Nordic Larp

Tag: erotic larp

  • Debauchery: Fantastic

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    Debauchery: Fantastic

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    Recently an article was republished from this year’s Solmukohta book, “Debauchery: Meh” (Anonymous 2024), that caused quite a stir in the community, on the subject of “erotic larps”, that is larps with sex as a central theme. Plenty of people within our community have made their own assessments over this week, but I’d like to take the time to offer up some thoughts. And naturally, the shorter the original comment, the more I have to say about it.

    So, why do we larp?

    A simple question to be sure, and perhaps a bit pretentious for the start of an essay talking mostly about filthy sex, though as anyone who has played a larp can say, the answers are broad and complex. No shortage of ink has been shed across this very outlet on the topic, and yet my anonymous friend in the original comment has surmised that in the case of “erotic larps” that the principal, and perhaps even sole, driver for people attending is sexual gratification. 

    Whilst it is no surprise that many people had some quite robust criticisms of this idea, I think it’s worth exploring not just why this is wrong, but the range and diversity of why these larps may appeal to people.

    A Confession

    Here is the point though where I need to make a confession: I haven’t actually ever been to an “erotic larp”. I have played sexually-charged characters and stories in other larps, such as being the paramour of a doomed warrior and part of her polyamorous entourage, to playing the latest “acquisition” to a sexy vampire cult, amongst others; but I have never been to a larp where sexual or kink themes were central to the design.

    So I should probably stop writing now then, eh? I don’t know the genre in question intimately (heh), I haven’t experienced the plotlines, the events, the hype; I don’t know what I’m talking about. Well, perhaps, and if that is your opinion then I bid you a good day. But I feel whilst I haven’t had much to do with “erotic larp”, I am both (in my own humble opinion) a fairly experienced larper across a range of genres, and would like to share some credentials in a vain attempt to restore some credibility.

    Hi there, my name is Abbie, and I have been at various times in my adult life: a sex worker, both escort and porn, a volunteer at a sexual health service, a trans and disability sexual liberation activist, an organizer and host of a series of sex parties, and a sex & kink communicator, including getting to be on radio to talk about the Sex Without Shame campaign we ran some years ago. I’ve also happily had no shortage of romantic and sexual experiences in my life, so when it comes to that topic, I think I am broadly qualified.

    Exploring Ourselves

    But it’s my time with the Sex Without Shame campaign that I’d like to talk about most here. This was, as the name suggests, a campaign set up to encourage people, mostly queer and LGBTQ+ people, to explore their sexuality freely, and hopefully feel more comfortable and confident in experiencing sex and kink. My part of it (aside from doing a sexy photoshoot with a lovely Leather-Daddy named Frank, where we both admitted that it was to us the most heterosexual thing either had done in a long time) was mostly presenting seminars and workshops as part of the women’s programme. These workshops covered all sorts of topics, from sexual health and contraception to exploring sexual attraction and alternative relationships, but one important one was the ‘Wall of Kinks.’

    In this exercise, everyone would anonymously write a kink, fetish, sexual fantasy, or anything similar onto a post-it note, and place them into a bag at the start of the session. I would then empty out the notes, and put them up on the wall, and we’d discuss them. Part of the exercise was to break the taboo a bit, both personally and as a group, to show that these are the things the people in this room are into, and how that’s okay, natural, and can be explored and experienced safely and confidently. It was often a highlight of the series for me, as it was often the most transformative bit for participants.

    So this is a bit of a long personal ramble before I get to how-to-make the lasagne, but I think it’s important. Because the biggest point I wanted to make before getting to the other topics is this: if you use larp as a place to explore your own sexuality, in whatever form that takes, then that’s absolutely fine. If you communicate and are open about what you’re looking for, then you go right ahead. Because I know from the experience of running those workshops, that there aren’t a whole heap of places to safely explore parts of who you are, and sexuality is absolutely a core part of ourselves. So if you’re communicating, seeking consent, and being honest, then you’re doing larp right, and I don’t want anyone telling you otherwise. 

    And I don’t really think my anonymous friend would disagree, but I really wanted to make that part clear.

    Exploring Others

    Okay, so that’s one reason people might play “erotic larps”, to explore themselves and their own feelings in a safe environment. So what are the others? Well, they’re as myriad as the reasons people play any other sort of larp. And for that I’d like to share about why I don’t, or more accurately haven’t, been to any “erotic larps”. Because from reading my little CV up there you might well say “these larps look like they’re right up your street, Abbie,” and in some ways you’d be right. But that’s sort of the point isn’t it.

    A common reason for why we larp is to get to experience the lives of others. I will never forget, to my dying breath, the fear and loneliness of being a WW1 nurse, or the righteous fury of being a maniacal paladin, or the crushing loss of being a cursed raider doomed to be hunted for eternity through the forests. These experiences, these emotions, these deep and resonant lives of people I’ve lived, even for a short while, will stay with me forever, just as I know they do in the minds of fellow larpers. I will probably never in my life get to really experience the anxiety and love of shepherding a gaggle of nurses across Siberia, or the confidence and bravery of charging into a battle I know will kill me. That’s a big part of larping: to experience things from lives we will never see ourselves.

    Now this is also a big part of why I don’t often play disabled characters at larps. I live that, every day of my life. Whilst playing a disabled person in a very different context to my own is neat, and I’ve done that on occasion, on the whole, playing what I experience (and usually a bad experience) in life isn’t all that fun. Just for the same reason I don’t often play trans or non-binary characters at larp, a sentiment I have heard echoed by other larpers from those demographics. However, I do pretty much always play gay or bisexual characters, because that part of my life is pretty damn great, and so getting to be that in different contexts and in new and exciting ways is brilliant.

    But sexual liberation falls somewhere between the two. It’s certainly not a bad experience whatsoever for me, far from it, but it’s also not really much of a departure from who I already am. There wouldn’t be tremendous appeal to me in playing a character that was about being sexually confident, liberated, and getting to experience those feelings. But to someone for whom that isn’t a part of their everyday, I can see how that would be an especially enticing premise, just as getting to live any other life beyond our own is in larp. Experiencing the deep empathy of living another person’s life is one of the most amazing things about this medium, and I’m sure this can be a real draw to people to play “erotic larps”.

    Experiencing the life and perspective of others with a vastly different outlook from us, perhaps an outlook we admire, or one we are glad we don’t share, allows us to reframe how we see the world and the people in it. And whether that is seeing social interactions, positive and negative, through the mind of someone with a different outlook on sex and sexuality, can be a hugely moving adventure.

    So people might want to explore their own lives through “erotic larp”, they might want to explore lives of others… what else? Well you’ll notice that I didn’t actually give a proper answer in that section as to why I haven’t been to any “erotic larps”, and you might surmise that it was that they don’t differ from my own life enough to be appealing. But you may also recall me saying earlier that I have played sexual and romantic characters and stories in larps, so there must be something there that interests me?

    Well that’s because the honest answer is that I haven’t been to any “erotic larps” because of the very usual reasons: expense and travel. Most of the ones have been overseas, and my budget for international larp is limited, and none of them have ever broken the threshold of interest to make me want to commit my precious time and money to them when other priorities existed. Except one.

    Exploring Power

    I did in fact, some years ago, try to go to an “erotic larp”. This being Nocturne (2022) by Atropos Studios, a historical larp set in a brothel during the American Revolutionary War. In the end I didn’t get a place as numbers were quite tight, but I’d like to talk about what appealed to me in this larp over others. Firstly, for anyone who knows me, I am an absolute slut for a historical larp. They’re the main genre I play, write, and work on, and as a historian by background it’s fairly obvious why. So that alone already moved it up above the threshold of interest, but it wasn’t all of it.

    And I think this is where I make my biggest departure from the thoughts of my anonymous friend, because now we’re getting into the territory of “what does sex mean?” And that is a very interesting question that I think larp is an exceptional medium to explore. In the two cases I outlined at the start where I played a sexual story at a larp (there are others naturally, but these two I think best exemplify my point) the meanings they each had were quite different.

    For the romance with the doomed warrior, myself and the other members of their entourage were engaged in the traditional hedonistic lifestyle. The warrior knew she was bound to die soon, as did most of us around her, and so the sex there was about attraction, living for today, and the platonic ideal of hedonism. In the other, the being an “acquisition” to the vampires, that was much more about power, dominance, the symbolic expression of sex in possession and control. And my interest in Nocturne, skewed towards the latter.

    Now I want to reiterate, I didn’t end up playing the game, and beyond signing up and reading the provisional material for the first run I have no knowledge of the design or the actual content of the game, so I don’t really have anything to say on the game itself. But I do want to talk about what it was that appealed to me in the premise.

    It was specifically one character, the sister of one of the soldiers. So in the outline, the players are split into two cohorts, the brothel workers, being women, and the soldiers, being men. But there was one woman amongst the soldiers, being the sister of one of them who I presumed would be something of an assistant to the soldiers, what we would call a “camp-follower”. And reading that made me go “Oooh, that’s interesting”. 

    I am sure I would’ve had a plenty good time playing amongst the women of the brothel, as there’s a whole range of personalities and stories you could explore in that setting. You’ll perhaps notice that the two cases I’ve mentioned had me playing in a more submissive role, which to someone who is more often on the dominant side of the dichotomy has its own appeal, that would be present here. But that one character, the woman who would be split in loyalty between fellow women and the soldiers to whom she was bound, that would make for one compelling plotline.

    And of course there’s many ways one could play such a character and I didn’t get any more information on how she was written or eventually played by anyone. But for me, my intention was (if I was successful in getting a ticket and then in getting that character, neither of which came true) was to take the character in quite a dark direction, to be a willing, perhaps even slightly sadistic participant in the oppressive play that would no doubt have been central to the content of the game. And that exploration of themes, in a historical setting was very enticing to me. Everything after all, to get my obligatory pretentious quote in for the article, is about sex; except sex. Sex is about power.

    And maybe my anonymous friend agrees, maybe they feel that the “erotic larps” should be about so much more, that they could explore themes of dominance, power-structures, the leveraging of sex as a means of social control both in limiting and embracing it. Larps could give players a window into what sex means, exploring the deeper questions of morality and power, and let them live the lives of both those elevated and those crushed by sex. Whether they do or not alas lies out of my experience to say.

    Sex Sells

    Yet they still seem to feel that despite these important and meaningful topics to explore, “erotic larps” remain an “overrated” genre.

    Whilst I must admit, in my own circles I haven’t experienced much of this rating, as I don’t find “erotic larps” to be held with the sanctity they appear to be in other circles, there certainly is a perception from parts of the community that this is so. Where the prestige and prominence these types of larps seem to hold comes from is an important topic, but perhaps best explored by someone from those corners.

    Though I might offer a simple thought at least on the point of popularity, rather than prestige, and it is the evergreen notion that sex sells. From working in marketing on a few occasions, I can say from personal anecdote, that depictions or even mere implications of sex sell products, whether that be films like I was selling, or larps as here.

    I think it would be arrogant for me to claim that larpers are somehow not susceptible to those same hooks in our monkey-brains as everybody else. And whilst I absolutely do not believe that any larp producer is using sex as a marketing hook to sell tickets, it’s hardly outside the realm of possibility that in a sea of available larps, for some of us, those that light up the horny neuron in our brain might subconsciously seem a little more appealing. And in the current environment, where budgets are tight, and so many larps are struggling to make ends meet, it may only take a little bit of a marketing bump to take a larp from the edge of feasibility into safe territory, where other larps struggle to get exposure.

    So between this appearance of popularity, real or imagined, and the prestige they carry in certain circles, I can at least begin to understand why my anonymous friend might feel upset at these productions, even whilst I profoundly disagree with their assessments. Times are hard, and we all want to elevate the sort of experiences we enjoy and cherish, and it is demoralizing seeing projects you care for fall by the wayside to productions you’re not enthused by. 

    Though, it seems there are at least a fair few reasons besides sexual gratification that someone might want to play a larp with sex as a central theme, and no shortage of stories, meanings, and levels of emotion to explore through them. So I hope if it is your thing, or think it might be, that you’ll give them a go, and I have no doubt that those producing them will continue to improve their craft, as we all do.

    And to my anonymous friend: I hope you find forms of larp, and people to experience them with, that speak to you, and get to enjoy your favourite flavours with joy and abandon. I could wish nothing more for any of us.

    References

    Anonymous. 2024. “Debauchery: Meh.” Nordiclarp.org, August 7.

    Cover photo: Photo by Emojibater and Rosie Simmons on Unsplash. Image has been cropped.

  • Searching for Meaning in House of Craving

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    Searching for Meaning in House of Craving

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    In the past decade there has been an upsurge of sensual content in larps, brought to spotlight by international productions such as Just a Little Lovin’ (Norway 2011), Inside Hamlet (Denmark 2015), Baphomet (Denmark 2018), and others. With this focus, the sensual has at times eclipsed the intellectual, and House of Craving (Denmark 2019) provides an example.

    The larp has a trim structure. Twelve characters are friends and family who retire to a newly inherited summer house for a few relaxed days. Unknown to them, the house is self-aware, and evokes twelve ghosts to control the characters. The ghosts vicariously play out carnal desires and delicate disappointments through the humans for a few hours, until their personalities are broken and the house absorbs the humans into itself, remaking them into ghosts.

    On the next day, the same human characters freshly arrive into the house again, portrayed by new players. The previous characters continue as ghosts of who they were, locked into repetition, haunted by echoes of life, and driven by regret. Their players now embody the manipulative house, as the ghosts try to make good their lives through the humans, before facing final passage into darkness.

    The ghost players are dressed in white, and their characters are wholly invisible to the humans. They can take hold of and move human players and objects. The humans can only initiate interaction with the ghosts by treating them as objects of the house, or as participants in their masturbation fantasies.

    With six consecutive runs, the players (first and last set aside) get to experience the same day and the same characters twice: first from the point of view of the victimised humans, then as the shattered ghosts. It is a clever composition that, for me, tapped into the l’esprit de l’escalier of larp: regret born from realising too late what I should have said and remorse over how I should have played. In the House of Craving this self-reflection is sublimated into the emotive mechanism of the ghosts who revisit their lives, hopelessly trying to repair the fragments.

    The instrumentalisation of the humans also has a slapdash side to it, as the ghosts exploit them for instinctive ends. In a set-piece scene, the ghosts interject themselves into human affairs for the first time over formal lunch. My run featured a competition of ghosts over which human could eat the fastest when food is stuffed into its unwilling mouth.

    The scene highlights how House of Craving used physical play to depict the horror of being manipulated, being violated, the horror of taking actions that are not your own, whether in the course of eating or sex. The small group of characters makes for an intimate game, and the larp earned its place in the self-described genre of erotic horror.

    Although the larp sported a surfeit of sex, there was also some gravitas in the proceedings. The human characters were rather shallow in personality and interest, and the ghosts had more substance to highlight very human horrors. The ghosts enter the larp in a fractured state, and there is something frightfully moving in their sterile replay of old scenes, reaching out for closure and meeting only the encroaching dissolution of memory and sense.

    Compared to the setup for erotica, the existential horror sadly received little attention in the game materials and the workshop. The designers – Danny Meyer Wilson, Tor Kjetil Edland, and Bjarke Pedersen – instructed the players that the larp is ”mainly designed to be an entertainingly horrible experience. A premise for this, is that we all agree that we are doing this for the fun of it, and that it isn’t more serious than that.”

    These words curtail and contextualise the erotic elements in the larp to build a safe environment, but they also speak of an abridgment of ambition. There is no shame in entertainment, but House of Craving had material for a more meaningful enterprise.

    Especially when playing as a human, the sexual content often felt like an end unto itself, too unmoored from things of import to have the impact it deserved. Existential horror can enhance erotic elements, providing context and counterpoise and turning them from the default mode of play into meaningful trespasses. More than that, looking not only into the body but also at a wider context could make for a more intellectually satisfying engagement.

    For example, if the new family are real people, does that mean that the ghosts’ memories of last night are false, and the ghosts are echoes of people yet alive? Or do the ghosts remember true, and the family are only untamed memories of the recent dead? If the player takes their character down this road, they will soon run into the edge of the narrative set by the organisers. There is a limit to how far players can inject meaning into a larp designed just for fun.

    The problem is that the setting has been manufactured as a vehicle for social dynamics and an alibi for physical interaction, not as something to stimulate the intellect or support reflection. The casually instrumental approach to setting may be a counter-reaction to old-fashioned plot-centred writing, but the pendulum swings both ways. Superficiality of story invites the haunting question of meaning: what is it that the designers want to convey?

    Building a setting with intellectual depth that players can seriously engage with is hardly a new idea, but it has rarely been artfully mixed with the strong bodily experience design seen in larps like House of Craving. Inside Hamlet attempted this, although, as I have written elsewhere (Räsänen 2016), not with unreserved success.

    In contrast, Just a Little Lovin’ provides an example of a robust design in this regard (with quite a different take on physicality). One reason for the effectiveness and lasting impact of that larp is, I would argue, the balance between its physical, social, and intellectual elements. The design approaches the themes of friendship, desire, and fear of death from multiple points of view, and the game facilitates exploration in any direction: not with a set of answers to be discovered, but with a full-bodied setting to interact with and reflect on.

    One critic characterised the author Yukio Mishima’s lesser stories as “fine gems roughly polished”, a comparison that also encapsulates my feelings about House of Craving. There is untapped potential for more multi-faceted work, more comprehensive immersion that would not sacrifice meaning on the altar of sensation.

    Bibliography

    Syksy Räsänen (2016): “These but the trappings and the suits of woe”: tragedy and politics in Inside Hamlet. In Larp Politics: Systems, Theory, and Gender in Action, edited by Kaisa Kangas, Mika Loponen, and Jukka Särkijärvi. Ropecon ry.

    Ludography

    Baphomet (2018): Denmark. Linda Udby and Bjarke Pedersen. Participation Design Agency.

    House of Craving (2019): Denmark. Danny Meyer Wilson, Tor Kjetil Edland, Frida Sofie Jansen & Bjarke Pedersen. Participation Design Agency.

    Danny Meyer Wilson, Tor Kjetil Edland, Frida Sofie Jansen & Bjarke Pedersen.

    Inside Hamlet (2015): Denmark. Martin Elricsson, Bjarke Pedersen et al. Odyssé.

    Just a Little Lovin’ (2011): Norway. Tor Kjetil Edland and Hanne Grasmo.

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

    Räsänen, Syksy. 2024. “Searching for Meaning in House of Craving.” 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 image: Photo by Nick Magwood from Pixabay

  • Kickass Rococovid Kitsch: A Review of Disgraceful Proposals

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    Kickass Rococovid Kitsch: A Review of Disgraceful Proposals

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    Rocoquoi?

    Compared to other time periods, the 1700s have not inspired many larp settings. Even putting medieval fantasy aside, way more designers attempt to emulate Pride & Prejudice than Dangerous Liaisons. And when Nordic larpers do indulge in tricorns and powdered wigs, they seem to opt for a serious and dark tone like St. Croix (Norway, 2015) and Libertines (Denmark, 2019). I did not attend either of these, but I did attend an international run of De la Bête (Czech Republic, 2017). While clearly reminiscent of the monster-hunting film Brotherhood of the Wolf, the larp avoided the film’s kung fu fighting and video game weaponry. Instead, it focused on the recreation of 1700s village life, using plotlines more inspired by French literature than by pop culture.

    My interest for the “Lace Wars” era probably started with an 18 minute-long, Barry Lyndon inspired, lavish music video: “Pourvu qu’elles soient douces” (Farmer 1988). But I also loved less polished mashups, like the presence of an electric bass player in a supposedly historically costumed orchestra (Rondo Veneziano 1983), and a Marie-Antoinette inspired performance of Vogue at the MTV music Awards (Madonna 1990). I wasn’t alone: from “Rock Me Amadeus” in Austria (Falco 1985) to Spain’s Loco Mía (1989), it seems the combination of ruffled shirts, embroidered frock coats, glitter, sequins and synth pop was extremely popular throughout late ’80s and early ’90s Europe. But in larp, this type of 1700s kitsch crosser has been even rarer than more historical options. So when Kimera Artist Collective announced that they would open their Finnish Rococo-punk-camp-queer larps to an international audience, I immediately signed up.

    Person with moustache painted own playing a tiny violin
    From the photo shoot for the promotional music video. Photo by Kimera.

    Serious Fun

    For Disgraceful Proposals – In the Garden of Venus (Finland 2022) to be successful, every participant must faithfully adhere

    to the composite, yet specific visual style. Luckily, as its name implies, Kimera Artist Collective includes several professional visual and performance artists. They used multiple types of media for visual communication, from original art to hacks of historical engravings, to a video trailer and finally a full music video that ensured every interested party understood what they were aiming for. Importantly, Kimera also quickly realized that the online excitement about the visual style, and peer pressure of wanting to look fabulous, could also generate stress among the players, so they later released the following statement:

    “Many of you have been planning outfits already and thinking of what to wear. Don’t stress. The point of all this is to have fun. If you think your choices are fun and cool, they are! Go wild! Be extravagant! This is not a costume competition, this is crazy fun play with friends. You will not be judged. The guidelines are just for inspiration, not rules to stress about. Each and every one of you will be adored.” (Kimera 2022)

    This serious-but-not-too-serious approach permeated beyond the costuming advice, and was at the core of the the fictional 1700s setting: 

    The larp takes place in a place called Venusberg somewhere in Central Europe. Venusberg is an independent principality ruled by the Princess Bishop, a self-proclaimed Venus and goddess of love. They hold their court in the famous Party Orangerie, a beautiful winter garden on a mountain top. The Orangerie parties attract a wide variety of revelers: pretty peasants from the nearby Village and fierce Dandy Highwaymen from the Forest, as well as more outlandish visitors and creatures. And they all party like there’s no tomorrow. The night our larp takes place is a very special night, as the Great Six-Tailed Comet of 1776 is coming tonight. (Kimera 2022)

    From my French cultural frame of reference, the Germanic flavour of Venusberg (see character names below) instantly amped up the kitsch factor: this was neither gilded Versailles, grimy London nor mysterious Venice: this was queer Baron Munchausen high on Mozartkugel candy.

    Photo of sleeping people laying on one another near each other on a couch next to a red chair and a toy riding horse
    From the photo shoot for the promotional music video. Photo by Kimera.

    Textual Healing

    To my surprise, Kimera put in as much style and intent in their written content as in their visuals. How often do larp info letters put a smile on your face? One started with: 

    Dear fluffy shiny pufflings! You glorious diamonds of meringue sparkles! (…) Peekaboo! Your character is waiting for you! You can find your character in this folder(…) (Kimera 2022)

    Character text was transparent for all players to read if they so chose, with succinct public descriptions that were equally hilarious: 

    Name: Count/ess Frou-Frou

    Position: Boudoir Designer

    Countess Alexandra / Count Alexander Schleswig-Holstein-Sonderburg-Plön, or Count/ess Frou-Frou is Venusberg’s most wanted boudoir designer. They are married to Porcelain-Dolly, and they both love to hate each other and have an intense rivalry on seducing others. Lady Bee, the leader of the teen girl gang the Powder Puff Girls is their daughter who tries to outdo her parents in scandalous notoriety. Good luck trying, girl. (Kimera 2022)

    Person in purple robe looking at mirror in front of marble columns
    From the photo shoot for the promotional music video. Photo by Kimera.

    Individual character texts were in the same vein, consisting three pages full of whimsical flourishes, but also directly usable info, such as suggestions of “Whims, ideas of what to do in game” (make-your-own-fun sandbox style of play was explicitly discouraged). More classical connections between characters were called “Liaisons”, and beyond the jokes, backstories also included opportunities for deeper connections and more serious scenes during the game.

    Wolfgang jr. was born as a bastard child of Papa Wolfgang and the well-known porcelain polisher Leonora Möller. Papa Wolf did send money for his son but spent his time hanging out in the Forest in pursuit of manly sports and activities in the forests with the rugged Dandy Highwaymen, and never understood his son’s sensitivity and love for pretty things.” (Kimera 2022)

    To encourage play across social classes, characters were also part of “Hobby groups” with ludicrous names and goals, from the “Cake Crowning Society” to the “Water Fairy Appreciation Club”. They were actually neither jokes nor useless fluff, but accurately described what would happen during the game. A group did crown a cake in the center of the dancefloor, another group then really guillotined said cake, water fairies were very present, sociable, and appreciated.

    Person offering spread of food with small sculptures
    From the photo shoot for the promotional music video. Photo by Kimera.

    Staying Power

    I kept wondering how Kimera would maintain the announced “intense larp comedy” energy for the full duration of an international destination larp, i.e. much longer than a pop song. The designers had thought it through: 

    It is a three-day event that includes the pre-larp workshops, the larp itself (estimated length 6 hours), a debrief and the option to hang out afterwards. The actual larp time might seem short, but we want to be able to keep up high energy for the whole duration of the larp. These six hours will be a breathtakingly delightful exhilarating spiral into silliness –  trust us, more would make it less. (Kimera 2022)

    This short in-game duration was a good indicator that the organizers knew what they were doing. They had a clear vision, and clear expectation of how long people can keep up a certain type of play. This became crucial to me, as a global event was about to affect my energy levels for years to come.

    Woman in green dress with peacock fan
    Kiri Kaise / Kaisa Lervik.

    Not Your Average Knuteflu

    Disgraceful Proposals was announced at the end of 2019, confirmation of participation was swift, and info letters started flowing, for an intended run at the end of March 2020. But the pandemic hit, leading to the following email: 

    Mar 12, 2020, 6:36 PM Dear players,

    It is with heavy hearts that we make this decision. Today the Finnish government issued a ban on all over 500 people events until May and a recommendation to also reconsider all smaller events due to the COVID-19 pandemic. And in the current situation we just can not justify holding an event like this, with a lot of physical contact which is a high risk no matter what we do. Even if it breaks our hearts, and it really does, we have to do the right thing and decide that this will not happen now. We need to do our part in slowing the pandemic down to protect the weakest ones.

    But we are not forgetting you, sweet cream puffins. We will rearrange the event at a later date. (Kimera 2020)

    Person in adorned hat with finger in their mouth
    From the photo shoot for the promotional music video. Photo by Kimera.

    This cancellation increased my confidence in the organizers: for them, participants – and innocent bystanders, i.e. society at large – indeed mattered more than games. Even though they weren’t forced to do it by law, they refused to organize an event that could inherently become a Covid cluster, at a time when no vaccines were available. I did catch Covid in early 2020, and never fully recovered. I stopped crafting my costume, sheltered in place, and hung tight while at least 3 million people died worldwide. Fast forward to 2022, and another email felt like the return of spring: 

    Fri, Apr 15, 2022, 12:41 PM Dear disgraces,

    It’s been two years since the world changed with the Covid-19 pandemic and we all had to let go of the frenzied expectation of Disgraceful Proposals. Today, the world is still not okay – not by far – but we want to believe that in six months we can come together and frolic again.

    And so we are back and we’re having another go at this. Disgraceful Proposals – In the Garden of Venus will run in October 2022 in Hauho, Southern-Finland. (Kimera 2022)

    The larp world had changed too, and there were not enough sign-ups anymore to fill several runs. But both organizers and remaining players seemed ready to make that one run an event to remember.

    Since my initial infection, I had developed a series of chronic symptoms now referred to as Long Covid. This means that I regularly lose cardiopulmonary, muscular and cognitive abilities in a very unpredictable manner. I often need to prioritize using what energy I have left for work, rather than for hobbies. So shorter larps are more important to me than ever. Exhaustion did affect my play, but Disgraceful Proposal’s design proved to be rather Long Covid friendly.

    table with tea cups and a flower arrangement hanging from the ceiling
    Photo by Martin Østlie Lindelien.

    A Clockwork Orangerie

    First, the organizers recognized that Covid-19 was a current, ongoing threat:

    Covid-19

    There is still a pandemic going on, but at the moment it looks like it is possible to larp in October. But please only come to the larp if you’re healthy, and preferably take a covid test before the event.

    If someone gets sick during the event, we have rooms where you can isolate yourself apart from the rest of the players and rest. (Kimera 2022)

    Second, the three days were very well planned. The numerous workshops took things slow, step by step, and had breaks in between, long enough to rest (I could go lie down regularly in my room) or to get to know the other players off-game. Particular emphasis was put on safety, repeating there would be no nudity, no touching the bikini zone, and that participants should focus on co-creative appreciation, adoration and stepwise intimacy. The collaborative spirit translated beyond the workshops: players helped each other putting on their costumes, calibrating to play each other up, or just lending nail polish remover.

    Photo of woman in white wig and see-through hoop skirt.
    Viktoria, the Daughter of the Comet.

    Third, spatial design was also extremely precise, and well thought-through. All the pre-game activities, workshops, meals and sleep happened in a building that was large and comfortable enough to avoid overcrowding, including a large number of bedrooms with private bathrooms to avoid any dormitory or tent camp feeling.

    Players only discovered the in-game location at runtime, and even more spatial design had gone into it. The Orangerie was a large, multi-level wooden barn, with a main dance floor surrounded by a bed and couches, shelves with rococo kitsch porcelain ready to be worshipped, a portrait of Mozart with a “Rock Me Amadeus” graffiti, etc. This space provided many options for public play, from socializing to performances, happenings, etc.

    A basement room had refreshments, including a dizzying array of meringue flavors (some vegan, and one of them the oh-so-Finnish salmiakki), tea and alcohol-free bubbly, which provided enough calories to keep the energy going. It also had plenty of comfortable couches, pillows, and macramé braided cords hanging from the ceiling. Literally turning these iconic kitsch flower pot holders onto their heads transformed them into ropey curtains/cages suitable for more private dance performances. Upstairs were more pillows in a mezzanine, as well as a “winter garden” that was actually cold, decorated with a magnificent silk paper cherry tree and a rococo sofa. As announced in advance, some doorways and stairs were not wheelchair-accessible, and proved a bit difficult to navigate for my giant wig made of EVA foam. Attention to prop detail extended to the character name tags, made from those lace-like paper things usually placed under small cakes, i.e. perfectly matching the theme.

    A flowering tree
    Photo by Martin Østlie Lindelien.

    Showtime!

    When we all gathered in costume on the dancefloor, my jaw dropped and I had to do a 360° turn to take it all in. Per the announced rules, I knew there would be no in-game photos, but what stood before my eyes was a visual orgasm of kitsch and camp: polyester corsets, outrageous makeup, piercings, proper lace lingerie, funky colored wigs, gigantic fake eyelashes, panniers with skirts, panniers sans skirt, two halves of a birdcage as panniers, sea creatures wearing fishnet stockings, sea creatures wearing actual fishing nets… you name it. I was also impressed by the Peasants characters, who somehow managed to go all-in in the meek and innocent direction, including a shepherd boy with a cotton-wool-like wig.

    Then, what actually happened? The groups mingled, gossiped, betrayed and worshipped each other, there was some gentle flogging, foot rubs, rivalry between teen gangs, some theatrical kidnapping, a lot of yelling… So not a full six hours of frantically running around and laughing hysterically, but quite a lot of it.

    There were also those very classic larp moments where multiple groups tried to take center stage to each have their 15 minutes of fame, or when everyone ran to achieve their secret society objectives or resolve their personal conflicts just before the end of the game. There was also co-creation, such as when a hobby horse race was made more participatory by using non-rider players as obstacles. And there were also slower moments, as well as opportunities for those deeper scenes that were hinted at in the character text. I did feel the eponymous disgrace when one of the main inspiration songs, “Crucified” (Army of Lovers 1991), played just as my character was being betrayed by his prophet, in front of everyone.

    A person in a gown and Enlightenment-era wig with a fan covering their face
    Photo by Martin Østlie Lindelien.

    Rococovid

    Long Covid did affect my experience, but it didn’t spoil it, thanks to a steady supply of medications and energy drinks, my co-players’ support, and Kimera’s inclusive design. The off-game safe room was very quiet, and had comfortable beds, plus chocolate to snack on. I visited it within 20 minutes of game start, because I had to lie down and take an actual nap. In any larp, experiencing fatigue makes it hard to do justice to a character written as being “the life of the party”. Now try making a dramatic entrance when at least 30 of the other players are already busy being very dramatic.

    I quickly realized I was doing a pretty poor job as the leader of my character group. One of the players was friendly, but had chosen a very different direction compared to the other members, both in terms of costume choice and of the amount of hanging out with the group vs. going exploring on their own. The other player, who was playing my sidekick, yes-man, and planned to repeat every witty thing I was going to say, was extremely kind and supportive… but I didn’t provide many punchlines or cool moves to mirror. Both of these players seemed to have enjoyed themselves, but for me it was a missed opportunity. I did not play the character as intensely as it was written, or as I had intended to. In retrospect, based on that latter player’s impressive energy and creativity, I would have done a better job as their sidekick.

    People in fancy clothes whispering
    From the photo shoot for the promotional music video. Photo by Kimera.

    The Comet is Coming!

    The lights dimmed for the final scene, as the comet came down on the Orangerie (the giant chandelier-feather-boa-string-lights contraption attached to the ceiling lit up). The players gathered as practised during the workshops, first dancing separately, then closer, turning into a giant group hug, a progressive vertical cuddle puddle of silk, sweat, glitter, perfume, and those musty smells typical of rented theatrical costumes made with furniture fabric. We gently swayed for four songs, which was really long. It reminded me of calibration workshops where you practise hugging a person until it gets uncomfortable and you use the safeword. Except we were doing it in a human mass made of all the players. I was definitely uncomfortable by song two, especially as this was the first time in years that I was within centimeters of multiple people’s breaths. But it was the final scene of the larp, and I eventually gave in to loudly singing what I could remember of “It’s All Coming Back To Me Now” (Dion 1996) – and I did not catch Covid. The magic of larp, I guess.

    Person in front of the Hall of Mirrors in Versailles with a peacock feather
    From the photo shoot for the promotional music video. Photo by Kimera.

    Pillow Talk

    After this sensory overload, I needed some alone time, fresh air and to remove my makeup. People debriefed gently, and chilled in small groups, as both buildings provided multiple spaces for it.

    While my main regret was my own lack of energy and leadership, the main criticism about the larp that I heard from other players was that they expected more intimate sensuality, and felt burdened by the sheer amount of safety measures. I agree that it felt a bit like every single safety meta-technique in the book was workshopped, from lookdown to taps, to squeezes to two different safewords. These were intended to let people explore in a safe way, but they may have actually discouraged some players, who interpreted the organizers’ intention differently. Or maybe the players just had different expectations – I was OK with the level of sensuality I experienced.

    These minor gripes aside, I think Disgraceful Proposals was a resounding success. Starting from a very niche concept, organizers and players from multiple countries and different larp cultures pushed themselves in the very same creative direction. They were sensual but not sexual, and they took this intense Nordic larp comedy very seriously – but not too seriously. So since you’re asking, yes, I’d gladly get disgraced again.

    Person holding a fan over another person's midsection that says "Disgrace Me Tonight"
    From the photo shoot for the promotional music video. Photo by Kimera.

    Disgraceful Proposals – In the Garden of Venus

    Creative and practical work: Kimera, e.g. Tonja Goldblatt, Vili Nissinen, Kirsi Oesch, Nina Teerilahti

    Character writing: Kimera, Jade Heng, Ernesto Diezhandino

    Info, safety and support: Joonas Iivonen, Arhi Makkonen

    Scenography building helpers: Tia Ihalainen, Milla Heikkinen, Joonas Iivonen

    Meringue madness: Kirsi Oesch

    Cake guillotine: Arhi Makkonen, Mikko Ryytty

    Ludography

    De la Bête. 2017. Czech Republic. Rolling. 

    Libertines. 2015. Denmark. Atropos. 

    St. Croix. 2015. Norway. Anne Marie Stamnestrø & Angelica Voje. 

    Discography

    Army of Lovers. 2018 (1991). “Army of Lovers – Crucified (Official Music Video).“  RHINO. YouTube, March 1.

    Céline Dion. 2012 (1996). “Céline Dion – It’s All Coming Back to Me Now (Official Extended Remastered HD Video).” Céline Dion. YouTube, Aug. 24.

    Falco. 2009 (1985). “Falco – Rock Me Amadeus (Official Video).” FALCO. YouTube, October 25.

    Loco Mia. 2022 (1989). “Loco Mía – Loco Mía (Con Santos Blanco) Sabados Gigantes – 1992.” Solrac Etnevic. YouTube, Sept. 2022. 

    Mylène Farmer. 2015 (1988). “Mylène Farmer – Pourvu Qu’Elles Soient Douces.”
    Mylène Farmer. YouTube, Nov. 2.

    Madonna. 2010 (1990). “Madonna – Vogue (Live at the MTV Awards 1990) [Official Video].”
    Madonna. YouTube, Nov. 18.

    Rondò Veneziano. 2023 (1983). “Rondò Veneziano – Rondò Veneziano – La Serenissima (1983).” Rondò Veneziano Italia (Fan club). YouTube, 2023.

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

    B., Thomas. 2024. “Kickass Rococovid Kitsch: A Review of Disgraceful Proposals.” 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: From the photo shoot for the promotional music video. Photo by Kimera.

  • A Trip Beyond the House of Craving

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    A Trip Beyond the House of Craving

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    (Originally written July 10, 2019).

    PLUS ONE, n. (+) The drug is quite certainly active. The chronology can be determined with some accuracy, but the nature of the drug’s effects are not yet apparent.((Shulgin and Shulgin 1990.))

    For some larps it is easy to write about the experience in a way that will make sense to those who were not there. I can describe the events of the larp as a narrative, perhaps focussing on some of the significant set piece moments of the experience, and this will enable others to get a sense of what happened because of a shared context and shared experiences. Even for non-larpers we can explain some of the things that happened in a way that will persuade them to say, ‘That sounds amazing!’ Of course the experience is subjective. Of the various people I know who have played the various runs of Odysseus (2019) over the last week, for example, despite playing ostensibly the same larp, with some overlap, their narratives will be similar, but their reactions to it will be personal. Just as it is with people who have played College of Wizardry, or Inside Hamlet, or any larp that has been re-run. For my UK friends who are unfamiliar with this concept, it is when you run the same larp – usually with the same characters (but different players) – multiple times. It is not a campaign, but literally the same game being repeated. You can play the same larp multiple times, but with very different outcomes.

    But I played House of Craving and it was different, and yet I am struggling to articulate how it was different and why. And so this is neither a review, nor a critical summary, but rather a gonzoid attempt to make sense of what the fuck just happened. 

    A recently widowed man discovers that his wife owned the house where she grew up and that she has left it to him in her will. He decides to spend the summer there – with his extended family and friends – in order to try to come to terms with her death. The characters are all broken in different ways: Some of them aren’t terribly pleasant, others are self-absorbed, others still are so damaged that they would be better suited to be anywhere but in close proximity to these others. Of course this terrible potential for conflict is what powers the engine of larp. But the house is beautiful, the cooking staff are geniuses, and there is a pool, and plenty of champagne, so what could possibly go wrong?

    Over time it becomes apparent that these twelve people are not alone. The ghosts of the house object to this family’s presence and, as the day progresses they will influence, manipulate, and then finally control the living family to play out a cycle of tragedy and abuse. Eventually the family will be absorbed by the house, and as the old ghosts move on – into the darkness – they replace their ghosts to become the ghosts for the next family to arrive. And then the cycle will repeat itself. Again and again.

    PLUS TWO, n. (++) Both the chronology and the nature of the action of a drug are unmistakably apparent. But you still have some choice as to whether you will accept the adventure, or rather just continue with your ordinary day’s plans (if you are an experienced researcher, that is). The effects can be allowed a predominant role, or they may be repressible and made secondary to other chosen activities.

    The stories of this larp – and those who played it – are interlinked and overlapping. A story written in an earlier run may persist as an artifact to be discovered by those who came after. A drawing or a photograph of Jacob may affect a different Jacob when he comes across it in a future run. A short story written by Monica in run 3 could be read aloud by Monica in run 5, but she has no memory of having written it.((Metalepsis, again.)) There are other echoes too, like a twisted game of Chinese Whispers, some stories are retold as remembered or as experienced by the players. Those of us playing run 5 do not know what happened in run 1, but some of that narrative surely became plot to drive our own story. Who are the authors of our fates? Those who played as ghosts in run 1? The others? Ourselves? I cannot say. 

    This larp is a horror story, it unravels as a descent into madness and death. From the player’s perspective, we think we will have an (un)easy revenge on the next set of family players; but we do not, because the true horror, and the fear is yet to come, as we discover what happens to our ghosts and the approaching darkness that will devour them. And worse still the human’s play back at you. After all this is larp not some Punchdrunk loop. Their agency is real.

    House of Craving is an immensely physical larp. You play it with your whole body in a way that I find terrifying; there is little abstraction, and more touch in this larp than I have experienced before; largely because of the proximity and influence of the ghosts. But as ever you retain autonomy, the option to tap out or to invite escalation exists.((I tap out once during the larp. I have one quiet regret for not tapping out a second time. I attempted to escalate but the mechanic – lightly scratching a co-player – does not work for those who bite their fingernails!)) Despite the ability of ghosts to eventually control humans, as players we remain responsible and accountable for ourselves and our own experience. We are instructed to steer for our own play, rather than to focus on the experiences of others. It is a bold undertaking, and a risky one if the players are not all on the same page. But for our run, we are all on the same page! We had an evening together before the larp: our players met for dinner in Odense and then had some self-guided workshops (with wine) at the venue. Here is the point I knew it would work. So much of what we do as larpers is subliminal. If you know your fellow players already it helps, but sometimes a group or an individual just does not gel. Our core-group of four players whose plots and backstory were intertwined clicked. Understanding that this group were all looking for similarly intense experiences really helped; we know even before the larp starts that we’ll be able to cooperatively play ourselves deep into the madness that is to follow. The word often used is chemistry, but perhaps it is more reasonably alchemy.((Or possibly pharmacology.))

    The first morning consists of a series of workshops; these are designed to teach you how to play the larp. This is not simply an explanation of meta-techniques and an info dump of rules, but rather a set of subroutines that reprogramme the players to conform to the new social norms of the story world. We, the new players, are slightly nervous and slightly hungover, watching the players who had been the family the previous day. It is interesting. They smile, they hold eye contact for longer, they are unafraid, have no concept of personal space, and carry with them a nervous joy that permeates the black and white checked ballroom, empty but for a candelabra and a few chairs. I want to opt out of at least one of the proffered workshops, but force myself to take part; I am so far beyond my comfort zone that it becomes Brechtian. The sessions are physical; I am strong, used to fighting back; part of the exercise here is to give up control. The ghosts always win. Pushed to the floor with ghosts whispering in my ear I take a deep breath and relax, becoming one with the checked tiles beneath my cheek and I am not afraid anymore.

    The larp starts with a nap. The characters have fallen asleep before lunch and all awake in different parts of the house. They amuse themselves for an hour before lunch – Jacob and Wilhelm do “masculine things” in the garden, the homoeroticism of wrapping someone’s hands before putting on boxing gloves is lost in front of an audience sipping champagne – and then at lunchtime, things start to get weird. At six thirty the humans are utterly under the control of the ghosts, and by midnight they are destroyed and devoured by the house. The whole experience is ten to twelve hours of intense play but the following day the cycle repeats except the human players of the previous day are now their own ghosts and a new set of humans come in – as the same characters – to repeat the day. All except for the first run, where the ghosts are NPCs, and the last run, where the family players do not get to play ghosts. I played the penultimate run. 

    PLUS THREE, n. (+++) Not only are the chronology and the nature of a drug’s action quite clear, but ignoring its action is no longer an option. The subject is totally engaged in the experience, for better or worse.

    But when it comes down to it, I can’t begin to describe what happened. Individual events and scenes taken out of context may sound challenging, confusing, or simply make no sense, and the contexts are subjective. Instead I am going to have to resort to the obvious analogy. Larp is sometimes thought of as a consensual hallucination, and this one was more hallucinogenic than most. 

    The Shulgin scale – quoted throughout this piece – looks at the experience of a chemical over time, and describes the physical and mental effects of the experience on a positive scale of plus one to four (Shulgin and Shulgin 1990). As I am typing this, another player on a backchannel chat is describing the mental state of the players, four days after the larp, as like a comedown after 48 hours of MDMA. Their description is valid. Except there is no crushing bleakness for me. I am still on a high. I am mainly frightened that it will wear off and what it will feel like when it does. Other players have described this process already. Perhaps this is a part of the horror of this game, having to look in the mirror and realise that the larp is over and the magic circle is no more?

    House of Craving was a solid plus three for me. It is important to note that this is not a rating scale. A high number is not objectively the goal of larp, or the best thing. One cannot argue that any larp that fails to achieve it is a failure – because most larps don’t, indeed hardly any larps do, nor do they intend to. House of Craving was a horror larp, but there were no moments of blind terror or jump scares and it did not feel dangerous. The fear was the slow realisation of creeping entropy juxtaposed with beauty, and this juxtaposition made the fear feel much worse. My run produced two of the most beautiful larp moments of the 34 years I have been larping, including one which was so eye-wateringly incredible that it makes me gasp to think about it. I am not going to tell you what they were. It would be like describing the effects of 2,5-Dimethoxy-4-chloroamphetamine((DOC, a hallucinogenic amphetamine first synthesised in Canada in 1972 (Shulgin and Shulgin 1990).)) to someone who had not taken it. I can’t offer you details, only impressions.

    I played towards not some sort of death, but towards oblivion. My character’s ending was a ceding of control to the unknown by a character who was willfully in control of himself and his environment up to that point. He did not allow himself to feel physical fear or pain, he kept it inside, until – at the end – only fear remained. The only thing that scared him was the loss of his wife. His litany “without you, I am nothing” became the poem that ended the larp, as he slipped away from her and the lights went out. (Here I literally move away from my fellow players and end the larp alone in the darkness, I feel their hands reach out to find me, but I am gone.) “Without you I am nothing. Without you I am nothing. I am nothing. Nothing. (nothing).”

    The patterns and the layers of the piece is what made it work; the ultimate form of intertextuality, stories tied into intricate and beautiful knots, held tight against willing skin. As a piece of ontological design which constructs a narrative and performative space – a larp if you like – House of Craving is a masterpiece of the form. It is a dramatically and personally profound piece of capital A-Art. Given the right players, a little bit of larp magic, and a prevailing wind, it can be life changing. It is certainly life affirming, sexy as hell, and really rather scary. 

    PLUS FOUR, n. (++++) A rare and precious transcendental state, which has been called a “peak experience,” a “religious experience,” “divine transformation,” a “state of Samadhi” and many other names in other cultures. It is not connected to the +1, +2, and +3 of the measuring of a drug’s intensity. It is a state of bliss, a participation mystique, a connectedness with both the interior and exterior universes, which has come about after the ingestion of a psychedelic drug, but which is not necessarily repeatable with a subsequent ingestion of that same drug.

    There is a point on the Shulgin Scale above plus three. Plus four, however, is a state of being which is profound by definition and by effect, but it can also be terrifying and dangerous. The experience of playing House of Craving was a powerful one yet it remained safe. But the fall out is even more fascinating. I feel fantastic; as though the loved-up effect of MDMA has persisted long after the chemical has worn off. My body image issues, whilst probably not gone for good, are certainly in abeyance; I went into the larp as someone who would describe himself as “old” “fat” “bald” “ugly” ”haggard”; I have come out of it with a healthy dose of “fuck that.” Do you know that we are all beautiful – all of us – and that is the truth, everything that tells you different is merely advertising? I have no religious conviction that this state of affairs will persist, but the larp has produced a profound effect on how I perceive who I am, and this is plus four, and it is wonderful.

    If a drug (or technique or process) were ever to be discovered which would consistently produce a plus four experience in all human beings, it is conceivable that it would signal the ultimate evolution, and perhaps the end, of the human experiment.

    — Alexander Shulgin and Ann Shulgin, PIHKAL: A Chemical Love Story (pp. 963–965).

    References

    Shulgin, Alexander “Sasha,” and Ann Shulgen. 1990. “#64 DOC.” PIHKAL: A Chemical Love Story. Transform Books. Available at Erowid.org: https://erowid.org/library/books_online/pihkal/pihkal064.shtml

    —. 1990. PIHKAL: A Chemical Love Story. Transform Books. Available at Erowid.org: https://erowid.org/library/books_online/pihkal/pihkal064.shtml

    Cover Photo: Promotional photo from House of Craving. Photo by Bjarke Pedersen.

  • Wielding the Magic of Anticipation

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    Wielding the Magic of Anticipation

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    Maximizing the emotional impact of anticipation for better play.

    “I see you shiver with antici-

    -pation”

    – Rocky Horror Picture Show

    The sweet moment when you close your eyes full of expectation while your lips get closer and closer to another person’s lips for the first time. So close that you can already feel their breath caressing your cheek… when you can sense the warmth of their body close to yours. This seemingly endless moment when your heart starts beating a tiny bit faster and when you do not yet know if your and the other’s lips are really going to touch.

    Isn’t this moment of sweet anticipation often more intense than the kiss itself?

    Or the last moments of a desperate bunch of rebels before the attack of an overpowering group of stormtroopers. Waiting to stand their ground for the last time and defend their base with their lives. The last glimpses they might exchange, someone patting a friend on the shoulder. Fear and hope in conflict with each other. Final encouraging words by a leader.

    Isn’t this moment of gloomy, yet heroic anticipation much more interesting than the following fight? 

    Is it not those moments when events are yet to happen that spark our excitement and that send our emotions on a rollercoaster ride? No matter whether can foresee the outcome or not, these moments of anticipation hold a bewitching power. 

    Skillful authors use these moments to build up suspense in their novels and also to forge a stronger bond between you, the reader, and the novel’s characters. Screenwriters use them to hook you to their shows and movies while displaying their characters’ virtues and flaws. 

    Some of us larp folk instinctively use moments of anticipation to develop intense scenes during larps. However, not all larpers and larp designers are aware of the magic of anticipation, let alone of how to wield this magic. So let us quickly look at one or two things that you can do to start using the magic of anticipation to enhance your own experience as a player.

    First – and this is the most important rule of all – don’t rush to the anticipated event!

    Learn to relish moments of anticipation. Like in the first example with the kiss, you might be eager to take the next step in a chain of events. Maybe you feel like you cannot wait until the anticipated event is going to happen but learn to endure this suspense! Dive into this sweet kind of excitement in order to fully unlock its potential.

    Second, use those moments to delve into your character’s unique personality!

    Use the moment of anticipation to dive even deeper into your characters’ hopes and fears. In these moments the anticipated event is like Schrödinger’s cat. Every outcome is possible which allows you to portray and experience different aspects of your character’s personality. Imagine the worst possible thing to happen and let your character react to it! Or let your character dream of the best possible outcome and share it with somebody to play on hope! Maybe old memories from your background story surface or maybe something that happened earlier during the larp acquires new gravitas.

    Third, let your emotions flow!

    Moments of anticipation are often moments when emotional waves become massive, when feelings can’t be held back anymore. Use your whole body to feel and portray those emotions. This might be a shivering breath before you kiss or shakily grasping your best friend’s hand before you storm out into battle. It might be a long thankful smile at your mentor before you climb the stage to hold a speech.

    Fourth, focus on your co-players too!

    As we all know, larp is a co-creative medium and we all want to have a good experience when playing. So try to find a good balance between exploring your character during moments of anticipation and giving the floor to other players. Those moments of anticipation are a perfect opportunity to learn more about others’ characters and to develop your character’s relationship to them further. You can also use the things you learn from such moments about others’ characters later in the game to create intense personal scenes.  

    Now, let’s briefly take the designer’s perspective.

    If your larp is a complete sandbox, you probably don’t have much influence over moments of anticipation. However, if you have at least some rough cornerstone events planned for your larp, then you should definitely add enough occasions and time for your players to savor the anticipation.

    Of course, sudden surprises and unexpected turns of events have their own magical charm but don’t forget to add opportunities of anticipation. Let your players wait before a big event is finally happening and give them hints about what they can expect to spark the flame of their imagination. You can drop allusions with the help of supporting characters or in-game materials such as a newspaper. Or you can simply use transparent design where your players know off-game where the story arc is going.

    The imagination of your players is a powerful tool! Just think of a horror movie as an example – usually, we are far more frightened when we haven’t seen the monster. When we know that there is something lurking, some eerie imminence, our imagination fills in the gaps and often our imagination does it far more effectively than any creature designer. 

    Give your players time to envision the worst or the best before you actually let it happen. If you want, you can even guide their imagination by using sound effects, music, lighting, and so on. Just read up on how to use those things when designing larps to get some inspiration. A good starting point is the article “The Fundamentals of Sound Design in Larp” by Anni Tolvanen and Irrette Melakoski (2019) published in the book Larp Design.

    No matter if you look at anticipation from a player’s perspective or from a designer’s – relishing moments of anticipation can definitely create intense scenes. Let’s all be more aware of the magic that lies within anticipation and let’s use it more consciously!

    References

    Tolvanen, Anni, and Irrette Melakoski. 2019. “The Fundamentals of Sound Design for Larp.” In Larp Design: Creating Role-play Experiences, edited by Johanna Koljonen, Jaakko Stenros, Anne Serup Grove, Aina D. Skjønsfjell and Elin Nilsen. Copenhagen, Denmark: Landsforeningen Bifrost.

    Cover photo: Illustration by Nina Mutik.

    This article is published in the Knutpunkt 2022 magazine Distance of Touch and is published here with permission. Please cite this text as:

    Fischer, Olivia. 2022. “Wielding the Magic of Anticipation.” In Distance of Touch: The Knutpunkt 2022 Magazine, edited by Juhana Pettersson, 105-107. Knutpunkt 2022 and Pohjoismaisen roolipelaamisen seura.

  • Terror and Warmth

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    Terror and Warmth

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    We step into the ritual chamber wearing our ceremonial robes, the hoods on our heads. We’re at a beautiful estate in the Danish countryside, secluded enough to feel the outside world only as a distant concern. The larp is Baphomet (2015-) and I participated in it in 2019. It details the fall of a vintage era Hermetic cult as they connect with the dark gods Pan and Baphomet.

    As the ritual goes on, we huddle in the middle of the room, backs to each other, facing the walls. A High Templar circles us and intones the ritual while we hum a low, collective sound that feels bigger and deeper than any individual.

    The experience goes beyond the typical boundaries between fiction and reality that superficially define larp. The outwards-facing huddle is a simple formation but it means that my back is physically against other players. I feel the sound vibrate in their bodies. Someone shorter than me is in front and their voice is indistinguishable from mine.

    Our collective hum changes. There are vibrations, emotions, dissonances and shrieks. It feels like an auditory summation of the larp’s emotional state at that point. There are moments of terror and warmth. It’s a profoundly positive experience of togetherness but the larp’s horror themes shine through and fear makes itself manifest.

    The seemingly contradictory experiences of human connection and inner darkness are present at the same time, not as a contradiction but as complementary elements. This is a common theme in a family of larps of which Baphomet is one.

    Others in the same genre are Pan, House of Craving, Inside Hamlet, Libertines, Conscience, and End of the Line. They are defined by an aesthetic of sordid indulgence, dark emotional content, and playground-style design creating opportunities for participants to sin creatively.

    several people in 20's clothing posing outside a manor Baphomet Run 2. Photo by Bjarke Pedersen.

    Communities of Sin

    As is typical of larp, these games create small temporary communities, microcosms in which the participants enable each other to experience the thrills and terrors that draw them in. In my personal experience, the communities of play especially in the smaller larps such as Baphomet and House of Craving (2019) are unusually warm, supportive and positive.

    Indeed, so much so that participants joke about not wanting to go back to the real world and its hierarchies, anxieties and daily oppressions. While the larp’s fictional landscape is full of degradation and injustice, the off-game community is humble, constructive, and ready to listen.

    Of course, no larp experience is homogenous across its player space. There are surely other player experiences as well, especially in the bigger of the larps mentioned. Still, when I’ve left for the airport after the larp, the positivity of the play community has been a topic of conversation with other players in a way that differs from most of my other larp experiences.

    After one of these larps, I lamented with another male player the fact that the easy physical closeness between men would slowly fade in the outside world. It would become more awkward to hug as the repressions of society wore away at us.

    This experience of closeness and community doesn’t happen by accident. Larps all about characters doing terrible things to each other function best when the workshops are geared to build trust and intimacy. When the players feel safe and comfortable they can go to emotional extremes that would otherwise be inaccessible to them.

    Two people on the verge of kissing House of Craving (2019). Photo by Bjarke Pedersen.

    When I think about other types of larps that have featured a similarly close, warm community experience, they’ve tended to be small games which have workshops with similar goals. One such is the Brody Condon larp The Zeigarnik Effect (2015) in Norway. We played characters undergoing gestalt therapy and the workshops were needed to get us accustomed to the game’s unusual mode of communication and interaction.

    Because of the positive nature of the overall emotional experience of these larps I’ve started to wonder whether they’re horror larps at all. The one I worked on, the Vampire: the Masquerade larp End of the Line (2016-), was explicitly conceived as a horror-themed playground designed to enable each participant in a dynamic, personal way. The aesthetic was from horror but the actual experience was made so you’d get to do fun things you can’t do otherwise.

    Designed for Transgression

    There are a few design choices that make this sort of larp possible. They tend to be typical of Nordic larp design in general but are often implemented in specific ways to enable the players to transgress in a fun and safe way.

    Workshopping together to build intimacy, trust and a shared sense of the social space is crucial. The players have to feel that the play community of the larp supports them and is open to their ideas. They have to feel free to express themselves and take creative risks. This is achieved with workshop exercises that build trust and intimacy. In some larps, player selection also plays a part.

    Safety or calibration mechanics that allow the player to stop or adjust play on the fly also play an important part. The presence of such mechanics makes it possible for participants to feel like they can trust their fellow players and the play situation.

    These mechanics can be used for many different reasons, not all of them dramatic. When they work well, they allow the player to navigate around issues that make transgressive content difficult for them to access, whatever those issues might be.

    Two people behind a third person with their hands on that person's shoulders House of Craving (2019). Photo by Bjarke Pedersen.

    While not present in all the larps mentioned in this article, transparency is great for enabling the players. In Inside Hamlet, Pan, Baphomet, and House of Craving, every player can read all characters if they so choose in the preparation for the larp. For some players this makes it easier for them to instigate transgressive game content with other players. They know from their reading that the other player’s character is just as fucked up as their own.

    All together, these design choices work best when they give the player the tools to take responsibility for their own larp experience. A player who feels enabled and in control can more easily engage in play where the character is in the opposite situation.

    Cruelty is Fun

    There’s an overlap in themes, techniques and player base between these larps and BDSM culture. They allow us to enjoy feelings, sensations and emotions that are taboo in normal conversation and polite society. Things that are ordinarily considered wrong, debased, or evil become playful, fulfilling, and fun when enacted within a consensual, supportive context.

    BDSM often features role-play and I don’t think that’s categorically different from larp with erotic or sexual themes. Rather, there’s a sliding scale of different designed experiences from an abstracted larp experience to a fuck session with a light sheen of fiction.

    One example of a thing that’s bad in real life but often fun in play is cruelty. In the right context and with the right people, cruelty can be tremendously sexy.

    Everyday life has limited opportunities to enjoy cruelty in an ethical way because it tends to require a victim. In larp and BDSM the victims are there consensually and they can enjoy the thrill of being subjected to cruelty, safe in the knowledge that they control their own play and can exit it as needed. In this way, being the victim of cruelty can become a fulfilling, profound experience. For a player of a masochistic or submissive bent, all the more so.

    The design of these larps supports the playing of cruelty in much the same way the culture around BDSM scenes supports it. Safety mechanisms and workshopping provide a framework in which taboo impulses can be explored. Character writing and other design elements provides alibi for being cruel. However, personal experience suggests that the most dynamic scenes of cruelty in a larp are expressions of player creativity and energy enabled by the design but not necessarily originating in it.

    Two people in corsets, lounging on a couch
    Members of the Voltemand noble family at Inside Hamlet. Photo by Marie Herløvsen.

    In Baphomet, there was a scene where another character threw me to the ground and kicked me in the balls. Following the rules of the game, the hits and kicks connected only lightly and I play acted to make them seem real. I fell to the ground, groaned, moaned, whimpered. I remember the scene very well because there was a release of energy, a spontaneous burst of power animating those present. Even for someone like me, who’s not masochistic by nature, it was a fun larp scene to be in because of the intensity and release of emotion.

    The over the top spectacle and transgressiveness of cruelty makes it interesting and dynamic even when it doesn’t satisfy a personal kink.

    Sex

    Did I ever tell you about that time I was fucking my dead wife’s sister while moaning my wife’s name in her ear? It was funny because my son was there too. I remember him drawling: “Go Dad!”

    There was also a ghost who was touching his crotch through his pants but that was normal in House of Craving.

    Sex is a huge component of these larps. Sometimes there’s so much fucking that players complain of it becoming boring. It’s larp sex of course but the playstyle is physical. You might not actually engage in genital penetration but you’ll probably end up kissing people, groping them, getting groped, caressing, touching.

    It’s amazing how quickly this sort of sexual interaction becomes normalized. Once everyone has collectively adjusted their perception of what’s normal you find yourself casually grinding with people as easily as you ordinarily shake hands. The way we’re socialized, sexual and flirtatious contact always matters. It always means something. Except after a morning’s larp workshop, it suddenly doesn’t.

    Although this has the effect of banalizing sexual interactions, it also makes it possible to reach new types of sexually inflected play that would otherwise be out of reach. It also feels liberating: It’s fun to be part of a community that has temporarily decided to let go of standards of sexual behavior.

    A person in a white dress with stockings and ballerina slippers holding a cigarette
    A courtier at Inside Hamlet. Photo by Marie Herløvsen.

    Of course, the role of sex in your experience depends on the specific larp and how you choose to play it. In Inside Hamlet (2015-), about the last days of the degenerate court of King Claudius, I played a judgmental priest. I participated in many sex scenes but my role was to denounce the sinners for their moral turpitude. Other times, like in House of Craving, sex becomes such a basic element of the larp’s landscape that you won’t even remember all the fucks you participated in.

    House of Craving is about a family who gets together to remember the dead mother and wife. The malevolent house starts to affect them, ghosts guide them, and finally they fall into an everlasting state of mutually destructive degeneration. As the characters’ sense of reality collapses, so does the need for the larp’s fiction to be coherent. The higher truths of the emotional journey take precedence.

    I have never participated in so many debased larp scenes as I did in that game but it felt quite straightforward when it was happening. The workshops had glued us into a cohesive social unit and we could brutalize each other with casual ease. The play was intense, so much that I took frequent breaks in the off-game area to gather my wits. Often someone else was there too and we enthused together about how great the experience was.

    The approach to sex in the design of these larps is coy despite the graphic nature of the stories they generate. It’s all about the tease, not the actual act of fucking for real. You don’t have sex, you dryhump. From the purpose of larp dynamics this works much better as sexual flirtation drives action but sexual fulfillment doesn’t. The character may be sexually satisfied but the player isn’t and that keeps the player in motion.

    People in a manor house eating food off of a person laying on the table House of Craving (2019). Photo by Bjarke Pedersen.

    Prey

    Baphomet and Pan (2013, 2014, 2020) feature a signature piece of larp design: the necklace mechanic. The way it works is that a player who wears either the Pan or Baphomet necklace is that god. Other characters will worship their god, falling on their knees in manic adoration. They do everything the god says.

    You can wear a necklace for a maximum of half an hour after which you should pass it onto another player. This way, the necklaces travel the larp, organically causing chaos.

    Wearing the necklace is a power trip. It’s fun to be worshiped. There’s more to the experience, however. As a larper, you’re very well aware that the god has to provide content for their followers. It’s fun to tell people what to do but it uses up material pretty fast. There was a moment when I was standing in the middle of a room with perhaps ten people kneeling all around me, waiting expectantly. I drew a complete blank. Couldn’t think of a single thing for them to do.

    Suddenly I heard one of the players vocalizing like you do in that situation, just speaking whatever seems kind of appropriate. They said: “We want to eat you.”

    Blessed inspiration! Feeling great relief, I proclaimed: “Eat my flesh!”

    The others thronged at my feet and started biting my flesh, especially my arms since they were exposed. Not very hard, but hard enough to leave a mark. Still, it was a small price to pay for being spared the terror of failing to provide playable larp material for the expectant crowd.

    Three people in white with pink necklaces lounging on a chair House of Craving (2019). Photo by Bjarke Pedersen.

    Most players pass on the necklace much faster than the 30 minute limit. I don’t think I ever had it for longer than fifteen minutes. That’s just enough time to do one scene.

    The necklace is a wonderful symbol for how these larps work because it shows the fun of both sides of the power equation: the experience of wielding power and of being subjected to power. When players play these scenes, they support each other’s experiences. Neither the god nor the worshippers can experience that role without the other.

    There’s a distinct difference in the power equation in terms of how many people there are in a scene. When I have the necklace and I’m surrounded by ten other people, ostensibly I have the power. However, their expectations as players place great demands on me, effectively constraining how much I can use my game-granted authority. In contrast, when the scene is small, it’s much easier to start choreographing other people. In a smaller scene, I can safely assume that there’s enough to do for the other players, giving me freedom to think about what’s fun for me. Perhaps because of this, my best necklace scenes were small.

    When we made End of the Line, we focused on the basic vampire theme of predator and prey. In the design, we strove to make as many of the characters as possible into both. Depending on the circumstances you could hunt other characters and be hunted in turn.

    A person feeding of another's neck in a room covered in graffiti End of the Line (Finland, 2016). Photo by Tuomas Puikkonen.

    The thrill of being hunted is an essential part of the experience, indeed possibly even more integral as that of being the hunter. You can zoom out from this assertion to a wider characteristic of larp design: Often in larp, villains, enemies, and oppressors are used as supporting characters to generate play. The player characters are the victimized whose experience is subject to a lot of design thought. Against this background, the design in End of the Line was an attempt to systematize this dynamic while also giving the hunter an autonomous play experience that didn’t feel like playing a supporting character.

    After the larp, one player compared the design to primal play found in BDSM culture, where predator and prey-dynamics similarly provide a foundation for the fun.

    Pure Experience

    In many of these larps, especially in Baphomet and House of Craving, the design foregrounds immediate emotional experience and interaction to an extreme degree. As Baphomet comes to a close, the lights are dimmed. This makes it harder to see who has the necklace and who doesn’t. The social dynamics of the game have been running for two days and the participants have fused into a collective madness where elements like character or story become increasingly meaningless compared to the immediacy of the interactive moment.

    In these last moments, we don’t need the game design crutches of the necklace or the fictional frame. We are free floating active agents with full agency to let the impulses created by the larp’s social dynamics dribble out. We don’t play as individuals but as a collective.

    A person holding another person down while another watches on, with a fourth person staring at the camera House of Craving (2019). Photo by Bjarke Pedersen.

    As the larp ends, we gather in the ritual room. The atmosphere is hysterical, people falling to pieces all over the place. Yet as a player it doesn’t feel dangerous at all. Quite the opposite: It feels like a place where you can safely allow the expressions of the experience to flow through you.

    Huddling together, making the ritual hum, feeling it in our bodies, feeling our breath, voice, collective spirit start to tear as the gods Baphomet and Pan manifest. As players we know how this moment goes. We know the meaning of these choices on a game design level. We are mentally prepared to deal with the chaos even as it pulls at us from every direction.

    The larp has two endings, the Pan ending and the Baphomet ending. As a player you can choose which god to follow depending on the themes of your game experience. I followed Pan in a horde of people running to the mansion’s spa area, tearing our clothes off as we went, plunging into the pool.

    We’d had instructions that we should submerge ourselves in silence, without speaking or making a sound, and as we rose from the water we would be out of the game.

    This didn’t happen. Instead as all the followers of Pan were standing in the water we started screaming. I have no idea who started it but suddenly the sound was swelling from inside us in an impersonal collective furor, a meaningless, inhuman wall of noise echoing from the walls of the pool chamber. As we became exhausted by the sound we went underwater and out of the fiction.

    A person in jewels staring at a skull Inside Hamlet. Photo by Marie Herløvsen.

    War Stories

    The larp Inside Hamlet had a rule that after the game you were allowed to talk about your own experience but you shouldn’t talk about what other people were doing. It was okay to say: “I crawled and licked another player’s boots,” but not: “Gustav crawled and licked Annie’s boots.”

    The purpose of this rule is to enable people to play freely with kinky, dark, and extreme subjects without getting outed with non-players who might not understand the context. It’s a community safety mechanism making it easier for players to relax.

    This rule and other similar ones has left us with the result that these larps are often talked about in an euphemistic manner, eliding many of the more outré things that happen in them. Players talk about them face-to-face or in small, closed online groups.

    When it’s only one larp, it doesn’t matter too much, but it’s become a hallmark of the genre. From the outside they’re decidedly opaque, which is especially obvious if you’ve gone to them and witnessed the discrepancy between the reality and the discourse. This is why I chose to write this essay: I wanted to make an attempt at mapping the emotional landscape of these experiences in an open manner without undue coyness.

    Some of the larps mentioned in this essay, especially the bigger ones, feature complex, nuanced narrative elements. Conscience (2018-) modeled its storyworld on that of the TV series Westworld, and our End of the Line used a well-known role-playing game as its basis. Inside Hamlet is based on a famous play.

    A person looking at poetry near the corpse of a person with flowers on them
    Ophelia’s Funeral at Inside Hamlet. Photo by Bret Lehne.

    You can play each of those larps without engaging with the kind of sordid activities celebrated in this essay. Because of the breadth of their design, they can support many different kinds of playstyles.

    This is why I think that while the tendencies of this genre are present in each of those games, they reach their fulfillment in Baphomet and House of Craving. In a sense, these two are not larps of the mind at all. They function on a more primitive, submerged emotional level where the nuances of the fiction don’t matter nearly as much as the emotional landscape of a beautiful larp scene.

    Those moments of emotion are why I’ve played so many of these larps. Those and the warmth of their temporary, fleeting communities.

    Cover photo: A Stormguard and a Companion at Inside Hamlet. Photo by Bret Lehne.

    This article will be published in the upcoming companion book Book of Magic and is published here with permission. Please cite this text as:

    Pettersson, Juhana. “Terror and Warmth.” In Book of Magic, edited by Kari Kvittingen Djukastein, Marcus Irgens, Nadja Lipsyc, and Lars Kristian Løveng Sunde. Oslo, Norway: Knutepunkt, 2021.