Tag: Knutepunkt-books

Out of Tune

Ludo-narrative dissonance seems like a pompous term but actually defines a simple concept that appears when gameplay (“ludo” from ludis, “game”) and narration (“narrative”) diverge or oppose: the story created by players’ actions contradicts the story tailored by the narration.

For this article, the definition of “gameplay” in larps includes the system of rules, techniques and meta technical setup which allows players to express themselves in the larp-specific fictional universe, thus to build and expand their story through common tools. The term “narrative” refers to the context in which the game takes place (historical period, genre), displayed themes, game masters’ intentions (what experience they want the player to have), tone, etc. In larps, the narrative is set up primarily through character sheets, player tips and guidelines (describing the universe, social conventions, background), scripted events, etc. The marriage of gameplay and narrative creates the story.

Prelude in Video Games

Clint Hocking,1 the creative director at LucasArts and Ubisoft, first used the term “ludo-narrative dissonance” in 2007 when discussing an issue related to the video game Bioshock (2K Games, 2007). The term became an instant success and a practical tool of analysis for video games.

To summarize Hocking’s original argument, there is a conflict between the ludic contract and the narrative contract in Bioshock. The game enhances the theme of personal interest vs. generosity through the gameplay, but denies the player that freedom of choice through its narration, creating a breach in the player’s adhesion to the overall game history.

Other examples of such dissonance are abundant in video games. For instance, in the 2013 Tomb Raider reboot, a “hero next door” young man or woman is presented in the intro cinematics as immature and fragile and then transformed in the early stages of the game into a killing machine, almost without transition. Another typical example appears in Batman Arkham City, when Batman is poisoned and encouraged to rush to find the antidote; actually, the player has all the time in the world to fulfill as many side quests as he wants. As soon as he explores the city, the game mechanics actually encourage him to do so in order to increase his skills, negating the feeling of emergency put in place by the narration.

The ludo-narrative dissonance goes beyond a simple bug, continuity error or occasional incoherence. When it emerges, it’s the whole system that is at fault, where the story promised to the player is contradicted by the story that he lives, which is precisely what we wish to avoid in larp.

Counterpoint in Larp

“Anne d’Autriche with a Jambon-Beurre”, or when anachronism is a kind of dissonance. Photo taken before the Fouquet’s larp by Jérôme Verdier – Photographe.

Like for video games, I believe ludo-narrative dissonance is not only a useful analytical tool, but also a key challenge for larp storytelling. Whether a larp is gamist, simulationist or narrativist (or any other category if one does not adhere to these) does not say anything about its quality. However, if the rules are not consistent with the announced intention, then the organiser is exposed to the likely disappointment of the players. Imagine a larp centred around introspection or character relationships, but whose preparation material instead focuses on encyclopedic rules that detail every aspect of the external world; or a larp promising to explore the daily life of 16th century Venetian merchants, without designing an in-game economy or rules of exchange.

Although other classifications are possible, I’d like to distinguish the most frequently encountered dissonances into two categories: passive and active.

Passive dissonances are related to unnecessary rules. Sometimes these are rooted in the desire to present a comprehensive overview of the world or the designer’s work, which leads to an encyclopedic system. Other times, they are a result of the designers’ anxiety to cover all possible avenues of play and not limit players’ freedom or immersion. It is even specified sometimes that some rules are detailed “just in case,” even if it is not advisable to use them.

Players’ observations tend to show2 that the more our memory is cluttered by the need to take charge or remember the rules of a game, the less space it can devote to emotional impact and empathy. Consequently, a game that would favour an abundant, complex or counterintuitive system of rules diminishes the quality of players’ immersion. This argument alone should lead designers to promptly and ruthlessly suppress any rule not actively reinforcing the game themes (safety rules not included, obviously).

Not forgetting a more insidious effect: some players, intuitively familiar with the famous trope of Chekhov’s gun,3 may be tempted to think that if the rule exists, it is to serve a purpose. It would be a shame to unintentionally encourage players to use a rule that doesn’t serve the intention of your game, or worse, which lessens the impact of the game’s story. Even though combat, sex or healing rules cover basic subjects (from a simulationist point of view), this is not a reason why they should appear by default in a game system. Every rule should meet a need. One way to avoid passive dissonance and strictly focus on relevant rules may be to suggest to players other means of resolving situations that might occur, more in line with the game themes. Organisers should also clearly communicate what will not take place during the game because it is not part of the scope. For instance, in Prima la Musica or L’Agonie du Poète (The Poet’s Agony, 2016), there are no rules to simulate sex. In operas or 17th theatre plays, protagonists do not sleep with each other, so the same rule applies to these larps set up in the same context, period. However, the theme of being in love is central, thus other means consistent with the setting are suggested to express it like sighs, looks, and gentle touching of hands.

Active dissonances are caused by rules conflicting with the intentions of the game. The experience they offer to the player is different from what the larp promises. As a consequence, the story experienced by the player is different or even in contradiction with the narration of the game. This situation can take many forms, among which:

• A discrepancy between the intention of the game, and the type of rules set up by the game design: games anticipated as fun and light but burdened with heavy or complex rulebooks, or games without rules or with minimal rules, where players’ objectives require simulationist mechanisms. This last case can make players and designers think that rules are necessary in a larp, when the actual problem is that it’s not possible to achieve the game objectives with the tools provided.
• Poorly chosen rules, inconsistent with the narration, and ultimately harmful to the game. Ars Amandi for instance, is a sex simulation rule requiring touching one’s partner’s arm that allows a wide variation of interpretations. Nevertheless, it should not be systematically used as a default sex simulation rule: in games where sexual intercourse is not an important stake, other rules that don’t involve physical contact may be as relevant, and less intrusive for the player.

Rules are marvellous tools to support, structure, and build a story. Just as it would be unthinkable to reuse character sheets from one game to another (except in the case of a very innovative concept), it would seem at best neglectful, at worst counterproductive, not to design specifically tailored rules for each larp in order to define the game’s own identity. The assumed ambition by most larps—to propose original, varied, strong, and inspiring experiences—requires designers to pay attention to the consistency of all tools used to reach the Holy Grail of ludo-narrative harmony.

From Dissonance to Harmony

Following the above thoughts, a term has naturally emerged to greet the effort of preventing—and indeed actively counteracting—the dissonance: ludo-narrative harmony.

Passive and Active Harmony

In the same way that passive and active dissonances can be categorised, it seems relevant to distinguish passive and active harmony:

The Santeuil Boating Party design illustrates seamlessly their “slow gaming” approach: “Take your time, enjoy, live at the pace of the ripples on the lake…”

• Passive harmony: when the rules are consistent with the premise of the game, without necessarily supporting the theme. Consider for instance a post-apocalyptic game where everyone is accustomed to the rigours of survival since childhood, but that promises players the opportunity to explore interpersonal relationships, the importance of family ties, and the experience of group life. To fully focus rules on combat or survival would be consistent with the setting, but would be inadequate to convey the theme. Dissonance is then avoided but harmony is not fully achieved.
• Active harmony: when the rules, whether chosen among existing ones or created, are always selected specifically to support the whole story by incorporating themes into players’ actions. By this means, the focus of the rules and their tone and treatment are in line with the fictional framework. Again using the post-apocalyptic game example, it may translate to rules setting up group rituals for instance.

In an effort towards active harmony, many games have brilliantly set up such rules, through the choice of their subject matter (which rules to focus upon, such as sex-play or inter-generational dynamics) or the choice of their treatment (the mechanics by which this focus is handled). Let’s take a look at some examples:

The first path to ludo-narrative harmony is to choose rules that address a specific topic, to frame the specific larp narration setting and themes. It ranges from designing rules about quodpot for a Harry Potter university larp (Salem-Never forget, 2012), where the championship is not only competitive but part of the narrative; or duelling rules in a western larp to create smooth scenes (Hell on Wheels, Appl and Dulka et al.,. 2015); to more unexpected ones, like rules that allow players to forget or blur serious events as a means of reinforcing the desired dreamlike atmosphere in an oneiric larp (La Sirena Varada, 2015); or a rule that channels madness through a necklace that enhances charisma and lowers a character’s inhibitions, imbuing the game with psychological horror (Pan, 2014).

Once the designers have chosen the subjects of the rules, it’s time to design them in a relevant way that reflects the narration specific to the larp. Sex simulation rules are a good illustration for that kind of choice. The needs unique to each of the following games has led designers to address this topic, but each set of rules has been executed differently, echoing the identity of the larp:

• In Les Liaisons Dangereuses [Dangerous Liaisons] (2014), where love is seen as a tool of power and competition, a tarot deck is provided in each room to calculate the sexual performance of each character and determine the winner, with consequences ranging from change in reputation to pillow talk; and even the ultimate disgrace for both characters, the birth of true love.
• In Les Canotiers de Santeuil [The Santeuil Boating Party] (2014), where love is a floating dream in a light and leisurely atmosphere, there is no crude simulation, no undressing, and (almost) no contact, but a system of ribbons to lovingly tie each other’s wrists before counting clouds together to climb to seventh heaven.
• In Les Fleurs de Mai [Flowers of May] (Algayres, 2014), where love is designed as a tool of power and enslavement in a brothel, each player is required to use a range of various and subtle interpretations of Ars Amandi.
• In Just a Little Lovin’ (Edland and Grasmo, 2013) where homosexual advances are at the heart of unbridled evenings, bowls of feathers are available in some scenes: to give a pink feather to someone is a smooth way to suggest directing the scene towards sex. If the player ignores the feather, the scene then moves elsewhere. If black feathers had not also been used to invite to black box scenes, this meta technique could even have been integrated as an intradiegetic mechanic to further strengthen harmony—the feather would then have been considered a usual code of these kind of evenings and well-known by the characters.

The same attention to consistency can also be advantageously applied to explain the game intentions or overall design. In Vivre Vite [Live Fast] (Allermoz, 2014), a game about young punks in the 80’s, rules are offered to simulate headbutts or ass grabs, in order to enhance a violent, vulgar and sexist atmosphere. Aside from these rules, though, the playing intentions are all consistent with the subject, either in the writing (some paragraph titles for instance: “I’ll punch you,” “I’ll stab you,” “I’m on drugs” “I’ll f… you”) or the numerous incentives to break generic larping codes, including those regarding conflicts (“let’s prioritise shouting over discrete quarrels”) or physical fighting (“in that culture, opponents may finish off a fight either with a few insults or by grabbing a beer together, depending on the case”).

In the same vein, the rules for Dirty Little Secrets (Algayres, 2013) provide several dramatic elements based on tropes from the soap opera genre—dramatic monologues, slamming doors, looks toward the camera— creating an innovative experience where ludo and narrative merge seamlessly.

Arabesques

Pre-game workshops could also be regarded as tools of ludo-narrative dissonance or harmony, as well as other kinds of rules; for example, the many and varied workshops for Mad about the Boy (Raaum, Edland and Lindahl, 2010) – especially the one collectively building the world through examining how the disappearance of all men would impact each character’s daily life. Similarly, the meta technique of using safewords may enable greater harmony, even if it does not create it. In our violent post-apocalyptic world example, safewords would allow to safely and fully experience the rigour or cruelty, designed as pillars of a society fighting to survive.

Another interesting reflection: once aware of the ludo-narrative harmony mechanism, one could imagine playing with it, in order to create what I’d call constructive dissonances: dissonances that at first don’t appear to be part of the story, but in the end benefit the game, as described in the first musical definition of dissonance:

Game designers can use players’ unconscious desire for resolution as a (comprehensive and benevolent) manipulation tool, to push them towards playing in a certain way, creating a home for some unexpressed expectations that will be resolved in-game, or to induce the tone of game without announcing it.

Such use may be dangerous, exposing the organiser to the risk of poor communication and the player to disappointment, but tempting to lovers of non-transparent games.

Why not imagine, for instance, apparently ill-designed rules (rules too simulationist or insu cient, detailed topics unfit with the announced themes) ultimately justified by the unexpected change of direction along the way, with the introduction of new issues that finally justify the original rules (it was all a dream, your character wakes up in another world/lives in a different one than they thought they were living in, etc). Or also, the use of certain preparatory workshops in order to create an artificial intimacy on a meta-level, which can resurface during some unexpected internal changes to the game and impact characters’ actions; for instance, characters supposed to hate each other who are teamed up during the Ars Amandi workshop, seemingly as a joke, but discover ingame that they are attracted to each other. In this case, the dissonance allows designers to avoid foreshadowing in character sheets, suppressing the consequent risks of players understanding, and enhancing the emotional impact of unexpected events and psychological turnarounds.

The Breakthrough, a Perfect Tune?

So much Space is played in a real bar, allowing life to imbue the game experience.

To go further, I would like to introduce a notion sometimes called “breakthrough” in the field of video games. I do not, however, use it in the overall sense of “breakthrough that marks the era or the history of the game,” but in a more restricted sense, a technical or design innovation at the heart of the game, defining its specific identity and allowing for—in the most successful cases—a new way to play. This concept provides an interesting construction and analysis framework to apply to larps.

Crystallisation of Storytelling

It is possible to create a breakthrough that does not lead to ludo-narrative harmony— for example, in the case of a gameplay innovation that isn’t related to the game’s theme. But when given its full potential, the breakthrough is the innovation that amplifies and gives an unexpected echo to the narration. It is the one rule that will often be the most memorable and regularly cited when trying to describe t he game—and therefore a good way to help define and differentiate one larp from another.

For example, the massive medieval fantasy larp Légendes d’Hyborée [Legends of Hyboria—Opus 1] (2015) offers an innovative system of instances, derived from video games. Instances scattered throughout the site were accessible to players during some quests, with the objective of recreating the kind of epic pulp scenes that groups of adventurers had been told about in their character sheets. For instance, the dungeon of thieves, a succession of rooms filled with physical and mental puzzles to decipher in order to access the following room was an exciting adventure in which each player could refine and a rm their role within the group.

The breakthrough is a particularly valuable way to direct the player’s attention to the theme at the heart of the game. In all larps—even the most detailed and carefully designed—immersion is an illusion. Only the agreement of the players, who willingly suspend disbelief during the duration of the game, allows what is commonly—albeit imperfectly—called “immersion.” To do so, the players tweak their sensory perception. They mentally erase what doesn’t align with the proposed narration (other players’ appearances, boffer weapons or other anachronisms), and instead focus on elements in tune with the story that they want to experience, which ideally matches the narration offered to them. More than aesthetics or the story of a game, what best enhances this objective are the rules which provide the framework for action and drive the story forward. The breakthrough is a meaningful way to help them focus their attention towards what enriches their game experience, and away from what contradicts it.

Tant d’Espace [So much space] (Duvned, 2014) is a game for two players based on the themes of melancholy, nostalgia, and a known non-dramatic ending. Participants can play in a real bar, which reinforces on multiple levels the intention of the game. First of all, thanks to the familiarity of the setting, it utilises known references such as the selection of drinks and the presence of other customers as a way of strengthening the bleed-in inspired by the game design. Playing in a real, open world also encourages the interruption of reality through its unpredictability (rose vendors interrupting, the dynamics of background music, server downtime, closing time that forces the game to end). These hazards do not break immersion, but rather reinforce it, immediately merging with the story and offering a different experience for each session. In this sense, one could even qualify it as a systemic feature.

The larp Comme le Houx [Like the holly-tree] (Henry,2015) explores quite another path, as the game consists entirely of a phone call between two friends. This idea is born out of the desire to remove the bodily dimension from a larping experience, in order to facilitate “immersion” and identification with the character rather than the player, as well as to encourage listening, confession and dialogue, which are the essence of the intended experience.

Creating Languages Beyond Words

Many larps already include breakthroughs, although they have not necessarily been identified as such. The following examples provide players new ways to express their characters, through songs, dance and music:

Tango is a powerful way to convey emotions in The Wedding of Ashes, set in 1945 Argentina. Photo by Ze Moz.

• L’Eté 36 [Summer 36] (Artaud and Frénot, 2012): In order to recreate the “bucolic, romantic and festive” atmosphere, designers invite players to sing as a way of expressing their state of mind at key moments of their choice. To achieve this, a song book with customised songs of the relevant period is provided in addition to each character sheet. They become a powerful means to channel emotions, relevant both as a way of expressing the concerns and hopes of the era, and for reinforcing, through communal choirs, the characters’ sense of belonging to a group. The songs can also reveal dilemmas and intimate revelations, either through force or subtlety. This tool could be transposed and fully exploited in a musical larp, for example, where ludo and narrative would then be perfectly tuned. In any case, singing is a specific gameplay technique to personify characters.
• Les Noces de Cendre [The Wedding of Ashes] (Gresset and Abbey, 2012): In this game, players are invited to express their characters’ moods through tango. The rules emphasise the diverse palette of emotions that can be communicated, as well as the universality of the language (everyone can dance and convey an intention while dancing: love, friendship, passion, hate, …) thus providing an additional tool shared by all players.
• Prima la Musica (2016): This game, typical of the French romanesque genre, revolves around the world of opera and offers the players a game mechanism called the Theatre of Emotions: a clearly defined theatrical space in which the player can play a scene, sing, mime, or dance with the accompaniment of famous arias in the background, selected from a catalog available before the game so the players can familiarise themselves with the music. It punctuates players’ stories by enhancing key scenes that they choose, at their discretion, to disclose to the other players (open curtain) or play in private (closed curtain). It is a clever mechanism to enhance the atmosphere and intimately connect the opera to the game, allowing the players to interpret scenes worthy of a real opera.

Make no mistake: I am not claiming that every game should have a breakthrough or should create an innovative rule. Innovation only makes sense if it adds to the game narration. That’s why it can be an interesting question to ask when creating a game, and the answer will depend on the nature of the larp.

The Sound of Music

What best than a phone to relive the friendship’s years from the pre-social networks area? Photo taken by Rémi Lapcinelle during a session of Like the Holly Tree.

It seems obvious that when creating rules, one should keep in mind their relevance to the game. Yet the persistence of ludo-narrative dissonance in larp suggests that it may be not that simple, as it requires from larp designers both a clear vision of what they want the players to experience, and what the rules and mechanics will engender.

Still, larps have by nature many advantages, especially compared to video games, and these advantages should be utilised as much as possible:

First, the team composition and the workflow pipeline: in a larp team, designers often conceive all aspects of the game, including the rules and story. Even when that is not the case, the team is small enough for everyone to work tightly together. In video games, this kind of collaboration is an exception. Worse over, video game designers are not necessarily trained to take the story into consideration while developing the game design. Fortunately, narrative designers and producers, who translate the story into gameplay, are more and more frequently part of the development teams. But the fact that writers are not always included in the video game development team from the start of the project increases the chances that narration and gameplay are treated as parallel strands rather than as two sides of the same coin. On the contrary, larp designers usually keep a clear overview of the experience they want the players to live, and can more easily harmonise their design and story, since they control everything.

Also, contrary to video games, last-minute gameplay changes in larp do not usually have cost implications, which makes it easier to align ludic and narrative elements and to address any divergences, right up to the very end.

Finally, and most importantly, larps are ahead of video games when it comes to avoiding ludo-narrative dissonance, because larps are by essence a collaborative form of storytelling. One of the most exciting and di cult challenges that video games are trying to overcome today is at the heart of most larps: providing players with tools that allow them to take an active role in the creation of the story and to build and tell powerful, non generic-stories within the framework of the game.

In conclusion, here are some questions that can help game designers interrogate the ludo-narrative harmonics of their game design:

• What experience do I want the player to have? Which eras, themes or questions will they explore? Therefore, what kind of actions would logically happen during the game?
• As a consequence, which topics require rules in order to frame, guide and strengthen this exploration? For instance, if the game is categorised as gamist, it should include rules for defining the winner of various kinds of conflicts; if simulationist, it should introduce rules reflecting the atmosphere and detailing societal injunctions and codes; if it’s a campaign, it needs to provide rules for the play happening between events.
• Conversely, what kinds of rules do not fit into this framework? Does each rule support the narration? If not, is it useless and therefore dispensable?
• Once the rules have been defined: what kind of execution best reflects the themes of the game? Do relevant rules already exist to support the intended theme? If the answer is no, they need to be created.
• What is the focus of the game, the essence of the experience? Which specific game mechanics should I create to enhance it? What about preparatory workshops or rules dealing with unexpected topics or treatment? A specific structure (linear, ellipse, cutting into action with gradation of intensity)? A specific medium? etc.
• Would constructive dissonance be a meaningful way to create a specific feeling or tool for my larp?

These are only some leads to help explore new paths towards a meaningful and consistent larping experience, without any claim to absolute truth or completeness. Employing these concepts of ludo-narrative harmony and breakthrough may help drive the expressive power of the game, and ultimately, improve the players’ experience.

Ludography

• 2K Games. Bioshock, Novato, USA: Take-Two Interactive. 2007
• Algayres, Muriel. Les Fleurs de Mai [Flowers of May] France: Association Rôle. 2014
• Algayres, Muriel. Dirty Little Secrets. France: Association Rôle. 2013
• Allermoz, Isabelle and Olivier Allermoz. Vivre Vite [Live Fast]. France: Association Clepsydre. 2014
• Appl, Filip, Tomáš Dulka and Jan Zeman et al.,. Hell on Wheels. Humpolec, Czech Republic: Potkani and LARPard. 2013, 2014 & 2016 http://howlarp.cz/about
• Artaud, Olivier, Marie-Claire and Olivier Frénot. L’Eté 36 [Summer 36]. Castle Cernay, France: Association Rôle. 2012
• Barnabé, Frédéric. L’Agonie du Poète [The Poet’s Agony] France: Association Rôle. 2011 http://agoniedupoete.fr/
• Crystal Dynamics. Tomb Raider, Redwood City, USA: Square Enix. 2013
• Canotiers de Santeuil, Les [The Santeuil Boating Party] France: Les Francs Papillons, Beaulieu and Association Les Amis de Miss Rachel. 2014.
• Duvned, Sébastien. Tant d’Espace [So much space]. France: Association eXperience. 2014 http://www.murder-party.org/tant-despace/
• Edland, Tor Kjetil and Hanne Grasmo. Just a Little Lovin’. Denmark: Rollespilsfabrikken. 2013 http://just-a-little-lovin.blogspot.fr/
• Gresset, Veronique, Raphaelle Gresset and Vauluisant Abbey. Les Noces de Cendre [The Wedding of Ashes]. France: Association Rôle. 2012 http://agoniedupoete.fr/NocesDeCendre/
• Henry, Hélène. Comme le Houx [Like the holly-tree] France: Association eXperience. 2015 http://www.murder-party.org/comme-le-houx/
• Légendes d’Hyborée [Legends of Hyboria]. Château de Guise, France: Association Eve Oniris. 2015 http://www.eveoniris.com/
• Liaisons Dangereuses, Les [Dangerous Liaisons]. Castle Carsix, France: Association Les Masques de Dana’t for organization, Don Quixote for creation. 2014
• Prima la Musica ou L’Opéra Terrible [Prima la Musica or the Opera Terrible]. Castle Montbraye, France: Primoot Team and Association Urbicande Libérée. 2016
• Raaum, Margrethe, Tor Kjetil Edland and Trine Lise Lindahl. Mad About the Boy, Norway: 2010
• Rocksteady Studios Batman: Arkham City, London, United Kingdom: Warner Bros. 2011
• Salem—Never Forget. France: the Very Disturbed Team and Association Le Chaudron penché: 2012
• Sirena Varada, La. Granada, Spain: Somnia. 2015 http://somnia-larp.wix.com/lasirenavarada
• Udby, Linda and Bjarke Pedersen. Pan. Organised by Nina Teerilahti et al. Finland: 2014

This article was initially published in Once Upon a Nordic Larp… Twenty Years of Playing Stories published as a journal for Knutepunkt 2017 and edited by Martine Svanevik, Linn Carin Andreassen, Simon Brind, Elin Nilsen, and Grethe Sofie Bulterud Strand.

Cover photo: Le Déjeuner sur l’herbe by Édouard Manet.

War Stories

Why are we in this business of creating stories for people to play? What do we, as creators, get out of the experience of running games? Why do we do it? I get a kick out of knowing that the players have gone through intense emotional experiences. How do I know whether we’ve achieved that? I use a simple measure. I listen to what I call war stories.((My brother, who works in TV and film, reminds me that these are known in TV as “water cooler moments” i.e. where, in the workplace, people will cluster around a water cooler discussing last night’s episode.))

It’s something that’s obvious in hindsight. Every time you get a bunch of larpers together to socialise, out come the war stories; tales of things that happened at events to them, or to their friends, or at another event that they heard about once. “That bit when the demon appeared …” “And then, my God, I was running from that thing, I’ve never been so scared …” “The look on her face when she realised the truth!”

Most of those stories have been provoked by moments of intense experience, of intense emotion: fear, shock, hilarity, love, freezing cold weather, sleep deprivation, utter disbelief. These people have been put through the mill, and these stories are the resulting moments that stood out to them, memories that will live on in their heads forever, stories they want to share. And so they share them. Many become iconic, and are passed on second or third hand.

This isn’t solely restricted to larp, of course—it’s the sort of conversation that happens when film-lovers get together to discuss “the bit where Hulk punched Thor!” or “when Bruce Willis realises the truth!” These stories bind people together in pubs, or on forums, or at book clubs. A need to share the things that really affected them, that etched those experiences into their minds.

It’s only in recent years that I’ve come to the realisation that such froth((Used in UK larp circles to mean excessive outpourings of excited conversation about an event you’ve played, an event you’re going to, a game system, or really anything about larp at all. An umbrella is advised.)) is my primary measure of a successful game. But in starting to analyse the phenomenon, I realise that it’s how our team at Crooked House((A long-running UK larp organisation that runs high-budget one-off events with lots of special effects.)) has always approached shaping stories. We write larps by coming up with moments that we hope the players will talk about afterwards, and we’ve been doing that for years. It’s something we evolved entirely accidentally, with no in-depth analysis of what we were doing.

Background

Historically, the core of our team has been very focused on set-piece moments. This is because we have people who work in set design, stunts, pyrotechnics and props for films; we do our best to make best use of those talents. The art & stunt department always have gags they want to try, no matter the genre.

And we’ve always tackled games as an exercise in genre. When we ran a gore-based horror event, we did our best to push the boundaries of taste and decency and to cover a whole range of tropes that players would recognise, but would have never encountered before in larp. Similarly, on running a pulp action-adventure, we made certain to pack it full of red lines drawn across maps, tombs half-buried in sand, ridiculous accents, and traps involving lots of creepy-crawlies.

We write and run one-off events. We knew our pulp adventure was probably going to be the last one we’d ever run, so we packed it full of as much pulp as we could find, as we wouldn’t get another chance.

The Writing Process

So we get together with a rough idea of theme and setting, and a long list of experiences we’d like the players to have. These could be set piece stunts, gags, or special effects; atmospherics where we generate a certain mood; small interpersonal moments; several hours of continuous unrelenting horror. They could be ideas for rules. They could also be material for pre-event, to set the scene. At this point many of the ideas will be only partially formed. For example, our list might include “have to deal with a confined space,” “there should be a moment where all the lights go out,” “a scene where the antagonist lays bare every character’s deepest secret” or “we could do that trick with a Ouija board and magnets.”

Then, through brainstorming sessions, we identify a few key moments and solidify them, making them the tentpoles of our game timeline.

With our tent-pole moments in place, the shape of our event starts to emerge, as do the themes, and the story itself. This is the stage at which we may reject ideas from our list outright, as we find they don’t suit the story or the theme or the mood. Eventually we’ll have a firmed up set of key experiences and a rough idea of when they might happen.

If we were creating a story for a book or a film — and we’ve used this system for that — then the story would be essentially linear. One key moment would play out after another, and the viewer would have no options to change that, no choices to make. Our tent-pole moments would always happen in the same order.

With larp, we could run our games in that way, but there’s a danger of “railroading” the players—making them feel as if their actions have no effect on the story, as if it’s being told to them rather than as if they’re part of creating it.

Our games are somewhere between linear and totally free. We are certain of several fixed moments that will happen no matter what, and we know roughly when they’ll happen, but we leave a lot of space for flexibility with other moments and the order in which they might play out. This is critical not only for the dramatic flow of the story—for example, during these few hours the players shouldn’t be overly stressed or challenged, but right here we need a climax— but is also critical for the art department, so they know in what order they need to get sets built or rebuilt and stunts and effects rigged. We have a rough idea of the window of time in which a particular moment can be experienced.

Note that there’s no guarantee a moment will happen. We give the players the opportunity to take part in a particular scene, gag or event at specific points. All we’re doing is providing opportunity. Those opportunities may not be taken in the way we expect, or may not be taken at all. And, honestly, we cheat. In some cases we make the players believe they’ve made their own timeline choices, but we’ve secretly railroaded them. I give an example of that later on in this article.

We’ll do several brainstorming passes filling in the blanks. Normally I go away and write a treatment of the flow of the game as if it were a story, because this irons out inconsistencies and brings up all sorts of issues we haven’t thought of—it also shoots down ideas that we thought seemed amazing at 3am.

And then we’ll simply repeat, talking through the game again and again, picking apart each moment and polishing it until—hopefully—it shines, making sure the story is consistent, making sure our supporting cast fit in where they should, and layering theme and mood into everything we can. When we’re done, some of the things we’ve come up with will be concrete set-piece-like moments. Others will be ongoing opportunities for players to generate moments themselves. Both are equally important, and I’ll give examples of the design of each.

A Moment Design Example: The Jump

A ‘moment’ from God Rest Ye Merry (staged, Rachel Thomas).

It’s 3am. You haven’t slept for two days now. There are strange things happening in this mansion. You’re upstairs in your bedroom, in bed with your partner, but the lights are on; you’re both too scared to turn them off.

There’s something about this room. When you came in, you noticed the wedding pictures of the young couple, and the photos of their baby daughter. You know it’s a daughter, because the crib is still here, beside the bed; the name Gwendolyn hangs on a wooden plaque at the end of it. You turned the photos face down, because you realised who they were; the young couple who died here years ago. You’ve read the newspaper reports, and heard the family stories. You’ve found letters: receipts, bills, final demands.

And you’ve heard things. A baby crying, although you couldn’t find the source. A man and a woman arguing, muffled, through the wall; something about money. And, twice now, a gunshot, somewhere outside through the corridor. You’ve never found where it came from… although there was blood on the bathroom floor.

And now, tonight, you hear the gunshot again. And the baby starts crying outside your door. A girl screams. And the door flies open. There stands the young mother, dressed in black, the baby bundled under her arm. She’s in tears, makeup running. In her right hand she brandishes a revolver. She runs into your room and turns around, frantically warning away her pursuers. Except there aren’t any pursuers; the doorway is empty—but she can clearly see them. She runs to the window, still waving the gun; opens the window; and throws the baby out.

At this point, you, the player—because you are a player, and this is a moment in a live-action game that you’ve been taking part in for the last few days, having taken on the role of a 1950s character— might realise something. If you’ve got enough detachment from the terror of the moment, if you can draw yourself back, you can think “Ah. I get it. I understand what’s going on. The baby’s clearly not real. it’s all fine. It’s just a play, a scene, a trick. I don’t need to panic.”

At which point the young woman jumps out of the window.

When you’ve recovered yourself enough to get to the window and look out, there’s nothing below; no baby, no woman, nothing at all.

We started this one with a simple request from our stunt team. “We want someone to jump out of a first floor window and disappear. And we don’t want the players to know how we did it.”

This was for our event God Rest Ye Merry (Thomas and Thomas et al., 2015), a Christmas ghost story set in the 1950s. The house, a rambling old mansion set on Dartmoor, was perfect for our needs, and on our site visit we scoped out the perfect window.

So, from a writing perspective, we knew that our stuntwoman Kiera Gould would be the one who jumped. And it made perfect sense that, for a ghost story, the disappearance would be due to ghostly goings-on. It follows, then, that this must have been how someone died. And that the players would see this as if it were a vision—it would be a haunting. To make it extra-scary, we would have them seeing it late at night.

The first concern came from the stunt team. The window Kiera would be jumping from was a bedroom window, and we expected two players to be in bed asleep. What was to stop the players leaping out of bed and interrupting the stunt, ruining the gag? We came to the conclusion that we’d put a barrier between the bed and the window, and settled on a baby’s crib, since there was one in a nearby room. We would fix it to the floor.

This immediately led to story. The woman who had died had a baby. So who was she, and what happened to the baby?

Someone came up with the genius idea that Kiera should come in, distraught, with the baby under her arm—a dummy, obviously—and should throw the baby out of the window first. Not only would it add to the horror, it would mean there would be a moment where the players thought that the baby-throwing was the whole gag, and, internally, they’d relax—just as Kiera jumped.

“Wait,” said the stunt team. “If there’s a baby involved now, they’ll work extra-hard to interrupt the stunt. Can we introduce some other barrier?”

So—why was the girl distraught? Well, we decided, she’d just shot her husband, and now, filled with regret, was going to commit suicide. So we would give her a revolver. The scene would start out in the corridor, with the sound of a revolver firing and a scream. Now, as the girl ran into the room, she would be brandishing the revolver, “accidentally” waving it towards the players—who she, being a ghost, couldn’t see. This acts as a psychological barrier to anyone wanting to get involved; a gun being waved in their face.

An interesting facet of our barriers—the crib and the gun and, in fact, the mood we’ve engendered up to this point— is that we’ve almost certainly shut down the player’s desire or ability to stop the girl jumping but, crucially, they think it’s their own choice. They will think they’re unable to act through their own fear, rather than through our railroading or design.

So there was the basis of the stunt. On top of that, we built up and layered story—the room was filled with mementos from the young couple’s marriage; elsewhere in the house you could find evidence of the husband’s debts and excessive gambling habit; newspaper clippings reported their deaths; family stories told of the tragedy; a wooden plaque on the crib named the baby Gwendolyn. And sometimes, if you listened carefully, you could hear a couple arguing, muffled, through the wall.

From a very basic moment idea, we now had a chunk of story, a very visceral moment, that was wound into the fabric of the house and the event and which fitted our themes. We knew roughly when it would happen—around 3am Saturday night.

Oh yes. The girl vanished completely, as did the baby, when you looked out the window. Despite the long drop below. How did we do that? We’ll leave that to your imagination.

A Moment Design Example: Pulp Languages

Now something from the other end of the spectrum—a rule specifically introduced to allow the players to spontaneously generate their own memorable moments.

For our 1930s pulp action adventure Captain Dick Britton and the Voice of the Seraph (Thomas and Thomas et al., 2006), we’d decided that multiple languages would be a fun feature of the game, as we had an international cast of characters. However, very few of the players involved spoke multiple languages. How could we deal with this?

Well, we could adopt ridiculous accents. So if you spoke, say, with a French accent, it would be assumed you were speaking French. But if we did this, it meant that we wouldn’t be fitting into the pulp stereotype; in pulp, Germans need to sound stereotypically German, Americans need to sound stereotypically American and so on when speaking English.

So we dreamed up a very simple system. Any sentence that was supposed to represent French would be prefixed with the keywords “Zut alors!” Any sentence that was supposed to represent German would be prefixed with “Achtung!” “Effendi!” for Arabic. And so on. Terribly stereotypical, but pulp is stereotypical, and we were erring on the side of comedy.

Adding to that, we came up with a very simple system of written languages. Anything in red would be Arabic; green would be German; blue French and so forth.

This was introduced as a rule to our players. The key reason for including this was very simple—to allow them to create moments where the players OOC entirely understood what was going on, but, for comedy purposes, their characters would not. I call this sort of technique Seeding Opportunity—providing fertile ground for moments to happen in.

This would only work in this style of game. For a deeply serious game based on secrets and lies, the OOC/IC divide simply wouldn’t work. But for our purposes, it worked brilliantly.

Here I’ll cite an anecdote from one of our cast, Harry Harrold:

Pay close attention to that last line. “I’ve lost count of the number of times I’ve told that story.” We’ve achieved our outcome—the desire to create a war story that players would tell and retell.

So, with our Jump stunt, we were introducing a specific moment. With this language rule, we were introducing the possibility for the players to create their own moments.((Okay, okay. Some moments we helped them create. For example, the minefield with a large sign—in greenreading “Achtung! Mines!” Which came into its own when it was crossed by a small group of players who could read it perfectly well, but none of their characters knew German…)) We’ve found the mix of these techniques extremely successful.

Other Media

I’ve talked solely about larp here. But since we started working this way, I’ve applied these techniques successfully to writing films, books, and in particular to computer games. Each medium has its own rules and styles, and by doing this you don’t need to eschew standard dramatic structure—but, in the same way as with larp, thinking about what your audience will take away is a great starting point for building your story.

Conclusion

It’s my contention—and experience—that if you work this way, if you concentrate on the highs and lows, on provoking war stories, you’ll have a memorable game.

It almost doesn’t matter what goes between those moments, so long as it makes some sort of sense. Honestly. I know that sounds crazy, but most people have terribly fuzzy memories and the bits they didn’t enjoy or found bland fade away, leaving the bits that excited them.

Sure, the quality of your whole piece will be vastly improved by good joining-of-thedots, but to turn it on its head, if you don’t have those memorable moments, you have nothing. I’ve lost count of the number of movies I’ve seen or books I’ve read that I can’t recall anything about a couple of months later. But people in pubs still talk about the time we had a WW1 tank, ten years later.((We didn’t. It was two sides of a tank faked up out of plywood + paint with a couple of pilots inside and some carefully positioned pyrotechnics, so that when a puff of smoke came out of the barrel, a piece of the ground exploded. But we still hear about “that game where they had a real tank.”))

Bibliography

• Goldman, William, Adventures in the Screen Trade. Warner Books. 1983

Ludography

• Harry Harrold, The Hole In My Tooth. LarpX. 07/05-2016 https://larpx.com/2016/05/07/ the-hole-in-my-tooth/
• Ian Thomas and Rachel Thomas et al. God Rest Ye Merry. United Kingdom: Crooked House. 2015
• Ian Thomas and Rachel Thomas, Thomas, Brewis and Macmillan; Captain Dick Britton and the Voice of the Seraph. United Kingdom: Crooked House. 2006

This article was initially published in Once Upon a Nordic Larp… Twenty Years of Playing Stories published as a journal for Knutepunkt 2017 and edited by Martine Svanevik, Linn Carin Andreassen, Simon Brind, Elin Nilsen, and Grethe Sofie Bulterud Strand.

Cover photo: The setting for the stunt “The Jump”, from God Rest Ye Merry (pre-game, Rachel Thomas).