A frequently told origin story of larp goes as follows: A group of people was playing Dungeons & Dragons (1974), when someone asked: “Wouldn’t it be cool to do this for real?” In that moment of eureka, with these imaginary people standing up from around the table, live-action role-playing was born from tabletop role-playing. This apocryphal origin story captures the central aesthetic of larp that remains prevalent even today: doing things for real in an embodied manner is, for many people, preferable to the improvised verbal storytelling of tabletop role-playing. However, when things are done “for real” there is always some confusion on how real is real, as there are numerous different levels of simulation, representation, and performance.
In larp we dress up as our character, use our bodies as our character, and inhabit the space that stands in for the fictional world. Sometimes larping is symbolic, abstract, and gestured, and the difference to tabletop role-playing performativity is only in standing up and moving around a bit. However, it is also possible to strive for the aesthetic of authenticity, where characters, actions, props, and sites look, feel, and function as they would in the fictional world. In larp – specifically Nordic larp – there are long standing aesthetic traditions that value this kind of “realness” (see e.g. Koljonen 2007, Stenros & Montola 2010). These are aesthetic traditions that encourage fidelity, authenticity, and actuality. While the dream of a comprehensive illusion of a fantasy world is seldom a goal in larp design or play, the longing for “more real”, whatever that means, does influence creating and enacting larp.
Yet, how do we portray skills such as sword fighting or dancing in a larp, if as players we are not nearly as good at it as our characters? What does it mean to create a fantastic-looking, broken and dirty, yet machine-washable, outfit for a post-apocalyptic larp campaign? How are these questions connected to the challenges of portraying oppression inspired by the real world, and the questions relating to what player bodies are allowed to stand in for what fictional entities?
We can never completely “do things for real” in a larp. It is an interesting and alluring design goal to create “fully real” props, costumes, actions, bodies, and sites, but it can never be achieved. The level of representation is always uneven – some things always have a more authentic representation than others, partly because some representation is impossible (magic is not real), partly because we do not want some things to be fully real (we do not want to harm other players), and partly because symbolic representation is sometimes more powerful in allowing players to engage with an experience.
Being fully real can be cumbersome, expensive, dangerous, and socially unacceptable: and it leads to countless barriers of entry around players’ resources, skills, minds, bodies, and lived histories. When representation is uneven, it means that there will be more inconsistencies in players’ interpretations of what is happening. Even so, the longing for the real and the aesthetic of authenticity often guide choices made by both larp designers and players.
In this article we aim to make sense of larp in practice. We put into writing common structures of larp that “everyone already knows”, examine them, and explain why these features have the effects that they have. To do this, minimal tools from semiotics are borrowed. We discuss this aesthetic of doing things for real from the angle of the general problem of indexicality: all strategies for representation in larp carry inherent trade-offs in terms of what can be presented, how, by whom, to whom, with what likely interpretations, and under what circumstances. Since the (general) problem of indexicality has two sides – the difficulty of similar enough interpretations, and the deeply contextual assigning of meaning – we first look at why uniform interpretations are hard to foster, and then move on to the practical challenges of striving for authenticity in larp locations, setting, actions, knowledge, and finally the living bodies of the players. On the way, we also discuss indexicality as an explicit design ideal.
The way we outline the general problem of indexicality sheds light on what we perceive as a root cause of many critiques of Nordic larps and Nordic larping we have read over the course of the last few years relating to conflicts in player cultures, accessibility, and differences in design aesthetics. The article does not attempt to solve the problem, or even propose strategies to negotiate it, but seeks to articulate this foundational challenge of larp, and to explore some specific trade-offs that have caused problems. While the problem of indexicality is general, affecting everything from props to bodies and from actions to histories, there unfortunately is no general answer to the difficulties it creates – even ditching the entire ideal of indexicality is no solution.
Indexical Representation in Larp
Fundamentally, role-playing can be seen as a practice of creating a world together with other people, and then enacting changes to that fictional world in a way that produces narrative content (cf. Montola 2012). Give a kid a tabard and a sword, and she can pretend to be a knight in a fictional world. When others also start to pretend that she is a knight, and possibly pretend to be adversaries for her to encounter, a shared world starts to emerge. This joint pretense, inter-immersion (Stenros 2015; originally Pohjola 2004), is the cornerstone of sociodramatic role-play. As the knight and the adversary fight or hug, a sequence of events takes place that can be narrativized after the fact, while also producing meaningful consequences – emotion, identification, simulation, and so forth.
In larp theory, this fiction is called diegesis (cf. Montola 2012), a highly subjective understanding of an individual player about the state of the co-created fictional world. Larp theory has long used philosopher Charles S. Peirce’s second trichotomy of symbols, icons, and indices (Peirce & Wiener 1958; Everaert-Desmedt 2011) as an analytic framework to understand how real-world material signifies fictional things in the diegesis (Loponen & Montola 2004). These categories help in understanding how the shared imaginative space is constructed.
Symbols are signs that refer to their objects through arbitrary convention. In larp theory, symbolic representation happens when players use agreed-upon symbols to signify things about the diegesis. For example, an off-game symbol can be marked on an object to signify that it does not exist in the diegesis, or a metatechnique can indicate that a player doing a particular gesture may speak out her inner thoughts without her character actually doing so in the fiction.
Icons are signs that refer to their objects through similarity. A foam sword covered in duct tape counts as a sword because it resembles one. A player with green makeup counts as an orc, as she resembles the earlier portrayals of fictional orcs in popular culture.
Finally, indices are signs that refer to their objects through a direct connection. For Peirce, a pointing finger refers to its target through the direction of the pointing, and a weather vane refers to the direction of wind through its causal orientation. In larp theory, indices refer to their fictional objects by being the same thing. A ballpoint pen is a ballpoint pen in fiction simply because it is a ballpoint pen.
Players’ interpretation of the symbols, icons, and indices are not identical. Thus being a symbol, an icon, or an indice is not a property of an object, but an interpretation a person does of the relationship between the sign and what it is seen as pointing toward. There is always variation, and as new information emerges, players tune their interpretation. Each player has their own reading of the diegesis. However, for the shared imaginary space to remain playable, the interpretations need to be similar enough. They need to be equifinal (Montola 2012), meaning that even if the routes to interpretation vary, the consequences are indistinguishable enough that material conflicts in the interpretation of reality do not derail play. For example, when two characters talk about “their past poker games” during the larp, only for the players to realize that one was talking about Texas Hold’em and the other about Five Card Draw, the interpretations during play are equifinal enough without being identical. Indeed, it is common for players to speak broadly about characters’ shared past to make room for this. On the other hand, if one player believes their character is holding a gun, and the other player believes their character sees a gun-shaped piece of wood, there is an equifinality conflict and coherent play cannot continue.
Superficially, indexicality appears simple. When things stand for themselves in the fiction players need the least amount of context and little imagination, and misunderstandings are seemingly rare. However, a closer look reveals a far more complicated reality.
First, it is often not simple to determine whether something was intended as an index or an icon – or in what sense some object is an index or an icon. For example, if a player uses chemicals to produce a worn sweater for a post-apocalypse larp, the sweater is probably intended to be read as an indexical representation of a sweater that has been used through an apocalypse and beyond, but not as an indexical representation of a carefully crafted shirt with acid and paint stains. A participant might choose to wield a metal sword for its indexical qualities, but still make sure it is properly dulled to avoid dangerous situations. This renders it into an icon of a sharpened blade.
Second, icons can appear more real than indices. Kent Grayson and Radan Martinec (2004) studied the consumer perceptions of authenticity in the home museums of William Shakespeare and Sherlock Holmes. Their surprising finding was that the highly indexical Shakespeare museum was sometimes perceived as less authentic than the completely iconic home museum of Sherlock Holmes. Similarly, the reason why creating a dirty sweater for a post-apocalypse larp is often done with paints and chemicals, is that mere ordinary dirt would not make it visibly dirty enough to convey the proper Mad Max aesthetic. Choosing paints and chemicals over dirt also allows gear to be washed between larps while remaining iconically dirty.
Third, indexicality might imply more or less of the object’s sociocultural history. The item in question is not just like the item, or even that item in general, but that very specific item with the exact history. In the pervasive larp Prosopopeia Bardo 1: Där vi föll (Sweden 2005, Eng. Prosopoeia Part 1: Where We Fell), it was intended that fictional objects were not only materially identical to their indexical signifiers, but they were intended to be the very same objects. “[E]ven though in a regular urban larp a jacket may signify a perfectly identical jacket, in Prosopopeia the jacket signified the exact same jacket owned by the exact same person” (Montola & Jonsson 2006). This is most obvious when it comes to locations. If a larp takes place in a castle, it can take place in a castle, in that specific castle, that specific castle with an altered history, or even that very castle with its exact same history.
While indexicality can support the feeling of “being there” and “doing things for real”, it can also hinder it if there is confusion as to how and what exactly does an object represent and signify. In larp we are aware that symbols and icons are not specific in their signification and require negotiation. An action, object, site, or body can be presented with some vagueness; often a sketch is enough to communicate the underlying idea, as we are competent in filling in the gaps to achieve an equifinal result. However, with indices there may be a false sense of clear signification when in fact indices also require negotiation.((A note on semiotics. We are knowingly operating here with a concise, even reduced, toolset. In the field of semiotics, and in literature and cultural studies more generally, there is a wealth of tools that could be brought to bear on reading larp. We could dwell further into Peirce’s work, beyond his first trichotomy. Alternatively, we could begin the analysis with Ferdinand de Saussure’s signified and signifier and continue to tease apart the literal meaning (denotation) and the meaning given by community (connotation) as outlined by Louis Hjelmslev (Barthes 1964). Indeed, we could dwell much deeper in interpretation: What work does the reader do to fill in gaps in the larp text or performance? We could unpack this with the works of Marie-Laure Ryan (1991), go further into untangling the creation of coherent fantastic diegeses as outlined by Matt Hills (2002) and Michael Saler (2012), and the help provided by paratexts as outlined by Gérard Genette (1987). Juri Lotman’s (2005) concept of semiosphere could probably be usefully mobilized to bring some clarity to challenges of cultural contexts, just as Judith Butler’s (1993) citationality might be an interesting addition to this discussion, and obviously Stuart Hall’s (1997) work on representation and stereotype could also be applied on larp signaling.
However, we have consciously chosen a sharp focus in this article: we have set out to describe the general problem of indexicality in larp with as little theory as possible. Our idea is that by describing the general problem in the abstract and with contextualizing examples, we render this foundation feature of larp communication clearly visible. Thus our project here is more semiotic than discursive: “the semiotic approach is concerned with the how of representation, with how language produces meaning – what has been called its ‘poetics’; whereas the discursive approach is more concerned with the effects and consequences of representation – its politics” (Hall 1997, 6). The two cannot be fully separated in practice, but in this article, we lean towards poetics, not politics.))
The general problem of indexicality is that all design strategies for direct representation within a larp carry inherent trade-offs in what can be represented. Thus far we have concentrated on the side of the interpretation. Now we move to the other side, assigning meaning.
Indexicality as a Design Ideal
The aesthetic of indexicality seems to allow for a powerful suspension of disbelief of being able to inhabit the world (and “immerse” into the character) without disturbance. This kind of ideal has been often celebrated and endorsed as a desirable aesthetic within the Nordic larp movement (e.g. Fatland & Wingård 1999, Pohjola 2000, Montola & Jonsson 2006, Pettersson 2018; Koljonen et al. 2019). Sometimes the ideal is rooted in indexicality, while at other times strong iconicity suffices, allowing spaceship interiors to be constructed from warships, through a mixture of partially being the real thing and partially just looking-the-part with high production values and perfectionist fidelity.
The clearest expression of striving for indexicality can be found in the 360° illusion design ideal, formulated by Johanna Koljonen (2007; see also Waern, Montola & Stenros 2009). This design ideal stipulates that the surroundings in the larp should look, feel, and function in full accordance with the fiction. This means that the larp location should look like the diegetic location, the players should look, act, and react like their characters, and all the props should be functional.
However, a fully indexical larp is impossible. To quote Alfred Korzybski (1958/1933), “the map is not the territory”: A larp that aims to ‘reproduce’ a fictional world fully, and aims for a 1:1 representation, is bound to fail, since the players would then also have to be exactly who they are. The concept of role-play is lost without pretending. Indeed, if larp is viewed as a simulation, and a simulation is a representation and a simplification of another system, it is this gap between the real and the representation that allows for pretend play.((Indexicality is not the same thing as simulationism, although they do share a number of similarities. Simulations and simulationism are about modeling real world situations, events, or behavior, and simulation always requires simplification. Indexicality is representation and signification that is connected to the thing being signified or represented.)) We believe that you cannot actually larp in a fully indexical situation.
Larps set in or near the present day can aim for historical indexicality, except for the characters. This is the level of detail already suggested by the Dogma 99 manifesto, which stated that “No object shall be used to represent another object ”, used by larps such as 13 til bords (Norway 2000, Eng.13 at the Table), which is a very minimalistic larp about thirteen characters eating dinner and having an improvised conversation. As there are no instructions to the contrary, there is nothing preventing players from bringing in all the history of material objects, except when they relate to the player characters. As long as the characters do not want to do anything that the players are not willing or able to do, the actions of the characters can also be indexical.
However, when we move away from realistic larps in contemporary settings, we can, at most, aim for material indexicality without historical or character indexicality. In the highly indexical aesthetic of the larp 1942 – Noen å stole på (Norway 2000, Eng. 1942 – Someone to Trust), portraying the German occupation of Norway, the organizers did recommend using authentic gear from the WW2 era – but a pair of authentic army boots were not intended to carry their vintage status as artifacts from the previous century. While 1942 perhaps did not reach an extreme degree of material indexicality (it was played in present-day homes after all), historical re-enactments played in the wilderness can reach this state with enough focus on authentic artisanship.
Finally, larps with supernatural content can at most have partial material indexicality without historical or character indexicality. An extreme example of a larp aiming for indexicality was Parliament of Shadows (Belgium 2017). The larp addressed lobbying for and against the legislation establishing the European Travel Information and Authorization System at the European Parliament. The larp was played in the actual European Parliament building, with members of the European Parliament, lobbyists, and other parliament staff. The ETIAS legislation is also real, and the larp used the actual documents. Indeed, Parliament of Shadows was particularly strongly connected to reality, using the actual contested issues, places of power, and people of influence to stand in for themselves. Yet Parliament of Shadows was also an official Vampire: The Masquerade fifth edition (2018) larp that features all sorts of supernatural beings – who obviously were not indexical. The level of indexicality need not be homogenous through the design of a larp.((It is important to note that the 360° illusion and the drive toward indexicality, while strong design ideals in Nordic larp, are not universal. Other ideals are, for example, clarity and material independence (Stenros, Andresen, & Nielsen 2016). Larps that aim for clarity tend to reduce the complexity of fictional elements, having for example only three elaborate chairs and a beautiful table. Such larps also tend to have very little visual noise, and are often played in empty, monochromatic rooms. Clarity as a design ideal is strongly associated with the genre of blackbox larps (e.g. Koljonen et al. 2019). While actions may still be strongly indexical, the environment and the player bodies and costumes are not.
>Material independence as an ideal is most strongly connected to tabletop role-playing games, where the physical environment does not matter for the fictional world. In larps this is common in chamber larps run at conventions and in the Fastaval freeform tradition. As such, role-play is mostly symbolic and iconic, with possible moments of indexical speech or action, the problems of indexicality are not an issue here.
To explain this using the map metaphor, larps aiming at a 360° illusion want to have a map that is the world, maps that have 1:1 reference. Larps aiming for clarity want maps akin to the most beautiful transit maps; the map is very useful for a very specific purpose, more so than a 1:1 map, but for most things it is useless. Larps that aim for material independence have maps that look like maps, but they are more like artistic interpretations of the terrain.))
As these examples show, the problem in assigning meaning starts to emerge here. While it is work-intensive and possibly very expensive, it can be possible to have indexical items and locations. However, once we populate these sites with characters, connected to culture and history, the general problem of indexicality can no longer be ignored. Next, we move on to considering how compatible indexicality is with character bodies, actions, and histories.
Being Real (Enough)
There is an old larp rule: “Kan man, så kan man”, if you can, you can. KMSKM is intended as a shorthand for rules-light larps describing what characters are able to do in the fiction. If you can run, climb, and fight, then your character can do so as well. This is a foundational element of indexical play. However, the downside of this indexical model is obvious: If you can’t, you can’t.
When indexical representation is the goal, then the player’s skills and abilities set the limits for their possible actions. Most people cannot play indexical archers or indexical hackers, or pull off performances as indexical rappers or indexical gourmet chefs. Most people do not want to larp indexical penetrative sex or face the legal ramifications of indexical use of intravenous drugs, even if they could perform the necessary actions. Sex, violence, and wealth are areas where simulation is frequently used to allow groups to tell stories where the consequences of indexical representation would inhibit play.
Sometimes indexicality is not desired, as it might damage the larp on a structural level. A canonical example is indexical lying in larps. It is difficult for a player to have their character tell a lie in a game that is not obviously verifiable as a lie. So much of the diegetic reality of a larp is created through speech acts, that good lying is much more likely to generate equifinality conflicts than interesting plot twists.
We are also not only limited by what we cannot do, but also by the things that we can. Many skills and abilities are very hard to turn off. This is most obvious when thinking about social skills, such as attractiveness, charisma, and oratory skills, that are hard for a player to leave outside a character performance. As each player is unique, with a personal history, a specific set of skills, knowledge, and experiences, each player will also interpret the larp differently. A professional entertainer may feel alienated by incongruent nuances of backstage banter in a cabaret larp. A professional banker may have a hard time in a larp where the control of a company becomes an issue but the co-players are oblivious to the intricacies of equity and power in publicly held companies. When players have conflicting, non-equifinal readings of the shared imaginary space, we have interpretive friction.
Furthermore, when players are limited by what they can actually do, they tend to fall into familiar patterns. Play can end up being less imaginative. Indexicality enforces real-world behavior (see Stenros, Andresen, & Nielsen 2016), and it can also reduce interpretive friction if it is extreme enough. If all orcs in the game world are strong and scary, and all players cast as orcs are selected to be taller than any of the non-orc players, the limbic systems of non-orc players will likely manage the diegetic interpretation of emotional response to orcs, when the game material makes the reputation of the orcs clear. This limbic response reduces the interpretive friction around non-orc players’ reaction to the orcs, at the expense of rigid casting requirements.
The rush of larp is in doing things for real, in pretending to be something you are not: but at the same time the player and the character cannot and will not be the same, unless the circumstances are exceptional. Indexical representation also means that not only do the players need to be able to do a thing, but they must actually do it. They need to speak Quenya, they need to convince another character, and they need to cook a gourmet dinner. Some actions are not only hard, time-consuming, or dull, but can also be dangerous or undesirable.
Doing things for real requires practice. Pre-larp work is the non-play-time preparation, which includes things like costuming, the establishment of in-game character relationships, and workshops or skills training. For example, a player might train every other weekend for a year for a larp with boffer combat in which they will play the king’s champion. Similarly, a spymaster might memorize the names and backgrounds of all characters in a game, trying to produce an indexical portrayal of creepy omniscience.
Authentic Gear
The drive toward making props as indexical as possible is strong in some low fantasy or historical reenactment larps. Authentic gear, making it, finding it, and taking care of it, is an important aspect of the hobby for many people. Striving for indexicality as an ideal can be useful, but the idea that all props, costumes, equipment, and locations must be real – or at the very least they should look, feel, and act as if they were real – carries endless challenges. Some props are dangerous (weapons), others are expensive (jewelry), difficult to find (antiques), impossible (warp drive), or very time-consuming to make (period clothing done with period methods).
Experienced indexicality is a function of the perception of the player: If a player has never touched or seen a real gun before, an aluminum replica might pass as an indexical representation. On the other hand, if the player has carried a service weapon every day for years, a replica is unlikely to feel real, even if other players do not notice and it does not affect play. Historically military gear feels more authentic if you know it to be actual army surplus from the 1940s.
The indexicality of any object is evaluated in the context of its surroundings. An object that is significantly more or less indexical will attract specific attention. Introducing an indexical object into an otherwise symbolic experience makes those objects seem more real than their surroundings, allowing focus to be shaped. In a sufficiently indexical environment, iconic objects will be more difficult for players to ignore – an obvious Nerf gun symbolizing a real gun in a contemporary café will be hard to take seriously. The more familiar the players are with an environment, the larger the experiential breach of non-indexical objects. Hence, high-resolution contemporary environments tend to have the highest bar for indexicality.
Since neither full indexicality, nor uniform reading of signification cannot be achieved, negotiation of representation is always necessary. Interpretive problems can happen in both directions: an act or a prop can be read as more indexical than it is (imperfect make-up on a character interpreted as intended to be diegetically imperfect make-up and not just make-up), or it can be read as less indexical (a replica gun is read as a gun when it is meant as a replica).
Like any strict propping standard, a requirement of indexicality easily turns into a question of classist gatekeeping. The requirement of a high-fidelity royal ball gown would prevent some players from signing up to a larp, or make them choose to play lower status in order to avoid costuming expenses. Participants with less money, time, network, and social and cultural capital can have a hard time participating.
Labor and money can be traded off against each other for indexical propping, and most games using it see a variety of player strategies. However, if a player wants to indexically represent, say, a perfectly fit post-apocalyptic tribal warrior and run for miles to perform the gamemaster-given quests of that larp, they have to actually participate in a pre-larp training regime; there is no monetary shortcut to indexical abilities.
We can analytically divide pre-game work into labor in the world (earning money, making objects), labor on the self (learning skills, physically changing one’s body), and labor on the game (rehearsing metatechniques, studying the fiction). Different players often have preferences among the different kinds of pre-game work and may see some as presenting a higher barrier to participation than others.
Players in Context
The ultimate limit for the players is not their knowledge or skills, nor even their monetary means. The practical limit is the physical, living player body. This is also the area that is often most contested as it can be very painful to individual players. Tall people cannot be indexically short, just as young people cannot be indexically old. If the requirement of indexicality increases, the possible roles available to players shrink.
To a certain degree, all larp is inherently ableist. Opting for non-symbolic representation always places at least some players at disadvantage. When we choose to do things for real, we must acknowledge that there is virtually nothing that all of us can do for real.
Furthermore, a player body does not float as a tabula rasa in a vacuum, but it is situated in a specific culture with histories of meaning and interpretation. The further you choose to map the player’s body to the character’s body, the closer you venture towards sexism, ageism, racism, colorism, transphobia, and other discrimination (see e.g. Kemper 2017). Indexical representation tends to reproduce real-world power structures. When players are physically identical to their characters, diegetic body shaming, racism, or misogyny touches the players as well as their characters.
Some larps specifically forbid diegetic insults targeting players’ or characters’ bodies (or other attributes that the character might share with the player) to avoid this – which can in turn make it difficult to meaningfully portray some character identities that have been shaped by oppression in ways that are important to players who share those identities (Saitta and Svegaard 2019). For example, if a larp world is designed as egalitarian in regards to sexual orientation – if there is no significant difference between being straight, gay, bi, or pan – then lived experience connected to the pressures of staying in the closet and coming out becomes largely meaningless (cf. Stenros and Sihvonen 2019). It is hard to construct a fictional world that is free of oppression, yet renders identities shaped by oppression in a legible manner.
Talking about the body of a player as a brute fact, as something that has a specific, historical, and physical existence is uncomfortable. Yet that is very much the point here. When attempting to design a larp that is accessible and inclusive, yet also contains visual, physical cues rooted in the actual players (appearance, gestures, actions), we cannot ignore the body of the player. In that design work, we must attempt to address the problems inherent in the body as an indexical object, separated from the player as a whole. This abstracted perspective can be dehumanizing, yet ignoring it means we also ignore the very real challenges relating to the indexicality of bodies in larp. We lack polite language for this because we often go through a lot of effort to not see this, to overlook it; in part because of the harm caused early in the history of the medium when communities were still understanding this territory. It can be uncomfortable to look at these issues as they are distinctions that are tied to violence, trauma, and shame, both inherited and personal. However, when we construct ways of seeing that let us not reproduce this trauma, they may obfuscate problems. When we play, we react both to the other embodied player, and we react to our conception of this other player. Both matter.
Let us break down some of the power structures that have an impact on the people who participate. First, the bodies of players are always present in the larp in some form, but not always indexically. A player might play a character with their exact physical appearance, or they might play a character whose body their body only represents, as an icon. For instance, a young person might play an old character, or the character might be a supernatural being. In all cases, however, the player is present in their specific, living, breathing actual body. When the body of a player becomes a representation of the character’s body, some translation, interpretation, and negotiation is needed.
Humans carry their history in their bodies. As a particularly important and complicated example, trans bodies might require accounting for or explaining marks such as scars, tattoos, and surgery within the larp – or agreeing to omit them from the fiction. Even when a trans body represents itself as a biological index, the production of that body is intricately tied to a specific history, specific power relations, technologies, and legislation. For the body to be indexical, the player and designers would need to create a parallel set of fictional structures. While this is possible, it is rarely done, as accounting for diegetic oppression would be a major task of world-building that most larp designers are not equipped to carry out. Even if it were done, the result would not always be desirable for players who might want to avoid oppression by playing with an iconic body instead. Consequently, the labor falls onto trans players, who bear the burden of rereading their bodies in such a way that they can fit into the game while performing the character, re-establishing their existing relationship with their body afterwards, and managing the reactions of other players to a non-indexical body throughout.
Secondly, the player and the character body unavoidably share physiological emotional responses to events. A player can portray emotional responses that do not exist in their body, representing them iconically in the game. Without this the sociodramatic pretend play that is larping would be very hard. However, when emotions are performed iconically, the physiological response to portraying an emotion will (at least for most players) lead to the body feeling some degree of the portrayed emotion. This is one of the roots of bleed: indexical sorrow is real sorrow, which does not simply vanish because the players step out of the liminal space.
Often, players choose to steer for the emotional responses of which they want an embodied experience. Attraction between players is a key example here. Portraying an intimate relationship with a player with whom you have no chemistry is hard emotional labor, often resulting in a flat portrayal. On the other hand, allowing the responses of the players’ bodies to filter into the game can result in stronger portrayals. Karete Jacobsen Meland, Ane Marie Anderson, and others have even experimented with a smellcasting technique, where players would be cast into intimate relationships based on their preferences of each other’s body scent – evaluated blindly based on anonymous white T-shirts (see Anderson 2015).
Thirdly, representations also carry specific histories. While from a formalist point of view all signs that point to a meaning are equally valid, some signs have very loaded cultural histories attached to them (see Hall 1997). The obvious example here is blackface, the act of painting a face with a dark color to signify that a white person is portraying a black person. However, this abstract description of blackface is almost useless in practice, as blackface has a history of use as a tool of ridicule and oppression that is so strong, especially in North American context, that players cannot be expected to interpret it benevolently. In the last few years there have been endless discussions on social media about the use of black face paint to portray fantasy races, such as the Drow from Dungeons & Dragons. People who advocate the use of black paint for Drow tend to see this as an iconic representation of dark elves, where they attempt to create a specific visual surface. However, the practice of painting one’s face to look like a dark elf is the same as doing blackface – indeed, Drow make-up is (usually) white people in blackface. Today, blackface is widely considered unacceptable even when used to portray fantasy races, and consequently many larps in the United States require Drow makeup to be blue rather than black or brown.((However, it is important to recognize simultaneously that histories of representation are always culture specific. Assuming the universality of, for example, a United States based reading erases all other local cultures and histories. That said, the discourse on blackface in particular is broadly understood in similar ways across the Nordic region too.)) In some cases, white players’ unfamiliarity with the history of the practice have caused conflict with those who live with that history, and sometimes insistence on ignoring that history has become a form of racist gatekeeping.
Other representations that carry history include stereotypical camp narratives for queer characters, representations of sex work grounded in Victorian moralism (and equally, Victorian pornography) rather than lived experience, the antisemitic portrayals of treasure hoarding goblins in fantasy fiction that can be traced back to Shylock in The Merchant of Venice (1605), and indeed most traditional racialized monsters in fantasy fiction (see Loponen 2019, also Hall 1997).
Some of these aspects of the general problem of indexicality fall under the header of social justice. This is because in larp we are dealing with actual, individual people, and not abstract, ideal players. If the design goal is to create a formalist larp where players are interchangeable, it may make more sense to go for symbolic representation. Indexicality and “doing things for real” requires that actual players are considered.
The challenge of indexicality can be restated as a friction in larp design “between wanting to be real and wanting to be meaningful”. This is how Stenros, Andresen, and Nielsen (2016) formulated one of the two key challenges in larp design in an article about the Mixing Desk of Larp:
“The second key aspect is the negotiation between, on the one hand, naturalism, plausibility, immediacy, and authenticity, and, on the other, structure, curation, predictability, and artificiality. The larp experience should be as real as possible – without having the drawbacks of reality, such as being boring for long stretches of time, being very exclusionary based on skills and appearance, and being not only dangerous but often devoid of meaning. Indeed, it is important to remember that realism is an “-ism.” It is an artistic movement dating back to the 19th century. Similarly, simulation is never complete, or it stops being a simulation.” (Stenros, Andresen & Nielsen 2016)
Striking a good balance between symbols, icons, and indices is about striving to be visually pleasing, immediate and immersive, and satisfying of the aesthetics of authenticity, while still being legible, accessible, and practical within the production frame chosen for the event. If larp is about doing things for real, then the question is how to be and to do “real enough”.
Specific and Communal Solutions
At the heart of the general problem of indexicality lies the inherent drive for authenticity. Authentic props, sites, and actions are a practical challenge. In the search for an indexical environment, we must make choices that ensure that the larp remains understandable and playable. And this, at the very latest, is the point where interpretation becomes an issue as well. Actual players are not interchangeable, but they have different skills, bodies, and lived experiences. Player backgrounds strongly influence what we read as authentic: pretending to be a stage magician is very different for a person who has never done a magic trick in front of an audience, and for a person who does that for a living.
Players come to a game with a variety of backgrounds and of both real-world and player skills. This results in them reading an identical representation in different ways. This happens with played actions as much as with props or characters. The fidelity of the experience is thus also a key ingredient – and the related problems cannot be solved without considering the actual players of the larp.
The general problem of indexicality does not have a general answer, just situation-specific, contextual answers. Design, larp design included, is always about making choices within constraints. While the general problem of indexicality cannot be escaped, there are numerous ways to address it. Indeed, each larp addresses the problem in its own way, often guided by design traditions. Each larp will present its own partial solutions to the problem, creating a field where different kinds of experiences are available.
Unfortunately, there are areas that are seldom addressed, the black hole areas of design, such as when the drive for indexicality always ends up creating a barrier of entry for the same people: adherence to a narrow reading of historical gender roles is a recurring problem for women in larp, and wheelchair accessibility is a recurring problem in authentic historical palaces.
The only way the general problem of indexicality can be tackled is communally. No larp can solve the problem, but every larp can choose parts to solve and parts to accept – and in a healthy larp culture, different larps choose different parts of the puzzle, providing play to everyone.
Acknowledgements
The making of this article has been partially supported by the Academy of Finland-funded Center of Excellence in Game Culture Studies (CoE-GameCult, 312395). Special thanks to Aaron Trammell.
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This article has been reprinted with permission from the Solmukohta 2024 book. Please cite as:
Stenros, Jaakko, Eleanor Saitta & Markus Montola. 2024. “The General Problem of Indexicality in Larp Design.” In Liminal Encounters: Evolving Discourse in Nordic and Nordic Inspired Larp, edited by Kaisa Kangas, Jonne Arjoranta, and Ruska Kevätkoski. Helsinki, Finland: Ropecon ry.
Cover photo: Photo by Tim Mossholder on Pexels.com
Nevermore: Family Issues (2023). Photo by Anna Posetselska.
Ennen vedenpaisumusta (2021): caring for sheep. Photo by Mikko Heimola.
Kaski: Tuhka (2022): Sarka didn’t wear shoes. Photo by the author.
