Nordic Larp

Tag: Larp Design

  • The Descriptor Model

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    The Descriptor Model

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    This article is related to a presentation that the authors gave at Solmukohta 2024. Here is a link to the slides. It is a companion piece to Defining Nordic Larp.

    We don’t think we are alone in sometimes having created larps where what our participants wanted from the larp was far different from what we had envisioned as organizers. Communication is of course key to get the right participants with the right expectations of a larp, but how do you successfully communicate this? We believe that we have put together a model that can be helpful in classifying and describing larps.

    What we wish to present is The Descriptor Model, a toolkit that can be handy for other organizers when defining their larps and trying to communicate this vision to potential participants. This was first conceived together with the rest of Atropos, Tonja Goldblatt and Kirsi Oesch from Kimera Artist Collective, and Reflections Larp Studio.

    The Descriptor Model defines three types of descriptors that can be used together to communicate the style, atmosphere, and target audience of a larp. It’s good to note that all of these target the player, rather than the character experience. The first of these is the Audience Descriptor.

    Audience Descriptor

    Audience Descriptor
    Audience Descriptor (diagram by the authors)

    An audience descriptor in larp is a term used in larp websites, materials, and promotions to:

    • Target a specific audience
    • Tell prospective participants what kind of co-participants they can expect
    • Communicate other things that are associated with that particular target audience

    In this, we use audience in the traditional meaning of “target audience” for marketing or promoting your larp, not in the theatrical meaning where audience would mean onlookers or passive enjoyers of the larp itself.

    Together with other descriptors, it can be used in larp design to identify and clarify the audience, style, atmosphere, and genre of a larp.

    Some examples of this are: Nordic Larp, Blockbuster, Luxury, Exclusive, International, or phrases starting with things like “You who…” or “Have you…”

    They are firmly targeting an audience. In the examples above people who like what they perceive to be Nordic larp, blockbusters, etc. They can also say something about the crowd that would typically be attracted to the larp.

    To communicate something about how the larp will actually be played, you can use a style descriptor.

    Style Descriptor

    Audience and Style
    Audience and Style (diagram by the authors)

    A style descriptor tells you something about the playstyle of the larp. Examples of this are: Pressure-cooker, Blackbox, Abstract, Slice-of-life, Adrenaline-pumping, and so on.

    It can also be used to describe a regional or national style of larping that has a clearly defined style, for example Mediterranean larping, Romanesque, Southern Way, etc.

    Finally, it can also tell you the rule-based system that will be used, like Vampire MET or boffer fighting.

    The style descriptor can in this way convey the playstyle of the larp, what rules it might use, as well as what to expect when it comes to rules, workshops, and setting. When it comes to the more abstract style descriptors like ‘theatrical’ or ‘surreal’, they instead say something about what the larp is striving for when it comes to feeling, i.e. what the larp’s potential meta techniques, workshops, and characters will try to support when it comes to mood or feeling. They do not tell you the actual aesthetic of the larp.

    With the target audience and larping style defined, we also need something to describe the visual impressions, along with things like sounds or even smells.

    Atmosphere Descriptor

    Sans Gateway
    Audience, Style, and Atmosphere (diagram by the authors)

    An Atmosphere Descriptor explains what the larp will look like. This can include aesthetics, periods of history, or genres. Some examples are: Noir, Futuristic, Vintage Era, Regency, 1950s, and Dark academia.

    However these can also be more narrow. They can describe a moment in time, or an overarching mood of the larp. For example: “Eating noodles in the rain in a near future” and “The festive spirit of Christmas in an assembly line dystopia”.

    The Atmosphere Descriptor is there to give an idea of the visuals of the larp: what people will see as they’re larping. It creates a joint aesthetic vision for the larp that participants can use when putting together their costumes. It can also include music or even smell that contributes to the atmosphere.

    Something to be aware of is that the same word can be used both as a style descriptor and an atmosphere descriptor but mean different things. For example a surrealist style of larping can be different to a surrealist atmosphere or aesthetic. There’s a clear difference between a larp played with abstract aesthetics in a teen drama style, compared to teen drama aesthetics in an abstract style.

    This was the last part of the model, but in our discussions we realized that something was missing. How would we be able to classify the concept larps that used clearly defined existing IPs? So we created a broader term called Gateways.

    Gateways

    Descriptor Model – Full
    Descriptor Model – Full (diagram by the authors)

    Gateways are something broader than a style, atmosphere, or audience descriptor. They are frequently associated with an existing IP, and bring a herd competence when it comes to the setting of the larp: but they also present some difficulties when it comes to communicating the larp vision. Examples of Gateways are Star Wars, Harry Potter, Westworld, Jane Austen, and Twin Peaks.

    Gateways are not just a genre, but function as a big open door to the public. They often have mass market appeal and reach out to people who are not larpers, but feel strongly about the particular IP that the gateway is using. This means that a larp that uses a gateway can see a lot of first-time larpers; and it quickly communicates the atmosphere and style of the larp itself, because most people attending will already understand the aesthetics and tone of the fiction.

    However, like most things it also presents some challenges. It can lead to players having vastly different expectations of how the larp will be played, what they can expect, and what is typical for your story. Some might lack experience entirely, others are veterans of the genre with favorite characters already, while yet others come expecting a Nordic larp because of who the organizers are.

    You also risk losing the co-creative nature of the larp because of preconceived notions about what kind of story you will tell. Sometimes there are clashes between organizers and participants; other times between different groups of participants. People might disagree on what aspects of the known IP is actually being played out, and what role everyone should be playing. There is also a chance that it’ll feel like some people are playing the main characters of the story, while the rest are NPCs in a filmic drama.

    Some Examples

    The descriptor model contains three parts – audience, style, and atmosphere descriptors – as well as the term gateway. Sometimes these are communicated more broadly or in longer text passages, but we believe that many larps out there can be condensed into these three aspects.

    To better illustrate this we have put together some short examples. Hopefully these will paint a clear picture of the type of larp they’re describing:

    • A Nordic pressure-cooker 1950s larp
    • A high drama 1920s luxury larp
    • A surreal vintage-era larp for those who always wanted to be poets
    • A blockbuster adrenaline-pumping cyberpunk larp
    • An exclusive, slice-of-life dark academia larp
      • Audience descriptors in the examples above: Nordic, luxury, “for those who always wanted to be poets”, blockbuster, exclusive.
      • Style descriptors: Pressure-cooker, high drama, surreal, adrenaline-pumping, slice-of-life.
      • Atmosphere descriptors: 1950s, 1920s, vintage-era, cyberpunk, dark academia.

    What we’re hoping by presenting this is that the model can be useful to analyze and document existing ideas and projects, as well as in decisions on how to market or design a larp.

    But How Do I Actually Use It?

    One simple use for the model is to create one-sentence descriptions of your larp, which are beneficial for quick pitches and to market it.

    For example, we frequently describe Love and Duty as “a grimdark regency larp by Atropos and Lu Larpová”.

    • Grimdark=style descriptor. It will not be moving towards happy endings or light stories. “[A] kind of nihilism that portrays right action … as either impossible or futile.” – Liz Bourke
    • Regency=atmosphere descriptor. The visual style is for the most part regency.
    • by Atropos and Lu Larpová=Audience descriptor. People who like Atropos larps will like this. People who like Lu’s projects or want to support her might like this.

    Of course, in practice, ‘grimdark regency’ could also be an audience descriptor. It tells you that you will enjoy this if you enjoy a more realistic regency game without fairytale endings. But, anything could be – after all, we expect participants to sign up for things they will like.

    In the examples above we’re keeping the terms very short and precise, but when actually making a larp website you often use more words to set the scene for the larp that you wish to make.

    The descriptor model can be a good stepping stone when trying to determine the vision of your game. It might start with an atmosphere descriptor like “I want a larp about eating noodles in the rain”. From there you can try to determine what your audience could be: “People who like the mundane parts of futuristic society. People who aren’t scared of low-drama and focus on small human interactions. People who don’t need drama to have a good larp. People who want to explore humanity and dehumanization.”

    And then your next step might be determining the style: “Think Blade Runner and Cyberpunk, but not cool prosthetics and special effects, but instead simple signifiers, with the color scheme as seen through the lens of rain. Where everything becomes duller and less cool.” With all that in place you might have designed an Androids larp inspired by Blade Runner (a gateway), but with enough thought put into the atmosphere, style, and audience that with time little remains of the original movie inspiration, and instead it has become its own concept.

    Essentially it boils down to some simple questions:

    • Who is this larp for? (Audience)
    • How will we play this larp? (Style)
    • How will the larp look? (Atmosphere)
    • What is our main inspiration, if any? (Gateway)

    A question missing here is “How do we want our participants to feel?” or perhaps “What do we want them to experience?” The reason for this is that these things are part of the entire designed experience. The Descriptor Model instead sets out to create a framework for potential participants. When it comes down to what they will internally experience or feel, that is both a part of what you are continuously designing as an organizer, and something that participants need to be co-creative in.

    Sometimes organizers know from the beginning what they want participants to experience. Sometimes they want to create a cool event and see what stories come out of it. In any case, this is something that might change along the process, and that is continuously being worked with.

    In many ways, that is the idea of the larp itself: while the Descriptor Model exists to better provide tools that will prime potential participants on what to expect, and to know if this larp is for them.

    It could also be used to pinpoint early in the process that there might be too many things going on with your larp idea at the same time. For example, if you as a team have multiple styles that are supposed to mesh without having designed a new joint vision, people might get confused about how to play the larp. If you’re targeting multiple audiences without giving tools for how those different groups will play together, you risk the larp splitting into groups with separate experiences. Finally, if you give people too many options for atmosphere, you risk people stressing about costume and what the larp is actually supposed to look like.

    All of these together risk diluting the core idea of what the larp should be about.

    It can also be used to make sure that your organizing team is on the same page about what larp you are designing, instead of finding out down the line that you have envisioned completely different things.

    Nordic Larp and the Descriptor Model

    So what is the relationship between Nordic Larp and the model? Well, as we discuss in our companion article Defining Nordic Larp, the term itself still has meaning to people. ‘Nordic larp’ as a term attracts a certain crowd. This makes it valid as an Audience Descriptor, by attracting people who enjoy the style.

    Adding the word Nordic can also change people’s idea of how a larp will be played. For example, there is a difference between a fantasy or vampire larp, compared to a Nordic fantasy or vampire larp. In that way, ‘Nordic larp’ could also be seen as a Style Descriptor, just like many other regional or national larp traditions. It might communicate that there will be workshops, that there won’t be a lot of rules, and that there will be a play-to-lose mentality. Style descriptors do not have to be unique, as long as there’s a group of connotations connected to it.

    However, we do not think that ‘Nordic larp’ can be used as an Atmosphere Descriptor. Perhaps a case could have been made at one time for it meaning modern-day clothes without a costume aspect to them, but looking at the broad use of the term Nordic larp we surmise that it can have many different types of aesthetics.

    Finally, ‘Nordic larp’ can be used as a gateway. If a community learns about the concept by watching videos or being told about it, then the term itself can be used to recruit broadly without defining the term too specifically. This will lead to the same type of issues as with other gateways, i.e. that people will have different views of what Nordic larp actually is, and therefore be acting according to different ideas and rules.

    Final Words

    That was what we had to offer. We hope this will be helpful to someone, and if you end up using it, let us know! We are available on social media, and are always curious to see if there are any ripples in the water.

    Cover image: Photo by fabio on Unsplash

  • Rules, Trust, and Care: the Nordic Larper’s Risk Management Toolkit

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    Rules, Trust, and Care: the Nordic Larper’s Risk Management Toolkit

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    In 2018, I brought a friend to A Nice Evening with the Family (Sweden 2018). I was concerned, because he had very little experience with role-playing games, let alone with a very emotionally intense game. Despite my efforts to discourage him, he insisted that he wanted to join. The morning after the larp finished, he was a crying mess and it took him quite some effort to convince me that he would be fine and that I should not regret having brought him over. The next time we spoke, he told me that several friends had confronted him about this new hobby that left him shaken for several days. 

    It was his first larp. Since then, he has chosen to become a crying mess several times. It does not look like he will stop any time soon. What might look reckless from the outside is actually a well planned process: he knows his limits, but when he ventures to cross them, he is aware of the scars he may bring back, and prepares as well as he can to alleviate the consequences. This is the same process he goes through when he goes rock-climbing, an activity arguably more dangerous, which does not raise such concerns.

    As larp has evolved, pushing for new limits of intense play, we have developed a wealth of expertise to larp more safely. However, this is not limited to larp: as humankind’s ability to cause catastrophes has increased, so has our ability to avoid causing them. Pharmaceutical companies, nuclear power plants, financial institutions, airplane manufacturers all have had to change their ways of working (enforced by legislation, obviously) not to bring about tragedy. The most critical part of it is the object of this article: how to come to terms with the fact that risks cannot be eliminated, and how to manage them instead.

    In practice, there is nothing revolutionary about risk management. It is just a systematization of common sense. This article will hardly reveal anything new. However, I will hopefully provide a new perspective that will help to view larp safety in a new way, and shine light on how powerful the tools are that we already have at our disposal.

    Risk

    Attempting to find a definition of “safe” that everyone will agree on is futile. Any communication relying on the word “safe” will be misleadingly dangerous. Any financial adviser, surgeon, engineer, or martial arts or scuba diving instructor worth their salt will never claim that something is safe. Instead, they will try to clearly explain what the negative consequences might be, and let their client make an informed decision. Similarly, a larp organizer that promises that their larp is safe, implying that no harm will happen to any participant, is promising something that they have no control over.

    Risk, on the other hand, is a word most people can agree on. There may be disagreement if a certain risk is worth worrying over or not, but if somebody says “This rusty nail is a risk” or “There is a risk that we will run out of money”, everybody understands it the same way: something bad may happen.

    Risk means that harm, more or less severe, has a certain likelihood of happening.

    Harm

    Harm is something that we do not wish to happen. Harm is the ultimate negative consequence of a series of events. Falling off a cliff is not harm, but getting injured as a consequence of a fall is. Being yelled at is not harm, but becoming emotionally distressed is. Hazards are the direct sources of harm: fire, physical impact, toxic chemicals, and verbal abuse are examples of hazards.

    In larp, there are many things that we do not wish to happen: trauma (physical or mental) and property damage are the first that come to mind, but other things can be also regarded as harm: damage to reputation, loss of friendship, or even boredom. From a risk-management perspective, they are all the same, and you must decide what to focus on.

    In Nordic larp, the focus has been centred on psychological harm. Psychological harm is a slippery concept, and to my knowledge there is no conclusive source to refer to. Because of that, most of the examples I will use throughout this article will be about physical harm, which is much easier to agree on. Hopefully, it will become clear that the same techniques that can be used to manage one can be applied to manage the other.

    Severity

    Harm presents itself in varying degrees of severity. We think of a bruise as less serious than a broken rib, which is itself less serious than the loss of a limb. Often though things are not so clear-cut, and determining the severity of harm is context-dependent, subjective, and hence challenging.

    Generally speaking, severity should correlate to how longer-term prospects are negatively impacted. For example, in a medical context, severity is assigned depending on the consequences to patients, from a minor nuisance to permanent disability or death; broken bones are usually considered minor injuries, since the prognosis for total recovery is often excellent. Financial risk could be quantified not just in terms of how much money might be lost, but how likely it is to be able to recover from such loss; structural risks could be related to the ease of repairing a building; environmental risk measured by how likely it is that the previous situation can be recovered, etc.

    As many have experienced, larp can cause serious emotional harm. However, let us admit that larp is, by definition, a simulation, and hence the severity of emotional harm is going to be always lower that being exposed to the real situation: a larp about prisoners at the Guantánamo Bay detention camp, as harrowing as it may be, will hardly ever be an experience as horrifying as being imprisoned at the actual camp. In a way, larp is an exercise in risk management, eliminating most sources of harm when mimicking extreme real-life situations.

    Likelihood

    Severity is not the only thing that matters about harm. A meteorite crashing on your larp location would certainly be catastrophic, but it is so unlikely that it is not worth considering. On the other hand, a mosquito is normally considered a minor source of harm, but it becomes a concern if it happens constantly: having a bunch of larpers going back home covered in bites after spending a weekend by an infested swamp is something that everyone would want to avoid.

    The likelihood of harm can be understood either in terms of how probable it is or how frequently it will happen. Such probabilities are difficult to estimate accurately. In any case, knowing that the probability of falling off the staircase at your larp is 1.3% is not very useful compared to “I would be surprised if no one trips here over the weekend”. As with severity, organizations normally simply assign terms in a scale, corresponding to qualitative likelihoods. One common example is to have five levels of likelihood: improbable (not expected to ever happen), remote (it would be very exceptional if it happens, but it is not impossible), occasional (rare, but given enough time, it will happen), probable (nobody will be surprised if it happens), and frequent (it would be surprising if it did not happen).

    A quick introduction to risk management

    Risk management, as daunting as it may sound, is a fairly straightforward process which consists of three steps: analysing the risks, deciding whether to accept the risks or not, and mitigating the risks. 

    Analysing risk

    The starting point to manage risks is to analyse them: finding as many things as possible that can go wrong and figuring out how severe and likely they are.

    Risk analysis requires honesty to be useful. It is hard to admit that we are putting people in danger, but dismissing a risk without careful consideration is a recipe for disaster. Airplanes rarely crash because of saboteurs, and drug dealers are not planning to hurt their customers when they cut their product with rat poison: behind all these cases, there is somebody who believes everything will be fine. Crooks are a piece of cake to catch and stop in time compared to reckless optimists who take everyone down with them.

    In any case, identifying risks is never easy. Reality always finds ways to surprise us, no matter how thorough our analysis was. So, how much effort should you spend analysing risks? The unsatisfactory answer is “as much as reasonably possible”. One way to evaluate your analysis is to think about how you would view it in the future if something goes wrong. Was it reasonable not to reach out for an expert? Was it reasonable that you did not check out your larp location in advance? Was it reasonable to conclude that no serious mental distress could be expected? All of this is context dependent. If you have doubts, maybe you can try to run your analysis by somebody else.

    Analysing the risks that lie beyond the limits may seem impossible, but it is not: we may not know how things may go wrong, but at least we know what wrong means. In other words, we know the severity, but not the likelihood. The safest approach is to assume that the likelihood is higher than you expect.

    Accepting risk (or not)

    After identifying and determining the severity and likelihood of a risk, a natural question arises: can we live with it? Some risks are obviously intolerable, and some are so trivial that it is even hard to consider them as risks. But quite often this is not clear at all.

    Deciding when we can accept a risk is a tricky question. Even after bad things have already happened, people often disagree on whether the risk was worth taking. Even the same person might have doubts about it. So, how to decide about something that may not even happen?

    The methods used in risk management (risk matrices being the primary example) help us very little here: they have been designed to leave a paper trail which can be used as evidence. They are too bureaucratic to use in larps, but most importantly they are not much of a moral reference we can adhere to. Sadly, nobody can give you any easy answers here.

    Whatever you consider as your criteria, they should fulfil two conditions. First, a criterion has to be systematic: if you find yourself adding exceptions one after the other, it is probably not a very good criterion. Secondly, it must be easy for anybody to understand the criteria and agree that they are reasonable.

    One criterion that you could use is the following: a risk is acceptable if, even when harm happens, we expect nobody to regret having been part of the larp.

    This implies that the organization did everything within reason to analyse and mitigate the risks, all participants understood and accepted those risks, and whatever harm happened was either predicted and handled as well as possible, and nobody can be blamed for having been reckless. In reality, this goal is not achievable: but since it is clear, and the absolute best one can hope for, it is a good target to aim at.

    If we decide that a given risk is acceptable, we can move on to the next one. But if we conclude that it is not, then it must be mitigated.

    Mitigating risk

    Mitigating a risk means reducing its likelihood, its severity, or both. Risk mitigation (also referred to as risk control) must be continued until we decide that the risk is acceptable. Let us review several strategies.

    If you encounter a risk which you have tried mitigating by all means possible, but it is still unacceptable, there is one way to completely remove the risk: just do not do what you were planning. If it looks like in your larp something horrible might happen which you have no control over, and you have no idea on how to fix the problem without it becoming a different larp, the best idea is to cancel the larp.

    The second approach is to change the design, that is, adding, removing, or modifying elements of your original plan. Moving to a different location, locking doors, removing game content, forcing off-game breaks, adding non-diegetic safety elements (such as mattresses), or changing your player selection process can all be used to mitigate risks. If you are lucky, your larp may be unaffected – possibly even improved! However, it is more likely that the changes will impact your larp, possibly even to the point that you feel it is not worth organizing.

    If there is nothing you can change, the next thing you can attempt is to affect how people will behave. You can instruct them not to enter an area under any circumstance, or remind them to stay hydrated under the scorching Tunisian sun. Since this relies on participants’ efforts and attention, you may want to go through these procedures during a workshop. Do not hesitate to make participation compulsory, if absence would lead to risks that you cannot accept. Of these behavioural mitigations (called administrative controls), the weakest form is what we can call, in general, labelling, which is any kind of passive, static visual information, such as signs, warning messages in manuals, pop-up windows, safety brochures, and actual labels found in packages, control panels, etc. If the only thing between a player and disaster is a paragraph somewhere on your website, or a danger sign that looks perfectly diegetic, get ready for disaster.

    The final option is protective equipment. Unfortunately, as effective as they may be for other purposes, helmets and hazmat suits will do very little to protect your participants from emotional harm.

    The Nordic larper’s risk management toolkit

    By now, you hopefully have a good idea about what risk management is. In this section, we will zone in into the peculiarities of emotionally intense larp.

    In emotionally intense larp, like in combat sports, enjoyment is inextricably linked to the potentially harmful things that players do to each other. Somewhat counterintuitively, risk management in both cases revolves around the same key concepts: the restrictions to what participants can do, the measures to ensure that participants will follow such restrictions, and the contingency plans to be used if something goes wrong. In other words, rules, trust, and care.

    Rules

    If you run or design larps, you should appreciate that you have a huge control over players: if you can convince them that they are capable of throwing fireballs by extending both index fingers, you can surely convince them that they cannot touch each other at all, thereby creating a world where the risk of hurting other people is non-existent. This is what rules are for.

    By “rules” I refer to all the constraints on the things that can possibly happen during a larp. From a risk management perspective, rules are control measures which either reduce the likelihood of risks – or remove the risks altogether – or replace hazards with different ones. Rules define what may or may not happen in- and off-game. Sometimes larp rules are introduced for other purposes than risk mitigation, and in some cases, rules may control risks at the same time as they contribute to a more interesting game experience.

    Perhaps the most representative rules of larp are those used to represent violence: I have never heard of any larp with WYSIWYG violence, that is where violence between characters is not governed by restrictions of some kind. Requiring padded weapons, using rules systems similar to table-top role-playing games, theatrical representation – where the outcomes are either pre-planned or improvised during play using some signalling mechanic, or even removing violence altogether from the game, are all different ways of reducing the severity or likelihood of harm, or even eliminating it altogether.

    Sex seems to be the other major perceived source of risk. In this case, the hazards are not so clear-cut as getting a broken nose, but it is generally accepted that sex requires a state of vulnerability which opens the gates for extremely severe psychological harm. Again, the forms in which sex appears in a game are restricted, from total avoidance to “dry-humping”, including more abstract mechanics, such as the Phallus technique used in Just a Little Lovin’ (Norway 2011), or Ars Amandi which, after its introduction in Mellan himmel och hav (Sweden 2003, Eng. Between Heaven and Sea), has been used in numerous larps of many different genres.

    In the daring type of play of many Nordic larps, characters are often exposed to many other sources of emotional harm, which are often a central part of the game: family abuse, workplace harassment, discrimination, slavery, imprisonment, political repression, torture, manipulation, etc. Harm happens when these emotions exceed the level the player is willing to experience. This may lead to emotional distress, and even trauma. These, in their turn, may be worsened because of triggering past traumatic experiences.

    Interestingly, it is rare to find rules to handle emotional risks arising from something other than physical violence or sex in a specific manner: and these other elements are usually supposed to be represented realistically. For example, players playing prison guards are expected to shout at other players’ faces, and to represent mental torture scenes as they would think would happen in reality.

    Instead, emotional risks are managed generically by check-in, de-escalation, and game interruption mechanics. These mechanics are forms of inter-player communication to avoid harmful situations. Check-in mechanics are used to verify, during or after a risky scene, that players are doing fine. A popular one is using the OK hand sign to silently ask a co-player if they are OK when it is difficult to tell if a negative display of emotions (grief, anger) is a sign of an emotional distress that the player cannot handle. De-escalation and interruption techniques function in the opposite way, providing signals (like safe words or taps) to ask co-players to not escalate further or to lower the intensity of the scene, or to stop the game altogether.

    These techniques have become standard. If you decide not to include any of them in your larp, it is a good idea to explain your alternative risk management plan before players sign up.

    It is important that safety rules are, in the first place, clear. But it is equally important that you, as an organizer, as well as every other participant, get a clear picture that everyone has understood them.. I strongly recommended practising them explicitly in a workshop before runtime, particularly in case of subtle diegetic mechanics, which may be easily missed. The number of safety mechanics should be kept to a minimum to prevent confusion. Well-meaning players may spontaneously suggest adding their favourite mechanics to your game: it is preferable to firmly – but kindly – not allow this. An overabundance of mechanics may have the same effect as too many warning signs: none of them are meaningful in the end.

    Trust

    Trust is the degree of the certainty we have in our predictions that no harm will happen to us. Trust is critical in daring larp, because participants will compensate for lack of trust by acting as if risks were worse (either more probable or more harmful) than in reality, refraining from fully engaging with the content.

    When we trust someone, we know that they will not hurt us, neither by directly causing us harm, nor by neglecting doing their part in keeping us safe. When we do not trust someone, it is because we suspect they may fail at the moment of truth, or because they actively seek to hurt us. Trust has two components: a cognitive one and a primal one. Having enough information to make predictions is critical, but so is having the “gut feeling” that we are right. These two aspects need to be considered all the time.

    The first step is building trust. In other words, convincing every participant that nobody will hurt them. Easier said than done.

    For starters, participants must be on the same page about the possible risks. Make sure that you provide enough information during the sign-up process so that everyone has an understanding of risks as similar to yours as possible.

    Another important aspect is the player selection process. A player may wish not to play with another player, for a variety of reasons. It is reasonable to publish a list of players and offer a channel for players to give feedback. Flagging, which consists of assigning a colour to other players to indicate the level of trust (from “will not share scenes” to “will not attend same larp”), is a popular approach. It may put you in the difficult position of leaving people out. In such a case, remember that your goal is to ensure a less risky game, and not to act as a moral judge. If you believe that your larp may present such risks that it requires that you completely trust all the players – trust that they can care for themselves and others – then you may need to do something more drastic, such as hand-pick your players or have an invite-only run.

    Once your players have arrived at the larp location, the most effective way to create trust is pre-game workshops. On the cognitive side, you should cover all your rules and mechanics thoroughly, and rehearse them as necessary, until players are convinced that everybody can play their part. Safety-critical workshops should be compulsory, not just opt-in. A bit like how beginners are required to show that they can do an 8-figure knot before they are allowed to start top-rope climbing. Finally, do not rush through safety workshops: besides failing to communicate critical information, players may get the impression that you do not care enough about safety, and that you included the safety workshop as a nuisance that must be there.

    On the primal side, you need to tickle the brains of participants to convince them that they are of the same tribe. Things like physical contact, or locking eyes and smiling, may help. Baphomet (Denmark 2017) used a simple and powerful technique where participants hug each other randomly in silence for a very long time. This had a profound effect in creating a trusting atmosphere. These exercises are not a replacement for the safety rehearsals discussed above, and can be counterproductive if they create a sense of false security.

    When someone causes us harm, either directly or indirectly, we immediately lose trust, to a larger or smaller degree: our predictions that they would not hurt us failed, which means that they may hurt us again. Our brain will then activate the alarm and deploy its defences. Suddenly we will dislike, fear, or lose respect for those people. This defence mechanism is quite clever: even if our feelings for those people are unfair (for example, they tried to protect us and failed), our brain will override our reasoning, tricking us into being convinced we are absolutely right, pushing us to avoid that person.

    Restoring trust is not easy. At a cognitive level, we need to know that the other person is sensitive to our pain – that’s the purpose of a (real) apology —, and that we can accept that something bad happened exceptionally, that is, that either the other person didn’t know something important or simply made a mistake, or that there was actually a very good reason we did not know about. The primal level also needs to be readjusted to lift the defences after they are not needed. For example, a hug or a smile can have a magical effect after a fight. However, be careful when using this approach: I can tell from my own experience that a forced hug from a perceived aggressor has the opposite effect, and can cause even more harm. In case of doubt, do not push it and simply try to figure out a way for the larp to continue with everyone feeling safe. This, in extreme cases, may require removing players from the game.

    Care

    Care is a particularly versatile tool, because it can reduce the severity of harm which we had not even predicted could happen. In our quest for pushing the limits of daring larp, it is very valuable to deploy a solid care infrastructure, in the same way that a campaign hospital will help dealing with all kinds of physical harm, without needing to predict its exact nature. Making participants part of a care infrastructure is similar to demanding that everybody must take first-aid training before joining an expedition.

    Similar to trust, it is possible to enforce care using rules. Off-game rooms and dedicated staff to support players are very common; although it may not look like such, giving players the option to walk out of the game into guaranteed support is just a larp rule. In many larps, each character has a connection with whom they have a positive relationship. This connection can be used to seek in-game support, which translates into support for the player. This could be further exploited by means of explicit rules, for example adding a hand sign directed at the support connection which forces them to go play a blackbox scene reminiscing of happier times. A larp designed around one-on-one abusive scenes could impose that after every such scene the players must go off-game together to provide mandatory after-care.

    Care rules could take many forms: the key is that larp designers should not be afraid to impose such seemingly awkward game elements, because the fact is that this can be much more effective than leaving care to the skill and initiative of the participants.

    Conclusion

    Nobody – including, first of all, me – expects that larp organizations will start conducting formal risk review meetings, performing external audits, filling risk matrices, and writing down risk mitigation plans.

    Let’s be daring! But daring does not mean reckless. Let’s learn from the lessons of the past and, for those disasters yet to come, let them be the kind that, despite the pain they cause, leave us with the feeling that it was worth trying.

          Take home messages:

    • Be brave! At least as much as you want to.
    • Be honest. Do not fool participants, but most of all do not fool yourself.
    • Be open. Your level of risk is not the same as most people’s. You do not want to drag anyone into something they will regret.
    • Be kind. If other people fail, and they honestly tried their very best to avoid disaster, be thankful that they discovered for all of us where the hard limits are.
    • Be creative. Pushing the limits will demand of you to come up with new techniques to go where no larper has gone before, and come back in one piece. Hopefully, you know now that you have more tools at your disposal than you thought before.

     

    Bibliography

    Anneli Friedner. 2019. “The Brave Space: Some Thoughts on Safety in Larps“. https://nordiclarp.org/2019/10/07/the-brave-space-some-thoughts-on-safety-in-larps/ , ref. Dec 12th, 2023.

    Ludography

    Anna Westerling & Anders Hultman. 2018. A Nice Evening With the Family. Sweden. (Originally En stilla middag med familjen (2007): Sweden. Anna Westerling, Anders Hultman & al.)

    Eliot Wieslander & Katarina Björk. 2003. Mellan himmel och hav. Sweden.

    Linda Udby & Bjarke Pedersen. 2016. Baphomet. Denmark. 

    Tor Kjetil Edland & Hanne Grasmo. 2011. Just a Little Lovin’. Norway.

    This article has been reprinted with permission from the Solmukohta 2024 book. Please cite as:

    Losilla, Sergio. 2024. “Rules, Trust, and Care: the Nordic Larper’s Risk Management Toolkit.” 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: Photo by Eamon up North on Pexels.com. Photo has been cropped.

  • How to Do Night Scenes

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    How to Do Night Scenes

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    I have been to so many larps that tried to make a scene in the middle of the night, when the characters are suddenly awoken and something cool happens. Perhaps being dragged from their beds and kidnapped. Perhaps they will all share a vivid nightmare. Perhaps they will be visited by a ghost.

    Yet, all attempts to suddenly awaken players for a cool night scene tends to turn anticlimactic. Why?

    People woken in the middle of the night tend to be:

    • Sluggish
    • Really hard to wake
    • Confused (“Is it an out of character emergency? Why is everyone shouting?” )
    • Bursting and needing to go to the bathroom
    • Bad tempered
    • Very not in character
    • Not wearing their contact lenses and blind as bats
    • Out of costume and not in character makeup (“Why is the evil wizard in a Winnie the Pooh t-shirt?”)
    • Just wanting to get back to sleep
    • In need of interrupted sleep for medical reasons

    Generally, being woken in the middle of the night just doesn’t make a great larping. It is also inaccessible for anyone sleeping out of character or away from the location.

    Yet, there is so much potential in those kinds of scenes. Who wouldn’t love to be dragged from their bed by a monster, or woken by a ghost’s gentle touch?

    Ready to drag you from your bed. På Gott och Ont (Of Good and Evil) photoshoot 2019. Photo by Emmet Nordström
    Ready to drag you from your bed. På Gott och Ont (Of Good and Evil) photoshoot 2019. Photo by Emmet Nordström

    One Solution

    One way to do night scenes without the drawbacks of actually waking the players is by doing “set time” night scenes. The horror larp campaign På Gott of Ont (Of Good and Evil) generally employs a lot of those scenes as they are such a staple in the horror genre, that being dragged from your bed by unspeakable terrors is simply a must.

    When you do set time night scenes, give the players a bedtime, by which time all characters should be in their beds resting, and then inform them that 15-20 minutes after lights out something is going to happen.

    That’s it. But to go into some more detail.

    Instructions

    Preparation for Bedtime

    • At a designated time, let’s say around 10:00 PM, players have been instructed to retire to their beds, lights out and be “asleep”.
    • Before bedtime, players go through their characters’ night times routines like they were getting ready for bed. Brushing their hair and changing into comfy pajamas and whatnot.
    • Out of character aspects of going to bed, like taking sleeping medication that make you drowsy, or taking out contact lenses can wait until after the night scene so that everyone can have the best possible experience.

    The Night Scene

    • At 15-30 minutes after light out, let’s say at 10:20 PM, the night scene unfolds.
    • Players only know that something will happen soon after they have gone to bed, not what’s going to happen, keeping them in suspense. Perhaps they will be awoken by an unearthly scream, perhaps by armed soldiers, who knows?
    • In-character, the scene may occur much later during the night, but out of character having the scene a short after bedtime means that you have the feeling of being in bed for a while, but without too much tedious waiting. Who wants to wait until 3 in the morning?
    • If you are going to drag players outside it is nice to give them a hint to perhaps keep their shoes close by or something similar.

    Pros and Cons with This Approach

    Pros

    • Players get to experience the thrill of being jolted awake by a scream or ensnared in a vivid nightmare, without real disruptions to their actual sleep. (Or at least jolted awake from relaxing in darkness or a light slumber.)
    • After the scene concludes, players can silently finish their out of character bedtime routines, like taking out their contact lenses, taking their meds and returning to bed.
    • Night owls who like playing late into the night can also do so. It is easy to say that some character awoke after the dream scene, or couldn’t go back to bed right away after being faced by the monster. So night owls can keep playing into the wee hours, catering to different player preferences.
    • Players sleeping out of character or off location are given a place to lie down for the bedtime scene, even if it is just “curl up on the couch with a blanket” or “lie down on this air mattress for a short while in the sleeping quarters”. Providing some short term place to sit or lie down to rest is generally doable.
    • If someone wants to opt out for any reason, it is really easy. Just be somewhere else at that time.

    Cons

    • Setting a bedtime for the players is awkward. No matter what time you chose it will probably be too early for some players and too late for others. Early birds and night owls can never agree.
    • The evening can feel rushed when all players suddenly realize they need to head to bed at the same time, and it usually takes longer than planned. That 10:00 PM bedtime means that people won’t actually be in their beds lights out until 10:10 PM.
    • Some of the chaos of a night scene, like people tripping over each other and stepping on each other’s stuff in the dark is still the same. Be strategic about night lights. Electric tea lights placed around the room are generally great.
    Armed. På Gott och Ont (Of Good and Evil) photoshoot 2018. Photo by Emmet Nordström
    Armed. På Gott och Ont (Of Good and Evil) photoshoot 2018. Photo by Emmet Nordström

    Other Solutions?

    So far I have not seen any other solutions for night scenes than doing a set time night scene, or to really try to wake people up. I suppose you could do it as a black box scene too during the day, but then you miss out on even more of the night experience. Yet I am curious about other solutions. Please get in touch and tell me if you know of any.

    Conclusion

    We all want cool night scenes but waking people up in the middle of the night sucks. One way to get around it is to give people a time when their character should be in their beds and that something will happen soon after bedtime.

    Cover photo: Asleep. Photo taken during play. På Gott och Ont – Thorns (2016) Photo by Linn Vikman.

  • Strings and Rails: NPCs vs. Supporting Characters

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    Strings and Rails: NPCs vs. Supporting Characters

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    For larps [Non-Player Characters] (…) exist at the service of the larp, and their existence and agency are secondary to those of the player characters (Brind 2020).

    In many larps, Non-Player Characters (NPCs) are diegetic tools for larp designers and runtime gamemasters to set specific events in motion, to convey important messages and to anchor story beats in the timeline of the larp. Their psychology is often simplified compared to other characters, and they are single-minded in their pursuit of the given task. NPCs are a bridge between the plot and the player characters, and their primary goal is to serve the story.

    Sometimes, however, the game benefits from the presence of Non-Player Characters with more complex personalities and agendas; characters who must remain on the runtime gamemasters’ strings, but who can no longer be on rails. For convenience, I call them supporting characters, and I separate them from the NPCs, even though there may be various degrees of overlap in their design.

    Where NPCs serve the story, supporting characters serve the players. Their interactions with player characters are paramount to their personal agendas, and they are often used as a litmus paper for how the game is going and what aspects of it need to be tweaked on the go. Supporting characters bring out the internal struggles in player characters, draw them deeper into the story; not for the story’s sake, but for the characters’.

    The Polish larp Fallout: Xanai’s Revenge (Poland 2023) used both NPCs and supporting characters with great success. The larp’s plot centred around a small village that drew in travellers from various conflicted factions, and with them – all sorts of trouble. NPCs were the overt antagonists who made the other characters’ lives difficult – they were thugs on the roads, raiders attacking the village, one-dimensional villains with straightforward agendas and one simple task: to pose a challenge to the players. They set the tone for the game, and their actions clearly communicated the level of danger facing player characters.

    Simultaneously, each faction at the larp contained a supporting character, some openly introduced as such, some hidden among the players. Their role was more complex: they were expected to provide play to their respective factions, to incentivise players to develop their personal stories, and to provide a living and breathing world where the players could feel at home. Those supporting characters had their own allegiances and agendas, but they were allowed to change them and even switch sides if they bonded with the player characters, or if the direction in which the game was progressing didn’t seem to appeal to the players.

    They were still on the larp designer’s strings – the potential change of their goals was written into the design and had to be consulted with the designer, but the freedom of action set them apart from the single-minded NPCs whose actions and goals were set in stone.

    An important trait separating NPCs from supporting characters is their “screen time”. NPCs are typically one-off appearances. They serve a specific role and then they disappear, or in the case of random encounters, they respawn into equally one-dimensional roles to repeat the same task. Meanwhile, supporting characters are either present throughout the game, or recurring at specific times. Since their role is that of supporting the players’ stories, their availability is crucial for the formation of emotional bonds, the building of stakes, and the escalation of conflicts. Supporting characters are there to encourage players, to create spotlight for them, and to weave the player characters’ personal stories into the overarching story of the larp. They are the manipulative antagonist who tempts the heroes with the promise of power and glory; they are the vulnerable rookie who needs guidance and protection; they are the dying elder who brings out the worst in the relatives fighting for their inheritance.

    Railroad tracks leading through green forest.
    Photo by Antoine Beauvillain on Unsplash.

    Sometimes, all the larp needs are one-off NPCs. The larp Paler Shade of Black (Poland 2013) introduced NPCs whose only job was to incite riots and let themselves be captured by the palace guards to be made an example of. The game focused on a small kingdom surrounded by inhospitable lands, whose survival depended on the absolute trust in the ruthless but effective rulers. Civil disobedience was a major theme there, and the NPCs served as both its enablers and primary victims. Their off-game goal was to provide play to the guards and play up their authority, but because their “screen time” was so short, they didn’t require extensive backgrounds or personalities. Despite this, the cast of the NPCs decided to add flavour to their roles. With the runtime gamemaster’s approval, they wrote quasi-backstories for their characters, weaving them into letters and pages from diaries that could be found on them once they’d been captured. 

    These props didn’t turn the NPCs into supporting characters, but they sprinkled their one-dimensional roles with a little more personality, providing the guards with something new to engage with. Had the NPCs survived and used their backstories as alibi to interact with the personal stories of the player characters, their conversion to full-fledged supporting characters would have been complete.

    When designing a larp, it is crucial to decide which of the roles will be needed, and to clearly communicate it to the cast who will be playing them. While NPCs mostly stay on rails and depend on the runtime gamemasters to direct them, supporting characters require thinking on their feet and a level of selflessness that allows them to cater to the players’ needs while keeping the overarching plot in peripheral vision. Due to their recurring nature, full-fledged personalities, and often complex backstories, supporting characters carry an emotional investment that needs to be recognised and approached with proper care. The supporting cast may experience bleed just like the players, which means that regular check-ins and a thorough debriefing is just as important for them as the pre-game briefing.

    NPCs and supporting characters set an example of generosity, serving the plot and the players alongside the gamemasters. Distinguishing between the roles we perform in larp and the implications they carry is just another step to creating a safe, generous, and wholesome experience for everyone involved. 

    Bibliography

    Brind, Simon. 2020. “Learning from NPCs“. In Eleanor Saitta & al. (eds.). What Do We Do When We Play? Helsinki; Solmukohta 2020.

    Ludography

    Bartczak, Wiktor & Patryk Wrześniewski. 2013. Paler Shade of Black. Poland.

    Nowak, Lech Witold. 2023. Fallout: Xanai’s Revenge. Poland.

    This article has been reprinted with permission from the Solmukohta 2024 book. Please cite as:

    Fido-Fairfax, Karolina. 2024. “Strings and Rails: NPCs vs. supporting characters.” 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: Photo by Esteban Trivelli on Unsplash. Image has been cropped.

  • Designing the Designer

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    Designing the Designer

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    “Everything is a designable surface”, as the larp designer, writer and theorist Johanna Koljonen (2019) says.  This means that every single aspect of larp can be designed for particular effect: scenography, characters, workshops, communications, costumes… Even the absence of design can be designed. You can make the conscious design choice to leave a particular aspect of the larp open to the chaos of emergent play.

    In many larp productions, the designer of the larp is visible to the participants. Perhaps they post about the larp on Facebook, run workshops or chat with players arriving at the venue.

    If we take Koljonen’s maxim seriously, we have to conclude that the person of the designer is also a designable surface: how they dress, talk, come across. Is the designer stressed and angry or relaxed and reassuring?

    The Second Run

    In 2021, we made two runs of the larp Redemption (Finland 2021) and in 2022 we did two runs of another larp, 3 AM Forever (Denmark 2022). I was working with different teams but there was a subtle yet noticeable phenomenon in both larps: the first run had a nervous edge and the second run was more relaxed. This is one of those qualities that’s hard to quantify but when you run a lot of larps, you learn how to read the energy of the crowd. Running the larp twice back to back makes it possible to subjectively compare the vibe of two sets of players.

    So what could cause such a difference?

    For the players, the run they played was their first experience of the larp. Although there were minor adjustments, neither larp underwent substantial revision between runs. It was just the same larp, played twice.

    However, one thing was different. Me. Us. The organizers. Talking with participants preparing to play the first run of both larps, I was nervous. We’d never run the larp before! Would it work? Of course I tried to keep cool but humans are often very good at picking up subtle social cues, especially in groups undergoing an intense process of socialization.

    At the workshop of the second run of both larps, I felt relaxed, buoyed by the knowledge and experience gained from already running the event once before.

    I started to wonder: was the nervous edge of the first run caused by the nervousness felt by us, the organizers? Did the players pick up on our emotional state and mirror it, the way humans often do?

    Designable Surfaces

    What are the different areas that can be designed for in terms of how the participant interacts with and experiences the designer?

    Examples are social media, workshops and runtime, and discussing the larp after the event, for example at conventions or on messaging apps. There’s also a difference whether the organizer who’s interacting with a participant is someone tasked to do that, or a team member whose main function is something else.

    Social media. In many larp productions, the first interactions are online. Social media posts, answering questions on Discord and Facebook. Maintaining a friendly persona is easier when communications are not immediate. If a prospective participant gets on your nerves, you can take a break, breathe, and then respond instead of going with your first reflexive take.

    It’s a good idea to agree in advance who speaks with the voice of the larp in public, online spaces. This can be done by one person only, or several, depending on your chosen communications strategy. What matters is that everyone who speaks to participants projects a friendly persona and knows what they’re talking about. You should avoid disagreeing with each other in public as that damages the credibility of all communications very quickly.

    The tone of online communications also matters. Going full corporate can backfire because it makes the larp feel sterile and unfriendly, not the communal experience so many larps strive to be. The question of the right tone varies by the individual but I usually try to go for a personable but somewhat official persona.

    To be official, it helps not to reply to messages late at night and to keep the language and syntax correct instead of casual. You should avoid sharing personal emotions unless they’re positive ones related to organizing the larp: “I’m so excited to meet you all on site!”

    To be personable, you can share carefully curated personal emotions related to the running of the larp: “I love seeing player creativity bring the larp to life!” You can empathize with individual players in a positive way and share updates from the larp team’s process: “We’re meeting with the team today!”

    You have to find a way to use your own personality in a manner that feels natural to you, otherwise you risk sounding fake and alienating. If your communication feels forced to you, it might be a good idea to re-evaluate it.

    On location. I recently played in the larp Gothic (Denmark 2023). The venue was a mansion in the Danish countryside and each run had only ten players. t. When we came to the venue, there were organizers busy making the larp run but always also someone whose job it was  to talk to us. To sit down with us in a relaxed manner, asking after how the journey to the larp went. The workshops all followed this pattern, leveraging the larp’s limited number of players to make each interaction friendly.

    This is an example of designing the designer.

    When players arrive, they often feel nervous and jittery. They haven’t yet settled into the flow of the larp and they’re worried about all kinds of things, from their own play to food or accommodations. It’s enormously helpful if there are relaxed organizers present.

    Chatting with the players is an organizer task. It should fall on those team members who have slept properly and maybe even enjoy talking to players. Meanwhile, the stressed-out scenographer should be allowed to build in peace.

    Workshops are an obvious area where organizer presentation matters a lot. The energy projected by those running the workshop carries over to the larp. It’s important to feel that the experience is in safe hands, that you can trust the people you’re with and that everyone is friends here.

    In situations like that, designing the designer means sending out the team member who can put on the most convincing facade of reassurance to talk to the players.

    After runtime. The period after the larp event is the trickiest one in terms of designing the designer because of the question of how to set boundaries. When does the responsibility of the larp designer end?

    Excess

    It’s easy to be idealistic when designing the designer: we should always be accessible to participants, respond to every need and be available for emotional support forever even after the larp has ended.

    The problem with this approach is the limited nature of the human being. If we demand everything of ourselves, we risk exhaustion and burnout. Because of this, part of the process of designing how you come across is about boundaries.

    Before the larp, perhaps you’re only reachable via a specified channel, such as an organizer email address. You won’t do larp business on Messenger in the middle of the night.

    During the larp, perhaps issues related to the wellbeing of individual participants are handled by a dedicated safety person. This way, the stresses of running the larp won’t cloud handling the needs of individual participants.

    All of these design choices are about the wellbeing of the organizer. That too is part of how to design the designer. The best way to appear relaxed and cool in front of the players is not when you learn to fake it, but when you’re genuinely not suffering from intense stress. When you feel good, your participants feel good.

    Bibliography

    Johanna Koljonen (2019): Essay: An Introduction to Bespoke Larp Design. In Larp Design, edited by Johanna Koljonen, et al. Bifrost.

    Ludography

    3 AM Forever (2022): Denmark. Juhana Pettersson, Bjarke Pedersen, Troels Barkholt-Spangsbo & Johanna Koljonen.

    Gothic (2023): Denmark. Avalon Larp Studios.

    Redemption (2021): Finland. Maria Pettersson, Juhana Pettersson & Massi Hannula.

    This article has been reprinted with permission from the Solmukohta 2024 book. Please cite as:

    Pettersson, Juhana. 2024. “Designing the Designer.” 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: Photo by John Hain. Image has been compressed.

  • Player Limitations and Accessibility in Larp

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    Player Limitations and Accessibility in Larp

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    If you are a larper with any kind of limitations that affect your ability to play, the first thing you may think of when you see a listing for a new larp is not whether it is exactly your kind of thing, but whether you would be able to participate in it at all. Not for reasons of schedule clashes, but because of these other limitations. 

    Players with limitations, be these physical, mental, psychological, or something else entirely, will often feel like they are missing out on the full experience of the larp they are attending. Many larps – even larp as a hobby in general – are known to be physically, mentally, and psychologically demanding, and players need to know in advance if they will be able to engage with the larp to the same extent as everyone else, or to an extent that they are happy with. Transparency in larp design is what makes it possible for players to judge these things, which is why, for us, it is one of the most important tools for accessibility. 

    Accessibility is about looking out for people. Players come to your larp because it looks interesting and they want to have a good time. Thinking about accessibility and disability from the very beginning of your larp design, as well as communicating it clearly from the beginning, signals to players that they are explicitly included and that the designer has put thought into the wide range of people who might want to play it. Accessibility is about showing responsibility for players and the player experience as much as you can and should as a designer. Of course, you can never be wholly responsible for everything that might happen within a game, but to paraphrase Maury Brown (2016), you have power over what your larp allows, prohibits, and encourages. You control what the larp expects from players and whether this is reasonable for everyone who might want to play.

    Ideally, accessibility should be proactive, not reactive. Disabled players often have to do the work themselves to figure out whether a larp will be accessible to them, rather than being able to rely on clear accessibility information from the organisers. This can be very draining and can make disabled players feel discouraged from larping at all. When accessibility information is not included, disabled players can feel that they haven’t been considered and that their experience at the larp is bound to be lesser than their abled co-players. Implementing accessibility proactively into your larp means that you consider what is and is not absolutely essential to how your larp is run, and you consider what you need to implement to make sure people with varying levels of ability and different limitations can participate in the larp to the greatest extent that is possible. A side-effect of this, as an organiser, is that your vision for the larp becomes much clearer.

    Accessibility in larp is (and isn’t!) many things, depending on what your larp is about. If your larp’s foundation is about players being in the dark and all unable to see, lack of light would not factor into your larp’s accessibility in the same way as it would if the larp was not based on physical darkness. However, if a fantasy larp is set in a fairy glade with dim lighting, and if this would pose a problem for larpers with reduced vision, the lighting could be increased since this is not essential for the larp’s vision.  

    Various accessibility symbols on diamons shaped tiles
    Photo by Cris Renma from Pixabay.

    When you design a larp, it does not have to be accessible to absolutely everyone. For example, Legion (Czech Republic 2014), a Czech larp, takes place over a 25-kilometer hike over two winter days and, according to the larp’s website, hunger and tiredness are at times an “inevitable” part of the larp. This means that someone who uses a wheelchair, or someone with a chronic illness, would very much struggle with the essential parts of the larp and would not necessarily be able to participate. This does not make Legion a bad larp or brand it “inaccessible.” No larp can be accessible to absolutely everyone, whether that be due to themes of trauma, the amount of physical activity it requires, or something else. But designers should be intentional about their design. It is ok to exclude people if the heart and goal of the larp simply would not ever be able to accommodate people with certain limitations – such as someone with severe asthma trying to play Luminescence (Finland 2004), a larp in a room full of flour. But if designers are able to open up their larps to people without compromising what the larp is actually about, they should bake that accessibility into their design.

    You should be able to explain the state of your larp’s accessibility to yourself – what is it about the heart and soul of your larp that means some people will not be able to play it? Ideally, the people that your larp excludes are the same people who would not want to participate in your larp anyway and would agree that the larp would always be inaccessible to them, such as how Legion necessarily requires walking 25 kilometers as an intrinsic part of its design. Accessibility in larp is not about making every larp accessible for every person, but making them as accessible as their designers’ intrinsic visions allow them to be.   

    Of course, navigating player limitations takes different forms depending on the medium of the larp, whether it is played in person or online. Some people may experience severe concentration fatigue when larping over video chat, meaning that live-action online games are inaccessible to them due to the nature of the medium. Others have a much better experience larping online in the comfort of their own home, and find that they are less able to concentrate or larp “well” when attending an in person event. 

    We would be remiss to not also explicitly acknowledge psychological safety in this article. Accessibility is also about what a player can expect to experience during a larp, which becomes difficult if the larp has hidden features. In our opinion, knowing a secret beforehand will not diminish the ingame experience of keeping it or having it exposed. At Høstspillet (Denmark 2023, Eng. The Autumn Game), every character’s background and all lore material was open to everyone – their secrets, traumas, deals, alliances, ambitions, relations and topics. During sign-up, people could tick off boxes with what topics they didn’t want to play on. At the briefing, the organisers emphasized that “a safe larper is a good larper.” We believe that by helping players manage their expectations and giving them the agency of playing within the framework but also around individual pitfalls, you create not only safer larps but better larpers too.

    There are as many limitation combinations as there are larpers. Ultimately, the decision on whether the larp is not accessible for someone comes down to the individual larpers themselves. People love knowing exactly what level of control and agency they do and do not have, and transparency in design choices will help each larper decide if a larp is accessible to them. Accessibility is not binary, even for one person. People can have different limitations at different times, and they have to make the choice on whether they can or cannot participate in a larp for themselves. Players want to be able to get everything that they can out of the larp experience, and satisfying play is achieved by having the access and agency you need to get the play you want, within the constraints of a larp that could allow for that play. Disabilities complicate this, but if the organisers have given thought to accessibility and how to support players in different ways, it will be much easier for all players to participate in the larp to the extent they wish to.

    As a larp designer, it is not your responsibility to make your larp accessible to absolutely everyone. But you should try to make it as accessible as its core vision allows it to be. If the larp excludes someone, it should be because the heart of the larp truly cannot be realised in a way that allows them to participate, not because their needs were not thought about at all in the design process. Hopefully, the future of larp is one where the only reason someone would forgo a larp is because they simply wouldn’t want to participate in it in the first place.  

    Bibliography

    Maury Brown and Benjamin A Morrow (2016): People-Centred Design. Living Games Conference 2016, Austin, Texas. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oZY9wLUMCPY 

    Ludography

    Høstspillet (2023): Denmark. Mads Havshøj & Bjørn-Morten Gundersen.

    Legion (2014): Czech Republic. Rolling o. s. et al.

    Luminescence (2004): Finland. Juhana Pettersson, Mike Pohjola, & Mikko Pervilä.

    This article has been reprinted with permission from the Solmukohta 2024 book. Please cite as:

    Livesey-Stephens, Beatrix & Gundersen, Bjørn-Morten Vang. 2024. “Player Limitations and Accessibility in 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: Photo by Krustovin from Pixabay

  • Elements of Larp Design

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    Elements of Larp Design

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    What is it larp designers actually design? How do players actually respond to design decisions? Are there any truths that apply to all the different kinds of larp design? Eirik Fatland presents his unpublished yet influential mid-level theory of what the big picture in larp design looks like. An updated re-run of a classic KP presentation.

    Cover Photo: screenshot from the video. Photo by KP SK on YouTube.

  • Description of Larps using Textual Parameters

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    Description of Larps using Textual Parameters

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    One of the big problems for organizers of larp festivals – particularly those that bring together larps and larpers from different cultures, and/or people with little or no larping experience – is: how to describe the larps in ways that will be meaningful to participants who may come from a different larping background, or from no larping background at all?

    This is something that the organizing team of The Smoke: London’s International Larp Festival tried to tackle. At The Smoke we always had a huge variety of content and an even huger variety of participants. We found quite quickly that asking designers and GMs to write descriptions of their larps, while essential, was sometimes of limited value to people who either didn’t understand the terms being used, or who understood them to mean different things to what was actually intended.

    We decided to add a requirement that people submitting larps to the programme should, as well as describing the larp discursively, answer a set of questions that sought to establish firm and unambiguous statements about what taking part in the larp would involve. Asking this at submission allowed us to ensure a mix of larps on the programme, as well as making them clear to prospective participants.

    Hopefully this will not only be useful for festival organizers. It may also be helpful to anyone who’s organizing a run of a chamber larp for their friends, or seeking to recruit participants for one: and perhaps also for participants who want to examine a little what it is that they do and don’t enjoy doing in larps, etc.

    An example

    This is taken from the website of the 2022 edition of the festival, for the larp 4–3 (Alessandro Giovannucci and Oscar Biffi):

    ABOUT THE LARP

    The city stops, gathered around the stadium. The derby splits it in two. In the locker room, eleven players prepare for so much more than just another game. On the other side of the wall, their long-time rivals. A ritual, a sacred space for the length of the match, only extinguished by the referee’s final blow on the whistle. And in between, some sublime moments and many ridiculous episodes.

    In a word, football.

    4–3 is all about teamplay and the match is a non verbal ritual of gestures and movement. But the result is determined by what happens in the locker room. As the athletes prepare to face yet another epic challenge, their stories and decisions interweave like a web of passes. Will they miss or score a goal?

    PARAMETERS

    Physical contact Not relevant for this larp; e.g. just standing in a room and talking
    Romance and intimacy Not relevant for the larp
    Conflict and violence Shouting and other intimidating actions not involving contact
    Communication style Half of the game is verbal, half non-verbal
    Movement style Jogging on the spot at your own pace and pass a ball
    Characters Players play facets of a personality, or something else that is human but less than a full character
    Narrative control There are random mechanics to establish the final score of the match
    Transparency Fully transparent – players will, or at least can, know absolutely everything in advance
    Representation The fictional space looks very unlike the play space, but players will use their imaginations
    Play culture Players are collaborating to achieve joint aims
    Tone Moderate

    Not the Mixing Desk

    This approach is related to that of the Mixing Desk of Larp (Martin Nielsen and Martin Eckhoff Andresen), which uses a set of sliders to describe a larp design in terms of various properties.

    The Mixing Desk itself was conceived as a design tool; and although it also has value in communicating the nature of the larp to prospective participants, this is not what it was designed to achieve. Also, the Mixing Desk is aimed at people who already have some understanding of the Nordic larp design space: the sliders are not necessarily going to be meaningful to people from other communities, or to newcomers.

    We considered preparing a ‘mixing desk of submitting larps to international festivals’ or something like that, using a similar model but with sliders that were chosen to be clear and meaningful for our specific explanatory purpose. We decided not to go down this route, because we felt that a choice of textual parameters was more useful in this situation than a numeric/visual position on a slider.

    This was partly in order to gain clarity – the difference between 4 and 6 out of 10 on a slider is not obvious, while the difference between ‘walking’ and ‘running’ is more so.

    And it was partly because it allows possibilities that aren’t just along one linear direction. If there was a slider for ‘Level of physical activity’, should a larp that involves dancing set the slider higher or lower than one that involves running? Perhaps they are similar enough that the slider would be the same: but they are sufficiently different as experiences that we wanted to represent them separately.

    Participants at The Smoke 2022, photo by Oliver Facey
    Participants at The Smoke 2022, photo by Oliver Facey

    The parameters

    The questions asked, and the options offered for each, have evolved somewhat over the years that The Smoke has run, as we gradually refined the initially-crude system in the direction of being clearer and more helpful. No doubt there is still a lot of room for improvement, and perhaps readers will have thoughts of their own about what they might like to see changed, added, or removed.

    We always took into consideration that we didn’t want to put too heavy a burden on the people who were submitting these forms. Otherwise, one could add any number of questions… There has to be a balance between usability for submitters, and usefulness for eventual participants. We don’t know if we’ve struck that balance in the right place.

    Here are the 11 parameterized questions that were asked for The Smoke 2022, the explanatory text that accompanied each, and the options available. All include an ‘Other…’ option, to allow the submitter to write in something that’s not covered by the available options.

    Of course, if your audience is different to The Smoke’s audience, some of these options (or even some of the questions) may not be applicable to you: or some may be missing. We’re explaining this here as our particular approach for this event; we’re not trying to say that it should be universal.

    Physical contact

    If relevant, the level of physical contact participants should generally be comfortable with to play the larp.

    • Not relevant for this larp; eg. just standing in a room and talking
    • Light contact; touching hands or forearms
    • Moderate contact; eg. hugging, formal partner dancing
    • Moving in contact; eg. rolling around on the floor together, contact improv, very close dancing
    • Intense contact; intimate or forceful
    • Other:

    Romance and intimacy

    How the larp handles themes of romance and intimacy. Put the level participants should generally be comfortable with to play the larp.

    • Not relevant for the larp
      Romantic themes but no player contact; eg. discussion of romance, illicit glances
      Demonstrations of affection; eg. hugging, holding hands
      Symbolic kissing or sex; eg. stage kisses, abstractly representing sex
      Actual kissing or simulated sex; eg. dry humping
      Other:

    Conflict and violence

    How the larp handles conflict and forceful play, if relevant. Put the level participants should be generally comfortable with to play the larp.

    • Not relevant for this larp
    • Themes of conflict, but not enacted by players; eg. quiet threats and vengeful stares
    • Shouting and other intimidating actions not involving contact
    • Pushing, grabbing, latex weapons, or other safe physically-forceful actions
    • Other:

    Communication style

    How will participants be communicating with each other during play? If it’s a mix, choose ‘Other’ and explain.

    • Silent
    • Non-verbal sounds
    • Minimal speech
    • Lots of speech
    • Singing or chanting
    • Other:

    Movement style

    Choose the minimum level required, ie. participants can run but also it’s ok to walk, choose ‘Walking’. If it’s too complex for one choice, choose ‘Other’ and explain – this is primarily to gauge how accessible your larp is to people with restricted movement.

    • Sitting or lying
    • Walking
    • Dancing
    • Running or other vigorous movement
    • Other:

    Characters

    Who creates the characters, and what are they like? Choose the nearest; or If it’s too complex for one choice, choose ‘Other’ and explain.

    • There are no actual characters; participants play abstract entities, or similar
    • Participants play facets of a personality, or something else that is human but less than a full character
    • Participants create their own characters, in a workshop
    • Participants build their characters around a predesigned skeleton or archetype
    • Characters are fully predesigned
    • Other:

    Narrative control

    Who is responsible for the direction of story? Choose the nearest; or If it’s too complex for one choice, choose ‘Other’ and explain.

    • There is no story as such, it’s more like abstract activity
    • The shape and direction of the story is entirely, or almost entirely, determined by participant choice
    • Participants have some influence over story, but there is basically a script or structure that they’re within
    • Intensely plotted and designed, but participants have freedom as to how to achieve their goals
    • Heavily scripted, perhaps with predefined scenes whose outcomes are known
    • Other:

    Transparency

    How important are secrets? Choose the nearest; or If it’s too complex for one choice, choose ‘Other’ and explain.

    • Fully transparent – participants will, or at least can, know absolutely everything in advance
    • Transparent design, but participants can create secrets during play and keep them from each other / reveal them when wished
    • There are predesigned secrets that participants will have from each other
    • There are predesigned secrets that the organizers will have from the participants
    • There are predesigned secrets the organizers have from the participants , and also that the participants will have from each other
    • Other:

    Representation level

    How does the physical reality of the room relate to the fiction? Choose the nearest; or If it’s too complex for one choice, choose ‘Other’ and explain.

    • What you see is what you get: the space and fixtures etc are exactly as they seem
    • The fictional space is pretty similar to the play space
    • Scenery and props will be used to make the play space look something like the fictional space
    • The fictional space looks very unlike the play space, but participants will use their imaginations
    • The fictional space is so abstract that its physical representation isn’t important
    • Other:

    Play culture

    How will participants be playing together? Almost all larps are collaborative to some extent, so take that as a given. Choose the nearest; or If it’s too complex for one choice, choose ‘Other’ and explain.

    • Players are in direct opposition, p vs p
    • Players are individually trying to achieve goals, such that not all can succeed
    • Players are in rival factions, teams, etc, which are in some sort of competition for success
    • Players are collaborating to achieve joint aims
    • The concept of rivalry or cooperation between players doesn’t really apply
    • Other:

    Tone

    What is the general tone of the larp and of the themes it covers? An ‘Intense’ larp might not be misery all the time, but will require participants to engage with serious or heavy material. Choose the nearest; or If it’s too complex for one choice, choose ‘Other’ and explain.

    • Comedic
    • Light-hearted
    • Moderate
    • Dramatic
    • Intense
    • Other:

    In review

    The Smoke’s organizing team built up the current set of parameters, as described here, over time, as we discovered what it was that people wanted to know about a larp. For example, the initial set of parameters didn’t include physical contact, romance and intimacy, or conflict and violence: these were added later, after feedback from festival participants and reflection from the organizers.

    It is unavoidable that there is still an amount of subjectivity in the answers, based on the designer’s own larp experience. The difference between a moderate, dramatic, and intense tone is a matter of perspective: and the tone of the design doesn’t necessarily indicate the nature of the experience. If there is bleed-in, a relatively low key larp can feel intense. Similarly, quiet threats with a feeling of realism can feel more violent than an abstract fight with latex weapons: and whether this is the case might not always be in the control of the designers.

    As a compromise between not asking for too much labor from people submitting larps (and indeed from those reading the resultant descriptions), and allowing participants to get a clear understanding of what they were likely to experience, our perception is that this system has been largely effective.

    Cover photo: by Thomas Stephan on Unsplash

  • Documentation of Larp Design

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    Documentation of Larp Design

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    Background

    Working with larp professionally for 10 years has forced me to think a lot about structure, communication and documentation. When writing larps that are supposed to be run multiple times and by multiple people, it needs to be documented.  You then need a language to talk about what that documentation is. What parts does it consist of and what do we call the different parts? This has been relevant for me in my previous job as one of the founders and larp pedagogues at Lajvbyrån and in my new position as part of the Transformative Play Initiative at the Department of Game Design at Uppsala University. Both on a practical level and on a theoretical level. I have also seen discussion about this showing up online in larp communities and I would like to address this. 

    Procedural Documentation

    As I see it there are eight main design relevant documents that need to be talked about that are aimed at different audiences and have different purposes. These documents can be either finished edited documents or living documents that get updated regularly for example on a web page. You probably won’t need all of them but instead will choose the versions that are relevant for your larp. The first part is the part that is aimed at the players, then we have the part aimed at facilitators/game masters and organizers, and the last part is aimed at the organizers only. I will now go through the different parts and the documents. 

    For Players

    Player Handbook

    The player handbook is all the info that the players need. That means both things that are sent out and info on the webpage. It can include; practical info like time and date, safety info like content warnings and safety person, narrative info like the setting and the vision, dress code info, meta techniques, transparency and so on. 

    For Facilitators/Game Masters

    A facilitator/game master is someone running the game but not necessarily organizing it. An organizer has more responsibilities that also include things like production. For example a facilitator could be someone running a game in a convention where the organizers would be the ones renting the place for the convention and making the schedule with slots where the individual facilitators/game masters would run games.

    In this category we have a number of different documents. You will probably only have some of these since they overlap and sometimes entail each other. Which ones you need depend on your design and who will be reading the documents.

    Gameplay Design Document

    A gameplay design document contains what is relevant for the players interactions and agency. This would include things like characters (if pre-written), groups, relations, meta techniques,  and what happens during the playtime. It would not include any type of framing such as pre- or post-game activities or any planned activities during off-game breaks mid-game. This is a helpful document to look at the design of the game itself, how it all fits together and what the players will be able to do during the larp.

    Runtime Script

    The runtime script contains what happens during the runtime of the larp. That is what happens from the players go into character until the game is over. This is without any pre- or post-game parts but including mid-game parts. It also wouldn’t contain characters, groups or relation since that happens outside of the runtime. This is a helpful document to look at what happens once the larp starts until it ends. It could be something that you might want to have available in a game master room during the run. Another reason to have a separate run time script could be that you have a design that has three small larps on a theme that are interchangeable but where the framing for the games are the same. 

    Larp Script

    The larp script entails what you have in the gameplay document and runtime document and also the full framing including pre-game and post-game activities. So this includes things like any kind of workshops, deroleing and debrief. This is what you would need to have to facilitate/game master the larp. It also includes annotations with comments about how to facilitate/game master the larp and minor preparations like moving chairs, starting a fire or hiding the secret potion recipe. It can be done in different ways from as simple as overarching headings to really meticulous with exact timestamps for every little part. This is a helpful document to cover the whole design from the facilitators/game masters perspective.

    Complete Schedule

    This is something that is not needed most of the time. It is for those times where you might want to run several small larps as part of a bigger theme but have workshops and other things that are overarching. Then it can make sense to separate out the parts specific to the small larps from the overarching experience. For example, at Lajvbyrån we had a larp experience focused on the industrial revolution for school classes. During one day a school class had lectures, got visits from historical persons and got to play two shorter larps. Everything during the day is facilitated by the larp pedagogues. Half the class will play one of the larps before lunch and then the other after lunch. The other half does it the opposite way around. Both classes have the lectures and the other parts together. Here it was a lot easier to have an overarching script for the whole day with the specific exercises in there and then just a header saying “Larp 1” for the first larp slot but no further info in there. Then we could have one GM running the same larp twice and having the larp script for that specific larp in the assigned larp location while having the overarching script in the main room. In this case each larp would have  its own framing and then there would be a broader, more overarching debrief and after discussion for the full day in the main room with the full class. 

    Campaign Design Document

    The campaign design document is only relevant for larger campaigns that have many larps running as part of it. Here you have the overarching information that goes for all the larps in the campaign. It can include world info, systems for fighting or economy, what you are allowed to change or not in the setting, visual guidelines, and so on. A lot of the info in the player’s handbook would be found here if you are running a campaign larp. This is a helpful document to have a coherent world but still have many larps run by different organizers. 

    Design Document

    The design document contains everything you need to facilitate/ game master the entire larp experience.
    It includes (Some or all of the following): 

    • The player handbook – or all the info from it
    • The gameplay design document
    • The runtime/larp script
    • The complete schedule
    • The campaign design document 
    • Annotations: Extra comments relevant for running the larp and info like the target audience that might not be relevant for the players. This might also be included in a larp script but is more common in a design document and therefore gets an extra highlight here.

    So what is the difference between a larp script and a design document if both contain what you need to facilitate the larp? A lot of the time a larp script is a design document. But as mentioned you might have a situation where you are doing a larger larp experience with more than one larp as a part of it so you also have a complete schedule. In that case the design document would contain the complete schedule and maybe two or three larp scripts. 

    For Organisers

    Design Bundle

    The design bundle contains everything you need to organize/re-run a specific larp. It includes the design document but will also include things like production info, a list of necessary props to have, promotion material, and maybe a budget. It could also include relevant articles about the larp. By giving someone the design document they would be able to run the larp with only this information. This also means the design bundle often is less of a document and more of a folder with multiple documents in it.

    Examples

    The Hobbyhorse Scenario
    by Nynne Søs Rasmussen

    This is a 3 hour short scenario larp that is available to print and play. It contains everything you need to know to run the scenario. From in-game info that could go into a gameplay design document like the scenes, to the broader parts that could go into a larp script like workshops. It also contains things that are relevant only to the facilitators/game master like how to game master the scenario and how to prep the room. Since it’s a free form scenario that means the players don’t have to read anything before. That means there is no need for a player hand book. All the players would need would be a blurb, a time and a place but the general info found in a player guide is still available for the facilitators/game masters. Since it’s a scenario larp for one game master it is a larp script as well as a full design document. But since there are no document with more overarching info I would call it a design document. 

    Krigshjärta (Warheart)

    Krigshjärta is a campaign that has been running for many years in Sweden. Like most campaign larps it has one overarching fictional universe but many different individual larps. It also has many different organizing groups that run larps in this fictional universe. A game design document here would need to include a campaign design document, a larp script for the specific larp, a player handbook and probably annotations. A runtime script or a gameplay design document could be included but are not necessary. Here the facilitators/game masters would probably also be the organizers. But this would not be a design bundle since each run is different and can have very different content and therefore the production parts and the larps script will be very different for each larp. If you would do a rerun of one of the larps, then you would instead create a design bundle.

    Just a Little Lovin’ Book

    by Anna Emilie Groth, Hanne “Hank” Grasmo, and Tor Kjetil Edland.

    This book is actually called Just a Little Lovin’ – the Larp Script. I would say this is not a larp script, it is more, it is a design bundle. It contains everything you need to organize the larp. Runtime design, framing, music, food, sleeping arrangements, articles and so on. It also has a list with checkboxes to tick off as you go along.

    Why Do We Need All These Versions and What is the Purpose of Them? 

    I would say a lot of the time we do not need to have all of these. Many larps are for example one offs and then you don’t need to put hours and hours into writing a design document that should be understandable by someone else. But for making a larp re-runnable you will need to document all of it in some form. You will probably never need all 8 but will pick what level you need depending on the larp. Many times you don’t need a freestanding overarching script with separate larp scripts for example. But there are also times when it can be very good to have it. Like when me and my colleague were supposed to run a larp while I was working at Lajvbyrån and I got sick and lost my voice the evening before. Then it was super good to have a larp script and an overarching script because then we could just ask someone to read one of the larp scripts and they could jump in. They didn’t need to read or know the overarching script since that could be handled by my colleague that also ran the other larp in parallel.

    The reason to separate the player info is because your players should get all the info they need but not more. If you give them all the info it will be hard to find what is actually relevant for them. If you have a plot written about finding a treasure you don’t give them the location because that is what the whole plot is about. The players also might not need to know the exact price of the rentable toilets because that is not what’s important to their experience (even if the fact that there are toilets there absolutely are). Even in games with full transparency not all players need to beforehand read exactly what workshop exercise that will be run pre-game and in what order. That just leads to information overload. And as a game master/facilitator you might want to have some freedom to run different workshops depending on how the group feels and what they need and then it can be better if not everyone has expectations on what should happen. 

    On the other hand there might also be information that needs to be in more than one place. Info about the world might be available in many places. This means that you might have to change info on multiple places if you do any changes late in the process which lead to extra work. My experience is that even if it can be a bit of extra work it is worth it. Having a clear structure helps with knowing where to make the changes and each document has a different purpose.

    So to conclude, depending on how you interact with the game you will need different information. As a head organizer there is a lot of info that you need that a runtime game master or a player doesn’t need. By having different documents it’s easier to share the relevant information with the right people. 

    References

    Krigshjärta. https://krigshjarta.com/

    Groth, Anna, Emilie, Hanne, “Hank” Grasmo, and Tor Kjetil Edland. 2021.  Just a Little Lovin – the Larp Script. Volvemál Grasmo.

    Rasmussen, Nynne Søs. 2018. Hobbyhorse. Available at: https://stockholmscenariofestival.files.wordpress.com/2018/11/hobbyhorse_english.pdf

    Cover Photo: Image by KOBU Agency on Unsplash.

  • The Use of Music as a Magical Element for the Larp Experience

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    The Use of Music as a Magical Element for the Larp Experience

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    This article describes how Confraria das Ideias (a larp group from Brazil) uses music as a game design element. The text is based on own experiences and learning, especially in the larps Blind, Deaf and Dumb (2017) and The Last Night (2019), with practical examples, future ideas, and sharing different ways to use music in the larp.

    Since the late 1990s, the group has been making free-style and one-shot larps, each with different themes, proposals and stories. The games are held in public spaces such as libraries, cultural centers and theaters, all free of charge to participants and funded by public and private funds earmarked for cultural projects. (see Falcão 2014)

    Over the years, Confraria das Ideias has utilized music in larps in different ways, recognizing its importance in the trajectories of the larps produced.

    Music is able to bring old memories to the fore and make you experience feelings such as passion, sadness, anger and  joy. It is present in the performing arts and derived from its earliest movements, from Greek tragedy to modern cinema, passing through the most artistic expressions and – also – in larp.

    “Music, more than any other art, has an extensive neuropsychological representation, with direct access to affectivity, impulse control, emotions and motivation. It can stimulate non-verbal memory through secondary associative areas which allow direct access to the system of integrated perceptions linked to associative areas of cerebral confluence that unify the various sensations.” (Weigsding 2015)

    Since the first larps, the group realized that the soundtrack had great influence on immersion and, with some scenography, served as a foundation for the stories proposed in the characters and in the plot to manifest themselves in a more fluid way. But, over the years, this use of music in larp grew and started to gain important space in the stages of creation and execution of larp.

    When the Magic Begins: Music as a Soundtrack in Larp

    It all starts with an idea for a new larp. It is discussed by the group, improved gradually. Characters are written, while the scenographic proposal is created along with the plot. Design elements, mechanics and props are developed. The larp is publicized and people express an interest in participating. The day arrives, the scenography is set up for a few hours; costumes are distributed, and the entire reception is prepared.

    Then, the participants begin to arrive and prepare. Once everyone are together, the guidelines for the game are communicated. 

    After this the proposed immersion for larp takes place, and the participants are positioned on the stage – waiting for the combined signal to start. Until that moment, the larp does not yet exist.

    And that is when, as if by magic, larp manifests itself. A song appears in the room, especially selected for the moment. It is the trigger indicating to everyone that the veil of reality, of everyday life, is on the ground and that from there their characters come to life for a new world of discovery, mystery, drama and adventure.

    It is magic! For a spectator, it seems that everything prepared up to that moment comes to life instantly, with the first chords of the intro music. As a kind of trance, characters take on the bodies of the players, moving them through space.

    Music works not only as an initial snap, but as a catalyst for this proposed new world. It plays a dramatic role, sometimes as a diegetic element, sometimes not. It helps to set the tone of the story, to break the limiting personal barriers that block actions: it frees action and imagination, aware that they will find support and reinforcement in other participants.

    The control of the songs happens in a prepared sound table, and basic equipment comprised of a notebook and sound output, strategically placed at the scene.

    The complexity depends on the design of the larp, ​​which may require constant changes in music and sound effects or just a single track throughout the game.

    Photo by Leandro Godoy
    Photo by Leandro Godoy

    Paulo Renault, one of the founding members of the Confraria, producer and responsible for preparing and conducting the sound mixer, uses the Virtual DJ software to conduct the tracks during larps, ​​says:

    “Among the ways of giving rhythm to the larp, ​​the sound, through music or sound effects, is something that plays in deep layers of the player. The use of equipment such as a mixer allows mixing effects and sounds, creating an immersive outdoor atmosphere for the game.”

    As in the larp State of Grace (1997, 2011) where the soundtrack is composed of Gregorian chants in a constant loop, helping to transform the atmosphere of a traditional São Paulo mansion into a French monastery of the Middle Ages.

    Or as in the larp Neon Dragon Express (2018, 2019), where the theme is a cyberpunk adventure. The soundtrack is composed of electronic and industrial songs that are played interspersed with pre-recorded ads and various reports that are inserted by the organizers according to the narrative of the game.

    In both cases, music exerts a strong power in the participants’ imagination, quickly placing their minds and hearts on the theme planned for the larp.

    In the larp Extraordinary Stories (2009, 2014, 2015, 2020), inspired by the tales of Edgar Allan Poe and set in a masquerade ball in the 19th century, the soundtrack also has the mission of helping the sensation the passage of time. In addition it marks important moments such as dancing in the main hall with the waltzes of Johann Strauss II: The Blue Danube Waltz, Kaiser-Walzer and Rathausball-Tänze in addition to using a dramatic and apotheotic melody for the final moments of history, with Lux Aeterna by Clint Mansell (soundtrack by Requiem for a Dream, version with violins).

    Photo by Thomaz Barbeiro, larp Extraordinary Stories (2020)
    Photo by Thomaz Barbeiro, larp Extraordinary Stories (2020)

    The choice of songs to compose the track are contextualized and planned in the production stages; but it is important to pay close attention to the operation of the sound board. After all, the execution of the tracks ends up directly reflecting on the game’s actions, but it can also be influenced by them.

    When the design of the larp requires this type of complexity in the operation, the organization needs to keep an eye on the larp’s events. From this perspective, they decide to change the pre-selected tracks and sound effects, in search of a better immersion and correspondence with the game, and also end up influencing the rhythm of the larp.

    One might say that the music helps materialize the larp, ​​with its execution bringing in the concepts of the game planned previously.

    It is closely linked to the design of the game not only in its content and sequence of execution, but also in the format that it presents itself. One example is the larp Club D (2016) which has as its setting a mansion of the highest society, where it was decided to replace the sound table with a pair of professional guitarists, thus seeking the atmosphere of refinement that live classical music provides. 

    Photo by Thomaz Barbeiro, larp Club D (2016)
    Photo by Thomaz Barbeiro, larp Club D (2016)

    A New Trick, Another View 

    As a larp designer you can propose an experience that uses, as a tool, or a collection of songs where the lyrics provide insights for the players during the larp session.

    The idea is to use the songs to evoke emotions, memories and feelings in the participants, as a way to employ bleed to create larps with more introspective themes.

    “At its most positive, bleed experiences can produce moments of catharsis: when the player and character emotions are synced in a powerful moment of emotional expression. Most often, these experiences manifest in great displays of joy, love, anger, or grief; in-game crying is often associated with bleed.” (Bowman 2015)

    The first larp with this perspective sought to capture the aura of the album Tommy (1969) of the band The Who and create a game that was born from a very personal reflection on the album.

    This became the larp Blind, Deaf and Dumb, about a group of young people who over the years need to deal with the frustration, trauma, disenchantment and misunderstandings of adult life.

    This time, the songs came to have a direct influence on the larp’s narrative. As a designer, it was necessary to dissect track by track of the disc, and from this analysis make the content reflect on the dynamics of larp.

    This is not a literal transcription of the album into larp, ​​even though it is present all the time from production to the execution of the game, but rather a source of inspiration for something new.

    Photo by Thomaz Barbeiro, larp Blind, Deaf and Dumb (2017)
    Photo by Thomaz Barbeiro, larp Blind, Deaf and Dumb (2017)

    The larp was divided into acts, which represented the passage of the years. The players were workshopped to interpret music as part of the mechanics indicating not only the beginning and the end of each act, but also insights for the characters, who had plots created from excerpts of the lyrics of the songs. 

    This way, a character that had in his background, an abuse suffered by his uncle, would be impacted immediately upon hearing the song “Uncle Earn” where the theme was addressed.

    This type of approach with music bringing emotional issues to the characters ends up also dealing with the affective memory that the songs exercise in the players. It has more impact on those who already knew the disc, but is capable of promoting different sensations in all the participants regardless.

    “Recursively, the proposal sought to make the players’ experiences affect the sensations of the characters. The idea of ​​a group of friends who, in the midst of disagreements, meet some times in the 47-year period was a metaphor for friendships that are absent due to setbacks in everyday life. A recurring finding by the players was that, even within the fictional environment of the larp, ​​it was friendships distanced from the daily reality of the players that caused feelings to emerge on the characters.” (Iuama and Miklos 2019)

    The larp starts with a group of friends gathered in 1969 to celebrate their last year in high school. When playing the “Tommy” album and lighting a candle, the mechanics of time travel, marked by music, begin.

    Photo by Thomaz Barbeiro, larp Blind, Deaf and Dumb (2017)
    Photo by Thomaz Barbeiro, larp Blind, Deaf and Dumb (2017)

    The larp was set up on a theater stage. Therefore, the participants were instructed to address the backstage whenever they heard the music play, naturally, each in their own time, as if they were saying goodbye. There, they received a change of clothes and a card indicating when the next act will take place and some relevant facts about what happened in the character’s life. In addition, pre-recorded audio about events in the history of Brazil that were emblematic for the period. For example, the track Do You Think It’s Alright? was used to introduce the act where the characters returned from the “Diretas Já” marches – a movement that sought the end of the violent Military Dictatorship that devastated Brazil.

    The return to the play was marked by the next song on the album, with the participants instructed to gradually return to the stage, which contained some updates of scenography to match the time.

    Photo by Thomaz Barbeiro, larp Blind, Deaf and Dumb (2017)
    Photo by Thomaz Barbeiro, larp Blind, Deaf and Dumb (2017)

    The track We’re not gonna take it comes as a refusal to this whole trajectory full of secrets and annoyances, and the characters are invited by the stanza “See me, Feel me”, to look at themselves and return to the initial moment of larp, ​​in 1969, with the same costumes and initial positions, and the provocation that their experience was a future that could still be changed, leading the participants to smiles and tears.

    The choice to use the music to structure the larp brought the need for a guide sheet to help operating the sound table:

    Sound desk guide sheet, by Leandro Godoy
    Sound desk guide sheet, by Leandro Godoy

    The Materiality of Music as a Magical Element

    The materiality of the music can be used in its design, bringing benefits to the player’s immersion. 

    The digital format and streaming allowed the distribution of music in quantity and speed never imagined, but the relationship of object with the music, the album, the touch to feel the vinyl records or the huge inserts that exhibited art were lost representing the songs.

    “(…) materiality (and ‘possibilities’) are realities that are always perceived – mediated, therefore – by human actors, as social and cultural subjects. Thus, there is a complex dialectical interaction between the cultural dimension and the properties of objects (here, specifically, the musical material), which conditions the way in which a subject and an object interact, in a given context.” (Boia 2008)

    Imbued with this nostalgic feeling, a larp was imagined where players had the opportunity to experience these sensations.

    With the larp The Last Night, the Confraria das Ideias proposed to create a game about nostalgia, conflict between generations and the different ways in which these generations dealt with music.

    The idea of ​​having an old radio station as a scenario sought to allow participants to discover a little bit of this tangibility of music. Immerse yourself in an era: from the touch when handling vinyl records, discovering their sounds and shape; to occupy the space of the stage, use microphones, play out the script and perform radio soap operas; bring the programme to life.

    Thus, the participants had control of the larp’s own soundtrack in real time.

    Photo by Thomaz Barbeiro, larp The Last Night (2019)
    Photo by Thomaz Barbeiro, larp The Last Night (2019)

    In the main plot, half of the participants received characters who, in 2019, discover an old radio station that was destroyed in the early 1960s by a terrible fire. The rest received characters who were the ghosts of the people who worked at the radio station, and who were stuck reliving the last night, in an eternal loop.

    For the idea to work, the sound table was set up inside the radio station itself, so that the participants themselves could operate it, including releasing the microphones for live musical numbers. The players were able to choose to sing live or use playback.

    Photo by Thomaz Barbeiro, larp The Last Night (2019)
    Photo by Thomaz Barbeiro, larp The Last Night (2019)

    The audio was broadcast live across the larp venue (stage, aisle and dressing rooms), as well as being broadcast live to YouTube to simulate the radio.

    Everything that the participants chose to put on the program also became the larp’s soundtrack.

    With the characters in charge of the programming, they were given the power to command the tone of the larp, ​​alternating moments that went from comic to dramatic, allowing musical discoveries and sharing their own repertoire.

    Photo by Thomaz Barbeiro, larp The Last Night (2019)
    Photo by Thomaz Barbeiro, larp The Last Night (2019)

    Thomaz Barbeiro, professor of history and member of Confraria das Ideias, was one of those responsible for researching the material:

    “For me, as a historian and passionate about culture, the search for vinyls for the composition of “The Last Night” is, above all, an instigating work with sources and, consequently, the satisfaction of being able to take some of the critical work of historical science into a larp, ​​a game that adds fun and learning about you, the other, about the present time and the past you want”. 

    Some players used the vinyl record player for the first time in their life during the larp. The touch made the experience more real, contributing to the immersion.

    With fun and memorable moments, the larp came to an end, but the magic remained present: the participants did not leave the scene even after the game ended, extending the fun for a few more hours in improvised sessions of songs, novels and new random fictitious commercials.

    Photo by Thomaz Barbeiro, larp The Last Night (2019)
    Photo by Thomaz Barbeiro, larp The Last Night (2019)

    To transfer this experience to other larps, the designer needs to plan the technical part carefully (in-game equipment connected to the sound system) and provide the material (discs, CDs, musical instruments) for the players to use. Imagine a larp where a character can put a song in a dramatic moment, and it reverberates throughout the scene? Allowing players to directly interfere with the soundtrack can benefit your larp.

    Is it Possible to Use this Magic of the Musical Larp to Change the World?

    By tradition and intention, Confraria das Ideias does not abstain from speaking in its work on important social issues, always seeking a dialogue for reflection and learning. And social inequality is one of the most challenging problems in Brazil (and in the rest of the world), amplified by the rise of the extreme right with an oppressive, homophobic, ultranationalist discourse, causing serious social damage and disruption in the name of its perverse economic agenda. 

    In this context, art through larp comes to question this model, launch a discussion and shed light on the subject. 

    Thinking about these issues, the idea arose of using music in a larp in order to represent social conflicts, and provoke an empathic vision.

    Rhapsody Paulistana is a larp currently in production in which the players will investigate using the format of the great musicals in game mechanics, ​​in order to engage with the genre and still provoke the participants to leave the comfort zone.

    Luiz Prado, producer of larps – with a repertoire of immersive games – and a member of the Confraria das Ideias has for some time been investigating how to encourage participants to use their whole body more when composing and representing their characters in larps:

    “A song can grab us by the hand and offer trips to infinite lands. We all already feel that when we hear a song that really gets us. When the song is used in larp, ​​it is a kind of turbo for the transformation in the character and the arrival at the game world. The right music, added to the right disposition, throws the head player into a somersault without any protection in the experience”.

    Rhapsody Paulistana goes in that direction, by provoking  the senses further, by the observation and support in the game of the neighbor, and in how well-defined movements can be powerful communication tools in the larp.

    Can magic create a safe environment that allows people to risk trying something? What tools will the organization need to bring to make this experience enjoyable and unforgettable for everyone? In addition to the obvious challenge of creating the game mechanics, one of the biggest desires is to keep larp accessible to all people, even those who don’t know how to sing or dance.

    The idea is to use songs and dances as these tools, as part of the mechanics to obtain narrative turns, in addition to developing the game’s plot.

    A pre-larp workshop will probably be needed to help participants to naturally utilize the mechanics throughout the larp.

    Photo by Thomaz Barbeiro, larp Blind, Deaf and Dumb (2017)
    Photo by Thomaz Barbeiro, larp Blind, Deaf and Dumb (2017)

    It is a provocation, seeking to challenge the limits of each one, and yet collaboratively build a dense narrative.

    Music comes in as a magical element to unite differences. From the erudite to the popular, create a plot that confronts social issues, put the conflicts in focus by the musical style and promote a strong reflection of social inclusion. The players can do this with a strong emotional charge, as well as a repertoire that provokes a discussion that can go beyond the larp itself.

    From Magician to Magician

    A larp is an open work, which is built collectively. Regardless of how you choose for music to affect your game, it is important that not only the organizational team is fully prepared and involved with the game’s proposal. Communicating the intention of the work well is a way for everyone to contribute to the game. 

    Music plays a strong role in immersion, in the dramatic load and in the rhythm of the larps. It will invariably affect people emotionally, so take the time to discuss at the end of each larp. Hosting well is key to ending the game well.

    While designing your larp, ​​take time to reflect on these issues. And more: What is the best alternative to strengthen the experience you are proposing with larp? Make music part of the game? Live music? Loop soundtrack? Sounds that are mixed, controlled and played in real time according to the moment of the game? Having no music at all, and using only noise and sound effects? 

    Photo by Leonardo França, larp The Night of Love, Smile and Flower (2013)
    Photo by Leonardo França, larp The Night of Love, Smile and Flower (2013)

    Whether present in the game diegetically, pre-recorded or live, do not underestimate the power of using music in the design of your larp. Songs – popular or classical – have an influence on participants (including organizers). Being aware of this and recognizing this magic that surrounds us is quite enriching.

    These choices should be made while you are designing your larp, ​​when you have a more mature idea of ​​how you want your larp to be. There is no ready formula for right or wrong, but different ways of interacting with music.

    There are a few clichés: larps with a medieval theme using live folk music, larps that take place in a bar using a pre-recorded track from the time the story takes place, etc. We encourage larp designers to use the examples provided to extrapolate the use of music, think of alternatives, create soundtracks in which the lyrics appear as an insight to players, soundtracks that have markings during the larp, ​​or deliver to participants a way for them to make their own larp soundtrack. You might also make a mix of all this. After all, there are no ready-made rules, just good ideas to enhance your larp’s emotions and experiences.

    And, at the end of the larp when the music stops, each one will leave behind those fantastic characters, but never the lived experience, which will warmly perpetuate itself in their hearts.

    Bibliography

    Boia, Pedro dos Santos. 2008. Capturing the Materiality of Music in Sociological Analysis. Institute of Sociology, Faculty of Arts, University of Porto, Jun 2008.

    Bowman, Sarah Lynne. 2015. “Bleed: The Spillover Between Player and Character.” Nordiclarp.org. Last modified March 2, 2015.

    Falcão, Luiz. 2014. “New tastes in Brazilian larp”. The Cutting Edge of Nordic Larp. 

    Iuama, Tadeu, and Jorge Miklos. 2019. “Citizen and ecological communication: Experience of contemporary cultural resistance based on the performance of larp at the Youth Cultural Center of São Paulo”. Electronic journal of the Master’s Program in Communication at College Cásper Líbero Jun, 2019.

    Weigsding, Jessica Adriane. 2015. “The influence of music on human behavior.” MUDI files v 18, n 2, p 47–62. State University of Maringá.

    Audial Media

    Mansell, Clint. 2000. ‘Lux Aeterna’. Nonesuch Records.

    Strauss, Johann II. 1866,  ‘The Blue Danube’, Op. 314.

    Strauss, Johann II. 1889. ‘Kaiser-Walzer’, Op. 437.

    Strauss, Johann II. 1890. ‘Rathausball-Tänze’, Op. 438.

    The Who. 1969. Tommy. Recorded 19 September 1968 – 7 March 1969, Track / Decca.

    Cover photo: Photo by Thomaz Barbeiro, larp Club D (2016)

    This article is published in the companion book Book of Magic: Vibrant Fragments of Larp Practices and is published here with permission. Please cite this text as:

    Godoy, Leandro. “The Use of Music as a Magical Element for the Larp Experience.” In Book of Magic: Vibrant Fragments of Larp Practices, edited by Kari Kvittingen Djukastein, Marcus Irgens, Nadja Lipsyc, and Lars Kristian Løveng Sunde. Oslo, Norway: Knutepunkt, 2021.