Nordic Larp

Tag: Opinion

  • What Does it Mean When Sex is Sexy?

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    What Does it Mean When Sex is Sexy?

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    Disclaimer: The opinions expressed herein are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of Nordiclarp.org or any larp community at large.

    Sex! Isn’t it great? And a significant and thought-provoking part of human experience. Interesting because of the effects it has on people; dramatic because of the emotional stories that can be woven around it; fun because it’s (usually) enjoyable, and we’re all grown-ups here, aren’t we?

    Larping succubi. Photo by flickr user danielle_blue Larping succubi. Photo by flickr user danielle_blue

    If you’re designing a larp about any aspect of human experience that’s not entirely abstract, and you’re working in anything like the Nordic tradition((It’s different in the US and UK traditions: and maybe in other countries as well, we don’t know.)), there’s a good chance that you’ll be thinking about the possibility for characters to engage in sexual activity of some sort. And, because this is a larp rather than a sex holiday, you’ll be thinking about what sort of technique(s) to use to represent different types of activity. Even in the most permissive of larp cultures, fully-indexical wysiwyg((What You See Is What You Get – ie. direct representation.)) dkwddk((Du Kannst Was Du Darstellen Kannst – ie. direct action.)) sex would generally be thought of as a bit extreme.

    So, then, there’s a whole spectrum of different techniques and meta-techniques available out there, in extant successful larps, for representing sexual activity – from flirtation up to various different modes of coition.

    Meta or Not?

    A brief digression. There’s a distinction here between diegetic representational techniques – where the players are doing something that is actually how their characters engage in sexual activity, but which has been designed to be different from the way normal humans do – and meta-techniques – which are in some way abstracted representations of sexual activity. So for example if you use Ars amandi as a way of representing your characters engaging in sexual intercourse, that’s a meta-technique. But if caressing each other’s arms and shoulders is actually how these characters have sex – as in Mellan himmel och hav – then that’s a diegetic technique. Your choice which you want to use! From the point of view of this argument, it doesn’t matter much: holding someone’s hand is holding someone’s hand, whether it’s diegetic or not.

    Okay Then, Back to the Spectrum

    We are going to argue that the most important thing about how you’re going to represent sex is: how sexy do you want it to be? So, as Kat Jones described in a talk((Jones, K. C. 2016. ‘Touching on Taboos: Exploring Sexuality and Intimacy Through Larp’, keynote address at Living Games Conference 2016. https://youtu.be/Whk-gsw3zFk [accessed 26 July 2016].)) at Living Games Conference, it might involve two players dropping out of the larp together for 15 minutes and killing time somehow in a part of the play space where the other players can’t see them: when they rejoin the larp, it is considered that they have had sex (in some way that’s unimportant to define in detail). That’s at the ‘not very sexy’ end of the spectrum.

    • Slightly sexier: the players sit aside together and agree, out-of-character, what sexual activity their characters are going to engage in. This is then decreed to have happened, without any attempt at actually representing it.
    • Slightly sexier still: the players hold hands and gaze into each other’s eyes while doing the above.
    • More sexy: they stroke each other’s arms and shoulders, or other not-generally-thought-of-as-erogenous zones, either schematically (me caressing you like this represents this particular sexual act) or just generally.
    • Also more sexy (in some ways but not in others): players agree on the sexual activity that’s going to happen, then play it out using a prop wooden phallus rather than making any actual sexual contact.
    • Potentially much more sexy: players use a red–yellow–green safety system, whereby they can represent any level of sexual activity by making ever closer and more involving physical contact, until one of them decides that’s enough.

    Perhaps you’re thinking here “Hold on a minute – holding hands, gazing into eyes, stroking arms and shoulders, that’s not sexy!” Well… maybe it hasn’t been for you, with the people who you’ve so far done that with in larp. But think: if you’re doing that with your real-life partner, then it’s a level of foreplay. Some people who you larp with, you will find attractive, whether you want to or not: or they may find you attractive. In that situation, there are no non-erogenous zones.

    From the 2014 run of Just a Little Lovin'. Photo by the organizers, from a talk at Prolog 2015. From the 2014 run of Just a Little Lovin’. Photo by the organizers, from a talk at Prolog 2015.

    But Why Would You Actually Want It to Be Sexy?

    Well, here are a few of the possible reasons:

    • More immersive: the closer that player actions can be to character actions – ie. the less abstract the representation – the less it breaks immersion. If your character is doing something sexy (or painful, or joyful, or angry, or whatever) then having something close to the same experience yourself as a player will help you feel your character’s feelings more closely and intensely.
    • More aesthetically satisfying: using a non-sexy technique to represent sex is generally pretty clumsy. It involves people dropping out of the game, it may involve elision of time, it may involve people coming back into the game not looking anything like they’ve just been having sex… and so on. If you pride yourself on the representation level of your larp, non-sexy sex is understandably unappealing.
    • More convincing and authentic: if your body is feeling genuine sexiness-related hormones and endorphins coursing around it, you’ll find it easier and more natural to relate to the person who is causing those as your sexual partner in the larp.
    • More ‘hardcore’: if you’re aiming for representation of ‘unfun’ sexual activity, involving suffering, coercion and other grimness, then using authentically sex-related physicality can sometimes make it more impactful than abstraction could.
    • More fun: what’s not to like about sexiness? People enjoy it! We are all adults here, and it’s not doing anyone any harm, as long as it’s all fully consented.

    So What’s Wrong with That, Then?

    Maybe nothing! But we would like to suggest that sexy sex in larp may not always be an unalloyed good thing. Not because we are repressed and joyless Puritans((Mo was brought up that way, it’s true, but he’s been doing a fairly good job of shaking it off.)) – but because we think there’s a need to be thoughtful about what you’re asking of participants, which isn’t always being addressed.

    Touchy Culture

    As larp becomes more international, larpers from a wide range of different cultures are becoming involved. We wonder if there is sometimes an unexamined assumption that being comfortable with touch, and happy to accept it as without actual sexual meaning – as is common in some European cultures – is in some significant way more progressive and enlightened than the caution around touch that’s present in other cultures. And that accordingly, players from those other cultures – or players who don’t identify with that aspect of their home culture – should learn to power through their discomfort; or else should just be prepared to exclude themselves from larps that are going to involve touch?

    Now if your larp is entirely designed around skin-on-skin contact, that’s one thing. But not many are… Much more common is that a player could comfortably go through a whole larp avoiding skin-on-skin contact, other than when it comes to use of a sex technique or meta-technique.

    Larp Is Not a Bubble

    Participants in larp also have an existence outside it, which will include loved ones of one kind or another – including sexual partners. Now, of course, there are many scenarios where partners are entirely happy with people engaging in sexytimes activity with others while on larp, for example:

    • There is no partner.
    • Relationship is an open one.
    • Partner is happy with ‘what happens on larp, stays on larp’.
    • Partner doesn’t want to know what happens on larp.
    • Partner thinks they know what happens on larp, but doesn’t actually know everything.
    • Partner has discussed boundaries for how sexy/unsexy a range of larp activity they are OK with.

    And then for younger players, these considerations may also apply to parents/guardians. It’s not enough to expect players to say to their significant others, when asked why exactly it is that they were smooching away like that at the weekend, “You don’t get it! It’s larp!”

    Communication

    Suppose that you’re in the ‘have discussed boundaries’ category. When you sign up for a larp, is it always made clear whether the sex techniques involved might transgress those boundaries? Organizers are impressively organized about communicating practical details of larps, these days, but something like “this larp will be using Ars amandi as a sex meta-technique” is not always seen in advance of signup. Should it be? – is that as important as letting prospective players know that the larp will be eg. physically arduous?

    From an ars amandi workshop at Living Games Conference 2016. Still from a video by Harrison Greene. From an ars amandi workshop. Still from a video by Harrison Greene.

    As a designer you want your players to be engaging with and exploring their relationship to the issues that your larp is bringing up; not spending emotion and energy on negotiating around the borders of their partner’s preferred physical boundaries.

    Exclusion

    We go to great lengths to make our hobby welcoming and inclusive for everyone who wants to participate. It feels wrong for people who don’t want to play out sexy sex mechanics to be the one group that it’s OK to exclude.

    So who are we talking about as being excluded here?

    • People who for cultural reasons are uncomfortable with touching those with whom they aren’t actually intimate.
    • People whose relationships have boundaries that don’t include sexy doings with others; or who haven’t fully discussed where such boundaries might be.
    • People who, perhaps because of trauma, are psychologically uncomfortable with physical intimacy in general.
    • People who find intimacy highly emotionally affecting, and so are wary of engaging in it.
    • People who just don’t want to be doing that sort of thing in their larp, for whatever reason.

    (Of course, you will probably have opt-outs available, intended to allow players to halt sexual activity before their boundaries are reached. But opting-out isn’t always easy or possible, in the heat of the moment: and discomfort, of participants or their partners, may also be caused by what other players are doing around them.)

    Now without those people present, you’ll still have a great selection of larpers. But is there a danger that they will fall into a relatively narrow psycho-social description? – even a stereotype?

    The Down-low

    We are not saying that representing sex in larp is a bad thing – far from it. But we are saying that it should always be a considered ingredient – like all design decisions, it would benefit from a debate and some questioning and not just be accepted as a default. Does your larp need to allow for sexual activity between characters? – if yes, then the next question is, how should that be represented in a way that supports the design needs and the larp aesthetic? And part of that question is: how sexy does it need to be?

    We feel that there are likely to be a range of answers to that question: and that, while for many larps, a high-sexiness technique or meta-technique will be entirely appropriate; for others, a low-sexiness one will be more applicable. And we also feel that, no matter how you turn and twist it, some methods are more inclusive than others. Sometimes at the cost of narrative effects; and sometimes at the cost of players.

    Cover photo: From the 2014 run of Just a Little Lovin’ (photo by the organizers, from a talk at Prolog 2015).

  • There Is No Nordic Larp – And Yet We All Know What It Means

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    There Is No Nordic Larp – And Yet We All Know What It Means

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    Disclaimer: The opinions expressed herein are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of Nordiclarp.org or any larp community at large.

    “Nordic larp is like porn. I know it when I see it.”((Adaptation of a quote by United States Supreme Court Justice Potter Stewart (1964) ))

    Ten years ago, when first attending the Knutpunkt conference in Norway, I was humbled by stories about Hamlet, 1942 and other great games. Here, there were people actually stretching the definition of what “larp” means. It was an awesome, mind blowing experience for sure. There were a lot of talks about the larps that were influenced by the KP tradition and vice versa. There was no good term for these games, so usually the rather cumbersome “games in the KP/SK tradition” was used.

    When in 2010, Jaakko Stenros and Markus Montola published the book Nordic Larp documenting 30 larps belonging to this tradition, they effectively coined the term. It had been used before, but never with such a brand recognition. Still, there was no clear definition what “Nordic larp” actually means. In discussions, one of the main points is if the term is meant geographically or not. The Nordic Larp Wiki greets its visitors with the following words:

    “Nordic-style larp, or Nordic Larp, is a term used to describe a tradition of larp game design that emerged in the Nordic countries.”

    So far, so good. Is it a geographical description then? “Nordic” seems to imply this and the Nordic Larp Wiki certainly defines it this way:

    “Nordic-style larp is traditionally different from larp in other parts of the world[…]”((http://nordiclarp.org/wiki/Nordic_Larp))

    In 2012, Juhana Pettersson writes in States of Play (already subtitled as “Nordic Larp around the world”):

    “Nordic Larp is not the same as the larps played in the Nordic countries. Indeed, most Nordic larps are not part of the Nordic Larp design movement. This leads to the bizarre situation where the Nordic Larp movement can enter into dialogue with Finnish larp the same way it can be in dialogue with Russian larp.

    “Nowadays, the truly new stuff comes from all those Italians, Germans and Americans who have taken some of the ideas of Nordic Larp and made them part of their own artistic practice. Thankfully, instead of just assimilating stuff from us, they’re sending ideas back, becoming the new creative frontier of Nordic Larp.”

    So the definition from the Wiki is not very useful since there are:

    • Larps in this tradition which are not from Nordic countries;
    • Larps in Nordic countries not belonging to this tradition.

    So why is it still called Nordic? What’s so Nordic about Nordic larp? Maybe it is the origin of the movement. In his Nordic Larp Talk 2013, Jaakko Stenros tries to define “a” Nordic larp this way:

    “A larp that is influenced by the Nordic larp tradition or contributes to the ongoing Nordic larp discourse. This definition may seem disappointing, or even like a cop-out.”((‘What does Nordic Larp mean?’, Jaakko Stenros, Nordic Larp Talks 2013, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mL_qvBaxV5k))

    Not only a cop-out, but also recursive. Thus it is not very helpful if we want to get closer to the actual meaning of the term. Furthermore he continues:

    “Nordic larp is not a set of instructions. It is not even a coherent design philosophy. It is a movement.”

    Well, well – it’s also not a coherent design philosophy. At least that definition empowers anybody to define their own style as Nordic. And where is the nodal point of this movement? It is, in fact, the Nodal Point conference – Knudepunkt/ Knutepunkt/Knutpunkt/Solmukohta.

    Next, there is Jaakko Stenros’ version of a brand definition for the “Nordic larp tradition”:

    “A tradition that views larp as a valid form of expression, worthy of debate, analysis and continuous experimentation, which emerged around the Knutepunkt convention.”

    We are back to the KP/SK tradition. Not much Nordic left here though, because this tradition (r)evolves around the conferences and for at least ten years they have certainly not been entirely Nordic (in geographical terms) anymore and not the creative frontier (according to Juhana Pettersson above). Somehow we are getting nowhere.

    Let’s try a different approach. The book The Foundation Stone of Nordic Larp((The Foundation Stone of Nordic Larp, 2014, Edited by Eleanor Saitta, Marie Holm-Andersen & Jon Back)) was written to give a sort of “kickstart” into the Nordic larp tradition, collecting important articles from the now 20+ books published around the Knudepunkt conference. It describes Nordic larp this way:

    “The Nordic larp community differs from larp culture in other places. […] And yes, that’s right, there are other kinds of larps played in Scandinavia; the Nordic larp community is a specific and by now reasonably well-defined subset.”

    So, first sentence: kind of geographic. Let’s imagine the movement is what the author implies as a “place”, because the last sentence of the paragraph is clear about the term being non-geographic. Let’s try to define the term in other ways. Also from the above paragraph:

    “It spends more time telling stories that emphasize naturalistic emotion, it emphasizes collective, rather than competitive storytelling, and it takes its stories fairly seriously much of the time […]”

    Jaakko Stenros’ Nordic Larp Talk also mentions some of these characteristics:

    “It typically values thematic coherence, continuous illusion, action and immersion, while keeping the larp co-creative and its production noncommercial. Workshops and debriefs are common.”

    These are characteristics which undoubtedly are part of the tradition we are talking about. The Nordic Larp Wiki supports this approach as well:

    “[…]Here are a few examples of aims and ideals that are typical for this unique gaming scene:”

    If we accept the Nordic Larp wiki as a PR instrument, this is certainly cool, but as a reference about what Nordic larp actually means, this is maybe slightly too much self-adulation. Let’s have a closer look at these characteristics and ideals:

    “Immersion. Nordic larpers want to feel like they are “really there”. This includes creating a truly convincing illusion of physically being in a medieval village/on a spaceship/WWII bunker, playing a character that is very close to your own physical appearance, as well as focusing on getting under the character’s skin to ‘feel their feelings’. Dreaming in character at night is seen by some nordic larpers as a sign of an appropriate level of immersion.”

    Not only is this definition of immersion mixing in 360° for good measure, the sentence about the “truly convincing illusion of physically being [there]” is also not very Nordic (at least from my personal experience) even though some games are now trying to do exactly that. The second part talking more about actual immersion could be considered very Nordic, if you like.

    “Collaboration. Nordic-style larp is about creating an exciting and emotionally affecting story together, not measuring your strength. There is no winning, and many players intentionally let their characters fail in their objectives to create more interesting stories.”

    This might actually be one of the better indicators for a “Nordic larp”, but then, there’s plenty of examples from other game traditions where this is used as well – but maybe not the other way around. Maybe it is required, but not sufficient?

    “Artistic vision. Many Nordic games are intended as more than entertainment – they make artistic or even political statements. The goal in these games is to affect the players long term, to perhaps change the way they see themselves or how they act in society.”

    Artistic vision is hard to define, as is a political statement, but there’s certainly a divide between pure “entertainment” and “serious” games. But then, aren’t the ones without a political statement artistic in their own unique way? And what about the Nordic games which are not intended as more than entertainment?

    There’s certainly a lot of elements which are considered part of this tradition, but are they unique? Is “bleed”, “immersion”, “alibi” really Nordic? Are pre-game workshops, 360°, black box and debriefings? Furthermore, what is often described as “Nordic larp”, evolves with every game and every discussion about this tradition. Fifteen years ago, no game would use bleed or alibi or 360° in their descriptions (since the terms didn’t really exist) and even mechanisms, but still they were and are considered part of this tradition.

    One could argue the way Merleau-Ponty does and say that while many of these are often present, none needs to be to make it a Nordic larp. The question cannot be solved this way.

    Furthermore, when we used black-box-style mechanisms in 2000-2003 in the Insomnia series of games in Germany, were they “Nordic”? Did the workshops, debriefings, game acts and use of “cut”, “brems” and “escalate” mechanisms for The Living Dead (2010) make it “Nordic”?

    There’s a simple answer: no. But the reason for that is not that they were not played in the Nordic countries or organized by people from there. The simple reason is that they did not add to the discourse, in one case because we hadn’t heard about KP yet, in the other case because we didn’t bother to do so.

    This needs to change. I don’t think it actually matters where ideas were first tried out and who made it popular, but we need to tell people what we do and show it to them in a meaningful way if we want to be part of the movement.

    “In the end, while we may rage and debate whether Nordic larp actually isn’t all that special, reality is that it is. And let’s use that for our advantage instead of trying to nitpick.”((Claus Raasted, January 14 2015 in a private conversation on Facebook))
    – Claus Raasted

    Conclusion

    I truly believe there is something special about the kind of games we create. I also do think that creating a term like “Nordic Larp” was a masterstroke of Knudepunkt/ Knutepunkt/Knutpunkt/Solmukohta propaganda.

    And this is what I’m going to do((And maybe edit that page in the Nordic Larp Wiki and remove that ridiculous geographic reference.)): Nordic larp. No matter where I am or where I come from. It’s where I’ve been heading all my larping life and I don’t really care how we call it as long as we know what it means. I believe we do.

    Because if we can’t agree upon what Nordic larp means, others will form their own slightly worrying conclusions:

    “Meanwhile, in Europe, some people were already making a living from LARPing and stretching its art in interesting directions. Claus Raasted [sic], for example, fused parlor roleplay with very serious topics, such as acting out couples’ therapy to pretend to grieve for a dead child. The genre spread through the region and became known as Nordic LARP.”((Olivia Simone, tabletmag.com, Sep 2 2014 getting more facts wrong than right in this “definition” of the term.))

    Nobody really can tell you what Nordic larp actually is, but who cares as long as Claus Raasted is the godfather of Nordic LARP?

    This article was initially published in The Knudepunkt 2015 Companion Book which was edited by Charles Bo Nielsen & Claus Raasted, published by Rollespilsakademiet and released as part of documentation for the Knudepunkt 2015 conference.

    Cover photo: Participants at Knutpunkt 2014, by Johannes Axner.

  • The Law of Jante in Nordic Role-playing

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    The Law of Jante in Nordic Role-playing

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    Disclaimer: The opinions expressed herein are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of Nordiclarp.org or any larp community at large.

    Outwardly, the Nordic role-playing scene seems like a tolerant, egalitarian place where everyone is welcome. But the truth is that we are so busy being equal, that we fail to see excellence, and are downright fearful of elitism. Our fear of saying out loud that some role-players are better than others fosters secret social structures, where people are included or excluded depending on how well-connected they are.

    There’s a taboo in Danish role-playing. On the surface it’s about openness, tolerance, and equality, but in reality I believe it boils down to the infamous Law of Jante, the first paragraph of which says: “You’re not to think you are anything special”.

    Back in the days of yore, when I started role-playing, conventions still held competitions about who was the best role-player. As a matter of fact, I once made it to the second round in such a contest. A good role-player was defined as somebody who could not only rack in loads of XP (experience points), but was also capable of doing some degree of acting. It was up to the gamemaster to decide if you lived up to these criteria.

    Somehow along the line, these competitions died out. ‘Being a good role-player is not about winning or losing’ became the general approach in the tradition I belonged to – and actually, I had to agree. Once free-form became a norm at conventions, counting XP became meaningless. Role-playing became less about the game, and more about immersion. A good game should be about the individual experience of the player: How the story and the setting moved you, what the chemistry between the players were like, what you took away from the experience.

    In addition to this, a lot of role-players came from backgrounds where they had been more or less ostracised or even traumatised for lack of social skills. If being a good role-player was no longer just about counting XP, the competitions could have come very close to popularity contests. We didn’t want that.

    The Gamemaster of Doom

    In the 1990s, the general consensus was that everyone was welcome. “Everyone can role-play”, is what people were saying. It didn’t matter if you couldn’t act if your life depended on it. Even people whose social skills were so bad that they consistently ruined everyone else’s experience were welcomed. I remember a specific “Gamemaster of Doom”, who was so bad he would just sit there, leafing through papers, without even speaking to his players. It didn’t matter: We had room for the freaks and the outcasts that had nowhere else to go.

    If you were really unlucky, that might be her first and last experience with role-playing.

    Except for the fact that it quickly became a lie. Because secretly, there was a selection process going on. If you had played with the above mentioned game master, you were not likely to do so again. Why should you? It was not a good experience. No, someone else had to take their turn with him, in the name of tolerance and openness. Sadly, said person would usually be the unknowing outsider, who did not yet have her social network to warn her. If you were really unlucky, that might be her first and last experience with role-playing.

    As I got to know more about the other people who played role-playing games, I got better at knowing whom to avoid. But perhaps more importantly, I got to know those people who had a reputation for delivering. At conventions they were gamemasters, writers, and players. At larps, they were organisers or players.

    These were people who could take an otherwise mediocre scenario and boost it so thoroughly that it became not just a good experience, but actually unforgettable. They were dynamos in their own right. At conventions, you would amble over to stand next to them, hoping to be put in the same group. At larps you could do even better, if you had the nerve: Why not phone them up beforehand and ask for your character to be a sister, a close friend, or even a lover?

    The system of nepotism favoured people who were in the know. People who were already well-connected, and who weren’t afraid of asking for favours. People like me.

    The Good and the Bad

    The fact of the matter is that some role-players are better than others. When people ask me why I role-play, I usually say: For my own sake. Not for an audience, not to impress anyone. Just for the experience. However, this is not the entire truth. We are each-other’s audience. But more than that: We affect each-other’s experiences in good ways and bad ways. A good role-player knows this, and takes that responsibility seriously.

    Some people are bad role-players, and some people are good ones.

    Even though we don’t want to be open about it, it is not random: Some people are bad role-players, and some people are good ones. Sometimes the bad ones get lucky and manage to get through a game without ruining anything for everyone else, and sometimes the good ones have a bad day. But the trend is clear. In the name of our all-accepting, egalitarian community, we refrain from saying it out loud. But that doesn’t make it any less true.

    Why This Is a Problem

    Why should I care? I am one of those people who gets to play with all the best. And yet, it bothers me. It bothers me for several reasons.

    Obviously it’s a problem that the opportunity to play with really good role-playing partners does not present itself to you unless you happen to know the right people. Often enough we even wind up scaring potentially interested newbies off by letting them play with lousy co-players. If we want our hobby to be characterised as a closed-off society where you have to fight your way in, then we are doing exactly the right thing. However, that doesn’t serve us very well in the long term.

    The other problem is for the bad players themselves. Because we refuse to (publicly) acknowledge the good players, we cannot give the bad players the tools to get better. Simply put: We have not analysed what it means to be a good player, so there are no shortcuts. You have to go on spoiling a lot of people’s games before you see the light – provided you ever will. No-one will even tell you why they only play with you once, they just kind of seem to move on without you.

    Solutions, Please!

    At present time, I do not have the solutions. However, a good starting point would be to acknowledge the situation. If we were open about who the good players were, it would become much more legitimate for organisers to cast them into particular functions: Why not do the opposite of what we are doing now, and actually make sure that there is at least a few skilled role-players present when running games for newbies?

    Similarly, larp organisers who cast solid players who can be counted on for a good delivery in pivotal roles should not be accused of nepotism. They should be applauded for making conscious choices, as they do this to give the rest of the players the best possible experience.

    We need to direct our attention towards the good players

    First and foremost, we need to direct our attention towards the good players. What is it that they do? Most of them tend to be seasoned role-players, with many years of experience. So it is probably not a question of an innate genetic talent, but rather a thoroughly honed skill set.

    Currently there is an undergrowth of bloggers who are working on charting what skills a good role-player possesses. Needless to say, it is a difficult chore. We all play for different reasons, and being a casual gamer, you would look for different qualities than an immersionist or a dramatist would (see ‘The three way model‘ for an introduction of these terms).

    Mapping Good Role-playing Skills

    However, one trait seems to crop up everywhere: Social skills. As Lizzie Stark puts it: “Larp is a social activity”. The same can be said of all role-playing games that aren’t digital (and some that are). This implies something we already knew, but didn’t want to admit: Maybe not everyone is as welcome as we would like to believe. Maybe the same people who lacked the social skills to get through school unscathed find themselves confronted with their shortcomings once again.

    Another Anecdote

    Good role-players are the people we should be looking up to

    I’m going to end this article with yet another anecdote – but this time a recent one. I was running a game for some teachers who were interested in using role-playing as a tool, but who needed to be shown what it is. I wanted to give them a good experience, so I asked a friend who is an experienced role-player to join them. Within a very short time, his mere presence managed to escalate the game in a way that none of the others would have been capable of doing. It happened in many ways: By way of imitation, but also because he was able to create action that would beget action. His participation lifted the experience for everyone else.

    Pretending that ‘everyone can role-play’ is a huge underselling of the skills that good role-players have. If we want to continue making increasingly complex games, we need players that can measure up to the games. That is something we will only get if we are working consciously towards it.

    There is a reason why Danes don’t like to mention that some people are better at what they do than others. We come from an egalitarian society, and we don’t like braggarts. But we have to stop equalling skill with status. What is wrong with being a skilful role-player? Absolutely nothing. Being good at something doesn’t make you an arrogant elitist. More likely, it means that you have invested a lot of time in getting good.

    Good role-players are the people we should be looking up to. We need to start seeing them as a resource which should be made available. Not as a hidden discourse. As for the bad role-players: We don’t need to put them down, but we do need to show them the way.