Multi-day larps inevitably require a great deal of commitment in time, money and effort. A few hours’ preparation, in good time, can make a huge difference to your experience at the event.
Here are some broad suggestions on how you can prepare for a larp.
Read the Material, Settings and Character Sheet
Read your character sheet, the design document, the casting lists, and other documents sent by the organisers. Make notes and calendar reminders of key deadlines such as payment and responses to casting questionnaires. This keeps track of everything but also helps the game organisers, who do not need to chase you. Join any Facebook group the organisers recommend and watch for announcements.
If the larp provides long and detailed pre-written characters, they can be difficult to remember. Write down some notes in an in-character notebook you can use in game. This is a better alternative to refer to in game than a non-diegetic character sheet.
Finally, some players like to read or watch movies about the setting or relevant subject, for example in a historical game or in a game about a real life situation. The knowledge or emotions from those sources can be brought into the game naturally, through the lens of your character, if appropriate.
Practical Preparations
Book travel and accommodation. Doing this early can save you money. Make sure you have the relevant visas, travel insurance and anything else you would need to travel to the relevant country for the larp. Check in advance any travel from the station or airport to the venue. Sometimes the organisers will provide a coach — be sure to sign up to this in time. If not, reach out of the Facebook group to carpool. Bring comfort snacks, any personal medicines, a hot water bottle, anything that you need to be physically comfortable.
Make Pre-game Connections
If the game relies on you making connections, then engage with the relevant Facebook groups pre-game. First, reach out to the players of specific characters mentioned on your character sheet. Four or five connections are more than enough to get you started. Think of two axes: positive to negative and static vs. dynamic. A static relationship is something that may evolve but is relatively settled. A dynamic relationship is one that is expected to change dramatically during the game. For example, a positive static friendship is a long-lasting friendship. These elements are fluid and can change unexpectedly in game time, but these axes provide a good starting point.
If you are worried you may not have enough relationships but at the same time do not want to stretch yourself too thin and overpromise, you can also make some simple connections for example: we are friends because I help them with their homework. If the two players have chemistry, it can become something more, but if there is not much time or inclination, it can stay as a casual connection.
Some players love to pre-play scenes by play by text or over Facebook. Other players like to write stories about their backgrounds and events that have happened in the past. These can all be useful in finding the emotional connection to the character. However, they can also be quite time-consuming, so it is possible that not every player will be able to engage in this way.
“Finding” the Character
Think of the personality and emotional state of your character. Choose a signature song, archetype or story arc. Consider how the character would react to a certain situation, their belief system, and feelings.
Work on the physicality of your character, their posture, accent, any mannerisms that are distinct from yours. Adopting a few characteristics for your character that are distinct from you as a player can be very interesting and effective in portraying different personas.
Costuming and Props
With costuming, start with the advice given by the designers. It’s easier and less stressful to buy, rent, or create your costumes in advance. Don’t underestimate the power of your friendly fellow larpers — they’ll often be able to provide obscure items, or point you at a place you can get them. Make a costume list which will also help with packing.
Prepare any props. Gather some keepsakes or tools of the trade that identify your character and ground you emotionally. Letters, photographs of your loved ones, a locket, or a wedding ring can all be very emotive props both for you and for others who interact with your character’s personal story.
Pre-Party
If you arrive the night before, perhaps participate in a dinner or drinks with other players. It is always nice to get to meet people out of character and it helps with the pre-game nerves.
Don’t Overdo It
There is such a thing as too much preparation. If you have invested too much time in preparation and preplay you may not meet the expectations that you yourself have placed on the game. Similarly, a game has a finite amount of time and overcommitting to plots and connections may leave you stretched.
Have Fun!
Preparing for a larp can be great fun, especially if you do it in good time. It can help get you in the mood, extend the enjoyment of the larp and prepare you for a great experience!
Players may engage in erotic and amorous interaction, in character, in different ways (Stenros 2013). Sometimes the design of the larp tries to avoid arousal, especially due to safety concerns, but there are a growing number of Nordic style larps designed for strong emotions, including sexual arousal, and players steering for that experience.
The question is, how to successfully indulge in that excitement?
Sexual role-playing has been addressed in Nordic larp for the last 20 years (Brown & Schrier 2018). Harviainen notes (2019) that in larps the role-playing activity is in the centre, contrary to BDSM role-play, without digging too deep into solely sexual aspects.
I will question this conclusion and lay out methods by which we can explore the sexual dimensions of larp.
A new trend has emerged in Nordic larp where erotic action seems to be at the core of the player experience. For instance, the many re-runs of Inside Hamlet, Baphomet, Just a Little Lovin’ and the 2019 larp House of Craving have shown that larpers want and are capable of playing with sexual arousal and erotic action. I choose to call these player interactions Embodied Erotic Role-Play — they can be found in larp, in BDSM, and also in private settings or pro-domme settings. They might happen in any larp, especially if the theme is erotic.
Representative symbolic methods, where the player is not meant to feel anything, are not included in this article, nor verbal methods of playing out erotic lust. Of course, sexual arousal might happen because of fantasies, the right person, that adrenalin rush you feel when you are scared, the fetish of larp costumes, etc. But this article is about the times when all players included want to play out (and get immersed in) sexual arousal.
My thinking around sexual arousal is inspired by the sexologist Denise Medico (2019).
There are three steps in my method of handling sexual arousal in character:
First, you need to “feel deep” about what you really want for yourself. Next, pregame (and postgame) the people involved in Embodied Erotic Role-Play should communicate and negotiate, try to “talk true” as much as possible, and then find ways to “adjust arousal” during playtime.
Feel Deep
If you jump directly into negotiating and calibrating with your co-players, you might not realize what you really need. It is easy to say do everything you want to me and hope for as strong emotions as possible. But what would be your most erotic and arousing scene? You need some time by yourself that could be provided during the workshop: close your eyes, breath deep, consider what do you need now? What do you see yourself doing in this larp, with this person or these people?
I find Betty Martin’s Wheel of consent really useful for this phase: Before you start communicating offgame with the one(s) you want erotic role-play with you should be able to answer these questions for yourself:
How would you like to touch me? (take)
How would you like me to touch you? (accept)
You need to be able to allow (or not allow) requests from others of touching you, or how others want you to touch them (serve). This is to understand if you are doing your erotic runtime actions for yourself or the one who ask.
When you know a little more of what you want, you may play The 3-Minute Game (booklet available in many languages, including Danish, English and French) in the workshop with several different people, so that you are more secure and aware before actual erotic negotiations. It is a good exercise to do with the one(s) you plan to heighten in-game sexual arousal with.
Betty Martin’s Wheel of Consent.
Talk True (Negotiate Hard)
A couple of methods have been used in many larp workshops (Pan, House of Craving) to create a brave and loving mode for talking and playing more intimately: The loong hugs stretching into awkwardness and staring with acceptance and love into each other’s eyes. Preferably with many more than the ones you have planned to play sex with.
I have made a model (Grasmo, 2019) about how immersion into the fiction and sexual arousal may interact. You can use this when you negotiate Embodied Erotic Role-Play: Would you like to play out your erotic scene in a performative or narrative-driven way. Look at the model (2) to have a tool for more concrete discussions about what you want (draw it on a napkin for yourself) — do you want immersion into the character’s erotic history, without much sexual arousal at the player’s end, or is sexual play the core of your play?
Here are questions inspired by Midori (2017).
What mood do we want to reach? (sexual, erotic, performative, immersive/narrative). Think in more detail what the atmosphere between you should be like. If you draw this on a napkin, you can also stick a straw through which may symbolize maximum/minimum physical contact.
How do we want to reach that mood? Share goes and no-goes, mentally and physically.
How do I hear and see if you are having a good or bad time? Show with the body language of your character.
How do we escalate or de-escalate? Also agree on if you want to play safe (no one gets their feelings or bodies hurt) or brave (we know it is risks involved, and we will be there for each other if something goes wrong).
A part of the negotiation should be practical: Try out some scenes together. To create a brave space (Friedner 2019) go further than you think you would go in-game. Test out different ways of urging each-other on, gently stopping, and hard stops. Change who initiates. A version of this was done in the workshop at Vedergällingen.
Adjust Arousal
The game has started, you are in character and you’re ready for some hot play. It may be just a lustful story, but just as often an extremely abusive and negative narrative may make you happy and horny (See Montola 2010). Remember, plans or consent can always be granted or revoked, because of what you (playing your character) want now. In the worst case you can always walk out of the scene. In the best case, continue to climax. Here are some tips to adjust sexual arousal up or down.
If it feels too much for you, this is some suggestions to minimize sexual arousal:
Do not immerse: make theatrical pre-planned scenes and use symbolic representational techniques.
No or very little touching, avoid eye contact. Use instead a lot of words to stay in your head, not your body.
Rush into and out of scenes without feeling them.
Play on preferences and kinks you do not share.
Think of other things, don’t be present. But be present enough to know if you allow, take, serve or accept what is happening. Stop if it is not what you like.
Of course it is always a good idea to take an off-game break to adjust, but also to be able to escalate or not while staying in character. This might give you another kind of control so that you can feel safe to explore sexual arousal. Talking about bleed after the game is important (Waern 2011) to understand and adjust your arousal to real life but I will not cover that in this article.
If you are interested in erotic role-playing you probably don’t want to minimize the sexual arousal. If you’re steering for that sexual transgressiveness (Stenros & Bowman, 2018), you can train for skills to stay in your state of sexual arousal, while you are in character. Actually sharing the imaginative space together, as inter-immersion (Pohjola 2014), might help you spiral lust upwards. It does not have to be unhelpful to stay in character: normally fantasies help us closer to orgasm, not further away.
You may heighten ingame arousal during your intimate scenes using some of these tips for erotic and sexual embodied play:
Use your breathing. Both to breath deep into your own body, your own loins, and to breathe fire into the other players(s) lust. Sounds and touch go straight into our brain, without filter. Alter with breathing “dog breath”, fast and shallow, it will make you more horny (and maybe a bit dizzy).
Lock eyes with each other, touch, stand close.
Be mindful, focus on breath, the other(s), the sounds. Make lustful sounds and sighs. Remember to use a lot of time (good practise for real-life sex), do not rush.
Eroticize the other and the situation, even if you do not find them attractive out-of game. They are your porn now. Hopefully, they will also give you something that turns you on, as you have planned.
Play on your preferences and kinks, build them into your character, maybe even with a strong backstory on why it means so much (sexually) to your character.
Make rules to keep the space and the play both safe and brave: For instance with other persons (lustfully) watching, with clear rules (like no clothes off, not touching sexual parts).
Stay in the mode you trained for: clear, detailed communication, both with facial expressions, body language and words. The perfect thing about having larp as the frame for erotic interaction is that in most larps you cannot actually performs sex acts ingame — therefore you do not have to act on it. This is a gift that can transfer knowledge, skills and emotions into your real life sexual relationship(s).
Bibliography
Sarah Lynne Bowman (2018): Immersion and Shared Imagination in Role-Playing Games. Role-Playing Game Studies: Transmedia Foundations. Routledge.
Ashley Brown & Karen Schrier (2018): Sexuality and the Erotic in Role-Play. Role-Playing Game Studies: Transmedia Foundations. Routledge.
Hanne Grasmo (2019): Arousal in Character: Embodied Erotic Role-play in larp and BDSM. World Association for Sexual Health Biannual Conference/International Journal for Sexual Health, Special Edition.
J. Tuomas Harviainen & Tania Sihvonen (2019): My Games are… “Unconventional” — A Literary Cross-examination of Game and BDSM Studies. 3rd Sexual Conference: Play, Turku
Denise Medico (2019): Orientation toward Eroticism: A Critically-Based Proposition for Sex Therapists. World Association for Sexual Health Biannual Conference/International Journal for Sexual Health, Special Edition.
Markus Montola (2010): The Positive Negative Experience in Extreme Role-Playing. Proceedings from Digra 14
Jaakko Stenros (2013): Amorous Bodies in Play: Sexuality in Nordic Live Action Role-Playing Games. Screw The System — Explorations of Spaces, Games and Politics through Sexuality and Technology. Arse Elektronika.
Jaakko Stenros & Sarah Lynne Bowman (2018): Transgressive Role-Play. Role-Playing Game Studies: Transmedia Foundations. Routledge.
Being cast in a leadership role is a great opportunity, but it can mean extra responsibility to shape the tone and experience of your play group, both ingame and offgame. As a player, your goal should be to empower everyone to focus on playing their characters and having a great larp. Whether you’re playing a school prefect, a bunker president, or a marine officer, leadership characters are often focal points for ingame information and tasks, and many of the core principles of playing them well remain consistent.
There are many strategies you can use to bring your fellow players together and to create an atmosphere of trust. Let’s look at a few of them:
Before the Larp
Understand what is required of you as a leader — and also what isn’t — both in setup and during runtime. This will help you set your level of engagement, and recognize when you risk being overloaded — and either delegate responsibilities, or change your character if necessary.
If the larp has pre-game online discussions, be active in the build-up to the larp if you can. You don’t need to be omnipresent, but being visible in discussions, dropping tidbits about how you plan to play your character, and posting from an account that uses a recognisable photo of you can create familiarity and trust.
Take an interest in players who will be playing your subordinates. What do they think your character should know about theirs? What play do they want from the group and from you? What are their boundaries? Answering those questions yourself first can help hesitant players give more useful answers, and demonstrates sincerity in sharing vulnerabilities to help each other play safely.
Expect your play to revolve around your group. When setting up relations, focus on connections within your group that emphasise or undercut your character as a leader, and establish your character’s investment in the success of the group and the people in it. Choose relations outside the group that complement the interactions you want within it, so they provide variety and play opportunities rather than making you inaccessible.
Build your group’s lore and dynamics with your fellow players. Establish shared expectations, like how successful the group is at what it’s supposed to do, or whether the characters are fiercely loyal, cheerfully indifferent, or at each other’s throats. Define known internal and external-facing views and behaviours of your group, and as a leader, embody these views and behaviour. Encourage your group to play off you and your position (even when you’re not present) by either following and strengthening it or going against it — for example, if you establish yourself as a strict by-the-book boss, both followers and rebels can use you to give additional ingame depth to their play.
Try to make your costume recognisable and describable so others can find you in a crowd or ask around for you. Make sure it includes some way to tell the time!
During Workshops
Find a moment to gather your group and bring anyone who wasn’t involved in preplay up to speed. Collectively review the decisions you made before the game and see if they still make sense in person, and are acceptable to players who couldn’t be involved.
Have everyone introduce themselves and describe what they want from this experience, and what they’d like the group to play up about their character.
Ask players if there are any group responsibilities they want to avoid or play on so you know who to delegate which tasks to. Encourage people to come to you in play if they feel their larp would be improved by more involvement in official group tasks.
Check if anyone has any access needs the group can help accommodate to level the playing field and make the group feel safe. If you know the larp’s structure, consider planning times to bring your group together in play, but avoid making these meetups mandatory unless the design requires it.
Work together to ensure other players understand your group and how they can engage with you during the larp.
During Play
Be a hub of activity for your group but avoid micromanagement, which can both prove stressful for you and deny others opportunities to participate. Give others a chance to contribute — they can be tasked to find ball dates, research the macguffin, plan an attack, or serve as a liaison officer to other groups. The leader gets to sign off on the action — responsibility lies with them — but by spreading the work both prevents overburdening individuals and gives all players opportunities for high status play. It also creates more potential for drama.
Your leadership position gives you access to information. Share it with your group as much as possible; share too much rather than too little unless someone specifically asked for play around being uninformed.
Involve your group in decision making — ask for and listen to their opinions. If the ingame culture supports it, consider explicit mechanisms like voting, too. Remember, if they suggest bad ideas it may signal that they’re interested in playing on the consequences.
Play an enthusiastic, larger-than-life version of your character at the start of the larp to give your group a beacon to align around. Use your depiction to illustrate key elements of the character’s role, personality, and how to interact with them.
Project when you speak. Speak louder and slower than normal and pay attention to facing the group you’re talking to.
Use non-verbal play. Take up space! Stand in the middle of the room and don’t back off when someone plays aggressive. Have a straight back, don’t lean against walls, and spread your legs to shoulder-width instead of crossing them. Stand rather still and move calmly. Look straight forward rather than down, and look people in the eye when you talk to them. Gesture with your wrists stiff rather than loose. If you’ve calibrated with other players and you want to convey superiority or dominance, you might even step this up with things like staying seated while people have to stand and report to you, or interrupt and cutting them off when they talk.
Understand your offgame advantages and use them to enhance your presence, but not to be overbearing. If you’re tall, use your height to centre focus when you need it, but make sure you aren’t looming over anyone who’s uncomfortable. If you’re playing in your native language and others aren’t, try giving an inspirational speech, but be mindful of anyone who might not be able to answer back fluently. Calibrate this with your co-players before and during play.
Not all leaders are willing and you can play on reticence, delegating decisions, but at a dramatic moment making a forceful and determined stance.
Not all leaders are competent or sensible. If you go this route, it’s important to negotiate offgame and make sure your co-players will understand what you’re doing. That said, by giving people the wrong tasks to do you can create even more drama: the shy student as master of ceremonies, the blunt soldier forced to be a diplomat, the skilled surgeon required to deal with coughs and colds. Things going wrong or deadlines being missed can create interpersonal play.
Don’t force players into tasks they’re uncomfortable with or are unable to complete. In larps, we mostly want to play on character drama and the experience of being competent. Make sure that players are set up to succeed when they want to perform competence, and that players who want to show incompetence can communicate this clearly in play. Remember to delegate tasks that need competence to players with the skills required, and pair up other players who want to try out those experiences with them as mentors. The characters may be seasoned marines, but the players probably aren’t.
Avoid “make-work” with no dramatic value. It bores players and can undermine the sense of importance of assigned tasks. Having someone cook for three hours or fill paperwork that would be necessary in real life but doesn’t play into plot or drama may be practical, but rarely makes for fun play.
Match play to players and ensure they’re prepared for the culture of the organization they’re supposed to play. If you adopt a rigid military structure and leadership style, players with little actual experience of it may not react as expected, and you’ll need to make allowances.
Create memorable moments. Leaders are often busy during larps and the temptation is to limit play to your immediate circle. However, interaction with a leader can add a lot to the immersion and atmosphere for the player of a subordinate. Try to have at least one meaningful, personal interaction with every subordinate — seek a subordinate’s personal advice, pat the rookie on the shoulder for an accomplishment and say how proud you are, have a clash with the maverick of the group. If you’re leading too many characters to make this possible, enlist peers and your direct subordinates to spread the load, but still try to reach out when you can.
Play up those around you and share the spotlight. Remember to use the information you gathered before the game to make sure you give players the kind of interaction they need to support their portrayal. For example, always ask for the opinion of an “expert” before making a related decision or reprimand the person playing the lazy worker. You have a lot of influence on how these players’ larps may turn out.
After the game
Prepare to be active in post-game support and care. As a prominent figure in many players’ larps, it’s likely your character will be a focus of discussions and feedback afterwards. This can be emotionally taxing if it’s negative, but highly rewarding when it’s positive. Remember to keep sharing the spotlight and reflecting it back to the people you played with — you’re peers again now. The amount of feedback will vary wildly; after some larps you may get none, and after others an overwhelming amount. The more prominent and dramatic the role, the more you’re likely to hear from other players. You may be called upon to support your co-players, but make sure you’re looking after your own needs and welfare too, either with co-players or with the safety team.
Magic items are (often small everyday) items used by the player to help them animate a character during play and to evoke the character afterwards. Through this article we want to help players understand the power a magic item can have during gameplay, and how to choose and prepare a magic item for their character, as well as how to distinguish everyday use from in-character use. Note that when we talk here of “magic items”, we mean a technique for using a prop in any genre of larp, not an in-character magic item in a fantasy larp.
We will also touch upon the possibilities for using a magic item during or after debriefing either to consciously distance themselves from their character or to invoke in-game feelings after the larp is over.
Choosing and Preparing Your Item
Most larps use props and costumes to some extent, but magic items are ones you as a player choose to imbue with special significance and connection to your character. The best choice is usually a personally distinct item that you can carry with you while playing, so you can access it as needed. It could be part of the costume, a tool, or a personal memento. What really matters is that you can find a way to make it a symbolic part of the character’s history or everyday life: a particular piece of jewelry, a letter from a loved one, or a sonic screwdriver would all be good choices.
Sometimes it happens naturally, during play, that an otherwise insignificant prop becomes magical through repeated interactions, but you can also consciously make one as preparation for the larp. It works well in concert with finding the costume and physical mannerisms for the character. When you try out costumes, a certain accessory might really nail the character as you see it or a prop lets you do a certain thing that is perfect for what you want to express. When you start feeling the bond between item and character, include the item in various preparations for your character. Wear the item when trying out body language, hold it when pondering the dilemmas the character will be facing, or just daydreaming your way into the role. You’ll soon find the object beginning to be inextricably intertwined with the character.
Using Your Item During Play
The magic in the item can be used in several ways during play. It always functions as a passive reminder of your character that can help you maintain immersion. It works wonderfully as a catalyst to push you deeper into your character when you’re having a hard time immersing.
It is also a great tool to give physical expression to the inner life of your character. Playing with your wedding ring when you have marriage trouble or scrunching up your hat when nervous can be great examples of communicating your feelings while focused on your inner life. It doesn’t even have to be a specific situation, a magic item could be the thing your character always takes out when there’s nothing going on. Re-reading the letter, winding up the pocket watch, or whittling with the pocket knife can make beautiful in-character moments when nothing else is going on.
After the Larp
Putting down or taking off a magic item can be an excellent way to sharpen the divide between being in your character and returning to yourself. If the item is always with the character, then not having it makes it easier to be yourself instead.
When you are completely done playing the character, the magic item can serve as the focus of a ritual to leave the character behind. Depending on your relationship to the character, this can be a more or less destructive endeavour. Destroying the item that symbolizes the character can ward off some negative bleed effects, while other characters need a more tender approach in order to lay them to rest.
If instead, you want to retain the connection to the character, a magical item can serve as a reminder of how it felt to be that person, long after playing the larp. Us humans have an uncanny ability to recall feelings, given the right sensory input. That can be tapped into and used to bring back a character for a new larp or a nostalgic moment, or possibly to evoke positive traits from the character, useful for specific situations, e.g. courage to handle an everyday conflict or confidence to meet a new person on a date.
Building a character, bringing the persona to life, and taking control of any emotional residue isn’t necessarily hard, but with a tool as a magic item, it can be easier to keep a mindful process.
Listening connects players and creates shared spaces. Listening is crucial for diving into stories, moods and fictional worlds. Listening is a key skill in larp, but are we aware of that? How good are we at listening? Can we learn it and improve it?
In larps we usually give importance to speech abilities and visuals, but listening can shape the rhythm and space of a live experience. We will present an interdisciplinary approach drawing from music and sound studies theory: we will also propose exercises and practical solutions. Listening is a matter of respect and empathy. It is an interface for co-creation: if we all learn how to use it, maybe we will achieve new forms of negotiation.
Listening as an Embodied Tool
Your listening is unique: no one listens like you. Your listening is linked to your body and your experiences. It is individual and unique, like your fingerprint or your voice. Since listening is not tangible, this aspect is often forgotten. However, it is important to keep this in mind as you read the rest of this text. Each technique and exercise will test your way of listening in a different way and produce different outcomes. These are
not prescriptive exercises. Some will be very useful, others will not. You may already use some of these techniques. Everyone larps in different ways, everyone learns according to their own rhythm and their own interest. Each listener, each soul, is different and beautiful.
Listening — A Different Awareness
Listening is physical, like having blond hair or dark eyes. Understanding this, we can learn to use it as a tool to portray a character. Just as we change our appearance, our posture, or our way of speaking, we can try to change the way we listen. This does not require previous training, but it is necessary to be more aware, or perhaps aware in a different way toward what surrounds us. We propose two pre-larp exercises and three techniques for in-game use.
Exercises
1. Listen to the Space
If possible, visit the location before the larp. Walk in silence and listen to it. Every room has its own voice. Figure out what spot your character will like the best, where they will spend most of their time. Connect your character to the location by deep listening to it. Experience that with fresh ears. Then try to break down the soundscapes. Use your mind like an audio mixer, breaking down what you hear, as a producer isolates sounds and instruments when working on a song. This place will be your house. Know its inner voice.
2. Listen to the Time
Prepare yourself by listening to the sound of the setting. Will it be historical? Listen to the era’s music and songs. Become familiar with the historical soundscape and what was around back then. Usually this is only done when our character is somehow connected to the music (musician, singer, etc.), but remember that we are all music lovers. We all have songs we are attached to and that speak to us. Let your characters have some too. The same applies also to dystopian/non-realistic settings: every world has it own sounds. Listen to soundtracks of movies or games that are set in the same or similar world. Use this music while reading or preparing your character. Listen to it again just before the game, to better get into your character’s shoes and start your larp with a boost of immersion.
Techniques
1. Shape your own Soundscape
Each character has their own soundscape. You can build it as you would any physical affectation. Do they live in a silent world? A noisy one? If you have your own house or private space in the game, make it sound like your character. For example, if you are a priest, surround yourself with silence. Let your environment speak for you.
2. Filters and Listening Positions
Listening can be an instrument of power. You can use it to exclude other people or silence them, or conversely to rebel or impose yourself. When we listen we always use filters, which can come from our cultures, privileges, beliefs, expectations, intentions. Each of these values filters the attention we pay when we talk to someone. In a larp these filters can be reworked and combined in many ways. Not listening to someone or to certain sounds is a powerful way of building relationships. Changing those filters generates new listening positions, the attitudes that place us, through sound, in the world and the social order.
If you play a mystical character maybe you may never listen to all that is said by ordinary people. Or your traumatized character can react strongly to sounds connected to their trauma.
3. Limit Verbocentrism
In the most larps, we talk a lot. Words are used to express concepts and feelings and to achieve goals. Try to listen more and talk a little less. What are the other players expressing, or asking for? How are they right now? Listening in this way becomes a vehicle for inclusion and hopefully a contribution to an ingame safe space.
Conclusions
These techniques are not universal and they only work in the right context. It may not be easy, since it’s based on an impalpable material and because listening can take place only when there is connection and mutual understanding. It works if we mean listening, and larp, as a way of being connected to the world.
So, you’ve been given a predesigned character that you’re going to be playing in a larp. You read the character sheet. “Yes,” you think to yourself , “this sounds kind of like a person. I can see where they fit into the larp setting and the designer’s overall scheme. I can see how they are intended to behave and present themselves.” But! Maybe it feels a bit thin and schematic? Maybe the designer has thought hard about how this character contributes to the larp, but hasn’t had time to think quite so hard about what it will be like to actually play them for a weekend? Maybe they are lacking in the sort of interest that turns a character from a space-filler into someone memorable?
This is where inner tension comes in. Think of the character sheet, as presented to you, as showing the outer layer of the character — how they appear to the rest of the world, how they engage with the larp environment by default. But then within that, there will be another person — or maybe more than one — which may inform behaviour, decisions, actions, etc. in a way that’s not obvious and predictable from looking at the outward nature of the character. And maybe there will be interesting tensions between the outer persona and the inner person, that will generate play for yourself and for your co-players.
This technique is a shortcut. You may be happier with a detailed psychological exploration of your character to unfold its inner workings in depth. But not everyone works that way; and sometimes even if you do, you might end up in similar places.
What is Inner Tension?
Let’s take an example from the most familiar generic fantasy setting: your character is a tavernkeeper. This is an easy stereotype to play: the tropes of a tavernkeeper include bonhomie, tolerance up to a point, the capability of violence, and so on. But what will make your tavernkeeper different from any other? Perhaps, back when they were a kid, they really wanted to be a paladin when they grew up. And perhaps that ‘inner paladin’ is still present. This will affect things like how they deal with bad behaviour in the tavern. It may mean that they address some clients with more respect than others. It may mean that they don’t cooperate with the local thieves’ guild — or perhaps they do, as part of a plan to expose them? Perhaps they have a set of rules, rituals, and dogmas that they adhere to, to the annoyance or amusement of their regulars.
This is a process of analysis, rather than exploration — which means it can be used on short notice. When someone in the tavern starts reminiscing about their time on crusade, you as a player immediately know how to respond — you’d love to go on a crusade, if it wasn’t for the responsibility of this tavern — and people will see how the tavernkeeper’s eyes will light up.
If you have a more ‘method’ approach to characterization, the same technique can still work. Robert de Niro famously said (Levy 2014) that, when preparing to play the character of Travis Bickle in Taxi Driver, he thought of the drivers as hermit crabs, each scuttling around the city in their own shell. Perhaps your tavernkeeper’s internal identity might be a hermit crab? They’ve decorated and pimped the tavern to express their personality. Within it, they feel safe — armoured, at home, and confident. Outside the tavern, they might feel naked — exposed. They might stick to walls and corners, and be nervous about being approached closely. Hermit crabs are always on the lookout for bigger shells, so that they can grow — is the tavernkeeper keen to expand, asking for word of larger properties that might be coming vacant? Maybe they are grabby, and when they take money, they unconsciously shape their fingers into claws?
Added Depth
When asked to make an unexpected decision or choice, players tend to react in a rather binary way — “What do you want to drink?” will often be met with, either the obvious thing or the same thing that the player themselves would drink, or else the opposite. But thinking about the hermit crab: perhaps when in their own tavern, they drink like a monarch, the best wine in the house. But when elsewhere, perhaps they are too wary to drink anything but water — or anything at all.
A character can have multiple inner tensions. Another approach is to use a composite of people who you know in real life. Perhaps, instead of a paladin or a hermit crab, the way the tavernkeeper presents themselves physically is driven by Person A inside; perhaps the way they behave socially is driven by Person B; etc. So, perhaps the friend from whom you have drawn Person A gets up early in the morning, so as to fit in a lengthy preparation routine. How will that feel for the character, when you do it at the larp? Why do they feel the need to do this? How does it interact with the other aspects of their life as a tavernkeeper? Not having these answers given to you in a prescriptive way, in a deep character description or in a shallow one that you have made deep yourself by exploring it, can be liberating. Real people don’t always have rational explorations for how they do things, and don’t always have answers to questions — a lot of the time, they just act out of habit or instinct. A character who is too strongly guided by purpose or whose reactions have been fully reasoned out often won’t feel as real.
Tension within the character is what produces interesting play — for you, and for those around you. Thinking about internal identities can be a way to quickly and easily generate internal tension. It can enable you to respond realistically to unexpected situations and to ensure that your characters are memorably different from one another, different from other similar characters, and different from yourself.
His tongue slid slowly up his stepbrother’s neck. “I don’t understand why I’m doing this… It is like there is something wrong with this place.” There was a small pause in his movements and a scared look in his eyes as he stared longingly at his stepbrother’s body. Then he continued almost like something was forcing him…
From the webpage of House of Craving (2019), a larp by Tor Kjetil Edland, Danny Meyer Wilson & Bjarke Pedersen.
Do you also enjoy reading an erotic passage in a novel or watching an erotic scene in a movie? Do you like this tingling sense of excitement? Wouldn’t you find it interesting to feel a bit of it in a larp as well?
Do you also tend to chicken out of possible erotic scenes like many of us used to do? Or do you want to try a larp with erotic elements for the first time but are hesitant about it? We wrote this piece for you.
In Wikipedia eroticism is defined as “a quality that causes sexual feelings as well as a philosophical contemplation concerning the aesthetics of sexual desire, sensuality, and romantic love.” In this text, we will use erotic larp as a term for larps that include any elements of eroticism (as defined by Wikipedia) in their design, no matter the extent erotic elements are occurring and no matter if these elements are optional and depend on participant agency or if they are an inherent part of the larp.
Playing on eroticism and desire in larps has become more and more popular within the international larp community in recent years. Such larps seem to bear an increased risk of generating larp regrets and of making participants everything from nervous up to really worried about the potential scenes lying ahead, Here’s how you can make an erotic larp work for you — although this doesn’t replace participating in workshops that are part of the larp design:
Feeling Accepted, Attractive and Desired
There is a lot of research on how representation of bodies in media influences people’s selfevaluation. Advertisements, movies and social media dictate their own idea of what a beautiful, erotic body looks like and the proportion of people who are dissatisfied with their body image or even feel inadequate is far from negligible. There are many larpers who are insecure about their body, about their level of attractiveness, about being accepted, and about whether others would want to play an erotic scene with them.
Feeling comfortable with yourself and your co-participants is key and this is definitely something that can be improved before the game.Get clarity in order to stop worrying! Take initiative and tell people if you want to play erotic scenes with them. Ask if they want to play with you and on what level.
You are probably thinking, but what if I get no for an answer? That will not help me feel accepted and more secure about myself. But the possibility of rejection is a necessary factor of reaching out to other people, and we can try to not make it into anything bigger than it is. Knowing is always better than worrying and then you can both let that be no big deal and play some other content together.
Here are a few tips for how you can help yourself feel like a protagonist in an erotic story:
Prioritize having a costume you feel beautiful in. Clothes you feel well in help you ease into play.
If possible, agree in advance to play a few scenes with someone you feel safe playing erotic content with and who you don’t have anxieties about. This can ease you into play with strangers later in the larp.
Seek out play with someone you find attractive at some level but are not obsessing about in order to get the right type of tension.
When you sense someone else’s attraction to you try to take it in and let it make you feel beautiful instead of dismissing it or immediately worrying about what responsibility you have for following up.
Knowing and Stating Boundaries
Before arriving at an erotic larp, take your time to think about what you may not feel comfortable with. Imagine what kind of scenes could happen at this larp. Are there activities you do not want to take part in? Is, for example, being naked an issue? Or giving somebody a French kiss?
Once you have identified the things that make you uncomfortable, find out if those are absolutely unacceptable for you and if yes, avoid those in the larp and communicate your boundaries to your co-participants in advance. Also, never hesitate to state your boundaries during a larp. Boundaries might change due to your mood, who you are playing a particular scene with or just by chance.
Everybody playing with you will be thankful if you use safety-mechanics and state boundaries. Something many larpers dread is to be told after the larp that they made someone uncomfortable because they failed to pick up on a boundary.
Often people larp because they want to test or push their boundaries. If that is the case with you, take it slow and try to come-up with a stepby- step approach. If being naked is a boundary you want to push, do not force yourself to immediately undress completely but prepare a costume that can be removed piece by piece. Or maybe you decide to just go with nice underwear which will stay on you and the next larp will be when you jump naked into the pool.
Boundaries can also open during a larp. Chemistry with co-participants can make this process very dynamic and it might be a good idea to reassess your boundaries and wishes during the larp to avoid regrets.
Pacing Your Erotic Play
Sometimes in erotic larps things are rushed. Most erotic larps include simulated sex scenes but if you jump into a sex scene with your erotic relation after two hours into playing, what are you going to do for the rest of the larp?
Compare it to movies and ask yourself — do I want this to be a porn movie or do I want it to be an erotic movie? Sex scenes in erotic movies are deliberately placed within a dramatic arc. They can fuel suspension and contribute to the atmosphere. They can be a tool to make a story complete but they alone do not make a good story.
Furthermore, do not forget that there might be other elements in the larp besides your erotic storyline. Too much eroticism might get boring over time so focusing on a good mix of things keeps the larp interesting.
If you prefer transparency you can talk with your potential erotic-relation-partners about pacing. Otherwise just try to pace the game yourself. It can increase the level of erotic tension in a relation if you break off a scene before it ends in a simulated sex scene. Maybe you do not even need a simulated sex scene at all.
Making Sex Scenes Meaningful
During an erotic larp, you might end up acting out sex-scenes. A good sex scene adds something to the story and contributes to your character development. It might represent change in social relationships and deliver new input to others to play on.
You can play around with the expectations and fantasies of the characters. They might not be realized after all. Characters who had sex can have vastly different experiences and interpretations of what happened.
Eroticism Doesn’t Have to be Physical
Last but not least, playing on eroticism doesn’t necessarily involve any intimate or physically close play. Imagine reading erotic poetry to a secret lover without touching them or eating some strawberries lasciviously while sitting at the opposite ends of a table.
What If It Doesn’t Work?
You are at the larp and the erotic larping you were hoping for doesn’t work. You don’t gel with your co-players, you aren’t able to overcome your own anxieties, someone is stressing you out. What do you do?
Have a talk with the organisers or the safety team. It can help to vent and to get suggestions for how to proceed in your play.
Focus on other relations than the one not working for you. If you are up to it, talk with the co-player you’re not gelling with. If that seems too stressful you can de-escalate play to a casual level and move to play with other characters.
Ask yourself if you are focusing too much on pre-game expectations that are not working out. Consider accepting that those didn’t pan out and go into an explorative mode to see if the larp might have other things in store that are interesting and sensual — If all the eroticism just doesn’t work out, explore the other themes of the larp and start creating additional stories. These stories shouldn’t interrupt the play of others but should add new flavors to the experience you are creating together.
Don’t forget to make use of safety mechanics and calibration techniques if something or someone stresses you out. It’s never too late even if you haven’t used them in previous scenes with the same person.
At the start of runtime, I’m completely overcome with feelings of fear and anxiety. I do not feel comfortable in my own skin. I believe that I am not capable of embodying the character to satisfaction. I believe that I will let down others who will be depending on me to support their experiences.
The first step is the hardest. The first choice to speak to another participant in play is not a proud moment. I don’t project my voice when I am nervous, and many times the unlucky participant has had to ask me to repeat what I just said. My body is defaulting to the nervous version of me. I don’t know what to do with my hands.
Sometimes I am still working my way up to making that first step, and a participant initiates conversation. I am not ready. When I speak to this person, my words are safe and non-committal. It would not surprise me if they feel that I’m either rudely disengaging with them, ineptly playing, or just merely being too boring.
This feeling of fear has followed me throughout my larp experience over the last 25 years.
These thoughts and feelings are entirely normal. They are difficult but manageable. We can overcome them. It’s going to be okay.
Fail Quickly and Forget It Happened
I am aware that my fear and anxiety is out of proportion. I am aware that once I begin play during runtime, these negative feelings will recede. I liken this to a stumbling start, but at least one that has some forward motion, enough to build personal momentum towards a desired level of confidence. After all, the start is always just a little awkward for everyone. If I screw up, it’s very likely no one will remember, and if they do remember, no one will likely care. This rush to start can use the fear in a helpful way too by transition from afraid-to-start to afraid-to-stop.
Make Choices that are Comfortable and Safe
If I have agency over my role, I can put the play within my comfort zone. What’s good is that this is a very acceptable way to share a larp experience with strangers, or a new-to-me style, or a different culture. The play in a larp that’s safe is not satisfying though and always going for safe play is boring for both me and for others who are looking for exciting play. Safe play is steady ground to which we can take the next step though. We can use it to challenge ourselves, a solid launch toward play with bigger risks.
Liquid Courage
While intoxication does not lead to mindful play, a single alcoholic beverage serving helps in multiple aspects. On the science and biology end, when the alcohol hits my forebrain, colloquially referred to as the worry wart, the brain activity related to my nerves and anxiety is anaesthetized, specifically my ability to inhibit my own behavior. The voice inside us that’s telling us that we can’t succeed becomes a little quieter. The visual cue of a drink in hand invites other players to have one with me.
Late Start to Let Others Take the Lead
Since others also struggle with the less-than-perfect play at the start of runtime, either plan to come late or engage in a distinctly solitary activity if early. When other players have left the initial awkward stage, join play with them. By doing this we are letting their play draw us in, which helps us get past the awkward stage quickly, and it also affirms their choices by showing support.
Interrogate the Fear
The fear and anxiety I feel is the outcome of the thoughts that I am thinking. By means of internal conversation, examining these thoughts significantly allows me to get that fear down to manageable levels. So what am I afraid of?
I am afraid that no one will like me.
I am afraid that I will harm someone’s experience and no one will want to play with me.
I am afraid that I am not interesting/
attractive/strong/trustworthy enough for the players I engage with and they will want to have their experience with someone else.
Upon examination, is there actually a danger of appearing uncool enough that people will dislike us? A very small possibility at most. Uncool is temporary until we do something cool.
While it’s important to steer with care for the experience of others in mind, is there really a risk that we’ll accidentally ruin someone’s experience? Under a good design, that risk is quite small. If the design is weak in this regard, the best we can do is the best we can do. Worrying doesn’t help so just move forward with things that we can do. Being mindful of others does lead to more good experiences for us.
The fear that we’re not good enough in the various categories is not easily dismissed. It is true that we cannot be everyone’s first pick for every interaction, but we don’t have to be to merely start. Even among strangers, a single conversation can lead to beautiful play. Let things go, allow for possibilities. We can be good choices for others, and don’t have to worry about being a first choice.
Fear is normal. While we cannot eliminate it, we can help each other overcome it. We can become practiced at using those tools that help us get through that awkward stage to where we can engage in play with confidence.
The most memorable scenes in larps have one thing in common: they involve strong emotions. But how to know how your character should feel in a given situation? How to express their emotions authentically? This article gives tips on how to prepare for the game in order to create a character who easily feels and some practices for expressing the turbulence of their inner realms.
Here are some useful practices to help you to tap into your character’s emotional realm.
1. Understand What Is Most Important To Your Character
What would your character fight for? Die, or even kill for? Her loved ones, money, drugs, her spiritual guru, fame on social media, a better climate, her zombie pet puppies, or the freedom to have ice cream for breakfast? That’s probably her deepest motivation, which tints her thoughts and excites emotions. This is what fuels her every action.
You may also want to explore if that motivation is strong or is she losing her interest towards it? Are there some conflicting drives, some other important things in her life? What kind of things are held important in her culture and in her family?
Write down the answers to the questions above. Then imagine some interesting situation in your character’s life, like talking to her parents (living or dead), succeeding in her duties, facing her fears or falling in love. Select the scene and watch it in your head as a movie or free-write about it. Don’t think too much, just witness your character reacting.
2. Understand The Relationship Dynamics
Before the game, talk with your close contact players. What do you and they want from the game? What kind of traits do your characters have? What is similar, what is different? What is important to them? How do they usually express their emotions?
One powerful way to practice relationship dynamics is to come up with a scene in your characters’ past (a happy memory or a conflict) and play it for 5-10 minutes. After trying out the scene, share what it stirred up in you. This will give you both a hold of the dynamic and expression. It will also boost your confidence to express your character safely in game.
3. Make Sure You Are Safe
In our Nordic cultures we’re accustomed to playing it cool in our social roles, whether we are in or out of character. Even if we feel a storming rage or sparkling joy inside, we usually show up as grey and dull as the Finnish summer. It’s completely understandable that stepping out of this conditioning and revealing our hearts may feel daunting.
That is why it is important to feel that you are safe among your fellow players. If the larp touches difficult topics, then it is crucial. Larp organizers may want to create or co-create some social rules for the players, such as “everyone is responsible for their own boundaries”.
The best way to create safety for yourself as a player is to get to know your closest contacts before the game in person. Tell them what you like and try to find some common interests. Agree about the physical and emotional boundaries: what is okay for you and what is not. If you dare, share what you feel insecure about in playing the relationship of your characters and come up with ideas on how to make it easier.
4. Follow Your Character’s Impulses
Once you’ve done the groundwork properly, you have a good understanding about your character’s motivations and their relationship dynamics and a safe environment for playing. Then it’s time to let it go. Let your character happen in the moment: let her have her thoughts and feelings, let live her own life. Express whatever she wants to say or do and follow her impulses — of course in respect of your and fellow players’
boundaries.
She will automatically have different reactions when she hears that her children have been kidnapped, orcs are about to attack or that the dinner is late. You don’t need to know them all beforehand, just trust your character’s ability to fully be herself. You don’t need to act. This is one of the most freeing ways of playing. Neither you need to get lost in your thoughts in the middle of the game pondering how your character should react.
Surrendering to your character’s impulses becomes easier when you learn to accept your own impulses. Simple exercises used in improv theatre (Johnstone 1987) and the Meisner acting technique (Meisner & Longwell 1987) can also be very helpful here.
5. Practice Expressing Emotions
Conveying emotions involves more than just words. Our posture, movement, facial expressions, rhythms of speech and breathing, and tone of voice all reveal something about our inner states.
How do you know how the other person feels? A good practice for studying expressing emotions is to observe other people doing so, in movies, larps, and in real life.
Another way to practice expressions is by selecting a sentence (e.g. “I want to buy a unicorn”) and saying it with a different feeling (happy, sad, angry, in love, scared and surprised). Repeat the sentence with the same feeling a couple of times, and let it grow every time. You can do this in front of a mirror, by shooting a video of yourself, or with a friend. Pay attention to how your tone of voice, facial expression, and posture change and how you feel.
When you become more comfortable in feeling emotions and expressing them, the easier it is to express whatever your character feels. For some people being in character is very liberating, because it gives them a chance to overcome the restrictions of their own personality.
Bibliography
Keith Johnstone (1987): Impro: Improvisation and the Theatre. Routledge.
Sanford Meisner & Dennis Longwell (1987): Sanford Meisner on Acting. Vintage.
Many people blame organizers, designers, or co-players when they have a bad larp experience, and sometimes, you just have bad luck with unfavourable conditions. However, larp is a co-creative medium — participants have a say in what happens at a larp and in their own experiences. Constructive Alignment is a didactic theory developed by John Biggs that focuses on intended learning outcomes when designing a learning programme. It was developed in 2011 for tertiary education, to facilitate sustainable learning and to refine control over learning processes. It’s also applicable to larp.
Let’s look at how you can use constructive alignment theory to improve your experience:
1. Identify Intended Experience Outcomes
Biggs’ theory focuses on the intended learning outcome. In larp, then, the first step is to identify one’s Intended Experience Outcomes (IEOs). What is it that you’re looking for in this particular larp? Is it a specific story? Experiencing specific emotions? Larping specific character relations? Portraying specific characteristics and experiencing the reactions? Having a specific function in the fiction of the larp?
2. Reflect on and Analyse Previous Larps
Once you have identified your IEOs, reflect. Have you had a particular IEO at a larp before? What made it possible? What prevented it from happening on other occasions? What part did you play in making it happen or not? What role did your co-players play in that? What other circumstances had an influence? What could facilitate this IEO, when it comes to your own actions or your co-players’ actions? Could the organizers help you with it, in particular in casting you in a specific role? You may find it helpful to talk to a friend about it and get some input. Take notes about your findings.
3. Communicate Your IEOs With the Organizers
If you yourself create the character for the larp, take everything you have found out into account when doing so. Try to communicate as clearly as possible what you’re looking for when you send it to the organizers.
If it’s a larp with pre-written characters, also communicate your IEOs to the organizers, within reason. Don’t do it face-to-face, as no one can remember every detail that came up in a conversation. Agree on a medium — casting form, email, or letter — through which to mention your IEOs and what you need to achieve them. You should also state what you do not intend with this specific experience.
A word of caution: don’t fixate on a specific character or event. Organizers will try to help you achieve a good experience, but sometimes wishes just don’t fit into a design. For example, no wizard school needs a hundred headmasters and headmistresses, and no spaceship needs fifty captains. More often than not, you will not get the exact character you wanted to play, but this won’t necessarily hurt your experience, either.
4. Adapt and Plan Measurements that don’t Interfere With the Larp Design!
Once your character and their relations are determined, re-visit your IEOs and your findings from previous larps. Have another look at the design document and the website, and then analyse the character and its relations. If the character is not what you were hoping for but you are happy anyway — cool! If you aren’t happy with what you got, it’s not the end of the world.
Try to abstract your IEOs and try to adapt them to the given conditions. For example, if you wanted to experience the responsibility of a leader and being looked up to by playing the headmistress of the wizard school but got cast as a student, then is there a way to experience something similar in this role? You could, for example, play the head of a student group or mentor another student. Based on this character, who or what could help you to achieve your IEOs? In particular, are there co-players that could help you achieve them? For example, were you hoping to be the center of every social interaction, but instead were cast as the shy introvert? Maybe somebody can play your friend who wants you to socialize and who drags you to every party.
Keep in mind as you do this not to interfere with the overall design of the larp or to plan things that might hurt your co-players’ experiences. You may want to re-ignite your discussion on IEOs with your friend from step 2.
5. Communicate Your IEOs With Your Co-Players
You hopefully now have some new ideas and it’s time to communicate, negotiate, and calibrate them with your co-participants. Contact them before the larp, if possible, and talk to them on location before the larp starts. Be clear about what you need from them and accept a no, if it doesn’t fit in their plans. More often than not, people will do their best to help you to reach your IEOs.
If you feel that only changing a part of your character might help, you can try to talk to the organizers, but please don’t do this if there are only a few weeks left until the larp — they are probably drowning in work.
6. Ensure There Are Safety Nets
Ideally, you’ve gathered a few ways to make your IEOs happen. Don’t just focus on one strategy. If you were cast as the shy introvert, for example, you would not only ask one of your co-participants to drag you into social plots and events, but also go more relations with co-players. If possible, you might also try to identify some opportunities for actions you can take during the larp.
7. Think About Pacing
Pacing is key to a cool experience. Good books and movies have well-conceived dramatic composition. It’s likely that your character will go through some kind of change during the larp, and that this is connected to your IEOs. Of course, it’s often hard to anticipate what is going to happen, but it’s good to gather some key ideas about your character’s development and how it can flow through the larp. E.g., if you want to play a person who loses their sanity, start slow and don’t lose your cool right away, as this will exhaust you. If you want to play an emerging romance, don’t declare your love on the first evening — instead, start with shy gestures or intense eye contact.
Think your pacing through and gather some turning points for your dramatic composition, but keep an open mind and be ready to have everything change — larp, after all, is co-creative and your co-players and the overall design will probably leave no stone unturned.
8. Reassess Your Experience During the Larp
Sometimes you’re fully prepared and still feel unhappy with your experience at a larp. You don’t have to endure this until the larp is over. Take some time for yourself and try to figure out if anything can be changed that could help you without interfering with the ongoing larp too much. If there is a safety team, talk to them and ask them if they see a way for you to achieve your IEOs. Try to talk to co-players who could help you. Again, most people will be happy to help. And don’t forget — once the larp is over, there will be no chance to change your experience, so be brave and change things while you’re still there!
Bibliography
John Biggs (1996): Enhancing teaching through Constructive Alignment. Higher Education Vol.32, pp 347–364. Kluwer Academic Publishers
