Nordic Larp

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  • Writing an Autobiographical Game

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    Writing an Autobiographical Game

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    An autobiographical game is a game that is based on the experiences of the designer(s). There is, of course, a lot of wiggle room in that description. A game that realistically depicts an event from the creator’s life moment to moment is an obvious example, but what about an abstract game that is emotionally true to the creator’s lived experience but not literally true? Does a game in which players fumble around a room in total darkness without speaking count as autobiographical, if the purpose is to experience something similar to the helplessness and frustration the designer felt when they experienced a loss?

    For the purposes of this piece I am going to talk about something that’s planted firmly in between the two. Specifically, I’m going to talk about designing an experience that explores autobiographical themes through metaphor while also incorporating characters that are based on real people. This goal is what I tried to achieve when writing The Truth About Eternity, my semi-live scenario for Fastaval this year.

    The Truth About Eternity (Davis 2019) is a scenario about a near future in which ancestor worship has taken the form of preserving the deceased in digital tombs. When a person dies, their family can upload an artificially intelligent copy of them to a server and then continue to visit them via virtual reality. The scenario explores the relationships between two digitized ancestors and their three living descendants, all who belong to different generations, as well as the financial and emotional strain that comes with maintaining these digital tombs. One of the major themes is the struggle of balancing familial responsibility and personal freedom. At its core, this scenario is about Korean family dynamics, eldercare, guilt, and grief. It’s also about whether artificially intelligent copies of human beings have souls, but that question is presented in the scenario as a way to further explore those core themes.

    While I clearly do not live in a world in which digital tombs of this nature exist, The Truth About Eternity is largely autobiographical. The three descendants, Esther, Helen, and Sam, are based on my grandmother, mother, and me. They are not carbon copies when it comes to the details, but I wrote them to be largely emotionally true to the three of us. The two ancestors, Jungwoo and Minji, are amalgams of various family members both living and deceased. Likewise, while some of the scenes are completely fictitious, many of them pull from real moments in my family’s history, some which I was present for and others which I heard about after, sometimes long after, they transpired.

    grandparents posing with granddaughter by trees
    Family photo of Clio Yun-su Davis and grandparents. Photo by Hoyun Kim.

    Why Write an Autobiographical Game?

    There’s a scene that makes its way into what feels like the vast majority of media revolving around ghosts. The protagonist somehow witnesses the trauma of the ghost through a vision or by investigating what happened to the deceased, and through witnessing the trauma they have either freed the ghost or have learned what must be done in order to do so. This trope is so prevalent that it’s hard to imagine there’s nothing to it in real life. There is something healing about having other people witness the most painful moments in your life because in sharing these moments you become less alone in them.

    What part of your life do you want other people to witness and experience, and why? If you’re thinking about writing an autobiographical game, it will likely help to have as specific of an answer to that question as possible. If I had gone into writing The Truth About Eternity with the goal of creating a game about my family rather than creating a game about the guilt and profound grief my family has contended with while taking care of my grandmother who has advanced dementia, I would likely not have gotten too far. In my experience, vague design goals often lead to less memorable experiences for players. I would rather play in a game about someone’s family dinner growing increasingly awkward because a will was recently read than a game about a family dinner that becomes awkward because the characters don’t like each other for unspecified reasons.

    Once you have determined what part of your life you would like other people to experience, even just for a snapshot, it’s a good idea to have some understanding of the “why” behind the design. There is a decent chance that your “why” will look like one or all of the following:

    • Because I want other people to understand this part of my life.
    • Because if other people experience this (in a controlled environment), I will feel less alone.
    • Because words are not enough to explain what I experienced.
    • Because I want to be witnessed.
    • Because other people have gone through something similar and I want them to know they aren’t alone.

    The Curse (Stark 2013), a scenario written by Lizzie Stark also for Fastaval, has a premise and family tree that both pull from the author’s own life while not exactly replicating it. The designer created the scenario partly as a means for giving others a glimpse into the challenges faced by those who have hereditary cancer in their family, and specifically cancer caused by a BRCA mutation. That is, at least in part, her “why.” Marshall Bradshaw, another American larper and designer, wrote his short semi-autobiographical larp A Political Body (Bradshaw 2018) in order to provide an opportunity for players to explore the struggle of having to choose between participating in a protest and staying home when a chronic illness flares up badly. The larp functions as a highly specific snapshot that depicts a much longer-term issue.

    The Truth About Eternity was the equivalent of the cursed video tape from Ringu (Nakada 1998) or The Ring (Verbinski 2002) for me. In these films, the ghost of a girl who was killed by being pushed down a well manifests her anger and pain as a video tape that kills the viewers after they watch it. The scenes shown in the video are mostly abstract, with shots that illustrate her trauma dispersed throughout. The video’s message is not a simple confessional of what happened, but a strange piece of art that conveys the creator’s suffering by inflicting suffering upon those who witness it.

    I was, and still am, this ball of guilt and sorrow due to my grandmother’s condition and the immense challenges that have come with taking care of her. It has been unbelievably hard to communicate the sheer magnitude of my grief through conversation or even in writing. Like the girl in the well (yes, I am running with this analogy), I had to create something else in order to make people understand the emotional component of my family’s situation. One of the goals of The Truth About Eternity is absolutely to make its players distraught. When I hear that players cried during a run, it feels like part of the weight of the situation has been lifted off me. It feels like an essential part of my existence has been seen by another person—finally—and just by being seen, some of the pain dissipates. Is it selfish to write a game for those purposes? It might be, if there weren’t a lot of players out there who specifically seek out games that try to rip their hearts out.

    There is a secondary reason for why I wrote The Truth About Eternity, and that is to help people who are unfamiliar with Korean culture and Confucianism to understand it a little better. The Wikipedia entry on Korean Confucianism serves as a good brief overview of some of the cultural information relevant to the scenario. As mentioned previously, this scenario was specifically written for Fastaval in Denmark. There are parts of it that would be different if I had written it for an American audience, and parts that would be very different had I written it specifically for Asian players intimately familiar with the culture.

    Much of the workshopping at the beginning is in place to deter accidental (and potentially purposeful) microaggressions. Autobiographical games that depict a culture different from the one the majority of its players come from have this additional challenge, as you must provide cultural context for the life events inspiring the content. You also run the risk of participants interpreting the game’s message as “this is what is wrong with this culture and why it’s worse than others” even if the goal is supposed to be “here is a glimpse at some of the complexities of this culture.” This especially tends to happen when players enter a game with existing assumptions about said culture gleaned from stereotypes, depictions of it in other cultures’ popular media, and brief encounters with it without deeper knowledge and context for its values. James Mendez Hodes touches on this tendency in his article “Best Practices for Religious Representation, Part I: Check for Traps,” in which he warns against wasting time on hierarchies of evil (Mendez 2019). One nightmare outcome for my scenario would have been if players used it as an opportunity to paint Korean (and Korean American) society as inferior and unevolved compared to others because of the game materials’ inability to make the characters’ values relatable. Too much information and the players are overloaded, while too little and they do not have enough to work with. Martin Nielsen and Grethe Sofie Bulterud Strand outline good practices for portraying cultures in larp in their “Creating and Conveying Cultures” chapter of Larp Design: Creating Role-Play Experiences (Nielsen and Strand 2019).

    Writing Characters Based on People you Know

    There are some questions of ethics and etiquette to consider when basing characters on real people. Each case is different so I won’t go into much detail here, as there are plenty of articles on how to deal with this when writing fiction that apply to games as well, such as Matt Knight’s “Using Real People, Places, And Corporations In Your Fiction – How Real Can You Get And Not Be Sued?” (Knight 2017). The short of it is, it’s generally a good idea to not make characters one hundred percent identical to those they’re modeled after. The more similar they are, the better it would be for you to get explicit permission. There are, of course, exceptions, but this is a good place to start.

    A game that is autobiographical for you, the designer, is also likely in part biographical for one or more people unless you are creating a game in which multiple players all play different facets of yourself or alternatively, a single player experience. You may very well be telling other people’s stories as well as your own. In a chapter of Larp Design: Creating Role-Play Experiences entitled “Writing Realistic, Non-Exploitative Characters,” Laura Wood (2019) describes the thinking behind writing Inside, a larp that takes place during an English class held in a women’s prison. The characters, created during a pre-larp workshop, pull from the histories of real people with whom the designer has interacted, but are purposefully not recreations of specific people’s lives. This is one way to avoid exploiting real individuals and their lived experiences.

    When emotions are strong and psychological wounds are fresh and/or deep, it can be tempting to write characters based on people we know as saintlike or evil beyond the shadow of a doubt. If you’re going for a surreal, cartoonish, or over the top tone, then this might work! If not, however, you will probably want to include a bit more nuance. Real lives and people are complex, and if you want to convey that complexity, you are going to have to do some things in your design that may hurt a little. Or a lot.

    Playable characters based on people who have hurt you generally need to have qualities other than that they hurt you. Again, when you dive into very surreal territory you might want to throw this out the window, but when writing realistic characters, this is important. Players are already often inclined to take a character with unpleasant traits and play heavily into them, making them as despicable as possible. I learned this the hard way with Jungwoo, an ancestor character who does some nasty, selfish things but is also supposed to be pitiable and at least somewhat sympathetic. Many runs of The Truth About Eternity seem to have featured a decidedly horrible version of Jungwoo, something that I’m taking into account as I prepare to make revisions to the scenario.

    Likewise, playable characters based on people who you love and admire need to have flaws. I struggled with this when writing Esther, who is based on my grandmother. I ended up taking one of her best qualities and amplifying it so much that it became a flaw—Esther is so selfless that her selflessness actually becomes a burden to her family. Similarly, writing Helen was a challenge because she is largely based on my mother who shoulders many of the same responsibilities that Helen does. It wouldn’t be difficult to play her as someone who easily makes all the most selfless decisions if I didn’t make her realistic by giving her her own conflicting needs. If a character is placed on a pedestal, a player may be hesitant to portray that character with the depth they would like for fear of breaking an unwritten rule about representing that person as perfect and beyond reproach.

    Photo of a mother her young girl posed against a rock wall with a building behind them
    Family photo of Clio Yun-su Davis and mother in South Korea. Photo by Mark Davis.

    Writing a Character Based on You

    This is where things get even trickier. There are so many ways in which writing yourself into a character can go wrong. You have to have a keen sense of self-awareness in order to write a character based on yourself realistically, and I’m still not sure whether I managed this or not. My approach was to create a character who shared my motivations, fears, and one big flaw that I’ve had plenty of time to examine. Sam, the youngest character in the scenario, is the embodiment of my desire to have all the elderly people in my family well taken care of despite what it might do to those fronting the brunt of that responsibility. In my case it is primarily my mother, in Sam’s case it is Helen, his mother. As much as Sam and I might sacrifice to help our families, it is never as much as our mothers sacrifice. So it is that Sam is fairly oblivious to how his desperation urges his mother to martyr herself. Sam has this flaw because I have spent a lot of time reflecting on its manifestation in myself. Had I not, I don’t know what kind of character Sam would have turned out to be, but I suspect he would be rather two-dimensional, not very believable, and therefore difficult to play.

    It can be a little weird and disorienting to have other people step into your shoes and play someone who is based on you for several hours. They may make decisions that make your head spin because you’d never see yourself making them, or they may accentuate your worst or best qualities in a way that makes you feel anywhere from slightly embarrassed to utterly ashamed. If you find yourself reacting strongly to the way others portray you, it’s a good idea to remind yourself that they are likely playing for drama and not to accurately depict you. Depending on how much you disclose, there is a good chance the player won’t even know their character is based on you.

    So far, I’ve mostly been amused and fascinated by how players portray Sam. I’m relieved when people play him as naive and childish because it means I didn’t write him to be a perfect angel simply because I didn’t want to see myself in an unflattering light. It is wise to check your motives when writing yourself into a game. If it turns out that the whole thing is a long way of saying you were right and everyone else was wrong, chances are you need to revise it.

    Is This a Game that is Emotionally Safe for You to Facilitate?

    This leads us to a question I grappled with even before I started writing The Truth About Eternity. Is the game you want to create something that you would be able to facilitate without it causing you too much distress? You are, after all, setting up a bit of an Ebenezer Scrooge and the Ghost of Christmas Past situation in which you may be witnessing variations on upsetting scenes from your past, depending on the content of your game. Some of those variations might take you by surprise in terrible ways.

    I don’t have a good answer when it comes to The Truth About Eternity because illness kept me from attending Fastaval this year so I did not get to facilitate the game for its intended audience. I have, however, heard and read detailed accounts of the runs that took place in my absence. Before I settle on a definitive answer, I feel that I need to run the scenario for a group of players not composed of my friends.

    What I do know is that I cried for about twenty to thirty minutes every time I sat down to write this scenario, which made finishing it in the first place ridiculously difficult. There were also multiple layers to my concerns about seeing players embody these characters. Would they make a parody out of these characters’, and therefore my family’s, suffering and the way I presented Korean culture? Would they find the characters and their situation so alien that they couldn’t possibly portray them with any seriousness or depth? These concerns are in addition to the standard anxieties so many people have about their games; do the mechanics work, are the workshops helpful, is the pacing okay?

    My advice is mostly hypothetical since I did not run the scenario in the environment it was written for. However, I would suggest running it first with players you trust before making yourself vulnerable to the world at large. That way at least you can see how it is you react when you know the other people in the room have your back and will understand if it’s an intense experience for you.

    Receiving and Parsing Feedback on an Autobiographical Game

    It’s a pretty radical act of vulnerability to write an autobiographical game and then hand it over to people who are going to tell you what’s wrong with it. When you take the time to create something that holds so much meaning for you and share it with the world, you will eventually encounter people who don’t like the thing you created at all. When you’ve created something based on your own life, you might find that even if you’re normally thick-skinned, the criticisms sting particularly badly.

    It can also be difficult to distinguish, particularly when writing about a culture that is likely unfamiliar to the players, when your design isn’t doing the best job of explaining how to portray that culture or when players are being unintentionally insensitive. I also dealt with this challenge when writing and calibrating The Long Drive Back from Busan (Davis, 2017), a freeform larp created for the 2017 Golden Cobra Challenge about a dysfunctional k-pop group. If the majority of runs of the game do not encounter an issue with this, then it may very well be an issue with the players instead when it does occur. When players are being intentionally insensitive, it tends to be more obvious, and unfortunately you can’t trust much of the information you gain from those sessions.

    Fortunately, none of the feedback I received for The Truth About Eternity was painful to read. In fact, it was overwhelmingly encouraging and informative. Some runs were a little bumpier than others, and players pointed out the things that didn’t go perfectly, but at the end of the day the experience resonated with many of them exactly the way I wanted. There were some players who did not connect emotionally to the content, but that’s to be expected with any game. For now, I can safely say I do not regret writing this scenario and sharing it with people. I would love to see more autobiographical games in the future from designers from different backgrounds.

    References

    2019. “Korean Confucianism.” Wikipedia. Wikimedia Foundation. July 22

    1. “Microaggression.” Wikipedia. Wikimedia Foundation. July 23.

    Knight, Matt. 2017. “Using Real People, Places, And Corporations In Your Fiction – How Real Can You Get And Not Be Sued?” Sidebar Saturdays. August 5.

    Mendez Hodes, James. 2019. “Best Practices for Religious Representation, Part I: Check for Traps.” September 1.

    Nakada, Hideo, dir. 1998. Ringu. Toho Co.

    Nielsen, Martin and Strand, Grethe Sofie Bulterud. 2019. “Creating or Conveying Cultures.” In Larp Design: Creating Role-Play Experiences, edited by Johanna Koljonen, Jaakko Stenros, Anne Serup Grove, Aina D. Skjonsfjell, and Elin Nilsen, 228–31. Copenhagen: Landsforeningen Bifrost.

    Verbinski, Gore, dir. 2002. The Ring. DreamWorks Pictures.

    Wood, Laura. 2019. “Writing Realistic, Non-Exploitative Characters.” In Larp Design: Creating Role-Play Experiences, edited by Johanna Koljonen, Jaakko Stenros, Anne Serup Grove, Aina D. Skjonsfjell, and Elin Nilsen, 228–31. Copenhagen: Landsforeningen Bifrost.

    Ludography

    Bradshaw, Marshall. 2018. A Political Body. In Review.

    Kim, Yeonsoo Julian. 2017. The Long Drive Back from Busan. PDF.

    Kim, Yeonsoo Julian. 2019. The Truth About Eternity. PDF.

    Stark, Lizzie. 2013. The Curse. PDF.

    Cover photo: Wilson Vitorino.

    Content editing: Elina Gouliou

  • Fortune & Felicity: When Larp Grows Up

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    Fortune & Felicity: When Larp Grows Up

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    I wish you could have been at Primrose.

    It is spring. Tonight there is a ball on. The women have gone back to the parlors to change out of their day dresses and into their extravagant silk gowns. A pair of soldiers are loitering outside the clock tower, discussing race horses, and paying little mind to the rather exquisite sunset in the background.

    As the young ladies emerge on the porches, the soldiers click their heels together and emit simultaneous “Ah!”s of admiration.

    And these virginal rose buds of spring certainly are a sight for sore eyes: Long, gloved fingers wrapped about their father’s arms. Faces half hidden behind the shades of the bonnets. Silk slippered feet on the gravel path. In the evocative words of the poet, “She walks in beauty, like the night.”

    And off they all go — to dance the night away at the ballroom. Surely tonight they will meet that certain someone.

    I wish you could have been there. My description does not do it justice.

    The author in costume for Fortune & Felicity. Photo by Sanne Harder.

    Fortune & Felicity was a larp held at the beautiful spa village of Medevi Brunn in Sweden. The larp lasted from May 25-28, 2017. It was based on the works of classic writer Jane Austen and set somewhere around 1810. The idea was to create a Nordic larp with a 360 degree illusion setting and strong plot lines that were inspired by Jane Austen’s literary works.

    It’s been over a week since I got back from Fortune & Felicity and the dust is finally settling.

    I’m sure we can agree that there are different kinds of larp experiences: There are the plain awful ones, where you have no chemistry with the other players and you never manage to connect with either the narrative or your character. You wind up feeling like the other players are having all the fun.

    There are the OK ones and there are the good, but not that memorable experiences. Those will be part of your future reference sheet when you meet other larpers, but they are not exactly mind-altering.

    Finally, there are the mind-blowing experiences that leave you euphoric for weeks on end. My experience with Fortune & Felicity was one of the latter. So asking me to write anything objective is rather a tall order. I think of this article as more of an attempt to order my thoughts, hopefully making some valuable deductions and recommendations for organizers and players to consider.

    Pushing the Boundaries for Larp

    Ten years ago, a larp like Fortune & Felicity would have been pretty much unthinkable. The sheer level of ambition would have seemed unrealistic. However, since then, we have seen Nordic larps play out at castles, submarines, and similarly ambitious settings, which would previously have seemed to be one-off experiences negotiated by organizers with special connections and budgets. Larpers are maturing and with student loans now payed off and full-time jobs, we are able to afford more expensive settings.

    In addition to that, “chamber larping” has bridged the previous gap between intricately designed freeform games and the hitherto more brute force designs of larps.While the later years have offered the kind of settings that dreams are made of, Fortune & Felicity is one of the first larps of its size to draw upon the kind of metatechniques that you otherwise mostly encounter at a Blackbox festival. These are techniques that enable players to tell stories that are more intricate than the usual straightforward chronological ones that larpers are used to. I would like to summarize some of the metatechniques the larpwrights of Fortune & Felicity utilized.

    Dramatic Monologue Poetry

    a woman with a fan looking outside a doorway
    Photo by Kalle Lantz & Frida Selvén.

    Fortune & Felicity was a very subtle game. Usually, larping is about broadcasting your intentions as loudly as possible so that other players can pick up on them. But in this larp, everything had to be read as a subtext. This posed a challenge for the players; if the lady I am trying to impress is hiding her face behind her fan, does it mean that she is embarrassed or does it mean that she does not want people to see her blush with delight?

    In order to help players interpret each other’s intentions correctly, the larpwrights gave us a metatechnique that I have dubbed dramatic monologue poetry. The tool was incredibly simple, yet very effective. At any point in the larp, it was considered comme il faut to recite poetry. The poem could be learned by heart or it could be read aloud from a book. Poems were also distributed at poetry workshops. After reading a few lines of the poem, the reader would start revealing the character’s internal dialogue, thus giving the audience an insight into character motivation and intentions.

    This metatechnique worked extremely well. Specifically, I had the opportunity to recite a poem by Shakespeare in front of my fiancée’s family. Since his family were neither as rich nor as accomplished as the one my character came from, I took the opportunity to give them my opinion in full. The stiff smiles on the players’ faces were priceless!

    Amusingly, one of the players picked up on the insult and confirmed my character’s opinion by acting exactly according to my prejudices. This created great play for us both.In other words, the technique was an excellent solution for helping players to read between the lines.

    Subtle Courting

    Before the larp, all players were instructed thoroughly in how to behave when in the company of the other sex. No touching except between family members. No being alone unless if you were engaged. And no eye contact.

    So how does one flirt under those circumstances?

    For the ladies, the answer was simple: you do not. But basically you could assume that if a gentleman was giving you attention, it was because you had caught his interest. There were three sure signs that a gentleman was serious about courting you; if you were receiving flowers, found yourself witnessing poetry readings, or got asked to dance repeatedly, then a proposal was probably afoot.

    However, as in Jane Austen’s books, there were gentlemen out there who did not play by the rules. Those gentlemen would lead you astray just for sport!

    One of the lead designers, Anna Westerling, discussing the intersections between freeform and larp at the Nordic Larp Talks 2014.

    The Fortune Teller

    At Fortune & Felicity, there was a fortune teller. The fortune teller was in fact a team of talented game masters who took interested players off to a Blackbox room to play alternative scenes.

    The Blackbox larp is the direct opposite of the 360 degree illusion larp. There is no setting other than the blackness of the room and usually participants are dressed in neutral clothing. Blackbox larps have no physical restrictions. You can play achronological sequences. The scene can take place on a space station, during the Jurassic times, or anywhere else your imagination might take you — much like with any pen and paper RPG. In that sense, it is a hybrid form of role-playing.

    At Fortune & Felicity, the blackbox was used to elaborate character relationships. Personally, I played out several scenes with my fiancée that showed us much of our future. Among other things, I found out that if I were to go ahead and marry my true love, we would most likely end up rather impoverished. Obviously, this knowledge added much to my “present day” play.

    Blackbox defies physical space and time — and therefore makes it possible to garnish the larp with the kind of literary tricks that we usually only encounter in books and films.

    The Art of Mansplaining

    In Fortune & Felicity, the responsibility of carrying on a conversation lay with the gentlemen. This major obstacle was not really a metatechnique, but it still deserves mentioning because it was a very elegant way of emphasizing the gender disparity of that time.

    Some gentlemen found it difficult, while others enjoyed taking the lead. As someone who was playing a women, I found it somewhat frustrating, but only in the sense that it helped me imagine what life would have been like for my gender in 1810.

    Luckily, the game masters offered the women a possible out: when conversation got too boring, the woman could signal to the player of the male character by mentioning her journey to Primrose. “Oh, the roads are rather muddy this time of year,” for example. I used this trick a few times, but generally found that the male characters around me were quite apt at carrying on an interesting conversation!

    Ladies and gentlemen in amused conversation
    Photo by Kalle Lantz & Frida Selvén

    Based on Established Literature

    All the stories in Fortune & Felicity were directly inspired by Jane Austen’s works. The most visible way in which the writers had incorporated this inspiration was in the character descriptions and relationships.

    The larp had pre-written characters. The characters were long enough for people with knowledge of Austen’s works to recognize them as characters from her books, but short enough that the players could easily build on the written material and make them their own.

    For me, it was immediately clear that my character was inspired by Miss Marianne Dashwood from the novel Sense and Sensibility. She is a somewhat melodramatic and rather naïve girl, who falls deeply in love with one of the more memorable Austen villains, Mr. John Willoughby. At first, I actually found the task of portraying her a bit daunting, but after having watched Ang Lee’s film from 1995, I found that I could draw on actress Kate Winslet’s brilliant performance. Having her version of Marianne in the back of my head, I felt like there was a richness of inspiration I could access that I have seldom experienced otherwise.

    Although many of the participants knew Jane Austen’s works, other did not. I believe being a fan of Jane Austen added to the experience, but I do not have the impression that not having these references subtracted anything from the game. I love how classically Austenesque the different plots played out, but on the other hand, they could certainly stand alone too.

    Lines of dancing characters in Regency attire.
    Photo by Anders Hultman.

    Setting the Bar High

    Sunday morning in Primrose. The young couples are gathering outside the village church. They are waiting to declare their engagements in front of the congregation. As the doors open, they file inside in pairs — clasping each other’s hands and sharing shy sidewards glances. The parents and the rivals sitting in the pews bear witness as the vicar proclaims the engagements.

    And then, abruptly, the larp comes to an end. Anna and Anders in their pristine Regency outfits reap their accolades. We clap and clap. For the game masters, for the live band. For each other, even.

    I return to the 21st century. Shell shocked. Elated. The way you feel when you have had one of those really strong larp experiences.

    But also deeply grateful to be home. To be me, and not Miss Marianne. Quite frankly, Miss Marianne would never even dream of a life such as mine. It would have been beyond her otherwise vivid imagination.

    My hope for the future of the larp scene is to see more ambitious scenarios like Fortune & Felicity, where organizers and larpwrights become more aware of developing game design that supports the content and theme of the larp. Like previous vessels of fiction have done it, I hope that larp has a future where we can explore not just genres, but also more advanced forms of storytelling.

    For now, we’ve only just begun.

    A man lifting a woman up as if dancing in a forest
    Photo by Kalle Lantz & Frida Selvén.

    Fortune & Felicity

    Production and design: Anna Westerling & Anders Hultman

    Design: Jennie Borgström, Susanne Gräslund, Elsa Helin, Anders Hultman, Frida Karlsson Lindgren, Gustav Nilsson, Martin Rother-Schirren, Anna Westerling & Joel Grimm with Jeppe Bergmann Hamming & Maria Bergmann Hamming.

    Characters:

    Overall design: Jennie Borgström, Sabina Sonning and Anna Westerling

    Clubs: Rosalind Göthberg & Mimmi Lundkvist

    Hearts: Jeppe Bergmann Hamming & Maria Bergmann Hammingg

    Diamonds: Ylva Berry, Jennie Borgström & Jacob Ordeberg

    Spades: Susanne Gräslund & Daniel Linder Krauklis

    Game Masters:  Alex K Uth, Anders Hultman, Anna Westerling, Arvid Björklund, Elin Gissén, Elina Andersson, Elsa Helin, Frida Karlsson Lindgren, Frida Selvén, Gustav Nilsson, Jakob Jacob Ordeberg, Jennie Borgström, Joel Grimm, Kalle Lantz, Lizzie Stark, Martin Rother-Schirren, Mimmi Lundkvist, Peter Edgar & Ylva Berry

    Orchestra: Elsa Helin, Henrik Summanen, Niclas Hell & Susanne Gräslund

    Soundtrack composed by: Henrik Summanen

    Trailer: Sara Fritzon

    Costume: Anders Hultman & Mikaela Lindh

    Photo: Kalle Lantz & Frida Selvén

    Design and illustration: Anna Westerling, Janetta Nyberg & Lotta Westholm

    PR: Mia Häggström & Anna Westerling

    Editing: Lizzie Stark, Jason Morningstar & Sarah Lynne Bowman

    Cover photo: Photo by Kalle Lantz & Frida Selvén. Photo has been cropped.

  • Tears and the New Norm

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    Tears and the New Norm

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    In recent years, we — the Nordic/International progressive role-playing scene, both tabletop and larp((I’ve been in on the tabletop/freeform side of things for many years; on the larp side, I got going with a splash with Just a Little Lovin’ in 2015. The otherwise admirable and magnificent Just a Little Lovin’ probably did a lot of messing with my head, but I was thoroughly softened up long before then.))– have produced games that can bring out powerful emotions in the players, and empower the players to engage with powerful emotions. This process has significantly extended the artistic reach of the role-playing medium, and also given a lot of people (myself among them) some great experiences. In this context, some design and cultural elements have been developed to help handle difficult topics and emotions. Of particular importance has been the widespread acceptance of the notion that it’s actually alright to feel a lot of feelings and not be too tough or hard to shed a tear or ten. Bleed is here to stay, and it’s OK to be concerned with the comfort and safety of yourself and your fellow players.

    This is excellent! I’ve been a part of this movement as it regards play, design, and culture. Although I’m not personally inclined to weep over role-playing games, I’m happy with my part in all this. In those of my own games that deal with difficult subjects, I’ve included a debriefing: one containing the line that it’s OK to feel a lot of powerful or strange things, and it’s also OK to feel nothing much at all.

    The New Norm

    Last year, I discovered a surprising dark side to this new, accepting culture around strong feelings about role-playing games. Even though it’s a pretty standard disclaimer that it’s OK to not bleed all over the place, not just in my games, but in most games that come with debriefing instructions attached, somehow strong and care/space-requiring emotions have become not just normal (fine!) but also normative.((NORMAL = within the range of commonly occurring phenomena in a given category and commonly accepted as such. NORMATIVE = in accordance with social norms determining what is socially acceptable.)) It’s the norm for how you do demanding and artistically ambitious role-play; it’s how you demonstrate that you’re a good role-player. If you don’t feel all of the feelings, passionately, you’re not quite alright.

    It’s a subtle thing, and certainly not the result of conspiracies and subversion, just the cumulative effect of a lot of usually enthusiastic conversations about earth-shaking, personally transformative experiences that have made the tears flow.

    the #feminism anthology cover
    The #feminism nanogame anthology indicates the intensity of each larp with ratings of teardrops from 1-5.

    Comparing Notes

    It was rather by accident that I found out that there’s a problem that might be a bit larger than just me. Some time last year, after having witnessed (mostly online but also off) exchanges between people who had had earth-shaking experiences – even a year later, that one song brought tears to their eyes – I found that I was actually downright worried about how little I felt. As in, I seriously entertained the notion that I might be on the outskirts of some sort of personality disorder. And it’s not quite the first time that role-playing games and role-playing culture have had me wondering why I was reacting off — and below — the norm. Anyway, I struggled a bit with it, and after a couple of uncomfortable months, I arrived at the conclusion that the rest of my life doesn’t support the theory that I’m under-endowed with emotions and the capacity for authentic human relations. Probably.

    At some point, I opened up and told my friend Anne Vinkel about my concerns. Her reaction was powerful and telling:

    “Oh God, I thought it was just me!”

    Then, I started considering whether there might be more at stake here than just my own discomfort: if we might have a cultural problem on our hands. When people are wondering whether they have real psychopathology (that they don’t), simply because the standards of this role-playing subculture for what “we” feel around games has become so extreme, it’s not great.

    I know several role-players with real, honest-to-goodness personality disorders. They’re fine people that I care about both in and out of role-playing games. This is in no way a criticism or rejection of them. But neither Anne nor myself are in their situation! Diagnoses are a thing to approach soberly.

    Person cowering in a prison with the Kapo logo
    Promotional photo for KAPO, a 2012 Danish larp about imprisonment

    Shame! Blame! Disgrace!

    So whose fault is this? At whom should we point the finger of condemnation? When I put it like this, the observant reader might suspect that I’m about to say ”no one” and this is 98% true. This is a question of culture, and as is usually the case with such things, the responsibility is vague and diffuse. If, during the following, you feel personally accused, please dial down the feeling by 98%.

    It started out with a desire to explore challenging subjects through roleplaying without falling into The Cult of Hardcore, which was quite prominent back in the early and middle 2000s. The standard was that WE as Good Roleplayers were too cool to bellyache over the Very Edgy games that we played. The revolt against The Cult of Hardcore that the role-playing culture around safety mechanics, debriefings, etc. represents was sorely needed.

    In connection with debriefings — and war stories in a wider sense — the conversation focused on the extreme experiences that made safety mechanics and debriefings relevant. It’s natural enough to talk more about those players with issues — players in active need of inclusion — than about those who are just fine. But, as is the case in any (sub-)culture, it became a matter of prestige. Culture works like that; even in the most self-consciously egalitarian culture, there will be actions, objects, and stories that attract more positive attention than others. In this case, the tales of earth-shaking, transformative experiences became prestigious. There’s nothing weird about this; it’s a logical consequence of the inclusion and centering of the extreme emotions that had previously been marginalized. And on a very basic level, “I wept like I’d been whipped and I’m a new person now” is just a better story than “I had slightly moist eyes at one point in the second act, and I have some interesting things about sibling relationships to reflect on.” If both stories are tellable, the former is more likely to be told, shared, and remembered.

    All of it is very human, understandable, and largely even sympathetic. It still resulted in myself and Anne — and who knows how many others? — separately and secretly worrying and wondering if we were sociopaths, schizoid, or otherwise emotionally under-endowed. Which is not cool.

    Performative Emotions

    It’s not that I see the powerful emotions as in any way fake. This is worth saying and worth repeating. I believe that, in the vast majority of cases, they are authentic enough. However, they are in many cases also performative, not just as in players theatrically performing the feelings of their characters — with a bit of player spillover through bleed — but also between players, outside of games, but inside the subculture. Because the intensity of emotions is a source of authority, prestige, and bonding, all the nice social goods are out of reach if others can’t clearly perceive that you have the valuable emotions. And then it makes sense to make a good show out of the things you feel. Conspicuous emotion is a gainful social strategy in this context.

    And the more people are performing their emotions loudly, the harder it is to gain recognition for quieter thoughts and feelings, and so we have a tendency towards inflation.

    a drawing of a person with their hand behind their back and details for a 2012 run of Just a Little Lovin'
    Promotional information for the 2012 run of Just a Little Lovin’, a larp about desire, fear of death, and friendship during the early days of the AIDS crisis.

    What Now?

    This is a tough one. I have no interest in bringing back the hardcore culture that the new, more sensitive culture has dethroned. Emotion- and safety-accepting role-playing culture has a WHOLE lot of babies that it would be bad to throw out with the bathwater. It’s great that we have created spaces of safety and recognition where we can be, as Moyra Turkington memorably put it to me in a private conversation, ”deliciously vulnerable,” and we should preserve this. But if we want to think up something to do anyway?

    TALKING ABOUT IT. Both in public and in private. A bit of consciousness-raising can go a long way, and is precisely the point of this post.

    DEBRIEFINGS ARE NOT ABOUT TRAUMA. While gathering pace for writing this post I had an excellent discussion with Sarah Lynne Bowman about what debriefings are and aren’t good for. A lot of people, myself included, have absorbed from the general conversation the idea that debriefings are about after-treatment of trauma, and this is not the case at all. What they do is reestablish normal social relations between players after the shakeup of the game, and create a space for recognizing feelings — not necessarily, indeed probably not, traumatic — for later reflection and digestion. If players have been actually traumatized, it is rather psychological first aid that’s called for, which is an entirely different beast that should be fielded as soon as the crisis is seen as such and absolutely should NOT wait until after the game. At any debriefing, it should be clear that debriefing =/= trauma treatment.

    UPGRADING THE STANDARD DISCLAIMER. I and quite a lot of others have our standard disclaimer, typically fired off in connection with debriefings, that it’s OK to feel a lot of weird feelings, and it’s also OK to not feel that much. I’ve been saying that myself for years, and yet I let myself be quite viscerally convinced that it wasn’t the case. I’m thinking that it might be an idea to simply reverse the order so you start out by saying that it’s normal and OK if it’s not that wild, but if it’s wild, that’s cool too. Thus, the non-violent reactions are pulled back into the range of the normal, rather than remaining an afterthought. In situations where we’re on the outskirts of the sensitive culture — where it doesn’t define the standards — I’d use the traditional order instead. And I’d write this in my debriefing instructions!

    MOVING UP THE STANDARD DISCLAIMER. Right before the debriefing is awfully late in the game to establish that the acceptable range of responses is quite wide. How about before the game proper starts?

    TEMPERATE USE OF DANGER SIGNALS. Warnings about harsh subject matter is a fine idea, and ambushing people with bad stuff is not cool, but as I see it, we could show a little more restraint in communicating HOW traumatized players are ”supposed” to be by a given game. I suspect that strongly framing games as dangerous contributes to the inflation of conspicuous emotion. I also suspect that it doesn’t really contribute much to actual safety.

    I’m aware that the above is not terribly impressive. So if you have ideas for what to do that aren’t too harsh on the babies in the bath, I’m all ears!

    Cover photo: “Don’t Cry My Love” by Axel Naud on Flickr. Photo has been cropped. CC BY 2.0.

  • GMing Nordic Freeform: A Beginners’ Guide

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    GMing Nordic Freeform: A Beginners’ Guide

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    This post was originally published on the blog of Lizzie Stark, the author of Leaving Mundania, a narrative nonfiction book that examines the complex world of larp, or live action role-play. She’s written for The Today Show website, Philadelphia Inquirer, Daily Beast, io9.com, Good Men Project and elsewhere.

    Though I’ve run dozens of Nordic freeform games for Americans in the last year or two, I’m probably still a rookie GM. But, as the saying goes, “You don’t need Santana to show you how to hold the guitar.” I suspect it’s true for GMing Nordic freeform too. There are many ways to run freeform for Americans, and mine is just one of them.

    To me, the key component of GMing freeform for Americans is creating the right sort of atmosphere, letting people know what to expect with verbal and non-verbal cues, and explaining what will be expected of them.In the Nordic countries, the heavily collaborative style of play is already out there, and it’s supported by a communitarian culture. In the states, we tend to view things more individualistically and competitively — in roleplaying games there’s often a sense of waiting for your spotlighted moment and wanting to make it totally, totally, awesome — and that is the expectation that many players arrive with. So it’s important to support players and to engineer them to collaborate with one another.

    Most of my advice is geared toward trying to create the right set up — setting the tone, explaining certain things, helping people understand what the play style is — rather than the act of running the games, which is pretty intuitive once you’ve tried it a couple times. And of course, since some of these games can hit unexpectedly hard, especially for an audience that may not be used to them, debriefing is key.

    I think Nordic freeform is great because it’s so easy to run — no costumes, no set, just a handful of people together in a room for a few hours. You can find free downloadable scenarios in English at Alexandria and Jeepen.org

    THE GM SETS THE TONE

    Always and forever.

    If the scenario is serious, act serious.

    The attitude of the GM sets the tone for the game. I think this is particularly important when running games for Americans, because our cultural context for play is different.

    If you act seriously, people will bring their realistic a-game. If you crack a lot of jokes, in my experience, they won’t. Your attitude sets up the players’ expectations about the game, so act accordingly.

    Use as few words as possible.

    Don’t waste people’s time: explain the scenario in as few words as you can. And try to keep the focus on the players and what their experience will be like, rather than jetting off into anecdote. If you don’t waste words, they’ll be less tempted to as well, and that will serve the game.

    Make it clear you care about the players’ well-being.

    For me, setting the tone also means making sure people know that this space is a safe space to enact intense emotion, whether the game rises to that intensity or not. This means asking everyone about their physical boundaries, giving people cut words, and making sure that people know you’ll take their concerns seriously.

    I often tell people beforehand that we’re going to use “writer’s workshop rules,” in other words, that if someone lets something heavy drop during the game or the debrief, it stays within the group and doesn’t get spread around.

    I also tell players that if they are comfortable getting a bit physical with each other — shoving each other during a fight, for example — that’s fine with me, but they should keep it playful, since I don’t ever want to feel that anyone is in real danger during a game. The physical boundary talk isn’t just about fighting — it’s also about how comfortable people are with strangers touching them. Some people are fine with a casual arm around them, but no more. Some people are comfortable with the “bikini limit.” Some people don’t want to be touched at all. Getting this on the table at the outset settles some unrest, and gets people thinking about their own limits, which is good.

    One time we skipped this physical boundary talk, and unbeknownst to me two of the players dating each other were stage combat experts who love sparing with each other. They had a very serious-looking physical fight during the game, and it freaked everyone out, since we didn’t know about their agreement. Other players thought, “If they can do that to each other, can they do that to me too?” I’ve never forgotten to have the boundary talk since.

    Tip: Choose an enclosed room that’s not too big — four people will be dwarfed by a ballroom. And make sure to hang a sign on the door asking people to stay out. Absolutely no spectators. Just trust me on this.

    GIVE THEM CONTEXTUAL INFO

    This lets people know what to expect and what is expected of them.

    Tell them where the games come from.

    Since this style of play is new to many American gamers, I usually give a little thumbnail sketch of the style’s history.

    “Freeform is a style of game that comes from the Nordic countries and incorporates larp and tabletop techniques. It arose when tabletop players decided they wanted to start acting out scenes, rather than just describing them, and eventually they lost the table completely. These games use tabletop techniques — like fast forwarding through the boring stuff — and larp techniques, like acting out your character.”

    That’s the cliffs notes version, though sometimes I’ll go into a little more detail. If I’m GMing jeepform, I am careful to explain that jeepform is not identical to “Nordic larp,” which is a misconception many people have — you can explain it as a type of freeform that uses metatechniques which are ways of breaking the narrative to heighten the drama, or ways to let players communicate with one another when their characters cannot.

    I try to keep this explanation to 1-2 minutes.

    Tell them about cutting and about the rule of yes.

    “Instead of playing out one long, continuous scene, this game is more like a movie, where I’m the director, cutting the scenes together.

    “Also, this game is sort of like an improv exercise. Try to adhere to the rule of ‘yes and…’ This means that when someone gives you a suggestion, ‘Do you remember that time we went to the Waffle House together?’ you add on to it. ‘Yes, and you were wearing that totally dumb hat.’ “

    You can also note that the rule of ‘yes,’ doesn’t always mean saying ‘yes.’ “‘Do you remember that time we killed that guy?’ ‘No, I think I was too far gone on Quaaludes…’ also advances the narrative. The important thing is not to deny what other people have made up, what you don’t do is say, ‘No, we never killed that guy.’”

    If the game is bleedy, explain the concept of bleed.

    Bleed is what happens when character emotions and player emotions get mixed up, and in many gaming communities in the states, people try to avoid this. Some freeform games are designed to facilitate bleed.

    Some people aren’t prepared for games to address their real lives and real emotions so directly. Let people know that it’s normal to have strong feelings (or not!). Explain that there will be a debrief afterward where we’ll talk about the game and anything that came up.

    Explain the bare bones of the scenario and any meta-techniques used.

    Do it with few words and do whatever else the scenario tells you to do before gameplay begins.

    WARM THEM UP

    Warming players up emphasizes that they are part of a collective team that is working together to create an interesting experience for everyone. Warm-ups also get people comfortable with one another and start the creative juices flowing. I usually try to include:

    A physical warm-up or other energy-raiser.

    Make people do the hokey pokey or sing heads, shoulders, knees, and toes. Doing something silly in front of other folks breaks down some boundaries. Alternately, say short phrases with various intonations and make everyone repeat after you as a group. Or come up with your own.

    A mental warm-up.

    Get people’s minds lubed up for the game by saying a word and asking the player to your left to say the first word that comes into his or her mind. Go around in a circle enough times that people are speaking quickly. I’m told that great GMs say words that bring back the themes of the scenario.

    You can also pass a sound and a motion around the circle, and even get more than one going.

    A teamwork/focus warm-up.

    Part of running these games is getting people to work together as a team, and this can mean making them sensitive to the emotions, boundaries, and moods of other players.

    Make a face at the player to your left, they mirror it back to you, then make a new face to the next player.

    Have people stand in a circle, with their arms around shoulders (which gently breaks the touch barrier), everyone closes their eyes, and counts to 20. Using a pattern to do this is forbidden. If two people talk at the same time, you go back to zero. This is one of my favorites, as it makes people sensitive to the energy of the group and even the breathing of other players.

    Tip: Build the group’s confidence by complimenting them on how they do the warm-up exercises. Saying stuff like “We’re going to have a great game” can be a self-fulfilling prophecy. If the scenario calls for pre-game collaboration among the players, a heartfelt “thank you” after each person’s contribution has a similar bolstering effect.

     

    CAST AND PLAY THE GAME

    Like it says in the game materials.

    Co-creation

    Some games involve co-creation, in which the players get together and decide some stuff about how the narrative will go before the game starts. Often, the GM moderates these discussions by asking questions and so on. In these cases, it’s really important to get buy-in from each of the players, and to make each of them feel that their contributions are being heard. So if one or two players are dominating the conversation, it’s really really important for you to step in for the silent types and make sure their contributions make it into the game.

    Festering resentment between players makes for a terrible game.

    Casting

    The best casting advice I’ve gotten is to never cast the loudest player in the loudest role, because they’ll take over the game. Casting introverts in extrovert roles and vice versa can help quiet the loud and louden the quiet. The game is best when everyone participates equally.

    It’s hard to give blanket advice, since casting depends on the individual scenario you’ve chosen. Use your observations of the players from the warm-up to help you make good decisions.

    I try to think about the dynamics between the players, rather than who most resembles a given character, because the dynamics make the game. If Sue and Joe don’t like each other all that well, casting them in a romantic relationship probably isn’t a good idea (unless it’s supposed to be unhappy!). If Bob hates public speaking, maybe I won’t cast him in a part that requires being super-eloquent, because I want him to feel comfortable.

    If you’re playing relationship drama, the chemistry between the couples is obviously important. You can also be sneaky and cast people according to the roles you think might help them grow. Maybe I will give Bob the role of mayor so he’ll see that he can be eloquent. Sometimes it’s fun to play against type. Gender is often not as important as you think it is in casting.

    That advice, and more on casting here.

    Tip: If someone looks lost during a scene, you can ask them to monologue about the action to draw them in, if rules permit.

    Cutting

    It can be hard to cut scenes as a first-time freeform GM. There are a bunch of different schools – cut before the tension peaks to frustrate the players, cut when stuff gets boring, cut slow to draw out awkward situations– but most of all, when in doubt, cut fast rather than slow, because cutting fast keeps up the tempo and energy of the game.

    It also depends on the game. In some games, I like to cut long early-on, to draw out the core dynamic of the scene, and to give players time to happen upon something wonderful. But if you cut long, you also risk slowing the energy of the group and letting it peter out.

    Lots more advice on cutting here and here.

    The main thing to remember: the more you cut, the more you’ll get the hang of when to do it. There’s no wrong or right here, so don’t worry about it too much. As you GM more, you’ll develop your own style, and that’s good.

    Tip: Silence can be pregnant with meaning, and it’s OK to let it lengthen awkwardly.

    DEBRIEF

    Always hold a debrief. A five minute debrief is better than no debrief. A fifteen or thirty minute debrief is better. A rule of thumb is: the more intense the game, the longer the debrief should be. And games don’t have to last long to be intense.

    The most minimal debrief is for everyone to go around the circle and say one thing that stood out to them about the game.

    The most important part of the debrief is that everyone should talk and no one person should dominate the conversation. Some people are naturally more talkative than others, of course. So watch for the quiet ones and try to draw them out. If they really don’t want to talk, don’t make them, but maybe go up to them casually later and make sure they’re ok.

    Of course, people will tell some war stories, and that’s great, but you also want to cut to the heart of the matter and ask people to talk about their feelings. If something seemed problematic or could have been problematic, but wasn’t, now’s a good time to talk about that.

    You should ask questions, but know that the questions you ask also set the tone for the debrief and therefore for the experience that the players leave the game with. Neutral questions, “What did you think of X?” are better than critical questions. At the end of a decent but not great game, I once asked “What were the problems with this game?” People left nitpicking the game design and GM style, instead of talking about the impact of the experience. If you want GM feedback, get it later and privately.

    You may also find that players want to talk to you solo after the game down at the bar or in the lobby, or whatever. This is natural and good, so let it happen.

    And a reminder: as the GM, your job is to listen and not talk during the debrief.

    Lots more advice on debriefs here.

    TIPS, TROUBLESHOOTING, AND LEARNING FROM LIZZIE’S MISTAKES

    I’ve tried out a bunch of stuff. Here are some miscellaneous things I’ve learned:

    • During my first few games, I looked at players and thought they were miserable, bored, etc. In the debrief, it was plain they’d had a great time. Players look serious while playing serious games. This is normal, so don’t freak out about it.
    • It’s up to the players to make the game good. Sometimes they’re just not in the right mood, or the group dynamics are wonky and the game is shallow in a boring way. This isn’t necessarily your fault.
    • Not every person is a good audience for every game, or even for freeform in general. Just accept that not everyone will be into it.
    • People play better in the afternoon and evening.
    • If a game tanks, it’s better to end it early and talk about it that then to let it drag on. Sometimes admitting this hurts your ego. Suck it up and do it anyway. You’ll learn a lot, and the players will respect you for not torturing them.
    • I experimented with “enforced sharing” during warm-ups, asking people to share a fear or hope, for example, as a way of bonding the group and making them comfortable bleeding. I found that instead of driving the players closer and facilitating bleed, most of the time this made it more difficult for players to play hard; it sort of pointed at issues players might want to explore, and in doing so, made people feel self-conscious.
    • It’s normal to flail around for the first two-thirds of a freeform game – people are still finding and focusing in on the story. The magic seems to happen in the last part.
    • It’s OK for you to have feelings about the game too, but it’s probably best for you to share them with an external party.
    • Confidence. If you don’t have it, just larp it; like dogs smelling fear, players can sense when you feel weak and that weakens the experience for them.
    • If the game isn’t perfect, or if it fails, no one will arrest you. So get out there and try new stuff.

    So there you have it: set the tone and let the game unfurl, and use your GM tools to manage the interpersonal dynamics between people and make sure no one is left out.

    Happy adventuring.

    And for the comment crowd: What games would you recommend for a first-time freeform GM? What tips did I miss? Share your experience with us, or come ask questions!