Tag: Featured
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Joy is an Act of Rebellion
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This piece was originally published in the Italian Larp Festival magazine (ILF Mag) 2025, and is republished here with thanks. In a capitalistic world that thrives on conformity, joy becomes one of the most radical acts we can choose. More than just an emotion, joy is an expression of vitality and hope. Different from the…
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Why testing and exploration of different ideas matters
in
On designing better larps through iterative playtesting “This mechanic is so bad, why didn’t they test this?” a co-player once said to us at a larp after-party. We had all experienced the larp together, and it was true — there was a design problem. But instead of staying in the rant, we wondered, since one…
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Larp Critique: Why We Need It and How To Write One
At the moment, there isn’t much in terms of culture of larp critique. There is no structured reflection on how to write a critique that is analytical, constructive and well documented. There are some very good examples, but nothing systematic or with a recurring format. However, there are a lot of discussions, because organizers and…
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The Prosocial Act of Larp Crime, and Some Thoughts on Odysseus
Author’s Note: The essay below is a design thinkpiece that contains many evidence-free assertions about player behavior. This anecdotal information has been gathered from a lifetime of gamemastering and larp organizing. Your own experience and data may vary, and I welcome rebuttals with those differences in hand. Larp is a medium of relation. We invent…
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Performance and Audience in Larp
“When we larp, some of the time we are in a performing role, and some of the time in an audience role. And that is ok! It’s the same in real life, after all. We shouldn’t see this as larp falling short of an aesthetic ideal in which such concepts don’t apply. Larp doesn’t have…
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Emotionally Pacing for Larps – How To Get the Best Rollercoaster Ride
“Pace yourself and pace your design. Intense emotional experiences become more available to you and more sustainable if you have variety to the intensity of your play, both as a designer and as an individual player.”
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Games Never Played: or Composting ‘The Antarcticans’
“If larp is a co-creative practice, one that cannot exist without its players, what do we call larps that were never played? And what do we do with them? Can we still give them a life outside of ourselves, and enjoy their unpredictability?”
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Christianity is an Immersion Closet
“Never, before the recent re-run of the larp Snapphaneland, had I had religious play as deeply immersive and moving.”
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River Rafting Design
in
River Rafting design can help create a more engaging and dynamic player experience from the very beginning of a larp, with a higher chance of many moments of emotional impact, instead of very few towards the end.
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Larp in Greece, Romania, and Switzerland
A summary of the history of larping and the current larp scene in three European countries, as learned from local larpers, taken from the author’s collection of articles on larping around the world.