Tag: Techniques

The most memorable scenes in larps have one thing in common: they involve strong emotions. But how to know how your character should feel in a given situation? How to express their emotions authentically? This article gives tips on how to prepare for the game in order to create a character who easily feels and some practices for expressing the turbulence of their inner realms.

Here are some useful practices to help you to tap into your character’s emotional realm.

1. Understand What Is Most Important To Your Character

What would your character fight for? Die, or even kill for? Her loved ones, money, drugs, her spiritual guru, fame on social media, a better climate, her zombie pet puppies, or the freedom to have ice cream for breakfast? That’s probably her deepest motivation, which tints her thoughts and excites emotions. This is what fuels her every action.

You may also want to explore if that motivation is strong or is she losing her interest towards it? Are there some conflicting drives, some other important things in her life? What kind of things are held important in her culture and in her family?

Write down the answers to the questions above. Then imagine some interesting situation in your character’s life, like talking to her parents (living or dead), succeeding in her duties, facing her fears or falling in love. Select the scene and watch it in your head as a movie or free-write about it. Don’t think too much, just witness your character reacting.

2. Understand The Relationship Dynamics

Before the game, talk with your close contact players. What do you and they want from the game? What kind of traits do your characters have? What is similar, what is different? What is important to them? How do they usually express their emotions?

One powerful way to practice relationship dynamics is to come up with a scene in your characters’ past (a happy memory or a conflict) and play it for 5-10 minutes. After trying out the scene, share what it stirred up in you. This will give you both a hold of the dynamic and expression. It will also boost your confidence to express your character safely in game.

3. Make Sure You Are Safe

In our Nordic cultures we’re accustomed to playing it cool in our social roles, whether we are in or out of character. Even if we feel a storming rage or sparkling joy inside, we usually show up as grey and dull as the Finnish summer. It’s completely understandable that stepping out of this conditioning and revealing our hearts may feel daunting.

That is why it is important to feel that you are safe among your fellow players. If the larp touches difficult topics, then it is crucial. Larp organizers may want to create or co-create some social rules for the players, such as “everyone is responsible for their own boundaries”.

The best way to create safety for yourself as a player is to get to know your closest contacts before the game in person. Tell them what you like and try to find some common interests. Agree about the physical and emotional boundaries: what is okay for you and what is not. If you dare, share what you feel insecure about in playing the relationship of your characters and come up with ideas on how to make it easier.

4. Follow Your Character’s Impulses

Once you’ve done the groundwork properly, you have a good understanding about your character’s motivations and their relationship dynamics and a safe environment for playing. Then it’s time to let it go. Let your character happen in the moment: let her have her thoughts and feelings, let live her own life. Express whatever she wants to say or do and follow her impulses — of course in respect of your and fellow players’
boundaries.

She will automatically have different reactions when she hears that her children have been kidnapped, orcs are about to attack or that the dinner is late. You don’t need to know them all beforehand, just trust your character’s ability to fully be herself. You don’t need to act. This is one of the most freeing ways of playing. Neither you need to get lost in your thoughts in the middle of the game pondering how your character should react.

Surrendering to your character’s impulses becomes easier when you learn to accept your own impulses. Simple exercises used in improv theatre (Johnstone 1987) and the Meisner acting technique (Meisner & Longwell 1987) can also be very helpful here.

5. Practice Expressing Emotions

Conveying emotions involves more than just words. Our posture, movement, facial expressions, rhythms of speech and breathing, and tone of voice all reveal something about our inner states.

How do you know how the other person feels? A good practice for studying expressing emotions is to observe other people doing so, in movies, larps, and in real life.

Another way to practice expressions is by selecting a sentence (e.g. “I want to buy a unicorn”) and saying it with a different feeling (happy, sad, angry, in love, scared and surprised). Repeat the sentence with the same feeling a couple of times, and let it grow every time. You can do this in front of a mirror, by shooting a video of yourself, or with a friend. Pay attention to how your tone of voice, facial expression, and posture change and how you feel.

When you become more comfortable in feeling emotions and expressing them, the easier it is to express whatever your character feels. For some people being in character is very liberating, because it gives them a chance to overcome the restrictions of their own personality.

Bibliography

Keith Johnstone (1987): Impro: Improvisation and the Theatre. Routledge.

Sanford Meisner & Dennis Longwell (1987): Sanford Meisner on Acting. Vintage.

Many people blame organizers, designers, or co-players when they have a bad larp experience, and sometimes, you just have bad luck with unfavourable conditions. However, larp is a co-creative medium — participants have a say in what happens at a larp and in their own experiences. Constructive Alignment is a didactic theory developed by John Biggs that focuses on intended learning outcomes when designing a learning programme. It was developed in 2011 for tertiary education, to facilitate sustainable learning and to refine control over learning processes. It’s also applicable to larp.

Let’s look at how you can use constructive alignment theory to improve your experience:

1. Identify Intended Experience Outcomes

Biggs’ theory focuses on the intended learning outcome. In larp, then, the first step is to identify one’s Intended Experience Outcomes (IEOs). What is it that you’re looking for in this particular larp? Is it a specific story? Experiencing specific emotions? Larping specific character relations? Portraying specific characteristics and experiencing the reactions? Having a specific function in the fiction of the larp?

2. Reflect on and Analyse Previous Larps

Once you have identified your IEOs, reflect. Have you had a particular IEO at a larp before? What made it possible? What prevented it from happening on other occasions? What part did you play in making it happen or not? What role did your co-players play in that? What other circumstances had an influence? What could facilitate this IEO, when it comes to your own actions or your co-players’ actions? Could the organizers help you with it, in particular in casting you in a specific role? You may find it helpful to talk to a friend about it and get some input. Take notes about your findings.

3. Communicate Your IEOs With the Organizers

If you yourself create the character for the larp, take everything you have found out into account when doing so. Try to communicate as clearly as possible what you’re looking for when you send it to the organizers.

If it’s a larp with pre-written characters, also communicate your IEOs to the organizers, within reason. Don’t do it face-to-face, as no one can remember every detail that came up in a conversation. Agree on a medium — casting form, email, or letter — through which to mention your IEOs and what you need to achieve them. You should also state what you do not intend with this specific experience.

A word of caution: don’t fixate on a specific character or event. Organizers will try to help you achieve a good experience, but sometimes wishes just don’t fit into a design. For example, no wizard school needs a hundred headmasters and headmistresses, and no spaceship needs fifty captains. More often than not, you will not get the exact character you wanted to play, but this won’t necessarily hurt your experience, either.

4. Adapt and Plan Measurements that don’t Interfere With the Larp Design!

Once your character and their relations are determined, re-visit your IEOs and your findings from previous larps. Have another look at the design document and the website, and then analyse the character and its relations. If the character is not what you were hoping for but you are happy anyway — cool! If you aren’t happy with what you got, it’s not the end of the world.

Try to abstract your IEOs and try to adapt them to the given conditions. For example, if you wanted to experience the responsibility of a leader and being looked up to by playing the headmistress of the wizard school but got cast as a student, then is there a way to experience something similar in this role? You could, for example, play the head of a student group or mentor another student. Based on this character, who or what could help you to achieve your IEOs? In particular, are there co-players that could help you achieve them? For example, were you hoping to be the center of every social interaction, but instead were cast as the shy introvert? Maybe somebody can play your friend who wants you to socialize and who drags you to every party.

Keep in mind as you do this not to interfere with the overall design of the larp or to plan things that might hurt your co-players’ experiences. You may want to re-ignite your discussion on IEOs with your friend from step 2.

5. Communicate Your IEOs With Your Co-Players

You hopefully now have some new ideas and it’s time to communicate, negotiate, and calibrate them with your co-participants. Contact them before the larp, if possible, and talk to them on location before the larp starts. Be clear about what you need from them and accept a no, if it doesn’t fit in their plans. More often than not, people will do their best to help you to reach your IEOs.

If you feel that only changing a part of your character might help, you can try to talk to the organizers, but please don’t do this if there are only a few weeks left until the larp — they are probably drowning in work.

6. Ensure There Are Safety Nets

Ideally, you’ve gathered a few ways to make your IEOs happen. Don’t just focus on one strategy. If you were cast as the shy introvert, for example, you would not only ask one of your co-participants to drag you into social plots and events, but also go more relations with co-players. If possible, you might also try to identify some opportunities for actions you can take during the larp.

7. Think About Pacing

Pacing is key to a cool experience. Good books and movies have well-conceived dramatic composition. It’s likely that your character will go through some kind of change during the larp, and that this is connected to your IEOs. Of course, it’s often hard to anticipate what is going to happen, but it’s good to gather some key ideas about your character’s development and how it can flow through the larp. E.g., if you want to play a person who loses their sanity, start slow and don’t lose your cool right away, as this will exhaust you. If you want to play an emerging romance, don’t declare your love on the first evening — instead, start with shy gestures or intense eye contact.

Think your pacing through and gather some turning points for your dramatic composition, but keep an open mind and be ready to have everything change — larp, after all, is co-creative and your co-players and the overall design will probably leave no stone unturned.

8. Reassess Your Experience During the Larp

Sometimes you’re fully prepared and still feel unhappy with your experience at a larp. You don’t have to endure this until the larp is over. Take some time for yourself and try to figure out if anything can be changed that could help you without interfering with the ongoing larp too much. If there is a safety team, talk to them and ask them if they see a way for you to achieve your IEOs. Try to talk to co-players who could help you. Again, most people will be happy to help. And don’t forget — once the larp is over, there will be no chance to change your experience, so be brave and change things while you’re still there!

Bibliography

John Biggs (1996): Enhancing teaching through Constructive Alignment. Higher Education Vol.32, pp 347–364. Kluwer Academic Publishers

Think for a second what words you use to describe yourself. For me, it’s words like shy, withdrawn, unlikable, angry, and very awkward. There’s nothing wrong with this — I love how I am. However, there’s something special about being able to step out of my usual self and be someone completely different.

I’ve played many roles during the years and I loved them dearly. They helped me grow and gave me lovely memories that I share with many larp friends.

The first roles I played were servant girls who were shy and easy to play. Growing into larping, however, I found I wanted to challenge myself more. I started to go outside of my comfort zone by playing military roles. This let me be more confident — I could command characters, shout orders, and make people listen. My first step toward becoming comfortable in the new roles was to actively analyze and plan how to portray certain characteristics:

• To play confident, I imagined I was alone instead of in front of twenty people. This made my voice steady.
• To play rude and cocky, I changed how I used my body. I leaned into a more forward stance and walked with longer steps. When standing, I kept my arms at my sides and cocked my head to the side. When speaking, I lowered my voice.
• Learning how to portray characters that other players would read as intimidating was hard, as I’m often perceived as non-threatening and as intimidating as an angry kitten. I settled on always looking people straight in the eyes and stepping into their personal space.
• To help other players trust my portrayal and our play together, I checked in with my co-players before larps and made sure they knew they never needed to be afraid to come to me with off-game things and most importantly, I made it clear that I in no way had any military background and that I know nothing about strategy and battle techniques. Most importantly, I stressed that I’ll always have their best interests at heart during the larp. This created trust and made both their larps and mine awesome.

Those dominant and commanding roles helped me grow and find my place as a larper, and they also made me dig out the confidence that always was in me. They gave me the tools to speak my mind freely and at the same time be caring. By playing every larp by thinking of other people’s needs, I made sure that I had control while also taking care of my co-players.

My greatest challenge came just over a year ago. I was given a character who was described as a bubbly, happy, romantic girl with no other ambition than to get married. A girl that was perfectly fine with having her life laid out for her by others. She was also much younger than me, a teenager, while I was in my thirties. For the first time, I was so outside of my comfort zone that I felt no connection to the character. None of my usual tools worked this time. My character was the opposite of my usual roles. I realised I could make this work if I let go of my control and left my character’s fate in the hands of others. This was a new context, and finding my comfort zone in it required a new set of tools.

I broke my previous patterns and made her as an image of the girls I was so jealous of in high school. I adopted their positive and annoying traits in a way I never was able to do when I was younger or in my everyday life today.

• I always moved my hands when I walked. I talked in a much higher voice and also laughed in a higher pitch.
• I sat strictly and properly and I made sure to touch my face with my hands all the time when I talked to boys, just as if I was blushing.
• I smiled until my cheeks hurt and I widened my eyes when spoken to as if everything I heard was the most interesting thing on earth.
• Finally, I imagined that I was a Disney princess with my own soundtrack. That really helped me trust my own portrayal.

Two hours into the larp, I was that teenager. I blushed when the boys gave me flowers and I did not have a clue about anything other than landing a good marriage. I could play a romantic teenager and when I was proposed to by a handsome man, it felt like I’d struck gold.

When I look back now, I see I’ve been playing two extremes. I have played the most masculine roles and adapted a body language similar to my dearest male friends. I have played the flimsy girl from my high school dreams, so feminine and fragile. Between those extremes, I found a balance I can bring into both my future larp roles and also my real life. Today, I know that I can play characters close to the parts of myself that I don’t usually show, and also ones that are so far away from who I am.

I might be shy, withdrawn, unlikable, angry, and very awkward.

But I can be so much more.

The larper character sheet is a playful tool for evaluating your strengths and weaknesses as a larper. In the spirit of the Storyteller system, you get to allocate 10 points to your Attributes and 33 points to your Skills. As this is a tool for self-evaluation, you should allocate the same amount of points regardless of your larp experience. In our imperfect world, the amount of points in Advantages greatly depends on your background.

Attributes

Perception is your ability to understand the larp, listen to other players, and to be aware of what is going on around you. If you have a low Perception, you have a hard time understanding the big picture.

Intelligence is the capacity to make correct decisions based on perceived information. When you notice that everyone is having a terrible time, intelligence helps you understand how to improve the situation. If your Intelligence is low, you tend to make wrong calls.

Strength is your power to effect change in larp after you decide what to do. It is often about charisma, assertiveness, and leadership. If your Strength is low, you cannot improve a larp even when you know what is wrong and how to solve it.

Perception Skills

Calibration, following is your ability to notice safewords and calibration gestures, and to understand the nuance of how much the other player wants to adjust intensity.

Empathy is the ability to understand others’ feelings. Also useful between larps.

Ensemble adaptation is reading the crowd and adapting to the collectively emerging style. Playing together requires you to do this throughout the larp.

Larp mapping is the ability to understand the larp around you. How social relations work, where are the play affordances, where the plot trains stop.

Metareflection is the skill to take a deep breath between spurts of immersion and understand how the larp relates to ordinary reality.

Metatechnique initiative is the skill to detect openings for using metatechniques. Quick wit, good memory, and workshop practice are all helpful.

Plot spotting is noticing plotlines in the social fabric of the larp. After spotting a plot you can decide whether to jump in or dodge it.

Reading affordances is a skill to notice what is possible, feasible, and sensible to do in a larp. What actions will generate interesting play, which ones will be followed by the ensemble?

Self-awareness is about knowing whether you are in the comfort zone, approaching triggers, or genuinely terrified. Are you angry, hungry or horny? Makes a big difference.

Intelligence Skills

Character interpretation is the skill of turning a page of text into a fleshed-out personality with a rich and plausible inner life.

Consequence analysis comes with experience; it’s about thinking three steps ahead. If we improvise a general strike early in the larp, what will happen four hours later?

Cultural sensitivity is knowing how other players will react to female-presenting nipples or realistic stalker portrayals in their larp.

Eye for beauty in larp is finding beauty in the chaotic mess that is larp. Can you enjoy the beautiful boredom, sense the potential for a delicious failed romance?

Plot pacing often has a very high failure rate. Should I escalate or de-escalate a plot? When exactly should I break a heart? It takes two or more to tango.

Runtime larp design is helpful in making a broken larp work. As a player you have more information than the larpwright, allowing you to improve design on the fly.

Supportive play plotting is about lifting others with your play, allowing them to shine. A critical skill for players of the so-called non-player characters.

Vision alignment is the skill of internalising a creative vision and becoming a runtime instrument of the larpwright.

Winging diegetic facts requires quick creativity while staying within the established fiction. How spontaneously can you describe what your character did last week?

Strength Skills

Bravery is often overlooked, but in order to lead from the front, you have to take creative and social risks. Lead the way in being vulnerable, despicable, strong or decadent.

Calibration, leading is the counterpart of following. Knowing how to invite more intensity, and how to play around a rejected invitation.

Intensity escalation is the larp equivalent of filling up an empty dance floor with your crazy moves. Can you turn an argument into a fight, a bad mood into tragedy?

Intent telegraphing is the skill of wordlessly conveying your intent to the other player before you do a thing, in order to improve dramatic effect, agency, consent, and safety.

Nuance projection is the undervalued skill of doing less, not more; playing frustration instead of rage; pushing instead of punching; threatening with a break-up instead of breaking up.

Off-game negotiation is the art of having the awkward discussions that allow you to play difficult content. Can you assert your desires and limits while adapting to those of your partner?

Plot hogging/dodging is about getting on and off plot trains. Hogging a stray plot is a great way to salvage a larp experience.

Safewording usually happens a bit too late — when we get hurt, not before we get hurt. But even worse, we often fail to safeword at all when necessary.

Steering is the act of guiding your play based on off-character concerns. A skilled player can steer hard while portraying her character with complete consistency.

Other Fields

In Backgrounds, you can evaluate your personal history and how it impacts your larping. If you know everyone and have larped here before, things are often easier for you.

Checking one’s Privilege is important in understanding your relationship to other players. In addition to gender, race, sex and ability, you should also consider social class and cultural and linguistic privilege. Age and (conventional) beauty are also axes of privilege in larp.

Virtues are about performing to the first-person audience; how you, as a person, impact your own internal larp performance. Authenticity, for instance, is a virtue of newbies, untainted by cultural mannerisms. Openness to magic is the beautiful, naive immersion allowing adults to pretend to be Harry and Hermione.

Heittäytyminen is one’s capacity to daringly plunge into the depths of immersion.

Getting a pre-written character can be an exciting part of the pre-larp process, but what if you don’t like your character? It can be disheartening, especially if everyone else seems enthusiastic about theirs. How can you go about turning a character that doesn’t inspire you into one you’re looking forward to playing?

Who Is This Character?

Your initial reading of a character might be cursory, which could cause you to miss important details. Take the time to read it again thoroughly to establish a more complete picture of the experience you might get from playing them.

If you have a strong emotional response to reading the character, it may be a good idea to leave a few hours or days before you tackle this in-depth re-read. However, If the character is actively triggering for you it may be best to skip rereading and go straight to contacting the organisers.

As you read, look out for a few things:

• Who is the character? What are the key elements of their history and personality?
  What motivates them to do what they do?
• What is the character’s role in the larp, both in the fiction and in the larp’s structure?
  Who or what might they be responsible for?
• What is the character’s story likely to be?
  What do they want that they will likely need to expend effort to achieve because of the tropes of the larp’s genre or the desires of other characters?

If you’re comfortable reaching out, you can also ask the organisers more about the intention for the character to help you at this stage.

What Doesn’t Work for You?

Now take a close look at what you don’t like about the character. The problem might be something specific, or it might be something broader that seems to impact the whole character, but either way, being able to articulate it clearly will help you resolve it.

Look out for:

• Things you aren’t comfortable with playing, like themes that are too close to home or personal relationships you don’t want to embody
• Things you don’t think you’re capable of playing, for example because they would require specific offgame knowledge, more larp experience, or because they don’t feel like they work for your body
• Things you don’t want to play, for example because you’ve played something very similar recently or the experience isn’t what you wanted from the larp
• Things that are missing that you feel you need, like a certain relationship dynamic or an explicit motivation for the character

Consider if you might get an interesting experience from playing with some of the elements that you initially reacted negatively to, and if you think you might, you can challenge yourself to keep the character as it is. You might also feel the character has enough going on for you to be able to deprioritise the elements you’re less interested in playing and still have enough of what you want to play a fulfilling larp. Take a little time to think it over, and if you still aren’t happy, continue on.

What Would You Change?

• There are three primary ways you can change a character:
• Change the balance of importance of the elements of the character
• Add extra depth, motivations, or events to fill in any gaps that are there
• Change things that are explicitly stated to be something else

If you’re okay with playing everything in your character but like some parts more than others, spend your prep and your runtime energy on the bits that speak to you. If you have relationships that depend on elements you find less interesting, consider contacting other players to tweak your connections.

If your character feels like it’s missing detail or something you know your enjoyment depends on, add new elements. Strengthen your internal play by adding compelling reasons why the character acts how they do, or determining events that have challenged their outlook. Boost your external play by including recent occurrences they need to confront their contacts about, or adding strong opinions on topics that are closely tied to the larp’s themes and are likely to be debated.

If there are elements of the character you really don’t think you’ll be able to play, consider making material changes. Think about what you might alter, perhaps trying to keep past events thematically similar whilst changing how they played out, or changing an uncomfortable opinion. Remember that suggested or historical interactions with other PCs, named events or NPCs in the character’s history, or strong stances in the character’s worldview might indicate places where your character is designed to create a specific type of play in a larger context, so prioritise seeking organiser guidance if you want to adjust these elements.

Check With the Organisers

You won’t always need to contact the organisers, but you’re usually welcome to and it will give you more certainty about any assumptions you’ve made. If the larp design is low transparency, the organisers might have planned events that will impact or even change the character during runtime. In these cases, it’s especially important to voice your concerns so the organisers can review any secret information that you might not have access to.

If you’ve changed anything factual, encountered anything in the character that you find especially uncomfortable or triggering, think you might want a different role in the larp, or can’t figure out how to improve the character by yourself, getting in touch is highly recommended. Use the organisers’ preferred method of contact and try and articulate your concerns concisely and specifically. Offer solutions if you have them, but be ready to listen if the organisers suggest something else.

You don’t have to accept the changes right away. Feel free to ask for clarification on what any alterations might mean and why they’ve been suggested and, if you want to, take some time to repeat this whole process for the altered character. It’s your character, and you should enjoy playing it.

Groups are a staple of many games, taking forms such as families, political blocs, military units, ships crews and scooby gangs. It is easy to see why: a cohesive team has more means to steer and affect their game in meaningful ways. It is also a lot of fun building and creating this additional shared identity with fellow participants.

Many groups are player-driven — even or perhaps especially in larps with pre-written characters it is seen as a constructive way to contribute to the game. Most larps also come with built-in groups while some have entirely pre-written groups. Nevertheless, while pre-written characters are generally very detailed, groups are often a series of brief descriptions and aims with room for contributions.

Building a group and fostering relations therefore falls mostly to players, and requires different player skills from solo preparation. Below there is a list of tools in the form of questions and descriptions for constructing a group concept in a deliberate fashion. It should work reasonably well for most forms of larp, but focuses mainly on the entwined and transient nature of one-off Nordic style games where each ‘run’ is a fresh exercise in group-building.

Before the Game

Communication and Breaking the Ice

Initially, group concepts will be published or pitched, people invited or assigned, and first meetings organized. This will often be a digital format, such as Discord, Skype or Facebook chat, based on preferences or availability. If you are a group organiser or find yourself cast in that role it is smart to summarize the pitch of the group. It is highly recommended to try voice chat at least once so you can all hear each other — a big challenge if multiple time zones are involved.

First, consider what the group will add to the larp. Don’t set the concept in stone, and try to flexibly include the expectations and wishes of your fellow players in the group pitch. It is okay if this is a bit messy and takes a while to figure out. This is just the first step, and helps break the ice between you and your players. At this point the idea is to set up effective communication and build trust.

With so many (larping-)cultures, players and personalities, miscommunications are bound to happen. Words on a screen can be misinterpreted, and many of us communicate in a non-native language. If you find that someone may not understand you, reach out — the earlier the better. Always assume the best of intentions and work from there. During the preparation phase voice communication or face to face is preferable — hearing each other prevents a surprising amount of miscommunication.

What Is the Goal of Your Group?

There is often a difference between the ingame and offgame goals of a group. While bringing a nefarious plot to fruition is a good ingame goal to have, the group may decide that outing themselves “by accident” on the last evening of the larp may be their ultimate goal. In this case, goals may seemingly be at odds, but everyone in the group is on the same page.

During this step it is important to distinguish between player-written and pre-written characters, and the role of transparency. Group building with total transparency is often a lot easier as the actual character goals as opposed to perceived goals are clear. On the other hand, games that deliberately obfuscate generally do this for a very good reason. This must be taken into account during group creation, especially if this is a player-generated entity.

Much of the responsibility is then on the players themselves, to consider whether this group is for them. A good solution is not to define the group goal too narrowly, but as a series of directives for the players so they can play their characters aligned with the group, such as the example
“not costing the house points for the house cup deliberately” or “don’t do the big reveal before Saturday night”.

Roles in the Group

It is also important to clearly distinguish here between ingame and offgame roles. Offgame leadership and relationships generally do not reflect the ingame nature of the group dynamics. It is important to determine what roles there are in your group, how the hierarchy works and if this is where your characters will conflict.

Especially if the group decides on a single leader and a ‘command and control’ style hierarchy, ensure that everyone communicates their expectations for that well. For instance, while the strict hierarchy of a military unit is cool, the group may decide that offgame a more ‘cool-thentic’ approach fits better. Calibrating one or more metatechniques for this is recommended, such “Is that an order, sir?” as an indication of preferably not following the order while staying within the hierarchy.

On Site

Affirm trust

The nature of international games means that this may be the first time you meet in person. It will probably be a bit awkward, so get a drink, take a walk, get to know one another. If time, pre-game briefings and preparation allows, take the time to run through the concept, roles and goals one more time in person, preferably while in costume. This way you all start the game on the same level.

Check in and communicate

Things change during the game. Priorities of players and characters shift, plot happens and time seems to warp. Sometimes you gain a better idea of what you want as the game progresses, or the character takes a different direction from what you had originally envisioned. This is perfectly okay, but if it impacts your group play, you will want the others to know.

Casually checking in can be done easily without a break in the game. Mealtimes are generally good, as the game slows down and there is a good reason why your characters get together. Communicate quickly and preferably ingame, and keep your teammates in the loop on what is happening.

Some prefer digital means to stay in touch, if either the game world or player preferences allow it. This is not a guaranteed solution, with phone and wireless connectivity seemingly inversely proportional to the coolness of the larp location. A lot of players also prefer to have their mobile off and stowed away off game. Still, a chat app can be a good and authentic way to maintain contact, and can be easily read back in a quiet moment.

If a longer meeting is necessary, scheduling around mealtimes is still a good idea for the above reasons. Try to keep the meeting short and to the point. Game time is precious, and preferably spent ingame.

If Things Go Wrong

By nature one-off games with a long run-up and very busy signups will see significant change during the run-up, which will affect any group planning. Furthermore, priorities can change during the game, necessitating on-the-fly changing of the group dynamics.

Cancellations

Players will drop out for various reasons. If this happens, it is smart to quickly return to the first phase and reconsider all questions. This is i deally done as a group.

Busy busy busy

Other plots and groups can draw players in and change their priorities. In this case the best approach is to ask the player directly if the group still works for them. A variant of this I call conflict avoidance. Sometimes players can disappear, whether before or during the larp. It may be a player that is overwhelmed — international games can feel like a lot of pressure — or that circumstances are focusing their attention elsewhere.

While it can feel inconvenient or annoying, it is best to let that player rest and/or have their experience while ensuring that your group — and by extension your own experience — is not dependent on it. Carry on with those that commit to the group, and recalibrate where necessary.

After

Debriefings are as vital for groups as for characters. How was the game for the group, best moments, did it work as intended, and the general experience are all valid topics to debrief. If the group was the primary driver for your game it is wise to make it a priority. Many larps include group debriefings for these reasons. Even if this is not the case, try to make time for it.

In Closing

Well organized groups are more than the sum of their parts, even beyond what group or game writers envision. They are not without their pitfalls and struggles, but these can be mitigated with this sort of deliberate process. And when everything works, group dynamics can bring the larp design to life and ground very significant and even revelatory player experiences, as well as offer the players another way to bring their creative and nuanced contributions to the game.

Escaping attitudes linked to appearance is always hard, and the main difficulty is in escaping attitudes that you’ve internalized about yourself. Larp can let us escape the prejudices we suffer or confront them in a controlled way.

I believe unequivocally in body acceptance but I also know the world I live in. I am a fat woman, and rarely see people who look like me portrayed as fully realized characters in films or on television. Archetypal fat women are the comic relief or less attractive best friend. Fat phobia masquerades as health concern, negative comments about anyone who doesn’t meet conventional beauty standards get passed off as “jokes”. Growing up in that environment, it can be difficult not to internalise these perceptions. As with any internalized prejudice, challenging it requires both self awareness and active effort.

This article introduces tools for body positivity and acceptance. It discusses what other people can do and how to avoid larps and larpers that might not be safe for you, but I also want to focus on what we internalize and the way that larp can help. Most examples come from my experiences as an overweight larper, but many of them generalise to other areas where larpers feel uncomfortable with their bodies.

Do your research

Check the policies and reputation of the organisation whose larp you are attending. For example, NotOnlyLarp’s games like Conscience (2018), explicitly prohibit comments about the players’ bodies. If the group doesn’t have defined policies, ask them. It’s easier to explore glamorous, flirtatious, or powerful characters when you can trust the other participants will play to lift.

Look for opportunities

Generally, people with non-normative bodies exist in a society that judges us, even if our immediate circle doesn’t. In larp, when you are cast as a glamorous or powerful character you can exist in a society that believes you’re just that. Being cast in such roles, it was important to me that the characters were described this way both to me and to their teams, admirers and fans. This made it safe for me to push myself to play in a way I otherwise would not have been able to.

Find support

Internalised misogyny causes me considerably less issues than internalised fat phobia, because I’m surrounded by people who think misogyny is dangerous, will help me fight it, and will listen to me if I tell them they are doing something that could be hurtful. Issues of attractiveness are harder to address, because of the shame that attaches to it, or because you think the offender didn’t mean to be hurtful. Learning that you deserve not to be hurt by your community and putting that into practice is scary but important.

Costuming

Costuming can be difficult for larpers with non-standard measurements (see Grove 2019). If the costume is provided by the larp, sending measurements can be nerve-wracking, especially if the organizers request players post them in a public document.

If you get your own costume, you may still find strict costume requirements more difficult to meet. Shop in advance if possible — last-minute panic orders limit your options — and remember there is no shame in asking how strictly the organizers need you to adhere to their standard, or in passing on a larp because your costume will be four times as expensive as others’. Organizers should bear in mind that strict requirements are exclusionary. Not every larp can include everyone, but it’s important to acknowledge these barriers of entry.

Photography

It would be lovely to think of photos as reminders of a great larp and the emotions that we felt. The reality is more complicated. I’ve been hurt not to appear in photos, and I’ve been disappointed that photos of me didn’t look as good as I felt.

Decide what you want. Most photographers will happily take posed pictures, make sure to include you in group shots, or refrain from photographing you at all if you feel that would be uncomfortable. Remember that you can be your own worst critic. I’ve cringed at my appearance in photos, and then seen a co-player’s comment about how beautifully it captured a meaningful scene.

Skills for other larpers

Playing to lift is vital to players whose lived experience works against how their characters should be seen.. Don’t force larpers to pretend to conform to mainstream beauty standards. There is something very empowering about playing a formidable character who looks just like you, and that can carry over into everyday confidence if you realise that this scenario — you can be charismatic, you can be attractive — actually isn’t at all ridiculous. If players will only accept this by pretending that you look other than you actually do, that is lost.

Organizers: cast with this in mind. Write characters with this in mind.

Don’t apologize

I am specifically addressing people who have internalised the hatred of their body created by our culture and the media. It benefits capitalism and the patriarchy if your body makes you miserable. It doesn’t benefit you. I have never once looked at a larp photo and thought someone was unattractive. I have thought about the scene, the character, the outfit. If I knew the person I might have thought about them as a friend. It takes more than a few words to undo a lifetime of conditioning, but there are books, friends, and allies who can support you. There are many things which make people attractive. You are enough.

I firmly believe that larp is a community and I hope that we can be inclusive and welcoming to everyone. The standards of beauty in our society affect us during larps, but we can acknowledge that and hold ourselves accountable for our mistakes. One of the core things we do as larpers is explore different worlds with different attitudes: this can be a powerful tool for acceptance of yourself and others.

Bibliography

Anne Serup Grove (2019): Costumes for Real Bodies, Nordic Larp Talks. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A5la3UevxVE, ref. Jan 26th, 2020.

When we larp, we make deductions about other characters and the types of role-play they will provide. Through speech, costuming, body language, and other signs, each player signals to others how to interact with their character. As you play, analyze what a character looks like, wears, and does with their body to learn important clues about status, affiliation, role, and personality.

Wearable Cues

Name tag: If the larp uses them, a name tag is a shortcut to critical information for play.

Costume: Clothing and accessories provide discrete details about the character. React to the most obvious explanation for a costume choice until you have reason to believe differently.

Affiliation markers: Some larps use colors or fashion guidelines so players know a character’s affiliation or status on sight.

Body Movements

How a character stands, sits, walks, and interacts with others reveals a great deal.

• Space: Characters who take up space, such as with a wide stance, large gestures, bold strides, or manspreading are projecting authority, power and confidence. Characters who demure to others, step aside, or sit or stand on the edges are demonstrating lower status or discomfort.
• Posture: Nobility, military, upper-class, and authority figures tend to stand straight and tall and look others in the eye. Servants and lower status characters tend to keep their heads down and eyes averted.
• Directional stance: Face-to-face can reveal confrontation. Side-by-side can indicate alliance, and back-to-back or leaning-in can suggest covert communication.
• Stealth: A sneaky character wants you to think they are up to something. Actions include: looking around to see if someone is watching, moving in the shadows, or ducking behind people or objects.

Facial Expressions

When portraying a character, deliberate facial expressions convey information to others.

• Smile, light in their eyes: This character is friendly, approachable and eager. They are often looking for someone to converse with, spill secrets, or go on an adventure.
• Scowl, dark eyes: This character wants you to know they are dangerous, villainous, or angry. Does your character dare to approach them to discover the source of their anger or their secrets?
• Furrowed brow, wide or darting eyes: This character could be anxious, frightened, or confused. They are demonstrating discomfort and hoping someone will ask them about it. Is your character caring? This could be a good time to display it.
• Deliberate warm eye contact, calm and inviting expression: This character is projecting safety and approachability. They likely want to help others and/or have information to share.
• Hard eyes, set mouth: This character is projecting authority, intimidation, or disapproval. To play into this, approach with deference, look scared, or gossip about how you hope you don’t get in trouble with them. If you are playing a rebel, use disrespect to get reprimanded or put in your place.

Eye Contact

Knowing what to do with your eyes and paying attention to another character’s eyes creates play.

• A person who makes deliberate eye contact is inviting you to interact with them.
• In an interaction with an authority figure, avert your eyes to show respect. Either do not meet their gaze, or if you do, look away quickly or before they do.
• As an authority figure, use eye contact to establish dominance and intimidate others. Extended eye contact can be uncomfortable.
• Eye contact with eyebrows raised is a question. Go see what they want to ask you!
• To show disrespect to an authority figure, refuse to look away from their eye contact. If/when you finally do, make sure it appears reluctant or sarcastic. Breaking eye contact with an eye roll will make an impact!
• A wink is a sign of a secret, either between characters or one begging to be shared.
• Blinking without speaking is a sign of confusion or can be coquettish if flirting. You’ll need to roleplay further to find out.

Read the Character, Not the Player

Diegetic clues are deliberate choices made by the player that belong to the character, such as those above. Don’t make the mistake of initiating roleplay or making deductions about aspects that belong to the player, but not the character.

You should disregard factors about the player such as:

• Size: A large or tall person does not automatically mean an intimidating or powerful character. React to the roleplay and the character clues, not assumptions about the player’s physical body.
• Age: The age of the character is not the same as the age of the player. React to the stated age of the character and do not make comments about someone’s out-of-game age.
• Body type or fitness: The shape of a player’s body does not indicate any measure of power, stamina, or health. Use other clues, such as weaponry, costuming, and reputation of the character.
• Skin tone: Do not make diegetic assumptions from a player’s natural skin tone.
• Gender: The player’s gender and the character’s gender are not always the same. Use the correct pronouns and accept the character as presented. The player’s gender is not relevant.
• Accent, speech difficulties and grammar: Do not make assumptions about accent or grammar at international larps played in English. The manner of speech often has nothing to do with the character, but is instead the player communicating in a non-native language. Do not react or remark about speech unless the player makes it clear that this is part of the character.
• Birthmarks or physical disabilities: Ignore things a player cannot change, such as medical or accessibility devices. If you are unsure whether an attribute belongs to the player or the character, wait for the character to bring it up during roleplay. If it never comes up, use other attributes to make your deductions.

Conclusion

Learning how to read other characters to know how to interact is a skill that is honed the more you play. Misreading cues can lead to awkward roleplay or even hurting someone’s feelings, especially if you react to them as a person instead of their character. If you’re unsure what to do, go with the most obvious archetypal interpretation of a character and assume that attributes of the player are not in play until you are certain they are available for interaction. And if you make a mistake, apologize and move on. Honest mistakes happen and are part of the learning process of collaborative play.

In the summer of 2018 a middle-aged Danish woman, Inga Wilson, married to an English tattoo artist, moved into a house on the outskirts of Tintagel with her husband and three teenage children. In the attic she found an old journal, and in the following years she wrote in it as her children grew up, got married and moved away.

The journal was written as preparation for The Quota (2018). This is just one version of the content. There is another one, which follows her through the years as the country breaks apart, fascism shows it ugly head and she ends up in a detention center, utterly broken and alone. Both stories are part of her journal. Both experiences can be read from her journal. But why is this interesting?

When you write by hand, you remember. Research has shown (Mueller & Oppenheimer 2014), that the best way to remember the substance of a lecture is writing notes by hand. Handwriting is a medium between the body and the mind. It is a physical manifestation of your thoughts. When you write as the character you are going to play in a larp, you remember — not just the background and story of the character provided to by the organizers, but the mind of the character as you want it to be, with the knowledge and quirks characterizing this person. You start to know the character, not just in your mind but also in your body. You learn.

On receiving your character, you start the arduous work of creating a persona that is both you and not you. You choose your costume, the props you want to use during the larp, contact your relations — and if you have the time, you start to write. You must now choose the form your writing is going to take. Is it going to be a journal, a diary, an essay or maybe letters to your contacts? And you must choose your tools according to the setting of the larp. If you are a noblewoman around 1800 you may want to use pen and ink. And if you are Granny Weatherwax, you will probably go to the nearest farm and grab a tailfeather from the rooster((Do not try geese — much too angry.)). This is not a reenactment, nobody will comment on what you use or how you use it, but your choice will be part of how you build your character. So will the paper you are using and the handwriting skills of your character. Handwriting is a very tactile medium. You feel how the pen moves over the paper as you start writing. You may find out that your choice of pen and paper will impact your calligraphy.

Now you must decide what you will be writing. When will your journal start? Is it an old diary, started a long time ago? Are you writing to friends or foes? Is it private or public? This will be the start of a long list of choices you have to make on behalf of your character as you start writing. It will start dawning on you that there are things missing in your character sheet essential to your writing and your story. You start to look up clues, to find the missing links to your character on the internet or in books and journals. As you start exploring, your character will start to awaken.

Now you and your character are ready to start the larp. Your writing will become part of your play, a way to pick up clues and relations, or to take a break in a space of your own if you need to. You can write your deepest secrets or comment on the shenanigans going on around you in your journal, diary or letters and leave it to be read by others or keep it private. How, when, where and if you use it is up to you and your character in the larp. Writing is not a goal but a tool to immerse yourself in the larp and maybe recognize patterns and relations that you might otherwise have overlooked.

After the larp you may want to write your last entries. This could be the next day or maybe later. But always say goodbye to your character — if possible, in handwriting. Just as the character is created using your body and mind, you send it away.

Bibliography

Pam A. Mueller and Daniel M. Oppenheimer (2014): The Pen is Mightier Than the Keyboard: Advantages of Longhand Over Laptop Note Taking. Psychological Science, vol. 25, no. 6.

[This article is also available in Spanish, at: http://vivologia.es/como-ser-una-victima-participativa/
Thank you to Vivologia for translating it!]

Many Nordic larps portray instances of one character oppressing another — individually, not as in systemic oppression — including abusive relationships, uneven power structures, and perpetrator/victim dynamics. Some of us like to explore the victim side of these dynamics, but there is a risk that responsibility for advancing the story falls entirely on the perpetrator’s player. This means the victim character’s game becomes a long wait for the perpetrator to act or approach, which can be frustrating for everyone.

Some great articles have already been written on how to play the oppressor (e.g. Dalstål 2018). But in this piece, we’ll draw from our experiences to give you tools as a victim player. What can you do to help tell the story of the relationship? How can you support the perpetrator’s game or have agency even when your character doesn’t?

Types of Victims in Larp

There are different types of victims and they create different kinds of play. How you approach your character’s lack of power will change your story. When we think of a “victim”, we first imagine someone who is mainly afraid of the abuser — the passive victim. The passive victim is the biggest challenge for player agency, because their main drive is to stay away from the abuser but the story you want to tell as a player requires seeking them out. Constantly doing something your character doesn’t want can be both hard and draining. There are tools that can make it easier, but first, let’s see if another type could be the answer.

Someone who fights their perpetrator but is destined to lose anyway can be the defiant victim. The defiant victim has agency and can act independently, but they might have fewer resources or less strength, status, or willpower than the perpetrator. Regardless, you aren’t a poor, frightened thing. You will actively seek the other character out and shout or fight, making it clear you are not afraid. A few of the prisoners of war in Spoils of War (2019) are an example.

Relationships are complex, so you can have some warm feelings or even genuine interest in the abuser’s character — the ambivalent victim. You can be drawn to them even as you’re disgusted. Fighting your own emotions as well adds a layer of dilemma and complexity to the character, whether it’s Stockholm Syndrome or an abusive partner who your character still loves. This ambivalence both gives you agency and gives the abuser more power over you. It also can prevent other characters from saving you from the abuser permanently.

Offgame Tools

Ask for specific scenes. As in many other aspects of larping that try to explore hard dynamics without crossing boundaries, communication, collaboration, and calibration are essential.

Don’t be afraid to ask for specific directions or scenes . This makes it easier for the perpetrator’s player to provide, because they don’t have to come up with all the ideas and they know they have full consent. Calibration goes both ways, though — make sure that they don’t feel pressured into play they don’t want. The perpetrator’s player has boundaries too.

Give enthusiastic consent! As always with edgy content, it’s important to stress that you want the play. If they are dragging you by the wrist and you struggle to get out, signal or use mechanics to communicate that you as a player are happy even though your character isn’t. This makes the other player feel safe and encouraged.

Ingame Tools

Vary in your reactions. The two extremes of freezing/just taking it or shouting/fighting physically are opposite and valid reactions to abuse. However, without variety the first option can lead your character to become entirely passive if it’s your only reaction during the game. However, only doing the latter creates an adversarial dynamic, not an oppressive one. Quiet reactions — long haunted looks when they aren’t looking, whimpering, shaking a bit while holding someone’s hand, or just a moment of sympathy or pity — will give nuance to the fear or fighting.

Let them win (sometimes). Collaborating toward losing is valuable in this dynamic. Your character may think that giving in a bit will get them off the hook, but it will only draw them further in. For example — if an abusive and controlling boyfriend insists you wear certain kinds of clothes, agree to change your clothes because your character thinks it will make them stop and it’s such a sacrifice. Really, it just encourages the perpetrator character, and also encourages the player, offgame.

Fail to avoid your perpetrator. It’s easy to avoid someone at a larp. You can hide in the bathroom or the forest for the whole larp, but this isn’t an interesting conflict. It’s hard to be scary or abusive when you’re being avoided all the time, and it takes a lot of energy to constantly seek out the victim. Help your abuser by seeking them out or make other characters push you into being near them. Your character can still want to stay away, but use your fear to create an active connection. For example, look in the perpetrator‘s direction too often, or always keep them in line of sight but never look at them directly. Walk into a room you know (offgame) they’re in, and then act shocked and try to sneak back out.

Be a bad liar. Tell different versions of the same story to the same person, or get others to spread conflicting versions as rumours. Be really obvious or flag it offgame, so players know it’s not just you being confused. When the perpetrator finds out you were lying, you give them an extra tool to be angry at your character and maybe even to be in the right. You were the one being dishonest. This gives them some moral high ground to work with later in the relationship.

Involve other characters. You can draw people into your scenes with the perpetrator. Show others how scared or powerless you are. Tell somebody what is going on in confidence, or make sure that they witness something they shouldn’t have. Maybe they can become a victim too, and sharing the experience of being oppressed can be very powerful.

Delay the “Hero”. Involving others can mean that unwanted heroes step up. If other characters try to fix things at the wrong time, it can make a victim dynamic blurry or difficult to play on. Explicit calibration can help — ask players to support the relation — but so can working to make sure the hero isn’t in a position to fix things. Being powerless to intervene or having to work around the victim can also make great play for others.

Have allies keep the two of you together. For example, calibrate and make sure that some of your character’s loved ones like the perpetrator and keep them around. Or have the perpetrator’s allies notice you can help them, and decide to work with them.

Defend the perpetrator. Take care of the abuser’s reputation. Things like making excuses for the perpetrator or making sure they don’t do anything unambiguously wrong for as long as possible can prolong and intensify the dynamic, and help stop unwanted heroes.

Bibliography

Dalstål, Elin (2018): Playing nasty characters, https://nordiclarp.org/2018/01/31/playing-nasty-characters/ ref. March 12th, 2020.