Nordic Larp

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  • All Quiet on the Safety Front: About the Invisibility of Safety Work

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    All Quiet on the Safety Front: About the Invisibility of Safety Work

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    There has been said a lot regarding safety mechanics, tools and the safety mindset on nordiclarp.org over the last ten to fifteen years: Design discussions have taken place, talks and workshops have been held at Knutepunkt/Solmukohta, publications in the respective books have been published, and discussions between people who are volunteering — meaning working — in safety, have raised awareness about the need for safety at larps.

    One topic that has not been talked or written about much is the work and visibility of a Larp Safety person. 

    Articles from 2017 give very good insight into the work. Problems and techniques of working as a Safety person have been addressed, such as giving players the space to express their feelings without being judged, when overwhelmed or anxious, offering them empathy, and validating their experiences and emotions. We have discussed how it fits into the community work as a whole, such as advising organizers on safety concerns and designing workshops or debriefs. 

    One thing that remains ironically obscure for many players is the invisibility of the person and their investment itself. With this invisibility also comes missing appreciation and the risk of creating a lack of people willing to engage in this important community work. 

    It seems the requirements to work as a Safety person are not widely known. Also, most players and even some organizers might not know what a Safety person actually does and what the experiences before, during and after a larp are like for them. We often know about the strains and stresses of organizer’s work, know about burnout risks and talk about what players struggle with, but what about the people in Safety teams? 

    What I experienced at an international larp I was doing Safety for, was players asking me after the game if I had a good time, or how my game was. I was a bit baffled to be honest. Of course, they meant well and maybe intended it as a conversation opener. But then a realization hit me: while the Safety people are often recognized in their role, their actual work and the individuals behind the role stay mostly invisible. Players rarely ask themselves if this job is easy or not, enjoyable or not? 

    Why Is Safety Hard?

    As a Safety person, you’re skipping out on a perfectly fantastic larp you’re not actually participating in. You actively invest your time, vacation days, sometimes travel costs and energy to care for others. For this, you put other people’s needs first, making their well-being your priority. 

    People usually don’t come to the safety person when the larp runs “well” for them and they are happy, proud of something, or want to talk about how great everything is. Players usually also don’t interact with the Safety person if they do not have a specific safety need. Thus, the Safety person might be invisible to those who didn’t need them, during the game or even at the after-larp party. 

    To make sure everybody is emotionally safe, Safety people use various techniques, including: validating people’s experiences, being compassionate, being empathic, and offering space to the players who might need exactly that — a safe space to feel and deal with their emotions without being shamed, judged, or left alone. 

    Effective Safety people try actively not to give in to very human impulses like the need to “fix things” for other people that have a problem before they are ready. Often the “fixing” comes only after a player feels heard and having their concerns taken seriously before looking forward and being able to focus on getting their game or larp experience back on track. They also try not to quickly get out of an uncomfortable situation, even if it would be easier for them. 

    Another aspect of Safety that might pose difficulties is that you often have to keep things said or experienced anonymous and/or confidential — depending on what the person affected wants — as much as you might like to vent or share your “burden” afterwards. A player with a safety issue needs to trust the Safety working in their best interest as well as they are not seen as a “problem player” afterwards. This means you have to be as careful with what you communicate – similar to a lawyer or priest, just without the vows and training. Sometimes it is not possible to maintain confidentiality even if the person wants that, for example if a crime has been committed, or other kinds of situations. Anonymity yes, but confidentiality, not always. Similarly, a safety person should make the main organizers aware if there is a problematic person in the group. Also with the wrong information going out you and /or the affected player might face retaliation from other players or the community.

    One strenuous factor is the “on-call” or “standby” situation that Safety people are in most of the time. People who have ever experienced on-call service or standby duty in work life know that this can be exhausting, creating internal tension as one can always expect to be called to action.

    An important ability to have is self-regulation skills, because sometimes, even a Safety person can’t help with a problem. This means having to endure the helplessness of not being able to “do” something about a problem. Or there are situations where their own insecurities or past traumas are triggered, they become emotional themselves and they still have to try and focus to not get distracted with their own thoughts or bodily reactions – which is a strong argument for having a Safety person instead of loading that responsibility onto the shoulders of a single person. This, and the work that comes before (designing Safety mechanics and workshops, being involved in the flagging process if there is one, holding workshops) and after (doing debriefs, taking care of issues that might come up, after the actual event is over) takes a lot of energy out of many Safety people I have seen working on larps.

    Additionally, people frequently underestimate the role of Safety. Sometimes, organizers, writers, and designers also do the Safety job — and in most cases they are usually pretty much detached from the larp (which is sometimes their own!) As an organizer or writer, they suddenly stop sharing player’s or even organizer’s overall experiences, seeing and hearing mostly the negative experiences that people had with content, scenes, other players, or even themselves. 

    The Gender Factor?

    One factor weighing into the invisibility is that many people acting as safety people — in my experience — are socialized as women. Care work, putting the emotional wellbeing of others into the center of their work, being empathetic and trustworthy – these jobs are often taken on by people with female socialization and are mostly also silent and invisible. Women organizers can struggle with invisibility. And maybe this care work often done by people socialized as women is taken for granted as well. People socialized as men might be afraid of being called out themselves, which might make them behave in ways that are dismissive and even hostile to safety people (especially in public conversations, but also in defense of their friends, critiquing safety culture, etc.). Furthermore some participants may not feel comfortable talking about safety problems with a man Safety member — particularly if the problem is a gendered one, as they often can be.

    At one larp event in the past, two other people and me, who were doing Safety on top of other tasks like writing and designing the larp — all socialized as women — experienced complete invisibility, not even being invited to team meetings or being credited after the game by the main organizers.

    This is frustrating, demotivating and creates the opposite of the will to encourage community service, especially if the nature of that work aims to be discreet and low-key to protect the involved players which in turn can lead people who are not involved to assume there weren’t any issues at all. To keep larps safe for all people involved, this problem also reflects our communal societal need for change.

    Visibility-Enhancing Checklist for Your Next Larp

    Taking over the function as a Safety person is important and meaningful. Many larps need a Safety person to support players especially in conflict-heavy games, but also in games that may be light-hearted on the surface. And to be able to support someone, helping people to feel understood is its own valuable experience. 

    The following recommendations and behaviors are meant as tips and ideas, targeted at all parts of the community. They might make it easier for safety people who are spending their time to help us feel more empowered, safer and braver. And maybe they help encourage other people to become active in the community.

    Safety People 

    • Prioritize your own well-being, practice setting boundaries, and state your needs bravely. 
    • Talk more about your work! Demand visibility even if your instinct is to be a “silent supporter.”
    • Connect and share knowledge with each other and maybe even with like-minded / interested people.
    • Design workshops / trainings to teach Safety techniques to others and support each other as peers.
    • Find players or people from the organizing team who check up on you regularly.
    • When and where possible, work in a team to support each other, not feel alone and also be able to take sufficient breaks or tap out yourself if need be.
    • Don’t do Safety at your own larp – beside from the potential disconnect with the joy of seeing how your work turned out, players may be reluctant to voice a problem to the safety person, if it’s an issue with the organization or with the design – for fear that it will be seen as criticism.

    Organizers

    • Introduce Safety people as well as how to contact and where to find them thoroughly before the larp. 
    • Inform yourself about what your Safety people are doing. 
    • When possible, make sure your safety people are not responsible for other runtime logistics and especially do not have them play any important role in the game to not confuse their responsibilities / loyalties.
    • Care for your Safety team member as a person with needs and emotions. 
    • Check-in with them every now and then.
    • Involve the Safety people throughout the process as safety is important at all points of design and implementation.
    • Put together an Internal Procedures document (Stavropoulos et al. 2024) to establish clear courses of action in crisis situations.
    • If there are decisions to be made about issuing bans and the like, please separate this from Safety. It should be the main organizers who issue warnings and bans, not the safety people themselves. Safety people can make a recommendation that someone be expelled from the larp, but in the end it is the organizers of the event who have responsibility to take that decision. Also it decreases the risk of being targeted for enacting consequences or for not doing enough.
    • To make them feel included and part of the team, ask if they want to join GM meetings or other team meetings. (It can also be helpful as Safety, to know how the game is running). 
    • Ask if they’re interested in having updates about the game.
    • Credit & thank them after the event (as you would your fellow organizers, kitchen crew, tech support, etc.)

    Players

    • Remember the name(s) of the people in the Safety team and show them (especially at the afterparty) that you care for them as individual people.
    • Learn to identify and communicate your needs so that a Safety person knows how and what to offer.
    • Safety people are not in a therapeutic relationship with players. They can provide support in times of overwhelm or crisis, but they should defer to external help, such as ambulances with mental health professionals, if the crisis continues and longer term support is needed. It is also not their job to mediate disputes within the community.
    • Take reflection and self-regulation seriously and practice identifying your emotions and setting boundaries outside of larp.
    • Be mindful of what you are asking for – don’t use the Safety room or the Safety person as entertainment for a couple of hours, just because you don’t want to play or be alone.
    • If you don’t know what to do to make people feel safer but are interested in learning: Read up on those skills (like “validation”) and ask Safety people you know if you have questions. Most are open and happy to help you and share their knowledge and skills.
    • Take responsibility for your well-being, do your own risk- assessment of whether a larp is for you, and plan how to respond beforehand if troubles come up.
    • If you know about your triggers, medicational needs, or even what helps you in moments of emotional flooding or overwhelm: Communicate that to the Safety people before the larp so they can better support you individually.

    Let’s make this community even more competent and safe for everyone – including the Safety people who try to make sure everybody feels safe at a larp. Let’s be mindful of how we’re treating them, so that we have more people in the future interested in doing this work. 

    Acknowledgements

    The author would like to acknowledge the editorial team at Nordiclarp.org for their comments: Mo Holkar, Elina Gouliou, Kaya Toft Thejls, and Sarah Lynne Bowman.

    References 

    Bowman, Sarah Lynne, Maury Brown, Brodie Atwater, and Alexis Rowland. 2017. “Larp Counselors – An Additional Safety Net.” Nordiclarp.org, August 7.

    Brown, Maury. 2017. “Safety Coordinators for Communities: Why, What & How.” Nordiclarp.org, April 17.

    Lindve, Petra, and Rebel Rehbinder. 2023. “We Organized These Larps Too!” Presentation at Knudepunkt, Sweden, May 19.

    Kocabaş, Ezgi Özek, and Meltem Üstündağ-Budak. 2017. “Validation Skills in Counselling and Psychotherapy.” International Journal of Scientific Study 5, no. 8: 319-322.

    Rather, Jill H., and Alec L. Miller. 2015. DBT Skills Manual for Adolescents. Guilford Press.

    Stavropoulos, John, et al. 2018. “Living Games Conference: Internal Procedures.” Google Docs.

    Cover Photo: Image by Mariam Antadze on Pexels. Photo has been cropped.

  • Please Stop – an Occupational Therapist’s Advice on How to Avoid Burnout

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    Please Stop – an Occupational Therapist’s Advice on How to Avoid Burnout

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    So, you have found yourself on the verge of a burnout, or already in one, without the tools to stop repeating the cycle. In this text I will, as a newly working occupational therapist, larper, larp creator and two-time burnout survivor, give you some real-life tips and tools to fight back.

    Many of us think that burnout is something that only happens at work, when we are doing too much in a stressful environment. But burnout can also happen when we do something we love so much that it consumes us. This is called Passion Burnout. While burnout can happen to anyone, people working with things they love are at higher risk. When we do what we love, we risk thinking that we are not really working. We risk thinking that because we love the work so much, we should actually do more, that because we do what we love we don’t need to rest. When our passion peaks we become full of energy, and that can make us unable to detach from work enough to focus on the things we need to do in order to avoid exhaustion.

    Many larp organizers are in danger of experiencing Passion Burnout, because we love what we do.  But if we acknowledge the risk we can work together to prevent it. We can learn to spot the symptoms of burnout, both in ourselves and others: feeling helpless, trapped, defeated or overwhelmed, as well as lack of joy, fatigue, changes in sleep and/or appetite. We can encourage each other by setting an example by taking care of ourselves, setting boundaries, offering help and lowering our expectations. Together we can build a more caring and nurturing community.

    Now for the tips and tools.

    Burnout is not your fault

    You, like everyone else, are a victim of this capitalistic society that lives from our work. In this system you get rewarded, praised, and judged by the work you do, with larps just as much as with every other pursuit. In the capitalist world you don’t get more money or respect by doing less. But if you manage your time better, if you prioritize yourself  instead of the work you are doing, if you stop sacrificing your own well-being, your family, your friends, your relationships and your mental and physical health, there is at least one person who will respect you more: You.

    Know where your time goes

    Use a time management circle or a similar tool to find out how you spend your time and how you would ideally spend it. Writing things down will help you notice where the time actually goes, and with this knowledge, you can start making adjustments to your daily routine to better fit your needs. When organizing a larp, it can help you to write down larp organizing time into your day so that it doesn’t take over your whole free time. 

    Draw two circles and divide them each into 24 slices. The first circle is your everyday life: how you actually spend your time. Think of the last few months or the last time you organized a larp and fill the circle with your everyday occupations such as sleep, work, taking care of yourself, cleaning, cooking, down time, relaxing, hobbies, etc. You can be as specific or as vague as you like, you can fill it hour by hour, or more approximately. Use color coding if that helps.

    Now fill out your second circle. Think of your perfect life and fill your dream circle with what your everyday life would look like if by some magic all your hopes and dreams had come true.

    Then look at your two circles side by side. Visualizing the differences can help you find the things you can control. Maybe you need more time for sleep, or more time with your loved ones, maybe less work and more time for self-care. See the differences, but remember that you are not a wizard but a mere mortal. So start small, just one change towards your ideal life. Set yourself a goal that is realistic and achievable. The goal can be as simple as “I want to have an hour a week for myself to go outside” or “I need half an hour more sleep a day”. State that goal to yourself and start to find your way towards it by sharing it with a friend – or a stranger at Solmukohta – and asking for help along the way.

    Write things down

    The following tool is useful while working on a larp project. The version pictured is called the Time Management Matrix. It can help you see what needs to be done in order to manage a project and help avoid burnout by giving you a clearer idea on how to spend your time and where you can cut yourself some slack.

    Urgent Not urgent
    Important crises

    deadline driven

    emergencies

    etc.

    		 preparation

    prevention

    planning

    etc.
    Not important interruptions

    some emails or social media activity

    some meetings you don’t need to attend

    etc.

    		 busy work (work that adds a little value, like searching for theme songs for characters)

    something someone else should be doing

    etc.

    Fill the matrix with the things you need to do for the larp. Fill it with your responsibilities and burdens. After you have things written down, you can see the actual amount of work that needs to be done and spot the things that are less important. Which are the things you don’t like to do, and which things give you joy? What could you delegate to others? Are there things you don’t have to do at all? To help avoid burnout, I would suggest focusing on the things you like and delegating the ones you don’t.

    Look at the amount of work ahead and estimate how much time it would take to complete it. Set boundaries: look at your time management circle and be realistic. When are you going to do this work? Make a schedule and add in breaks and off-time. And if the work feels like too much, ask for help. 

    Ask for help

    Hard and shameful? For me at least it is. Many of us think we need to be able to do everything ourselves, because we value ourselves mainly through the amount of work we do, be it professional or artistic or passionate work. But try to think of what it feels like when someone asks you for help. Most of us would feel appreciated, and that it would be an honor to be a part of your project. Asking for help is giving an opportunity for others to feel good by supporting you.

    Find a way to connect with yourself

    This tool is a Green Care exercise. You can do it even in the middle of running a larp, you only need ten minutes. The goal is to find a way to regulate your emotions and ground yourself. 

    Go outside, to nature if possible. If you can’t go outside, find a picture of nature that speaks to you, or try to remember a nice view of a landscape. Start by observing your surroundings. What does it look like, what do you hear, feel or smell? Look at the big picture first, then some smaller details. If it’s hard for you to stand still, move. If you find yourself thinking about other stuff, notice that thought and then let it go, shifting your focus back to your surroundings.

    After a few minutes, when it feels good to you, start shifting your focus to yourself. With the same attitude of observation, without judgment or evaluation, try to feel yourself. Listen to your breathing. How does your skin feel, where in your body can you feel your heartbeat? If you feel like moving your body, do so. Move in a way your body wants to move. If you feel an emotion, let it in and try to look at it with a sense of wonder. 

    When you feel ready, slowly wrap your hands around yourself. Hug yourself and thank yourself for this exercise. Do this exercise when you feel disconnected, overwhelmed or when you need a moment for yourself.

    Calendar some Me Time

    When I’m in the middle of organizing a larp I tend to view that time as my free time, which has led me to overworking myself. It’s really easy to cut time away from rest and self-care, but taking care of yourself is necessary to avoid getting burned out. This is difficult, I know, but scheduling some Me Time while working on a larp project really helps. How much you need depends on you. If this is hard you can start small? Mark this time in your calendar and make sure not to book anything else over it. Even if larp organizing is your hobby, don’t do that work in this time, make this time your haven, for resting and enjoying yourself.

    The change needs to happen with you

    Lastly, I must give you the bad news: I can help you with tips and tools, but you have both the power and the heavy burden of actually using them. This is the hard part. You must take responsibility for your time management and set up the boundaries to protect your well-being. And please, for your own sake and for the sake of the whole community: ask for help when you need it.

    Don’t be afraid of the amount of tips and tools presented here, these are not “one size fits all.” Pick and choose those that feel doable for you. If something doesn’t work, try something else.

    And don’t forget that the community is here: the people who can help you with tools, support and labor. If we reach out and admit that we cannot do everything alone, we can lift each other up. With community, care and support we can achieve magic.

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

    Friman, Taro. 2024. “Please Stop – an Occupational Therapist’s Advice on How to Avoid Burnout.” 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 Manfred Hofferer from Pexels

  • Basics of Efficient Larp Production

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    Basics of Efficient Larp Production

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    This article was originally published in Juhana Pettersson’s collection of larp essays, Engines of Desire. The book is available here: https://www.nordicrpg.fi/store/tuote/engines-of-desire-print-edition/

    [This article is also available in Spanish, at: http://vivologia.es/fundamentos-de-la-produccion-eficiente-de-vivos/
    Thank you to Vivologia for translating it!]

    When I started organizing larps, there was only one way to run a production. For the purposes of this essay, I’ll call it the Infinite Hours model. Under this model, a fairly large team of volunteers puts in a massive amount of work to realize a labor of love. Leadership is focused on making the larp as amazing as possible through the brute expedient of work, work, and more work. People are motivated by the desire to make as much cool stuff as humanly possible.

    In productions like these, ambition rules. Some of the greatest larps of the Nordic tradition have been made like this. If you count work hours and calculate what they would have cost if anybody got paid, you get incredibly high figures. Because of this, larps made under the Infinite Hours models often punch far above their weight in production quality.

    Infinite Hours can lead to great work but they also have a cost. Under this model, people burn out. Organizers don’t sleep. Stress accumulates and makes people leave the scene entirely rather than subject themselves to another round of self-sacrifice.

    I’ve made larp like this too. Almost every veteran organizer in the Nordic larp scene has.

    The goal of this article is to lay out an alternate mode of production. I call it efficient larp production; and it’s important to ask, efficient in terms of what?

    This is not about saving money. Rather, I’ll lay out a production method by which organizer stress is minimized and the effectiveness of a single work hour is maximized. The purpose of making the work more efficient is to allow for more rest, sleep, and leisure. The goal is that by the time the larp is over, organizers feel energized and happy, not worn out.

    You can make great larps using the Infinite Hours model and terrible larps using the efficient model, or vice versa. How good a larp you create depends on your creative vision and design, not the choice of production model. This is about the wellbeing of the people who make larp, not the quality of the work. That’s a separate discussion.

    photo of a trailer with a bag hanging off of it
    A detail from Death By a Thousand Cuts, created using the guidelines in this article. Photo by Tuomas Puikkonen on Flickr. CC BY-NC 2.0.

    Labor

    There are three principal ways to structure the labor of a larp production. Counterintuitively, if nobody gets paid you can demand much more from them. Often they also demand much more from themselves. If people are paid, either all or some, questions of fairness and distribution of workload tend to arise because the project takes on the character of professional, paid work.

    The all-volunteer model is the most traditional way to make Nordic larp. Full volunteer teams are often large, as people excited by the project join in. Project leads often work extremely hard for long periods of time, taking on hands-on work on top of coordination. It’s not uncommon for people to drop out during production because of stress so new volunteers come in to replace them. This can happen at all levels of the production.

    Under the semi-volunteer model some organizers get paid while others work as volunteers. At the professional end of larp organizing this is quite common. Participation Design Agency, the makers of larps such as Baphomet and Inside Hamlet, has made productions like this. I’ve also used this model in larps like Enlightenment in Blood and Tuhannen viilon kuolema (Death By a Thousand Cuts).

    Typically, in a semi-volunteer model organizers who work on the larp over a long period of time get paid, as well as those with specialized skills not available on a volunteer basis. Unpaid volunteers are used especially during the actual runtime of the larp event. The model is similar to that used at film and music festivals in many countries.

    The challenge of running a semi-volunteer production is to ensure that everyone feels fairly treated. The people who get paid should carry the responsibility and the stress while the volunteers should get to participate in an interesting, meaningful way. This means that it’s harder to justify having volunteers shoulder the kind of extreme workloads you encounter in all-volunteer productions.

    Finally, in a professional model everyone gets paid. The realities of bespoke Nordic larp design are such that this is very hard to do, because even big productions have small budgets. Perhaps this will change if subsidizing larp production by the state or cultural foundations becomes more common.

    In a fully professional work model, the available resource pool in terms of people and work hours is the smallest. Since people are paid for their work, and work must be fairly compensated, the amount of work everyone does must remain reasonable. An increase in workload must come out of the budget, and the budget is always limited.

    a person in a suit standing next to another seated person with pieces of art behind them
    A wealthy character at an art gallery in Death By a Thousand Cuts. Photo by Tuomas Puikkonen on Flickr. CC BY-NC 2.0.

    Bang For Buck

    A design choice is efficient if it produces the maximum amount of meaningful larp action with the minimum amount of organizer work. This can be understood quite broadly: A beautiful prop that everyone in the larp sees which energizes their commitment to the setting is equally as good as a great innovation in character design that makes them motivate players to new heights of spontaneity at half the pagecount. What matters is that most choices made in the production follow the basic calculation of bang for buck. Or if not buck, then work hours and stress.

    You need to start each larp production by doing an analysis of the idea from the perspective of efficiency. Does the overall larp idea seem like it’s possible to realize within the model presented in this article? It’s important to note that the answer may well be no. Some larp ideas are possible to organize efficiently, others are not. Some larps can only be made with Infinite Hours. For example, if the concept involves a large number of individual, distinctly different, custom-tailored player experiences, it’s probably impossible to make under the aegis of efficiency.

    Maximizing the efficiency of an organizer work hour makes it possible to organize big larps with small teams. This is especially helpful for those organizers who are trying to make larps professionally and aspire to a sensible hourly wage. There are two ways to be paid properly for the work you do as a professional organizer: Higher pay and less work. Since the economics of larp organizing often mean that money is tight, it makes sense to see if hours can come down instead.

    Specialization

    “In our production, everyone does a little bit of everything.”

    This is the absolute worst way to organize larp production.

    Each individual organizer has resources that are spent at varying rates. Time, mental capacity, stress. Time is the easiest of these to measure and allocate but running out of mental capacity and accruing too much stress leads to burnout and long-term mental health problems.

    The reason I strongly prefer larp organizations where everyone has a clear job title is that it makes it much easier to manage stress. If everyone does a little bit of everything, everyone is also responsible for everything. Everyone must stress about everything.

    In contrast, in a team composed of specialized organizers, everyone is only responsible for their own sector. If everyone has food, the cook can sigh in relief and doesn’t have to think about whether the workshops are running properly. This way, an individual only has to stress about the work they control and understand.

    A team of specialized organizers is only possible with the help of coordinators whose job is to make sure everything gets done by someone. These roles are typically those of producer, creative lead, or similar. Ideally, the coordinator delegates instead of doing practical work themselves.

    In ideal circumstances, a larp organizer has wide autonomy to take care of their own responsibility while trusting others in the organizing team to do their part. Coordinators take care of problems and deficiencies in work allocation. This results in an efficient management of stress, since the number of things you have to stress about is minimized.

    photo of a person holding a serving tray with champagne glasses while someone checks their phone in the background Death By a Thousand Cuts was a simulation of Finnish class society in the shadow of climate catastrophe. Photo by Tuomas Puikkonen on Flickr. CC BY-NC 2.0.

    System Thinking

    Efficient larp organizing requires systems thinking. Ideally, you don’t engage with the larp at all on the level of an individual playable character. Rather, you design interaction systems that provide the desired types of experiences for as many characters as possible. If an idea benefits only several characters, it should be discarded.

    There are several tactics that can be employed to keep your thinking on the system level:

    Always think of characters in terms of groups, not individuals

    You can set a minimum group size, such as six for a smaller larp or ten for a bigger larp, to make sure you don’t accidentally start fiddling with individualized content.

    Recycle

    You can use the same idea over and over again as long as it’s not experienced repeatedly by the same players. For example, the larp has three secret societies. In the fiction they are different but no player will be in more than one of them. This means you can use the same rituals for all three. It might make the fiction incoherent from a top-level vantage point, but that’s not where the players are experiencing the larp from. The chaos and co-creation of larp will give each society a different texture even if they’re the same on paper.

    Design interaction engines instead of plots

    A plot is a handcrafted sequence of events. It’s very labor-intensive and thus bad for efficient larp design. An interaction engine is a mechanism in the larp that creates action. A single well-designed engine can create massive amounts of playable content in the larp thus freeing the organizers from writing bespoke content.

    I learned this framework from working with Bjarke Pedersen. In the larp Baphomet, there’s a necklace. If you wear it, you are the god Baphomet and people will react to you according to specific interaction rules. The necklace roams the larp, worn by different people, generating action. It’s very simple but results in a vast variety of action.

    Empower players

    This is not the same as outsourcing elements of organizing to players. Rather, you want to give the players as much creative agency as possible so that they engage with your design in a robust, active way. This means that all content that you create naturally reaches more people who use it more thoroughly. Typical design choices that encourage this are transparency and a robust fiction that won’t break if the players start improvising.

    Once you see the entire larp as a system, it’s easier to grasp which parts can be junked, which copied and repeated, and which must be handcrafted. Systems thinking has the additional advantage of helping you recognize blind spots in the larp’s design. For example, let’s say that you’re making a larp about love. If you design character experiences individually, it’s easy to get sidetracked and accidentally make a character who’s not connected to the theme of love. Designing on a system level helps avoid this because love is present as a systemic element.

    photo of people in black working near a table with snacks, with one listening to headphones
    We built a live radio station for Death By a Thousand Cuts, called Murder Radio. Photo by Tuomas Puikkonen on Flickr. CC BY-NC 2.0.

    Personal Touch

    All design that requires one-on-one consultation between an organizer and a player must be cut if at all possible. Ideally, an organizer relates to players and characters as groups, not individuals, during the preparatory stages of a larp production. This changes during runtime when taking care of individual needs becomes important for each player to have a good experience.

    For example, a character creation process where a player makes their character together with an organizer is unacceptable because it requires the organizer to custom-tailor content for an individual player. This is extremely work-intensive and thus inefficient. In contrast, a process where the players create characters in organizer-run workshops is fine because a single organizer can handle a large group of participants.

    The time between signup and runtime is when players have the largest amount of individual demands on the organizers. In my experience, 5% of players are responsible for 95% of questions and other requests for organizer time. To discourage this, I’ve found it best to try to cultivate a strong understanding of the larp’s vision and fiction among the participants, so that they feel comfortable making their own choices without having to consult an organizer.

    Note that as with all the guidelines presented in this article, there are always special cases. In my own experience, working with participants with disabilities to help them have a good experience is a sensible use of organizer time even if it’s only for one person.

    Writing

    The number of words that have been written for a larp is never, ever an indicator of quality. More text doesn’t make a larp better.

    Indeed, the opposite is true. Players are human beings and because of this they have limited cognitive capacity. Their ability to retain information from text is bound by their human nature. This means that the goal with larp writing must be to communicate as much as possible with as few words as possible. Information must be clear, concise, and immediately understandable. This way, players grasp it quickly, and organizers avoid the work of producing unnecessary textual mass.

    Personally, using the character software tool Larpweaver revolutionized my larpwriting because it makes it possible to have complex characters with much less text than before. It automatizes a lot of tedious labor. However, Larpweaver also requires an unorthodox approach to how characters are designed so it may not suit everyone.

    Other methods for reducing writing labor are character-building workshops where the labor of character-making is transferred to the players, and larp design that’s not very character based and thus doesn’t require long character texts.

    In my experience, transparent design often makes it possible to eliminate labor that’s not strictly writing but adjacent to it. An example is character sendout, a truly tedious task that can be removed if you can dump the character texts into a Google Drive folder and allow players access to all of them.

    Photo of a Volkswagen Westfalia van parked on a city street with an open door.
    A portable venue used for Death By a Thousand Cuts. Photo by Tuomas Puikkonen on Flickr. CC BY-NC 2.0.

    Physical Production

    When considering efficiency in a larp’s physical production, it’s important to note that this doesn’t mean compromising quality and comfort. Rather, it’s a question of how to allocate resources effectively so that the maximum number of players get to enjoy each feature.

    Using existing locations, props, and infrastructure is probably the greatest single trick to efficient physical production. If you find the right castle for your magic school, you don’t have to spend so much time decorating it. What you need is already there. This is one of the areas where consideration of the larp’s concept and the realities of production most overlap. It’s a recurring topic among larp organizers: “I’ve found this great location. Now I only need to come up with a larp that works there.” That’s efficient larp production!

    Efficiency favors relatively homogenized design where all participants either have similar experiences or one of a very small set of different experiences. In terms of physical design this means favoring props and scenography for big scenes and large groups of people. Beautifully decorated meeting halls, big showy props, and dramatic lighting are all examples of efficiency.

    In the Finnish larp Proteus, the production team built a combat simulation in an airplane hangar, a spectacular set piece with smoke, lights, cars, and guns. The story of the game was built so that all characters got to experience it in small groups. The simulation was a repeating instance. This way a labor-intensive showpiece benefited the maximum number of participants.

    Note that there are circumstances where it does make sense to put effort into physical production even if it only benefits a small number of players. Efficiency is not an absolute. One example is the dietary restrictions of individual players. Catering to them may be time-consuming, but it’s also necessary for the purposes of making the larp accessible.

    people discussing a topic around a table, some seated, some standing, with a surfboard behind them
    Airbnb is a great place to find interestingly furnished venues for urban larp. Photo by Tuomas Puikkonen on Flickr. CC BY-NC 2.0.

    Kill Your Darlings

    Imagine this scenario: The night before the larp, the creative lead sleeps only an hour because they’ve stayed awake sculpting a cool prop by hand.

    Never do this. Unless the task at hand is literally a matter of success or failure for the larp, you should cut features that require giving up sleep immediately before the larp’s runtime. Rested organizers are better organizers.

    Killing your darlings is important at all stages of larp development, but especially so in the late stage of the production when it becomes clear how far your resources stretch. And remember, sleep and stress are resources. You should aim to have an efficient, rested crew during runtime; and sometimes that requires cutting away cool things at the last minute.

    In my experience, the cool thing is often a custom-built technological solution that would be so awesome if it worked. At some point, you have to decide that you will live without it instead of wasting resources on troubleshooting that will lead to nowhere. Indeed, existing off-the-shelf technological solutions are nearly always better than unique prototypes, because of their reliability.

    Here it’s important to remember that the players won’t miss features they never knew about. If you didn’t tell them there would be a scale model of a spaceship in the main atrium, they won’t be disappointed that it was never finished.

    Casualties

    There are some things you lose in the search for efficiency. A lot of larpmaking is driven by a love for detail, cool props, and interesting individual characters. If you want to go to the extremes of efficiency, there’s no place for those things. You only design what you need, nothing more.

    Personally, I’ve never gone quite that far. Once the production machine is running efficiently, sometimes you’ll find the time to add a few little details, fun easter eggs that only benefit a few players. The important thing is to do these with your surplus energy, not by cutting from your own wellbeing.

    When talking about efficient larp production, a common protest to the ideas presented here is that efficiency removes all the things that make it fun to make larp. If you’re running a larp production with volunteers, this is something to keep in mind: Why are these people helping you? Ideally, you can organize the work so that they can create the features that make it all worthwhile for them while cutting elements they’re less passionate about.

    Happily, if you do this right, the larp benefits, as people are often at their creative best when making something they believe in. As a coordinator, you may sometimes have to cut one of your own favorite features so that a volunteer can have theirs.

    A person grabbing another person's arm while a third person watches in shock Death By a Thousand Cuts ended in murder. Photo by Tuomas Puikkonen on Flickr. CC BY-NC 2.0.

    Sustainability

    My hope is that over the long term, efficient larp organizing makes it possible to sustain a larp community where people don’t get permanently burned out. Instead, they’ll hopefully be able to continue organizing for years to come. Similarly, for some of us this model makes it possible to make larp professionally, thus leading to more larps that people can play.

    Another word for efficiency might be sustainability. The goal is that after a larp production is over, the organizers feel good, perhaps a bit tired, but still basically ready to do it again. This way, experience accrues in the community, great projects get made and people feel good about working on larps.

    Perhaps even so good that at the afterparty of one project they’ll already start thinking about the next one!

    Cover photo: We invited our funder Finnish Cultural Foundation to participate in the larp by providing a venue and one of their staff for a scene. Photo by Tuomas Puikkonen. Image has been cropped. CC BY-NC 2.0.

  • Leaving the Magic Circle: Larp and Aftercare

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    Leaving the Magic Circle: Larp and Aftercare

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    Every time the bandwagon “tell me about a strong memory we shared” runs through my Facebook feed, a big amount of the memories told are from larps. Strong immersive larp experiences stay with us. Lending out our physical bodies and our real emotions to tell stories will of course make these stories stay with us players, as memories integrate with our own pasts, tying us together as a community.

    Because this transition from larp to everyday life can be messy sometimes, it may require aftercare. And because larp is what brings our community together, I think more of aftercare as a collective than an individual issue.

    The term aftercare is borrowed from the BDSM community, and basically means taking some time after a BDSM scene to recover, transition from intense play back to normal, and take care of each other’s physical and emotional needs. Larpers sometimes talk about the same thing as defucking (Bindslet and Schultz, 2011) or debriefing.

    The idea to use the term aftercare in a larp context is hardly new (Grasmo 2011), but after listening to two related talks at Solmukohta 2020: Sarah Lynne Bowman’s keynote on integration and Julia Greip’s talk on safewords for brave spaces, I came to think about it again and wanted to write something on it. So in this text I will share some thoughts on aftercare in a larp context: how to do it and why.

    two people holding hands
    Photo by Kat Jayne from Pexels.

    Applying the Campsite Rule to Larp

    When we larp together, we are responsible for each other’s experience. We have the capacity to give each other very strong positive emotional experiences and to mess each other up quite badly. In my opinion we can absolutely apply the Campsite Rule to larping: “You should leave your co-players in the same, or better, condition than you met them in.”

    I learnt the Campsite Rule from sex advice columnist Dan Savage, who coined it about relationships with big age or power differences, as a responsibility the older person has towards the younger. This aspect of it can be meaningful in a larp context as well. Differences in age, larp experience or social status can create power imbalances when we larp, and we have to take them into account whenever we talk about safety and consent. This is perhaps extra important towards young or new players, or players from marginalized groups.

    Any participant that leaves a larp disappointed, traumatized, or hurt will have an impact. Both personally — these feelings can be hard to get over and haunt someone for a long time — and for the community as a whole, since these things often end up as inflamed conflicts, or with players leaving the hobby.

    Another important aspect to me is that this care primarily is a player responsibility — nothing we should demand as a service from the organizers. They will have their own aftercare needs. Take care of your organizers and prevent them from burnout, and we will get even more amazing games.

    two people clutching pillows to their chest on a bed
    Photo by @thiszun from Pexels. Photo has been cropped.

    Designing for Leaving the Magic Circle

    But when do we actually leave a larp? We enter a magic circle and establish a social contract when we larp together, and for successful aftercare, we need to find common expectations of how far this social contract extends.

    I don’t know about you, but I’ve been through “the train station scene” after multiple larps: the larp is over, the venue is cleaned out, and the participants are about to scatter off to their respective travels home. And we pretty often just end up standing aimlessly and confusedly in a big group of people, reluctant to leave. Most larpers are used to ritually leaving the first layer of the magic circle — going from characters back into players. But I still haven’t been to one larp where leaving this second layer of the magic circle has been smooth or thought out. Transitioning from a player group sharing trust and care for each other into our everyday selves at many different places is often really confusing. And this is one area where many aftercare needs could be acknowledged and handled better if we knew when and how our social contract ends. When do we actually leave the magic circle?

    I have experienced a multitude of ways this social contract confusion makes people feel bad after a larp. I have been the player who desperately wants to talk more with my bleedy larp crush, but feels too needy and clingy to ask them. I have been annoyed that my co-player wants to talk with me much more afterwards than I do with them. I have felt bad for not wanting to engage in post-game group hugs, meetups, and lovebombing, and I have felt really alone and believed no one wanted to hang out with me after larps.

    I know I’m not alone in having had these kinds of feelings. And I think we could save ourselves a whole lot of trouble if we talked more often and more openly about aftercare needs and where to go from here before we leave the magic circle of a game.

    two people holding each other on rocks by the water
    Photo by Anna Shvets from Pexels. Photo has been cropped.

    Aftercare Needs: There is No One-Size-Fits-All

    So, ok. Aftercare is important. But how do we implement it? Well, unfortunately there is no one-size-fits-all for aftercare. But predicting one’s own aftercare needs and being able to communicate about them is a great player skill to have. And it is a skill that we can get better at with more experience and practice.

    Most importantly: Yes. Some larps will require aftercare. Sometimes predictably and sometimes in unpredictable ways. This is normal and this is ok. There is a great deal of useful further reading about different aftercare needs and moods. Some people get post-larp drop, feeling intensely sad after leaving a game (Bowman and Torner 2015). Sometimes it’s post-larp charisma — being filled up with intense positive feelings after a larp, maybe getting braver, bolder, or filled with self-confidence. Many of us have experienced bleedy larp crushes on our co-players, great love and sense of community with people we just met and shared a larp with, the Knudeblues when we have to leave our new amazing friends, or strong feelings of rejection and alienation when “everyone else had a great larp and I didn’t” (Harder 2018; Nilsen 2015).

    Over the last 16 years of larping, I have learned a few things about my own general aftercare needs and patterns. Preparing for aftercare beforehand makes me feel better and more safe when I larp.

    I know that I usually have a strong need to write down my thoughts or story after the larp, so I make sure I’ll have time and equipment to do that. I also know that I often want to be alone or choose my company very selectively right after a game, so I usually book train tickets in the silent compartment where I won’t feel forced to talk with anyone. Even though I enjoy international larps, another need I usually have after an English larp is to speak my native Swedish, so another comfort is the ability to do that with other players or friends.

    Back home, I often make post-game playlists where I mix music related to the game experience with my own soundtrack, as a way to integrate the larp feelings in my own memory. I also generally have a need to indulge in the story told afterwards. For example, I spend lots of time in the participant Facebook group, starting lots of threads and sharing memories and experiences. It does help me to feel safe and really engage during a larp if I know there will be a possibility for me to have these aftercare needs met after the game is over.

    Most texts I’ve read on the subject of taking care of oneself emotionally after a larp naturally has a self-care focus. And while self-care comes first, and also is much more predictable and valuable to learn to do than waiting for someone else to take care of us (Dalstål 2020), I also want to share some thoughts about how to aftercare as a player ensemble.

    Here, once again, although many good articles have been written on post-play activities and debriefing, there is no one-size-fits-all. Cry it out, do physical labor, tell epic stories, cuddle pile, get drunk together, or dance the night away — any one strategy might be what someone needs and someone else really doesn’t. I assume the keys to good post-play is to base the activities on consent and opting-in, and not try to cast all players’ aftercare needs or wants into the same mould.

    two people cuddling with lights in their hands
    Photo by Matheus Bertelli from Pexels.

    One thing I want to advocate for, though, is to communicate about how we want the social contract to extend afterwards before we leave the game site. Maybe decide with co-players when and how we will talk the next time, and try to be open about it. For example, tell your co-players if you feel a need for some distance and to go back to your everyday life without engaging in post-larp discussions. Tell them if you are likely to be very emotional and want to connect a lot. It could be a good idea to talk with people you will be playing close with about your aftercare needs even before the game.

    I like the idea of sharing hopes and fears with one’s closest co-players or group before the game. A central part of building a safety to culture is finding trust to be honest and open about what we want to experience in a game and part of that is also communicating about what we fear will happen (Friedner 2019). Talking through the experience afterwards and reviewing those hopes and fears might also be a good debriefing exercise. Many of my larping friends have mentioned this in the context of playing evil or antagonistic characters. A common fear is that people will be afraid of or hurt by you out-of-character, and then it becomes even more important to get picked up and aftercared by co-players.

    Also remember that for many players the aftercare needs doesn’t come only two hours after the game, but two days or weeks later. For this reason I like the idea of assigning everyone debrief buddies, because they are a predictable extension of the social contract after the larp has ended that doesn’t depend solely on one’s own ability to reach out and ask for a check in.

    To summarize, I think aftercare is a collective, not just an individual issue. Leave the magic circle consciously and honor the Campsite Rule. If we make some shared efforts to make sure larp experiences integrate with the players in a positive and meaningful way, we build trust in the community and get more chances to be bold, brave, safe, and wonderful together. Let’s do that.

    two people cuddle on rocks looking at the sunset
    Photo by Arthur Brognoli from Pexels. Photo has been cropped.

    References

    Bindslet, Tobias, and Pernille Schultz. 2011. “De-Fucking.” Playground Magazine 2: 30-33.

    Bowman, Sarah Lynne. 2014. “Returning to the Real World.” Nordiclarp.org. Last modified December 8.

    Bowman, Sarah Lynne. 2020. “Solmukohta 2020 Keynote: Sarah Lynne Bowman – Integrating Larp Experiences.” YouTube. Last modified April 9.

    Bowman, Sarah Lynne, and Evan Torner. 2015. “Post-larp Depression.” Nordiclarp.org. Last modified on January 11.

    Dalstål, Elin. 2020. “Self Care Comes First: A Larp and Convention Policy.” Bold and Vulnerable. Last modified February 17.

    Friedner, Anneli. 2019. “The Brave Space: Some Thoughts on Safety in Larp”. Nordiclarp.org, Last modified October 7.

    Grasmo, Hanne 2011. “Take Care.” Playground Magazine 2.

    Greip, Julia. 2020. “Solmukohta 2020: Julia Greip – Safewords for Brave Spaces.” YouTube. Last modified April 9, 2020.

    Harder, Sanne. 2018. “Larp Crush: The What, When and How.” Nordiclarp.org. Last modified March 28.

    Nordic Larp Wiki. 2013. “Aftercare.” Nordic Larp Wiki. Last modified November 14.

    Nordic Larp Wiki. 2014. “Debrief buddy.” Nordic Larp Wiki. Last modified May 30.

    Nilsen, Elin. 2015. “A Beginner’s Guide to Handling the Knudeblues.” Nordiclarp.org. Last modified February 17.

    Q, Dan. 2008. “Savage Love Readers Talk About the Campsite Rule.” Scatmania. Last modified May 14.

    Cover photo: Photo by Samantha Garrote from Pexels. Photo has been cropped.

    Editing by: Elina Gouliou

  • How to Take Care of Your Organizer

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    How to Take Care of Your Organizer

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    [This article is also available in Spanish, at: http://vivologia.es/como-cuidar-de-tus-organizadores/
    Thank you to Vivologia for translating it!]

    The term organizer burnout is once again making the rounds. In essence, it means that the demands on the people who organize larps, often in their free time as a hobby project, are so high that people are burning out and are being discouraged from organizing again. To prevent this, I have put together a handy list on how players can take care of their organizers and help to prevent burnout. This list doesn’t apply to all larps and organizers, but it can hopefully apply to several situations.

    Before the Larp

    1. When signing up for a larp, read through the information available. If you already know that there will be design decisions and policies you do not agree with, it doesn’t give you the right to criticize them after the fact and try to change the organizer’s mind about them. Often, an organizer has a reason for making a decision. You can inquire about the reason, but the organizer is not under any obligation to defend them-self to you. If the policy or decision really irks you, consider if you really want to attend this larp, or if you want to attend your own version of this larp. Respect that the organizer has their own vision for this larp.
    2. Leading up to the larp, use the official channels that the organizers of the larp have asked you to use. If they have asked you to email questions, don’t write to them through social media channels or personal messages.   Respect that some people need to compartmentalize information and that they don’t always have to be available.
    3. Read the information provided before asking questions, especially in the days leading up to the larp. If you struggle with finding information because it is spread out in different places, then you can point this out to the organizers in a nice, unpressurring way. This for example could be asking for a document with links or a thread that collects all information.
    4. If you stumble upon things you really like that the organizer is responsible for, tell them. Make them feel valued.
    5. Preparing for the larp, check the packing list and bring the things listed on it. Make sure that you bring snacks if you know you will need additional food. Read all the information once more.
    6. Consider bringing a present for your organizer if you know them well, like candy or their favorite drink. Otherwise bring hugs, but remember to ask if they want to be hugged first.

    During the Larp / Workshops

    1. Be on time.
    2. Don’t hog the organizer’s time. Remember, there are a thousand things to do just before a larp starts. Always give the organizer a way out of a situation and respect that they have things to do, even if you want to hang out with them.
    3. If you arrive at the event before the specified time, ask if you can help with anything and try to be mindful not to be in the way. The organizer has no obligation to keep you company if you’ve chosen to arrive before the set time.
    4. During the workshops, refrain from making jokes to lighten up the mood. If the organizer asks you to pose questions at the end of a segment instead of when you think of them, write down any questions and do that, instead of thinking that asking your question can’t hurt the flow or timing of the workshop.
    5. Don’t hog the organizer’s time during breaks or in workshops. They have a million things to do. If it is a dear friend, consider saying that you are there and ready to hang out and support them, but only if that’s what they want. Anything other than an enthusiastic yes is a no.
    6. Don’t ask the organizer for special privileges just because they’re your friend (unless they are for health and safety reasons).
    7. Listen during the workshops to understand what function the organizer will have during the game. If they say you can larp with them (for example if they have an NPC function), then you can, but remember to always give them an opportunity to opt out. If they are present only in an off-game capacity, then respect that.

    After the Larp

    1. After the game, thank the organizer either at the larp or afterwards online. Give them appreciation and tell them about things you enjoyed that they were responsible for.
    2. Allow the organizers some time to recover before providing negative comments about the larp. If you want to rant about the game in a way that includes criticism of some sort, check to see if the organizer is nearby. If they are, don’t do it. For an organizer, that sort of criticism is not what they need to hear in that moment. Your criticism during the larp may make it difficult for them to perform their other tasks effectively.
    3. Check in with the organizer after the game, repeat positive things, and wait for them to ask about constructive criticism before giving it. Some organizers request a Week of Stories, in which players should only share their positive stories from the event for the first week after the larp before issuing criticisms. Respect that wish.
    4. If there is a feedback form, fill it in. When filling in longer comments, remember to nuance your answers. Often organizers will clump together the data and the comments separately, which means that even if your data reflects that you have had a good larp, your comments may make it seem like a bad experience.
    5. Remember, you might not have all the information about a design decision. Even if something seems objectively bad to you, there might be reasons for it. Try not to word things as absolutes, but as things you perceived as flaws. Sometimes your own expectations or other outside influences are the reasons you haven’t had a good game. Sometimes it’s the design. Rarely is it because the organizer is a horrible human being.
    6. If you don’t organize on a regular basis, or if you have never organized a larp like the one you attended, have some humility. Remember that this is a person that has put themselves out there in trying to create something. Be nice.

    This is a living document that may be updated to include more tips. I don’t claim to have thought of everything, or that my tips work for everyone, but this is, in my opinion, a baseline with which to start. If you want to add something, including rewording, nuancing, or disagreeing, feel free to use the comment section and expand upon your suggestion.

    Cover photo: Pixabay

    Edited by: Elina Gouliou