Editorial note: This article was originally published in the Knutepunkt 2025 book Anatomy of Larp Thoughts, a breathing corpus. It has been reprinted from there with the editors’ and authors’ permission. It has not been edited by Nordiclarp.org.
We larp because we want intense emotional experiences. We want to shiver with fear, cry over tragedies, give in to the rage, and laugh with joy. Yet such feelings are not sustainable without crashing afterwards. Intense emotions might come in waves, but they leave exhaustion in their wake.
In contrast to those feelings we also need less intense, more subtle feelings. Worry, annoyance, companionship or gentleness for example. Less intense feelings offer just as rich play experiences and are needed to contrast and complement the more intense emotional spectra.
In addition we need emotional downtime, to reflect, recover, and rest – particularly during a longer larp – as larping is emotionally, mentally and sometimes physically demanding. This enables players to have the energy to really engage with the story.
This article is about how you both as a player and organizer can plan and execute your larp for maximal emotional impact as well as emotional sustainability. So how do you do it?
My suggestion is that you draw a squiggly line, but we will get to that later.
How intense do you want the larp?
First, consider how emotionally intense you want the larp. As a designer this is a big choice that will affect all players. Choose baseline intensity to fit the overall design, but be aware that there will be players both above and below whatever baseline you chose. When you make this choice as a player, you make it in relationship to whatever baseline the larp design aims for. Some larps are low-key by nature, and some larps strive for the most intense experience possible. No matter what, I think all larps benefit from some variation in intensity. Even a low-key experience about baking bread needs some variation, even if it is just an acknowledgement that some stages of baking bread are more stressful than others.
It is easy to imagine that “more intense = better”, as if larp was an extreme sport about always climbing the tallest mountain possible. It is not. Sometimes you might want to climb a tall mountain, but sometimes you just want to go on an easy hike and enjoy nature, and sometimes you might want to visit a specific site. Striving for maximal intensity is a valid agenda, but only one among many.
Decide what you want for the larp you are going to, or the larp you are designing. What mix of high and low intensity play do you want? What range of experiences would make you happy? This might be a bit hard to think about, so let me help you.
Four levels of intensity
One way to think about this is dividing the emotional intensity into four rough levels, and that is how I am going to talk about it for the rest of the article. This scale is not absolute but relative to the playstyle at the larp. At a very low-key bread-baking larp “high intensity” might mean harsh words being spoken, while at a super-dramatic save-the-world larp it might mean the possible end of humanity.
High intensity
These are the most intense scenes. If a character is angry they are as angry as they get, if they are sad they are a heartbroken mess, and if they are happy their joy couldn’t be greater. The absolute highs and lows.What this looks like might differ, as we as people express and experience emotions differently. But this might be weeping uncontrollably over your father’s lifeless body, or the primal scream of rage and betrayal, or absolute fucking panicked horror.
Mid intensity
In this one emotions and activity level might be a bit heightened, for example your character might be pissed off, but they are not raging. A character might be curious but not desperate in their search for knowledge, for example. Much of a larp might be happening on this level, because many of us want to spend most of our play at this level.
Low intensity
Here things are even more chill. There will be emotions, but the emotions are not pressing. Here you find characters that are relaxed, or a bit thoughtful, or “meh”, or displeased about something. A lot of meaningful play can be found here in the form of deep and meaningful conversations. They are just not emotionally intense.
Recovery
At this level players are actively resting. Either in character, or out of character. It might mean having a nap, doing some task like chopping firewood or going on a walk to clear their head. Or doing some very low-key relaxing play, for example I had wonderful scenes laying half-dozing in a tent next to my in game companions listening to musicians play. Some players might need to go out of character (at least mentally) to disengage from the feelings of their character to recover, either because they can’t fully relax in character or because what is going on in character is too intense to allow them to relax. As a designer you don’t always plan for this level, because this is something the player must choose to do for it to happen. But you can communicate to players when they have a chance to rest without missing out. It might be something as simple as communicating “after meals there will be a bit of a lull, so if you need to rest or go out of character it is a good time to do so”.
Check out other media
One way to help you with this analysis is to watch a movie, especially a movie with a lot of intense feelings, and try to keep track of the emotional tension in the scenes that play out. You will see that the emotional intensity comes in waves. Even a horror movie that is all about causing intense feelings will have low intensity scenes interlaced with the more tense ones, as contrast and to not exhaust the watcher emotionally and make them disengage. Try to identify where on the scale different scenes fall.
Length of the larp
Secondly, consider the length of the larp. The shorter a larp is, the less of an issue emotional sustainability is. All larps can benefit from giving some thought to emotional pacing, but a short larp faces less risk of exhausting the players. For an 1-2 hour larp many of us can maintain maximum intensity and come out on the other side of it without ever having to pull on the brakes. You probably won’t need to recover emotionally during the larp because the experiences will be over soon and the natural ebb and flow of the game will offer enough micro pauses in itself.
The longer a larp gets, the more you have to think about emotional sustainability. Already at a 3-5 hour larp you probably need some variation in the intensity of play, because very few of us can keep playing the same level of emotional intensity for hours. We want and we need some variation at this point.
Anything longer than that, especially multi-day events, larps need an emotional pacing to create the best possible experience. We will want high intensity, mid intensity and low intensity scenes and some chances to recover to be able to best engage with the story.
Draw a squiggly line
Thirdly, draw a squiggly line. Do it before the larp as a player, or during the design stage as a designer. Divide a paper into two axes. One is time, and one is intensity. On the intensity scale divide it into four zones. High intensity, mid intensity, low intensity and recovery. Then map out the larp roughly.
You are striving for waves of intensity. Ebb and flow. The map should look like a mountain landscape with peaks and valleys, where you switch between the different zones (high, mid, low and recovery) and don’t stay all the time in one zone. Like this for example:
Diagram by Elin Dalstål
As an organizer
Depending on the style of larp it might be possible to make a very detailed outline or a very rough one. For a sandbox larp, where you have a lot of factions acting independently, it can be very hard to guess what and when things are going to happen both as a player and as an organizer. Just make a rough guess based on what you know. It is helpful to plan around meals, as their timing is something you generally know. Often you can make an educated guess at the meal’s intensity as well. (Breakfast is usually a low intensity meal, while a banquet with entertainment might be a high intensity scene.)
On the other end of the spectrum you can, as an organizer, plan the curve almost down to the minute, if you have a lot of planned events and probable outcomes. Here I zoomed in on the Friday in the previous example to show what a very detailed curve might look like, dividing the two big waves into even smaller ones.
If you have a different group of characters at a larp that will have very different larp experience with different timings, draw separate curves for those groups and see how they play out.
Diagram by Elin Dalstål
Of course, whatever line you draw, it won’t work out that way. There will be delays and things happening out of sync. Every individual player will on top of that follow their own dramatic curve due to all the small events and interaction that make up a larp. Also they will find different things emotionally intense. That is natural. Going through the trouble of having drawn this squiggly line will help you troubleshoot your larp design and create at least a rough plan for the pacing.
Try to pace the low intensity scene so that if the players want to withdraw to rest they can do so at those occasions without missing out on much.
As a player
When you are a player, there are usually a lot of unknowns. You might have no idea what the organizers or your co-players are planning. I still think it is best that you draw a squiggly line to make a rough game plan. For example, try to kick off strong on Friday, round off with some calmer play late at night, head to bed, start out strong Saturday morning, try to find some time to rest on Saturday afternoon, go hard again until you head to bed and go for low or mid intensity play on Sunday because you have a long drive home.
That is still a plan that might help you get the best possible experience out of the larp. If you made a plan you can also figure out if there is anything you want to communicate with your coplayers. In this example you might want to tell them that you plan to take it a bit easy on Sunday because you have a long drive home, so the big dramatic confrontation might happen on Saturday evening instead.
Diagram by Elin Dalstål
Go for variety
While we larp it can be tempting to just go for the high drama, the high intensity all the time both as designer and as players.. Chasing the next high until we run off a cliff or into a wall. Unless the larp is very short, don’t do it. Be a boring adult and pace yourself. Remember that less intense play is just as meaningful and rewarding. It is not always the most dramatic scenes that are the best ones. On top of that you need some less intense scenes to give meaning and contrast to the dramatic scenes. Unless you establish your character’s relationship by having scenes where you just hang out and talk about nonsense, your friend’s dramatic death won’t mean as much to you if it happens later. The low-key scenes are instrumental to give the high intensity scenes meaning.
At the same time others have a tendency to hold back. Always staying at low to mid intensity, playing it safe and never getting into the strong feelings also means that they are missing out. Having a squiggly line plan can help some players actually go for more intense play without being afraid of crashing afterwards.
Either way, pace yourself and go for variety in the emotional intensity.
Abandon the squiggly line!
Lastly, no plan survives contact with the enemy. Once play starts, throw your carefully made plan out of the window, or at least revise it. You never know how things are going to play out during a larp.
Revise your plan and create a new squiggly line. As a player, if you had low intensity play, jump at the next chance to up the intensity. If you had very intense play, seek out something more low key or go have some rest. Feel your energy levels and plan ahead.
As an organizer feel out the pacing of the game. If things just unexpectedly exploded, then create space for more low key play. If there has been a long lull, see if you can turn up the heat.
Closing words
Pace yourself and pace your design. Intense emotional experiences become more available to you and more sustainable if you have variety to the intensity of your play, both as a designer and as an individual player. Enjoy the whole intensity range, low intensity scenes can be just as beautiful and captivating as high intensity scenes.
Draw a squiggly line to create a plan for the larp, and abandon your squiggly line when it doesn’t work out but still try to pace your play based on the new circumstances.
I hope this mindset helps. Pace your larps however works for you, because variety in how we design and play larps is just as important as any other type of variety.
Editorial note: This article was originally published in the Knutepunkt 2025 book Anatomy of Larp Thoughts, a breathing corpus. It has been reprinted from there with the editors’ and authors’ permission. It has not been edited by Nordiclarp.org.
Let’s get right into the action! Literally. Because “River Rafting” is a larp design methodology to help catapult larpers into play without a slow start. The purpose of this design model is to help the players experience more moments of emotional impact as well as to increase intensity and meaningful experiences throughout the whole duration of the larp.
I am a strong believer in the idea that when we act, we experience. River Rafting design helps the players to act immediately. This article is a further development of the design concept of frontloading((The idea of frontloading appeared in my realm of design thoughts in 2016 when Alexander Bakkensen and I were designing the Danish larp Victorious which I later made an iteration of to become the international larp Spoils of War. It is a bespoke larp inspired by A Song of Ice and Fire, The Tudors and several other similar sources. I have also later tested and developed the concept further, based on the thoughts we had together back then. We talked about it in the 2018 version of the Danish roleplay convention Forum in the talk: “Toolbox of drama designers” which was repeated at Knudepunkt 2019.)) and covers pre-larp design, workshops and the pacing of the larp. It will explore how to do it intentionally and why designing for River Rafting can enhance the larp experience for your players. I will use perspectives from the three larps Spoils of War (Wind, 2018-), Daemon (Wind, 2021-) and Helicon (Pettersson and Wind, 2024-) to provide specific examples.
What are we trying to solve?
I have often noticed that most of the meaningful scenes on an individual level clump together at the end of a larp, but that the emotional impact of these often turns to disillusion when witnessing or participating in a cascade of dramatic scenes/deaths/reveals in the last hours. This phenomenon, Alexander Bakkensen has called “The Twilight Avalanche”. I usually feel too numb to react to yet another person screaming or crying by then.
This experience regularly contrasts with the first few hours of a larp involving mostly polite introductions and surface-level interactions like saying “greetings” and small talk for hours. In some cases, there is not a lot of emotional impact during the middle of the experience either, and often I don’t feel I have the tools to push the experience along as a player.
I think a number of design choices are supporting the slow start and place (too much) emphasis on the end of larps. One of these is if written character drama/conflicts/dilemmas are not very complex or have just one big scene in them. Another issue can be creating a setting that only provides an interesting framework late in the larp, or that builds up to a “Big Plot Ending”. This kind of ending is sometimes introduced late in the runtime, overshadowing previously built up character conflicts and tensions. It could be “end of the world”, “we are suddenly being invaded”, “we all have to die” etc. While such grand conclusions can be effective, they are not always consciously integrated into the rest of the larp’s structure. It can be frustrating as an individual player if such an ending isn’t tied meaningfully into the story of your character. A “big bang” finale can even leave players wondering what could have been if the larp had started with this level of intensity. In fact, the larp might have been a lot more interesting if it started with its ending as its beginning.
Furthermore, many players will, no matter the quality of the written setting and character, instinctively save the most interesting parts of a relation and the character until very late in a larp, playing towards a resolution only at the end unless you provide tools for them to do otherwise. We also miss the opportunity to help the players effectively use these tools to create early impact play this specific larp if workshops are not spent on practicing key mechanics and relationships. Often, on-location workshops will contain long briefings with repetition of the website instead. This approach means that players are not ready to get the full potential for emotional impact out of the written content right from the beginning. How they use the tools is up to the players, but if we don’t coach on how to unlock the usefulness of the mechanics in this specific larp, the players will spend a lot of the in-game time learning how to use the tools, or – worse – never use them at all.
Lastly, many larps have a pacing that structurally supports very few and late points of emotional impact with minimal structure and setup during the early and middle part. A slow start can make it harder to connect with the experience, relations and character early on.
All of these factors (low playability of characters/setting, poor practicing of mechanics and backloaded pacing) encourage players to save secrets or conflicts until the very last hours of the larp. Let us name this common combination of design choices the “Waterfall”((Not to be confused with the waterfall method in project management.)) method since it creates a slow start, a quiet flow of the boat on a broad river and a dramatic finish.
What we want instead of a waterfall is a more turbulent flow of the water within the themes of the larp. This doesn’t mean full intensity all the time. If we want many wavetops (experiences of emotional impact), we also need slower paced periods. But fluctuations are hard to achieve if you are already on a low point of pacing at the beginning of the larp, as this is also the time when you are practicing enacting the character in the setting and using the mechanics. If we don’t make the early rapids coming from pacing powerful enough for the players, there is a tendency that the larp experience itself will be backloaded.
What is River Rafting design?
River Rafting is a design philosophy that supports a turbulent flow of the larp experience with many opportunities of emotional impact from the beginning of the larp and throughout. I chose this term because river rafting starts slowly for a short time (pre-game and workshops) and then you hit a lot of rapids right away as well as during the rest of the trip (beginning of the larp until the end). We want to throw the boat around early and for the whole duration of the larp to offer an alternative to a Waterfall experience. If there are more rapids and more opportunities for movement, it is less important if some of it doesn’t result in a lot of impact.
In this maritime analogy, the larper’s experience of drama and emotional impact is the boat being moved. The characters, setting and mechanics are the paddles, life vests, ropes to other boats and other tools that the larper can use to make their own boat and the boats of others move at different paces down the river, and to create rapids for each other from many different angles at once. The workshops need to focus on teaching players to use these tools.
But since it takes time to learn to use the tools, early rapids must be created by providing a narrow river and intentionally plotted obstacles (frontloaded pacing/structure). Later, the river broadens and we design fewer obstacles to create rapids, but by then the players use the setting, characters and mechanics to make their own and each others’ boats move in a meaningful way.
Fig 1 – Illustration of River Rafting Design. Image by Katrine Wind.
As designers, we have three arenas where we can significantly influence the potential for emotional impact of our provided material: Highly playable characters/setting, mechanics and workshops, and pacing/structure.((I realise a lot of things influence a player’s experience: Co-player chemistry, off-game mood, room design, communication style of organisers and crew, feeling of safety, physical needs being met etc. But the focus of this article is purely on how to provide tools for the players to get the biggest emotional impact out of your writing and structure.))
What you want to achieve by this is to help the players get going right away, keep and vary intensity and take the interplay between the overall arc and the arc of the individual player into account.
So the three key elements of River Rafting design are:
Highly playable characters and setting: Focus on crafting characters and a setting that encourages immediate action. Emphasize extensive and complex character relations and highly playable dynamics. Please notice that I don’t say “long character backgrounds” or “as many pages of lore as possible”. It is about the volume and complexity of highly playable content.
Mechanics and workshops: Provide a few key mechanics for the players to create impact. Workshops should ideally quickly go from instructional briefings to a more tool based and practice heavy approach where players practice core mechanics of the larp, embrace important themes and actively play on character relationships early in the larp. Encourage the players to dive into conflicts and dynamics from the outset – and keep reminding them. Make a safe environment to help players to be brave. Additional workshops in act breaks can support this.
Early impact pacing: Start the larp with compelling events or tense scenarios, supported by a lot of designed structure and tense content in the very early parts of the larp.
Below is an illustration of how I perceive each design approach’s attempt to structurally influence emotional impact throughout the runtime of a larp.
Fig 2 – Emotional Impact Potential from the Design. Image by Katrine Wind.
The wavetops in River Rafting design don’t have to be at exactly these points of the larp. The later spikes symbolise how structured content and potentially mid-game workshops etc. can make extra rapids. However, the expectation is that the potential of provided content and structure to help create meaningful emotional impact is much less later in the larp because the players have practiced the characters, relations and mechanics and create the rapids themselves by then.
Please note that the illustration is not a visualisation of the individual player experience. Many players will experience climaxes at the end of the larp, and that is great. The point is also having a lot of potential emotional impacts earlier – the aim is to increase the volume and frequency, not just to move the curve.
I will go through the three different aspects of River Rafting design in detail and with examples below.
Setting and Characters
If you write a setting and characters for your players, you are already frontloading this part of the design to some degree. Well done! Sending out characters as well as facilitating workshops are the gentle start that can teach the players how to use the paddle and steer with the tools they have been given. This means that when you start the larp, the players are already in the water, can create movement in the boat and feel brave and ready to do so.
But what is necessary for a specifically River Rafting design is for you to provide an engaging setting right at the end of an interesting time which creates a setup and something to talk about. You also need complex, highly playable characters containing dilemmas that will lead to more drama while dealing with them. The intention is to provide all players with a springboard for their personal stories supported by an engaging narrative framework.
Spoils of War opens with this engaging setting; the interesting part to play is happening right now.((The idea for the setting was originally created together with Alexander Bakkensen for the Danish larps Victorious 1 and 2 in 2016 and 2017.)) We are at the very end of a brutal civil war. The characters have already experienced the horrors of it, but the emotional impact hasn’t fully hit them yet. The players know that their characters are either on the losing or the winning side, and that the war will end early in the larp. They don’t spend time playing the lead-up to the war or competing over who will win. Because all the characters will be in a state of turmoil with many options for the aftermath, the setting gives us something recent and impactful to play on right away. Furthermore, the characters contain complex relations with slights, dilemmas, heartbreaks, love, despair and uplifting camaraderie happening right now, combined with shared history from before the war.
Another example which illustrates the design principles regarding characters and setting is Helicon (Maria Pettersson and Katrine Wind, 2024).((Maria Pettersson and I had no conversations about the term River Rafting design in the design process of Helicon, and she cannot be held accountable for any of my theoretical descriptions of the perspective as I hadn’t conceptualised my design preferences in this way at the time. We completely agreed on the need for complex/highly playable characters and setting – and we have an equal part in the design of all aspects of Helicon itself. But the description of what I perceive we did when looking back and any criticism of the conceptualisation thereof is completely on my own account.)) Helicon is a larp about a group of artists, scientists and leaders who have captured the Muses of old to keep all of the inspiration in the world for themselves. The larp is based around dyadic play where the couple has a deep relation with each other. Some of the Muses want to be there or are even emotionally in power, and this setting of ambivalent slavery is relevant to every single player. It is significant and interesting to have Helicon play out at exactly this point of time in the setting, since it is time for the yearly binding ritual to keep the Muses caught.
To give plenty of content to play with on a character level, the humans (the Inspired) have fifteen years of complex history together. Also, the Muses are thousands of years old, they are all siblings and they have significant relationships with one another. As the Muses have been prisoners for fifteen years, there are also extensive relations across the two groups: Characters are lovers or ex-lovers; many of the Muses have stolen artists from each other over the years; some are currently best of friends with their captors etc. Thus, you have dilemmas all across the base of characters as well as with your dyadic partner.
A misinterpretation of the frontloading concept, in my opinion, is writing extensive characters but where the most interesting content is in the past (or in the future after the larp). Why would you write that a conflict or dilemma is already dealt with or easily resolved, unless it has led to an even more interesting conflict? We have to give players the opportunity to have the most meaningful experiences while they are in play. Therefore, I am not advocating for long characters. Instead, I recommend putting in a lot of playable content in the provided material no matter the length of the text. This could be complex, unresolved conflicts, established and significant relations, challenges to the character, dilemmas, goals etc.
A great way to help players be ready for River Rafting is providing the setting and character material a long time before the larp. That also entails the pacing structure and schedule as well as other forms of expectation management that helps them structure their own experience no matter which degree of transparency you want for what actually happens in the larp. For example: Do you expect the players to talk to co-players before the larp or will you allow time for that on location? Do they sleep off-game? What will they physically do with their bodies and spend their time on during this larp? When is a good time to take a break?
Workshops and Mechanics
Setting and characters take time to learn to use. I often find that organisers underestimate the value of structured time for people to talk with co-players about their relations during the workshop time as a means to enable players to use the material right away. If you provide a highly playable setting and characters, the players will do wonders for themselves to be ready to play intensely right from the outset of the larp, if they just have time to talk with each other. Talking about their relations and maybe even trying out flashback scenes is also practicing to use the written material before the larp instead of practicing and finding each other when the larp has already started. No matter how many online meetings you have for calibration before a larp, I find that players meeting each other just before the larp is where they have the best opportunity to find each other and create the trust it takes to play bravely together – and be ready to do so. This is more valuable for the emotional impact of their experience than more instructional briefing about the setting.
Furthermore, I suggest that you introduce one or a few core mechanics to support the experience you want the players to have, and to practice them during workshops. This enables the players with more tools to move their boat and the boat of others. Structured practice of the tools given to the players is an excellent way to help them get going from the start of the larp. If you don’t do this, most of your opportunity as a designer to meaningfully influence the emotional impact on the individual player experience (before the larp) will rely on just the characters and setting.
For the workshops, I encourage not providing information pieces and practicing mechanics until they are needed. If you have act breaks, and a tool is not used before act 3, then wait to provide this information until it is necessary. If you have a debriefing, don’t instruct about that at the beginning of the larp.
A mechanic that I use in several of the larps I am involved in is Dinner Warfare (Wind, 2024). It is a way of designing meaningful mealtime situations and using seating plans to create subtle but strong emotional pressure based on specific relations. But I introduce it differently for each larp depending on the purpose and importance of the tool. I use it extensively in Daemon and provide off-game instructions before the larp as well as an in-game alibi that has to do with classicism to stay in the seats of the horrible seating plan. It is a less prominent mechanic in other larps I am involved in and therefore not introduced as thoroughly.
Instruction and Coaching
As a larp runner you have to consider when to give instructions and when to let the players practice tools themselves in a more coaching style of leadership. While I strongly emphasize the value of the latter, there is no shame in being instructive: “You must use this mechanic in the game”. The coaching approach is letting players know that the rest is up to them: “You decide what to do within the framework”. This will help them be more comfortable using them from the beginning of the larp by practicing. A combination of the suggestions above is illustrated in Spoils of War. The players know before the larp which side has won or lost, but the characters don’t. The first night starts with the siege of the last standing castle. The losing side has been caught inside for three months but hasn’t quite given up yet. It is hard to start right in the middle of a siege and be ready to react to what it has been like being at a standstill for three months. Everybody is frustrated.
We try to explain it briefly at first and underline that the frustration is a specific mechanic for the very beginning of the larp (instruction), and then we lead the players into the game by making a “frustration workshop” where we play the same scene three times (coaching). First, it is at the beginning of the siege: The losing side has plenty of hope and food and the winning side is patient. Then we jump a month and the players are prompted to escalate how annoying it is being around the same people and that food is scarce. Finally, we play the same scene where three months have passed and everyone is desperate. The scenes only take about five minutes each, but it underlines the feeling we start the larp with. After the last scene, the intro song plays and the larp begins with this exact feeling of frustration. Almost right away there is an inspection of prisoners of war where the two sides meet, which means that the players are more ready to play the emotional rapid of seeing their loved ones but not being able to save them from imprisonment than if they just started cold.
It is almost impossible not to have some degree of briefing with instructions when you start the workshops, but I encourage going from instruction to coaching as soon as possible.
Mechanics take time to learn
In Daemon, the core vision is experiencing being two people who together portray one character. Daemon is inspired by the trilogy His Dark Materials by Philip Pullman (1995–2000) where humans live with their soul outside of their body in the form of an animal. Daemons are the expression of the inner lives of the characters and the human and daemon can’t move very far away from each other.
It might seem like an obvious mechanic that one player is portraying the human itself and the other is portraying the inner life of the character. But if I was mostly interested in the universe or characters of the books instead of the human-daemon relation, I could have decided mechanics-wise that the players just have a toy animal on their shoulder and then play in the setting. However, I wanted to make a larp where you could experience dyadic play in a way where you together portray one character.
The other core mechanic I chose to support the vision is that the player can’t go more than two meters from their dyadic partner the whole in-game playtime, which requires immense attention to what your partner is doing.
Dyadic play is a new way of larping for most people – and if they didn’t play Daemon before, they probably never had to play this physically close to another player for such a long time before. We also have to practice how the daemon player acts on a continuum from underlining and mirroring what the player of the human is portraying to showing what is really going on inside or between two humans when they interact. So in the workshop I explain briefly about the bond, and we then practice it extensively.
I have seen players struggle with the mechanics during Daemon despite extensively trying it out – my workshops were not enough. The players spent too much time worrying about the mechanics and moving too far away from each other/not mirroring enough instead of focussing on the character and what was happening around them. What has really helped in later iterations is saying to the players in the instructional part of the workshops right before the first act of Daemon that the first night will be clunky. I tell them that I realise that even though we have practiced the mechanic, we have to try it out during the first night before we know how we want to play it with our partner and in our dyad together towards others, and then we calibrate before act two. I find that verbally validating the fact that the key mechanic takes time to learn has made some larpers braver – especially when it is a tool not usually used in other larps. I have witnessed this bravery helping players to bring out interesting content from very early on in the larp in later runs of Daemon.
But if prewritten characters, setting, mechanics and workshops – no matter the quality – were enough to achieve rapids in the river in the beginning of the larp, more larps would feel like a River Rafting experience instead of feeling slow and backloaded.
For Daemon, the physical closeness is a good example of a mechanic that becomes much more impactful later in the larp when they have had time to get used to it. I often hear people forgetting right after the larp that they don’t have to stay within two metres of their dyadic partner anymore. But it is obvious that the players benefit from something else to create opportunities for emotional impact until the mechanics work for them and they have a feeling for their characters. What is lacking is a strategy for pacing. As mentioned before, I think that more larps would structurally support emotional impact early if they had a frontloaded pacing.
Pacing
As a designer, you have the best opportunity to provide a meaningful overall structure early in a larp. Later and by the end of the larp, most players will have been practicing, utilising and developing the character drama, setting and mechanics, making overall pacing and structured content much more irrelevant – or at worst – meaningless. By then, the main part of the emotional impact should come from the larpers themselves, the co-players and utilisation of the mechanics.
River Rafting design encourages establishing a high intensity starting point pacing-wise for the players to react to and talk about as well as more structured content in the first parts of the larp – to create “the narrow river and the first rapid”. Structured and intense openings help to actualise the tools and encourage players to take action early because their boat is already moving. We learn even more from our first actions in a larp than in the workshops about utilising the characters, setting and the mechanics. But if nothing pushes us to act, it is harder to convert this to meaningful experiences, and the emotional impact is also postponed.
The opening of the larp does not have to be the same for all players but should in general tie into the themes and core experiences as well as be relevant to the individuals.
It is not an original idea to start in mediās rēs. It is just not very prevalent in larp designs in my opinion. Or at least the opening scene is often not meaningful for the individuals or coherent with overarching themes, in the way the River Rafting design suggests.
This leads me to what I think really happens when “backloaded” pacing is the choice in so many larps following the Waterfall design model and why I don’t want to design like that.
Backloaded Pacing
Pacing in larps often mirrors the “Hollywood model” of storytelling.
The “we start slow and everything only climaxes in the end, and something even more interesting happens at the end of or after the larp” structure outlines schematically the progress of a classical “good story” split into (usually three) different acts. It makes sense that we consciously or otherwise use this structure in our medium: It’s how we usually see stories unfold in the content we consume.
Here are a few examples of the classical Hollywood model. I would argue that often larp pacings (not necessarily the individual experiences) will stop at the climax.
I think the Hollywood model is fine. It can be a good way to tell a story – why else would so many pieces be structured like that? Movies, video games, plays etc. can benefit greatly from this approach, because when you have a predetermined outcome you can structure the whole experience around this pacing. However, at larps, pacing needs to accommodate the double-layered structure: The overall story arc and the individual character arcs. So you can’t make this structure work for a majority of the players just by making a larp end in a certain way or culminating everything in the overarching arc in the end.
Even for the pop culture pieces that start out in media res, my point would be that this rarely accounts for all individual characters – it’s mostly for the overall story. Because of the improvisational nature of larp, since we have so many moving pieces and because we care about every individual player’s experience, the backloaded pacing or Hollywood model is less applicable to larp if you want more emotional impact for the individual.
With River Rafting design, you can more easily design for the players to be hit by so many different waves and rapids on their path down the narrow river that they have had enough meaningful experiences along the way, so that it doesn’t matter if their ending is a waterfall, a whirlpool or a quiet stretch of river – none of the players will have their whole experience be dependent on the ending.
Daemon as a pacing example
Below is an example of how the pacing for the overall larp works for Daemon (Katrine Wind, 2021–). This is not the model of River Rafting pacing design. That can take a lot of different forms – this is just the general visualisation of the pacing in a larp with a lot of structure and planned events in the beginning more than in the end.
Fig 5 – Katrine Wind (2024): River Rafting Pacing Design for Daemon larp
In Daemon, the setting is the aftermath of a war where we have just killed God. The characters themselves are centered around themes like creating meaning, victory/defeat, grief/relief and building a new future. A lot of the characters are already gathered in the castle of one of the nobles on the winning side (facilitator character). The guests are there to celebrate the war heroes, mourn the fallen and exploit the opportunity created from the fall of a controlling theocracy to experiment with scientific projects that have up until now been illegal. But the theocratic power has thrown one last bomb of a biological weapon in the form of a powder that affects the bond between human and daemon (a core mechanic of the larp).
The opening scene creates a sense of urgency and immediate possibility for the players to take action, as enemies and people with complex relations to the guests originally invited for the celebration are evacuated to and quarantined in the castle. They have just been hit by the powder. These people are soldiers from the war, former fiancées, traitors and other people whose relations are significant, complex and problematic to the original guests. The scientists present immediately need to start working on helping those affected.
The next structured event comes almost right away when the hostess and an original guest continue to award medals to people who have killed family members of the newly arrived characters’ families. Very soon after this, everybody is thrown into an excruciating three course dinner where they have to endure each other but have a lot to talk about from the workshops, characters and starting scene. The social structures as well as the urgency of the powder situation force the adversaries to be around each other (see Dinner warfare, Wind 2024).
The peak in the third act is again a reflection on a Dinner Warfare scene, but it is disruptive in the pacing as the hostess creates a last, unhinged seating plan fuelled by a retaliation where she surrounds herself with other peoples’ daemons. They are placed almost too far away from their humans to make it physically uncomfortable to be at dinner and stay polite. For a larp to be designed for “frontloading” as part of River Rafting design, this would not be necessary as the concept focuses more on the first part of the larp, but the structured spike in intensity is a design choice for other reasons than overall pacing.
In the pacing overview from Daemon, you also find another tool. The act structure cuts up the pacing in three, and I choose to put in off-game breaks between the acts to allow more opportunities for me as a designer to add structured content in the beginning of act 2 as well as have more workshop time which enables me to make more rapids. I deem that it is not necessary with an intense start scene for the beginning of act 3, as the mechanics and characters drive the emotional impact almost solely by then.
For River Rafting design, you don’t have to have a quiet ending as a player. Don’t be fooled by the fizzling out of structured content in the third act of Daemon. This refers only to the larp pacing itself – for some players it will still be the most dramatic part of the larp.
But by not pressuring structured content into the end, in my experience, it will help avoid some of the “Twilight Avalanche.”
You can still facilitate a dramatic ending
Maria Pettersson and I decided to make a structured ending of Helicon (2024–) with focus on a highly dramatic situation, even though I still consider it a “frontloaded” larp which follows the principles of River Rafting design. We wanted to include a specific end scene where a choice is required, shifting certain dynamics. However, the key element for me that makes this ending meaningful for each individual is that they have influence over their own arc in relation to this scene. We also provide the tool that each player can be informed of the ending and the choice that they will face (transparency) during the final act break, or they can choose to be surprised.
However, I still consider the opening scene and structured content in the beginning of Helicon to be much more significant design aspects to the players’ experience of emotional impact as they set the tone of the larp and help the players to get into the characters and mechanics right away.
Fig 6 – Katrine Wind (2024): River Rafting pacing design for Helicon larp (larp designed with Maria Pettersson)
Already in the character descriptions, an intro scene is added where the players have to act on their relations. It is described how last night, the Muses tried to escape and failed. To establish the uneven power dynamic that is so central to the larp, Helicon begins with a ritualised, common punishment scene for this slight with each couple focussing on each other, and the significance of this intro scene is already emphasized in each individual character. Bowman describes this scene and its significance to kick off the larp in her article about Helicon (Bowman, 2024). Since ritualistic content is very important to the experience, we practise the rituals in the workshops. In this case, the Inspired have practiced this specific Punishment Ritual but the Muse players don’t know what is going to happen. All of the individuals and couples have a huge stake in this scene, no matter if the Muse was an instigator of the escape attempt or urged along by their siblings. Thus, the event is meaningful to each individual character (and hopefully player) when we start with high drama.
This is another point of River Rafting design. I don’t advocate just throwing in any action scene or dramatic beginning to kick off the larp in a frontloaded manner. The intro scene should emphasise the themes of the larp and be relevant to the players. Something can be meaningful and dramatic without being loud.
During the Larp
Once the larp is running, you obviously have to execute the plan for events and structure which can take a lot of work. You might even be able to make little adjustments in your design plan if you see a need for it during a pre-planned event. You learn a lot from rerunning larps, and there have been plenty of pacing events that have not worked as intended in larps I have been involved in.
Despite our intention to make Dinner Warfare a mechanic all the way through Helicon, Maria Pettersson and I decided during the first run to loosen our plan so the seating was only very tense for everyone on the first night. We had planned to do it for all three meals, but we decided for the two other in-game meals to just provide the opportunity for players off-game to wish for people to sit with or not sit with. We didn’t deem it necessary to place the rest of the players to create the most possible tension as other structured content was more impactful in the later part of the experience. Granting player wishes for seating plans is the most advanced version of Dinner Warfare, and we still deemed that the mechanic served a purpose enough to not scrap it completely even though we adjusted our plan.
Act changes with off-game breaks are your greatest chance of affecting the larp significantly as a designer later in the larp. Act break calibrations can for example be helpful to catapult the players into the new part of the larp. Many players will do this themselves with individual relations, act breaks or not, which is wonderful, but structuring time for it can be a helpful tool for some to ask something from the group. This works best in smaller or medium sized larps or in smaller groups.
For Daemon (28 players) and Spoils of War (58 players), I do a calibration round in each act break where I ask if anyone needs something generalized from the group. Either you say that you don’t need anything or you can for example ask for: “Could someone oppress me about my class” or “I need someone to have more quiet conversations with”. Then I will ask if someone can see themselves doing this, and usually some other players are happy to help provide this type of play. I specify that you should only raise your hand if you are really going to commit to it so the player asking actually gets what they need. Chances are that when I try to make people accountable and three raise their hand to help, at least one of them will actually cast the rope from their boat to their co-player’s.
You can also choose to provide a new workshop piece or a significant and possibly dramatic event in the beginning of a new act. In Daemon, act two starts with a cutting edge science presentation with shocking discoveries with all characters present. After this, there are spikes in the pacing but the larp includes less and less content that I design because the impact of the individual character arcs take over. I also signify this with my facilitator character being less and less important and prevalent to create pressure.
Final Remarks
River Rafting design can help create a more engaging and dynamic player experience from the very beginning of a larp with a higher chance of many moments of emotional impact instead of very few towards the end. By designing highly playable characters and setting, focussing workshops on practicing the tools you provide and designing your pacing for immediate action, you empower players to experience and create more emotional impact.
Whether you choose to put more content in the beginning of the experience or not, I encourage you to consider how pacing can shape your larp and communicate these design intentions to players. Even if you don’t want your larp to follow the River Rafting design methodology, you can help your players by making your choices clear. That will enable them to better structure their larp experience and engage with your vision more effectively.
Happy designing!
References
Bakkensen, Alexander, and Wind, Katrine, “Toolbox of the drama designers”, Forum convention, Denmark, 2018
Victorious 1 + 2 (2016–2017). Denmark. Alexander Bakkensen and Katrine Wind.
This article is republished from the Knutepunkt 2025 book. Please cite it as:
Wind, Katrine. 2025. “River Rafting Design.” In Anatomy of Larp Thoughts, a breathing corpus: Knutepunkt Conference 2025. Oslo. Fantasiforbundet.
Cover image: Helicon larp. Photo by Kai Simon Fredriksen.
Editorial note: This article was originally published in the Knutepunkt 2025 book Anatomy of Larp Thoughts, a breathing corpus. It has been reprinted from there with the editors’ and authors’ permission. It has not been edited by Nordiclarp.org.
As larp communities evolve, it becomes increasingly important to consider how we include young adults (12-18 years old) in our communities and at our larps. This article explores how larp designers can design larps that span generations and include young adults as co-creators and peers in the design and play processes. The article’s approach is practice-based, utilized at Østerskov Efterskole as well as at our mythical fantasy larp campaign Fladlandssagaen (Denmark 2006-, Eng. The Flatland Saga), which means that its tools and insights are created in a Danish context. The article touches upon themes such as accessibility, connections, workshops, hopeful narratives, and presents practical strategies to empower young adult (and new) players and provide safe spaces for self-exploration. It emphasizes the relevance of designing for hope, agency, and inclusion for young adult players as well as integrating and respecting popular young adult tropes and themes.
A young adult-only scenario or an intergenerational larp
The first step in the process is to determine whether the larp you are designing is targeted towards young adult players only, targeted to young adult players with the possibility for other age groups to participate, or if it is intended as part of an intergenerational larp, for example including children, teens, and adults. Different formats offer different advantages, and all have merit – being aware of this from the outset will clarify your needs as an organizer.
Larps for young adults only can be comforting and empowering. To play alongside peers at a similar level creates a safe space wherein they can explore and be braver than they would normally be. In addition it builds a strong bond with peers they can mirror. Playing in an intergenerational larp can help build relationships across age groups, expand one’s perspectives on life and forge an understanding of hopes and dreams for the future no matter what the participant’s age is. Regardless of the format, when designing a larp with young adult participants in mind it can be an advantage to include a co-organizer or consultant who is a young adult themselves to make sure their experiences and perspectives are included in the design of the larp. Your format and the age gap among players will need to be considered when you help your players calibrate, understanding their responsibility in relation to each other, together with your larp’s themes and meta-techniques.
Off-game accessibility
Larp preparations. We The Lost (2024). Photo by Luka Safira Søndergaard.
When you have chosen your format, it is important to reflect upon how to make it possible for youths to
participate in your larp, both economically and practically; young adults typically have less spending power than adults with stable income and they usually have less experience with the practical aspects of attending a larp, such as coordinating transport and costume. If possible, try to find ways to make the larp accessible for low-income players. This could for example take the form of lower ticket prices for specific target groups, or easily accessible (or low requirement) costumes. You can also have a designated person who is visible and easy to contact if they have any practical questions or problems, or design your larp so that every group has an experienced player who has the offgame responsibility to coordinate the group and its members; just make sure they know how to give space and agency to the group’s young adults.
You should also take the implicit knowledge one gains from earlier larp experiences into account when designing and communicating with young adults. Some in the target group might be just entering the community, and it can be challenging to find information and navigate the scene without connections who have knowledge of how larps are structured. Here it can be beneficial to consider whether you communicate on the appropriate social platforms, whether there are social connections you can engage with to help spread information about the larp, and whether the materials you develop are presented in language that is both accessible and relevant to young adults.
If you have an age limit for the larp, make it clear why the limit is set where it is, whether exceptions or accommodation are possible, and what expectations exist for the young adults in relation to other age groups. For instance, do they have additional responsibilities toward children in the game, or are there types of play they are not allowed to join because they are intended for adults?
Familiarise yourself with the player group
When designing a larp aimed at young adults, especially if you are not part of that age group, it is often beneficial to immerse yourself in media, stories, and life experiences that resonate with them. This helps you to understand the narrative conventions, themes, and tropes they are familiar with. If you are unsure where to begin, the best step is to find someone within the age group and ask for their guidance to get started. This could be a family member, a student, a friend’s child, or someone from your local community. Ask them questions about which media they consume, which social media they are on (and how they work) and how they prefer to be part of a story when they larp, and let them provide examples from their own life.
Creating meaningful narratives
An essential part of developing a young adult larp is crafting the narratives so that it is clear and transparent what the stories are about, which outcomes the players can experience when they interact with them, and how they can follow the plotlines. Surprises and unexpected revelations are of course welcome, but it is crucial that players feel they can trust the designers – that they will not be tricked or exposed if they fail to understand something, especially when the designers are from outside the target audience. This is particularly important because designers often hold greater social power and influence within our communities.
Some designers favor larps that teach young adults about life’s darker sides: about the political challenges of our world, injustice, and how one can do everything right and still lose. While it is undoubtedly important to engage with and learn about the realities of our world – especially issues like the climate crisis, famine, wars, and systemic injustices, most of the young adults I design with and for are already acutely aware of how much darkness exists. Many of them feel a profound sense of helplessness, believing there is little they can do to make a difference. As designers, it is not enough to simply highlight the darkness. We have a responsibility to design in a way that conveys hope, that creates spaces of possibility, that demonstrates how even small actions can hold value in a larger context, especially when we design with and for young adults. Of course, we can use dark narratives and themes in our designs, but then we should balance it with aspects and plotlines that show that factors like age, gender, or background need not be barriers to making an impact, give the young adults self-confidence, teach them how to handle real-life situations and give them trust that they can make a real change in the real world. Therefore, we have a duty to design for hope and agency.
Themes, characters and relations through workshops
Often, our larps end up revolving around themes such as identity, self-discovery, tension between duty and freedom, relationships and responsibilities, together with social and ethical dilemmas. Essentially these are all themes involving choices and changes that the young adults in our community like to explore. These themes challenge players to reflect on morality and consequences, allowing their characters to win or lose something meaningful without any real-world repercussions for the player. For some, larps with these themes become a mirror, a transformative experience in which they can see themselves more clearly, and then use their experiences as guidelines for the direction of their lives. Especially if you include a debriefing wherein the players can reflect, by themselves and collectively, upon the shared experience of the larp.
When we use these themes, one of our recurring tropes involves young adult characters who see the world as it really is, not as they are told it is, and who strive to challenge authorities to change the status quo or the adults’ pessimistic worldview. This provides an alibi to practice speaking up, standing one’s ground, collaborating, and forging paths forward.
In addition, we write characters for young adults in which they act as protectors, leaders, explorers, healers, teachers, or gatherers; the characters have clear goals and believe they can influence the world around them together. These characters are connected to qualities like empathy, wisdom, strength, ingenuity, courage, and hope, giving players agency and opportunity to influence the larp and its outcomes without being hindered by their age or existing knowledge. We give their characters something to stand up for, even when all seems dark. This gives them an alibi for action, something to fight for.
To support this, we focus heavily on workshops aimed at building strong relationships between the player characters. Every character is integrated into multiple group dynamics to ensure they have several connections if one set of relationships fails to generate meaningful play. Furthermore, we typically create four core relationships: one with a best friend, one with a nemesis, one sharing a common dream, and one sharing a common fear. This layered approach ensures characters are deeply embedded in the world, with clear, impactful roles that empower young players to explore and affect the story meaningfully.
Thoughtful use of clichés in your design
Some seasoned larpers speak negatively about clichés and stereotypes, not because they did not at first enjoy them, but because they have seen them repeated across numerous larps and therefore end up dismissing them as a sign of “lazy design”. While the frustration of encountering a trope or narrative element you have experienced many times before is understandable, I find that clichés hold value and have their merit as design tools. I’m not advocating for their exclusive use, but thoughtful clichés that are incorporated and embedded in your design do have their worth. Why?
Clichés create an accessible and recognizable entry point for players to step into and explore the larp, by making it easy to decode the structure, story, and roles through shared cultural references among designers and players (even though there are different clichés in different cultures and age groups). They can work like a gateway into the larp and immersion by giving players predetermined patterns of actions, role developments and opportunity spaces that players know from other media. They can use these in the larp without doubting whether they are playing “correctly” or fearing being judged by the rest of the players.
Through the familiarity of the cliché, players have a safe platform from which they can choose to follow, challenge, or even break the stereotype when they feel ready. Overall, clichés can help free up the player’s mental energy so they can use it on engaging with the larp and getting to know the rest of the players, as well as working on being confident in the medium itself. When designed right, clichés give new players access while older players can be reminded of their first encounter with them and experience the bittersweet nostalgia of reunion. Clichés you use should be empowering, intriguing, slightly quirky, or familiar, and used to develop the characters, narratives, and experiences you offer. Avoid those that do not align with the larp’s ideals and values, ensuring you do not compromise your vision by recycling harmful stereotypes that maintain toxic beliefs and behaviours.
We The Lost (2024). Photo by Helle Zink
Clear activities, groups, and functions
Clear activities with tangible consequences and rewards serve as fallback options for those inexperienced players who may feel less confident, are overwhelmed by choices, or lack energy to take active initiative in the larp. These could include puzzles, smaller quests, brief blackbox scenes, or other elements that still support the goals of their groups and characters but require less initiative and larp know-how. We use this in our designs because many experience fluctuating energy levels and even though they deeply want to be part of the play, they have not yet developed larp endurance to play a full day of larp without breaks. Well-defined activities make it easier to navigate those situations, since they are just as meaningful and helpful for the rest of the team if one decides to influence the plots, develop relationships with others, immerse themselves in their character’s inner emotions or to take a break. To support this, when a player has an in-game responsibility, they share it with at least one other player. This way, one can take a break without feeling guilty about the possibility that it hinders the rest of the play. Important responsibilities often have an non-player character (often shortened as NPC) attached, in case both players need to take a break or need to reflect upon what the next right move is, so the players know that someone has their backs if they find themselves in deep water.
In some larps it can be a great option to use role models as clear examples of how to play and portray roles, showing the players what to do. If you have two or more opposing factions, it works well when the adult role models clearly show how one could choose to play. This works best if you train the role models to switch between standing behind the participants, giving them the confidence to take center stage, and taking center stage themselves to drive the story forward when the players need guidance. It is often interesting to let the role models disappear during the larp, losing their power or giving the important positions to the players. For example, the mayor could be forced by the players to arrange a new election and lose, or the leader of one clan could die in an attack from another, so the young ones need to step up and take charge.
To make sure that the young adult players feel real freedom to choose their larp experience and take needed breaks, we articulate clear expectations, objectives and success criteria as a framework for them to play and navigate in. We measure success in initiative and participation, based on the good enough attempt rather than focusing on the perfect performance with the right in-game outcome. For example, it would be enough to take part in a ritual, opposed to running one, or to dare to act politically in front of the others, as opposed to ending up as the mayor.
To emphasize this, we design our stories so that the characters only face consequences in-game that their players understand off-game. If the players somehow do not understand the consequences when played out, we make time, space and alibi to reflect and to help them with what they can do next, if needed. These framings are crucial, as without them some feel pressured to prove themselves to others to feel validated, or out of fear of not being welcome at a larp again.
The best way to help the participants when their energy levels fluctuate and they need a break, is to not make a big deal out of it and just give them time to get to a place where they are able to rejoin the larp. A designated break room is a good way to explicitly communicate that it is okay to take a break during the larp. Players may, rightfully or not, worry that taking too many or long breaks can result in them losing touch with the narrative of the larp. To remedy this problem it may be beneficial to structure the larp in acts with clear endings and beginnings, possibly with planned breaks in between so that players as well as organizers can recharge. These bookend scenes can then be used to summarize the act, and ensure that everyone is on the same page, as well as provide a natural point at which to rejoin the action!
Let us start the talk
There is a gap between children’s and adult larps. To bridge this gap and seriously work on the integration of young adults in larp communities, it is crucial to take their experiences seriously and make them feel involved as teenagers. To do so, we must take active steps to include the next generation by initiating dialogue, and that includes having some difficult discussions about the communities we have built. Some of the questions we should ask ourselves and each other are:
Could we lower the age limit of an event from 18 to 16?
Could our larp events include less alcohol?
Is it necessary to include this adult-oriented theme?
How do we talk to and about young larpers?
How do we address the topics, themes, and narratives that captivate younger audiences without ridiculing them or being dismissive of their fascination?
Which themes can young adults and adults explore together? Which are adult only themes, and which themes can youth play on without adults?
How do you communicate with young adults so they feel involved, being at eye level with the rest of the play and being respected as human beings?
Healthy, growing, and stable communities require ongoing integration of young and new people who, with passion and vibrant energy, feel at home among the older and more experienced players, and who dare to both be a part of the communities and to challenge the pre-existing canon so we can evolve together.
We have a responsibility to make it easy and safe for young (and new) people to become part of our community, and we have the power to make it happen. To include these new larpers we must design for hope and agency, using larp to tell stories that make them confident that they have a voice to be heard and choices to make in this world.
Ludography
Fladlandssagaen (2024): Denmark. The organizer team of Fladlandssaga.
Tin Soldiers (2024): Denmark. The Blackbox Project Liminal.
We The Lost (2024). Denmark. Østerskov Efterskole’s study trip scenario.
Østerskov Efterskole (2024): Denmark. The Larp School, Østerskov Efterskole.
Editor
Elin Dalstål.
Reviewers
Gijs van Bilsen, Laura op de Beke, Maya B. Hindsberg, Mathias Oliver Lykke Christensen, Paul Sinding, and Rasmus Lyngkjær.
Young consultants
Asta Hansen, Artemis Torfing, Eva Fernandes, Frida I. L. Grøfte, Nicolai Lindh, and Sam Hvolris.
This article is republished from the Knutepunkt 2025 book. Please cite it as: Høyer, Frederikke S. B. 2025. “Design for young adult players: The relevance of designing for hope, agency and inclusion.” In Anatomy of Larp Thoughts, a breathing corpus: Knutepunkt Conference 2025. Oslo. Fantasiforbundet.
Cover image: Larp photo from the blackbox larp Tin Soldiers, played during Project Liminal (2024). Photo by Kalle Hunnerup. Photo has been cropped.
Sometimes in larps – and I suspect this happens to most of us – I get bored and disconnected. When this happens, I’ve noticed what I need is usually not more to do, but to get better in touch with what I feel about the game. Before I start looking for something to happen – I need to start by looking for something to care about.
This has led me to the idea of the emotional core. I think of it as something that makes me as a player care, which helps to emotionally connect my character to the story. With a clear emotional core in place, my character has something that matters to them. It can provide a sense of purpose or a feeling of connectedness with the game – both for my character and for myself as a player. In rhetorics, the presence of an emotional core would be part of the art of pathos – appealing to the audience’s emotions. Of course, there are many ways to do this. Some people tend to go there with a more-is-more approach and find it through heavy themes and big drama – dragons, disasters, damsels in distress. Some go for a less-is-more approach, where intense emotions are built around mundane themes, like conflicts in your friend group or intensely hoping your crush likes you back. Either approach can create deeply meaningful stories, because they matter to the players and the characters present. Without an emotional core, though, it is easy as a player to simply not care, but to feel bored and disconnected. Then, an intense pressure-cooker story turns into boring “dry-larping”, and a truly epic story ends up feeling like telenovela-style melodrama.
Emotional core – the who, what and where
Compared to other designable surfaces of a game, what I find interesting about the emotional core is that it is internal to the players, and thus something the designers have limited control over. This is one thing that separates it from the theme, setting and plot of a game. As emotions are inside our heads, emotional core content is usually found in the internal conflicts of a larp, while a plot more often focuses on external conflicts.
When I write a speech and consider how to use pathos to appeal to the audience’s emotions, I can make assumptions about what will make these specific listeners care about what I’m saying (loud or silent, overdramatic or understated), as well as decide what emotions I want to invoke in my audience (guilt, fear, hope, trust, anger etc). In the same way, larp designers can give conditions for an emotional core to appear in a number of ways – by themes, plot, conflicts, the characters and their relationship to each other, and by making sure every character has something meaningful to do that connects them to the story of the larp. But just like I as a speaker can’t control which emotions (if any) my audience feel while listening to me, larp designers can’t fully control what emotionally connects each player to the story of their larp.
The emotional core doesn’t necessarily have to be the same for all players of the same larp.
Sometimes, this varies between players in the same game, and that is fine. It can however also be an area where players get very out of sync with each other in frustrating or unintentionally comical ways – like someone dying from an overdose while their friends have a serious argument about the benefits of different kitchen appliances.
This is where the emotional content grid comes in. The idea of it is to provide a tool for understanding the emotional core in a game. In this article, I use it to analyse how different larp designs can provide different kinds of emotional core content. It might also be used by designers to communicate what kind of larp you’re making, or by players to figure out your preferred playstyle and find others with similar preferences.
The content axis – what is going on?
The content axis is about how light or heavy the emotional core content of the larp is. Will the internal conflicts of this larp centre around things like “does my crush like me back?” or “how do we deal with slavery and torture?”.
The emotional core content is not the same as the setting, theme or external conflict of a larp. Different larps can have the same theme (eg. a search for love) and external conflicts (eg. who will end up with who?), but different positions on the emotional core content axis will decide if these are played out as a dark dystopian fight for survival, a social realist critique of the patriarchy or a lighthearted romantic comedy where everyone gets a happy ending.
Contrasting the emotional core content with the setting or theme can also be a really interesting design choice, like in Our Last Year where I spent the last hour on earth mending my character’s sore relationship with her teenage daughter. Here, lighter emotional core content (human connections and search for meaning) became more powerful when combined with the heavy setting (waiting for the pending apocalypse).
Different positions on this axis will likely appeal to different players, just as different rhetorical strategies appeal to different audiences. As a designer it is, however, good to communicate to your players where your larp is placed on this scale.
The emotional realism axis – how does it feel?
This axis is about what level of realism the emotional themes are handled with. Is the violence frightening and realistic like in a Nordic noir tv drama, or symbolic and theatrical like in an action movie? A position on this axis can be created through communicating an intended degree of realism – like if “my whole family were killed by orcs” will be treated as a character alibi for being alone and carrying a sword, or a source of deep trauma.
Emotional realism can be approached using both a high degree of realism, and wysiwyg (What You See Is What You Get) aesthetics, or by using meta-techniques and mechanics. This is not about how a larp looks, but about how it feels to play it. And while some players might find these to be connected (like having an easier time to immerse in a character if they’re in a 360 environment), they are not the same thing.
The emotional realism axis connects to what Andie Nordgren describes as high/low resolution larping, which is defined by the detail level of the interactions. In a high resolution playstyle, we can use subtle gestures like looks, pauses and small shifts in tone to enact a conflict in an emotionally realistic manner. A low resolution playstyle requires conflicts to be acted out with bigger brushstrokes and more theatrical gestures, like obviously snide remarks or a full blown bar fight, in order to be recognised as a conflict by the co-players. It subsequently requires less realistic simulation mechanics, so that the bar fight can be enacted without anyone getting hurt.
This is, once again, an area where different design choices will be suitable for different games, and where players have different preferences. In this article, Mo Holkar and Monica Hjort Traxl discuss the “sexiness-level” of different sex mechanics, and their consequences when it comes to different aspects (feelings, looks, accessibility) of the larp. A game with high emotional realism is more likely to contain some degree of unsimulated physicality and simulation mechanics chosen to feel real. On the other hand, a game with low emotional realism might have simulation mechanics chosen based on whether they look good, or which are completely symbolic.
To me, this also seems to be a somewhat common source of conflict between players, like when more realism-oriented players accuse theatrical-oriented co-players of “over-acting” or treating emotional scenes as slapstick, while more theatrical-oriented players might find it uncomfortable to immerse in realistic feelings like sadness, anger, affection or arousal.
Many ways to make it work
Sometimes, the axes of the grid are directly connected to each other – the heavier and darker the content, the more immersive and realistic the violence. But they certainly don’t have to be, and it seems possible to make intensely emotional games in all the different quadrants. Let me give some examples:
A classic genre of larping – the boffer fest larp – is one good example of heavy content, theatrical playstyle. These battle larps are usually centered around wars and battles, but the main appeal of them is that it is fun to play war with your friends. This works because they generally treat heavy content like wars in a low-realism way, where battles are played out as joyful boffer fights with lots of abstraction mechanics involved.
Larp campaigns like Krigshjärta or Granlandskampanjen have tried to bring more Nordic-style elements like higher realism, heavier content and more grimdark oppression into this genre – but to get the players onboard they still have to compromise with the idea that while war is awful, it should also be entertaining to play. My friends’ war stories from these games are usually adrenaline-filled anecdotes from fights, or happy retellings like “I cried in mud a lot and had an epic death scene” – the emotional core is usually about getting to be an action hero, or antihero.
Hurt soldier getting help away from the battlefield at Krigshjärta 9. Photo by Johan Nylin.
Another category of larps that would fall into this category are the high-abstraction ones. At Beasts We Fight Against, we played hospitalised children, who had learnt to talk about their cancer as a beast within themselves. While the narrative of this larp was about children battling cancer – what we did in practice was to switch between the beasts doing abstract representational dancing, and the children painting with crayons and exchanging small talk. In this way, we could find the emotional core in a story about a heavy theme, without it turning realistic or melodramatic.
Many Nordic-style larps seem to fall in the category of heavy content, high emotional realism. These might be games like Nocturne, The Circle or Snapphaneland, combining heavy themes like sexual violence, manipulative cults, oppression and racism with high-realism mechanics. Players of this kind of larps often seem to talk about “type two fun”, and the emotional core often seems to be around the catharsis of feeling strong negative emotions within a safe framework.
I am personally very fond of light content games, and had an eye-opening experience at Klassefesten when it ran at Prolog in 2012. The game is about teenagers forming cliques, having popularity contests and making out. I ended the larp comforting the crying birthday girl, feeling lonely and left out as all my friends were hooking up on the dance floor. This opened my eyes to the power of light content larps, and not having to turn the heavy content level up to max to get an emotionally fulfilling experience.
The scenario format lends itself well to meta-techniques and mechanics which could make the game more abstract and symbolic, but simultaneously create alibi which helps the players immerse more in their characters’ feelings and thus get a stronger emotional realism. For example To the Bitter End, which follows a couple through their cycle of meeting, falling in love and breaking up, does this by giving the players action-cards (like “give your partner a pet name” or “make unreasonable demands”) to play out. I’ve played it a few times with results ranging over a spectrum from low-realism romantic comedy to heart-wrenching realistic drama.
My own scenario As Long as We Don’t Tell Anyone is even more mechanics-heavy and abstract, with the GM giving the players new and limiting instructions every few minutes. The content of the game is light and mundane – two people with a complicated relationship that they can’t really talk honestly about. The abstract mechanics however seem to help the players focus on the emotional core of the game by exploring a lot of different aspects of this relationship (casual flirting, deep talks, restrained longing, rejection, dreams and fears), which often creates vulnerable and intense stories.
I recently played Fragment of a Novel, which deliberately placed itself high up in the far left corner of the grid, as a light content, high realism game. It centered around a group of young people celebrating a school break together, and was designed as a very wysiwyg game with close-to-zero simulation or off-game calibration techniques. It was so lifelike that it was an almost meditative experience, which built immersion and a strong connection to the characters slowly over multiple days. This provided me with a mundane, yet intense, emotional core in moments like the satisfaction of finishing a drawing, the love felt while peeling potatoes together, or the adrenaline rush of a first slow dance.
Fragment of a Novel, polaroid photo taken in-game by Carl Nordblom.
Melodrama and hyperbole – when it doesn’t really work
Sometimes, being out of sync with co-players or the design in regards to this grid, seems to create negative experiences. I’ve for example at multiple occasions heard players complain about others taking serious or heavy content (rape, war, drug addiction etc.) too lightly, creating an understated effect. This can on the one hand become hyperbolic and silly, like the sandbox fantasy games of my early teenage years which were full of orphans threatened with being married off to old men, demon cultists performing ritual sacrifices, murderous orcs, happy hookers and sexy slaves. On the other hand,it might also become hurtful and offensive, as when some players’ real life trauma becomes entertainment or misery-tourism for others.
I’ve – unfortunately on a few different occasions – had other characters subjecting my character to sexual violence by quickly initiating it without checking for consent first. This seems like something that happens much easier in games with a theatrical playstyle or low degree of emotional realism – as it is easier to introduce a scene like this if your emotions don’t step on the brakes. I definitely suspect that if violence felt more like violence and sex felt more like sex, my co-players would have gotten the feeling that “wait, stop, this is really icky” and been better at slow escalation and checking for consent.
I’ve also experienced pretty bad cognitive dissonance at larps where player groups have different ideas on where to place themselves on the theatrical-realistic scale, or on how heavy and gritty the violence should be. Like a disturbing public execution scene right before the troops are about to leave for boffer o’clock – Are we still the heroes? Or the villains? Are we supposed to react negatively to this or cheer? Or similarly, a few co-players barging in, throwing someone on the table and shouting for medical help in the middle of some simmering low-key emotional drama.
Conclusion
I believe that the emotional core of a game is an important designable surface, and something to consider for both players and designers. Just like when building pathos in general, there are many ways to achieve it, and the “best practice” will depend a lot on the larp and the target audience. Hopefully, the grid could help provide a bit of an explanation to why some will find a scene deeply meaningful, while it will look bleak and boring to co-players, or why one player’s satisfying emotional drama feels hyperbolic and over-dramatic to others. At least, I’ve discovered that finding my own personal preferences on the grid is helpful to find which larps and co-players I will easily vibe with, and which ones I won’t.
Jesus did it. So why don’t you? Create drama during dinner, that is. Saying that one of your best friends will betray you while you are having your last meal is a pretty dramatic way to create pressure in an eating situation. The Danish Dogme 95 film The Celebration (1998) is another example of great drama happening at a dinner. Many of our favorite stories can make it work, so let’s do that in larp as well. We waste so much time eating during longer form larps. At least, that was my experience for a very long time, until I figured out a solution that worked for me both as a player and designer. Food and food design in larps is in and of itself an interesting subject. But more than the actual food, I very much enjoy larps that make something special of meal situations.
Examples of larps where specific meals have been well thought into the design are the last dinner at the Atropos larp Libertines (2019-2020)and the meals at House of Craving (2019-). At Libertines, the last meal is a culmination of building pressure within the group of characters, and it seems completely normalized that there isn’t any cutlery, plates or cups, and people are not properly dressed while the food is served so it becomes messy and very physical.
At House of Craving, meals become more and more absurd; some players portray a representation of “The House” (so your character doesn’t see these people) and they will move around the food and your cutlery in a haunting way, making you start to question why things are not in the places you put them. The further into the meals you get, you feel more and more like you are going insane while the House starts to interact more directly with you.
These examples contain wonderful scenes designed to enhance an atmosphere and specific actions that connect to the larps’ themes in their own way.
A way I most often utilize meals to become an actual Dinner Warfare situation, is by creating subtle but strong emotional pressure based on specific relations instead of mostly atmosphere in designing eating situations.
From Daemon (2023): Katrine Wind. Photo: Bjørn-Morten Vang Gundersen.
Dinner Warfare
Dinner Warfare is, primarily, a tool to design meal situations that contain emotional relevance for the players individually and, secondarily, a way of underlining the atmosphere and themes of the larp. As an organizer, I most often utilize Dinner Warfare to enhance conflict, but it can also be meaningful in positive relations between characters.
Putting each other under pressure as well as subtly poking in polite circumstances gives another dimension to a personal relation than when you are not forced to spend time together. It can both kickstart a conflict and help decide the pacing of a larp. This tool can also provide much longer scenes than usual. It’s not often that you get to spend hours together with the same characters at a larp, which has at least the potential to deeper and more layered conversations and therefore relations. In the best cases, this ignites embers that can burst into a fire later in the larp as well.
An important lesson in larp design is that we can’t teach everyone everything during workshops, but we can “train” our players and provide them with new player skills. A way of doing this regarding Dinner Warfare is simply stating that they have the obligation as players to sit in a place that is meaningful to your character and where it might create the most play during one or more meals. Putting the responsibility with the players is the first step on the “The table of Dinner Warfare.” If you want to take more responsibility as a designer, you can ensure organized meals, make seating plans or even dynamic seating plans.
Illustration of “The table of Dinner Warfare” by Iris van Blijderveen (2024).
Brief players and make organized meals
The table above (or figure as it rightfully is) makes it possible for anyone to point out that they want dinner warfare at their larp no matter their resources. If your players eat in-game, give them the responsibility to be meaningful. If you want to help them even further, you can make specific mealtimes. Then you ensure that they are all gathered and that they then have an easier time finding people to sit with that are meaningful. There you go — you already completed two courses on the “Table of Dinner Warfare.”
The next part of the article is about how you as a designer can enhance and help the players use this tool, if you want to do more.
Seating plan
A seating plan is essential in the Dinner Warfare concept if you as a designer want to heavily affect the pressure this tool can put in a larp. People who have problematic relations as well as terrible secrets together make very good Dinner Warfare seating partners. To actually utilize Dinner Warfare effectively as an organizer, you have to know the characters very well and I can imagine that it takes clear and strong (as well as well-written) relations. You have to have an idea of the intricacies of why it would be terrible for these two characters to be forced to eat a three course meal together.
A helpful set-up is a setting including very strong social norms like nobility adhering to old-timey table-manners or creating families with harsh social structures. In these settings, there is an expected air of at least surface-level civility. So while there might for example be a threat of violence, it is kept under wraps, leading to tension (and possibly even better scenes that couldn’t have been happening without these external circumstances).
It is important to have an alibi for why you have to stay in your seat and not leave the person you are put next to. This is something I often combine with some of the elements that Karijn van der Heij and I described in the article “Playing an Engaging Victim” (2020). In this article, we argue that it can be tempting for victim players to simply run away or physically hide from their oppressor, but with Dinner Warfare, you can actually provide both parties with an alibi to spend extensive time together.
In Spoils of War (2019-2024), I utilize this by having the winning and losing side of a war celebrate the sacred Feast of Life together: one day a year where you have to celebrate Life no matter the circumstances. Thus, the queen of the side that will lose the war later in the game will invite everybody who is in the siege camp outside into the castle for a long meal. The written characters are long and the relations complex, so the seating plan is made off-game by me, while in-game it is Her Majesty’s. Prisoners of war sit with their captors and the family that is desperate to have them back. Former lovers sit next to the one that broke their heart — you get the sentiment. The cultural and religious agreement that we don’t attack each other during a meal provides the alibi here.
The author creating a seating chart in Helicon Run 1 (2024): Katrine Wind and Maria Petterson. Photo: Anna Katrine Werge Bønnelycke.
Daemon
In my larp Daemon (2021), Dinner Warfare is a core design element. The larp is inspired by the His Dark Materials trilogy by Philip Pullman (1995-2000) where humans have their soul outside of their body in the form of an animal. Daemons are the expression of the inner lives of the characters and can either underline what the human players are portraying or show what is really going on between the two humans. In the larp, this is represented by two people playing the same character (human and daemon, respectively) and that they can’t go more than two meters from each other.
The larp takes place in the aftermath of a war in which many of the characters helped kill the God of this world. The characters have gathered at the mansion to celebrate the victory. But not everyone wants to be there. Not all of the heroes see themselves as that and because of a last attack from the losing side, even adversaries from the war have had to flee to this exact place. The war has brought together people from all classes. Class differences are an important part of the experience. Everybody present experiences the pressure of social norms because of the nobility present — and we kick that off very early into the game with a three course dinner.
In this particular setup, the hostess is setting the table and forces the seating arrangements on the guests. This is usually an organizer controlled character. A player can absolutely be the host in-game like in Spoils of War, but it is important to be willing to keep the pressure on the other players and have a lot of insight into the characters and relations as there are only 30 people in this larp. You also have to consider that it can be time consuming for a player the more responsibility they have, possibly taking them out of the game.
In-game enemies or problematic relations can be placed together because of malicious intent or unknowingly. For example, the hostess at Daemon purposefully doesn’t put her own sister at the high table because they have a conflict; instead she is placed with the lowest classes. This provides tension for all. The hostess’ greatest enemy, who she has always been very jealous of, is, on the other hand, placed beside her former fiancée who has publicly denounced her and had her put in house arrest.
Daemon (Belgium 2023): Katrine Wind. Photo: Ork De Rooij.
Another option is that the pressure is unintentional in-game but intentional off-game. An example of this is the high table, where the hostess Lady Philippa Blackett has placed her best friend Lord Richard Wiltshire, whom she has always dined with and who is a hero of the war and their daemons of course. The nobles are chummy, making others uncomfortable by familiarity, obvious privilege, and status. At that table is also placed Richard’s younger sister Evelyn, who was engaged to Philippa’s deceased brother. Richard and Philippa pity her, try to make her mourn as much as possible for the lost fiancée, and feel guilty for his death as a war hero. The last person at the table is Professor Rowan, whom Richard has been sponsoring for years. What Richard doesn’t know is that the professor has a long running affair with Evelyn, who doesn’t mourn her fiancée at all. The daemons of Evelyn and Rowan are placed next to each other. They will then play out the romance as subtly as they can under the dangerous attention of Philippa and Richard while the daemons often choose to telegraph more visibly the feelings that the humans are trying to keep quiet. I often find that transparency helps here — if the players know what is at stake between Evelyn and Rowan, it is easier to pick up the hints.
All of this emotional, meaningful drama can make it a very “pressure cooker”-like experience, which for some larps is completely fine. That the characters are not exploding on each other and mostly suffering internally while being prodded and provoked by the people they sit together with. If you want to avoid this atmosphere, you can choose to encourage a more rowdy atmosphere with e.g. toasts or speeches. This mostly works if it is briefed or workshopped; not many will make toasts if they aren’t suggested to do so.
Daemon (Belgium 2023): Katrine Wind. Photo: Ork De Rooij.
The last example from Daemon to create more pressure, is an element where the hostess wants to get the conversation going. By each seat, there is an envelope titled “A little game.” When the guests open it, there are really hard questions like: “How do you think you are going to die?” and “If you could change one thing about how you grew up, what would you change?” This makes it easier to start the conversations and everybody can see the inappropriateness of the questions — especially across classes. But no one can protest this early in the game because of polite society.
So, where religious and cultural norms offer the alibi in Spoils of War, class differences are the kicker in Daemon.
Player wishes
If you want to make it more difficult for yourself (why wouldn’t you? Organizing is so easy, right?), take player wishes into account. That is the last course on the “Dinner Warfare table”. If someone enjoys the Dinner Warfare situations, it can for some be interesting further into the game to have some influence over who it would make sense for their game to be placed next to. There might be someone that your character would want to avoid, but that would enhance your experience to be pressed by social norms to spend time with.
Helicon
For Helicon (2024) by myself and Maria Pettersson, a larp about the Muses of old being trapped by humans (the Inspired), class differences can’t be much of a pressure point for Dinner Warfare, as the Inspired are pretty much equal with a few exceptions. Class differences are utilized for other kinds of conflicts. Instead, we use traditions as an alibi for the seating plan (for play accounts of Helicon, see Bowman 2024; Nøglebæk 2024; Pettersson 2024).
The social dynamics in this larp are complex and layered and are utilized and enhanced by the Dinner Warfare by physically putting one’s Muse next to one’s ex-wife and love interests while the Muses are former lovers/close friends. The Muses are connected to their Inspired and can’t go more than 100 m away from them. The ritual of keeping them with the human will have to be renewed every year, making ritualistic content an important part of the design. The first ritual is directly followed by a three course dinner, so that there has just been a dramatic escape and punishment scene and then we go directly to the traditional welcome dinner. We also make the larp feel a bit like a time warp by making characters going back to the same dynamics over and over during the larp — and this doesn’t only include the seating plans.
We put people who have been divorced next to each other with the alibi that they used to sit like this 15 years ago, and if we change anything — even the seating — the sealing of the capture of the Muses might not work. With so much pressure, sometimes the atmosphere can be very serious, strained and quiet unless you workshop it not to be and give tools to change it.
Toasts are great tools for setting the mood and getting more active meal situations during Dinner Warfare but as mentioned earlier, people will not necessarily do that in-game unless encouraged. Maria Pettersson and I use a tool called “Please stand up” to overcome the possible hesitation. It is basically just the very known game “Never have I ever…” A character can at any point stand up and say: “Please stand up if…” and often it will be used to either celebrate good qualities in oneself or slander another character. An example could be: “Please stand up if you also hate your Muse.” This way the players can affect if the atmosphere should be more vicious, cruel, or maybe celebratory.
For this larp it is also much more beneficial that people can actually walk around and switch seats during the meals as they are all old friends, lovers, and enemies and dramatic interactions are encouraged.
Helicon (2024): Katrine Wind and Maria Pettersson. Photo: Bjørn-Morten Vang Gundersen.
Downsides to Dinner Warfare
Anecdotally, quite a lot of larpers have difficulty eating at larps. I don’t personally prefer for people to not have eaten at the larps I design, as I find hungry people in many situations to be worse larpers. The kind of pressure that Dinner Warfare provides can make it difficult for some to eat and I acknowledge that. One of the antidotes to that on my behalf, is making the dinners very long. If you have to sit for 2½ hours and are served three different courses, almost anyone will have eaten something at the end.
Serving the food buffet style takes away the pressure as well. When people have to get up to grab their choice of food, they will spend more time away from each other and experience relief of pressure. The disadvantage of serving by the plate or family style on the tables, which I would argue gives the best physical circumstances for Dinner Warfare, is that it takes a lot of extra effort from the kitchen and serving staff. Servers can also raise the cost of a larp, making it even more financially inaccessible. However, bearing these possible disadvantages in mind, I highly recommend Dinner Warfare as a design tool
In summary, meals don’t have to be empty design spaces in a larp or something you just have to get over and done with to get on with the real larp. Real larping canhappen while eating. Bon appetit!
Wind, Katrine, and Karijn van der Heij. 2020. “Playing an Engaging Victim.” In What Do We Do When We Play? Solmukohta 2020, edited by edited by Eleanor Saitta, Johanna Koljonen, Jukka Särkijärvi, Anne Serup Grove, Pauliina Männistö, and Mia Makkonen, 244–53. Helsinki: Solmukohta.
Ludography
Daemon (2021): Denmark, Belgium, USA, UK. Katrine Wind.
Helicon (2024): Denmark. Maria Pettersson and Katrine Wind.
Spoils of War (2019-2024). Denmark. Katrine Wind.
Libertines (2019-2020): Denmark. Atropos and Julie Greip.
House of Craving (2019-2023): Denmark. Tor Kjetil Edland, Danny Wilson, Frida Sofie Jansen, and Bjarke Pedersen.
Cover photo:From Spoils of War (2022): Katrine Wind. Photo by Elvinas Rokas.
In Finland, children playing in their sandbox with their plastic buckets and shovels, chant a traditional rhyme: “Älä tule paha kakku, tule hyvä kakku!” (Don’t become a bad cake, please become a good cake).
A good sand cake stays whole when the bucket is turned upside down. It is affected by lots of things: moisture and quality of the grain, evenness of the platform, and swiftness and steadiness of the baker’s hand. Sometimes the cake collapses no matter how hard the baker tries.
Playing with sand cakes reminds me of preparing for a larp as a player. There is an element of randomness in every game, no matter how conscientious or detailed the design is or how dutifully the players create their contacts. The sand may appear nice and moist, but in the end, it’s too loose. We think we succeed in compressing the sand in the bucket snugly enough, but one edge fails to fill up. Maybe the handle of our bucket is broken and it betrays us at the most crucial moment.
Contacts as the most important ingredient
I come from the Finnish larp tradition, where characters and their relations are usually carefully planned and written, balanced, and of equal value. Their personal and inter-character story arcs are meaningful and dramatically coherent, and aligned with the themes of the game. Organisers usually choose their players from a pool of applicants, based often on an extensive background information form. The character is chosen for each player with their personal wishes and experience in mind. I call this the micro-level of character design.
Micro-level character design operates on the level of individual players and characters: What does this particular player want and wish? What are they capable of? What can they personally bring into the game? What is the dramatic arc of the character? What kind of tensions does the character have with other characters; what are their desired outcomes? What are they going to do in the game? Do they have balanced plots that support their personal story?
Many big, international blockbusters use either brute force design (see Fatland & Montola 2015) that relies on the maxim “More is more” and offers the players a well-supplied smorgasbord of plots, or sandbox design where players are invited and often expected to create their own content. These are cost-effective ways to create large commercial games. Some of these games offer well-constructed and carefully thought out characters, but often the players are given only a loose draft of character and their network. The personality and contacts are more like suggestions, and they might be open for change if the player feels like it. Players can even choose to discard them entirely. This I call the macro-level of character design.
Macro-level character design operates on the level of groups and bigger constructions: character groups, big plots in the background, public scenes open to everyone, action free to join.
In my 25+ years of larping, the strongest element to either build the game to excellent heights or make it fall has been contacts and inter-character relationships. Thus, choosing very light, sketch-like character design or making contacts fully flexible according to players’ ideas, inspiration, or time, burdens me with potentially pointless shovel-work and increases the chance for the sand cake of the game to collapse.
My argument is that when game designers lead character designing work or, if players are given responsibility for it, facilitate its processes, the experience is more likely to be successful for a bigger number of players. This is because purely player-driven character and contact design potentially has several problems and challenges.
Embrace the chaos?
Next I will discuss four specific problems and challenges of macro-level character and contact design. Many of my points echo Anni Tolvanen’s (2022) Nordic Larp Talk on dance card larping.
It’s easy, fun and safe to play with friends and people with similar play styles. Players can plan their character relations and plots together, and make use of their previous common play history: whereas contacting several strangers, feeling their play styles, negotiating content, and trying to fit it all to the larp can be much more stressful and time-consuming. Playing with friends is natural and understandable and, at least to some extent, one of the points of larping: but it can, however, lead to exclusivity. My first point is that players who have no friends to gravitate to in the game or who feel difficulty making new contacts, may be left out from designing game content.
Secondly, player-driven contact design can also lead to collecting as many interesting contacts as possible. This is also known as contact shopping. In the process, common content is brainstormed, inter-character history drafted, plots agreed on and even scenes planned. But in the game, the contact shopper has no time to play with all their contacts, so they have to choose: maybe the most interesting ones, those with friends, or those easily at hand. To co-players, these pre-planned relationships can, however, be crucial. These players may not have their friends aboard, or they may not be prepared for the play culture of contact shopping. The content now thrown overboard may play a big role in their planned game content or character story, which now deflates.
Thirdly, when there is no coherent, personal story and view of the character’s arc during the game, play can easily become chaotic and coincidental.
In many Finnish larps, each plot is specifically designed for a certain character or group of characters. However, in some international larps, it is a choice of design to provide many potential plots that are not tied to any particular character. The player can then freely choose which ones they want to engage with during gameplay. When this design choice is communicated to potential players, they can choose whether they feel up to it or not.
If players find themselves in this situation unexpectedly, they can try grabbing whatever plot or action they can get in the fear of missing out and being bored, whether it is something the character would do or not. Personally, in these kinds of situations as a player, I have felt pretty desperate. I’ve tossed aside all logic and the story of my character, and I’ve just tried to squeeze myself into anything. Immersion is long gone, numbness and indifference linger close. Embracing the chaos might keep me from getting bored, but it seldom offers impressive experiences or feelings of meaningfulness for a player, who is seeking a personal story.
As a fourth and combining element: players are not equal when it comes to social capital, skills, and status. When the organiser’s hand doesn’t balance characters’ weight in the fiction, the most popular, charismatic, socially and verbally skilled players often reign. That can offer little or at the worst case no room to more subtle tones, quieter players and more delicate stories.
Not easy for everyone
Larping is an extreme social sport. Contact creation and plot design with a dozen strangers from other play cultures can be fruitful and awesome, but it can also be socially extremely straining and strenuous. Introverted or shy players, players with bad experiences or occasional problems with social situations, or players who know no other players in advance, may feel really anxious and uncertain. Also, players who can’t use hours of their free time for pre-larp random contacting in the hope of finding plots, can struggle.
Behind my text are my own experiences from international sandbox or brute force blockbusters. I spent a lot of time contacting, brainstorming and plotting. From some players I never got answers. With many of them, I didn’t succeed in communicating the balance and equal weight of our content plans or character relationships. With some, I never ended up playing because they seemed too busy with other stuff. That made me feel meaningless and disappointed. I was also ashamed: I couldn’t follow the plans I participated in making, and I was unsure if I should push more or just give up. Diegetically, I felt not welcome in several plots, or, when suggesting hooks or action, didn’t necessarily get an enthusiastic response. When I gathered my strength to force myself in, my character was often merely a bystander, the audience witnessing others’ play. Here, despite the fear of missing out, I started to realise that these design styles are sadly not for me – or, rather, I am not for them.
My larps were saved by friends with whom we had pre-planned contacts, and with whom we had an understanding that we are really going to play the planned content. I’ve also been lucky to have several really nice encounters and meaningful play with new acquaintances.
For an introvert with some insecurities in social relations, the trying, the uncertainty, the negotiating, the forcing, and the continuous alertness for potential content was exhausting. I longed for knowing where to concentrate, being able to trust that there is a reason for my character’s existence. I felt envious and missing out: I did not get in or feel like an essential part of the cast.
As far as I know, operating on the macro-level of character design is easier, lighter and less laborious, and that’s why it’s practised in big games. As a designer, though, I can’t help observing how things could be done a bit more inclusively. In each blockbuster I’ve attended, I have noticed many places where organisers could relatively easily have connected the spots to insert inter-character content, such as: both of these characters have nubile children, they should absolutely meet and discuss marriages! This character has violated a member of a leading gang, the information has to be shared for drama to happen! These characters have both recently lost someone important, the players would get a kick out of a séance session!
Creating together or purchasing an experience?
I see larping as creating together. Thus it also includes player responsibilities, not just rights. Especially in commercial blockbusters, some participants may see themselves as paying customers, and game designers as customer service providers. Can customers be asked to mind their co-players’ experience, answer messages in time, stick to pre-planned contacts, drop their immersion to help others, do something that doesn’t feel fun? Usva Seregina’s (2019; see also Seregina in this volume) article on commodification of larp discusses this and related topics in more detail.
Personally, I fear that commercial games may lack the true communality that comes from committing to supporting other participants’ play and stories, and the vision that comes from comprehensive, dramatically solid, designer-led character arcs. I’m aware that I’m not purchasing an experience but a possibility of one. If I get a spot and choose to participate, I don’t expect to be fully catered, but I wish to know how to focus my available time and energy.
Safety and stability make a better cake
To decrease the problems and challenges of exclusivity, contact shopping, vacuous chaos, and inequality in social status, I, an introvert player, need some information or guidelines about these things: Why is my character important in this game, what can I expect from the game? Which players are my most important contacts and do we have time to play together? What kind of tension is planned inside the relationship? In short: I want to be as sure as possible that my experience is going to be as good as possible. I’m also willing to work for it, as long as I know what are the tools best for this playground.
Compared to free player-driven contact creation, contact design by the organisers is a stronger promise to me and other players struggling with uncertainty on whether we too will be relevant and included. Knowing that designers have created full, meaningful characters and their relationships, I’m much more confident that the cake will stay whole.
This article has been reprinted with permission from the Solmukohta 2024 book. Please cite as:
Niskanen, Niina. 2024. “Good Cakes, Bad Cakes: Character and Contact Design as a Factor of Personal Game Experience.” In Liminal Encounters: Evolving Discourse in Nordic and Nordic Inspired Larp, edited by Kaisa Kangas, Jonne Arjoranta, and Ruska Kevätkoski. Helsinki, Finland: Ropecon ry.
At Knudepunkt in 2019 I attended a panel discussion, You Look Like I Want To Play With You, hosted by Karijn van der Heij, where participants shared their experiences of co-players refusing to play on pre-written relations. According to the participants, the excuse often used by said co-players was them feeling “a lack of chemistry”. Disregarding the problematic nature of such a judgement, the argument inherently states that chemistry is something which either exists or doesn’t between people, even though we have multiple examples of the opposite being true. Just take something as common and widely discussed as relational bleed: You might never have met the person playing your best friend or one true love before, but after a larp weekend of holding hands and/or gazing into each other’s eyes, they seem awfully nice. Or look to Hollywood and the number of romantic leads ending up in real-life relationships after having starred in a movie together, no matter their relationship status going into it.
All in all, chemistry is not something that either exists or doesn’t, it is something that can be built between people, doing certain things together. Which also means it can be workshopped.
While it took a few years, some research and testing, I created a workshop method aimed to do exactly that: Building player chemistry.
The goals for the method are:
Building trust and a feeling of safety between participants.
Having participants tune in on each other, becoming aware of their workshop partner.
Having participants model behavior that creates closeness, attention, and appreciation between them.
The method is based on 6 steps, continuously adding degrees of interaction ranging from being distant to touching and from non-verbal to verbal. It can either be run as a workshop by organizers before a larp, to help support players with intimate relations, or used by players portraying intimate relations before the start of the larp (or during the larp if your relation play just doesn’t work out). In this context, intimate relations refer to relations where love, romance, or simply physical and emotional closeness is one of the primary forces. This includes romantic partners, lovers, close friends, and family members, as well as abusive relationships based on the perception of love or closeness.
The method is based on, and inspired by, elements from:
Studies of the effects of eye gazing and related exercises
The Meisner and Lucid Body drama schools/techniques
Ars Rego (created by Maria and Jeppe Bergman Hamming for Spellbound, 2018)
Ars Amandi (created by Eliot Wieslander for Mellan Himmel och hav, 2003)
Disclaimer: The workshop includes both extended eye contact and touch, which the participants must be comfortable with.
Running the workshop:
Total runtime of the workshop is approximately 40 minutes, not including exercise instructions. Start by dividing the participants into pairs. Instruct them on all steps of the workshop, prior to starting the exercises, so that the workshop can be run as one continuous flow, facilitated only verbally by the organizer.
Step 1:Eye contact
Time: Approx. 5 minutes
This step consists of four rounds. Participants sit in front of each other with some distance between them (1-1.5 meters), eyes closed. On cue, they look into each other’s eyes, for a set amount of time, then close their eyes again and rest for a moment. Every round has an extended duration of eye contact:
1: 5 seconds
2: 10 seconds
3: 30 seconds
4: 2.5 minutes
Remember to give the participants breaks with their eyes closed, between the rounds, as this kind of prolonged eye contact can feel overwhelming at first.
Step 2: Coordinated breathing
Time: Approx. 5 minutes
Participants stay seated and keep eye contact throughout this step. This step combines coordinated breathing and movement. One participant starts, stretches their arms out in front of them and draws in breath, simultaneously moving their arms towards their body (as if drawing in their breath with their arms), and then exhales while moving their arms back towards stretched (as if pushing out the air with their arms). The other participant continues this movement, drawing in their breath, while moving their arms towards their body, followed by exhaling, while stretching their arms out – returning the breath and movement to the first participant, who then continues.
This will create a circular movement and breath, from one participant to the other and back.
Let the pairs find a rhythm, without verbally communicating it.
Throughout this exercise, create variation by asking the pairs to slow their coordinated breathing/movement down together, let them then go back to normal, ask them to speed it up, and end this exercise by letting them go back to normal again.
Step 3: Ars Rego Movement
Time: Approx. 15 minutes
This exercise is based on the method Ars Rego by Maria and Jeppe Bergman Hamming.
Short description of the mechanic: Ars Rego is a Nordic larp mechanic created for simulating magical physical control. With this mechanic a “leader” controls one or more “followers” by using hand signals. A connection between leader and follower is created by participants establishing eye contact and raising their hand(s). The follower must now follow the leader’s hand at a distance and be led around the room, while keeping their hand up and the connection intact. They are to mirror the leader’s hand movements (e.g. The leader “pushing” them down, “lifting” them up, making them move to the side, spin, etc. by using hand gestures). The leader is always responsible for the follower’s safety and comfort, while moving them around the room.
Note: This exercise does not use touch at any point, and doesn’t include the hand movement to signal to your partner to get closer, as demonstrated in the link above.
The pairs split up (momentarily) and all participants start moving around the room, walking amongst each other. Let the participants get comfortable moving around on their own, before asking them to start noticing their partner: Where they are in the room, how they are moving, their expression, etc.
Ask participants to make eye contact with their partner and at their own pace establish the touch-free “connection” with their hand. The pairs should continue to keep some distance between themselves, moving around between other participants in the room.
The participants are allowed to break off the contact and reestablish it, getting used to the “connection”, before they are encouraged to “lock in” and slowly get closer to each other, without ever touching. Let the participants play around with the connection for a while, trying out changing hands, using both hands, moving their partner around, both from side to side, down towards the floor and up again.
Important note: The participants are responsible for their partner. It is their responsibility to make sure their partner doesn’t bump into furniture, walls, or other people. Make that responsibility very clear to the participants – It is necessary to keep eye contact during the exercise, but at the same time be aware of the other’s surroundings.
Throughout the exercise, create some variation in the participants’ movements. Ask one person in the pair (e.g.: the person who started the breathing exercise) to take control of the other, then change the roles. It is also possible to add elements from your larp design, like asking participants to move as their character and interact with each other based on their ingame relation. Consider how this could potentially affect the building of chemistry – If the relation is not inherently positive, this could interfere with the result of the workshop itself.
For the final approx. 5 minutes of the exercise, ask the pairs to get close to each other, if they haven’t already. Invite them to move together as if dancing in a ballroom setting (or if something else fits your larp better).
As the final step, ask participants to use both hands in their movement together, so that the transition to the next exercise happens fluently.
Step 4: Shared Moment
Time: Approx. 3 minutes
Ask the participants to stop in their movement, still with their hands held up “connected” to each other. The participants then move closer together, so close they can feel the heat from their partner’s hands, without touching. Ask them to close their eyes, take a deep breath and focus on the feeling they have in that moment. Ask them to visualize something, it could be an image, a thought or emotion, and keep their focus on what they are visualizing. Give them a few moments to get grounded, then ask them to open their eyes and at the same moment let their hands touch.
The pairs now get a minute to share what they thought of and visualized.
Step 5: Touch
Time: Approx. 7 minutes
This exercise is based on the method Ars Amandi by Eliot Wieslander.
Short description of the mechanic: Ars Amandi is a Nordic larp mechanic used for simulating romance or sex in larp. The mechanic uses touch of permitted zones (often hands, arms, and shoulders) between two or multiple participants. The touch is often in the form of stroking, massaging, grabbing, or exploring with one’s fingers/hands.
The pairs sit down in front of each other again, this time knee to knee. They establish eye contact and slowly start touching both of each other’s hands. The area of touch slowly increases, as the participants have time to get comfortable, by first moving the touch up to the lower part of the arms, stopping at the elbows, then the upper part of the arms, stopping at the shoulders. The participants should be allowed to tap out, if increasing the area of touch is not wanted, thereby keeping the touch to the previous level (e.g.: hands or lower arms).
The participants can play around with this touch, either by expressing the kind of relation their characters have, or by the organizer creating variation in the types of touch (e.g.: asking participants to change their touch to portray siblings, parent-child, lovers, etc.)
Again, be aware how portraying ingame relations can potentially affect the building of chemistry if the relation is not inherently positive.
Step 6: Appreciation
Time: Approx. 5 minutes
Continuing the touch exercise from step 5, the participants simultaneously start verbal appreciation of each other. They take turns commenting on facts they appreciate about the other, using the following sentence form: “I like… XXX” (e.g.: “I like your curly hair”). The receiving participant continues with: “You like… XXX” (e.g.: “You like my curly hair”) and adds their own comment (e.g.: “I like your blue shirt”), returning the appreciation and continuing the exercise.
Important note: No derogatory or hurtful comments are allowed. Clearly instruct participants to only state objective and neutral facts about each other (e.g.: colors of eyes, hair, etc.), chosen aspects of their appearance (e.g.: choice of clothes, jewelry, tattoos, etc.), or experienced behavior during the exercises (e.g.: their movement, smile, eye contact).
Wrapping up
The workshop can either end with step 6 or with a repeat of a moment of silent eye contact.
Either way, it is encouraged to give participants a few minutes after the workshop to talk with their partner about the experience and how they are feeling.
Final notes on the workshop design
As mentioned, the workshop can be run either by organizers or used by players themselves. Especially in the case of organizers running the workshop, it is important to consider the impact it can have on the participating players. As the workshop aims at modelling participants’ behavior to create closeness and build player chemistry, the risk of relational bleed can increase. It is the responsibility of the organizers to consider the ethics of using this or similar methods, as well as making sure the participating players are consenting.
The workshop was first run and tested in its entirety at Knutpunkt 2022 in Linköping, Sweden. Thank you to everyone who participated and gave their feedback, as well as everyone who checked the workshop description for read- and run-ability.
Odysseus (Finland 2019) was an ambitious attempt to create a fully functioning spaceship in the spirit of the TV series Battlestar Galactica. The dream was to create a sense of a perfectly working spaceship, where every aspect of the ship would have a part to play in the collective success and failure of the crew. The Odysseus had 104 characters onboard, running the ship in shifts for 48 hours. The larp aimed for a high-fidelity illusion of being on a spaceship, full with interactivity, scenography, sound and light to create a plausible feel of being inside an episode of a space opera.
Played in the Torpparinmäki school in Helsinki, Odysseus was about making every aspect of a space opera into playable content: bridge crew fighting space battles, landing parties exploring planets, fighter pilots engaging enemies in combat, med bay patching up injured soldiers, science lab solving mysteries, and engineering crew keeping the bird in the air.
Odysseus pursued the dream of a clockwork larp. Clockwork larp is a larp where characters work on diverse and sequential interdependent tasks that feed into each other, forming loops that progress the story and the dynamics of the larp.
The beauty of a clockwork is in the immersive sensation that comes from dozens of players working together to overcome a challenge. Your job might be tedious in itself, but as your performance impacts everyone, it becomes imbued with meaning and significance. When an injured soldier comes to the medical station, she arrives with actual historical details on where, how, and why she got hit, and all those details are shared by all her comrades. As a medic, you are just patching up a soldier, but if you do your work badly, it might lead to dramatic repercussions further down the line.
A properly interdependent clockwork is a fragile device. For every task to matter, every task needs to matter. Every wheel and spring must be doing its job or the gears grind to a halt. The characters must be reasonably successful in their tasks. The players must be reasonably timely. The larp technology must work smoothly. The marines must be on board when the cruiser jumps. If something goes wrong, the entire larp might be in danger of falling apart.
While naval vessels and space stations are the obvious themes, any larp requiring coordinated success of diverse character groups can approach the aesthetics and face the challenges of a clockwork. To understand whether you should think about a larp as a clockwork is all about interdependence and fragility. If there are multiple player groups performing multiple tasks that could completely ruin the larp, it might be valuable to think about the larp in terms of clockwork design. In this paper I seek to describe how Odysseus approached the central clockwork-related design problems. This is not a review of Odysseus as a whole, but an attempt to distill the essential elements of its successful execution of the clockwork aesthetics.
The Odysseus Engine
The ESS Odysseus is a starship escaping a devastating attack on her home planet. As in the Battlestar Galactica TV-series that inspired the larp, the only hope is to find a safe haven by following an ancient path through the stars. In order to succeed, the crew must fend off relentless enemy attacks, deploy landing parties to collect long-lost artefacts, and decipher clues to discover the way to safety.
The Odysseus clockwork loop (Figure 1) starts with the ship escaping combat with a hyperspace jump, and landing in the relative safety of a new star system. After the jump, the medics and the engineers have to take care of injured crew members and damaged machinery. At the same time, the scientists and the bridge crew use scanners to figure out which planet to visit next.
Figure 1: The clockwork loop of Odysseus. Ground missions were only done during every other loop, giving scientists more time to figure out the artefacts while traveling. Each revolution took about 2 hours and 47 minutes to complete. Jump drive cooldown requirements prevented players from rushing the loop, and the pursuing enemies prevented players from slowing it down. The clockwork loop was sequential, not simultaneous, so there were always some character groups off-duty and others hard at work: the scientists, for instance, had no clockwork duties during the marine ground missions.
Then, the marines are deployed to the planet, with a mission to obtain ancient artefacts for the scientists. During the ground mission, they encounter enemies and other dangers (see Figure 2), and thus need to have their injuries treated by the medics. While this happens, the pursuing enemy fleet unerringly catches up with the Odysseus, prompting a space battle between the ship, its fighter craft, and the enemy fleet.
Figure 2: Marines and pilots often ended up in combat situations on their planetary missions. When they returned, the stories of their heroic deeds fueled play onboard. (Photo: Santtu Pajukanta)
The fight lasts until the scientists researching the artefacts figure out the next star system to visit, at which point the engineers prepare the jump engine and the bridge officers perform another hyperspace jump to safety. As the Odysseus escapes to a new star system, the loop starts over, and it is time to take care of injured crew members and damaged machinery.
Every other loop was a ground mission loop, where a landing party was deployed to recover artefacts, and every other loop was a more relaxed waypoint en route towards the next ground mission. While Odysseus was traveling, the scientists studied the artefacts further and determined where to land in the next star system to find more artefacts.
Odysseus was played, in shifts, for 48 hours straight. More than half of the players were awake at any time to run the ship (see below). During the larp, the Odysseus went through 16 clockwork loops, which included 6 larger and 3 smaller operations for the marines.
Odysseus Crew
Out of the 104 players, 60–70 were playing the characters directly involved in the clockwork operations of the larp. As the crew worked in two shifts, approximately the following amount of characters were on shift at any time:
6 bridge officers, who commanded the Odysseus in space battles
5 fighter pilots launched to space to defend the Odysseus
6 marines ready to be deployed to the Finnish woods on ground missions, plus the officers managing their equipment
4 engineers operating the jump engines and generators, as well as repairing the ship by physical actions such as replacing fuses
4 science lab personnel who studied alien artefacts recovered from planets
4 med bay staff to patch up sick and injured characters
The remaining 30–40 characters were not directly involved with the clockwork operation, and mostly slept at night and played during the day:
9 political leaders who engaged in political play with the accompanying civilian NPC fleet
14 Velian refugees, survivors of a mysterious colony, rescued early in the larp
27 other civilians, such as refugees, journalists and clergy
These numbers do not add up for many reasons. Primarily, the crew consisted of two shifts, supported by a reserve of “Ghost Shift” crew who joined the clockwork when needed. Some characters were always on shift. Some characters belonged in multiple groups. All in all, this is the author’s rough estimate informed by the organiser team.
All the while the clockwork was relentlessly grinding onwards, the Odysseus runtime gamemaster team was throwing spanners in the works: Enemy boarding parties attacking the Odysseus, marines getting mysterious parasite infections on planetside missions, critical resources running out, and so on and so on. As the escaping Odysseus was accompanied by a flotilla of civilian vessels, the politician players had to figure out political issues and conflicts relating to the entire fleet.
As the journey of the Odysseus progressed through the clockwork loops, the various plotlines of the larp advanced as well. Characters and groups brought an endless amount of plot twists to the mix, from small personal plots to grand revelations. Often it felt like none of the clockwork revolutions were played out cleanly, as there were always some twists to accompany them. Sometimes you picked up a group of refugee players, sometimes you hosted a group of NPC visitors from the civilian fleet for a political summit. Sometimes there were massive space battles, and sometimes the crew had to take various precautions to prevent disease from spreading onboard.
Small Cogs in the Large Machine
It is not a simple task to ensure that all players understand what is happening in a larp. However, in a clockwork design it is almost mandatory: when your ship gets shot, or performs a hyperspace jump, or receives visitors from another vessel, this needs to be obvious to everyone on board. This is not an easy task, even when a substantial amount of computers, lights, and loudspeakers can be used to do the job.
Some earlier larps going for clockwork aesthetics discovered magnificent pre-existing larp locations: The Monitor Celestra (Sweden, 2013; see Karlsson 2013) was played in the crammed steel corridors of the HMS Småland, and Lotka-Volterra (Sweden, 2018) took place in a large underground bomb shelter near Uppsala. These gorgeous locations came with fundamental downsides: they were labyrinthine, they were difficult for rigging all the cables and gear, they were impossible for wireless connectivity, and they heavily limited the time the organizing teams could spend on-site before and after the larp.
Odysseus rented a convenient modern building in Helsinki for six weeks. Before the first run, the team spent three weeks on site, transforming a school into a spaceship with sets, lights, audio, ICT systems and more. They laid down six kilometres of cable, installed 34 loudspeakers, and rigged dozens and dozens of lights. This was a very expensive solution in terms of workload, but it provided the team a controlled, dry, warm, safe environment where they could spend a lot of time before the larp to set things up. This was possible because Odysseus had a huge organiser team, with some 160 people credited on the game’s website.
All the main systems of the ship were connected to semi-automated light and sound systems, creating a powerful illusion of being actually on a spaceship. Klaxons screamed, jump engines boomed, fuses blew, screens blinked, all coordinated with sound, light, and smoke. The technological infrastructure created not only a convincing illusion, but also a critical communication medium that ensured that everyone understood the state of the Odysseus, and allowed the game masters to direct the larp. One clever design choice was that whenever the Odysseus performed a jump, all her computer systems went momentarily offline, with all monitors everywhere only displaying static. Together with all the other audiovisual cues, this ensured that even deeply engaged players had to take a pause and register that a new clockwork loop had begun.
Figure 3: The big main hall was the central communication medium of the larp. All essential crew functions had an easy visual access to the lobby, and as it also served as a bar and a restaurant, civilians spent a lot of time there. Consequently, as all visual and auditory information was clear in the lobby, it was clear everywhere in the larp. In this picture, an enemy boarding party has just penetrated the Odysseus and an indoors firefight is about to start – in the central lobby. (Photo: Santtu Pajukanta)
In a clear contrast to the maze-like corridors of the Celestra, the Odysseus team intentionally designed all the spaces to be inclusive, open, and accessible (Makkonen 2019). Almost all the facilities were placed around a large, open main lobby, which served as the primary channel of audio and light information: Even if your work area did not have lights or loudspeakers for a red alert, you could not miss it when it took over the main areas. Most rooms had windows to the main lobby, so everyone could see what was happening (see Figure 3). Areas like the bridge and the med bay were separated with a glass wall, allowing anyone to see all the action (see Figure 4). The brig was adjacent to the security room, and designed to allow prisoners to “incidentally” see the entire play area through surveillance cameras.
Figure 4: The Odysseus bridge and Empty Epsilon -driven command screens portrayed through a glass wall from an adjacent corridor. All important areas were positioned behind glass walls from the main hall, allowing the crew to focus on their tasks while still being easy to observe from the outside. At times crowds would gather outside the bridge during a space combat, or outside the medlab during a dangerous surgery. (Photo: Santtu Pajukanta)
The ship was not a backdrop in Odysseus: it was a relentless force controlling your play at all times. Depending on whether you were on shift or not, a red alert could be a startling backdrop to an intimate moment, or a rough shake-up pulling you back to combat. If you chose to sleep in the in-game berthing area, you probably noticed every single jump and red alert.
Running on Rails
Odysseus was a larp about a military vessel in a crisis situation. The majority of characters were members of a military hierarchy, and as the crisis was acute for the full duration of the larp, civilian characters did not have much say on the big picture. Thus, the larp’s themes would be better characterised by discipline than by agency, and the Odysseus team took a very negative stance on individual players choosing their own styles of play. This tight design was adopted as a perceived necessity for a clockwork larp: since the aesthetic was portraying interdependent characters working in unison, there was limited room for anyone getting out of line.
The larp is designed to be a tunnel not a sandbox, so although you have many decisions you can do completely independently there are [a] few elements we hope that you follow as it gives you most to play with. We have tried to also give your characters ingame reasons to do this. So if you get a distress signal, go and save those in need! … The game relies rather heavily on solving the puzzles and completing the following land mission in timely manner, so this should be supported from the top as well. … This is not a game to be hacked, won or overachieved (Odysseus play instructions, 2019).
It was important that every clockwork character did their part with a reasonable amount of success and in a timely manner. This was non-negotiable, as the organisers had scheduled the full larp with a 15-minute timetable.
The primary strategy for this was to make sure that all the key characters were suitable for keeping the train on the rails. As in many Finnish larps, character descriptions were long and detailed, containing the most important relationships, personality, agendas, personal history et cetera, and these character writeouts were written to create the everyday heroes the larp needed. I played the chief scientist, who was intentionally established to be a fair but demanding leader – precisely what was necessary to run the lab in a way that would get the artefact puzzles solved in time. According to the organisers, this micro-level design was used in other leader characters as well, in order to minimise the chances of, for example, the captain going rogue and rebelling against the fleet command.
As an additional strategy, players were given explicit responsibilities. For instance, the organisers provided the marine officers with specific instructions on which characters to send on particular ground missions. This allowed organisers to distribute planetary missions evenly, and ensured that particular characters would be on missions related to their personal plots.
The organisers actively sought to avoid player boredom, as bored players frequently make their own fun in ways that could be disastrous to the overall working of the clockwork. According to the main organiser Laura Kröger, one reason why the larp had tons of action, secrets, revelations and plotlines was to keep players busy, specifically in order to avoid emergence of disruptive plots such as unplanned mutinies or unwanted larp democracy.
The last line of defence was brutal old-school railroading. If the scientists failed to solve a puzzle in time, one of them would get a whisper in the ear from a game master. If a bridge officer plotted incorrect coordinates into the jump engine, the ship AI would double-check and reject them. If the ship was about to explode, the onboard AI would suggest heroic last-second shenanigans to engineers who could miraculously save the ship, often at the cost of ending up in the med bay. Railroading was necessary, because Odysseus had no contingency plans for players ending up exploring incorrect planets.
Although a lot of larpers shun this kind of railroading, this probably did not harm most players’ experiences of the larp. In terms of agency, the enforced hierarchy of a naval setting concentrates all decision-making power to very few characters in any case. For a player of a junior engineer it matters little whether the route of the Odysseus was planned by the admiral or by the game organisers, as the setting forces most characters to follow orders anyway. The organisers also worked hard to ensure that the players had reasonable in-character reasons to follow along their plots. Similarly, offering a miraculous feat to an engineer or a critical tip to a scientist might detract from one player’s experience, but at the same time allow the clockwork to keep on ticking for the hundred other players.
Ideally, of course, this kind of a larp would weave a story of natural successes and failures, incorporating important decisions made by the players. However, the workload of creating even a single path through the larp was massive, so it seems unfeasible to create all the redundant content that would be required for a branching narrative – let alone one where players could freely explore the galaxy.
In comparison, The Monitor Celestra team also realised the fragility of a clockwork machine when faced with diverse playstyles. Just like Odysseus, the Celestra organisers explicitly gave the players of key characters various responsibilities to keep the game running. While the Odysseus key playstyle message was play along – check the distress signals, solve the puzzles – the Celestra key message was play to lose against other players, play to win against outside enemies.
The Celestra still allowed a lot more freedom to players. The main thing that was explicitly forbidden was covert sabotage: clockwork play is challenging even on a good day, and it is practically impossible to keep an eye on everyone working in various duties. I remember trying to command a space battle while the engine room was staging a strike, preventing us from maneuvering or shooting. Although such a scenario might work perfectly on the silver screen, no larp space battle is long enough to accommodate negotiations over working conditions. The Celestra was also hijacked by a lone gunman at some point, creating an experience where all agency was transferred from everyone onboard to one player for a moment, until the crisis was resolved.
This genre of larp is not resilient against larphacking, sabotage, popular uprisings, or larp democracy. All clockwork larps have to make their peace with some amounts of railroading. They have to clearly specify supported styles of play, and to figure out how to restrain player agency in order to keep flying. I believe there is no other way.
Turning the Gears
Clockwork design depends on in-game work, and designing a labour-intense larp has its own challenges (see Jones, Koulu & Torner 2016). The work needs to be interesting, there needs to be enough of it, and there must not be too much work. Finally, the labour should support character play, instead of taking attention away from it.
The Odysseus clockwork was designed to be sequential, rather than simultaneous. None of the clockwork functions required more than half-a-dozen players contributing simultaneously, which made it easier to get the crew in stations and to focus on the tasks. The characters were split into two main shifts, with a third shift consisting of reserve characters that could relieve characters that were on shift, or jump into action if crew members were missing. As the larp lasted for 48 intense hours, exhaustion became a part of the play: some jobs needed to be done, regardless of whether the players fancied doing them at the moment. Although working in character was a central pleasure of the larp, there were definitely some occasions where tired players genuinely wanted to avoid their shifts. Personally, for me it is hard to stay in character when exhausted, so there is always a danger of robotically doing my job without really larping while doing so.
Designing diegetic work is a difficult multidisciplinary design task that connects larp design, digital game design, scenography, engineering and other hard skills. If you want to create a handheld HANSCA scanner (see Figure 5) that relays information between engineers, medics, scientists and game masters, you have to interface with the tech systems to get it working, with plot design to add content, with props to make sure they can be properly scanned, and so forth. As this kind of task requires many people to accomplish, it becomes complex and time-consuming.
Figure 5: HANSCA handheld scanners combined off-the-shelf Android phones with custom software. In the initial plans, they would have been used a lot by scientists, engineers, and medics to read RFID tags and provide information for the game mastering systems. In the actual runs they were primarily used by engineers. (Photo: Santtu Pajukanta)
Bridge officers, fighter pilots, engineers and marines had close-to-indexical((See e.g. Stenros & al. (2024) in this volume for more on symbols, icons and indices.)) jobs, meaning that the player tasks were very closely aligned with the character tasks. For example the bridge officers and pilots were actually fighting the enemies with Empty Epsilon combat simulator, the engineers were mechanically changing fuses (see Figure 6) and fiddling with the jump drives, and the marines were physically shooting aliens with nerf guns.
Figure 6: Engineer changing a fuse. The game masters could blow fuses around the ship to represent damage to the Odysseus. Blown fuses could have further physical consequences, such as screens going black until they were fixed. (Photo: Santtu Pajukanta)
The medical staff sometimes reverted to iconic work, where you pretend to do something in a way that looks and sounds right, but you are not actually doing the work itself. For instance, they acted out performing surgeries. Often the injuries and ailments were well-propped to improve the experience of medical treatment.
The scientist work often felt symbolic. Deciphering the ancient artefacts to figure out the path of the Odysseus was done through puzzles which resembled escape room puzzles. Although they were fairly well designed, it was at times hard to explain why some ancient folks used a geometry puzzle to encrypt stellar coordinates.
Designing the difficulty level of diegetic teamwork is not easy. You might end up with players who have no idea of what they should be doing on a spaceship bridge, or – like I did in one run of Celestra – you may end up with a professional naval officer who can both run the show and teach others at the same time. In Odysseus, at least some bridge crews mitigated the risk of incompetence by practicing space combat with Empty Epsilon before the larp. This is of course possible only if you can play the simulator online in advance.
The gold standard of labour in clockwork larp is work that consists of tasks that uphold the 360° illusion (see Koljonen 2007) perfectly, while having a difficulty level easy enough to allow players to role-play while barely succeeding. Ideally, the tasks should enable narrative granularity: binary success/failure tasks do not produce the most interesting narrative inputs down the line in the clockwork. Similarly, symbolic tasks can be hard to turn into social content – if Odysseus would have literally expected scientists to solve sudokus, it would have been very hard to narrativise success and failure in that task to create social play.
As Celestra before, Odysseus included a lot of characters without clockwork tasks, such as refugees, civilian administration, religious leaders, and politicians. The risk is that regardless of the quality of the game content created for those characters, they may feel left out from an experience centered around the clockwork. This risk is connected to player expectations, for instance if players sign up to experience a clockwork, but end up cast as civilians.
Odysseus sought to alleviate this by creating tons of important plot content for civilian characters. Based on the quantitative evaluation in a post-larp player survey, this was a mixed success. In general, the players of civilian characters did state that they had a great larp, but the players of military characters were still quite a bit happier with their experiences.
The Invisible Machine
Behind the scenes, another fragile and interdependent machine was ticking away: The organiser team was busy at work. They were setting up space battles with Empty Epsilon, answering characters’ messages to the civilian fleet, prepping antagonists for the land missions, deploying artefacts in the woods to be soon retrieved by the marines, shuttling marine players from the main location to the planetside play areas, answering endless queries from medics, scientists and engineers on behalf of the ship’s AI… and much more. At any time there were a couple of dozen organisers at work.
The runtime game mastering was based on a pre-planned schedule, where everything was broken down to 15 minute slots. This allowed the game masters to adapt their plans based on the status of the larp. For instance, if the Odysseus was planned to suffer an unexpected glitch during a jump that would damage the ship, but the ship was already heavily damaged by the enemy fire, the event could be skipped or postponed. Or if the Odysseus had enjoyed smooth sailing for a while, the game masters could trigger a larger and more dangerous space battle. According to Laura Kröger, the team had many backup plans for various scenarios in which the larp would have been derailed.
Although much of the technology was automated, the light, audio and code had to be manually operated whenever the Odysseus performed a jump – every 2 hours 47 minutes, around the clock. As the organiser team had no capacity to train substitute game masters to run the larp, there was very little redundancy available. For example, Kröger herself had to be woken up to orchestrate every jump, and she was also the person directing all runtime game mastering, meaning that team members had to consult her on details constantly.
There were numerous indispensable organisers who would have been very hard to replace on a quick schedule. While the in-game machine only had to run for 48 hours, the organiser side also had to operate smoothly through all the phases leading into the larp and taking place after it.
Where possible, the Odysseus team mitigated technology risk by using off-the-shelf hardware and software. Lights and audio are relatively easy to operate frictionlessly if organisers are professionals who can use the same tools they use in their daily work, and Empty Epsilon is a reasonably stable piece of space combat software. With the more ambitious custom tools, like the HANSCA hand scanners, custom-programmed Android phones that were intended to relay scan data to game masters, minor glitches and problems were frequent – but they were still more robust than any custom wireless hardware I have ever seen in larp. Half a dozen professional programmers spent more than six months on building and integrating the various systems used in the larp. The larp had some 20 different IT systems running, including a custom backend, engineer repair system, the datahub used for ingame emails, the warp engines, airlock doors, surveillance cameras, info screens, and so on (see Hautala 2020 and Santala & Juustila 2019 for details).
It is a small miracle that everything worked out pretty well in all three runs, and it is trivial to imagine incidents that would have been extremely detrimental to the play experience: main organiser falling ill, or a key piece of technology breaking down, as simplest examples. It is far from certain that the larp could have recovered from such an incident at all.
Although the Odysseus team successfully pulled it off, anyone planning a clockwork larp should consider whether the dangerous and difficult aesthetic is truly worth the effort and the risk. Unless the point is to deliberately create the sensation of a fragile and interdependent system, there are easier ways to provide players with intense experiences of challenging labour. Succeeding and failing together does not require interdependence, and working in parallel can also be an equally great generator of social play.
A Fragile Contraption
The art of running a clockwork larp is largely an art of not failing. In principle, you only have to design meaningful interdependent jobs, build the architecture and the IT systems to allow proper communication, and fuel the system with events and plots to keep it running. But in practice the operation of the clockwork machine is fraught with existential risks: players can fail in their tasks, technology can break, bored larpers can start a mutiny, or someone can simply walk to the bridge with a gun and hijack the entire ship.
The Odysseus team successfully mitigated these risks. They established a railroading playstyle before the sign-up to eliminate larp democracy and to stop random rebels and saboteurs. They ensured that players succeeded in diegetic tasks by creating necessary fallbacks to sustain the clockwork. They spent a lot of time building the larp on-site, to ensure that all the IT systems running the game worked. They designed a space that facilitated communication, and augmented it with light and audio, to create a shared understanding of what was going on in the larp. They avoided dangerous player boredom by firehosing the characters with action and plots day and night. And they had a lot of luck in that none of the critical personnel or technology risks actualised.
Running a clockwork larp is a fool’s errand, because the very point of a clockwork is interdependence, and the very point of a larp is agency. The Odysseus team invested a massive amount of skilled labour to take this paradox head-on. While they had to accept some design tradeoffs to make it work, they ultimately prevailed, and crafted a beautiful 360° illusion of a spaceship ticking with clockwork magic.
Odysseus info
Credits: Laura Kröger, Sanna Hautala, Antti Kumpulainen, and a team of over 160 volunteers. Illusia ry. Full credits
Date: 27-30 June, 4-7 July & 9-12 July, 2019
Location: Torpparinmäki Comprehensive School, Helsinki
Playtime: 48 hours
Players: 104
Budget: € 85,000 (three runs total)
Participation fee: €200; sponsor tickets €300
Katherine Castiello Jones, Sanna Koulu and Evan Torner (2016): Playing at Work. In Larp Politics, edited by Kaisa Kangas, Mika Loponen and Jukka Särkijärvi. Solmukohta.
Johanna Koljonen (2007): Eye-Witness to the Illusion. An Essay on the Impossibility of 360° Role-Playing. In Lifelike, edited by Jesper Donnis, Morten Gade and Line Thorup. Knudepunkt.
Jaakko Stenros, Eleanor Saitta and Markus Montola (2024): The General Problem of Indexicality in Larp Design. In Liminal Encounters: Evolving Discourse in Nordic and Nordic Inspired Larp, edited by Kaisa Kangas, Jonne Arjoranta, and Ruska Kevätkoski. Helsinki, Finland: Ropecon ry.
Ludography
Lotka-Volterra (2018): Sweden. Olle Nyman, Simon Svensson, Andreas Amsvartner and Sebastian Utbult. Berättelsefrämjandet, Ariadnes Red Thread & Atropos. Full credits ref. December 26th 2023
The Monitor Celestra (2013): Sweden. Alternatliv, Bardo and Berättelsefrämjandet. Full credits ref. December 26th 2023
Odysseus (2019): Finland.
This article has been reprinted with permission from the Solmukohta 2024 book. Please cite as:
Montola, Markus. 2024. “Odysseus: In Search of a Clockwork Larp.” In Liminal Encounters: Evolving Discourse in Nordic and Nordic Inspired Larp, edited by Kaisa Kangas, Jonne Arjoranta, and Ruska Kevätkoski. Helsinki, Finland: Ropecon ry.
Cover photo:The hangar bay and the smaller ships were built with less fidelity for a 360° illusion, as the smaller vessels were built from fabrics. The 3 fighter craft, on left, were used in the space battles during the larp. The diplomat vessel ESS Starcaller, in the middle, could only be repaired in time to participate in the final mission. (Photo: Santtu Pajukanta)
I am lying on the big double bed in the middle of the living room, all clad in white. A glass of whisky in hand and Ray-Ban Aviators on to conceal where I am looking. The memorial for Lena who committed suicide earlier that year, is ongoing. Her widower Wilhelm is giving a tear-ridden speech about how wonderful a wife and mother Lena was.
House-Wilhelm, a ghost-character portraying both the House they are in and a previous incarnation of Wilhelm, is forcing the fingers of his son down his own throat, trying to throw up as a comment to the speech given by his human counterpart. In between, he screams that Lena was never supportive of him and that he hopes she burns in hell. None of the human characters react to this. They can not see or hear the twelve House-ghosts that are in the room with them.
The ghosts, on the other hand, applaud Ghost-Wilhelm’s effort to throw up and laugh scornfully when he fails. He falls sobbing to the floor in front of his human counterpart while repeating “I am sorry, Lena!” over and over.
The human characters step over him and go to get coffee and cake in the adjoining room. This scene will repeat itself in new and equally exciting ways for the next seven days when the human characters will be absorbed into the house by midnight and become the House-ghosts for the new family that will come to stay in the house.
What I((Although the article has two authors, it is written from Bjarke Pedersen’s perspective.)) just described is a scene from the erotic horror larp House of Craving (Denmark 2019). I was there playing one of the House-ghosts as a non-player character. The larp was created by Danny Meyer Wilson, Tor Kjetil Edland, Frida Sofie Jansen and myself. Eighteen runs have been played since the premiere, and the original freeform (Længslernes Hus, 2017) has run countless times since its premiere at Fastaval in Denmark. The larp runs for eight days straight, with twelve new participants arriving each day, reiterating the story lived by the characters. On the first day, you play as the family who has come to spend time at a haunted house. Around midnight, your character is absorbed into the House, and the next day, you play a House-ghost version of your character.
Each run is uniquely different but feels much the same. The structure of the larp is based around a few repeating fate play scenes each day that gather people together. One of them is a memorial service for Lena, the mother who has committed suicide. The fate play scenes and the ending for both the Family and the House characters are predetermined. Everything else is created by the participants on the fly, together as an ensemble. There are no quests and little connected narrative or story per se. The participants are encouraged to prepare as little as possible besides reading the larp materials and getting their costumes. The larp becomes better without preparation. With less preparation, there will be fewer assumptions about what the larp will be, and the participants are better equipped to react in the moment.
This works because the larp is designed around what I call an interaction engine. The interaction engine is a specific type of larp design where the primary focus is on enhancing playability by ensuring that every action generates new possibilities and emotional impact. Other larp design styles may foreground structured narratives, fighting simulations, or realism, for example. These can exist in engine-driven games, but they are always in the background. The main focus in an engine larp is on what creates interactions between participants. Specifically, interactions that intensify the larp experience – the aim is not to create intensity for the sake of it, but intensity that moves both the individual and the ensemble experience in the direction of the themes of the larp. This way, the journey through the experience by the player will be way more dynamic than a plot or narrative written months before the participants arrive at the location. Scenes and experiences that players create themselves on the fly will fit better into their context and into what they want to experience.
The interaction engine will help the players create engaging interactions that are both emotionally and physically intense, and that always lead to more interactions rather than fewer. The goal is to get the players to connect with the themes of the larp in as many ways as possible, so their actions resonate with not only their own dreams and desires but also with their cultural identity, experiences in their own lives, and how they see themselves.
I came to this design method out of frustration. Early on in my design career, I realized that a big part of the work that my team or I had done was never used. If it was a plot or story, then the players went in another direction than I anticipated. Or if it was character relations, then the chemistry of the players was off, or the relationship was not something that was interesting for the people involved. All the hard work creating what I felt was good content for the larp, was wasted time I could have used on other aspects of the larp.
The most scarce resource you have in larp is the organizers’ time, closely followed by the participants’ time. When a large part of the material created for the larp is not used, you have wasted both. What I realized was that to create the best possible larp and not waste time, you need to let go of the narrative control and hand it over to the participants. Instead of controlling their narrative journey in great detail, an interaction engine guides the players to understand what the themes they are supposed to explore are, and the chosen larp mechanics help them to do that in the best available way. You could say that an interaction engine larp controls the emotional arc of the character’s story, rather than the narrative arc.
When you design a larp, you often start working on the parts that are the most exciting to you. While this can be rewarding and motivating, the design of an Interaction Engine larp needs to begin with laying down a core foundation that must form the basis of all your future decisions. In an engine design approach, you have to start with the theme or themes for your larp. You then map out the actions that your participants can do that support the exploration of those themes from as many angles as you can think of. By actions, I mean very specifically the things that the players actually will be doing during the larp. What verbs describe the actions in the best possible way? For House of Craving, some of the verbs are flirting, controlling others, lounging, and masturbating.
These actions define the focus of your larp. All other design choices should be made to support them. If you want flirting, then flirting needs to be front and centre in the workshop, to be sure people trust each other and are comfortable with each other – and even more trust and comfort are needed when it comes to masturbation. For House of Craving, we had a masturbation mechanic that included clear jelly dildos as penis replacements, and we workshopped it extensively before the larp. The ghost-penises as they were fondly called by the players, could be used by the players no matter their character’s gender. We also instructed the players to always bring a ghost-character with them if they went to their room to masturbate. The actions we wanted to see were supported by the mechanics of the larp and the workshop design, helping the players play with otherwise private and intimate actions that are very difficult to do without support from the design.
There are larps with themes where an interaction engine is probably not the best fit. You need the themes to be focused on emotional and relational actions for the interaction engine to truly shine. An example of a larp where an interaction engine would be less ideal could be a larp centred around detail-oriented and rules-heavy diplomacy, where the actions have to follow a predetermined structure to achieve connection to the themes.
Building a larp around an engine demands that all elements, from scenography and food to characters, relations, and motivations, are aligned toward the themes and actions of the larp. Everything else should be removed from the design. When done well, this makes the theme of the larp accessible and playable for all. The player does not have to be at the right place at the right time to access the important plot – they can create access for themselves at any given time by being in the setting and engaging with the design and mechanics.
When designing a larp this way, any main plot steps into the background and the potential for meaningful encounters between characters is brought to the foreground. When all the verbs or potential actions available to the players are clearly defined and understood, the players can choose the ones that make the most sense to them at any given time. If the participants understand the themes, and it is clear how the verbs connect to the themes, all the participants are able to steer their experiences in the same direction, each individually choosing the best possible path for themselves.
The larp mechanics allow the participants to push their actions (described by the verbs) beyond what is possible without mechanics. Moreover, the mechanics make it easier and faster for the participants to take the actions described by the verbs. Thus, the mechanics work as tools to create or support powerful moments. Giving participants the responsibility and trust to follow their own desires (through the lens of their characters’ motivations) as to what to explore gives room for their imaginations to shine. Given space, they will tell far more gripping stories than you as a designer can ever create for them.((To be clear, gripping and meaningful are not always the same thing – engine-driven larps do away with a lot in the pursuit of engagement. That said, in my experience more games have failed because the players have been disengaged than because the deeper meaning of the larp did not resonate deeply enough in the lives of the players.))
This, of course, demands a lot from the players. A high level of herd competence is required for the engine to run smoothly. With less experienced players, more workshop time is needed for a smooth larp experience. The extra workshop time should primarily be used to create trust within the ensemble and to help individual players calibrate with the norms of the ensemble. Another use for it is to ensure that the players understand what they are personally comfortable with and what they are interested in experiencing.
Juhana Pettersson writes in his excellent article Engines of Desire:
“When I conceptualize the process of larp design, I see it as working with the players to give them the desires required by the design and help them get in touch with their own desires so they can use them to drive action. When a player does something they’ve always wanted to do, they bring energy and power to the larp. You can see it in the way people play, carry themselves, speak, act. It’s a powerful thing and generates so much meaning.” (Pettersson 2021)
The most important thing for an engine-based larp is to create a space where the participants feel safe and seen and where they feel they have the possibility to explore and engage with the themes of the larp without fear of being ridiculed or having their boundaries breached. In this mind-space, the participants feel empowered, with all possibilities open for them to choose. Many of my participants have told me that being in this space feels both overwhelming and totally safe. In these moments, larp can be transformative. You learn something new about both yourself and the world when you dare to step up to the edge of your safe interaction space and into unknown territory.
That the participant feels like they have all possibilities open to choose from is of course an illusion created by well-crafted larp and participation design. This design starts way before the participants arrive on site.
“Everything is a designable surface” is the mantra for all of my design work. It was coined by Johanna Koljonen (2019), and it means that all the design decisions you make or that are made for you by e.g. time or monetary constraints, a protected historical location, or anything else beyond your control, will have an impact on the success of your larp. For instance, if the temperature in a room is a few degrees too cold the characters will not take their coats off or sit still for very long, and your well-planned physical boudoir interaction space goes out the window – as happened in a 2018 run of Inside Hamlet.
As a designer, you literally need to think of everything – or, more practically, you need to accept that you are responsible for all aspects of the larp even if they are out of your control. At any given moment when designing or running a larp you should ask yourself the question “What are the consequences of making this decision and not another one?”
Use the themes you have set for your larp as a guide. If all of your decisions are aligned to support the themes, you are well on your way to creating an interaction engine larp.
But what is the interaction engine? Can you point at it? Just like a real engine, an interaction engine is made of hundreds of parts (which we don’t have room to describe exhaustively), and no one part can be said to be the whole thing. To start identifying the core of your engine, ask yourself the following question: “What is the main part of the design that drives participants to actions that are connected to the themes of the larp?”
The answer to this question is the core of the engine, and you should put your design effort here to support this part of the design in as many ways as possible. The more time and energy you use here, the easier your design decisions will be.
To be able to answer the question above, you need to analyze the themes of your larp and describe them in detail – an example will follow below. With your themes locked down, you then need to figure out what design elements will most efficiently drive your participants to perform actions that connect directly to those themes. This is the core of your interaction engine.
Once you have the core of the interaction, you need to iterate through all aspects of the design with your themes and the core engine in mind. This means looking at your larp mechanics, your set and spatial design, costume guidelines, your workshop structure, how food is served, the website, participant communication, and everything else. All of these should be focused on supporting the themes and the core engine to drive participants to take actions during the larp that explore the themes in the ways that you think will be most worthwhile. As you make new decisions about different parts of the larp, you need to continually cross-reference with all the other decisions you have made to ensure that you do not make choices in one place that push players toward an action that you have made harder for them in another place.
As you are doing this, you may identify actions that your design pushes participants to do that are not connected to the themes of the larp. In a few specific cases, these might feel necessary to make the larp feel coherent to some players, allowing them to access the rest of the game, but this is rare, and almost without exception you should remove them from your larp. If you do not, these actions will feel disconnected from the rest of the larp and be uninteresting to engage with for your participants and may lead to participants falling out of play or being confused about the things that they should be doing.
For example, if you are making a larp about a decadent court and some of the characters are guards designed to stand still and guard the court, then you will have a group of characters that are not able to engage with the themes of the larp. At Inside Hamlet, we solved this challenge by making the royal guard more like celebrities that the members of the court wanted to become or to bed. These celebrity guards did not need to stand guard at all.
An Example: PAN
PAN (Denmark 2013) is an example of an engine-based larp. A group of couples from various walks of life are at a couple’s therapy workshop retreat run by a new-age husband and wife. Over the course of a weekend, the participants go through various exercises trying to save or improve their relationships. In one of the more new-age exercises, the workshop leader does a seance, trying to connect with people from the other side. This fails spectacularly when the Great God Pan enters our reality and possesses her. Pan then starts to jump from person to person over the next few days until all notions of reality and identity are stripped from the characters and all characters are willingly destroyed.
The themes of PAN are an exploration of self-actualization in a couple structure, what ethics, morality, and being civilized actually mean, and what happens when this is stripped away. What is then left of a person’s humanity? Some of the actions that are connected to the themes are possessing, indulging, taking control, losing control, being shameful, being fearful, exploring the self, and destroying your relationship, among others.
The core of the engine in PAN is the possession mechanic. The Great God Pan is symbolized by a necklace. The necklace is only visible to participants, not their characters. Wearing the necklace, and seeing someone else wearing it, both have specific interaction scripts.
When you are wearing the necklace, you become possessed by Pan and must pursue your biggest basic needs as soon as possible – if you are hungry you must eat and if you are horny you must find release. Pan does not care for what is proper or in good taste.
If you see someone wearing the necklace, your character will ignore everything around themselves, and the possessed person becomes the single most interesting thing in the world. You will do anything at all to get their attention, to have them see you, touch you.
This leads to mayhem. The necklace leaves broken and embarrassed characters in its wake, with each possession adding a new and different layer of emotional chaos to the characters impacted by it. Every possession is unique, driven by what the participant wearing the necklace wants and desires from the larp at that moment. The agency goes both ways, too – if a participant around the possessed doesn’t find their desires in the interactions around the necklace, that participant leaves the room and pursues play somewhere else.
The only planned scenes in the larp are the seance where Pan enters the world and the ending where everyone follows the god into oblivion. All scenes that arise because the necklace travels from participant to participant are unscripted. They evolve and change in each iteration like a beautiful fractal pattern. This way, the participants tell stories that we the designers never could imagine in our wildest dreams.
Conclusion
Creating a larp designed around an interaction engine demands more design work at the beginning of the process, but it pays off later by giving you a guiding light for every decision you make. When you identify the core themes and verbs for your larp it helps you focus on the actions and larp mechanics you should be designing, leading your participants to do engaging and coherent things together.
Finally, this essay includes some of the questions you can ask yourself to help you design an interaction engine larp. As an example, I will in the next section answer some of the relevant questions for my larp PAN. Please add your own questions to the list as you work with this design style:
What are the core themes of your larp idea?
How would you describe each theme in such a way that every participant will be able to understand it?
Why these themes and not other ones?
What actions explore the theme? How many different types of actions can be used to do so?
Are there any actions currently in the larp design which do not connect to the themes? Can they be removed?
How can you support the core actions by planning secondary actions around them?
Are the core actions accessible to all characters and participants? If not, why?
What affordances in the design, site, mechanics, characters, or costumes are required to make those actions possible and legible to participants?
How can you design all aspects of the physical space to support the actions that you want and make them desirable to participants?
How can you shape the use of time, either the participants’ time on site or before the larp or the structure of time inside the larp, to support those actions?
What communication strategy will best support the interaction engine?
The origins of PAN
The design of PAN began when my co-designer Linda Udby and I were sitting and complaining that there were no larps to sign up to that we were interested in. After some time we ended with a conclusion that I can highly recommend: we decided to make our own damn larp!
I was really interested in exploring the, at the time, new idea that you need an alibi to be able to play a larp that is intense and outside your comfort zone, and that you can design such an alibi. We wanted to make something quick and dirty that would not take a year to design and produce nor require endless preparation from the participants. This restricted what kind of larp we could make in many ways. For example, we needed a location that we could use as it is without having to build or dress.
I had just read the gothic horror story The Great God Pan (Machen 1890) and was fascinated with the idea that there was merely a thin veil protecting us from a reality so alien that seeing it would shatter our morals and beliefs and drive us insane. With these restrictions and ideas, we came up with the core idea for PAN. The larp is set in the present day since this choice made it easier for us to find a location and to produce the larp and easier for the participants to find costumes. We chose a summer house as the location. The number of characters in the larp was decided based on the number of beds at that summer house.
Back in 2012 when we designed PAN, I would have answered the (relevant) design questions from the previous section as follows (as far as I can remember).
What are the core themes of your larp idea?
Exploration of self-actualization in a couple structure; what ethics, morality, and being civilized actually mean, and what happens when this is stripped away.
How would you describe each theme in such a way that every participant will be able to understand it?
The experience of PAN will take your character through working on your relationship in a new age therapy weekend in a group with people you have never met. Suddenly you will be face to face with a god that will slowly strip you of everything you know. You will end up betraying yourself and your partner in the most heinous and terrible ways.
Why these themes and not other ones?
They fit this specific larp very well, they are themes that I am very interested in right now, and they will expand my knowledge of designing and running larps. Moreover, the themes can be explored within the time and production restrictions we have set.
What actions explore the theme? How many different types of actions can be used to do so?
The actions available are grouped into two different categories. The first is a group of actions that are connected to the self-actualisation and therapy part. Here the verbs are going to be: engage with therapy, argue, expose shame and lust, meditate, perform relationships, help others to open up, etc. The second group of actions are the ones that the god forces upon the participants via the game mechanics and instructions on what to do when possessed or seeing someone who is possessed. Here the verbs are indulge, scream in terror, give in to lust, and abuse others and yourself.
How can you support the core actions by planning secondary actions around them?
Since the larp was so small (8–12 players), there was little room for secondary actions. Each couple in the larp had their own story that had some secondary actions embedded. It was not a priority to make this consistent across all characters during the design process (the larp would be better for it, though).
What affordances in the design, site, mechanics, characters, or costumes are required to make those actions possible and legible to participants?
To play PAN, you had to agree to play the larp in a very physical style, and you needed to understand that you are not in control of the character’s journey. Even if the ending of the larp was predetermined, neither the participant nor we the designers were in control of what would happen during the larp. This was due to the chaotic narrative the possession mechanic enforced on the larp.
How can you design all aspects of the physical space to support the actions that you want and make them desirable to participants?
The location needed to be open and small, with few places to hide and be private. We needed to be able to hear where the participants were and where the participant that was currently possessed by Pan was moving.
How can you shape the use of time, either the participants’ time on site or before the larp or the structure of time inside the larp, to support those actions?
The biggest challenge in a larp like PAN is to make the participants feel safe enough to fully engage in the actions the larp is aiming for. This is why we decided to use more time in the workshop to create trust amongst the participants than in many other larps. It also meant a quite harsh casting process. You needed to sign up with the person you would play partner with. We did this to make sure that there would be trust between the players of couples already right from the beginning.. The whole ensemble was chosen based on a signup form where you had to motivate why you wanted to participate.
What communication strategy will best support the interaction engine?
We had a simple website with enough information to understand what the larp was about and what was required from the participants. We deliberately avoided creating hype around the larp, since we wanted to make sure that only people who were truly interested in the themes and actions would sign up.
Bibliography
Arthur Machen (1890): The Great God Pan. Whirlwind magazine.
Johanna Koljonen (2019): An Introduction to Bespoke Larp Design. In Larp Design: Creating Role-Play Experiences, edited by Johanna Koljonen & al. Kopenhagen: Landsforeningen Bifrost (Knudepunkt 2019), p. 25–29.
Juhana Pettersson (2021): Engines of Desire in Engines of Desire: Larp As the Art of Experience, p 247. Pohjoismaisen roolipelaamisen seura.
Ludography
Inside Hamlet (2015): Denmark. Participation|Design|Agency
Pan (2013): Denmark. Linda Udby & Bjarke Pedersen.
House of Craving (2019): Denmark. Danny Meyer Wilson, Tor Kjetil Edland, Frida Sofie Jansen & Bjarke Pedersen.
This article has been reprinted with permission from the Solmukohta 2024 book. Please cite as:
Pedersen,Bjarke & Eleanor Saitta. 2024. “The Interaction Engine.” In Liminal Encounters: Evolving Discourse in Nordic and Nordic Inspired Larp, edited by Kaisa Kangas, Jonne Arjoranta, and Ruska Kevätkoski. Helsinki, Finland: Ropecon ry.
A recent article entitled “Against Design” (Nordwall and Widing 2024), republished here from this year’s Solmukohta book Liminal Encounters (Kangas, Arjoranta, and Kevätkoski eds. 2024), was the inspiration and provocation for this article, and whilst naturally I thank its authors for their frank and lively debate, I have to resoundingly disagree with just about everything said in it.
Naturally, I would encourage you, my dear reader, to give it a read here, and then perhaps come back to read the thoughts of one who proudly claims the mantle of “designer”.
Firstly, my most important point: designers are not the enemies of artists. In fact, I would go a step further, and say that there is no real line between designers and artists, which is one of the things I most profoundly dislike about the article. No person, filled with the spirit of the muses, is sitting in a pine forest somewhere, hewing larps from great pieces of monolithic marble. Every person who writes, weaves, conspires, or conceives of larps is doing so considering their audience, to the materials, the spaces, the minds, and to the resources they have available to them. Whether it be decisions about communicating the message of a larp, the ways it is expected to be run, or even (and hopefully so) the ways to keep their participants safe and happy.
We create larps for human beings, real people who dwell on this earth with fears, and delights, and backstories, and jobs, and houses, and a preciously limited time to share with us. So the thought that “design”, spat out as a dirty word, as the antithesis of art, as the enemy of the artist, is in any way a bad thing, quite frankly baffles me. It would baffle me in just about any medium, be it painting, or cinema, or music, but most profoundly does it baffle me in larp.
Because unlike all those other mediums, larp is entirely unique. I might ask the philosophers to leave the room for a moment while I say this: a sculpture remains sculpted even when no one is looking at it, paintings do not cease to be when the gallery closes for the night, the cellulose in a film doesn’t melt if it hasn’t been watched in a decade, and the air still bends to the plucking of a violin even if that air should touch no person’s ears.
But a larp? A larp as a medium, as an artform, only exists, and can only exist, in the fleeting moments amongst a group of people, playing it, living it, creating it, in real-time, and only for as long as those people are there and building that story together. You can write the most fantastically beautiful, upliftingly soul-wrenching larp that has ever been conceived, but unlike a painting that may well be considered complete at the final stroke of the artist’s brush, a larp is not complete until the last word passes a player’s lips, until the last breath of someone, inhabiting the life of another, is taken.
I’m sure some may argue over whether trees falling in the forest make a sound, (and perhaps by some assessments as a mere “designer” I could be seen as unfit to have those discussions). But regardless, for now I believe it can stand without question that a larp is nothing without its players, and that we have in this medium of ours possibly the most collaborative, the most actively participatory medium that has ever been devised.
And I’d reckon that the authors of the article would agree with me, at least in broad principle, and they seem immensely passionate about protecting what they see as this special and unique medium. They might wish to hide it away, shelter it from the corrupting influences of capitalism, of commercialisation, keep it sacred, tucked away in the hills, whispered of only from the lips of ordained monks raised from birth to know the meaning of “true larp”.
But alas, I don’t live in those hills, I live in capitalism, I live in commercialisation, I live in a society, with grit under my nails, a cheap keyboard at my finger-tips, and smog in my lungs. And don’t get me wrong, sometimes I dream of running off to those forgotten places of the Earth and rejecting the modern world and all its trappings. If I didn’t need the medicine that this modern world creates to even stay alive, maybe I would’ve done so already. But for now, I still live amidst the concrete, where money talks, and the traditional ways of living have been gutted by the gods of industry.
And so when I can, I escape. I escape into TV, I escape into video games, I escape into movies, and even on occasions I have the brain space to escape into a book. I don’t think that’s too rare, all in all. But when I am escaping, sometimes I feel like I want to escape just a little bit more, y’know? To push that boundary just a smidge further, to immerse myself just a little bit more, in another life, in another place, in another reality…
And on occasions, I do.
Me and a group of my friends will get together in some field somewhere, or a scout hall, or some community centre, and dressed in cheap costumes, maybe a prop or two, and some garishly written characters, and together, we escape. And in those times, I am very glad that somebody was being a designer, because unfortunately I don’t come from a country with centuries of tradition in collaborative storytelling, at least not any that survived the Industrial Revolution. I didn’t have the opportunity to immerse myself in this artform from childhood. I don’t even generally have the luxury of knowing half the people I am playing with most of the time.
In the article, the authors make a reference to the Norwegian term for larp creating, lage, meaning ‘to make’, and reference it being the same word as used for when one makes soup. Now I realize at this point I am committing the sin of media analysis and introducing a food metaphor, but I hope you’ll forgive me. But it does seem as though the authors feel that everyone should only be eating soup. A carefully crafted, small home-cooked larp soup, made from fresh home-grown ingredients, lovingly cultivated in some little farm somewhere.
And I’ll be honest, that sounds delicious. But I don’t have a little farm somewhere; I live on a council estate in Manchester. My food comes in packets and tins, and sure, I could maybe spend lots of money on trekking out to produce markets, and then lots more time on making a beautiful fresh soup every day, and sometimes I do. But I can’t do that most of the time. To do so is a privilege that I, and most of the people I know, are not afforded. And so, when I am tired from work, when I am poor, when I am lonely, and when I am above all else: hungry, I’ll go get a burger.
And that’s what we designers are: we’re burger-flippers. We make things people can get easily, as cheaply as possible, have a good time doing it, and get value for their money. And sure, it ain’t the healthiest, it ain’t the best for us, hell it ain’t even probably the cheapest most of the time. But it’s meeting people where they’re at. Because far too many people I know are tired, poor, lonely, and hungry for a bit of respite from this world that was built around us.
So we design mechanics that allow people to jump into games without weeks of prep. We write games based on popular properties so that everyone has a baseline understanding of tone and content. We build safety systems so people can feel alright having deep personal conversations with strangers. We craft experiences that can run and give people an immersion in someone else’s world for a little while. We flip burgers. We “design”.
And when it comes to making larps that can run, I think it’s about time we talked about the elephant in the room: selling tickets. It’s a dirty business, I’d reckon there’s no larp writer in the world who really likes it, but we have to face the facts. People only have so much money, they only have so many days off work, they only have so much time they can take away from children and pets and families, they only have so much energy at the end of the working week. And larps cost money.
You combine these two facts, what do you get? The nemesis of my existence, the boss-fight at the end of every larp development process, the big bad horrible beast: the break-even number. How many tickets do I have to sell to cover my budget? How many butts in seats do I have to reach to allow this project to be a reality? Now you can have all the artistic craft in the world, you could craft the most effervescently perfect creation in larping history, but if you don’t get the people, you ain’t got nothing.
And so I do marketing. In the first few months of a larp’s creation, I’m not writing characters or doing world building or thinking up mechanics, no. I’m building a website, I’m calculating budgets, I’m pricing up venues, I’m designing graphics, and I’m figuring out how to say to people, “Hey, this is a cool larp that you should come to.” And I hate it, oh boy do I hate it, and I reckon the authors of that article hate it too, if they’ve ever done it.
So what’s the solution? Well I could just stop. I could never build another website, never create one more fancy graphic, put Facebook away, and just whisper the existence of my purely crafted larp into the breeze. Cool, well now I have a larp with no players, which as we’ve said before is less than worthless.
Alright, so we’ll appeal to the hearts of our players, implore them to stop being so picky. Why do you have to be so demanding? Just sign up to every larp you hear about, go to them all, give us all your money! Now wouldn’t that be nice, but I won’t belabour the point, it’s not really feasible, is it.
So what do we do?
Well the authors of that article have a suggestion: “stop designing”. Stop making larps that haven’t been grown organically in the forests by sustainable larping communes with at least forty years of pedigree and blessed by Idunn herself. Retreat into the wilderness and just, please, stop making larps for people. Well, I’d say that’s just about as impractical as the previous two.
Now, as said, I would love to go live in a forest for the rest of my life, with a small group of fellow larpers who I’ve known for decades and only create and share together, and let the rest of the world go kick rocks. But unfortunately for me, I was born in a failed industrial town where the smog is baked into the bricks, and where that was never really an option for me. My culture has a vibrant tradition of storytelling, mostly through song, and I am very proud that I get to carry it on into the future, and do genuine work in preserving and sharing it.
Because contrary to the implication of the article there, we aren’t all godless barbarians in these cities, we aren’t all traditionless, religionless heathens bashing rocks together for entertainment. We have a culture, we have a history, and we want to share that. And part of the way we share that is through larp.
This is very much close to my heart, as the sort of larps that I predominantly write are historical and theological larps, where I try and give people an opportunity to experience the lives and the beliefs of those that came before us. I feel it’s essential to understanding yourself and your world to be able to relate on a personal level to the lives of others, be that others who live with us now, or others who lived in the past. And larp is of course an unsurpassed tool for this, to allow someone to immerse themselves in the feelings, the life of another person. If that isn’t art, then I don’t quite know what is.
And even if we’re not making the world a more harmonious place, even if we’re not giving people the opportunity to develop empathy and all we’re doing is giving people an escape: that’s okay too. I am so proud to see this medium of ours grow ever larger. It fills me with such profound joy at every event we run where there is someone who hasn’t larped before and gets to take their first steps into this brilliant community. And I love it even more when those people get a chance to contribute to the story, to bring in their experiences and their knowledge and their feelings and ideas.
In the article, the authors accuse design of stifling innovation. They claim that designing one’s larps and focussing on the experience of participants leads to stagnation and intellectual decline. And I again, frankly, could not disagree more. Design lowers the bar to entry, it brings people in, from more places, from more backgrounds, from more peoples, and from more cultures. And that is how you innovate. By offering more people a seat at the table, from learning, and growing, and sharing, and mixing, and giving everyone you possibly can a voice to contribute and create something beautiful.
We have in our hands an artform that is unique, because it relies on the hands, the hearts, the voices, and the souls of everyone in the audience to make it what it is. Not only to experience it, but to craft it along with us. Most of the people I play larps with or make larps for wouldn’t consider themselves artists, and yet that’s entirely what they are. And so are we, the designers. Because we are making art, by getting people there, by giving them the tools to engage with the game, to play with other people, to feel safe and supported and free to create according to where they are at. If a larp is an artistic medium, then making a larp happen is art, designing a larp is artistic.
And I shall come at last to the final paragraph of that article, in the penultimate of my own. Therein they say, “Larps can happen through community building, collaborative creation, or even serendipity.” And in this I agree, larp and collaborative experience-centred design can come from anywhere. But I am led to another quote I once heard, by Plutarch, saying, ”No man ever wetted clay and then left it, as though there would be bricks by chance and fortune.”
Well, I and my fellow designers aren’t gonna just wait around for larps to pop out of the ground, or be handed to us on gilded tablets by our Scandinavian cousins. We are the brick-makers, and we are working very hard, with the clay we have, to build a community of wonderful players and incredible experiences, out of those bricks.
Larp preparations. We The Lost (2024). Photo by Luka Safira Søndergaard.
We The Lost (2024). Photo by Helle Zink
Hurt soldier getting help away from the battlefield at Krigshjärta 9. Photo by Johan Nylin.
Fragment of a Novel, polaroid photo taken in-game by Carl Nordblom.
Daemon (Belgium 2023): Katrine Wind. Photo: Ork De Rooij.
Helicon (2024): Katrine Wind and Maria Pettersson. Photo: Bjørn-Morten Vang Gundersen.
