When cast in a relationship with another player, — meaning any kind of relationship, such as family, friendship, enmity etc., as well as romantic/sexual relationships — it is customary (but usually not mandatory) to reach out and calibrate before the larp. At times like these, there are a few questions I usually ask my co-player. A friend recently mentioned that she found my questions very helpful, and always used them when calibrating. At first I thought that they were nothing special, probably everyone used questions more or less the same? But, pre-game calibration definitely is a skill that can be developed and refined, just like most other parts of larp. So, perhaps in this text you can find some tool that will help you in your pre-game calibrations.
These questions are based on a larp designed with a Nordic, collaborative playstyle, prewritten characters and prewritten relationships. Usually, characters are available for all players to read, and it is common to read at least parts of your co-players’ character descriptions. The questions work for other design choices as well, but may have to be adapted accordingly.
It is of course not necessary or expected that you always ask all of these questions every time you do pre-game calibrations with someone. They are to be considered as a tool-box, and you yourself will notice which ones will seem most useful, depending what larp you are going to, what kind of relationship you have been cast in, and what you know about your co-player beforehand.
Question: How much time and energy do you have for calibration, and what methods of communicating work best for you?
Why it is useful to ask: Some people have very busy lives, and many larps lined up. Others have a lot of time, and want to spend weeks or months planning and discussing play. Calibrate this first, and try to find what works for both of you. If there is less time and energy, you might have to focus on only the most important questions.
Question: What are your hopes and wishes for this larp?
Why it is useful to ask: This will give you the chance to understand your co-player better: their playstyle, why they signed up for this particular larp and what kinds of scenes they enjoy. It may also offer insights into how you can create rewarding play for them within the character relationship.
Question: What is your understanding of the relationship between our characters?
Why it is useful to ask: An important early step is to have a shared idea of what kind of relationship you are going to be portraying. This is especially relevant if you have not been reading the same texts (e.g. if you have only been reading your own character descriptions, and the relationship described from their point of view). But even reading exactly the same texts, interpretations may vary. If you do not have the same idea about what the characters’ relationship is (at least at the start of the larp), it may make things much more frustrating, both to calibrate and play.
Question: What themes and aspects of this relationship are most interesting to you?
Why it is useful to ask: Partially, this question allows you to delve deeper into the relationship, to analyse it deeper. But, more importantly, it is how you start to make the relationship your own, focusing on the things that appeal to you both. Hopefully, you have shared interests, and want the same things – but if not, this is also a good time in the discussion to politely tell your co-player if you are uninterested or uncomfortable with certain areas of the relationship. This can be hard, but hopefully you will be able to create something that appeals to you both, and fits in the framework of the larp and relationship.
Question: What are your worries and fears going into this larp?
Why it is useful to ask: Playing together is also taking a level of responsibility for one another. If you know what your co-player worries about, you might help make sure that their fears do not come true – especially if this relates to the relationship between your characters. And, if doing anything about them is out of your power, then it can sometimes be good to just share your fears with someone.
Question: Do you have any triggers, or anything else I should be mindful of?
Why it is useful to ask: This one is self-explanatory. We do not want to distress our co-players off-game, if it can be avoided.
Question: What level of physical play are you generally comfortable with?
Why it is useful to ask: If there is a possibility that we might play scenes with violence, romantic/sexual intimacy or platonic closeness, having a rough idea of what to expect is a good thing. However, this reply is not about how you will be playing (see below).
Why it is good to ask in this particular way: We usually know what level of physical play we are normally comfortable with, and if we have any boundaries that we never cross. However, I do not think it is good practice to decide beforehand, days or weeks before the larp and with someone you have not played with before, what is ok and what is not. What might have felt good when planning, might not seem at all good when the larp is about to start. It might be due to how you are feeling on the day, how it feels when you actually meet your co-player, or some other reason. I therefore think it is best to not commit to anything, but rather talk about what usually works, and then do more calibration on the day of the larp.
How not to respond: If your co-player says ”I don’t have any boundaries, you can do anything!”, I think it is fully reasonable to say ”Oh, okay, so can I break your arm?” We all have boundaries of some sort. Some people who do not state boundaries simply have not considered things that might happen at the larp. Personally, I only feel safe with co-players who state some sort of boundaries – at the very least, ”Don’t do anything that leaves lasting damage on my body”. You might think, ”But this is obvious, you shouldn’t have to say that!”, but that’s just the thing. There are very different cultures and norms in different larp communities. To some, it may be just as ”obvious” that you would never play out a realistic-looking sex-scene, or do things that are actually painful to others; those are common elements of some larps. So, try to be explicit, think about what your boundaries are, and be comfortable communicating them.
Question: What level of emotional intensity do you generally prefer?
Why it is useful to ask: Some larpers want to feel deeply when larping, and feel that larp is best when it breaks their heart, and they can immerse deeply into feelings for the entire larp. Others have a playstyle focused more on cool scenes, interesting plots, or simulating an alternate reality, and are not very interested in having their hearts roughed up in the process. Although it can be difficult to specify what is a high or low level of emotional intensity, it might be relevant to calibrate if you are unsure.
Why it is good to ask in this particular way: Just as with physical play, we can never know for certain what we want or need during an upcoming larp. It is also not always possible to plan how intensely you are going to feel during the larp.
Question: What is your preference when it comes to transparency?
Why it is useful to ask: Transparency refers tolearning the other characters’ thoughts and motivations, or possible things that might happen at the larp. Since it is part of the tradition I larp in, I think transparency is a very good thing. Lack of transparency usually just makes it more difficult to pick up on things. The transparency of reading others’ characters is generally very useful. However, I do love a good curveball from time to time. If my co-player springs an unexpected scene on me, or reveals a hidden corner of their character’s mind, it can be a very impactful experience. However, not everyone enjoys this. So, discuss with your co-player what level of transparency you prefer.
When to ask: This question might be one you want to ask very early in the conversation, or it might only feel relevant later on. This, of course, depends on how many non-transparent secrets there are that might become relevant, and you should be able to assess this based on the information you have. Ask before disclosing in-game information that is most likely unknown to your co-player!
Question: What are your preferences on if/when/how to be off-game?
Why it is useful to ask: We have very different needs in this regard. Some players want to be in-game all through a larp, while others have a need for little breaks to decompress, laugh a bit, or rest. If larping in very close proximity with someone (for example, sharing a room) and having very different styles, this can prove problematic – especially if unaware of your different needs beforehand. If you find that you have differing needs, discuss how to deal with this.
There are of course countless more questions that can be asked, focusing on the specifics of the characters and how they relate to each other, and it is probably neither possible nor useful to try to list them all here. These questions usually tend to arise as the conversation continues, and your shared understanding deepens.
Why do pre-game calibrations?
Do you have to do pre-game calibrations? No, you don’t. Some people do not have any need or desire for it – others simply don’t have time. Usually, it works out alright. However, pre-game calibrations have many potential benefits.
Building trust: Having talked to someone, getting an idea of them as a player and person before diving into the larp and your characters, makes it easier to feel comfortable and trust them. You have an idea about the person behind the character, and have established an atmosphere of wanting to collaborate for a good experience.
Being careful: It happens from time to time that one is cast in a relationship with a person we don’t click with, or whose style of communicating, larping, or similar is incompatible with our own. Sad as it is, it happens, and it is better to notice this before the larp, than in the middle of it. You can then decide how to work around it, or if you need help dealing with it.
Less stumbling in the dark: Without calibration, the risk is greater that we spend valuable larp time not quite feeling like we’re getting our money’s worth. We might spend time doing small-talk, not quite knowing where the scene is going, or be brought out of immersion because we are confused about important parts of the characters’ shared story. Good calibration means that we are more likely to know how to engage with the relationship from the beginning, and what to focus on for an enjoyable and impactful experience.
Get to know your own character: Talking about the relationship isn’t only about the relationship. It also gives you plenty of opportunity to think about your own character – how they think and feel, how they behave in various situations, and so on. Getting to know and understand your character makes it more likely that you will feel connected to it during the larp.
A final word on responsibility (and feminism)
Many women larpers of my acquaintance mention that they are usually the ones who initiate calibrations with male co-players, and that they are the ones that take responsibility for asking questions and directing the conversation. This is an experience I definitely share. Although there are of course many great and responsible male larpers, the trend is there. I would like to encourage men to take on more of the responsibility, to take initiative and to be the ones asking questions. With the toolbox provided in this text, perhaps it might be slightly easier.
Cover photo: Players at Fairweather Manor: The Titanic Prelude (2024). Photo by Nadina Dobrowolska.
Last week, I had the pleasure of participating in Together At Last, February 15-18, 2024 in Berg en Dal, the Netherlands. Together at Last is a larp focused on romantic play by Reflections Larp Studio, designed and organized by Karolina Soltys, Patrik Bálint, David Owen, Lu Larpová, Marie-Lucie Genet, and Phil D’Souza. Based on the Black Mirror episode “Hang the DJ” and, to a lesser extent, the film The Lobster, the larp is set in a governmental facility in which volunteers are matchmade three times in order to find their Perfect Match. The larp originated online during the pandemic and was run 15 times as Together Forever, then transitioned to in-person play for 4 runs, with 2 additional runs planned for 2025. This run of the larp had 40 players, including 4 organizer-run characters.
The original setting made use of the actual pandemic and social isolation conditions players experienced to maximum effect; in this near-future scenario, humans cannot leave the house or socialize with others outside of hazmat suits without facing instant death from the mutated virus unless living in the same household as a family. Once a person decided to leave home, they must live alone, as proximity was too risky. As physical contact and companionship was deemed necessary by the government for human thriving, the Together Forever program was designed in order to allow people to date. At the end of the program, the system decides which characters are matched together, as well as which characters will remain unmatched. The matched participants are married in a perfunctory mass ceremony. Participants must choose to marry their “forever match” assigned by the algorithm at the end of the program; otherwise, they forfeit their right to ever go through the program again. Their alternatives were to beg this person to reject them or to run off into the wilderness to become part of the Banished, a group of people living in dangerous conditions outside of society. Divorce was possible long after the match was made, although that was deemphasized in play.
A once-per-lifetime vaccine giving 3 day immunity neutralized the virus enough to allow the participants to temporarily be physically co-present with multiple people, which for most characters meant the first time they had ever experienced physical intimacy in-person instead of VR; in other words, even if VR technology had become advanced in this near-future world, most characters were physically virginal for all intents and purposes. This chip was “new,” as previous versions of the program occurred online. In practice, this meant that play was punctuated by the strangeness of being physically co-present with so many people, able to go outside without a hazmat suit for the first time, etc. We actually started the game with a hazmat suit and mask on, waiting in line to be sanitized and processed, before we could change into our first “date” clothes and experience our first match. This contrast between the sterile government facility and the nightlife vibe was also emphasized in our costuming requirements for daytime, in which we were only permitted to wear white, grey, or light pastel comfortable clothes, including the optional Together at Last t-shirt with the program’s logo.
The sanitization process. Photo by Marlies. Image has been cropped.
The characters were jointly designed by the players and the organizers through an extensive in-game and off-game online form. The majority of the character’s personality arose from player inputs, with the relationships designed for us to link these disparate characters together. My character, Hope Novak, was one of the few who had experienced the program before, having been successfully matched for twelve years before her husband died.
While much could be said about the design of Together at Last, this article will focus upon several tensions I noticed — some which are embedded in the design and some I consider byproducts of it — which I will label paradoxes for dramatic effect. To be clear, none of these paradoxes are bugs of this brilliantly-designed larp, but rather features when exploring the difficult nuances of interpersonal intimacy. I enjoyed myself immensely at the larp and had incredibly powerful experiences with my co-players, in part because of the brilliant design. That being said, I think foregrounding these tensions is important due to the sensitive nature of the subject matter, especially when discussing a larp framed as aiming for play on a spectrum between absurdist comedy to realism to melodrama.
Photo by Bianca Eckert.
The Paradoxes of Consent, Rejection, and Monogamy
Like many Nordic-inspired international larps, Together at Last normalized queer play, as many of the matches would end up being queer in terms of gender and sexuality. Such a rule is not controversial in this play community, as many players identify as queer and/or polyamorous, or at least identify as allies. However, diegetically polyamory was not permitted in the program and was stigmatized, although the designers explained afterward that the intention was for this stigma to arise from logistical reasons based on the “laws of virology” rather than the “oppressive society.”
As players can sometimes experience discrimination due to physical appearance in such games (van der Heij 2021), we were not allowed to play upon lack of physical desire for the other person, but were instead given an impressive list of other playable reasons to reject them. This list ended up super helpful as a personal steering and mutual calibration tool, to the point that I think an article about “how to reject a character in a mutually beneficial way for players” is warranted. Furthermore, the larp was explicitly framed as not erotic (Grasmo and Stenros 2022), meaning that we were not allowed to be nude or engage in overly physical play during sex scenes. While players could ultimately choose their level of contact, the organizers recommended calibrating different representational modes of physical intimacy, e.g., using stage kissing and exaggerated movements; fading to black; or discussing what happens. Ideally, the scenes would be short and obvious, letting others clearly know what happened so they could react dramatically.
Photo by Lea-Maria Anger.
Diegetically, in-game pregnancy was not possible due to contraceptives in the water supply, although in my run, one character was permitted to join the larp pregnant somehow by another character. Instead, the government would assign a certain number of babies, which would be vat-grown and delivered via drone to the married couple’s home at some point in the future. This conceit allowed play on sexuality to be a bit more free. Instead of traditional conception, the algorithm determined if a character was permitted to have children based upon their behavior in an in-game parenting workshop; they were assessed based upon their care for a pretend baby made of flour over several hours, among other factors.
Furthermore, during each date, each match was made to fill out a form in which they discussed important topics related to marriage, including how to decorate their small government-provided apartment, how many children to have, what types of sexual kinks they would like to explore, etc. Diegetically, these forms all contributed to the “data” that led to the final “perfect match” selection. Thus, while engagement with childrearing was technically optional in-game, in practice, the theme became pervasive throughout the larp, e.g., topically in the forms, visually with play around the flour babies.
The larp emphasized consent-based play and consistent calibration. We engaged in bullet-time consent (Koljonen 2016a) for physical play and were encouraged to calibrate liberally off-game with other participants. Workshop time was devoted to calibrating with each of our three matches, which was extremely important, because we spent the better part of an entire day playing closely with each of them in turn. However, once runtime was happening, I would have preferred to have time reserved for calibration with matches before each date off-game rather than relying on ad hoc side discussions.
While we had other social connections and plots, we were under instruction in-game and off-game to make sure we interacted with our dates the majority of the time (80%). This rule was in place explicitly to avoid an issue that sometimes arises in larp: some players will ignore romantic plotlines that are central to play because they are not attracted off-game to the player, which can lead to a terrible experience for the other person. Furthermore, players should avoid filling up their “dance card” with known relations ahead of time and should be open to playing with unknown players, especially when the larp relies upon it (Tolvanen 2022). This principle was especially important in Together at Last, as we did not sign up in pairs, a recommended practice in other larps featuring dyadic play, see for example Helicon (2024), Daemon (2021-), Baphomet (2015-), etc.
Parenting class.
However, consent becomes a bit tricky in situations like these. Yes, we technically opted-in to playing closely on romance with three people — likely off-game strangers. But chemistry can be a difficult thing to predict even when not considering physical or emotional desire (Nøglebæk 2016, 2023); for example, incompatible playstyles can be a bad fit in such close, mostly-dyadic play (Bowman 2024). We are essentially responsible for another person’s positive experience in ways that can feel a bit like labor (Koulu 2020), which is not an inherently bad thing for me: I often prefer to play characters with a support role (Fido-Fairfax 2024, in press), which is why I played one of the game’s few in-game coach/counselors.
But that responsibility for another’s play experience is quite heavy especially when engaging with romantic and sexual intimacy. In such games, we expose some of the most vulnerable parts of ourselves to others, even through the alibi of the character. We may think the alibi is strong for many reasons — trust among co-players, a rather light-hearted and sometimes absurd setting, strong distinction between player and character personality, etc. But the emotions we experience are often all-too-familiar, and may have spectres of previous relationship memories attached to them, reemerging unbidden before, during, or after play. From a transformative play perspective, these emergences can be viewed as positive, in that they show us areas that need healing in ourselves (Hugaas and Bowman 2019), but not everyone attends leisure larps interested in or prepared for intensive personal transformation.
Emotions around rejecting others or being rejected are especially potent and are inherent to this setting. Needs for love and belonging and fears of ostracization drive much of human behavior as matters of survival, and are especially sensitive with romantic and sexual relationships. These themes were inherently present in the larp, whether or not each individual player experienced them or not.
Polaroid photo by Karolina Soltys.
The first date was meant to feel like an evening. Then, the chip went into “Turbo mode,” meaning Dates 2 and 3, which were only one day in this run, felt to the character like a several month relationship. This design combined with the enforced monogamy meant that rejection would likely happen in-game on some level. For example, while we could still pine for our last match, diegetically we risked being reported and kicked out of the program if we did not adhere to the rules, such as not talking to our exes without a “chaperone.” While off-game, we were encouraged to bend the rules, in practice, this rule meant that at least some of the time, many of our characters were likely to feel insecure or rejected as we watched our potential “perfect match” playing closely with others.
The angst around these feelings was also tied to the fact we had no actual power to choose who we married in the end or whether we got married at all, leaving our fate up to the “algorithm” and for us to “trust the process.” Interestingly, as players, we had much more influence over the outcome than our characters; we were instructed to fill in calibration forms at the end of each match, sharing our in-game feelings for our current match (and others at the program). We were also permitted to share our personal desires for an ending as an off-game request; some players wanted a happy ending, others wanted a terrible match, and others let the organizers decide the ending. This last option seemed the most risky to me, as unsuspecting players might be sideswiped by emotional (Montola 2010) and romantic bleed (Boss 2007; Waern 2010; Bowman 2015; Hugaas 2022) from past triggers or current desires dashed.
The HelpBot.
Furthermore, the game setting itself was inherently murky consent-wise. While were instructed not to play on sexual violence of any kind, there were in-game consequences for rejecting our current match. Yes, technically we all opted-in to the program, but we had literally no other choice if we wanted to live with another person. We could live alone or with our families, some of which we wrote to be highly dysfunctional and even abusive. We were not required to engage in sexuality with our matches, but we would be forced by the program to live with them for a certain length of time before divorcing, or be alone. And since polyamory was forbidden, we were expected to somehow make it work with this person. Off-game, this rule was here in part to provide angst for the characters, who would likely have feelings for multiple people, but also to try to prevent the players from solving their character’s dilemmas in this not-quite-dystopia by becoming poly. The HelpBot, a non-sentient robot who helped run the program, who played by one of the organizers, would inform us that 97.5% of matches ended up “perfect”… even if it took 10 years for the couples to realize it.
My character Hope was a 45 year-old intimacy coach who made her living by teaching people ways to connect in online environments. She also had the visceral memory of living harmoniously with someone for much of her recent life; indeed, her “perfect match.” However, Hope was also polyamorous, which was highly frowned upon in this setting, meaning she was one of the few people critical of what she viewed to be compulsory monogamy forced upon the program participants. Indeed, one of the reasons her previous husband, Paul, was “perfect” was that he supported her online relationships with other people and provided stability while she was on the turbulent rollercoaster of dating.
The game had an overarching Panopticon feel, as all interactions were fed through our chips to the system as “data.” Our matches were read over a loudspeaker by a robot voice each time they occurred, with dramatic pauses for us to react within our Support Groups, which were set up for us by the program. Almost all of us were matched with one or more exes. For Hope, this practice was initially problematic, as her ex had left because she wanted a monogamous relationship. While we were instructed by our character sheet and the rules to be excited to see these exes at the program, Hope immediately worried if this forced interaction would be unwelcome, which thankfully it was not.
Furthermore, Hope found out in-game that her ex was almost twenty years younger than her and a virgin (like most characters), while my character had previously been married and had many online relationships. (Note that before the game, I asked the organizers to be paired with players closer to my age to try to avoid these issues, which thankfully was arranged). This fact led to extensive discussion between our characters about the ethics of such a relationship, a conversation also echoed in Hope’s second match, Serena, who Hope believed was her soul mate. Serena had been married before but had never experimented with polyamory. In both cases, my character’s polyamory could be experienced as non-consensual non-monogamy by the other characters, leading to rocky emotional waters in-game and discomfort for me off-game.
Siblings preparing for the mass wedding. Photo by Linnéa Cecilia.
Another oddity was the inclusion of family members in the setting. As players, we were expressly directed not to engage in incest. Yet, in practice, to engage in group activities such as the sex education, burlesque, and neo-tantra workshops (which I ran), characters were asked to consider sexual themes in close proximity with their parents, siblings, or cousins. On the plus side, this factor also led to deep play around protectiveness and family-building; two of the Dates featured a Meet the Family meal, in which various configurations of participants found themselves testing the waters of each new family constellation.
Finally, while the setting enforced monogamy, it was also paradoxically a polyamorous — or at least serial monogamist — environment. As an intimacy specialist, Hope found this setup to be irresponsible at best and sadistic at worst. Not only were characters forced into relationships with their previous exes, but they also had new exes after every match all together in the same space. They were forbidden diegetically from openly loving or desiring others, although of course transgressions of these rules were off-game encouraged. No one had any time to process the relationship they just left and were forced into another relationship immediately, a recipe for drama and dysfunction — which, of course, makes for excellent larp fodder.
Inherent to this design was the “Singles Night” embedded in the program after Date 2, in which characters were temporarily single. While they were discouraged from interacting with their exes, of course this rule was repeatedly broken and new connections were formed, many of which did not align with Date 3 the next day. Hope interpreted this more licentious setup as entirely intentional on the part of the program — any connections that night fed the algorithm more “data” regarding who might actually make a good match and how characters might behave given liberty.
Serena and Hope before the wedding.
Thus, the compulsory monogamy of the program was challenged at each stage of the process in fascinating ways. Regardless of how each character felt about their previous matches, they were likely to have strong feelings of some kind that caused complications in the future relationships. Hope viewed these complications as a test of her integrity as an openly polyamorous person: could Hope have compersion and be happy for her soul mate if she fell deeply in love, had incredible intimate experiences, or ended up married to someone else? Wrestling with this inner dilemma was intense enough for me to feel that I had not “solved” the larp through poly as a player.
When the robot voice announced who Hope would marry — thankfully, her second match and “soul mate,” Serena — the joy Hope felt was immediately tempered when she considered the feelings of her two exes in the room, including her third match, who also happened to be in her Support Group watching her reaction. Fortunately, the two had come to a mutual understanding, but still the drama of the moment was high for all characters. Furthermore, Hope had difficulty feeling joy when her other loved ones in the room were visibly distressed by their matches. The Group Wedding final scene was bittersweet, as the matched characters lined up in their fancy wedding clothes for the mass ritual, while the Unmatched watched on in their hazmat suits, preparing for more time physically separated from intimacy with others. Conversely, some characters were devastated by their pairings, yearning instead to be with someone else.
Again, this complicated ending was engineered for maximum larp drama, and even steered toward by many of the players to get their desires met for their version of good play (Pettersson 2021).
The Paradoxes of Physicality, Tone, and Genre
A game like Together at Last is difficult to classify in terms of traditional larp genres. While we the genres of romantic comedy and drama are well-known in film, such genres have yet to be established fully in larp. In part, this limitation is due to taboos historically in more traditional play communities around romantic, sexual, and physical play, which often lead play groups to deny acknowledging that romantic bleed is a natural phenomenon that can happen to anyone (Bowman 2013). Even in the Nordic community, larps focused on oppression dynamics are far more common than settings focused entirely on romance, to the point where the designers had to explicitly signpost on the website to manage player expectations (Koljonen 2016a) that Together at Last:
is a story about attempting to have romantic relationships with a variety of people, some better suited to you than others, about growing as a person and looking for true love, whatever that means. It is not intended to be ‘misery porn,’ though there may be some difficult themes in the character backstories (e.g. depression, bullying, emotionally abusive parents). (Reflections Larp Studio, 2024)
That is not to say that larps centered upon romance do not exist; notable exceptions are Regency-based larps such as Fortune and Felicity (Harder 2017; Kemper 2017) and many UK freeforms, but rather that they are not nearly as common, and thus the play culture surrounding them is not fully solidified in terms of conventions around physicality and tone. Therefore, I would say that romance-based larp is an emerging genre — one that is developing alongside erotic larp, but is not necessarily synonymous, just as sexual and romantic attraction do not always coexist (Wood and D 2021). I would say JD Lade’s Listen 2 Your Heart (Bowman 2023) also fits the romantic genre, whereas larps like Just a Little Lovin’ (2012-) or Helicon (2024) may or may not depending on the way the characters are written and enacted.
Former members of the Banished reintegrating into the main society through the program. Photo by Marlies.
As a developing genre, norms need to be established and made clear by the organizers about what the game is and is not. Otherwise, players tend to rely on their larp muscle memory (Bowman 2017), unconsciously driving play toward genre expectations that are more familiar to them, or inserting genre conventions that were not intended as themes. This tendency is not in itself necessarily a bad thing, but it can lead to wildly different expectations of play, interpretations of content, and spreading of themes that were not necessarily intended by the designers. For example, as I have described with Listen 2 Your Heart (Bowman 2023), the last minute addition of vampires to an otherwise romantic game might lead some to find the content appealing, whereas others might find it troubling (e.g., Edward’s problematic behavior in Twilight).
As mentioned above, at Together at Last, we were instructed to play along a spectrum of absurd comedy, realism, and melodrama. However, I noticed people bringing in conventions from the gothic horror and noir detective genres, which caused a bit of cognitive dissonance for me. For example, behavior that might be gritty and normative in a noir film (or even in a BDSM context) might be considered abusive in a light romance context without calibration. A normal reaction to psychological terror in a gothic horror book may look like a psychotic break in another context, something my counselor-type character found especially concerning. In both cases, I was able to successfully calibrate with the players in question, which was a relief, but the experiences were jarring. It can also be difficult to tell if such actions were fully calibrated off-game with other players involved, which can lead to concern, especially when role-players are very immersed in the drama and convincing. We were encouraged to break game to check in with other players, but I found myself wishing we had workshopped the Okay Check-In (Brown 2016) or something similar to practice in an embodied fashion.
I often noted what I could only describe as “hate walking”: characters experiencing something emotionally upsetting and hate walking away up and down the halls, sometimes in packs, with one or more characters hate-walking alongside as emotional support. Of course, larp is a physical activity, and such behavior added to the dynamism of the environment, but it also added a sense of volatility. At the afterparty, the organizers shared that this run was particularly “dark,” with the previous one ending up far more “wholesome.” I suspect part of the shifting dynamics between larp runs has to do with the player-written characters, as different inserting kinds of content can radically impact the game, i.e., the domino effect (Bowman 2017).
Interestingly, I have noticed that these romantic larps that have been run several times tend to develop a devoted following, especially if the setting allows for a unique experience each time the game is played. Both Listen 2 Your Heart and Together at Last had an active Discord before, during, and after the game. Such channels lead to an intriguing blend of in-game and off-game light-hearted banter and pre-game play (Svanevik and Brind 2016) that often impacts dynamics in-game. The character sheets were all transparent, meaning we could read them before play, leading some players to have a strong in- and off-game familiarity with all of the characters; some even seemed to ship some duos over others coming into the game, meaning they had preferences for who should end up together and not. The Together at Last Discord was active many months before the larp and though I could not participate in it due to time constraints, I found it oddly reassuring to see people connecting so excitedly around larp. The Discord also became a needed lifeline after play, as we emerged from this 3-day experience back into life (see e.g., Bjärstorp and Ragnerstam 2023). Now, in the post-larp transition, it feels good to continue to be connected to my co-players.
Diegetically, the Discord was used in interesting ways as well. We all had our own in-game social media timeline upon which people could post, as well as several channels for special interests our characters would have had online, e.g., simulators for farming or raising AI children. One of the reasons this run was particularly intense was that many of the characters were celebrities, so actions that happened in-game would become news stories on Discord, thus raising the stakes. The organizers also used the Discord to communicate key logistical things that we were expected to do, such as filling out the forms. Many players fluidly switched between the online engagement on their phones and the in-person play, but I found it difficult not to get sucked into my off-game responsibilities, so I used it sparingly until after the game. Ultimately, the larp was a paradoxical hybrid of virtual and physical, especially considering the newness of physicality compared to the relative comfort the characters had with virtual encounters.
In-game celebrities made for an active Discord with extensive online play.
Romantic Realism
I appreciated that Together at Last made space for happy endings for players who wanted to have that experience (as I did). I also really enjoy being part of the ongoing online community around these intense romantic larps. I have had some deep and potent scenes, as well as debriefs, with the players. I feel very lucky to have been a part of these experiences. Each larp had moments of brilliance in its design, leading to a feeling of safety when playing with these emotionally fraught themes.
That being said, after each of the larps in this series, I keep wondering what it might look like to play a multi-day romantic larp focused entirely on a realistic exploration of healthy intimacy. I have played several short Nordic freeform scenarios on romantic relationships, although they usually focus on issues of breakups (En kærlighedshistorie, Ellemand and Nilsson 2012), infidelity (Under My Skin, Boss 2010), and other critical issues rather than on trying to develop and maintain a functioning loving relationship. I realize that content might be boring for some players, but in my view, even relatively healthy relationships have plenty of inherent conflict to work through — for example, insecure attachment styles or trauma recovery.
Hope and Serena.
If larps help us develop skills in a deeply embodied way, which I believe they are capable of doing, what are we practicing when we return to dysfunction as a source of drama? What lessons are we experiencing in our bodies about love in times of conflict? What catharsis is happening? And what takeaways can we distill from these dynamics that we can infuse with our daily lives afterward, whether as cautionary tales or breakthroughs, our own intimate relationships, or our relationship with our own vulnerable, human hearts?
Together at Last
Designed and organized by: Karolina Soltys, Patrik Bálint, David Owen, Lu Larpová, Marie-Lucie Genet, and Phil D’Souza
Cost: 300€
Location: Berg en Dal, the Netherlands
Players: 40
Bibliography
Bjärstorp, Sara, and Petra Ragnerstam. 2023. “Live-action Role Playing and the Affordances of Social Media.” Culture Unbound 15, no. 2: 66-87.
Bowman, Sarah Lynne. 2018. “The Larp Domino Effect.” In Shuffling the Deck: The Knutpunkt 2018 Color Printed Companion, edited by Annika Waern and Johannes Axner, 161-170. Pittsburgh, PA: Carnegie Mellon University: ETC Press.
Fido-Fairfax, Karolina. 2024, in press. “Strings and Rails: NPCs vs. Supporting Characters.” In Liminal Encounters: Evolving Discourse in Nordic and Nordic Inspired Larp, edited by Kaisa Kangas et al., 38-40. Helsinki, Finland: Ropecon ry.
Koljonen, Johanna. 2016b. “Toolkit: The Tap-Out.” Participation Safety in Larp, September 11.
Koulu, Sanna. 2020. “Emotions as Skilled Work.” In What Do We Do When We Play?, edited by Eleanor Saitta, Johanna Koljonen, Jukka Särkijärvi, Anne Serup Grove, Pauliina Männistö, and Mia Makkonen, 98-106. Helsinki: Solmukohta.
Svanevik, Martine, and Simon Brind. 2016. “‘Pre-Bleed is Totally a Thing.’” In Larp Realia: Analysis, Design, and Discussions of Nordic Larp, edited by Jukka Särkijärvi, Mika Loponen, and Kaisa Kangas, 108-119. Helsinki: Ropecon ry.
This article is first in a series on Larping Intimacy and Relationships.
From October 28-29, 2023, I participated in Listen 2 Your Heart Season 8 (L2YH), an online larp (or LAOG, Reininghaus 2019) based on the Netflix show Love is Blind (2020-). The game was organized by JD Lade and took place on Discord between Saturday evening and Sunday evening, with enforced off-game sleep hours. We played 8 characters, plus the robot-voiced “Production” who gave us instructions at each stage of the larp.
The following article describes the reality show genre within which this adaptation was placed, addressing its fascinating but also problematic nature, as well as its similarities and differences with larp. I then discuss the potency of playing romantic relationships as vulnerable and potentially transformative experiences, as well as the pitfalls that can arise. I briefly discuss Oliver Nøglebæk’s (2016, 2023) “4 Cs of Larping Love”: context, consent, communication, and chemistry. Finally, I explore how a larp’s design can impact player experiences of romance, situating Listen to Your Heart’s game design and my play experience as a case study. I discuss the surprise twist of this particular run and consider it with regard to safety and consent.
Is Love Really Blind?
As a binge-watcher of many shows related to intimacy, relationships and marriage, Love is Blind is one of my favorite concepts. Single people are invited to take part in an experiment to see if love truly is blind. An equal number of cis-het men and women who all ostensibly are ready to get married are grouped in living quarters according to gender. Then, they take turns dating each person from the other group with a twist: they cannot see each other and can only communicate through a thin partition between them. They spend hours on end in these rooms called “pods” and they can choose to share or not share aspects of their physicality to the person on the other end. However, most avoid such talk, as the premise of the show is to date people without judging them immediately based on looks alone. Of course, some of the cast are there to get on TV and get famous, but some earnestly want to find a life partner through the show.
If one of the cast proposes to another — always heterosexual pairings, with usually the cis man proposing in the traditional fashion — and the woman accepts, they prepare for The Reveal. The two are placed on opposite sides of a room with the partitions slowly rising. The anticipation is intense — will they be attracted to this person who they only knew by voice, and vice versa? After they propose, they rush to the center of the room, where they embrace, and if he still wants to propose, the man drops to a knee and asks again.
They are then thrown into a honeymoon with the other newly engaged couples, which can be intensely romantic or disastrous depending on the couple’s compatibility and each partner’s ability to handle insecurities or shallow habits, such as focusing overmuch on physical traits that are not their usual “type.” If they make it past the honeymoon, they have three weeks to live together back in the “real world,” then have a wedding with their friends and family watching. At the altar, they find out if the other person will actually marry them, which makes for high-stakes and intense television. A year later, they come back to the show for the reunion, sharing how life has unfolded for them since they made this big decision.
Emotional Extreme Sports and Consent
I have seen many seasons of the show, as well as its spiritual predecessor, Married at First Sight (2014-), which is made by the same production company. In Married at First Sight, the cast members are matchmade by experts (a sexologist, a pastor, and a sociologist) and are subject to extensive questionnaires and interviews before, during, and after meeting their spouse at the altar. The experiment in this show is to see if love can grow over time. At times, these experts intervene in times of conflict, which is viewed as inevitable, and guide the couples through marriage counseling. The experiment is predicated on research developed at the Gottman Institute (2023), where psychologists have studied the formula for long-lasting relationships. The show emphasizes how love can grow through moments of intimacy and connection, even if attraction is not present, as attraction can fade, while intimacy needs tending over time. In this way, Married at First Sight is educational, and my view is these counselors deeply want these couples to be happy and have healthy marriages.
The Love is Blind experience has little to none of that concern. No one intervenes on camera, although occasionally the fourth wall breaks and you can see a producer or camera person trying to persuade the person to stay in the relationship. Cast members have recently revealed shocking filming conditions, including being abandoned with no food, sleep-deprived, and forced to stay on set for 20 hours straight at a time (Hogg 2022). As a larper, this makes total sense to me: of course you would deprive people of their basic needs in order to push for intense emotional reactions (Leonard and Thurman 2018) — and many larpers willingly push these limits regardless of the game’s design, and some larps consider such deprivation a feature, not a bug. Larpers who enjoy this type of intense experience or even edge play (Poremba 2007; Montola 2010) often refer to their play activities as emotional extreme sports. Furthermore, such extreme experiences, especially when paired with romantic play, often do lead to romantic feelings between players, as they experience the catalytic container of the liminal space of the larp and the altered, paradoxical state of being themselves-yet-a-character.
However, although these cast members signed a contract and receive the benefits of being on the show, such as instant fame, they clearly are not privy to the kind of consent and safety mechanics we encourage in the international larp community. That contract also states that they must stay legally married for one year and can only get divorced after the reunion is filmed, which is a surefire way to ensure psychological damage if the relationship is dysfunctional. They risk the humiliation of being turned down at the altar not only in front of their friends and family, but the world. It’s exploitative, problematic, hetero-, mono-normative, although not necessarily more so than other Hollywood products sadly.
Nonetheless, I can’t help watching and being fascinated by the human struggle to relate to one another playing out in all these different dynamics. What is remarkable about these shows is the way in which cast members open their relationships to be inspected and consumed by millions of people. Relationships are the places in which our deepest insecurities can be revealed, including any prior wounds or attachment trauma, such as a tendency to fear abandonment (anxious attachment) or engulfment (avoidant attachment) (Levine and Heller 2011). As the show airs, fans around the world watch every (edited) moment of their relationships at their ecstatic best and excruciating worst. Furthermore, the edits they receive tell a narrative that is more of what the producers want to portray, which may not accurately reflect the actual dynamics and happenings between the participants. Many have difficulties dating non semi-famous people after the show airs, instead dating other people from the show or from other reality TV shows, especially if fame was indeed their objective. However, it’s clear that being on the show changes their lives forever; one cast member recently claimed he has been turned down for jobs in his profession due to his participation on Love is Blind, although other cast members have found these claims dubious (Brathwaite 2023).
I think what fascinates me most about this show in particular is the idea of only knowing someone by voice and spending many hours with them, learning all about them, without the distraction of examining their physicality or the anxiety of them examining yours. When I think about concepts that would be appealing to larp, a Love is Blind-themed game was on the top of my list. Could “the experiment” be replicated in a serious way in larp form, or would it devolve into the familiar (and safe) realm of satire, as in The Upgrade (2004) a jeepform larp by Tobias Wrigstad, Thorbiörn Fritzon, and Olle Jonsson about couples deciding whether or not to “trade up” for a different partner? Would players experience emotional bleed (Montola 2010; Bowman 2015) or relationship bleed (Harder 2018) they find triggering or exposing? Or perhaps have a breakthrough as a result of playing out a trial relationship under these circumstances? As a result of this fascination, when JD Lade posted in Larpers BFF that late spots were open to Listen 2 Your Heart Season 8, I jumped right into playing that evening.
One of the things that interests me most about romantic play is the way it can open opportunities for players to explore relationship dynamics that are unfamiliar, but might reveal parts of themselves, their desires, and their patterns that were less clear to them before. They can experience hypercolor moments of relationship intensity that they may never have felt safe, worthy, or brave enough to try to achieve before. They can play characters that are more sexually or romantically confident and experience what that feels like; alternatively, they can play deeply insecure people who employ manipulative tactics in order to gain power over one another. They can watch in horror as their character takes their own attachment trauma into dysfunctional extremes, or practice playing out a more healthy relationship dynamic. They can experience what true love is — for their characters, at least. What happens to the relationship between the players and any lingering feelings afterward, i.e. the larp crush (Harder 2018), is an often taboo, but necessary topic to openly discuss within larp circles and between players. Ultimately, such experiences can be spaces for healing, learning, personal, and interpersonal growth if handled with care (Baird, Bowman, and Hugaas 2022).
Aware of the vulnerable space that romantic play can open, I am always curious how larps will handle issues of attraction, consent negotiations, storylines, and relationship dynamics. A tendency in role-playing game design in general and romantic games specifically is to design for conflict and tension — the more explosive, the better, especially in communities like Nordic larp that emphasize playing to lose or playing for drama. I am often dubious and even bored of such dynamics — beginning play at the height of conflict means next to nothing if there was no relationship developed between the characters beforehand, no embodied sense of what being “in love” with that person might feel like. For that reason, I have often favored preparatory scenes (Holkar 2021), also called backstory play, in which the basic dynamics of the relationship, including the excitement, the tenderness, and the passion can be experienced, therefore making any drama that unfolds meaningful.
Furthermore, the idea of trying to play out functional relationship dynamics can be equally fascinating, as conflict often arises in human interaction whether we pre-plan it or not. Being asked by the larp’s design or by organizers to overperform drama in order to keep things exciting for other players has often annoyed me, as sometimes the best play in my view is in the quiet, gentle moments of subtle intimacy. I am also careful about bleed, as I am aware that angry or shaming words said in-character when in such a vulnerable state can often reach us as players, especially if the dynamics we are exploring are relatable to our own lives.
The Four C’s: Context, Consent, Communication, and Chemistry
Of particular sensitivity are matters of chemistry and attraction. According to Oliver Nøglebæk (2016; 2023), “four Cs” are important to consider when larping romance (and, arguably, when engaging in relationships in general):
Context: Considering the context of the larp as a whole, its themes, and the experiences of other players when approaching romantic play;
Consent: Making sure all players enthusiastically consent to play within stated boundaries;
Communication: Directly, openly, and regularly communicating what types of experiences each player would like to have;
Chemistry: The inexplicable spark of connection that can be instantaneous or cultivated over time.
Regarding this last point of chemistry, many larpers will understandably lean more into in-game relationships with people to whom they are emotionally, intellectually, physically, or spiritually attracted; that sort of bleed can be experienced as pleasurable and may even lead to relationships with the other player in daily life (Bowman 2013). Chemistry from this perspective need not be rooted in sexual desire. On the other hand, if one only plays for chemistry, one might end up rejecting play from others, which can emotionally impact other players, especially if they consider themselves outside the bounds of conventional attractiveness, or as Karijn van der Heij (2021) calls it, appearance-based prejudice. Rejecting such connections can also negatively impact the larp, e.g., in larps with a strongly narrativist structure like Fortune & Felicity (Harder 2017; Kemper 2017), where a specific arc is meant to be played out over time with one’s assigned co-players. However, when considering the importance of consent, we arrive at a conundrum: should we force players to engage with one another in romantic play at all if they are not enthusiastically consenting? When considering the ethics of larp, this sort of peer pressure to perform romance can be a bit murky. In such cases, trying to find mutually satisfying ways to adjust the narrative through larp hacking might be kinder for everyone involved. Larp hacking involves subverting the game’s parameters such that it is more playable or enjoyable for participants but does not “break the game” completely (Svanevik and Brind 2020).
Nøglebæk’s (2016, 2023) view on chemistry is “You can’t force it. But you can grow it, if both of you are willing to open up – it takes a little work and communication to build up mutual trust and connection.” This philosophy is quite similar to the stance taken by the Gottman Institute and, by extension, Married at First Sight and Love is Blind. Laura Wood (2022) has given a Nordic Larp Talk on the topic, advising much the same, discussing the way larpers can cultivate chemistry through “emotional bids,” as Gottman describes. It is certainly possible to foster such connection in a startlingly short amount of time in larp through workshop activities such as eye gazing; ars amandi, a technique developed by Eliot Wieslander for playing out sexuality through touching arms (Nordic Larp Wiki); or asking each other 36 Questions intended to help you fall in love (Aron et al. 1997).
Listen 2 Your Heart: Salem Edition
The run I experienced of Listen 2 Your Heart was called Season 8 diegetically and was the eighth iteration of the larp non-diegetically. The title of the larp refers to the Roxette song by the same name; the Glee (2009-2015) version of the song (2015) was played at the beginning of the larp, ostensibly as the theme song for the show. The setting was realistic in principle: all characters were given their own apartment and were communicating through chat rooms, audio, and video conferencing. This practice made it easier to immerse through the interface, which can be challenging in online larps. Furthermore, the online format took any anxieties around physical touch or intimacy off the table, which was a nice change of pace from physically embodied larp.
By this point in the larp’s evolution, certain rules were in place in order to try to avoid the pitfalls of larp romance described above, which was a pleasant surprise. I am particularly sensitive to issues of chemistry; people’s feelings can get hurt if romantic gestures are not reciprocated or they can feel violated if forced to play out relationship dynamics without the option of opting out. Such issues can lead to larp ghosting, in which players drop their pre-arranged relations to seek out more fulfilling play.
Listen 2 Your Heart dealt with this conundrum in several ways. Most importantly, it broke with the cis hetero-normative formula endemic to many of these mainstream shows. The setting document states, “All characters are some flavor of bisexual / pansexual. They may have preferences, but none of the characters are to be played as straight or homosexual with only one gender preference” (“L2YH Schedule and Rules”). This rule tries to solve issues that can emerge in larps, such as queer players being forced to play straight romances (Paisley 2015; Stenros and Sihvonen 2019; Wood and D 2021), players steering away from players that their off-game self would not normally consider “their type,” etc. However, the rules also explicitly state that this world is mono-normative and that the dilemmas inherent to dating in groups cannot be solved through polyamory or dating outside of the pods. Such solutions break the premise of the game. In addition, the setting document states that all characters want to be on television and consented to the possibility of marrying someone.
I played Melaina, a young adult Fantasy author who believed she could do magic. The last part was a tweak I added to the original pre-written character concept when I started noticing the twist (see below). The in-game experience toggled between playing in the pods in a series of dates with members of the other group (audio only), in my case, Group B, then communicating with one’s group about what unfolded (audio and video), in my case, Group A. Though the larp was fairly long for the online format at approximately 13-14 hours of play over a 28 hour period, the pacing was such that while we were asked to interact with co-players through these “pod dates” played out in a series of Discord channels with camera off, we were not interacting with any one person for more than 20-30 minutes at a time. This kept the pace going and the format allowed for players to make any choice with regard to their character’s romantic storyline, although they were not allowed to unalive themselves, as that kind of choice can negatively hijack the narrative for everyone.
Group meetings featured different stimuli in addition to talking, such as prompts for us to go to the “confessional camera,” prompts to vote on characters in specific ways, e.g., “Most Likely to Receive the ‘Hero Edit’,” “Least Favorite Date.” This input was gathered in practice in Google Forms, then the larp adjusted in some way. For example, characters could request all the confessional quotes from a particular character, or were given anonymous confessional quotes to decipher. Votes were tabulated and winners (even in “losing” categories), were sometimes invited to choose the next series of dates, including to benefit themselves and either thwart or assist others. This practice kept us always on our toes and the game flowing nicely. Consistently shifting between interactions ensured that even if the setting was mono-normative, the play was more a collective negotiation.
Many larps these days have rules against larping rejection of someone based on personal appearance for the reasons van der Heij (2021) described. L2YH had a particularly interesting approach to this rule, stating: “Don’t play negatively on someone’s OFF-GAME looks / age / etc. Everybody is hot, that’s the fun of the show, right? Somebody might not be your character’s type, but they are still objectively hot (“L2YH Schedule and Rules”). In practice, this was quite lovely after Reveal scenes, in which each of us were sent on dates where the camera suddenly came on, like the barrier lifting in Love is Blind. Cast members on Love is Blind often comment on how jarring it is to finally connect this new face with the voice they fell in love with and the physicality they imagined, which I found to be true as well, but still a pleasant surprise. In fact, these scenes were even more potent for me perhaps than the several of the other players, who seemed to play the larp together often I presume as new characters each time; I only know one of the players previously so I had an authentic experience of curiosity and surprise.
When Group A would reconvene to gossip after these Reveals, we would play to lift (Vejdemo 2018) the other players, talking about how hot they were and how confusing it made everything, which we would then also sometimes reveal to characters in Group B. This practice can potentially lead to positive experiences of bleed that might counteract feelings of insecurity present in the player.
The game encouraged players to amp up the interpersonal drama, which I sometimes struggle with being forced to do considering my preferred playstyle of keeping intensity growing at a slow boil rather than exploding for the sake of narrative drama. However, off-game calibration with other players in terms of boundaries and the direction of storylines was strongly encouraged. In practice, this worked quite well, especially when communicating with experienced larpers who are conscientious of other player’s experience.
However, from my perspective, a major issue with such calibration occurred due to in-game secrets embedded in this particular run of the larp. While most runs focus on the traditional relationship trajectory storyline, this run of L2YH had a twist due to its proximity to Halloween: all the characters in Group B were actually vampires. Furthermore, it was revealed through play that if anyone in Group A does not choose to get married, they will be hunted and killed on the vampire television network on which the show now airs. Furthermore, they would then be forced to become a vampire themselves or die, thus becoming the monster themselves, now implying an additional meaning to the word “bleed.” This plot was hinted at in our briefing, in which the facilitator alluded to spooky things being afoot due to the game running close to Halloween and placed in Salem, Massachusetts, the location of the famous witch trials in colonial America that were unfortunately all too common in Europe.
In terms of a plot, it was intriguing and my character figured out some of what was going on fairly early, but the secrecy of the game led to some cognitive dissonance around genre. On Love is Blind, you might end up with someone with narcissistic or abusive tendencies, but on this show, you would most certainly end up with a serial murderer, which is a steep escalation. Players in Group B were instructed to try not to reveal the secret until the Reveal, ostensibly to stir up the aforementioned drama. However, as it leaked early, I had to make a choice as a player: I could lean into the premise as horror or as the aforementioned satire/mockumentary style of play, similar to What We Do in the Shadows (2014, 2019-). I ended up doing what my characters often try to do when playing romance in larp: attempting to redeem or save the “troubled, misguided” abuser. My storyline started off fairly seriously, as I wanted my character to be earnestly looking for her life partner, as befits the genre of the show, but ended up in a dysfunctional love triangle between murderous psychopaths in order to amp up the drama for the finale. Furthermore, as Vampire fiction is often considered a metaphor for sexual violence, this twist did not entirely line up with the rule, “Do not play upon child- / sexual abuse / non consensual sexual encounters” (“L2YH Schedule and Rules”).
I decided to lean into the absurdity and still had a good experience. However, this example illustrates the problems with secrecy in larps in terms of player consent (Torner 2013), as I may have declined playing upon such themes or negotiated a less severe storyline through calibration if I had known ahead of time. My understanding is that the next runs of this larp will revert to the typical Love is Blind format and will therefore likely not have such issues.
A further hiccup revolved around the opt-out mechanic, a semi in-game phrase, “I’d rather not…” We were instructed to say or chat the phrase and use the X-arms to the camera if we wanted to take the scene in a different direction. “I’d rather not…” could also be used to indicate a desire to change the topic of conversation, similar to an X-card (Stavropoulos n.d.), meaning that topic was off-limits. In practice, remembering such phrases during play can be quite difficult, as can remembering to signal, or remembering to check the chat to see if someone had sent an off-game message. These issues are ongoing with regard to safety. Cues can be missed whether in-person or virtual play, and in-game phrases meant to be immersive can sometimes be missed. In future runs, I would recommend workshopping such techniques to make sure all players had some embodied experience with them before play rather than only receiving them in the rules document and having them explained at a briefing.
A Successful Experiment
Despite this narrative twist at the end, overall Listen to Your Heart Season 8 provided an authentic-feeling experience that strikes me as similar to what it might feel like to be in the pods of Love is Blind. I very much enjoyed being able to focus only on the voice as a means of communicating, whether the topics were flirtatious or deeply metaphysical, which is where my play tends to go. The experience of listening to the character’s voice on headphones strikes me as particularly intimate, as well as the pressure of attuning to every nuance the person was communicating explicitly or implicitly in order to ascertain in a short amount of time whether or not the relationship would work. Overall, I think the designer made smart choices in terms of the parameters of the larp.
References
Aron, et al. 1997. “The Experimental Generation of Interpersonal Closeness: A Procedure and Some Preliminary Findings.” Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin 23, no. 4: 363-377.
Baird, Josephine, Sarah Lynne Bowman, and Kjell Hedgard Hugaas. 2022. “Liminal Intimacy: Role-playing Games as Catalysts for Interpersonal Growth and Relating.” In The Magic of Games, edited by Nikolaus Koenig, Natalie Denk, Alexander Pfeiffer, and Thomas Wernbacher, 169-171. Edition Donau-Universität Krems.
Bowman, Sarah Lynne. 2013. “Social Conflict in Role-playing Communities: An Exploratory Qualitative Study.” International Journal of Role-Playing 4: 17-18. https://doi.org/10.33063/ijrp.vi4.183
Holkar, Mo. 2021. “Larping Before the Larp: The Magic of Preparatory Scenes.” 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.
Paisley, Erik Winther, 2015. “Play the Gay Away: Confessions of a Queer Larper.” In Larp Politics: Systems, Theory, and Gender in Action, edited by Kaisa Kangas, Mika Loponen, and Jukka Särkijärvi, 170-177. Helsinki, Finland: Solmukohta 2016, Ropecon ry.
Svanevik, Martine, and Simon Brind. 2020. “Larp Hacking.” Nordiclarp.org, February 2.
Torner, Evan. 2013. “Transparency and Safety in Role-playing Games.” In The Wyrd Con Companion Book 2013, edited by Sarah Lynne Bowman and Aaron Vanek, 14-17. Los Angeles, CA: Wyrd Con, 2013.
Vejdemo, Susanne. 2018. “Play to Lift, not Just to Lose.” In Shuffling the Deck: The Knutpunkt 2018 Color Printed Companion, edited by Annika Waern and Johannes Axner, 143-146. Pittsburgh, PA: Carnegie Mellon University: ETC Press.
So Karin Edman published a wishlist from the ladies of the Swedish Larp Women Unite (LWU), who wished more men would be interested in playing romantic relationships with them, which has spawned a lot of interesting discussion in the larposphere on Facebook.
I’ve had a lot of fun out of romantic storylines in a lot of different larps, it’s a really powerful area to explore. There’s so many possibilities for intense emotions and meaningful stories:
I’ve played Romeo and Juliet in a prison camp, a can’t-live-with-you-can’t-live-without-you story in utopia, been set up in an arranged marriage doomed to tragedy and been magically drawn back to life by my true love.
I’d like to share my observations on what I think makes for good romantic play (or any intense interpersonal drama, really).
Just to be catchy and bloggy, I’m basing it on four pillars: Context, Consent, Communication and Chemistry.
Context
No man is an island; neither does two make an archipelago. So if you are making the romance from scratch, explore the context of the whole larp to see what relationships are possible and encouraged. Find an angle that supports the intended experience of the larp; don’t just go for fulfilling your personal fantasies.
Also make sure the play has room in between the other stuff you’re doing, I’ve seen so many romances neglected by players too busy to focus on them and an equal amount of players stuck with only the romance to play on and no one at the other end.
Find someone to play with who has a genuine desire to be the other half, who has the possibility to prioritize the play with you, so you don’t end up disappointed.
Oftentimes your character comes with a romantic story attached and you just have to make the best of it. Here the best approach is to try and see what function the plot has in the larp and where you get to decide yourself in the relationship.
The players around you are also an important part of the relationship. Find ways for your relationship play to contribute to their experience as well, and see that they have meaningful positions in regards to the relationship. Romeo and Juliet are boring without the Capulets and Montagues.
Consent
I have this thing where I cannot engage with play if the other person is not actually into it – call it neurotic. If I sense they are not enjoying themselves, my body has ways of shutting it all down.
Seriously though, consent is a basic requirement for me. If I don’t feel that the other person is excited about playing romantically with me, I steer clear of that play. I don’t just want a lukewarm “okay, that sounds fine.” I need enthusiastic consent and shared ownership if I am to play it at all.
I’m also aware of giving my own enthusiastic consent early and often; I’d rather be overbearing than not get the conversation started. You should at least have a vague idea about your personal lines. Saying “I’m not sure exactly where my lines are with physical play” is a good start; “I don’t have any lines” shows that you are an idiot.
Personally I have used the last many larps to develop an elevator pitch about my personal limits, to get started:
I really enjoy bringing physicality and touching into play, so I’m good with most normal stuff as long as you stay away from groping the swimsuit area. You can give me a slap or light physical molestation if that becomes relevant. I have a weak immune system, so anything with mucus membranes and bodily fluids is out, that means actual kissing, spitting, fingers in the mouth and such. But Ars Amandi works wonderfully for me, so I suggest that for intimacy, but if you prefer something else, I’m sure we can make that work too.
I also need to have consent reaffirmed during play. Especially when thing get heavier. If I can’t tell that you are enjoying play, I’m not going to take it further. This means we go off-game and check in, and preferably also talk about where we want play to go. Blackbox scenes are a good excuse.
If you fail to build the relationship on mutual off-game consent, you’re bound to end up in territory where you or someone else feels violated or unsafe. The stuff we play with in romantic scenes is the natural habitat of trauma, so we need the extra care not to trigger old scars or create new injuries. Sometimes we do so by accident, in which case it is going to be a lot less horrible to work out, if you have already shown that you care about consent.
Communication
Talk. With. Each. Other. A lot. You can’t really consent if you don’t know what is going on. Also there’s a lot of layers and meanings we might miss when it comes to intense relations, so it’s good to know what the other side is focusing on and what is making them excited. Talk about the type of scenes you’d be into. Talk about the kinds of stories you love. Talk about the kinds of affection that work for you. Talk about your characters. Talk about what you want to go wrong. Talk about which songs you could have as theme song for the relationship. Make up pointless bits of backstory.
And once play starts, you keep the lines open. You take time to listen to each other and sense what works for the other. You go off-game and check in. You tell how you feel as a player.
I’ve enjoyed using meta room or blackbox play to calibrate with my partner, we’ve done abstract scenes with stuff like inner monologues and free association to communicate our thoughts and feelings in ways that open up for new and more nuanced play afterwards.
I nearly always follow the basic model of mutual escalation in order to keep it feeling safe all the way through. Make a move, wait for the other to respond and reciprocate before moving on. If you get positive feedback, move up the intensity, if not you step back to a safe place and try something else.
If you want to be discreet, you can do things in-game and then check if the other player plays into the move or around and get useful info. If someone isn’t actively playing reactions to your play, you’re better off going for something else. You can tell a lot from the level of engagement.
Chemistry
This is actually the most important bit: You need personal chemistry to play love. Without chemistry, play becomes a sucky chore. You need at least a spark of connection. And it better be mutual. Also, it has infinitely less to do with what makes your pants tingle, than it does with subconscious trust and genuine interest in the other person.
You can’t force it. But you can grow it, if both of you are willing to open up – it takes a little work and communication to build up mutual trust and connection.
Chemistry is also awfully fragile. So many things can ruin it, so you have to put in the work, to be someone people can connect with. A lot of the points in the list from LWU is personal deal breakers that ruin the chemistry. You can’t guarantee that it works, but you can start it up.
Also, chemistry is impossible to detect without meeting in person. You might have great fun on skype before play, but once you meet a wrong pheromone can break the spell. Likewise, sometimes you build up an incredibly meaningful thing out of 15 minutes at a workshop. It’s a bit of a lottery really, so you just go to try an up your odds and hope for the best.
If you’re stuck larping a romance without any chemistry, you’re gonna want to minimize the damage. A good place to start is to acknowledge the awkward with your partner and talk about what to do about it. If possible, simply play the relationship to a breaking point and end it. Go your separate ways. Otherwise see if you can transform the relationship into something you’re both comfortable with. Going through the motions should be a last resort.
How to Get Started
You ask. Ask out aloud in the Facebook group of the larp, if anyone is up for a romance. Suggest it to someone personally. Be prepared for rejection, so don’t just aim for one perfect relationship – that is a losing strategy. Be open to whatever comes up and be prepared to shape it yourself.
The big problem is that for a lot of us, asking someone to play out romantic stuff is pretty much the same terrifying prospect as asking someone on a date in real life. The rejection is very much the same punch in the gut. There’s no big trick here, but to make it start out as low stakes for everyone involved. I’d suggest starting out talking about play in general, move onto your characters relationship potential in general, before asking about adding a romantic layer. Worse case scenario is you might get a rejection, but still an interesting potential for play.
Be honest about what you want. Don’t just go along with what you get offered, take ownership of your half of the play. It’s a lot more attractive when it comes to building the intense stuff we all want. Romance is really not that different from most other play, at the end of the day.
And my pet peeve:
Don’t you dare hook up with the other player. You’re failing to larp if you do. You’re putting your own base needs ahead of community safety.
I can’t count the number of times I’ve had to give up on opening romantic play, because the other person assumed I was only into if to get into their pants. I usually make a point of mentioning my off-game partner during introductory talks, to discreetly position myself.
The reason I’ve managed to get to some insanely intense levels of intimacy in larp, is the simple fact that off-game there is nothing but friendship awaiting us. Even if we feel like we connect on soul-level or hormones rage during Ars Amandi. Off-game we’re not going to pursue this further. That’s part of the contract and the magic circle.
At least keep your pants on through play and the after party, if you can’t wait that long, you are not grown up enough to larp.
Maximizing the emotional impact of anticipation for better play.
“I see you shiver with antici-
-pation”
– Rocky Horror Picture Show
The sweet moment when you close your eyes full of expectation while your lips get closer and closer to another person’s lips for the first time. So close that you can already feel their breath caressing your cheek… when you can sense the warmth of their body close to yours. This seemingly endless moment when your heart starts beating a tiny bit faster and when you do not yet know if your and the other’s lips are really going to touch.
Isn’t this moment of sweet anticipation often more intense than the kiss itself?
Or the last moments of a desperate bunch of rebels before the attack of an overpowering group of stormtroopers. Waiting to stand their ground for the last time and defend their base with their lives. The last glimpses they might exchange, someone patting a friend on the shoulder. Fear and hope in conflict with each other. Final encouraging words by a leader.
Isn’t this moment of gloomy, yet heroic anticipation much more interesting than the following fight?
Is it not those moments when events are yet to happen that spark our excitement and that send our emotions on a rollercoaster ride? No matter whether can foresee the outcome or not, these moments of anticipation hold a bewitching power.
Skillful authors use these moments to build up suspense in their novels and also to forge a stronger bond between you, the reader, and the novel’s characters. Screenwriters use them to hook you to their shows and movies while displaying their characters’ virtues and flaws.
Some of us larp folk instinctively use moments of anticipation to develop intense scenes during larps. However, not all larpers and larp designers are aware of the magic of anticipation, let alone of how to wield this magic. So let us quickly look at one or two things that you can do to start using the magic of anticipation to enhance your own experience as a player.
First – and this is the most important rule of all – don’t rush to the anticipated event!
Learn to relish moments of anticipation. Like in the first example with the kiss, you might be eager to take the next step in a chain of events. Maybe you feel like you cannot wait until the anticipated event is going to happen but learn to endure this suspense! Dive into this sweet kind of excitement in order to fully unlock its potential.
Second, use those moments to delve into your character’s unique personality!
Use the moment of anticipation to dive even deeper into your characters’ hopes and fears. In these moments the anticipated event is like Schrödinger’s cat. Every outcome is possible which allows you to portray and experience different aspects of your character’s personality. Imagine the worst possible thing to happen and let your character react to it! Or let your character dream of the best possible outcome and share it with somebody to play on hope! Maybe old memories from your background story surface or maybe something that happened earlier during the larp acquires new gravitas.
Third, let your emotions flow!
Moments of anticipation are often moments when emotional waves become massive, when feelings can’t be held back anymore. Use your whole body to feel and portray those emotions. This might be a shivering breath before you kiss or shakily grasping your best friend’s hand before you storm out into battle. It might be a long thankful smile at your mentor before you climb the stage to hold a speech.
Fourth, focus on your co-players too!
As we all know, larp is a co-creative medium and we all want to have a good experience when playing. So try to find a good balance between exploring your character during moments of anticipation and giving the floor to other players. Those moments of anticipation are a perfect opportunity to learn more about others’ characters and to develop your character’s relationship to them further. You can also use the things you learn from such moments about others’ characters later in the game to create intense personal scenes.
Now, let’s briefly take the designer’s perspective.
If your larp is a complete sandbox, you probably don’t have much influence over moments of anticipation. However, if you have at least some rough cornerstone events planned for your larp, then you should definitely add enough occasions and time for your players to savor the anticipation.
Of course, sudden surprises and unexpected turns of events have their own magical charm but don’t forget to add opportunities of anticipation. Let your players wait before a big event is finally happening and give them hints about what they can expect to spark the flame of their imagination. You can drop allusions with the help of supporting characters or in-game materials such as a newspaper. Or you can simply use transparent design where your players know off-game where the story arc is going.
The imagination of your players is a powerful tool! Just think of a horror movie as an example – usually, we are far more frightened when we haven’t seen the monster. When we know that there is something lurking, some eerie imminence, our imagination fills in the gaps and often our imagination does it far more effectively than any creature designer.
Give your players time to envision the worst or the best before you actually let it happen. If you want, you can even guide their imagination by using sound effects, music, lighting, and so on. Just read up on how to use those things when designing larps to get some inspiration. A good starting point is the article “The Fundamentals of Sound Design in Larp” by Anni Tolvanen and Irrette Melakoski (2019) published in the book Larp Design.
No matter if you look at anticipation from a player’s perspective or from a designer’s – relishing moments of anticipation can definitely create intense scenes. Let’s all be more aware of the magic that lies within anticipation and let’s use it more consciously!
References
Tolvanen, Anni, and Irrette Melakoski. 2019. “The Fundamentals of Sound Design for Larp.” In Larp Design: Creating Role-play Experiences, edited by Johanna Koljonen, Jaakko Stenros, Anne Serup Grove, Aina D. Skjønsfjell and Elin Nilsen. Copenhagen, Denmark: Landsforeningen Bifrost.
Cover photo:Illustration by Nina Mutik.
This article is published in the Knutpunkt 2022 magazine Distance of Touch and is published here with permission. Please cite this text as:
Fischer, Olivia. 2022. “Wielding the Magic of Anticipation.” In Distance of Touch: The Knutpunkt 2022Magazine, edited by Juhana Pettersson, 105-107. Knutpunkt 2022 and Pohjoismaisen roolipelaamisen seura.
As we stood
there by the vine-covered
tree, solemn,
tangible forest around
intangible, skin-covered words, created
in our own image, we left behind
our cocoon, the forest was real
and so were we, in this moment
where the seed was
planted in our name
and we watered it.
Second Element
Was there a wall here
sometime before and have we
forgotten it or torn it down
because it limited our view
of who we could be?
The roofs are gone as well and we
drenched as we are, is it rain
that has wetted our faces and
our backs, is it us, are we
the ones whose silhouettes
suspended in a silent narrative
still stain the stone?
Third Element
I don’t remember who
among us did the melting; you
or me, or both, but here we are
liquid as ever, marbling together
forgetting our own colours; if
they were yours or mine
or never ours to begin with as
the heat of the moment forges us
together and forces us
to think as we never
thought before it –
behind this line that someone
drew in the scorched earth
blood may run thicker than
water, but we run thin
into each other.
Fourth Element
I opened up my veins
to let you in, to let you breathe your life
into me as my aspirations filled
your lungs so full of warmth that we took flight
of fancy; our parts multiplied
by more than one and less than two, a fraction
of who I was before you became me
like fragments of a language that connects us
unspoken to the voices in our mind
of all the ones that we have been before
tomorrow someone else will flow
through you.
Fifth Element
What are the parts that make up
the sum of what we can be and more –
when we subtract ourselves and don’t lose
count, something still is left
that wasn’t there when we began
to take root inside our own bodies
to sculpt our own river clay
to harden in the fire of our dreams
to breathe the air we occupied
and open its mouth to sing;
what strange new songs will it begin
to make of us?
Cover photo: Image by EchoGrid on Unsplash. Photo has been 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:
Wierda, Berber. “Elements of 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.
Discovering that you will be having romantic play in your larp, is something that almost always causes a certain reaction amongst larpers. One of panic, stress, worry, joy, relief, or anything else not mentioned here. It is clear that having romance in your character and relations is something that can be very impactful for your entire larp. So, how do we take this romantic play and feel safe to run with it? How do we turn something that so often is frightening for a lot of players into something that establishes and deepens a character? How do we create an engaging story about emotions that enriches play for all parties involved, without it having to go further than that? How do we play on romance without it becoming play on sexuality? How do we bring the magic into our romantic play in a larp?
Creating a safe framework
Having the right safe space is an essential component to romantic play. It allows you as well as your co-player(s) to dive deep into your romantic relationship, regardless of whether it’s a prewritten one or one that you have created yourself. Especially as romance play tends to often go deeper and become more emotional than a lot of other relations in a larp, it is key to make sure that everyone involved feels that it’s safe enough to jump into this play and trust each other to build a beautiful story.
Discuss your boundaries before the larp
Having a discussion on boundaries before the larp will help in creating a safer environment for everyone involved in a prewritten or pre-negotiated romance. Make sure this talk isn’t just about physical boundaries, but also about emotional and narrative ones. It’s important not to stay overly superficial or get stuck in generalisations; it pays off to go into specifics. This doesn’t just provide a wider area to play in once you rule out the specifics, but also gives you a sense of security, because you have trusted each other with these specifics. If, e.g., you don’t like being tickled on your right thigh, or hate your nose being touched because of insecurities, this is the moment to mention it. If there are any emotions you do not like to play on, like grief, if there are any stories you prefer not to tell, or if you have any important triggers that might come out during play, these are also worth mentioning to someone you will be sharing intense and deep play with. Don’t be afraid to be vulnerable towards each other, and don’t be judgemental about each other’s boundaries. Creating a safe space starts here, by creating a safe and trusting atmosphere in which to discuss your boundaries together.
Manage everyone’s expectations
Along with a talk about your boundaries, it is equally important to also discuss expectations, and to manage them. There are as many expectations from a larp as there are participants in it, and it is important to make sure your expectations aren’t completely opposite to those of your co-player(s) for your romantic play when you step into the game. Before starting up this conversation, remind yourself that you will probably have different expectations, and that it will mainly be a question of communicating and getting your expectations aligned with each other, so that you can flow from there.
You can start up this conversation by stating the type of (romantic) play you like and dislike, and what you are or are not willing to play on. Also think about your preferred directions for the story and state them, but be open for the story to go differently, or for your co-player(s) to have completely different ideas or intentions. This is also a good moment to discuss potential conflicts for your romantic relationship. You can talk about whether or not and how much of it you would like. Additionally, you can also come up with some potential sources of conflict beforehand, which makes it easier to play them up during the larp. Furthermore, make sure to be clear on how much or how little play you would like to get out of your romance. And, above all: be flexible in your expectations, and if needed, make it clear to your co-player(s) that they should be, too. In case you notice that your expectations and those of your co-player(s) are very far apart, don’t hesitate to start up the conversation on how to bring them closer to each other. It’s better to do this before the larp than to be disappointed during play.
Be open for calibration during play
We all know larp is unpredictable, and so is your romantic relation in it. Which is why it’s better not to stick to one outcome, but to be ready for whatever is thrown in your direction instead. This also means it’s good to be ready to check up off-game with your co-player(s) whenever things seem to be going in a very different direction than originally planned or expected. If, for example, you feel like you are not getting a lot of play from your romantic relationship, or not the type of play you had expected, it is worth it to have a quick calibration about this situation. Your co-player(s) may have been unaware, or they may have been stuck with the same issue as well. However, always keep in mind that your co-player(s) can say no to your requests, as you can to theirs. In the end, a short calibration in case of play going into a direction that you would like to see differently will at least help you to know what to do next or what to expect, instead of possibly heading towards disappointment.
Similarly, boundaries may change during a larp, too. This can happen for many reasons, which you do not need to state to your co-player(s). However, do inform them about these changes if this is important for the situation or for possible future situations you may find yourself in. For example, if you have become more comfortable with your co-player and you do not mind them kissing you on the forehead while this would have crossed a boundary before, do not hesitate to quickly tell them about this off-game.
Furthermore, romantic play can at times happen spontaneously during a larp, without it having been preplanned or prewritten. For these spontaneous romances, it is equally important to be open for calibration, if you want to allow for this kind of play to flow. Look for a moment to go off-game and discuss boundaries if you feel the need for it, and make it clear to your co-player(s) that you are open for them to communicate their boundaries to you as well. Even with people who know each other well, it is important to make it clear that the door is always open for this conversation, so that you are sure to create that space of safety and trust despite not having had any negotiations before the larp. Lastly, if you feel the direction you want to take the story in is unclear, or you’re all steering in different directions, make sure to calibrate together, so that this spontaneous story doesn’t fall through or burn up halfway through the larp – unless this is exactly what you want to happen.
Check up on each other after the larp
After the larp ends, it is also important to end your story together and to manage your bleed together. Find a moment when you and your co-player(s) feel alright to talk through the larp and the story together. This can be right after an event, or a week after. Just make sure you find a moment you agree on. During this conversation, take care to give each other compliments and positive feedback: state what elements you liked that the other(s) brought to your story, what you think they did amazingly, which moments you particularly enjoyed, etc. Then, carry on to differentiate yourself from your character. Ask each other about differences and similarities between the player(s) and the character(s). Be there for each other and be supportive for each other. Remain open to talk about bleed to each other, as you may have different moments or different ways of experiencing it. Also embrace the idea that it is equally fine if there is no bleed at all. And last but not least: do not become stuck in going through and drawing each other into bleed over and over again. Keep an eye open for warning signs, such as: starting a conversation over and over again about specific in-character memories; continuing to send each other messages/files/… that remind you of your character’s emotions or their story together; steering conversations to be about the larp more often than not; ending up in a long lasting, time absorbing post play; etc. When you notice warning signs for lasting bleed, take care to take breaks, to do things that distract you from the bleed. Talk about it to your co-player and be honest about the lingering bleed, but also consider taking distance if they are facing the same issue. Working through bleed together is ok, but make sure you also end your story together and move on from there. Keeping your memories and talking about them is a good thing, but clinging to them and to the emotions involved can become problematic.
Making the romance part of your entire story
Just like other relationship dynamics can influence your character and be part of their story, you can allow your romance to shape your character, without necessarily having your entire story and play become exclusively about the romance. This means that you can make the romance meaningful while also making sure your character is still interesting enough without the romance. A romance can be impactful to your character’s story without being their only story: it can be a character’s biggest internal motivator, their largest driver for change, their biggest setback, etc. Romantic play can influence a character, it can push and pull their narrative in a lot of ways, and you can even pace a romantic story along with the rest of your narrative to create a whole. If you manage to find a middle ground between being too dependent or too independent of your romantic story, it can become a beautiful and meaningful part of your story in its entirety.
Having your romantic play and your other relations interact
A first step for making sure your larp romance isn’t just a loose part of your character’s story is having your romantic interest(s) interact with your character’s other relationships. This can happen both directly and indirectly.
Direct interactions are the interactions that take place directly between two characters, without a middle man. A very straightforward example of this is an actual spoken conversation between two characters, but it can also be an exchange of letters or notes, a brief exchange of glances, etc. The most straightforward way to establish this is by introducing your romantic co-player(s) to your other relationships. Any excuse can serve to this end, and you can even go as far as to literally introduce them as the person(s) you fancy. There are obviously less straightforward ways to establish this as well: your character can ask their best friend or servant to deliver a note to their romantic interest, you can suggest to your sibling to ask your romantic interest for advice in a certain matter, etc. The idea here is that you get your romantic interest(s) to interact directly with other characters that hold a relationship to your character and story.
Lastly, you can also establish indirect interactions between your romantic connection and your other relationships, which can obviously turn into direct ones over the course of the larp. With indirect interactions, I refer to interactions where the characters interact and know about each other without talking to each other directly. This is, for example, established by having characters gossip about each other, by having your character confide in their relationships about their romantic feelings, by having them complain, ask for help, or anything else you come up with. Similarly, your character can also talk to their romantic interest(s) about their other relationships, about their friends, their enemies, and their family, and state their opinion about them to their romantic partner(s). This way, you establish a good basis for these characters to look out for each other, or to just talk about each other and establish a certain relationship in this way.
Be open to possible consequences of all of these interactions catching up with your character in the course of the game, and be ready to interact with those as well. It often works well to have different types of direct and indirect interactions going on, as these can all help shape your romantic story.
Pacing a romance along with your character story arc
Tying into the above, next to having your different relations interact with your larp romance, you can also have your romance interact with your character story arc, and vice versa. In essence, pacing your romance and the rest of your story together is a case of allowing them to affect and bleed into each other.
Whenever a part of your general story affects your character and accelerates or slows down your story, or moves it in a new direction, this change of pace can equally be reflected in your romantic story. Use that momentum to create a similar change in your romantic relationship – either internalised or externalised. If your character is, for example, rapidly becoming more independent because of certain events in the game, have them rethink their dependence on or independence of their romantic relationship as well, and show it in their behaviour, or bring it up in conversation, or simply use it as an internal motivator. What matters is that a change in your story arc also affects your romantic story. Changes in pace have a bigger impact if they cause ripples in other stories your character is living through as well, and having these changes influence your romantic play often makes the relationship more realistic as well as more meaningful.
In the same way, impactful changes in your character’s romantic relationship(s) can equally influence the pacing of the rest of their arc. For example, if your romantic interest is slowly changing your character’s opinion on certain matters, take these subtle changes of opinion and reflect them in conversations or opinions you share with other relationships. Act upon the changes your romantic relationship(s) install in your character, and allow them to flow slowly and subtly, instead of having a sudden change of heart from one extreme to the other with no in between. A gradual change in worldview paced along with a gradual evolution in a romantic relationship is a beautiful example of how the whole of a story can be paced and have an impact. Having changes of rhythm in your romantic story affect your other stories, and then having the consequences of these changes in their turn impact your romantic relationship, makes for a better paced whole.
Keeping the romance small yet impactful
A misconception I often find is that in order for a romantic relationship to matter, it needs to be big and visible. I would argue for exactly the contrary. In order for your romance to be impactful, it often works better if it’s small. As so often in larp, it isn’t the big gestures, the big declarations or speeches that leave an impact. It’s the small gestures, the hidden conversations and the stolen moments that affect your character’s world.
As building small, meaningful moments together makes for a more realistic romantic relationship than only having a few grand gestures as shared memories, it is worth looking for them in your larp. You can achieve this in a lot of ways, going from a quick exchange of glances or a slight touch every time you and your romantic interest(s) encounter each other, to actively seeking them out whenever you need a short conversation with them about what’s happening to your character, and asking for their advice. Actively create small moments of togetherness: have your characters check up on each other every so often, share little jokes, send each other small notes, be supportive of each other in moments shared with a group, go and have a drink together and talk about random things … Find small shared interactions that work in your romantic relationship and play on them, repeatedly if you like. Creating small, tender, genuine moments will make your romantic relationship feel a lot more real than only relying on big gestures and declarations of love.
Keeping an open story and an open romance
As with any other larp story or relationship, keeping your romantic play open makes for a more versatile and often more interesting experience. If you want to be able to weave your romantic story into your overall story, both need to be flexible and open enough to be influenced by each other. It does not serve your play to stick rigidly to a desired outcome, and even less so when it no longer makes sense in the given reality of your story. If you are open to not sticking to one fixed goal or storyline, you allow for your different stories and relationships to influence each other even more, thus resulting in a more coherent whole that shapes all of your character. Being open for all the elements in your story, both the expected and the unexpected ones, to influence and shape your character and their story will more likely result in a wholesome and realistic narrative arc for your character to go through.
Having romantic play without it becoming play on sexuality
Romantic play becomes powerful by being small and intimate, and hence, it can be so much more meaningful and rewarding to play exactly on these romantic feelings and this (physical and/or emotional) intimacy for the entirety of your larp. Intimacy comes in many forms and can thus also be achieved in many ways through play, none of which need involve play on sexuality or even physicality. On the contrary, an actual romantic relationship isn’t necessarily shaped by its sexuality, so a romantic relationship in a larp shouldn’t be, either.
Setting boundaries and discussing intimacy
As I’ve argued before, discussing your boundaries with your romantic co-player(s) is an important part of making romantic play work in a larp, as it helps create that vital safe space for us as players to jump into. As a part of this discussion, setting boundaries for not having sexual play with your co-player is equally important. Dare to state this boundary, and be accepting if you ever have a co-player stating this boundary.
When stating this hard limit for sexuality, make it clear that while you are less or not interested in sexual play, you are more so in intimate play. It’s important to make it clear to your co-player that a hard boundary on play on sexuality does not mean there can be no interesting play on the relationship, but rather the contrary. Make it clear that instead of sexual play, you want to play on a romance in which the feelings and/or the small gestures themselves become the focal point.
When shifting your focus from sexuality to intimacy, you should also be ready to discuss what kind of intimate play you desire most. Think about whether you are open for play on intimate physicality, like eg. holding hands, accidental touches, gently brushing each other’s face… or whether you would rather only play on emotional intimacy, e.g. having deep conversations, supporting each other, seeking each other out for advice, having a lot of small one on one talks… Any option or anything in between can create a lot of play and closeness, so don’t be afraid to discuss it and go into detail if needed.
When you trust each other in stating these boundaries, a whole range of other interactions opens up. With the hard limit of no play on sexuality, you can explore which types of intimacy you would like to play on together.
Being open for different types of love and relationships
When talking about romantic play in larp, we often assume this is centred around a certain normative type of romantic attraction and interaction. However, there are many different kinds of love and attraction, so it’s important to also be open to discuss and play on this variety of possible relationships.
It is worthwhile starting this conversation when negotiating your romantic relationship, either before play or during. If you have a desire to play out your relationship more as a platonic love relationship, or if you would like for your character to be asexual and/or aromantic, state this to your coplayer. Be open for other players to inform you about their preferences as well. If during this talk, any clarification is needed – ranging from “what is ace?” to “how would you like us to express our platonic love in a non-physical way?” – be open and willing to ask as well as to offer an explanation. Additionally, normalise these different types of love and relationships, both in your negotiations about them as well as in your play during the larp. Be accepting when a co-player asks not to play on certain types of attraction, or if they suggest a non-romantic kind of love relationship, and don’t lose yourself in assumed problems for this type of play, but think of ways it can enrich your larp experience instead. Being in a polyamorous relationship or feeling a deep love for an aromantic character should, for example, not be the main source of conflict in these relationships. Be willing to talk about and jump into different types of romantic play without making this matter the focal point of your conversation or your play together.
Reinforcing the importance of the relationship
If you make every interaction count, I am also convinced there is less need for play on sexuality. If you treat a romantic relationship less like a romance bound for sexuality and more like a meaningful, character shaping relationship, then every moment has an impact. By keeping it small, you also allow for everything to be meaningful and impactful. A small conversation, a short glance, a desire to help them out,… all of this can motivate your character to do things, to evolve, to take actions outside of the romantic relationship that then again reflect back into the relationship.
A lot of play can happen on an evolving relationship, on words and gestures, on interpretations, on characters growing closer or apart, on characters changing and their dynamics changing along with them, but also on physical intimacy – a touch, a glance, a gentle stroke of the cheek, a smile… As I discussed before, you can create very intimate and important moments with very little. Create moments where you give all your attention to your romantic interest. Have stolen moments, hidden conversations no one else noticed or knows about, ask them for their opinion often and follow their advice (or not), granting each other influence on your stories. Always save some extra kindness, some extra time, a brief glance, a short moment of attention (e.g. asking them specifically for their opinion when talking with a group…) for your romantic interest. Show them they are special and meaningful in the small, unnoticed (by others) moments. Be aware that this kind of play between just the two of you creates a wonderful and deep level of intimacy, and embrace that.
Relationships can become a lot deeper and more important if you dive into the mindset that your characters can inspire each other, that their presence and interactions can influence and forward each others’ stories. A romantic story isn’t necessarily only about one character meeting another and them falling head over heels in love. It can be a story about unwavering support for each other, about being an inspiration for each other to change, to realise their own strength, etc. It takes away from a relationship to only focus on the aspect of romantic attraction when it can be about so much more. Be open to give each other leverage and impact in your stories, and be ready to build a fuller and richer story from there.
Postponing the words “I love you”
It is, however, also perfectly fine to have (part of) your story revolve around the romance. If you choose to go for this type of play, there is a lot to gain from building an arc of evolving towards each other in conversation, not immediately admitting your feelings but showing them in small actions, to then eventually evolve to some (sometimes reluctant) confessions, or finally daring to give in to feelings towards the end of a game, with a simple holding of each other’s hand, an intimate hug, or stating “I love you”. It is worth having a think about the different possible positive or negative resolutions of your romantic relationship, but even more so, it is worth postponing getting to that resolution and focusing on the way you get there. There is more play in getting to that final stage of knowing where the romantic relationship is at, than there is in already reaching that point early on in the event – unless you then play on conflict or a change of the status quo.
At first glance, this seems to be a course of action that mainly works well for new and/or young romances. However, I would like to put forward that this type of play on postponing confessions works for any type of romantic play. You can have an established romantic relationship drift on the same longing for a confession, on the same unspoken (positive or negative) feelings. Your character can, for example, find it problematic that their partner never states their love for them, and have your entire play together evolve around their pushing and longing for those words, or around their wanting to leave for a lack of them. The evolution of the story doesn’t necessarily have to be towards each other, it can also be away from each other, striving for postponing the words “I don’t love you (anymore).” Whichever the case, and whichever the romantic relationship(s), it’s clear that postponing the resolution and playing on the journey there, and the possible (interpretations of the) feelings involved is another way to steer more for play on the relationship, the feelings and the intimacy, and less on the sexuality.
Conclusion
In this article, I hope to have established a good basis for people to turn to when their larp takes them into romantic play. While my own focus was on emotional safety, on making the romance part of your story, and on non-sexual play, throughout all this it remains clear that communication and openness are two key components for any type of play on romance in larp. I hope this article helps players to realise that play on romance doesn’t need to be scary, or forced, or negative, as long as you step into it with an open mindset, ready to communicate, and willing to see it flow within your story in whichever way works for everyone involved.
Cover photo: Image by truthseeker08 on Pixabay. Photo has been 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:
Bailly, Sandy. “Creating Magical Romance Play.” 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.
Disclaimer: The opinions expressed herein are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of Nordiclarp.org or any larp community at large.
The Split Attraction Model (SAM) was created within the aromantic (often shortened as aro) and asexual (often shortened as ace) communities to build language to describe members’ experiences. The model can be used to expand language in describing larps, in setting expectations, and in player negotiations. The language and understanding of the split attraction model helps to reduce struggles and misunderstandings.
To understand the Split Attraction Model, it’s important to understand the difference between sexual and romantic attraction, as they are often conflated. Sexual attraction is an attraction that would make someone desire sexual contact with the object of their attraction. Romantic attraction is an attraction that would make someone desire romantic contact with the object of their attraction. There is a societal view that people may experience sexual, but not romantic, attraction to a particular person: but the converse isn’t widely acknowledged, and when it is, it is generally presented in a negative context.
Split Attraction Model
It is helpful to start with some background to best understand the model. Asexuality is a sexual orientation where a person experiences little to no sexual attraction to anyone, and aromanticism is a romantic orientation where a person experiences little to no romantic attraction to anyone. That these are separate orientations, and that they are separate from more widely-known orientations, can be understood via this model. While the SAM is known and inherent in aro and ace communities, it can also be put to use elsewhere, including larp.
The Aromantic spectrum Union for Recognition, Education and Advocacy (AUREA) defines the Split Attraction Model as:
The Split Attraction Model (SAM) is a framework that makes a distinction between experiences of attraction, depending on certain characteristics, and conceptualizes them as different types of attraction. Commonly used are: sexual, romantic, aesthetic, alterous, platonic and sensual attractions.
An Introduction to Aromanticism, The Aromantic spectrum Union for Recognition, Education and Advocacy The Split Attraction Model (Laura Wood)
The above diagram offers a simplistic view of the model. Sexual and romantic orientations are considered separately. The left column indicates whether someone experiences sexual attraction, and if so to whom. If someone experiences little or no sexual attraction they may be considered asexual and if they experience little to no romantic attraction they may be considered aromantic. If they do experience sexual or romantic attraction then they would be considered allosexual or alloromantic respectively.
Someone who experiences no sexual attraction, and romantic attraction to the same gender as themselves could be considered asexual and homoromantic. Someone who experiences sexual attraction to a gender other than their own and no romantic attraction would be heterosexual and aromantic. It can also apply to allo identities — for example someone might be sexually attracted to multiple genders (pansexual) but only romantically attracted to a gender other than their own (hetroromantic).
While the SAM was developed by the aro and ace communities, it is intended to be agnostic to commonly recognized orientations. Another example is someone who is heterosexual and biromantic who might otherwise be seen as “straight”.
The SAM in Larp
In the rest of this article, we will be discussing the SAM, and applying it in ways that refer to players’ interests within larp, which may or may not match their personal orientations. It can be common for a straight player to roleplay romance with players of the same gender, or to not have any desire to roleplay sex in larp. Likewise, an aro player may or may not want to roleplay romance in larp.
Larp often uses the terms ‘romance’ and ‘romantic’ as attributes to describe content, focus, or in creating character relationships: but the meaning varies and is often left unspecified. In some situations this means flirting, courting, and expressing feelings of love between characters. In others it may mean or include intimate or sexual content, in the background, off-stage or on-stage using metatechniques, or otherwise. This conflation is understandable, as many people view romance and sex as going hand in hand, and many societies avoid direct discussion of sex in public.
Larp Development
Understanding the SAM can be an asset to larp designers who need to understand the approach that they want to take to attraction in their larp.
It can help designers decide what they want to include in the larp. The model can examine whether romance is present in the larp and whether sexual attraction is assumed or played out. Even larps that don’t feature characters with romantic and sexual orientations that differ from each other might benefit from understanding how much play they want around each of these areas. For example many UK Freeform larps focus on romance, but don’t often have on-stage play around sex, although sexual attraction in the romantic relationships is usually assumed.
Working out the focus designers want to place on romantic and sexual attraction can also help development of metatechniques. If sexual attraction is an important element of the larp, then metatechniques used for sex generally reflect this, whereas if it’s less important then metatechniques may be less elaborate or omitted all together.
Using this model also opens designers up to the possibility of other relationship models such as queerplatonic relationships (ie close relationships which are not primarily romantic or sexual in nature) and a general approach of relationship anarchy (ie a belief that relationships should not be bound by set rules other than those which are mutually agreed upon).
Describing a Larp
Consent-based larp requires as a foundation that all involved are aware of what they are consenting to, which is something the SAM can help with.
When providing the details of a larp, it is common to include an overview of content potential players can expect, the principles of the larp, or a design document. Using the SAM when writing and sharing these details can remove ambiguity of what content players would be signing up for. This description or document can separately specify if romantic and sexual content is included, along with what is meant in each of those cases.
For example, without using the SAM, a larp may commonly indicate “romantic plots between characters feature strongly in this larp”. To some people, they may assume this means flirting, courting and expressions of love, and want to sign up for that, only to get to the larp and discover sheets which describe sexual content and a defined metatechnique that players can optionally use to represent physical intimacy during game. Using the SAM, this same larp might say “This larp strongly features romantic plots between characters including flirting, and expressions of love as well as sexual content in the background and use of a physical intimacy metatechnique.”
Character Creation
By separating sexual and romantic attraction and detailing how they are expressed within the character, the model can be useful for creating characters based on the type of play that participants want to experience.
It can allow them to understand exactly what they are opting into. They can feel comfortable creating or signing up for a character who has a romantic relationship(s), without feeling that there will be expressions of sexuality that they are uncomfortable with, or conversely can play a sexually driven character without feeling that there is an expectation that a romance should develop.
This can be used to build participant confidence in knowing that they don’t have to opt out of romantic or sexual relationships entirely in order to get the type of play that they enjoy. It also means that there is less uncertainty about whether a relationship will develop in a way that all the participants are comfortable with, leading to increased confidence during the larp. It gives agency to participants by allowing them to choose what is being expressed, rather than making assumptions about what trying to pursue a specific type of relationship entails.
Player Negotiation
In order for the participant in a larp to fully understand what they are consenting to, it is important that as few as possible assumptions are made about the nature of play. This is particularly true around romance, sex and relationships where participants might find it necessary to set boundaries for personal comfort but struggle to do this where the SAM model isn’t normalized, leading to players either continuing with scenes that make them uncomfortable or opting out of romantic or sexual play completely. Not only does that unnecessarily limit play, it can cause games which feature these things heavily to be unplayable by some people as they would be shut out.
The majority of people have expectations of what a romantic (or sexual) relationship should entail which are carried into larp. When two or more characters are defined as being in a relationship, it is generally understood that this will include romantic and sexual aspects. Discussion of participant boundaries would normally take place, but generally would start with the expectation that the player is comfortable in participating in at least some metatechniques involving symbolising sex within the relationship (assuming such metatechniques exist within the larp.) There would also be the assumption that the participant would be comfortable with playing on some romantic attraction, possibly as an endgame in a relationship which is initially based on sexual attraction.
By using the SAM the participant can discuss the sexual and romantic attitudes of their character, as well as the boundaries they are setting as a player. It also means that the other player in the relationship can understand the intended trajectory and steer play accordingly. Use of the SAM can also allow more people to play larps that feature romance or sex, by providing more detailed aspects to be negotiated on.
Posed photo from Live or Die: Break the Wheel, a Game of Thrones larp (photo: Maya Kuper)
Examples of the Split Attraction Model in Larps
Just a Little Lovin’ (Tor Kjetil Edland and Hanne Grasmo) could potentially allow players to use the SAM during play. One of the key themes of the larp is ‘desire’: and there are metatechniques to offer sex and to play out a sexual encounter with the amount of desire and passion discussed beforehand by the participants. Afterwards each character gives a monologue about what occurred, which could allow them to express a (lack of) romantic attraction.
Cult used a technique where when characters negotiated physical intimacy off-game, they also discussed how the characters felt about it and how it would affect their relationship. Due to the setting (a manipulative and exploitative religious cult) it was assumed that not all sexual attraction would necessarily have a romantic element.
Born this Way (Rei England) has opportunities for participants to calibrate their relationships with each other and specifically to ask questions about any sexual or romantic attraction, or deepening of a queerplatonic relationship, as separate emotions, rather than assuming that one entails the other.
More Than Friendship (Quinn D and Eva Schiffer) specifies both romantic and sexual relationships and orientations in the main description, to be explicit and remove ambiguity. There, while the focus is specifically on platonic relationships, romantic and sexual orientations still need to be specified separately.
Currently in larps there seems to be more opportunity to convey that sexual attraction might not be romantic, than to convey that romantic attraction might not be sexual, as the metatechniques used generally focus on sexual activity.
Underexplored Topics
Most of the above is focused on romantic and sexual attraction because they are the most recognized and explored in larp. But the SAM also invites us to look at other types of attraction. While some larps do include some of these, there is a lot more that can be explored. In the same way larps often use romantic and sexual attraction to draw characters towards each other, these other types of attraction can as well.
A larp setting where appearance is important could lean heavily on aesthetic attraction. One focused on exploration of touch could explore sensual attraction. And almost all larps can focus on platonic attraction between characters. These are not often explored in larp simply as a reflection of our amatonormative society which supports the widespread assumption that everyone is better off in an exclusive, romantic, long-term coupled relationship, and that everyone is seeking such a relationship; and which prioritizes romantic connections above all others. By untangling these assumptions larp has more and various directions to explore.
Wrap Up
Using the SAM can help larp designers and players think about sexual and romantic attraction separately throughout the larp process. This allows more deliberate design and roleplay by examining and breaking into pieces something that society just assumes all goes together. And it better supports consent in larp by helping everyone understand what is included, instead of players interpreting things differently. The SAM can function as a language and tool in larp to recognize and apply the distinctions it brings. And it can help expand the topics explored in larp.
This article is based on a presentation I made at the Nordic larp conference Knutpunkt 2018 in Lund, Sweden. It is based on my own experiences as well as conversations with larp crushed people.
There must be more to it. That’s what I’ve always thought.
Larpers generally agree that what happens in-game stays in-game. This idea is known as an alibi — as described by e.g. Markus Montola (2010). Just because your larp character is a sadistic tyrant does not mean that you are. The same goes for relationships: Your sister is not your actual sister, your friend is not your actual friend, and your lover is not your actual lover.
Right?
But then there’s the larp crush. It sounds like a little blip on your romantic radar — something you laugh at and quickly shrug off. But as it turns out, that is often a misconception. In the words of a young lady who approached me after my talk at Knutpunkt: “It’s called larp crush because your heart is crushed afterwards.”
Defining the Larp Crush
What is a larp crush? If you are not sure whether you have had one, you can rest assured: You have not. It is not the kind of experience that goes unnoticed.
A larp crush is a condition where you and your character get your wires crossed, so to speak.
It is a close relative to larp bleed, which Sarah Lynne Bowman (2015) defines as “moments where […] real life feelings, thoughts, relationships, and physical states spill over into [the players’] characters’ and vice versa.”
However, larp crushes are known to be potentially more intense than pretty much any other experience of bleed.
In order to examine the larp crush, I have been looking into how actors deal with the equivalent of bleed. According to professor of media psychology Dr. Elly A. Konijn, actors rarely get confused about their identity (Konijn 2000). In my experience, the same goes for role-players. However, they do get affected by their character’s emotions and behaviour. Just like actor Jim Carrey was affected by portraying Andy Kaufman in the biopic Man on the Moon, so do role-players get affected by their character’s emotions.
This is my definition of a larp crush:
A larp crush is a variant of bleed, which means that you are having trouble separating your real world emotions from your character’s.
You know that you have a larp crush when you feel an inexplicable desire to spend time staring into another person’s eyes for unreasonable amounts of time.
It is only a larp crush if you felt no prior attraction to the person in question. You might have thought they looked nice, but you didn’t see them in a romantic light. If you did, it’s not a larp crush — it is a regular crush!
It is only a larp crush if it was triggered by your in-game relationship. Finding out at an afterparty that you really like each other is not a larp crush — it is a regular crush.
Echo and Narcissus (1903) by John William Waterhouse.
Immersion into Character
In Nordic larp as well as in most Hollywood films, realism is by far the most prevalent genre. This means that being able to reproduce realistic emotions is considered “good role-playing.”
Our approach is much like that of actor and theatre practitioner Konstantin Stanislavski’s work.
Early Stanislawski method acting claims that the actor should give themselves up, and become one with the role. Furthermore, you should use emotional recall to create believability.
Recalling genuine emotions not only creates the expression of those emotions; it also makes you relive them. Because of the potential danger of this method, Stanislawski later distanced himself from it. However, it was too late: Hollywood had already embraced it. Some of the most famous actors, from Dustin Hoffman to Heath Ledger, used this method.
When larping, so do I.
Becoming emotional or being moved by a performance appears to be one of the most important criteria an audience uses to judge the impact of a performance. The same is the case for participants larping in the Nordic style (Bowman 2017).
Unless we get emotionally involved, we do not get the catharsis feeling that the ancient Greeks used to describe the feeling of being emotionally purged — of having gone through a great ordeal, and coming out on the other side.
As a side note: For some larpers, emotional identification with the character never happens. However, many people are able to create an emotional bond with their character some of the time, although not always. Because Nordic larpers often see character immersion as an indicator of success, larp without immersion into character is often considered a failure and a disappointment.
Actors agree that the ticket to an emotional bond with your character is preparation. You must know all about your character — where she comes from, her status, her character, her habits, her life goals or lack thereof. You must know enough that you are able to build “an inner model,” or as psychologists describe it, a theory of mind.
Limerence
Larp crushes feel like falling in love. They consist of a mixture of obsession and compulsion. You are constantly thinking about the object of desire, and you can’t help but interpret everything he or she says or does and what that means for your relationship.
While doing research for this article, I stumbled on the term limerence. It was coined by psychologist Dorothy Tennov in 1979. It is an often involuntary state in which you are emotionally attached to another person to the point of obsession. Although it involves physical attraction, it goes much further than just the wish to have sex. You might call it an extreme version of romantic love. As Tennov (1979) describes, “Limerence is first and foremost a condition of cognitive obsession.”
According to Tennov, never experiencing limerence is just as natural a state as experiencing it. However, people who have never gone through limerence are prone to think it is a myth. It is not, but it is a bit of a unicorn that some people go their entire life without ever seeing. Larping is excellent at inducing this state.
The limerent person — that is, the person experiencing a full-on crush — becomes extremely attentive to little signals, such as body language, wording, or actions.
Being limerent is like that moment in The Wizard of Oz when the doors open, and you step out of Kansas and into Oz. It is like an awakening. You are high on energy, and everything is doubly intense.
The Wizard of Oz (1939). Photo by Insomnia Cured Here on Flickr. CC BY-SA 2.0.
According to scientists, an MRI brain scan of a person in love looks a lot like the brain of a person under the influence of cocaine (Fisher, Aron, Brown 2018). Over the years, it has in fact been debated whether being in love should be classified as a mental disorder (Tennov 1979). There is no doubt that limerence is a very powerful physical condition as well as a state of mind. Also, while you are going through it, you have as little power over the chemical reactions that are going on in your brain as if you were on drugs.
Limerence is not the product of human decision: It is something that happens to us. Its intrusive cognitive components, the obsessional quality that may feel voluntary at the moment but that defies control, seem to be the aspect of limerence in which it differs most from other states. (Tennov 1979)
Larp crushes make you feel alive. Everything is coated in meaning. For better or worse, whether you are drowning in misery or over the moon with joy, you are incredibly tuned into the world around you.
We all have a generalized longing for union with the beautiful and the excellent. Limerence is a pure manifestation of that longing.
Are Larp Crushes “Real?”
The answer I have currently arrived at is: Yes and no.
Larp crushes are definitely real experiences of being in love. Larp crushes are real in the sense that the barrier between you and your character’s emotions are eroded to the point where you really, truly are going through limerence.
However, larp crushes are “created” because you deliberately place yourself in a situation where you are balancing between hope and uncertainty. Placing yourself in a state where you are constantly balancing hope and uncertainty feeds the limerence. That is what is referred to as The Bungee Method in Charles Bo Nielsen’s (2017) article “Playing in Love,” which is intended as a guide to playing romantic relationships in Nordic larps.
Often, when you experience a larp crush, you have no idea about the person behind the character. But actually, that lack of knowledge does not set larp crushes apart from other kinds of crushes: There is no need to know the person who becomes the object of limerence. People often describe falling in love at first sight.
Tristan and Isolde Sharing the Potion (1916) by John William Waterhouse.
According to Tennov, the best way of getting rid of limerence is if it is revealed that the limerent object is highly undesirable. However, since most people are decent enough, this approach is not very reliable.
Tennov estimates that the average limerent reaction lasts approximately from 18 months to 3 years. However, a few may last a lifetime, while others might wear off more quickly. There seems to be a connection between exposure and duration.
There are three efficient ways of getting rid of limerence:
Consummation: you get together and have a relationship. (No, sex is not enough)!
Starvation: you never see this person again.
Transference: you somehow manage to transfer your feelings to a third person.
Staying in touch is most certainly not the way to go, if you want to get rid of unwanted feelings. However, Tennov believes that the person who is at the receiving end has an ethical obligation to help diminish the pain that the limerent person is undergoing.
Also, if the limerence is not reciprocated, the suffocating attention from the limerent person can be an unpleasant experience, which needs to be dealt with. What both parties need is a very clear statement from the object of limerence (the person whom the limerent person is in love with) that they are not interested. Otherwise the limerent person will continue to nurse the embers of hope.
Can you Make Your Body Fall in Love?
According to Konijn, there is only slight evidence that performing specific physical exercises, such as staring into each other’s eyes, will make you fall in love (Konijn 2000). However, separating the character’s feelings from your own is a different story.
Konijn explains how it is rare that even method actors become affected by a character’s emotions while actually acting. It is during rehearsal and while preparing for the character that they wind up being affected. However, larpers are in a different situation — our performance is significantly more immersive, if not for any other reason, then because we do not have to remember lines, and we are not standing on a stage.
Scientists Arthur Aron et al. (1997) wanted to find out if intimacy between strangers can be accelerated by carrying out “self-disclosing” and relationship-building tasks. The tasks would gradually escalate in intensity. Indeed, self-disclosure turns out to be linked to establishing intimacy and feeling close. The conclusion was that under the right conditions, and with the right pairings, intimacy can be accelerated.
In my experience, larping has a similar effect: Having lived through strong emotions together, you feel intimate afterwards. However, while I don’t doubt the sincerity of the feelings, the idea that you truly get to know a stranger on a deep level after spending a few days together, I find dubious at best.
The emotional “shortcut” to feeling intimate with strangers that larp provides is perhaps best considered a stepping stone to get to know each other. You may have opened the door, but the actual relationship building comes after — and needs to be done, so that you do not wind up in a relationship with someone with whom you are not compatible.
Still, larp crushes are not that different from falling in love at first sight. While most people are most likely to be nice, you may be falling in love with someone with whom you cannot connect long-term.
Have I Fallen for a Real Person, or for a Fictional Character?
You have fallen for a fictional character. However, there is nothing new about this. People do it all the time, when they fall in love with Mr. Darcy, John Snow, or Lara Croft. Just because the object of your desire is fiction, your feelings are not.
Elizabeth Bennett and Mr. Darcy in Pride and Prejudice (2005). Photo by Peter Pham on Flickr. CC BY 2.0.
Limerence is very often built on fiction. When people talk about “falling in love at first sight,” what they fall for is obviously not a deep knowledge of each other’s character, but rather a fantasy of who they assume this person might be.
According to sexologist John Money, everyone carries a blueprint for our ideal partner. Love maps are fairly complex — they both have to do with fulfillment and upbringing. When you fall in love at first sight, what happens is that you find someone onto whom you are able to project your lovemap. Money (1986) continues, “That is to say, the person projects onto the partner an idealized and highly idiosyncratic image that diverges from the image of the partner as perceived by other people.”
Of course, that projection is in itself a fictitious character.
The question you need to ask yourself is not whether your feelings are real — of course they are — but rather: Do I want this? Depending on the degree of compulsion/obsession, a larp crush can disrupt your everyday life to a degree where it becomes destructive. Tennov (1979) explains, “Limerence for someone other than one’s spouse can cause major disruption to the family, and when frustrated, limerence may produce such severe distress as to be life threatening.”
However, limerence can also be a positive, transformative experience that helps you reevaluate your life in a constructive manner.
Controlling Your Larp Experience
According to psychology professors Thalia Goldstein and Ellen Winner (2012), there are three psychological skills that help an actor create a strong characterization: theory of mind, affective empathy, and emotion regulation.
Theory of mind is the ability to understand what others are thinking, feeling, believing, and desiring. Being able to see through someone’s actions and understanding their intentions is integral to creating a strong character, because those are the skills that character creation require. Some people have strong theory of mind, while others find it difficult. Reading fiction, and — of course — larping, trains this skill.
Affective empathy — as opposed to cognitive empathy — is the feeling you get in response to someone else’s emotion. It is sometimes referred to as “emotional contagion.” It could be sadness for someone’s grief, joy for someone’s happiness, etc. Being happy and shedding tears of joy at someone else’s wedding counts as affective empathy. Letting yourself be affected by your character’s emotions does too.
Finally, a good larper needs emotional regulation skills. You need to be able to decide whether you want to feel the emotions of your character or not, or to what extent. This is not just a skill for when you are larping; from an early age, we all learn to regulate our feelings, because sometimes it’s inappropriate or inconvenient to show them.
To be able to control your larping experience, you need emotional regulation skills. Being able to play a romantic relation without getting larp crushed — or the opposite, deliberately getting larp crushed — all comes down to this particular skill.
Detail of Romeo and Juliet (1884) by Frank Dicksee.
Tools for Emotion Regulation
Emotion regulation is currently not something that is emphasized in the Nordic larp vocabulary. Interestingly, though, in other larp scenes the idea of being fully immersed in your character is seen as stigmatizing.
This stigmatization is something that Tennov (1979) also describes in relation to limerence, stating, “Many societies have attempted to prevent love or, more often, to control it in some way.“
She even describes how Stendhal, a 19th century author who is often quoted for his philosophical thoughts on love and beauty, was embarrassed at the thought of being discovered as someone who could be taken over by feelings of passion. She ascribes this reaction to society generally being more inclined to reward rational behaviour than emotional.
While Nordic larp generally praises character immersion, larp crushes seem to be trivialized. The idea that we need tools for handling too much immersion does not seem to have taken root.
Larp crushes are not trivial fiction. They are real emotions, and they should be treated as such. With regard to finding the tools that will help us get better at creating the experiences we want, we still have far to go. Becoming aware of these emotional responses, and admitting their impact on us, is a first step.
Fisher, Helen E., Arthur Aron, Lucy L. Brown. 2006. “Romantic Love: A Mammalian Brain System for Mate Choice.” Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences 361, no. 1473 (December): 2173–2186.
Nielsen, Charles Bo. 2017. “Playing in Love.” In Once Upon a Nordic Time, edited by Martine Svanevik, Linn Carin Andreassen, Simon Brind, Elin Nilsen, and Grethe Sofie Bulterud Strand, 176-184. Oslo, Norway: Knutepunkt.
It is spring. Tonight there is a ball on. The women have gone back to the parlors to change out of their day dresses and into their extravagant silk gowns. A pair of soldiers are loitering outside the clock tower, discussing race horses, and paying little mind to the rather exquisite sunset in the background.
As the young ladies emerge on the porches, the soldiers click their heels together and emit simultaneous “Ah!”s of admiration.
And these virginal rose buds of spring certainly are a sight for sore eyes: Long, gloved fingers wrapped about their father’s arms. Faces half hidden behind the shades of the bonnets. Silk slippered feet on the gravel path. In the evocative words of the poet, “She walks in beauty, like the night.”
And off they all go — to dance the night away at the ballroom. Surely tonight they will meet that certain someone.
I wish you could have been there. My description does not do it justice.
The author in costume for Fortune & Felicity. Photo by Sanne Harder.
Fortune & Felicity was a larp held at the beautiful spa village of Medevi Brunn in Sweden. The larp lasted from May 25-28, 2017. It was based on the works of classic writer Jane Austen and set somewhere around 1810. The idea was to create a Nordic larp with a 360 degree illusion setting and strong plot lines that were inspired by Jane Austen’s literary works.
It’s been over a week since I got back from Fortune & Felicity and the dust is finally settling.
I’m sure we can agree that there are different kinds of larp experiences: There are the plain awful ones, where you have no chemistry with the other players and you never manage to connect with either the narrative or your character. You wind up feeling like the other players are having all the fun.
There are the OK ones and there are the good, but not that memorable experiences. Those will be part of your future reference sheet when you meet other larpers, but they are not exactly mind-altering.
Finally, there are the mind-blowing experiences that leave you euphoric for weeks on end. My experience with Fortune & Felicity was one of the latter. So asking me to write anything objective is rather a tall order. I think of this article as more of an attempt to order my thoughts, hopefully making some valuable deductions and recommendations for organizers and players to consider.
Pushing the Boundaries for Larp
Ten years ago, a larp like Fortune & Felicity would have been pretty much unthinkable. The sheer level of ambition would have seemed unrealistic. However, since then, we have seen Nordic larps play out at castles, submarines, and similarly ambitious settings, which would previously have seemed to be one-off experiences negotiated by organizers with special connections and budgets. Larpers are maturing and with student loans now payed off and full-time jobs, we are able to afford more expensive settings.
In addition to that, “chamber larping” has bridged the previous gap between intricately designed freeform games and the hitherto more brute force designs of larps.While the later years have offered the kind of settings that dreams are made of, Fortune & Felicity is one of the first larps of its size to draw upon the kind of metatechniques that you otherwise mostly encounter at a Blackbox festival. These are techniques that enable players to tell stories that are more intricate than the usual straightforward chronological ones that larpers are used to. I would like to summarize some of the metatechniques the larpwrights of Fortune & Felicity utilized.
Dramatic Monologue Poetry
Photo by Kalle Lantz & Frida Selvén.
Fortune & Felicity was a very subtle game. Usually, larping is about broadcasting your intentions as loudly as possible so that other players can pick up on them. But in this larp, everything had to be read as a subtext. This posed a challenge for the players; if the lady I am trying to impress is hiding her face behind her fan, does it mean that she is embarrassed or does it mean that she does not want people to see her blush with delight?
In order to help players interpret each other’s intentions correctly, the larpwrights gave us a metatechnique that I have dubbed dramatic monologue poetry. The tool was incredibly simple, yet very effective. At any point in the larp, it was considered comme il faut to recite poetry. The poem could be learned by heart or it could be read aloud from a book. Poems were also distributed at poetry workshops. After reading a few lines of the poem, the reader would start revealing the character’s internal dialogue, thus giving the audience an insight into character motivation and intentions.
This metatechnique worked extremely well. Specifically, I had the opportunity to recite a poem by Shakespeare in front of my fiancée’s family. Since his family were neither as rich nor as accomplished as the one my character came from, I took the opportunity to give them my opinion in full. The stiff smiles on the players’ faces were priceless!
Amusingly, one of the players picked up on the insult and confirmed my character’s opinion by acting exactly according to my prejudices. This created great play for us both.In other words, the technique was an excellent solution for helping players to read between the lines.
Subtle Courting
Before the larp, all players were instructed thoroughly in how to behave when in the company of the other sex. No touching except between family members. No being alone unless if you were engaged. And no eye contact.
So how does one flirt under those circumstances?
For the ladies, the answer was simple: you do not. But basically you could assume that if a gentleman was giving you attention, it was because you had caught his interest. There were three sure signs that a gentleman was serious about courting you; if you were receiving flowers, found yourself witnessing poetry readings, or got asked to dance repeatedly, then a proposal was probably afoot.
However, as in Jane Austen’s books, there were gentlemen out there who did not play by the rules. Those gentlemen would lead you astray just for sport!
One of the lead designers, Anna Westerling, discussing the intersections between freeform and larp at the Nordic Larp Talks 2014.
The Fortune Teller
At Fortune & Felicity, there was a fortune teller. The fortune teller was in fact a team of talented game masters who took interested players off to a Blackbox room to play alternative scenes.
The Blackbox larp is the direct opposite of the 360 degree illusion larp. There is no setting other than the blackness of the room and usually participants are dressed in neutral clothing. Blackbox larps have no physical restrictions. You can play achronological sequences. The scene can take place on a space station, during the Jurassic times, or anywhere else your imagination might take you — much like with any pen and paper RPG. In that sense, it is a hybrid form of role-playing.
At Fortune & Felicity, the blackbox was used to elaborate character relationships. Personally, I played out several scenes with my fiancée that showed us much of our future. Among other things, I found out that if I were to go ahead and marry my true love, we would most likely end up rather impoverished. Obviously, this knowledge added much to my “present day” play.
Blackbox defies physical space and time — and therefore makes it possible to garnish the larp with the kind of literary tricks that we usually only encounter in books and films.
The Art of Mansplaining
In Fortune & Felicity, the responsibility of carrying on a conversation lay with the gentlemen. This major obstacle was not really a metatechnique, but it still deserves mentioning because it was a very elegant way of emphasizing the gender disparity of that time.
Some gentlemen found it difficult, while others enjoyed taking the lead. As someone who was playing a women, I found it somewhat frustrating, but only in the sense that it helped me imagine what life would have been like for my gender in 1810.
Luckily, the game masters offered the women a possible out: when conversation got too boring, the woman could signal to the player of the male character by mentioning her journey to Primrose. “Oh, the roads are rather muddy this time of year,” for example. I used this trick a few times, but generally found that the male characters around me were quite apt at carrying on an interesting conversation!
Photo by Kalle Lantz & Frida Selvén
Based on Established Literature
All the stories in Fortune & Felicity were directly inspired by Jane Austen’s works. The most visible way in which the writers had incorporated this inspiration was in the character descriptions and relationships.
The larp had pre-written characters. The characters were long enough for people with knowledge of Austen’s works to recognize them as characters from her books, but short enough that the players could easily build on the written material and make them their own.
For me, it was immediately clear that my character was inspired by Miss Marianne Dashwood from the novel Sense and Sensibility. She is a somewhat melodramatic and rather naïve girl, who falls deeply in love with one of the more memorable Austen villains, Mr. John Willoughby. At first, I actually found the task of portraying her a bit daunting, but after having watched Ang Lee’s film from 1995, I found that I could draw on actress Kate Winslet’s brilliant performance. Having her version of Marianne in the back of my head, I felt like there was a richness of inspiration I could access that I have seldom experienced otherwise.
Although many of the participants knew Jane Austen’s works, other did not. I believe being a fan of Jane Austen added to the experience, but I do not have the impression that not having these references subtracted anything from the game. I love how classically Austenesque the different plots played out, but on the other hand, they could certainly stand alone too.
Photo by Anders Hultman.
Setting the Bar High
Sunday morning in Primrose. The young couples are gathering outside the village church. They are waiting to declare their engagements in front of the congregation. As the doors open, they file inside in pairs — clasping each other’s hands and sharing shy sidewards glances. The parents and the rivals sitting in the pews bear witness as the vicar proclaims the engagements.
And then, abruptly, the larp comes to an end. Anna and Anders in their pristine Regency outfits reap their accolades. We clap and clap. For the game masters, for the live band. For each other, even.
I return to the 21st century. Shell shocked. Elated. The way you feel when you have had one of those really strong larp experiences.
But also deeply grateful to be home. To be me, and not Miss Marianne. Quite frankly, Miss Marianne would never even dream of a life such as mine. It would have been beyond her otherwise vivid imagination.
My hope for the future of the larp scene is to see more ambitious scenarios like Fortune & Felicity, where organizers and larpwrights become more aware of developing game design that supports the content and theme of the larp. Like previous vessels of fiction have done it, I hope that larp has a future where we can explore not just genres, but also more advanced forms of storytelling.
For now, we’ve only just begun.
Photo by Kalle Lantz & Frida Selvén.
Fortune & Felicity
Production and design: Anna Westerling & Anders Hultman
Design: Jennie Borgström, Susanne Gräslund, Elsa Helin, Anders Hultman, Frida Karlsson Lindgren, Gustav Nilsson, Martin Rother-Schirren, Anna Westerling & Joel Grimm with Jeppe Bergmann Hamming & Maria Bergmann Hamming.
Characters:
Overall design: Jennie Borgström, Sabina Sonning and Anna Westerling
Clubs: Rosalind Göthberg & Mimmi Lundkvist
Hearts: Jeppe Bergmann Hamming & Maria Bergmann Hammingg
Diamonds: Ylva Berry, Jennie Borgström & Jacob Ordeberg
Spades: Susanne Gräslund & Daniel Linder Krauklis
Game Masters: Alex K Uth, Anders Hultman, Anna Westerling, Arvid Björklund, Elin Gissén, Elina Andersson, Elsa Helin, Frida Karlsson Lindgren, Frida Selvén, Gustav Nilsson, Jakob Jacob Ordeberg, Jennie Borgström, Joel Grimm, Kalle Lantz, Lizzie Stark, Martin Rother-Schirren, Mimmi Lundkvist, Peter Edgar & Ylva Berry
Orchestra: Elsa Helin, Henrik Summanen, Niclas Hell & Susanne Gräslund
Soundtrack composed by: Henrik Summanen
Trailer: Sara Fritzon
Costume: Anders Hultman & Mikaela Lindh
Photo: Kalle Lantz & Frida Selvén
Design and illustration: Anna Westerling, Janetta Nyberg & Lotta Westholm
PR: Mia Häggström & Anna Westerling
Editing: Lizzie Stark, Jason Morningstar & Sarah Lynne Bowman
Cover photo: Photo by Kalle Lantz & Frida Selvén. Photo has been cropped.
The original setting made use of the actual pandemic and social isolation conditions players experienced to maximum effect; in this near-future scenario, humans cannot leave the house or socialize with others outside of hazmat suits without facing instant death from the mutated virus unless living in the same household as a family. Once a person decided to leave home, they must live alone, as proximity was too risky. As physical contact and companionship was deemed necessary by the government for human thriving, the Together Forever program was designed in order to allow people to date. At the end of the program, the system decides which characters are matched together, as well as which characters will remain unmatched. The matched participants are married in a perfunctory mass ceremony. Participants must choose to marry their “forever match” assigned by the algorithm at the end of the program; otherwise, they forfeit their right to ever go through the program again. Their alternatives were to beg this person to reject them or to run off into the wilderness to become part of the Banished, a group of people living in dangerous conditions outside of society. Divorce was possible long after the match was made, although that was deemphasized in play.
Echo and Narcissus (1903) by John William Waterhouse.
The Wizard of Oz (1939). Photo by 
Tristan and Isolde Sharing the Potion (1916) by John William Waterhouse.
