Tag: pervasive larp

Published on

2022-10-19

in

Documentation

Culture, Community, and Layers of Reality: Playing Allegiance

Written by
Juhana Pettersson

The larp Allegiance ended at a statue in a small park commemorating the end of the Second World War. We played diplomats and their support staff from different countries in 1970, listening to the Norwegian Foreign Minister’s speech about war and peace.

The minister talked about her own experiences in the aftermath of the Nazi occupation of Norway. She quoted the Norwegian king Håkon the Seventh: “Higher even than peace, we place the right of self-determination.”

The reactions in the crowd to the speech came from all the different histories and emotions our characters had. But they also sprang from the reality we live in as players. The themes of war and peace feel immediate in the context of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, which had impacted the lives of many players concretely and all players at least indirectly.

At the end of the speech, the minister’s words were not of the glory of victory but the necessity of rebuilding all that was lost.

Diplomats socializing at the American Party. Photo by Martin Østlie Lindelien (cropped).

Allegiance was a pervasive larp (Montola, Stenros, and Waern 2009) about the Cold War and the diplomacy needed to stave off nuclear Armageddon. Spies, betrayals, defections, and diplomats trying to carve space for themselves and maybe even for their countries. It was played in the streets of Skien in Norway and included over a dozen locations open to play over the weekend.

I played the military attaché at the Finnish embassy, a war veteran scarred for life in the Winter War and the Continuation War. Much of my larp was about old friends, relationships, and meeting people I used to know in new circumstances.

The larp’s core question was made plain in its name: Allegiance. During play, our characters had to interrogate who or what they were really loyal to. Country, ideology, personal self-interest? In the beginning of the larp my character seemed quite straightforward: He was a patriot loyal to his country, trying his best to keep it out of another war.

As play progressed, I found myself with other loyalties too. Helping old friends even when they were technically on the side of the enemy. Concocting secret plans to extend Project Gladio to Finland in direct contravention to Finnish government policy.

Community

The production model for Allegiance placed a heavy emphasis on community. Each country represented in the larp had a designer of its own recruited from that country’s larp community. This country designer created the characters and play design for their embassy. The country designers worked together on connections and events that happened between the embassies and in the wider fiction of the larp.

Thus, my character had close connections to people from the Swedish and East German embassies and the Norwegian foreign ministry. My main social context was the Finnish embassy, designed by Maria Pettersson.

Ida Foss and Martin Nielsen were the project leads of the larp but their role was more that of a producer, facilitator, shepherd who guides the collective efforts of the country designers and makes it possible for their work to be realized in the larp.

This design approach was very much in tune with the larp’s wider political and social vision, which emphasized coming together across national boundaries to forge a path towards a better world. The players whose characters staffed the Soviet embassy came from Belarus, Ukraine, and in a few cases, Russia. Some of them experienced significant difficulties in making their way to Norway for the larp due to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and the increasingly repressive regimes in power in some of these countries, as well as the stringent travel bans and border closures enacted by almost all of the European countries sharing a border with Russia.

Much of the simple pleasures of the larp had to do with cultural exchange and discovery. In a pervasive larp spread across a number of venues it’s always fun to discover new places. The first night, there was a party hosted by the American embassy, with hot dogs. The venue was a real bar, a place you might have used in real life for a party for diplomats.

One of the larp’s design ideas was the use of Moments. They were pre-planned scenes between characters reminiscent of fateplay (Fatland 2000). The important difference here is that the Moment is defined as a scene with a starting point. It was up to us as players to take it somewhere interesting. One of my Moments was with an East German embassy official who I’d recognized from the war. We met at the Finnish sauna boat and talked about the war and how different our lives had become.

The second night, we took an antique, 70’s era bus to a mansion outside town where the East German embassy was holding a reception. In the pacing of the larp, this was the time when we resolved dangling plotlines and extended earlier prompts into something with more depth and meaning. We also discovered an actual secret door in the mansion’s library, not part of the larp’s design at all.

The larp featured an antique, period-appropriate bus. Photo by Kai Simon Fredriksen.

Language

I’m from Finland. Finnish is my native language. I’m writing this in English, a language I learned in school and from the media. Almost all international larp in Europe happens in English and because of this, the majority of my larp experience in the international context has been in a foreign language.

International larps and related events such as the Knutpunkt conference have a social convention where everything should be in English so that the events are accessible to all. This of course assumes that everyone can speak English.

Allegiance made the extremely unusual choice of having a different design around language and nationality. The larp was made so that as a player, if you wanted to play in the embassy of a specific country, you needed to speak the language and have relevant cultural experience and understanding. To play in the Finnish embassy, you needed to speak Finnish and grasp Finnish cultural references.

This meant that the larp was primarily accessible to Norwegians, Swedes, Finns, Danes and Germans as well as larpers from the U.S., the U.K., the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Ukraine, Russia, and Belarus. Players from these countries had an embassy they could easily play in. The U.S. and U.K. embassies ended up having more relaxed policies, especially because player drop outs led to new participants having to come in at short notice. In their case, language skills and some understanding of the culture was deemed enough.

Maria Pettersson designed the Finnish embassy and played the secretary, a supporting role designed to facilitate the running of the larp. Photo by Juhana Pettersson.

All larps feature design choices that make the event more accessible to some players and less accessible to others. This was the case with Allegiance as well. It was obviously less accessible to the Spanish or the Greeks because they didn’t have a place in it. It was more accessible to players from its represented countries who didn’t speak perfect English because the design was much more forgiving in that sense than typical international larp.

During the larp, you played in the language that made most sense in the moment. At the Finnish embassy I spoke Finnish and at international meetings I spoke English. At an important meeting concerning the multilateral reduction and limitation of nuclear weapons, the Soviet ambassador spoke through a translator in a beautifully awkward and authentic way, obviously choreographed by the players involved to create a very specific cultural expression.

Personally, when I played in the Finnish embassy, I realized how rare and unusual it was for me to be able to play my own language and culture in an international larp. The fidelity of cultural representation was very high because everyone at the embassy was able to play with shared background and references.

A culturally specific reference from the Finnish embassy. Photo by Juhana Pettersson.

We had jokes about Ahti Karjalainen and a bottle of Puolustuslaitos-branded booze. We had period comic strips by Kari. I played a former politician from the Keskusta party whose family came from Savo and who was personal friends with Kekkonen. When we got a diplomatic note from the Soviet Union, all players had the deep cultural background needed to grasp the enormity of such an event.

My character was involved with the grassroots project of hiding weapons in farms and barns in case of a future Soviet invasion after Finland lost the Continuation War. They were to be used in guerrilla warfare. In real life, my family also has a connection to this same phenomenon.

Historically, Finland is famous for sauna diplomacy. To make it happen in the larp, we had a sauna boat where we could host meetings. It demonstrated the difference between two aspects of playing on your own culture. The internal play at the embassy ran on deeper cultural nuances while the internationally facing sauna diplomacy was simpler, made legible for foreign consumption but also fun because of the cultural exchange involved.

The use of English and the focus on cultural elements that can be shared between people from different countries are necessary elements of international larp and will remain so in the future. Still, I deeply appreciated the chance Allegiance gave me to play on my own background for once, and see the Czechs, the Swedes, the Danes and others doing the same.

As an international larp, Allegiance attempted to build bridges between player communities to an unusual degree. A typical international larp operates on a policy where anyone can join in as long as they speak fluent English. The doors are open. In Allegiance, the backgrounds of players were more limited. It was open to people from the former Czechoslovakia, Soviet Union, Scandinavia, Finland, Germany, U.K. and the U.S. However, from many of those larp communities, the project actively sought to involve participants and designers to a much greater degree than international larps usually do

In this sense, Allegiance swapped a passive open doors policy for proactive bridge building.

The designer of the Czechoslovakian embassy Dominika Kovacova. The embassy designers played supporting roles as secretaries who could be relied on to transfer information reliably. Photo by Kai Simon Fredriksen.

Manufacturing Reality

Physical reality consists of the material world around us, the tables and walls, air and water. Our bodies and their biological function. Social reality encompasses all the fictions we’ve built for ourselves to organize our existence: money, government, corporations, titles, countries, borders.

When we organize a larp, we create a temporary alternative social reality and then live within it for a set period of time, with tools to take a break from it when needed.

Allegiance featured two parallel sets of meetings about important international agreements, NORDEK and MALART. The latter concerned reductions and limitations for nuclear weapons programs and I was involved in it in my capacity as a military attaché.

Sitting in the meetings, I felt like I was engaging with the construction of social reality on a double level. Playing a larp means I’m constantly manufacturing social reality with my co-players to keep the fiction consistent and playable. My character, as a diplomat, is participating in a painstaking process of creating social reality by the way of treaty negotiations which decide where nuclear weapons can be placed, who can have them and how the materials of their manufacture can be sold.

The social reality of larp is temporary and ceases to exist once the larp is over. The social reality of diplomatic negotiations has much broader consequences because we as a society have decided that the results of such negotiations are “real.” Nevertheless, they’re also made up and diplomats are the people who hammer out the specifics.

The way we ordinarily understand things, larp is fake and diplomacy is real. Yet there is something similar in the minutiae of how the processes are negotiated that emphasizes how our social reality is constructed. The social reality of diplomacy eventually becomes physical reality as nuclear missiles are dismantled or new bases capable of firing atomic warheads constructed.

The Finnish Ambassador visiting the Danish embassy. Photo by Martin Østlie Lindelien.

From this viewpoint, politics is the process through which we decide the rules of the social reality in which we live. On a national and global level, the process of politics can lead to extremes such as war. Allegiance examined the international political processes created to produce the opposite result, peace.

Allegiance is a political larp beyond its subject matter. It happens in a specific political context, that of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. On the level of community, the vision behind Allegiance is that of transnational work towards peace and against authoritarianism. As borders are closed, refugees turned away, and visas rescinded, it seeks to present a vision of coming together against the dark forces of nationalism, hate, and war.

At the afterparty, I talked with a Belarusian player I’d shared a scene with. She said that all of her friends back home in Minsk had either emigrated or were in jail.

The Ghost of History

In 1970, the Nobel Prize for Literature was awarded to the Soviet writer Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn. His The Gulag Archipelago is a powerful indictment of the Soviet prison system. The first major event I participated in during the larp was a reception held in honor of Solzhenitsyn’s award. The diplomats came together at an art gallery and there was tension in the air because the representatives from the East Bloc countries obviously didn’t much care for the Nobel Committee’s choice.

In real life, the Nobel Peace Prize was awarded while the larp was running. The 2022 award went to the human rights advocate Ales Bialiatski from Belarus, the Russian human rights organization Memorial, and the Ukrainian human rights organization Center for Civil Liberties. The choice of recipients from each of these countries symbolically emphasizes the necessity of civil society to come together across borders to fight against war and repression. When I saw the news during the larp, it felt like the reasoning of the real life Peace Prize and the larp’s creative agenda were perfectly aligned.

The author of this article contemplating a speech in honor of the Nobel Prize for Literature of Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn.
Photo by Martin Østlie Lindelien.

For my character, the larp Allegiance ended in a classic scene from Cold War spy stories. I tried to help my East German friend defect to the West but in the last few minutes of the larp, during the speech, he got arrested. We’d made plans to meet in Tromsö but my character would wait alone for a friend who would never come.

The ending was appropriate. As the larp went on, I became worried things were going too well for me but this injected a necessary element of melancholy.

Just before we took a taxi to the airport the day before the larp, I was helping to print some of the papers and documents needed for the play at the Finnish embassy. I had printer trouble with no time to resolve it so I left the mess as it was and finished printing with a laptop.

On Sunday night after the larp when we came home, I turned on my computer. My printer came alive, spontaneously printing out a diplomatic note from the Soviet Union.

Period cars used by the East German embassy in an in-game photo. Photo by David Pusch.

Credits

Project Leads

Ida Foss and Martin Nielsen

Country Designers

Czechoslovakia: Dominika Kovacova
Denmark: Jesper Heebøll Arbjørn
East-Germany: Christian WS
Finland: Maria Pettersson
Norway: Grethe Sofie Bulterud Strand
Soviet Union: Masha Karachun
Soviet Union: Alexander Karalevich
Soviet Union: Zhenja Karachun
Sweden: Anders Hultman
Sweden: Susanne Gräslund
U.K.: Mo Holkar
U.S.A.: Julia Woods

Other Designers

Martine Svanevik
Kari KD
Sanne Harder

Kitchen

Tor Kjetil Edland
Jørn Slemdal
Frida Sofie
Thomas Frederick Hozman Tollefsen

Backstage

Jahn Hermansen
Frida Lines
Salme Vanhanen
Ronja Lofstad

Red House And Retro House, Runtime and Designing Embassies

Adilya Rakhimova
Stine Mari Haugen

Rigging
Tatsiana Smaliak
Jorg Rødsjø
Katharina

Safety and Runtime

Freja Gyldenstrøm

Drivers

Olav Borge Bondal
Margo Raaum

Theme Song and Live Music at Villa Ekeli

Thomas Herlofsen

Theme Song Production

Olav Stahl

Photographers

Martin Østlie Lindelien
Kai Simon Fredriksen

ID Cards, Paper Props and Website Sound

Nina Tunge-Kvamme

Assistant, UD

Bjørn

Locations

Skien Bibliotek
Bakgaarden
Skien Kulturskole
Telemark Kunstsenter
Ibsenhuset
Skien Nanbudoklubb
Telemarkskanalen
Megafon
Kontorbygg AS
Torjerd Sofie Strand Moripen

Antique cars

Grenland Veteranvognklubb

Supporting Organizations

Ravn
Nordisk kulturfond – Globus
Fantasiforbundet
Norsk Kulturråd

References

Fatland, Eirik. 2000. “The Play of Fates (or: How to Make Rail-roading Legal).” Amor Fati.

Montola, Markus, Jaakko Stenros, and Annika Waern. 2009. Pervasive Games: Theory and Design. Routledge.

Cover photo: During the day, diplomats attend meetings and craft policy. At night, the work continues at parties, such as the one hosted by the East German embassy. Photo by Kai Simon Fredriksen. Image has been cropped.
Published on

2021-09-08

in

Theory

A Plot to Bomb the Magic Circle: Chaos Magic in Urban Play

Written by
Alex Brown

[This article is also available in Spanish, at: http://vivologia.es/un-complot-para-bombardear-el-circulo-magico-la-magia-del-caos-en-el-juego-urbano/
Thank you to Vivologia for translating it!]

The magic circle is a metaphor for a mutually agreed space for play. By playing larps, we willingly enter into these contracts with boundaries of where, how and when play is permitted in consensually agreed terms or social frame (Järvelä 2019). Through urban and pervasive styles of play, I’m exploring the possibilities arising from disrupting the social frame of the magic circle, particularly through the practice of chaos magic.

Psychogeography is often practiced as a pseudo-scientific study of the city, particularly in its early forms. Beginning in the 1950s from the Lettrist movement and in the following years with the Situationist movement, psychogeography is a ‘study’ or exploration of the range of emotions and behaviours that an urban landscape determines upon its inhabitants or participants. Considering the actively playful nature of urban landscapes as seen through the psychogeographic lens, it could be considered that a city’s inhabitants assume the role of participants, simply by taking part in everyday life. Psychogeography is characterised by the rejection of convenient forms of traversing a city in favour of more experimental forms of navigation, usually by walking to actively work against the intended purpose of urban design, as an act of playful resistance. It redefines the function of the architecture as tools for play, to be dissected and reassembled through the act of walking and reimagining what the city might be. The Situationist practice of blurring the boundaries between art and life is ever present in the form of a drift (in French: dérive) where a purposeless, playful interaction with the urban landscape through a journey creates possibility for chance encounters. The active participation of the drift, in contrast to passive consumption, creates the same levels of player agency desirable in most larp practices.

Psychogeography is not without its challenges. As a documented practice it can lack inclusivity by getting lost in opaque language and esotericism (obscure forms of knowledge). However, the active participation of the body situated in the space means that it has to be experienced in order to be understood.

Through encounters with cities in constant flux, moments of chance and serendipity are what I want to focus on, as well as the magic created through these experiences.

Since the 1990s, British psychogeography practitioners have borrowed more and more from esoteric and occult practices, particularly in London and Glasgow. Chaos magic is an accessible introduction to this crossover with urban play, with or without larp. The term ’chaos magic’ is easier to understand as ‘success magic’ or ‘results magic’. I don’t want to explain it away, but as this is the purpose of this piece of writing, please forgive me as I do precisely this.

Serendipity

Serendipity is similar to luck or good fortune, but not the same. We can view serendipity as the process of allowing unlikely chance findings to happen and accepting that what is found is not necessarily what is being looked for. Chaos magic relies on serendipity as a salient feature, and, this is the important bit, it uses the psychology of only celebrating successful results. (If this sounds like cheating, that’s because it is cheating. But you must immediately forget that I have written this, and this section should be détourned or ripped out and eaten).

Through the adventures of the city, you ordinarily encounter so much that is immediately forgotten. However, during a drift, you can become hyper attuned to your surroundings and pay attention to the brilliance of all details. Coming across buildings, signs, street furniture, and found objects that you might have ignored before offers infinite possibilities for play. It is these details which begin to build your magic. The Baader-Meinhof phenomenon gives a name to the psychological effect of coming across something new and then encountering it again in quick succession. This effect is similar to what can happen through the process of a drift. By paying attention to the details of the urban environment, it is inevitable that some will be more interconnected than others, even showing repeated motifs in the way the Baader-Meinhof phenomenon might make us believe we are encountering incredible repetition, yet it is the process of being more susceptible to your own motifs that will make them stand out. These connections are the moments of serendipity that will shape a narrative and look like they are made for you.

Facilitating play

In this context of psychogeographical chaos magic, urban play requires the practitioner to engage in a dialogue with the landscape. Reading the environment is similar to reading a tarot draft: it is an exercise of interpretation, of connecting ideas to create meaning. This allows you to approach the play with a problem that you want to solve or an unanswered question, either predetermined or found through the play itself. The process of being open to allowing events to happen is paramount, so don’t get too hung up on specific questions that do not bear fruit, and be prepared to give your playful journey enough time for symbols, clues, and answers to present themselves.

If you make a few predictions or choose a few overlapping threads of narratives, the odds stack up in your favour. It’s always an experiment, and some questions will be answered through the magic; some questions, if you allow them to continue outside of the magic circle, will be left hanging like an unresolved cadence for years. And some will be complete wild goose chases that leave you wondering if, in fact, you are the goose. For me, this is definitely part of the appeal.

Drift as larp as chaos magic?

To introduce a drift in larp terms, we could imagine the urban environment as a freeform sandbox larp without a spatial border to the agreed area of play. We can still create a fictive setting, and a narrative arc such as a question or prompt to be answered on the journey.

In Green Basilisk (2019), an environmental disaster takes place and time travellers from different eras come together to decide what happened through a collective drift. “Green Basilisk” refers to the disaster, the collective prompt for players is to interpret clues from the landscape, but without saying what actually happened. In the workshop, players create their characters who come from 3 fixed points in linear time and interact with real objects in the landscape as props for play in the fiction. The props (buildings, found objects) can be used diegetically or non-diegetically as the players feel appropriate. This contributes to a sense of being situated in the landscape at the same time as playing in the storyworld. When encountering a church, for example, players are permitted to use their own player knowledge of what the function of the building is, or they can create a new meaning for it, such as a spy headquarters or fallout shelter. Characters from different eras might have conflicting views on the function of buildings, which creates opportunities for play. The contradiction between eras, as well as moving between the ‘real’ and fictional interpretations of objects, creates a blurring of time boundaries. This allows players to experience a more fluid interpretation of the relationship between cause and effect of events through play. There is no set route in the larp, this is decided by players as they go, which is important for serendipitous activity to allow the process of a narrative to build through unexpected discoveries. In urban areas (and especially London, where this larp has been played), there are enough signifiers of consumer capitalism for the play to veer towards capitalism as theme and cause of the disaster but this setting could just as easily allow the players to take the narrative in other directions!

Bomb the Magic Circle

The magic circle as a boundary is not one that larp designers and players should give up on lightly. It expands possibilities by providing an alibi for the development of narrative and relationships, within a social contract which is predominantly safe for play. However, I want to encourage forms of urban play where the magic circle exists as a membrane, one which is permeable to the everyday world in both directions.Through this process, the blurring of “art” and “life” or play experiences with wider society, provides an opportunity to occupy space with play whilst maintaining a firmer connection with the everyday world. By taking up space for its own sake in the context of a city where privatised and monetised areas dominate, we can détourne the landscape to one that can be shaped by the imagination of the players. We can view it as an act of resistance and confrontation, it gives agency simultaneously in the play and the everyday, where players can imagine and prefigure hopeful futures for the city through the active reclamation of public space.

In urban play, particularly with the temporal stretching of play in psychogeographical scenarios, in which case it can be restarted at short notice out of the everyday, it is helpful to us to think about the 2 worlds layered on top of each other, or co-existing. For larp to be accessible in the broadest sense this method allows a process that keeps an openness for porosity and for serendipitous moments. If the magic circle exists as sacred without allowing the porosity of worlds in both directions, it has the possibility to only work as a privileged space for the same people. At the risk of hyperbole, if you think that larp has an opportunity to change the world, then the porosity of worlds in urban play is where the magic happens.

Photo by cottonbro on Pexels. Image has been cropped.

Suggestions for DIY Chaos Magic in Urban Play

People: 1-6 players (3 is literally the magic number, as you tend to move as one unit). You don’t necessarily need characters for play, although fine to do so (they should relate to your problem as below).

Time: 1.5-2 hours at least. If you’re inclined to stretch the limits of spatio-temporal boundaries confining to ‘play’ and ‘not play’, then 1.5-2 years.

Prompts: Think of a collective problem you want to answer, or a prompt. This can be something based in reality: “How do we banish cars from city centres?,” something based in a fiction which still relates to the everyday world: “How do we escape the masked warriors?” or something more cryptic: “What happened to red?”

Location/direction: There should be no set route decided in advance. I would recommend following signs or clues which relate to your prompt (it is fine to choose a direction, e.g. north, although this can be limiting). In general, you should follow the route that looks the most interesting. You can also set rules in advance for wayfinding such as rolling a die, though instinct is the best guidance. Pay attention to the surroundings, and the more ground you cover without rushing, the more you will see.

Objects: Take cues from the surroundings in order to guide the journey. Use signs, symbols, words, buildings, street furniture, behaviour of people, or anything else you come across. Found objects are going to be particularly valuable.

Chaos magic: Try to loosen the idea of cause and effect and disrupt a sense of linear time. This will make events connect easier and create more possibilities for play. Remember that chaos magic is a process through which you will not find answers straight away. The questions that you first thought of may become dead-ends, don’t be disheartened by this. Be open to new suggestions from the landscape as you come across them, it’s fine to follow multiple threads of clues at the same time. Try to be situated in both the fiction and reality and consider how they feed into each other, how the magic circle is permeated, or in fact, bombed.

Bibliography

Järvelä, Simo. 2019. “How Real is Larp?” In Larp Design: Creating Role Play Experiences, edited by Johanna Koljonen, Jaakko Stenros, Anne Serup Grove, Aina D. Skjønsfjell and Elin Nilsen, 22. Copenhagen, Denmark: Landsforeningen Bifrost.

Cover photo: Jos van Ouwerkerk on Pexels. Photo has been cropped.

This article will be published in the upcoming companion book Book of Magic and is published here with permission. Please cite this text as:

Brown, Alex. “A Plot to Bomb the Magic Circle: Chaos Magic in Urban Play.” In Book of Magic, edited by Kari Kvittingen Djukastein, Marcus Irgens, Nadja Lipsyc, and Lars Kristian Løveng Sunde. Oslo, Norway: Knutepunkt, 2021. (In press).
Published on

2017-08-29

in

Documentation

Road Trip Report

Written by
Sharon Underberg

Road Trip was like no other larp I’ve ever done. I felt like I’d fallen down the rabbit hole, with a constant interweaving of fiction and reality.

Road Trip, a joint production of Dzobiak Larp Studios and Imagine Nation Collective, was a 7-day Nordic larp held in July 2017 in which a rock band and its entourage went on a road trip on Route 66 from Chicago to Santa Monica. In most larps, a group of people decide to mutually support each other in creating a fantasy world, isolated from the real world as much as possible. But for Road Trip, we were larp characters existing in the real world and interfacing with people who didn’t know we were larping. The characters were assumed, but the interactions were all honest and real. We weren’t pretending to be a band — we were a band. In particular, we were The Runaway Sound and its entourage on our first US tour. Our band was little known in the US, but had made a radio hit that went viral in Romania and Bulgaria. This trip was in preparation for our US tour. (And helped explain why so many in our entourage were European).

The band and entourage of Road Trip on the first day. Photo by Nadina Dobrowolska from Dziobak Larp Studios.

But we were a band that was to play in real venues, without the audience knowing we were anything other than a real band. This led to an unusual amount of insecurity for me in the lead up to Road Trip. I’ve played a variety of characters in larps and enjoy playing against type. My larp friends might not even know what I am like in real life — a (gulp) middle-aged single mom of two amazing and challenging young adult children. I am a pediatric radiologist who has held leadership positions in my practice, a choir director, and performer in community theater. Responsible, caregiver — these are the kinds of descriptions I get in real life. Oh, and physically I am just under 5 feet tall with the energy of someone much larger. When I do theater, the roles I am cast in are determined by how I look and sound — usually a comic or quirky character. I am never the ingenue, never the evil witch queen, never the leading lady. Which is why I love larp. I get to take a vacation from my life and become someone different of my own choosing, not governed by my age, stature, or real life skills. Younger or older, different strengths or weaknesses, often capable of things I wouldn’t feel capable of in real life. And the magic of larp is that my fellow players honor my choices and treat me as my character would be treated.

But in this case, my character was to be a singer in a rock band, performing in real venues in front of audiences who were not part of the mutual contract of larp. I knew I could handle the singing and the performing — but it was the real life physical stuff that scared me: going against type on stage.

Valentina, the author’s character’s stage persona. Photo by Nadina Dobrowolska from Dziobak Larp Studios.

I incorporated these fears and how to respond to them into my character design. Valerie Saunders was the daughter of an unwed teen mother from Bridgeport, CT who had a difficult childhood, often pushed into being the responsible one. She was drawn to rock music from an early age, but was hampered by her insecurities. At the age of 20, she went to an open mic night but was unable to overcome her stage fright. That’s when she created an alternate persona for herself — Valentina Sunder. Valentina was uninhibited and fearless, a creature of impulse and energy. Valentina had no problems performing on stage, and soon began to build a reputation as a singer. While initially an intentional construct, over time, Valentina became more of an alterego who fought with Valerie for control: a form of dissociative identity disorder. Valerie was the responsible one, all superego. Never having gone to college, she worked as a receptionist and was the one who paid the bills. In her spare time, she dreamed and wrote songs. Valentina was pure id; offstage, she was equally uninhibited, drinking, drugging, sexually promiscuous. She often ended up in trouble with which Valerie had to deal.

Valerie, the author’s character’s primary persona. Photo by Nadina Dobrowolska from Dziobak Larp Studios.

My intention in playing this character was to give myself permission to use the Valentina persona as a way to overcome my fears of being seen as an impostor. She was a goth through and through, wearing black or purple wigs, heavy makeup, black leather, fishnet stockings, and platform boots. Wearing these clothes gave me the courage to BE Valentina. But I didn’t want to be forced to dress and act like this for the entire trip. That’s where Valerie came in. I could wear my real hair and more comfortable clothes a good deal of the time. At first, Valerie was more like me in real life, but I intentionally found ways for her to be different. More insecure, less educated, never left the northeast. And she dressed like a hippie, wearing bright colors.

I intended lots of drama between the 2 personas. Valentina throwing tantrums before shows, major dysfunction, a breakdown that might lead to the integration of the two personas into one.

And then the larp started and it all changed. The 4 members of the band in the US had rehearsed twice prior to the start, and we hoped to rehearse with our European based lead guitar player on the Sunday, but it never happened. I was Valerie the first day while traveling, and then changed into Valentina once we hit St. Louis. So far so good. But then Monday night, we ended up onstage in an amazing venue in St. Louis — and let’s just say it didn’t go well. I remember all the details why, believe me, but don’t need to belabor them.

The band’s first performance. Photo by Nadina Dobrowolska from Dziobak Larp Studios.

The band members talked the next morning at breakfast — mostly out-of-character — and asked to speak with the organizers before we started on the day’s plans. We told them they had two choices. It was clear to us that, if we were to succeed as a performing band, we needed some things. We needed significant dedicated rehearsal time in one of the vans, with no band members driving. We also needed real support from our entourage. Everyone had “jobs” as part of the role-play, but with a few exceptions, it felt like that first night it was the band members doing all the (literal) heavy lifting while everyone else was just having fun. That would have to change.

Audience members for the first gig. Photo by Nadina Dobrowolska from Dziobak Larp Studios.

Or, if they didn’t feel that could happen, we wouldn’t perform live again. We would play and sing at times we were just with the other larpers, could do some video footage, and spend our energy being our larp characters rather than being musicians.

The organizers agreed to try option one — in fact, we had a long rehearsal in the van that day and followed that by recording footage for a rock video. But something happened with my intentions for the character along the way. You see, I’ve been a singer and musician far longer than I’ve been a larper. And the music took priority for me.

The entourage enjoys an outdoor performance on the first night. Photo by Nadina Dobrowolska from Dziobak Larp Studios.

While I didn’t stop playing Valerie/Valentina, a lot of the intensity got dialed back. Neither of them had both the discipline and assertiveness to aid in helping a group of musicians in become a band. And it was more important to me to rehearse and give/get honest feedback about the music and performances than to create drama. And truthfully, for me that was the drama. Were we going to be able to pull off a successful gig? Make the video we wanted to have made? Make our potential fans into real fans?

Meanwhile, the band members bonded. Kelsey, our guitar player/lead singer, with a voice like an angel and an attitude of making the best of tragedy in his past. Tony, our lead guitar player, who led impromptu jam sessions in the van. Lily, our singer who realized partway through the tour that she loved the journey, but didn’t want to perform — and then got an unexpected inheritance allowing her to sponsor the band’s further journeys. And Cholly “Thunderlizard” Skolnik, our larger-than-life drummer. The Thunderlizard’s original heavy metal band, Vermithrax Pejorative, was still a legend. His hobby was joining cults. He regaled us with endless stories of his adventures on the road, making every van ride with him a treat. I still intend to write a song entitled “The Legend of the Thunderlizard,” lyrics completely comprised of quotations.

The band performs their second gig. Photo by Nadina Dobrowolska from Dziobak Larp Studios.

Audience members. Photo by Nadina Dobrowolska from Dziobak Larp Studios.

The other thing that led me to dial back the drama was that there was plenty of potential conflict in what we were doing already. Moving 22 people plus luggage plus band equipment in 3 vans, driving 4-6 hours a day, getting unpacked each night, sharing hotel rooms with various other characters. Hotels varied from pretty nice to very sketchy. One night we stayed in an Airbnb, which had its own private pool. However, it also had one bathroom for all of the guests, who slept in rooms with up to 14 bunk beds. None of this sounds exciting, but it needed doing — and throwing a tantrum as Valentina during the process didn’t seem like a good idea.

Photo by Nadina Dobrowolska from Dziobak Larp Studios.

And there were the exciting parts too. One part, about which I can’t overstate the amazingness, was exploring a whole chunk of America, and even better with a bunch of Europeans who had never been here before. Seeing the country and landscape through their eyes. In Missouri, there was a gun shop, which was the first time many of them had ever seen a real gun. Several players took the opportunity to use one at the shooting range, sparking a whole range of reactions. Noting how many churches we passed. Noting how many cows we passed. Their amazement at the landscape especially as we got into Texas and further west.

Sightseeing. Photo by Nadina Dobrowolska from Dziobak Larp Studios.

All of our conversations with locals. And many, many conversations in the vans about politics, religion, economics, and philosophy. This was another place I found myself modifying how I was playing Valerie. As originally designed, she had a limited fund of knowledge or experience, and I found I wanted to dive deeper into the conversations. Stories about my kids in real life morphed into stories about my niece and nephew.

There was also the pleasure of interacting with the other characters as we traveled. Keith, our spiritual adviser, really ended up as a therapist and guide for many of us. Sarah, a fundamentalist Christian widow, got on the wrong tour by accident — she meant to travel with a Christian band — and was transformed into Cadillac, the best drum tech ever. Dickie, another religious type, was our roadie and gofer, entangled in a crazy relationship with the sister of a band member. Nico and Eliza, our videographers, fell in love during the trip.

The entourage at a venue on the second night of the trip. Photo by Nadina Dobrowolska from Dziobak Larp Studios.

More about Nico and Eliza. The real life players of these characters are a couple from Poland who are videographers that are part of Dziobak. On Thursday, during our gig in Albuquerque, Nico got on the stage and asked Eliza to marry him. Eliza said yes — if they could be married in Las Vegas.

Talk about the blur between real life and fantasy… The organizers looked at each other and said “I guess we need to change plans and head to Vegas.” Of course, in real life, this was planned ahead of time, but none but a few knew that, and it -felt- spontaneous. After a stop in Winslow, Arizona (of course), we made it to Las Vegas. The characters AND the players were married by Elvis at the Graceland Wedding Chapel. The ceremony used their real names — yes, they were really married. Wow.

The Road Trip entourage standing on a corner in Winslow, Arizona, a pilgrimage made famous by “Take It Easy” by the Eagles. Photo by Nadina Dobrowolska from Dziobak Larp Studios.

The organizers also did a great job of planning stops. The Uranus Fudge factory, where we filmed a segment of our video, was a glorious hodgepodge of western memes. Aside from the General Store that sold fudge and souvenirs, there was saloon, a gun store, shooting range, a tattoo parlor, a giant rocket ship, a double decker bus, and a dinosaur. We shot our video on the porch of one of the buildings. I was on the roof in blistering heat, plus the wig and all. What we sacrifice for our art!

There was also the Route 66 museum in Oklahoma, which helped provide a historical backdrop to our trip. As usual, we struck up conversations with people there, including a photographer for Playboy and Penthouse who was taking a vacation from his job, traveling Route 66 with his wife and son and photographing families on the way. He photographed our whole group, and he and his family made it to our gig in Amarillo that night. But an impromptu stop for a picnic lunch in a neighborhood of cookie cutter tan brick ranch houses made an impact as well. So bleak and colorless…

Photo by Nadina Dobrowolska from Dziobak Larp Studios.

Our stop at the Blue Whale of Catoosa in Oklahoma was surprisingly spiritual for a monument to kitsch. Keith, our spiritual adviser, explained about the legend of Jonah and the Whale and encouraged us to come out of the belly of the whale open to change in our lives.

The band had video shoots and photo ops, and I got to experience in a very small way what it’s like being a celebrity. There were curious glances from passers-by as I strode out into the Texas desert in my black platform boots and fishnets for our video shoot at Cadillac ranch. Having a group of 20-somethings in Amarillo ask to have a photo taken with me once they knew I was in the band. And being part of a podcast for The Future is Virtual on Altspace VR, half in- and half out-of-character.

The entourage dancing on the second day. Photo by Nadina Dobrowolska from Dziobak Larp Studios.

Our next gig — open mic night in Amarillo — went much better. In fact, a couple of the locals came back to the hotel and partied with us. Which presented me with a conundrum — they had met Valentina, but I really wanted to get out of her whole getup. And the dual personality part… at the spur of the moment, Val decided to explain herself as twins. I ran up to my room and changed, and came down and asked everyone how the show had gone. We talked one of the local guys into coming with us the next morning to Cadillac Ranch to be part of our video. He walked up to me as Valentina prior to the video shoot and asked whether my purple hair was a wig. I grudgingly agreed that it was, but that it allowed me to change my hair color whenever I wanted. He came to the shoot and played the tambourine. And as far as we could tell, he never knew that I, or the rest of us, were anything but what we claimed to be.

But so much of the experience was the ordinary stuff. Conversations with locals, conversations with each other, jamming and singing in the vans. A beautiful desert rainstorm. Watching the scenery change.

The entourage relaxing during the trip. Members of The Runaway Sound, the in-character band for the larp Road Trip. Image has been cropped. Photo by Nadina Dobrowolska from Dziobak Larp Studios.

The fact that it was a larp meant that glitches along the way were seen as opportunities for role-play rather than annoyances. And there were glitches. One major event was that Tony, our lead guitar player and his two friends decided to leave the tour while we were in Texas. In real life, we respected their decision and wished them well. Meanwhile, the band members were fuming and panicky, and Thunderlizard was plotting to have his biker gang friends abduct Tony and bring him back. Also, the gig in Albuquerque was in a real venue, but there was a misunderstanding between the booker, the venue and us. We thought that the venue was publicizing and selling tickets for our performance, the venue thought we were doing that. So beautiful venue, no audience. Rick, our film director, solved that. He instructed the group to head out into the streets and recruit an audience for a rock video that we were filming. Twenty minutes later, there was a respectable crowd for our show.

The band’s gig on the fourth day. Photo by Nadina Dobrowolska from Dziobak Larp Studios.

The audience for the gig on the 4th day. Photo by Nadina Dobrowolska from Dziobak Larp Studios.

Vegas was and always is surreal. It was 114 degrees F/45 C. We left there and drove through the Mojave desert — the most barren place I’ve ever been to. We passed the Ivanpah Solar Power plant — the largest in the world — which looked for all the world like an alien installation from another planet. We drove through the mountains and then we arrived at our ultimate destination, the Santa Monica pier.

We all walked down to the Pacific Ocean. Keith, our spiritual adviser, told us that this journey had changed us, and that it was up to us to decide how the changes would look in the future. He took us each of us into the water for a private conversation and baptism, and brought us back, introducing us to the group by our real names. This was the most beautiful and effective de-roling process I’ve ever been through.

Keith, the band’s spiritual advisor, baptizing Thunderlizard. Photo by Nadina Dobrowolska from Dziobak Larp Studios.

I’m sure the organizers are evaluating how it went and how they might change things in the future. There is video footage for a rock video as well as documentary footage to process. They discussed the idea of getting a pre-existing band for a future tour, but to me, the coolest thing was creating a band on the fly. However, if I were designing future runs, I would carefully audition potential band members and schedule a couple of extra days at the beginning for rehearsal. That way the band could hit the ground running in performance. Would I like to do the European tour as Valerie/Valentina? Tell me where I can sign up!

The author at the conclusion of Road Trip. Photo by Nadina Dobrowolska from Dziobak Larp Studios.

Cover Photo: Members of The Runaway Sound, the in-character band for the larp Road Trip. Image has been cropped. Photo by Nadina Dobrowolska from Dziobak Larp Studios.
Published on

2017-05-29

in

Documentation

Enlightenment in Blood: A Pervasive World of Darkness Nordic Larp

Written by
Sarah Lynne Bowman

It’s not a revolution… it’s an insurrection.
Anarch catchphrase during Enlightenment in Blood

Enlightenment in Blood was a night of celebration for many vampires in the setting. Photo by Tuomas Hakkarainen.

Enlightenment in Blood was an official White Wolf larp in the Nordic style spanning 10 locations for approximately 200 players in the city of Berlin. The larp lasted five hours and took place in the Friedrichshain district on May 12, 2017. Developed by Participant Design Agency for the World of Darkness Berlin convention, Enlightenment in Blood was created primarily by Juhana Pettersson with help from a team of writers. Tickets were available for convention participants and some local players.

While a few locations were kept private by security, this game is considered a pervasive street larp in that play takes place in public locations and, in many cases, around non-larpers. In this respect, Enlightenment in Blood is similar to previous city larps, including Prosopopeia Bardo 2: Momentum in Stockholm, Sweden; The Spiral, an ARG-larp hybrid that spanned many European cities; and Neonhämärä (Neon Twilight) in Helsinki, Finland.((See Andie Nordgren, “Prosopopeia Bardo 2: Momentum,” in Nordic Larp, edited by Jaakko Stenros and Markus Montola (Stockholm, Sweden: Fëa Livia, 2010; Bardo AB Facebook Group https://www.facebook.com/bardoab/posts/266925533406299; Jaakko Stenros, “Nordic Larp: Theatre, Art, and Game,” in Nordic Larp, edited by Jaakko Stenros and Markus Montola (Stockholm, Sweden: Fëa Livia, 2010). For more information on pervasive larps, see Markus Montola, Jaakko Stenros, and Annika Waern, Pervasive Games: Theory and Design (CRC Press, 2009).))

The primary narrative of the larp focused upon the celebratory first night of a successful vampiric Anarch revolution over the traditional Camarilla. However, the larp was cross-genre, meaning players could choose from an array of character types: Camarilla, Anarch, and Sabbat vampires; Technocracy and Tradition mages; changelings; werewolves; kinfolk; ghouls; and mortals. Players were expected to uphold “the Masquerade” both in-character and out-of-character in order to preserve the surprise. Some groups featured supernaturals and mortals of many types, whereas others, such as the Church of Caine, were vampire-specific. These features contributed to an authentic-feeling World of Darkness larp, where characters walked through the streets of Berlin as if denizens of the city and encountered an array of different creatures with unique agendas.

Though the overall tenor was one of aggression and adrenaline, the larp felt like a large sandbox with multiple locations throughout the city. To reflect this multiplicity of experiences, in addition to my personal account, I collected informal data from 40 participants of the larp, who shared brief descriptions of their experiences. This article will contain some of this information in a consolidated form. For other examples of the variety of experiences, check out Ivan Žalac’s blog post about playing a Gangrel Anarch and the Darker Days podcast, where Mike and Chris discuss playing Technocracy Syndicate mages.((Ivan Žalac, “World of Darkness Berlin and Enlightenment in Blood,” Diary of a Croatian Larper, last modified May 20, 2017. http://www.crolarper.com/2017/05/world-of-darkness-berlin-and.html; “Darker Days Radio Episode #78,” Darker Days Podcast, last modified May 21, 2017. http://podcast.darker-days.org/e/darker-days-radio-episode-78/))

Members of the Church of Caine. Right-hand photo by Tuomas Hakkarainen.

A Tech-Heavy Larp Experience

We were the Chosen of Caine and that night we took to the streets. Beset by enemies at all sides, we stood strong and took care of each other.
Bastian Retzlaff, Malkavian Anarch, Shepherds (Church of Caine), Losers Club

Enlightenment in Blood featured digital components that enhanced the modern feel of the larp. All character creation took place on an online app called Larpweaver, developed by Matthew Webb from Incognita Ltd. Players selected aspects from a limited list of characteristics: primary groups, secondary groups, short backstory seeds, supernatural types, factions, memories, goals, and basic powers where applicable. In this way, character creation was streamlined by offering the player a limited number of options based upon their previous selections. In many cases, the most important selection players made was their Primary group, as all characters started play with this faction at a particular location.

Enlightenment in Blood primary groups.

The majority of the plot was seeded through the Larpweaver platform, as the character affiliations with their groups, their stories, and their goals were the primary drivers for interaction within the larp. However, the organizers also offered some major plot points at various times in the evening. Players could choose to chase these plots or instead decide to focus upon their personal interactions.

While Larpweaver offered character connections through the groups and factions, players were expected to establish independently personal ties such as romances, childe-sire relationships, etc. through Facebook before game. Other players were able to establish these connections at the convention leading up to the event. As with many larps in the collaborative style, this practice meant that players who engaged in extensive pre-play by establishing connections and playing out scenes tended to have more extensive personal interactions within the larp than those who did not.

Description of the Shadow Enlightenment primary group in Larpweaver.

In addition, during the few days leading up to the larp, during play, and for a week afterward, the organizers activated an online social media network called Undernet. Undernet was based upon the Kin framework used for the College of Wizardry larps. The platform had a main channel for all players, private channels for specific groups, and private messaging. While online engagement during a larp can sometimes detract from the in-person interactions, Undernet provided a fast way to spread information to players scattered in 10+ locations. However, some players relied on Facebook for coordination as well, as Undernet access could be spotty in places.

As the furthest locations were a fifteen-minute walk from one another, having an online means to coordinate proved important for the flow of the game. Players could find out where certain groups were headed and where key plot points were unfolding. Characters also used the Undernet platform to post in-game photos and provide running commentary. As one Brujah Anarch player explained, “Glued to my phone, I managed to network my way through the evening, surprisingly up-to-date on everything happening in the city. I didn’t feel lost at all.” Players were encouraged to take in-game photos, as the documentation team could not reach all locations of the larp. However, the organizers placed strong limitations on the sharing of photos and emphasized the need for consent.

Anarchs celebrate the death of the Camarilla sheriff by taking a selfie. Photo by Tuomas Hakkarainen.

Revolution Comes in Many Forms

They may have hurt us before. They may have controlled us. But in this moment, we are free. We are beings of love. We are one with the universe.
Numina, Malkavian Anarch, Shadow Enlightenment, Immanentize the Eschaton

I played a Malkavian Anarch tantrika named Numina who was part of two groups: the Shadow Enlightenment, who sought ways to cope with the Kindred condition through spiritual means; and Immanentize the Eschaton, a group who believed that spiritual transcendence could occur on earth. Interestingly, while the Shadow Enlightenment opposed the Church of Caine — a hierarchical Anarch religious faction gaining power in the area — Immanentize also contained Church of Caine and other members, so we had some crossover in connections through these groups. In this regard, for some pockets of the larp, the themes of enlightenment and revolution focused primarily on the metaphysical aspects of existence rather than physical revolt.

Alaric, a Cult of Ecstasy mage, and Numina, a Malkavian Anarch tantrika. at the Camarilla bar. Photo by Suvi Korhonen.

A trauma survivor, Numina believed in trying to reclaim her Humanity through meditation and connection with others, leading her to run tantra workshops for Kindred and anyone else interested. Her form of anarchy led her to feel vehemently opposed to hierarchies and power structures, believing strongly in personal autonomy and freedom. My larp consisted mainly of trying to extract “misguided” friends from the Church of Caine, leading an in-game tantra workshop to help center other characters in the midst of chaos, and engaging in metaphysical discussions with members of the Shadow Enlightenment and other spiritual seekers. Numina was particularly concerned with saving Metatron, an autistic Malkavian boy with suicidal tendencies who she was worried had been bloodbound by the Church. Her most consistent companions throughout the night were two Cult of Ecstasy mages: Sabine, her mentee posing as her childe, and Alaric, the love of her life for several decades. Alaric was a member of the primary group the Relationship Anarchists, who believed in pursuing non-traditional relationship structures, genders, and sexualities.

As a writer for the larp, I was able to contribute the two primary groups of the Shadow Enlightenment and the Relationship Anarchists. I was pleased to see these groups unfold in game. Much of the “action” of the larp focused upon the violent uprising against the Camarilla, along with the other supernaturals taking advantage of the chaos, including werewolves and changeling Redcaps. I wanted to provide a space in the sandbox for more philosophical, metaphysical, and romantic play to unfold should players choose those options.

Members of the Shadow Enlightenment. Photo by Sarah Lynne Bowman.

Stripped Down Mechanics, Increased Safety Tools

The insurrection is finally here and freedom beckons. We are the merciful bullet to the head of the malignancy that is the Camarilla.
Viktor Keller, Toreador Anarch, Stirner Group, Berlin Intelligentsia

The organizers explained game mechanics in emailed preparatory materials and mandatory pre-game briefings held at the convention. While the larp did not have workshops, play started with a pre-game poem and list of questions that players were asked to read ritually at their respective starting locations in order to gradually phase into character.

Starting ritual and poem for Enlightenment in Blood.

As the larp was in the Nordic style, the designers stripped down the mechanics to incentivize basic, low-level, playable actions that would enhance role-play. For example, my Malkavian character was able to use a stripped-down version of the Dementation power by touching a character’s clothing and saying “You really, really feel everything intensely” or “You really, really want to make someone happy.” Used in both End of the Line and Convention of Thorns, the “really, really” mechanic signals the enactment of a discipline to co-players in a subtle way. The recipient of the power decides the effect on their character, which should last no more than ten minutes. Larpweaver offered a few options from which to choose among these powers, which allowed us to customize our characters based upon the play we aimed to experience. In practice, we negotiated additional types of powers typical to our particular supernaturals in smaller collaborative groups. However, the system gave us a basic understanding of the limits of our power levels and what aspects we could enact during play.

Combat skills were similarly minimized to a small score between 1 and 5, with supernatural powers enhancing this number slightly. No combat scores could exceed 5. In the Nordic style, players are encouraged to collaboratively plan the outcome of scenes rather compete. However, if players wished to have a competitive combat, the larp provided a barebone framework for them to determine the winner. The only exception was the Prince of the city, who could be held by five characters, but could only be defeated by ten. These rules were in place in order to demonstrate his superior power level compared to the rest of these low-level denizens of the World of Darkness. While combat was possible at any point, character death was only permissible in the last hour, although presumably players could arrange consensually for character death before that time. Regardless of these combat mechanics, players were still expected to negotiate consent out-of-game for the content of such scenes and make agreements regarding physical enactment.

Bjarke Pedersen explaining the combat rules in the briefing. Photo by Sarah Lynne Bowman.

Safety and calibration were also emphasized in pre-game briefings with Johanna Koljonen. The larp featured three tools: the Tap-out, a non-verbal means of leaving a scene by communicating through physical touch; the See-No-Evil hand gesture over the eyes, which allows players to bow in and out of scenes without comment; and the Okay Check-In, a way to make sure other players are emotionally comfortable out-of-game.((For more information about these tools and other aspects of larp safety and calibration, see Johanna Koljonen’s blog at https://participationsafety.wordpress.com/)) Players were also asked to step out of game and negotiate physical boundaries in a consensual manner. As the participants came from a large range of larp cultures — those quite familiar with negotiation in the Nordic style, those from a very physically rough play style, and those where touch is not acceptable — workshopping these techniques would have helped standardize their use. Unfortunately, time was limited due to the busy convention schedule.

Johanna Koljonen explaining the safety tools in the briefing. Photo by Sarah Lynne Bowman.

Pervasiveness and Engagement

Walking around in a neighborhood that seems almost immune to Masquerade breaches…
Ludwig Müller, Toreador Anarch Stirner Group, Losers Club

As with many larps, player experiences varied depending on location, cohesion of the groups, and interactions with co-players. All primary groups started game in the same location, e.g. a bathroom stall after a Diablerie, a willing ritual sacrifice at the Church of Caine, etc.. Our group, the Shadow Enlightenment, started play at a restaurant, where we discussed matters of metaphysical philosophy, as well as our concerns around the Church of Caine, which would surely rise in power during the revolution. Because we ate together before play and engaged in the starting ritual together, then launching into serious discussion, our group cohesion was strong. Many of us walked together to confront the Church of Caine directly afterward, attempting to extract members about whom we worried. Others splintered off to pursue their own plots, experiencing varying degrees of intensity.

The Shadow Enlightenment at their starting location. Photos by Sarah Lynne Bowman.

Anecdotes suggest that the cohesion of the primary group was central to this larp, especially for players who did not establish other ties ahead of time or who could not find their other connections in the city. The secondary groups came into play far less frequently. Players were instructed to stick together during play for safety reasons and in order to remain connected to the larp. While some players were frustrated by the distances between locations or felt like they just missed the action, others remarked that role-playing while walking was an exceptionally immersive experience. Ultimately, the degree of engagement depended upon interactions with co-players, as main plot points were few and far between.

Members of the Shadow Enlightenment walking to the Church of Caine. Photos by Sarah Lynne Bowman.

While the larp had 10 locations, the three central play areas were: Zwinglihaus, the Church of Caine location in an actual church; Raumklang, the low-key and fancy Camarilla Bar; and Jägerhutte, the gritty Anarch Bar where the game ended, located in the RAW-Gelände arts district. Regarding the atmospheres of the different locations, a Nosferatu Anarch player said, “Loved the Camarilla bar and giving the finger to a few of them, but nothing could match the energy, fear, threat and violence of the Anarch bar.” Despite the fact that many groups had starting locations in more intimate spaces, most participants reported flowing between these three main places during play. Some players suggested that a tour of the various locations would have helped players know their other play options and see more of the sprawl of the larp.

A Bone Gnawer Ahroun from the pack After the Wall, Trash Fuckers, Life in Filth. Photo by Tuomas Hakkarainen.

The pacing was also variable. One Anarch player from the Red Liberation, an anti-Camarilla gang, explained, “The game, for me, was long lulls of uncertainty and cacophony, punctuated by an occasional (and strong) sense of urgency and purpose. But when they came, those moments were very powerful.” Alternately, another player from the Church of Caine faction felt engaged the entire time, stating, “The flow was great, swept me away from the starting ritual onwards right to the end. Complete illusion, full immersion.” A Toreador Anarch player summed up her experience by saying, “I managed to always be in the wrong place at the wrong time to take part in the action. But it’s okay, it was fun roaming the streets.” Larp flow varies from player to player in any game, but the pervasive nature of Enlightenment in Blood made these lulls more punctuated due to travel times and fear of missing out on the “action.” Some players wished the larp was longer in order to explore more of their desired connections.

Metatrron with another Anarch vampire. Photo by Tuomas Hakkarainen.

Finally, the pervasive nature of the larp was immersive for some players, but jarring for others. The Friedrichshain district of Berlin is full of colorful nightlife, which meant that roaming gangs of costumed larpers did not draw much attention overall. As one Virtual Adept mage player explained, “It felt very immersive and engaging. Berlin felt like the World of Darkness that night.”

However, the larp did pique the curiosity of outsiders, particularly in the private location for the Anarch bar, where physicality around feeding and violence was more prominent. We were instructed to keep physically aggressive or transgressive actions limited to these private locations and explain to anyone asking that we were a theatre troupe. While the ambiance of the environment helped some players feel engaged, others were uncomfortable. A Toreador Anarch player shared, “The environment was too rough for me to play; too many players in the same spot and I was afraid of non-players’ reactions to our play.” Another player reported waiting outside an in-game billiard hall, feeling “a little uncomfortable surrounded by non-players.” While this area of Berlin provided an ideal location for the themes, costuming, and atmosphere, not everyone felt at ease with the pervasive qualities of the larp.

A Changeling Redacap. Photo by Tuomas Hakkarainen.

Little Pockets of Story

As mentioned above, although much of play took place at the three central locations, the bulk of the story was distributed throughout the characters through Larpweaver and established through pre-game negotiations between players. As overarching narratives, the Camarilla Sheriff and Prince were killed by Anarchs, the Church of Caine rose to prominence, only to become mostly destroyed at the end, etc. However, the smaller stories ended up providing much of the drama of the larp for players. Therefore, I have included a selection of brief summaries of these stories in order to demonstrate the variety of character experiences. Character names, supernatural types, factions, primary, and secondary groups are listed as identifiers.

Total devotion for the Church powered by rituals thinning hour by hour as Elijah observed [a failure] in leadership. An attempt to find his place through fighting and aggression aimed at [the] Church’s attackers. Broken blood bonds and a search for a new group to belong to now.
Elijah Stern, Brujah Anarch, Bene Elohim (Church of Caine), Cryptoanarchists

Leeches started to kill themselves. We got a bit closer to each other, but stayed and waited for the actual slaughter to start.
White Spirit, Garou Bone Gnawer Ragabash without a pack, Anticapitalist Culture Center, Life in Filth

The vampire uprising was a dangerous time for a mage to go out and play, but you gotta take risks to shape your fate! Friends helped her in her quest for Ascension: vampires and mages by coming together in a tantra session and an old Satyr by taking her momentarily to Dreaming in the toilet of a concrete shack.
Sabine Riedel, Cult of Ecstasy mage, Shadow Enlightenment, Exquisite Agony

Arguments about whether Marx is German or Russian and other activist banter. Uncertainty when hooking up with the Red Lib, an imposing group of real vampire rebels. Ecstatic about getting to drain the Prince.
Ron, Brujah Anarch, Anticapitalist Cultural Center, The Prince’s Dogs

Raelyn, Elijah Stern, both Brujah Anarchs; Myra Redford, a Changeling.

Going from ‘I’m on top of the world and life is great’ to despair when Nichole realized that it’s not going to stop with the sheriff. Loneliness and fear when her world collided. Realization of the consequences of how she had treated others and diving into emotions locked away.
Nichole, Ventrue, Camarilla Orthodoxy, Queen Machine Records

Investigative, observer, looking for the chance to invest in the city. A [larp] that started out focusing primarily on a very human part of the game, but which rapidly spiralled out as the lid was blown off the vampire and werewolf politics.
Alexander Hurst, Technocracy Syndicate mage, Integral Solutions, Green Action Force

Woke up, had plans to change things, but saw butterflies and got carried away by distractions. (Satyr life…)
Hallam Jung, Changeling Satyr, Total Party Explosion, Cryptoanarchists

I was a hub for information. I was communicating across the city and sowing chaos, leading crazy fae partiers from one chaotic fight to the next. I was one of the Enlightened, breaking something more and more just to see how it fell apart, with no regard for the consequences.
Sinistar, Virtual Adept mage, Total Party Explosion, Berlin Intelligentsia

Hallam Jung, Changeling Satyr; Katherine “Kat” Meridian, Brujah Anarch, photo by Rick Boeve; Bastian Retzlaff, Malkavian Anarch.

It’s not a revolution, it’s an insurrection and I enjoyed every moment of it. Omg we diablerized my Sire who I tried to find for decades! Wait…I have a blood brother and he is with the Church of Caine?
Dana van Rijckevorsel, Malkavian Anarch, Stirner Group, The Rabbits

Mahler had a good time watching his kin fighting the night away. Got some good scares out of people, including one vampire starting to believe he was a true nightmare. It was completely chaotic but good for a Redcap.
Dirk Mahler, Changeling Redcap, Total Party Explosion, Animal Trainers

As the Camarilla collapsed, he fought a lone and valiant fight to uphold order and everything he believed in. Was beaten to near final death in front of his siress Katharina Kornfeld, [who] had given up on him, the Camarilla, and the clan (phantastic scene!). Broke his chains and in the end lost everything but his humanity and his personal honor.
Hamid Mansour, Ventrue, Camarilla Orthodoxy, Berlin Wine Tasting Society

Fear, fascination, horror, then chaos at the church. Changing locations, making alliances and choosing a way forward. At the Anarch bar, a high of emotions, a flurry of bodies (fighting, loving, conspiring), a Vaulderie of three, drinking liquid sun through the veins of a satyr, and finally being set free from three decades of tyranny by the arranged death of her sire.
Luise Siegel, Toreador Anarch, Blood Gardeners (Church of Caine), Voice of Reason

In addition, participants provided three word descriptions of their game, which are summarized in the below word cloud. When viewed together, these emotions help construct a more cohesive amalgam of the chaotic experience of Enlightenment in Blood.

Emotions and themes collected from Enlightenment in Blood players.

A Revolution for White Wolf Larp

Revolution is not an economic and social cause, but an act of free will.
Isabella Chiaromonte, Malkavian Anarch, Mortal Lovers, The Ethics Committee

Organizers have run pervasive White Wolf larps from their inception in the ‘90s, playing in public locations such as bars and restaurants. The idea of upholding the Masquerade while among “kine” or “sleepers” resonates well with the themes of the World of Darkness, which emphasize how supernaturals influence reality from behind the scenes and must remain secret to protect themselves. What Enlightenment in Blood did for White Wolf larp was to demonstrate that a high budget pervasive larp spanning multiple locations and utilizing mobile technology is a viable format. Additionally, with mechanics stripped down to their minimum, the physicality of walking between locations and enacting character moves in a collaborative manner helped increase immersion for many players. As a result, Enlightenment in Blood was an ambitious fusion of the World of Darkness content with the aesthetic principles of Nordic larp, creating a truly unique experience for players.

Pre-game photo of Anarchs. Photo by Sarah Lynne Bowman.

Enlightenment in Blood

Participation Fee: €90

Players: approx. 200

Date: May 12, 2017

Location: Berlin, Germany

Production: White Wolf Publishing and Participation Design Agency

Lead designer and writer: Juhana Pettersson

Designer: Bjarke Pedersen

Writers: Sarah Lynne Bowman, Mika Loponen, and Jesper Kristiansen with David Pusch & Daniel Thikötter

Producers: Bjarke Pedersen & Johanna Koljonen

Producer (locations): Zora Hädrich

Werewolf ritual design: René Kragh Pedersen

Character creation design: Bjarke Pedersen, Juhana Pettersson & Matthew Webb

Character creation tool (Larpweaver): Matthew Webb, Samuel Phelps & Riley Seaman / Incognita Limited

Social Media tool (Undernet): Kin software developed by Thomas Mertz, Per Sikker Hansen, Alena Košinárová, Richard Wetzel, and Daniel Sundström

Workshop design: Johanna Koljonen & Bjarke Pedersen

Runtime lead: Johanna Koljonen

Runtime organizing and NPC coordination: David Pusch

Runtime organizing and location coordination: Daniel Thikötter

Runtime organizing: Monica Traxl & Bjarke Pedersen

Creative consulting: René Kragh Pedersen, Maiju Ruusunen & Sarah Lynne Bowman

Documentation lead: Brody Condon

Documentation: Keren Chernizon & Tuomas Hakkarainen

White Wolf: Karim Muammar & Martin Ericsson

© 2016 Participation | Design | Agency AB. World of Darkness®, Vampire: The Masquerade®, Werewolf: The Apocalypse®, Mage: The Ascension®, Wraith: The Oblivion®, Changeling: The Dreaming®, Copyright© [2017] White Wolf Publishing AB All rights reserved.

Cover photo: Isabella Chiaromonte, a Malkavian Anarch from Enlightenment in Blood. Photo by Tuomas Hakkarainen. Photo has been cropped.