There has been said a lot regarding safety mechanics, tools and the safety mindset on nordiclarp.org over the last ten to fifteen years: Design discussions have taken place, talks and workshops have been held at Knutepunkt/Solmukohta, publications in the respective books have been published, and discussions between people who are volunteering — meaning working — in safety, have raised awareness about the need for safety at larps.
One topic that has not been talked or written about much is the work and visibility of a Larp Safety person.
Articles from 2017 give very good insight into the work. Problems and techniques of working as a Safety person have been addressed, such as giving players the space to express their feelings without being judged, when overwhelmed or anxious, offering them empathy, and validating their experiences and emotions. We have discussed how it fits into the community work as a whole, such as advising organizers on safety concerns and designing workshops or debriefs.
One thing that remains ironically obscure for many players is the invisibility of the person and their investment itself. With this invisibility also comes missing appreciation and the risk of creating a lack of people willing to engage in this important community work.
It seems the requirements to work as a Safety person are not widely known. Also, most players and even some organizers might not know what a Safety person actually does and what the experiences before, during and after a larp are like for them. We often know about the strains and stresses of organizer’s work, know about burnout risks and talk about what players struggle with, but what about the people in Safety teams?
What I experienced at an international larp I was doing Safety for, was players asking me after the game if I had a good time, or how my game was. I was a bit baffled to be honest. Of course, they meant well and maybe intended it as a conversation opener. But then a realization hit me: while the Safety people are often recognized in their role, their actual work and the individuals behind the role stay mostly invisible. Players rarely ask themselves if this job is easy or not, enjoyable or not?
Why Is Safety Hard?
As a Safety person, you’re skipping out on a perfectly fantastic larp you’re not actually participating in. You actively invest your time, vacation days, sometimes travel costs and energy to care for others. For this, you put other people’s needs first, making their well-being your priority.
People usually don’t come to the safety person when the larp runs “well” for them and they are happy, proud of something, or want to talk about how great everything is. Players usually also don’t interact with the Safety person if they do not have a specific safety need. Thus, the Safety person might be invisible to those who didn’t need them, during the game or even at the after-larp party.
To make sure everybody is emotionally safe, Safety people use various techniques, including: validating people’s experiences, being compassionate, being empathic, and offering space to the players who might need exactly that — a safe space to feel and deal with their emotions without being shamed, judged, or left alone.
Effective Safety people try actively not to give in to very human impulses like the need to “fix things” for other people that have a problem before they are ready. Often the “fixing” comes only after a player feels heard and having their concerns taken seriously before looking forward and being able to focus on getting their game or larp experience back on track. They also try not to quickly get out of an uncomfortable situation, even if it would be easier for them.
Another aspect of Safety that might pose difficulties is that you often have to keep things said or experienced anonymous and/or confidential — depending on what the person affected wants — as much as you might like to vent or share your “burden” afterwards. A player with a safety issue needs to trust the Safety working in their best interest as well as they are not seen as a “problem player” afterwards. This means you have to be as careful with what you communicate – similar to a lawyer or priest, just without the vows and training. Sometimes it is not possible to maintain confidentiality even if the person wants that, for example if a crime has been committed, or other kinds of situations. Anonymity yes, but confidentiality, not always. Similarly, a safety person should make the main organizers aware if there is a problematic person in the group. Also with the wrong information going out you and /or the affected player might face retaliation from other players or the community.
One strenuous factor is the “on-call” or “standby” situation that Safety people are in most of the time. People who have ever experienced on-call service or standby duty in work life know that this can be exhausting, creating internal tension as one can always expect to be called to action.
An important ability to have is self-regulation skills, because sometimes, even a Safety person can’t help with a problem. This means having to endure the helplessness of not being able to “do” something about a problem. Or there are situations where their own insecurities or past traumas are triggered, they become emotional themselves and they still have to try and focus to not get distracted with their own thoughts or bodily reactions – which is a strong argument for having a Safety person instead of loading that responsibility onto the shoulders of a single person. This, and the work that comes before (designing Safety mechanics and workshops, being involved in the flagging process if there is one, holding workshops) and after (doing debriefs, taking care of issues that might come up, after the actual event is over) takes a lot of energy out of many Safety people I have seen working on larps.
Additionally, people frequently underestimate the role of Safety. Sometimes, organizers, writers, and designers also do the Safety job — and in most cases they are usually pretty much detached from the larp (which is sometimes their own!) As an organizer or writer, they suddenly stop sharing player’s or even organizer’s overall experiences, seeing and hearing mostly the negative experiences that people had with content, scenes, other players, or even themselves.
The Gender Factor?
One factor weighing into the invisibility is that many people acting as safety people — in my experience — are socialized as women. Care work, putting the emotional wellbeing of others into the center of their work, being empathetic and trustworthy – these jobs are often taken on by people with female socialization and are mostly also silent and invisible. Women organizers can struggle with invisibility. And maybe this care work often done by people socialized as women is taken for granted as well. People socialized as men might be afraid of being called out themselves, which might make them behave in ways that are dismissive and even hostile to safety people (especially in public conversations, but also in defense of their friends, critiquing safety culture, etc.). Furthermore some participants may not feel comfortable talking about safety problems with a man Safety member — particularly if the problem is a gendered one, as they often can be.
At one larp event in the past, two other people and me, who were doing Safety on top of other tasks like writing and designing the larp — all socialized as women — experienced complete invisibility, not even being invited to team meetings or being credited after the game by the main organizers.
This is frustrating, demotivating and creates the opposite of the will to encourage community service, especially if the nature of that work aims to be discreet and low-key to protect the involved players which in turn can lead people who are not involved to assume there weren’t any issues at all. To keep larps safe for all people involved, this problem also reflects our communal societal need for change.
Visibility-Enhancing Checklist for Your Next Larp
Taking over the function as a Safety person is important and meaningful. Many larps need a Safety person to support players especially in conflict-heavy games, but also in games that may be light-hearted on the surface. And to be able to support someone, helping people to feel understood is its own valuable experience.
The following recommendations and behaviors are meant as tips and ideas, targeted at all parts of the community. They might make it easier for safety people who are spending their time to help us feel more empowered, safer and braver. And maybe they help encourage other people to become active in the community.
Safety People
Prioritize your own well-being, practice setting boundaries, and state your needs bravely.
Talk more about your work! Demand visibility even if your instinct is to be a “silent supporter.”
Connect and share knowledge with each other and maybe even with like-minded / interested people.
Design workshops / trainings to teach Safety techniques to others and support each other as peers.
Find players or people from the organizing team who check up on you regularly.
When and where possible, work in a team to support each other, not feel alone and also be able to take sufficient breaks or tap out yourself if need be.
Don’t do Safety at your own larp – beside from the potential disconnect with the joy of seeing how your work turned out, players may be reluctant to voice a problem to the safety person, if it’s an issue with the organization or with the design – for fear that it will be seen as criticism.
Organizers
Introduce Safety people as well as how to contact and where to find them thoroughly before the larp.
Inform yourself about what your Safety people are doing.
When possible, make sure your safety people are not responsible for other runtime logistics and especially do not have them play any important role in the game to not confuse their responsibilities / loyalties.
Care for your Safety team member as a person with needs and emotions.
Check-in with them every now and then.
Involve the Safety people throughout the process as safety is important at all points of design and implementation.
Put together an Internal Procedures document (Stavropoulos et al. 2024) to establish clear courses of action in crisis situations.
If there are decisions to be made about issuing bans and the like, please separate this from Safety. It should be the main organizers who issue warnings and bans, not the safety people themselves. Safety people can make a recommendation that someone be expelled from the larp, but in the end it is the organizers of the event who have responsibility to take that decision. Also it decreases the risk of being targeted for enacting consequences or for not doing enough.
To make them feel included and part of the team, ask if they want to join GM meetings or other team meetings. (It can also be helpful as Safety, to know how the game is running).
Ask if they’re interested in having updates about the game.
Credit & thank them after the event (as you would your fellow organizers, kitchen crew, tech support, etc.)
Players
Remember the name(s) of the people in the Safety team and show them (especially at the afterparty) that you care for them as individual people.
Learn to identify and communicate your needs so that a Safety person knows how and what to offer.
Safety people are not in a therapeutic relationship with players. They can provide support in times of overwhelm or crisis, but they should defer to external help, such as ambulances with mental health professionals, if the crisis continues and longer term support is needed. It is also not their job to mediate disputes within the community.
Take reflection and self-regulation seriously and practice identifying your emotions and setting boundaries outside of larp.
Be mindful of what you are asking for – don’t use the Safety room or the Safety person as entertainment for a couple of hours, just because you don’t want to play or be alone.
If you don’t know what to do to make people feel safer but are interested in learning: Read up on those skills (like “validation”) and ask Safety people you know if you have questions. Most are open and happy to help you and share their knowledge and skills.
Take responsibility for your well-being, do your own risk- assessment of whether a larp is for you, and plan how to respond beforehand if troubles come up.
If you know about your triggers, medicational needs, or even what helps you in moments of emotional flooding or overwhelm: Communicate that to the Safety people before the larp so they can better support you individually.
Let’s make this community even more competent and safe for everyone – including the Safety people who try to make sure everybody feels safe at a larp. Let’s be mindful of how we’re treating them, so that we have more people in the future interested in doing this work.
Acknowledgements
The author would like to acknowledge the editorial team at Nordiclarp.org for their comments: Mo Holkar, Elina Gouliou, Kaya Toft Thejls, and Sarah Lynne Bowman.
Lindve, Petra, and Rebel Rehbinder. 2023. “We Organized These Larps Too!” Presentation at Knudepunkt, Sweden, May 19.
Kocabaş, Ezgi Özek, and Meltem Üstündağ-Budak. 2017. “Validation Skills in Counselling and Psychotherapy.” International Journal of Scientific Study 5, no. 8: 319-322.
Rather, Jill H., and Alec L. Miller. 2015. DBT Skills Manual for Adolescents. Guilford Press.
JM: Now that we have more people talking about larp, a lot of people say “larp taught me that I could be another gender.” That’s a great conversation that we’ve now had a few times, so what is the next conversation? What’s next after “larp can teach me that I can be different”?
ES: I would say that it can teach you how to be different. Gender is a thing we do, and having an environment where we can actually learn — I mean, my first Inside Hamlet was the first time I ever tried to perform that specific kind of high femininity.
AN: I was thinking about skills. It can take years to feel comfortable with the most basic skills of performing the gender role that you want to be reflected as.
JM: I’m what, eight years in? And I’m finding that I don’t feel like I’m getting so much more comfortable with the skills as much as getting comfortable with feeling uncomfortable. There are definitely people and situations where I still have no idea how to interact.
ES: It gets easier. There are still things that feel weird and fraught—but there are so many things that I’ve also stopped noticing are skills; I don’t realize they’re learned anymore.
AN: But there’s also some danger to larp being talked about in this sense. How do we talk about what it is that we do? Because there’s no way to make that immune from someone saying “well, this is just an act” – reducing it to clothing and skills. We didn’t just put on the dress or the suit, we put on the skills, and they don’t want environments where people can learn these skills and become comfortable with them. They don’t want us to exist. Maybe let’s not get too depressing here, but I think that’s what is radical about larp spaces: they can be a place where you can learn.
JM: Most people don’t actually want that liberation.
ES: To that I would say they’re going to try to kill us regardless, so making ourselves smaller isn’t going to stop it. My answer to that is to ignore it, and even to be explicit about this — here is the fraught thing, and we choose to ignore it. But skills are an interesting frame because body language isn’t a skill. You’re literally restructuring your peripheral nervous system to have different kinds of reflexes, right? You could argue that performance plus time is part of physical transition.
JM: Like fluency?
ES: Deeper than that, it’s physiological.
JM: Maybe similar to the way when you start to think in a new language and react in that language – you don’t forget your original one, but for a long time they can get mixed up.
*****
SS: As a player, I find it useful to have access to queer history and other queer experiences. And to play your own oppression, because it can be very liberating to fuck with it. But as the backlash against queer people has been growing, our queer games have become more sanitized; people don’t want to play on things they experience in real life. People playing the oppressors are scared of playing the oppressors.
JM: If you can’t have the oppressors in these games, you also lose out on the possibility for liberation.
SS: Exactly, and that’s what’s been bugging me. One of the things larp can do is let us see the oppression and act against it.
AN: We have to workshop people to get them to play mean and nasty!
JM: In The Future is Straight I played the head of the conversion camp and used this very nuanced, caring kind of normative oppressor — the counselors and I would do these horrible scenes and then meet up in the kitchen to cry. But at the end I didn’t feel horrible, I felt intensely grateful to anyone who had done any of that work, who had stood up to this in the past and now. But can trans liberation and larp overlap?
ES: I mean, we know larp is a very bad tool for doing politics because it doesn’t scale. But learning history in a very deep way is one of the places where it can be useful. Like, this is what it meant to come out as trans 15 or 20 years ago. Or the fight between the leather dykes and the conventional pride ecosystem in 1980 and ‘81. Understanding how we survived previously and how we fought is a direct survival mechanism.
JM: But are the kids even interested in history yet?
ES: Larp lets us create scripts for talking across generations. We don’t really have scripts for talking to our elders because they died, or went stealth.
JM: And there’s an active campaign to prevent us from interacting with young people.
*****
JM: Sometimes I go into a larp thinking I want to consciously play with a particular part of myself, or to try something out, and to cis people it might not be a characteristic or personality that is obviously gendered, but for me it’s inescapably gendered.
ES: I mean, as a trans person, can you actually imagine a version of yourself without thinking about the gendered implications of it?
JM: No, exactly.
*****
SS: One of the reasons I larp is that sometimes when I’m larping, I can forget that I’m trans, and I crave that so much.
JM: Do you reflect yourself as cis, or do you just forget that transness is a thing?
SS: I don’t know. I forget that I am trans. Not that it exists, but the inhabitation of another character can sort of reinscribe a bodily understanding of myself.
ES: I remember that specifically from Just a Little Lovin’, this physical weirdness of interacting with my own body after the game, like wait, what is this?
JM: I’m going to take a different direction. Obviously Just a Little Lovin’ was the larp that made my omelet more than cracked my egg, and it was jarring to leave that character body, but not just the body; the way that people behaved around that body. And like, in real life when I walk into a new social situation, especially a non-queer one, I’m always looking for my failure modes and the social and gendered awkwardness have real consequences. But in a larp, people are so ready to paper over your “mistakes.” I experience some of the usual anxiety of performing in the larp, but I have a lot less anxiety about just being in a social situation at all. And I wonder if this is the liberatory element; like, I would like to live in a society where I feel like that all the time.
ES: To be in a room where you’re guaranteed a kind reading.
AN: Also something about the fact that everybody has a layer of performance.
JM: Yeah, and they know it!
ES: Everyone is aware.
JM: Because we all do this all the time.
ES: I feel like we should ask some cis people about whether they have that understanding that they’re performing all the time.
AN: They don’t!
SS: Some do, but yeah.
AN: That’s the problem! But larp is an equalizer in that way, right? That’s why there’s safety in a larp pack and why we party so well at Knutepunkt — even if you’re not trans, everyone has some kind of understanding that reality is a stack and you can play with it, and at the base layer we’re all performing something.
JM: So larp levels the playing field when it comes to the creation of the self?
ES: There’s also something about the ensemble thing, though, right? Because we’re not just aware that everyone is performing. There’s this explicit trust and co-performance relationship that’s happening. And you know that everybody kind of knows that.
AN: Everybody is performing and everybody needs to support everybody else in that performance.
ES: And if you say that you’re X, of course I’m going to take that at face value, because why wouldn’t I?
AN: That’s why it’s so hard to lie at larps; we interpret everything so kindly.
JM: And then in the real world, in the office, people are deeply invested in not doing this.
*****
SS: You said something that made me think — about making explicit the gender play in every role. That would do a lot, forcing people to think about it, because the privilege of cisness is that you don’t have to think about gender.
JM: We often write very gendered characters in the backstory, but we’re not explicit about it.
AN: And now a lot of larps now have gender-neutral casting —
JM: Not a fan.
ES: I hate it!
AN: Because all this is taken out, right?
JM: I realize I don’t really play cis characters, but I don’t really play trans characters, either. I’m just kind of this guy —
ES: I know what you mean.
JM: And it’s not gender-neutral, but it’s somehow resisting or even escaping the categories. But here’s a conversation: When you larp, is your body your body? Are your scars your scars?
SS: It’s complicated.
JM: Yeah, me too. I feel like I have a bit of a Schrödinger’s body.
SS: I mean, the facts of our bodies are by and large inescapable. We can change them but that’s not really something we do for larp. How we physically access this world is a fact, though we might experience the liminality in that particular larp moment.
ES: Obviously I acknowledge that I’m playing the character with the same body as I have otherwise, but it would never occur to me to think of any of the specificity of my body as belonging to the character. Almost like something that I have to do to play the character is to step away from the history of the body, because it’s so bound up with identity — and not just identity, but path dependency and time and interaction with gatekeepers and all of this specific body history. For me to play a character it can’t be the same body. It has to be, at the very least, read through a soft focus.
*****
JM: Could we ever make a trans liberationist larp that cis people would get?
ES: What does liberation mean?
JM: [struggling] … with this sort of idea baked into it that… I have to describe it negatively — no gatekeeping, no violence, no prejudice on the basis of a trans identity.
ES: That just sounds like freedom from oppression. That feels like a really low bar.
JM: Yeah, it does. I’m not going to fall into the trap of saying it’s liberation from gender because I like gender and I think it’s a nice flavor. But I could imagine something where fluidity is actually assumed for everyone?
ES: I don’t want to play that game.
JM: Okay, not fluidity. But I somehow want the society I would like to see modeled in a larp, though I don’t think it’s so important to model the exact society so much as get something right in the design about the interaction. Why do we interact with gender and each other in a particular way?
AN: Another answer for a trans liberatory larp would be one that’s for trans people, one that actually leaves the concerns of cis people behind. I don’t know what that looks like —
ES: Me neither, but I would play that. Trans utopia sounds nice. I’ve never played a larp that is as queer as my life is.
This article is published in the Knutpunkt 2022 magazine Distance of Touch and is published here with permission. Please cite this text as:
MacDonald, Jamie. 2022. “Beyond Cracking Eggs.” In Distance of Touch: The Knutpunkt 2022Magazine, edited by Juhana Pettersson, 51-54. Knutpunkt 2022 and Pohjoismaisen roolipelaamisen seura.
In the summer of 2018, I signed up for a feminist spinoff of College of Wizardry (CoW, 2014) called Hecatic Academy of Witchcraft (HAW). Since CoW usually aspires towards a gender-neutral setting, I was interested in seeing what a specifically feminist and female-focussed version of the larp and the magic college might look like. How would the concept of magic academia be changed if we were to imagine it as developed mostly by and for women? Would magic itself become something different? What would gendered magic look like? And importantly, would there be room for magic expressions outside of the gender binary?
Hecatic Academy of Witchcraft was the brainchild of Agata Świstak and Marta Szyndler, and it was described as a “world where feminine means strong, powerful and unyielding’ and a “safe haven where witches can study magic without the risk of being burned at the stake.” The spinoff larp was marketed for “women, for non-binary pals, for anyone with a feminine experience, and for men who want to try something new.” ((College of Wizardry. “Hecatic Academy of Witchcraft”. Facebook video. 22 June 2018. Accessed 31 August 2020.))
Having played as a professor at CoW before, I immediately knew that I wanted to teach again at HAW. Especially the new subjects of Moon Magic and Blood Magic sparked creative visions in my head of witches gathering in a circle under the full Moon to celebrate their womanhood. (Since I identify as a queer feminist, a witch and a cis woman, ideas for magic rituals centred on and celebrating female empowerment come easily to me). However, I was aware that I needed to make anything I did accessible to characters and players of all gender expressions and identities – and this honestly seemed quite the challenge. For instance, if Blood Magic or Moon Magic connotes a focus on “the female cycle” and menstruation, how would I include female bodies that don’t menstruate, non-female bodies that do, cis-gendered male bodies and people who might feel dysphoric about the subject? Is it possible to separate menstruation from the notion of a female biology? In general, how do we celebrate female power and magic in any larp setting without simultaneously reproducing binary gender thinking? How do we avoid cis-hexism?
The special feminist run of CoW was eventually cancelled, but it left me with a lot of unresolved speculation about uplifting the stories of women through elements of female power and magic while striving to make room for all players, including trans*((In this text, I will use trans* as a signifier for all non-cis people (such as transgender, non-binary or genderfluid people, etc.). In other words, I will use trans* for brevity as a signifier for anyone who identifies (always or sometimes) outside of the gender they were assigned at birth. This is a common practice in writing about trans* experiences that I first came across in Ruska Kevätkoski’s work in the 2016 Solmukohta Book (Kevätkoski, 2016).)) players and characters. My goal here is not to provide the perfect answers (I don’t have them), but to share my thoughts and hopefully inspire others to gender their magic systems with awareness and intention.
The Social Construction of Binary Gender
Let’s have a quick talk about the gender binary and how our implicit biases about gender might influence larp design. The gender binary is the historical and current notion (particularly in Western culture) that there are two – and only two – distinct and separate genders. Biological sex is often invoked as a reason for upholding the gender binary, with proponents arguing that individual gender expressions spring ‘naturally’ from inherent biology – a view that is sometimes called essentialist. An alternative view (and the one I hold) is that the binary division of gender is a social construct, i.e. a socially constructed and culturally fluent set of expressions and behaviours that are implicitly taught, learned and sustained.((See e.g. Beauvoir, Simone de. The Second Sex. Vintage Books, 2011. Originally Le Deuxième Sexe. First ed. 1949; Butler, Judith. Gender Trouble. Routledge, 1990, Tandon Neeru. Feminism: A Paradigm Shift. Atlantic, 2008. Accessed 23 September 2020.)) In the following, I will presuppose that gender categories are fluent, malleable and socially constructed – and that it is therefore possible to bend, break and rebuild them in larps and other fictional settings.
It is crucial to understand that just because something is a construct, this does not mean that it doesn’t exist. National borders are a social construct, but they are enforced by laws and sometimes maintained with violent force. Currency is a construct, but the numbers typed on a piece of paper or inside a computer still represent influence and agency in society. The male/female division of colours such as blue and pink or the idea that only women may wear skirts is obviously culturally constructed, but the negative consequences for transgressing outside the expectations of your assigned gender category can be substantial. Even when we resign ourselves to the restrictions of whatever gender category we were assigned at birth, there is still implicitly trained internalised and externalised social policing in place to ensure that we perform((“Perform” here not in the sense of “playacting” but meaning to present yourself through a set of implicitly trained and socially acceptable gendered behaviours.)) whatever behaviours have been designated as sufficiently “feminine” or “masculine” by our culture. This is true for both of the binary gender categories, because although white, straight cis-men are often viewed as a dominant group and as the “norm” (compared to whoever is being “othered” through normative discourse), their potential for self-expression is equally restricted by the rules of the gender binary. As Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie explains:
We define masculinity in a very narrow way, masculinity becomes this hard, small cage and we put boys inside the cage. We teach boys to be afraid of fear. We teach boys to be afraid of weakness, of vulnerability. We teach them to mask their true selves…
Although the binary categories of “male” and “female” are constructs, they have tangible and material effects on our lives. We live within and around these identities and categories every day. Many people perform their expected gendered behaviours without even thinking twice about it. Our assigned gender roles are implicit and systemic, and therefore they become the norm. Anyone who exists outside of this norm, either because they resist binary thinking, or simply because they don’t fit easily within the two established categories, often risk being shunned, oppressed or overlooked. The consequences of not “fulfilling” your assigned gender role can be harmful. Exclusion from communities or being marked as “other” have very long histories as forms of social punishment intended (consciously or subconsciously) to correct behaviour back towards the culturally normative expectation.((See e.g. Munt, Sally R. Queer Attachments: The Cultural Politics of Shame (p. 32). Ashgate Publishing, 2007.))
When we understand the mechanisms behind gendering and othering, and when we recognise the binary gender categories and their associated expressions as constructs, we are better able to anticipate and play with these concepts in larps during world building and in the development of gendered or ungendered((Since the gendering of people, expressions and behaviours is the accepted norm, the decision to omit gender altogether also become a gender-conscious choice.)) magic systems.
Illustration by Marie Møller
Gendering Magic
When we create worlds and settings for larps, we are deconstructing and reconstructing reality. Most larps, however abstract (with a few exceptions), still tell the stories of connected or disconnected human beings and their communities. Nothing comes from nothing, and the stories we tell are reflections of the human experience.
When it comes to gender, this means that we might unwittingly be reproducing binary stereotypes. That is why gender awareness matters, and why it is important to make conscious decisions about gender and to include trans* characters and narratives. Because of the historical erasure of trans* narratives, examples of trans* historical figures are not easy to find,((Sharma, Ayesha. “Transgender People Are Not Included In Mainstream History.” Everyday Feminism, 2018. Accessed 24 September 2020.)) and it takes deliberate effort to search them out and include them((Preferably without ascribing trans* identities onto historical figures whose personal gender identities can’t be ascertained.)) or to create fictional historical trans* characters for players to portray.
Likewise, when we create magic systems that celebrate female power (or any gendered magic), we must take care not to conflate magic and biology, thereby insinuating that e.g. femininity and female magic spring from a “female biology”((I.e. a female gender assigned at birth based on physical characteristics.)) rather than from the female cultural experience. If we create a system which states that female magic comes from such a “female biology” (i.e. from having a womb or from something more abstractly female but concretely connected to the physical), we are reproducing the essentialist idea that gender is biological. If gender is a construct, then gendered magic is also a construct. This is true for the actual construction of gendered magic systems when we create them out of game, and that must be true inside the diegetic reality of the larp as well.
The great thing about this is that if gendered magic (such as a female witch’s potential connection to the Moon) is a social construct, then this gendered border within magic can be explored and transgressed just as the boundaries of gender can be explored and transgressed in real life. We can (and should) embrace and empower the female minority exactly because it is a minority((“Minority” here not signifying a numerical minority but rather any social group that is subordinate to a dominant group with more power and/or privilege regardless of group size, see e.g. https://www.britannica.com/topic/minority.)) – but we can do that and also make space for other minorities. We can do it without doing unto others what has been done to women for so long.
Gentlemen Magicians and Wild Witches
There is so much potential for stories about gendered magic, so let me offer an improvised example: Imagine a world historically reminiscent of our own where men go to school and learn magic while women are denied access to both magic and learning. In this world, girls are taught magic in secret by their grandmothers in the woods. Their magic grows wild and intuitive while the boys are taught structured and formulaic spells – both branches of magic equally effective, but each with their restraints and specialities. In this world, the cultural division between boys and girls has created a gender binary. It has also created two separate forms of magic according to gender – not because only two genders exist but because only two genders have been allowed to exist.
Now in this world, there are male magicians who will never learn (or even want to learn) what the wild witches know. But there are some among them who yearn for the magic of the Moon and the forests and who turn out to excel in intuitive magic. There are those who were told they were girls, but who now live as boys to attend classes and surpass their peers in every way. And there are those who can master both branches of the craft and combine them into new kinds of magic.
Of course, several things could happen next within this world when people break the social expectations. I would love to see a story where combined or gender-transverse magic is celebrated to empower trans* characters and where it begins to dissolve the gender binary. Alternatively, backlash, banishments or cover-ups of all non-binary magic could mirror the transphobia, ostracism and the erasure of trans* narratives in the real world. This is where it is especially important to consider the purpose of the gendered player experience you are shaping and to remember your trans* players. While I firmly believe there must be room in larp for people to explore lives and identities outside of their own, and while some trans* people will appreciate seeing cis players struggle with the same institutionalised challenges they face every day, others might find it hard to watch someone else live out their most difficult real life moments.
With no direct experience in larp development, I don’t claim to be an expert, but I have made note of some good advice and best practices: Make it very clear in your scenario description if your gendered magic system will lead to play involving gender discrimination and/or trans* discrimination. Create trans* or ungendered characters to make space for all players interested in playing trans* narratives. Acknowledge the existence of your trans* players in advance. Don’t wait for them to initiate the conversation, but make it clear from the start that you anticipate what you can and are ready to listen.
When it comes to magic in a historical setting, it is interesting to imagine how the two (culturally constructed and segregated, but very real) genders might perform magic differently. But it is not enough simply to declare that there is male and female magic. We need to know why that is and what it entails. Stories of gender segregation have value when they investigate the gender binary in order either to teach us something about the lived experience of all genders at that time and place or to explore and transgress the gender boundaries they establish.
Gender-Neutral Witchards and Agender Fae
At College of Wizardry, it has become custom to call witches and wizards by the universal gender-neutral portmanteau “witchards.” No one seems to recall the exact origin of the word (a reflection of the largely community-sourced gameplay), but the term functions well to support the gender-inclusive tone that the larp aims for. In the player handbook for CoW, there is a passage on equality and inclusivity which reads:
Witchard Society is different though: magical ability can surface in anyone, and that makes everyone equal regardless of their looks, body, sexuality, gender, beliefs or ethnicity […] and genderqueer and transgender individuals are common and wholly accepted.((College of Wizardry. Player Handbook. Company P, 2019. Version 3.0, ed. Laura Sirola and Christopher Sandberg. Accessed 23 September 2020.))
I imagine this rule stated clearly and directly (and repeated in pre-larp workshops) makes a difference for many players, although I can’t speak for them. I can say that it means a lot to me when portraying a female professor of age and authority, and it matters in the gameplay I have sought to create for other players. At CoW, there are also pronoun badges for players to show clearly whether their characters identify as they/them, she/her or he/him. This enables me to use the right pronouns for the characters I meet (something I very much appreciate), and then promptly ignore their gender because at CoW, gender doesn’t matter – but it matters a great deal that gender explicitly doesn’t matter, because this stands in such clear contrast to the importance implicitly placed on gender in the real world.
In-game: The author teaching magic through music at College of Wizardry 22. Photo by Przemysław Jendroska, Horseradish Studio.
The upcoming larp A Harvest Dance((A Harvest Dance, set for October 2021.)) by Lotta Bjick and the team at Poltergeist LARP features another kind of magical creature that has transcended (or rather never had) the need for gender. The site describes: “Fae society is not human and the concept of gender is bewildering and strange to them, therefore all characters will be written and played without gender.” The vision is that all players will portray genderless fae characters and use they/them pronouns about each other at all times. As fae, the participants will be able to play with – or rather completely disregard – gender in fashion and demeanour because the fae are bewildered by the silly human mortals’ constructed gender binary.
Of course, although characters might be written as unbiased or genderless, it doesn’t mean that players are able to enter into the fiction and immediately abandon their subconscious biases. It takes effort, and that effort takes awareness and intention – and even then, we might still slip up. (For instance, in spite of best efforts, I have personally experienced both sexism and sexual harassment at CoW.) But it matters that we get to try, and that we get to enter into a world where concepts such as gender-equality or the total lack of gender is explicitly stated as the norm and the expectation.
The organisers of A Harvest Dance are aware that players bring their trained normative behaviours with them into the event whether they want to or not. The act of using they/them pronouns for everyone around you is a new experience and a social exercise. It is stated clearly on the website that players should avoid gendered pronouns and not use words such as “man” or “woman.” But, the organisers say, “We are aware that this is not what most of us are used to in off-game real life and we might mess up. That is ok!” (A Harvest Dance).
Although our ingrown biases are hard to shed, larps give us the option to try. The trying is important in itself because it shows us that the established social norms of the real world are transmutable and replaceable constructs and are not the only ways to exist and interact. Even when we try and fail, we learn something about ourselves and the pervasive condition of our subconscious preconceptions. Through the narrative device of magic (and the actual magic of larping), we are able to construct, inhabit and investigate alternate realities that can show us a glimpse of what a truly unbiased community might look like, or experience what a genderless society feels like. The creators of A Harvest Dance say that they “are excited to see what characters we all can create together without the boundaries of gender!” And so am I.
Menstruation Magic
I would be remiss if I didn’t at least attempt to include a discussion on magic and menstruation. After all, it was the notion of Moon Magic and Blood Magic as magic school subjects that set my thoughts in motion exactly because they made me think of menstruation rituals and the potential for accidental gender-based exclusion. Menstruation is historically and implicitly connected to womanhood, but it is not something all women experience, and it is not something only women experience.
Menstruation is connected to womanhood because it has historically been associated with the physical characteristics ascribed to ‘female biology’. Not only that, but menstruation has been marked as something unclean or impure by the patriarchy and is still abused as a reason to subjugate and disfranchise the female minority and keep women subdued.((UNFPA. “Menstruation and Human Rights.” UNFPA, 2020. Accessed September 27, 2020)). Women have been called hysterical (from the Greek “hystera,” meaning womb or uterus), and the menstrual cycle is continually cited as a reason why women should not hold positions of power.((See e.g. Robbins, Mel. “Hillary Clinton and the clueless hormone argument.” CNN, 2015. Accessed 24 September 2020.)) In some cultures and traditions, women are kept separate from their communities during menstruation, and they must undergo cleansing rituals before re-entering society. The loss of dignity and agency that women face through the stigma of menstruation is exactly why it is an important act of resistance for women to celebrate it. Menstruation celebrations and rituals can and should be used as a tool to empower the female minority and break this age-old taboo.
However, as I said above, not all women menstruate, and not only women menstruate. Some women are post-menopausal, some have medical conditions that disrupt or prevent menstruation, some have reasons and medical means to opt out, and some women don’t have a uterus. Some trans* people menstruate but do not identify as women, including a number of men. And some people are dysphoric about their menstruation (or lack thereof) because it doesn’t correspond with the (socially constructed) physical expectations of their gender identity. So how do we celebrate menstruation through magic without risking the exclusion of bodies that don’t fit neatly into binary gender categories?
I’m sad to say I don’t have the answer. To be honest, I thought about not including this segment at all because I have more questions than answers. But in the end, I believe the question merits being asked. My ultimate intention is not to provide a ready-made solution but to inspire further contemplation in others. Two brains are smarter than one, and larps are the perfect playgrounds to ask the “what ifs” together and experiment with subversions of social norms. But I do have one final thought to share on the matter.
While womanhood and menstruation are historically related issues, they are not actually the same thing. When we look beyond the conflation that patriarchal history has made of women and menstruation, we see that the connection is yet another social construct. Some bodies menstruate. Some of these bodies belong to people who identify as women. Some of them do not. Menstruation is a thing that some bodies do – not a thing that just women do. So maybe it’s possible to separate the two.
Perhaps in the right story and the right setting, rituals celebrating menstruation could be something different and apart from rituals celebrating womanhood. The great thing about magical world-building is that we are not limited by mundane maxims. We are free to imagine and inhabit alternate realities that are partially or wholly different from our own. We can create worlds where menstruation is celebrated in all bodies regardless of gender, or where menstruation talk is commonplace and not taboo, or where menstruation represents something else altogether.
As I said, there is good reason to celebrate menstruation specifically in order to re-empower a female minority that has been disfranchised directly through menstruation stigma. That can and should be done in larps that focus on the gender binary and the concomitant limits it places on everyone – larps that hopefully also consider the injustices done towards trans* people through the same social system.
The Power of Gendered Magic
Whether you believe in magic or not, gendered magic will always be a social construct because gender is a social construct. When we create worlds and social settings for larps, we are either reconstructing or deconstructing the gender binary. Once we realise that genders are social categories that have been culturally constructed over time, it becomes easier to reframe and reimagine them, which we can then do with intention and awareness of the ramifications it will have for players and characters of all genders, including trans* players and characters. We should not accept an implicitly essentialist approach to gender simply because it is the norm of the real world.
Larping – and especially larping in fantastical settings – gives us the power to decide to try something new, or to question the status quo by reproducing it for the purpose of closer scrutiny. We get to imagine worlds not only where “feminine means strong,”((College of Wizardry. “Hecatic Academy of Witchcraft.” Facebook video. 22 June 2018. Accessed 31 August 2020. )) but where masculine means being sensitive to the needs of others and expressive about your emotions. We get to break the cages and the restrictions placed on all of us through the binary construct of gender. Whatever choice we make about gender categories in our world-building and magic systems, it should be done with intention and for good reason because it has the power to change someone’s frame of mind.
Gendered magic has the power not just to include but to uplift gender minorities. With Hecatic Academy of Witchcraft, the idea was to reframe and celebrate women and female magic in exact opposition to the historical persecution of female witches.((Even though men were also persecuted for witchcraft, and although there are examples of countries where more men than women were executed, women were the main target of witch-hunts and executions in Europe and Scandinavia. (Guillou, Jan. Heksenes forsvarere: en historisk reportage. Modtryk, 2012. Orinally Häxornas försvarere – ett historiskt reportage. First ed. 2002).)) At A Harvest Dance, there will be an absence of gender, which is in itself a gender-aware choice and a social construction, and it will probably teach the participants something about their own perspective on and relation to gender. In my own example above about boys schooled in magic and girls learning magic in secret (where gender segregation has resulted in two different types of magic), we can imagine how characters that are able to combine the two gendered forms of magic might become revered for the very fact that they see through and transgress the implicitly binary system.
In larps, we get to do the telling – but narrative power also means responsibility. When it comes to creating space for trans* narratives in larp, cis people still hold the most power. By stepping up and making sure to include trans* characters in our stories, and by asking the right questions when we create gendered worlds and gendered magic systems, we begin to counteract historic and current trans* erasure. When we create realistic or historically inspired settings, we need to work towards including those stories that are too often erased, overlooked and forgotten. When we write alternate, fantastical and imaginary worlds and settings, we are free to reimagine gender, or its absence, for everyone.
Although I don’t have all the answers, I hope that sharing my thoughts and speculations on this issue might have inspired some further play with gender, magic and gendered magic in larps. There are already a number of larps with rich explorative ideas about gender (e.g. Brudpris, Sigridsdotter and Mellan himmel och hav), and I hope to see even more larps in the future with a deliberate focus on gender in their world-building in order either to investigate or remedy the gendered injustices of the real world. I especially dream of more larps where gendered magic – or the explicit absence of gender in magic – is applied as an allegorical device to illustrate and illuminate the fundamentally constructed condition of the binary gender categories of the real world in order to uplift and celebrate gender minorities. To me, this would be true magic.
This article will be published in the upcoming companion book Book of Magic and is published here with permission. Please cite this text as:
Møller, Marie. “Gendered Magic.” In Book of Magic, edited by Kari Kvittingen Djukastein, Marcus Irgens, Nadja Lipsyc, and Lars Kristian Løveng Sunde. Oslo, Norway: Knutepunkt, 2021. (In press).
Vedergällningen was a Viking horror larp focusing on the relationships between humans, and between humans and the gods. It was played in the Berghem larp village in Sweden, on 1-3rd November 2019. Vedergällningen was created by Karin Edman under the brand Wonderkarin. The larp was run in English, with players from both Sweden and abroad, totalling about 85 participants, including both players and crew.
The larp world was set in a fictional Viking age and time where magic exists and works, the gods walk the earth, and supernatural beings roam the forests. The larp itself was set in the village of Astfanginn, a village where völvas, their disciples, and thralls lived and worked. A völva is a person who knows sorcery, or as it is called in this world, magic “seidr”. The seidr are magic rites to make something happen, from healing someone, to giving someone power in battle, to calling down the gods to the earth. The völvas are usually female, but sometimes they can be male. What sets this village apart from other villages is that in this village the residents have settled based on their merits in seidr, and then the followers who are attracted to the residents also settled there.
The followers of Gyrid communing in the forrest, Gyrid being to the right. Photo by Hanna Olsson.
There was a set hierarchy in the village. The Council are firmly in the top, a group of völvas so senior they seldom leave the village. Then there were five travelling völvas, and then the followers of the travelling völvas. In the larp, there were also three different groups of vikings. At the bottom of the hierarchy are the thralls, also within their own group.
This all sounds a bit complex, so I will take myself as an example. My character was Halldora and I was part of the group The Followers of Gyrid consisting of me, Hjördis, Geirlaug and Hjerka and our leader Gyrid who was one of the travelling völvas. I had a mentor in the Council, Ljufu. I was also assigned a friend, Ranveig, in the Followers of Järngerd. This meant I had plenty of connections both to other characters and to other groups, creating an alibi for play. The other characters had a similar network of connections to explore. Each group also had their own house to sleep in, meaning it was relatively easy to find each other, even though it was dark after 9 pm and rained quite a bit.
This design worked very well for me, especially since I had signed up to the larp by myself without knowing too much who else had planned on going. And although I knew some people there off-game, I played with them very little, as I had so much play with my assigned connections. This design also meant that both I and most other players that I know of also had plenty of threads to follow, which in turn generated more play. It also created a feeling of the village being lived in, and relationships being established and being changed.
There were a number of set events within the larp; the vikings would arrive, the Vedergällningen ritual would be held calling down the gods, and the ending scene of the larp. This level of transparency gave me as a player room to steer my game and time the experience which I enjoyed.
Ingame, one dark and stormy night, Vikings arrived to the village to seek help as their ships had been destroyed, and they were in need of physical, mental and magical healing. Before the first night was over, the völvas became victims of a horrible crime. To get vengeance, the völvas called the gods for answers and aid. This did not go exactly to plan, and now the humans had to face both Loki and their beasts, as well as themselves.
Our group “The followers of Gyrid” believed in the goddess Idunn. Idunn was the goddess of youth and fertility; her symbol is the apple. Our magic powers were focused on rituals for healing and youth, using food and drink. I talked with the gods and sometimes got answers. Gyrid, the three other disciples, and I worked and lived in a small hut and this was also where I spent most of my time playing.
Gyrid Eirikdottir. Photo: Hanna Olsson.
If you were the person in need, something like this would have happened to you:
You stand outside our hut, in the dripping wet and cold November night. The door opens and you see lights and feel the warmth streaming out.
‘Welcome, come in, what ails you?’ we ask, inviting you in. You sit down on the warm blankets and pelts on the floor, sweet smell in the air. Gyrid sits behind you, directs her disciple with small gestures and eye contact. On the chest over there you see a bowl of berries, the spine of a big animal, and cup of mead. You lean back and when you look up into the ceiling, it is covered with hanging apples and branches; the lovely smell permeates the air. Hjördis sets the tune with her staff, the rhythmic sound reverberating in the hut. Geirlaug, then takes up the tune and Hjerka and Halldora soon chime in too. The song is about Idunn and how her power is granted to them. At first it is only pleasant, the song and soft touches and small nibbles fill you; then it turns darker and the soft touch turns into restraint; and the nibbles are not so delicious anymore and you don’t want to eat it but you are forced to swallow. But it is for your own good and soon, so soon, you will feel better. The song fills the hut, the smells and the screams. And then it is over; you are healed. What do you have that you can pay with? Maybe the price was a bit more steep than you first bargained for. What is the bitter pill you have to swallow? Is it a year and a day as a thrall, or losing the ability to ever have children, or simply the rage that helped you keep your men in check that you lost? But we all know, before long, you will be back again. Now out again with you, out into the rain and cold; there’s a line waiting.
This was my most hedonistic larp this far. If you’re imagining November in the Swedish forest to be a bit cold and drab, you are completely right. But despite the surrounding setting, I slept well, ate well (including eating a mallard!), danced, sang a lot, and had a lovely time performing rituals with players I had never met before and not really talked to before either; still we managed to form a very well functioning group by just the exchange of a few words, our expectations and wishes, and setting up the hut together.
Skadulf facing the Völvas of Astfangin. Photo by Cajsa Lithell.
I didn’t spend time thinking of how I looked or how I acted but could just follow my character and what my character was up to. I think this was largely due to the fact that the larp was explicitly queer friendly and lesbian-themed. Most positions of power were held by women, and there were overall a lot of female and nonbinary players, compared with relatively few men. This ensured that I could relax and just enjoy myself and go with it. I also appreciated the relatively high average age in this larp, and the maturity of the players. The calibrations ensured that I had time setting up scenes and following threads, allowing me to steer the experience.
Another factor that added to my feeling of immersion was how little time I spent talking and how much time I spent doing. There’s something special about carrying water, plucking mallards (so soft feathers!), stroking and touching and restraining other players, singing and feeding and eating. Running scared through the wet forest, beasts close by. Relishing the feel of wood, and bone, cold water on the hands and hot coffee in the stomach. The sound of the other villagers, the smells of wet fur and leather. Tip-toeing around Loki and their beasts as not to spite them. All my senses were activated and my body moved most of the time. Engaging the body and the senses so much gave me a deeper relation to the larp and it is something I will steer towards in the future more than I have done before.
What made Vedergällningen good to me was that there was so much room for different experiences, such as playing with power, being scared, being used and owned as a thrall, feeling like an outsider, being a witch, being a warrior and so on. Having different gender expressions and tastes. Lots of sex (in-game of course) or none at all, go for what you like.
What made me take the step from thinking of writing up this piece was two fold. I often wish larps that I did not attend had accompanying documentation pieces, so I offer this work as a contribution to others. Secondly, Vedergällningen is being run again and I wanted to let a broader audience know about it. If you’re curious, have a look at https://vedergallningen.wordpress.com for more information. (Disclaimer: I have no affiliation with Wonderkarin; I just had a good experience).
Cover Photo: Skade cursing out the Viking who killed the First of the Council. Photo by Cajsa Lithell.
In role-play, players and their characters do not always use the same pronouns. Some players use role-play to explore personal questions of gender identity, using the alibi of the character to give them a chance to try on a new identity and experience being known, seen, and referred to as that gender. Others are simply more interested in experiencing a particular game from the point of view of a gender that is not their own, often because they desire the challenge of the play, or because they feel that the roles of a specific gender are more intriguing or important. Others still are gender non-conforming in some way and experience misgendering in and out of games.
More and more larpers are coming out as transgender — meaning that their gender is different from what they were assigned at birth — or non-binary, in which their gender doesn’t fit within the gender binary of male or female. As a result, the way larps and larp communities use pronouns, casting, and references to gender role-play also needs to adapt in order for a larp to be accessible and inclusive to participants of any gender. Terms like “cross-play,” which has typically meant to play the opposite of your own gender become problematized when moving beyond a gender binary. Casting based on what gender one presents as or passes as, instead of what gender one wishes to play is also something to question, and can sometimes feel at odds with the design goals of the larp or the ideals of immersion.
These important considerations are beyond the scope of this article, though, which deals solely with player and character pronoun markers and the introduction of a pronoun correction mechanic to use at larps. These tools are designed to allow players to ensure their pronouns are known and used for themselves off-game and for the characters they are playing. The goal is to minimize the amount of misgendering, to expose participants to the variety of gender identities people may hold, to create the norm that pronouns matter, and to implement a procedure for correcting a pronoun mistake. All of these are in place to establish a Culture of Care and Trust, as well as to make our games and communities safer and more inclusive spaces for all bodies, genders, and identities.
Pronouns matter. Misgendering someone is a big deal that causes them discomfort and pain. A misgendered player experiences immersion breaks in their role-play at best and gender dysphoria at worst. Misgendering contributes to negative bleed and emotional distress. Assuming pronouns for a player or a character can lead to trouble. To avoid pronoun assumption, the triggering effects of misgendering, and the sometimes difficult process of correcting a misused pronoun, the following pronoun statement and correction mechanics were developed. They were created in 2016 for New World Magischola by Maury Brown, Sarah Lynne Bowman and Harrison Greene, with help from Sara Williamson and Liz Gorinsky, co-authors of the larp See Me Now, which explores queer identities. Brodie Atwater contributed to later workshop adaptations. Pronoun markers are now in use in several large larps and larp conventions, and the pronoun correction mechanic is in use at Learn Larp, Event Horizon, and Double Exposure events.
Pronouns on Display: Two Methods
There are two main procedures regarding using pronouns on name badges at larps or conventions. The first approach displays pronouns on all name badges as an expectation or norm; and the second allows participants to add their pronouns to badges (or wear a separate badge or patch) if they choose. In both cases, players designate their own pronouns, and upon seeing the displayed pronoun, other members of the community are expected to make every effort to refer to each person by the pronoun that they have displayed.
Default Pronoun Listing and Default Gender-Inclusive Pronoun
New World Magischola (2016-) and Event Horizon (2017-) display player pronouns on player badges and character pronouns on character badges as a default. Players are asked to list their preferred pronouns on the document or database prior to the game, and nametags are printed from that source. The expectation set by this choice is that pronouns matter and cannot be assumed. Participants check the nametag to give all co-players the courtesy of correctly gendering them. In the absence of knowing someone’s personal pronouns, the default pronoun is “they,” which may be corrected to another pronoun using the procedure below or by checking the name badge.
Badge for a professor in New World Magischola with pronouns. Photo by Learn Larp, LLC.
Putting preferred pronouns on all nametags normalizes listing pronouns. This practice recognizes their importance for player safety and inclusion, and makes it a generally accepted practice to see them for everyone, not just those folks who are gender non-conforming. It brings awareness to the existence of other ways of identifying and includes those who identify beyond the gender binary. If pronoun markers are a choice, it can single out those who choose to wear the badge, and draw attention to them as different from the “norm” or somehow “needing” a badge more than someone else. It can also be more difficult for a trans participant to have to decide whether to make their pronoun choice explicit (sometimes outing themselves), or attempt to pass by deciding whether to use a pronoun badge. Such a practice can make them feel that they are different from the rest of the community by needing to wear one, since their presenting gender may not “adequately conform” to their preferred identity. When pronouns are listed by default, it removes this decision from any participant, as it’s just a matter of course that all participants’ pronouns will be visibly stated. All players display their pronouns on player nametags and all characters display their pronouns on character nametags. The font is large enough to be seen at a conversational distance.
Separate Pronoun Badges or Patches
The large networked North American post-apocalyptic boffer campaign Dystopia Rising added pronoun patches in late 2016 and the Polish-Danish perennial castle larp College of Wizardry added pronoun badges in 2017. Badges and patches are a way for players to self-select displaying their pronouns on their in-game costumes or off-game attire. DR made official patches that are sold through their company store, and made rules about wearing them to ensure that subcultures in their game network could not discriminate against them or ban their use. In addition, the singular design would be recognized across their many-game network, and the guidelines for displaying them helped to universalize where to look. Prior to creating their official badges, some players had been making their own, or writing pronouns on another part of their costume, and there had been dissension in the community about whether this was proper. The official patches were intended to end those arguments. She/her, he/him, and they/them patches exist.
Dystopia Rising’s pronoun patches. Photo courtesy of Eschaton Media Productions.
In their fall 2016 and spring 2017 games, College of Wizardry introduced pin-on buttons/badges, which they made available for free at the beginning of the larp, as players pick up their robes and ties. The badges have three choices of pronoun options available (He/Him, She/Her, and They/Them) and they are optional to wear and use. These 1” badges are generally pinned near the name badge and are in a font that is easily readable. While primarily intended for use in-game, some players also use them at the after-party as well, especially if their off-game gender differs from their in-game one. Many College of Wizardry students wear various badges already — such as a House crest pin, or a pin to show support for an activist cause or membership in a club — so the use of a pin-on badge makes sense in the world.
In both cases of Dystopia Rising and College of Wizardry, any player may choose to wear a badge, but no player is required to do so. Some cis players choose to wear one to bring awareness to pronouns and help normalize their use in game. Some players, including trans and nonbinary players, do not want to make their pronouns explicit, so they choose not to wear a badge. Trans and nonbinary players have noted that this self-selection process can require them to out themselves in a way that may not be safe or desired. Some genderfluid players do not want to choose a specific pronoun, so they may choose to wear two or more of the badges. In either game there is no mechanic for a default pronoun. Players in both communities have expressed thanks that the patches and badges were introduced and used.
Pros and Cons
In either method of pronoun marker, it is important that the stated and enforced community norm be that a participant’s stated gender is accepted at face value and without question. Comments such as, “it’s difficult for me to call you [pronoun] because you so clearly look like [gender]” are harassing, unwelcome, and should not be tolerated.
Not every game will want to use a name badge for characters in-game, or use pronoun markers of any kind. An immersive historical larp where everyone is in period costumes, for example, may find the name badges or pronoun badges to be disruptive to immersion. If you are using name badges, placing the pronouns on the badge itself is typically least disruptive, as there is only one article that is “out of place” on the Regency ball gown or the pirate couture, for example. Organizers should make a careful and calculated decision about using name badges and/or pronoun badges. They are weighing player comfort and safety against an immersion ideal. Whatever choice is made, they will have to justify it to themselves and their participants. Choosing not to include visible pronouns may make certain participants feel uncomfortable, especially if they worry about being repeatedly misgendered, which can disrupt their own immersion.
College of Wizardry pronoun pins. Photo courtesy of Dziobak Larp Studios.
Listing pronouns on name tags as a default is not the same as mandating wearing a separate pronoun badge or ribbon. Separate badges are extra items to wear or attach, and requiring everyone to add them begs the question of “but what if I don’t need one, because my presentation is obvious” or “I don’t want these progressive politics introduced into my game” or “adding the badge breaks my immersion.” Leaving them as an option can create these conversations and invite these arguments, which can be difficult for genderqueer participants to hear and be part of. Making pronouns a part of a regular nametag normalizes them as an essential piece of information, not an option, and stops deliberation about whether they should be used. This practice also raises awareness for correct pronoun usage outside of the larp.
However, sometimes the act of choosing, especially for a genderfluid person, creates discomfort. The design choice of having the default gender neutral pronoun, “they” can reduce that concern, as “they” is used if a pronoun is not indicated. Using “they” signals a lack of reliance on the gender binary, as “they” is neither expressly male or female. Without the default pronoun of “they” participants tend to fall back on the binary, which is already normalized. The default of “they” instead changes the norm, but allows gender binary pronouns to co-exist within it.
Correcting a Pronoun Mistake
Being misgendered is a big deal, and it should not be tolerated. Many people who use incorrect pronouns do so despite good intentions and are genuinely mortified when they make a mistake. While being misgendered causes negative and hurtful feelings and is in some cases used as a form of deliberate harm, aggression, or violence toward trans and nonbinary people, when seeking to create a safety tool to contribute to a culture of care and trust, it is important that all participants give each other the benefit of the doubt. The benefit of the doubt means that everyone in the community will do their very best to use each person’s correct pronouns, and that there is a shared responsibility for correcting someone who makes a pronoun mistake, promptly and matter-of-factly.
When a person is corrected, they should accept it graciously, thank the person who is helping them use the proper pronoun, and treat their co-players with respect. The overriding principle is: “If you make a mistake and use the wrong pronouns in spite of your good intentions, the best response is to acknowledge the mistake, correct, and continue the conversation.” Over-apologizing exaggerates the mistake, derails the role-play and makes both the person who was misgendered and the person who did the misgendering uncomfortable. This situation can lead the person who was misgendered to feel compelled to reassure the player who made the mistake, which can heighten feelings of dysphoria or alienation. Thus, a simple “thank you” is considered preferred etiquette and is least anxiety-producing for everyone involved.
To enact this norm, the following pronoun correction procedure was created and implemented in New World Magischola beginning in June 2016. A similar procedure is used at Event Horizon larp and at Double Exposure conventions (DREAMATION, DEXCON, and Metatopia). Providing a mechanic that includes a script both normalizes and standardizes the correction. This makes it second-nature and ensures that a considerate correction/response is used and expected.
Pronoun Correction Procedure
If a misgendering occurs, participants are taught and expected use the following quick, non-judgmental pronoun correction mechanic. This technique is used for both in-game and off-game interactions:
Person 1 accidentally uses the incorrect pronoun to refer to someone. The person who was misgendered can be the person you are speaking to or someone you are speaking about.
Person 2 notices the incorrect pronoun use and says the word “Pronouns” and shows the P hand signal. This can be one of two signals: the British sign language symbol for the letter P (which requires two hands) or the American Sign Language symbol for P (right hand only). If the player does not have one or both hands available, or chooses to, they can simply use the verbal cue “Pronouns.”
Person 2 follows the verbal cue and/or hand signal with the correct pronoun for Player 1 to use. e.g. “Pronouns. They.”
Person 1 says “Thank you” for the reminder and repeats the correct pronoun. Play or conversation resumes.
The British sign language symbol for P. Photo by british-sign.co.uk.
Person 1: “We were leaving class at the same time, but I didn’t get a chance to talk to her.”
Person 2: [Makes a P symbol] “Pronouns. They.”
Person 1: “Thank you. I didn’t get the chance to talk to them.”
This procedure can be repeated as often as necessary if the misgendering continues. Sometimes it is genuinely difficult to change one’s speech habits and use a different pronoun, especially when one is already under the cognitive load of roleplay. A person may need several reminders. The expectation is that one is corrected each time, both to help someone pay attention to their language use, and to encourage not letting a misgendering pass without correction. Anyone who notices the pronoun mistake is encouraged to speak up; it can be much easier for a friend to correct on behalf of someone misgendered than the person themselves. In each case, the response is the same: the person correcting uses the mechanic and states the correct pronoun and the person being corrected acknowledges with “thank you” and repeating the pronoun. Needing several reminders can be frustrating for everyone, but repetition is often needed as people learn new habits. If it appears that someone is intentionally misgendering or refusing to abide by stated pronouns, an organizer or member of the safety team should become involved. Deliberate misgendering or dismissal of the importance of using a person’s preferred pronouns is harassment and should be dealt with accordingly.
American Sign Language symbol for P. Photo courtesy of Pixabay.
What the Mechanic Does and Its Usefulness
Sends a clear message that your community is inclusive to people of all genders.
Formalizes how pronouns are handled in your community.
Reduces the amount of misgendering that occurs for players and characters.
Gives a simple and quick correction procedure that is expected and minimally intrusive.
Opens community members’ eyes to perspectives beyond a gender binary.
Teaches participants how to get better at recognizing and using different pronouns.
Helps trans and nonbinary participants feel more respected and safer.
Allows role-play to continue quickly after a correction, rather than allowing a conversation to derail into obsequies and discomfort.
Shares the responsibility for ensuring people are called by their proper pronouns to everyone in the community, not just those who use gender binary conforming pronouns.
Pronouns markers and gender in games are a topic that needs further study in larp communities. Trans and gender-noncomforming players have stated that having a method for indicating and correcting their pronouns makes them feel more welcomed and included. Having one’s pronouns respected helps players feel safe and able to trust their fellow participants. Implementing a pronoun correction mechanic shares the responsibility for ensuring that correct pronouns are used with everyone in the community. Trans and gender-nonconforming participants have stated that it can be exhausting and difficult to continually correct others themselves, and that they appreciate it when others correct and advocate for proper pronoun use on their behalf. Many larpers and people in general society have little experience with people who identify beyond the gender binary, and tend to default to language or behavior that often is harmful to genderqueer co-players. Designers and organizers can put tools and techniques such as these in place to improve awareness of how default gender norms marginalize nonbinary and trans participants; to take steps to improve marginalization and toxic behavior within game communities; and to model better behaviors outside of the gamespace. While these tools do not solve the systemic issues that trans, nonbinary, and genderqueer people face in larps and everyday life, they make a visible and important step toward inclusion.
Special thanks to Alex Rowland, Brodie Atwater, and Dani Higgins for feedback on early versions of this article.
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