Nordic larp is taking France by slow-motion storm. After experiencing the awesomeness, people are setting up re-runs of classics such as Mad about the Boy and Just a Little Lovin’. The next logical step was to make our own stuff, and NEXUS-6 was one of the first humble attempts.
The Inspiration
Ever since I played Monitor Celestra I have been convinced that Blade Runner’s ‘replicants’ are dramatic gold (for those who didn’t get the reference, Nexus-6 are the newest model of replicants in Blade Runner). I’m also fascinated by totalitarian regimes and the insane things they make people do. Then, for some reason, I thought it would be nice to give airsoft a try.
The result was a retro-future “Battlestar Galactica meets the battle of Stalingrad”, where soldiers fighting a losing war for a North Korea-like state gradually realize that some of them might be replicants planted by the enemy.
The Mechanics
Most techniques I stole from other larps (who probably stole them from other productions themselves): shadows from Monitor Celestra, letters from Last Will, colored lanyards from Life is Cheap, monologues from Just a Little Lovin’ and many more, including of course safe-words from just about all Nordic larps. Most of these techniques are not particularly novel but had barely been used in France before, making the game a bit of an experiment.
The Experience
I wanted a hardcore game, because that’s one of the things I love playing myself. The players got very little sleep, little food, some action and a lot of psychological pressure. They could tune the pressure level to their taste using the safe-words, lanyards and an off-game area.
The location was also pretty uncomfortable and haunting: An abandoned 1920s hospital, used as a prisoner camp during the Second World War and surrounded by woods. The place is often used by local airsofters who were very helpful in showing us how to use our rented airsoft weapons (almost none of the participants had ever handled one before).
To make things extra interesting, there was of course no water or electricity. Much of the experience was recorded by photo- and video cameras (handled by organizers, NPCs or the players themselves, both diegetically and not) – a good thing, especially for the busy organizers who did not get to see much of the actual game!
The Feedback
Players and organizers were very much overwhelmed by the intense experience. The larp was physically and emotionally exhausting, and very different from what most participants were used to (this was precisely why most of them signed up in the first place). The “get out of character” workshops and debriefing were well received, and it took days (in some cases weeks) for participants to stop singing the game’s “national anthem” (adapted from a Soviet war-song – another idea I stole from a previous larp; in this case Robota). Some players recorded feedback videos, to be used for the benefit of future players.
What made this larp a success for me was the balance between hardcore in-game conditions and the safety of the rules and off-game environment.
Participant who played Soldier DA-X-746
The Problems
Everything did not run smoothly, of course. Luckily, the obvious things did not happen: thanks, in part, to a very heavy focus on safety, no one got shot in the eye without their glasses on, and no one broke their neck falling down stairs in the dark. Some airsoft guns did malfunction, though, the local fire brigade had to come back and put out the fire they had started on-site earlier as an exercise, and an unsanctioned airsoft team even turned up in the middle of the night (they were kind enough to leave once they realized what was going on)… Among other miscellaneous mishaps.
The Airsoft
Airsoft and larp have been moving closer together for a while in France, and this larp certainly confirmed the potential. First off, the airsoft guns look pretty realistic. Knowing that it will sting if you get shot and hearing BBs hitting the wall right next to you also contribute to the experience. It might seem obvious to some, but we discovered that, handled carefully, airsoft guns are just the same as latex swords for larping purposes. Better yet: Just like latex swords, they fit in just fine with a narrativist approach, since you can simply decide how bad the injury is when you get shot (from a scratch to instant death). As already mentioned, airsofters helped out during the larp, and they were very much impressed by the passion we larpers put into what we do. I would not be surprised if a few of them turn up for a larp in the future!
The Conclusion
I humbly feel NEXUS-6 has contributed towards making Nordic larp better known in France. The next step is to organize it again in the summer of 2016, this time in English, to allow more French larpers to interact with foreigners. The road ahead is exciting!
How was the larp? It was… It was… It was real.
Participant who played Commissar DC- X-811 Squad singing the anthem. (Photo: Philippe Carrère)
NEXUS-6
Credits: Hoog (design and production), Baptiste Cazes (additional design and production), Matthieu Nicolas (production), Aurélien Duchatelle (video documentation), Rémi Dorbais & Philippe Carrère (photo documentation), eXpérience (logistics support), ARCAN (airsoft support)
Date: July 24-26, 2015; July 30 – August 2, 2015 (two runs)
Location: Aincourt, France
Duration: 24 hours + workshops
Participants: 10 players per run (20 in total)
Budget: €1,500 for two runs
Participation Fee: €70
Game Mechanics: Text-message voting to determine replicants, airsoft weapons, shadows, playing to lose, no character death before last act
A couple of months ago, I received my copy of #Feminism: A Nano-Game Anthology. It took me only two days to read all the games, and I was very excited about testing a lot of them.
So, first of all, I needed to figure out how to set up a time and place where we could play. I realised that some of the games are written to be played by only women but others required the presence of men for play to be the most interesting. The second problem was choosing a space. We (as Producciones Gorgona) don’t have a meeting place so, we needed to find one.
After thinking a lot about it, we highlighted the characteristics of the place we need:
Two or more rooms (so we can play at least two games at the same time).
Intimate
Places we could sleep
So, finally, to avoid paying a lot of money, I decided to offer my parents’ house in the countryside. We could sleep there, it was big enough, and it was intimate. In addition, we decided to go for a whole weekend of feminism games, where Saturday and Saturday night would be for women only, and the Sunday the men would be welcome.
And we did so last weekend (May 14-15, 2016). We loved all the games we had time to test. So, I will not focus this review on the anthology as a whole, but on our experiences of running the games we chose.
Reviewing #Feminism: A Nano-Game Anthology
Selfie
Selfie is a game written by Kira Magrana. It’s part of the section called ‘The Digital Age’. We consider it a very good way to create trust and to form a new group (we knew each other but not very well). And it worked quite well!
The game consists of taking some selfies and trying to guess what feelings we wanted to convey. I’m not going to explain it here (you’ll have to get the amazing book for that). But I want to give you some advice if you’re going to run it.
If you decide to use the soundtrack proposed by the author, you can find it already prepared in my Spotify account so you don’t have to make it again.
During the game, we discovered that it was funnier if we not only tried to guess the feeling by naming it, but also tried to build the history behind them by using hashtags.
We played it with 7 players (not the 3 to 5 recommended in the book), and it worked smoothly. So don’t be afraid to increase the number to adapt to the group you have.
After lunch, we divided into two groups to play simultaneously. Three of us (myself included) played My Sister Malala (me included) and the other four went to the other terrace to play Mum, I Made This Sex Tape.
My Sister Malala
My Sister Malala is a game designed by Elsa Helin. It’s a free form for only three players. In this game, you play one of three Pakistani teenagers who can use the Internet in their schools, and the different lives they experience. Each of them has two scenes: a Facebook state and its conversation, and a short live-role playing scene.
We only made two changes to the original design. The first one was starting the Facebook conversation with an actual written status just below the Facebook page we designed in the workshop (we decided not only to describe the photos, but also to draw them). We think that helps to reenact how a real Facebook post is. After that, we continued the conversation orally, as described in the game.
The second change was to the short scenes. According to the designer, all the players have to decide together how the scene will end. In Spanish larp culture, this is a very strange concept. We prefer playing the larps without knowing the ending, going with the flow of events. So we agreed to adapt it. Before the scene began, the other two players (non-protagonists ) talked about how they would play their characters and how they wanted to finish it. The entire scene was therefore a surprise for the main character, in the same way that it would have been for a real teenager. I think this change worked marvelously.
Overall, I think the design is very solid. The way in which it creates a scale of tension and identification with the different girls was amazing. I totally recommend playing it if you can.
Mum, I Made This Sex Tape
The other four girls played Mum, I Made This Sex Tape, designed by Susanne Vejdemo. I can’t review this larp completely, as I didn’t play it. One of the players who did provided this review:
Four of us decided to play this game due to the topic, which is funny and taboo at the same time. The game is designed for 3-5 players with pre-written characters. One of them is a girl who has made a sex tape and is proud of it but she wants to know the opinions of other female members of her family.
It is a good way to know the evolution of feminism from its beginnings, through the role of the grandmother, until today thanks to the role of the girl. All the characters are strong in their convictions about the way women should live and think about sex and porn.
If you want to play this game, here are some tips:
-With 4 players, it is better to include the aunt rather than the sister. It will be very refreshing and good support for the girl.
-Don’t create tense relationships. Mother and aunt should be sisters, not sisters-in-law.
-We played for 20 minutes and it was too short! We could have played for at least 10 more minutes.
-And most importantly: enjoy every moment and have fun.
Janire Roldán
Mentioning the Unmentionables
After two hard games, we decided to play something more light-hearted; our choice was Mentioning the Unmentionables by Kajsa Greger. It was the funniest game I’ve ever played, especially the first two parts.
As with the other games, we wanted to play all together, so we adapted the game for seven players. It wasn’t a problem for the two first games (“Vulvas” and “Dying for a cup of coffee”) but it was for the last one (“Just Put Some Salt on It”). Since you have to replay each scene three times, the game can run very long if you play with more than five people.. As the games can be played separately, I highly recommend to playing the first two with more people if you like, but not the third one.
“Vulvas” is an easy game, but so much fun. We nearly doubled the number of objectives, so we were very happy about it (afterwards, we continued with it all day long when we remembered a new film). For Spanish speakers that want to play this game, we translated the word “vulva” for “vagina” as the meaning in Spanish is funnier (The Spanish tend to be more open about saying some words, such as “coño” (c***) – and “vulva” is like a high level word for us).
I’m not going to say much about the other two games, as they should be played without knowing the twists they have. However, if you need a game that is funny but at the same time addresses important issues , Mentioning the Unmentionables is your choice. It is time for women’s anatomies, problems and needs to be called by their true names.
Glitzy Nails
Later, we came together again and decided to play Glitzy Nails, designed by Kat Jones. Glitzy Nails explores the relations between women of different social classes, and how their problems are not only different but also they separated them in the fight for women’s rights.
Drawing made by Sky as we were playing Glitzy Nails.
The larp is for 2 or 4 players, but we decided to play with 6 (3 clients and 3 workers). Moreover, as we were 7, two of them played as one (one played the immigrant and the other the executive). Also, it is not a problem to increase the number of players in pairs (2, 4, 6, 8…), I highly recommend not playing it in pairs; it is more interesting if you can play both roles.
We decided to make other changes to the settings. According to the design, you must play it at a table, as manicures are done in most Western countries. But, based on our experiences visiting countries in Southeast Asia such as Vietnam and Cambodia, we put out three armchairs for the clients and we did the manicures on our knees. It increases the feeling of humiliation and the differences between the roles. It worked very well (even all of us had pain in our legs the day after).
For me, this game was one of the better designed in the book. It was well thought-out, well written, and it was even better when we played it. We could totally understand how women lose everything when they leave their native countries to find a new life.
Flesh
Writing about Flesh is, maybe, the hardest thing I’ve ever done. Flesh is designed by Frederik Berg, Rebecka Eriksson and Tobias Wrigstad, and it turned out to be the strongest experience of the weekend – even a life-changing one for most of us. Trying to write a review without telling personal histories thus becomes difficult.
First of all, Flesh it’s not a larp. It’s more like therapy. And it’s only for women (trans or cis), at least the way we played it. It requires a private space and a certain level of trust between the players. We weren’t exactly sure about how to play it (if we had to do it all together, the timing of each action…).
This is why we adapted the game in a way we think it could work. Maybe, when you read it, you will realise we were totally wrong about it. Yes, we admit that.
We played it in turns. Each of us chose a song that really meant something to them so they could – literally – bare their bodies and souls. Once we did that, we wrote on our bodies the problems we have with them, and our strengths. We objectified ourselves to the point of being nothing but a body. After that, the other players erase our writing for us while explaining why it is not important, letting us be only flesh.
It was wonderful, and terrifying. We discovered things about ourselves that we had never realised before. We opened our souls, and let others in. We became broken, but managed to rebuild ourselves in a newer, stronger way.
6066
Writing about 6066 after Flesh is hard, because they are two totally opposite experiences. 6066 is a comedy larp written by Elin Nilsen. We played it on Sunday morning, once some guys and other girls had shown up. Even if it’s supposed to be from 3 to 6 players, there were 11 of us. I think it is a larp that can be scaled up, but I don’t recommend more than 8 (there were too many people for some of the actions).
I have to admit that it was one of the most appealing larps for me. As a PhD in archaeology, I’m personally interested in how you can know a society by the things they left behind. In that way, using a soap opera was a really amazing way to highlight the gender role problems we are leaving behind.
On the other hand, it was hilarious to play. We were inspired by the South American soap operas (the most common in Spain) and we translated the title as: “Amor, Lujuria y Desconfianza”. One of our friends composed the entire song for the credits, and we were singing it for days.
I have to confess that we played it for nearly two hours, but it was so much fun. The mechanic of changing between the soap opera and the students seeing it, and being able to stop, pause and rewind was very well designed. Totally recommended.
Conclusion
We found all the games of #feminism that we played very interesting. It was a pity we didn’t have more time on Sunday to play more of them (we wanted to test Catcalling and A Friend in Need with the guys). So we decided two important things: first of all, we’ll have to play them another day; second , the girls will meet once a year, alone, to enjoying this amazing experience. We hope to design our own games next time.
It was an incredible experience for us (the girls who spent the whole weekend). After that, we have become like sisters; we have shared too much to not having real bonds – something special. And that’s something that money cannot buy.
The Southern Way larp manifesto was originally presented by Chaos League on their website. We have re-printed it with their permission without editing.
In recent years Larp has gained strength and popularity in Italy, and has taken new and more conscious forms. This Manifesto suggests a path for this process, and continues by defining Larp as a strong, actively engaged way of telling stories. Powerful stories that leave their mark. Stories that are hatchets waiting to be dug up.
The Nordic style was fundamentally important in the development of the Larp. We have established parallel paths, yet our origins, both geographic and cultural, distinguish us. A Dionysian spirit has always animated us. Our travelling companions are: madness, fire, and passion; the corporeal, the non-functional and non-regulated, the invasiveness, the politically incorrect. We have no superiority to show off, that is simply the way we are. And thus we want to encounter the world.
This manifesto concerns Larp and how to play, it intercepts trends and evolutions. It is the result of many years of work and creativity: it is our proposal to the Larp scene. Rather than a closed story, a party or an ideology, it is a platform, a developing consciousness. It is freely derived from the New Italian Epic Manifesto because we identify ourselves in some of its key orientations and believe that Larps are a form of art in all effects. It’s not about theory, it’s about praxis, program, and vision. Anyone who shares its principles, anyone who wishes to organise Larps according to this Manifesto is welcome, we will be fellow travellers. It is time to write new shared, conscious and profound narratives.
Southern Way
1) Play Unsafely
Reality is potentially dangerous, that’s why we spend our lives developing routines and building fortresses, habits, univocal mindsets. Larps can test these self-imposed boundaries, can carry out an attack on our comfort zones. They represent acts of negotiation because they address and question our shortcomings; they besiege our strongholds. We don’t play to seek confirmations but to come out in the open. Experience the abyss, the diversity. Stand on the edge. Be what we are (not).
2) In Playing We Trust
We firmly believe that there should be an unbiased and mutual trust between organisers and players. We ask players to rely completely on the organisers’ care without prejudice or diffidence, even when their actions require secrecy or mystery. We don’t look for contracts to sign but for ever evolving relationships. There’s only one shared interest: the success of the game, nothing else.
3) No Customers Allowed
Larp is not cinema, neither is it theatre. It is not a show you can watch sitting comfortably on your chair. No one will entertain you, there’s no passive audience, only co-authors. Don’t look for the drive outside of you, don’t wait for something to happen, be the very stone which starts the avalanche. The logic “I pay so I demand” has no place here; here we’re all equal partners, no one’s a client. The more you give to the game, the more the game will give back to you. Larp isn’t and mustn’t be a gala dinner.
3) Don’t Keep Cool and Dry
We want to create ‘unidentified playing objects’, put the accent on the hybridisation and experimentation of genres and narrative techniques. Larp is an expanding galaxy. Not only do we believe that Larp can tackle any subject, but we also believe it can do so with the most diverse means. We want to hybridise with literature, music, theatre, visual arts and the new media. We want to harness the allegorical power of narratives, without obligations and without honouring any orthodoxy.
5) Just Play
Playing doesn’t mean winning, playing doesn’t mean losing. Playing means playing. As children we know well the implication of this word but in a world where everything revolves around productivity it is difficult to keep the memory alive. We have nothing to produce, nothing to prove, no one to please or to account for. We only want to play.
6) Playing as Art
Larp is a form of art. It has to do with existence and is ontologically connected with the human race. Larp is the Apollonian and Dionysian, is a mask and vertigo, heterotopia, situated utopia. It’s here and now, an unmediated elsewhere. Larping puts everyone in front of their emotions, in front of the act of creation, in front of the experience of the self and of the Other. We believe in Larp as a vanguard, as an antagonist form of experiences, as a spontaneous and collective artistic expression. This doesn’t mean that all Larps are art.
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As Organiser I commit myself to:
A -Respecting the ethics of narration
Telling stories is a powerful act which requires great responsibility. We know the value of stories and the necessary effort to live them. We know many have come before us and others will follow, we consciously want to contribute to the undertaking. We are ethically committed not to abuse the trust players put in us and not to use narration dishonestly.
B -Preserving the political awareness of playing
It is the duty of those who organise the game to be conscious of the power in decision making, and to interact with people profoundly. To be aware that choosing to play in our society has a precise political value. Playing can be an antagonistic act. It’s about choosing a creative gesture that will impact the things that surround us.
Larp is a voluntary and collective act, alternative to the industry of mass-entertainment. The player is a vibrant and co-acting individual, energy that wants to play a part in the project.
C – Choosing to tell stories with a rich allegorical value
It is the duty of those who organise the game to select and design stories that have rich and deep implications. The meaning of Larp is found in the reciprocal relationship between form and content, and these aspects need to be constantly renewed. Stories have a structural value, they are what makes us human. Choosing the right stories means orientating towards the present, pointing one’s weapons at a target, choosing a battlefield. The need to narrate generates the Larp, not the other way round.
You can now support Nordiclarp.org on Patreon! By giving us a monthly donation through Patreon you can help us keep the site running. Our Patreon page, linked below, further explains how to donate and where the money goes.
Where Does the Money Go?
In short we’ll use your money to pay our bills for running the website (domain, hosting and software licenses) and increasing the quality of the content on the website. No amount is too small, every dollar helps. <3
Creating Play in the Magical Classroom is a multi-part guide to playing a teacher at the College of Wizardry and New World Magischola larps. While it was written specifically with these events in mind, it can be applied to many other larps and settings.
The texts in this series are written collectively by (in alphabetical order) Maury Brown, Stefan Deutsch, Johanna Koljonen, Eevi Korhonen, Ben Morrow, Juhana Pettersson, Maria Pettersson, Mike Pohjola, Staffan Rosenberg and Jaakko Stenros. The series is edited by Johanna Koljonen.
This work is distributed under a CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 license. That means you are allowed to use elements of this text beyond the extent of referring and linking to it as long as you credit the original authors and source. It’s not allowed to use parts of this work for commercial purposes, if you are unsure if this applies to your project, please contact us.
This is not intended as a cut and paste smorgasbord but rather a complete text. Please reference it, but avoid using parts out of context. It’s better to just link the articles where it’s appropriate for use.
Can 2016 be the year we make a breakthrough on the subject of how to deal with audience at chamber larps?
When attending contemporary theatre performances in the past year, I have been following closely what happens when the actors try to involve the audience in doing something. Even though the audience at these kind of performances should not be alien to some kind of interactivity, the bar seems to be extremely high for people to take part. One example I remember well is when Lisa Lie addressed the audience and invited them to “tap three times” in Blue Motel (Black box Theatre, Oslo, 2015). Not a single spectator responded until she had repeated the request three times, with increasing intensity — and frustration. At last, one spectator simply tapped the floor three times with their shoe, and the show could go on.
Blue Motel at Trøndelag Teater. Press photo from Trøndelag Teater.
The norms of non-participation that separate the audience from the actors in the theatre are extremely strong, at least in Norway. We are afraid of misinterpreting the actor or somehow else making a mistake. Even as a larper I find myself insecure – afraid that a misguided response could ruin the piece. I excuse myself thinking there’s always someone else more qualified than myself to make the response – “The Bystander Effect.” Although the “super-audience” – the people who dare to engage in participation and add the extra flavour to a piece — do exist, they are rare. It seems that providing the safety and alibi necessary for an audience to engage in even the slightest participation is a very difficult hurdle for the artists.
When it’s hard for the actors to get the spectators at contemporary theatre to take part in very simple and limited interaction, how can we as larp designers ever succeed in reaching out to more people than the few brave enough to start out with taking a full-fledged step into the larp as players?
How to reach an audience of spectators has been a headache for chamber larp designers for many years. If we could solve this Gordian knot, it could make larp available to a much wider community and bolster its recognition in other circles of performing arts.
Approaches to the Audience Problem
Video
One of the few people who have both legs inside the art circles and are working with larp, is Brody Condon. He uses larp techniques to create improvised action. One of his pieces is The Ziegarnic Effect , which was exhibited at the Nordic Biennial of Contemporary Art in Moss this summer. To sum it up in two sentences, it was a larp-like roleplay with eight players, taking place in a house while being live broadcast via video link for two days. After the first two days, an edited version of the video was on display.
Brody told me that in his eyes, what he did was at least three pieces: one piece was the edited video showing during the entire exhibition, another was the live video stream, and the third was the roleplay itself.
From a larp perspective, the latter piece clearly is the most interesting. But for the outside world, it is the video pieces that count, mainly the edited one., partly because that is a format people are used to, but of course mainly because those are the only pieces that are actually available to them. Brody reached his audience with two video pieces, – but in the end, those pieces were not larps, but video installations showing a film of improvised action. The larp piece itself remains an experience that only truly reached the eight players.
Participate, Don’t Play
With the development of black box larp, the larp scene has also seen an increased liaison with people from theatre and other performing arts. While the first black box larps could be seen as a step backwards in terms of accessibility, the genre has increasingly experimented with ways to make participation just as easy as being an audience at other regular kinds of performing arts.
Fragile Souls
One way of doing this has been by moving away from seeing the target group as players, but rather as an audience in a participatory piece. Plays belonging to this school are minimizing preparations and rather focusing on creating a playing area that facilitates interaction and shapes characters while playing. The Nyxxx Collective in Stockholm are among the people who have explored this borderland between larp, theatre, and performance art the most. In his keynote talk at Knutepunkt, Gabriel Widing, one of the Nyxxx members, described immersion as “the excrement of action,” noting that if you succeed in changing the behaviour of people, they will eventually immerse. A handful of larps have followed this approach to solve the audience problem.
The Temple of the Blind Beings (2013) is one example. Here, the participants were blindfolded and, after a very brief introduction, entered into a room filled with scenography for tactile interaction. The players could enter or leave at any time, removing the need for a common start and ending.
In Inside Myself Outside Myself (2014), the participants walked into a black box without any preparations and started to explore objects and non-player characters that it was easy to interact with. This worked very well when I played it, but I am not sure how it would work with only non-larper participants. However, an inexperienced player group would probably work well if there were a few instructed players with larp experience as bellwethers in the group. The bellwethers could pave the way and, by taking space, reduce the anxiety that one’s actions would be “wrong.”
Pieces of You, Pieces of Me (2015) labels itself as a participatory experience. In short, the story is that you will have your personality upgraded to something better. It’s similar to Inside Myself Outside Myself as the players enter the playing area almost without preparations, and their actions and characters are shaped in the “playground for interaction.”
Pieces of You, Pieces of Me at Stockholm Dramatiska.
All these three examples are lowering the practical bar for taking part by removing preparations that can often be demanding and require larp experience. Furthermore, they attempt to lower the psychological bar by not expecting the participants to play a character, but rather allowing them to be just participants who explore an area on their own terms. The question remains to be answered if this approach is enough to lure the participation-anxious (at least in Norway) performing arts audience to join in.
Consecutive Plays
Another way to address the audience problem is to have repeated runs of the same play, preferably in a theatre. This approach subscribes to the view that in a larp, the audience and players are the same people. Instead of changing the content, the framework and setting is adapted to make the audience feel safe even though they are actually players.
Consecutive plays is something we are used to from theatre plays, and it could lower the bar for taking part because as the show runs, more and more people will talk to someone who have already tried it.
I have been hoping to see this for a long time, and while I am not 100% sure it’s the first example, I was delighted to see that Jamie Harper is running eight consecutive runs of The Lowland Clearances at the Camden Theatre in London in January 2016. I am fortunate enough to be joining their dress rehearsal and I’m excited to see how this project will go.
Integrated Audience
A Mother’s Heart
One of the most interesting approaches I’ve seen to the audience problem was at The Fragile Life of Souls Gone Missing at Blackbox Copenhagen last month. There are at least a handful of predecessors where audience “play” audience/spectators, such as A Mother’s Heart, where the larp is about a trial and you can be a spectator to the trial. There are also theatre plays where the audience can move around the site with the actors – such as the Punchdrunk plays Sleep No More or The Drowned Man, – but although labelled “interactive theatre,” the audience does not have any role in the fiction and thus not any agency for true interaction.
I think The Fragile Life of Souls Gone Missing combined the two in a very elegant way. In this larp, the players are souls that are looking for their mission or purpose, but forever going in circles. The spectators were given a short introduction before entered into the playing area. In the fiction, they were explained as deities. Contrary to the players, the spectators were not required/expected to interact, but they were given the opportunity to do so. Furthermore, the way they could interact was clearly sketched out by specific phrases the deities were allowed to say and specific actions they could do. On the other hand, the players were given the choice of playing along or disregarding the audience.
This made a clear distinction between the players and the audience and provided the audience with a solid alibi for interaction as well as non-interaction. The opt-in mechanism for the audience and opt-out mechanisms for the players provided a safety net that should prevent any action that could ruin the larp, and hopefully prevent most of the anxiety of doing so. I believe the alibi should be solid enough even for the “regular” participatory-anxious crowd.
Will We Solve the Audience Problem?
Early pioneers have given us signposts for different ways to approach the audience problem, and it also seems like the black box scene is growing up – such that, after the first years of euphoria over the format itself, we can focus on making more people able to try out what we create. I believe 2016 has the potential to be the year when this scene makes a breakthrough for the audience problem of chamber larps.
Thanks to Magnar Grønvik Müller, Eirik Fatland, Jaakko Stenros and Karete Jacobsen Meland for comments.
References
A Mother’s Heart (2010). Christensen, Christina and Fatland, Eirik. Larp.
Blue Motel (2013/2015). Lie, Lisa. Theatre performance.
Drowned Man, The (2013). Punchdrunk. Theatre performance.
Fragile Life of Souls Gone Missing, The (2015). Essendrop, Nina Runa. Larp.
Inside Myself, Outside Myself (2014). Björkne, M, Burns C, Dumstrei N, Durkan M, Essendrop N, Holm-Andersen M, Karlsson P, Kiraly Thom, Munthe-Kaas P, Nilsson G, Nøglebæk O, Ryding K, Widing G. Larp
Lowland Clearances, The (2016). Harper J.
Pieces of You, Pieces of Me (2015). Grønvik Müller M, Pierpaolo V, Nordblom C, Dolk C, Brown M. Larp.
Sleep No More (2011). Punchdrunk. Theatre performance.
Temple of the Blind Beings (2013). Larp. Peter Munthe-Kaas.
Zeigarnic Effect, The (2015). Larp/video installation. Brody Condon
Cover photo: Pieces of You, Pieces of Me at Stockholm Dramatiska.
Disclaimer: The opinions expressed herein are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of Nordiclarp.org or any larp community at large.
“Nordic larp is like porn. I know it when I see it.”((Adaptation of a quote by United States Supreme Court Justice Potter Stewart (1964) ))
Ten years ago, when first attending the Knutpunkt conference in Norway, I was humbled by stories about Hamlet, 1942 and other great games. Here, there were people actually stretching the definition of what “larp” means. It was an awesome, mind blowing experience for sure. There were a lot of talks about the larps that were influenced by the KP tradition and vice versa. There was no good term for these games, so usually the rather cumbersome “games in the KP/SK tradition” was used.
When in 2010, Jaakko Stenros and Markus Montola published the book Nordic Larp documenting 30 larps belonging to this tradition, they effectively coined the term. It had been used before, but never with such a brand recognition. Still, there was no clear definition what “Nordic larp” actually means. In discussions, one of the main points is if the term is meant geographically or not. The Nordic Larp Wiki greets its visitors with the following words:
“Nordic-style larp, or Nordic Larp, is a term used to describe a tradition of larp game design that emerged in the Nordic countries.”
So far, so good. Is it a geographical description then? “Nordic” seems to imply this and the Nordic Larp Wiki certainly defines it this way:
In 2012, Juhana Pettersson writes in States of Play (already subtitled as “Nordic Larp around the world”):
“Nordic Larp is not the same as the larps played in the Nordic countries. Indeed, most Nordic larps are not part of the Nordic Larp design movement. This leads to the bizarre situation where the Nordic Larp movement can enter into dialogue with Finnish larp the same way it can be in dialogue with Russian larp.
“Nowadays, the truly new stuff comes from all those Italians, Germans and Americans who have taken some of the ideas of Nordic Larp and made them part of their own artistic practice. Thankfully, instead of just assimilating stuff from us, they’re sending ideas back, becoming the new creative frontier of Nordic Larp.”
So the definition from the Wiki is not very useful since there are:
Larps in this tradition which are not from Nordic countries;
Larps in Nordic countries not belonging to this tradition.
So why is it still called Nordic? What’s so Nordic about Nordic larp? Maybe it is the origin of the movement. In his Nordic Larp Talk 2013, Jaakko Stenros tries to define “a” Nordic larp this way:
“A larp that is influenced by the Nordic larp tradition or contributes to the ongoing Nordic larp discourse. This definition may seem disappointing, or even like a cop-out.”((‘What does Nordic Larp mean?’, Jaakko Stenros, Nordic Larp Talks 2013, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mL_qvBaxV5k))
Not only a cop-out, but also recursive. Thus it is not very helpful if we want to get closer to the actual meaning of the term. Furthermore he continues:
“Nordic larp is not a set of instructions. It is not even a coherent design philosophy. It is a movement.”
Well, well – it’s also not a coherent design philosophy. At least that definition empowers anybody to define their own style as Nordic. And where is the nodal point of this movement? It is, in fact, the Nodal Point conference – Knudepunkt/ Knutepunkt/Knutpunkt/Solmukohta.
Next, there is Jaakko Stenros’ version of a brand definition for the “Nordic larp tradition”:
“A tradition that views larp as a valid form of expression, worthy of debate, analysis and continuous experimentation, which emerged around the Knutepunkt convention.”
We are back to the KP/SK tradition. Not much Nordic left here though, because this tradition (r)evolves around the conferences and for at least ten years they have certainly not been entirely Nordic (in geographical terms) anymore and not the creative frontier (according to Juhana Pettersson above). Somehow we are getting nowhere.
Let’s try a different approach. The book The Foundation Stone of Nordic Larp((The Foundation Stone of Nordic Larp, 2014, Edited by Eleanor Saitta, Marie Holm-Andersen & Jon Back)) was written to give a sort of “kickstart” into the Nordic larp tradition, collecting important articles from the now 20+ books published around the Knudepunkt conference. It describes Nordic larp this way:
“The Nordic larp community differs from larp culture in other places. […] And yes, that’s right, there are other kinds of larps played in Scandinavia; the Nordic larp community is a specific and by now reasonably well-defined subset.”
So, first sentence: kind of geographic. Let’s imagine the movement is what the author implies as a “place”, because the last sentence of the paragraph is clear about the term being non-geographic. Let’s try to define the term in other ways. Also from the above paragraph:
“It spends more time telling stories that emphasize naturalistic emotion, it emphasizes collective, rather than competitive storytelling, and it takes its stories fairly seriously much of the time […]”
Jaakko Stenros’ Nordic Larp Talk also mentions some of these characteristics:
“It typically values thematic coherence, continuous illusion, action and immersion, while keeping the larp co-creative and its production noncommercial. Workshops and debriefs are common.”
These are characteristics which undoubtedly are part of the tradition we are talking about. The Nordic Larp Wiki supports this approach as well:
“[…]Here are a few examples of aims and ideals that are typical for this unique gaming scene:”
If we accept the Nordic Larp wiki as a PR instrument, this is certainly cool, but as a reference about what Nordic larp actually means, this is maybe slightly too much self-adulation. Let’s have a closer look at these characteristics and ideals:
“Immersion. Nordic larpers want to feel like they are “really there”. This includes creating a truly convincing illusion of physically being in a medieval village/on a spaceship/WWII bunker, playing a character that is very close to your own physical appearance, as well as focusing on getting under the character’s skin to ‘feel their feelings’. Dreaming in character at night is seen by some nordic larpers as a sign of an appropriate level of immersion.”
Not only is this definition of immersion mixing in 360° for good measure, the sentence about the “truly convincing illusion of physically being [there]” is also not very Nordic (at least from my personal experience) even though some games are now trying to do exactly that. The second part talking more about actual immersion could be considered very Nordic, if you like.
“Collaboration. Nordic-style larp is about creating an exciting and emotionally affecting story together, not measuring your strength. There is no winning, and many players intentionally let their characters fail in their objectives to create more interesting stories.”
This might actually be one of the better indicators for a “Nordic larp”, but then, there’s plenty of examples from other game traditions where this is used as well – but maybe not the other way around. Maybe it is required, but not sufficient?
“Artistic vision. Many Nordic games are intended as more than entertainment – they make artistic or even political statements. The goal in these games is to affect the players long term, to perhaps change the way they see themselves or how they act in society.”
Artistic vision is hard to define, as is a political statement, but there’s certainly a divide between pure “entertainment” and “serious” games. But then, aren’t the ones without a political statement artistic in their own unique way? And what about the Nordic games which are not intended as more than entertainment?
There’s certainly a lot of elements which are considered part of this tradition, but are they unique? Is “bleed”, “immersion”, “alibi” really Nordic? Are pre-game workshops, 360°, black box and debriefings? Furthermore, what is often described as “Nordic larp”, evolves with every game and every discussion about this tradition. Fifteen years ago, no game would use bleed or alibi or 360° in their descriptions (since the terms didn’t really exist) and even mechanisms, but still they were and are considered part of this tradition.
One could argue the way Merleau-Ponty does and say that while many of these are often present, none needs to be to make it a Nordic larp. The question cannot be solved this way.
Furthermore, when we used black-box-style mechanisms in 2000-2003 in the Insomnia series of games in Germany, were they “Nordic”? Did the workshops, debriefings, game acts and use of “cut”, “brems” and “escalate” mechanisms for The Living Dead (2010) make it “Nordic”?
There’s a simple answer: no. But the reason for that is not that they were not played in the Nordic countries or organized by people from there. The simple reason is that they did not add to the discourse, in one case because we hadn’t heard about KP yet, in the other case because we didn’t bother to do so.
This needs to change. I don’t think it actually matters where ideas were first tried out and who made it popular, but we need to tell people what we do and show it to them in a meaningful way if we want to be part of the movement.
“In the end, while we may rage and debate whether Nordic larp actually isn’t all that special, reality is that it is. And let’s use that for our advantage instead of trying to nitpick.”((Claus Raasted, January 14 2015 in a private conversation on Facebook))
– Claus Raasted
Conclusion
I truly believe there is something special about the kind of games we create. I also do think that creating a term like “Nordic Larp” was a masterstroke of Knudepunkt/ Knutepunkt/Knutpunkt/Solmukohta propaganda.
And this is what I’m going to do((And maybe edit that page in the Nordic Larp Wiki and remove that ridiculous geographic reference.)): Nordic larp. No matter where I am or where I come from. It’s where I’ve been heading all my larping life and I don’t really care how we call it as long as we know what it means. I believe we do.
Because if we can’t agree upon what Nordic larp means, others will form their own slightly worrying conclusions:
“Meanwhile, in Europe, some people were already making a living from LARPing and stretching its art in interesting directions. Claus Raasted [sic], for example, fused parlor roleplay with very serious topics, such as acting out couples’ therapy to pretend to grieve for a dead child. The genre spread through the region and became known as Nordic LARP.”((Olivia Simone, tabletmag.com, Sep 2 2014 getting more facts wrong than right in this “definition” of the term.))
Nobody really can tell you what Nordic larp actually is, but who cares as long as Claus Raasted is the godfather of Nordic LARP?
The pre-game workshop tradition in Nordic larp is mostly oral, with little written material. People take part in workshops as players, then borrow and develop ideas from those experiences to construct workshops for their own larps. So I thought it might be useful to put together a method which looks at some of the different intentions and purposes that workshop activities can have, to help designers think about and plan their workshops more systematically.
The table below lists and categorizes workshop activities that I use in my own practice, or that I will use if I run a larp that requires them. The sequence of the table is the sequence in which I use these activities: ie. first working on the players themselves, then working with them on their characters; start with warmup, move on to impro basics if required, and so on. There may be requirements to move back and forth (eg. perhaps a re-warmup will be needed partway through, or meta-techniques may be practised again in-character), but it’s this general direction.
In practice you may use workshop activities that have more than one purpose: this may be desirable both for conciseness and for helping to reinforce the activity impact upon players. For example, flashback scenes can be used to calibrate players’ understanding of relationships with each other. Or the way to teach a particular technique could also serve as a trust exercise.
I’ve given an example activity for each aim, but of course there are many different ways of achieving all of them: some will be more appropriate for some larps than for others; and you’ll have your own favourites. The useful Workshop Handbook site has a categorized collection of activities which give plenty more examples.
A few of the items talk about ‘calibration’. This is a very important larp-preparation concept, introduced by Martin Nielsen (2014). The short definition is: “all participants adjust their interpretation of a phenomenon, so that all participants have more or less the same interpretation.” (Where I take “phenomenon” to mean something like: an aspect of the culture being portrayed/experienced in the larp.)
(click to open PDF version of this table)
* Safety exercises aren’t always included in workshops; indeed they’re quite rare in some larping cultures. But I personally feel that there should always be at least a minimum safety brief.
Details
Spelling each of these out in more detail:
Introduction– the frame through which players enter the workshop and the game. Welcome them, check off names if appropriate, tell everyone what the game is that they’re about to play, tell them that now they are in the pre-game workshop.
Practicalities – those useful things players need to know so they can be comfortable in the space. Where are the bathrooms, where are the exits, can they eat and drink, how long will the workshop and the game last, will there be breaks… etc.
Structure and purpose – explain why this game is preceded by a workshop, and what will be achieved during it. You may want to go into detail about the workshop activities – more likely, you’ll just give a general picture. (Or you may want to keep the activities secret for now, so the players aren’t expecting them.)
Warmup – important to get players relaxed, disinhibited, and moving freely. There are lots of great warmup exercises, such as Penguins and flamingos, Human knot, Jump in jump out, Shake hands… Choose exercises that are appropriate for your number of players and for the space that you’re using.
Impro basics – simple exercises to reinforce (or to introduce, if your players are new to this) the basic improvisation tools of Yes, and…, Not blocking, and so on.
Physicality – this may be important if the game requires physical contact, but your players are unaccustomed to it in their larp tradition, or are strangers to each other. The exercises should familiarize them with each other’s touch, proximity and presence. This doesn’t need to be any more intense than it will be in the larp itself.
Trust – particularly useful in emotionally intense games. If you can help players become comfortable entrusting themselves to each other’s care, it’ll make opening up emotionally that much easier.
Out-of-game – this won’t always be required, particularly if you’re going straight from the workshop into the game. But if you need to explain practicalities of travel, food, sleeping etc relating to the game, now is the time to do it.
Expectations of play – you may prefer to let these emerge naturally, of course, or to let players infer them from the material. But if you’re expecting a particular style or mode of play – for example, if the game’s intended as a farcical satire in which nothing makes sense; or if players are to act with grand, exaggerated gestures to communicate their emotions; or you expect them to act like hardened criminals who behave as if their every move is under watch – tell them so, and explain that you will be showing them how to do it later in the workshop.
Skills – some games may require the players to use out-of-game skills that they do not (yet) themselves have. If dancing is an important part of the game, you may need to teach them how to dance appropriately: and so on.
Safety – go through the safety policy and practice of the game, and act out examples where that’ll be helpful. Cut, Brake, ‘The door is open’, Traffic lights, Lines and veils – whatever you’re using. You need to make sure that the players are familiar and comfortable with the safety techniques, and (ideally) that they won’t hesitate to use them – or to interpret other players’ using them – during the course of the game.
Rules and system – where present. For example, in a combat larp, there may be rules about how many blows will cause injury or death. Or if there’s non-WYSIWYG magic, players may need to be told how to interpret its commands. Explain and practise until they are familiar.
Techniques – this covers unnatural things that players may have to do during the game for some (non-meta) purpose. So, for example, suppose your game features a fantasy culture who traditionally greet each other by clasping each others’ forearms between their backs. You want the players to learn this manoeuvre and to practice it until it comes as easily to them as it does to the characters that they’re playing.
Meta-techniques – techniques that are ‘meta’, ie. that operate outside the game reality and allow players to communicate directly (rather than as their characters) in some way. Maybe you want players to be able to deliver an internal monologue of their character’s current thoughts: they will need to learn the meta-technique that triggers it, such as standing in a designated part of the room, or having their glass pinged by another player.
Mutual understanding of game world — very important if the setting is not a familiar one. If players have differing internal assumptions about how the world works or of facts about it, that can cause problems in the game. This element of calibration is best carried out by discussion, followed by improvised scenes using the established knowledge. The GMs should provide guidance and suggestions.
Mutual understanding of relationships – if characters are already designed, the players need to make sure that they and the people with whom they have relationships (of any kind) have a shared understanding of what those relationships are and how they work. This is best done by discussion, and again can be followed by improvised scenes acting out the relationship (for the more important ones).
Creating characters from players’ own ideas – in some games, the players will invent their characters wholly, within the workshop. The GMs will have to explain how to do this, and facilitate the process.
Around a GM-designed skeleton – in other games, players may have been given a skeleton character that they fill out themselves. If you have time, one nice way of doing this is with a ‘prelude’ – a one-on-one GMed scene in which the player is led through decisions and statements about their character that combine to flesh it out fully and satisfyingly.
Practical – if there’s any system or rules (or numbers of any kind) applicable to character creation, GMs need to explain them and help players apply them.
Role exploration and definition – if the character is to play a particular narrative role in the game (eg. captain of the ship, mysterious stranger, disruptive toddler, Prussian spy) then GMs may need to brief the player on how to fulfil those duties.
Building character relationships – allow the players to mutually establish their characters’ attitudes towards, and history with, each other – where this is appropriate for the game. GMs might shape this strongly or leave it to the players: different activities will be appropriate.
Rehearsing those relationships – for newly-established material and also where characters have been designed in advance (by GMs or players) and players haven’t previously had the chance to explore them. A combination of discussion and playing out interpersonal scenes is generally effective.
Background filling-in – it may be desirable to add richness to players’ understanding of each other’s characters by the public provision of detail. Hot seat is a straightforward activity that allows players to question one another.
Take-off – you may wish to help the players get ‘into character’ so they don’t have to leap straight into the game (although that can work too: see Flying start). This might perhaps be a formal exercise where they assume their characters, or a quiet meditative space for them to do so privately or as a group.
I guess everybody knows I’m gay, but I don’t think everybody knows I’m a queer, too. I like to incorporate gay culture into my speech and slang, and even used to flaunt my gayness, but I haven’t been able to come to grips with being queer.
Being queer is to approach life from an oblique angle, to step into the world somehow askance, as an outsider, which is decidedly more difficult (Ahmed 2006, passim). Being left-handed must feel similar. There are all these scissors and tools and techniques out there that everybody can just grab and use, but for you, there’s something amiss. You can’t get a proper hold even if you know perfectly how people go about it. They just pick up the scissors and don’t give any thoughts to the fact that they’re custom-built to suit their take on the world.
It’s the same for queers as it is for lefties. You find the world wasn’t designed with you in mind. Straight love stories feel like wrong-handed scissors to me. I understand perfectly well – intellectually – what they’re about, but they aren’t immediately accessible to me. I can pick them up and use them, but only awkwardly. Their straightness is foregrounded. I guess stories that happen in queer settings must feel the same for straight people. Guess that’s why they always call them gay love stories. Brokeback Mountain isn’t about cowboys in love; it’s about gay cowboys in something that looks an awful lot like love (except without the emotional impact.)
Until I played Just a Little Lovin’ this summer (2015), I never understood why straight people were interested in playing love stories. It was abstract and I couldn’t relate to it.
The Gay Agenda
Once at the tender age of 16, a female player tried to involve me in a love plot at a Danish fantasy larp; I went along with the midnight moonlit walk in the woods, but felt alienated from the situation – somewhat worried that this would come across as off-game dating.
Since then love plots were only a source of potential awkwardness for me – either the awkwardness of feigning heterosexuality in-game, feigning interest in heterosexual love stories for fear of seeming unable to immerse, or – above all – the awkwardness I would risk if it looked as though I were steering my game in a romantic direction.
Imposing my queer agenda on the game for personal gratification seemed like the perfect way to become an outsider. When I was growing up in the Danish fantasy larp scene (c. 2000–2005), the games we played tended not to be accessible to players as queer people because they rarely or never incorporated queer themes directly.
It is not that people were homophobes; I just do not think it occurred to them that the king could be a big queen, that fierce lady orcs could love each other, or that gender transitioning could be a rite of passage for druids. Orcs were fine, but fairies stretch the imagination.
The only even remotely queer thing that comes to mind from that time are the cracks about homoelvere (gay elves). I was one, of course. I once received a letter in the post addressed to “Erik, the gayest boy in the world.” Bless the sender, who knows who he is, and bless my parents for not asking questions.
Any bona-fide queerness in the larp fiction would be something that I would have to introduce out of my own initiative. Maybe not at my own peril, but try telling that to a giddy kid who is only out of the closet when he is at larps. And does not want to fuck things up. What would it say about me if I could not even play a silly game without queerhacking it to accommodate my particular proclivities? When you go to a larp that is not designed for queerness, and you bring up the issue and pursue queer themes, it can feel as if you are imposing your queer agenda on the game. There are not many good reasons for a person to do such a strange thing. Either you are doing it for sexual kinks or you are trying to make a point of it. Other players might not have given any thought to whether there are queer characters in the game or even in the game world. It sounds like reasonable accommodation, but it feels a lot like rocking the boat.
Queens and Wizards
Two larps challenged that feeling. The first was close to home – the College of Wizardry (2015, 3rd run), a Harry Potter-esque game about the students and staff that has been making the headlines for the last couple of years.
I was not intending it to be, but College of Wizardry became queer larp bootcamp for me before I had to go full queer later in the year. It was the first larp I had been to where the organizers had specifically written the existence of queer relationships into the fiction – they dedicated a whole page of the design document (Rollespilsfabrikken 2015) to telling us it’s OK to play gay. I guess they provided an affordance that I have not been used to having. If they had not made that design decision, I probably would not have asked. I mean, there are kids there. Can’t I just get on with the game?
Luckily, that’s exactly what I got to do. Seeing as I am a larper and love to cry, I wanted to play a mournful widower whose husband had been “scraped off the wall and buried with honors” during the Wizarding Wars. Playing it straight would have been a distraction, would have made it less real. College of Wizardry was a place where the queerness of being gay could be left in the background, and I could just be an angry widower instead.
Nevertheless, my character was studiously asexual and churlish. Three co-players conspired to tame the shrew and get me out into the world again. I am sorry to say that they succeeded. Once again, I would not have done that on my own. A simple design choice from the organizers reminded me that queer stories were possible topics of play. I did still have to come out of the closet during the game, but that was because my character was an unregistered badger Animagus, not a gay widower.
And then there was Just a Little Lovin’, which has gotta be the gayest larp ever played. It is almost mythically so – leather men, drag queens, dark rooms, dykes, closet cases, AIDS, Abba, sequins, brotherhood, fisting. The aesthetics are camp and the theme is dead serious. Players portray a social circuit in New York in the 1980s as it is ravaged by AIDS during the years of 1982, 1983 and 1984. The stories that the larp produces are magnificent run after run after run, but for me and from what I know, the transformative part of the game is how it transplants players into a world where gay is the new normal. It was the best game I have ever played and I think that is true for a lot of other people, especially all the other queers.
Playing Out the Closet
You would think going to Just a Little Lovin’, the gayest game ever, would be a chance to let my queerness fade into the background. For one, it was my first experience of being in a gay male world outside “the scene” – where I had never felt at home, anyway. I think I am too square for it. Everybody always thinks I am somebody’s awkward straight friend. It sounds poetic, “being a stranger among my own kind”, but when you’re in the situation it just makes you feel even queerer. Finally, my gayness would not set me apart – just my queerness.
In daily life, it is hard to trace all of the sources of my queerness. As a geek, I am queered once talk goes to mainstream topics I cannot identify with, which I imagine a lot of larpers have experienced. As a perpetual foreigner, as someone who wanders into the deep end of conversations, I am queer for a lot of reasons. I might as well be left-handed.
After Just a Little Lovin’, I even felt some resentment toward straight players. They get to read and play love stories without all the mental adjustments, caveats, and hypotheticals that gay people need to make in order to relate to them. They get to cringe at and enjoy Hollywood sex scenes for what they are. They get to have their stories served up straight. The rest of us do not have that. It is like we are listening for love songs, but through heavy white noise. Straight people have got it coming in loud and clear.
In the context of Just a Little Lovin’, it was safe to assume that everyone was either gay or gay-friendly, and the straight characters were an amusing backdrop.
On the other hand, I was still a very queer character – older, a drag queen, mother, always donning an alter-ego that I could use as a shield. I could be aloof and statuesque if I wanted to, and every time anything became too real, I could escape into a world of my own making. My character, gay guy Nate, could become the Queen of Diamonds. He even escaped death (for a time).
While Just a Little Lovin’ did offer relief from a single source of my queerness, my orientation toward other men, it could not dispel my inclination. I did not go into the dark room nor participate in orgies. I only had three sex scenes, all of which involved straight players, and I still feel guilty about one of them and awkward about finding them all a bit arousing. Even in a gay larp, there are ways to feel like a big old queer.
My character’s story once again became a story about being drawn into the world and forced to unqueer myself – but I struggled to fully engage until I was literally grabbed by the hair in a sex scene and brought into the story, incidentally by a straight player, who I imagine has more experience being in the normal world and thus being more accustomed to love stories and play. I was a larp love virgin. For some players, queer had become so normal that they had trouble readjusting to the fact that most people in the world are not. That was not my experience – but I did get to forget my gayness and play around with being queer, and boy did I ever.
Queer Shame
Years before I played Just a Little Lovin’, I attended a workshop at Solmukohta 2012 where the sex simulation technique used at the game was demonstrated. Other people have described it better than I can:
Sexual scenes started with offering another player a pink feather1. If they took the feather then they said yes to playing a sex scene … If you did agree, you took the feather and you walked off a bit from the other players, talked out of character about what sort scene you wanted to do, agreed on how you were comfortable playing it and then you played the sex scene. When you played sex you could touch the other player, as long as you kept your clothes on, and as long as you didn’t touch genital areas and the breasts. … Penetrative sex and any other type of sex that might transmit the virus was played out by touching and stroking and playing with a phallic prop. Phallic prop.
Dalstål, 2012
It is hands-on. And it is a great technique, but it is also terrifying – which is why the organizers of Just a Little Lovin’ go to such efforts to couch it in narrative meaning, with a symbolic way of accepting or declining an invitation to have a sex scene, a detailed negotiation beforehand, monologues afterwards, and so on. It is not like you just whip it out and start larp-screwing people.
The workshop facilitator tried to explain all of this and made an honest effort to make people – me – feel safe about trying the technique, but it did not work. Through the combined efforts of somebody’s toddler being present, casual onlookers passing through the workshop space, and general feeling of exposure, I was doused with buckets of sexual shame that in a way I had not experienced since my Dad once forgot to knock. That is only context, though. What was the proximate cause of my shame? The exposure was bad enough. Worst was the fact that one of the mini-scenes was nice. I ended up snuggling up with a tall, dark and handsome French larper – though somebody older and different than the kind of guy I would usually go for – and stroking a candle. The candle did not do it for me, but the snuggling sort of did. Once again, the fear of exploiting the game situation for sexual gratification. Alongside a platinum wig and hooker shoes, that’s some of the luggage I packed for Just a Little Lovin’.
A Queer Beauty
My character at Just a Little Lovin’ was something of an alien. A one-time loner, drag queen, a man with a million pasts, who had swept into town six months before like Dionysus arriving from the east. In the game world, he had screwed his way through half of New York before setting up his nightclub. Par for the course.
For my own part, I could not see my character as very sexual. Being a gay man, appreciation of women’s beauty and desirability is abstract for me. I know what physical beauty looks like and what bodies are, so to say, attractive, but they do not actually do it for me. I can recognize attractiveness, but it does not arouse me. And although I love drag, I am not particularly attracted to men in drag. I like masculine guys, even though they can be intimidating.
I also like to think of myself as quite masculine and I dress to maximize that appearance. Even when I wear something more feminine, like a t-shirt with a low neckline, I do it to show off my male strength. The feminine has a strange allure, if only because we grow in a world where men are supposed to be attracted by femininity. It does not matter that you are gay, or that you are a man. Growing up in a culture where the masculine is drawn to the feminine, playing around with femininity feels like playing with fire. On the one hand, there is an excitement to it and some plain relief from not having to perform traditional masculinity; on the other, there is a shame from feminization and a fear of losing your attractiveness as a man, demeaning yourself by being a nancy boy.
The effeminate is a no-man’s land that you don’t venture into lightly. Even gay men can be bitches toward fems. I mean, nobody wants to be a sissy, right?
I had not been in drag since I did a rendition of Geri Spice at a school show in the 6th grade. Sassy is fine; sissy is not. The prospect of playing a drag queen was quite intimidating. And the physical sensation of dragging was strange and foreign, but did not come close to the experience of seeing myself full-figure in the mirror and hardly recognizing the visage looking back at me. Queer almost does not cover it. As I wrote a few days later:
Experiencing [Nate’s story] and creating it as a player gave me a taste of being beautiful and admired in a way I have never been before. It’s a foreign and different and dreamlike kind of beauty you feel as a drag queen of his time and age. It’s made me look at myself, literally, in a different light. (…) I got to stand as a statue and lie half-undressed, makeup smeared, and look at myself in that big, gorgeous mirror in the dressing room. It was bizarre and I don’t know how to square that image of myself with what I otherwise am. Nate might be someone I might have been, had I been born when he was. I don’t know how I feel about that. It feels dangerous and horrifying, but the appeal of his life and his aesthetic is still there.
Winther Paisley, 2015
For a straight player, reorienting themselves sexually and socially toward the same sex might have been a powerful source of personal queerness. For me, it was through drag.
I do not think your personal sexual desire toward a gender can be changed through a game, but I do think your orientation can be. For someone who is oriented toward men, whether sexually, romantically or socially, you read a room in a different way than someone who is “into” women (Ahmed 2006). If you coax yourself into looking toward, cruising for, play-lusting for the other gender, even if you are looking for narrative satisfaction rather than carnal, you can have a reorientation. At least until the curtain drops. When you leave the game, some of the angles of approach you had just begun to become accustomed to suddenly become unavailable. When that happens, the world gets a bit queerer.
My reorientation toward others came from being perched on heels, wrapped in foam and sequins and painted up like a glamorous old broad. With myself as the main audience, I tested out a new kind of queer.
The dressing room scenes were especially powerful, not just for the banter, but the undressing, too. You show a lot of yourself when you drag, even as you hide it. You wonder if you look alright – as a player who wants to have a good costume that isn’t silly, and as a person who is vain and does not want to look stupid in a dress. My co-players helped dress me up and down, put on my lashes, and beat my face. I started each show by looking myself over critically in the mirror. The Queen would never ask, but I had to ask if I looked alright. Then I could parade proudly onto the stage to oo’s and ah’s.
It took a lot of convincing to play that kind of queer for real, not just for laughs. If anything I even distanced myself personally at first in the game. I could become a statue when I wanted to. Majestic mourning is a very safe, insulated place to be. Thankfully it did not last.
Play It Straight
Before the second night of the game began, I mentioned in the intermezzo that I did not think of my character as someone who was particularly attractive. I had been channeling an old queen from Paris Is Burning (1991). I felt… sassy, impressive perhaps, but sexually attractive? Somebody disagreed. Shit. That somebody was Mr T – “a perfect embodiment of a successful gay man played by a strikingly handsome Swedish player” as I described him a few days later – who found my character attractive. Maybe he thought I, the player, was attractive, and maybe that was bleeding into how he saw me.
Even my newfound beauty became a source of awkwardness for me, because I did not know how to handle the foreignness of my character and how to comport myself in this world. I can play gay – well, hell no, but I can try – but being the object of desire in a feminine persona was unrelatable for me, so I retreated into my aloof position as Queen.
Luckily, Mr T was there to help me shimmy out of my comfort zone. After flirting in the silly, normal ways people do on the dance floor, we took to the dressing room (in exactly the same way as you leave a party to go kiss! In a game!) where he proceeded to help me get undressed. Wig off, then shoes, then half the dress, then most of the persona. We ended up lying next to each other on the floor, looking into the ceiling, and laughing about hooking up for old time’s sake.
It was normal. Relatable. A scene that I get. Possibly the least queer thing that happened to me during the entire game, but it would not have been possible if the game had not been heavily rigged for queerness. In normal life, I can’t just drop the mask and kiss. I have the option of going into the closet – being outwardly normal, camping out – being outwardly queer, or going on as I usually do – feeling normal, but only until the context re-queers me by reminding me of the ways in which I’m not.
Walk a Mile in My Shoes
Photo by Erik Winther Paisley, edited by Jonas Hjermitslev.
It is hard not to have a bit of estrangement and bitterness when, at least in aspects of your life, you are stuck on the outside looking in. Being made to feel queer is something that happens to everybody once in a while, but for those of us whose sexualities, gender identities, or personal orientations are queer, it is a position we can struggle to escape from.
So, playing an embittered gay badger wizard let me feel normal, while being a gay man among gay men did not. It did more for me – it let me play with an even more fundamental part of my identity, as a queer, in a way that would not have been remotely possible in a game where my gayness had been in the foreground. This let me dig into some deep, dangerous, challenging play.
I was given a powerful backdrop for the drama that took place later. It was the final night of the game, in 1984 when we all knew, and I had not seen Walter, my in-game lover, for hours, until he found me on the dance floor. He had come to show me the letter from the clinic that said he was HIV positive. We had been living together for a year at the time.
We wept. We had sex. Just so it wouldn’t matter. I had to have him grab my hair, push me down and drag me out of my isolation. My makeup was smeared and the dress crumpled. It was raw and visceral, and it was over almost before it started. Fittingly. Afterwards I left him and walked back on towering heels to the dressing room and collapsed onto the floor. I was tarnished, but I couldn’t take my eyes off myself.
After a while my faghag, Diane, came, and she knew, and she helped me take my make-up off. Joani who did my eyes before the shows also knew, and she helped too. I sat still, and was undressed yet another time.
The scene tore my character out of the world I had spent the game trying to create; and I needed the game to give me a chance to feel something normal before I could let it make me feel such a queer kind of loss. Without Mr T, no Walter. No queer storylines, no universal loss.
This kind of play is personally rewarding, but it is not a personal achievement. It would not have been possible without the conscious effort of writers, organizers, and co-players to make it so. If players with less experience of queerness want a chance to dig into these themes, I have got just the shoes for the occasion.
Acknowledgment
I would like to thank the organizers of the College of Wizardry, the original creators of Just a Little Lovin’, organizers of the June, 2015 run, and my co-players, especially Simon “Walter” Svensson and Arvid “Mr. T” Björklund and my extended drag family, for making this article and the thoughts behind possible.
Bibliography
Sarah Ahmed (2006): Queer Phenomenology. Duke University Press, Durham and London
Not every sex scene in the Just a Little Lovin’ runs has played out like this. Feathers, for instance, are sometimes omitted in favor of diegetic negotiation. I myself am not sure I would have dared do without. For a more in-depth explanation, see Edland (2013). ↩︎
The desperation of tomorrow fuels the joy of today. Self-destructive choices don’t seem so bad when there’s no future.
from the End of the Line introduction document
End of the Line is the first official Nordic larp under the One World of Darkness produced by White Wolf and Odyssé since the intellectual property was purchased by Paradox Entertainment in October 2015. While the owner Tobias Andersson Sjogren and creative lead Martin Elricsson have announced that they do not plan to alter significantly most of the existing games or associated production companies, they do plan to create a One World of Darkness under which all of the existing content falls.((UlissesSpiele, “Tenebrae Noctis: White Wolf – One World of Darkness (uncut, audio repaired),” YouTube, last modified Dec. 15, 2015, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LlA6LKUNDWs&list=PLYW0RCU4vh23ZoQC26d8D0O-zvMDrGlQn)) Additionally, they plan to run Nordic-style larp events, which differ significantly from the way traditional Vampire larps are played. These larps are meant to exist in addition to the other larp experiences available, rather than replace them or compete with them in any way. This article will cover the first larp from these official events, entitled End of the Line, which took place in Helsinki, Finland on March 7, 2016 for six hours.((Jussi Ahlroth, “Blood and Close Contact in Illegal Raves — Vampire Larp Played in Helsinki,” HS, last modified Mar. 9, 2016, http://www.hs.fi/kulttuuri/a1457497605103#)) Bjarke Pedersen, Juhana Pettersson, and Martin Elricsson created the larp, running it in the week leading up to the Nordic larp conference, Solmukohta.
Martin Elricsson, Lead Storyteller for White Wolf. Photo by Tuomas Puikkonen.
End of the Line took place in an abandoned mental asylum in central Helsinki.((For a complete photo album, see Tuomas Puikkonen, “End of the Line (larp),” Flicker, last accessed Mar. 17, 2016, https://www.flickr.com/photos/darkismus/sets/72157665084152550)) While the main building was used for briefings, preparation, and off-game facilities, the play space was a multi-storiedbuilding off to the side of the hospital that recently housed squatters. The organizers and volunteers spent a considerable amount of time preparing the space for play, making it relatively clean and safe considering its recent inhabitants. Bonuses of the space included an abundance of gorgeous graffiti and an upstairs loft, which the organizers turned into a rave club. This rave felt authentic thanks to ongoing music provided by the Suicide Club, as well as fantastic lighting, visuals, and scenography by Marcus Engstrand, Anders Davén, and Aleksander Nikulin.
Lighting, Sound, and Scenography
Lighting and sound were integrated into the larp design. The first and last fifteen minutes of the larp were spent in a communal rave “workshop,” in which we all slowly glided in- and out-of-character through dance. This technique proved especially useful in enhancing the visceral physicality that was central to the intention of the larp, as discussed in more detail below; we were encouraged from the beginning to inhabit our bodies rather than view the larp as an intellectual or strategic experience. While many of us admitted to feeling uncomfortable dancing under normal circumstances, our characters regularly frequented these types of underground raves. Therefore, the technique helped put us in the mindset of a group of lowlifes coming together for a shared, not-quite-legal experience.
The Suicide Club kept the dance party going throughout the larp. Photo by Tuomas Puikkonen.
In terms of the lighting, the larp was organized in three acts according to colors, which each represented a specific theme. Red represented Lust/Passion, Green represented Selfishness/Envy, and Blue represented Control/Power. As we transitioned into these phases, which all lasted 1.5-2 hours, we were encouraged to direct our play toward these general themes. However, the colors themselves were only visible from the dance floor, which made it difficult to assess when the themes were active without revisiting the upstairs. Still, having a general idea of the narrative arc toward which we should push helped guide play.
Color was also used in the three meta rooms, sometimes called blackbox rooms in the Nordic scene. As with the Acts, the three rooms were themed and colored Red, Green, and Blue. In these rooms, players could enact flashbacks or hypothetical futures, although we could use the rooms for whatever we chose. In practice, this ambiguity led to some confusion as to whether or not scenes happening in these rooms were transpiring in real time, especially since the Red room featured an eye level hole in the wall through which players could watch. Despite this ambiguity, having experienced both the Red and Green rooms, the themes definitely contributed to the types of play enacted within them.
Traditional Vampire Themes, Setting, and Mechanics
Outdoor shot of the location of the larp, which took place at an abandoned asylum in Helsinki, Finland. The Blue, Green, and Red rooms are visible. Photo by Tuomas Puikkonen.
This larp was functionally different than any Vampire game I have played in the past. As an active participant in both Mind’s Eye Society and troupe games from approx. 1997 to 2010, as well as a researcher who has studied conflict and bleed in White Wolf games, I found this larp appealing to try precisely because we would experience events differently.((Sarah Lynne Bowman, “Social Conflict in Role-playing Communities: An Exploratory Qualitative Study,” International Journal of Role-Playing 4, 2013, pp.17-18. http://www.ijrp.subcultures.nl/wp-content/issue4/IJRPissue4bowman.pdf)) Below is a breakdown of the primary differences I noticed in the design and play of this larp as opposed to traditional Camarilla-based Vampire games.
Most Vampire games center upon the events during and surrounding the vampiric court. The premise of the game is that a secret cadre of immortal creatures who feed on human blood are running the city through a variety of forms of influence, both supernatural and social. For example, a vampire may have control over the Opera House because they have used their supernatural powers to make the owner fall in love with them, which affords them a certain amount of Influence. Similarly, a vampire may have control over a gang in the area or own an underground club where other denizens of the World of Darkness frequent for feeding, seduction, or secret meetings. In general, very few of the humans involved in these exchanges have any idea that vampires exist, as they might become angry and hunt them. Thus, vampires must remain secret and preserve a concept called The Masquerade in order to pretend to be human and avoid detection. Court is one of the only places where vampires can openly show their nature, although they are expected to follow certain social conventions that resemble Renaissance courtier politics as described in Machiavelli’s The Prince. Breaches of the Masquerade are kept to a minimum, as they may result in punishment or death by the reigning ruler.
A Ventrue and another vampire consult one another in a private corner. Photo by Tuomas Hakkarainen.
Since the majority of play happens at court, while gaining these forms of external Influence may take place through role-play, they are represented most often through mechanical abstractions on a character sheet, e.g. Street 2, High Society 1, Herd 3, etc. Players can use these types of Influence to enact some sort of advantage through interaction with the Storyteller. For example, vampires generally attend court having fed upon humans beforehand, which may be represented by their scores in Herd, Manipulation, or Seduction. Feeding allows some mechanical advantages in terms of use of powers, while lack of feeding can lead to dire consequences in terms of loss of control of the beastial nature of the vampire character. In other words, some vampires have an inherent advantage over others in the seductive feeding part of the game, whereas other characters may excel at having Street level contacts that give them access to drugs, gangs, or information that may become useful in play. As mentioned before, this Influence system usually comes into play most often during downtime actions between games or while interacting with a plot through the Storyteller. For example, a player might ask, “I have Street 2. Do I know anyone involved in this gang associated with this plot?” The Storyteller may choose to embody that non player-character (NPC) briefly or simply deliver information gained from that Influence.
While influence actions often take place during downtime in conventional Vampire larps, the players embodied interactions between vampires, street thugs, and feeding victims during End of the Line. Photo by Tuomas Hakkarainen.
Similarly, all sexual, violent, or supernatural activities generally take place off-game or through mechanical interventions such as rock-paper-scissors. For example, if a character tries to seduce another, they may role-play out the dialogue leading up to the attempt, then use rock-paper-scissors to resolve whether or not the seduction was successful. Depending on the comfort level of the participants, they may verbally describe what follows or “fade to black,” but actual physical touch is discouraged in violent, sexual, or supernatural contexts. Players may mime the feeding of blood, but are not encouraged to actually bite one another. A character may direct a slow punch toward another character for dramatic effect, but these actions are rarely meant to feel or look real. Indeed, in the official larp rules for the game, the writers imposed a no-touch rule from the beginning. This rule served many purposes, notably making players feel more comfortable engaging in edgy content and reassuring mainstream authorities that no “real” feeding, sex, or violence was occurring. Depending of the comfort level of the play group, these rules are sometimes bent, but the larp system as is features a large amount of abstracted rules to arbitrate these activities. For example, if combat breaks out in a group with several characters present, each person in the area must declare their actions, which can sometimes take hours to resolve due to the multiple tests involved.
End of the Line flipped the script on traditional Vampire role-playing in many ways, at least as represented by the official rules. Instead of taking place at court surrounded by vampires, the game setting was an underground party. I should note that some Vampire larps do take place in semi-public settings such as nightclubs amongst non-larpers where characters attempt to maintain the Masquerade. Thus, this article should be viewed through my experience with these games, which overwhelmingly took place in private homes or reserved public spaces and focused upon court politics.
In short, my experience of End of the Line was that we role-played out the activities usually handled before game or through game mechanics. As mortals, we embodied those Street and Herd contacts normally represented numerically or briefly embodied as NPCs by Storytellers. We physically played out biting, seduction, brawl, drug use, and partying. While some Camarilla politics took place behind the scenes – Ventrue, Brujah, Toreador, and Malkavians were present – I was able to play the larp as a mortal mostly unaware of these secret conversations and fully feel engaged. Another theme was that at various points of the larp, each of us would feel equally predator and prey. For my character, at least, I felt quite empowered as my drug dealer hipster mortal; sometimes, I was the seductress or corrupter rather than the prey, as was written into my character.
Vampiric feeding and Discipline use sometimes took place in the open, despite the Masquerade rule. Photo by Tuomas Puikkonen.
To clear up potential miscommunication from the outset, no real blood drinking or drug use was present in this larp. Fake drugs consisted of sugar and calcium pills. Fake blood was made of water, powdered sugar, cocoa powder, cornstarch, and red dye. Alcohol was served in small amounts. No fake guns or knives were permitted. Physical fights were permitted with negotiation of intensity, but fighting in general was discouraged in order to preserve the “all is love” rave atmosphere. Sexuality was negotiated ahead of time and was represented by activities ranging from verbal descriptions to dry humping and making out. Players could bite one another, but should do so slowly with clear visual signs of advance facing the front of their victim. Players could tap out of any scene that made them feel uncomfortable.
Themes, Setting, and Mechanics
In End of the Line, the activities that are usually relegated to mechanical representations were enacted physically. The larp did feature some mechanics – actually, a large amount by Nordic standards – but those mechanics often involved physicality. One of Martin Elricsson’s goals in introducing the Nordic style of larp to the larger White Wolf community was to steer away from the “talking heads” larps. In other words, one goal of End of the Line was “show, don’t tell.” Thus, the mechanics were designed as guides toward enacting the physical aspects of play in a consensual way agreed upon by the group, as well as means to conceptualize the character’s goals and typical behaviors. Also, the game featured pre-written characters, which is not usual for Vampire campaign play, but sometimes happens in traditional convention one-shots. Players were asked to fill out a short questionnaire on the type of play desired, as well as email a picture for casting to the organizers. Characters were given at least three ties with other characters and at least two larger subcultural groups to which they belonged.
A millionaire hanger-on; my character’s girlfriend; me as drug dealer and party organizer Carolina Kaita; and my in-game best friend. All three ties in my character sheet worked well for me in the larp. Photo by Tuomas Puikkonen.
Some additional descriptions of the themes and mechanics present in End of the Line:
Play for What Is Interesting
Vampire is promoted as “a game of personal horror” that explores the trauma of losing one’s humanity to one’s increasingly beastial nature. However, because the mechanics of the game are focused upon leveling and win conditions for challenges, play often becomes more about what has colloquially been called “superheroes with fangs.” White Wolf designers such as Eddy Webb have encouraged the concept of Playing to Lose,((Onyx Path Publishing, “Playing to Lose — Atlanta By Night 2012,” YouTube, last modified Dec. 3, 2012, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hrkGTnYjbuM)) in which allowing your character to have some sort of failure can lead to more dramatic scenes, although the impact of long-term play and character investment sometimes make this style of play difficult. Nordic larps, on the other hand, often feature one-shot, intensely immersive experiences where Playing to Lose((“Playing to Lose,” Nordiclarp.org, last modified on May 29, 2014, http://nordiclarp.org/wiki/Playing_to_Lose)) is a normative part of the play culture.
In the briefing for End of the Line, Bjarke Pedersen suggested we Play for What Is Interesting, or Play for Drama, as losing is not always the most accurate description of this style of play. This direction allowed me to feel enabled to have a surprise, in-character engagement and marriage in the middle of the Vampire larp, as it made sense based upon the way play unfolded, but would not normally be classified as “losing.”((For additional photos of the larp, including the engagement and wedding, see Singen Sternenreise, “End of the Line: A White Wolf Larp,” in Exposure, last modified Mar. 15. 2016, https://singen.exposure.co/end-of-the-line)) Of course, my new wife was turned into a vampire thirty minutes later without consulting me, so loss happened regardless, which added more interest to the larp for me. Ultimately, the one-shot format and the fact that the characters were all written to be terrible people allowed for greater alibi,((Sarah Lynne Bowman, “Bleed: The Spillover Between Player and Character,” Nordiclarp.org, last modified Mar. 3, 2015, http://nordiclarp.org/2015/03/02/bleed-the-spillover-between-player-and-character/)) meaning that I did not have to feel terribly emotionally connected to my character or responsible for her unethical actions.
Play for What Is Interesting gave participants permission to take the story in whatever direction they found thematically appropriate. Photo by Tuomas Puikkonen.
Masquerade
Out of around 66 players, only one third were vampires. The rest of the characters were mortals or ghouls, i.e. servants of vampires. As players, we were not aware of who was playing each group and were encouraged to keep this information secret. In this way, the game was — in a meta sense — about enacting the Masquerade, but also about breaking it, as we were encouraged to do with abandon. Unlike traditional Camarilla Vampire games where breaches of the Masquerade are considered treasonous and often punishable by final death, in this game, we were encouraged to play the weaknesses of mortals and immortals alike. When breaches of the Masquerade occurred, mortals were instructed to view them as “drugs gone bad,” “abuse,” or “people pretending to be vampires,” rather than escalating to “vampires exist!” This guideline helped us preserve the Masquerade theme of the game without the larp breaking down.
As a mortal character, I was fed upon once, offered the chance to become immortal, and proffered fake blood to drink from a wrist while in a dazed state, which I eventually declined in favor of asking my girlfriend to marry me. As directed, I played only having a vague recollection of this scene as a “weird drug experience” that let me “see my future,” as the events transpired in the Green meta room.
A potential breach of the Masquerade. The organizers encouraged players to act with greater abandon than in a traditional Vampire larp. Photo by Tuomas Puikkonen.
Stats
Characters were given three base stats that had absolutely no mechanical effect, but rather served as guides to role-play. Some players found these stats pointless, although I thought they preserved the original feel of the character sheet while not limiting my character’s agency. My stats were Using People 3, Cruelty 3, and Jaded 1. Each of us had custom stats based upon the design of the character.
Vampires also had supernatural abilities such as Presence, Obfuscate, Fortitude, Potence, and Celerity, although the disciplines were significantly pared down from the original rules. Presence worked by placing a hand gently on the back of someone’s neck and saying, “You really, really want to do X.” Some examples are “You really, really feel in love with me” or “You really, really want to leave now.” The character under these effects chose how to interpret the command, but was expected to follow it for 10 minutes with no after-effects or memory. Disciplines worked on other vampires as well. From what I understand, Celerity and Potence merely added a bonus to Brawl. Interesting, vampires also could only use certain Disciplines if they fed upon characters that had specific emotional states. For example, “feeding from a forgotten, lonely or homeless person fuels Obfuscate,” while “drinking deep from someone that lusts or loves fuels Presence.”
A player uses the “You really, really….” mechanic for Presence by placing his hand on the back of another participant’s neck to indicate supernatural persuasion. Photo by Tuomas Puikkonen.
Brawl allowed for a mechanical representation of who would win in a fight if winning was desirable. While some players might choose to simply lose, Brawl stats were compared by flashing the number to one another, then discussing how the fight would play out before enacting it. While fighting was discouraged in the overall setting, I did see some fights break out that looked quite physical, as is the norm in many Nordic larps. Players could negotiate how close to real violence they wished to get, from miming to close-to-real physical strength.
Scents
Players were instructed to spray themselves with one of three scents at the start of game: coconut, citrus, or floral. These scents were appealing to vampires in that order from highest to lowest, which most of us did not know until the end. This mechanic was an interesting way to integrate multiple senses into the larp, although practically speaking, it was sometimes difficult to tell who smelled like what scent in close quarters.
Feeding
The feeding mechanic involved the vampire squirting fake blood into their mouth, biting the player with varying degrees of intensity, and licking the wound to heal it. Similarly, players could squirt blood on their wrists or neck and allow players to feed on them, which was experienced as ecstatic by all parties. Similar to the Presence mechanic, the effects of the blood lasted for ten minutes and resulted in feeling dazed and confused about what happened, at least for mortals.
Feeding scene in the Blue room. Photo by Tuomas Puikkonen.
Players were instructed to do all feeding slowly and from the front, although a couple of us experienced being bit and having our neck sucked hard as a surprise from behind while in the process of a slow scene. As the tap-out mechanic puts the onus on the recipient to opt-out if uncomfortable, such a practice led in our cases to feeling uncomfortable with these scenes, as tapping-out at that point would have been too late. However, several of the vampires asked for consent before biting and made sure to act slowly and visibly, which seemed to work well in most contexts. Additional workshopping of the mechanics before the game would have helped everyone feel more comfortable about the expectations ahead of time, as I will discuss in a later section.
Sexuality
As mentioned above, the sexuality rules were the most variable and also, in some ways, the most vague. Sex could be played through activities ranging from narratively explaining what happens to dry humping and making out based upon the comfort level of the participants. While nudity was possible, I did not personally witness much in the rooms in which I frequented. Hypothetically, real sex was possible, though not encouraged explicitly by the organizers.
Physical intimacy was negotiated between players based on individual comfort levels. Photo by Tuomas Puikkonen.
Dance
Players were encouraged to dance through the intro and outro scenes and the DJs played throughout the larp. One interesting metatechnique involved dancing. If a player was looking for interaction, they could enter the dance floor and attempt to engage in eye contact with another player, inviting a scene between the characters. While I did not use this technique often, other players reported it working seamlessly. Also, being able to dance when not engaged in role-play was a nice release for some players.
The dance floor played rave music throughout the night. Locking eyes on the dance floor was a metatechnique for starting a scene with a new person. Photo by Tuomas Puikkonen.
Death or Embrace
Players could determine if and when they wanted to die. A character could be fed upon multiple times with no negative consequences except those the player choose to role-play. Some characters were offered the opportunity to become vampires – i.e. the Embrace — which they would role-play out. I witnessed one character undergo this transformation, role-playing out the proceeding hunger and traumatic delirium post-Embrace quite convincingly. A couple of characters died during the game, with one playing a corpse in the closet for at least thirty minutes at the end of the larp.
Alibi and Agency
The characters in End of the Line were all written to be horrible people, regardless of their status as mortals, ghouls, or vampires. These characters represented the lowlifes of the streets and underground culture. As stated by organizer Martin Elricsson during a pre-game briefing, each character would experience being both predator and prey at some point. My character was specifically written to be a sociopathic hipster party organizer and drug dealer who sometimes messed with people because she was bored. Fortunately, this character was quite similar to my long-running Vampire character in her early days, so she was an easy default for me to inhabit. Other players reported having a more difficult time enacting the darker parts of their character’s nature.
What this design produced is a sense that all people have their inner monster and that vampires are merely a supernatural expression of that inhumanity, a theme that I have always felt was central to Vampire and often overlooked in traditional play. We do not need to look far in actual humanity to see the Beastial nature within us, nor do we need to invent supernaturally creative ways to be cruel and selfish. The metaphor of feeding and domination is useful to play out in this circumstance, but in reality, is no different than how people treat one another emotionally in their darker moments. For more information on this concept, depth psychologist Whitney Strix Beltrán has academically explored this expression of the players’ inner Shadow through Vampire and other games.((Whitney Strix Beltrán, “Shadow Work: A Jungian Perspective on the Underside of Live Action Role-Play in the United States,” in The Wyrd Con Companion Book 2013, edited by Sarah Lynne Bowman and Aaron Vanek (Los Angeles, CA: Wyrd Con, 2013), 94-101. https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/1793415/WCCB13.pdf)) As one of the players, Bob Wilson, summarized for World of Darkness News, “Emotionally, people manipulated, lied, and did all the other terrible things people do to each other.”((Harlequin, “‘End of the Line’ LARP Interview,” World of Darkness News, last modified on Mar. 16, 2016, http://www.worldofdarkness.news/Home/TabId/56/ArtMID/497/userid/2/ArticleID/15/End-of-the-Line-LARP-interview.aspx))
Characters in End of the Line often embodied some of the worst parts of human nature, whether vampire or mortal. Photo by Tuomas Puikkonen.
Some of the mortal players did find themselves lacking sufficient agency toward the end of the game, although we were instructed to make our own role-play scenes, also known as “bringing your own basket” to the picnic. One of the problems in traditional Vampire larp is the structural inequalities built into the game, where higher-level players with more status get more access to secret meetings, powers, plots, etc. While the beginning of End of the Line featured an equilibrium of play between mortals and supernatural characters, by the end of the larp, player-characters not involved with secret Camarilla meetings or getting Embraced as vampires sometimes felt excluded from play, as is often experienced by Neonates in traditional Vampire larp. Perhaps adding some sort of element to engage the still-mortal toward the end would help these players maintain engagement and their sense of agency, such as dealing with a police raid or some other type of plot.
Consent, Workshopping, and Debriefing
As mentioned above, the main opt-out mechanic of the larp was tapping-out. This mechanic places the onus on the person receiving the action to be cognizant enough of their own experience to remember to tap-out, to be comfortable enough with their co-players to not feel shamed for not being “hardcore” enough, etc. The organizers did a good job of trying to alleviate concerns around consent in the pre-game social media groups, assuring us that we could exit any scene without repercussion and that actions such as feeding would happen slowly, from the front, and with plenty of opportunity to tap-out. In practice, this rule was not always followed.
In my view, both the aggressor and the recipient should be equally responsible for consent in a scene. Briefly stopping play to check in with another player or negotiate the degree of intensity may cause a short break in immersion, but offers the net gain of allowing players the sense that their personal boundaries are important and will be respected by the other players. This comfort level can often lead to greater intensity if trust is established.
Because of the lack of space in the main building and time constraints, we were only given a thirty minute briefing rather than the usual workshopping often associated with Nordic larps.((The Workshop Handbook, Workshophandbook.com, last accessed Mar. 17, 2016, https://workshophandbook.wordpress.com/)) Similarly, we were not offered a chance for structured debriefing,((Sarah Lynne Bowman, “Returning to the Real World: Debriefing After Role-playing Games,” Nordiclarp.org, last modified Dec. 8, 2014, http://nordiclarp.org/2014/12/08/debrief-returning-to-the-real-world/)) as the organizers needed to clean the site and close it to the players. Some players convened for an after-party off-site, but I was unable to attend due to a conference in the morning.
Organizer Bjarke Pedersen running the pre-game briefing. Space and time constraints made extensive workshopping infeasible. Photo by Tuomas Puikkonen.
I believe that when playing with physically intimate scenes that feature feeding, violence, and sexuality, workshopping serves many important purposes. It helps players build trust before inhabiting their characters; offers opportunities to model and practice the mechanics; and opens up opportunities for players in their assigned groups to negotiate boundaries. We did some of these activities in our small groups over email, but recognizing each other at the venue was sometimes difficult and not everyone in the larp communicated boundaries beforehand. While I respect the fact that logistics for such an event can be difficult, one thing I learned from the Nordic larp Just a Little Lovin’ was the importance of off-game negotiation and workshopping in facilitating the ability to play intimacy more safely.((Sarah Lynne Bowman, “Love, Sex, Death, and Liminality: Ritual in Just a Little Lovin’,” Nordiclarp.org, last modified July 13, 2015, http://nordiclarp.org/2015/07/13/love-sex-death-and-liminality-ritual-in-just-a-little-lovin/)) Additionally, Just a Little Lovin’ featured clear negotiation before sexual scenes and ritualized this play in a way that allowed player input to influence the scene, not just character desires. This practice cut down on ambiguity.
Similarly, debriefing is important when processing the events that happen in such a game. While some individual players felt comfortable speaking informally after the game, a structured debrief – perhaps in small groups – would have allowed people the chance to de-role and speak seriously about their experience. I especially would have appreciated a structured opportunity to speak with the individuals with whom I had intimate scenes, insulted, or threatened in-character. I do think such debriefing sessions should be offered by organizers, but I also think they should be optional for individuals who wish to take part. It was difficult for some players inexperienced with Nordic larp and/or Vampire to transition quickly back to their daily consciousness and not perceive themselves or others as predators, an issue that can be ameliorated in part with a debrief.
The organizers of the larp plan to adjust the next run according to these critiques, with greater variability of options for physical play, negotiation between players, workshopping, and debriefing. In essence, this run showed excellent proof of concept with refinements that should and will be made for future iterations.
The Future of White Wolf and Nordic-style Vampire Larp
The Helsinki run of End of the Line is just the first of several events planned for the next two years. The organizing team plans to rerun a version of this larp at the Grand Masquerade in New Orleans in September 2016.((“The Grand Masquerade,” Masqueradebynight, last retrieved on Mar. 17, 2016, http://www.masqueradebynight.com/)) Potential players should note that based upon feedback, the above-mentioned mechanics and structure may change in the next iteration. Interested players can subscribe to the End of the Line mailing list here. Additionally, this team plans to runEnlightenment in Blood as a pervasive larp spanning many locations in Berlin in 2017 as a part of a multi-day World of Darkness festival.((“World of Darkness Berlin 2017: Enlightenment in Blood,” Enlightenmentinblood.com, last retrieved on Mar. 17, 2016, http://www.enlightenmentinblood.com/))
Finally, Liveform and Rollespilsfabrikken plan to run a White Wolf-endorsed larp calledConvention of Thorns between October 27-30, 2016.((“White Wolf Presents Convention of Thorns,” Cotlarp.com, last retrieved on Mar. 17, 2016, http://www.cotlarp.com/)) This larp will provide an alternate history account of the famous 15th century event in White Wolf history in which the Camarilla organizing body was formed. Notably, this historical larp will take place in a Polish castle and will focus upon interactions between vampires of various power levels, from Neonate to Methuselah. While some of the mechanics will resemble those from End of the Line, the two productions will offer different takes on the genre. In short, World of Darkness players interested in trying Nordic-style larps have several options coming soon.
To summarize, these larps are not intended to replace or alter existing Vampire larps, but rather to add additional experiences for players interested in this style. The physicality of the Nordic approach will likely not appeal to certain players, which is understandable. For potential players unused this style, I suggest fully reviewing the content of this article and other documentation before signing up for one of these games in order to understand the expectations of the play culture. I also suggest being clear from the outset with yourself and your co-players about your boundaries via email or other forms of communication. Players should feel enabled to negotiate those limits before, during, and after play and tap-out of any scene that makes them uncomfortable. In my view, physical play in larp is certainly possible — indeed, some of the organizers of End of the Line started role-playing in traditional Vampire larps before exploring other forms of embodiment — but should be done with careful consideration of the off-game needs of other players.
End of the Line
Participation Fee: €25 Players: 66 Date: March 7, 2016, 6 hours Location: Helsinki, Finland Created by: Bjarke Pedersen, Juhana Pettersson & Martin Elricsson Production: José Jácome & Mikko Pervilä Characters: Elin Nilsen, Jørn Slemdal & Mika Loponen Decor: Marcus Engstrand, Anders Davén & Aleksander Nikulin Documentation: Tuomas Hakkarainen, Tuomas Puikkonen, Julius Konttinen & Joona Pettersson Catering: Kasper Larson & Aarne Saarinen Production assistants: Outi Mussalo, Tia Carolina Ihalainen, James Knowlden, Bob Wilson, Irrette Cziezerski, Jukka Seppänen & Ville-Eemeli Miettinen Featuring: Suicide Club (Gabriella Holmström & Ossian Reynolds) Produced by: White Wolf Publishing and Odyssé with Solmukohta and Inside Job Agency
Cover photo: Part-larp, part-rave, End of the Line provided a unique and authentic World of Darkness experience, in game photo by Tuomas Puikkonen. Other photos by Tuomas Puikkonen.
