Nordic Larp

Tag: Player Safety

  • Flagging: A Response

    Published on

    in

    Flagging: A Response

    Written by

    This article was prompted by the recent republication on Nordiclarp.org of the article ‘Flagging is Flawed’ (Brown and Teerilahti 2024) from the Solmukohta 2024 book Liminal Encounters.

    In the article, the authors describe the practice of circulating a list of names of participants prior to a larp event, and inviting ‘flagging’ – the indication of safety concerns about fellow-participants, privately to the organizers. They discuss problems that they perceive with the tool.

    Our perception is that the article itself is flawed, because it doesn’t discuss the commonest flagging practices that are actually widely used in contemporary Nordic and international larp (in those cases when flagging is used at all).

    The authors seem to assume that the only flagging indication possible is a ‘red flag’, meaning that the named person should be considered unsafe and should be prevented from attending the event. They go on to suggest that this is misapplied, with participants flagging for reasons other than serious and absolute safety concerns meriting a ban from the event.

    That would indeed be a problem – which is why larp organizers don’t, in general, ask solely for red flags. Instead, they usually ask for a range of different indications of concern, with only the most severe meriting a red flag and hence exclusion.

    For example, a ‘yellow flag’ is commonly used to indicate that one wishes to avoid playing closely with another person, but does not consider them a general danger. Brown and Teerilahti seem to be unfamiliar with this practice, or have chosen to ignore it for the sake of their thesis. Either way, it invalidates a large part of their argument, because in their article they seem to assume that flagging because of a wish not to play closely will necessarily lead to automatic removal of the flagged person from the larp. But in practice, larp organizers for the most part do not act in such a way: a yellow flag simply means that the flagger and the flagged person will be cast in roles that are not closely connected.

    Some of the difficulties of communicating about flagging relate to its dual purpose. Red flags are intended as a safety tool – we want to keep people who have hurt others out of our larps. This is a method of mitigating risk at the events we run.

    But organizers may also feel the need to offer a comfort tool. Casting two players who dislike each other in an intense relationship is likely to result in a poor larp experience for them, and perhaps for everyone else, too. Therefore it’s useful to have methods for participants to indicate those people who they will be uncomfortable if cast closely with. It is important that the difference between this and a red flag is communicated clearly.

    The authors, larping together in safety and comfort. Photo by Oliver Facey.
    The authors, larping together in safety and comfort. Photo by Oliver Facey.

    Flagging in Practice

    Flagging as a system has evolved and developed over the last ten years or so, and we feel that it’s valuable to share details of practice, so that organizers can learn from one another, and participants can understand how the system can work.

    Here is the default flagging system that we use at Larps on Location. This is a work in progress, which has been refined and tweaked, added to and taken away from, over the years. Other organizers use similar systems, and we feel that overall there is a general coalescence around certain practices.

    The gist of it is that people should only be excluded for absolute safety concerns. For serious interpersonal disputes not related to general safety, one or other party will self-exclude; for lesser differences, the parties will be cast apart where practical.

    “The names of everyone who has signed up to the larp will be circulated to everyone who has signed up. You will have the option to:

    • Red-flag – means ‘I believe that this person is unsafe to larp with.’  Examples of behaviour that might deserve a red flag include bullying, harassment, or abuse. Someone who has been red-flagged will not be allowed to attend the larp. We will not tell them who red-flagged them, or why. We will not tell them that they’ve been red-flagged without the consent of the person who flagged them.
    • Orange-flag – means ‘I’m unable to attend if this person is participating.’ Choose this if you don’t believe that that person is unsafe, but for personal reasons you are unable to attend an event that they’re at. In this case, whichever of you or them is allocated a place first will be prioritized.
    • Yellow-flag – means ‘I don’t want to play in a close relationship with this person.’ Choose this if you don’t believe that the person is unsafe, but for personal reasons you are unable to play closely with them. (An example might be a difficult personality clash.) In this case, we will prioritize not casting you and them together in relationships; even if that means that as a result of this one or both of you aren’t cast. We will not tell someone that they have been yellow-flagged. If someone receives several yellow flags, it may be impossible to place them in the larp, especially if it’s a small one.

    You don’t have to tell us your reason for giving a flag (although you may do so, if you wish to).

    IMPORTANT: Don’t use a yellow flag when it would be more appropriate to: 

    • Request not to play closely with a specific person – this is for when you prefer to play away from someone perhaps because you often play closely together, or you are real-life partners, or because you want to explore play with different participants, or because of a clash in play styles, etc. We will do our best to honour these requests, but they won’t be prioritized. We will not tell them that you have made this request.”

    Our practice is to circulate the signup list, before asking about flags – rather than, as some organizers do, asking during the signup process if there are any people who the prospective participant wishes to indicate in advance as unsafe. We operate in this way because we feel that it creates an emotional burden on a prospective participant to name the people that they find dangerous – perhaps, their abuser(s) – each time they sign up to a larp, just on the basis of a possibility that those people might try to take part in that event.

    The details of what ‘request not to play closely’ involves will differ from larp to larp, as there’s a wide variation around what kinds of close play the design requires. For example, in a pair larp, play might be extremely close with one other person, not especially close with others. It’s important that these expectations are spelt out to participants when inviting them to submit such requests.

    Inviting requests of this type can also allow participants to introduce nuance, if that will be helpful – for example, there might be someone who they are happy to play some forms of close relationship, but not others (e.g. romance). The details will depend on the needs of the larp – but in general, it will always be the case that the more participants understand about what will be involved in play, the more they can help organizers to help them in return.

    We would be very glad to see the practices of other organizers shared in this way, to prompt further discussion.

    Weaponization

    The other substantive point that Brown and Teerilahti make in their article is that a flagging tool can be misused maliciously, to deliberately exclude others from larps for reasons that are not related to safety concerns. They consider this bad-faith flagging to be such a widespread and pervasive practice that it causes unacknowledged damage to the community.

    We have not seen evidence of such ‘weaponization’ of flagging in our own limited experience (we have organized about a dozen international weekend larps of various sizes, plus five large larp festivals, that have used some sort of flagging tool) – and other, larger, organizers of Nordic and international larps have indicated that they also have had few or no encounters with it. And that they, like us, have in general received very few red flags, and none that seemed unjustified.

    This is not to dismiss the authors’ concerns – no doubt, malicious flagging may be more common in some areas of larp, and in some communities, than others. But our overall impression is that it is a minor issue compared against the value of being able to flag up genuine malefactors – who have previously taken advantage of modern larp’s internationalism to move to operate in new areas where the organizers may be unfamiliar with their records.

    Critiques such as these seem to argue that the benefits of flagging are not worth the risk of potentially ostracizing flagged people undeservedly. To set against that, flagging may have saved larger numbers of people from being harassed or worse at larps – but those accounts are quiet and invisible, as the threat has been avoided thanks to flagging.

    Additionally, concerns have been expressed, including at a panel on this subject at Solmukohta 2024, that flags could be abused to create systemic prejudice in the community. An example discussed was that of a neurodivergent person being excluded because another participant misunderstood their communication style. We feel that this can be addressed by giving clear examples of what does or does not constitute cause for a flag, and by emphasising that a red flag should only be raised if the flagger believes that the other person is unsafe to larp with.

    There are many people in our community who identify as neurodivergent in a variety of ways – including one of the authors of this article – and, as noted above, we ourselves have not seen evidence of red-flagging being used as a weapon against them.

    Anonymity and Emotional Labour

    There has been considerable discussion about the responsibilities of organizers towards those who have been flagged against, and those who have submitted flags. (This is particularly important for red flags, which result in the exclusion of the flagged person. But, it may also be relevant to orange flags, if organizers have a policy that involves choosing which of the people involved to exclude.)

    We feel that the highest of these responsibilities relates to protecting participants at the event – including those who have raised flags as part of the process. They are to be protected by not sharing their identity with those who have been flagged against. It’s of the utmost importance to protect people from experiencing further serious harm.

    It is possible to also consider a responsibility towards those who have been flagged against. If they have done something wrong, for they deserve to be given a chance to mend their ways? Or if they feel they have been unjustly flagged, do they deserve a chance to clear their name?

    Then, is there a responsibility to the larp community as a whole, to provide the opportunity for offenders to be rehabilitated; or at least to provide them with the information that they may need to be able to take that journey?

    Our feeling is that these aims will be hard to accomplish without risking breaching the anonymity of the flagger. And they will involve organizers in emotional labour that they may be reluctant to take on in addition to all the other burdens involved in making larp events happen – or that they may find difficult to handle objectively, if personal friends are involved. For these reasons, at our own events we do not undertake such work. If other organizers are able to do so successfully, then we applaud them. But we feel that it needs to be made clear in advance, if this kind of engagement with flagged parties will be taking place: because participants who have been victims of malefactors may seek to avoid such a situation.

    We need to bear in mind that attending a larp, or even being part of a community, is not a human right guaranteed to participants. Larps are private events, usually run by volunteers in their spare time. There is absolutely no onus on larp organizers to make their events available to those who they feel are unsafe to attend – and there is also no right to have such decisions explained or justified.

    Flagging is clearly not a suitable tool for rehabilitation of people who have unintentionally caused harm. Is there a better method, in which everyone involved consents to the emotional labour, and to any potential risk? Possibly. But we feel that rehabilitation needs to be considered as separate from the issue of finding optimal ways to keep participants safe. Restorative justice is a big topic in its own right – but it is better managed by friends of the abuser than by random larp organizers. And it is definitely not something that victims should get caught up in when they thought they were just signing up for a larp.

    Communication in Advance

    And this leads to a more general point – which is that all policy and practice around flagging must be communicated clearly to all prospective participants, in advance of seeking signups. Otherwise, no-one can be confident of what they will be encountering. Like any other aspect of safety, a flagging system is only as good as the culture around it – and clear and direct communication is essential to this.

    Evolution 

    Brown and Teerilahti (2024) end by stating:

    We recognize that there is no easy answer to the important issue of protecting player safety, and that this is a difficult conversation. Sadly, bad actors will learn to weaponize any safety system put in place, so the system must evolve in order to stay relevant and continue to do the greatest good possible.

    There is no question that we should continue changing and evolving our practices, as we find ways to improve them. And we do understand that flagging is an uncomfortable topic, which brings up fears around exclusion and ostracism whenever discussed. However, it is vital to keep in mind what the main goal for the system is: and to ensure that sight of that is not lost, as we look at ways of addressing other associated harms. Flagging systems were introduced as a way of addressing manifest and persistent abusive behaviour from predatory individuals within the increasingly internationalizing larp community. Any suggestion of removing them must be accompanied by tools that are at least as effective at this.

    References

    Brown, Maury, and Nina Teerilahti. 2024. “Flagging is Flawed.” 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 Hawksky on Pixabay. 

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

    Published on

    in

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

    Written by

    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.

  • How to Do Night Scenes

    Published on

    in

    How to Do Night Scenes

    Written by

    I have been to so many larps that tried to make a scene in the middle of the night, when the characters are suddenly awoken and something cool happens. Perhaps being dragged from their beds and kidnapped. Perhaps they will all share a vivid nightmare. Perhaps they will be visited by a ghost.

    Yet, all attempts to suddenly awaken players for a cool night scene tends to turn anticlimactic. Why?

    People woken in the middle of the night tend to be:

    • Sluggish
    • Really hard to wake
    • Confused (“Is it an out of character emergency? Why is everyone shouting?” )
    • Bursting and needing to go to the bathroom
    • Bad tempered
    • Very not in character
    • Not wearing their contact lenses and blind as bats
    • Out of costume and not in character makeup (“Why is the evil wizard in a Winnie the Pooh t-shirt?”)
    • Just wanting to get back to sleep
    • In need of interrupted sleep for medical reasons

    Generally, being woken in the middle of the night just doesn’t make a great larping. It is also inaccessible for anyone sleeping out of character or away from the location.

    Yet, there is so much potential in those kinds of scenes. Who wouldn’t love to be dragged from their bed by a monster, or woken by a ghost’s gentle touch?

    Ready to drag you from your bed. På Gott och Ont (Of Good and Evil) photoshoot 2019. Photo by Emmet Nordström
    Ready to drag you from your bed. På Gott och Ont (Of Good and Evil) photoshoot 2019. Photo by Emmet Nordström

    One Solution

    One way to do night scenes without the drawbacks of actually waking the players is by doing “set time” night scenes. The horror larp campaign På Gott of Ont (Of Good and Evil) generally employs a lot of those scenes as they are such a staple in the horror genre, that being dragged from your bed by unspeakable terrors is simply a must.

    When you do set time night scenes, give the players a bedtime, by which time all characters should be in their beds resting, and then inform them that 15-20 minutes after lights out something is going to happen.

    That’s it. But to go into some more detail.

    Instructions

    Preparation for Bedtime

    • At a designated time, let’s say around 10:00 PM, players have been instructed to retire to their beds, lights out and be “asleep”.
    • Before bedtime, players go through their characters’ night times routines like they were getting ready for bed. Brushing their hair and changing into comfy pajamas and whatnot.
    • Out of character aspects of going to bed, like taking sleeping medication that make you drowsy, or taking out contact lenses can wait until after the night scene so that everyone can have the best possible experience.

    The Night Scene

    • At 15-30 minutes after light out, let’s say at 10:20 PM, the night scene unfolds.
    • Players only know that something will happen soon after they have gone to bed, not what’s going to happen, keeping them in suspense. Perhaps they will be awoken by an unearthly scream, perhaps by armed soldiers, who knows?
    • In-character, the scene may occur much later during the night, but out of character having the scene a short after bedtime means that you have the feeling of being in bed for a while, but without too much tedious waiting. Who wants to wait until 3 in the morning?
    • If you are going to drag players outside it is nice to give them a hint to perhaps keep their shoes close by or something similar.

    Pros and Cons with This Approach

    Pros

    • Players get to experience the thrill of being jolted awake by a scream or ensnared in a vivid nightmare, without real disruptions to their actual sleep. (Or at least jolted awake from relaxing in darkness or a light slumber.)
    • After the scene concludes, players can silently finish their out of character bedtime routines, like taking out their contact lenses, taking their meds and returning to bed.
    • Night owls who like playing late into the night can also do so. It is easy to say that some character awoke after the dream scene, or couldn’t go back to bed right away after being faced by the monster. So night owls can keep playing into the wee hours, catering to different player preferences.
    • Players sleeping out of character or off location are given a place to lie down for the bedtime scene, even if it is just “curl up on the couch with a blanket” or “lie down on this air mattress for a short while in the sleeping quarters”. Providing some short term place to sit or lie down to rest is generally doable.
    • If someone wants to opt out for any reason, it is really easy. Just be somewhere else at that time.

    Cons

    • Setting a bedtime for the players is awkward. No matter what time you chose it will probably be too early for some players and too late for others. Early birds and night owls can never agree.
    • The evening can feel rushed when all players suddenly realize they need to head to bed at the same time, and it usually takes longer than planned. That 10:00 PM bedtime means that people won’t actually be in their beds lights out until 10:10 PM.
    • Some of the chaos of a night scene, like people tripping over each other and stepping on each other’s stuff in the dark is still the same. Be strategic about night lights. Electric tea lights placed around the room are generally great.
    Armed. På Gott och Ont (Of Good and Evil) photoshoot 2018. Photo by Emmet Nordström
    Armed. På Gott och Ont (Of Good and Evil) photoshoot 2018. Photo by Emmet Nordström

    Other Solutions?

    So far I have not seen any other solutions for night scenes than doing a set time night scene, or to really try to wake people up. I suppose you could do it as a black box scene too during the day, but then you miss out on even more of the night experience. Yet I am curious about other solutions. Please get in touch and tell me if you know of any.

    Conclusion

    We all want cool night scenes but waking people up in the middle of the night sucks. One way to get around it is to give people a time when their character should be in their beds and that something will happen soon after bedtime.

    Cover photo: Asleep. Photo taken during play. På Gott och Ont – Thorns (2016) Photo by Linn Vikman.

  • Villain Self Care

    Published on

    in

    Villain Self Care

    Written by

    I vividly remember the first time I played a villain. After years of always opting for and being cast as the sweet and innocent characters, I signed up to a larp with a group of friends and dared ask the big question: “Can I try playing the villain?”

    Thus started my travels down the road of larp villainy – a travel filled with plenty of bumps in the road! Already during the larp, I started feeling increasingly bad. And after the larp concluded, I became riddled with guilt. I felt physically sick from what I had done to people I cared about, being the manipulative and scheming horror of a person behind many of the transgressive actions of the larp.

    I started doubting myself: Since I had been capable of playing that character, did it mean I was secretly a terrible person? After all, it might have been imaginary, but it was my brain that imagined it – every thing I said and action I took came from somewhere inside of me. Not just the character, me.

    Now, many years later, my minor identity crisis has subsided, and I have managed to not only come to peace with playing a villain, but to enjoy a good antagonist story.

    As a part of that process, I developed a strategy (or a series of steps) to help me play an antagonist in a way I find both manageable and rewarding, as well as help with the potential negative emotional effects both during and after the larp:

    1. Don’t be the lone villain.

    It can be an isolating experience playing the antagonist, so team up beforehand with someone you trust. If you are able to create an in-game relation to the person, make sure it’s one that provides positive interactions and doesn’t fall apart immediately, when confronted with your actions. If you can’t establish such an in-game relation, make sure you at least have the support off-game, e.g., someone who checks up on you, makes sure you take care of yourself, someone to brainstorm horrible actions with, or confirm you are indeed not a bad person in reality.

    2. Know your boundaries.

    A villain can be and do a multitude of things. Consider what kind of villainy you are capable of and interested in portraying – and what you should steer away from. An antagonist can be everything from the physically and emotionally violent spouse or schoolyard bully, to the disengaged leader causing the suffering of hundreds with their actions (or lack thereof). What kind of play, themes, or actions are difficult or impossible for you to do? What is a soft limit you might want to explore, and a hard boundary you shouldn’t cross? It is as essential for you as the pretend-perpetrator to know and respect your boundaries, as it is for the pretend-victim.

    3. Understand your character’s motivation and beliefs.

    Unless you play an evil cartoon villain, most villains don’t perceive themself as evil. They act according to their moral compass, however flawed that might be. Consider how your character justify their actions and explain away their behavior. What is at the center of their decisions, driving them forward, and what brought them to this point? It’s both easier being antagonistic if you feel excellent – or righteous – doing it, and potentially horrifying to everyone else observing it.

    Photo of person in black makeup and gold armor sitting at a stone table
    The author in the larp Høstspillet. Photo by Bjørn-Morten Vang Gundersen. Image has been cropped.

    4. Prepare your play and potential interactions.

    Playing a villain puts you in the role of the aggressor, often having to generate new ideas for transgressive actions towards multiple co-players. It can be tiring and draining, both regarding energy and capacity for new ideas. First step is to consider what your low effort villainy is like. What can you always do if low on energy? Some mean bullying, hateful glaring, or sabotaging someone else’s life and relations? Secondly, can you plan some (inter)actions ahead? Either pre-calibrated scenes with other players (especially good for the start of a larp, as it kicks everyone, including yourself, into action and sets the tone) or “a catalogue of evil ideas” you can draw inspiration from during the larp.

    5. Let your victims be creative.

    See if you can make your victims come up with the perfect transgressive actions towards them. After all, they know what would hurt them the most. It can both be done in-game, which might even add another layer to the scene, making them tell you how to hurt them, or as a part of an off-game calibration, with the player of the victim brainstorming or suggesting ideas to you. Do, however, make sure you don’t end up as a facilitator of their larp. Their ideas might not match your character’s motivation and beliefs (no.3) or even more importantly, it might be against your own boundaries (no.2).

    6. Steer for a conclusion to your character.

    Consider what kind of ending you want your character to have. Do you want your villain-self to suffer for their actions? To experience redemption and forgiveness? To ride off into the sunset, preparing their next villainy deed? You might not be able to decide yourself, and it might change throughout the course of the larp, but steering for catharsis of your antagonist story arc, can add value to your experience – or be a full stop separating you from your character. It is especially relevant, if you are suddenly facing an ending you are not comfortable with, e.g., revenge from your victims. Remember to consider your boundaries. You might be comfortable playing the perpetrator, but not comfortable ending as the victim. And that is okay.

    7. Check in with your victims – and yourself!

    Checking in with your victims is necessary to make sure they are okay, the larp is safe for them, and the interactions aren’t crossing their boundaries. But it is equally important to check in with yourself, especially after hard scenes! What do YOU need? A comforting hug? A cup of coffee? A nap or a positive interaction-break? Being behind the transgressive actions can be just as emotional and taxing an experience as being on the receiving end. Use your support-person (no. 1) if necessary; your victim might not be the one wanting to hug you right after the scene – and that’s okay too.

    8. Plan for larp aftercare.

    Consider what do you need after the larp has ended, after all, villains might need aftercare too. Your needs are valid, even if they might not be possible to fulfill. You might want to change out of your costume to distance yourself from the character – or stay in costume to reconnect it with yourself. Maybe a hot shower is at the top of your list, or a sit-down conversation with your victims? Maybe you want to sit by yourself and digest the experience in peace? Some of it you can plan for, like packing your favorite snack and a soft sweater, other things require specific facilities or interactions with co-players. Be mindful of how you can best take of yourself, while also being mindful of your co-players and their needs. Sometimes you might need a little more help, especially if you find yourself cast as a main antagonist at a larp. In that case:

    9. Collaborate with the organizers.

    Villains don’t exist in a vacuum, and what seemed like an excellent plan prior to the larp, might fall short as soon as confronted with the runtime reality of the game. On location organizers can often help improve, steer, or brainstorm solutions with you, if you find yourself and your character stuck in a bad situation and/or dynamic.

    Cover photo: The author in the larp Høstspillet. Photo by Bjørn-Morten Vang Gundersen. Image has been cropped.

  • How I Learned to Stop Faking It and Be Real

    Published on

    in

    How I Learned to Stop Faking It and Be Real

    Written by

    In my opinion, one of the most important things in being a good larper is to have self-awareness. This means knowing one’s strengths and weaknesses and being able to provide play for other players – but also knowing what one wants out of a larp and how it aligns with the vision and themes of the larp.

    After larping for some years, I thought I had a good perception of my strengths and weaknesses. For example, I knew that I was lousy with directions, so I should not try to play Aragorn. However, I knew that I was really good at organizing things and playing a leader, so I thought I should actually try to play Aragorn.

    It all came down to balance and knowing that I could play most of the characters I wanted to as long as I tweaked them, had trusted friends around, and communicated well with the organizers. In addition, I was very good at making sure that my body was strong enough to carry heavy things at a larp if a character demanded it and letting the organizers know if there was something that needed to be adjusted or not played on. For example, I could tell them that I am really bad when it comes to close combat since I am short and lazy.

    Over the years, I learned more about what kinds of characters I could give the most for and what characters I could grow into. But while I was great at communicating about my practical skills and all my larp needs related to them, I was not up to par with being transparent about my health. Or rather, my mental health.

    As all people, I had ups and downs. But to tell it bluntly, there were some years when I was in a downward spiral. While I had been very outspoken to my friends about my mental health and the importance of self care, I was adamant that it would not impact my larping.

    Woman in white in a white room near a painting with a finger over her mouth
    The author at the larp House of Cravings (2023). Photo by Martin Østlie Lindelien.

    Mental health issues can range from depression and PTSD to anxiety, self harm, and eating disorders (to only mention a few examples). All of these should be taken seriously and treated as reasons to get help. It does not matter what my mental health issues were. What is important is how they impacted my larping. The biggest thing they brought to me was shame over feeling the way I did and having the issues I had.

    I wanted to play pretend in my hobby and to be strong without letting my issues bleed over to my co-larpers. And I was hesitant to communicate what I needed to my co-larpers since I did not fully know what I needed. Was it sympathy? Maybe concrete hands-on help if I would not be able to play out a scene? Understanding if I needed to break the game for a time? Underneath these thoughts there was a fear of being rejected. What if people thought I was too broken to play with?

    With that, I made a promise to myself to basically take care of myself, to be a great larper and be open in every way – but not when it came to what I needed from my co-larpers and organizers with my trauma and mental health issues.

    Of course, in retrospect, that was a horrible idea.

    When things got hard or triggered something in me, I had to hide it. I rather pushed it down than caused trouble. I pushed myself to the breaking point when it came to organizing and being available to my co-players – just to prove that I was not broken. I did not cancel a single larp, but in the end, I played for my co-players, not for myself. I tried to make sure that they had fun but ended up having less fun myself.

    On the other hand, I was adamant in advising my friends and co-larpers to do the opposite of what I was doing. I always encouraged them to be open with all their needs and health issues. I was the one who took people aside to sit down and have a chat. I was the one who offered a shoulder to cry on during larps.

    Then something happened a couple of years ago. It was a standard larp with no hard themes — and played with trusted friends. I was responsible for a small group and all was well. Apart from that it was not. Around this time in life, I was struggling more than ever. I wanted to stay at home all the time and the only thing that pushed me to the larp was the knowledge that I had people relying on me.

    There was a scene, some larp fight – and suddenly I blacked out with over ten minutes of which I have no memory of. People told me that I did a great scene with screaming and fighting, and that they were surprised over seeing me get that physical.

    I have no memory of this. The next thing I remember is sitting in the darkness by a lake and silently crying my eyes out. I felt so ashamed and broken. Most of all, I did not know how to handle this or how to reach out to friends. So I cried a bit more and then went back into the tent and took care of my group.

    The big change came only recently. I had gotten used to hiding how I felt at larps or conferences and just faking it all the way. Always smiling, always acting like I did not care, doing my best to be the steady port for others.

    I thought I had a great system for handling myself in the larp community. And then came a larp when it just did not work anymore. I had, again, the responsibility for a small group. I should have been able to keep it together, so I just ignored the feeling of terror. But for the first time, I could not push myself anymore.

    I contacted my group. I told them that I had limited energy and told them to make sure to steer their larp away from relying on only me. I told them that I would need breaks but that I could handle it.

    Then I contacted the organizers. I told them everything. On how I was at my limit but that I really wanted to give the larp a try. I told them what could be done, both for me and my group. They were wonderful in assuring that things were ok and that I was welcome with limited energy and all my brokenness.

    The larp was a bit of a blur. I was really tired and had to rest a lot. I cried off-game in an organizer’s arms. I was sitting and resting on a friend’s lap and had her pat my hair until I could breathe again. But I had the energy to give my everything and to feel into myself. I created magic for my co-larpers and for myself. And for the first time in years I felt I was larping for myself. 

    I went home from that larp with a sense of sadness and peace. Sadness over how easy it had been and how many years I had robbed from myself. Peace in knowing that it would be so much easier from now on.

    That experience changed larping for me. I no longer take on responsibilities for groups alone. I put myself first when it comes to how I travel to, sleep, and eat during larps. I share my needs before and after a larp, both with organizers and with my friends. I try to be open with my co-players if things are hard. When they ask how they can support me, I answer their questions honestly. 

    Woman in Viking gear sitting in the woods
    The author in Viking garb (2021).

    During any larp, I take the time to rest, and I step off-game when I need to. If I feel I don’t have the energy for something, I cancel it and try to do it in good time. After a larp, I take the time to land. I might not always succeed in it but I do my best. And I give myself that time. 

    A while ago, I went to a very challenging larp. Even before the larp, my sleep pattern was non-existent and I had mental health issues that were acting up. I opened up to a co-larper when she asked if I needed anything and that helped a lot. Then after the first part of the larp, I just crashed. There were no triggers or bad things involved. I had just pushed myself too hard and too much.

    The main takeaway was that I could accept the help from organizers who just sat together with me in a dark room while I cried. I managed to explain my needs and reached out to a loved one who came and held me. And with those small means of accepting help, speaking about my needs and just being honest, I could breathe and pick myself up for the rest of the larp. Looking back, I have come very far in how I handle myself, and I try to make sure to take care of my needs. Does it make me feel better? Absolutely not. I feel more vulnerable than in years and so broken. But I hope that it will pass in time. I will rather do this than go through another 20 years faking it.

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

    Erlandsson, Anna. 2024. “How I Learned to Stop Faking It and Be Real.” 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 jaygeorge on Pixabay. Image has been cropped.

  • Paranormal Experiences in Larp

    Published on

    in

    Paranormal Experiences in Larp

    Written by

    Can we design larps that produce paranormal experiences?

    Summary

    Paranormal experiences are characterized by a perception that something that was previously thought to be impossible has happened. The paranormal is often part of the fictional settings of larps. We can, however, use techniques and practices inspired by events in the real world to allow our larp participants to experience what it is like to have a paranormal experience. These techniques should only be used with full and informed consent, and only as a tool to allow participants to shape their own experience. The article lists possible techniques for achieving collaborative paranormal larp experiences, and gives a concrete design example of a larp inspired by real-world psychic espionage.

    Introduction

    What is the paranormal?

    People have always experienced strange events. They may have had a dream that came true, seen a ghost or witnessed a highly unlikely coincidence. Even though many believe in the reality of supernatural phenomena, and many have had strange experiences,((Between one third and one fourth of the population has had a paranormal experience, based on surveys in European countries . The proportion is higher in the US, where around half report at least one paranormal experience (Haraldsson & Houtkooper, 1991). Another survey found that over one third of British adults reported at least one paranormal experience (Castro, Burrows, & Woolfit, 2014).))these kinds of events are still considered really weird. For example, if you see a person you know to be dead, or something happens exactly as you dreamed, you will probably be surprised no matter what your beliefs were previous to that experience.

    The paranormal means that which is outside the normal. It refers to events that we cannot explain through known natural forces. For example, seeing a weather phenomenon you do not know the exact cause of would be a normal phenomenon, but feeling like you are communicating with an intelligent blinking light in the sky would be paranormal. Having a paranormal experience then means sensing or feeling something that breaks with how you usually think the world works.

    This article is about creating circumstances that allow us to have these kinds of weird experiences – which I will call “paranormal” experiences. They are perceived as being outside the normal world of experience, and they are often interpreted to mean that something that is ordinarily believed to be impossible has happened.

    I will only discuss paranormal experiences that do not have a psychopathological origin. In other words, experiences that arise from healthy human functioning and not as a symptom of mental illness.

    It does not matter if the paranormal is really real.

    Some argue that all paranormal experiences are misinterpretations of ordinary events, and others argue that they truly are supernatural. No matter what we believe about the origin of these experiences, they are real for the person having the experience in that moment. For example, you may happen to think of someone the second before they call you and get a strange feeling of premonition at that moment. Later on you may think it was just a coincidence and forget it happened, or you may think you had a genuine psychic experience. Whatever you decide later, the experience was real when you got the call. This experience is the focus of this article, not the question of what is fundamentally real.

    The paranormal can be more than a background part of the larp setting.

    Often, the paranormal is part of the fictional worlds that are used as larp settings – settings where demons, ghosts or prophecies are real. My suggestion is that larp can also approach the paranormal in a different way – by creating a space where the participants can play with belief and allow themselves to experience, if only for a second, something impossible happening.

    Larp is sometimes seen as a way to access other kinds of experiences, and we have played with everything from the sensual to the horrifying. Why not also the impossible?

    All larps aiming for weird experiences must have full and informed consent as the basis.

    The degree to which the participants can allow themselves to believe in the paranormal is an important factor in allowing paranormal experiences to happen. I do not believe it is possible to do this with unwilling or uninformed participants. It would also be unethical to design a larp where you trick someone into believing something impossible has really happened. Larp must be based on consent, and allowing paranormal experience is not the same as just scaring the participants. Leave the tricking to the false prophets and fraudulent mediums, and instead embrace the unknown in collaboration with your participants.

    General principles for allowing paranormal experiences

    Do not use any magic tricks or deception.

    The techniques described below do not involve any tricking in the form of magic tricks or lying to your participants. If the aim is to have a genuine paranormal experience, then any tricks or deception will lessen the impact. If you use methods that involve suggestion or aim to increase the likelihood of a correct guess, be transparent about this.

    If you design your larp free of tricks or deception, then any participant that has a weird experience during the larp is more free to attribute the experience to something paranormal rather than trickery or unintentional information leakage from the organizers. Allow the participants to believe in the weirdness of an experience without looking for the secret to a trick or trying to uncover deception on the part of the organizers.

    Give the participants tools to believe in the experience.

    A person’s beliefs highly influence how they interpret their experiences. The degree of belief is also a factor in allowing oneself to have these kinds of experiences. This means that the larp participants should be given tools for having their characters believe in the possibility of paranormal experience as strongly as possible. They can create, or be given, characters that have strong beliefs.

    This also means that it is useful to pay attention to the context that the characters are acting in. Context is very important for how experience is interpreted. A noise on a busy street goes unnoticed. A noise in a haunted house may be interpreted as a paranormal event.

    Give the participants tools to use their imagination.

    Larps often use external cues for supporting the imagination of the participants. However, when designing larps that allow for paranormal experience, it may be useful to also give special attention to the inner worlds of the participants. The paranormal is often associated with vague sensations, hunches or inner impressions. The inner world is a play area that has great potential, and there are many techniques for enhancing the imaginative power of the participants.

    Larp designs that allow the participants to focus on their inner landscape may find it useful to emphasize the group aspect of the larp, rather than leaving each participant isolated. Merely imagining the same thing as the rest of a group may feel more powerful than doing it alone. The participants can also be allowed to communicate and play up each other’s sensations, impressions and hunches, and thereby further enhance the experience.

    One way to bring attention to the inner experiences of the participants is to guide them in some form of meditation. Various kinds of meditative practices are common in modern larps. Having the participants focus on their immediate surroundings and breath may lead to a pleasant and relaxed state of mind. This could be a kind of intermediate exercise leading to more intense experiences, or it could be used with the aim of creating paranormal experiences in itself. Unusual physical and mental experiences also commonly occur when meditating, and may be interesting especially to those who are new to meditation.

    Prepare to give basic emotional support.

    For many, the paranormal is associated with feelings of anxiety and uncertainty. This association is formed both by popular culture and because naturally occurring paranormal experiences often happen in connection to powerful and sometimes negative life events. While the people who choose to attend an event that is clearly communicated as connected to the paranormal are probably prepared to immerse themselves in the experience, they may still experience unpleasant emotions. Prepare for allowing participants to choose their degree of engagement, and for a soft landing after the larp. Familiarise yourself with guides and best practices for larp safety, a good starting point is Koljonen’s (2020) fundamentals of larp design safety.

    Techniques for allowing specific paranormal experiences

    In this article, I will focus on three classic kinds of experience that are often investigated in the literature on the paranormal. From skeptics and debunkers to ghost hunters and self-proclaimed psychics, these kinds of experience are often reported and written about:

    1. Extrasensory experiences or “being psychic”
    2. Experiencing a strange coincidence
    3. Sensing the presence of a ghost

    Techniques for allowing extrasensory perception.

    Popular fiction is teeming with representations of characters who can see the future or sense what is happening far away, and self-proclaimed psychics are common in contemporary media landscapes.

    Extrasensory perception (ESP) occurs when a person appears to get information that none of the ordinary senses could provide. Extrasensory experiences often have content of strong personal and emotional significance, and they are often vague and give only partial information about the event to which they presumably refer (Watt & Tierney, 2014). The experiences range from the relatively mundane, such as thinking of someone the moment before they call or guessing the outcome of some event to more intense experiences such as dreaming of an event that happens the following day or hallucinating something that is happening far away.

    It is also possible to have second-hand ESP experiences by having information about oneself guessed by another person. This can be from a person claiming to be psychic, or it can be that a friend had a strange dream that fits very well with current life events.

    Everybody guesses correctly once in a while, but what makes ESP experiences stand apart is the sense of wonder and impossibility that usually follows the experience. The emotional reactions to these experiences vary, with the most typical being happiness or anxiety (Watt & Tierney, 2014).

    In a larp, participants can experience receiving information psychically through:

    The possibility of guessing something.\

    From 1983 to 1989, the parapsychologist Charles Honorton and his colleagues conducted one of the largest studies of ESP done to date (Bem & Honorton, 1994). Their method was to place two people, “sender” and a “receiver”, in two separate, acoustically isolated chambers. The “sender” looked at a randomly selected visual target, and the “receiver” was given the “Ganzfeld procedure”. This means that the person was reclining in a chair with translucent ping-pong ball halves taped over their eyes while a red floodlight directed towards the eyes produced an undifferentiated visual field, and white noise played through headphones to produce an undifferentiated auditory field. The receiver was instructed to pay attention to any images coming to mind, and to report verbally their thoughts. This went on for half an hour, and at the end the receiver was asked to guess which of four targets the “sender” had been looking at. At the end, the sender and receiver met and the true target was finally revealed.

    While it may be too complicated to set up such an elaborate laboratory for a larp, it gives an example of what kinds of situations parapsychologists have created in order to facilitate ESP. Some participants reported imagery that aligned quite well with the target, and the experience of seeing the target revealed at the end must have been quite powerful for some of the participants.

    By setting up situations where the participants may guess something correctly, you can make it possible for them to experience ESP. The more detailed, unlikely or obscure the target of the guess is, the more likely it is that someone who guesses it correctly will feel like they received the information through paranormal means.

    Imagining something that may have relevance in the future

    In 2003, a group of 47 people attending a “remote viewing” workshop attempted to imagine the circumstances under which Saddam Hussein would be found (Schwarz, 2018). They went through a series of exercises prompted by the instructor such as visualising various features of his person and surroundings. The participants then drew their impressions as best they could, and the workshop instructor Stephan A. Schwarz compiled a list of “consensus” impressions as answers to a series of questions. When Saddam Hussein was found about a month later, Schwarz compared the answers to the actual circumstances and was struck by what he believed to be close similarities between the participants’ guesses and the outcome.

    The group exercise led by Schwarz is one example of trying to imagine something that may be relevant in the future. By asking the participants to imagine what will happen later in the larp, you can make it possible for them to experience precognition or sensing the future. Making more specific predictions will make it seem more unusual if any of the predictions come true. This technique might be relevant for a larp where there is a lot of uncertainty or where parts of the larp take place in an environment not fully controlled by the organizers. For example, the participants might imagine events that could occur, followed by walking around the city in a pervasive larp.

    One important note about Schwarz’ workshop: The participants were asked if they would like to try and “find Saddam Hussein”, and could opt out. In fact, about a dozen of the participants did so. Make sure that your participants are aware of and comfortable with what the larp will explore.

    Being the target of cold reading

    “Cold reading” is a deceptive psychological strategy used to give, what seems to be, a convincing psychic reading (Rowland, 2002). Cold reading is not the same as simply guessing. It is a set of techniques to move from general to more specific statements in a conversation, and it requires conscious effort from the person doing the reading. Most people can learn the basics of cold reading, and it’s not unlikely that the recipients of cold readings experience the reading as a paranormal event. Cold reading is per definition deception, but that does not mean it cannot be used in a larp based on informed consent. Even if the participants know that cold reading is being used they may still feel that some guesses are more correct than they “should” be – after all, that’s the whole idea when using specific cold reading techniques.

    The technique can be used in larp if there are enough facts established about the character being given the reading that it makes sense to guess correctly. It can also be used before the larp to prime the participants for experiencing something paranormal. If cold reading or a similar technique to increase the likelihood of guessing correctly is used, make sure to inform the participants in advance.

    Techniques for allowing weird coincidences

    Unrelated events coinciding in a meaningful way are often portrayed in fiction as a sign from God or destiny that a course of action is right or that the hero of a story is on the right path. In real life, many of us experience weird coincidences that have personal meaning (Coleman, Beitman, & Celebi, 2009).

    These can be small events that merely seem a bit strange, such as hearing a favorite song on the radio immediately after receiving good news or seeing a meaningful phrase repeated several times in a row on social media. They can also be connected with big decisions or life-changing events such as “miracle” coincidences where unlikely events prevent fatal accidents, or a chance meeting that propels a career to the next level. One important component of a weird coincidence is how it makes the person experiencing it feel. Some may feel like the universe is perfectly in harmony in a single moment, feel dizzy or disoriented, or feel like they’re dreaming.

    In a larp, weird coincidences can happen when:

    Elements line up in an unusual and meaningful way

    Experiencing that different external events line up in a way that seems to fit perfectly for your story or character can be experienced as a paranormal event. In real life, these kinds of events are often associated with meeting people in unlikely places, such as meeting your neighbor on vacation on a remote destination. If you are designing a larp with a very large playing area such as a city, these kinds of coincidences may occur.

    Another kind of common event is seeing meaningful or recurring images or text. One example is the frequency illusion, where an obscure phrase or idea is encountered many times in a short period of time. Another example is seeing images or text that strongly relate to what you are currently thinking or doing, such as seeing someone post just the recipe you were looking for on social media. In a larp, these coincidences can be encouraged by including complex environments with many small details. For example, you may include a screen that shows random wikipedia articles, or randomly generated sentences may appear in an app that gives the characters advice.

    The participants interpret random events as signals from the universe

    The series “Hellier”, available free on YouTube, is an example of a group of people who follow strange coincidences wherever they lead. In the series, a group of paranormal investigators investigate what they at first interpret as an appearance of alien creatures. However, as the investigation proceeds they interpret a wide range of events as signals from the universe that they are investigating a greater mystery. The mindset of these investigators allow them to experience otherwise ordinary events (such as finding a tin can or a balloon) as paranormal.

    One way to enhance the feeling of random events as meaningful is to guide the participants in interpreting everything as signals from the universe to the character. This could mean following weather patterns, seeing symbols in maps or simply exploring an area in great detail while interpreting the findings as signals. As the reading of these signs lead to the characters taking action, the signs may seem like meaningful guides for the character’s journey.

    Techniques for allowing the perception of ghosts

    Hauntings and visits from the dead have been the focus of a great number of works in popular culture – both in fiction and in ghost-hunting series presented as nonfiction. Experiencing communication with departed loved ones is the least common of the three kinds of paranormal experiences discussed in this article, but one representative survey in Great Britain still found that around ten percent report having had this experience.

    People who sense what they perceive as ghosts report a wide variety of experiences. Common varieties include a feeling of something being present, temperature change and strange sounds and smells. In some cases apparitions are seen, either clearly or as vague shadow-like figures (Wiseman, Watt, Stevens, Greening, & O’Keeffe, 2003).

    In a larp, participants may experience sensing a ghost through:

    Interpreting sounds and images as signals from ghosts

    Participants can experience stimuli that allow them to easily imagine “something” being present. This can allow them to sense the presence of ghosts or other entities. The stimuli can be vague sounds such as white noise or short random clips from radio stations. It can also be visual impressions such as shadows or points of light.

    The near-death researcher Raymond Moody is famous for his “psychomanteum”, a large mirror with dim lights on either side. When one sits with this mirror for a while, it is common to experience slight hallucinations. Moody used this for an apparently successful kind of grief counseling, where the bereaved were given the opportunity to believe that they were contacted by deceased dear ones (Moody, 1992). A similar technique may be used in larp to allow participants to feel like a ghost is nearby.

    Participating in a seance

    Seances are well-known through ghost stories and horror movies, and are often associated with fear and negative outcomes. However, contemporary spiritualism is usually more oriented towards positive emotions and the hope of survival after death. Many of the techniques used in contemporary seances can be useful for larp designers. This includes fostering a positive, creative and “party-like” atmosphere before the seance, encouraging openness to whatever may occur during the seance and ritual techniques during the seance itself.

    Wiseman, Greening, and Smith (2003) document cases of paranormal experience in seances using suggestion. They hired an actor to play the medium, and he made clear at the start of the seance that he did not possess any mediumistic powers, and would simply guide the participants through the seance. During the seance, the actor made suggestions of paranormal events such as that a table moved. These suggestions led several of the participants to experience what they saw as paranormal events. In fact, about a third reported after the seance that the table had moved. Several participants also indicated that they had experienced the kinds of strong sensations and psychological states often associated with paranormal phenomena, such as feeling a strong sense of “energy” or smelling something unusual. One approach to larp design could then be to simply give the participants the opportunity to conduct a seance. This may in itself allow them to experience weird phenomena.

    Another possible source of inspiration is “the Philip experiment”, where a Canadian group of parapsychologists imagined that they believed in a ghost, and called to him every week for several months (Owen & Sparrow, 1976). After a while, they reported physical phenomena including hearing knocking sounds and seeing the large seance table move around the room. This paranormal experience created through a structured process of make-believing in a ghost may also be achieved in a larp.

    Visiting haunted environments

    Places known to be “haunted” may more easily allow experiences associated with sensing ghosts. Experimental research suggests that at least some of the reports of sensing ghosts arise from factors in the environments where the ghost was sensed. This could simply be that the environments are cold, draughty and include sporadic, unusual sounds (Wiseman, Watt, Stevens, Greening, & O’Keeffe, 2003).

    Some researchers have also suggested environmental factors such as local magnetic fields or radioactivity. In recent years, many have paid special attention to low-frequency sounds or “infrasound” (Parsons & Cooper, 2010). Some research suggests that exposure to this kind of sound may lead to feeling a sense of presence, experiencing temperature changes and seeing vague peripheral hallucinations. Haunted environments may then be places where these kinds of sounds occur naturally.

    Allowing larp participants to visit such environments may allow them to more easily sense ghosts or other entities. Of course, the safety and legality of the visit should always come first. A serious larp organizer should have little difficulty getting access to a comfortable but haunted hotel or similar place.

    Practical design example: Controlled Remote Viewing

    The larp Controlled Remote Viewing (2020) by the artist Mark Durkan and myself is an example of a larp that uses several of the techniques described above to open up the possibility of experiencing being psychic.

    In this larp, the participants take the roles of characters joining the first session of a training programme for enhancing psychic potential. The goal of the larp is to give the participants a practical impression of what techniques real-world government agencies have historically used to train psychic spies. The larp also allows for the possibility of experiencing real ESP in the form of correctly guessing an image hidden in an envelope. The larp is designed to be run in a black box and takes three to four hours from start to finish. I will outline some important design choices we made for the various phases of the larp.

    Before the larp: Real ESP targets and double-blind selection

    Before the larp, we give a person who will not be present at the larp access to a database of several hundred images that were historically used in a psychic espionage training programme (the “Stargate programme”). This person chooses a set of targets, prints them and seals them in brown envelopes. This means that neither the larp organizers nor any of the participants know what the targets are, except that they are images of places on Earth. This means that if any participant comes close to guessing the target during the larp, they are more free to attribute the guess to ESP rather than trickery or unintentional information leakage from the organizers. This is clearly communicated to the participants.

    Pre-larp briefing: Clear communication and safety measures

    When the participants are gathered for the larp, we start by stating that our goal is to re-create historical training programmes and explore how using a character as an alibi might generate an ESP experience. We then list the various techniques we will use in the larp and give special attention to how the participant may bring themselves out of any unpleasant experience. We also make clear that they can leave the room at any time, and that we will be available for a chat after the larp. We focus on making sure that the participants feel that they are in control of how they make use of the lightly consciousness-altering techniques that we use.

    Pre-larp workshop: characters with strong paranormal beliefs and a guided visualisation of a paranormal experience

    The participants are given characters who have a strong belief in the paranormal. This is both stated in the character description and reflected in a set of “test scores” that the characters are given at the beginning of the larp. These scores are explained before the larp, and are presented as results from real-life psychological tests showing high scores on items that have been associated with ESP ability, such as a high degree of belief in the paranormal.
    The participants are also invited to a guided visualisation of the characters paranormal experience. This is done by first guiding the participants to a state of heightened focus and then asking them to imagine a strange event in the characters life unfolding. The participants are guided by open questions about the event and are asked to use hand movements as visual feedback to the larp organizers about their progress in imagining the event. The visualisation technique relies on continually affirming that the participant is in control of the experience at all times. We also use inviting and open language, allowing the participant to choose to imagine the event in great detail or to skip over all or parts of the event.

    The aim of this is to give a strong sense of what it is like to be someone who has experienced weird things and who believes in the possibility of ESP.

    During the larp: Use of sensory homogenization to enhance imagination

    During the larp, the characters sit for approximately ten minutes with white covers over their eyes, a strong red light focused on their faces and loud white noise from a set of speakers. The aim is to enhance the participants imagination and possibly allow for light auditory or visual hallucinations, making it more easy for the participants to imagine the targets that they will later try to guess.

    During the pre-larp briefing we test this method by asking the participants to sit in a short practice session and calibrate the level of light and noise that we will use during the larp. We also make clear that they can remove their eye covering if they feel uncomfortable.

    During the larp: Guided meditation and creative exercises

    During the larp, the characters try to guess the image inside a sealed envelope. To facilitate this, we invite the participants to focus their breath and enter a state of calm focus. Then they draw a series of increasingly complex shapes, culminating in a drawing that incorporates the elements they have created and that aims to represent the target. After this, the envelope is opened and the characters discuss their performances.

    The aim of this technique is to allow all the participants to slowly build a repertoire of shapes and impressions that they can draw from to compose an image. Clear shapes and textures makes it easier to discuss the drawings after opening the envelopes, and allow for the possibility of guessing parts of the target.

    After the larp: A short de-roling, round of impressions and the possibility to talk more

    After the larp has ended, we facilitate a short exercise to leave the character behind and invite the participants to sit in a circle and share a short sentence or two about how they are feeling right now. After this, we hang out for a while and make ourselves available if any of the participants want or need to talk.

    The purpose of this is to give a slow landing after the larp and to be able to detect if any participants have had an emotionally unpleasant experience. We do not expect this larp to be particularly disturbing for the participants, but we acknowledge that the paranormal may evoke feelings of anxiety. We therefore wish to help the participants have a pleasant and calm ending to the larp.

    Conclusion

    I have outlined some general principles and techniques for allowing paranormal experience in larp. Larp is sometimes seen as a way to access a variety of ways of experiencing the world. The larps that are organized around the world today are filled with all kinds of unusual experiences, and allow the participants to explore areas of themselves that may be hidden in everyday life. With the ideas and techniques in this article, we may now also design larps that allow us to experience the impossible.

    Bibliography

    Bem, D. J., & Honorton, C. “Does psi exist? Replicable evidence for an anomalous process of information transfer.” Psychological Bulletin, 115(1), 4–18. (1994) DOI:10.1037/0033-2909.115.1.4.

    Castro, M., Burrows, R. & Woolfit, R. “The Paranormal is (Still) Normal: The Sociological Implications of a Survey of Paranormal Experiences in Great Britain.” Sociological Research Online, 19 (3). (2014) DOI: 10.5153/sro.3355.

    Coleman, S., Beitman, B. D., Celebi, E. “Weird Coincidences Commonly Occur.” Psychiatric annals, 39 (5). (2009) DOI: 10.3928/00485713-20090421-03.

    Haraldsson, E. & Houtkooper, J. M. “Psychic Experiences in the Multinational Human Values Study: Who Reports Them?” The Journal of the American Society for Psychical Research, 85. (1991) pp 145-165.

    Koljonen, J. “Larp Safety Design Fundamentals.” Japanese Journal of Analog Role-Playing Game Studies, 1, pp 3-19. (2020) DOI: 10.14989/jarps_1_03e

    Moody, R. A. “Family Reunions: Visionary Encounters with the Departed in a Modern-Day Psychomanteum.” Journal of Near-Death Studies, 11(2), (1992) pp. 83-121.

    Owen, I. M. & Sparrow, M. Conjuring up Philip: An Adventure in Psychokinesis. Don Mills, CA: Fitzhenry & Whiteside Limited, 1976.

    Parsons, T. & Cooper, C. E. Paracoustics: Sound & the Paranormal. Hove, UK: White Crow Books, 2010.

    Rowland, I. The Full Facts Book of Cold Reading. London: Ian Rowland Limited, 2002.

    Schwarz, G.A. “Finding Saddam Hussein: A Study in Applied Remote Viewing.” Edgescience, 36, (2018) pp. 5-10.

    Watt, C. & Tierney, I. “Psi-Related Experiences” In E. Cardeña, S. J. Lynn, & S. Krippner (Eds) Varieties of Anomalous Experience, 2nd Ed. Washington, DC: American Psychological Association, 2014

    Wiseman, R., Watt, C., Stevens, P., Greening, E. & O’Keeffe, C. “An investigation into alleged ‘hauntings’”. British Journal of Psychology, 94. (2003) pp. 195-211.

    Wiseman, R., Greening, E., Smith, M. “Belief in the paranormal and suggestion in the seance room.” British Journal of Psychology, 94, (2003) pp. 285-297.

     

    Cover photo: Image by Tumisu on Pixabay (cropped).

    This article is published in the companion book Book of Magic: Vibrant Fragments of Larp Practices and is published here with permission. Please cite this text as:

    Bruer, Erlend Sand. “Paranormal Experiences in Larp.” In Book of Magic: Vibrant Fragments of Larp Practices, edited by Kari Kvittingen Djukastein, Marcus Irgens, Nadja Lipsyc, and Lars Kristian Løveng Sunde. Oslo, Norway: Knutepunkt, 2021.

  • Atypical: Journeys of Neurodivergent Larpers

    Published on

    in

    Atypical: Journeys of Neurodivergent Larpers

    Written by

    Being neurodivergent often means walking into the world with misunderstanding as a certainty. Everyone expects you to respect and abide by rules unstated and unknown to you. As an autistic person, larp has brought me places where the rules are shared and I can have the same language as others. And for someone who didn’t have a voice for so long, being able to communicate, feel, and create with others is more than just a little magic.

    Through a series of testimonies illustrated by drawings we hope to raise awareness and bring acceptance in our larp communities on the difficulties encountered by the neurodivergent players both in life and in play. Here we have chosen to focus on people who have been diagnosed with ASD and/or ADHD. 

    While all neurodivergent experiences are different, you might find these testimonies are quite similar to each other. These correspondences demonstrate our deep similarities, the needs and traits that must be highlighted for neurotypical players and organizers to reach understanding and recognition of their neurodivergent counterparts. I’m also aware that those testimonies are personal statements that don’t account for all of neurodivergent players’ ways to relate and feel toward the larp experience.

    What is the core of the neurodivergent players’s experience of larp?

    What can we learn from each other?

    What can we teach to neurotypical players and organizers? 

    What do we need from them?

    drawing of a person imagining different kinds of shoes

    Finding Magic in the Dark

    LolV Peregrin

    The autism spectrum encompasses a range of neurodevelopmental conditions, generally known as autism spectrum disorders (ASD). Individuals on the autistic spectrum experience difficulties with social communication and interaction and also exhibit restricted, repetitive patterns of behavior, interests, or activities.

    –Wikipedia, “Autism Spectrum”

    I grew up difficult. I was a difficult child and a difficult teenager.
    The world was a maze. I felt I was the only one without a map.
    Everyone seems to have figured their way out.
    So I built my own world, full of all the things I liked.
    I had an interest in magic, spells, witches. A specific one.
    I’ve been labeled unhinged and crazy.
    Because
    I thought animals were better than people,
    I walked bare feets,
    My face was strange,

    Because I looked for magic.

    I felt too much, or not enough.
    I am autistic, not a puzzle, therefore I can’t fit or be solved.

    I hate unpredictability,
    I wanted to be in control somehow, to understand what was happening.

    To switch the narrative.
    To find magic, dreamt and remembered.

    My strong emotions,
    my intense personality,
    my ability to mask and interpret roles constantly:
    It made larp the perfect environment for me.

    A place where while we all wear masks I could finally forsake mine.

    Role-play and Larp have brought me places where the rules are shared
    and I can have the same language as others. Finally.

    And for someone who didn’t have a voice for so long, being able to communicate, feel
    and create with others is more than just a little magic.

    drawing of person in superhero costume with ADHD on their helmet

    My ADHD

    Charlie Haldén

    I instantly think of how my ADHD partly turns into something that makes me great at larping — that larp is a world that my brain is perfectly suited to (in ways), and how that is magic. My impulsive traits, spontaneity, the superpower of being totally in the moment – stuff that can make life outside difficult but fits perfectly with larp.

    Always Playing a Role

    Lea Elias

    Many people on the autism spectrum feel obliged to pretend not to have autism. They invest considerable effort daily in monitoring and modifying their behavior to conform to conventions of non-autistic social behavior. This phenomenon has come to be called masking, compensation and pretending to be normal. Masking is exactly what it sounds like, simply putting on a metaphorical mask. In many cases of the autism spectrum, that mask is a neurotypical (“normal”) one. It is when someone on the spectrum either consciously or subconsciously hides the telltale signs they are on the autism spectrum.

    — Bahar Ateş, “Masking in Autism: Social Camouflaging”((Ateş, Bahar, “Masking in Autism: Social Camouflaging,” Good Autism School, last retrieved April 17. 2021 from https://goodautismschool.com/autism-masking/ ))

    drawing of a chameleon

    As an autistic person, I am, in a way, always playing a role.

    It’s an experience not unique to people on the autism spectrum, but I’ve never met a neurotypical person who understood just how tiring it is to be born into a world where the way you express yourself is completely nonsensical to other people.

    And vice versa, that the way other people express themselves, through tone, body language, and facial expressions, makes no sense to you, while pretty much everyone else appears to have an instinctual understanding of what the hell is going on. 

    To survive in that world, you need to become very adept at studying and copying the behavior of other people. In order to appear acceptable, I’ve developed into a chameleon; In seconds I can change my tone of voice, sense of humor, dialect, mannerisms et cetera.

    While tiring in my day-to-day life, it’s proved very useful in larps, and I’ll often joke that the main difference between real life and larp is for me that having a character sheet makes the process of figuring out what role I’m expected to play much simpler.

    drawing of person surrounded by masks and holding a mask

    Many Differences…

    Cecilia Dolk

    There are many differences between people that are on the spectrum, just as we are all different human beings. What is a struggle for me can be something that another person the spectrum has no problem with – at all. 

    As a producer and being diagnosed as an adult with both ADHD and autism, I finally can understand why some parts of producing feels natural and easy for me. It also makes so much more sense why I feel so much more comfortable visiting and participating in a larp and then going to a dinner party, birthday party, or just traveling to a new place.

    Why, you may wonder?

    The rules and expectations are equal within a larp since I don’t have an autopilot when it comes to social rules or boundaries, a larp setting – before – during, and after – is giving me the opportunity to participate on the same starting point as a person that is not on the spectrum.

    photo of a person surrounded by rainbow colors and the words: language, motor skills, perception, executive function, and sensory
    Photo by Rebecca Burgess of Autism Spectrum.

    To explain how my mind may be a bit different than yours, I don’t think in words, I think in pictures. My mind is like “google for images” and I attend to details – I mean all the details. Let me give you an example – If someone asks you to think of a shoe, your mind thinks of a generic one. Instead, my mind thinks of specific ones, one at a time or as a video that shows stuff on YouTube.

    When it comes to new information and making decisions, my mind is like an international airport but I don’t have a staff running it. I have to manually do everything on my own, while for most other people it’s on autopilot. This happens so quickly in my mind and it makes me exhausted quickly and suddenly sometimes when I’m in a new situation. 

    I also feel sounds, I feel structures, but it isn’t scary or uncomfortable it can just be too much.

     

    So, now you know a little bit of how my mind works, and many of these traits make me a kick ass as a producer – mostly because I remember details and not making assumptions on things. I run all different versions of the outcomes in my mind while I even may be talking to someone! 

    I can see and feel a budget work or not in my mind, logistics, and timetables – it’s like it’s there on my own internal whiteboard.

    drawing of person with many objects in front of them

    There is something that you can help your fellow larper with if they are on the spectrum, this is things that help everyone but for me, it’s the thing that decides on how much energy I will have during the larp. These things are often the difference for me on how much I can participate until I’m crashing and need to rest.

    • Clear schedules – with times and what will happen during that time.
    • Clear expectations – what do I need to do and when.
    • Pictures and signs – an emoji next to a text can help our minds so much!
    • Knowledge beforehand – show pictures of the venue and describe where I will have my sleeping quarters. 

    Also — sometimes it’s more comfortable being NPCs just because we get a clear picture of the run time schedule! Take that in consideration if you can offer that to some people before the game

    • A place to recharge if the sleeping quarters are being in-game at all times.
    • A clear structure of the website and if there is much information to read, it’s not a bad thing to have someone do an audio recording or be there to read it with a person. I know it’s much to ask – but maybe a volunteer can help with that and make it accessible for more people to join. 
    • Friendly reminders – if you have a deadline coming up and ask if they need any help!
    • Be clear with changes before, during, and after, over explain is better than vague.
    • Arrange someone in the coordination staff that can be a safe person and/or a person to ask questions that is focused to help people on the spectrum. It’s helped me tremendously to have someone that understands since the stigma and misunderstanding are making us mask and try to fit in.
    • Ask – ask – ask. Ask us if you can do something to help, but also be clear that we may say “no”.If you do not have knowledge of how to adapt and create more accessible – ask for help – we will be so grateful to contribute knowledge that we have to create a better experience for us all.

    Bibliography

    Ateş, Bahar, “Masking in Autism: Social Camouflaging.” Good Autism School. Last retrieved April 17, 2021. 

    Wikipedia. “Autism Spectrum.” Last retrieved February 21, 2021.

  • Playing with Eros: Consent, Calibration and Safety for Erotic & Sex Roleplay

    Published on

    in

    Playing with Eros: Consent, Calibration and Safety for Erotic & Sex Roleplay

    Written by

    A version of this article was originally published by Pelgrane Press, in the Honey & Hot Wax anthology edited by Lucian Kahn and Sharang Biswas. (more…)

  • Recognising Disappointment

    Published on

    in

    Recognising Disappointment

    Written by

    The first step to be able to deal with disappointment in larp is recognising that you are experiencing these emotions. However, this is not always easy during a larp. It is important to remember that whenever you feel like you are having a hard time during a larp, it is okay to step out of it and deal with your emotions instead of persistently staying in character, which can eventually result in a worse overall experience. Here are a few helpful questions for general reflection, and especially for recognising disappointment:

    • Are you showing behaviour towards a certain player (group) that seems more aimed towards the player than towards the character?
    • Are you feeling anger, frustration or similar feelings that are difficult to place? Are they about the situation in the larp?
    • Do you feel a helplessness that not only your character feels, but you as well?
    • Do you feel stuck in your character’s story or relationships? Do you feel out of character, or unable to change this situation or direction?
    • Did you have big plans that didn’t turn out as expected?

    Even in an intense larp, it’s useful to give yourself regular moments of reflection. Especially when you are starting to feel emotions that are hard to place, it is beneficial to step out of the game (mentally or physically) for some reflection. If this makes you realise that you are indeed experiencing feelings of disappointment, it is important to recognise them so you can deal with them and prepare yourself to head back into the game and still make a positive experience out of it.

    How to deal with disappointment during your larp and still have a great game

    Once you have recognised and accepted that you are feeling disappointment about the larp you are playing, you can start to deal with it.

    Disappointment is a valid emotion, and this article isn’t about suppressing it. It is about acknowledging it, dealing with it and moving from there. This means that no matter the cause of the disappointment, you should also find a way to get these emotions out of your system. In case of anger, you can resort to running, hitting something, screaming in your pillow, etc. If you’re sad, cry if you feel like it. You can always ask for a hug from your emotional safety person. For any type of emotion, it is important that you think about what works for you. And most importantly: take your time to deal with these emotions. Don’t rush to get back into the game. You might play in a way that you afterwards regret if you are still playing with feelings based on your disappointment. It can reflect towards other players, or towards yourself. Like with any emotional low, take your time to re-energise and get rid of any negative emotions before returning to the game.

    After having gotten rid of your negative emotions, reflect on what caused these feelings of disappointment:

    • If the disappointment was caused by another player or group of players or organisation, there’s not a lot that you could’ve done to influence this. Recognise and accept your circle of influence.
    • If the disappointment stems from your own actions, accept that this happened, maybe think about the reasons why and promise yourself to reflect on this more after the game if you would still need it, and accept that you can make mistakes too.

    In both instances, however, it is clear that the main course of action after dealing with your feeling of disappointment, is letting go. Often disappointment is caused by having focused too much on one aspect of your event (one relationship, one plot, etc.), which causes tunnel vision. If you let go of that one aspect, your view can broaden, and you can start noticing other aspects of the larp that your character can run with. Allow yourself to change your mindset and your focus.

    Some actions that may help here are:

    • Breathing exercises;
    • Take a quick nap;
    • Talk to your gamemaster about other possible paths for your character;
    • Calibrate with other players about the rest of the game, ask them to pull you back in if needed;
    • Play to flow: if you open up for day to day play, being your character instead of looking for scenes, it all might naturally happen in directions you didn’t expect.

    When you let go of the negative things that happened, it opens a whole new array of possibilities. Accept that your previous expectations will no longer be met, and embrace that new things can come your way. Now, you are ready to step back into the larp.

    How to minimise disappointment in your future larps

    While overcoming your feelings of disappointment in a larp can be an empowering experience of turning a negative into a positive, it is also worthwhile to minimise the feelings of disappointment in your future larps by preparing for them.

    After a larp in which you faced disappointment, reflect on what you could have done differently, and what effect this might have had on the situation that got you feeling disappointed. Learn from this for next time.

    The important thing is to manage your expectations. This does not mean you cannot dream, challenge yourself or try to do Big Things. It means that you should keep your expectations realistic: realise that things can go wrong, people can say no, the story can take unexpected turns, or you can just be too tired or lose inspiration. If you start out with a more open mindset instead of a fixed idea of where you want to go, your game holds more potential. There is less to be disappointed in because you are less dependent on the success of the stories you have in mind. If you do set out with some fixed ideas, learn when to let go of them, should they fail. Consider beforehand how your character would react to failure and integrate this in your game. Accept your circle of influence and your own limitations before stepping into any event, and see where it goes from there.

    Conclusion

    Dealing with and continuing from a feeling of disappointment in larp is first and foremost allowing yourself to recognise the feeling by stepping out of the game and asking yourself the right questions. When you acknowledge these feelings of disappointment, you need to take the time to first deal with your emotions and get them out of your system. Next, you can move on to recognising where your disappointment stems from, before you can allow yourself to let go of it. There are several actions you can take to help you with this, so that you can also step into the larp again with a more open mindset, and still embrace what comes next and have a great game. Lastly, you can also manage your expectations in a way that leaves room for failure and unexpected events, by accepting your own limitations as well as your circle of influence. If you allow yourself a realistic and open view of the larps you attend, you will also find that you become less disappointed and more enthralled by what a larp and the other players can give to you.

  • Larp-Related Stress

    Published on

    in

    Larp-Related Stress

    Written by

    Larping has been described as an extreme social sport. Players often get the most from games they devote time to and when they expose themselves as characters to situations that are both pleasant and distressing and attempt to immerse themselves in the experiences. Players are expected, or expect themselves, to put quite an effort into the larp. These expectations can include cognitive demands (such as ability to memorize background materials and switching one’s attention between relevant information during the game), emotional demands (for example, immersion into the character and how the character feels about the transpiring events), physical demands (including preparing props or doing physical feats in the game), and social demands (getting to know new people and adapting one’s behavior to new social setting). These expectations may cause stress for the players.

    Players may also stress about whether the larp is organized in an effective and practical manner, about catering and sleeping arrangements, and even about whether they will feel lonely before, during, or after the game, among other practical and personal issues. Often larp related stress is centralized around the larp event and isn’t expected to be prolonged.

    Not all stress is harmful. Potentially stress-generating events, or stressors, can even be positive life events (such as a wedding or a graduation cere-ceremony). Stress generated by positive life events is often labeled positive stress and typically has little long-term effects on well-being (e.g., Lin et al., 2013).

    Richard Lazarus (e.g. Lazarus & Folkman, 1984), suggests negative stress occurs when a person appraises an event as a negative or dangerous (versus positive or irrelevant). In Lazarus’ model, stress is a resource issue; if task demands exceed the available resources, a person may become stressed. A person’s response to stress varies based on both their specific coping strategies (adaptive, i.e., constructive versus maladaptive, i.e., harmful) and how their individual characteristics predispose them to stress or, how resilient they are to adversity.

    Figure 1. Factors of the larp-related stress according to preliminary analysis. Arrows denote relationships between the factors.
    Figure 1. Factors of the larp-related stress according to
    preliminary analysis. Arrows denote relationships between
    the factors.

    Aspects of Larp-Related Stress

    Larping is a recreational activity, and larps are positive life events. However, larps can be more demanding than the player expects, and thus create stress. To assess how larps generate stress, we conducted a comprehensive online survey amongst Finnish larpers, to which we received more than a hundred responses. We investigated how stressful larpers consider different situations that can occur either before, during, or after the game, and assessed what types of coping mechanisms larpers use to alleviate that stress. Respondents also answered questions about relevant background information that might protect from or alleviate stress (like relationship status, personality and wellbeing, predisposition to anxiety etc.). Finally, we examined the symptoms larpers generally experience from larp-related stress.

    Preliminary analysis of our data shows eight distinct categories of larp-related stressors (see Figure 1). The category explaining most of the variance in the data was feelings of failure. This means stress generated by larper’s own feeling of not performing to the expectations either before, during, or after the game. For example, not coming up with a good enough backstory, forgetting relevant information during the game, or making mistakes in scenes during the game. Feelings of failure seems to be associated with other stressor categories: sexist and discriminatory themes in the game, feelings of bleed or post-low, and disappointment with the game or character. These four areas represent stress generated by internal experiences of the events or themes in the larp. We found four other distinct categories: events related to design and practicalities of the larp, loneliness, demanding or distressing characteristics of the game, and harassment or worry for safety. These factors seemed less associated with other stressor categories than the first cluster of stressors.

    In terms of experienced stress on a scale from 0 to 10, larping was perceived as quite stressful (mean 5.2), but larpers also found themselves recovering from this stress rapidly. Based on a preliminary analysis, stressor groups harassment or worry for safety, sexist and discriminatory themes in the game and feelings of bleed or post-low seemed to generate less stress on average than other stressors. We want to emphasize that these are averages and can be misleading: our data shows that while most players don’t experience harassment or worry for their safety in larps, a minority of players suffer a great deal of this type of stress. The players for whom harassment and insecurity is a large stressor are generally women or of non-binary gender((We expect minority-related stress applies to all marginalized groups, e.g. PoC players in a predominantly white environment. However, since our questionnaire only tracked the responders’ age and gender, we have no data for other demographic sources of minority stress.)). This aside, gender does not seem to play a large role in terms of the causes or intensity of stress larpers experience. A comparison of averages suggests men may experience less larp-related stress than other genders, but our data was inconclusive. Youth seems to predict stress: younger larpers seemed to experience more stress over loneliness, which is understandable as older larpers are likelier to be established in the community and to be familiar with their co-players. Finally, larpers in relationships seemed to experience less larp-related stress than those not in a relationship.

    Factors Predisposing Players to Stress

    Five general background factors seemed to have the most impact on how much stress respondents reported: low self esteem, predisposition to anxiety, stress related to other aspects of life, poor experienced quality of life, and emotional instability.

    Low self-esteem is associated with stress in many studies, although it is not always evident whether experienced stress or coping failures reduces self-esteem or vice versa. Low self-esteem may predispose people toward low self-efficacy and make it harder to use constructive coping mechanisms. Predisposition to anxiety can color a person’s perception of whether future events are likely to be positive or potentially threatening, which makes it more likely that they will experience related stress. Stress from other aspects of life may increase larp-related stress by reducing the available mental, physical, and emotional resources available to manage it. Poor quality of life is characterized by unhappiness related to some aspect of life: work, health, friendships and so forth. This unhappiness may increase stress experienced from other sources as it reduces the stress management resources available. Finally, emotional instability((For emotional instability and other personality personality factors, we used the 50-item questionnaire from the International Personality Item Pool (IPIP – https://ipip.ori.org/ and Goldberg, L. R., Johnson, J. A., Eber, H. W., Hogan, R., Ashton, M. C., Cloninger, C. R., & Gough, H. C. (2006). The International Personality Item Pool and the future of public-domain personality measures. Journal of Research in Personality, 40, 84-96. ))) is characterized by frequency of changes in mood and the frequency of feelings worry and concern. This may either make larpers more sensitive to stress or also reduce the available resources for dealing with stress.

    Constructive and Harmful Coping

    Even if players are similarly predisposed to stress, they subconsciously or deliberately use different approaches, or coping mechanisms, to ameliorate the effects of stress. Using a battery of questions((Coping was assessed using COPE-inventory; http://www.midss.org/content/cope-inventory (Carver, C. S., Scheier, M. F., & Weintraub, J. K. (1989). Assessing coping strategies: A theoretically based approach. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 56, 267-283.))) we assessed respondents’ stress coping approaches and compared them to the reported stress symptoms.

    These harmful behaviours were associated with reporting more stress-related symptoms:

    • denial (not acknowledging the feelings of stress)
    • avoidance (not confronting the feelings of stress)
    • substance use
    • externalization (blaming others)
    • paralyzation (to avoid or to be incapable of taking an action related to stress)

    In contrast, these constructive behaviors were not associated with reporting more symptoms:

    • humor
    • planning or taking action to alleviate stress
    • recognizing mistakes made and attempting to remedy them

    Generally, constructive coping strategies require more resources, while harmful ones avoid confronting the feelings of stress. As expected, our data suggests harmful strategies are more common among larpers who reported more life stress, poor self-esteem, or a predisposition to anxiety. In short, larpers with fewer resources to spare use harmful coping strategies, unintentionally increasing the experienced stress even further.

    Figure 2. What larp related stress consists of. Arrows denote relationships between the factors.
    Figure 2. What larp related stress consists of. Arrows denote relationships between the factors.

    Tips for Players

    How to Recognize Larp-Related Stress

    Recognizing stress is paramount for coping with it. Understanding your strengths, weaknesses, and current psychological state allows you to plan your activities effectively.

    Larp-related stress manifests much like stress from other sources. According to our data (Figure 2) there are four interconnected symptom categories: depression, anxiety, physical symptoms (such as loss of appetite, fatigue), and sleep disturbances. Another symptom category, tiredness and social avoidance, seems to be separate from the other four.

    Keeping a diary of stress symptoms, eating habits or sleep rhythms and looking for changes can be a useful tool for identifying how stress affects you: looking back, you can learn evaluating when you’ve felt most or least stressed, and what was going on. Monitoring your body sensations and anxiety levels before and during the game can help you manage your stress levels, reduce symptoms, and calm your nervous system by e.g. doing breathing and mindfulness exercises. It is also worth noticing how you interpret stress related sensations — as positive excitement or as negative and overwhelming symptoms?

    How to Cope with Larp-Related Stress

    For most players, larps are moderately stressful but the stress is not long-lasting. For players predisposed to larp-related stress, the impact may be more significant and prolonged. If this is you, recognizing the stressors affecting you the most can let you plan coping strategies more effectively.

    Almost 80 respondents described in their own words how they actively dealt with stress. Coping strategies could be roughly divided into planning ahead, reducing stress-related symptoms, controlling the source of stress, dealing with the emotion itself, and compensating for lost energy levels afterwards. Using these strategies in advance, during the game and after may help you cope with stress.

    The most common strategies were social coping approaches — talking to other larpers, friends, family, and organizers to ponder, analyze, and rant about the experience. Talking things over can help reframing a stressful situation and put it into perspective. Respondents talked about seeking support or advice from others on specific issues. However, social coping can also mean socializing with others to take one’s mind off of the stressful experience. Social support structures can give players the resources they need to be able to use more constructive coping strategies, which require them to confront the causes of stress, and make plans for using mental resources to cope with it.

    Players also reported using a wide range of internal strategies for dealing with feeling of stress. They could e.g. analyze and ponder the situation by themselves, write about their experiences, try to tolerate and accept the emotion, change their focus to something else, try to think positively, or lower their expectations. During the game players also dealt with stress by regulating their energy levels, emotion intensity, and focus by, e.g., taking scheduled breaks and carefully picking the content they wanted to focus on. Players also found that sleep and rest, as well as eating and drinking enough during the game, improved their coping ability. Some reported planning for upcoming stress or choosing games carefully based on things like game themes and design, to reduce the possibility of excessive stress. Some players also planned for stressful, taxing, and demanding larps and scheduled themselves post-larp time for recuperating physically and mentally. They took days off after games to do pleasurable, low-stress things: watch Netflix, sleep, do self care, and generally recharge. If you are planning to play a larp you expect to be stressful, plan ahead for recovery too!

    Bibliography

    Lazarus, R. S., & Folkman, S. (1984). Stress, appraisal, and coping. Springer publishing company.

    Lin, N., Dean, A., & Ensel, W. M. (Eds.). (2013). Social support, life events, and depression. Academic Press.