Angeles, CA: Wyrd Con, 2014), 112-131; Daniau, “Transformative”; Deterding, “Alibis.”)) This process allows us to displace any in-game behaviors that would be considered socially problematic, such as erotic, violent, destructive, manipulative, or otherwise “evil” play. In other words, our performances remain bounded within the magic circle, giving us plausible deniability that the whole experience was “just a game.” Alternatively, some of us work to justify our play experiences as “productive” by signaling to non-players that we have learned important, marketable skills that help us better integrate into mainstream society. While this tactic helps validate our play experiences as “useful,” it may further distance us from the pleasures of creativity and personal development for their own sake.((Deterding, “Alibis.”))
In transformational language, an expansion of consciousness is often followed by a contraction, colloquially known as a crash or drop. While helpful and even important to a degree, role-distancing after play can lead to feelings of alienation and cognitive dissonance for people who have powerful moments of catharsis, profound realizations of selfhood, and intense experiences of intimacy within the magic circle. The insistence on alibi can become a shock to the system, in which meaningful experiences that occur within play have difficulty finding a place within the rest of life, leading some players to experience an existential sense of loss, grief, depression, or angst.((Sarah Lynne Bowman and Evan Torner, “Post-larp Depression,” Analog Game Studies 1, no. 1, 2014; Sanne Harder, “Larp Crush: The What, When and How,” Nordiclarp.org, March 28, 2018.)) While such responses can emerge after any peak experience ends, the bounded fictional framing adds an additional layer of complexity; peak experiences occurring within a Burning Man festival, a rock concert, or a weekend meditation retreat are still considered mostly “real,” whereas role-playing is not. While many larp communities have worked to normalize debriefing, discussions of bleed, and other forms of off-game processing, shame may arise if a person feels overly attached to a game experience that has long since passed for other players.((Sarah Lynne Bowman, “Social Conflict in Role-playing Communities: An Exploratory Qualitative Study,” International Journal of Role-Playing 4 (2013): 17-18; Lizzie Stark, “How to Run a Post-Larp Debrief,” Leaving Mundania, December 1, 2013.)) Subsequently, players may continue to sign up for larp after larp, yearning for the permission to deeply feel, experience, experiment, and connect once more.
Figure 1: This figure charts the role of alibi within the role-playing process. Players are able to depart from their daily selves, adopting characters within the magic circle. While the social contract of the game allows for playfulness, alibi may interfere with desired transfer of traits, insights, and relationship dynamics from character to player. Vectors designed by macrovector_official and bybrgfx / Freepik.
This article seeks to complicate notions of identity and reality by suggesting that alibi can actually hinder one’s potential for personal growth. Paradoxically, the very same mechanism that allows for playful transgression of self-presentation can also create a barrier for the transfer and integration of play experiences into one’s daily life, self, and community (Figure 1). Even if we experience a shift of selfhood during play((Christopher Sandberg, “Genesi: Larp Art, Basic Theories,” In Beyond Role and Play: Tools, Toys, and Theory for Harnessing the Imagination, edited by Markus Montola and Jaakko Stenros, 264-288. (Helsinki, Finland: Ropecon ry, 2004); Jaakko Stenros, “Living the Story, Free to Choose: Participant Agency in Co-Created Worlds,” Alibis for Interaction Conference, Landskrona, Sweden, October 25, 2013. Reprinted as “Aesthetic of Action,” Jaakkostenros.wordpress.com, Oct. 28, 2013.)) — often enacting a dual consciousness that holds both self and player — ultimately, these experiences are happening to the same person embodied within the same physiological organism.((Järvelä, “How Real Is Larp?”)) If alibi is a polite fiction in which we allow players to obviate responsibility for their actions within games, what happens when we adopt a view of self as consistent and fluid between player and character? What happens when we decrease alibi and imagine the role-playing container as extending beyond just the fictional space and the temporally bounded event? What becomes possible when we steer toward “magical” experiences that can inform our self-concepts, our worldviews, and our definitions of community in more permanent ways?((Beltrán, “Shadow Work”; Kemper, “Battle”; Hugaas, “Investigating.”))
Role-playing and Manifestation
Answers may lie in contemporary occult and metaphysical discourses that conceptualize manifestation as a magical process. The process of manifestation varies from source to source. Modern witchcraft often focuses upon the casting of spells using rituals, physical components, and invocation of spirits. Alternatively, New Age conceptions of manifestation often involve aligning one’s attention and imagination toward the types of experiences one wants to summon into their life, e.g. The Law of Attraction. People outside of such communities may find such concepts suspiciously unscientific or fantastical — forms of magical thinking that do not reflect social or physical reality. Such thinking can also reveal a form of privilege, e.g. leading some individuals to dismissively downplay the real structural inequalities that might inhibit someone from “manifesting” a new Ferrari. With these limitations in mind, we wonder: what insight on personal transformation might role-players gain from manifestational theory and practice?
Although many manifestational models exist, this article will focus on Mat Auryn’s Psychic Witch, which has become successful within alternative subcultural audiences in the last year. In the book, the author works to streamline and make coherent for newcomers different threads of metaphysical thought.((Auryn, Psychic Witch.)) He synthesizes theories and practices pertaining to witchcraft and psychic abilities in non-denominational ways by crystallizing these concepts into more universally applicable language.
Auryn explicitly discusses the connection between role-playing and magic. Due to his belief that all people have inherent psychic abilities, as a basic exercise that he terms “psychic immersion,” he recommends that practitioners role-play being a gifted psychic for a day in order to notice their latent skills.((Auryn, Psychic Witch, 18-20.)) In other words, the author recommends invoking the alibi of inhabiting the role of a skilled psychic, using imagination as a tool for practitioners to step more fully into their nascent abilities. Drawing further parallels, Auryn has addressed an apparently common dismissive attitude held within occult communities toward spellcraft that looks performative as “mere role-playing.” He opines, “The level of devotion and dedication role-players have is something I think witches should aspire to in their Craft. So when someone accuses you of this, take it as a compliment.”((Mat Auryn, Twitter post, February 22, 2020, 8:33 a.m., https://twitter.com/MatAuryn/status/1231225521062776832; Mat Auryn, Twitter post, February 22, 2020, 8:36 a.m., https://twitter.com/MatAuryn/status/1231226271683792896))
If we consider that the processes behind postmodern magic are at the very least similar to role-playing, how is manifestation conceptualized? In one chapter of Psychic Witch, Auryn describes several dimensions of reality that overlay the physical world.((Auryn, Psychic Witch, 182-183. )) He states that successful manifestation — or simply put, “creation” — requires performing several steps within each dimension:
Physical reality: Gathering physical ingredients that support the magic, e.g. herbs, crystals, candles, etc. Physical gestures may also be helpful.
Etheric reality: Creating an energetic container for the magic to take place, e.g. meditation, altered states, establishing a time and space within which to invoke the (literal) magic circle.
Astral reality: Pushing the magical container, which holds a thoughtform or conceptualization of the desired effect, into another realm. This process involves filling the container with one’s personal willpower.
Emotional reality: Moving the thoughtform into alignment with the emotional energy the person wishes to manifest and using those emotions to direct the work, e.g. invoking magic to call love into one’s life by imagining experiencing bliss.
Mental reality: Distilling the thoughtform into concepts or words that represent what the person wants to manifest, e.g. vocalizing affirmations, intoning a spell, chanting, singing, or composing a petition to an entity.
Psychic reality: Using visualization to clearly envision the desired outcome.
Divine reality: Sending the thoughtform to the divine with a petition for assistance with this goal, surrendering, and releasing attachment to the outcome.
Auryn emphasizes the need in this last stage to envision the effect as having already happened, consciously avoiding considering any outcome that contradicts this imagined reality. He further stresses the need to take inspired action on one’s goals through the use of willpower, stating as an example, “You are not going to manifest the perfect relationship for you if you are not actively putting yourself in social situations where you can meet someone.”((Auryn 2020a, p. 184)) Thus, in manifestation, magic requires not only imagining and energetically aligning with the goal, but also taking action and focusing one’s will in order to achieve it.
While these concepts may seem far-fetched to many role-players, if we consider the basic principles Auryn is describing, they do not seem removed from other processes of personal growth and creativity: establishing space for the growth to transpire; aligning emotions, thoughts, and intention toward the desired goal; taking action based upon this aligned, focused willpower; and letting go of attachment to the result. One can imagine these steps being useful, for example, when building a house, establishing a business as an entrepreneur, or pursuing a consensual romantic relationship.
Furthermore, these steps can inform how we might envision our participation in a larp: learning about the location, setting, and game design; excitedly creating characters and costuming; imagining a positive future experience; purchasing tickets and arranging travel; calibrating with co-players for consent regarding the themes one would like to explore; and surrendering to the experience. Surrender in this case still involves remaining aware, present, and conscious, but may require releasing one’s attachment to the larp unfolding “perfectly” or banishing one’s “fear of missing out.” We can also envision these steps as useful after the role-play experience in order to integrate our desired goals: establishing space and time to process the events of play; distilling takeaways; and continuing to align thoughts, emotions, and actions toward concretizing these takeaways in daily life.
Photo by Ivilin Stoyanov, Ivilin on Pixabay.
Aspecting and Wyrding the Self
From a “magical” perspective, the distinctions between self and character are less stark. We can view our characters not as a means of leisurely escape from reality, but as tools for self-reflection. A lifelong Pagan, Phil Brucato, the primary author of White Wolf’s Mage: the Ascension since the 2nd Edition, connects role-playing to the occult practice of aspecting: a term that generally refers to the act of embodying or performing aspects of a divine entity’s characteristics. When conceptualizing characters through the lens of aspecting, Brucato envisions Mage in particular — and role-playing in general — as a metaphor for personal growth and transformation.((Phil Brucato, “Mage 20 Q&A, Part I: What IS Mage, Anyway?,” Satyrosphilbrucato.wordpress.com, March 23, 2014.)) He states, “I view aspects as creative masks and mirrors through which we can understand ourselves better… and thus, grow further than we would grow otherwise if we stuck to a stubborn (and often self-deceptive) sense of one Self.”((Phil Brucato, “Aspecting: Song of My Selves,” Satyrosphilbrucato.wordpress.com, April 23, 2013.)) Thus, when used intentionally, the character can become a tool for better understanding and transforming the self rather than an isolated entity bound to the fictional frame and disconnected from one’s self-concept.
Additionally, characters can occupy spaces, express aspects of selfhood, and perform behaviors that we might feel socially inhibited from exploring in daily life. In “Wyrding the Self,” Jonaya Kemper presents her assiduous process of autoethnographic documentation before, during, and after larps.((Jonaya Kemper, “Wyrding the Self,” in What Do We Do When We Play?, edited by Eleanor Saitta, Jukka Särkijärvi, and Johanna Koljonen (Helsinki, Finland: Solmukohta, 2020).)) Kemper intentionally steers her characters toward experiences of liberation and seeks out emancipatory bleed, a type of bleed that allows players “from marginalized identities to fight back or succeed against systemic oppression.” Kemper discusses how the root of the word “weird” arose from the Old English term “wyrding,” which was also connected to the concept of magic and fate. Kemper asserts:
To be weird, is to control one’s fate, rather than let society determine your place and fate. To be weird, is to be outside the normal aspects of society, yes, but to also collectively decide who you would like to be, not based on societal pressure. It is my belief that larp affords us the actual ability to wyrd ourselves, that is to shape ourselves and our conceptions of self through play.((Kemper, “Wyrding.”))
Like Kemper and Brucato, we believe that role-playing can be used to better understand and wyrd the self. Ultimately, we assert that participants need not believe in magic, different layers of metaphysical reality, or fate in order to use role-playing as a tool for manifestation. Rather, we view role-playing as a vehicle for self-development and community building that can be used alongside other more traditional practices, whether educational, therapeutic, or recreational.
Imaginal Selves, Performance, and Agency
How can we conceptualize this type of “magical” thinking from a scientific paradigm? In this section, we will explore evidence of the impacts of imagination on self-concept and community, drawing parallels between spiritual frameworks, ritual studies, and other social scientific perspectives. We assert that while the domains of science and magic have developed largely in isolation from one another, they reveal similar insights about the human experience and personal growth. We will examine five topics that seem especially relevant for understanding how role-playing can be used as a transformational process: ritual, narrative, identity, empowerment, and imagination.
Ritual
Is the ritual of larp distinct from other forms of magical practice? In terms of formal attributes, J. Tuomas Harviainen has explored how the two practices of larp and postmodern chaos magic are “identical”; they both involve delineating time and space in order to shift identities and engage in pretense play. Harviainen discusses the work of D.W. Winnicott((J. Tuomas Harviainen, ”The Larping that is Not Larp,” in Think Larp: Academic Writings from KP2011, edited by Thomas D. Henriksen, Christian Bierlich, Kasper Friis Hansen, and Valdemar Kølle (Copenhagen, Denmark: Rollespilsakademiet, 2011); Donald W. Winnicott, “Transitional Objects and Transitional Phenomena,” Playing & Reality (Tavistock, England: Tavistock Publications, 1971).)) and Ana-Maria Rizzuto, emphasizing that the processes underpinning play are central to human practices from infancy onward, as children often project fiction onto objects that later grow into imagined entities.
These imaginings are especially strengthened when supported by engagement with others in playful activities, as we do in role-playing communities. Following Winnicott((Donald W. Winnicott, “The Theory of the Parent-Infant Relationship,” The International Journal of Psychoanalysis 41 (1960): 585–595.)) and Wilfred Bion((Bion, Experiences.)), we can conceptualize role-play spaces as ritualized holdingcontainers: environments in which players feel sufficiently secure within the group to explore their authentic selves and experience empowerment by projecting fantasy onto brute reality.((Montola, On the Edge; Jaakko Stenros, Playfulness, Play, and Games: A Constructionist Ludology Approach, PhD diss, University of Tampere, 2015.)) In ritual theory, participants engage in three phases: separation from their mundane roles, entrance into the liminal — or threshold — space, and reincorporation into daily life.((Victor Turner, The Ritual Process: Structure and Anti-Structure (Piscataway, NJ: Transaction Publishers, 1969).)) According to anthropologist Victor Turner, these activities are often associated with rites of passage that support communitas: a group feeling of camaraderie and interconnectedness.
Lady Gaga symbolically enacting her battle with the Fame Monster in an on-stage ritual. Stefani Germanotta created the alterego of Lady Gaga as a means to gain strength. Photo by John Robert Charlton, Wikimedia (CC BY 2.0).
Despite these formal similarities, enactment in role-playing games as they are generally played today remain fundamentally different from magic or other religious rituals. Players agree to a social contract that dismisses these activities as not “real” in the same way that a religious ceremony or spiritually-motivated ritual is real for a believer. In Turner’s formulation, larps would be considered liminoid, not liminal; players do not acknowledge these shifts in role as rites of passage that have lasting meaning in daily life, e.g. an in-game wedding does not officially marry the players off-game.((Victor Turner, “Liminal to Liminoid, in Play, Flow, and Ritual: An Essay in Comparative Symbology,” Rice University Studies 60, no. 3 (July 1974): 53-91.))
Again, when considering the power of ritual, alibi can become a barrier between the incorporation of game elements to socially recognized states outside of play. By invoking alibi and strongly reinforcing the boundary between reality and fiction, we distance ourselves from much of the content that takes place within the container of the magic circle, blocking it from transferring to our self-concept and group understanding of reality. In Mike Pohjola’s words, we “pretend to believe,” rather than actually believing that what we are invoking is real.((Pohjola, “Autonomous Identities.”))
On the other hand, game scholars Doris C. Rusch and Andrew M. Phelps describe play as a form of “psychomagic,” asserting that games are ritual spaces where players can perform deeply meaningful acts through the lens of fiction. They assert that “symbolic acts are particularly conducive to envisioning – through the tangibility of bodily experience – new ways of being, utilizing the powerful interaction between body and mind.”((Doris C. Rusch and Andrew M. Phelps, “Existential Transformational Game Design: Harnessing the ‘Psychomagic’ of Symbolic Enactment,” Frontiers in Psychology (forthcoming).)) The authors emphasize the role of post-game reflection as central to these transformational processes of envisioning and meaning-making.
What becomes possible when we uphold larp as a liminal rather than liminoid activity? In other words, what happens when we shift our perceptions to actually believing that some of the emotional, social, and physical changes that we experience in games can become lasting over time?
Narrative
One way this shift can occur is by streamlining narratives that happen within role-playing games within the context of our larger life stories. Humans are storytelling machines. According to the theory of narrative identity,((Jefferson Singer, “Narrative Identity and Meaning Making Across the Adult Lifespan: An Introduction,” Journal of Personality 72 (2004): 437-59.)) a person will form their identity by integrating important experiences into a structured “life story” that provides them with a sense of purpose, unity, and a consistent self-concept. When such life events involve adversity or suffering, psychologist Dan McAdams has found it beneficial for people to create narratives of redemption, i.e. extrapolating redemptive meaning from otherwise challenging experiences. In McAdams’ research, individuals who were able to construct stories of agency and exploration tended to “enjoy higher levels of mental health, well-being, and maturity.”((Dan P. McAdams, “Narrative Identity,” in Handbook of Identity Theory and Research, ed. Seth J. Schwartz, Koen Luyckx, and Vivian L. Vignoles (Springer, New York, 2011).))
Role-playing is one of that many forms of narrativization that people employ in order to make sense of their experience. As role-players, we not only tell stories, but also embody the characters whose stories we tell. Sometimes, we construct clear story arcs, whether redemptive or tragic. Additionally, many players will engage in forms of storytelling after larps, whether by relaying amusing or exciting anecdotes — i.e. war stories — or sharing serious, intense narratives as a form of emotional processing, e.g. debriefing sessions or written accounts of play. Players may slip between first- and third-person perspective when recounting these tales. In first-person, players may feel more self-immersed and connected to the story as an active participant. In third-person self-distanced narratives, the players may feel less connected, recounting the tale as an observer of their character’s actions.((Ethan Kross and Ozlem Ayduk, “Self-Distancing: Theory, Research, and Current Directions,” Advances in Experimental Psychology 55 (2016): 81-136.))
In terms of using narratives as a tool for transformation, alibi might help or hinder the process. As described above, alibi might make it harder for players to own core elements of these narratives and apply them to life outside of games, e.g. “My character was brave, but I am not.” On the other hand, overly immersing in the fictional content off-game might also disrupt growth. As Ethan Kross and Ozlem Ayduk discuss in their work on self-distancing, with regard to one’s own life stories, continued self-immersion in the first-person perspective may lead to rumination and a lack of closure.((Kross and Ayduk, “Self-Distancing.” )) In these cases, adopting a third-person distanced perspective may help players reduce shame and engage in self-reflection, e.g. “I wept for hours when he left me at the altar” versus “Elizabeth wept for hours when Anya left her.” Such distancing can enhance post-game narrative meta-reflections when streamlined with the player’s own narrative identity, e.g. “Looking back on Elizabeth’s story, I can see how my own abandonment fears led to strong emotional bleed-in.” The player might then consider approaching future situations differently after reflecting upon these experiences, e.g. “Unlike Elizabeth, I am going to take active steps to make sure that partners are willing to remain in relationship with me before I commit.” In other words, the third-person perspective might allow someone to create a narrative identity that distills important redemptive lessons from the character’s experiences without persistently reliving and rehashing painful emotions.
Additionally, using narrativization tools, players can intentionally explore and process aspects of their own lives within the fictional settings that they inhabit. Organizers can construct containers for this specific intent, giving participants explicit permission to bring personal content into the fiction, e.g. a player’s fear of abandonment. Players can find redemptive meaning within their life stories through their game experiences, especially ones that emphasize adversity, e.g. “When I experienced the death of my character’s partner in the larp, I realized I am more resilient than I thought.” Ultimately, the most important component of this narrativization process is creating opportunities for post-game reflection, which allow players to streamline character narratives with their life stories, making meaning that can positively impact their lives.((Bowman, “Active Imagination.”))
Reginald Kenneth Dwight, aka Elton John, in 1975. Publicity photo, Wikimedia, no copyright.
Identity
One of the most potent tools for transformation within role-playing is identity exploration. When we role-play, we inhabit a dual consciousness((Sandberg, “Genesi”; Stenros, “Living.”)) in which we simultaneously experience both our own subjectivity and our character’s. We engage in perspective taking when we willingly alter our own identity in order to consider the perspective of another.((Adam Gerace, Andrew Day, Sharon Casey, and Philip Mohr, “An Exploratory Investigation of the Process of Perspective Taking in Interpersonal Situations,” Journal of Relationships Research 4, no. e6 (2013): 1–12.)) This perspective taking process can help us approach challenging situations or embolden us to act in ways counter to our self-concept.
The Batman Effect and The Proteus Effect
The creation and embodiment of characters occurs in many activities outside of role-playing games. D.W. Winnicott suggests that through imaginal play, children can express themselves in ways that may feel more authentic than their daily social roles permit.((Winnicott, “Theory.”)) Additionally, researchers have studied the phenomenon of the creation of alter egos: personalities that someone envisions and embodies who can better handle stressful, challenging, or even traumatic situations. When the alter ego is the one performing challenging tasks, some people seem able to exert a greater level of control over their own performance. In their research on how alter egos can affect perseverance in children, Rachel E. White et al. coined the term The Batman Effect.((Rachel E. White, et al,. “The ‘Batman Effect’: Improving Perseverance in Young Children,” Child Development 88, no. 5 (2017): 1563-1571. The added meta layer of Batman being the fictional alter ego of a fictional Bruce Wayne that was created as a result of emotional avoidance after a traumatic event in Wayne’s life, is not lost on the authors.)) They found that children who adopted a third-person perspective in relation to a task showed higher degrees of perseverance than participants operating in the first-person did, but both of these groups were surpassed by the participants that took on powerful alter egos such as Batman. This technique is also common in edu-larp theory and practice; for example, students at the Danish boarding school Østerskov Efterskole are often asked to play experts in larp scenarios in order to cultivate their perceived competence and self-efficacy in leadership.((Malik Hyltoft, “Full-Time Edu-larpers: Experiences from Østerskov,” in Playing the Learning Game: A Practical Introduction to Educational Roleplaying, ed. Martin Eckoff Andresen (Oslo, Norway: Fantasiforbundet, 2012). 20-23.))
As role-players well know, alter egos are not just helpful for children. Drag performers routinely report creating and embodying larger-than-life characters through which they can draw the personal strength to face marginalization in their daily lives. The name of Brian Furkus’ famous drag alter ego Trixie Mattel arose from childhood slurs hurled upon him by his stepfather in response to Furkus’ queerness. Furkus describes:
If I was being too sensitive or acting too feminine especially, he would call me a Trixie. You know, for years that was one of the worst words I could think of. So I took that name Trixie that used to have all this hurt [connected] to it and I made it my drag name. And now it’s something I celebrate, something I’m so proud of. If I hadn’t gone through all that horrible shit when I was little, Trixie Mattel might not even exist.((Nick Murray, dir., “Episode 8,” RuPaul’s Drag Race Season 7,eprformed by RuPaul Charles, et al. (Los Angeles: World of Wonder Productions, 2015).))
Brian Furkus transformed childhood experiences of abuse and shame into creative fuel for his drag persona, Trixie Mattel. Photo by dvsross, Wikimedia, (CC BY 2.0).
Other famous performers have created alter egos that are able to withstand the demands of marginalization and even stardom. Before he created Elton John, Reginald Kenneth Dwight was an introverted bespectacled piano-playing teenager.((Dexter Fletcher, Rocketman, performed by Taron Egerton, Jamie Bell, and Richard Madden (2019; Paramount), film.)) Stefani Germanotta created Lady Gaga as a separate and “stronger” version of herself.((Sarah Begley, “Lady Gaga Says Her Public Persona Is a ‘Separate Entity’ From Her True Self,” Time, June 8, 2016.)) However, the lines between these two entities often bleed together for Germanotta as art becomes life. With regard to this artistic process, she has insisted that we humans “possess something magical and transformative inside — a uniqueness and specialness waiting to be exiled from the depths of our identity.” In order to delve into these depths, bleed is a necessary state, as we “must effortlessly vacillate between two worlds: out of the real and into the surreal. Out of the ordinary, into the extraordinary.”((Lady Gaga, “V Magazine Gaga Memorandum No. 2,” V Magazine 72 (Fall 2011).)) Another widely-known and fascinating example is how Beyoncé created her alter ego, Sasha Fierce. When even someone as successful and praised as Beyoncé feels the need to create an alter ego to accomplish what she wants, the positive potential of identity alteration becomes difficult to dismiss.
Similarly, in role-playing studies, we have the Proteus Effect.((Nick Yee and Jeremy Bailenson, “The Proteus Effect: The Effect of Transformed Self-Representation on Behavior,” Human Communication Research 33 (2007): 271-290.)) Named after the shapeshifting Greek god Proteus, this effect describes how the physical attributes of virtual avatars can sometimes affect the behavior of their players. In their research, Nick Yee and Jeremy Bailenson show how playing more attractive avatars led to more confident behaviour in in-game interpersonal situations and how playing taller avatars led to greater confidence in negotiation tasks during play. While MMORPG avatars are not always fully “role-played,” the avatar clearly provides players with enough alibi to present themselves in ways that they might otherwise feel inhibited when enacting their daily identities.
Some role-players do report actively utilizing their characters to handle situations in their daily life. Players describe a form of “aspecting,” where they enact certain traits or skills from a character rather than performing the character in its entirety, e.g. aspecting a character’s leadership skills during a work meeting. In other words, even in small ways, we can expand alibi beyond the magic circle to allow for certain facets of the role-play experience to extend to the “real” world. Ultimately, role-players do not “become” our characters, but we can distill core aspects and substantiate them into our self-concepts.
Empowerment and Imagination
How can role-playing enhance our sense of personal empowerment? One of the coding constructs used in the narrative identity theory described above is agency. People who create narratives in which they see themselves as protagonists with a high degree of ability to affect change in their lives are likely to feel more agency in general. Agency is closely linked to the concept of locus of control.((Julian B. Rotter, “Generalized Expectancies for Internal Versus External Control of Reinforcement,” Psychological Monographs 80 (1966): 1-28.)) Individuals who have an internal locus of control tend to believe that they have a high degree of influence on the events and outcomes in their lives, while those with an external locus of control tend to insist that outside forces are primarily responsible for determining what happens in their life story.
In relation to role-playing, our characters often have a large degree of agency and even power. Even for disempowered characters, the very act of playing involves exerting a certain amount of control over the character and the environment. As such, role-playing can be a way for players who tend to favor an external locus of control in their everyday life to experience how it is to shift to an internal locus of control through the game. If those experiences feel empowering, through the use of narrative identity, players may be able to shift their own locus of control more readily in daily life. While we acknowledge that, in many situations, outside factors such as structural inequalities and marginalization will reinforce the external locus of control, processes such as Kemper’s Wyrding the Self can feel emancipatory and empowering for players.
Beyoncé during the tour for I Am… Sasha Fierce. The album explored empowerment through the embodiment of an alterego. Photo by idrewuk, Wikimedia, (CC BY 2.0), cropped.
We believe that the more individuals can experience themselves as agentic beings in games, the more they can feel empowered to make changes in the spheres of influence they inhabit, including the personal, interpersonal, and communal. Many role-players likely never believed they were capable of leading groups or running large-scale events before they experienced the motivating agency of larp. From this perspective, the very structure of our role-playing communities has been built upon this increased sense of agency, demonstrating that some forms of transfer are observable. Role-players also often describe the ways in which larp situations have prepared them for the working world in terms of social skills like leadership, teamwork, and understanding how to operate within systems.((Bowman 2010, 2014.))
While these concrete “productive” skills are of interest, we invite players to consider ways in which they might bolster agency throughout other dimensions of their life, including altering their personal narratives to ones that are more empowering. For example, a player may have previously believed themselves to be unlovable, then experienced a successful, impassioned romance in a larp. If they can distill that experience into a new belief about themselves, such as “I am capable of cultivating love,” then they might make different choices in daily life that proactively seek the love they desire based upon the positive proof of concept within the larp. Alternatively, if these experiences remain bounded within the fiction, a player might instead reinforce their previous belief with such thoughts as “My fictional characters are capable of cultivating love, but I myself remain unlovable.” Therefore, we strongly recommend finding ways to integrate these experiences into one’s personal narrative in order to foster a greater internal locus of control.
Furthermore, imagining ourselves as capable of certain activities might actually enhance our physical performance at tasks. While role-playing is not always an obviously physical activity, for many players, especially in larp, some degree of physical embodiment of character is central to their experience. In 1874, William B. Carpenter originated psychoneuromuscular theory, positing that the visualization of mental imagery related to a specific behavior will lead to subsequent greater motor performance of that activity.((William B. Carpenter, Principles of Mental Physiology (Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press, 1874).)) This theory is still central to a number of approaches to sports psychology. In brief, research into mental imagery shows that the mere practice of imagining oneself performing a task in an optimal way — such as lifting a heavy weight — will lead to noticeable increases in physical ability when one later performs that action.((Robert S.Weinberg and Daniel Gould. Foundations of Sport and Exercise Psychology. 7th ed. (Champaign, IL: Human Kinetics, 2018); Paul Holmes and Dave Collins, “The PETTLEP Approach to Motor Imagery: A Functional Equivalence Model for Sport Psychologists,” Journal of Applied Sport Psychology 13 (2007): 60-83.)) Studies have also shown that substituting the physical act of working out with imagining the activity can have positive effects on motivation, self-confidence, anxiety, arousal control, and injury rehabilitation.((Danielle Alexander, Eric Hutt, Jordan Lefebvre, and Gordon Bloom, “Using Imagery to Enhance Performance in Powerlifting: A Review of Theory, Research, and Practice,” Strength and Conditioning Journal 41 (2019): 102-109.)) Similar to Auryn’s insistence that action is necessary to fully realize manifestational outcomes, psychologists pair imagination with action in psychoneuromuscular work in order to enhance performance. In other words, while some limitations we cannot control, when we imagine ourselves as capable, we come to realize other limitations are psychological in nature; thus, we can imagine and perform a self that might be able to move past them.
In summary, role-players can find value in both metaphysical and social scientific explanations of transformation. In fact, manifestational work aligns with concepts in social science in the following ways:
We can place collective social meaning upon our ritual experiences that lasts far beyond the liminal phase;
We can place collective social meaning upon our ritual experiences that lasts far beyond the liminal phase;
We can use narratives to construct positive meaning, streamlining our fictional and non-fictional lives;
We can adopt aspects of our alter egos in daily life in order to augment our personalities;
We can imagine ourselves as capable of performing difficult tasks; and thus,
We can strengthen our belief in our own abilities to affect change in the world.
For participants who wish to experience lasting change from their role-playing experiences, the question remains: How do we design, facilitate, and play to maximize such impacts?
Role-Playing Communities as Transformational Containers
As we have discussed, many role-players claim to have experienced powerful transformative impacts as a result of adopting alternate identities in fictional worlds. In many cases, these impacts have evolved somewhat accidentally or even in spite of the game design, meaning that designers and players may not have intended for such effects to unfold. Role-players sometimes have differing views regarding the potential of the medium. Some participants make broad claims about the ability of role-playing to “change the world,” whereas others may insist that their larp activities are purely recreational or for entertainment. Similarly, in role-play studies, some scholars emphasize the educational or therapeutic potential of games, whereas others remain skeptical or conservative about such claims, pushing for quantitative evidence of change over time along specific dimensions of human growth.
While we hold each of these perspectives as valid, our goal is to envision role-playing communities as transformational containers. We define transformational containers as spaces explicitly and intentionally designed to facilitate personal growth and encourage communal cohesion, consent, and trust. Transformational containers extend far beyond the bounds of the magic circle of play. These containers include pre-game goal-setting, transparency, creative activities, bonding, trust-building opportunities, and workshops. They include safety structures, calibration, and negotiation during play. Most importantly, they involve post-game integration activities, such as creative expression, intellectual analysis, emotional processing, community support structures, and taking action on goals. These practices help players streamline game experiences with their self-concepts and social lives (Figure 2).((Sarah Lynne Bowman and Kjell Hedgard Hugaas, “Transformative Role-play: Design, Implementation, and Integration,” Nordiclarp.org, December 10, 2019.))
Transformational containers place personal growth and emotional safety at the forefront of activities. They strengthen and extend the magic circle, providing support for individuals and groups undergoing powerful and sometimes confusing processes. They hold space for personal alchemy, not only facilitating the shift from one state of consciousness to another, but also guiding the process of intentionally shaping consciousness and social reality through experimentation. Central to this process is projection of imagination; thus, fantasy becomes an asset to personal growth rather than “escapism” or a distraction from life.
Such role-playing containers may encourage players to consciously seek out certain types of bleed. While bleed is often unconscious and unpredictable, players can notice bleed when it arises by practicing meta-awareness and can even steer for desired types. Examples include:
Emotional bleed: Accessing and expressing one’s often suppressed emotions, allowing for deep catharsis and further processing;((Markus Montola, “The Positive Negative Experience in Extreme Role-playing,” in Proceedings of DiGRA Nordic 2010: Experiencing Games: Games, Play, and Players (Stockholm, Sweden, August 16, 2010); Nilsen, “High on Hell”; Sarah Lynne Bowman, “Bleed: The Spillover Between Player and Character,” Nordiclarp.org, March 2, 2015; Hugaas, “Investigating.”))
Ego bleed: Exploring new or suppressed aspects of personality or identity, allowing for consolidation of these aspects into one’s off-game self-concept;((Beltrán, “Shadow Work.”))
Procedural bleed: Practicing physical abilities, habits, or ways of holding the body, allowing for greater skill and confidence in one’s off-game abilities;((Hugaas, “Investigating.”))
Emancipatory bleed: Experiencing a successful challenge to structural oppression, allowing for feelings of liberation for players from marginalized identities;((Kemper “Battle”; “Wyrding.”))
Memetic bleed: Experimenting and acting in accordance with different paradigms, allowing for the adoption of new sets of values, ideas, and understandings of reality.((Hugaas, “Investigating.”))
Some players may require a strong alibi in order to experience these impacts, whereas others may play thin characters that are quite similar to themselves. Whatever approach players choose, the goals of the transformational container are to facilitate the exploration of self, envision new configurations of community, and transfer insights from these experiences to one’s life through integration practices. In other words, alibi should not remain so strong as to get in the way of this transfer process.
Figure 2: Envisioning role-playing as a transformational container. Explicit goals, agreements, safety structures, community support, and integration practices facilitate changes in participants’ identities over time. Vectors designed by macrovector_official, and bybrgfx, and kjpargeter / Freepik.
Thus, in a transformational container, we do not simply de-role, with a brief exercise evaluating what we wish to take with us and what we wish to leave behind. We distill the essence of the experience and infuse our lives with the meanings we uncovered. We do not shy away from owning the shadow parts of our identities that may have emerged during play. We embrace the shadow as part of the human experience. We learn to acknowledge and come into psychological balance with the different parts of ourselves. We reflect not only upon the “positive” traits that we hope to cultivate further, but also upon those “negative” behaviors that we fear to own. We hold space as a group for all of these aspects to emerge and develop, providing ongoing opportunities for reflection as individual and group processes. We avoid shaming others for what they have exposed about themselves so long as it emerged under conditions of mutual consent. We understand that feelings may linger, intense bonding may occur, and players may need support long after the game is done. We work together to process such emotions and to help each other learn how to create experiences in life that are as meaningful as we experience in larp. Ultimately, players within transformational containers must feel supported enough to expose their true intentions, desires, and vulnerabilities and the container must feel secure enough to hold space for such goals to potentiate.
Let’s perform magic together.
Acknowledgements
This theoretical framework is part of Sarah Lynne Bowman’s larger ethnographic research project on the therapeutic and educational potential of role-playing games. This project was approved by the Austin Community College Institutional Research Review Committee in June 2020 under the supervision of Dr. Jean Lauer. The views and opinions expressed in this article are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the opinions or policies of Austin Community College. Sarah would like to thank from the bottom of her heart all of her participants in this study, who have helped her refine her thoughts on these topics by offering their own expertise. Special thanks also to Doris Rusch, Lauri Lukka, Lars Kristian Løveng Sunde, Sanne Harder, Michael Freudenthal, and Mo Holkar for their insightful feedback on early drafts.
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Cover photo: Photo by Stefan Keller, Kellepics on Pixabay, cropped.
This article was published in the Knutepunkt companion book Book of Magic and is published here with permission. Please cite this text as:
Bowman, Sarah Lynne, and Kjell Hedgard Hugaas. 2021. “Magic is Real: How Role-playing Can Transform Our Identities, Our Communities, and Our Lives.” In Book of Magic: Vibrant Fragments of Larp Practices, edited by Kari Kvittingen Djukastein, Marcus Irgens, Nadja Lipsyc, and Lars Kristian Løveng Sunde, 52-74. Oslo, Norway: Knutepunkt.
This article is based on a presentation I made at the Nordic larp conference Knutpunkt 2018 in Lund, Sweden. It is based on my own experiences as well as conversations with larp crushed people.
There must be more to it. That’s what I’ve always thought.
Larpers generally agree that what happens in-game stays in-game. This idea is known as an alibi — as described by e.g. Markus Montola (2010). Just because your larp character is a sadistic tyrant does not mean that you are. The same goes for relationships: Your sister is not your actual sister, your friend is not your actual friend, and your lover is not your actual lover.
Right?
But then there’s the larp crush. It sounds like a little blip on your romantic radar — something you laugh at and quickly shrug off. But as it turns out, that is often a misconception. In the words of a young lady who approached me after my talk at Knutpunkt: “It’s called larp crush because your heart is crushed afterwards.”
Defining the Larp Crush
What is a larp crush? If you are not sure whether you have had one, you can rest assured: You have not. It is not the kind of experience that goes unnoticed.
A larp crush is a condition where you and your character get your wires crossed, so to speak.
It is a close relative to larp bleed, which Sarah Lynne Bowman (2015) defines as “moments where […] real life feelings, thoughts, relationships, and physical states spill over into [the players’] characters’ and vice versa.”
However, larp crushes are known to be potentially more intense than pretty much any other experience of bleed.
In order to examine the larp crush, I have been looking into how actors deal with the equivalent of bleed. According to professor of media psychology Dr. Elly A. Konijn, actors rarely get confused about their identity (Konijn 2000). In my experience, the same goes for role-players. However, they do get affected by their character’s emotions and behaviour. Just like actor Jim Carrey was affected by portraying Andy Kaufman in the biopic Man on the Moon, so do role-players get affected by their character’s emotions.
This is my definition of a larp crush:
A larp crush is a variant of bleed, which means that you are having trouble separating your real world emotions from your character’s.
You know that you have a larp crush when you feel an inexplicable desire to spend time staring into another person’s eyes for unreasonable amounts of time.
It is only a larp crush if you felt no prior attraction to the person in question. You might have thought they looked nice, but you didn’t see them in a romantic light. If you did, it’s not a larp crush — it is a regular crush!
It is only a larp crush if it was triggered by your in-game relationship. Finding out at an afterparty that you really like each other is not a larp crush — it is a regular crush.
Echo and Narcissus (1903) by John William Waterhouse.
Immersion into Character
In Nordic larp as well as in most Hollywood films, realism is by far the most prevalent genre. This means that being able to reproduce realistic emotions is considered “good role-playing.”
Our approach is much like that of actor and theatre practitioner Konstantin Stanislavski’s work.
Early Stanislawski method acting claims that the actor should give themselves up, and become one with the role. Furthermore, you should use emotional recall to create believability.
Recalling genuine emotions not only creates the expression of those emotions; it also makes you relive them. Because of the potential danger of this method, Stanislawski later distanced himself from it. However, it was too late: Hollywood had already embraced it. Some of the most famous actors, from Dustin Hoffman to Heath Ledger, used this method.
When larping, so do I.
Becoming emotional or being moved by a performance appears to be one of the most important criteria an audience uses to judge the impact of a performance. The same is the case for participants larping in the Nordic style (Bowman 2017).
Unless we get emotionally involved, we do not get the catharsis feeling that the ancient Greeks used to describe the feeling of being emotionally purged — of having gone through a great ordeal, and coming out on the other side.
As a side note: For some larpers, emotional identification with the character never happens. However, many people are able to create an emotional bond with their character some of the time, although not always. Because Nordic larpers often see character immersion as an indicator of success, larp without immersion into character is often considered a failure and a disappointment.
Actors agree that the ticket to an emotional bond with your character is preparation. You must know all about your character — where she comes from, her status, her character, her habits, her life goals or lack thereof. You must know enough that you are able to build “an inner model,” or as psychologists describe it, a theory of mind.
Limerence
Larp crushes feel like falling in love. They consist of a mixture of obsession and compulsion. You are constantly thinking about the object of desire, and you can’t help but interpret everything he or she says or does and what that means for your relationship.
While doing research for this article, I stumbled on the term limerence. It was coined by psychologist Dorothy Tennov in 1979. It is an often involuntary state in which you are emotionally attached to another person to the point of obsession. Although it involves physical attraction, it goes much further than just the wish to have sex. You might call it an extreme version of romantic love. As Tennov (1979) describes, “Limerence is first and foremost a condition of cognitive obsession.”
According to Tennov, never experiencing limerence is just as natural a state as experiencing it. However, people who have never gone through limerence are prone to think it is a myth. It is not, but it is a bit of a unicorn that some people go their entire life without ever seeing. Larping is excellent at inducing this state.
The limerent person — that is, the person experiencing a full-on crush — becomes extremely attentive to little signals, such as body language, wording, or actions.
Being limerent is like that moment in The Wizard of Oz when the doors open, and you step out of Kansas and into Oz. It is like an awakening. You are high on energy, and everything is doubly intense.
The Wizard of Oz (1939). Photo by Insomnia Cured Here on Flickr. CC BY-SA 2.0.
According to scientists, an MRI brain scan of a person in love looks a lot like the brain of a person under the influence of cocaine (Fisher, Aron, Brown 2018). Over the years, it has in fact been debated whether being in love should be classified as a mental disorder (Tennov 1979). There is no doubt that limerence is a very powerful physical condition as well as a state of mind. Also, while you are going through it, you have as little power over the chemical reactions that are going on in your brain as if you were on drugs.
Limerence is not the product of human decision: It is something that happens to us. Its intrusive cognitive components, the obsessional quality that may feel voluntary at the moment but that defies control, seem to be the aspect of limerence in which it differs most from other states. (Tennov 1979)
Larp crushes make you feel alive. Everything is coated in meaning. For better or worse, whether you are drowning in misery or over the moon with joy, you are incredibly tuned into the world around you.
We all have a generalized longing for union with the beautiful and the excellent. Limerence is a pure manifestation of that longing.
Are Larp Crushes “Real?”
The answer I have currently arrived at is: Yes and no.
Larp crushes are definitely real experiences of being in love. Larp crushes are real in the sense that the barrier between you and your character’s emotions are eroded to the point where you really, truly are going through limerence.
However, larp crushes are “created” because you deliberately place yourself in a situation where you are balancing between hope and uncertainty. Placing yourself in a state where you are constantly balancing hope and uncertainty feeds the limerence. That is what is referred to as The Bungee Method in Charles Bo Nielsen’s (2017) article “Playing in Love,” which is intended as a guide to playing romantic relationships in Nordic larps.
Often, when you experience a larp crush, you have no idea about the person behind the character. But actually, that lack of knowledge does not set larp crushes apart from other kinds of crushes: There is no need to know the person who becomes the object of limerence. People often describe falling in love at first sight.
Tristan and Isolde Sharing the Potion (1916) by John William Waterhouse.
According to Tennov, the best way of getting rid of limerence is if it is revealed that the limerent object is highly undesirable. However, since most people are decent enough, this approach is not very reliable.
Tennov estimates that the average limerent reaction lasts approximately from 18 months to 3 years. However, a few may last a lifetime, while others might wear off more quickly. There seems to be a connection between exposure and duration.
There are three efficient ways of getting rid of limerence:
Consummation: you get together and have a relationship. (No, sex is not enough)!
Starvation: you never see this person again.
Transference: you somehow manage to transfer your feelings to a third person.
Staying in touch is most certainly not the way to go, if you want to get rid of unwanted feelings. However, Tennov believes that the person who is at the receiving end has an ethical obligation to help diminish the pain that the limerent person is undergoing.
Also, if the limerence is not reciprocated, the suffocating attention from the limerent person can be an unpleasant experience, which needs to be dealt with. What both parties need is a very clear statement from the object of limerence (the person whom the limerent person is in love with) that they are not interested. Otherwise the limerent person will continue to nurse the embers of hope.
Can you Make Your Body Fall in Love?
According to Konijn, there is only slight evidence that performing specific physical exercises, such as staring into each other’s eyes, will make you fall in love (Konijn 2000). However, separating the character’s feelings from your own is a different story.
Konijn explains how it is rare that even method actors become affected by a character’s emotions while actually acting. It is during rehearsal and while preparing for the character that they wind up being affected. However, larpers are in a different situation — our performance is significantly more immersive, if not for any other reason, then because we do not have to remember lines, and we are not standing on a stage.
Scientists Arthur Aron et al. (1997) wanted to find out if intimacy between strangers can be accelerated by carrying out “self-disclosing” and relationship-building tasks. The tasks would gradually escalate in intensity. Indeed, self-disclosure turns out to be linked to establishing intimacy and feeling close. The conclusion was that under the right conditions, and with the right pairings, intimacy can be accelerated.
In my experience, larping has a similar effect: Having lived through strong emotions together, you feel intimate afterwards. However, while I don’t doubt the sincerity of the feelings, the idea that you truly get to know a stranger on a deep level after spending a few days together, I find dubious at best.
The emotional “shortcut” to feeling intimate with strangers that larp provides is perhaps best considered a stepping stone to get to know each other. You may have opened the door, but the actual relationship building comes after — and needs to be done, so that you do not wind up in a relationship with someone with whom you are not compatible.
Still, larp crushes are not that different from falling in love at first sight. While most people are most likely to be nice, you may be falling in love with someone with whom you cannot connect long-term.
Have I Fallen for a Real Person, or for a Fictional Character?
You have fallen for a fictional character. However, there is nothing new about this. People do it all the time, when they fall in love with Mr. Darcy, John Snow, or Lara Croft. Just because the object of your desire is fiction, your feelings are not.
Elizabeth Bennett and Mr. Darcy in Pride and Prejudice (2005). Photo by Peter Pham on Flickr. CC BY 2.0.
Limerence is very often built on fiction. When people talk about “falling in love at first sight,” what they fall for is obviously not a deep knowledge of each other’s character, but rather a fantasy of who they assume this person might be.
According to sexologist John Money, everyone carries a blueprint for our ideal partner. Love maps are fairly complex — they both have to do with fulfillment and upbringing. When you fall in love at first sight, what happens is that you find someone onto whom you are able to project your lovemap. Money (1986) continues, “That is to say, the person projects onto the partner an idealized and highly idiosyncratic image that diverges from the image of the partner as perceived by other people.”
Of course, that projection is in itself a fictitious character.
The question you need to ask yourself is not whether your feelings are real — of course they are — but rather: Do I want this? Depending on the degree of compulsion/obsession, a larp crush can disrupt your everyday life to a degree where it becomes destructive. Tennov (1979) explains, “Limerence for someone other than one’s spouse can cause major disruption to the family, and when frustrated, limerence may produce such severe distress as to be life threatening.”
However, limerence can also be a positive, transformative experience that helps you reevaluate your life in a constructive manner.
Controlling Your Larp Experience
According to psychology professors Thalia Goldstein and Ellen Winner (2012), there are three psychological skills that help an actor create a strong characterization: theory of mind, affective empathy, and emotion regulation.
Theory of mind is the ability to understand what others are thinking, feeling, believing, and desiring. Being able to see through someone’s actions and understanding their intentions is integral to creating a strong character, because those are the skills that character creation require. Some people have strong theory of mind, while others find it difficult. Reading fiction, and — of course — larping, trains this skill.
Affective empathy — as opposed to cognitive empathy — is the feeling you get in response to someone else’s emotion. It is sometimes referred to as “emotional contagion.” It could be sadness for someone’s grief, joy for someone’s happiness, etc. Being happy and shedding tears of joy at someone else’s wedding counts as affective empathy. Letting yourself be affected by your character’s emotions does too.
Finally, a good larper needs emotional regulation skills. You need to be able to decide whether you want to feel the emotions of your character or not, or to what extent. This is not just a skill for when you are larping; from an early age, we all learn to regulate our feelings, because sometimes it’s inappropriate or inconvenient to show them.
To be able to control your larping experience, you need emotional regulation skills. Being able to play a romantic relation without getting larp crushed — or the opposite, deliberately getting larp crushed — all comes down to this particular skill.
Detail of Romeo and Juliet (1884) by Frank Dicksee.
Tools for Emotion Regulation
Emotion regulation is currently not something that is emphasized in the Nordic larp vocabulary. Interestingly, though, in other larp scenes the idea of being fully immersed in your character is seen as stigmatizing.
This stigmatization is something that Tennov (1979) also describes in relation to limerence, stating, “Many societies have attempted to prevent love or, more often, to control it in some way.“
She even describes how Stendhal, a 19th century author who is often quoted for his philosophical thoughts on love and beauty, was embarrassed at the thought of being discovered as someone who could be taken over by feelings of passion. She ascribes this reaction to society generally being more inclined to reward rational behaviour than emotional.
While Nordic larp generally praises character immersion, larp crushes seem to be trivialized. The idea that we need tools for handling too much immersion does not seem to have taken root.
Larp crushes are not trivial fiction. They are real emotions, and they should be treated as such. With regard to finding the tools that will help us get better at creating the experiences we want, we still have far to go. Becoming aware of these emotional responses, and admitting their impact on us, is a first step.
Fisher, Helen E., Arthur Aron, Lucy L. Brown. 2006. “Romantic Love: A Mammalian Brain System for Mate Choice.” Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences 361, no. 1473 (December): 2173–2186.
Nielsen, Charles Bo. 2017. “Playing in Love.” In Once Upon a Nordic Time, edited by Martine Svanevik, Linn Carin Andreassen, Simon Brind, Elin Nilsen, and Grethe Sofie Bulterud Strand, 176-184. Oslo, Norway: Knutepunkt.
Figure 1: This figure charts the role of alibi within the role-playing process. Players are able to depart from their daily selves, adopting characters within the magic circle. While the social contract of the game allows for playfulness, alibi may interfere with desired transfer of traits, insights, and relationship dynamics from character to player. Vectors designed by macrovector_official and bybrgfx / Freepik.
Figure 2: Envisioning role-playing as a transformational container. Explicit goals, agreements, safety structures, community support, and integration practices facilitate changes in participants’ identities over time. Vectors designed by macrovector_official, and bybrgfx, and kjpargeter / Freepik.
Echo and Narcissus (1903) by John William Waterhouse.
The Wizard of Oz (1939). Photo by 
Tristan and Isolde Sharing the Potion (1916) by John William Waterhouse.
