Nordic Larp

Tag: Knutepunkt

  • Open Book: A Roadmap for Peer Editing

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    Open Book: A Roadmap for Peer Editing

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    How to initiate and coordinate a community publication on your own

    Introduction

    This chapter summarises the tools and lessons learned from working on the peer-edited Knutepunkt Conference Book ’25 Anatomy of Larp Thoughts: A Breathing Corpus. For this 500-page book, 33 chapters were edited, laid out and printed thanks to the combined efforts of 67 individual contributors. There was no harmonization process between editors, authors, and no rejection based on content or skills.

    Most years, the Knutepunkt/Solmukohta Nordic larp event releases one or more books in connection to the conference. For the 2025 Knutepunkt book, we needed to rethink the publication process, as no one had enough availability or mana to fully carry out such a demanding project. In line with the wishes of the general Knutepunkt conference organising team, this experience forms the basis for displacing responsibility from a tight team of volunteers to the wider community. Although successful, this first iteration had its shortcomings, and this document is intended to help future teams set up and refine their community-edited publications.

    By sharing our tools, I wish to advocate for balance, collaboration and transparency in that collective process, to prevent volunteer burnout but also to paint a less mediated picture of our community’s voice.

    In this document, you will find the core tools needed to start a peer-editing process on your own: from recruitment and coordination to editorial expectations and means of communication. It is based on my own conclusions, but also on previous KP/SK book documentation and implicit knowledge, and on countless hours of discussion with the fantastically knowledgeable and skilled Anne Serup Grove, who has worked on five different KP/SK books and was graphics and print coordinator for the KP Book ’25.

    An overview of the process

    To print or not to print

    If you want your publication to be printed and sent to an event (such as the Knutepunkt conference), your final file needs to be ready about 1.5 months in advance.((This can be adjusted according to cover type and delivery times.)) The rest of your deadlines should therefore be worked backwards from this final red line.

    If you want to give your editorial contributors at least 6 months to write and edit, and your graphic contributors 1 month to layout, this means that a comfortable timeframe would be to start about 9 months in advance.(( Longer writing times can be particularly suited to volunteer publications, where most contributors juggle their chapter with unrelated full-time activities.))

    Anatomy of Larp Thoughts: A Breathing Corpus -- chapter illustration Anatomy of Larp Thoughts: A Breathing Corpus — chapter illustration. Yanina Zaichanka (illustrations), Kirsten van Werven (edits), and Maren Wolf and Anne Serup Grove (layout design)

    When the end goal is a digital publication, deadlines and editorial expectations can be much more flexible. Removing all tasks related to online payment, printing and postage also removes a lot of the extra work that piles up at the end of the process.

    Here is a potential progression:

    1. Send-out role descriptions and enrolling form / Get in touch with printers

    This is the recruitment phase, where you get an overview of who is interested in getting involved and in what capacity. You will also receive pitches and get a first (raw and wrong) idea of the topics, tonality and length of the publication.

    If someone volunteers to set up the printing during your recruitment phase, they should start immediately: contacting printers, comparing prices to find the best deals, and setting budgets based on number of pages, colour options, paper quality and postage.

    Ideally, and this is something we did not achieve for the KP Book ’25, this recruitment phase should also clarify the general timeline so that volunteers are aware of the length and rhythm of their commitment.

    1. Forming editorial groups and setting-up your work platform

    Based on the answers to the enrolling form, the editorial coordinators create editorial groups for each chapter and set up a digital platform for the collective work. For the KP Book ’25, we used a Discord server. Star Hope Percival volunteered to be our Discord wizard and made it infinitely more readable and inviting, which is extremely important when such a large group needs to work with it.

    Knutepunkt book teams often decide that authors and artists retain all copyrights to their contributions, with an informal exclusivity right for the KP publication until it is launched. If you wish to rethink copyrights/Creative Commons, this is probably the time to do it.

    Here is a linked template for a contributor list/editorial group setup.

    When you start, you should provide a style guide that goes beyond the reference style to include details such as line spacing and headline levels (and any other relevant formatting) – this will help the graphics team enormously, and informing them before the first draft is written will make it much easier for them to incorporate it from the outset.

    1. Writing draft 1, starting graphic research, setting-up a tracking sheet

    Unless you deliberately want contributors to write only short chapters, you will probably need to allow at least 2 months for this first phase. During this time you should send out editorial guidelines to your contributors, especially if you have less experienced writers. The graphics team can also have a meeting and start playing with ideas for the layout and setting up their own process.

    Similarly, the book coordinators can meet and set up a tracking sheet. Here is a linked template for a tracking sheet.

    1. Deadline draft 1 and graphic coordination

    Authors send their first draft to their editorial group according to the expectations listed in the guidelines. The graphics team has an online meeting to discuss which tasks they would like to take on.

    1. Deadline reviews on draft 1

    The editors and reviewers send their comments back to the authors. At this point, authors should flag inactive members of the editorial group to the coordinators, who will then contact them to ensure that they are still on board, or alternatively, to find replacements.

    1. Writing draft 2 and developing the layout

    About a third of the way through the general timeline, the authors start working on a second draft. During this time, the graphics team works with the editorial coordinators to define a style that fits the emerging theme of the publication.

    1. Deadline draft 2

    Authors send a second draft to their editorial group. This should also be at least two months later, especially if there is a winter break in the middle. This is when most of the dropouts occur, and when you can start to crystallise the identity of the book and get an idea of its length. This is also a good time for authors and editors to seek additional help with reviewing or editing, if needed.

    1. Deadline reviews on draft 2, recruiting more proofreaders

    Editors send their final edits to the authors. This is a good time to check with the proofreaders who have responded to the call for contributors to see if they still have the time and energy to work on the articles, and in any case to send out an extra call to recruit more.

    1. Setting-up pre-orders

    If the book is to be printed, pre-ordering well in advance will help to ensure that copies are delivered to the event and that free copies are available to the contributors. Traditionally, Knutepunkt in Norway offers a copy to each contributor and also to the Nordic National Libraries.

    1. Final draft deadline, table of contents and foreword deadline

    Authors finalise their chapter and bibliography. The editorial coordinators write the preface and the table of contents. 

    1. Proofreading, layout, credits

    Proofreaders review the chapters and send them to layout staff. Editorial and graphics coordinators work on the credits and any additional information (ISBN number, publisher’s address, acknowledgements, copyrights, etc.).

    1. Final layout and graphic revisions

    The graphics team compiles, refines and checks all the graphic elements and layout of the entire publication, including ensuring that the table of contents matches the actual page numbers.

    1. Send to print and cross your fingers

    Print responsibles follow up with printers, including shipping and invoicing. There may also be work involved in setting up print-on-demand, uploading PDFs, working with online platforms, etc.

    Note: There are clear advantages to a digital-only publication. It reduces the workload for graphic designers, removes the need for a print manager, removes any budgeting or online sales work, is more environmentally friendly and allows for more flexible deadlines and more time for writing or creative content. If the organisation’s priority is to have a smooth process and focus on the quality of the content and the convenience of the schedule, I would recommend opting for a digital publication.

    That being said, Anne Serup Grove writes in the foreword of the KP book ’25:

    “Printing a book is important. It solidifies the huge amount of intellectual work they’ve put into it. You can feel it — its weight, its format. You can interact with it differently than you can with a digital publication.”

    Anatomy of Larp Thoughts: A Breathing Corpus – the finished book Anatomy of Larp Thoughts: A Breathing Corpus – the finished book. Yanina Zaichanka (illustrations) and Kirsten van Werven (edits)

    In 2025, the physical copies of the book were again happily handed over, sniffed and perhaps even tasted, but I would recommend further digital-only explorations.

    Recruiting for peer-editing: role descriptions & casting

    The basis of this peer-editing process is that all authors are required to take on the role of editor or reviewer as a condition of publication in the book. This requirement ensures a basic share of the general load, although it has its own drawbacks: it requires more work from authors, it doesn’t ensure the willingness to engage with someone else’s work that one might expect from someone who has signed up directly as an editor or reviewer, and it potentially leads to very heterogeneous collaborations. However, when presented as a necessary part of producing our publication and ensuring its quality and existence, the idea and task can be normalised beyond being an extra chore.

    This basic peer-editing structure is then complemented by the participation of other non-author contributors, who sign up directly as editors and reviewers, choosing any number of papers they are willing to work on.

    Each chapter is thus the responsibility of a core “editorial group” consisting of: the author(s), 1 editor, and 1-3 reviewers. Coordinators may be called in to help find substitutes, extra help, or to mediate, but the responsibility for the content rests with the editorial group.

    Larp organisers are no strangers to creating groups from a long list of people with different interests, skills and energy levels, and peer editing can work in the same way. This process therefore borrows the same tools as casting in larp: role descriptions and casting form/casting.

    1. Role descriptions

    Role descriptions should allow contributors to understand the expectations around each role: what they should do, at which time of the process they should be available, on which platforms they are expected to communicate, etc.

    These are some basic role description suggestions. Role descriptions should allow contributors to understand the expectations of each role: what they are expected to do, at what point in the process they should be available, on what platforms they are expected to communicate, etc.

    These are some basic suggestions for role descriptions:

    • Author: An author writes a chapter or creates other content for the publication. An author may also be asked to edit two chapters or review four chapters based on their areas of interest/comfort/experience. Co-authors may also share these other tasks. They report editorial difficulties to the editorial coordinators.
    • Editor: An editor looks closely at an author’s contribution and makes suggestions to help them achieve clarity and coherence, sometimes providing assistance with style. They help authors to meet deadlines and report editorial difficulties to the editorial coordinators.
    • Reviewer: A reviewer is a secondary editor who goes through several chapters, highlighting potential problems and encouraging the development of interesting ideas without going into detail. They usually only review the first draft of the chapter, but may be recruited later in the process to provide fresh insights.
    • Proofreader: A proofreader looks for typos, language errors that compromise the integrity of the text, and flags up formatting/layout issues. They are only involved with the final draft.
    • Graphic Designer and Layout Helper: A graphic designer designs the layout and layouts the finished articles. A layout helper ensures that each article uses the chosen font/layout/bibliography style. They don’t have to be the same people but some overlap is normal. (Suggestion: at least 3 per journal)
    • Graphic artist: A graphic artist creates illustrations, textures, or image editing (Suggestion: 2-3 per book)
    • Print responsible: A print responsible researches printers, negotiates printing and shipping on behalf of the team, and oversees the overall process. (Suggestion: 1-2 per book)
    • Editorial coordinator: An editorial coordinator sets up the editorial groups (author-editor-reviewer, and later proofreader), communicates the guidelines and the general editorial process, and supports the editorial groups – especially when making difficult decisions. They write the table of contents and the preface. (Suggestion: 3 coordinators per book or 1 per ~10 chapters)
    • Graphics coordinator: A graphics coordinator sets up the graphics research process with the other graphics contributors. They supervise the general progress, deciding on layout, cover, possible illustrations, possible harmonisation of diagrams, etc. In the case of printing, they work with the editorial coordinator to set editorial deadlines and with the printer to decide on paper quality, format and other graphic constraints. (Suggestion: 1-2 coordinators per book)

    In 2025 we ended up with this distribution: 36 authors, 21 editors, 43 reviewers, 15 proofreaders, 1 editorial coordinator (not enough), 1 graphic coordinator (not enough), 2 illustrators, 3 graphic designers, 2 print coordinators, 1 Discord wizard.

    Although a few people (the coordinators and a few editors) were still overworked, balance seemed within reach.

    1. Casting form, and casting in groups

    The call for contributors is a form designed to gather the information needed to create editorial groups (a team of authors, editors and reviewers working together on a chapter).

    It is therefore important to ask contributors to situate themselves in the editorial landscape: are they comfortable engaging with academic, artistic or personal pieces? How experienced are they in writing or editing? If they are authors, do they want an editor with a particular background to support them?

    It may not be possible (or desirable) to create perfect editorial groups, but these questions will allow coordinators to balance the desires of some contributors and limit potentially destructive group frictions. Our community is heterogeneous, and while bringing different affinities together may be the most valuable option here, exposure to other perspectives is unlikely to be well received unless it comes from the author’s initiative.

    One way to balance editorial groups could be to assign an editor from the desired background (academia, arts, humour, ecology, etc.) and reviewers with different perspectives. In particular, aiming for different cultural backgrounds to meet in editorial groups allows for a higher international readability, as niche cultural concepts are more likely to be spotted and pointed out. We learned in the process of the KP Book ’25 that this should be communicated clearly and upfront.

    As a community practice, the creation of editorial groups is subject to the same constraints as the creation of social groups in a larp, especially in terms of forced proximity.

    Before setting up the editorial groups, the coordinators can therefore send out the list of all volunteers, allowing contributors to indicate whether there are people they do not want to work with.

    Anatomy of Larp Thoughts: A Breathing Corpus -- chapter illustration Anatomy of Larp Thoughts: A Breathing Corpus — chapter illustration. Yanina Zaichanka (illustrations), Kirsten van Werven (edits), and Maren Wolf and Anne Serup Grove (layout design)

    Editorial guidelines and expectations

    1. Style & content expectations

    A peer-edited publication, where the responsibility rests primarily with the judgement of independent editorial groups, will by its very nature be disparate.

    There is, however, a way to ensure a degree of editorial harmony or quality by having pre-established guidelines to which reference can be made.

    These guidelines are the main authority that allows editors to set boundaries, ask for more effort or even step out of the general process. Detailed and progressive guidelines can also be a reassuring beacon for authors to follow and an instructive landmark for newer editors.

    Therefore, I recommend setting clear expectations for each draft, which editorial groups can then readjust if they have the need and capacity to do so. As an example, these are the expectations set for the KP book ’25, some of which are inspired by previous KP book guidelines.

    1. Drafts expectations

    Editorial expectations of the KP ’25 book were phrased as follows:

    What is expected of a first draft

    • The chapter should be close to its final length.
    • The chapter should cover most of the points necessary to its argument.
    • The chapter’s argument should be roughly understandable.

    What is NOT expected from a 1st Draft

    • Style: The chapter does not need to be fluid or well phrased.
    • Transitions: Vague and rough transitions are to be expected.
    • References: Although it’s encouraged to start referencing/quoting early on, you do not need to have all your references, or have them sorted and formatted.
    • Potential illustrations: This can also wait.

    What is expected of a second draft

    The chapter should be in its final form. Meaning:

    • The argument should be understandable.
    • The style should allow your group to have a fluid reading of your piece.
    • The author should have corrected their chapter to the best of their abilities (typos, grammar, etc.). We understand that this varies greatly from person to person.
    • The references, quotes and bibliography should be formatted using Chicago style.
    • Possible illustrations should be collected, named (e.g. fig 1, fig 2) and accompanied by a short description (e.g. “Diagram of the overlap between larp and a normal family dinner”).
    • The chapter should be available as a Google document.

    What is NOT expected from a second draft

    • That your chapter is up to academic standards.
    • That your group agrees with your argument.
    • That your group likes your style.
    • That there are no language mistakes/typos.

    If the paper does not meet the progress expectations, editorial groups can (and should) decide to:

    • Ask for more help by posting on the editors’ and reviewers’ communication channels, ideally before the deadlines have passed.
    • Withdraw from publication: In this case, editors and reviewers are also asked to post a call for editors/reviewers on the general communication channel to find potential replacements. If no help or replacement can be found, the chapter will not be published.

    Expectations and cuts

    If you read the KP book ’25, you will see that the chapters vary in style, genre, length, clarity, etc. Some of them would probably not make the cut if it had been a curated publication, but their compilation is true to a community-edited process. The process described above resulted in several authors withdrawing their publications and some editors leaving their editorial groups. In total, 14 chapters were shelved.

    This general process, involving group discussions, transparency and collaboration on other pieces, is already a great filter. Conversely, facing the troubles of trying to lift a piece we wouldn’t have chosen ourselves, of having to reach out for more reviewers and help, can challenge our prejudices and make us take a second look at what we otherwise have discarded. In this way, a couple of chapters have been rescued and then championed by initially uncertain editors.

    An open platform for communication and collaboration

    This collaborative process depends on creating an open platform that allows the community of contributors to discuss, meet, question and help each other.

    We used Discord. Each category of contributor (authors, editors, reviewers, etc.) and each chapter had its own private channel.

    A public channel called “Ask for more eyes” allowed authors and editors alike to seek extra help on their chapters, which was probably one of the most successful experiments of the whole process.

    The public channel “Questions” allowed all contributors to clarify the process, sometimes expressing dissatisfaction or confusion. This allowed everyone to potentially provide answers (rather than just relying on the coordinators), but also to have more difficult discussions publicly, which increased the transparency of our collaborative process.

    Discord server setup for Anatomy of Larp Thoughts: A Breathing Corpus
    Discord server setup for Anatomy of Larp Thoughts: A Breathing Corpus. Screenshot by Nadja Lipsyc

    Discord is overwhelming for many people, which was a barrier for some contributors who weren’t able to be active on their channels. However, it allowed the coordinators to have a very clear overview of the editorial groups, and the progress of different chapters, it allowed for compartmentalised storage of images and documents, and contributors knew exactly where to reach their editorial groups and discuss their work.

    Final thoughts

    The process around KP 2025 was imperfect, but the bumps we have encountered are easy to avoid. They include:

    • Either starting early or renouncing printing the book
    • Involving more coordinators
    • Writing more detailed and appealing “role descriptions” and guidelines

    It is possible that we were lucky with our contributors’ reactivity and in recruiting 5 volunteers for the graphic team, which may not be realistic to expect every year, or might not be robust enough to shifting life circumstances. This process still needs a lot more reflection and tools to encourage autonomy and responsibility, especially in meeting deadlines without prompting, in reading and researching the information available, and in communicating drop-outs.

    I hope that future teams will iterate on similar systems, and keep sharing their notes afterwards, towards more balanced, autonomous, manageable and transparent collective work. By further experimenting on peer-edition, we are training individuals in our community to take more initiative and better share the burden of volunteering.

    Cover image: Anatomy of Larp Thoughts: A Breathing Corpus – the cover. Yanina Zaichanka (illustrations) and Kirsten van Werven (edits)

  • Nordic Larp is not ”International Larp”: What is KP for?

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    Nordic Larp is not ”International Larp”: What is KP for?

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    Editorial note: Any views expressed in an article published in Nordiclarp.org do not necessarily represent the views of the editors or an endorsement of the article.

    This anonymous article was originally published in the Knudepunkt 2023 underground book larp truths ready to see the light (editors unknown). It was then republished in the Solmukohta 2024 book, and has been reprinted from there with the editors’ permission. It has not been edited by Nordiclarp.org.

    * * *

    Forward by editor Kaisa Kangas for the 2024 Solmukohta book: It has been a tradition to publish a book like this one in connection with SK/KP – a tradition so honored that the lack of an official book last year caused a small outrage (see Pettersson 2023). Even then, there was an underground pdf book known as The Secret Book of Butterflies that consisted of short essays by anonymous writers. I have decided to republish some of them here.

    * * *

    Some years ago, a wonderful thing happened.

    Larpers in the four Nordic countries developed a remarkable community and discourse around this phenomenon called ”Nordic larp.” At KP/SK, they met each year, to talk about it and to share thoughts and experiences with each other.

    Over time, larpers in other countries heard about this: they read the Nordic larp writings, and imported some of what they found there into their own domestic larping scenes.

    Some of them attended KP, and made their own contributions to the developing conversation. They were made welcome by the regulars, who were (mostly) glad that their ideas were being shared more widely. Now, as a result of this, we have a scene that might be called Nordic-inspired international larp.

    All over Europe, in the USA, and perhaps elsewhere too: larps are being run for people from a wide range of countries, in the English language, incorporating design and practice elements that were originally developed in Nordic larp.

    Who takes part in these ‘international larp’ events?

    Usually, a mix of people from the local larping scene, and cosmopolitan types who enjoy larping in other lands.

    These include some people from the original Nordic core.

    Meanwhile, ”Nordic larps” in the traditional sense are still taking place in the Nordic countries. But they are dwarfed, in number and in coverage, by this new international scene.

    The child is devouring the parent.

    The same thing can be seen at KP. Not so long ago, it was a 200- 300 person event that was 80% Nordic: now, it’s a 500-600 person event that’s majority non-Nordic.

    And, although the superstar system ensures that keynotes and other high-visibility items are still in Nordic hands, the bulk of the programme is provided and presented by international larpers, for an international audience. Is this good or is it bad?

    All we can really say is: it’s different.

    But is it time to recognize that international larp is its own thing, and deserves its own annual get-together – rather than progressively cannibalizing KP?

    Why not a conference that rotates around the countries where international larps take place – or that’s at one fixed location centrally within Europe?

    It would probably be cheaper to hire a suitable venue and accommodation in a non-Nordic country, for one thing. And it would probably be easier for most internationals to get to.
    And then, what might it mean for KP to get back to being focused on Nordic larp, in the Nordic countries?

    Of course, it shouldn’t be oblivious to the rest of the larping world.

    But nor should it be dominated by it.

    International larp is a tremendous thing, and it deserves to thrive and grow. But not at the expense of the Nordic larp that it borrows so heavily from.

    And perhaps KP should not be facilitating such a takeover.

    References

    Pettersson, Juhana. 2023. “The Wisdom of the Community.” Nordic Larp Talks. YouTube, May 28.

    Please cite as:

    Anonymous. 2024. “Nordic Larp is not ”International Larp”: What is KP for?” In Liminal Encounters: Evolving Discourse in Nordic and Nordic Inspired Larp, edited by Kaisa Kangas, Jonne Arjoranta, and Ruska Kevätkoski. Helsinki, Finland: Ropecon ry.

    Cover photo: Image by Kelly on Pexels.

  • Knutepunkt 2021 Call for Papers

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    Knutepunkt 2021 Call for Papers

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    Knutepunkt 2021, the 2021 edition of the Nordic larp conference, has released a call for papers! The theme for the conference is “Where the magic happens” and this is of course reflected in the conference companion book:

    Why do we return to the magic circle of larp again and again? How do we transmute our experiences from the celestial to the mundane? What can larp do for us that the outside world can not? Is the act of larping a way to step into the mythical realm? What do we see when we gaze into the mirror as someone else?

    The deadline for article pitches is 10 July 2020. You can read more on the Knutepunkt 2021 website:
    https://www.knutepunkt.org/book

  • Wyrding the Self

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    Wyrding the Self

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    You’re weird.

    This common childhood insult comes in many languages and forms. The gist being that if you are not like the other children, and you do not fit in, then there must be something wrong with you. To be weird, is to be outside of what was expected of you. This may be something you are familiar with. The outsider is something we, as a collective part of humanity, have always tried to deal with. The notion that we are weird, and therefore somehow outside of society, and unwanted, is strong. If you do not fit in, then you must be fixed. This can be especially strong in collectivist cultures, where being outside the norm may even be considered selfish.

    However, what if the concept of weird, was not bad at all? What if the act of being weird, was actually a powerful and radical act of controlling one’s destiny? In this article, we will learn how to wyrd the self, that is, we will learn how to use basic tools to decolonize((Colonization is when a dominant group or system takes over culture and society from other groups. This may involve taking land, physical and mental violence, systemic injustice, and forcing people to only follow the colonizer’s way of life. When one decolonizes something, they are trying to undo the long lasting harm colonization has done. In this article, we are attempting to decolonize ourselves by rejecting a mythical norm. In this meaning decolonize means that we will learn how to press the proverbial restart button. What if we could be the being we truly want to be without the confines of society’s rigid interpretation of who we must be?)) the body and search for liberation from internalized oppression using navigational play. In simple terms, by learning to steer for liberation, and to engage in deep reflection after a larp, we may end up finding a version of ourselves who we want to be, rather than who society tells us we must be. This article is a condensed and rewritten take on my Master’s Degree thesis, Playing to Create Ourselves: Exploring Larp and Visual Autoethnographic Practice as a Tool of Self Liberation for Marginalized Identities (Kemper 2018).

    What is Wyrding?

    The word weird has its root in the Anglo Saxon word, wyrd, which roughly boils down to the action of controlling one’s fate. To be weird, is to control one’s fate, rather than let society determine your place and fate. To be weird, is to be outside the normal aspects of society, yes, but to also collectively decide who you would like to be, not based on societal pressure. It is my belief that larp affords us the actual ability to wyrd ourselves, that is to shape ourselves and our conceptions of self through play. In her book, The Functions of Role-Playing Games (2010), scholar Sarah Lynne Bowman speaks about role-playing’s ability to allow players to alter parts of their identity by trying on different acts of self hood:

    Perhaps the most fascinating aspect of the process of role-playing lies in the ability to shift personality characteristics within the parameters of the game environment. Games and scenarios allow participants the opportunity to ”try on different hats” of selfhood, experimenting with the adoption of personality characteristics that either amplify or contradict aspects of their primary identities.

    Bowman 2010, 127

    What this essentially means is that when we role-play, we can completely shift who we are to fit the game. Each game allows us as players to explore the selves we could never be, or that we might have been, depending on how close to home we are playing. Larp then becomes a dressing room where we experiment with different selves that we can try on or take off as it suits us, and it is within this space we might find some of the characteristics we have always wanted to exhibit, but we have been closed off or discouraged from being. A large man may be allowed to be seen as soft and tearful, a woman of color may be able to be seen as smart without someone believing it is unbelievable, and someone who feels outside of the realm of attractiveness may be seen as a sex symbol. When you begin to alter yourself through this type of investigation and play it is taking fate into your own hands.

    When one does wyrd the self, they seek out emancipatory bleed, steer for liberation, and investigate themselves through the lens of play. What follows below, is a practical tool for using larp as an investigation tool, integrating those discoveries into your life, and a suggestion for the ethics of doing so.

    The Mythical Norm, Internalized Oppression, and Internalized Bias

    Before we go further, it is important to understand the concept of marginalized is larger than we have come to believe, and that these tools and theories are here to liberate all peoples, regardless of their station in life. While the word ‘marginalized’ may be commonly used to describe those populations who are often at the risk of the most oppression, it is important to understand that most people are both the oppressed and the oppressor. It is an uncomfortable thought to sit with, as it makes you aware that no matter how oppressed you may be, you still have the power to oppress others. Even people who face an extreme set of marginalizations (people of color/racialized populations and gender and sexual minorities) can still have the ability to oppress others.

    This can be best summed up by Brazilian educational theorist Paulo Friere, who explained what he believed the true goal of liberation in his book, Pedagogy of the Oppressed. Frieire writes:

    This, then, is the great humanistic and historical task of the oppressed: to liberate themselves and their oppressors as well. The oppressors, who oppress, exploit, and rape by virtue of their power, cannot find in this power the strength to liberate either the oppressed or themselves. Only power that springs from the weakness of the oppressed will be sufficiently strong to free both.

    Freire 1968/2014, 541

    Freire is saying that even though oppressors may do things that oppress others, they themselves are stuck in the same destructive cycles, and the only way to break them is to notice that we are all stuck inside of them. For example: A person who belongs in an ethnic minority may still have English as a first language, and can then take space of those who do not speak the language fluently. At home, this player is routinely oppressed by their government and culture. However, they are a native English speaker, and never have to worry about conveying what they want to say in a larp. The player realizes this, and attempts to remember this while playing, which leads them to being far more egalitarian in play. They must notice their behavior, and seek to change themselves.

    By freeing yourself, you free your oppressor and encourage them to break their social binding roles. Wyrding the self, is grounded in an intersectional theory of self, and so must sit with our messy definitions and recognitions of oppression. This tool is just as easy to use and accessible to a white, European, cis-gendered, hetreosexual man. Why? It is because it is my belief that society oppresses all individuals in ways that may be unseen, and if we want liberation, then we must also liberate those who oppress us because they are oppressed just like us, through the mythical norm.

    The concept of the mythical norm comes from intersectional theorist and poet, Audre Lorde, who defines it in her essay, “Age, Race, Class and Sex” when she states:

    Somewhere on the edge of consciousness, there is something I call the mythical norm. Which each one of in our hearts knows, “that is not me”. In America this norm is usually defined as white, thin, male, young, heterosexual, christian, and financially secure. It is within this norm that the trappings of power reside in this society.

    Lorde 2015, 116

    Identities like Western European, English speaking, cisgender, able bodied, and neurotypical are all things commonly seen as the mythical norm. In each of our societies, the norm goes even further, oppressing more and more people, and setting up those people to oppress others.

    Our primary identity is constructed and shaped by our culture and the mythic norm. When one lies outside that norm, they find that their primary identity is complex and intersectional. Sometimes you do not even need an outside oppressor to harm you, as your own thoughts and feelings can hold you back. You believe you cannot do something because you are not “the type” to do it. This is called internalized oppression. For example, if you do not go in for the sexy Goddess role because you believe you are too fat, and no one can believe a fat goddess, this is internalized oppression. Similarly, if you do not go for a leadership role because you think your English is not as good as others, and you’re worried no one will listen to you.

    With internalized oppression, we only see ourselves as not normal, as the other outside of the mythic norm, and we uphold that unconsciously. By continuing to stay in these roles, we uplift the very oppression that can pull us down.

    In addition to internalized oppression, we have internalized biases that stop us from playing as fully, and impacts our co-players as we are engaging in their oppression. Here are some examples: A woman who is playing a leader is never listened to by her war council, despite being cast as the most knowledgeable warrior who they are supposed to listen to. Someone in their 60s is considered too unattractive to be seductive, despite the fact that their character is seductive.

    If we hold ourselves captive to these internalized myths of who we can never be, how then do we break it? We can do this through consciously telling our own stories and creating our own selves. With larp, you have the power to live your own stories and put them to action in your body. In larp, we find yet another realization that stories have the power to liberate.

    Emancipatory bleed (Kemper 2016) is the feeling of liberation that comes from being able to fight back against or succeed against a systematic oppression, or allows you to notice those things that have held you back. For example, when a male player who was routinely bullied as a child for being emotional, plays a character who has the ability to freely share that emotion without being bullied for it. Or when a player notices that they are no longer afraid of speaking their mind at the office, or taking up space in public, after playing a person in charge at a larp.

    Capturing Story, Narrative, and Plot

    How can we capture what has happened during a larp? According to larp theorist Johanna Koljonen (2008), when a larp is over, it ceases to exist, and it is hard to pin down the narrative. In order to understand the importance of stories and narratives in relation to wyrding the self, we will be using the definition of story, plot, and narrative as defined by designer and scholar Simon Brind (2016). His definition of stories and narratives allows you to see how the fluidity and temporality of larp as well as how you may progress through it. Plot is the larpwrights plan for what is going to happen in the larp, Story is what is actually happening during runtime, and narrative is the events that have taken place and described after the fact.

    A larp follows an overall plot conceit (i.e. we are all in a forest in a magical land, we are all at wizard school, we are all at the dinner table) and then the players take the designer’s plot and structure, and turn it into a co-created story, which is ephemeral in nature, and becomes the narrative when it is all done.

    Since the narrative of the larp is only decided after the larp has taken place, it is fairly personal to each player. Therefore, each instance of play is a fleeting moment in time which can never be recreated exactly. The narrative of the larp lies in the mind of each player, and that narrative becomes their embodied experience. The story you create with your co-players evolves moment to moment with player interactions and choices, each person bringing themselves and the fiction to life. While the larpwrights may have ideas about how a larp ends, it is generally up to you as a player to get there, even if the larp ends in a specific conceit.

    How can we contextualize our own experiences if they are hard to document and the narrative is not created until after everything has happened? You will need a set of reflexive tools to help you remember and contextualize your experience, and since the co-creation of the story ends up in many individual narratives, I believe that larp experience can be best suited to be investigated from the personal, which is why we use autoethnographic techniques.

    We know that the narrative of a larp is not the plot of the larp, nor is it the story. The story is what happens during the larp, and the narrative we can investigate is not apparent until the end. This means you must create a record of your stages of play and actions as a character. This is something you may already do after many games. You may write up what happened to you during the game, or give your character’s story an epilogue. This is often bundled into a narrative write up, which can then serve as an autoethnographic set of data we can investigate. A visual ethnography is a study of a people done in media, namely photographs, ephemera, and videos, and autoethnography is a self-study of a group you may be in. These two combined approaches may help you to explore your experiences.

    A visual autoethnography allows you to capture as much of your experience as possible, like ephemera and narrative epilogues or write ups, and then use those to reflect on who you played. You may already be taking pictures and documenting your ephemera, and you may even practice reflexive writing every time you share narratives of your game.

    When we write reflexively, we do not just look inside the magic circle with this approach, we look inside ourselves, inside the character, and inside the greater world. This reflexivity is what gives us the ability to see into ourselves. Social scientists, Tony Adams, Stacey Jones, and Carolyn Ellis (2014, 103) define reflexivity in Autoethnography Understanding Qualitative Research, “Reflexivity includes both acknowledging and critiquing our place and privilege in society and using the stories we tell to break long-held silences on power, relationships, cultural taboos, and forgotten and/or suppressed experiences.” By allowing ourselves to pin down the narrative and then look at it and compare it to our lives, we can potentially see where our fantasies lie within our realities.

    Navigational Play

    When we choose to wyrd the self, what we are actually doing is engaging in something I have termed, navigational play (Kemper 2018). The main purpose of navigational play is to try and see yourself outside the bounds of the mythic norm. Instead of constantly inhabiting your own oppressive world, you can use a self-exploratory, liberatory play style, that allows you to feel free of or investigate a particular marginalization. Navigational play is the act of steering yourself during the full process of a larp, to seek emancipatory bleed and consists of two components, steering for liberation and reflective writing.

    When you steer, you are making in-character decisions based on out of game reasons (Montola, Stenros, & Saitta 2015), and thus steering for liberation is the act of seeking liberatory experiences through steering. Reflective writing is the act of looking at and writing about how your experiences relate to fictional situations, in our case, our larp experiences. In order for us to reflect on our narrative, we have to remember what our larp experience was. Using ephemera, pre larp writing activities, and creating a narrative write up, will create an artifact that we can then explore reflexively.

    In order to steer for liberation and create an artifact we can then look at reflexively, we have to investigate what we want and need from the larp. By investigating your character and self, at various points of the larp stages you can identify similar oppressions and desires between the character and self. In the next section, we will explore ways to invoke pre-bleed, create ephemera, involve others such as co-players and organizers, as well as touch upon how to take field notes during a larp so you may write reflexively. Chart 1 roughly explains how each step may be achieved during various stages of a larp.

    Pre-Larp During Larp Post Larp
    Explore Character If characters are pre-written, and not created by you, attempt to find and ask for casting in relations to the themes of the larp you would like to explore. Look at alibi. What will the larp allow you to do that you otherwise cannot in the real world?Explore relationships the character has to others. What are the similarities and differences?

    How does this character connect to you? Think about their name and history, what can you add to it to make it personal? How are they different? Which of the larp’s themes feel most important to play on? Are there parts of yourself that you would like to think about and bring into play? Are there themes you would like to play on that the larp and the character explores?

    Investigate the character. Which proverbs, virtues and values, rituals, mentors, and artifacts mean the most to you? To them? What if anything is in common or dissimilar to your lived experience? To your latent or obvious fantasies? Visualize the self.

    		 What feels interesting to the character in the play space? Who would they be drawn to throughout their story? What rituals, social mores etc. are they seeking to break, embrace, or understand? What in the end were the similarities and differences to you and the character?Using your narrative write up, or field notes re-investigate the character and their narrative. Compare and contrast which proverbs, virtues and values, rituals, mentors, and artifacts mean the most to you after play.

    What means the most to the character?

    What if anything is in common or dissimilar to your lived experience?

    To your latent or obvious fantasies? Visualize the narrative self and the personal.
    Identify Themes and Exploration Identify similar themes and oppressions between the character and yourself if they are prewritten. If the character is self-written identify themes you may want to explore now that you have alibi.If the character is pre-written and feels unplayable ask for a new casting or write changes and ask for them to be implanted within reason.

    Asking that your character bring in their ethnic heritage in a larp about going to a barbecue is reasonable, asking your character to be changed to a Martian in a game about the Crusades is not. To break the fiction premise radically when that will harm others’ games can throw off other players who are seeking to explore their own oppression or simply play. This would be a critical breach of ingroup social mores and unethical.

    		 Steer for optimal play experience of the themes chosen. Notice any behaviors you are replicating for better or worse. Notice who you gravitate towards. Steer for relationships and situations you have the alibi for. Look for situations that uphold narrative cohesion and satisfy your steering goals. Attempt fearlessness. Attempt exploration. Remember Alibi.If you are engaging in oppression play, be aware of intersecting identities and that oppression does not occur in a vacuum. Respect safety mechanisms. Go through your write up and look for replicated behaviors that tie into your personal life. Evaluate your steering in comparison to what you looked for. What stopped you? What encouraged you?What relationships did you gravitate towards? What roles did you enact that either broke or upheld the oppressive behaviors you sought to dismiss? What roles or people did you gravitate towards in order to feel liberation?

    Were there mentors?

    Did anything unusual happen that you weren’t prepared for? Did you stop yourself from doing something you wanted, or engaged in behavior that you don’t enjoy?
    Writing/Recording Flesh out Character through fiction or poetry writing. If this is not possible, ask yourself questions about your character. Where are they from, what do they like? Seek to make them as whole as possible.If possible, explore co-writing with established relationships in the larp.

    Take pictures of your costume choices, create a Pinterest board, or organize thoughts and feelings with music or art.

    		 Take notes during the larp or shortly thereafter. Diegetic notes and diaries are preferable. Write or draw ephemera as much as you can. Save notes.If allowed, take photos of spaces and people that mean things to your character.

    Gain informed consent from the larp runners and other participants.

    		 Create a narrative write up that focuses and centers your player experience in character. When you are ready to investigate the larp from your personal non-character point of view, attempt to find common themes in how you played. Look for moments that felt particularly poignant. Instead of trying to capture the entire larp, seek to capture what was most important to the character in the moment.Write the narrative write up in any creative format that makes you feel the most comfortable. Use annotations and footnotes to add in self reflections.
    Ephemera Using the character concept, design and think about the costuming, props, notes, and other things that may be important to your character. If the larp is short and you cannot create props consider creating in-game ephemera. If you are playing close to home, explore using personal objects to immerse yourself. Pictures of family and friends, your own wardrobe, etc. Take photos, write letters, create props, collect important objects that are useful for your character and provoke a sense of missing. Ephemera created during the story period often has significant meanings. Take photos of all of the ephemera collected. Sort through character portraits and other in game ephemera. What ephemeral artifacts can you explore?Save official game documents given to you by the organizer. How did the structure of the larp help? Hinder? What does the ephemera mean to the character? Are there similarities between the ephemera you collected at the player and you collected as the character?

    Identifying Oppressions and Desires

    The first part of liberatory steering, is to think of what you want to accomplish or explore within the magic circle of the larp’s plot. Not every larp is useful for exploring yourself in this way, and you can save yourself a lot of trouble by looking at playstyle, length of time, tone, and overall larp culture. A larp that allows you to play a role that can challenge your perceptions of yourself and the world, is a good candidate, as is one where the larp culture allows you to make more choices about what happens to your character. You should avoid forcing yourself to play on themes that deeply distress you, are not in the spirit or theme of the larp, and would affect the play of your co-players to the detriment of the game.

    For example: A player has two options of larps. One is a larp about an unequal society that murders lower class people, and the coming revolution. The other is a larp about wealthy nobles and their servants in 1918. The player who is from a lower class background, would like to experience what it would be like to successfully rebel against the upper class, so they choose the first larp as it would provide more opportunity to rebel and succeed than the larp in which most of their play is in subservience to others.

    If the characters are prewritten, you can try to select a character that may allow you to achieve your desires by applying for characters, groups, or requesting certain themes be written heavily into the character. If the characters are created by yourself or tailored to you, then you may ask to play around certain themes and desires in a casting questionnaire. In the former example, you may ask specifically to play a rebel because you want to explore that dynamic. Then if you are cast as such, you can seek to explore how or why you are doing so. After you identify your desires and things that may hold you back, you should then look at the relations your characters have and talk to your fellow co-players.

    Talking to Co-Players and Playing to Lift

    After casting, but before playing the larp, reaching out to co-players and actually expressing your needs and wants for the game is a challenging but necessary step. You can divulge what themes you are thinking of playing on more heavily, and ask your co-player if there are any themes they might want to play on. Asking questions of your co-players, even quickly, can help you both steer for the type of game you both would like to achieve. When you seek to share responsibility like this, you are also engaging in what designer and theorist Susanne Vejdemo (2018) calls, playing to lift. Vejdemo defines this as by saying, “Play to Lift means that the responsibility for your drama and your character also rests on all your co-players. You have to lift each other.” By talking to your co-players you can work to create a game that allows you to steer towards your desires together, and seek to help them in creating drama and interesting play that will lift them as well as yourself.

    Depending on the length of the larp, you can also go on to create connections with your co-players that can be as easy as choosing to be siblings who support each other to many pages of back stories with intricate details. This is done in larps that have or allow pre-play, which is the act of writing or engaging with players in character before the larp. This type of relationship building can lead to something called pre-bleed (Svanevik and Brind 2016), which is very useful for getting into character. Pre-bleed is usually conceived of as an activity between two or more players, but it does not necessarily require a co-player.

    Larps may set up chat groups where in character dialogue may happen, players may write stories between their connected characters that happen before the larp, and various other methods which deepen character connection.

    Here are some ways to invoke pre-bleed:

    • Writing a series of short fiction pieces with another player or a group of players that flesh out the world of the larp before the larp happens.
    • Writing a short story for yourself about your character’s relation to a key theme of the larp.
    • Creating a piece of ephemera that you will use heavily during the larp, such as a personalized handkerchief or other item.
    • Exploring the topic of the larp through research.
    • Creating a playlist of songs to listen to that reminds you of your character.
    • Creating a mood board that captures the character’s home, wants, and desires.

    Actions You Can Take Inside of the Larp

    By carefully choosing your larp based on what experiences, tone, and theme you will embody, you can set yourself up for better results. Look out for opportunities to experience things you may never get to do so in your daily life. If, for example, you never got the experience of finishing your studies, you could choose to play a high achieving and successful student in a school larp. Even if you did not overcome what stopped you from finishing in your actual courses, you may feel as if you overcame them within the larp.

    Here are some examples of actions to take during play:

    • If an action is prohibited for someone of your social rank, do it.
    • If an activity is something you wouldn’t be expected to do, do it.
    • If a style is something you have been prohibited from wearing because people like you are not allowed, wear it.
    • If your ethnicity, gender, or sexual orientation usually prohibits you from owning something, buy it.

    Creating Ephemera and Reflexive Writing

    When a larp ends, what do you have left as a participant? Perhaps some photos, your costume, a vague narrative you remember, lots of ephemera and…not much else. It is hard to be reflexive about your experience if you do not have a memory of what happened. How then, as a player can you investigate your experience after it is over? One way is by creating and writing about ephemera, things that are primarily used for a larp and typically discarded or recycled.

    Larps may produce a surprising amount of ephemera. Ephemera are generally objects that have limited use, like concert tickets, or a show program. However, within larp’s ephemeral nature, ephemera becomes a unique way to bond player to character.

    Within an autoethnography of larp participation, a player who carefully chooses, creates, documents, and uses reflection in regard to their ephemera may be able to immerse themselves deeper into their character, use ephemera in liberational steering, and document an otherwise transitory medium.

    Here are a few examples of ephemera you can keep and later investigate:

    • A letter sent to your character from another character that is important to you both.
    • A prop that your character always carried or used frequently during the larp.
    • A homework assignment, poem, or plan drawn up by your character or others.
    • Costume pieces like identifying badges, sweaters, and any other piece that firmly reminds you of an experience.
    • Photos taken in character by an in character photographer.

    After the larp is over, you can begin to look at each ephemera and write down your reactions to them and what they mean to you as the character and/or the player. This connects the character to the self. Interrogate and reflect on how the character and the self connect:

    • Why is this object important to the character or myself?
    • What do I feel when I touch it?
    • Why did I keep it?
    • Have I ever owned anything like it? Why or why not?
    • Have I continued to use it out of character?
    • Have I used it for multiple characters?
    • Where does it live when I’m not this character?

    By answering these questions you may begin to see the connections between yourself and the character. For example, perhaps you choose to explore a series of notes passed in class by your player, and realize that you were too nervous to pass notes when you were in school yourself. Passing notes made you feel daring, and you particularly enjoyed it in the larp, because you never got the opportunity to do so before.

    When you write this down, you may develop a sense of why you play the way you do, or whether you actually explored the desires and oppressions you wanted to. However, this reflexive insight must still be put in context of the narrative.

    Taking Field Notes at Larps

    For our purposes, field notes within larp are observations by players about their larp experience as it is happening and is collected into a field journal. There is no one way to write a narrative field journal, but having one if a larp allows it, can provide a valuable tool in searching for the transformation of self through immersion and examining bleed. A diegetic journal is also an ephemeral artifact that allows the player to connect to the character’s thoughts, feelings, and actions. You can use this journal to write a summation of your narrative write up, which you can then look at reflexively. Those who write them often turn their larp experience into pleasurable reading and a document of play.

    Here are some tips for taking practical field notes during larps:

    • Focus not on other’s experience, but your own. Avoid writing what you wish happened, and stay truthful to your own experience and your co-players actions.
    • Just as a character might take a diary, and note what happened, try and write what happened during the day.
    • Note who your most important relationships are, what is occurring around you, and how your character is reacting to it.
    • If you are in a short larp or are not able to write much, consider writing up your character’s feelings in a letter to yourself while the larp is still fresh.
    • Do not spend too much time trying to remember everything that has happened, but the key experiences, beliefs, issues, and rituals the character engaged in.
    • Do not stop other’s play in order to record a conversation. Feel free to go out of play to a separate space to record important moments immediately, if you fear forgetting.
    • Do not write more than you play.

    When you are done writing, you can then begin to be reflexive. Give yourself time and space before looking at what you wrote. When you are ready, use the following questions as a sample guide to begin investigating your experience while rereading:

    • Are there memories that remind you of your actual self?
    • Did you associate with characters or players that you you, yourself would or that you wished you could interact with?
    • Did you avoid people your character wouldn’t have? Why do you think so?
    • Is there something you overcame?
    • Was there something you felt stopping you from playing as you would have liked? Was it yourself? Design? Your co-players?
    • Did you notice moments of internalized bias towards yourself or others? If you did, what did you do about it?
    • Do you recognize habits that you do as yourself that you did in character?
    • Do you recognize any habits you always wished you had? Did you end up taking home any of these habits? Have you retained them?
    • Do you have any regrets about what you did or didn’t do? Why?

    Retyping your narrative in a word processor and then placing your reflective writing answers as footnotes can be particularly helpful to seeing the separation between self and character. You may begin to see clear threads about your own desires and oppressions, and notice patterns in your play style over time. This can help you choose which larps you may enjoy, and which larps you can steer away from, as well as what you may take away. For example like this:

    Field Note:
    After the battle meeting, I realized that the power I channeled during a previous ritual had been inside me all along.

    Footnote to the Field Note:
    After the larp I realized that I was more assertive at work than I normally am. I’ve been speaking up at a lot more meetings now then I used to, and I think it comes from this moment. I should really pick more larps where I have a leading role.

    Ethics

    While you should absolutely be using larp and a navigational play style in order to seek emancipatory bleed and investigate our own relationships to trauma and internalized oppressions, we cannot do this in a vacuum. Larp is a co-created medium, and while we may want to use it for our own liberation, our liberation cannot come at the cost of others. While our narratives in a larp are individual, our stories are not so easily cut off. Much like our actual lives, your co-players do play a role. Anthropologist Heewon Chang (2008) in her book Autoethnography as Method reminds us that we must be aware of the role of others in our research and outlines some practices I believe are also important when thinking of a larp autoethnography:

    Strangers can be connected to self through group membership or common experiences, if not through personal contacts. In autoethnography, self and others may be positioned in different ways. You can consider three possibilities. First, you can investigate yourself as a main character and others as supporting actors in your life story. Second, you can include others as co-participants or co-informants in your study. Third, you can study others as the primary focus, yet also as an entry to your world.

    Chang 2008, 65

    It is preferred to position yourself as the main character and your co-players as supporting characters in your own personal narrative. You must be aware though, that your narrative in no way is the only narrative of the larp, and even your closest co-player may have had a radically different experience. We must consider how we involve our co-players in the practice of our write ups and our play. We must take care to not misrepresent them, even though it may make for better fiction. The goal is liberation for yourself, not at the expense of others. In the cases of autoethnographies that are published for ingroup pleasure as well ones published for player-researcher means, I argue the following two approaches based on Chang’s above suggestions:

    First, focus only about your character’s experience of the world, making sure to keep all of your co-players anonymous as possible. In this way, you center your own experience over others’ in the write up, but not in play. In play, you should strive to be as generous as you would if you were not steering for emancipatory bleed. Your liberation should not come at the expense of others’ play.

    2. Involve your co-players in the writing and steering process. Making a collaborative larp autoethnography would be an excellent way to involve all of your players and help each other to dissect facets of the character you might have missed. Imagine if an entire faction took turns writing mission reports that served as a diary for that group during game.

    We must never put our liberation over co-player’s experience, and that means we must not steer ourselves in the play space to disrupt a larp when it would negatively impact others who may play. We must take into context the ethics of consequence (Etherington 2007) and the benefit of self. If you are writing something solely for your own discovery, this is less cumbersome as no one else outside of the group will see or read it. If, however, you chose to use it in your own research, then you must practice process consent (Ellis 2007) namely, you must check in with those who you have played and who appear in the work to see if they are still willing to take part. If the answer is no, then you must keep your narrative to the ingroup community or to yourself.

    An autoethnography that is kept purely for the discovery of self and never shared is still as valuable as anything that may be published. It is the act of reflection, not the publishing where liberation lies. Here are some things you can do with a finished autoethnographic larp write up:

    • You can share it with your co-players.
    • You can look over it with a trained mental health professional.
    • You can keep it for yourself, and reread it comparing it to other write ups and finding clear patterns in how and why you play the way you do.

    Conclusion

    Wyrding the self is the sustained effort to decolonize your body from the mythical norm, and begin the process of identity alteration. This alteration can be a direct result of experiencing emancipatory bleed that you may be able to achieve through navigational play which involves the acts of reflexive writing and steering for liberation.

    The ability to wyrd the self lies in a player’s desire to do the reflective work that is necessary for decolonization. It is not easy, and requires pre-planning and commitment to co-create narratives collectively with your co-players while seeking liberation. While this tool has been created with those who face systematic marginalization in mind, the ability to investigate how you played the larp, and it’s relation to your own life has been immensely helpful to larpers who are interested in playing for transformative purposes. Recording your actions during a larp, transcribing it, and then investigating your play by comparing it to some of the questions you may ask yourself, can allow you to see internalized biases or oppressions that can hold you back in your day to day life. As long as you do not push your narrative and experience to be more important than your co-players, I believe this too can be used to see and cultivate a community of transformative larp practice. When you seek to wyrd the self, you create a more resilient self by seeing yourself as truly want to be, not what you have been molded to be by a mythical norm.

    Bibliography

    Simon Brind (2017): Response to Ian Andrews. Knutpunkt. Once Upon a Nordic Larp: Twenty Years of Playing Stories, edited by Martine Svanevik et al.

    Sarah Lynne Bowman (2010): The Functions of Role-playing Games: How Participants Create Community, Solve Problems, and Explore Identity. Jefferson: McFarland.

    Heewon Chang (2016): Autoethnography as Method. Routledge.

    Paulo Freire (1968/2014): Pedagogy of the Oppressed: 30th Anniversary Edition. Bloomsbury Publishing.

    Jonaya Kemper (2017): The Battle of Primrose Park: Playing for Emancipatory Bleed in Fortune & Felicity, Nordic Larp, 21 June 2017.

    Jonaya Kemper (2018): Playing to Create Ourselves: Exploring Larp and Visual Autoethnographic Practice as a Tool of Self Liberation for Marginalized Identities (Unpublished Master’s Thesis). New York University, Gallatin Graduate School.

    Johanna Koljonen (2008): The Dragon Was the Least of It: Dragonbane and LARP as Ephemera and Ruin. Ropecon ry. Montola & Stenros (eds): Playground Worlds: Creating and Evaluating Experiences of Role-Playing Games.

    Linn, Holman Jones Stacy, et al. (2016): Handbook of Autoethnography. Routledge, Taylor & Francis Group.

    Audre Lorde (2015): Sister Outsider: Essays and Speeches. Crossing Press

    Markus Montola, Jaakko Stenros, & Eleanor Saitta (2015): The Art of Steering: Bringing the Player and the Character Back Together. Rollespilsakademiet. The Knudepunkt 2015 Companion Book, edited by Claus Raasted and Charles Bo Nielsen.

    Martine Svanevik, and Simon Brind (2016): Pre-Bleed Is Totally a Thing. Ropecon Ry. Larp Realia – Analysis, Design, and Discussions of Nordic Larp.

    Susanne Vejdemo (2018): Play to Lift, Not Just to Lose Nordic Larp, 21 Feb. 2018

  • Know Yourself

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    Know Yourself

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    When I started larping in the 90’s, I remember we had an ideal for a good player: the one who was able to play any character, take on any role. A king or a beggar, the good larper was able to stretch themselves into any shape and the player behind the character faded into invisibility.

    As I’ve grown older and played more, I’ve come to understand the limits of this ideal. Sure, it’s probably good for any larper to try new things and play characters they have never tried before. However, personal aptitude, taste and desire play an important part in what works in a larp and what doesn’t.

    This way, self-knowledge becomes part of the skill of being a larper. Once you understand what you can and can’t do, want and don’t want to do, it becomes easier to have good larp experiences and to co-create them with others.

    Some realizations are extremely obvious, yet also hard to do anything about. I have severe dietary restrictions caused by illness. I know them very well but that knowledge only helps me if the organizers of the larp are willing to accommodate my issues. If not, no amount of self-knowledge will help me play that larp.

    Personally, the greatest insights for me have been subtle: There are themes and relationships, types of scenes and modes of interaction, that work well and less well for me.

    I interviewed other larpers to get different perspectives on self-understanding for this article. Most of them are from the Nordics. Some are my friends while others are larp acquaintances.

    Positive Self-Knowledge

    Let’s start with the positives: What works? What do I want to do? What kind of things do I want to enjoy and explore? Self-knowledge of this type allows us to direct our larp towards good, interesting and new experiences.

    One interviewee said: ”My upbringing, education and current job involve a lot of controlling my own presentation. I fulfill my need for acting impulsively and thoughtlessly through larp characters.”

    Larp offers a safe environment for acting out many characteristics that are not desirable in a person’s everyday or work life. The fictional framework of a larp can provide alibi for personal emotional fulfillment of a subtle kind that is not necessarily obvious to other players.

    Another respondent said that they’d unexpectedly learned to enjoy: ”…wrestling, falling and fighting that isn’t with latex weapons or nerfs. I am not a fighter, I don’t do martial arts, but the physicality of brawling, being dragged on the floor or getting hit by hard projectiles is quite enjoyable.”

    It’s not always obvious what proves to be enjoyable until you try it out. Larp presents an environment for us to try out all kinds of things to see what works for us. These lessons can then be taken into future larps, and sometimes to real life.

    Self-knowledge also helps to understand what you’re good at. It’s fun to do something very well, to show off. We see it in particular in how players find a creative outlet in larp. Then again, sometimes you specifically don’t want to do things you’re good at in a larp. Many people have professional skills they use constantly in their day-to-day lives, and thus don’t want to take into a larp for fear of making it feel too much like work.

    One interviewee said that they once unintentionally created a character with all the characteristics both of themselves and their ADHD, while coincidentally also going through the medical diagnostic process. ”It has been very therapeutic for me. The change is that I got a lot more compassion for myself, and also this character is being loved and cared for, even though it is full of all the faults I hate in myself.”

    Developing Self-Knowledge

    It’s easy! The only thing you have to do is to larp for a decade or two and reflect on your experiences. That’s what I did.

    Fortunately, most can learn a little faster than that. Still, practical experimentation and trying out new things are great methods for acquiring self-understanding. In my experience, one of the most common things you hear from first-time larpers is: ”I didn’t expect it to feel like that!”

    For the purposes of developing understanding, experience needs to be paired with reflection and analysis. One respondent said: ”In larps where my character experiences disappointment, failure, being set aside or being put down my first reaction is often withdrawal, cynicism and blaming myself. After reflecting on this, I realized it was because when I was young, this kind of behaviour got me sympathy, but it has also contributed to my depression. Realizing how this worked made it easier for me to develop my larping in another direction.”

    The same interviewee continued: ”Often when I larp, my first impulses feel immersive but later I realize they are very much about myself and what I need at that point in my life. Sometimes that leads to repeating my own stereotypes. Nowadays, I consciously avoid certain themes and plan my character’s reactions in advance to avoid accidentally falling back into an old, unsuitable role. Sometimes I also do this during the larp, for example going to the bathroom to be by myself for a few minutes and consider the emotional impact of various choices.”

    Taking time in the middle of larp to consider what you’re doing and how you’re playing is particularly useful. I recognize the experience: when I improvise in the heat of the moment, I make choices that feel spontaneous but are actually just repeating old patterns. Taking a bit of time helps to move beyond those.

    Failures

    What happens when self-knowledge fails? I’ve had a few experiences in my larp career where I’ve thought a type of game content was okay for me, and it wasn’t. I’ve gone to larps that didn’t work for me, which I could have seen in advance if I had applied my hard-won understanding of myself.

    In larping, we want to push our boundaries and learn to enjoy new things. Very often we also do learn, but sometimes it’s through failure.

    Failures from lack of self-understanding can happen when you purposely do something you’re not sure will work for you. These are the honorable failures. We want to expand what we’re capable of. Sometimes that works and sometimes it doesn’t. Either way we learned something about ourselves.

    For myself, the really dumb failures are when I should know something will not work for me, but I do it anyway, and it doesn’t work. The cases where I think: ”Maybe this time the sleep deprivation will be okay!”

    It will never be okay.

    These types of failure modes are very personal. We each have our own things that just don’t work for us, no matter what.

    Understanding only helps if it leads to active, good choices.

    Boundaries

    A lot of the discussion about safety and calibration in larp is about the setting of personal boundaries. However, for a player to be able to set boundaries, they have to know what those boundaries are. This often requires experience and understanding of the self. This is why self-knowledge goes so well with consent and calibration mechanics that allow for realigning boundaries on the fly.

    An example of a calibration tool that worked very well for this purpose was the ribbon system in use in the Spanish larp Conscience. Based on the TV series Westworld, the larp featured heavy themes of violence and abuse. To allow players to direct their play in a desired direction, everyone had two ribbons, a white and red one. The white ribbon denoted physical violence, the red one sexual violence.

    If you had the white ribbon on, it meant you could be shoved, grabbed and otherwise subjected to light use of force. If you had the red ribbon on, you could be approached for the purposes of scenes involving sexual violence. These scenes would then be negotiated further with other calibration tools.

    I started the larp with both ribbons on. I ended up removing the white one for a very banal reason: I jinxed my back during the first night. I was okay standing and walking but anything more complicated hurt like hell. I remember agonizing over the situation and then suddenly realizing that I had just the right calibration tool for the occasion. Taking off the white ribbon meant I wouldn’t be subjected to force and could play without the danger of pain.

    Other players used the ribbons for more complex reasons. A player took off the red ribbon after playing one or two scenes involving sexual violence. Not because those scenes had gone wrong, but because the player was exhausted with the subject matter and wanted to explore other aspects of the larp.

    To me, this was a great example of self-knowledge in action. The players who took off the red ribbon correctly assessed where their limits were and acted preemptively to direct their experience in a desirable direction.

    I’ve found new boundaries during larp, and conversely, realized that my limits were more rigid than I thought they were. In these situations, it pays to be able to make these kinds of judgments in the heat of the moment. This type of situational consent requires taking responsibility for your own experience, and seeking to actively steer it in a desired direction.

    Unfortunately, pushing your limits in the heat of the moment doesn’t always work. For me, the worst failures have been related to sex scenes when I thought that I could ignore my original limits. Once I’ve done so, I’ve realized that my original intuition had been correct.

    Setting boundaries is thus a player skill that is strongly related to self-knowledge. Once you know where your limits are, you can figure out how to make sure they are not crossed.

    One respondent offered an example of a nuanced handling of boundaries: ”After being offered a pre-negotiated scene in a campaign I realized I would be so uncomfortable playing it that I declined, and the scene was modified to become more suitable for me. My character would have been solely responsible for our small post-apocalyptic community being revealed to a group of possible enemies, due to her negligence and selfishness with a radio transmitter.

    While mentally preparing for the scene before the game I started to get very nervous about my character getting all the blame, up to my heart hammering and my hands shaking. I realized that my personal fear of failure (and being forced to admit it to everyone) was really messing me up, and I wouldn’t enjoy the ensuing events in the game. Bringing this up with the group, we agreed that the blame would be shared and my character’s involvement toned down. In the end all turned out well and I was glad I’d spoken up about my preferences.”

    Often when we talk about personal boundaries, it’s about sex and violence. However, it’s important to remember that there’s a wide variety of different subjects that can prove so difcult they make the larp unplayable for a participant. In this case, the issue is the emotional landscape around failure and blame.

    Stress

    I’ve had two burnouts. While truly miserable experiences that caused lasting damage, they did provide the benefit of teaching me something about my own limits when it comes to stress. This relates to all aspects of life, including larp as a hobby. From the perspective of stress management, it’s good to have a very wide view of larp. Instead of focusing on the event itself, we can look at larp as part of everyday life. Signing up for larps. Getting rejected. Costume panic. Uncertainty over what will happen at the larp. Post-game weirdness stemming from handling difcult emotions. Together, they create a tapestry of stress that can affect how you interact with larp.

    If I think about what larp-related things I’ve learned cause stress for myself, they include uncertainty about what I’ll be doing at the larp, uncertainty about sleeping arrangements, and peer pressure to start preparing and communicating with other players too early. To deal with these issues, I sign up to larps that work for me and have instituted rules for myself about only starting to prepare once the larp is relatively close.

    Other people have other issues that cause them stress. Once such factors are identified, they can be managed and avoided, leading to a more positive relationship with larp as a hobby.

    One respondent said: ”I’ve gotten more selective about the larps I attend. I’m a pretty high-energy player, and as I’ve gotten older, I’ve been more explicit about the cost-benefit calculus of expending that much energy. It’s not that I only attend expensive larps or blockbusters now — it’s more the system and the people playing it I select for. Some systems just aren’t my cup of tea (even if my friends are playing them), and some people take my energy without giving much back.”

    This also leads to a wider discussion about how larps can be run and designed so as to avoid common causes of player stress, but that’s beyond the scope of this article.

    The Right Larp

    Probably the most obvious use for understanding yourself as a larper is to choose the right larp. There are plenty of larps that are cool, wonderful and very well made yet I would have a bad time if I participated in them. Not every larp is for everyone and it requires self-knowledge to understand what works and what doesn’t.

    We are blessed with a large variety of different larps. Small and big, local and international, Nordic and non-Nordic, plot-based and sandboxy, serious and silly. Even the most versatile larper in the world won’t be equally comfortable in all of them. Like with all self-knowledge, understanding what works accumulates with experience.

    One interviewee said: ”I really, really hate larp mornings. I hate roleplaying on an empty stomach, I hate putting on a costume in an in-character environment, or in cramped and crowded areas. If a larp description includes waking up in character, now I just don’t sign up.”

    Antipathy to in-character mornings in larp is a pretty specific attitude. It demonstrates the kind of specific understanding of one’s own preferences that allows for selection of larps where play goes smoothly.

    The same respondent continued: ”I like short, scripted larps better than long, sandbox larps. Even if a longer game looks super cool, I will probably lose steam at some point, get bored or discouraged, and it will make the whole experience, the trip and the time investment not really worth it. It’s a challenge to find larps that match my requirements because I like kickass sites and 360° aesthetics, but I’ll take short and intense any time over long and diluted.”

    This preference is also rooted in experience and understanding of how the larper functions in a larp. They know how their energy lasts and tailor their preferences to that reality.

    Personally, I’ve learned that I can’t deal with sleep deprivation. I need energy to larp effectively and I don’t have it if I haven’t slept. Because of this, I avoid larps featuring such elements. That doesn’t mean that they wouldn’t be great experiences for other players with sturdier constitutions than what I have, or who enjoy pushing their physical limits.

    When the Finnish scifi larp Odysseus was announced, I decided that I wouldn’t sign up because I understood the larp would run around the clock. Then later the hype got so strong, I put my name on the waiting list. I didn’t get in and in retrospect that was good. When people came out of the larp I heard stories of many great experiences but it was clear it wouldn’t have been for me despite my momentary wavering.

    Hype is the enemy of admitting to yourself that the larp is not for you. If everyone is going to the larp, maybe you should sign up too? Even if your instincts are telling you that it’s not the right choice. That’s why the right moment for self-reflection is often when the hype is at its strongest.

    Implementing Self-Knowledge

    You have achieved a perfect understanding of yourself as a larper. What’s next?

    In ideal circumstances, you’d be able to leverage this knowledge to find the right larps for yourself and play them in a way that works for you. Sometimes this is possible.

    Often the circumstances are not ideal. Maybe the perfect larp experience that has been revealed through a process of introspection simply doesn’t exist, or is out of your price range. Perhaps it’s not available where you live. Sometimes the larp is worth compromising for, and other times it’s better to stay home.

    In a recent larp I played, there was an offgame break in the middle with the players given the opportunity to each say what they needed to make their game better. In this way, asking for help from others was baked into the design of the larp. Larp is a collaborative endeavor and it makes sense to work together to make it work for each of us.

    The issues that prevent you from having good larp experiences might not be personal but systemic. A classic example is the lack of interesting female characters. Self-knowledge can tell you that the reason larp doesn’t work for you is a lack of characters you want to play, but getting those characters is not a matter of personal choice. It requires systemic change.

    In this way, the navel-gazing of self-knowledge becomes something that can have a positive effect not only on your own larp experience, but the whole community.

    Playing Any Character

    Personally, my understanding of myself as a larper has changed and kept changing. The community ideals I shared when I started out proved to be unrealistic. I couldn’t play every character and I didn’t enjoy the attempt.

    At the same time, the process of self-discovery has also led me to new subject matter. I’ve tried new experiences and found that they work for me. In this way, self-discovery has both defined and expanded my horizons as a larper.

    For me, the most educational moments have often been failures. I thought something would work out a certain way and it didn’t. While this has been painful and sometimes embarrassing, it’s also helped me further triangulate on what works.

    Only you can truly know what works for you and acquiring that knowledge can be a lifelong process.

  • Emotions as Skilled Work

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    Emotions as Skilled Work

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    Larps are played for many reasons, but emotional experiences show up time and again as part of the pay-off. This makes the skills related to creating, shaping, managing and enjoying those emotional experiences crucial for taking part in larp as a hobby and as an artistic pursuit. These skills may be especially valuable or desirable in Nordic larp, as the Nordic larp tradition emphasizes emotionally impactful or emotionally complex experiences.

    Emotion work or emotional labor is also an important part of connecting and relating to others, and it connects to our intimate selves. As Arlie Russell Hochschild (1983) has argued, the commercialization of this work as the emotional labor expected of, say, flight attendants and bill collectors is worth studying for this reason: carrying out such work enacts a price that can be devalued and hidden away.

    In larp, we participate in very similar activities as those expected in commercialized emotional labor, but the context can make all the difference. In a larp context, the same activities are usually voluntarily chosen by participants, experienced as rewarding both for personal reasons and for their relational and community-supporting value. However, even voluntary work may turn out to be onerous or burdensome at times, and the risks might be particularly high if our expectations of who will carry out this work are constructed in divisive and discriminatory ways.

    This paper is focused on the social and cultural aspects of emotion work and on our understanding of the skills involved, rather than on the psychological impact emotion work may have. I first examine briefly what kinds of emotion work can take place in larp during runtime; then I introduce the key findings from Hochschild’s classic research and recast the emotion work in larp within that context as emotional regulation. Based on this, I examine the social and cultural expectations around emotional regulation in larp, and consider how the non-commercial nature of many larp cultures affects its pay-offs and costs. Finally, I will discuss emotion regulation in larp in the context of Hochschild’s “feeling rules” and highlight how those feeling rules are navigated in the Nordic larp tradition. I conclude by recapping and honing the key argument of this paper: that emotion work is an indispensable part of larp and that skilled labor in doing it is simultaneously valorized but also unseen.

    Emotional Regulation in Larp

    Emotional regulation is a key part of the mainstream way of engaging in Nordic larp (see e.g., Stenros and MacDonald 2020, in this volume). Emotional regulation is what allows the participants to create, enhance and experience desired emotional states, as well as suppress or downplay undesired ones.

    Marras is a small and intimate Finnish larp about a small community of survivors in post-apocalyptic Finnish forest. It is the kind of larp where you cry a lot. The larp examines the loss, despair, and grief after a virus wipes out most of the population, and engaging meaningfully with the design of the larp practically requires the players to feel at least some of those feelings. The design of the larp supports the players in adopting suitable emotional states by several means, such as deliberately writing the loss of a close friend or family member into most of the character backgrounds and including partly scripted blackbox scenes that play on that loss.

    Emotional regulation is also an important tool for the players to support, navigate or challenge the intended emotional design of the game.

    In Inside Hamlet, the act structure of the game works to drive home the contrasts between the decadent party of Act 1, the listless ennui of Act 2, and the heady destructiveness of Act 3. The players participate in the act design by adopting emotional states that they feel give artistic interest or verisimilitude to the experience. A player might steer their character to drunken shenanigans and outrageous flirting in Act 1, and strive for an audacious, sexual mood. That same player can then use the act breaks to reset that emotional state and adopt a tense and anxious mindset for Act 2; perhaps transforming the boldness of Act 1 into the character acting out in a futile struggle in Act 2. Emotional regulation is a way for the player to participate in the runtime design of the larp, as well as a way to provide continuity and contrasts in the character portrayal.

    Emotional regulation begins well before runtime, as players will start engaging with their character materials and building a mental map of the larp design. It also carries on after the larp itself ends, as players negotiate the emotional impact of the larp and sort out character-appropriate feelings and relations from those that belong to the player. In effect, sorting out “bleed”, such as managing romantic or sexual attraction derived from portraying an in-game romantic or sexual relationship, constitutes emotional regulation.

    Hochschild and the “Managed Heart”

    As a key part of larp participation and design, emotional regulation deserves a more thorough examination. The topic has been addressed in larp studies now and then; in some pieces moredirectly(Jones,Koulu,&Torner2016)and in others more indirectly via analyzing various related phenomena such as bleed and embodiedness (e.g., Widing & Gerge 2006).

    In the social sciences, the analysis of emotion work blossomed in 1983 with Arlie Russell Hochschild’s classic The Managed Heart. Commercialization of Human Feeling. In the book Hochschild examines how people manage emotions and carry out so-called emotional labor as part of “a system composed of individual acts of ‘emotion work,’ social ‘feeling rules,’ and a great variety of exchanges between people in private and public life” (Hochschild 2012, xviii). Hochschild is mostly focused on emotional labor, i.e., emotion work that is done for pay, especially in the service sector. She notes that emotional labor requires one to “induce or suppress” feeling in order to sustain the right kind of outward appearance, and that it can draw on resources that we consider very personal and private. Thus it can also be costly, leading to a feeling of alienation with the part of self that is used to carry out this labor.

    In this chapter, I have chosen to use the concept of “emotional regulation” rather than emotion work or emotional labor, since larp is a recreational pursuit that is rarely done for financial compensation. That said, it is clear that larp can involve emotional labor in the strict sense as well even if the larp context places an extra layer on the work. For instance, the organizers of a larp might hire someone to perform a specific role in the fiction. The emotion work required of the performer, as well as the benefits or pay-offs they gain from it, can be almost identical to that required of the fictional character. Along these lines Torner argues (2020, in this volume) that the work players do at larps is best examined as ”playbour” and notes that there is little benefit in distinguishing between play and work.

    I define emotional regulation as the management of emotion in order to create, enhance, or sustain desired emotional states or to suppress or downplay undesired ones. This definition leaves the question of compensation and cost deliberately open, as there may be several benefits but also costs to carrying out emotional regulation, and these probably vary quite a bit from larp to larp and community to community. Whatever the context, emotional regulation is about “managing the heart”. It requires skill, but skill that is paradoxically more valued as it is more invisible — much as in the case of the flight attendants Hochschild studied. The larp participant’s portrayal of a character’s emotions relies on an impression of “authenticity” even as the distinction between the character and the player is necessary for the larp to function. Players may employ several different strategies to achieve this sense of authenticity, but especially in Nordic larp perhaps the most valorized method is to “really feel” the character’s feelings. This demands a high level of skill at emotional regulation from participants, as they are expected to be able to feel things on command, or at least give the impression of doing so.

    Expectations, Costs, and Pay-Offs

    Emotional regulation in larp matches Hochshild’s description of emotion work in many respects. However, in larp emotional regulation is rarely done for financial payment but instead for less tangible pay-offs. Some potential pay-offs might be

    • personal enjoyment, such as when a participant hypes themselves up in order to get more engaged with what might be a somewhat boring and stale larp;
    • artistic expression, e.g., when a character gives a passionate and moving speech on their deathbed, and the participant leans into the feeling of tragic loss so as to experience the scene more fully or to affect other participants more strongly;
    • social approval and disapproval, asemotional regulation has a social dimension — expressing feelings that deviate from the expectations at a larp can lead to social disapproval, while being skilled and expressive at portraying authentic emotion that is in line with the expectations of the larp can garner attention and admiration both inand offgame;
    • community status, as gaining a reputation as someone who plays expressively and emotionally convincingly can bolster a person’s status in their own larp community; especially if that community values emotional expression and regulation.

    Even this short list shows an interesting dimension in emotional regulation: while it is carried out on a very personal level, it also connects to the social norms and expectations in the wider community. As Hochschild noted, emotion is not private or individual but part of a system that connects the individual and the social — and even the public. Thus the lack of financial payment may not distinguish emotional regulation in larp quite as clearly from emotional labor as such as we might wish. Insofar as emotional regulation is socially encouraged, valued or mandated, we may need to look at the structures and contexts in which it is being carried out. Those structures and contexts depend on the play cultures and communities involved. The need for emotional regulation may differ based on the types of larp that are played: a tight-knit community playing Vampire: The Masquerade will most likely have different expectations for emotional regulation and the expression of emotion than a community of hundreds of players participating mostly in combat-heavy boffer larps. At the same time, emotional regulation is socially and culturally contingent, and the communally originated expectations around it can solidify and become embedded in play cultures (e.g., Bowman 2010).

    The expectations on emotion work that exist generally in society do not suddenly vanish in a larp context, but instead are layered in with the larp-specific expectations. We might suspect, for instance, that emotional regulation like emotion work is not evenly distributed.

    We know from a lot of earlier research that many forms of emotional and caring labor are gendered, so it may be worth examining whether we expect more skill and more effort from female-presenting people in larp as well. For instance, one form of emotional regulation that may prove necessary during a larp is the management of one’s own emotion in order to help another participant process their feelings. It is worth interrogating whether we expect female-presenting players in particular to be more caring and more willing to do that work, so that when we need support or validation during a bad moment in game, we seek them out over other potential contacts. This is a kind of emotion work that is relatively invisible in general (Hochschild 2012, xvii, 200) and while larp communities are perhaps better at spotting it, is worth asking what kind of expectations we have around it.

    In addition to being gendered, emotion work in general is often racialized. Sociological research has noted that the racialized aspects of emotion work are often glossed over or silenced (e.g., Mirchandani 2003, Wingfield 2010) and larp scholars have indicated similar issues in larp and in larp scholarship. Jonaya Kemper has noted that larp communities have expectations around PoC participation and ”free backend labor” (Kemper 2018), in ways that seem to echo broader societal expectations. There are also similarities here with the self-regulation that Stenros and Sihvonen (2019) have indicated is often expected from queer persons. In very broad terms, expectations around emotion work are structured along normative and hegemonic lines, in that less privileged groups are supposed to do more of it for the benefit of the privileged. However, these structural similarities do not mean the expectations are identical; instead, they intersect in complex and socially impactful ways both during larp events themselves and in the broader communities that form around them.

    Here the larp context may prove significant in accounting for the structures around emotion work. Emotional regulation may involve downplaying and suppressing one’s own emotional state in order to support another participant – a typically gendered or racialized expectation – but it may also require adopting and expressing emotion for dramatic purposes – such as when a male-presenting player of an authoritative character is expected to perform their role in a decisive, ”masculine” manner. The same distinctions are of course present in emotion work in general, but the larp context would seem to highlight the performative aspects of emotional regulation. Different kinds of emotional regulation may also be valued differently in larp contexts, in that privileged, performative modes of emotional regulation are perhaps more visible than the emotional constraint expected from participants belonging to marginalized groups. Of course, as Widing & Gerge (2006) note, different play cultures have different norms around what is considered valuable or legitimate.

    Feeling Rules in Nordic Larp

    Emotional regulation constitutes an important part of one’s private experience of a larp. However, as with most socially mediated activities, it also has inherent social and community significance. Here the concept of “feeling rules” from Hochschild’s work comes in handy. Feeling rules, according to Hochschild, are “standards used in emotional conversation to determine what is rightly owed and owing in the currency of feeling” (Hochschild 2012, 18) and as scripts or moral stances towards feeling they are “one of culture’s most powerful tools for directing action” (ibid, 56). Feeling rules tell us what feelings are appropriate or expected, or conversely inappropriate or unconventional, in each situation or context.

    The concept of a feeling rule helps us examine larp on several levels. Scripts that lay out appropriate feelings are a great tool for designing fictional communities, and they can be tied to mnemonics, sound cues, or small actions that reinforce the script. In Baphomet, for instance, the cult’s refrain of “Praise Ardor” became a mnemonic reminding both players and characters of the need to accept serenely whatever bizarre and oppressive actions the cult’s leaders decree. In Odysseus, the spaceship’s diegetic jump sequence involved a great deal of out-of game sound and lighting tech in order to pace the emotional and narrative flow of the larp. And in House of Craving, the workshops before the game were deliberately used to re-program the players’ feeling rules about sexual relations, creating space for the metatechnique “I need some alone time” where a player could invite another for a scene about, essentially, masturbation with an audience.

    Here, we can lay out the different forms of feeling rules based on their relation to the diegesis of the larp. The categorization is of course somewhat arbitrary, as the categories often overlap one another and in intense social contexts there can be a vague but pervasive expectation to mirror others’ feelings.

    • Diegetic feeling rules
      Diegetic feeling rules are feeling rules that exist in the fiction of the larp. The expectation that cult members will love one another, or the expectation that a noble will never forgive an insult offered to their house, are examples of diegetic feeling rules. These kinds of feeling rules are often designed by the larpmakers, though of course their feasibility as design choices depends on the intended audience and context. The players’ responsibility is to accept the feeling rule as a social fact in the fiction and find ways for their characters to obey, enforce and challenge it — perhaps in order to support a “realistic” depiction of the fictional setting, perhaps in order to create dramatic and artistic scenes as in ”the late-stage capitalist fairytale” Midwinter.
    • Cross-over feeling rules
      Cross-over feeling rules are feeling rules that exist both inside and outside the fiction but have more or less different meanings in each context. They cross over from the out-of character context of the larp into the diegesis or vice versa, such as when the participants in the larp are expected to feel comfortable and brave with each other in order to support a diegetic relationship involving intimate interaction (see also Widing & Gerge 2006). Here, Inside Hamlet’s invitation to all participants to “act wicked and be beautiful” is a neat example (https://www.insidehamlet.com/is-this-larp-for-me). The feeling rules are not always verbalized, though. At the larp Odysseus, the aforementioned jump sequence was an impressive piece of design that resonated quite literally throughout the location. It was clear that it was meant to make an impression on players as well as on characters, and the quality of the execution made it easy to transfer that feeling over to the diegetic experience.
    • Non-diegetic feeling rules
      Non-diegetic feeling rules are feeling rules about how participants in a specific larp are expected to feel about their experience or about a specific part of it as players. One widely shared non-diegetic feeling rule concerns the use of safety mechanics such as “cut”. The player who receives a “cut” message is expected to manage their emotional reaction in a way that supports and validates the player who employed the mechanic. Other non-diegetic feeling rules might relate to challenging or resisting broader cultural norms, such as when the larp deals with sexual or violent themes. And of course, non-diegetic feeling rules are in force when participants engage in the non-diegetic activities at a larp, such as participating in workshops or in cleaning up the site after the larp ends (see also Stenros & Sihvonen 2019).

    Of course, while feeling rules can be used as a design tool for larp, larp does not take place in a vacuum. The communities built around larp form specific social and cultural contexts that can mediate between the larp-specific expectations on emotion and our broader cultural scripts. Larp communities can and do also develop their own feeling rules: rules about how we should feel about larp, how we should carry out the emotion work related to larp, and how we should feel about the community. Community-level feeling rules are somewhat outside the scope of this paper, however, but it is worth noting that they are crucial in determining who is a good player or community member.

    These feeling rules can be all the more powerful in being relatively invisible, and the feeling rules of individual larps exist against this background of community-level feeling rules. These higherlevel rules inform our understanding of what we can reasonably or fairly expect from our fellow players and community members e.g., in preparing in-game relationships or managing bleed. They can be implicit, as when we have ingrained expectations on how much pre-runtime negotiation between players is normal, or explicit, such as in the earlier mantra “the character is not the player” that tried to eschew the idea that the player would owe something emotionally to others based on their character’s actions. Implicit feeling rules in particular can be hard to assess. A socially and emotionally skilled player will often be more adept in perceiving these feeling rules accurately and in acting in accordance; but the feeling rules can also conflict with individuals’ preferences and make a specific community a bad match for a specific person regardless of any skill involved.

    Conclusion

    In this chapter, I have argued that emotion work is an indispensable part of larp. Larp is fundamentally an art form meant for the first-person audience (Montola 2012, 89, originally Sandberg 2004), and emotional experiences can be a large part of that. A kind of “authenticity” becomes valuable, in that many participants consider “really feeling” the character’s feelings to be key for their experience and many consider the impression of authenticity to be valuable and desirable in their co-players as well. Stenros & MacDonald (2020, in this volume) connect authenticity especially with presence and vulnerability and argue that it is a source of experiencing larp as beautiful. Here I would like to highlight the skills involved in experiencing yourself as authentic, present, or vulnerable, and in offering that authenticity as relational labor to other participants.

    The skill of doing emotional regulation well can be valued quite highly, but larp participants may not be any better at recognizing actual emotions than the general public. This leads to a disconnect between the experience of the emotion and the appearance of it, much like in Hochschild’s examination of emotional labor itself. While Hochschild discusses the estrangement deriving from performing/feeling emotion for pay, there can be a sort of estrangement in performing/feeling emotion in larp as well especially with the commodification of larp and larp labor as noted by Seregina (2019) and Torner (2020). Managing that disconnect between the performativity of larp, and the management of emotionalstatesforone’sownexperience,can then be an important skill in itself.

    Essentially, emotional regulation cannot be fully and completely distinguished from emotion work or emotional labor. Emotional regulation can be playful and creative, and it is mostly voluntarily chosen for personal or artistic reasons, but it also intertwines with socially enforced expectations on how we should behave and act. It is perhaps best to accept emotional regulation as a sliding scale between the playful and the effortful, between the telic and the paratelic (see Stenros 2015, 66–72), the voluntary and the expected. We might even go as far as to say that emotional regulation is a key element in navigating the tension between the playful and the effortful, in order to experience the larp as distinct from the work involved.

    Bibliography

    Sarah Lynne Bowman (2013): Social Conflict in Role-Playing Communities: An Exploratory Qualitative Study. International Journal of Role-Playing 4 (2013), 4–25.

    Thorbiörn Fritzon & Tobias Wrigstad (eds.) (2006): Role, Play, Art. Collected Experiences of Role-Playing. Föreningen Knutpunkt. http://jeepen.org/kpbook/, ref. Jan 26th, 2020.

    Arlie Russell Hochschild (1983/2012): The Managed Heart: Commercialization of Human Feeling. Updated with a New Preface. University of California Press.

    Katherine C. Jones, Sanna Koulu & Evan Torner (2016): Playing at Work. Ropecon ry. Larp Politics: Systems, Theory, and Gender in Action.

    Kaisa Kangas, Mika Loponen & Jukka Särkijärvi (eds.) (2016): Larp Politics: Systems, Theory, and Gender in Action. Ropecon ry. http://solmukohta.org/uploads/Books/book_politics.pdf, ref. Feb 29th, 2020.

    Jonaya Kemper (2018): More Than a Seat at the Feasting Table. ETC Press. Shuffling the Deck: The Knutpunkt 2018 Color Printed Companion, ref. Jan 26th, 2020.

    Kiran Mirchandani (2003): Challenging Racial Silences in Studies of Emotion Work: Contributions from Anti-Racist Feminist Theory. Organization Studies, 24(5), 721–742, ref. Jan 25th, 2020.

    Markus Montola & Jaakko Stenros (eds.) (2014): Beyond Role and Play – Tools, Toys and Theory for Harnessing the Imagination. The book for Solmukohta 2004. Ropecon ry, ref. Feb 29th, 2020.

    Markus Montola (2012): On the Edge of the Magic Circle: Understanding Role-Playing and Pervasive Games. Tampere University Press, ref. Nov 15th, 2019.

    Christopher Sandberg (2004): Genesi: Larp Art, Basic Theories. Ropecon ry. Beyond Role and Play – Tools, Toys and Theory for Harnessing the Imagination. The book for Solmukohta 2004.

    Usva Seregina (2019): On the Commodification of Larp. Nordiclarp.org, ref. Jan 26th, 2020

    Jaakko Stenros (2015): Playfulness, Play, and Games: A Constructionist Ludology Approach. Tampere University Press, ref. Nov 15th, 2019.

    Jaakko Stenros & James MacDonald (2020): Beauty in Larp. Solmukohta. What Do We Do When We Play?

    Jaakko Stenros & Tanja Sihvonen (2019): Queer While Larping: Community, Identity, and Affective Labor in Nordic Live Action Role-Playing. Analog Game Studies, Vol 6, No 4, ref. Jan 25th, 2020.

    Evan Torner (2020): Labor and Play. Solmukohta. What Do We Do When We Play?

    Annika Waern & Johannes Axner (eds.) (2018): Shuffling the Deck. The Knutpunkt 2018 Color Printed Companion. ETC Press, ref. Jan 25th, 2020.

    Gabriel Widing & Tova Gerge (2006): The Character, the Player and Their Shared Body. Föreningen Knutpunkt. Role, Play, Art. Collected Experiences of Role-Playing. http://jeepen.org/kpbook/

    Adia Harvey Wingfield (2010): Are Some Emotions Marked “Whites Only”? Racialized Feeling Rules in Professional Workplaces. Social Problems, Vol. 57, Issue 2, 251–268.

  • Solmukohta 2020: Is Immersive Theatre the Future of Larp?

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    Solmukohta 2020: Is Immersive Theatre the Future of Larp?

    Written by

    Thomas B. is an opinionated connoisseur of larp, dilettante larpwright, and immersive theatre debutante. While repeatedly ranting about the word “immersive”, Thomas will cover highlights of larp-ish events such as Assassin’s Creed in Napoléon’s mausoleum, costume parties in Versailles, a murder mystery in the prison cell of the Marquis de Sade, physically chasing the plot train in NYC, and larping with unprepared actors in theatre basements. Mélanie & Michael co-wrote The Lost Generation, an immersive theatre party focused on seamless narrative design. They will present a vision from the field as well as examples from their design. All attendees welcome, no prior experience necessary.

    Thomas B., Mélanie Dorey, Michael Freudenthal

    [CW] sexual assault

    Q&A from the original viewing at Solmukohta 2020 Online event

    PART 1:

    Anonymous 1:n OK, what /is/ eläytim… Something?

    Thomas B: immersion in character

     

    Anonymous 2: What’s an example of a non-immersive party?

    Michael F: Smoking outside? (Nah, that’s still peripheral participation)

     

    PART 2:

    Anonymous 3: Looks fascinating! i imagine it’s played in French?

    Melanie Dorey: Yes it’s played in French for now but we are thinking about opening an English speaking version 🙂

     

    Anonymous 4: plateauwriting I would call “devicing”

    Melanie Dorey: Oh okay thanks !

     

    Anonymous 5: I like this production process overview timeline but what happens after Showtime 😀 #experiencedesign

    Melanie Dorey: We’re not covering in so much in the talk but can talk about it after in the live chat if you are interested 😀

    Michael F: Pretty much it’s a party. People are talking about themselves, about each others views on fun things like war or artistic creation, then later yelling at each other, or supporting each other. Just a party. But Melanie will put it differently!

     

    Melanie Dorey That allowed the cast to differentiate participants and for the actors to know what interaction to do with the participants

     

    Melanie Dorey Note : all types of interaction are the same price

     

    ANON5: I wonder how this would work with my aversion to larping with NPC:s? I always experence them as being “empty” because they aren’t played by a fellow player who wants things for themselves and that they should stop wasting time on me and go play with someone who appreciates them.

     

    Thomas B: you could avoid talking to them and talk to the other guests instead

     

    Thomas B: some other attendees were basically larping, others more shy and just an

     

    Anon6: Would love the name of the book and the auther about queer games and degamification

     

    Anon7: I believe it is this one:

    Ruberg, Bonnie, and Adrienne Shaw, eds. Queer game studies. U of Minnesota Press, 2017.‏

    Michael Gyr Yes and Video-Games Have Always Been Queer!

     

    Anon8: A very mudane question to this amazing project: What did the tickets cost? Did you get support/sponsing from other sources?

     

    Melanie Dorey We don’t really cover that in the talk but can talk about it after in the live chat

     

    Melanie Dorey Very briefly : all the costs were covered by tickets

     

    Melanie Dorey And we didn’t have any support or sponsoring

     

    Michael Gyr The tickets were 55€ (early bird) to 65€ but the next production budget needed more to cover the cost and make a small margin, and got to 68€ – 78€.

     

    Hanne Grasmo Michael Gyr OK, that is not much: I paid like 290 dollars for similar experience in NYC.

     

    Michael Gyr The Paris immersive scene is just starting. Also, we would like to be as accessible as possible and it’s a bummer because the production costs a lot. Kol Ford’s talk this year was inspiring in that light.

     

    Jenny M. Nordfalk The definition of being a professional is that you get paid, I guess? maybe there should be a third group in between the actors and the audience? We went to an immersive interactive murder mystery last year and I had a lot of guests coming up to me after and thanking me along with the actors..

     

    Michael Gyr We had people mistook for actors AND actors mistook for audience. That was the intent of blurring the lines alright 🙂

     

    Anon9: Who’s your photographer? This all looks gorgeous.

     

    Melanie Dorey It’s Les Garçonnes Studio !

     

    Anon10: How many hours did the actors use for preparations? Where they paid for all of that???

     

    Melanie Dorey We had about 10 full days of workshops and rehearsals with the actors (which is not a lot), we didn’t have the budget unfortunately for the rehearsals but all the show nights were paid

     

    Anon11: What were the buzz words given to the most interactive participants, and hiow did they work?

     

    Melanie Dorey They were secret phrases about the characters personal lives (like something you would know if you were an acquaintance)

     

    Melanie Dorey Like “How was summer in the Riviera, Zelda ?”

     

    Anon12: Were they different for different players and towards different characters, was it like giving the players relationships with the actors characters?

     

    Melanie Dorey Players had different characters but each character had only one secret code

     

    Anon12: Did the actors then take extra responsibility for those players? making them part of their group?

     

    Melanie Dorey Yes those participants were part of their “crew” for the night

     

    Anon12: Perfect, how many players did every actor have in their crew? and as it only the most intersctive feathers or did all players take part in a crew?

     

    Melanie Dorey Yes it was for the most interactive feathers only (as it included more intense interactions), and each character had from 5 to 7 members of the “crew”

     

    Anon14: Was it possible for the participants to change their feather during the performance?

     

    Michael Gyr Very good one. No it was not. But if you were to talk with the cast while wearing a “I don’t want direct interaction” feather, they would adapt their behaviour towards you, and talk with you (with a little caution). Also, all feathers all looked nice (golden, black with a golden tip, red with a golden tip).

     

    Anon13: If possible would you implement that feature for a rerun or was it best as it was?

     

    Melanie Dorey I think it could be a possibility to include that feature in our out of game safe zone !

     

    Anon15: What was the number of involved people in the team overall? Light, sound, production design, actors, concierges etc. On your team and from the rented location if any

     

    Melanie Dorey We had overall a team of 15 people for the staff (production, filming, venue, bar,…)

     

    Melanie Dorey 2 people from the venue

     

    Anon12: How many actors?

     

    Melanie Dorey 7 actors, 3 musicians, 2 bartenders, 3 people from production

     

    Anon16: What major things did you change from run 1 to run 2?

     

    Melanie Dorey We changed : set design (moved furniture), lighting, acting direction (by prepping to better answers to participants and implementing yesterday’s successes and mistakes)

     

    Melanie Dorey Mostly the change of the set design was a huge improvement because it allowed participants to feel more legitimate in the space

     

    Anon16: Did you as designers had a vision for content (not only aestetics) before you started researching and designing?

     

    Melanie Dorey We wanted something that was truly interactive and felt like a legitimate party for everyone (cast AND participants) : we didn’t want to have a frontal story with pieces of interaction but really a sandbox for everyone.

     

    Melanie Dorey That determined the party format before anything else.

     

    Anon17: Thank you so much, it was super-interesting!! 2 Questions: Was there a mechanism to step interaction up or down during runtime? Did you use safe-words or tap out to signal something is too much?

     

    Michael Gyr Good question, thanks! Besides training with the actors (which was not enough, considering errors have been made), there were three levels of “human safety nets” for audience participants. All were on the production side.

    The opener was the person to go to if you needed something during the show (they wandered around and checked up with people, in character), the bar was the place you go if there was any kind of problem or behaviour to report, and there was a saf(er), more quiet place where we would check up on the audience, or bring them if needed.

     

    Anon18: What info did participants get beforehand? Did they get a 30 second rules brief at the door or a document with the ticket or website?

     

    Michael Gyr Hi! By mail they got information on what was expected of them in terms of dressing up and more importantly, a quite short and explicit “accepted behaviour”. Thomas pointed out it looked inspired by SK/KP, which it was. There we mentioned, among other things, that racist or sexist historical (or not) talk will not be accepted by audience participants, with examples.

     

    Michael Gyr The onboarding was quite thought of and showed the rules of interaction for the evening, to make the audience participant understand they can role play, talk to us, laugh with us and so on. The process could be another 30mn talk.

     

    Anon18: Did you bring them in in groups you briefed or a short one-by-one thing?

     

    Michael Gyr Haha as I said, a whole new talk. The briefing was short and simple, with a very small group (4-5 people). It was more of an in-character scene including practicalities, setting the tone and announcing the ending (like Thomas said about opening and closing the “magic circle”, the blurry boundaries of play).

     

    Thomas Be Also, importantly the emails were sent well in advance, so you had time to prep, as opposed to most other immersive experiences that really send info last minute. I’m all for last-minute reminders, but the ground rules should be laid early on, a bit how we do in larps with design documents etc.

     

    Anon18: What made you decide on theme? Location or story or something else?

    I see both negative and positive aspects of the 20’s aesthetic as it has been done (at least in Sweden) as Great Gatsby parties that seem very directed to a non-interactive crowd.

     

    Melanie Dorey A few things made us decide on the theme :

    – We always create site-specific work, and we were inspired by this particular historical location.

    – We used on purpose the 20’s aesthetic to go in the opposite direction that is generally portrayed in “Gatsby parties”, and therefore to write about : femininity, masculinity, post-war trauma, abusive relationships, closeted queerness… All these themes portrayed by the characters we chose.

    – This “twist” (in the expectations) was something we wanted for participants experience, even though we did a lot of disclaimers about themes addressed in the experience.

    – We didn’t notice any negative effects coming from the audience because the party format and the types of interaction were giving the choices to everyone of how they wanted to live the experience. So you could have a nice themed party with your friends or chose to dive in the heart of the story and influence it.

    – Globally, we thinks that the Roaring Twenties are such an interesting period to write about because it can be layered so much in writing and is reflective in many ways of the times we live today.

     

    Thomas Be Also stuff I had to cut down due to time: check out the binaural-audio-in-the-dark work of Darkfield http://www.darkfield.org/ , I attended “Play” in Edinburgh and “Flight” in Melbourne and both are super interesting. No agency, but amazing audio/installation work.

     

    Thomas Be For another “glorified treasure hunt in a cool location”, check out Inside Opéra, in Paris’ Opéra Garnier: https://www.inside-infos.fr/opera/en/index.php

     

    Thomas Be And for another immersive theatre play, this time set in a fictitious Parisian brothel with various design issues (pay to play, favouring the loud, and super uncomfortable masks) check out Close: https://www.bigdrama.fr/

     

    Thomas Be For an immersive theatre version of Hamlet, clearly inspired by Sleep No More but with Shakespearean text (in French) instead of dancing, check out out Helsingor: https://chateauhamlet.jimdofree.com/

     

    Thomas Be And thanks to Le Musée du Fake for the reminder, other things I cut out due to time: if you’re wondering about what an immersive poetry event could look like, check your local Poetry Brothel, or Le Bordel de la Poésie in Paris, by L’assaut des poètes: https://www.lassautdespoetes.com/

     

    Anon19: I like this slider. Do/did you have in France what’s sometimes called “environmental theatre”? It’s perhaps a cousin of what is now usually described as “immersive”, and started in the 1960s with a movement to consciously minimise the role between actor and audience. In the 90s “environmental theatre” also sometimes referred to theatre where you as the audience walked around the space, like shows where you go from room to room to see different scenes and put it all together.

    I’m just wondering because I suspect this slider has even more words between these ones.

    Oh heck I just realised this is a talk that should be done.

     

    Michael Gyr A talk that should be done, yes! Anna & I put together a spreadsheet to gather examples (but that can be improved)

     

    Thomas Be There’s a lot of other types of participatory thingies “proper theatre” from theatre of the oppressed to I-cant-remember, no idea how much was done in France. I know a French larper who wrote a paper about it long time ago

     

    Thomas Be the article (unpublished so far I think) by is by Saetta Des CanonsdelaButte (not part of group), a larper and proper academic, about theatre of the oppressed https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Augusto_Boal , we actually have one in Paris: http://www.theatredelopprime.com/

    This was part of the Solmukohta 2020 online program. https://solmukohta.eu/

  • Solmukohta 2020: Chris Bergstresser – Peacock – a Global Larp Clearinghouse

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    Solmukohta 2020: Chris Bergstresser – Peacock – a Global Larp Clearinghouse

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    Getting information about larps in the hands of players is an ongoing struggle for organizers. And finding out what larps are being run is equally challenging for players. I have a proposal — and a prototype — for a larp clearinghouse named Peacock. It includes standards for larp data and a website to share that information. This talk will show the basic features of the system, along with the design decisions, to be followed by a discussion about the remaining steps to reach a public beta.

    Q&A from the original viewing at Solmukohta 2020 Online event

    Anonymous 1: I suppose you just need a system like the escape rooms or the delievery-fooderies have (BOX, Escapeall, E-food, Walt, etc), with a small % if you get your players from there.

    Problem is, do you want your larp to exist in a platform with another 100/200/500 “competitive” larps?

     

    Anonymous 2: I would like is one very useful feature for producers and designers: A call for last minute participants, when there is people jumping off – with info on if it is paid for or not etc. And participants could have profiles where they list if they are “a last minute player”. This feature would maybe make larps wanna be on the site.

     

    Anonymous 3: Are there many other services that work like this?

    Chris Bergstresser: Federated services are fairly common in computing.

    Anonymous 3: Uhm, I am not aware of any public service like this one. Everything I’ve used or seen requires logging into the central interface to modify data. This rocks.

     

    Anonymous 4: Ah, automatic currency conversion, that’s convenient (and prevents using free-form text fields for prices, but I see that multiple prices are allowed). One suggestion though: Annotate prices with a description (e.g. “Player”, “NPC”, etc.) to make it a bit clearer?

    Chris Bergstresser: Great ideas, but it’s part of the complexity of offering more than one price. The more complicated, the harder to understand. Fairly simple technical problem, somewhat less so UI/UX problem.

     

    Anonymous 5: Looks really useful! One suggestion is to have the Location on the filter show the country instead of the address

     

    Anonymous 6: What’s your code sharing model? Will this be a GitHub thing?

    Chris Bergstresser It’s on GitHub. I’m willing to open source it, but we need to think through licensing.

    Chris Bergstresser I’m more concerned the API is well-documented, so it can be replicated by others without needing the code.

     

    Anonymous 7: Chris Bergstresser I am not sure how much and in which way I can contribute, but this looks interesting. How should I contact you to get involved?

    Chris Bergstresser Chat on Facebook is probably easiest to get started.

     

    Anonymous 8: I also have some ideas and feedback already based on the talk and the documentation online, what would be the best place for that? Here in the comments allows others to react, but it is easy to lose it, of course.

    Chris Bergstresser I’ve created this Google Form to sign up to contribute: https://forms.gle/AB1sMG1XWAaMQmPZ8

    For feedback, I think here is an okay place to start the discussion. Better to start than wait for the right place, I’ve found.

     

    Chris Bergstresser I created a Google form to sign up if you’re interested in contributing: https://forms.gle/AB1sMG1XWAaMQmPZ8

     

    Sindre Punsvik Thank you! Sounds very interesting, in particular as an UX designer. Not sure if I will have capacity to help more than bouncing ideas

     

    Anonymous 9: I saw the idea is to put YAML in `<script>` tags in webpages. I’m all for YAML, but I’m not sure a `<script>` tag is the right place. Doesn’t HTML have something more semantically applicable for this?

    Also, it is nice to just put it into an event website (probably easy enough for novice webmasters too), but at first glance that would mean that each event must be registered in the system separately. It would be interesting to have just a single URL to be polled for an organization that can list all events (though I guess the current design could actually do that).

    ALso, isn’t there some kind of existing annotation system (RDF springs into my mind) from the “semantic web” corner that could be used as a base for annotations?

    Chris Bergstresser: The initial idea would be to register a root domain, and spider all the pages to gather all the larps for a given organization. That’s a little complicated, though, which is why it’s not in the initial prototype.

    As for a better HTML container for this data, I’m not aware of one. <script> tags have the advantage there’s all sorts of special coding around them (since they have to be able to handle Javascript, which contains < and & characters) so they’re safe in all browsers for embedding the information.

    I stole the idea from Mustache, which does things like:

    <script id="template" type="x-tmpl-mustache">

Hello {{ name }}!

</script>

    Anonymous 9: Spidering could indeed work, but does make things more complicated maybe. Thinking from our own organisation, we have a single registration system (which is *almost* ready) that knows about all our events and could easily export all needed into on a single URL. I guess both single-URL and spidering approaches could co-exist, of course.

    As for the script tags, I’m slightly worried that browsers will try to execute javascript as a fallback if they do not know the type (not sure if that happens in practice, maybe only with ancient browsers) and that all kinds of systems might end up stripping script tags.

    OTOH, I guess that stripping script tags can be a feature: If someone can publish script tags on a domain, they will have some authority on this domain (e.g. you will not be able to fake event data using a comment on a website since script tags will usually be stripped). Another approach could be to only look at the <head> tags and not the <body>, but that could complicate publishing data in typicaly CMS’s mayb e.

    Anonymous 9: The proposed YAML format does not list a format version number, which is probably good to add to facilitate format changes in the future (and think a bit on how that would work as well).

    Chris Bergstresser: There is one coded, but if it’s missing we assume it’s version “1”. I’m hoping most changes can be accomodated in a backwards-compatible fashion, but we’re safe if it can’t be.

    Anonymous 9: In my experience, requiring (or at least encouraging) an explicit version number is always a good idea, since it leaves less room for interpretation. But indeed, a default of 1 could work as well.

    Anonymous 9: One thing to think about is how to *remove* an event from the list. Removing it from the original webpage could work, but that means that normally events should be listed there indefinitely (which might not happen in practice as people clean up their websites or websites go offline, without any intention of being removed from the archive).

    Chris Bergstresser: We need to think through how events age through the system. If events disappear before they happen we assume they were canceled (you took down the web page before it happened, must not be happening) but after that point I think we assume they ran.

    But there’s weirdness there. What if people reuse the id? Do we allow people to remove events after the fact? What if people say they attended a canceled larp?

    Anonymous 9: I also think that the list of URLs to scrape metadata from might be one of the biggest assets in this system and might need to be separately managed and published (e.g. a github repo with URL lists per country maybe?). Making this list separate makes i…See

    Chris Bergstresser: One of the eventual things should be a way for federated systems to share routes to poll with each other, so you can register a route with any given aggregator and they’ll all learn about it. Seems overkill at this point in the design.

    Google avoids the problem by just indexing every web page in the universe. Which must be nice.

    Anonymous 9: Using Google to find these tags could be nice (maybe require including some unique string in the metadata), but that also opens up a lot of possibilities of dataset poisoning because it removes the step of explicitly adding routes to the dataset and thus also the implicit review process in that.

    Chris Bergstresser: Oh, I wasn’t suggesting using Google to find them. Just that, if we were Google, this problem is solved through brute force.

    Anonymous 9: I know, but your comment made me realize that Google *could* be used to find them, which is interesting in itself.

     

    Anonymous 10: Is there a status field? For signup open, cloSed, waitlist, in design

    Chris Bergstresser: Yes. By default it’s “active” which is why it’s left off many of the examples.

    This was part of the Solmukohta 2020 online program. https://solmukohta.eu/

  • Solmukohta 2020: 500 Magic Schools for Children and Youth

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    Solmukohta 2020: 500 Magic Schools for Children and Youth

    Written by

    Josefin Westborg, Anders Berned, Kol Ford, Mike Pohjola

    This programme item brings together the NGOs, companies and other entities that run magic schools for kids and youth. Each organisation will be presented with a focus on what they have in common, what they do differently and why, and how they can inspire each other. The aim is to create knowledge exchange and inspire others to start up magic schools. One goal in the programme is to agree on when we would like to have 500 magic schools for kids in Europe (and how to get the funds to start it up).

    Q&A from the original viewing at Solmukohta 2020 Online event

    Anon 1: I love the idea to create your own IP for the magic school based on the local culture, folk tales and myths. I’d love to know more about the Finnish magic school.

     

    Anon 2: Agree! I run an ‘edularp’ for 4 Hungarian students weekly which is set in the HP universe and it uses the Hungarian Pálos rend (Order of Saint Paul the First Hermit) as a background

     

    Anders Gredal Berner Anon 2: Sound awesome! What age group is the students?

     

    Anon 2: 11-12yo. One of them already had tabletop RPG experience .

     

    Mike Pohjola We’ve used local customs and beliefs when applicable. Like using an Easter tradition to create monsters (trulli) and a way to defeat them (Easter whips) for a larp played in Easter.

    The school Houses are loosely inspired by different parts of heritage of this area, but that’s not something we’ve explained to the kids yet. Mostly they’re based on different personality traits.

    Then many of the words we’ve created based on really old Finnish words, like marto (=dead) for a non-wizard. (Just to be different than Potterverse.)

     

    Anon 4: Would be interesting to do a magic school intirely based on folklore

     

    Anon 5: In magic school you can play out your wildest fantasy of going to school where the classes aren’t boring

     

    Anon 6: I just listened to some of the interviews from last autumn about Finnish Velhokoulu, and some of the kids love stealing candy while invisible and teasing the teachers, so basically making things happen with “magic” in a very simple way

     

    Anon 7: I would love to throw on (I work in a non profit association as game facilitator and children educator) but truly I don’t know where to begin. I have children from 6 to 15

     

    Anders Gredal Berner Anon 7: Sound awesome. We had a long discussion after the recording, also touching on how to help others to starting up. Im sure the rest of the panel is also up for helping -And your very welcome to get our materiales, guides ect.

     

    Anon 7: I would love that if it’s ok with you. :O

    :

    Anon 3: Anders I would like that very much.

     

    Anon 6: And kids love adults reacting to the magic the students perform

     

    Anon 2: Do you think its ‘just’ the power of empowerment or is there something else in it?

     

    Anon 6: I think it’s both: it’s also immersion, and having adults play with them in this imaginary world that to some feels very real and they keep playing their characters even at home with friends and family

     

    Anon 2: They keep playing at home? THAT sounds interesting!

     

    Mike Pohjola Essentially we teach them new children’s games. Like if you put your hands like this you’re invisible. Or this is a new version of catch-me-if-you-can that is the magical effect of the monster.

     

    Anon 6: Velhokoulu.fi is the Finnish website, it’s all in Finnish at the moment but you can find a description and pictures of our houses there. Also video links and Instagram was recently added

     

    Anon 5: magic schools have no homework

     

    Anon 8: A side note, Josefin’s outfit is a blast <3

     

    Anon 9: also yay for gender-neutral terms!

     

    Anon 6: In general I like to use the work “taikoja” so a “magic user”, since I feel velho is more a boy term still but that’s mainly because in the books Harry Potter is a velho/wizard and Hermione is a noita/witch.

     

    Mike Pohjola Yeah, that’s an Anglicism. In Finnish tradition they’re both gender neutral.

     

    Anon 10: The adults keeps the world more real for the children, being a part of the immersion and magic. It’s easier for the children to be a part and take a part of the game as their characters when the adults encourages them in their characters. The younger the player, the more important it is.

     

    Anon 7: It’s cool that things happen in the magic world. Like it’s not just a background and can be played anywhere

     

    Anon 6: We have 40min class then 20min break where they can invade the teachers’ lounge, talk to creatures and explore.

     

    Anon 6: Classes usually have handcrafts or taming magical creatures or spell tag

     

    Anon 10: Not sure if I missed this, but (about) how many players you have in one game? Since we have about 50players a game in Velhokoulu.

     

    Anon 6: Good question!

     

    Anders Gredal Berner Our magic school is up to 50 participant + teachers, helpers, monsters.

     

    Josefin Westborg In the library larp we have they meet famous children story characters from books that they need to help. One of them are Loki the Norse god. Last time we had a child that asked who I was when I showed up as Loki. I didn’t answer but mumbled something about that I needed to get back at my brother Thor. Then he looked at me and got wide eyes and said: Oh, no. I know who you are. You are Loki! I’m not gonna help you, I’m on your brothers side”. And then he walked away.

     

    Anon 6: I like this test idea :OOO we could have that too in Ropecon etc!

     

    Mike Pohjola Totally stealing it! 😀

     

    Anon 5: does anyone ever fail anything in schools of magic?

     

    Anon 6: If I understood correctly, I’d say the characters are not perfect in what they do, so the teacher will assist them during class and they will get better during the class

     

    Anders Gredal Berner Anon 5: Yes 🙂 both on a personal level and plotlines – you can fail at our magic schools. But its a kids activities for 8 to 13 years and with a visions about producing better humans – so there is somethimes the PC takes over 😉

     

    Anon 11: I remember a kid from my latest Velhokoulu who had a character who failed all the spells they tried until the end when they finally suceeded, they seemed to enjoy it a great deal

     

    Mike Pohjola The most common failure is being too shy to participate or scared of our monster. Then we try to help them overcome this.

    But of course they can also fail in, for example, translating ancient runes into modern alphabet.

     

    Josefin Westborg Anon 10:: In the shortest little drop in larp we can run it with just 1 player but max 12. For the libraries, we have 1-16 and for the school one we take around 30. We have made a special version where we do it as a pleasure larp and not an edularp and then we can have up to 40 players.

     

    Anon 6: We raised the prices since our expenses have risen, storage and book keeper have come into the picture. Also the locations are tricky to find within a reasonable price range as we need to run two games in one weekend for it to be financially smarter.

     

    Anon 12: Hope you get City funding Mike. The entrance fee is a lot of money for many people. Not for what they get (a long, wonderful experience) but as a sum. The threshold for many people for applying for free admittance is high I think. Hope you reach that group of people, too. Perhaps channels/contacts with for example some children’s organisations might help in this?

    Velhokoulu’s rock! <3

     

    Anon 6: I’m envious of your cheap prices as I fear we’ll be unreachable for some players soon, even if we have the “discount ticket” of 10€ available as we can’t give it to everyone (so far we have managed to take everyone in who needs the discount ticket though)

     

    Anon 2: Thats interesting because only 1 of my students from 4 wanted to have wizard parents!

     

    Anon 2: I think you have a larger sample size, Josefin. I have to ask my students why do they like muggle parents 🙂

     

    Josefin Westborg This is mainly in the school larps. It’s not as much with the slightly older students when we do it for leisure. The school larps are mandatory for the students. So that might be part of it. That the kids who come to magic school larps out of free will have another relation to it.

     

    Anon 6: Our kids have an option to be part creature too. So far we’ve had one half-dragon, one son of Zeus (allegedly, he had no proof) and one half-Pigglet.

     

    Mike Pohjola Oh yeah, I forgot to mention this! We added this option because so many wanted to be NPCs since then they could be magical creatures. But we didn’t want random 8-year olds as NPCs. 😀

     

    Anon 6: We started a YouTube channel, we’re hoping to create content there that will amuse our players and will hopefully reach new players too.

     

    Anon 3: Mike, is it possible to pool resources somehow?

     

    Mike Pohjola I’m sure it would be!

     

    Mike Pohjola I mean, yes! That’s one of the points of having this talk. In physical Solmukohta we would have had a bigger gathering after it.

     

    Anon 6: I feel that after this presentation I’m actually feeling the real disappointment of not being able to see you all and discuss face to face :((((

     

    Anon 6: Oh well, next time then!

     

    Anders Gredal Berner We are creating a network of magic schools – both to inspire each others and especial to help others to start up their own magic schools for kids and youth.

    Why to start a magic school for kids:

    – Give the kids a good xp and change the world one step at the time

    – Create stabel income for your larp NGO

    – Create jobs for young larpers as instructors and larp runners

    You can contact us at Orker@rollespilsfabrikken.dk or you can write here at FB :).

    All Love

    Anders Berner

    Project Coordinator

    Rollespilsfabrikken

    +4550573390

    This was part of the Solmukohta 2020 online program. https://solmukohta.eu/

  • Solmukohta 2020: Lindsay Wolgel – Larp/Theatre Crossover in NYC

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    Solmukohta 2020: Lindsay Wolgel – Larp/Theatre Crossover in NYC

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    This is a talk about the larp/theatre crossover work currently emerging in NYC, based on the projects Lindsay has been a part of in the past year as a professional actor in New York. Productions include Sinking Ship Creations’ Off-Off Broadway show The Mortality Machine, Calculations by Caroline Murphy of Incantrix Productions, OASIS Travel Agency (an immersive theatre/nightlife/alternate reality game blend with participatory elements by Silver Dream Factory) and more! Discussion includes the experience of being a hired facilitator/actor in these pieces as well as the trend of commercial “immersive experiences” in NYC.

    www.TheMortalityMachine.com

    Q&A from the original viewing at Solmukohta 2020 Online event

    Q, Anon1: My question on all participatory theater is: How much agency do you think counts as agency? I’ve only been to something like three pieces, and none of them gave me any. (Sleep No More gave me the least.)

    A, Lindsay Wolgel: So I wouldn’t consider Sleep No More participatory theatre! I would only call that Immersive theatre, but I agree, I felt the same way when I saw it!

    Anon2: I think that’s evolving in a lot of different ways – some companies like PunchDrunk have their own audience literacy, but at the same time it’s no longer the only participatory company out there

    Anon3: I would say punchdrunk is mostly interactive, while our pieces are more participative 🙂

    Anon1: Whats… the difference, Anon3?

    Lindsay Wolgel: In sleep no more, your choices don’t affect the show at all!

    Anon4: And not even all that interactive honestly, at least based on Sleep no More and the Drowned Man

    Anon5: Be Agreed, in SNM you move the camera and sometimes get easter egg, but you don’t create or influence anything

    Anon6: The Camera Anon5 is talking is about – its to my understanding what the broader fin art scene – see as interaction and interactive art

     

    Lindsay Wolgel: Reacting would be living in the given circumstances of your character – aka acting! Yes anding is more of an improv term- where you accept a piece of story someone is offering and you say okay and build on it!

    Anon9: Yeah, if I remember, reacting is where you as the actor are able to behave as though this is happening for the first time, because you are attentive to the other actors around you, and the circumstances of the play. It’s a way to get actors to get out of the habit of pre-planning all of their feelings and how they will say things, to try to be reactive in the moment even though you know what the text is. Otherwise you’re just painting by numbers.

    Yes and is more of a tool to prevent people from shutting down ideas, so instead of saying no, I don’t want to, you say yes, and I will add THIS to make it mine, too.

    Ryan Hart: Anon9 really did a good job with it.

    I don’t remember if Lindsay got into it, but when we talked for this piece, I mentioned we really go for a presentational style of acting and roleplay, as I think it’s very accessible to our audience. Which means we want people going through “as if” they were in that situation (usually with an “alibi” in the form of a character) and reacting as they would using their lifetime of experience.

    What *I* (not speaking for anyone else here) is that people have to come in and co-create. These experiences are expensive, and run pretty quick, and need to accommodate all experience levels, so I don’t want people to get in there have to make up a story or context. They still have agency in how they deal with the situation, and they still have to take advantage of the opportunity to enjoy the experience, but I don’t want someone to come in and have to do the beginning of an improv class to enjoy the experience.

    “Yes, and…” is a great technique, but there’s more to improv, and this particular technique tends to get heavy into content creation. We also lose sight of it’s purpose (again, as Anon9 pointed out) which is to get past the “no” response.

    All of this ties into the difference between a facilitator and a participant.

    Lindsay Wolgel: Ryan Hart I didn’t – I ran out of time to go into everything, so that was a piece that didn’t make it in! I love this extended response

    Ryan Hart: So, i’m going to speak for how I use the terms, and I use them very specifically. It’s not like this carries any weight

    First, I don’t use the term “player” in theatrical larp. I use the verb “to play” because a “player” can “play” a game, and an “actor” can “play” a role, but a player doesn’t really play a role and an actor doesn’t really play a game. This isn’t a statement about larp, it’s about how I, as a native English speaker, construct those sentences. “Player” implies “Game.” For a variety of reasons (focused mostly on win/lose) conditions, I don’t use the term player, I use the term “participant.” So if a person is playing in the larp, they’re a participant.

    *SOME* participants are paid to be there, and involved in the design. They’re still playing a role, but they have to bring the design to the participants on whom the experience is focused. If some is a facilitator, they’re there exclusively for other people. I hope they have a good time, and I’m obligated to treat them well, but I’m not asking them “how did you like it.” I call those individuals “facilitators.”

    From a design perspective, there’s two big things:

    1. Not all participants are facilitators, but all facilitators are participants. So things like safety, code of conduct, and character design (see below) all apply to the facilitators.
    2. Specific beats general. Certain things apply directly to facilitators that don’t apply directly to participants. So the design has to be parsed out with that in mind.

    When you have that split: a group of people who are all playing characters, and some of those people are professionals who are there to express the design to the others, the facilitator / participant terminology works very well.

    Ryan Hart: With all that said, we don’t have NPCs… because we don’t have “Non-Participants.” An NPC refers to a character, and all our character design has to be fundamentally similar… we can alter the method of delivery (a facilitator does not need the same materials as other participants) but the character played by a facilitator should be indistinguishable in interaction from other participants (this is part of our 360 design). For example, for Scapegoat, a 4 day, 120 participant larp that happened all over NYC, about 20 of those participants were facilitators, and with two exceptions, none of them changed characters.

    So we don’t have “PCs” or “NPCs” in this design, we just have “characters.” The people who play them are participants, and some facilitators.

    Anon10: It sounds like facilitator covers more or less the original intent of an NPC, i.e. a character in place to influence the experience of the non-facilitating participants, but that the updated nomenclature is more descriptive of the current situation.

    Anon11: With a non-larper audience it’s really important how you name things for the participants, too. They take what they’re called and run with it, not having that much information to build on. So it’s a big difference if you call them players/participants/audience/characters/initiates/whatever. Usually – don’t let them know what you’re calling them behind the scenes!

    Ryan Hart: Anon11 That’s exactly why we stopped using the term player.

    We also had to, after our first review, explicitly tell people “this is not an escape room.”

    Tommy Honton did a great design on TMM, and did exactly what we asked, but if I could make one change it would have been to remove the biggest “puzzle.” We were worried people wouldn’t have enough to do, and so we literally locked up elements of the narrative, and then prominently placed those locks in front of people. They always got the locks open, and generally loved the way they accessed the narrative, but it did put some people into problem solving mode.

    Q, Anon12: But Lindsay Wolgel wasn’t the 1 on 2 expereince much less taxing? In my exp the 1 on 1 mean I’m included in everything, there’s no breaks.

    Lindsay Wolgel: I couldn’t say! I’ve never done a 1 on 1 larp experience! It was hard in some ways to split my attention between the two participants but there were definitely times where they would be dealing with each other more than me. Two groups actually asked me to give them some privacy while they sussed out what to do 😅

    Ryan Hart: I think the 1 on 2 is less taxing, except if one of the 2 is a child. Then it’s my personal version of hell.

    It also depends on the phase. Something we’ve gotten really good at is onboarding in role (it’s why I want to take the smaller version of TMM to KP). It’s very hard, when you have a list of bullets in your head you have to hit, in order, with specific phrases, to manage that and a three or four way conversation. It’s much easier to onboard 1 person.

    The conflict management and resolution? Easier with multiple people, because if you get a “fish” (a person who just isn’t doing anything, just flopping around) you have other people to play off of. Plus if you get someone who gets the design, it’s really pleasureable.

    I actually instruct facilitators to avoid talking to one person for more than five minutes without a “reason.” That’s because actors love people who give them good responses, and if left to their own devices, facilitators will gravitate towards strong roleplayers and have amazing scenes. But I’m not paying for them to give amazing scenes to experienced people who can probably get there on their own… I need them to work with the entire group.

     

    Q, Anon13: Hey, thanks again for this. I watched it again with better concentration. In the title you speak of “Larp/Theatre crossovers.”

    Content-wise, these seem like 100% larps to me. Would that be correct?

    (I understand that for marketing you might says they are “Participatory Theatre” or “Immersive Theatre” or something.)

    Anon14: From what I’ve gathered, it’s rather low on roleplay component.

    Lindsay Wolgel: Yes! Calculations was written as a larp where the only thing changed when it became a commercial theatre experience was the addition of one audience member and it being set in a hotel room. The content of the larp is exactly the same! And The Mortality Machine belongs in the genre which Ryan is naming Theatre Larp! So yes, I think participatory theatre is just a naming device that can place these in the theatre world. And to me, they are so much more than immersive theatre so I would never name them immersive theatre alone.. I’d probably add more descriptives to the title!

    This was part of the Solmukohta 2020 online program. https://solmukohta.eu/