Lindsay Wolgel is a professional actor and edu-larp enthusiast. She is currently the middle school drama teacher at a charter school in NYC. Learn about the ways she incorporated larp into her curriculum this past year, via in-class parties, a classroom podcast, creative writing prompts and more!
This years Nordic Larp Talks are out! You can watch them all in the embedded playlist below, or go over to Nordic Larp Talks to get some more context and background.
Nordic Larp Talks Oslo 2017
As a bonus, we can also present Nordic Larp Talks Oslo 2017! They are all in the embedded playlist below, and can also be found on the Nordic Larp Talks website.
Enjoy these and keep an eye out for our own video documentation from Knutpunkt 2018.
Nordic Larp Talks is a series of short, entertaining, thought-provoking and mind-boggling lectures about projects and ideas from the tradition of Nordic Larp.
This year Nordic Larp Talks will be hosted in Helsinki, Tuesday March 8th at 19:00 and you are of course more than welcome to join us!
The event will be held at Aalto University School of Arts, Design and Architechture (often called “Taik”, Hämeentie 135 C, Helsinki, on the 8th floor which is located about 20 min away from the central station by bus. The evening will be hosted by writer and radio & television host Johanna Koljonen.
Free admission. Doors opens at 18:30.
PROGRAM
19.00 – 21.00 Tuesday March 8th at Aalto University School of Arts, Design and Architecture , Hämeentie 135 C, 8th Floor. The programme will start at 19.00 sharp.
State of Siege is a larp about occupied Finland that will be held 15th – 17th November in Helsinki organized by Palestinian and Finnish larp designers.
Last August the larp Till Death Do us Part was organized as a cooperation between Norwegian and Palestian larp designers. It was the first bigger Palestian larp project and since then many projects has has happened in and in connection to the emerging Palestinian larp community.
The latest addition is a Palestian-Finnish cooperation with the larp Sate of Siege (or Piiritystila – Halht Hisar) to be held in November.
State of Siege is a larp about occupied Finland and everyday life under a military regime. The game is set at the University of Helsinki where students and researches are trying to hold a seminar in the midst of checkpoints, random searches, curfew and other facets of life under occupation.
The game is created cooperatively between Finnish and Palestinian designers. It’s held in November 2013, on 15th – 17th, and is open to both Finnish and foreign participants. The languages will mostly be Finnish and English. From the website
We asked two of the designers from the crew about their thoughts about the project.
Larp designer Juhana Pettersson
Juhana Pettersson: “The original idea for Halat hisar came from a quote I used in an article I wrote about the Palestinian larp Till Death Do Us Part. Fatima AbdulKarim, one of the Palestinian organizers, said that she’d love to do larp in Finland. The idea caught on after the article was published. Fatima’s original idea of using larp to communicate the reality of life under occupation was just the kind of thing larp is really good for.”
Fatima AbdulKarim: “Its a great experience to be working on Halat Hissar and it’s characters, it’s like wearing your clothes inside-out and and changing perspectives like changing to matching sunglasses!”
Is there a way to understand what actually happened in a larp, and can we tell a single more coherent story about how a larp played out? This talk is about techniques to study larp.
Annika Waern (Ph.D) is a professor and game researcher at the department of Informatics and Media at Uppsala University, Sweden. She has a long-standing experience of studying games that play out in the physical world, including but not limited to larp. Together with Markus Montola, and Jaakko Stenros she is author of Pervasive Games: Theory and Design (2009).
This talk will explain the phenomenon of bleed in role-playing games and advocate for greater awareness of the phenomenon and increased discussion surrounding the emotional content of role-playing games.
Sarah Lynne Bowman (Ph.D.) teaches as adjunct faculty in English and Communication for several institutions including The University of Texas at Dallas. McFarland Press published her dissertation in 2010 as The Functions of Role-playing Games: How Participants Create Community, Solve Problems, and Explore Identity. Together with Aaron Vanek, Bowman co-edited The Wyrd Con Companion 2012, a collection of essays on larp and related phenomena. Her current researchinterests include examining social conflict and bleed within role-playing communities, applying Jungian theory to role-playing studies, studying the benefits of edu-larp, and comparing the enactment of role-playing characters with other creative phenomena such as drag performance.
Larp is great in building strange realities, far-away worlds and fantasies unheard of. But can it also be used to recreate authentic situations from real life to enable development workers to not only know about intercultural competence, but maybe even develop it before really coming in touch with a foreign culture?
Stefan Deutsch plays and facilitates larps for nearly 20 years, co-wrote one of Germany’s most controversial larp rules system and was one of the organizers of the MittelPunkt larp conference in Germany. He lives in Germany and Tanzania and works as a consultant for a software company and larp.
This talk explores how this can make larp design easier to teach as a game design discipline. It also helps designers become more aware of the default positions of their larp design.
How do you, as a game designer, work to get a diverse group of participants to feel welcome and included? Lars Nerback talks from his experience in working with educational larps in schools, and gives three examples for making inclusive games.
Lars Nerback is one of the owners of LajvVerkstaden (”The Larp Workshop” directly translated), a Swedish company that designs and runs educational larps for children, teenagers and adults. Apart from his work as game designer and project manager, Lars is deeply involved in issues of social justice and equality.
In this talk Jana Pouchlá describes some basic arrangements that make new larpers feel safe and enjoy the game. She also argues why newbies sometimes are better larpers than super experienced players.
Jana Pouchlá is a professional lecturer of larp and soft skills. Her favourite challenge is to connect these two worlds as larp is a great way to guide adults towards participation and active learning. Pouchla has an education from theatre university and currently works in the larp company Court of Moravia.
Here is the movie Jana shows in her presentation. Make sure to turn on the English captions if you don’t speak Czech:
Larp designer Juhana Pettersson
