I’m back from waging guerrilla warfare from deep in the Swedish woods, desperately trying to keep Scania under the rightful Danish King and not the usurper Swedish crown at the larp Snapphaneland, by Rosalind Göthberg, Mimmi Lundkvist and Alma Elofsson Edgar.
Pew pew, yours truly and his trusty musket – Photo by Tindra Englund 2024
The scenario was based on a very dark period in Scandinavian history, building on actual events, but set in a fictional place. A small farming village in the woods, trying to survive being caught in the middle of a fight between armed “Snaphane” resistance fighters and occupying soldiers. Taking place in two acts of increasing paranoia and brutality as the fight becomes more desperate for both sides.
It took place at Berghem, a primitive village built by larpers, specifically for larping, out it in the gorgeous Swedish woods. It ran from thursday morning to saturday afternoon, plus cleanup and afterparty. Thursday was half workshopping and preparations before play itself started. Friday afternoon there was also an act break to calibrate and escalate. So two full days of ongoing play time, with planned start and end scenes, but otherwise open, autonomous structure.
Organizers Rosalind, Alma & Mimmi brief the players before play – Photo by Tindra Englund 2024
The style of play here, is one of ongoing calibration and a focus on making sure the other players are having a good time with where the story is going, by taking a moment to talk offgame if an inflection point needs it, plus a few classical tools for quicker signaling. Combined with everyone knowing how the overall story will turn out and some directions on how to handle things, in each of the two acts, it is a matter of individual stories being driven by both chance and intent.
It featured a cast of characters, that is divided between a dozen Swedish soldiers, two handfuls of rebels and the rest of the eighty or so participants being villagers caught in the middle. In a lot of ways it was three quite different larps in each of the groups, villagers playing out stories of powerlessness to proctect themselves and their loved ones; soldiers trying desperately to take control while outnumbered and out of their depth; and the rebels fighting a losing battle to retain the loyalty of the villagers and evict the occupiers. My personal story was with the rebels in the woods, I played as Klaus, an outcast drunkard from the village, who had no other choice but join with them.
Some light plundering of the starving families in town – Photo by Tindra Englund 2024
The game took place in Swedish and Danish languages, the soldiers all being Swedish players, the Snaphaner all Danes and the villagers were a mix of the two. There was minor troubles at times, with getting the details right across the language barrier. But as the languages are mostly the same and a lot of us Danes have picked up a good deal of Swedish, it worked rather well overall. I also know a bunch of players chose to take language lessons ahead of play, which is a lovely commitment. I personally love the additional nuance you get from people playing in their mother tongue and can heartily recommend it as a design choice for Scandinavian games.
The experience
It’s been nearly two decades since I last went on a multi-day action scenario in the woods and I must admit that I was in doubt if I was in fact too old for this shit. But I already had the perfect costume, from a previous larp, Den Utan Synd. And this felt like a once in a lifetime opportunity, so I had no choice but to go. I signed up for any kind of character, since all three of the groups had themes I would love to explore, but luckily I got cast as a Snaphane and was able to take part in the experience for which the larp was named.
Hard choices all around – Photo by Tindra Englund 2024
That meant a whole lot of time out in the woods. Most of the other rebels had opportunities to spend time in the village during the first act, but my character was a known drunkard and troublemaker. So I only had five minutes, before I had my ass literally kicked out of town by my brother in law. But then again, the woods were absolutely amazing to spend time in. We had a primitive camp hidden in a thicket, but also a walled off section of town that functioned as an undiscoverable hideout where we could go to warm up and sleep in doors if needed, but quite a few of us chose to sleep it rough (or in my case on a field bed under a modern tarp and mosquito netting, middle age does come with concessions).
Snaphaner out on patrol – Photo by Tindra Englund 2024
Besides some lovely camp play, our main activity was sneaking through the woods to harass the occupiers. We mostly had the woods to ourselves, as the soldiers tended to stay in town where it was safer and reinforcements were quick to arrive. They only came out to stomp about in large patrols or when we provoked a response. In the first act the villagers were mostly on our side, helping hide and feed us, but in the second act (after a timeskip of two months) the majority had turned against us and would call us out if seen and help the Swedes instead.
As the pressure went up, fractures grew everywhere, including among the partisans. Drama and desperation increased along with the realization that we could do nothing to help the villagers, except try to hurt the soldiers, which would in turn lead to retaliation against the civilians. But by then the rain was coming down constantly and our big attempt at a three pronged attack was partially defeated by confusion and wet powder in the guns. We scattered into the woods. A lucky few escaped, some died ugly deaths in the woods and others were captured. The last of us made it back to camp, only for it to be surrounded and all of us taken prisoner. The larp ended soon after with a set scene where we were mercifully lined up and shot (real history is a lot uglier to partisans), our collaborators in town strangled and a third of the men in town killed as punishment, because the village had “helped” us.
Moments before the end – Photo by Tindra Englund 2024
The game was capped by the organizers retelling how the historical resistance ended and the bigger political motions afterwards, followed by light structured debriefs in smaller groups and general socializing into the night. I was soaked, tired and the rest of my ride home also wanted to get a head start on going home, so we left early. Anyways, I’m no good with extended socializing in large groups right after larps, a long ride home and the smell of the sea is the best reset for me, once I’ve had a chance to look everyone in their real eyes.
A man of the woods
Trekking through the woods turned into the largest part of my fun. I wasn’t sure how well I’d handle it, being a chubby, middle-aged nerd. But I’ve worked as a landscape gardener these last few years and it turned out it has given med a wonderful range of skills to traverse rough terrain: Automatically ducking under branches, sure footing, spotting animal trails and even at one point tracking a group through the undergrowth by reading broken bracken and flattened grass. I was able to outpace my compatriots and outrun the soldiers. It’s been a long time since I felt physically awesome and it was in amazing surroundings. Most of the terrain around the village was wet and hilly pine forest. Some sections were rocky, some open woods, some swampy ground and a large hill had been cut clear recently. It was wonderfully varied and spacious enough to be able to actually hide our movements and our camp out there. I really enjoyed having uninterrupted time in nature without modern distractions and all my senses in play, I kind of want to find a way to larp like this again.
Tension among the Snaphane partisans – Photo by Tindra Englund 2024
Bearing arms
Another thing that impressed me, was how well the guns worked (and how well they didn’t!) They were all prop guns, made to work with various loud things from pop caps to starter pistol rounds. They were impractical to load and especially to keep loaded as you stumbled through the woods. Often they would stop working in the rain, just like guns would, back in the day. The loud bangs were such a thrill and truly scary at times. Everyone would stop and listen tensely as they went off somewhere out in the woods. And hearing them go off behind your back, as you ran for your life was terrifying. Having guns did wonders for how fighting worked. You’d most often engage at a distance from a couple to a dozen meters depending on terrain and surprise. Since you’d likely only get one shot off, or the other side could score a lucky hit, there was always a reason to try and end the fight before it began. This led to some very tense moments of shouting and intimidation. Game rules were that the person being shot at, decided if they got hit and how. Any injuries had to be played on at the very least until the end of the act, so there was a lot of surrendering or fleeing instead, but it didn’t reach unrealistic dimensions. I loved how this form of fighting replaces the offgame skill and athleticism of boffer fighting, with a much more roleplay and story based form. I knew that a fight would only be humiliating or heroic, if I chose to make it so myself, not because of offgame factors.
Soldiers ransacking a home – Photo by Tindra Englund 2024
On a song and a prayer
The players of the Danish soldiers who were part of our guerilla force added a little bit of ritual in camp, where we’d be read scripture, pray and sing a patriotic song, before we went out on our operations in the woods. It really elevated the feeling of fighting for something, of believing in the fight, God and our divinely appointed monarch. Without this, it would have been pretty much indistinguishable from just playing bandits or robbers. Which we probably ended up being, more or less, in act two. But there was something more to it for us. I normally zone out during rituals and have little skill at singing, but this wasn’t the drawn out thing that usually plagues larp. The same went for the big town scenes where the evil Swedish overlord, Gyllenstierna, could have monologued us all to death, but instead the scenes went on with brutal efficiency instead. It’s one of the many ways my co-players made great choices, that always had the enjoyment of everyone else as the ultimate goal.
They got me… – Photo by Tindra Englund 2024
As things escalated in act two, I caught myself growing a slow offgame anxiety attack. The woods had gone from a fun playground to a terrifying hunting ground and the consequences of getting caught were so much worse. I took a long solo hike circling far around the village to get my thought in order and the thing that really pulled me back down, was realizing that the players of my enemies would always want to steer any scene in a direction that I was part of choosing, as they had done all through act one. With this in mind, I tracked down my compatriots and got back in the game, fully confident in my co-players.
This war of ours
While all the running through woods and shooting muskets was very romantic and fun, it was also futile. We could do little to actually help our friends and family in the village. And so very much more to hurt them. Mostly we could just lay at the edge of the woods and impotently watch them be mistreated by the occupiers. I had a handful of interesting relationships in town, that I wanted to play on. But since my character was a well-known outcast, so I only managed three heart-pounding and heart-breaking stealthy forays, hiding under houses waiting and hoping for my sister or lover to be home alone. Others had better opportunities to play in town. And while my special situation made for some great scenes in other ways, I just wished I could’ve had that direct play too.
A flogging in the town square, for example – Photo by Tindra Englund 2024
But what really stuck with me, was the hopelessness and powerlessness of the situation. How there was no real way to stop the soldiers, someone who operates with overwhelming force and sees no value in you. How this was the exact same dehumanization, genocide and wanton cruelty that crushes the best of us, throughout all of history. And does so still, so many places in the world. How everything we played out, to reenact our history from 350 years ago, is happening right now, somewhere to someone, with just as little choice or reason. I don’t think I can ever really be black-and-white about those civilians, who end up supporting rebels, occupiers, or both, ever again.
Civilians always end up with the short end of the stick – Photo by Tindra Englund 2024
But I also take a hope with me, from having done this: These people were our direct ancestors, we came from both sides of the war we reenacted (from the two countries in the world, that have fought the most wars against each other). And we came to explore our shared past with sensitivity and gentleness. Together. To see the humanity of everyone involved. To grieve what innocence was lost in these dark days. But also to see, that through who we are now, there is a chance to end the cycles.
Civilians always end up with the short end of the stick – Photo by Tindra Englund 2024
FACT BOX:
Larp Name: Snapphaneland
Designer(s)/Studio: Bröd och Skådespel
Dates: 6th to 9th of june 2024
Location: Berghem Lajvby, Sweden
Price: 1200 SEK (800 subsidised)
Website: https://snapphaneland.org/
Credits: Rosalind Göthberg, Mimmi Lundkvist and Alma Elofsson Edgar
This was the second and most likely last run, according to the organizers. The premiere was supposed to be June of 2020, but was pushed to 2022 due to the pandemic.
The larp sits solidly in the “Swedish Misery” subgenre of Nordic Larp, it can be seen as a sequel to Den Utan Synd ([He] Who Is Without Sin) by the same organizers, set in the same period and place, but focused on the peculiar horrors of the Scandinavian witch trials. Swedish Misery larps tell tragic stories of people and communities under unreasonable pressures. Like this larp, they are often inspired by history. They are expressly feminist and often centre the experiences of women and other groups without power, but with a focus on playable verisimilitude, self-direction and collaboration between players of oppressors and oppressed.
Cover image: Soldiers and villagers – Photo by Tindra Englund 2024
The first time I participated in Krigslive in 2011, I was 16 years old, and despite the mud, the bruises, and the bad sleep, it was one of the best and most immersive larp experiences of my life. I was enraptured by the thrill of the battlefield. The adrenaline and bloodlust made me fearless to storm players twice the size of my short, skinny teenage self alongside my likewise skinny, teenage brothers and sisters in arms. At that larp, in those moments, I forgot the real world, and I was at one with the experience of a warrior in battle.
The author (centre) at Krigslive 7 in 2011, unknown photographer
Today I am 28 (which in the Danish larp community is ancient). I have organised one Krigslive by myself and co-organised the most recent (in 2023) with my 19-year-old co-organiser, Tobias Ritzau, for a record-breaking number of participants. My favourite larp of all time is older than ever, and alive and kicking.
What is Krigslive?
Krigslive is a Danish battlelarp, that was first organised in 2006 by Thomas Aagaard (but there were other similar smaller events preceding and inspiring this event). Since then, it has been organised approximately yearly, and Krigslive XVIII took place in 2023.
A battlelarp is a larp where battles and fighting with boffer weapons takes center stage and is the main source of entertainment and action. Other examples of battlelarps are DrachenFest and Conquest of Mythodea in Germany, Krigshjärta (Eng. War Heart) in Sweden and Sotahuuto (Eng. War Cry) in Finland.
A number of things make Krigslive unique as a battlelarp. It is inspired by the Warhammer Fantasy tabletop miniature games, and the rules of Krigslive reflect that. The rules are revised each year by the new organisers, effectively making it a collective creation in its 18th iteration. The rules are the core of the Krigslive formula, as the setting of the larp can change (although it is most often Warhammer Fantasy). They were contained in a few pages in the beginning and have by now developed into a text of 16+ pages. They centre the principle of “fighting in formation”; that all members of a unit must stay within an arm’s reach of each other during battle. If you are separated from your unit and cannot immediately rejoin, you are demoralised and destroyed. If a unit is split in two, the part that stands with the banner survives and the other is destroyed. If a unit falls below five people (including bannerman) they are demoralised and destroyed. Everyone in a unit must carry the same weapons and armour, be visually distinguishable as a unit, and they have the same hit points from the onset of the battle. Everyone is individually responsible for counting their own hit points as they diminish. These rules structure the battles and promote cooperation within the groups.
The rules are published on the website prior to the game, and also sent out in participants’ letters. At the last Krigslive a simplified one-page version of the rules was made and posted on the inside of the bathroom stalls. Many veteran players have developed a strong memory of the rules. Krigslive organisers have less agency to design their event because players have such a strong sense of ownership over the concept. A common disagreement (and source of organiser stress) between organisers and players is the introduction of new rules or alteration of old ones. Likewise, a common disagreement between players is when old rules from old iterations are thought to still be in use.
General von Liebwitz, played by Carl Munch (22), Krigslive 18 in 2023, photo by Rekografia
The larp focuses on portraying soldiers at war; usually there are two enemy camps at the location, and there has thus far never been an in-game town. Krigslive is organised as a relay within the Danish larp community; different larp organisers from different Danish larp organisations take turns organising Krigslive. Newer organisers are prioritised over ones that have organised Krigslive before. To date there are more than 20 former Krigslive organisers (sadly, two have passed away). I love this relay structure because it gives everyone the opportunity to organise Krigslive, and it gives the whole community ownership. However, it has been difficult at times to recruit new organisers, or any organisers at all, and it is sometimes a very stressful experience to be a Krigslive organiser. Although the organiser(s) do not need to spend a lot of time on recruitment, they do have to navigate a community that has very strong and sometimes conflicting expectations of what Krigslive and its rules should be.
Krigslive has no individual characters. Everyone participates as part of a group, and groups organise all their tents, costumes, transport, weapons, armour, background story, and usually also their food.
What Krigslive has meant to the Danish larp community and what the community has meant to Krigslive
Krigslive has been a sizeable part of the Danish larp community for so long that it has shaped the community itself. The most obvious way is that by knowing that Krigslive will be around every year, always, Krigslive has made it easier for people to invest in more expensive larp gear. At least two different larp organisations, one a feminist larp organisation, Piger i panser (Eng. Girls in Armour) and its sequel-in-spirit Feminister i rustning (Eng. Feminists in Armour) (see Eriksen 2015), and another organisation from southern Denmark, also started out as player groups at Krigslive. Less obvious probably is that Krigslive has provided a way for players all across Denmark, from many different larp organisations, to meet and connect. In that way it has fostered a sense of national community for the Danish larp scene.
Picture from Krigslive 1 in 2006, unknown photographer
The community has also shaped Krigslive. The first Krigslives strived for a high level of realism. Battle plans were made on location in-game, and there was little to no off-game communication or coordination between the opposing sides. In time, this was changed to pre-planned battle plans and set schedules to cut down on waiting time and time lost searching for the enemy, as well as allowing players more rest and downtime. At the latest Krigslive, battle plans were shown to the generals beforehand, so the only task at the larp was to decide which units would do which tasks. A schedule for the larp with times for battles, meals, setup, and game ending etc. was published beforehand, sent out to all players, and printed and hung on the inside of bathroom stalls.
Krigslive is unique among Danish larps. It is the longest running larp in Denmark. It averages 300 players every time, with some Krigslives reaching 350 or 400 players, and hitting 530 players in 2023.
Estimates for number of signed up players Krigslive 1–18
Setting of that Krigslive
Krigslive 1
200
Warhammer Fantasy
Krigslive 2
250
Warhammer Fantasy
Krigslive 3
180
Warhammer Fantasy
Krigslive 4
400
Warhammer Fantasy
Krigslive 5
460
Warhammer Fantasy
Krigslive 6
400
Warhammer Fantasy
Krigslive 7
400
Warhammer Fantasy
Krigslive 8
400
Crusaders vs. Vikings
Krigslive 9
300
Warhammer Fantasy
Krigslive 10
440
Warhammer Fantasy
Krigslive 11
300
Vikings
Krigslive 12
350
Warhammer Fantasy
Krigslive 13
300
Warhammer Fantasy
Krigslive 14
290
Game of Thrones
Krigslive 15
No data – but probably 300
Warhammer Fantasy
Krigslive 16
300
Warhammer Fantasy
Krigslive 17
277
Age of Sigmar
Krigslive 18
530
Warhammer Fantasy
The biggest Krigslive ever
Krigslive XVIII in 2023 was absolutely record-breaking in terms of number of participants, and that was not anticipated by anyone, not even the organisers. The larp was to be in mid-May, and in April, we realised that we would reach at least 400 players, and that sent us into a weekend-long crisis about the weight of expectations, joy over success, and worry about our logistics. Two weeks later, the signup sprinted past 450 (another crisis), and one week after that we closed the sign-up with 530 (yes, another crisis). Why did this happen?
Krigslive 18, photo by Rekografia
My first instinct is to credit my co-organiser, Tobias Ritzau, for it and refer to what I call the Ritzau effect. I feel that Tobias Ritzau is a wunderkind, and everything he touches overperforms. This is an irrational idea but I want to believe it is true because I support my friends. For a more rational explanation, my theory is that three things happened.
First, we made a number of lucky decisions. We reduced ticket prices for a number of groups, including one travelling from Poland. Completely by chance, we scheduled the event so it did not coincide with events in Denmark or Poland. Krigslive usually does not have an age limit, only a restriction on how old you must be to participate on the battlefield. We lowered this age by two years from 16 to 14. We managed (again mostly by luck) to have good teamwork with the group leaders who organise the participating groups. We had a popular choice of setting and set-up. For the setting we chose Empire vs. Empire in the Warhammer Fantasy world. Most potential players have the landsknecht-inspired costumes that characterise Empire soldiers, which lowers their cost of participation. Also, most Krigslives have been set in the Empire in Warhammer Fantasy, so it is a familiar setting, and a lot of Krigslive traditions have been built in that setting. For a setup we chose a training camp, instead of war between two enemy armies. This allowed everyone to camp in the same location, so that all players could easily interact with each other. We made an open call for two players to portray the generals for each side, and the players we chose, Nikoline Gilså and Carl Munch, were popular choices and good at building hype.
General Eisenfaust, played by Nikoline Gilså (29), Krigslive 18 in 2023, photo by Rekografia
Secondly, we were generally lucky. We had players who did most of the hype for us by making videos and memes. We had some great group leaders, who recruited people in unprecedented numbers. This luck was not limited to just getting signups. Many situations made me think that the universe seriously conspired in our favour (Ritzau effect again).
Finally, Krigslive is an evergreen, robust concept, and we are getting ever better at showing the game to the world by having some seriously awesome photographers at the event.
Conquest of Mythodea (2004 -): Live Adventure Event GmbH, Germany.
DrachenFest (2001 -): Drachenfest UG. Germany.
Krigslive (2006-): Denmark. Organisation changes every year.
Sotahuuto (2005-): Finland.
Warhammer Fantasy (1983): United Kingdom. Games Workshop.
This article has been reprinted with permission from the Solmukohta 2024 book. Please cite as:
Budolfsen, Astrid. 2024. “17 Years, 18 Runs, Broken Records – Why Krigslive Just Won’t Quit.” In Liminal Encounters: Evolving Discourse in Nordic and Nordic Inspired Larp, edited by Kaisa Kangas, Jonne Arjoranta, and Ruska Kevätkoski. Helsinki, Finland: Ropecon ry.
Cover photo: Krigslive 18 in 2023, photo by Rekografia
Organising larps is a multi-disciplinary exercise at best. At its worst, you need a witch’s cauldron of different skill sets, and being negligent in one area can mean that no matter how much you shine elsewhere, you still have a failed larp on your hands. A large part of my larp work consists of managing somewhat large (25+) teams of people, most of them volunteers. Doing that for big larp productions like College of Wizardry (Nielsen, Dembinski and Raasted et al., 2014) and Convention of Thorns (Raasted, et al., 2016) has given me some insights that may come in handy for others.
Pretend It’s a Video Game
If you think of your helpers/volunteers/team as being human versions of The Sims characters, then you’ll have an easier time managing them. Each of them comes equipped with a number of “status bars” that you need to be aware of. They have to be fed, housed and instructed, if you’re to get anything useful out of them—no matter if they’re at your larp to play the hostile orc army appearing out of nowhere, helping with getting the location ready, or doing cleanup.
It doesn’t matter much whether you call them helpers, minions, team members or something else. It matters how you treat them, though. To aid you in your larp organising, I’ve compiled a list of tips, structured into three chapters. And while I use these strategies when working with larpers, it’s just as easy to apply this sort of checklist elsewhere.
And with all that in place, let’s jump right in!
Health Points
Health Points represent the physical side of things. If this was a video game, these would be the different status bars that could be boosted using physical remedies. If your helpers are low on health points, it’s very hard to make them do anything (at all).
Water. It may seem like a simple thing, but if your helpers don’t have easy access to water, they will suffer. If you’re using an outdoor location, it’s extra critical.
Food. People need to eat. Food should be plentiful, nutritious and if possible account for dietary needs and wishes. Both meals and snacks are important.
Accommodation. Without a place to sleep, it’s hard to be a hero. Taking care of this can be tricky, since you have to deal with things like snoring, privacy and the general psychological makeup of your helpers.
Temperature. I’ve worked on a film project in Abu Dhabi, and I nearly melted. I’ve also frozen my ass off during late Autumn larps in non-heated castles. You need to make sure that either you or your helpers are taking care of making the temperature bearable.
Toilets. What goes in must come out, and access to sanitation is vital. One toilet for 50 helpers is not good, and if you’re feeding them well, it’s even worse!
Physical safety. To work, we need to be safe—and to feel safe. If you’re doing something in an environment that’s less than friendly to humans, it’s even more important. Enthusiasts will often take risks to make things work. Do your best to make sure that they don’t have to!
Mana Points
Mana Points represent the mental state of your helpers. This is slightly harder to quantify, but nonetheless very important. It’s the things that make your well-fed, well-rested work crew put in that extra effort that is necessary to make an event run smoothly.
Vision. “The how begins with the why” is a popular phrase. It’s also at least somewhat true. Helpers who know what’s going on and why it’s important are more likely to actually make that vision come true.
Motivation. There are many different ways to motivate people, and I’ll not go into details here, but if you don’t manage to motivate your helpers, they’ll slowly degenerate into slow, unhappy shades of themselves. Okay, not that bad, but still bad.
Morale. Akin to motivation, but different from it, morale matters when things get tough. When something goes wrong, and you need to ask people to stay an hour extra to dig a ditch or clean toilets, morale is critical. It’s the difference between “Okay, if I absolutely must” and “Yes, let’s do it!”
Free time. This is something that I find is often undervalued in projects: the clear communication of when there’s free time, and how it can be used. Are there spaces for resting? Opportunity to hang out with others during free time? Knowing how things work when you’re not working is important.
Solidarity. Most of us know that some tasks require heavy lifting while others require less obvious forms of labour. Even so, it can feel very demotivating to see someone watching cat videos on YouTube, while you’re putting the finishing touches on a prop, regardless of whether or not the other person has worked hard earlier. Providing a good feeling of solidarity in the workforce is a key component to creating team spirit.
Emotional safety. If we’re stressed and overloaded—or even feeling unsafe and unwelcome, we’re not concentrating on the task at hand. Everyone in your team should feel included and accepted, and creating a culture that supports this is very important—especially when working with diverse teams of strangers.
Equipment
Last, but definitely not least, comes the hardware; the things you need to make your highly motivated and cared for helpers actually do the work they’re here for. Inadequate hardware is the most common mistake I’ve come across, and is not just about tools, but also related things.
Workspace. Once you’ve gotten someone who can build a dragon, they need a place to build it in, or it’s not going to happen. Having appropriate amounts of space for the work that needs to be done is a necessary component to making things happen.
Tools. It may be possible to build a wooden house without hammers and nails, but it’s certainly easier if you have the proper equipment at hand. This can be small things like scissors and pens, or it can be expensive power tools or technical equipment. Often, it’s possible to come up with ad hoc solutions but having the right tools is preferable.
Working gear. If you’re working on a construction site, hard hats are often mandatory. If it’s pitch black, lights are pretty much a must. This seems self-evident, but is a place where I’ve seen too many failures.
Transportation. Perhaps one of the most overlooked factors when doing projects in locations that are off the beaten path (and yes, castles in Poland fit this category). Just telling people to show up on location doesn’t work that well if your location isn’t easily reachable. Transport solutions take time, and often need to be customised.
Physical safety. This is not only about the more obvious aspects of safety, but also about the more tricky ones. Asking if there’s a first aid kit is simple. Remembering that women need lights in toilet spaces because periods are a thing should be simple, but has proven not to be.
Emotional safety. Is there a sanctuary to retreat to if you need one? Are there people you can trust who can help you deal with trouble? Larps are often as high-intensity behind the scenes as on stage, and it’s valuable to know if someone is there to make sure that your mental health is taken into consideration.
Final Words
This article could easily have been longer, more detailed or more focused on explaining the whys and the hows. Having been a helper at many larps, and being a helper coordinator for larps as part of my professional life, I will be grateful if you can provide everything on this checklist. Time, money and reality often get in the way for that, but it’s a worthy goal, I think. The reason I have chosen to go the video game route is that I’ve discovered two things while working with helpers (and as a helper myself):
People are not resources. People have resources, but forgetting to treat them like individual people is not only morally problematic, but also bad for your project.
People still have similar needs, and once you learn how to think systemically about some of those needs (as you do with The Sims characters) you get better at managing your helper teams.
In the end, larps come alive because of the players, but the work done before, during and after larps by organisers and their helpers make the play experience possible in the first place. If handled right, being a helper for a larp can be a very fulfilling experience.
So let’s do our best to get the basics right!
Ludography
Nielsen, Charles Bo, Dracan Dembinski and Claus Raasted et al. College of Wizardry. Poland: Liveform (PL) and Rollespillsfabrikken (DK), 2014-.
Raasted, Claus et al., Convention of Thorns. Poland: White Wolf Publishing and Dziobak Larp Studios, 2016.
During a Christmas dinner last year, my friend (and then boss) Claus Raasted got drunk and played “truth or dare”. He ended up getting dared to announce a larp that same evening. Being of a minimalist nature, he got the idea of announcing a larp with absolutely no information, except for a title, some organizers and a date. People had to sign up and pay without knowing anything more than that.
His original thought was that when people signed up, he would send them their money back and tell them not to trust such a silly scam. For better or worse, he put my name as co-organizer together with Anders Ebbehøj (who had bought the rights to be named as main organizer at a Rollespilsfabrikken larp years back – but that’s another story). Claus and I were at the time high on College of Wizardry madness, so it seemed natural that he’d just put my name on a weird project without asking.
Unlike him, I didn’t wanna pass up the chance to actually make a larp, though. Especially not when my name was on a mysterious website about said larp! So I ended up telling Claus: “Fuck your plan! We are going to do this! I will write a draft for it!”
We stuck to the idea of running a larp in complete secrecy. Participants had to pay 250 DKK (35€) up front, with no knowledge whatsoever of the content. Even the location was just listed as “somewhere in Copenhagen”.
Piling on the Silliness
Once we agreed on doing it and on keeping it silly and fun, the ideas we threw into the pile had no end. “How about if the main game mechanic is players drinking champagne?”, “We’ll make a gimmick out of Anders Ebbehøj being the only actual organizer and being super pretentious!”, “Let’s have players meet up on a public bar and hand them a letter and say we know nothing!”, “There should be a real prize for winning the larp. 1000 DKK sounds right!”
I hadn’t had this much fun creating a larp since I created a parody larp making fun of Swedish Jeepform. It was called We Åker Jeep – The game, but it was a lot more fun than it sounded. Anyway, this was even more fun than that. We basically laughed every time we got new ideas and said yes to everything
A Highly Competitive Larp about Pretentious Larp Organizers
We – that is me and Claus, and definitely NOT Anders, whose role will be explained later – ended up creating a five act larp about a group of pretentious organizers meeting up after the first College of Wizardry; dedicated to making a better larp than that mess. It was heavily inspired by Martin Jordö’s, Stina Almered’s and Karolina Staël’s comedy larp from 2014 about pretentious Nordic larpers; The Alpha Elite Larp of All Times. Except ours was even more outrageous and self-congratulatory.
Every act started with them opening a bottle of champagne and ended when it was empty. At the end of every act, they had to rate each other on their larping. We gave no rules for how to rate people, only that everyone had to give one of the other players a sticker for being an awesome larper. At the end, the one with most stickers would get a grand prize of 1000 DKK. Yes; real money. Also, it was about half our budget. The other half was spent on champagne. The third half we spent on pizza, thereby blowing our budget.
Anders Ebbehøj Presents
We decided early on that it would be Anders’ larp. Anders had no intention of working on it, though, but neither Claus nor I saw this as a particular hindrance. In fact, this was even more fun. So Anders’ role in the project was simple – he would be the star in an instructional in-game (oh, sorry, diegetic, you pretentious fuckers!) video that we put together, and we were to be his henchmen. He would be the diva of the production; showing up for our filming session and reading from an already-prepared script while dressed in various silly outfits. For the actual larp he’d do nothing but appear at the after party and get the war stories and fame. Just as planned.
No Organizers on Site
We (Claus and I; NOT Anders) met the players at a bar and gave them a letter with a map and keys to the location. They asked a lot of questions, but we told them that we didn’t know anything either. It was all part of Anders’ brilliant design and we were just the messengers. We also bought them beer. Then we wished them good luck and prayed for the best. On location we had prepared bottles of champagne and the video with Anders explaining the larp and how it should be played. What could possibly go wrong!?
They Nearly Sent Away the Pizza Man
None of us were on site for the larp itself, but “Anders” had ordered pizza for them. They weren’t aware of this, so when the pizza guy arrived with pizzas that were already paid for, they almost sent him away. Luckily, one of the players did a “Oh, wait, I ordered pizzas for everyone!” and let her character take the credit for it. More on credit-hogging later.
Rerunnable Larp
Since the complete design of the larp is described in the self-explanatory video we made in English, the larp can easily be run again by anyone interested in something crazy and fun.
This larp is clearly not for everyone, but when we met up with the players later after the larp, they didn’t know what was up and down and had had a quite funny experience. Our only German player won, and walked home with a 1000 DKK cash prize, and of course we had players complaining about how they should have won instead, but played to lose. Beautiful.
Game Mechanics
The Rule of I
In SHOWTIME you only talk about yourself, and never say “we”. This is about your achievements and contribution. (This was a mechanic meant to create alibi for even more outrageous competitive play.)
Sounding Important is More Important than Being Important
This is a larp about being pretentious and sounding pretentious, so you should play according to that, by focusing more on sounding important than on actual results.
Fear
Since this is a competitive larp, you should embrace your fear of losing and use that fear as a motivator to outplay the other participants.
Conclusion
There are a few things I take with me from creating SHOWTIME.
If you have fun while organizing, your players are more likely to do the same.
Sometimes it’s great to just create a larp, without overthinking it.
Videos with a person explaining what is going to happen actually work!
Intentionally breaking with the rules of good design can be a great learning experience.
I thought I’d write up a game summary about my experience playing Fairweather Manor, as there seems to be some interest. My background is as an American larper with some-to-moderate larp experience in the American scene, whose first international larp was College of Wizardry earlier this year.
Fairweather Manorwas set in early 1914, and the larp was run at Moszna Castle, a period-appropriate residence. An international crowd of roughly 150 players participated. The premise was that Sir Edward Fairweather, Duke of Somerset, was celebrating his 60th birthday and had invited many of the disparate branches of the family together to celebrate.
My Character
I was playing Richard Wayward-Fairweather, the patriarch of the American branch of the family. The American branch was represented by myself and my in-game family consisting of my wife, my daughter, my sister-in-law and my niece. Our background was that the American plantation — we named it Wayward Hall — was mismanaged horribly by my elder brother, who had died two years before. It was starting to recover, but still suffered under an extreme amount of debt. My primary goal in the larp was to find investors to restore the manor, possibly by finding a rich suitor for my daughter.
The characters were well-written, but there needed to be more information shared across characters. As an example, my wife had information about our dead son which didn’t make it into my packet. Also, my character had invited someone else to the manor, but I was unaware of it until I was approached by them at the larp.
It would have been very helpful to have a “family background” packet that shared all the relevant common information about the family, then allowing the individual packets to fill out the private information on a character-by-character basis.
Schedule
The game ran from Thursday to Saturday. Thursday we arrived, had about 90 minutes to get to our rooms, change into costume, and play a brief in-character scene. This included picking up our costumes if we chose to rent them. I was staying in a room with the other members of the American branch; noble families were housed together, and this was a great idea, as the rooms were large enough to comfortably accommodate everyone and it provided a way for families to communicate.
After arrival, after everyone had unpacked and arranged their costumes, players broke into small groups for workshops and dinner. The first scene, which was filmed for the documentary, was all the guests arriving at the manor at night, greeting the family, and heading into the great hall for a brief address by the Duke.
Friday and Saturday began with everyone waking up in game. There was generally a servant available in the morning to help us get dressed, which was extremely helpful, as a number of women in my room were wearing corsets. Then breakfast, followed by a brief homily in the chapel. Following that, there were various activities around the manor; examples include a poetry reading, a political discussion, and a scene from a play. This was followed by lunch, another round of activities, some speeches, and an hour to dress formally for dinner. The evening started with dinner, then men and women separated into two groups for discussions. Finally, each night ended with a formal ball: a Servant’s Ball on Friday and a Grand Ball on Saturday.
Meals, with the exception of breakfast, were served for all the nobles at once; servants ate at different times. There was assigned seating and the servants would serve each course to the table in order. Some people complained about the pace of the meals — they ended up taking a significantly longer time than predicted — although to some extent, this was an artifact of the period.
What Worked Well
By far the biggest reason the larp worked as well as it did is the setting, followed closely by the care and effort the players put into their characters and costumes. Moszna Castle is stunning, and filled with servants and nobles, it’s very easy to imagine you’ve been transported back in time.
Another strength for me was the “brute force” design. Some of the hallmarks of brute force design are having many subgroups with different agendas, having members within each subgroup disagree with one another, and seeding power imbalances and secrets through the character writeups. Rather than have specific plots or events woven through the weekend, characters were free to play out their stories naturally, and players were given the agency to create their own game. This allowed a number of different play styles and themes to coexist. Some players lived out a gothic tragedy, others a Belle Époque romance, still others a Remains of the Day-style elegy. This was obviously more work for players, but it accommodated a wide range of approaches.
What Needed Work
There’s only one thing that requires serious attention: the servant/noble mechanics. They are sufficiently complex that I discuss them in more detail below. Otherwise, there were some fairly minor issues to address.
When we arrived Thursday, we were rushed to get dressed for the workshops and the opening scene. I felt like the day could have been structured better. I was hoping to start playing on Thursday rather than just having one short scene, and some of the workshops could have been more focused on specifics like etiquette, rather than the more general information. As an example, a number of nobles found it difficult to get out of the habit of thanking servants when they did something, which struck many people as jarring and out-of-character. Some explanation and practice beforehand could have alleviated those problems.
In casting and plotlines, it seemed like there were a lot of women looking for eligible bachelors, but not very many young men looking for women. This created some frustrating play for some people.
Meals were assigned seating, which I thought was a great idea as it provided an opportunity to interact with people whose characters wouldn’t normally interact. Unfortunately, there could have been more thought put into the rotation; I found myself frequently at the same table with many of the people I had sat with for different meals. Others commented on the same thing.
Servants and Masters
The biggest challenge for the larp, though, was the relationship between the nobles and the servants. While most of the nobles really enjoyed the game, the players to whom I talked who played servants had much more varied opinions. They certainly had a lot more demands placed on them: their day started several hours earlier than the nobles, they were constantly pulled away from their stories to serve the whims of upstairs, and they often had no opportunity to sit down or relax at all.
There were also times — like the servant’s mealtimes, or when they were preparing for their ball Friday night — when it wasn’t possible for nobles to find servants.
I think it comes down the fact that there are essentially two separate and fundamentally different larps running simultaneously, with only a few points of connection between them. I’m not sure that’s a bad thing, but it does require being up front about the experience you should expect as a player. One suggestion, which may or may not be feasible, is to raise the price for nobles, while dropping the price for servants; that makes it more clear what the expectations of each role should be. Increasing the number of servants, as well, would reduce the burden on each individual player while increasing their availability.
Overall
In short, this was a largely successful iteration of the “blockbuster” formula, and a particularly interesting one, proving that it works even for genres which don’t rely on action or adventure to drive their plot mechanics. These games are ambitious and difficult to pull off, owing to their expense, logistics, and reliance on a fully engaged player base to generate play. But when they work, they provide an impressive amount of latitude in the play they can generate, and can be uniquely engaging to their participants.
Ludography
Fairweather Manor (2015). Agata Swistak, Agnieszka Linka Hawryluk-Boruta, Akinomaja Borysiewicz, Alexander Tukaj, Beata Ploch, Charles Bo Nielsen, Claus Raasted, Dracan Dembinski, Ida Pawłowicz, Janina Wicher, Krzysztof “Ciastek” Szczęch, Krzysztof “Iryt” Kraus, Maciek Nitka, Mikołaj Wicher, Nadina Wiórkiewicz, Szymon Boruta. Rollespilsfabrikken and Liveform. Moszna, Poland. http://www.fmlarp.com/
All photos are exclusively licensed for use by John-Paul Bichard. Contact him for use of these and other photos from Fairweather Manor.
Fairweather Manor is a historically-inspired international larp for 140 whose first run took place in Zamek Moszna, Poland, on the 5-8th of November 2015. It was created by the Liveform/Rollespilsfabrikken team already behind the creation of College of Wizardry. As such, the format, creative team, and overall design of the larp connects Fairweather Manor to the previous games considered as following the Blockbuster Formula, while also having its own, unique identity.
This article will therefore try to analyze how we might examine the design choices of Fairweather Manor in this light, how this larp also might differ singularly from those others, and which elements pertaining to the Brute Force design may also apply to Fairweather Manor.
In the Grand Scheme of Things
In the continuity of The Monitor Celestra and College of Wizardry, Fairweather Manor utilizes the full potential of running a game in a truly breathtaking location and of using both the setting and players’ efforts to create a spectacular 360° illusion. The Castle of Moszna possesses a variety of small sets whose exploration works as a perpetual incentive and makes for the possibility of a variety of scenes. A grand staircase, the dining area opening on the Winter Garden in the Orangerie, the chapel, the grounds, and Graveyard were all spectacular settings. On the upper floors, the big suites of the Castle served as family rooms for the nobles, making them a little less accessible, but giving some players the opportunity for other grand scenes.
The sheer size of the game — 140 players divided into three character-type groups — and the collective efforts of the players ensured that the experience would be a descent into 1914. Players could offer activities, such as a fencing lesson, an open stage, a play rehearsal, concerts, or speeches, which would become part of the frame for the larp. You could go on a car or a coach run, and then discuss the comparative merits of the two. You would meet different people at dinner and hone your skills at small or big talk.
The larp, like its predecessors, also benefited from the established world material factor. Historical resources on the period are numerous and, by claiming only a loose historical accuracy, the larp allowed for some flexibility on that ground. For the dramatic side, knowledge of the inspirational television series Downton Abbey was certainly an incentive for most of the players and the melodramatic aspect of the series’ narrative combined with the play-to-lose approach of the larp ensured that the play style of the participants, even when they came from a lot of different nationalities and backgrounds, would remain sensibly the same. These elements ensured that, overall, the game presented itself as a flowing, immersive experience with an extremely high production value.
Characters at Play: The Legacy of the Brute Force Design
However, Fairweather Manor seems to differ from the previous blockbuster models in regard to context, background, and the way it would influence the characters’ agenda. In a context such as those larps, which were inspired by Battlestar Galactica and Harry Potter, the incentive comes from the universe in itself. In other terms, the context drives the plot. In Battlestar Galactica, there is a (space)ship to run for the sake of the preservation of humanity and duties to be fulfilled. In the Harry Potter-verse or any magical equivalent, the combination of school routines and a general sense of exploration, fun, and adventure is more than enough to drive any narrative. In the confines of the strict hierarchies and overall lack of universe or plot-driven incentives, however, the narratives of Fairweather Manor had to rely mostly on characters.
Following heavily the character template established by College of Wizardry(CoW) — albeit with a little more room for pre-established character interactions — the characters of Fairweather Manor followed the same logic, aiming at giving the players something very flexible with which to play. Characters could be changed and exchanged at will, and players had to prepare as much interactions and development by themselves as they could. However, where the location and structure of College of Wizardry makes this type of flexibility fairly easy with most characters being students in the same location, the same cannot be said of Fairweather Manor, where characters came with established gender, age groups, family ties, social functions, etc. This design was a necessity to establish the society ofFairweather Manor in a credible way, but also, combined with a rather arbitrary distribution of characters between players, it limited the liberty that some players would have to transform their character at their will. Furthermore, the characters had gone through a variety of approaches in the writing process, making them extremely diverse. Some characters were, within the confines of the CoW model, more detailed, with pre-established storylines. Some were more constrained within their social function; some would prove fairly difficult to enact. Furthermore, Fairweather Manor, while run by a substantial staff of organizers, chose to dispense entirely with NPCs. While the purpose was obviously to make the larp completely self-sufficient and self-contained, it meant that Fairweather Manor would not have the leeway that College of Wizardry would have when it came to letting players create their own storylines. As such, most of the character work had to be done upstream when it was needed, the margin for freeplay being much more reduced once onsite. Therefore, as is often the case with the huge sandbox type these games prove to be, any character would only be as good as the way each player chose to handle them and co-create their own narrative.
When characters worked, however — and a significant number of them did — they provided the frame for a lot of deep, emotional interactions. In keeping with the social norm — and thanks to the rather clever technique of “think of the family” (an in-game expression that would also work on a meta-level to incite the player to keep secrets hidden) — most of the interactions were kept low-key, avoiding for the most part the risk of expansive melodrama or plot overload that can happen in this type of format. Lastly, we might underline the fact that two elements associated with the Brute Force design also came very much into play in that regard: secrets, and conflicting characters’ agenda.
Although the approach of the larp was fairly transparent, with all characters published in a common folder, players did not have to read them if they did not want to do so. Existing storylines often included personal or familial secrets, and pre-game preparation between players also tended to include secrets of the backstory that would come to fruition over the course of the game. A lot of players wrote letters addressed to or sent by their characters, which would be used to put their secrets in the open. Again, in keeping with the play-to-lose approach, secrets were used only as hooks for big reveals and intense conflicts. Whether this aspect makes for interesting role-play or not is of course a matter of personal preference, but seems necessary to a design such as Fairweather Manor, where (dysfunctional) family values really came out as an overarching theme.
Conflicting characters’ agenda were also present, a matter for which players expressed some concerns, for fear that these would hijack the sense of narrative and become a competitive gameplay. Issues pertaining to the Duke’s inheritance, matrimonial strategies, the search of patrons for the artist, the opportunities for better employment, or improving one’s situation for servants, for example, relied on characters’ agenda, and sometimes caused oppositions, but they also were played in a low-key, mostly narrative manner. Although it was not explicitly stated in such a way, most players seemed to choose that any accomplishment in that regard would come with strings attached, or at some cost, which worked well enough, as a valid take on these issues.
The existence of social hierarchies and subgroups — family groups, artists and intellectuals, higher and lower servants — also appear as a legacy of the Brute Force design. They were used, however, less to create conflict than as a backdrop for the enacting of social conventions and constraints. These, however, could have been more forcefully enforced, especially in regard of what would be considered proper and acceptable or not, and what the cost of deviation from the norm would be. More workshops on these issues, manners, and body language might have been useful. At the in location, briefings tackled essentially the subjects of play style, location, safety, and ideologies of the time period. A slot devoted to behaviors and cultural calibration could have been helpful to some, but was probably left out by design.
Players’ Duties and Sequencing
Like College of Wizardry, Fairweather Manorwas based on a strictly timed structure — activities and meals being used to structure the daily lives of the residents — relying on some players’ duties.
Most were taken voluntarily: players wanting to host an activity registered to do so ahead of the larp, providing the entertainment fit for a high-end reception. Artist characters, of course, were very much encouraged to do so. This aspect, combined with a general sense of goodwill in the audience, ensured that the setting always felt active and alive.
The main branch of the nobles — the characters who were the hosts of the reception — were hand-picked and cast way ahead of the lottery. These players did a lot of work pre-game and in-game to ensure that the reception would be running properly, and that information about timing and activities were properly delivered. How heavy a duty that was and how much the larp came to rely on these characters is hard to clearly evaluate, but it certainly should be emphasized that the structure of the larp needs this core group of characters as its foundation.
Then, there is the matter of the servant characters. A huge amount of work has been put to make them operate as a corps, some players being directly involved in the writing of the servants’ handbook. However, if the standing ovation the servant group received at the end of the game is any indication, it is quite obvious that the servant group took upon themselves a much bigger workload than was originally announced or expected of them. In addition, the higher servants — butler, housekeeper, and their seconds — obviously held a great many organizational tasks as well. Could the communication on these aspects have been clearer? Most certainly. But this point also shows how Fairweather Manor worked in no small part through the willful commitment of the participants, and managed to stir their passions, in combination with what remains a grand production design.
A Story about Love?
To quote from the second teaser, “Being at Fairweather Manor, that’s love.” I would believe that; for all the complexity and issues that are always raised by the grand scope of a blockbuster larp such as this one, it managed to hold up through the love that so many of its actors put into it. This sense of affection is perceptible in the show that inspired it: Downton Abbey is, in my opinion, a nostalgic, benevolent took at a Time that Was, while overlooking its obvious limitations and gruesome inequalities. Likewise, Fairweather Manor displayed all the outdated charm of the period that was called in France La Belle Epoque the Beautiful Era — before the upheaval brought by the war transformed all of society, for better or worse. The high-grade staff production, combined with a significant volunteer work and player commitment to the larp was considerable, its undeniable success as a result, and the surest testimony of the way it succeeded in engaging its participants wholeheartedly in its construction. While being clearly connected to the blockbuster model, Fairweather Manor also managed to be quite unique in distilling elements of the Brute Force in its own narrative. Whether other larps and future runs will manage to follow and improve on the same delicate balance will surely be interesting to contemplate.
Fairweather Manor (2015). Agata Swistak, Agnieszka Linka Hawryluk-Boruta, Akinomaja Borysiewicz, Alexander Tukaj, Beata Ploch, Charles Bo Nielsen, Claus Raasted, Dracan Dembinski, Ida Pawłowicz, Janina Wicher, Krzysztof “Ciastek” Szczęch, Krzysztof “Iryt” Kraus, Maciek Nitka, Mikołaj Wicher, Nadina Wiórkiewicz, Szymon Boruta. Rollespilsfabrikken and Liveform. Moszna, Poland. http://www.fmlarp.com/
All photos are exclusively licensed for use by John-Paul Bichard. Contact him for use of these and other photos from Fairweather Manor.
The theme of alternate sexuality, identity, and freedom juxtaposed with the tragedy of death permeates Just a Little Lovin’. Photo by Elina Andersson. CC-BY-NC.
Just a Little Lovin’ is commonly touted as one of the best Nordic larps ever designed by those who have played it. Originally written in 2011 by Tor Kjetil Edland and Hanne Grasmo, the larp explores the lives of people in alternative sexual and spiritual subcultures during the span of 1982-1984 in New York who attend the same 4th of July party each year. As the larp progresses, the AIDS crisis increasingly sweeps through their community, affecting each member directly or indirectly. The result is a cathartic explosion of emotions that leave a lasting impact on the majority of the players.
This article will discuss some of these rhetorical threads surrounding the design of Just a Little Lovin’. Then, I will emphasize the importance of the ritual spaces and structures within the larp, which work to enhance communal connection in- and out-of-game and help produce these strong moments of catharsis.
Player Discourse Surrounding Just a Little Lovin’
Oh no, not I! I will survive!
Oh, as long as I know how to love, I know I’ll stay alive!
I’ve got all my life to live.
I’ve got all my love to give.
And I’ll survive! I will survive!
Gloria Gaynor, I Will Survive Most characters came together each year in a ritualized fashion for the drag/variety show. Here, they enjoy a performance by the rock band Urban Renaissance. Photo: Petter Karlsson. CC-BY-NC.
In play reports, participants mention several powerful elements of the design. The characters have realistic motivations and relationship dynamics. The intersecting themes of desire, love, friendship, and fear of death interweave beautifully throughout the larp to provide a roller coaster of emotions for the players. The mechanics for sex and death are thoughtfully implemented, providing a meaningful, relatively safe framework in which to experience these powerful moments. The larp is organized into three Acts, with careful workshopping and debriefing exercises framing each phase. These breaks allow players opportunities to co-create the experience with one another through negotiation and agreement. While the larp does deal with the tragedy of disease impacting a tightly knit community of creative, experimental, open-minded people, the emphasis of the larp is not to dwell in tragedy, but rather to undergo a strengthening of that community through shared experience.
A lesbian contingent with their dutch boy. Participants emphasize an intensified sense of community after the larp in their play accounts. Photo: Petter Karlsson. CC-BY-NC.
I have never had my mind opened more by a larp, nor felt more bonded to a group of co-players – including those who I didn’t actually interact with during play. And, importantly, this is not because we came through a terrible experience together: it wasn’t like that at all. It’s because we came through an amazing and uplifting and life-affirming and worldview-changing experience together.
Similar accounts exist in articles by other former players:
I’ve got this sense that I’ve stolen a true glimpse of the past, or at least a past that could have been. We’ve created something real, and beautiful, and momentous. I don’t know how to handle that. It’s immense pride and I already feel nostalgic for it. In the most literal sense — I’m starting to feel the pangs of loss that are nostalgia. It’s exactly the right emotion I need to be feeling right now. Beauty, loss, sorrow, pride, admiration, longing, pining for something.
Just a Little Lovin’ was full of life and color. Death was real, but we needed to make the most of whatever time we had left, in order to be together. The very structure of the game was oriented towards living, and even suffering was just another way to interact with others, to deepen a character, and add even more meaning to his or her life. Death was not a beautiful release; it was just the end.
Eden Gallanter, The Bridge Between Love and Death, Cheimonette, July 6, 2015 Although death permeated the lives of the characters in the game, the party went on even through Act III as a celebration of existence and love. Photo: Petter Karlsson. CC-BY-NC.
Picture, if you will, a group of people discussing the death of one of their characters, which is directly brought about by the nature and behaviour of another in the scene, talking about what kind of impressions they want to construct in this scene. Then they play the scene, to spec, with screaming, tears, loathing, self-hatred, disgust, horror, everything. Then one raises their head and calmly says ‘thank you,’ and, with tear tracks still drying and breath still shaking, they dissect the emotions that each other’s play brought about, praising the particular moves, words, and timing that brought the greatest effect in their character’s response to the other characters. I still can’t decide if its madness, emotional vampirism, or the most awesome thing I have ever participated in.
JaLL is without a doubt the most intense and [thoroughly] designed game I have ]ever played. I understand now why some call it the best larp in the world. There [are] other as well-designed games out there, but it’s the mix of brilliant design with a theme and especially the handling of the theme that creates just a more intense experience.Simon James Pettitt, Just a Little Lovin’: Intro Post, Pettitt.dk, July 7, 2015
Documentation book for the 2013 Danish run filled with player and organizer accounts.
Ultimately, much of the discourse surrounding the larp focuses upon the intense connections the experience creates between participants, the enhanced understanding of the struggles of countercultural movements during the period, and increased awareness about the AIDS crisis. From a design perspective, Just a Little Lovin’ is also touted as successful due to its inclusion of metatechniques from the freeform and blackbox scenes and its careful framing with regard to workshops, negotiation, de-roleing, and debriefing.
One war veteran comforts another during a PTSD episode. The theme of death was woven into the larp in multiple ways: from AIDS to cancer to war. Photo by Elina Andersson. CC-BY-NC.
My examination of Just a Little Lovin’ will discuss this framing in more detail, emphasizing the multi-layered, ritualized nature of the larp design. The careful construction and use of ritual space facilitates progressively deeper and more intense levels of play. In this analysis, I will discuss ritual in terms of both a) atmospheric rituals within the larp transpiring in specifically established spaces, and b) the overarching game framework.
My intent in sharing these accounts is not to support the claim that this larp is the “best designed in the world,” but rather to emphasize that careful inclusion of heavily ritualized processes in larp design can guide players to deeper levels of connection and catharsis.
All Larp is Ritual
Is everybody in? The ceremony is about to begin.
The entertainment for this evening is not new.
You’ve seen this entertainment through and through.
You have seen your birth, your life, your death.
You may recall all the rest.
Did you have a good world when you died?
Enough to base a movie on?
Jim Morrison, The Movie
According to scholars Arnold van Gennep and Victor Turner,((Victor Turner, “Liminality and Communitas: Form and Attributes of Rites of Passage,” Excerpt from The Ritual Process (London, UK: Aldine, 1969). http://faculty.dwc.edu/wellman/Turner.htm)) ritual involves three stages: a departure from the mundane world with thorough separation, an entrance into an in-between state called liminality, and a return to the mundane world with an incorporation of the liminal experiences.
Separation: During the separation stage, the group prepares to shed their everyday roles and enter into new ones for the purpose of the ritual. The separation phase can include practicing the ritual, costuming, makeup, masks, establishing ritual space, or other activities intended to facilitate the transition.
Liminality: Participants enter their temporary social roles and play parts in a performance of some sort, either actively or passively. They cross over a “threshold” – or limen – into another state of being, which often transpires in a physical location specifically demarcated for the ritual. All participants agree to take part in this temporary, “betwixt and between” state, collectively agreeing to these new terms of their social reality. Turner refers to the liminal state as a “moment in and out of time”: a paradoxical, transitional experience.((Turner would distinguish play activities like larp as “liminoid” rather than “liminal” as they arise from leisure cultures, but this distinction is beyond the scope of this current discussion. For more information, see Victor Turner, “Liminal to Liminoid in Play, Flow, and Ritual: An Essay in Comparative Symbology,” Rice University Studies 60.3 (1974): 53-92.))
Incorporation: Participants then return to their previous social roles, leaving the ritual space behind. However, they incorporate the liminal experiences into their own lives to greater and lesser degrees. For example, if a community holds a rite of passage to mark a marriage, the couple leaves the wedding with a new social status acknowledged by all present. After leisure ritual activities – called “liminoid” moments — the individual can determine how the experience will impact their involvement in the community and their development of self.(( Turner, ibid.))
Turner believed that rituals create communitas: a greater feeling of communal connection between participants. Additionally, rituals are often guided by a shaman figure: some sort of guide or facilitator of the process who helps establish the atmosphere, tone, and components of the ritual.
Larp designer and co-organizer Tor Kjetil Edland gets everyone’s attention during pre-game workshopping. Organizers often serve the role of guide in facilitating the ritual activity of larp. Photo: Petter Karlsson. CC-BY-NC.
Several scholars have emphasized the ritual nature of larp itself.((For a few examples, see Christopher I. Lehrich, “Ritual Discourse in Role-playing Games,” last modified October 1, 2005, The Forge, http://www.indie-rpgs.com/_articles/ritual_discourse_in_RPGs.html; J. Tuomas Harviainen, “Information, Immersion, Identity: The Interplay of Multiple Selves During Live-Action Role-Play,” Journal of Interactive Drama 1, no. 2 (October 2006): 11; Sarah Lynne Bowman, The Functions of Role-playing Games, Jefferson, NC: McFarland, 2010, pp. 15, 48-53; J. Tuomas Harviainen and Andreas Lieberoth,”The Similarity of Social Information Processes in Games and Rituals: Magical Interfaces,” Simulation & Gaming (April 10, 2011): 528-549; Sarah Lynne Bowman, “Returning to the Real World: Debriefing After Role-playing Games,” Nordiclarp.org, December 8, 2014, http://nordiclarp.org/2014/12/08/debrief-returning-to-the-real-world/)) While not religious as many rituals are, secular ritual rites do exist in society. Generally speaking, larp includes the shedding of social roles, donning of new identities, performance of these identities in a temporary space guided by an organizer, and a return to the previous self, often with some sort of change individually and socially. Players often report a greater sense of community as the result of these experiences, as evidenced by several of the quotes above.
Therefore, Just a Little Lovin’ is not unique in its ability to create these bonds, as all larp has the potential to do so. What I believe the larp excels at doing is creating well-timed, nearly continuous ritual activities that have the potential to personally transform both the player and the character. Due to the personal nature of the larp’s content and its emphasis on sexuality, intimacy, vulnerability, and fear of death, the play offers participants the opportunity to reflect upon these aspects within themselves.
The larp afforded players the opportunity to shed old social roles, including sexual preference and identity, and explore intimacy in a relatively safe framework. Photo: Petter Karlsson. CC-BY-NC.
Each of the three Acts is framed by standard rituals common to the experience of most Americans to greater and lesser degrees: 1) the raising of the American flag while singing the National Anthem in the beginning and 2) a funeral at the end. Between these two poles of ritual experience, several smaller rituals are timed at regular intervals to offer potent, transformative experiences for characters and, by proxy, their players. On each side of these Acts, out-of-character ritual activities of workshopping, debriefing, and negotiating provide an even more structured frame. In this regard, Just a Little Lovin’ can be seen as producing rituals within rituals within rituals for the players. Leaving mundane life to go to a camp for five days with a group of people is a shift in perspective in and of itself, which is then followed by larping, and then followed by ritual activities within the larp.
Ritual Spaces and Subcultures in the Larp
Hey, babe. Take a walk on the wild side
Lou Reed, Walk on the Wild Side
The structure of the character relations in Just a Little Lovin’ involves each character belonging to one or more subcultures that were representative of the alternative scenes of the late ‘70s and early ‘80s in America. These subcultures include: rich gay men; the gay leather/fetish scene; drag performers; lesbian clubs; literary circles; the night club scene as exemplified by Studio 54; alternative spirituality seekers; tantra practitioners; members of a polyfidelity commune; performance artists; swingers; peace activists; a group of cancer survivors; the Radical Faeries masculinity movement; and AIDS activists. Effectively, each character had multiple connections within some of these subcultures, including their core group of friends, their primary social circle, and their extended connections within their party scene.
Map of the character core groups and subcultural associations in Act 2. Photo: Petter Karlsson. CC-BY-NC.
These subcultures often had ritualized activities associated with them, as outlined in detail below. I played Joani, one of the leaders of the Spirituals, which meant that my in-game husband Kohana (Kevin Burns), best friend Kim (Caroline Christiane Kasten Koren), and I were responsible for running some of these rituals ourselves. Joani and Kohana ran the Saratoga Pact of friendship for the cancer survivors in a copse of trees in the woods; Kohana and Kim ran the Green Drink ritual of personal transformation around the bonfire at midnight; Joani ran tantra workshops in a special room complete with lava lamps, dark lighting, and pallets; and Kohana ran all-male drum circles, also around the bonfire. Other subcultures had similar ritual spaces, such as the stage, the dance floor, and the “dark room.”
Joani, Kohana, and Kim made up the Heart of Saratoga core group, running rituals for the cancer survivors and the larger gathering as a whole. Photo: Petter Karlsson. CC-BY-NC.
These spaces were established carefully as important parts of the scenography and were not in any way incidental to the setting. They offered Temporary Autonomous Zones for the Temporary Autonomous Identities of the characters: spaces where the rules of reality could function differently and where both characters and players could explore new facets of themselves.((Mike Pohjola, “Autonomous Identities: Immersion as a Tool for Exploring, Empowering, and Emancipating Identities,” in Beyond Role and Play, edited by Markus Montola and Jaakko Stenros (Helsinki, Finland: Ropecon ry, 2004), 84-85; Saitta, ibid.))
This design created the possibility for overlap and exposure to new experiences. Rather than creating little pockets of exclusion, the social space was designed so that the environments occupied by members of these groups were in close physical and social proximity to one another. For example, the tantra room where my character ran workshops was physically next to the “dark room,” where cruising, BDSM, and lesbian activities transpired. Sounds from that room emanated into our space and some participants wandered between both at various times.
Members of the Saratoga Pact of cancer survivors and their loved ones head to the woods for their yearly ritual of recommitment. Photo: Petter Karlsson. CC-BY-NC.
This design encouraged “regular” attendees of each subcultural space to experiment with new ones, especially when all characters were expected to participate in group rituals such as the Green Drink ceremony, which might normally not interest some individuals. As an example, my character helped run the Saratoga Pact ritual, an annual ceremony in which cancer survivors renewed their vow to remain true to themselves, live life to its fullest, and always support one another. As the years went on, we inducted new members into the Saratoga Pact based upon their connections with previous survivors: lovers, close friends, family members, etc. Therefore, other characters were exposed to a small part of the survivor experience, just as many from the Pact were exposed to the new worlds of drag queens, BDSM, performance art, etc.
In another example, due to my off-game interest in drag and desire to help with the show, my character spent a good deal of time helping with makeup in the backstage area. This experience gave her access to a new subcultural realm and mode of artistic expression, as well as deeper connections with that social group in the game. The design of the physical and social space facilitated these sorts of crossovers.
Ritual in the Structure of the Larp Design
You can dance, you can jive
Having the time of your life
See that girl, watch that scene
Digging the Dancing Queen
ABBA, Dancing Queen
Just a Little Lovin’ takes place over the span of three Acts, each focusing upon a central theme: Act I is Desire, Act II is the Fear of Death, and Act III is Friendship. The total game time is approximately five days. 5pm until 12pm the next day is spent in-character during the Act, framed by workshopping before and debriefing after. Before each Act, players negotiate with their groups about how best to proceed, followed by 1-2 hours of downtime. The whole experience is followed by de-roleing and debriefing, with a much-needed afterparty in the evening after Act III, where players can reconnect with their out-of-game selves, as well as process their experiences and connect with others.
Off-game negotiation within core groups in between Acts helps direct play for the next phase. Photo: Petter Karlsson. CC-BY-NC.
Game time itself is heavily structured with back-to-back in-game rituals, which I detail below. Players are empowered to design and run many of these rituals themselves, with the exception of the National Anthem, the Lottery of Death, and the funerals, which are run by the organizers. The 2015 run of the game had roughly the following structure, with some variation from Act to Act of non-essential rituals like tantra, BDSM, and drum circles:
Kohana during the raising of the flag, National Anthem, and subsequent speech. Photo: Petter Karlsson. CC-BY-NC.
Song: The organizers play the “Just a Little Lovin’” song by Dusty Springfield while characters are frozen. This song ritually starts and ends the entire larp.
Entrance to Mr. T’s party: The party is itself a ritualized escape from the mundane world, as people can feel free to explore new identities. For example, a professor by day can engage in gay BDSM scenes at night.
National Anthem: The raising of the American flag on the porch, accompanied by the singing of the American National Anthem.
Speeches: T gives a welcome speech. Kohana gives a speech to honor the Saratoga Pact and summons members to that ceremony.
Saratoga Pact: Joani and Kohana run the Saratoga Pact ceremony for the cancer survivors in the woods away from the main party. When I ran this ritual, I had us recite the words of the pact in call-and-response format. Then, I asked each of those gathered to state their intentions for the year, evaluate past intentions, and induct new members. I hoped the intention part of the ritual would serve as a form of steering ((Markus Montola, Jaakko Stenros, and Eleanor Saitta, “The Art of Steering: Bringing the Player and the Character Back Together,” in The Knudepunkt 2015 Companion Book, edited by Charles Bo Nielsen and Claus Raasted (Copenhagen, Denmark: Rollespilsakademiet, 2014), 106-177.)), where player-characters could focus their goals for each day of play in a directed manner.
The Games (optional): The Indigo House members organized some fun physical game activities in the field during Act II.
Eating together was an important ritual activity as members from different social circles had the chance to become acquainted. During the breakfast of Act III, an impromptu gay wedding took place. Photo: Petter Karlsson. CC-BY-NC.
Dinner: Ritual of eating together. Mr. T usually gave a speech during dinner.
Tantra Workshops (optional): In the tantra room, I ran workshops in Acts I and III, primarily using techniques of guided mediation, eye gazing, and ars amandi.((Nudity and actual sex were forbidden at the larp, as was the consumption of real drugs or alcohol. The sex mechanics are described in the next section.))
Dark room (optional): BDSM scenes, lesbian hour, and cruising pick-ups. The dark room was intended for characters willing to have semi-anonymous sexual encounters. Lesbian hour was part of the structure of the larp in order to establish liminal space for those characters as well.
Drum circles (optional): In Acts II and III, Kohana/Kevin ran all-male drum circles for the Spirituals and Radical Faeries around the bonfire, with several other men attending as well.
Blackbox scenes (optional): Transpiring throughout the Acts, the blackbox was a liminal space within which players could negotiate and play out scenes from the past, the future, or fantasies. Two blackbox rooms were set aside for these purposes and did not “exist” in the normal game space. Our group used this space, for example, for Kohana to guide the Spirituals through a shamanic journey to meet their spirit animals — a scene that had transpired in the past.
DJ Tony, singer-songwriter Marylou, and Nate, the Queen of Manhattan during the drag/variety show. Photo: Petter Karlsson. CC-BY-NC.
Drag /variety show: Performance art, drag shows, singing, male stripping, poetry readings, anti-war protests, safe sex public service announcements, and rock band performances. Most of the characters attended or participated in this ritual during each Act.
Dance party (optional): Seduction on the dance floor, vogue-offs, circles where characters danced in the center, and general revelry transpired during this time.
Hookah smoking (optional): A “love nest” similar to a treehouse in the woods was set up with lights, pallets, and a hookah. Characters ritually smoked tobacco, laughed, and shared stories.
Green Drink Ceremony at midnight: Serves as an in-game ritual and a metatechnique. The characters consumed the Green Drink, which has unspecified contents in-game. This technique allowed players the chance to steer their characters toward explosions of building conflict or redirect them into new perspectives. Brilliant in replicating the transformative moments of hallucinogens that many people experience, while also offering the player an opportunity to take the reins of the character in their desired direction.
Lighting the paper balloons to commemorate the fallen. Photo by Elina Andersson. CC-BY-NC.
Fireworks and paper balloon ceremony: Each night after the green drink, fireworks were lit. In Act II and Act III, paper balloons were lit in memory of those who passed that year. The balloons rose into the air, then the lights winked out just over the horizon.
Aerobics (optional): In at least one Act, the Amazons, a lesbian-run aerobics club, led a workout session for interested parties.
Breakfast: Ritual of eating together. During Act III, two gay characters had an impromptu, “unlawful” wedding during breakfast to celebrate being alive and in love. Another ritual within a ritual. This moment later proved poignant for the players; Marriage Equality was finally ruled legal by the Supreme Court the next day in the U.S., over thirty years later in real time.
Song Between Life and Death: In the diner, a song was played to indicate the space between life and death, as well as the passage of time. All players were expected to remain quiet during the song, though they could hold hands or hug.
The Lottery of Death: Angels arrived to announce the Lottery of Death. Characters had to place the amount of lottery tickets in the hat equal to the risk level of their sexual activity in the last year. Names were drawn and those characters were called away.
Death was personified in the larp, guiding the characters to the Funeral and delivering the eulogy for those who passed. Photo: Petter Karlsson. CC-BY-NC.
Death arrives personified as a woman: Characters were led outside and instructed to collect flowers for the funeral. Chopin’s “Funeral March” was played in the background.
Death marches the group to the funeral space: Individuals who survived death that year were released to their loved ones.
Funeral: The group approached the coffins, where the characters who died lay. Death read the second chorus of the National Anthem like a eulogy, which framed the end of the Act.
Little downtime existed between the non-optional scheduled events, but characters had plenty of time for seduction, explosive arguments, breakups, drug overdoses, or laughing around the hookah. The tight schedule ensured that usually no more than 1-2 hours passed where no significant group event was transpiring. This structure afforded players consistent involvement with the larp on some level.
Additionally, these in-game spaces sometimes changed meaning or significance over the course of the larp. Spaces where casual sex once occurred such as the dark room were often eerily empty in later Acts as the fear of death became a palpable mood. Rituals also changed; the drag/variety show became much darker and sadder as the Acts progressed. Still, having the primary rituals and spaces remain intact added a sense of consistency for a community plagued by fear and grief.
Off-game Ritualized Structures
Let’s have some fun, this beat is sick.
I wanna take a ride on your disco stick.
Let’s play a love game, play a love game.
Do you want love or you want fame?
Are you in the game? Dans le love game?
Lady Gaga, Love Game
Another important ritualized structure within the larp involved the sex mechanics. In everyday life, sexual encounters are sometimes considered liminal acts in their own right. In larps, sex scenes are approached in multiple ways: not pursued at all, played literally, or enacted using representational techniques such as backrubs, ars amandi, rock-paper-scissors, or other “resolution” mechanics.
In Just a Little Lovin‘, sex scenes also followed a ritual structure. One player would offer a pink feather to another, which represented an invitation to a sex scene. The other could choose to accept or deny the feather. Denying the feather did not represent an actual in-game rejection, but rather out-of-game consent to play a scene. Players would then go off-game and negotiate the boundaries of the scene, comfort with kissing/touching, and the events that would occur. Groping of breasts or genitals was not permitted. Players had to remain clothed and use a wooden phallus as a representational object to indicate sexual touch regardless of whether the sex was gay, lesbian, queer, or heteronormative. When the negotiated scene was over, characters stood side-by-side and used the Monologue metatechnique, which allowed them to externalize their character’s thoughts to the other player. Altogether, these metatechniques ritualized the beginning, middle, and end of each sex scene in a way that allowed for intensity, while maintaining a sense of safety and player distance.
Members of the Indigo House, a polyfidelity commune in which all members were in an exclusive, group relationship. Photo by Sarah Lynne Bowman. CC-BY-NC.
Players could also call “cut” or “brake” in any scene. They could move their bodies to subtly indicate discomfort with kissing or touching in a non-verbal way that did not break the scene, a maneuver that was termed Deflection. Again, these safety mechanisms did not affect the fiction of the larp, but provided a greater sense of comfort for many of the participants engaging in intimate encounters.
Overall, extensive workshopping in large and small groups served as the separation phase for the main ritual of the larp, as did costuming. For the incorporation phase, the organizers ran structured debriefs that lasted around 1-2 hours in groups of approximately ten people. After Act III, we de-roled by placing a piece of our character’s costuming in the center of a large circle, then wrote letters to our characters as ourselves. We were assigned a de-roleing buddy, to whom we read the letters. We were expected to exchange contact information and check in with our buddy in two weeks after the larp. These processes aided in both the return to the self and in reconciling the relationship between the self and the character. The organizers then invited guest speakers to discuss their experiences with HIV activism and with cancer, which served as a way to contextualize the themes we had just larped with real world experiences and facts.
Post-game connection between participants through the playing of music and drums, which were central ritualized activities during the larp.
As mentioned earlier, the afterparty was another crucial part of this larp, allowing players time to decompress, distance, and discuss events with other participants. Additionally, each year at the Nordic larp conference Knudepunkt, organizers host an hour-long Just a Little Lovin’ dance party, which many players attend in their costumes from the larp. Social media sites like Facebook also provide outlets for people to discuss their experiences, organize reunions, and share information about HIV and other relevant topics.
Summary
The game content of Just a Little Lovin’ on its own is powerful, exploring themes of sex, love, death, and friendship. Adding ritual elements to the larp works to draw players even deeper into the experience. For example, many participants can no longer hear the songs built into the larp design without a flood of memories and powerful emotions returning to them. Even if the character rejects the content of one of the rituals in-game, thinking it “weird” or “uninteresting,” these events offer the opportunity for the character to react to in-game stimuli, which can draw them deeper into immersion. Additionally, the repetition of these in-game rituals in every Act with changes in the fiction each time can create new meaning: a sense of irony, feelings of grief, a sense of stability in an uncertain world.
All larps can include these ritualistic techniques and many larps have similar spaces set aside. Some fantasy and post-apocalyptic larps, for example, have elaborate religions built into the game, complete with rituals, sacred spaces, and mythology. Other Nordic larps such as KoiKoi and Totem have included extensive rituals as well, which are worth examining with regard to their impact on the larp experience.
In the case of Just a Little Lovin’, however, the inclusion of vulnerability, sexuality, romantic intimacy, and death summons a particularly cathartic element for many of the players, especially since these elements become intertwined. Therefore, Just a Little Lovin’ demonstrates how ritual elements in larp design combined with complex interweaving social connections and a strong theme can provoke intense emotional reactions and feelings of communal connection in the players.
Cover photo: The rock band Urban Renaissance closed the drag/variety show every night with an energetic performance. Although Rain (right) died in Act II, the show went on in Act III. Photo: Petter Karlsson. CC-BY-NC.
Since 1995, the Danish non-profit organization Einherjerne has made one large fantasy larp in the summer with 100-300 participants. Every larp has built on the experiences of the earlier years, with core elements of the larp being a village surrounded by a magical forest inhabited by mythical creatures. This is the Nemefrego larp series, that is continuously being rewritten with each new instalment, and which functions as a melting point between organizers striving to renew and participants trying to replay the previous game. An organiser using the brands “Einherjerne” or “Nemefrego” sets certain expectations. This can be a two-edged sword. The story of Nemefrego 2014 is about four of those edges.
Nemefrego 2014 Overview
The Nemefrego 2014 storyline was centered around the election of a king from five great families. Nemefrego larps happen in roughly the same setting and family names are often reused, but just about everything else changes. The reason for this is to make new players feel that they’re entering a brand new larp instead of “the middle of a series”. Some of the larps aren’t even called Nemefrego, though they are part of the tradition. This time, the players were divided into two distinct geographical locations. Most players lived in the town and the tents near it, while a portion of the players were in the forest portraying various mythic creatures. And when we say town, we actually mean something quite close.
A Pre-fabricated Village
The people in Einherjerne have built pre- fabricated larp houses, that can be stored in large ship containers since the early 00’s. These can be stored in containers and then quickly be assembled when needed for a larp. This has been perfected to a point where a whole village, including a two-story building and several buildings the size of dining halls are neatly fitted into 40’ ship containers, packed tight from floor to ceiling.
The containers can be moved by truck and sometimes they are leased or lent to other projects such as Aarhus Medieval Festival or other larps. A mobile medieval town is quite a resource, and several other larp organisations – including the Danish boarding school Østerskov – ha ve copied the Einherjerne idea and now have their own pre-fab buildings.
Intrigue Play vs. Status Play
One of the central pieces of Nemefrego 2014 had to do with getting conflicts and plots out in the open, where they would include as many people as possible. This could include gift spending, intimidating, great speeches and the like. The goal was simple: steering the characters towards slowly escalating conflicts and tension, while avoiding resolve until the final hours of the game where conflicts would play out and conclude as publicly as possible.
We call this play style; “status play”. The opposite, which we call; “intrigue play”, is a style where problems are resolved as quickly and discreetly as possible.
I empty my mug and placed my purse on the table. “How about a game of dice?” My fellow soldiers encourage the closest prey to participate. A man is about to stand but we all look at him with piercing eyes.“So you think our game is not good enough for you?”. He hesitates and then replies: “but I have no dice”. I smile: “No problem, I have dice you can borrow.”. He sits down, and I extend my arm around his shoulders: “by the way, there are a few special rules concerning the borrowing-dice. Nothing much…”. He stiffens but notices I have a hand on my dagger, and lets go of a sigh.
Player
We had many great examples of status play that worked and players who enjoyed it. One thing we experienced however, was that without a central town square, we saw status play reduced to only include small segments of the participants, rather than the majority. A town crier was implemented at some point in the game and made a big difference, since this brought information of various conflicts to many more people. Utilizing a central square seems optimal for this type of play, though. And however much we tried to get conflicts out into the open, we still encountered an old friend of a problem; sleeping bag murders.
The Sleeping Bag Murder Paradox
In Danish larps where conflicts are sometimes resolved with violence, and in which the players sleep on location, there is a risk of characters being killed during their sleep. This is a time-honoured (but despised) tradition in Danish larps known as “sleeping bag murders”, due to the fact that most players sleep in sleeping bags. At Nemefrego 2014 it was explicitly stated in the written game material that this was forbidden, but one player did it anyway – bringing several other characters down with him in the vendetta that followed.
I remember slowly becoming aware of my surroundings. I heard steps and instantly knew someone was in the tent. I also knew I slept with an in-game dagger just out of old habit. But just before I opened my eyes I hesitated. I thought this is stupid. The rules were specific; no sleeping bag murders. Then someone shakes me and I open my eyes and see the weapon in his hand. Seconds later the whole family including us guards were slaughtered.
Player
Organizers and participants, whose roles were dead, had a constructive dialogue afterwards and players were reinstated where it was a agreed the story needed it the most. When play styles and rules/ participants clash, having a short break followed by open dialogue including all sides can prove fruitful, as it did in this case. The optimal thing is if things don’t happen when they’re not supposed to, but sometimes it’s also good to have a “what if” plan if going up against tradition.
A Mythic Forest
Surrounding the town, in which the majority of roles lived, was a magical forest, inspired by dark mythological folklore. It was meant to spawn stories of gloomy tragedy as well as heroic deeds. Unlike many other Danish larps, which utilize an organizer controlled NPC group – the creatures inhabiting this forest were portrayed by a group of players, with great freedom to incorporate magic and mythic creatures in their stories and roles (some even played multiple roles).
There were no rule restrictions on the group, and the forest group would continue playing in the forest whether town players would come out or not. Forest creatures would not always agree amongst themselves and they had many power struggles – something town players often ended up being pawns in.
The forest group’s goal was simple; the creation of great stories featuring a small selection of the other players: Namely those who would understand the genre and play along with the terms set by the forest. The majority of players did not interact directly with the forest- but only hear rumors – creating a mythic feeling of insecurity and a lack of knowledge of what actually happened in the woods.
Some players were frustrated by this and felt left out because the forest play was not easily available to everyone, but many liked the uncertainty and enjoyed not directly interacting with the magical elements of the forest. Those who entered the forest and actively contributed to the mythic storytelling had a wonderful experience. The town and the forest were in effect two play zones with different visions, rules and narrative styles, even though they were very much part of the same larp.
Trade in the forest would be conducted in magical promises rather than in coin. Receiving help from the forest meant that you would be bound by a magical promise – something the characters were not always aware they had accepted, even though the players knew it. These could be small actions; accepting a gift could mean you had also accepted a price, even if nobody had you informed of the “cost” of the gift. The price would always be high (relative to the one having to pay it) and the forest would make sure you never forgot your promise. The consequences for breaking a promise were devastating.
The forest witch and I stared intensely at each other while one of her kin played a flute to keep the faun enthralled in it’s trancelike state. The witch drew a knife (a really nice one, one from this swiss army knife list) from her pocket and offered it to me. I broke eye contact and looked at the metal knife. She asked me if I needed it for my first knight trial. I hesitated but knew she was right.
I had to bring some of the fauns beard to pass the first test. I took the knife and gazed at the blade reflecting the playful light from the nearby bonfire. The witch cracked a gruesome mocking laughter and only then I realized that by taking the knife – I had also accepted a bargain. She could ask whatever she wanted since I had already accepted. My first born was now promised to the forest…
Player
The forest was primarily active at night and most creatures did not go near the town. This enhanced the mystery surrounding the forest. There were certain unwritten rules when entering the forest. The most prominent was that you should not bring metal into the woods since many otherwise peaceful creatures would react aggressively to weapons – and some of these creatures were beings of pure magic and thus immune to mundane steel.
Ironically one type of creatures would always be hostile – and could only be handled with weapons. This greatly supported the vision of the forest being a dangerous place far outside any town character’s comfort zone.
This was especially the case for members of the five great families who had to leave their status symbols – swords, which they were the only ones who were allowed to carry – behind. The end effect was of a seducing, intriguing and mystical forest, and those characters who went there never came back unchanged.
Nemefrego 2014
Credits: Einherjerne Date: July 17 – 20, 2014 Location: Forlev Spejdercenter, Skyggelundsvej 3, 8660 Skanderborg, Denmark Length: Afternoon Thursday to evening Saturday. Players: 112 Budget: €13,000 Participation Fee: €110 Game Mechanics: Status play, simple combat rules, Website:http://nemefrego.dk/
Cover photo: Bakker-Hviide, one of the great families plotting to seize the crown. (Play, Mai Isager Nielsen). Other photos by Mai Isager Nielsen and Christian Niclas.
Morgenrøde (Morning Red) was our take on the Danish hippie movement. Through three acts, 31 players portrayed the peak of the Danish hippie community and their endeavors to establish Denmark’s first grand commune: Morgenrøde – the utopia of their dreams.
Spanning the late 60’es and the early 70’es, the game showed the communes rise and fall. From an initial summer of love to the grinding frustrations of clashing ways of life to a final collapse, when the distance between Marxist revolutionary and flower power protagonist became too great.
Our aim was never to re-enact the heyday of the Hippie, or give the players an experience of actually being there. Rather, Morgenrøde was focused on the overarching story. We tried to sketch out a social movement and – more importantly – the consequences for the people who lived that movement.
A Dialogue with Parents and Traditions – Making Morgenrøde
We had many reasons for making Morgenrøde. First and foremost, we shared a fascination of the time. Most of our parents were young when the rebellion against everything established was driving the counter culture forward. Some were a part of the struggle. Others watched from the outside.
But none of them can escape the influence stretching from The Summer of Love over the hazy days of Woodstock and all the way to the present. In all their handicraftiness, the hippies made a permanent mark on our culture, which we wanted to explore with equal parts love and critique. We love living in a world of freedoms won by the pioneers of past generations, but we do not agree with all their ways of changing the world. In that way, Morgenrøde was a personal game for all of us.
Furthermore, we were very much inspired by both recent larps from the Nordic scene – such as Just a Little Lovin’ – and by the Danish free-form tradition, as it is seen at the convention Fastaval. We did not start with the intention of making a hybrid between the two scenes, but that is more or less what we ended up with. The game was split into acts with workshops before, after and in-between, something that has been seen many times before in the Nordic scene.
We started two of the acts with a free-form scene, meant to capture the vibe of a joint meeting in the commune, where every minute detail of daily life was discussed and voted on. These scenes were run by an organizer who assumed the role of a game master not present in the fiction of the game. By mixing and matching the two traditions, we sought to make a game with the narrative focus of a Fastaval free-form game and the immersive and physical qualities of a Nordic larp.
Morgenrøde was thus created as a dialogue between both the world of our parents and the present, and between different schools of larp and role-playing.
Love, Liberation and Revolution – The Themes of Morgenrøde
The more we dug into the time period and the counterculture the more we realized that the hippies were far from one group. It was a far-ranging movement of everything from Marxist revolutionaries over flower-power spiritualists to bra burning feminists fighting for women’s right to equal opportunity.
Most spoke about a revolution, but what that meant ranged from the violent seizure of the means of production to the dawning of the Age of Aquarius and New Age of spirituality. We chose to limit the themes of the story to love, liberation and revolution, which still gave a number of different interpretations of the purpose of Morgenrøde. The characters were all pre-written and the themes – and clashes between them – were thus worked into the very core of the game. In the end, it was these differences that tore the commune apart.
One Pill Makes You Larger… – The Mechanics and Design of Morgenrøde
We tried to make our triad of themes as pervasive as possible. We kept love, liberation and revolution as the guiding principles for all design decisions. In our game design, this led us to designing a series of mechanics, which should enable the players to act out the three themes.
One common thread with these mechanics was a high degree of voluntarism. The players could choose which mechanics to use when, which in turn helped them steer their game experience towards one of the three themes.
For the political theme we applied house rules for Morgenrøde which the political characters could enforce, mostly via self-criticism, inspired by a quite vicious form of social control, practiced by the Maoists of the time.
We tried to give the die-hard political a micro society to shape and manipulate. The rules were modified during the free-form scenes of the joint meetings and applied to the inhabitants of Morgenrøde as guidelines on how to live their lives. The three basic rules, which we wrote pregame, were:
Love your fellow inhabitants of the commune.
Fight capitalism in all its forms, together with your comrades.
Expand your mind, and always be ready to experience new things, together with the rest of the commune.
Seeing as hallucinogenic drugs became somewhat popular among the hippies, we chose these as the game mechanic backbone for the spiritual theme. In our experience, pretending to use drugs during a larp, whether it is snorting powdered sugar or eating candy that symbolizes pills, and trying to fake the high afterwards, never really works all too well. Thus we needed a way for the characters to take LSD without the players having to fake the following high. This became the Drug Box.
We decided that marijuana and anything like that was recreational and as such would have no effect on the characters, just as drinking a beer (which was nonalcoholic). All other substances were equal to LSD, symbolized by small squares of eatable paper with a white rabbit print on it. Taking LSD was never done alone and affected the relationship between the two or more characters taking part.
The trips themselves were played out in the Drug Box – a black-box with a white sheet wall which had psychedelic visuals projected on to it and a matching soundscape. An organizer played a spirit guide and game mastered the session.
The essential thought was that a trip could be good or bad, and that the nature of the trip would decide how the personal relation which the players brought into the trip, would be affected. The art for the spirit guide was to match the psychedelic story of the trip to the changing relationships. This ended up including, but far from limiting itself to: Deer grassing in a grove, two souls trapped in a cellar being flooded, a mother-of-the-revolution carrying her child across the ocean in a train and some forty-odd trippier scenes.
For the theme of personal liberation we implemented two game mechanics. One was the option for the players to be undressed during the game (with some limitations). This was very optional and not treated as a game mechanic as such. Rather, we tried to create a safe atmosphere, where it was possible for those who wanted to explore that part of the movement. Then there was the “love room” where characters could always go to have sex.
Many of the original hippie communes actually had these love rooms and as such it seemed like the obvious choice, but it also provided a way for the players to play out sex scenes in relative public, without it being frowned upon. As such we hoped for the sexual liberation to add to the stories.
Three Things We Learned from Morgenrøde
To us, Morgenrøde was a success. We were happy with the outcome and loved the look and feel. But that, we suppose, is what most organizers would say. So instead of the usual anniversary speech-style finale, here are three things we learned as game designers:
Continue to explore the crossovers. The free-form and Nordic larp-scenes have been merging for some years now. Find the interesting interactions and try the impossible. For us, this meant free-form scenes with thirty players and a highly specialized (and we dare say awesome) way of simulating drugs.
Remember that history is also last year. Historical games are hard and demanding when it comes to gear and accuracy. Games about contemporary cultural history are easier and the players’ knowledge can be a lot more nuanced than is the case with most of the medieval counterparts. We are certainly not the first, but more and more games are exploring recent history. It’s worth it.
Clash of playing culture should concern you. Perhaps the Nordic larp scene is becoming so homogeneous, that we’ve stopped to consider it. But a lesson is that you should always be very clear about how a game is played, the characters should be read and what can be expected when combining players from different national and/or international scenes.
Morgenrøde
Credits: Anders Lyng Ebbehøj, Astrid Andersen, Silas Boje Sørensen, Troels Barkholt-Spangsbo, Søren Lyng Ebbehøj, Klaus Meier Olsen and Jonas Trier-Knudsen. Date: August 12-15, 2014 Location: Græsrodsgården, Kalundborg, Denmark Length: 2 days Players: 31 Budget: €6,900 Participation Fee: €110 Website:http://morgenrode.dk/
Cover photo: One of the joint meetings where everyone was present to discuss everything from buying a saw to taking away the right of individuals to their own body (Play, Jonas Trier-Knudsen). Other photos by Jonas Trier-Knudsen and Bjarke Pedersen.
Larp is traditionally participatory in nature. Fortunately, there’s been a great introspective and analytical tradition accompanying the continuing push against the ever moving boundaries of what’s possible and what’s been attempted. Yet it seems that our vocabulary has not grown at the same rate as the art form itself.
This article will attempt to cover some of the recent strides towards enriching that vocabulary. It presents the findings of several projects each exploring the nature of larp by investigating how the play and narrative experience change when mediated through computer/larp hybrids. These projects have investigated the interactive digital narrative academic literature, and have come away with a range of terms and concepts directly applicable to larp.
It is my hope that this article will both provide the community with an enriched vocabulary for conversing about our art form, and an expanded analytical toolbox for designing and researching larps.
Before jumping into the murky waters of terminology, let’s first ensure that we’re on the same riverbank. There’s been many endeavours to define role-playing, and I’d like to add my voice to the cacophony. But it’s my hope that by refining and combining the current definition attempts, we can turn the cacophony into a choir instead.
Can’t You See I’m Role-playing?
Based on my experience with the different forms of role-playing, the definitions of Hitchens & Drachen((Hitchens,M.,& Drachen,A.(2008).The many faces of role-playing games.International journal of role-playing,1(1),3-21.)), Arjoranta((Arjoranta, J. (2011). Defining Role-Playing Games as Language-Games. International journal of role-playing, 1(2), 3-17.)) and Montola((Montola, M., 2008.The invisible rules of role- playing.The social framework of role-playing process. International journal of role-playing, 1(1), pp.22–36)), as well as the results from my thesis projects((Temte, B. F. (2014). I, Herosmaton? Unpublished Master Thesis, Department of Architecture, Design and Media Technology, Section of Medialogy, Aalborg University Copenhagen. Supervisors: Bruni, L.E. & Eladhari, M.)) ((Temte, B. F., & Schoenau-Fog, H. (2012). Coffee tables and cryo chambers: a comparison of user experience and diegetic time between traditional and virtual environment-based roleplaying game scenarios. In Interactive Storytelling (pp. 102-113). Springer Berlin Heidelberg.)) ((Temte, B. F. (2011). Project Restless Sleep – An Experimental Framework for Investigating the Change in User Experience of Roleplaying Games in Virtual Environments. Unpublished Bachelor Thesis, Department of Architecture, Design and Media Technology, Section of Medialogy, Aalborg University Copenhagen. Supervisor:
Schoenau-Fog, H.)), I would argue that there are a number of different processes to what we are currently calling role-playing:
Textoring (Lit: weaver): Exploring the potential story evolution possibilities, I.e. the story-space((The complete set of potential story evolutions for the story in its current state)), and consequently manufacturing a personal, curated story-subspace instance, focused on the nodes deemed favourable to an engaging story evolution.
Auctoring (Lit: authoring, acting, originator): (Re)defining the character itself, including personality traits and background. This is both done as part of the initial character creation process, performed by either the player or an author, and at runtime by the player and possibly also the GM.
Ductoring (Lit: guiding, leading, commanding): Determining the appropriate actions/utterances for the character in the given situation. Performed at runtime, with some ductoring taking place during character creation regarding background events.
Rectoring (Lit: ruling, directing, mastering): Directing the story through the actions/utterances of the character. Only at runtime, arguably some planning during initial character creation.
Cantoring (Lit: acting, playing, poet): Portraying/acting out the character physically, including body movements, tone of voice, facial gestures etc. Only at runtime. While one could argue that cantoring may be contemplated prior to runtime, in order to best get a sense of the character’s physical mannerisms, I would label such contemplations as auctoring. However, it is quite common for role- players to explore the mental exercise of imagining their character in various situations, and so a degree of overlap is theoretically possible.
Quod-core
With these processes as a foundation, it’s now possible to formulate a new definition of Role-Playing:
A type of Pretence-Play where Participants interact, often through rules, with a diegetic world through the continuous ductoring and possibly cantoring, rectoring and auctoring, of distinct characters, thus collaboratively co-textoring an emergent, ephemeral narrative.
The core of role-playing is thus, in the presented definition, not the playing of a role per se. Rather, it’s the ductoring of the character(s) you control, the continuous process of evaluating the appropriate and relevant actions for the character and situation, that is the heart of our artform. Whether you then describe or act out the chosen action(s) is of lesser importance, and covered by the definition as well. One would argue that ductoring could also happen e.g. when you read a book or watch a movie. I completely agree, and posit that these examples are also to a large extent role-playing, the only major difference being the degree of interactivity offered by the medium.
Basing media interaction on reader- response theory, the definition also takes this into account through mentioning ‘participants interacting with’.
However, ductoring doesn’t say anything about whether you actually act upon these evaluations. You may be ductoring with/by yourself in a cupboard for 12 hours, without ever moving or saying anything. When larping, a more important concept is thus to which degree you’re acting on behalf of your character or yourself. I define this as the degree of herosproxy.
When exhibiting a low degree of herosproxy, you’re essentially playing and acting as yourself in the given situations, with little regard for your player character’s motivations and personality. Reversely, a high degree of herosproxy signifies both a large amount of ductoring, and that said ductoring is being reflected and acted upon. Therefore, herosproxy is the most relevant real-world measure of role-playing.
What IDS Brought along…
I’d now like to present some of the terminology that the interactive digital storytelling academic community has developed for better understanding and researching their, and to a large extent our, field.
Aarseth((Aarseth, E. (2012, May). A narrative theory of games. In Proceedings of the international conference on the foundations of digital Games (pp. 129-133). ACM.)) divides narrative elements into Kernels and Satellites, kernels being story elements/events which define the story, and satellites being elements/events without which the story would still be recognisable. Clearly, this distinction does not take into account the ephemerality of role-playing stories, but it still gives us terms to distinguish between primary and secondary events/elements. Likewise, one could argue that a larpwright should focus on kernels, letting the satellites happen on their own.
1. The Network – A partially connected, cyclic graph with uni- and bi-directional paths
2. The Complete Graph – Fully connected bi-directional paths
3. The Tree – Unidirectional (from top to bottom), every traversal is a well-formed plot.
4. The Vector with Side Branches – One main direction, with bi-directional subplots.
5. The Maze – Structure typical for adventure games.
6. Directed Network (“flow chart”)
7. The Hidden Story – Plotting navigation on to time.
8. The Braided Plot – Events and destiny lines.
9. Action Space or Epic Wandering – System defined plot with user choices for action.
Figure 1: Ryan’s 9 interactive narrative structures((Ryan, M. L. (2001). Narrative as virtual reality. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press.)). Illustrations from ((Temte,B.F.,Aabom,H.T.,Bevensee,S.H.,Boisen,K.A.D.,& Olsen,M.P.(2013).Aporia:Codename Still LakeValley – Exploring the Merge of Game-play and Narrative through Multiplayer Cooperation and Storytelling.Unpublished project report,Department of Architecture, Design and Media Technology, Section of Medialogy, Aalborg University Copenhagen. Supervisor: Bruni, L.E.)).
Ryan((Ryan, M. L. (2001). Narrative as virtual reality. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press.)) presents nine different interactive narrative structures, along with their individual characteristics, with a tenth added by myself((Temte, B. F. (2014). I, Herosmaton? Unpublished Master Thesis, Department of Architecture, Design and Media Technology, Section of Medialogy, Aalborg University Copenhagen. Supervisors: Bruni, L.E. & Eladhari, M.)), this being ‘Instigating Event with Conflict-laden Characters’. The nine original can be seen on figure 1.
I have yet to come up with a suitable illustration for Instigating Event with Conflict-laden Characters. The ten structures can work as tools for designing and framing conversations about larp structures as well.
Ryan((Ryan, M. L. (2008). Interactive narrative, plot types, and interpersonal relations. In Interactive Storytelling (pp. 6-13). Springer Berlin Heidelberg.)) also proposes two different types of immersion in interactive narratives, these being ludic and narrative immersion. She also distinguishes between spatial, temporal and emotional narrative immersion.
Additionally, Ryan suggests three distinct types of plot in interactive stories, with each plot type primarily suitable for a specific narrative immersion:
Epic: Focuses on the struggle of the individual to survive in a hostile world – Spatial Immersion
Dramatic: The evolution of a network of human relations – Emotional Immersion
Epistemic: The desire to solve a mystery – Temporal Immersion (components of which are curiosity, surprise and suspense).
We’re also given a tool for categorising player actions/utterances, where Theune, Linnsen and Alofs((Theune, M., Linssen, J., & Alofs, T. (2013). Acting, Playing, or Talking about the Story: An Annotation Scheme for Communication during Interactive Digital Storytelling. In Interactive Storytelling (pp. 132-143). Springer International Publishing.)) construct a scheme:
This works very well for categorising e.g. player utterances when analysing larp play (see((Temte, B. F. (2014). I, Herosmaton? Unpublished Master Thesis, Department of Architecture, Design and Media Technology, Section of Medialogy, Aalborg University Copenhagen. Supervisors: Bruni, L.E. & Eladhari, M.))).
Reference
Perspective
Story
Game
Reality
Character
CS: In-character utterances and imitations
CG: In-character references to game elements
CR:In-character references to events or objects outside play
Player
PLS: Action suggestions and proposals referring to the story
PLG: Communication about game aspects
PLR: Including real-life events or objects in the game frame
Person
PES: Observations about events that happened in the story
PEG: Observations about the interface, opinions about the game
PER: Communications about events or objects outside play
Figure 2: Theune, Linnsen and Alofs PxR annotation scheme((Theune, M., Linssen, J., & Alofs, T. (2013). Acting, Playing, or Talking about the Story: An Annotation Scheme for Communication during Interactive Digital Storytelling. In Interactive Storytelling (pp. 132-143). Springer International Publishing.)). Illustration from((Temte, B. F. (2014). I, Herosmaton? Unpublished Master Thesis, Department of Architecture, Design and Media Technology, Section of Medialogy, Aalborg University Copenhagen. Supervisors: Bruni, L.E. & Eladhari, M.))
Mine, My Own, My Propositions
In ((Temte, B. F., & Schoenau-Fog, H. (2012). Coffee tables and cryo chambers: a comparison of user experience and diegetic time between traditional and virtual environment-based roleplaying game scenarios. In Interactive Storytelling (pp. 102-113). Springer Berlin Heidelberg.)), I define Diegetic Adherence to be the degree to which diegetic time equals real time, i.e. whether the larp is running on a 1:1 time, or e.g. features flashbacks/slow motion. This term can both be used for describing/discussing/designing larps, and for analytic purposes.
Hulk, Meet Spock
I also here propose two non-opposed play styles/attributes; Cerebral and Embodied. The distinction here is whether the player seeks out the intellectual challenge(s) or instead strives to be physically/emotionally affected by the larp/situation. Cerebral gamists thus enjoy the intellectual challenge of a mystery or tactical battle, whereas embodied gamists thrive on e.g. the adrenaline response of the battle itself. Embodied immersionists aim for becoming their character, whereas cerebral immersionists are more akin to simulationists, aiming instead for experiencing being in the diegetic world.
Dramaticists with a cerebral focus, enjoy shaping the story and influencing/ experiencing its fl ow and aesthetics, whereas embodied dramaticists instead seek the emotional response from entering the story. I do not see these terms as necessarily being directly in opposition however. Larps/situations where you’re both intellectually and emotionally engrossed are easily imagined.
Exploding the Player Character
In ((Temte, B. F. (2014). I, Herosmaton? Unpublished Master Thesis, Department of Architecture, Design and Media Technology, Section of Medialogy, Aalborg University Copenhagen. Supervisors: Bruni, L.E. & Eladhari, M.)), I define the ALHFa-PAV categorisation (pronounced Alpha-Paw) as a way of dividing and discussing the components of a player character:
Avatar: Physical manifestation of person in another reality. Navigational and ludic focus in games. In larps, the avatar is ourselves.
Locus: The visual appearance of a particular avatar. How we look, with costume, makeup, expression and props.
Herosmaton: The specific contents of the person schema of a player character, including personality traits, goals, background etc.
Facies: The countenance/appearance of a particular herosmaton. How the herosmaton looks inside the imagined diegesis.
Player Character: The combined avatar, locus, herosmaton and facies, along with its more ludic characteristics, e.g. strength score, hit points etc., and the actions available to it, defined below as Ago and Vis.
Ago: The verbs available to the particular PC, such as run, jump, shoot etc.
Vis: The ludic stats associated with the PC, such as hit points, strength score etc.
It’s my hope that our community may adopt some or all of the terms, hereby easing the joint communication and understanding of the player character elements.
Picking Nits
There is little doubt that bleed as a larp term and concept is both relevant and real (for a given definition of real).
But given the pre-existing uses and meanings associated with bleed as a term outside the role-playing community, and the fact that I’m a nerd when it comes to terms/classifications, I would propose to rename the concept Flusentio (in/ex) [Lit: Flow/bleed of feelings]. Influsentio would thus be emotions, characteristics and/ or opinions flowing/bleeding from player to character, with Exflusentio denoting flowing/ bleeding from character to player.
Concerning Genres
Usually, when discussing larps, we refer to the genre as based on those of Hollywood movies. The Danish larp theorist Jacob Nielsen proposes that we instead/additionally adopt the vocabulary of the art world as a way of discussing our works and the intentions of the authors.
For instance, playing a social realism drama expressionistically will yield a very different play through than the exact same larp played abstractly, impressionistically or post-modern. Therefore, I strongly encourage you read Jacob Nielsen’s thought-provoking article on styles in larp in this book.
I hope that the usefulness and relevance of these terms are clear, and encourage further debates about and expansions of our shared vocabulary. I also hope that the term-nado I’ve just unleashed has either blown you away, or at least ruffled your feathers enough that a productive debate will ensue, at whichever decibel level you prefer.
The trips themselves were played out in the Drug Box – a black-box with a white sheet wall which had psychedelic visuals projected on to it and a matching soundscape. An organizer played a spirit guide and game mastered the session.
