Editorial note: This article was originally published in the Knutepunkt 2025 book Anatomy of Larp Thoughts, a breathing corpus. It has been reprinted from there with the editors’ and authors’ permission. It has not been edited by Nordiclarp.org.
At the recent re-run of the larp Snapphaneland, I slipped into a very deep, immersive and solitary play on religion. As a fan of historical larps, I have of course played a Christian before, but never before have I had religious play as deeply immersive and moving. It made me get a glimpse of the importance that the Christian worldview had in history, and it made me want to explore and discuss these experiences. My focus in this text is describing my own experiences, and what contributed to finding that religious immersion. To do this, however, I first need to explain both the larp and the historical context, for those unfamiliar with it.
The larp Snapphaneland
Snapphaneland is a larp set during the Scanian War in the 17th century. Specifically, it focuses on the rebellion and guerilla war waged by Scanian resistance fighters (snapphanar) against the Swedish authority, the measures taken by the Swedish government and army to suppress the rebels, and how Scanian civilians were oppressed and punished, regardless if they aided the snapphane rebels or not. The larp is set in a Scanian village, and the characters in play are villagers, snapphane rebels and Swedish soldiers.
A life of toil
At the larp, I was a kitchen helper with a written character. This meant that I worked long, busy days, but could go out and play scenes now and then, and play while working in the kitchen. The kitchen was a mostly in-game area, and although it had some modern-ish equipment, many of the tasks were quite appropriate for the era – fetching water, keeping fires burning, chopping vegetables, and so on. It was also heavy work, with endless lifting, standing and walking. Although this was of course quite tiring, it also meant that the days were filled with manual labour, in a way that is quite realistic for rural life in the 17th century.
Snapphaneland. Photo by Tindra Englund.
The character I played was a farm maid (piga). Since she came from a large family, had no hopes of inheriting and slim chances of being married, this was how she would most likely spend her entire life, working very hard at someone else’s farm for food and board. Her days would be endless toil. Of course, everyone in a rural village worked, to the best of their abilities, but the farmhands (dräng) and farm maids got the heavier, dirtier tasks compared to the farmer’s family.
Most of the players at the larp did not have much work to do. There were some tasks that they could do if they chose – there was wood that could be chopped, sometimes things needed carrying, and they were always welcome to come help in the kitchen. Many of the people playing women brought knitting and similar handicrafts, to keep their hands occupied. But there were very few things that they had to do, and they could spend a lot of time sitting around talking, when not in the middle of Cool Scenes.
All this to say that while being in the kitchen for most of the larp, and not having much free time to pursue play, the benefit of my role was that the work was deeply realistic and immersive. My body ached from hard work. I was exhausted when going to bed in the evening, and then rose in the morning to do it all again. It was easy to lean into the knowledge that for my character, every day would be like this.
The Christian worldview
In Sweden in the 17th century, everyone (except minority groups of other faiths, of course) was a Christian Protestant. Belief in God was universal, it was a natural part of how the world was perceived. Not everyone was a good Christian, of course, and it was not uncommon that people did things that were considered sinful. However, everyone knew that sinning was bad, and had to somehow relate to this. Similarly, belief in an afterlife in heaven or hell was a natural part of life, and a very big part of the Christian worldview. Life on Earth was considered to be largely filled with suffering, toil, and hardship: and only those who lived good, pious lives would be rewarded with eternity in heaven.
This was a deeply important part of my experience. As described above, my character’s life really was full of toil and hardship, with no hope of becoming easier. These hardships were only increased as the oppression escalated, and life seemed almost unbearable. The thought of one day, when her life was over, being able to finally have comfort, rest and happiness in heaven was deeply important. Without it, life would just be a pointless struggle.
Snapphaneland. Photo by Tindra Englund.
Loneliness and love
Love is of course one of the great joys in life for a lot of people, something that makes life beautiful and brings meaning and hope to our lives. In the case of my character, there was not much of that to be had, however. She was the kind of person that no one really fell for, the person in the background who was perfectly nice, but just… not the girl anyone dreamed about. She herself fell in love pretty easily, but had never had her feelings answered. On top of this, she had lived most of her life away from her own village, away from parents and siblings. She was a very lonely person.
For a person like this, the thought of God and Christ was deeply comforting. Through God, there was the feeling of an ever-present love. A parent figure that, though stern and forbidding, was also full of grace and forgiveness, and would reward her if she was good enough. And someone who saw her, all of her, and cared about her deeds.
Suffering – God’s trials
Since the larp took place in a part of the country where the civilian population were tormented by both the Swedish army, and sometimes the rebels, there was a lot of suffering. Some characters (including my own) had in their background the ransacking and sometimes even burning of their homes, and having to look for a new home. There was hunger and poverty, due to soldiers and rebels taking food from civilians. And as the larp progressed and the army cracked down harder to quell the rebellion, there were beatings, rapes, and other kinds of violent cruelty.
Snapphaneland. Photo by Tindra Englund.
This created a vast wealth of internal play, with struggling with the age-old questions around God and evil. If God is good and all-powerful, why does he permit terrible things to happen? In Christianity, however, the reply is usually that God is testing your faith, and that enduring and remaining firm in your belief is how you succeed. This was beautifully illustrated and brought into play by my co-player and kitchen boss Kim Bjurström. My character had just been subjected to rape and abuse at the hands of the soldiers, and was quite broken. Kindly and gently, his character simply said: “God only gives us the struggles he knows we can bear.” It was all that was needed for my character to feel even more strongly connected to her faith, and to see meaning even in the absolutely terrible things she had endured. In a way, this is of course kind of weird and fucked up, as it can easily be construed as saying “You should really be happy that this happened to you, because it means that you are actually a really good Christian!” But, nonetheless, it was a very strong, moving, and immersive experience.
Sin
The concept of sin is great for roleplay, as it creates a strong incentive to not do things that might otherwise be very tempting to do. During the larp, my character often struggled with whether it was alright to lie – if you lied to protect someone, or if you were forced to lie by someone threatening you with violence.
Even more powerful was the thoughts around suicide and abortion. After my character had been raped, she was both traumatised and terrified of a pregnancy. On top of this, she had no future employment, and would soon be without food and housing. It was quite a heavy and hopeless situation, and the thought occurred to her more than once that she would be better off dead. But as suicide was a sin, this was of course out of the question. Similarly, if she did end up pregnant, then aborting the pregnancy would be a sin. This meant that she would simply have to submit to whatever God chose for her, and continue bearing it as well as she could.
Submitting, come what may
And this, I suppose, is the core of it: to submit. To keep faith. To suffer the sins of others, without turning to sin yourself. To bear a life with endless hardships and toil, trusting that after death all that suffering would go away, and you would be rewarded by an eternity in heaven.
Snapphaneland. Photo by Tindra Englund.
I felt this very deeply all through the larp, in a way I never have before. And it was a quite moving experience. It was also exceptionally suited to solo play, even when I was too busy working, or couldn’t find play for other reasons. The immersive relationship to God was ever-present. This is why I claim that Christianity is an excellent immersion closet.
What to take away from this article
In this article, I have focused on Protestant Christianity, since that was the religion at the larp in question. However, I think that the same playstyle can be relevant to explore in relation to other religions as well.
As a larper, I feel that it is very valuable to immerse deeply into experiences different from your own. It gives us a little bit of understanding and empathy for others, and humility before the manifold ways to live and understand life. I feel this to be even truer when it comes to getting a new perspective on religion, which is as important to many people today as it was centuries ago. I encourage other players to explore this, and to do so in an immersive, introspective way. Find your own Christian immersion closet, and/or religion as the lens through which you interpret and understand both everyday and extraordinary events.
As an organiser, I encourage designing for religious play, and not focusing solely on the outward expressions of religion – the rituals, the prayers, and so on. These things are great reminders to have during the larp, but they are not enough. Consider how you can design for religion to be always present in the back of the characters’ minds, to be informing the everyday moral choices and interpretations that they make. In short: design for more people to have religious play as their immersion closet.
Ludography
Snapphaneland (2024): Sweden. Rosalind Göthberg, Mimmi Lundkvist and Alma Elofsson Edgar (Bread and Games). https://snapphaneland.org/
This article is republished from the Knutepunkt 2025 book. Please cite it as: Greip, Julia. 2025. “Christianity is an Immersion Closet.” In Anatomy of Larp Thoughts, a breathing corpus: Knutepunkt Conference 2025. Oslo. Fantasiforbundet.
Cover image: Photo by Nataliya Vaitkevich on Pexels.
In 1999, just before the millennium, the movie Galaxy Quest was released. In the movie, you follow a group of actors as they try to save the world of the Thermians by becoming the heroes they were in the TV show Galaxy Quest. But there is a caveat to this – when the Thermians saw the show, they thought they were watching a documentary, and they recreated everything from the spacecraft to the uniforms.
So, try to put yourself in the mind and body of the clueless actor: You are transported eight lightyears into space and are now on a working space craft, the Protector II. So how do you become the hero of the story, when you know absolutely nothing about how to fly a spacecraft or negotiate with an alien enemy?
When you larp you are often expected to do just that. But what can help you as a player to enter that space in your mind where everything becomes real? Is it the design, the space, the scenography – or something else entirely? To answer this question, I talked to Esperanza Montero of NotOnlyLarp, and player/designer, Sandy Bailly.
Inge-Mette Petersen at the larp Demeter. Photo by Larson Kasper.
I first met Esperanza Montero in 2018, when I played her Westworld-inspired larp Conscience in Fort Bravo, Almeria, Spain. Conscience is a large sprawling monster. Montero called it five larps in one with layers of reality that can be switched by a few select players, who play the plot writers that make the stories wanted by the guests happen. Playing an android host, the powerless doll in their plot, you are totally at their mercy. Conscience deals with the consequences of the choices you make on a political, moral, and ethical level, something that interests me. This is not a coincidence as Montero has a long experience as an LGBT+ activist and Pride organizer.
The next year, 2019, I went to Matera in Italy to play The Trial of the Shadowcasters, an urban larp by Bjarke Petersen and Mike Pohjola dealing with history and philosophy. Matera is a very special place, partly a cave city, so the scenography was a big part of the larp. I played with Sandy Bailly there in the caves and on the streets. I talked to her about the importance of locations for the players, and she had some interesting thoughts about this.
Both Fort Bravo and Matera are fascinating locations. But the perfect location does not exist. A larp can be built around a location or the location can be adopted to fit the larp design. The location and scenography can help the story and the players. A castle with lots of nooks and crannies is perfect for larps with a lot of secrets and politics. A small room for meetings is great for building up tension. And as Bailly says – it is great to have a space where you can see the world go by as your character. I have certainly done that.
The location is not enough, no matter how magical it is. A designer needs collaborators – prop makers, character writers and safety personnel. They need the organization for logistics and production, for catering, and administration. They need supporting characters to help move the story along. And they need to make the players understand the vision and the ideas behind the larp before they arrive on the scene. Then the larp starts, the players arrive – and all the plans of the organizers change. Bailly interprets larp as a framework for co-creation. If it is clear and well defined you can let people loose in it, so they can move around in it much more freely and securely.
Montero has a similar definition – larp is a collaborative art form where you all have a story to tell together. The players always have the power. The moment they get their character they start to make backstories, playlists, costumes, and relations. All that will also be part of the final game. But when the location, the design and the vision, and the characters as they are portrayed by the players all converge, larp magic happens. You truly believe in the story you are telling together.
And then the larp ends – or does it? For an organizer like Montero there is important work to do after the larp. Every aspect must be evaluated, the persons who have helped in realizing the project must be credited and the experience gained before, during, and after must be collected. Maybe the organizer wants to reiterate it, to take the players on the journey again.
The larp has been documented by photographers that captures a fleeting moment in the game. This picture becomes part of the players’ memory. Montero found it interesting how larp inspires creative people. She has seen essays, short stories, songs, comics, and even videos done by players after the larp has ended, a testimony to how real the story has become to them. For some it has been a deep personal experience that has changed their outlook on life. For others it was a great rollercoaster ride. And when they meet again at a larp, a convention, or a party, they will share memories. Maybe a catchphrase (“By Grabthars Hammer….”) or a ritual will be repeated. And why not – just as the actors in Galaxy Quest, they have been on a journey together and survived.
And maybe you want to join them. If you do – may you live long and prosper.
This article is published in the Knutpunkt 2022 magazine Distance of Touch and is published here with permission. Please cite this text as:
Petersen, Inge-Mette. 2022. “‘Never Give Up, Never Surrender’.” In Distance of Touch: The Knutpunkt 2022Magazine, edited by Juhana Pettersson, 116-117. Knutpunkt 2022 and Pohjoismaisen roolipelaamisen seura.
The best prop I can have at a larp is a deck of tarot cards. They’re pretty; they’re powerful; they’re mystical. I love going to occult themed larps where they can be brought in for pretty much any reason, but if it makes sense for your character they can make sense in almost any larp. Tarot readings are great because they are fundamentally narrative in nature and shape themselves to any kind of situation. And the kind of skills a con artist uses in real life can be used to deepen and intensify the experiences of your co-players. So I’d like to give a little guide to getting started with tarot and how to make the most of it at a larp. The concepts can be used for pretty much any kind of divination, but tarot is just so dang evocative and iconic, it’s hard to beat if it’s an option. But if rune stones, animal entrails, or the I-Ching are a better fit for a given larp, the same basics go for them.
On Magic
There’s no actual magic in tarot cards beyond what we invest in them. They’re just an older form of regular playing cards that later got used by occultists, latter day witches and spiritualists as a tool or trick. But that doesn’t mean they can’t be used for powerful stuff. The names and images on them have been refined to touch on very strong universal themes in the human experience that we can tap into and they’re surrounded by a mystical story that we can use to make them more serious than they really are. Especially in a context like a larp, where we allow ourselves to believe in magic and the power in things just a little more. Tarot cards tap into the power of ritual in all the best ways on a scale that’s quick and easy to use in a larp setting. They’re fundamentally a narrative device, which is why they’re a perfect complement for role-playing. They tap into our subconscious and our brain provides patterns and explanations to make them speak meaningfully. There really is no magic, but when we allow ourselves to believe, there is.
But let’s get started with the practical side of things.
There are a ton of different tarot decks. You can get pretty much any kind, theme, and quality. It’s really all about finding one that speaks to you. And in the case of larp: one that fits into the fiction you’ll be playing in. I have two recommendations: The first is to go for the classic Rider-Waite-Smith or Universal Waite-Smith decks gorgeously illustrated by Pamela Colman Smith. It’s the one you’ve seen used a hundred times with the iconic pictures. It fits nicely into a wide range of time periods and people know exactly what it is. The iconography is quite evocative and pretty easy to work with. You hardly ever go wrong with a classic Rider-Waite-Smith. The second, and my personal favourite, is the Thoth Tarot designed by Aleister Crowley. It has a few twists on the classic deck and is more modern looking, but the cards are more abstractly expressive in the art and each comes with a label that drips drama. But if you go to the shop and find that the panda tarot deck really speaks to your next character, go for it. Just make sure the cards can inspire you when you use them. A good beginner trick is to ditch the Minor Arcana of Swords, Wands, Cups, and Pentacles and just focus on the Major Arcana with the big hitters like The Devil, The Tower, or The Lovers, until you are more comfortable with the cards.
Setting the Mood
Tarot really benefits from doing just a little bit of work on setting the mood before using them. Use a tablecloth; the cards are easier to pick up and it looks nicer. Light up a few candles; the flickering light will make the artwork come alive. And maybe place the deck on a nice plate rather than pulling it straight out of the pack. Be super obvious and ritualistic about how you shuffle them. Craft a little space where you, the cards, and the person you are reading them for are in tight focus. Tarot requires focus and a little drama to work their best. And get the recipient to contribute too: have them formulate a definite question they want inspiration for. Never offer clear answers, though. Just that you’ll help show them what lies ahead. Have them pick out a card to represent themselves if you have the time. If you’re the dramatic sort, a few invocations or ritual phrases might also be a good addition, but always play them as seriously as you can.
Dialogue
You can do a tarot reading like a show, talking all the way through the process while the recipient is just an audience member, but you’re much better off thinking of it as a dialogue. Both for their immersion and for making it easier on yourself. I like to get myself very calm, speaking slowly and as if I am teaching the person across from me to read the cards themselves, rather than as divine inspiration through me. I like to leave a bit of uncertainty and magic in just exactly how I know the things I say and how the cards reveal them. And I give the other person plenty of time and silence to think and react if they need it. Shape it to your own personal style, your character and the person you are reading for. It’s a one-on-one kind of show, so play into the strengths that it gives.
Con artists have two main techniques when doing these kinds of things out in the real world that you’ll find useful in larps as well: cold reading and hot reading. Cold reading is basically using the person you are talking to, to reveal things about themselves. It’s the same skill you’d use to guess which cards people have at the poker table, or when your friend is grinning ear to ear, but won’t tell who they kissed last night. With a little practice you’ll quickly notice which of your words impact them and which you need to skip past. Throw a lot of stuff out and see what sticks; they won’t likely remember the misses. See when their ears prick up, when their eyes become unfocused, or their attention zooms in. Try to shape moments where they’re the ones talking and you’re just confirming. The human brain is trash at remembering who said what, so odds are they’ll remember you telling them something they revealed themselves. It can be a little tricky to do while juggling the cards at first, but really fun when you get it working. There’s no reason to rush, so take your time to observe your audience.
Hot Reading
Hot reading is when you know things about the person they don’t know that you know about them. Con men will do a background check on their targets and then pretend angels told them, but in larp we can just read their character sheet beforehand or notice what kind of drama they’ve been in recently, or even have an offgame chat before the reading to lay out the themes. It’s where you can really help someone’s play by pushing them at choices their character has to make or realizations they’re just about to make. Bringing in characters they’re in conflict with or want to seduce. It’s a great steering tool or just a super fun way to mess with their heads. I like to leave most of it unspoken between us. I’ll hint at the thing, but never name it, to preserve the magical feeling. If I saw them have a big row with their brother earlier, I’ll start talking about how the cards mean family and the great price of loving someone, and see if they pick up on that. If they’re the ones making the realizations themselves, it’s often much more dramatic.
Card Manipulation
If you have the dexterity to pack the deck beforehand, you can choose which cards come up during the reading. It’s rarely subtle, but it can definitely be impactful. I personally have too many thumbs for it, so I can’t really give any practical tips; my skills are more in the area of making the most of the cards as they fall. That also keeps the magic alive a bit even after the larp is over, but that’s a matter of taste.
Layouts
You can do a tarot reading by just drawing a single card, but you get a lot of synergy out of having several in a layout on the table. Don’t go overboard; more cards aren’t better. The sweet spot is usually between three and five cards total. How you place them on the table is up to you. It’s a fun way to shape the dialogue beforehand. The classic is the Celtic Cross where you make a cross with the recipient’s chosen signifier in the middle and there’s a card for the past, the future, what’s working against them, and what’s helping, but you really can do any pattern. I like a Y-shape if someone is facing a choice or laying a wall if someone is up against a challenge. Or a circle if they want to know where they stand. It’s up to you. Just give each card position a clear metaphorical meaning when you lay down the card. I like to lay all the cards except the first out facedown in their place and then turn them over during the reading as needed.
The last skill is the “actual” interpretation of the cards. This is where most beginners feel intimidated, but just remember that there is no right answer for any card. It’s all about how well it connects to the target. Just keep bringing forth meanings until you strike gold.
Depending on the deck you have, there will be various amounts of things to work with on each, but every card will always have a couple of these:
What is the immediate feeling the card inspires?
What does the picture show? Who are the people in the picture to the recipient?
What is the colour of the card? What emotion does that bring out?
What is the value of the card?
What suit is the card?
What name does the card have?
You don’t need to use all of them, just whatever seems to fit best in the situation. These are usually obvious enough to get started talking and seeing what the other person reacts to, if not try another aspect of the card and so on. If you have a hard time, leave it and go on to the next card; maybe the pattern will make more sense later. As more cards are revealed so does your recipient reveal things about themselves that might be brought back to previous cards.
You can also invoke some of the structures behind most decks with a bit of practice. For example, the four suits usually align with the four elements:
Cups are Water, Pentacles are Earth, Swords are Air, and Wands are Fire.
Cups and Pentacles are usually feminine, while Swords and Wands are masculine.
Placement on the table matters; you can have axes of time, positives and negatives, good and evil.
All cards of course also always hold their own opposites within them.
Sometimes The Devil is in the details. It might really be the figure in the background the card is about.
There’s also often a structure to the values of the cards that you can play with. I won’t get into it here, but check out the Sefiroth of Kabbalistic tradition if you’re into mathematical magic.
Thematic decks can also have even more layers.
But all of that isn’t necessary to get started. Just go with an intuitive reading with a strong dose of confidence and you’re good. In addition, tarot decks often also come with a booklet that details each card, but there’s really no need to memorize or buy books on tarot. In the end, it’s all a subjective artform and not an accurate science. If you’re feeling uncertain, try imagining a situation in play and draw a couple of cards and think of how you’d make them relevant to that situation as practice before play.
Once you get comfortable with the basics, you can start to add layers on top. Maybe your character has an agenda and wants to twist the reading in a certain direction? Or they’re inspired by a demonic entity that loves sex, so the cards always points towards carnality? Or a theme of the larp is lost hope, so the readings tend to be cold on comfort. You can do a lot with the framing and what you emphasize in the cards to drive play in a fun direction. But all that’s for later. For now, just go get started.
I hope this makes it less intimidating to pick up a deck and bring it to your next larp. It’s a super fun tool to have. Or if someone else has brought their deck, don’t be afraid to ask for a reading or for them to show you how it’s done; I’ve had a ton of great play moments teaching acolytes the art of the tarot. It really is what you make of it and tarot tends to pay back big dividends for the effort put into it.
When larping, we are often aiming to feel immersed. This chapter shows how other internal processes are active as well when we are roleplaying. We may focus in on — immerse into — the experience of fiction while role-playing, but we may also choose to zoom out and observe both reality and fiction at the same time. This metareflection allows us to put the role-playing fiction in perspective with reality in different ways.
The framework of metareflection helps us understand the complexities of what we actually do when we role-play. Built from interviews and theories on theatre and cognition((The framework of metareflection is based on my master’s thesis (Levin 2017).)), it explains how all players move between seeing fiction, reality or both at the same time during their role-playing experience, and how we may play with that to enhance experiences and designs.
Connecting theory to practice, I have gathered examples of how we are already playing with metareflection in Nordic larp. By putting our practice into words, I hope to inspire more exploration and to allow for other art forms to learn from us. For example, our methods for metareflection as well as for calibration could be very useful in the immersive theatre.
This chapter starts with theories behind metareflection. If you are looking for practical tools, you may go straight to Methods for Metareflection.
From Brecht to Nordic Larp
Coming from theatre, my interest in the different layers of larping was sparked by the apparent influence of theatre director Bertolt Brecht (1898–1956) in Nordic larp designs. His aesthetics are quite visible in the minimalistic blackbox larps, that are closely aligned with the Brecht-inspired movie Dogville (Trier & Windeløv 2003). If we look deeper, Nordic larp has not only been inspired by Brecht’s visual aesthetics, but also by his methods for breaking the illusion of fiction in order to comment upon it.
In a time with a strong naturalistic theatre tradition, Brecht introduced the Verfremdung-techniques (alienation or distancing techniques) that make the audience question the narrative on stage. His goal was to make the audience aware that the outcomes of the stories were not predetermined but created by humans, and could be changed by humans: The audience for the Epic Theatre is expected to perceive alternatives to the events: different options open to the characters, different outcomes for the various events, alternative social systems or frames of reference. (Ben Chaim 1984) Through this work, he had a huge influence on the different forms of metatheatre that exist today, especially in political and feminist theatre.
Metatheatre describes forms of theatre that play with self-awareness of form; theatre that plays with being theatre, such as actors stepping in and out of character, or switching between naturalistic and over-emphasized behaviour, or having a narrator commenting on the fiction such as in Dogville. In a similar way, the meta used in larp is describing that we are playing with our awareness of the role-playing as being role-playing, where the metatechniques can allow us to use more abstract levels of play, or comment on the fiction, or in other ways play with an interactive relationship between reality and fiction.
While many larps today use minimalistic aesthetics without considering Brecht, the early blackbox larp When Our Destinies Meet (2009) directly quoted Brecht as the source for their design: We gather our inspiration from the director, playwright, and theater theorist Bertolt Brecht. […] We ask the player to interrupt their immersion into the character and story and start looking at what is happening and how it happens (Jarl & Karlsson 2013). Inspired by practices from theatre and other storytelling mediums, many different larp and freeform communities have experimented with methods for interrupting or adding other layers to the illusion of fiction for some time. Today, metatechniques are a common design tool with many areas of usage: From introducing sceptical distance, to the sharing of inner monologues, to allowing for simulations and calibration techniques. And still, there is a steady increase of creative ways of using the different layers of larping.
Aesthetic Distance in Embodied Role-Playing
Playing with the layers of larping draws on the ability to be aware of the real world at the same time as you are immersing into fiction. This ability has been observed by many role-playing researchers, among them Stenros (2013): When you are playing, you will see the world around in double vision. You will see the fiction as real through your character, but obviously you are also aware of the ordinary everyday world as a player. This player ability seems to be taken for granted — but how does it work?
Bowman (2017) has described immersion as a state of creative flow, where the player is feeling emotionally absorbed by the experience. Although the term is sometimes used to describe 360° surroundings, the feeling of being immersed may be reached in both realistic and minimalistic aesthetics. Immersion is created through situations that the participants may believe in and respond to, be it through visual aesthetics or dramatic content. In any larp then, players may become emotionally absorbed, and still, they will be aware of their everyday world.
This is connected to a fundamental rule of art called aesthetic distance (Ben Chaim 1984). We need to see something as different from our everyday reality, to recognize it as art. If we do not recognize the artwork as fictional, we will not respond to it as an artwork, but as an object of reality. We will react very differently to what we think is a real sword, or a boffer sword — or a boffer sword that we pretend is a real sword. Many types of artworks exist as objects regardless of how we interpret them. But in embodied art, real bodies, and real environments need to be seen in a different way for the artwork to exist at all. Even though aesthetic distance is part of all kinds of art, we may choose not to pay attention to it when watching a film or a performance. But when we participate physically, we need to take reality into greater consideration:
[…] in audience participation it is very difficult for this form to be invisible — we will pay close attention to the work that is done to make us participate, so that we will always be aware of our presence in the event, the way that the performers relate to us, and the differences between the participatory frame and the others in which we spend our time. Audience participation in this sense is always metatheatrical.
White 2013
This metatheatricality, the heightened awareness of reality while taking part in a fiction, is also found in larp:
As a participant, you are experiencing the events as a character, but also shape the drama as it unfolds as a player. You have a sort of dual consciousness as you consider the playing both as real — within the fiction — and as not real, as playing […] you can play with that border, with the difference between the player and the character, play and non-play.
Stenros 2013
Not only can we use this double awareness constructively when playing with the layers of larping, but it seems crucial to how we take part in any embodied and participatory art.
Role-Playing Through Interpretive Frames
Following the principle of aesthetic distance, several role-playing theorists have described immersion as an interpretive framework (e.g Balzer 2011, Harding 2007, Järvelä 2019, Lappi 2007), where the larp experience can be understood as a change in how the player interprets the world (Harding 2007). By seeing the world through the frame of the larp fiction, the player will understand what is happening in a different way. Immersion is then created by focusing on the fictional perspective (Järvelä 2019).
The concept of the interpretive frame of reality and interpretive frame of fiction, that the player can immerse (more or less) in, will help us to further understand how the player can uphold and move between immersion and awareness of reality during embodied role-playing experiences.
In cognitive psychology, the ability to have several interpretive frames in our mind at the same time is called conceptual integration (McConachie 2013). This allows us to be simultaneously aware of different systems of interpretation, and to associate between them. This ability makes it possible for humans to think abstract thoughts, compare different experiences to each other — and to turn play into performative expression: Regarding performance, the key contribution made by conceptual integration is role-playing.
When we have the possibility to see a situation through different interpretive frames, we may not only put them side by side and compare them to each other. We may also blend them, and try to align the frame of fiction more closely with the frame of reality — which is what we do when we play. By having put this fictional layer over reality through our own interpretation, we have the possibility to blend or un-blend our perspective at will. But, both audiences and role-players usually prefer to immerse into fiction, since it’s enjoyable to us:
[…] spectators may choose to stop the ‘flow’ of a performance by un-blending actor/characters to momentarily think about the work […] But usually not for long. The pleasurable effects of ‘flow’ generally pull spectators back into the cognitive activities of blending and empathizing.
White 2013
Immersing into the frame of fiction can then be understood as the player continuously trying to see the world through a specific perspective.
The Myth of Total Immersion
Since the frame of fiction is a layer that is put upon real material in theatre and embodied role-playing, we can blend fiction and reality, and unblend back to reality, but we may not unblend into a solely fictional perspective: We cannot will to accept or reject what we believe to be real, we can only become inattentive toward it (Ben Chaim 1984). To unblend into only believing in the fiction would mean to stop believing in reality, something that rarely happens through experiences of art:
The ‘total identification’ which sometimes appears as a catchphrase of theorists and theatre artists, if psychologically possible short of insanity, therefore appears to be impossible aesthetically. To literally become one with the object would be to cease to ‘see as,’ to cease to sustain distance, to cease to be engaged in an aesthetic experience.
Ben Chaim 1984
As opposed to how fearmongers have presented the supposed risks of role-playing, a successful role-roleplaying experience is not one of total immersion, but rather a satisfactory blend between the frames of fiction and reality, where reality does not bother us: […] deep immersion takes place when the player is focused strongly enough on the larp so that it fills their consciousness […] However, all that which they are not focusing on — including their everyday selves — does not disappear anywhere (Järvelä 2019). Players may still end up in a larp with structures, actions, or content that they do not wish to take part in. But having trouble stepping out of such an experience is an issue that have more to do with social dynamics and previous life experience, than immersion.
Even though many strive to experience immersion, the role-player is always responsible to not disregard reality more than what allows them to keep being considerate towards the other players. A certain amount of ’double vision’ is therefore, even in the most immersive of role-plays, both requested and expected. By highlighting that we are always somewhat aware of the fiction as fictional, I hope that we may lower the threshold for ‘breaking’ the illusion of fiction for calibration and confirming consensual play.
Hopefully, the knowledge and methods for player safety that have been developed within the Nordic larp community can also be transferred to other participatory fields. The ambition to create the most immersive experience has burdened participatory art with ill-considered design. Examples range from performers not recognizing nonconsensual play, insisting on continuing playing with participants who try to disengage, and safety issues such as actually locked doors in escape rooms. These strategies derive from misunderstandings about immersion and its relationship to reality, where the thought of a real sword seems better than an imagined sharp edge. But this is to overlook that the knowledge of the drama as fictional is an important quality of how we may create as well as how we enjoy these experiences. Pushing a fiction onto the participants is often insensitive, sometimes dangerous, and always counterproductive — since what is needed for the fiction to come alive is the individual player’s will to see it.
Immersion into fiction is less about losing touch with reality, and more about focusing your attention: According to many of the cognitive scientists who have studied it, attention is a lot like a follow-spot((A spotlight)) with an adjustable opening, allowing us to take in more or less of a visual field (McConachie 2013). Rather than forgetting reality while role-playing, we may try to zoom in on the fiction, and let it fill as much of our attention as possible. Following the idea of a spotlight of attention, we may also choose to zoom out into a larger perspective. From this expanded frame, we can observe both frames of reality and fiction at the same time, the blend that has been created between them and how they might relate to each other. This is the interpretive frame of metareflection((Meta as in transcending, encompassing (the role-playing fiction), a higher or more abstract level (of reflection))).
The Framework of Metareflection
When first considering aesthetic distance and reflection in role-playing, I looked at the player’s perspective of the real in contrast to that of the fiction, and how one might move between them. But to just unblend the role-playing experience and go back to the player’s everyday perspective during what is expected to be an immersive experience, will probably create boredom and disappointment, rather than interesting contrast. Through the expanded perspective of metareflection, we do not see the fiction as onlookers from reality, but in context with reality.
Metareflections are reflections concerned with both reality and fiction during a fictional experience. This separates the metareflection from reflections that take place only within the role-play, such as how the noblewoman shall seize the throne, as well as from reflections that are only concerned with reality, such as when the player’s parking ticket will run out. Metareflection commonly means the consideration of various different points of view (Wiktionary 2017), pointing towards the frame’s interactive nature. The meta also connects the term to metatechniques as well as to metatheatre.
A constructive metareflection puts the embodied role-playing (such as the fictional world, the character, the actions or the game structure) in perspective with the real world, which may concern narrative, personal, social, and/or political contexts. When the player is metareflecting, smaller and larger correlations between these categories can be found, that may inform the role-play or the perception of the everyday reality. The player may realize that the game structure reminds them of a certain power structure, or that they are following a narrative burdened by clichés, or be reminded of a childhood memory, all of which may influence their following play.
Since the management of the interpretive frames of reality and fiction are premises for every embodied role-play, the frame of metareflection is also available to every player, regardless of the particular larp design. As the player chooses to interpret the situation through different frames, they can also change perspective continuously during play: […] once engaged in conceptual integration, spectators slip in and out of the blends of performance with little conscious thought (McConachie 2013). While players can metareflect at any time, larpmakers can also apply methods that encourage them to use this awareness of reality and fiction in a specific way.
Although metareflection is an elevated perspective, it should not be simplified to a distancing view taking place at the expense of immersion. As with Brecht’s Verfremdung, some perspective may also result in more emotional engagement, as it may be used to bring the player’s own experiences into the fiction, or make the player realize that the fiction concerns their own life. Through our ability to make reality and fiction interact, we can create interesting experiences that touch us and affect how we see ourselves and the world around us.
Embodied Role-Playing as Metareflexive
Within drama theory, there are pre-existing terms that try to explain some of the same aspects of role-playing as metareflection((Such as aesthetic doubling (Grünbaum 2009) and metaxis (Boal 1995).)). But by trying to cover everything from aesthetic premise to learning outcomes with one word, they have ended up with being confusingly broad, mystifying and varying considerably in meaning between users.
The interpretive frames of reality, fiction, and metareflection gives us a clearer understanding of which frames the design and the player may move between, and how these frames are interconnected. It does not only make visible the reflection that may occur while being immersed, and how this is not necessarily opposed to, but rather dependent on, the fiction to be constructive. It also distinguishes reality from metareflection: In the frame of reality, the player might try to immerse but does not manage to believe in the fiction, or chooses to take a break, or needs everyone to stop playing. The frame of metareflection may include the use of intrusive metatechniques, which might also break the flow of the play, but with offering contributions to the fiction. Very different contexts are introduced when someone breaks the illusion of fiction to add to it, or when someone breaks it to address a real issue.
By allowing for variations in terminology, the framework of metareflection may distinguish the different aspects of role-playing with greater clarity than earlier terms, as following:
the metareflexivity of embodied role-play; the aesthetic premise of the simultaneous presence of reality and fiction (which may be implicit or explicit in the design) within embodied art forms
the frame of metareflection of the individual player, that make it possible to understand this premise and take part in embodied role-playing
to metareflect, when the player is actively using their frame of metareflection to put the fiction into perspective with reality
a metareflection, a specific comparison that the player finds between their role-playing fiction and their reality
methods for metareflection that facilitates or encourages the player to metareflect
methods that are using the metareflexivity of the embodied role-play with other purposes than to increase metareflection (such as to overcome the material premise of the embodied role-play (e.g. travel in time and space, act out violence and sex, etc.) and facilitate communication and calibration between players)
By giving all these different aspects of role-playing more precise terms, we may play and design more precisely as well.
Shifting Between Immersing and Metareflecting
Many larp designs focus on conveying the fiction, and let the players manage the frames of reality, fiction and metareflection as they see fit. Metareflections can be used to reflect upon and contextualize the larp during runtime. However, this is not their main advantage, as the larp experience may also be processed and placed into real-life contexts after the larp.
The main difference between reflecting after a larp experience and metareflecting during it, is that the latter may lead to meaningful insights that changes the direction of the following play. Moments of metareflection are thereby important for steering (Montola et al 2015), which grants the player greater control over their own narrative and experience. The player might become more aware of what kind of game structure they are playing within, and choose to go with or against it. They might realize that their story has become static and uninteresting to them, or remember a route that they have yet to explore. Nordblom & Westborg (2017) explains this through the metaphor of a football game: If the character is a football player, metareflecting would be to take on the perspective of the coach. By not only focusing on playing here and now, but also trying to foresee what strategies might be useful up ahead, we can see more play possibilities and create more exciting interactions.
Even though we can metareflect at will, imposed metareflection might be useful to us. Our immediate ideas, especially in the flow state of immersion, might be full of stereotypes from our lives and from stories that we have heard before. Moments offering some perspective might provide us with constructive new input. When metareflections are facilitated through shared spaces, this also offers possibilities to calibrate the larp as a group.
The human mind is generally better at focusing on one thing at a time than it is at multitasking. Rather than always staying in a middle ground, it may be more constructive for players to focus in on immersion and metareflection at different times. This is brought forward by larpmakers Bergmann Hamming & Bergmann Hamming (2017), claiming that the player may deepen their larp experience by shifting between diving into the immersion and coming up to the surface to breathe:
Larpers need to breathe and dive […] we try to immerse into these scenes, dive as far down as we can, feel and act on what makes sense and what could be fun, and then resurface and breathe. Consider where it would be great to go and if we can set the next great scenes up on our own, then dive back in and live them out.
But, shifting between deep immersion and more distanced reflection might be taxing to do often. Lukka (2014) points out that: Conscious immersion is first upheld by the attentive processes controlled by the player. Once immersion is deeper, it is upheld by automatic attentive processes and biases. When immersion becomes more subconsciously fueled, we might reach emotional landscapes and insights we didn’t know we had in us. Too many breaks might hinder this process, and a shift does not guarantee an interesting insight in itself. This makes it very understandable that many designs allow the players to immerse as much as possible during the larp, and leave reflections for later.
Methods for Metareflection
To help further experimentation with metareflexive designs, I’ve gathered some examples of methods for metareflection from Nordic larps. The methods mentioned here are used, mainly or possibly, to create deliberate design for contextualization, reflection and processing. Methods that use the metareflexivity of larping for other means than metareflection, such as simulations and safety techniques, are not included here.
Explicit Shifts
Act Breaks and Meta Rooms
Act breaks give the opportunity to process, discuss, and calibrate the role-play in a shared metareflexive space. It’s a method that caters well to players who do not like frequent shifts, as the duration of acts and act breaks allows for more uninterrupted processes.
Among others, the larp Just a Little Lovin’ (2011) uses act breaks to move the larp one year forward in time, allowing for collective calibration of how the characters’ intertwined lives have developed during that time.
Meta rooms (where larpers can play out flashback scenes, dreams, etc.) and offgame rooms may offer some of the same space for shared metareflection, but only for the players who choose to enter these spaces.
Editing: Stopping, Rewinding and Changing Scenes
Although one great feature of larp as a medium is how easy it is to interrupt and modify, these strategies are more visible in our workshops than in our runtime designs. One of the few examples is found in the free-form scenario Lady and Otto (2005): In this comedic antidrama, every scene has to start all over again as soon as conflict arises.
There are many methods for revisiting scenes that might be directly transferred from forum theatre and other drama practices. These kinds of methods may also be used to deconstruct a narrative, and allow several perspectives to be shown. It is also possible to play with switching characters between the players, such as in the larp The Family Andersson (2008), where two players share one character. As they take turns playing and observing the larp, the observing player will get a literal outside perspective on the character they just embodied.
Monologues and Player’s Comments
The inner monologue is a commonly used metatechnique that works slightly metareflexively, as the player will get more information about the other character than their own character, and may use that in steering the following play. More explicitly metareflexive is allowing the player, and not the character, to use the monologue to comment what they think about the fiction, as in When Our Destinies Meet (2009).
Subtle Shifts
Integrated Metacommunication
These are methods that emphasize or comment on certain aspects of the play without interrupting it, such as exaggerated actions or behavior, gestures, coded words, or audiovisual communication. These strategies are often used to communicate efficiently between larpers without interrupting play, but they also hold great potential for metareflexive play. Looking to Brechtian and feminist theatre might be an inspiration, where emphasized behavior is often used to expose the performativity within social roles and other norms.
In a larp about teenagers and peer pressure, En apa som liknar dig (2013), the players are instructed to “do the monkey” — goof around — whenever a situation turns emotional or serious, which exposes the goofiness as a compulsive flight behavior.
In the larp Joakim (2011), which takes place at a party, every angst filled monologue is instructed to be followed by all players roaring with laughter before resuming play, emphasizing the collective upholding of the facade.
Internal Metareflection: Sharp Choices
Methods for internal metareflection are very common, as they are subtle enough to not break the flow of playing, and they allow the players to self-regulate how much they want to redirect their attention. But, as they occur within the player’s mind, they do not offer any shared reflections.
Internal metareflections can of course happen at any time, but they may also be encouraged by the design. One such method is integrating sharp choices. These will present an imposed request for steering, where the player has to assess how the outcome of the situation will affect the following play. In the poetic larp Innocence (2014), this is created through symbolic props that the characters gain throughout the larp, that give them new abilities. The players will then need to choose between returning the props and the beloved abilities at specific times, or keeping them and giving up the character’s chances of returning home. Through this, the player has to decide if the abilities gained or the hope of home is most important to their character.
Voting is also a way of enforcing contemplation, be it for the future outcome or for the past. By the end of every act of Just a Little Lovin’ (2011), everyone has to think through their character’s past behavior to be able to put down votes corresponding to their risk of having contracted AIDS. Have You Come Here To Play Jesus? (2013), a larp dealing with euthanasia, ends with a vote where the character has to come to a conclusion about what they believe is morally right in the difficult situation.
Internal Metareflection: Moments for Processing
Internal metareflection may also be encouraged by downtime, where the players can pause and process while still staying within the fiction. It is quite common to let the larpers pace this by themselves, but looking to other media such as slower montages in film, it is also a feature that may be designed for at certain times and in certain ways. In the larp Do Androids Dream? (2017) the players were instructed to wait for two minutes at “the bus stop” before moving on to the next scene, providing a short break to process and gather new ideas. The player may also process through certain activities, such as writing a letter, painting, etc., which may condense and deepen a specific part of the experience.
Constant Metareflexive Layers
There are also strategies that accentuate the metareflexive aspects of the larp to keep them more present for all the players throughout. One common strategy is transparency, where the player has more information about the fiction than the character, which will encourage the player to use this knowledge when navigating through the shared narrative.
An opposing strategy is to give the players thin characters with little information, which may lead them to bring more of themselves into play.
Characters playing characters will add an additional layer of fiction to the larp, such as in the larp The Solution (2016), or as some of the characters in Shakespeare’s Hamlet are a troupe of actors that put up a play. When having fictional characters portraying yet another fiction, the players will have to manage four interpretive frames (reality, fiction one, fiction two, and metareflection), and keep up with how they interact more frequently.
In pervasive larps utilizing real surroundings, such as The White Road (2006), We Are Citizens (2015), and Home Planet (2019), the frame of reality will be more present and offer more direct interactions with the role-playing fiction. The presence of reality in larp may also be heightened by strong realistic and/or historical content, such as in 1942 — Noen å stole på? (2000), and Just a Little Lovin’ (2011). A player portraying what could have been an actual fate is likely to continuously compare their larp story to how it might have been in real life.
Larps are Made of Interpretation and Participation
The Nordic larp scene is well underway with developing metareflexive methods to refine the storytelling. Considering the interpretive frames of reality, fiction, and metareflection furthers a more dynamic understanding of what we do when we role-play, and how we can experiment with different variations of immersing and reflecting to deepen our experiences. There are many design possibilities yet to explore, and still plenty of inspiration to gather from other storytelling mediums.
The framework of metareflection suggests that an important task for the larpmaker to create a successful experience, is to communicate their vision clearly so that the players manage to envision that particular fiction together. This also includes creating willingness to bring it to life: [Fictionality] rests on the prior condition of a willingness to engage ourselves with an unreality. […] it is a voluntary commitment to participate in the creation of an alternate universe (Ben Chaim 1984). The interpretive frames also point quite clearly to why sudden larp twists and surprises usually work so poorly — you have to get the players on board with what they are supposed to imagine, for them to be able and willing to see it.
This also goes for how methods for metareflection are put to use. Larps are very pluralistic, as the players experience them through their individual character journeys. A too rigid method with specific insights to be drawn between larp and life will easily turn irrelevant to many players, while a design that allows players to draw their own connections between their particular larp and life experience will often prove more constructive.
As embodied role-playing occurs by putting a fictional interpretation over real material and real bodies, it may directly invite players to new ways of seeing the world and themselves. Be it through an explicitly metareflexive sociopolitical larp, or an escapist immersive larp: Regardless of form, larps are made out of player interpretation and participation. Invite your fellow players to explore the different layers of larping, and they will put their interpretive skills to use to fill the larp with meaning.
Bibliography
Myriel Balzer (2011) Immersion as a prerequisite of the didactical potential of role-playing. International Journal of Role-playing, vol. 2, pg. 32—43.
Daphna Ben Chaim (1984) Distance in the Theatre — The Aesthetics of Audience Response. Theatre and Dramatic Studies. Michigan: UMI Research Press.
Jeppe Bergmann Hamming & Maria Bergmann Hamming (2017) Beyond Playing to Lose and Narrativism. In Linn Carin Andreassen, Simon Brind, Elin Nilsen, Grethe Sofie Strand & Martine Svanevik (eds.) (2017) Once upon a Nordic larp… Twenty Years of Playing Stories, pg. 357—364. Knutepunkt 2017.
Augusto Boal (1995) The Rainbow of Desire: The Boal Method of Theatre and Therapy. Oxon/New York: Routledge.
Simo Järvelä (2019) How Real Is Larp? In Johanna Koljonen, Jaako Stenros, Anne Serup Grove, Aida D. Skjønsfjell, & Elin Nilsen (eds.) (2019) Larp Design: Creating Role-play Experiences. Copenhagen: Landsforeningen Bifrost.
Ari-Pekka Lappi (2007) Playing beyond facts: immersion as a transformation of everydayness. In Jesper Donnis, Morten Gade & Line Thorup (eds.) (2007) Lifelike, pg. 74—79. Projektgruppen KP07.
Hilda Levin (2017) Inifrån och utifrån — Immersion och reflektion i lajv och deltagande teater. Estetiska ideal och möjligheter för korporeala rollspelsupplevelser (Outside and within — immersion and reflection in larp and participatory theatre: Aesthetic ideals and affordances for embodied role-playing experiences). Master thesis in Dramaturgy, Aarhus University.
Lauri Lukka (2014) The Psychology of Immersion. In Jon Back (ed.) (2014) The Cutting Edge of Nordic Larp, pg. 81—92. Knutpunkt 2014.
Bruce McConachie (2013) Theatre & Mind. Basingstoke/New York: Palgrave Macmillan.
Carl Nordblom & Josefin Westborg (2017) Do You Want to Play Ball? In Linn Carin Andreassen, Simon Brind, Elin Nilsen, Grethe Sofie Strand & Martine Svanevik (eds.) (2017) Once upon a Nordic larp… Twenty Years of Playing Stories, pg. 130—142. Knutepunkt 2017.
Entertainment. Escape room. Larp. Map-based MegaGame. Boasting so many features, Dragon Thrones was an ambitious and collaborative production.
Produced by The Game Theatre and fully funded on Kickstarter in January of 2017, this game came onto the U.S. larp scene as ambiguous and expensive, and its presence and success were not necessarily anticipated by members of the larp community.
Even on day one, players were nervous about its success.
How did this three-day game turn most dubious ticket holders into loyal fans ready to buy another ticket?
Dragon Thrones provided a surprising amount of immersion and engagement, especially for a game involving so many other elements not always present in a larp.
I participated in Dragon Thrones as a game master (GM), assisting House Ardmore, one of ten houses (teams) in the game. Going into Dragon Thrones, I wasn’t entirely sure what to expect or whether the game would suit my roleplay style (I enjoy intensely exploring themes of loyalty, conflict, grief, and romance in larp so long as there are rules for engaging in consensual roleplay).
Also contributing to some apprehension on my part: I was one of two women on the GM team, the other being a more experienced GM than me. Being not so great with numbers, I was worried that I wouldn’t be able to advocate for my house or even manage the MegaGame (see below section) properly. However, The Game Theatre worked closely with all the GMs so that they were able to learn, collaborate, support each other as well as the players.
Regarding group leadership and supporting our player character (PC) group leader, I felt more confident, having experience in American fantasy boffer games such as Seventh Kingdom IGE and in the Nordic-inspired New World Magischola. In Dragon Thrones, GMs assumed responsibility for MegaGame management, resource distribution, and supporting their assigned house through roleplay.
Like the players expressed in post-game comments on Facebook, immersion carried my GM experience to a high degree, and from the beginning, I was encouraged to be an embedded character within my assigned house. The level of immersion I experienced makes me enthusiastic about the prospect of returning to Dragon Thrones.
Photo courtesy of The Game Theatre, LLC.
In addition to immersion creating fantastic game play, assuming the role of a character beloved by her house allowed me to handle the otherwise overwhelming or unknown aspects of the game more confidently than I would have otherwise.
What is a MegaGame?
Most MegaGames involve strategy, problem solving, negotiation, and diplomacy. There are typically set rules, rounds, and resource trading involved, as well as light roleplaying.
While I didn’t define it as a MegaGame at the time, the first MegaGame I participated in was in the 1990s. It was a UN-type roleplaying scenario run at my high school. I took on the role of a diplomat of Israel. Though I was a theatrical person, I was new to improvisation, shy, and talked over by the other students. I was impressed with the game, but ineffective.
I have always enjoyed strategic elements in the games I play. When I play games like Risk or Civilization V, involving troop movements and resources, I tend to internalize the role of the leader more than others who play the game, sometimes as a deliberate, immersive way to explore decisiveness and to employ strategies that I as the player might not normally choose.
Since the high school game, Dragon Thrones was my first MegaGame. Due to the technical elements, I predicted a low level immersion and had some serious concerns about how the MegaGame element would integrate with immersive larp – in addition to doubts about my own abilities in GMing a MegaGame.
The Game Theatre included the MegaGame element to resolve character versus character (CvC) actions without the type of combat (and even more rules) typically found in American fantasy boffer combat larps. Due to the magic of the setting (see “Castle as a Character” below), characters were safe at Bryn Mawr. The MegaGame allowed them to make moves against other groups, which in turn escalated tensions, highly positioned the importance of diplomacy, and created high immersion in the roleplay following the MegaGame rounds.
Neither my doubts about the game nor the integrated structure of gaming variety prevented immersion to a high degree.
Game Structure and Schedule
Photo courtesy of The Game Theatre, LLC.
Dragon Thrones had an ambitious schedule, and it seemed that most players were never bored. The schedule included:
Scheduled meals (most in cafeteria, one in great hall – most of my house chose to eat primarily in character and with our house).
Mead and beer tastings and Catered Meal Cocktail Hour (also served during the dinner).
High council meetings (two representatives from each house vote on global issues).
Escape room (sign up for a time slot).
Side Quests (can complete at any time).
MegaGame (scheduled rounds).
Entertainment in the main hall, including music and dance.
Scripted entertainment (modules, including a finale scene).
Night missions (at GM discretion when there were 45+ minutes of time).
As in many games (especially in the first run), the schedule changed as needed, but there was always something to do.
Introduction and Group Exercises
The first run of Dragon Thrones did not feature any exercises relating to the introduction of larp, bleed, or how to communicate things in game versus out of game. This was handled by each GM at their own discretion. (With the help of the larp community, I expect this will be added in following runs.)
There was time for the GMs to meet with their individual houses, so I put together a quick workshop based on what I discuss in my salon larps and what I have seen used successfully in other games such as New World Magischola. I introduced the players – to addressing concerns in game versus out of game (to each other, game staff, and me as the GM) and warned them about the potential emotional intensity involved in an intentionally competitive game. I was assigned to a roleplay-oriented group of players with varying amounts of larp experience.
I also allowed each player time to introduce themselves and talk about their characters as well as form some quick relationship history between their characters and others.
Lastly, I did a quick ‘lines of play’ exercise, asking players to line up based on how their characters feel about certain world events and issues and what attitudes they have. By the end of this exercise, players were suggesting items to scale on, and I was pleased to see this level of engagement.
Photo courtesy of The Game Theatre, LLC.
I could have provided a bit more detail about bleed. I also heard that other GMs focused on instruction about the MegaGame component. Instead of focusing on the MegaGame, I opted to ensure that a few of the house members would attend the workshop on the MegaGame with me.
Each house initially convened in its war room, which served as home base for the house. The war room location promoted a sense of fellowship.
University Workshops
Prior to game, the organizers ran “university,” during which players could learn about an area of interest to them. The classes were out of character and the options included:
MegaGame
Draconian lore and magic
Diplomacy and Espionage
Houses were encouraged to split up to cover each class. These workshops were pretty efficient and there was plenty of time for the staff to address questions about game mechanics.
Immersion and GM Role
As the GM, I understood that much of my role would be out of game. (I consider this to also be the case when holding leadership positions in other larps traditionally billed as more immersive.)
With the MegaGame elements, I had to wrangle a computer (and sometimes my cell phone) and GM chat, all while handling the needs of my house and the in-game concerns of other houses’ diplomats and spies – they had functions requiring GM approval for use of game mechanics.
As expected:
The mechanical elements of the MegaGame did break immersion, though this was largely limited to MegaGame rounds.
The MegaGame got easier with practice.
While the attention to out-out-of-game mechanics required a lot of immersion breaking for myself and most of the players in the war room, there were also gains in the level of immersion.
The MegaGame prompted diplomacy and spying (which also engaged characters not otherwise interested in the MegaGame) and resulted in rapidly escalating tension and camaraderie between kingdoms.
Multiple MegaGame rounds were played over the course of three days. Length of round decreased with player experience as the weekend continued, which caused a bit of a thrill as things began moving fast towards the climactic ending.
Players also interacted with the MegaGame, dumping resources into purchasing and enhancing forces using clear game mechanics provided on printed worksheets: it wasn’t clear to me as the GM how immersion-breaking or immersion-enhancing this activity was for them.
Immersive Setting: Castle as Character
Photo courtesy of The Game Theatre, LLC.
As is the case with many blockbuster larps, the setting is integral to the immersion of the game. In the case of Castle Bryn Mawr, the castle felt like its own character and played a specific role in the story. To create further immersion and realism, Castle Bryn Mawr was “The Citadel of Mirrors,” establishing peaceful dialogue between houses and kingdoms, the ability to travel through magical mirrors on covert missions, and providing characters a reason to have wounds healed or for assassinations to fail.
The magic of the Citadel of Mirrors prevented (or warned of the danger of) attacking players in-game. The lore states that “those who attack others while under the magic of the Citadel (of Mirrors) attack only themselves. As if you’re attacking your own reflection.”
This preemptively addressed issues like griefing (unrelenting kills) and grave camping (standing by a deceased character, waiting for a respawn so that the character can be killed repeatedly) sometimes encountered in rules-heavy American boffer combat larp settings.
Immersive Entertainment
Prior to arriving at Dragon Thrones, I saw many posts in the Facebook group about all the dancers, knights, professional actors, and alcohol distributors who would be at the event. I became concerned that it was going to be more like spectator theater or at best a renaissance faire than a game with larp elements.
In this respect, I was delightfully wrong. Every entertainer I saw interacted with the player in-game which helped enhance the immersion rather than reduce it. This included the bard who ate with my team on Saturday night and the dancers who added story elements through their art and interactions.
The most amusing example of this level of immersion involved a champion (knight) who represented our house. This actor who portrayed the knight, along with his group, was hired to perform a choreographed fight. Following the fight, each champion came to meet with his house in game.
Photo courtesy of The Game Theatre, LLC.
As a GM integrated with my house in a roleplay sense, my character’s king pointed out that he was interested in marrying her to their house’s champion. I consented to this attempt (and let him know that I was okay with it on an out of game level), but obviously this was not a scene we had prepared with our champion. When the knight came in to greet us, the king introduced my character as his ‘future wife.’
I did an out of game check-in with the actor to make sure he was comfortable with it – it turns out he was, and that he was an actor with roleplay experience. He rolled with the scene, his character being quite kind and receptive to mine, and within five minutes, the high priest character had wed the pair.
Consent Negotiation
The consent negotiation I initiated, as well as the scene itself, was every bit as immersive as it might have been in a Nordic-inspired larp setting and it created a bonding moment for our entire house.
With more workshopping related to consent negotiation, it is possible that players will take more risks and initiate such interactions rather than limiting access to veteran roleplayers and actors.
Agile Gameplay versus Scripted Plot
From a GM perspective, I was impressed at how many details of the scripted plot were up for alteration.
For example, when the aforementioned Ardmore champion arrived, we were informed that he was a hero from our citadel who had become draconian as the result of another house’s actions in game (House Ardmore is a human house). Not only did this affect house and personal plot, but it was a reason for his victories as a champion. These details mattered and increased our level of immersion.
Large displays and the need for a conclusion did provide the feeling of being steered from time to time, but I appreciated how the details changed significantly depending on in-game actions.
Some of these actions were up to GM discretion, particularly the night missions. The Game Theatre team made story changes in an agile fashion, based upon player character choices in roleplay in multiple aspects of the game. Whether a player made a roleplay decision affecting another player character or non-player character or a large-scale action like troop movement affecting the game world, behind-the-scenes adjustments were often made to the story.
Night Missions: Surprisingly Immersive
Night missions consisted of a narrative session. During the session, the GM allowed the players to embark on an adventure, exactly like the story-oriented part of most tabletop games.
Whenever the players had to make a huge choice or attempt something risky, the GM asked them to pull a Jenga block. This represented the elements of risk in the game, and they’d receive certain rewards (or consequences) based on their result. In my adventures, I let the players select a location on the game map and used that as a starting point. The players chose to:
Explore a temple
Retrieve golems from a volcanic area
Poison an enemy’s water supply
The player feedback indicated that night missions were one of their most beloved parts of the game. What really surprised me is how immersive these missions were, even for me as the storyteller. I imagine this is due to multiple reasons:
The storytelling and narration came naturally to the players, already immersed in roleplaying these characters in a larp sense. There were no awkward ‘new group meets in a tavern’ scenes; the adventurers know each other before the missions begin.
Night missions were supposed to be an hour or less. There were no long, boring stretches, and we sometimes squeezed these in between other scheduled events.
The MegaGame and some of the larp elements were extremely serious in tone, and night missions allowed for a bit of levity based on storytelling style and the potentially late hour of the mission.
The MegaGame allowed for tangible rewards in the form of gems (player resources) or additional army strength. MacGuffins and roleplay items could be represented by props. Having a goal that can make a difference in army strength, for example, caused the players to remain focused and invested in night missions.
The Night Mission’s rule set was extremely streamlined and other than pulling a block from Jenga, all of the roleplaying and storytelling was up to the GM and the players. This was a contrast to the structured MegaGame rules and allowed for more player interaction and character development.
GMs were permitted to exercise a high level of discretion regarding Night Missions. This is overall the case for all of Dragon Thrones, which is part of what allowed for a game with multiple different rulesets to feel so immersive and rewarding.
Overall, the night missions created immersion due to pre-established character relationships, brevity, and tangible goals.
Photo courtesy of The Game Theatre, LLC.
I was initially skeptical of night missions (and my ability to run them), but found them to be one of the more immersive parts of the game. As a larper preferring WYSIWYG (what you see is what you get) interactions even in a magical world, I was pleasantly surprised.
I was also asked to provide summaries of night missions to the event organizers. In two instances concerning my house, the night missions affected armies in the MegaGame. This was to be recorded in the lexicon of Dragon Thrones to be used for future story elements per the discretion of The Game Theatre.
Final Scene: Narration
The closing scene of the game also involved a great deal of narration. After a tense MegaGame round, the divided kingdoms and houses had to face an elder dragon together. The high king (played by the game’s co-creator, Chris Batarlis of The Game Theatre) set the scene via narration and then called each GM forth to narrate the actions of their house.
I found the storytelling opportunity immersive and I think most players felt that this scene provided us with a great deal of closure (not always – or often – found at Nordic and Nordic inspired-larps). This type of closure may be more conducive to softening negative bleed, and it’s something that may work better for a more competitive game and larp culture.
Evidence of Immersion, Transformative Roleplay and Larp Drop
As an experienced larper, I’m typically aware of what immersion is and when it affects me. As a GM, I was particularly aware of this because I prefer to maintain more out-of-game awareness than I would as a player because I am responsible for providing certain elements and guidance.
Photo courtesy of The Game Theatre, LLC.
While I had to focus in an out-of-game context during MegaGame rounds, there were long periods of roleplay-only activities. I disliked breaking immersion, but also found that I wandered back into an immersive state relatively naturally due to several reasons:
It was clearly that my in-game friendships with other characters were heralding out of game friendships. In the MegaGame, we had to work together out-of-game to a degree, and we fortunately discovered that most of us got along well in character, too.
There were long portions of time without the MegaGame, and I was matched with a group who wanted to focus on roleplay.
Mead. There was a lot of mead, and we consumed it responsibly.
Dining together helped us immerse and come together as a group.
My character’s role as a trusted advisor to the King of Ardmore guided me into an immersive state. In and out of game, king players and characters knew that the GMs and their characters were there to help them, and would not be traitors.
The writers had given me a character who had been fostered with the king and his family. Aside from making my job as a GM easier, the unquestioning loyalty my character felt towards the king created an endless amount of roleplay opportunities and encouraged other characters to further explore themes of loyalty and betrayal. How far would these characters follow their king when his decisions deviated from their desires? My character would speak her mind, but would follow him to victory or ruin.
Throughout the event, my character consulted a deck of archetype cards (similar to tarot in purpose) for help in advising their king. As a prop, it also helped me play an outgoing and flirtatious character who could easily converse with others and facilitate connections.
In a tender scene, walking from war room to the great hall, my character advised the king on an important matter, then told him, “That counsel is not from my cards…it is how I feel.” He responded that such advice meant the most, and that he trusted it.
That’s when the transformative nature of the immersive roleplay occurred.
Having lost my job less than a month prior to the event, my real life was filled with stress and pressure. I wasn’t entirely sure whether I could pull off the MegaGame aspect of GMing, but I had found that the GM team worked well together and that I was paired with a really compatible group in the game.
How many times have I given in to imposter syndrome or second guessed my own intuition? Far too often – but not nearly as often as other people have brushed it off.
As GM and Karinna, I worked hard to provide the best advice – to guide the king as player and character, but to leave the choices up to him. To find this rewarded with an acceptance of my own intuition was a very powerful takeaway from this game, and not one that would have sunk in without the roleplay.
This also resulted in lasting friendships with many of the players on my team. We’ve already made plans to play and run games together in the future, at Dragon Thrones and beyond. I’ve heard that this experience is not unique to my team.
The most compelling piece of evidence of immersion and enjoyment is the larp drop experienced by many of the players involved. This refers to feelings of loneliness upon returning to the real world. For me, larp drop manifests most intensely not after playing specific relationship types with individuals, but with the type of team dynamic present at Dragon Thrones. I feel this type of larp drop pretty strongly, and weeks after the game I am still experiencing it.
Above all, it felt fulfilling to work with a house that valued me and my intuition and judgment in and out of game, and that feeling also extends to the organizers, GMs, writers, and full player base. That sort of self-development is not something I achieve without immersive and transformative roleplay.
Unique Selling Proposition (USP) as Related to Immersion
Every larp needs its own hook. What makes it different from every other game?
For Dragon Thrones, it’s clearly a combination of setting, entertainment, MegaGame, and immersive larp. Describing the setting (Bryn Mawr College, outside of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania) is the easiest way to convey the immersive nature of the game format, though the latest trailer solves Dragon Thrones’ pre-game issue about expectations and game identity (it was so many different things in one) and also emphasizes the avenues towards immersion a player can experience in the game:
Setting and discovery (“an entire castle for you to explore”)
War game strategy (“masterfully control the MegaGame”)
Agency, decision making and collaborative storytelling (“choose your own path; your actions shape the story”)
Bonds of loyalty and duty to kingdom (“be the hero for your kingdom”)
Conflict and competition (“crush your enemies”)
Leadership and the hero’s call (“lead your kingdom to victory”)
Destiny and influence (“the fate of the realm is in your hands”)
Social decisions and choices (“what decisions will you make?”)
Dragon Thrones 2 and Beyond
The notes and feedback surrounding Dragon Thrones were significant, particularly concerning the MegaGame rules. A second run of the game certainly needs to address these issues (I understand this is in progress) and this will enhance immersion to an even greater degree.
The other necessary improvement involves workshopping and debrief. Now that there is a clearer sense of what Dragon Thrones is and the type of immersion players were able to accomplish, I imagine the next run will be even more spectacular and hope to remain involved.
Following the first run, I would define Dragon Thrones as a larp with strategic elements and fully integrated professional entertainment. A new or experienced larper aiming for immersion has the potential to meet their goals at this larp.
Bowman (2017) has described immersion as a state of creative flow, where the player is feeling emotionally absorbed by the experience. Although the term is sometimes used to describe 360° surroundings, the feeling of being immersed may be reached in both realistic and minimalistic aesthetics. Immersion is created through situations that the participants may believe in and respond to, be it through visual aesthetics or dramatic content. In any larp then, players may become emotionally absorbed, and still, they will be aware of their everyday world.
The framework of metareflection suggests that an important task for the larpmaker to create a successful experience, is to communicate their vision clearly so that the players manage to envision that particular fiction together. This also includes creating willingness to bring it to life: 
