Nordic Larp

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  • Remember That Time… We Tried to Film a Larp

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    Remember That Time… We Tried to Film a Larp

    By

    Sophia Seymour

    Is it possible to capture the magic of larp on film? This was the question filmmaker Sophia Seymour and larp creator Martine Svanevik decided to explore in the spring of 2023. 

    As we write, we are three months into the edit, and the workings of a finished film is on the horizon. This article is part confessional, part conversation, and part inspiration for those of you who want to join us in trying to document and create something more permanent when we play. 

    We are the Remember that Time players and film crew, and we tried to create something new. 

    In 2019, Martine designed the larp Remember that Time. It’s a bittersweet piece about a group of friends that have stayed together through good times and bad. The friends meet up to reminisce after the death of one of the key members of their group, and the experience lends itself to feelings of reminiscing, grief, and catharsis. 

    Both Martine and Sophia felt that the larp had film potential. It was  small and self-contained: and it dealt delicately with a tender yet important issue of grief, which lent itself to exploring the breadth and width of emotional bleed on film. 

    Setting up the descreete cameras
    Readying the set for filming. Photo by Olivia Song.

    To film a larp – you have to play it

    Remember that Time was written as a black box larp and it only takes three hours. It can be played without costumes and has very few props. Originally, Martine wanted to lean into this black box nature of the larp, to shoot it on an empty stage with only a table. But after playing, Sophia and Edward, the cinematographer, had a different idea.

    Edward Hamilton Stubber (Cinematographer): “After going out to Oslo to meet and play Remember that Time with Sophia, I was super inspired by the idea of filming a larp to see how far we could push the idea that something doesn’t need to be real to be felt.This is obviously true when we watch films as they are by their very nature dramatisations of fiction, yet we still feel something. But larp seems to offer a more visceral and personal experience of a given story, as instead of watching the story passively, you are part of it. I thought that if we could showcase the journey that participants go through in a larp, in a way that blurred lines with fiction filmmaking, then we might offer a reflection on why it is that we want to experience these emotions, in films and beyond.

    Sophia: “After playing the game in Oslo and seeking counsel with some very helpful veteran larpers, we knew that comfort and safety were key to the success of the project. We knew we only had one chance to film the larp (larpers are not professional actors and there are no retakes) and so creating a safe environment for the larpers was key. This started well before we turned on the cameras and fed into every decision from where to film, how to film and what the eventual story would be. We had to treat the filming very carefully and had two somewhat contradictory main goals: to capture all the micro interactions and dynamics unfolding in the larp, and to make the larpers feel as comfortable and as little under observation as possible.”

    Edward (Cinematographer): “The challenge for us was that we were going to be trying to create an atmosphere in front of the camera that didn’t disturb the authenticity of the larp. In conventional filmmaking, there is often a menagerie of different pieces of equipment and crew just outside of the frame lines, that are put in place to create a look and feeling that elevates the emotion of a given scene. But we knew that we couldn’t do this in the larp. We had to give all five participants the freedom to move around and explore the space without restriction, whilst also maintaining a look with lighting and camera movement that felt cinematic. This meant I had to put a lot of thought into where I would be placing cameras and lights, much more than I would have done in conventional film. It was a good challenge and I think it bore something unique.

    Moreover, we decided to invite both crew and contributors to stay for the whole weekend in a large country house in the South of England to create a unique atmosphere of trust and collaboration. We played group bonding games and made sitting down for meals together a priority. By the end of the weekend we all felt like we had gone through an experience together, with each member of the crew and cast feeling like they were a part of a collaboration. This all contributed to the authenticity of the footage and veracity of the emotions on screen.” 

    Players and crew socializing outside of filming.
    Players and crew socializing outside of filming. Photo by Olivia Song.

    Martine (larp designer and facilitator): “Unlike fiction film, the larp could only be shot in one take. How did you manage to capture all the dynamics while also filming so that the players didn’t feel the presence of the crew and kit?”

    Edward: “We knew that we needed different camera angles in the edit to allow us to fit the three-hour game into a short film length. So as not to disturb the atmosphere of the game, we chose a room that had two adjoining rooms either side of it, which meant that I could light the game room and then have operators in total darkness operating cameras on sliders in the two other rooms, hunting for close-ups as the game developed. We also had three stationary cameras inside the room that were unmanned, which we used as broader catchall angles to use as a back-up in the edit.

    This constellation kept the operators out of the eyelines of the participants, and I made sure to pump the main room with light so that once their eyes had compensated, the rooms either side appeared entirely dark. Myself and another colleague operated the cameras and it was quite thrilling – it felt like a mixture between live TV and fiction.”

    Still from the documentary.
    Anna and Fredrik larping in front of the cameras. Still from the documentary.

    To translate the story – you have to chop it up 

    Sophia (Film director): “Larp has sometimes been portrayed in a rather trite or negative light – were you ever nervous that the same might happen with this film?”

    Martine: “Not after I met you. I thought the pitch for what you wanted to accomplish – to explore why we chase emotions when we experience art – was beautiful and interesting, and that you were approaching it in just the right way, so I wasn’t worried you would make the larpers look bad. What did worry me, however, was how moviemaking is about telling one story, whereas this larp – and most good larps, in my opinion – are about making every story equally important. 

    Since it’s difficult for audiences to equally care about everyone in a piece of fiction, I wondered how you would choose to frame what went on in the larp. Who would become the villain of the piece? Whose story would be told and whose would be lost? The larp lasts for three hours, and we were making a twenty-minute documentary. A lot of things would end up on the cutting-room floor, so what story would remain? 

    Although I never worried that you would approach it as a reality TV producer would, I was aware that the cutting, framing, and focus of the piece would change the story. “

    Sophia: “I was also really concerned about where the editing process would take us. You often don’t know what is going to materialise in the cutting room and how to make sense of more than 20 hours of footage. My aim was to explore the impulse in Nordic larping to seek out emotional bleed through play. I knew there would be people who were unfamiliar with larp who might find it odd to play make-believe grief, but I was determined to make something that underlined how normal it is to seek out environments and situations that allow for feeling – be it at the theatre, in the cinema, or playing a larp.

    To do this, I knew I did not want to sensationalise the game. It was about following the players’ emotional journey as faithfully as possible, rather than projecting my own version of events onto the film.”

    Martine: “Do you think the documentary tells the story of the larp in a true way? What happened in the editing room? How do you feel about editing and changing the story to make it fit into a 20-minute documentary and tell a story that others can understand?”

    Mariana Moraes (editor): “The editing of this documentary was the most difficult I’ve ever experienced, because in the footage the larp looks like bad acting. In movies, people rarely talk over each other and no-one stumbles looking for their next line. In this piece, the conversations were closer to the way real people speak, but that made them seem less truthful on camera. 

    Since the goal was to get the viewer to empathise with the emotional journey of the players inside the fiction, while also showing them that this was a game the players played, we had to find the balance between it feeling real (in a fictionalised way) and not real (since it is a game), without throwing off the audience. We struggled in early versions of the film with the ‘real’ feelings of grief that came off as fake or badly acted. So, in order to make those feelings feel as real as they were for the players in the game, we ended up drawing on the tools of fiction and cutting together the most ‘real’ moments. 

    It’s common to find the story of a documentary in the editing room, but in this case we had to experiment a lot more to find the film. The film plays with the audience’s perception: we had to experiment a lot with the drops of information we would release or withhold about what was happening. We wanted the audience to think in the beginning that the emotions they were watching were real, and by the end understand that emotions were real but not triggered by real events. 

    Still from the documentary.
    Still from the documentary.

    The balance between over-telling and under-telling was our main challenge. At one point we had a conventional cut where we catered to an audience that had no understanding of larp. The focus in this cut became the players themselves – why do they play, how do they play, and what do they get out of it. This cut was an interesting showcase of why someone might larp, but it failed to take the audience on an emotional journey with the players. 

    Therefore, we ended up going with a version that required more active participation from the audience to fill in the blanks in order to understand the story. This lets us show more of the larp and join in with the players’ journey. We hope that the audience will still understand what is going on, even if they know less about what larp is and what exactly is happening. 

    Our hope is that we have created a comment on the power of storytelling and the way filmmaking and larping trigger emotions – be they real or not. It’s interesting because this version also allows the audience to project their own emotions and stories onto the film.”

    Martine: “How did you approach the editing as a director?”

    Sophia: “How to capture the essence of something and not get too bogged down in the minutiae of details and story threads became a huge question. I had to stay true to my vision that I wanted the audience to experience the larp rather than look at it. This was my compass. 

    We eventually landed on the idea that Martine would guide both players and audience through the game through a voiceover that takes us through the film. We realised that the audience needed to feel close to the players by relating to them as a group of old friends on a broader level, instead of following intricate story lines. We chose to include more abstract conversations – laughter, a little quip or a joke, a glance or a touch, which lent itself to feeling more immersive. We then intercut the larp with interviews with the players telling us how they were feeling during the larp, allowing the audience to follow the players’ emotional bleed.”

    Martine: “One of the things I loved most about this process was that I wasn’t just running the larp, I was also invited to give feedback on the different cuts of the film and to join in the decision-making of the eventual story we were telling across the different mediums. This made me a more active part of the filmmaking process than I initially thought I would be, and I believe it is a strength of the final piece to have the larp designer’s input on the editing. I tried to always have the vision of the larp in mind when I looked at the footage, and tried to be the advocate of the larp inside the film.

    We had to make hard choices about losing interesting stories in order to fit the documentary into 20 minutes. But at the same time, it was a good exercise in focusing on the essentials to build the narrative. For example, all the contributors had recent grief experiences in their real lives that influenced their bleed in the game, and those added a lot of nuance to the story. There wasn’t space to include all of them, however, and including one and leaving out the others felt like it shifted the focus of the story too much to what was happening with one of the players outside the larp. 

    The hardest for me was to come to terms with the fact that there wasn’t space for everyone’s emotional arc. Even though there were a lot of stories in the larp, the film did have to focus on one of them to keep the audience invested. However, we tried to balance it by showing more of the interviews and conversations happening during play, and I believe that we got the balance right, eventually.  Nevertheless, if there’s ever a 90-minute version of this documentary, the story will be a lot more nuanced and many-faceted, and that is going to be even more beautiful.”

    A larper prepping for play.
    One of the larpers, Nadja, prepping for play. Still from the documentary.

    Is it possible to play authentically while being on camera? 

    We knew the presence of the cameras and crew would be the main obstacle for us. We kept coming back to the same questions – would they make the players play differently? More stiff and awkward? Would they feel the need to perform in a different way than they normally would? Would the crew as an audience change the feel of the piece? 

    This is what our players said.

    Frederik Hatlestrand (player): “It was a little bit surreal at first, but when I started playing, I kind of ignored the cameras because I’m used to playing in spaces where you have to ignore stuff. I’m just used to ignoring things that aren’t in there, so surprisingly I had some moments where I saw a camera and I was like, “Oh, yeah, it’s a camera. Okay, I’m looking another way now.” “

    Anna Emilie Groth (player): “To be honest, I actually forgot pretty quickly (about the filming) because you did such a great job with hiding the cameras in the dark. I think there were only a few moments where I thought about it being a film set. It felt just like a black box larp. However, the experience that I had in the larp will not be what’s on the film, because it will never show the whole thing. But I’m really curious to see what the camera caught. I want to see what you can see from the outside. I’m not an actor, so I’m not used to seeing myself on film.”

    Simon Brind (player): “I was super nervous about it for a number of reasons.  The biggest reason was as I’ve said this before, that we’re not actors, we’re not used to performing. We’re certainly not used to cameras but incredibly I didn’t see them. It was very strange because when we went onto the set, there was a boom at head height which meant I had to be careful where I stood up, and there were cameras hidden by the windows and at the doors. But once the larp started they pretty much ceased to exist. I don’t think the filming affected what I was doing in the end, which makes me excited to see the end result.”

    Erik Winther Paisley (player): “Maybe larp is not impossible to film. I don’t know yet. I have not seen it yet. The impossibility for me, I think, is whether our private states will actually come through enough, whether those little glances and moments that mean something for us will show. The example I give you is karaoke: you could document karaoke, but I think the worst possible way you could do that would be just to release an album of people’s karaoke singing.”

    Larp creator Martine Svanevik (left) and filmmaker Sophia Seymour (right) on set. Photo by Olivia Song.
    Larp creator Martine Svanevik (left) and filmmaker Sophia Seymour (right) on set. Photo by Olivia Song.

    Can we capture the magic?

    Martine: “Do you think we captured the magic of larp on camera?”

    Sophia: “I hope so! We wanted the film to connect with both larpers and audiences who knew nothing about larp, and so have trod a fine line between throwing the audience into the deep end of the game and providing clues as to what this is all about. My secret is not in the filming of it – although Edward did a fantastic technical job in hiding the crew from the larp space – but the emphasis I placed on creating the right environment. I wanted to film in the perfect location where everyone could stay together to feel comfortable and safe. 

    Larp can be such a personal and vulnerable process that one of my priorities was to dedicate a large proportion of our budget on lodging and catering, to create a homely environment where crew and contributors could be together, sit around chatting, and get to know each other before filming. I firmly believe that these behind-the-scenes comforts meant that when we did begin filming there was a lot of trust between everyone involved. This in turn meant less nerves, less performance anxiety, and much more fun. I had the sense that we were all collaborating for a collective vision of the film, which I hope has translated on screen.”

    Sophia (film director): “By the end, did you feel that we had captured the larp? What were your hopes and concerns?”

    Martine: “I think the way you filmed the larp gave us a very good position to start from, and that it would be possible to tell many stories from the footage – all of them true even if none of them were real. We had to create an emotional story that the audience connected to and related to, while explaining what larp is to those that have never heard of it. 

    I got to watch every second of the larp on camera as it was played, and I know how beautiful the whole piece was, and there were of course stories that got lost in the translation from larp to film. However, the film shows the artform in a cinematic way, despite having to focus on only one or two character threads. 

    There are many possible stories you could have made from the footage, but I think you made the right editing choices in the end to create a cohesive whole. I am very happy that we stayed true to the vision of wanting to let the audience experience the larp and the emotional journey, rather than explain via the more traditional cut simply what larp is. Here, I think we might have captured something that speaks to how we all seek out and need to feel – perhaps even more than we tend to allow ourselves in everyday life.”

    Sophia: “Where do you see this heading in the future?”

    Martine: “I am super keen to try more transmedia stuff now, to try VR in game, to try filming parts of an experience and show it to players in different areas to see how they react, to have in-game confession booths active during play, etc. I think there are possibilities here to create something that transcends art forms. Nadja, one of our players, put it so well.”

    Nadja Lipsyc (player): “I think it’s impossible to film what it is to larp. Because larpers are not actors. It might look just like bad acting and bad dialogue and cringe interactions on screen while the interaction in the larp feels entirely different. However, I think having larp as a layer in an artistic project is very interesting and very promising.”

    Martine: “Would you do it again?”

    Sophia (Film director): “Definitely! We learnt so much, the next time will be even better! Who’s up for it?”

    The documentary Remember that Time will be released in February 2024. 

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

    Seymour, Sophia & Martine Svanevik. 2024. “Remember That Time… We Tried to Film a 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: Backstage while filming the documentary. Photo by Olivia Song. Photo has been cropped.

  • SIGNA’s Performance Installations: Walking the Liminal Border Between Larp and Theatre

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    SIGNA’s Performance Installations: Walking the Liminal Border Between Larp and Theatre

    By

    Rasmus Lyngkjær

    In the narrow hall of an old county hospital building, two rows of people stand facing each other. The Open Heart organisation has sent out an invitation to the general public to meet and stay with the people in their care. To foster empathy, they say. To become compassionate. The people in the hospital’s care stand in one line; The Sufferers, they are called. People on the fringes of society. Drug addicts, homeless people, criminals. Every single sufferer is a tragic tale of how life can beat you down. In the other line, the Compassionates stand, looking around with mixed emotions; curiosity, pity, regret. The sufferers will each choose compassionates to live their lives. Wear their clothes, sleep in their bunk, and become them for the evening and night to come.

    This is the opening scene of the performance installation Det Åbne Hjerte (Eng. The Open Heart), created by the artist collective SIGNA in Aarhus, Denmark 2019. The sufferers are paid actors and the compassionates are their audience. You might, like me, see the similarities this performance piece bears to larp. The experience requires active participation from everyone, which eliminates the border between actor and audience that is usually found in theatre. If I replace the term “actor” with “non-player character” and “audience” with “players”, it would look like a larp. Both groups exist fully within the fiction, but while the audience are there to experience it, the actors are there to facilitate and steer the experience. 

    In this article, I aim to look into the overlap between larp and theatre, with SIGNA’s performance installations, that bear resemblance to both practices, serving to guide my exploration of this liminal space. In addition I aim to tease out approaches SIGNA use, that might be gainful for our development of larp. To gain insight into the methods and intentions of how SIGNA creates what they term performance installations, which I will introduce in the upcoming chapter, I asked them for an interview, which they generously granted.

    The Performance Installation

    When I experienced Det Åbne Hjerte in 2019, I was chosen by a young, too-skinny man with bleached hair and pale skin, named Blondie. While I was being dressed in his clothes, he told me about himself, and his life. He was open, brutally honest and believable. I quickly forgot that Blondie was a fictional character.

    ”Our point of departure is to create universes that are a sort of reality simulation. Not necessarily copies of reality, but simulations of hermetically sealed universes […] These universes are then populated by characters who improvise with the audience in processes that, depending on the given work, are more or less planned. However, what they say is up to the individual participant in accordance with the framework.”

    This is how Signa Köstler describes the artform of performance installations, a concept of her own devising. With her background as an art historian, she had previously worked with the concepts of performance and installation, and the combination of these seemed to encapsulate what she did.

    The power of performance installations, according to the Köstlers, lies in the heightened engagement they elicit. This emerges from three factors: participants navigate labyrinthine spaces, experience sensorial stimuli, and build relationships with characters. In Det Åbne Hjerte, the old county hospital had doors open into washing rooms, offices, cantinas, bedrooms and so on, and it was full of smells, sounds and actions. These were tied together through the relationships. As my sufferer, Blondie, chugged a whole beer, puked all over the floor, mopped it up with his shirt and led us through the tunnels of the hospital to the washing rooms, all senses were stimulated. The unique quality of these interactions allows for genuine emotional connections, akin to the impact of cinema or theatre but with the added dimension of direct engagement from the audience.

    These real emotions and feelings, created by deep immersion and interaction with a fictional universe, begin to sound exactly like what we argue for, when we talk about the value of larp. In fact, when Simo Järvelä (2019) describes the magic circle and alibi in the article “How real is larp?”, he writes: 

    ”Designing a larp is about constructing an artificial situation that is completely real. The players treat it as fictional – which it is – but it is also something fully embodied by the players” (Järvelä 2019).

    That these two descriptions line up so well, gives us a look into the landscape where theatre and larp can meet. It is interesting to look at how the audience’s relationship to the characters are formed. Is it passive, as with traditional film and theatre, where an audience relates to the situation happening on stage, or is it active, as with larp and performance installations, where the audience builds relationships based on the actions they personally take in the fake reality? 

    There isn’t a clear cut between these two categories. In the more experimental forms of theatre, the audience often has an active role that comes near to larp or performance installations. For example, in Punchdrunk’s Sleep No More (London 2003), the audience is allowed to move about freely in a six-storey building transformed into a set for Shakespeare’s Macbeth, though they are separated from that reality by plastic masks. Although the audience members have little actual power to influence the experience, they are not just passively sitting and observing. This illustrates how temporal media – that is media which we experience live – can range from traditional theatre to sandbox larps. 

    Three permance artists from the SIGNA piece "Det Åbne Hjerte" sit on a bench
    Three performers from the SIGNA performance installation “Det Åbne Hjerte”. The performers depicted from left to right: Arthur Köstler, Larysa Venediktova, Stine Korsgaard. Photo by Erich Goldmann.

    Manipulation of the audience

    After arriving in the afternoon and moving among the sufferers, learning about their pain, it is time for bed. We compassionates share bunk beds with our sufferers. It quickly becomes clear that this will be no easy night. Many of the sufferers have difficulties, mental or otherwise, that trigger at night. The worst comes in the middle of the night, as one of the sufferers starts screaming. It startles me awake and as staff rush past, my curiosity battles with tiredness. As the screaming continues, curiosity wins and I drag myself out of bed to find the source. 

    SIGNA employs diverse strategies to guide the audience through specific scenes and emotions. The masterplan is a carefully orchestrated framework that serves as a roadmap for performers to interact with participants. SIGNA has different approaches to the masterplan depending on the performance installation. Sometimes the masterplan includes instructions for sending the audience between performers in predetermined patterns, other times it is almost like an itinerary that the performers follow, while the audience are free to move around in the spaces where the performance happens, as was the case with Det Åbne Hjerte. Interestingly, Signa Köstler notes that more recent plays have proven that the most optimal format is for the audience to be attached to specific performers:

    ”… Audience members are attached to one or two characters, whom they will always gravitate towards. When this attachment has been created, either of loyalty, security or the like, they [the audience member] will always come back to it. Then they can be set free a little, and they can be with others, but you can always pull them back in again pretty quickly. Then you can move about with an invisible masterplan, while they are satellites you can pull along with you.”

    The Köstlers say that the actors need to be in a “hyper-aware” mindset when they follow these master plans. Their focus is split between ensuring the picture of the scene stays in place, that the acoustics of the installation are balanced, and that the minds of the audience are engaged with the fiction. In other words, the actors need to keep in mind how the audience sees a scene and hears a scene, and to be aware of how engaged they currently are. Reading the body language of the audience becomes a crucial skill to balancing the experience, as this is a core tool in understanding what the audience currently experiences emotionally. As Signa puts it, the constant mindset is ”What can I contribute with? What needs do the audience members I am responsible for have, right now?”

    This relates interestingly to another scale of variances between larp and traditional theatre. The performers don’t need to improvise reactions to audience responses unless the audience actually has a certain degree of freedom to respond to the stimuli. In traditional theatre, the audience is expected to sit still, and clapping or crying out are the strongest responses the audience is expected to have to the events on the stage. The smaller, more nuanced reactions are usually visible only to other audience members. While they may create liveness in the room, they do not directly affect the action on stage. 

    Experimental theatre and performance installations have a higher degree of audience freedom, which introduces an element of uncertainty into the artwork. Most larps fall into the opposite end of the scale compared to traditional theatre. In larp, audience interaction is expected and needed for the artwork to progress at all. Det Åbne Hjerte performance installation is slightly more towards the larp extreme on the empathic response scale, as the audience participates actively in the action. However, it is slightly more towards the traditional theatre extreme on the audience influence scale, as the plot is made for the audience to explore it, rather than to influence it. An audience member might try to influence a cast member’s actions, but usually the cast member will still be at the next spot on their master plan itinerary. 

    Performer from the SIGNA performance installation sits on the floor surrounded by trash
    Performer from the SIGNA performance installation “Det Åbne Hjerte” sits on the floor. Depicted performer: Arthur Köstler. Photo by Erich Goldmann.

    Character handling

    One of the sufferers sits in a hallway, with a blanket with random low-quality goods spread out before her. Plastic toy dinosaurs, old DVDs and lighters. I strike up a conversation with her. She wishes to sell the goods, not to profit from it herself, but because she is at the bottom of a pecking order that The Open Heart has allowed to persist amongst the sufferers. The meagre profits she gets from selling her wares go to another sufferer. Seeing this suffering, upheld by the system of The Open Heart, I get angry. I storm into the manager’s office to tell him off. 

    In SIGNA’s universes, there is a rule we rarely see in larp: no-one ever breaks character. I first assumed there were exceptions, but there aren’t any. The rule can be upheld, because the performers have a lot of practice before stepping into character, and because safety is mapped out in advance. In fact, I asked the Köstlers if they could give one tip to the roleplaying community, based on their experiences. Their answer was to try this out. There are two parts to safely upholding this rule. Allow the characters to be fallible and take responsibility for any action you take: and have an order of command in the fiction, that allows for safe response to real-life emergencies.

    First of all, the character is seen as a whole, and should be made to withstand any emotion, action, and the like. The situation they wish to avoid, as Signa puts it, is to ”feel that the character only exists when you have everything under control”. The character should be allowed to have any response you could have, from being tired or overwhelmed, to having a headache or an upset stomach. If the character can take responsibility for those situations – that is, if it can still be the character who feels them and acts upon them – it allows for a flexibility that can ensure that the fiction is a whole, simulated world. Or, as Signa puts it:

    ”And maybe it’s also about, when working with these forms, being prepared to let go of control and let go of perfectionism.”

    Secondly, SIGNA has procedures that allow staying in fiction when an emergency strikes, for example if someone breaks a leg or the building catches fire. They have carefully planned these in advance. In any given universe, accidents like broken bones or fires can occur. Creating a chain of command that is ready to handle these kinds of problems, just as they would in real life, makes it a natural part of the story being told. If there are hospitals in the storyworld, an injured participant’s character will be taken there within the fictional world of the performance installation. If the installation is set in the front lines of a war, the performers would speak about the hospital as a lazaret. As a part of the administrative preparation, SIGNA makes sure to keep all the health insurance certificates alphabetized in a box, along with money enough for taxis and lists of relevant phone numbers, so that the character who is responsible in the fiction can access and efficiently handle the out-of-character parts required without breaking the fiction. This also extends to audience emergencies. 

    “When it happens to the audience, we have experienced that it is worse to go out of character for them. When they, for example, have an emotional breakdown or the like, it is much better to take care of them in-character. We have a room, where you can sit down with them and make them a cup of tea.”

    When someone gets aggressive, they meet them with an equal measure of calm, to de-escalate the feelings. Arthur Köstler especially promoted the concept of being prepared to nip any breakdowns in the bud – reading up on communication theories and learning about body language to see potential breakdowns coming. 

    When I heard this, it felt like a very high bar to aim for, but SIGNA noted that they do have a significant advantage to most larps. They have five weeks to practice up to the performance installation itself. When talking about it, I explained that we often do workshops before a demanding larp. Using the Sigridsdotter 2018 run in Denmark as an example, I explained the day-before workshopping for internalizing the gender-norms we were to play, as well as for introducing the storyworld and setting common boundaries for the larp. The Köstlers noted that their practice corresponds to five weeks of constant workshops, attending to all the potential need-to-knows of the performers and forming the installation together.

    The interview left me inspired to see how I could work all that I had learned into my larp praxis. With time, we will hopefully be able to find more points of connection between artforms, to explore how the borderlands and liminal spaces are formed and how we can use them to create unique, creative experiences.

    As I barge into the manager’s office, he meets me with a calm expression and tone of voice. I yell about how fucked up the system is, how unfair it is to allow the discrepancy in power to persist among the sufferers and how The Open Heart should take responsibility for the people they are claiming to help. In a slow, measured cadence, the manager answers all my worries with corporate speak. It only makes me more angry. But his tone of voice, and the cup of tea he offers me, gets the edge off and at some point I sink into the futility of trying to convince these people that they are doing anything wrong.

    Later, I talk to the sufferer who chose me and express interest in helping. He gives me his phone number. He texts me once, after the performance installation is over, but nothing comes out of it. Weeks after the final performance, I hear from another audience member, that a blonde sufferer had dropped out of the program and died from a drug overdose. I text to hear if Blondie is okay, but in the end he never responds.

    Bibliography

    Järvelä, Simo. 2019. “How real is larp?”. In Larp Design – Creating Role-Play Experiences. Edited by Johanna Koljonen, Jakko Steenros, Anne Serup Grove, Aina D. Skjønsfjell and Elin Nilsen. Landsforeningen Bifrost.

    Ludography

    Barrett, Felix & Maxine Doyle. 2003, 2009, 2011–2024. Sleep No More. New York.

    Köstler, Signa & Arthur Köstler. 2019. Det Åbne Hjerte. Denmark. 

    Renklint, Lukas, Kaya Toft Thejls & Anna Emilie Groth. 2018. Sigridsdotter. Denmark. 

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

    Lyngkjær, Rasmus. 2024. “SIGNA’s Performance Installations: Walking the Liminal Border Between Larp and Theatre.” 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 by Erich Goldmann. Photo has been cropped.

    All photos in this article are used with permission from the artistic collective SIGNA.

  • Out of Nothing, Something

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    Out of Nothing, Something

    By

    Juhana Pettersson

    The Muses of antiquity live on Mount Helicon (a mythological place, but also a real mountain in Greece). Perhaps because of this, the mountain’s name has come to symbolize creativity and inspiration. Helicon is also the name of a larp created by Maria Pettersson and Katrine Wind, run in Denmark for the first time in January, 2024.

    The larp is about a group of friends who enacted a ritual in their student days, binding the Muses to themselves, granting themselves the genius to become superstars in their own fields. As their stars rise, they also deprive the world of inspiration, hogging it all. The binding of the Muses also means that these immortal beings have now become imprisoned into the service of mere mortals, individuals who may treat them kindly or badly depending on their whim.

    In Helicon, the Inspired come together for an annual ritual strengthening the ritual of binding. They also want to spend a weekend together with the only people who really understand them, their fellow Inspired. After all, they’re the only ones to really know the secret of their success.

    I played one of the two Inspired of Melpomene, the Muse of Tragedy. I was a war reporter while my sibling was a playwright, both of us feeding from the genius granted by the Muse.

    Incidentally, Mt. Helicon is also where Narcissus looked at his own reflection in the water and saw his own beauty. This may be somewhat narcissistic of me but when I was playing Helicon (in the second run, in February 2024), I was quite taken by the creative invention and ability of our ensemble. There’s a specific kind of beauty in larp when the spontaneous emergence of each players’ actions collectively creates a wonderfully coherent whole.

    Photo of person smiling at someone.
    Photo by Bjørn-Morten Gundersen.

    Inspiration

    The themes of Helicon make a certain amount of recursive self-commentary unavoidable. After all, if I play an Inspired of Tragedy, how likely is it that my character’s narrative arc bends toward an unhappy, perhaps even sad ending?

    I didn’t plan it that way but that’s exactly what happened. Me and my sibling, both for our own reasons, found that following the genius of Tragedy was destroying us and we yearned to be free. In the case of my character, the toll of documenting the suffering caused by war all across the world was becoming too much and while I believed it to be my moral duty to continue the work, it was also breaking me apart.

    Thus at the end, I begged for freedom even as many other Inspired sought to hold onto their Muses, the divine spirits granting them deathless genius. Of course, that plea was not heard. Instead, the Muse of Tragedy decided to keep us trapped in our self-inflicted hell. That was a choice made by the player of the Muse Melpomene, not something dictated by anything in the workshops or our characters. It was an example of a dramatically appropriate, satisfying arc emerging from our collective ensemble play, fueled and inspired by the design of the larp. Nobody planned it like that but it still happened.

    There’s a trick to larp design that, when it works, looks like magic. You leave space for the spontaneous creativity of the players and they bring the larp’s core themes to life without explicit instruction or a script. If you’re an experienced larp designer, you probably know how to make this happen. This observation may even feel banal because it’s such a basic element of how larp works.

    Indeed, the trick is an illusion. The designer knows that the magic of the larp flows from careful design work. When that work is done elegantly enough, play feels free and unconstrained, specific choices and themes flowing with seeming emergence and settling into just the right configuration for the themes of the larp to become manifest.

    If you haven’t peeked behind the curtain and seen enough larp to know how this is done, you might ask questions like these:

    How do the players know what to say?

    How do they know to do the right things?

    How can it work when everybody is playing spontaneously?

    If you’ve played in a larp, you know the answer: It works the same as it does in real life. We all go through our days unrehearsed, whether in the context of everyday reality or a fictional event.

    When the larp’s design works as intended, our improvisation and imagination has been prepped so that we together as an ensemble explore a shared creative space, producing desired types of scenes and interactions. 

    The Creative Ensemble

    In their article Ensemble Play, Anni Tolvanen and Jamie MacDonald (2020) talk about larp as a creative ensemble similar to a band or an orchestra playing music together. To successfully participate in an ensemble, there’s one skill above all: Listening. You have to be able to listen to what’s going on in the ensemble to be able to participate in a meaningful and harmonious way.

    Many of the most basic workshop exercises we commonly do in Nordic larps are very effective in building the ensemble. Even simple warm-ups teach us to understand each other as a group, to pay attention and to read our co-players and their desires. When we do a round of all the players in the workshop, with each describing what they need for their larp to be successful or what they’re worried about, we help each other to lift the whole ensemble.

    Humans are social herd animals and we’re typically quite sensitive to the moods and shifts of the group. The larp ensemble uses this quality to its advantage, allowing us to support each other creatively and to bounce off each other’s ideas in an interesting way.

    Photo of a person seated in black with sunglasses on.
    Taylor Montgomery. Photo by Bjørn-Morten Gundersen.

    When this works for you in a larp, it feels like spontaneous play magically gives you what you need. One such moment for me in Helicon was in a flashback scene where our characters were discussing the idea of binding the Muses. A few believed while others, like me, went along for a lark. There was a somewhat silly, half-serious process for distributing who gets which muse, where I and another person ended up competing for the Muse of Tragedy.

    The crowd called for both of us to show our “unhappy face”. We both did, to general laughter and merriment all around. Mine was judged better, so I got Tragedy and the other person got Comedy.

    In the scene, this sequence emerged spontaneously, yet it had an immense impact on my larp. My character had made this life-altering choice without understanding the consequences or seriously considering the implications. In play, both my character and the character who got the Muse of Comedy were desperately unhappy, yet unable to change their course.

    In the same scene, it turned out that there was one less Muse than there were friends in our group of students. The character of my sibling was a sensitive, sad soul, and he was left without a Muse. As a result, I offered: “Don’t worry, we’ll share the one I got!”

    This was also something that emerged spontaneously, and led to meaningful play later. In each case, the magic is a combination of design choices priming us for certain themes (my character had an affair with the Muse of Comedy, guiding me to think of Comedy as the light in the darkness of an existence defined by Tragedy) and ensemble play where we each watch for what the others are going for and try to support it.

    Profundity

    The themes Helicon explores are almost a caricature of classical profundity: Immortality, art, creation, destiny, genius, responsibility, and so on. Making a larp focused on such themes is not easy, and Helicon does it through designed emergence. Instead of overtly designing scenes or metatechniques around philosophical discussion, the seeds are planted in the way the characters are written and the muses described.

    The problem with many themes and subjects in larp is that to be able to successfully co-create (i.e. to participate fully in the larp), the players need to feel comfortable and empowered with the material. I explored this topic in my article The Necessary Zombie, where the titular zombie is the familiar and known element which the player can rely on, creatively speaking, while also exploring newer and more unfamiliar territory.

    In the case of Helicon, the supernatural framework of mythology created this familiarity, helping participants to engage with more difficult themes.

    When I read my character, I didn’t think I’d be able to use very much from my own life. The war reporter who had become something of a monster in his personal life, someone from an aristocratic background who used moral need to justify the captivity of his Muse, was a much more dramatic figure than a Finnish creative arts professional like me.

    We were encouraged to bring examples of artworks or other creations to show during the larp. At first, I figured I’d bring photos from wars, dying children and so forth. After reviewing potential candidates, I quickly changed my mind. Not because of what other people would think, but because of how I suspected they’d push me out of the fiction. Around the time of the larp, war had been very much on my mind. I’d followed the crimes of the Israeli apartheid system for two decades and the ongoing genocide in Gaza felt very immediate. Something like that was too painful to bring to a larp.

    Instead, I chose to use pictures by the famous war photographer Robert Capa. I avoided images of combat or the dead and the dying, focusing instead on images of people who had survived.

    Photo of people sitting on a couch talking.
    The author as Thomas Montgomery. Photo by Anni Tolvanen.

    The character worked well for me because I’ve read a lot of books by war reporters over the years and had some idea of how to fake war talk, the way you do in a larp. For my character, the goal was to end all war by bringing its horrors to light through journalism. I talked about these topics a lot during the larp, because they were central to my character’s personality, flaws and philosophical outlook.

    It was only afterwards that I realized that I’d used a lot of things I myself believe about war. I believe wars can end. I don’t believe war is an inherent part of the human experience. Nation states have to work hard at making propaganda to dehumanize the enemy to the point that people are willing to murder them at scale. I’m essentially an optimist when it comes to the human spirit, and this optimism makes me believe that war is one of the great evils of human existence and must be opposed everywhere and always. We must resist the narratives that make us believe that somehow, this time mass murder is justified.

    It felt strange to realize that I’d used pieces of myself in the character after all, because in many ways the character was not someone I’d aspire to be.

    Vintage

    At one point, the players gathered together for a group photo. First all together, and then a photo with only the Inspired. As we were posing, the Muse players were lounging about, waiting for their Muses-only photo.

    We were at the venue’s gorgeous dining hall, with its classical decor and Greek-style statues. Looking around, seeing three, four, five Muses hanging about in poses of casual repose, I caught myself thinking that of course this is what a place haunted by the Muses would look like. These are the Muses, children of Zeus.

    We were off-game but the casually gorgeous visuals and the easy panache displayed by the players of the Muses made it feel plausible anyway.

    The larp is set in “the vintage era”, a vague thematic milieu used by several other larps as well, such as Baphomet (2015). The vintage era is perhaps from the 1890’s to the 1940’s, allowing for both glamorous costuming and ignoring modern communications technology such as cell phones.

    Different larps use the concept in their own ways but in Helicon, what was particularly important was the deliberate, purposeful vagueness of the setting which makes it impossible to discuss external details. We barely know which country we’re in (the U.K.), and things like politics, technology or current events are shrouded in fog.

    This has the result that discussions naturally move towards in-game events or the big, broad themes suggested by the larp’s central conceit: art, philosophy, immortality, morality, creativity, often connected to in-game events in surprisingly concrete ways.

    The Inspired don’t age, the blessings of the Muses keeping them forever young. For some, this meant an eternity to spend in pursuit of their creative genius. Since I was a war reporter, from my point of view, it meant endless years watching people die. The subject may have been lofty but the relevance was still immediate.

    The deliberate haziness of the vintage era means we can’t discuss the price of bread or the latest political scandal so instead we’re forced to tackle the fundamental meaning of the creative arts. Nobody is pushing us to talk about profundities. It just occurs naturally as a result of the setup and the way the setting has been framed.

    Helicon had the thematic precision of a classic five-player Fastaval scenario, keeping it unusually tight despite its larger player base. The vintage era is a good example of a design choice keeping the focus subtly constrained: It has the effect of guiding conversation, but discreetly, without making a thing of it. This in part creates the illusion where the desired play and themes emerge seemingly of their own volition.

    Photo of two people gazing at each other smiling.
    Photo by Bjørn-Morten Gundersen.

    Champagne Flute Logistics

    When a larp has a strong ensemble, its social nuances become easier to read. This was my experience at Helicon: It was easier to grasp when it was okay to join a scene and when to butt out, what characters I’d interacted with only a little were feeling on the other side of a room or what kind of actions would best support the play of someone else.

    Similarly, I felt supported by the other players in the sense that it felt like they could read what was going on with my character and support it in turn. Because of this, I had moments when the larp’s emergent action spontaneously served up just what I needed for my character’s journey.

    As the larp was building up to its final climactic scenes, we were participating in a collective ritual. It involved ambrosia, the nectar of the gods, portrayed by elderflower cordial in a champagne flute. Appropriately filled glasses were discreetly placed around the ritual space so that you could pick one up when you needed it.

    I was standing with my back to a piece of antique furniture with several of the glasses. When the time came, I realized I and a nearby co-player should do a bit of discreet distribution duty to keep the ritual running. Similarly, later in the same ritual, as I was kneeling on the floor in the throes of poignant emotion, I also took a couple of glasses from nearby players and placed them out of the way so we wouldn’t accidentally break them.

    These were simple, automatic acts. We all do these things when we participate in a larp. We’re deep in our own drama, but if there’s a chance to discreetly facilitate someone else’s drama in some small way, we do it. We hold a door so that someone can storm off dramatically or pick up a cool hat that fell off from a co-player’s head in a fight scene and make sure it’s not damaged.

    I find certain joy from being able to do something like this, something small to help things along, because it speaks to the power of the ensemble to keep the collective larp experience functioning as beautifully as possible. Because we all do these things for each other, the experience is that much better for all of us.

    Through the magic of ensemble play and careful, elegant design, we feel that we’re acting freely in the moment and yet we experience coherent, meaningful play. When it works, it feels like we as players have been inspired by the Muses. 

    Disclosure: I’m married to one of Helicon’s two designers, Maria Pettersson.

    Helicon

    Designers: Katrine Wind and Maria Pettersson, Narrators, Inc.

    Participation Fee: €630

    Players: 29

    Second Run: February 16-18, 2024

    Location: Broholm Castle, Gudme, Denmark

    Music: Anni Tolvanen 

    Photography: Bjørn-Morten Vang Gundersen, Anni Tolvanen 

    Safety:  Klara Rotvig 

    Website: Katrine Kavli 

    Graphics: Maria Manner

    Sparring and Ideas: Emil Greve, Elina Gouliou, and Markus Montola

    Character Writing Assistance: Søren Hjorth

    Website Proofreading: Malk Williams

    Ludography

    Baphomet (2015): Bjarke Pedersen and Linda Udby. Denmark.

    Helicon (2024): Maria Pettersson and Katrine Wind. Denmark.

    Bibliography

    Juhana Pettersson (2011): The Necessary Zombie. In Claus Raasted (ed.). Talk Larp. Denmark; Knudepunkt 2011.

    Anni Tolvanen and James Lórien Macdonald (2020): Ensemble Play. In Eleanor Saitta, Johanna Koljonen, Jukka Särkijärvi, Anne Serup Grove, Pauliina Männistö, & Mia Makkonen (eds.). What Do We Do When We Play? Helsinki; Solmukohta 2020.

    Cover photo: Image by Bjørn-Morten Gundersen. Photo had been cropped.

  • On Co-creating Experiences – iFoL

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    On Co-creating Experiences – iFoL

    By

    Katharina Kramer

    If you ask ten people what larp is for them and why they do larp, you will probably get at least  eleven different answers. For me, it is all about meeting my dearest friends. I recently turned 30, and all the people I invited to my party were people I met through larping. Unfortunately (or fortunately) due to how global our hobby is, a lot of those people live all over the world, and I only see them at larps. However, when I go to a typical weekend larp, though I get to enjoy an amazing larp, I never have enough time to talk to all the awesome people.

    That’s one of the main reasons why I love an iFoL. IFoL, standing for “Its Full of Larps”, is typically a long weekend from Thursdays to Sunday, dedicated to short form larps (1-6 hours) played at a rented large house. Between the larps, there is lots of talking, cooking, board games, sometimes a sauna – in general, just having a good time together. It is like only experiencing the big moments of a larp while spending most of the time as yourself, not as a character. Or like being at one of the KP/SK conferences, but without panels and in a way smaller venue. This gives the participants more time to really get to know each other and spend time together between the games – instead of only having a short time for socialising at an after party after a larp.

    Apart from the social aspect, the organisational design of iFoLs is quite different compared to a lot of larps these days. Since a couple of years ago, we have seen quite a big trend of commodification in larps (see Seregina 2019): the larper is more of an attendee than a participant, and larps are often more about buying experiences – not co-creating them. At an iFoL, the opposite applies: everyone is part of the organising team. This is emphasised in the design: an iFoL usually begins with the people who organised the venue and registration saying the iconic phrase: “Our part is over – now everyone is organising.” This shows the importance of co-creation at an iFoL. 

    This also means that the participants must be ready to volunteer to guide larps, to organise time schedules, to cook, to help with the logistics, and so on. And everyone must be involved in keeping the space clean. If you want something to happen, you must organise it yourself. 

    Usually, these roles are not appointed up front. Instead, people volunteer on the location. Apart from a food plan (due to needing to buy the groceries before), the final schedule of the event is decided spontaneously. Most of organising is done ad hoc; for example, to sign up for larps, participants may stand in a line after dinner to get a spot at a larp, or room corners may be reserved for different larps, with people gathering at specific corners to sign up for specific larps. These on-the-fly mechanisms  make it easy to find out which larps still have open spots and which are full. Signups tend to be organised just a few hours before the games to allow people to arrive and organise their schedules flexibly. 

    The system of self-organising and co-creating works surprisingly well, though there are also some challenges. In an ideal world where responsibilities would be shared equally, the main tasks that need to be done before the event would be shared between all participants. However, in our non-ideal world, this does not work. To make the events happen reliably, there usually must be a smaller organising team that decides to facilitate an iFoL. This team manages the preliminary tasks such as booking the venue, handling participant registration, and organising the food for the event. 

    Additionally, there are always small things that require coordination – an ingredient missing from a meal, a participant needing to be picked up from the train station, or a person feeling lost at the event. The goal is to share these responsibilities between everyone, but usually the main organisers tend to be the first who are asked to provide help. They can then coordinate with the other participants and ask them to help with the tasks.

    The events do not work well with too few or too many people. If there are less than 25 people, experience has shown that this leads to not many games being played, and people get disappointed for not being able to larp. Not everyone wants to play all the time, and if there is already a bigger larp with maybe 15 people attending, there might not be enough willing participants to play another larp simultaneously. Likewise, with over 35 people attending, self-organising does not work as well. In larger groups, people tend to rely on other people doing the required tasks and no longer feel responsible for the co-creation.

    The participation fees of iFoLs are divided equally between everyone. Since iFoLs started,  the tradition has been that everyone pays the same amount to participate, and this includes the main organisers. This was based on mutual co-creation – even the main organisers are just participants, and all participants are equal organisers. The main organisers have tasks before the event, but ideally they would not have to do anything anymore once at the location (though as said before, this ideal does not fully hold). However, equality is not the same as equity, and having everyone pay the same amount of money does not give everyone the same chance to participate. Thus subsidised and sponsor tickets have become available during the past years.

    What I have written above have been my experiences on participating in iFoLs – and organising one. Even though the main idea is written down in the iFoL manifesto (Deutch & Kasper 2015), at the end iFoLs are about creating an experience together. They are not about attending as consumers – they are about co-creation and organising together. They are about spending time with old and new friends in a safe and welcoming environment to play larps, to talk, and to have fun together. 

    To have an iFoL work out well for all, you need to trust your fellow larpers. There are enough of us who want to co-create events together instead of buying experiences, and enough of us who are ready to take the responsibility. Over all my years of attending iFoLs, this mentality of co-creation and co-organising  has permeated the events – and it is the main reason why I love iFoLs. In the end, this is what our community is about at its best: friendship.

    Bibliography

    Deutsch, Stefan & Kasper Larson. 2015. iFoL – it’s Full of Larps. http://ifol.magency.de/wp-content/uploads/2015/04/ifol-the-manifesto.pdf?fbclid=IwAR0htH7ZQfb8gWlvqgxRLo415no_ZB4xMRirPtLJ0Q-aYreXK5ovjUuKe3s

    Seregina, Usva. 2019. On the Commodification of larp. Nordic larp. https://nordiclarp.org/2019/12/17/on-the-commodification-of-larp/

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

    Kramer, Katharina. 2024. “On Co-creating Experiences – iFoL.” 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 Kilimanjaro STUDIOz. Image has been cropped.

  • Strings and Rails: NPCs vs. Supporting Characters

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    Strings and Rails: NPCs vs. Supporting Characters

    By

    Karolina Fido-Fairfax

    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.

  • Experience vs. Imagination – Effects of Player Age

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    Experience vs. Imagination – Effects of Player Age

    By

    Chris Hartford

    Larp is a broad-ranging hobby, covering a plethora of subjects and every situation and scenario under the sun, with participants aged from 8 to 80. It is often stated that imagination is the limit – that anyone can play any role – but is that the reality?

    We rely on the alibi of larp to allow us to play different roles, the acceptance that the reality of the characters and the setting may diverge from our perceptions. Young can play old and a school can be a spaceship, because we agree it is so.

    However, while in a fantasy larp the difference from our reality applies equally to all characters and their players, for larps set in the recent past this disconnect may be less clear-cut. One player’s fictional reality may be something that other players have actually lived through. In these larps, the player’s age and/or experiences may alter their experience and thus the actions of their character.

    Are age and generational experience something players and designers need to take into account, and if so, what impact do such factors have on play experience?

    Emotions and knowledge

    The 1980s and 1990s serve as the backdrop for a number of larps. In some, like Just a Little Lovin’ (aka JaLL, Norway 2011), which is set in the early years of the AIDS epidemic in the 1980s, the era is an integral part of the game narrative.

    For many designers and players, these years are just a retro era that provides a cool setting, something they have heard of from older members of their family, seen in TV shows like Stranger Things (USA 2016), or played in tabletop role-playing gamess like Tales from the Loop (Sweden 2017). But older players may have actually lived through these events, so their significance and the emotional associations older players have with them may greatly vary from those of younger players. Such associations may alter the play experience, leading to a bleed-in of personal experiences and emotions that in turn shape the character’s responses.

    A personal example from the UK run of JaLL: a 20-something co-player said the music of the early 1980s was cool and retro, but to me it was the music of my teenage years. It brought back personal memories and emotions of the era and its events and wasn’t just a piece of atmospheric set dressing. Another example is The Sisyphus (UK 2018), set in the early 1980s during the Falklands War. Many Brits experienced the conflict first-hand – I was a teenager and recall the news coverage – but for younger co-players, or those from overseas, it was a more abstract idea. My personal experience, my familiarity with the themes and events of the conflict coloured my perceptions of some aspects of the larp.

    In both JaLL and The Sisyphus I had prior knowledge of and an emotional connection to the setting that went beyond the material provided by the larp designers. In some regards that helped deepen my immersion – I didn’t need to imagine my response to these events and could draw on personal experiences to shape my character’s actions.

    However, the players’ personal connections to the events – e.g. knowing how they played out in the real world – can also be a distraction to the actual game. From a player perspective, the ideal would be to play only off what the character knows. But separating what the character knows (e.g. from briefing notes or workshops) and what the player knows (from personal experience) may not be a straightforward process. It’s also worth noting that strong emotional resonance with the setting of a larp isn’t limited solely to older players, but deeply personal associations are often more difficult to prepare for.

    Designing a larp set in a near-contemporary setting may require some consideration of the impact on players who actually lived through that era. Conversely, some larps may seek to exploit this personal connection. One example is the larp Reunion (UK 2023), which is set in both the late 1990s and modern day, with middle-aged players and characters. In such cases, the challenge may be to create an even experience between those players who lived through this particular period and those for whom it is a more abstract piece of history.

    Technology

    Cassette band on red background
    Photo by Daniel Schludi.

    The social and technological changes even within the 21st century can also lead to wildly different perceptions and experiences among players. Players in their 20s and 30s have had easy access to such modern technologies as mobile communications, the internet, and digital music their whole lives, which is not necessarily the case for older players. Going back even 25 years involves a massive shift in the availability of these technologies, making some near-contemporary larp settings almost an alien world to younger players. By contrast, older players may still recall those days and the challenges and activities associated with them, such as postal orders or cheques to send money, collect phone calls, dial-up modems, and library index cards.

    If these kinds of older technologies are to feature in a larp, designers may need to take steps to bridge the knowledge gap between younger and older players. Much like workshops explaining the social etiquette in a 1920s high society larp, there might need to be workshops for using the now obsolete technologies in retro-modern larps. A good example of this is Midsummer Disco (Germany 2023), set in the eighties, which had workshops explaining how to use some technologies of the era, such as how to use a cassette player – and how to rewind cassettes with a pencil!

    Physicality

    Player’s age has yet another impact on their play experience through their physical abilities. In school larps, such as College of Wizardry (Poland 2014), many play characters that are significantly younger than themselves. When larps have major physical elements such as sports matches, the players’ physical abilities may become a factor to consider. Can all such obstacles be cleared by imagination?

    In some larps, such as Legion: Siberian Story (Czech Republic 2014), this is clearly not an option. The physicality of marching and fighting in hostile conditions is an integral part of Legion and the physical reality of the player is the physical reality of the character (a significant challenge for this 50+ year old).

    But in other larps, imagination can be used to circumvent physical reality. In Avalon (Poland 2018), teenage characters raced to the top of a hill, fighting monsters, to capture a flag. Many of my younger co-players ran up the hill, but as a fifty-year-old player less physically capable of that feat, I instead slowly ambled up the hill. My 17-year-old character would have raced up that hill, and when asked about it later, no one disputed it when he said he had. Similarly, at Sahara (Tunisia 2020), some players did not participate in a long desert march but instead travelled to the next location via modern transport. It was agreed by all that these characters hadn’t vanished and miraculously reappeared, but had always been there with the others.

    Conclusions

    We should acknowledge that age can be a factor in play, be it because of differences in knowledge and experience or in the physical capabilities of the players. The ideal that anyone can play any role is a good aspiration, but it may not always be attainable. As a broad generalisation, it would be good to accept that older players may have more real-world experience to draw on in near-contemporary settings, whereas younger players may often be more physically capable. The ideal larp will blend the two, allowing players of all ages to combine their knowledge and experience into something greater than the individual parts.

    Ludography

    Avalon Larp Studio. Avalon. Poland, 2018.

    Carcossa Dreams. The Sisyphus. UK, 2018.

    Chaos League. Sahara. Tunisia, 2020.

    Dziobak Larp Studios. College of Wizardry. Poland, 2014.

    Edland, Tor Kjetil and Hanne Grasmo. Just A Little Lovin’. Norway, 2011.

    Hintze, Nils. Based on the art of Simon Stålenhag. Tales from the Loop. Sweden: Free League Publishing, 2017.

    On Location. Reunion. UK, 2023.

    Poltergeist LARP. Midsummer Disco. Germany, 2023.

    Rolling. Legion: Siberian Story. Czech Republic, 2014.

    Videography

    Duffer Brothers, Netflix. Stranger Things. USA, 2016.

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

    Hartford, Chris. 2024. “Experience vs Imagination – Effects of Player Age.” 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 Volodymyr Hryshchenko. Image has been cropped.

  • Designing the Designer

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    Designing the Designer

    By

    Juhana Pettersson

    “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

    By

    Beatrix Livesey-Stephens

    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

  • Readdressing Larp as Commodity: How Do We Define Value When the Customer Is Always Right?

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    Readdressing Larp as Commodity: How Do We Define Value When the Customer Is Always Right?

    By

    Usva Seregina

    At the end of 2019, I wrote an article on the commodification of larp (Seregina 2020), suggesting that larp has become a commodity and analysing the activity from a commodification point of view. The topic felt timely and sparked a lot of interesting and important discussions. In this article, I return to the topic of larp as a commodity, taking a look at it in a context that is defined by numerous crises. We are at a point in time where financial resources are becoming scarce for many, while a need for communal activities is high.

    Before delving any deeper, it is central to note that the development of larp into a commodity is, in many ways, a logical development within contemporary society, a society which largely functions around consumption-oriented logic. This forms what is commonly referred to as consumer culture (see Slater 1997; Baudrillard 1998; Bauman 2001; Cohen 2003). Hence, the commodification of larp, in itself as a development, is neither good nor bad. It merely follows the development that has become commonplace within contemporary society. In fact, commodification comes with many positive aspects. 

    For example, a commodified larp becomes more accepted and legitimised in wider society, as it takes on familiar legal and financial forms, as well as clearer producer and consumer roles. Thus, in reflecting structures common in society and taking on a financial element, larp becomes a more ‘acceptable,’ ‘worthwhile’ use of one’s time. Commodified larps also gain more streamlined production processes, as elements become optimised and repeatable. Hence, creation and production of larp can become easier and faster (for more on this, see Seregina 2020). However, it is important to be aware of what these developments do to larp as a practice in its entirety, as the positives do not come without the negatives (no matter how hard we try).

    The terms consumer and commodity can often feel cold and removed, and hence larpers often do not want to think about their beloved hobby as part of the market economy. However, ignoring the fact does not address any of the issues that the development of larp into a more commodified form brings with it, and may potentially even make them worse. While I do not believe commodification in itself is bad, I do believe that it can result in negative outcomes for our community if left unchecked. Hence, I would like to re-address the topic of larp as a commodity and reflect on what it means for larpers to become consumers. 

    Co-Creation of a Commodity

    What exactly does larp as a commodity mean? Commodification is often incorrectly equated with paying money for something, as well as with passively interacting with something. However, it is more about the form of and attitude toward a thing (Campbell 1987; Slater 1997): larp becomes a commodity, as it becomes a resource within the exchange economy. In other words, it becomes valued not for what it is, but for what capital (whatever form this may take) it provides in exchange for people engaging in it. This capital is aimed at fulfilling a want or need, and can be financial, but also cultural or social capital, such as status or experience. The latter would be more common in the context of larp.

    Following the above, co-creation or active participation does not exclude something being a commodity. Commodification rather becomes an issue of what participants (or now consumers) expect from the activity, and what their attitude toward it is. In fact, many traditional commodities are becoming co-created or gamified, as it has been shown that an actively interacting consumer is more engaged and thus more invested (for example, Oli Mould (2018) talks about the commodification of creativity overall). In that sense, larp fits perfectly into how contemporary markets are progressing.

    As I explain in my 2020 article, larp has developed into a commodity via various characteristics and circumstances, including increased media coverage, rising growth and demand, as well as inclusion of elements from the market economy (such as catering, cleaning services, etc.). The latter ties into the idea of us ‘buying back’ our leisure time in order to use our time and resources more efficiently (following Frayne 2015). In essence, many convenience commodities, such as microwave meals or cleaning services, allow us to free up the time we would normally use to engage in their creation (such as cooking or cleaning). While ‘buying back’ time allows organisers and participants of larps to focus more on the larp itself instead of all the chores that come with it, it also means that we engage less materially with the practicalities of the event, thus tying larp into consumerist norms. In other words, as we ‘make’ less of the larp ourselves and together, it becomes created for us and thus removed from us as a commodity functioning through forms and structures of consumer culture. 

    Another important aspect of how larp becomes a commodity is rooted in how we talk about it. The past years have seen us change a lot of terminology and description of larp toward a more commodified and consumerist logic. Society in general is extremely performative, in that social meanings exist merely because we have decided to collectively give them these meanings, repeating the same meanings over and over (following Austin 1962, Turner 1987). Coming from this logic, things have meaning and status and value because we actively give them that meaning and status and value. For example, something is posh or stylish only because we have collectively decided that these things are posh or stylish. Hence, when we call  larp participants “customers” or when we call sign-ups to larp “ticket purchases”, we further instill the essence of consumerism onto larp through wording it as such.  

    Multiple shopping carts stacked together
    Photo by Pixabay, Pexels

    The Customer is Always Right

    If an activity becomes approached as a commodity, its user naturally takes on a consumer or customer role. This is a role that we are extremely accustomed to in today’s society, as we are acculturated into it within consumer culture, and take it on in many contexts (such as service and shopping situations, but also governance, education, and culture). Hence, we slip into the role of a consumer very easily, without necessarily recognising it as such.

    The consumer role comes with its own preset modes of interaction with the service provider (in this case, the larp organiser), other service users (other larp participants), and the product itself (the larp). A consumer is driven by their wants and needs, and fulfills these by consuming products (Campbell 1987). While attending a larp may have a multitude of underlying goals (which I will not go into here), we could roughly sum these up as the want to have a good experience (whatever that is classified as). However, the consumer is only driven by their own needs and wants. This does not mean consumers become passive or exclusionary: as I mention above, a consumption experience can be very interactive and co-created. However, the end-goal of such an experience will always be one’s own experience, with other participants becoming a part of the background or potentially even seen as service providers along with the larp organiser. The co-creation will thus not be on equal terms, but rather as a consumer and producer, with the former holding a lot of power over the latter in terms of expectations and demands. 

    At the same time, the consumer relinquishes any responsibility over the product (following Slater 1997; Ritzer 2001; Cohen 2003). The product is created by the service provider, and hence its value is created during its production. However, the complex issue with larp is that its production and consumption are, in many ways, overlapping processes that cannot be distinguished or disentangled. We create larp as we consume it; forever an ephemeral process. As I noted in my 2020 article, in the long run, this loosening of responsibility may lead to collapse of communal larping as everyone merely focuses on their own experiences.

    In itself the consumer role is in no way problematic, as long as it does not undermine the organiser and the other players. However, one big issue I see arising is what happens when someone has a bad time. Obviously, if it’s a safety concern or another similar matter, these need to be dealt with properly by the organiser. But what happens when someone does not have an experience that has lived up to their expectations? Or they don’t feel they’ve got their money’s worth? From a commodification point of view, the organiser should be fully responsible for the consumer having a good time, yet this is not necessarily feasible in the way larp is set up now. I address this further below.

    Moreover, who will be seen as the producer? A larp organiser naturally falls into this role, even as they may not have as much power in it as a producer would traditionally. But what about the crew and the volunteers? And potentially even more active players participating alongside? This set-up may result in some players falling into the role of a service provider without actually having anything to do with the organisation of the larp, skewing power relations in dangerous ways among participants.

    Pressure to Professionalise

    Multiple stacked shopping carts
    Photo by Albin Biju.

    There has been a strong push to organise larp more professionally and to view larp organisation as work (not to be confused with labour). This is, once again, a very logical development in contemporary consumption-oriented society, in which work is the ultimate form of status and legitimisation. No matter whether we like it or not, work is how we largely define our identities and our value within contemporary capitalist society (Frayne 2015; Mould 2018). Consequently, many fields such as larp that are initially not commercialised see a movement toward ‘careerisation’ of their practices (Seregina and Weijo 2017). When something becomes work, it also becomes more productive and profitable, and hence a more legitimate use of time. Simultaneously, the product of this activity also becomes more legitimised and a valuable use of one’s resources in the eyes of others. It is important to talk about professionalisation of an activity in the context of its commodification because consumption and work are two sides of the same coin, with one pushing the other. 

    Professionalisation can be seen in a few main ways within larp. Firstly, many directly want to turn larp-organising into a job. Secondly, professionalisation emerges in higher production value and use of support services. This includes a higher level of scenery, lighting, catering, and costuming, among other things. Lastly, larp is more and more often documented and merchandised. A lot of events are photographed and sometimes even filmed, and we also see a rise in possibilities of buying add-on products like t-shirts that advertise the event and/or can be used in-game. Such elements solidify what is otherwise an ephemeral performance, making it more of a produced material entity.

    The result of professionalisation can be higher-value events, which can create amazing experiences for participants and organisers alike. The processes involved in it can further help make larp organisation easier, putting it into an easily and conveniently reproducible form. 

    At the same time, professionalisation of larp in many ways presents the activity as a commodity to those planning to attend. This means that (mostly indirectly) participants are getting the message that they should be approaching the event as a commodity, altering their expectations and attitude toward it. If larp organisation is presented as a for-profit job and larp takes on easily reproducible, mass produced characteristics, we cannot expect participants not to approach the event as something with which they have customer expectations and consumer rights. As a result, it becomes natural for the participant to focus only on their own experience and demand that the experience matches what was promised, cementing larp’s place as an element of market exchange within a capitalist system.

    Professionalisation further requires streamlining and standardisation of activities, repeatability of events (or elements of events), as well as higher larp ticket costs in order to become economically viable. The first characteristics are central for pushing down costs for the organiser in order to attempt to make a profit, but run the risk of changing the nature of larp as quite ephemeral, interpersonal events. The latter is necessary to be able to pay organisers and crew for labour that is now their work. In reality, however, organisers and crew are rarely paid a wage, especially a fair one, often because of budgeting reasons. Hence, even for-profit larps largely rely on volunteers or low-pay workers, which, in turn, creates ample possibilities for misuse of labour (as well as potential legal issues with taxation and labour laws), once again skewing power relations within the community.

    When organising a larp, it is important to reflect on how the event itself as well as the forms of production that it has involved impact larp as a community. The professionalisation of specific larp events reflects on the community as a whole, raising standards and expectations for all future events. This growth and expectations that come with it puts an immense amount of pressure onto larp organisers to provide events up to par, potentially creating organiser stress and burnout (something discussed a lot previously; see e.g., Lindve 2019, Pettersson 2022). 

    The Value of a Larp

    In the above described context, monetary value becomes extremely complicated and potentially problematic. To begin with, higher cost of a larp easily becomes interpreted as the event providing a ‘better experience’ to the larper. In a consumer culture context, higher cost is generally associated with higher value and higher demand in our society. Moreover, limited access to larp in general makes the activity a scarce commodity, immediately making it intrinsically more valuable. This results in higher expectations on personal experience: participants feel that they are investing more financial capital and hence are entitled to reap more social and cultural capital from it. 

    The issue for larp specifically in this setup is that the organiser, in the long run, has limited capacity in making sure the player’s experience is of high value, as I’ve already noted. A good larp experience can depend on a large number of ever-changing elements, including but not limited to personal investment, engagement, and preparations; other participants and their contribution; weather, terrain, the venue, and associated travel. In a professionalised set-up, the service provider becomes responsible for all of this despite having little control over many elements that feed into a good experience. 

    Moreover, because larpers as consumers relinquish much of their responsibility over the event, they are more likely to focus on their own experience rather than aid others’. Hence, the inherent value that we gain from larp in some ways can be seen to actually go down in a commodified form because a good experience in larp largely relies on the interaction among and support of other larpers. In focusing solely on our own experiences, we expect more, but also give less. Other larpers easily become seen as a part of the commodity we are consuming, while organisers as well as any crew, volunteers, and NPCs will become seen as service providers.

    Financial Inaccessibility

    A single shopping cart in shadows
    Photo by Evgeni Lazarev.

    With raised costs of larping, a big issue that arises is financial inaccessibility. This is an extremely difficult subject, especially in light of everything else discussed, such as fair labour, and thus easily becomes the elephant in the room. Moreover, we, in many ways, have little control over rising costs, as overall rise in cost of living undoubtedly has its effects on larp organisation as well, reflecting in the prices of venues and catering to name a few things. Yet because any inaccessibility is viewed as bad, we seem to steer away from this conversation as a community. 

    It is important to stress that a costlier larp should not in any way be seen as bad. Most of the time, the attendance costs are merely covering any investment organisers have put in, which is only fair to ask for. However, if someone’s choice of whether or not to attend a larp is mainly or even solely dependent on the costs associated with that larp, that is, indeed, textbook financial inaccessibility. And we should not ignore that.

    Many support systems already exist for financial inaccessibility, such as discounted and tiered tickets or payment in installments. These are definitely helpful and make larp more accessible to those with lower means. However, costly larps will remain costly (and most likely become even costlier); oftentimes even discounted tickets remain inaccessible. Sadly, there is little we can do about high costs, as I already noted. What we can do and what we need to do is be able to discuss these issues.

    In line with a commodity point of view, a more expensive larp easily becomes viewed as better. Following this, those attending costlier, larger, better advertised, and thus ‘higher value’ larps can easily become seen as ‘better larpers,’ which creates problematic hierarchies and power structures within the community. Larps with higher production value also come with more hype, more discussion, and more coverage in media and social media, and thus, inadvertently, more social and cultural capital. Simply put, those who go to costlier larps and those who create costlier larps accrue more capital within the community (be it cultural, social, financial). Thus, while the fact that we pay more for larp does not directly make it a commodity, the fact that we reap more capital from costlier larps and use that capital within our community does.

    At the same time, we see a certain subsection of larpers becoming priced out of the activity. More and more people are having to limit how many events they attend, or even stop going to larps entirely, due to financial reasons. We also see more and more of those from lower economic strata crewing and volunteering at events. While this is a great way to make an event financially accessible, if these roles are seen as service provider roles that attendees can demand from and take their frustrations out on, it will further skew power relations among larpers. Hence, financial inaccessibility runs the risk of creating wildly different ways people with different economic means can access larp, and they may be unable to access it at all.

    Concluding Thoughts

    Following my brief analysis of larp as a commodified activity, I’d like to wrap this article up with a few thoughts and suggestions. I want to begin by reiterating what I stressed in my 2020 article. Commodification in itself is not good or bad. However, we cannot reap its positive qualities without its negative characteristics, as many seem to try. Hence, we should question why we structure things the way we do – as larp organisers and as larp participants. As organisers, we should consider: what kinds of audiences do we reach, and what audiences will be able to access our larp? How are participants viewing the larp? How do they view their own role as part of the larp, and how do they view others attending the larp? What does commodification of larp bring to the event specifically? Is it valuable to you? And to the players attending, as well as the wider larp community? 

    As participants, we should similarly reflect on our role within the event. How am I taking part in the larp? How am I taking into consideration the organisers? The crew? Other players? What do I want to get out of the experience, how am I obtaining that, and who do I think is responsible for that?

    We should also reflect on why we are pushing for professionalisation and thus commodification of larp. What is the purpose of this? Is it to create better events? Is it to gain legitimisation within wider society? Is it to create jobs?

    Two shopping carts, one with red details, and one with blue, side by side.
    Photo by Sora Shimazaki.

    In 2020, I noted a fear of fragmentation of our community. Today, I definitely see more economic, social, and cultural inequalities within larp, as well as a growing divide between high cultural capital and low cultural capital events. I think we need to push hard for giving value to different kinds of larp, independent of their cost and production value or ‘type’ of larp (be it so-called Nordic larp, boffer larp, international larp, or localised larp groups, among various other types). We are running the risk of creating a hierarchy of larps in terms of what are seen to be ‘better’ larps than others: something that, at this point, often coincides with the market and production value of the event. In other words, costlier larps are currently associated with being higher culture and thus better than lower culture, cheaper larps.

    Along with this divide, we bring growing class differences and potential skewed power relations among those attending and those who are organising; among those attending different types of events; among those who are attending on different terms (be it different ticket types; as volunteers, crew, players). We are already a very white, very middle-class activity, but with the cost of living crisis we are becoming even more so. Hence, it is critical to be aware of, reflect on, and aim to address these issues in organising larp. What’s more, all of the discussed issues will further tie into the acculturation of new larpers. What kind of community are we welcoming them into, and what kinds of roles will they be learning to take on?

    Reflecting on one’s roles and actions can be difficult, especially for topics of commodification, which come to us quite naturally and unintentionally, yet can feel alien and cold, with people tending to push away or disassociate from them. But denying these issues does not remove consumption as a central structuring force of contemporary society. Its ideology remains, reinforced by our own actions. The aim of the reflexive actions I am suggesting is not to judge anyone, but rather to get larpers to understand their own choices when engaging in larping. Perhaps the reflection will not change anything, perhaps it will only change things a little, and perhaps it will change someone’s approach entirely. But I believe that by being conscious and aware of what we are doing as well as how our actions affect the activity of larping and the larp community as a whole, we will create a more inclusive and communal entity. 

     

    Bibliography

    Philip Auslander (2008): Liveness: Performance in a Mediatized Culture. London: Routledge.

    L.J. Austin (1962): How to do Things with Words: The William James Lectures delivered at Harvard University in 1955. Eds. J.O. Urmson and Marina Sbisa. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

    Jean Baudrillard (1998): The Consumer Society. London: Sage.

    Zygmunt Bauman (2001): ”Consuming life.” Journal of Consumer Culture. 1 (1): 9-29.

    Pierre Bourdieu (1984): Distinction: A Social Critique of the Judgement of Taste. Cambridge: Harvard University Press. 

    Colin Campbell (1987): The Romantic Ethic and the Spirit of Modern Consumerism. Oxford: Basil Blackwell Ltd.

    Lizabeth Cohen (2003): A Consumers’ Republic: The Politics of Mass Consumption in Postwar America. New York: Knopf.

    David Frayne (2015): The Refusal to Work: The Theory and Practice of Resistance to Work. London: Zed Books.

    Douglas P. Holt (1998): “Does Cultural Capital Structure American Consumption?” Journal of Consumer Research. 25 (1) 1-25. 

    Petra Lindve (2019): “How to Take Care of Your Organiser,” Nordic larp. https://nordiclarp.org/2019/03/22/how-to-take-care-of-your-organizer/, retrieved 3.9.2023. 

    Maria Mies (2014): Patriarchy and Accumulation On A World Scale. London: Bloomsbury.

    Oli Mould (2018): Against Creativity. London: Verso Books.

    Dan Slater (1997): Consumer Culture and Modernity. Oxford: Polity Press.

    Juhana Pettersson (2022): “Basics of Efficient Larp Production,” Nordic larp. https://nordiclarp.org/2022/01/22/basics-of-efficient-larp-production/ retrieved 1.9.2023

    George Ritzer (2001): Explorations in the sociology of consumption: Fast food, credit cards and casinos. London: Sage.

    Richard Schechner (1982): The End of Humanism: Writings on Performance. New York: PAJ Publications.

    Anastasia Seregina and Henri A. Weijo (2016): “Play at any cost: How cosplayers produce and sustain their ludic communal consumption experiences.” Journal of Consumer Research. 44(1): 139-159.

    Usva Seregina (2020): “On the Commodification of Larp,” Nordic larp. https://nordiclarp.org/2019/12/17/on-the-commodification-of-larp/, retrieved 1.8.2023

    Victor Turner (1987): The Anthropology of Performance. New York: PAJ Publications.

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

    Seregina, Usva. 2024. “Readdressing Larp as Commodity: How Do We Define Value When the Customer Is Always Right?” 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 Sora Shimazaki.

  • Together at Last: Romantic Paradox in a Not-Quite-Dystopian Future

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    Together at Last: Romantic Paradox in a Not-Quite-Dystopian Future

    By

    Sarah Lynne Bowman

    This article is the third in a series on Larping Intimacy and Relationships.

    Content advisory: Dysfunctional relationships, domestic violence, murky consent, grooming, virginity, incest, pregnancy and parenting, potential spoilers

    Last week, I had the pleasure of participating in Together At Last, February 15-18, 2024 in Berg en Dal, the Netherlands. Together at Last is a larp focused on romantic play by Reflections Larp Studio, designed and organized by Karolina Soltys, Patrik Bálint, David Owen, Lu Larpová, Marie-Lucie Genet, and Phil D’Souza. Based on the Black Mirror episode “Hang the DJ” and, to a lesser extent, the film The Lobster, the larp is set in a governmental facility in which volunteers are matchmade three times in order to find their Perfect Match. The larp originated online during the pandemic and was run 15 times as Together Forever, then transitioned to in-person play for 4 runs, with 2 additional runs planned for 2025. This run of the larp had 40 players, including 4 organizer-run characters.

    Photo of two people in hazmat suitsThe original setting made use of the actual pandemic and social isolation conditions players experienced to maximum effect; in this near-future scenario, humans cannot leave the house or socialize with others outside of hazmat suits without facing instant death from the mutated virus unless living in the same household as a family. Once a person decided to leave home, they must live alone, as proximity was too risky. As physical contact and companionship was deemed necessary by the government for human thriving, the Together Forever program was designed in order to allow people to date. At the end of the program, the system decides which characters are matched together, as well as which characters will remain unmatched. The matched participants are married in a perfunctory mass ceremony. Participants must choose to marry their “forever match” assigned by the algorithm at the end of the program; otherwise, they forfeit their right to ever go through the program again. Their alternatives were to beg this person to reject them or to run off into the wilderness to become part of the Banished, a group of people living in dangerous conditions outside of society. Divorce was possible long after the match was made, although that was deemphasized in play.

    A once-per-lifetime vaccine giving 3 day immunity neutralized the virus enough to allow the participants to temporarily be physically co-present with multiple people, which for most characters meant the first time they had ever experienced physical intimacy in-person instead of VR; in other words, even if VR technology had become advanced in this near-future world, most characters were physically virginal for all intents and purposes. This chip was “new,” as previous versions of the program occurred online. In practice, this meant that play was punctuated by the strangeness of being physically co-present with so many people, able to go outside without a hazmat suit for the first time, etc. We actually started the game with a hazmat suit and mask on, waiting in line to be sanitized and processed, before we could change into our first “date” clothes and experience our first match. This contrast between the sterile government facility and the nightlife vibe was also emphasized in our costuming requirements for daytime, in which we were only permitted to wear white, grey, or light pastel comfortable clothes, including the optional Together at Last t-shirt with the program’s logo.

    People in hazmat suits bathed in blue lights
    The sanitization process. Photo by Marlies. Image has been cropped.

    The characters were jointly designed by the players and the organizers through an extensive in-game and off-game online form. The majority of the character’s personality arose from player inputs, with the relationships designed for us to link these disparate characters together. My character, Hope Novak, was one of the few who had experienced the program before, having been successfully matched for twelve years before her husband died. 

    While much could be said about the design of Together at Last, this article will focus upon several tensions I noticed — some which are embedded in the design and some I consider byproducts of it — which I will label paradoxes for dramatic effect. To be clear, none of these paradoxes are bugs of this brilliantly-designed larp, but rather features when exploring the difficult nuances of interpersonal intimacy. I enjoyed myself immensely at the larp and had incredibly powerful experiences with my co-players, in part because of the brilliant design. That being said, I think foregrounding these tensions is important due to the sensitive nature of the subject matter, especially when discussing a larp framed as aiming for play on a spectrum between absurdist comedy to realism to melodrama.

    Photo of person in black on a couch
    Photo by Bianca Eckert.

    The Paradoxes of Consent, Rejection, and Monogamy

    Like many Nordic-inspired international larps, Together at Last normalized queer play, as many of the matches would end up being queer in terms of gender and sexuality. Such a rule is not controversial in this play community, as many players identify as queer and/or polyamorous, or at least identify as allies. However, diegetically polyamory was not permitted in the program and was stigmatized, although the designers explained afterward that the intention was for this stigma to arise from logistical reasons based on the “laws of virology” rather than the “oppressive society.”

    As players can sometimes experience discrimination due to physical appearance in such games (van der Heij 2021), we were not allowed to play upon lack of physical desire for the other person, but were instead given an impressive list of other playable reasons to reject them. This list ended up super helpful as a personal steering and mutual calibration tool, to the point that I think an article about “how to reject a character in a mutually beneficial way for players” is warranted. Furthermore, the larp was explicitly framed as not erotic (Grasmo and Stenros 2022), meaning that we were not allowed to be nude or engage in overly physical play during sex scenes. While players could ultimately choose their level of contact, the organizers recommended calibrating different representational modes of physical intimacy, e.g., using stage kissing and exaggerated movements; fading to black; or discussing what happens. Ideally, the scenes would be short and obvious, letting others clearly know what happened so they could react dramatically.

    Image of two people posing for a camera
    Photo by Lea-Maria Anger.

    Diegetically, in-game pregnancy was not possible due to contraceptives in the water supply, although in my run, one character was permitted to join the larp pregnant somehow by another character. Instead, the government would assign a certain number of babies, which would be vat-grown and delivered via drone to the married couple’s home at some point in the future. This conceit allowed play on sexuality to be a bit more free. Instead of traditional conception, the algorithm determined if a character was permitted to have children based upon their behavior in an in-game parenting workshop; they were assessed based upon their care for a pretend baby made of flour over several hours, among other factors. 

    Furthermore, during each date, each match was made to fill out a form in which they discussed important topics related to marriage, including how to decorate their small government-provided apartment, how many children to have, what types of sexual kinks they would like to explore, etc. Diegetically, these forms all contributed to the “data” that led to the final “perfect match” selection. Thus, while engagement with childrearing was technically optional in-game, in practice, the theme became pervasive throughout the larp, e.g., topically in the forms, visually with play around the flour babies.

    Photo of two people in makeup and black clothing

    The larp emphasized consent-based play and consistent calibration. We engaged in bullet-time consent (Koljonen 2016a) for physical play and were encouraged to calibrate liberally off-game with other participants. Workshop time was devoted to calibrating with each of our three matches, which was extremely important, because we spent the better part of an entire day playing closely with each of them in turn. However, once runtime was happening, I would have preferred to have time reserved for calibration with matches before each date off-game rather than relying on ad hoc side discussions. 

    While we had other social connections and plots, we were under instruction in-game and off-game to make sure we interacted with our dates the majority of the time (80%). This rule was in place explicitly to avoid an issue that sometimes arises in larp: some players will ignore romantic plotlines that are central to play because they are not attracted off-game to the player, which can lead to a terrible experience for the other person. Furthermore, players should avoid filling up their “dance card” with known relations ahead of time and should be open to playing with unknown players, especially when the larp relies upon it (Tolvanen 2022). This principle was especially important in Together at Last, as we did not sign up in pairs, a recommended practice in other larps featuring dyadic play, see for example Helicon (2024), Daemon (2021-), Baphomet (2015-), etc.

    Photo of two people embracing and holding a pretend flour baby
    Parenting class.

    However, consent becomes a bit tricky in situations like these. Yes, we technically opted-in to playing closely on romance with three people — likely off-game strangers. But chemistry can be a difficult thing to predict even when not considering physical or emotional desire (Nøglebæk 2016, 2023); for example, incompatible playstyles can be a bad fit in such close, mostly-dyadic play (Bowman 2024). We are essentially responsible for another person’s positive experience in ways that can feel a bit like labor (Koulu 2020), which is not an inherently bad thing for me: I often prefer to play characters with a support role (Fido-Fairfax 2024, in press), which is why I played one of the game’s few in-game coach/counselors. 

    But that responsibility for another’s play experience is quite heavy especially when engaging with romantic and sexual intimacy. In such games, we expose some of the most vulnerable parts of ourselves to others, even through the alibi of the character. We may think the alibi is strong for many reasons — trust among co-players, a rather light-hearted and sometimes absurd setting, strong distinction between player and character personality, etc. But the emotions we experience are often all-too-familiar, and may have spectres of previous relationship memories attached to them, reemerging unbidden before, during, or after play. From a transformative play perspective, these emergences can be viewed as positive, in that they show us areas that need healing in ourselves (Hugaas and Bowman 2019), but not everyone attends leisure larps interested in or prepared for intensive personal transformation.

    Emotions around rejecting others or being rejected are especially potent and are inherent to this setting. Needs for love and belonging and fears of ostracization drive much of human behavior as matters of survival, and are especially sensitive with romantic and sexual relationships. These themes were inherently present in the larp, whether or not each individual player experienced them or not.  

    Photo of two people in white sitting on the floor, one with a head on the other's shoulder
    Polaroid photo by Karolina Soltys.

    The first date was meant to feel like an evening. Then, the chip went into “Turbo mode,” meaning Dates 2 and 3, which were only one day in this run, felt to the character like a several month relationship. This design combined with the enforced monogamy meant that rejection would likely happen in-game on some level. For example, while we could still pine for our last match, diegetically we risked being reported and kicked out of the program if we did not adhere to the rules, such as not talking to our exes without a “chaperone.” While off-game, we were encouraged to bend the rules, in practice, this rule meant that at least some of the time, many of our characters were likely to feel insecure or rejected as we watched our potential “perfect match” playing closely with others.

    The angst around these feelings was also tied to the fact we had no actual power to choose who we married in the end or whether we got married at all, leaving our fate up to the “algorithm” and for us to “trust the process.” Interestingly, as players, we had much more influence over the outcome than our characters; we were instructed to fill in calibration forms at the end of each match, sharing our in-game feelings for our current match (and others at the program). We were also permitted to share our personal desires for an ending as an off-game request; some players wanted a happy ending, others wanted a terrible match, and others let the organizers decide the ending. This last option seemed the most risky to me, as unsuspecting players might be sideswiped by emotional (Montola 2010) and romantic bleed (Boss 2007; Waern 2010; Bowman 2015; Hugaas 2022) from past triggers or current desires dashed. 

    Person in pink wig and shirt holding a sign that says love next to a red heart shaped balloon
    The HelpBot.

    Furthermore, the game setting itself was inherently murky consent-wise. While were instructed not to play on sexual violence of any kind, there were in-game consequences for rejecting our current match. Yes, technically we all opted-in to the program, but we had literally no other choice if we wanted to live with another person. We could live alone or with our families, some of which we wrote to be highly dysfunctional and even abusive. We were not required to engage in sexuality with our matches, but we would be forced by the program to live with them for a certain length of time before divorcing, or be alone. And since polyamory was forbidden, we were expected to somehow make it work with this person. Off-game, this rule was here in part to provide angst for the characters, who would likely have feelings for multiple people, but also to try to prevent the players from solving their character’s dilemmas in this not-quite-dystopia by becoming poly. The HelpBot, a non-sentient robot who helped run the program, who played by one of the organizers, would inform us that 97.5% of matches ended up “perfect”… even if it took 10 years for the couples to realize it.

    My character Hope was a 45 year-old intimacy coach who made her living by teaching people ways to connect in online environments. She also had the visceral memory of living harmoniously with someone for much of her recent life; indeed, her “perfect match.” However, Hope was also polyamorous, which was highly frowned upon in this setting, meaning she was one of the few people critical of what she viewed to be compulsory monogamy forced upon the program participants. Indeed, one of the reasons her previous husband, Paul, was “perfect” was that he supported her online relationships with other people and provided stability while she was on the turbulent rollercoaster of dating.

    The game had an overarching Panopticon feel, as all interactions were fed through our chips to the system as “data.” Our matches were read over a loudspeaker by a robot voice each time they occurred, with dramatic pauses for us to react within our Support Groups, which were set up for us by the program. Almost all of us were matched with one or more exes. For Hope, this practice was initially problematic, as her ex had left because she wanted a monogamous relationship. While we were instructed by our character sheet and the rules to be excited to see these exes at the program, Hope immediately worried if this forced interaction would be unwelcome, which thankfully it was not. 

    Furthermore, Hope found out in-game that her ex was almost twenty years younger than her and a virgin (like most characters), while my character had previously been married and had many online relationships. (Note that before the game, I asked the organizers to be paired with players closer to my age to try to avoid these issues, which thankfully was arranged). This fact led to extensive discussion between our characters about the ethics of such a relationship, a conversation also echoed in Hope’s second match, Serena, who Hope believed was her soul mate. Serena had been married before but had never experimented with polyamory. In both cases, my character’s polyamory could be experienced as non-consensual non-monogamy by the other characters, leading to rocky emotional waters in-game and discomfort for me off-game.

    Person in wedding dress and veil with arm around another person.
    Siblings preparing for the mass wedding. Photo by Linnéa Cecilia.

    Another oddity was the inclusion of family members in the setting. As players, we were expressly directed not to engage in incest. Yet, in practice, to engage in group activities such as the sex education, burlesque, and neo-tantra workshops (which I ran), characters were asked to consider sexual themes in close proximity with their parents, siblings, or cousins. On the plus side, this factor also led to deep play around protectiveness and family-building; two of the Dates featured a Meet the Family meal, in which various configurations of participants found themselves testing the waters of each new family constellation. 

    Finally, while the setting enforced monogamy, it was also paradoxically a polyamorous — or at least serial monogamist — environment. As an intimacy specialist, Hope found this setup to be irresponsible at best and sadistic at worst. Not only were characters forced into relationships with their previous exes, but they also had new exes after every match all together in the same space. They were forbidden diegetically from openly loving or desiring others, although of course transgressions of these rules were off-game encouraged. No one had any time to process the relationship they just left and were forced into another relationship immediately, a recipe for drama and dysfunction — which, of course, makes for excellent larp fodder. 

    Inherent to this design was the “Singles Night” embedded in the program after Date 2, in which characters were temporarily single. While they were discouraged from interacting with their exes, of course this rule was repeatedly broken and new connections were formed, many of which did not align with Date 3 the next day. Hope interpreted this more licentious setup as entirely intentional on the part of the program — any connections that night fed the algorithm more “data” regarding who might actually make a good match and how characters might behave given liberty. 

    Photo of two people
    Serena and Hope before the wedding.

    Thus, the compulsory monogamy of the program was challenged at each stage of the process in fascinating ways. Regardless of how each character felt about their previous matches, they were likely to have strong feelings of some kind that caused complications in the future relationships. Hope viewed these complications as a test of her integrity as an openly polyamorous person: could Hope have compersion and be happy for her soul mate if she fell deeply in love, had incredible intimate experiences, or ended up married to someone else? Wrestling with this inner dilemma was intense enough for me to feel that I had not “solved” the larp through poly as a player.

    When the robot voice announced who Hope would marry — thankfully, her second match and “soul mate,” Serena — the joy Hope felt was immediately tempered when she considered the feelings of her two exes in the room, including her third match, who also happened to be in her Support Group watching her reaction. Fortunately, the two had come to a mutual understanding, but still the drama of the moment was high for all characters. Furthermore, Hope had difficulty feeling joy when her other loved ones in the room were visibly distressed by their matches. The Group Wedding final scene was bittersweet, as the matched characters lined up in their fancy wedding clothes for the mass ritual, while the Unmatched watched on in their hazmat suits, preparing for more time physically separated from intimacy with others. Conversely, some  characters were devastated by their pairings, yearning instead to be with someone else.

    Again, this complicated ending was engineered for maximum larp drama, and even steered toward by many of the players to get their desires met for their version of good play (Pettersson 2021). 

    The Paradoxes of Physicality, Tone, and Genre

    A game like Together at Last is difficult to classify in terms of traditional larp genres. While we the genres of romantic comedy and drama are well-known in film, such genres have yet to be established fully in larp. In part, this limitation is due to taboos historically in more traditional play communities around romantic, sexual, and physical play, which often lead play groups to deny  acknowledging that romantic bleed is a natural phenomenon that can happen to anyone (Bowman 2013). Even in the Nordic community, larps focused on oppression dynamics are far more common than settings focused entirely on romance, to the point where the designers had to explicitly signpost on the website to manage player expectations (Koljonen 2016a) that Together at Last: 

    is a story about attempting to have romantic relationships with a variety of people, some better suited to you than others, about growing as a person and looking for true love, whatever that means. It is not intended to be ‘misery porn,’ though there may be some difficult themes in the character backstories (e.g. depression, bullying, emotionally abusive parents). (Reflections Larp Studio, 2024)

    That is not to say that larps centered upon romance do not exist; notable exceptions are Regency-based larps such as Fortune and Felicity (Harder 2017; Kemper 2017) and many UK freeforms, but rather that they are not nearly as common, and thus the play culture surrounding them is not fully solidified in terms of conventions around physicality and tone. Therefore, I would say that romance-based larp is an emerging genre — one that is developing alongside erotic larp, but is not necessarily synonymous, just as sexual and romantic attraction do not always coexist (Wood and D 2021). I would say JD Lade’s Listen 2 Your Heart (Bowman 2023) also fits the romantic genre, whereas larps like Just a Little Lovin’ (2012-) or Helicon (2024) may or may not depending on the way the characters are written and enacted.

    Photo of a person sitting on a couch, with another person on the floor embracing their wig.
    Former members of the Banished reintegrating into the main society through the program. Photo by Marlies.

    As a developing genre, norms need to be established and made clear by the organizers about what the game is and is not. Otherwise, players tend to rely on their larp muscle memory (Bowman 2017), unconsciously driving play toward genre expectations that are more familiar to them, or inserting genre conventions that were not intended as themes. This tendency is not in itself necessarily a bad thing, but it can lead to wildly different expectations of play, interpretations of content, and spreading of themes that were not necessarily intended by the designers. For example, as I have described with Listen 2 Your Heart (Bowman 2023), the last minute addition of vampires to an otherwise romantic game might lead some to find the content appealing, whereas others might find it troubling (e.g., Edward’s problematic behavior in Twilight). 

    As mentioned above, at Together at Last, we were instructed to play along a spectrum of absurd comedy, realism, and melodrama. However, I noticed people bringing in conventions from the gothic horror and noir detective genres, which caused a bit of cognitive dissonance for me. For example, behavior that might be gritty and normative in a noir film (or even in a BDSM context) might be considered abusive in a light romance context without calibration. A normal reaction to psychological terror in a gothic horror book may look like a psychotic break in another context, something my counselor-type character found especially concerning. In both cases, I was able to successfully calibrate with the players in question, which was a relief, but the experiences were jarring. It can also be difficult to tell if such actions were fully calibrated off-game with other players involved, which can lead to concern, especially when role-players are very immersed in the drama and convincing. We were encouraged to break game to check in with other players, but I found myself wishing we had workshopped the Okay Check-In (Brown 2016) or something similar to practice in an embodied fashion.

     I often noted what I could only describe as “hate walking”: characters experiencing something emotionally upsetting and hate walking away up and down the halls, sometimes in packs, with one or more characters hate-walking alongside as emotional support. Of course, larp is a physical activity, and such behavior added to the dynamism of the environment, but it also added a sense of volatility. At the afterparty, the organizers shared that this run was particularly “dark,” with the previous one ending up far more “wholesome.” I suspect part of the shifting dynamics between larp runs has to do with the player-written characters, as different inserting kinds of content can radically impact the game, i.e., the domino effect (Bowman 2017). 

    Interestingly, I have noticed that these romantic larps that have been run several times tend to develop a devoted following, especially if the setting allows for a unique experience each time the game is played. Both Listen 2 Your Heart and Together at Last had an active Discord before, during, and after the game. Such channels lead to an intriguing blend of in-game and off-game light-hearted banter and pre-game play (Svanevik and Brind 2016) that often impacts dynamics in-game. The character sheets were all transparent, meaning we could read them before play, leading some players to have a strong in- and off-game familiarity with all of the characters; some even seemed to ship some duos over others coming into the game, meaning they had preferences for who should end up together and not. The Together at Last Discord was active many months before the larp and though I could not participate in it due to time constraints, I found it oddly reassuring to see people connecting so excitedly around larp. The Discord also became a needed lifeline after play, as we emerged from this 3-day experience back into life (see e.g., Bjärstorp and Ragnerstam 2023). Now, in the post-larp transition, it feels good to continue to be connected to my co-players.

    Diegetically, the Discord was used in interesting ways as well. We all had our own in-game social media timeline upon which people could post, as well as several channels for special interests our characters would have had online, e.g., simulators for farming or raising AI children. One of the reasons this run was particularly intense was that many of the characters were celebrities, so actions that happened in-game would become news stories on Discord, thus raising the stakes. The organizers also used the Discord to communicate key logistical things that we were expected to do, such as filling out the forms. Many players fluidly switched between the online engagement on their phones and the in-person play, but I found it difficult not to get sucked into my off-game responsibilities, so I used it sparingly until after the game. Ultimately, the larp was a paradoxical hybrid of virtual and physical, especially considering the newness of physicality compared to the relative comfort the characters had with virtual encounters. 

    In-game celebrities made for an active Discord with extensive online play.
    In-game celebrities made for an active Discord with extensive online play.

    Romantic Realism

    I appreciated that Together at Last made space for happy endings for players who wanted to have that experience (as I did). I also really enjoy being part of the ongoing online community around these intense romantic larps. I have had some deep and potent scenes, as well as debriefs, with the players. I feel very lucky to have been a part of these experiences. Each larp had moments of brilliance in its design, leading to a feeling of safety when playing with these emotionally fraught themes.

    That being said, after each of the larps in this series, I keep wondering what it might look like to play a multi-day romantic larp focused entirely on a realistic exploration of healthy intimacy. I have played several short Nordic freeform scenarios on romantic relationships, although they usually focus on issues of breakups (En kærlighedshistorie, Ellemand and Nilsson 2012), infidelity (Under My Skin, Boss 2010), and other critical issues rather than on trying to develop and maintain a functioning loving relationship. I realize that content might be boring for some players, but in my view, even relatively healthy relationships have plenty of inherent conflict to work through — for example, insecure attachment styles or trauma recovery. 

    Photo of two people embracing
    Hope and Serena.

    If larps help us develop skills in a deeply embodied way, which I believe they are capable of doing, what are we practicing when we return to dysfunction as a source of drama? What lessons are we experiencing in our bodies about love in times of conflict? What catharsis is happening? And what takeaways can we distill from these dynamics that we can infuse with our daily lives afterward, whether as cautionary tales or breakthroughs, our own intimate relationships, or our relationship with our own vulnerable, human hearts?  

    Together at Last

    Designed and organized by: Karolina Soltys, Patrik Bálint, David Owen, Lu Larpová, Marie-Lucie Genet, and Phil D’Souza

    Cost: 300€

    Location: Berg en Dal, the Netherlands

    Players: 40 

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    Cover photo: Polaroid by Karolina Soltys. Image has been cropped.