Nordic Larp

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  • Dance Macabre Blueprint

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    Dance Macabre Blueprint

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    Dance Macabre was a dancing larp based on the larp In Fair Verona((In Fair Verona is a tango-larp-love story made by Tue Beck Saarie (Olling) and Jesper Bruun for 30 players. The game explores different love relationships between male and female characters. The focus of the game is the individual character’s emotions and the attempt to overcome problems and fears around the subject of love. In this larp the dancing is the medium of storytelling and we found that very inspiring. For more information check the website: http://www.danceaffair.org/in-fair-verona/)) by Tue Beck Saarie and Jesper Bruun, and on one chapter of Neil Gaiman’s The Graveyard Book. We initially conceived the game as an experiment to find out whether Czech larpers would even be interested in this style of larp, and whether the Nordic larp approach in general would be welcomed in the Czech Republic. We also wanted to identify the scope of adaptations required to make the Nordic larp-like game attractive for the Czech larp community. This article sums up the concept of the game, the mechanics used and the experience gained from the creation and organization of the game.

    Dance Macabre has long been an open wound for me – but I mean that in the positive sense of the word, if there even is such a thing as a positive sense of the word. Now it’s become a strong memory, an emotional experiment that I was glad to have experienced. You don’t need to know any dancing; you just have to be willing to leave a bit of yourself in the game.
    Ciri – player

    This form of the larp was largely inspired by a workshop presenting In Fair Verona at Knutepunkt 2011. After starting the preparations for Dance Macabre in summer 2011, we also attended the run of the In Fair Verona larp in Stockholm 2012, and used the in-game and workshop experience, especially some of the character creation techniques, the dancing and game design techniques, to fine tune the design of our game. We also created an Icebreaker workshop and added elements and techniques focused on nonverbal playing in all the workshops. We outline the main differences between Dance Macabre and In Fair Verona in the text to follow.

    The setting and the plot of the game were inspired by the Danse Macabre chapter of Neil Gaiman‘s The Graveyard Book, particularly by the idea of a rare mystical occasion where the living and the dead have the opportunity to meet and communicate. Just as in the book, the location and the time of the game were of no particular importance and none too specific. The personal stories pursued in the game involved the crossing of the border between the living and the dead, and opened up issues such as how to achieve emotional closure, how to say last words before the final departure, how to move on with one’s own life or how to find a peaceful rest at the end of things. An example of story in the game might be possibility to meet and say farewell to your deceased love and find the courage to go on with your life with new hope for better tomorrows or your new love. In the game it was possible to seek revenge through fight (played out symbolically in a dance), but it was impossible to kill – although you could choose death for yourself.

    Dance Macabre, photo by Šárka Růžičková
    Dance Macabre, photo by Šárka Růžičková

    Pre-Game Workshops

    I think a lot of thought went into the making of the game – any kind of game or preparation, though it may seem pointless at the time, proves to be useful in other part of the workshops.
    Iva Tatranová – player

    One of the important lessons of our experience with In Fair Verona is that we enjoyed the pre-game workshops as much as the game itself. The workshops for Dance Macabre were four times longer than the game, it was therefore necessary to make them interesting and playful to ensure good, comfortable and friendly mood between players for the later parts of the game. We could see from the players’ hesitant behavior before the event that some were not quite comfortable with not knowing how to play the game and what was expected, so we made it our goal to make the workshops as smooth and easy-going as possible, encouraging players to ask for help whenever they lost track or became insecure about anything. The eight-person organizational team was at hand throughout the workshops, ready to step in, assist or answer any questions. We believe this helped the players to get ready for the game as smoothly as possible.

    The 14-hour workshops combined dancing lessons, icebreaking activities, and training in non-verbal expression techniques, as well as lessons on how to create strong and enduring characters and stories. Speaking of which, the methods used to create characters and pursue their individual stories were also strongly inspired by In Fair Verona and applied plenty of similar techniques such as props, short concepts of characters, challenges for the character, or relationships with others as the means to deal with character challenges.

    To make the game more interesting, we also included a part of the relationship workshop where players were asked to create and experience a same-sex relationship. A relationship with a person of the same sex was also a compulsory part of every character’s relationships in the game as our way of familiarizing players with all possibilities of the dance and game.

    The dancing lessons were inspired by the larp In fair Verona too, but they were arranged in accordance with the preferred approach of each teacher (in four different runs of the game, we cooperated with three different pairs of dancing teachers), although all accounted for the specific needs of the game. The first part of the dancing lessons was incorporated in the Icebreaker workshop on Friday evening in order to introduce players early on to the basics of the specific tango motion and the lead-follow principle. The Saturday morning workshop was focused on tango technique only, while in the afternoon we teach people how to express different emotions and attitudes through dance, and how to use dance to establish relationships between characters. The Sunday morning workshop aimed to imprint the underlying nature of each character in the players’ dance and to teach players when and how to break tango rules to better express their character through dance. In all the workshops we demanded frequent alterations of couples and important part of workshops included change of lead-follow roles and dancing in same sex couples.

    Dance Macabre, photo by Šárka Růžičková
    Dance Macabre, photo by Šárka Růžičková

    We used many of the traditional techniques of dramatic education in our Icebreaker workshop and to a certain extent in other workshops too. In the Icebreaker, we thought the players to get used to being in close physical contact with each other, and to engage emotionally in the game. The technique drills also proved to be beneficial in helping the players to improve the quality of their character engagement in the game by giving them access to simple but effective range of movements to express different emotions and to connect different parts of the entire experience into a single whole. We think this was a very important part of the workshops because it helped players find and learn to express their characters even before they start dancing. Some of the techniques were presented at KP2013 in the workshop Shut your mouth and play it out :-).

    To help participants remember the rather extensive quantity of information presented in the workshops, we sticked notes on the walls of the room with inspirational texts and important dancing tips or leads.

    Just as at In Fair Verona, we reserved the Saturday evening for the Jam (dance party), where the participants may practice their dancing skills or just relax and party with others.

    Game Design

    The strongest moment for me was when the bell struck for the twelfth time and the whole evening was coming to an end. Death was walking around us and taking the dead back. And when she was approaching us and I saw her catch a sight of us from the distance, we looked each other in the eye; that made me shiver.
    Estanor – player

    Through the workshops the players acquired the basic understanding of the character they were about to portray (to the extent of the information important for the game), its in-game point of departure and motivations, and the background relationships with other characters. This provided the players with the content for the first half of the game. Most players agreed to have their endings resolved through the process of the game, but some might feel uncomfortable about not knowing how it will all end up, so we gave them a chance to arrange their endings ahead of time. This arrangement also gave couples an opportunity to end up with each other without having to resort to steering the game. In the absence of a strict script, we found it important to give the players a precise timeframe to work with, especially considering that each player is in charge of his own game individually. For this purpose, we divided the game into 3 acts, each consisting of 3 sets, called tandas, and each tanda of 4 songs. From the gameplay perspective, the whole game takes place in the short while that it takes the bells to toll midnight. As a result, the ringing of bells divided the tandas, and bells were also used to mark the beginning and the end of each act, and the beginning and the end of the whole game too. Throughout the game, we used large clocks to identify individual tandas and give the players a good sense of how much time they have left to bring their story to its end.

    Dance Macabre, photo by Roman Hřebecký

    The acts were divided by short intermissions to give players some rest from dancing the whole time. We did not use a proprietary scenography in our workshop but rather follow the design inspired by In Fair Verona played in Stockholm 2012. Unlike in In fair Verona we decided not to include creation of the scenography in the workshops, but it was created by organizers because characters were more archetypal concepts without any occupation or social status and we wanted to save some time in the time schedule of the whole weekend. The set was conceived as a town square surrounded by buildings that are important for expressing various in-game emotions. The buildings were marked only by lines drawn on the dance floor; we also included certain inspirational props that could be used in the dance (scarf, cards etc.).

    The figure of Death, the Grey Lady, played an important part of the game plot. Acted by an organizer, she escorted the deceased into the land of the living, and then guided them back to the land of the dead at the very end of the game. While the characters could not kill each other during the game, the Grey Lady might decide to collect a life during the game for some good reason. The characters were also free to dance with her if they wish to settle any old issues, for example ask why she took someone close to them. According to the players, dancing with the Grey Lady was one of the most intense experiences they ever had.

    It should be noted at this point that the dancing aspect of the game, which combines argentine tango and contact improvisation, was not used in the game for its own sake, however enjoyable it may be, but rather as the means to an end, an instrument of personal expression of the player’s character and its story. Players in Dance Macabre were encouraged to play the whole game in silence and only through nonverbal communication. Unlike in In Fair Verona players did not talk to each other in the game at all. Even though we had doubts whether it will provide range of expressions wide enough to experience the story in its’ complexity, we were happy to see that it actually intensified the whole experience. The nonverbal aspect of the game made the entire experience considerably more intense and players tended to experience stronger bleed than they usually do from other larps.

    After the Game

    I was very pleased that the organizers did their best to create good after-game mental hygiene. They were aware the game can be difficult to cope with, that the aftereffects can be long and problematic and so they prepared for it and I think they did everything they could to help us, so that we wouldn’t leave as emotional wretches, but had mostly positive experiences and memories instead.
    Genevieve – player

    Dance Macabre is (for me) like good whisky. First it’s bitter and doesn’t taste like much, but the flavor gradually improves and you start to really appreciate it. The final reflection came too soon for me – I drank too much of that whisky and was still a bit drunk.
    Maník – player

    Dance Macabre, photo by Šárka Růžičková
    Dance Macabre, photo by Šárka Růžičková

    The game ended on Sunday afternoon and it was followed by short period of deroleing and debriefing. As in In Fair Verona, players were encouraged to discuss their experience and their characters’ stories. The first run of the game revealed that players tended to be very emotional after the game, so we added some techniques to help the de-roleing process (i.e. naming the character, talking about it like about a stranger, a short game reminder about their personalities). The game appeared to exert a rather strong bleed effect on many participants, but regrettably, the timeframe available for the game did not allow for more post-game activities.

    Summary

    Four steps to a brilliant game: a step to the right, a step to the left, forwards and backwards. Death, love, hatred, forgiveness.
    Sindor – player

    The purpose of Dance Macabre was to introduce nonverbal and dancing techniques as viable in-game communication methods to the Czech larp community, and also to present some of the other interesting features of the Nordic larp-like games. For us as organizers, the experience opened up a whole new host of gameplay possibilities and taught us a valuable lesson on how to work with players who lack previous experience of some of the more novel larp concepts, as well as a lesson about the importance of the deroleing process, and the great impact of the nonverbal aspects on the emotional experience of the game. We are also happy to report that the Czech larp players seem very excited about the game concept and that we have plenty of new prospective players willing to participate in the next runs of the game, as well as old players who wish to re-visit the experience.

    Dance Macabre, photo by Šárka Růžičková
    Dance Macabre, photo by Šárka Růžičková

    One of the most important things we learned was the importance of de-roleing and the deepness of nonverbal communication, which has a great emotional impact on the player, because due to the lack of verbalization it sometimes bypasses the rational parts of the brain and influences emotions of the player directly. For me personally, Dance Macabre was also an important lesson about the differences between games played in Prague and outside of the city, about the impact of location on group dynamics and its influence on the game itself.

    Additional Note

    The game has now been run eight times. There had been four runs before this article was originally written (2012–2014) and four more afterwards (2016–2019). The last two runs were played in English; one of them took place in the Czech Republic with international players (2018), and the other one was made in the UK in cooperation with local players and organizers, who took care of the production and invited the game designers to run the game there (2019). Neither of the English-language runs set any gender-related rules or content in the game. Players signed up in couples consisting of one leader and one follower, and all the content focused only on the dancing roles, i.e., the same-sex relationship mentioned above became a same-dance-role relationship.

    Dance Macabre

    Credits: Mikuláš Bryan, Kateřina Bryanová, Kateřina Holendová, Monika Kadaňková, Pavel Mejstřík, Pavlína Mejstříková, Šárka Olehová, Jana Pouchlá, Petr Růžička, Petr Urban, Caminito.Cz, Buenos Aires Tango, Ondřej Vicenik, Van Ahn Nguyenová, Iva Vávrová

    Date: 2012–2019 (eight runs in total)

    Location: Praha, Vanov u Telče, Svatý Ján pod Skalou, Lipník, Zámek Veltrusy, Krasnice Czech Republic; near Cambridge, UK

    Length: game – 3 hours, workshops – 14 hours

    Players: 40

    Participation fee: €50–80€ in CZ

    Proofreading: Iva Vávrová

    Web:

    http://dancemacabre.tempusludi.cz/ (in Czech), http://dancemacabre-en.tempusludi.cz/ (in English)

    Facebook page:

    https://www.facebook.com/dance.macabre.larp

    Photos:

    https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.419887498033165.90900.127279253960659&type=1

    https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.483878351643640.119048.283565981674879&type=1

    https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.569528713069042.1073741828.127279253960659&type=3

    https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.658602907494955.1073741834.127279253960659&type=1

    https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.2231212786900618&type=3

    https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.1441025652586006&type=3

    https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.658602907494955.1073741834.127279253960659&type=1

    Short Dancing Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GoAGdNaGMtQ&ab_channel=VegaProduction

    Video documentary (with English subtitles): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wk95Bb5hF2A&ab_channel=VegaProduction

    Cover photo: Image by Šárka Růžičková

  • Tenement 67: Tales from the Tenements

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    Tenement 67: Tales from the Tenements

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    How a UK larp’s take on dystopian cyberpunk is learning from Nordic larp design principles

    “One day you will see the truth, you will learn to understand the patterns and numbers in the data. When God left the analogue world they left us a trail to follow, a path to enlightenment and a way to see the demons all around us.”
    — Tales from the Tenements

    Hooded woman with makeup-streaked cheeks drinking
    Emma from T67. Photo by Ara McBay.

    As William Gibson’s Sprawl Trilogy was coming to an end, I was spending a fair amount of my time in underground nightclubs listening to angry electronic music. A lot of people wore black; there was a hint of illegal stimulants and the threat of violence that entails It was a world of rainy streets, strobe lights, and laser noodles from styrofoam containers. I once received a 1.44MB floppy disc with a pirated C compiler on it in a basement of a bar in central London; that same night a woman with a pet python tried to persuade me to run away and join the circus, and I learned why you should never let a friend attempt an intimate piercing with a piercing gun, whilst drunk, in a cloakroom.

    man in hoodie, glowing glasses, and green collar
    Merc from T67. Photo by Ara McBay.

    My liminal relationship with cyberpunk((Cyberpunk is a sub-genre of science fiction that tends towards telling the story of the underclass in a highly technological post-industrial dystopia. Gibson’s Sprawl Trilogy (1984-1988) is probably the most cited text, but John Brunner’s (1975) Shockwave Rider is arguably the first.)) fiction did not end there. One of the descriptions of Cyberspace in Gibson’s Mona Lisa Overdrive runs like this,

    “’That’s White’s,’ Tick was saying, directing her attention to a modest gray pyramid, ‘The club in St James.’ Membership registry, waiting list…”

    …building that database for White’s of St James’ was actually my first freelance software contract after university.

    As a result I have always steered very clear of cyberpunk larp. I worried that it would not have the razor sharp edge of what had come before. And so we must fast forward, like a console cowboy through the consensual hallucination that is cyberspace, through thirty odd years to the present day…

    Broken Dreams is a UK larp company that has produced a number of games that have started to subvert the formula of UK LRP((The majority UK larp organisers use the acronym LRP — for Live Role Play — rather than the word larp))systems. T67: Tales from the Tenements (“T67”) is a rules light larp that rejects the hegemony of character development via skills or points. Instead, this larp focuses on the stories of characters living within a near future dystopia that is both cynical and slightly too close for comfort.

    Helly from T67. Photo by Ara McBay.

    The fictional world of T67, written over the period of a few months by UK larp designer Rob Williams, exists as a series of short snippets of fiction. As an exercise in world building, he’s adopted a “sketch-based-design” approach. There is information that is canon here, but players don’t have to learn a whole new language or remember the details of a world. It is trope rich in places. T67 borrows heavily from the cyberpunk genre, but that makes the experience more comfortable and rounded for players. There is just enough backstory for the world to be defined and the result is an immediately accessible fiction in which to play.

    It was this combination of easy access to both the game mechanics and the game world that attracted me to the larp.

    The first event, set during a block party for one of the tenement buildings in 2040, featured a live DJ playing a soundtrack of industrial and electronic music. It was loud, and at times the music made conversation harder in the central parts of the larp site than was desirable. As a design feature, the loud music tended to force conversations out towards the edges of the site, which I found slightly isolating. I spent a lot of my formative years in and around clubs playing this sort of music and find that (in nightclub settings) the bleed from my misspent youth tends to detract from the larp experience. In this instance, however, the music was diegetic. Moving around the periphery fit both the character and the setting; I was not forced to go to an off-game space to reconnect with the larp[1].

    I arrived about an hour after the larp had started. There was no pre-game briefing or workshop, and I was escorted from the lift in the warehouse where the larp was taking place to the game area and just started to play. The location is specifically used for airsoft, larp, and similar activities. A series of wooden walls — many painted black — formed rooms and corridors in the fictional Tenement building. There was limited scenography — I saw a bar, the dance floor area, and an operating theatre for cyber implants — so the setting was representational rather than going for the 360 degree illusion.

    Person in white coat adorned in glowing lights
    Kat from T67. Photo by Ara McBay.

    Characters were written by the players, but needed to fit into certain predefined groups. These were staples from the cyberpunk genre: gang members, hackers, street samurai, outlaw journalists etc. I was offered a high society (corporate) character. However, in an attempt to play low-status characters rather than high status ones, I ended up as “The Reverend,” a street preacher in the Church of the Digital Mother. The Reverend was a burnt out hacker turned religious leader. I wore a liturgical dog collar made from a reflective band and found that the agency this piece of costume gave me to talk to anyone, to be — up to a point — trusted, and to go anywhere was most liberating.

    Photo of Simon Brind
    The Reverend, held at gunpoint and considering his next six moves. Photo by Ara McBay.

    The details of the Church were shaped by the players via pre-game emails and conversations. Much of it we made up as we went along. Indeed I spawned two new religions along the way, the Reverend being there to provide platitudes to those that needed them in whatever form was most appropriate. The character creation process relied a lot upon players writing backgrounds and creating relations themselves, which is normal for UK games. But beyond a Facebook group where everyone seemed to know each other, there was little support or guidance for players on how to develop characters and connections. It may be that less experienced players got more input or guidance from the organisers, but the assumption that this process would work without organiser input was a slight weakness in the larp design.

    Traditional UK larp would have skills — a hacker would have some things that they could do, or not do, specified in some detail by the system rules. In T67, we could — via a role-play process — do pretty much whatever we wanted. In some cases, actions required the input of a game master; in other cases, they gave us access to a laminated card that could be torn open and a code revealed inside. However, in most cases, if a player said they were doing something, everyone went with it.

    Part of what the hackers needed to do was to break a code. In doing so, and by interfacing with various bits of cyber-technology found within the game location, the game plot was revealed. This process was slightly unwieldy. We unearthed sequences of binary code numbers by hacking into things and opening up the laminated cards attached to them. We then had to work out which letter of the alphabet the binary number referenced. By decoding the entire sequence, we got a meaningful message in English. Typing sequences of binary into a spreadsheet and then converting them to a letter in the dark was time-consuming, and yet still strangely satisfying. We broke the code very quickly, but needed to validate and confirm it was right. The job felt edgy and slightly dangerous, mainly because of the risk of discovery. Its flaw is that it is not scalable or repeatable. Subsequent T67 larps using the same mechanic risk an arms race of cryptology and a group of players locked away trying to break codes rather than role-playing. However, the original plan for this part of the larp was going to use an IRC (Internet Relay Chat) server with backchannels for hacker characters, so I’d expect something very different for subsequent events.

    However, via some shady deals, clever hacking of implants, and some binary maths, the Church made some important discoveries. I learned that crouching in shadows frantically writing (VBA) code to help decrypt binary messages was fun.

    a group of characters confer in a dystopian setting
    Photo by Ara McBay.

    Other rules were very light. The larp used an escalation and opt-out meta-technique for physical interactions and a simple “largest group wins” for conflict (with a modifier for characters with cybernetic implants). The escalation mechanic was the “Is that all you’ve got?” phrase that originated with Black Friday. The opt-out mechanic was the Lookdown, devised by Johanna Koljonen and Trine Lise Lindahl. Workshopping these mechanics would have been beneficial — particularly to those who have never used them before in other larps — because it is a very different approach to what most UK players are used to. Death and injury were up to the victim, but with a strong suggestion that players should let their characters die where appropriate. Alternative pre-written characters were available to those players whose characters died early.

    two people with glowing adornments huddle close
    Cass and Weaver from T67. Photo by Ara McBay.

    Overall, the style of play was very generous. It mixed a “play for maximum drama” style with the desire to stay on trope. Particular kudos to “Zee,” the insufferable corporate clone who everyone wanted to punch, but nobody wanted to get on the wrong side of their bodyguard. This was a larp that balanced character driven narrative with carefully interwoven organiser seeded plot. There was a crew of NPCs, but they were seamlessly integrated into the larp and it was never clear whether a character was a player or an NPC.

    I am not a fan of campaign games, i.e. those with a continuing storyline where players play and develop the same character, often over a period of several years. T67 is episodic, but has been designed in a way that the stories are not necessarily chronological; whilst they may be linked, there is no imperative to play the same characters from one game to another, and no material benefit for doing so. Nevertheless, I can feel the setting getting its hooks into me in a way that a UK game has not done for a decade or more.

    Does this larp mark a turning point in the style of game offered in the UK? The “system” based larp — with points/skills based character creation — has been popular since the early 1980s and shows little sign of decline. There seem to be more larp systems in the UK than there are players to sustain them. Some fail to run even one event because of a lack of players or the NPC “monster” crew that they inevitably require. With that in mind, Tales from the Tenement makes a brave choice to try something different and it does it well. If other larps follow the lead. I think it will lead to an overall growth in the number of larpers in the UK simply because this style of game is collaborative rather than competitive, and that is significant.

    I no longer sport the battered leathers, mohawk haircut, and mirrorshades of an early 1990s cyberpunk, but it was interesting to both revisit my past and also to play in a dark future that seems to be getting ever closer. I didn’t even have to get on a plane!

    a man with goggles and a metal mohawk
    Charlie from T67. Photo by Ara McBay.

    T67: Tales from the Tenements

    Location: Grange Live Gaming, Birmingham, UK

    Cost: £30

    Duration: 6 hours

    Designer: Rob Williams

    Players: 55

    Details: https://rob8153.wixsite.com/t67-tales

  • Real Men – Defining Gender Identities

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    Real Men – Defining Gender Identities

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    Take your mind back, I don’t know when
    Sometime when it always seemed
    To be just us and them
    Girls that wore pink
    And boys that wore blue
    Boys that always grew up better men
    Than me and you

    Joe Jackson, Real Men

    Real Men is a chamber larp for 4–8 players, lasting four hours, designed by Kevin Burns and Mo Holkar. It’s about the lives and friendships of men – taking a group of characters who meet as young adults, and following them through thirty years as events befall them and their relationships evolve and develop.

    Real Men

    The precursor to Real Men is a similar game, known variously as Women on the Verge… or These Are the Days of Our Lives, in which players build a group of female characters and trace their friendship as their lives develop.

    When we started working together on a parallel larp for men, we decided to focus on the challenges men have in friendship: in being vulnerable to each other; in showing their feelings; and in asking for and receiving help. Male difficulty in communicating, and the pressure that patriarchal society places upon men to behave in a certain range of ways, became major themes of the Real Men game.

    Manhood and Masculinity

    Kevin reflects on masculinity: “When I was young I didn’t feel that being a man in a patriarchal sense had much to offer, and it’s only since I turned 40 that I’ve begun to try to explore and reclaim an authentic masculinity. This has led me to participate in men’s groups, to playing the masculinity guru Kohana in Just a Little Lovin’ (Denmark 2015), and to writing Real Men with Mo.”

    One of the design problems in the larp was the confusion around ‘maleness’ and ‘masculinity’. As an example of this, consider these words by 1990s masculinity guru Marvin Allen((Quoted in Steve Biddulph Manhood (1998) p 33.)):

    I like to think what I do is masculine – when I hold a little baby and kiss it, that’s the masculine part of me holding that little baby. When I have tears because I’m scared, or because I’m full of joy, they’re all masculine. There’s not a female thing about them.

    Marvin Allen, quoted in Manhood by Steve Biddulph

    If a man can only have ‘masculine’ qualities, then masculinity simply means ‘anything pertaining to males’ and this makes it difficult to explore the question. In the 2015 runs of Real Men, in Lewes, UK and at Grenselandet in Oslo, we saw that the (all-male) players struggled with this problem.

    We had to find a way to displace the default gender.

    yinyangIt was not until the third run in Lewes (7th May 2016), after a major rewrite, that we were able to make headway with this. The ancient Chinese concept of Yin-Yang allowed us to decouple behaviours from physical gender. Instead of ‘masculine’ we used Yang, and ‘feminine’ became Yin. In Real Men, Yang behaviour is about dominance, status, outward expression and career; while the Yin aspect is a man’s inner life, his emotionality, his soulful quality, his sensitivity, his secret vulnerability and longing.

    We adapted the ‘metabox’ meta-technique, which allows players to give their character’s internal monologue, which we renamed the ‘Yin-Yang Meta-technique’. Players could be as Yang as they wished outwardly, and use this technique to show their hidden Yin qualities of vulnerability, fragility and self-doubt.

    The second important difference with this run was that it involved female players (4 men, 3 women). Having women involved meant spelling out what it meant to be a man. In the workshop players were taught how to be Yang – taking up space, dominating a room or conversation, establishing status. “At last, we felt we had found a way to play with being a man,” says Kevin.

    Gender and Sexuality

    It should be stressed that we talk about the characters in Real Men (and the related games with female characters) from the point of view of gender as binary, because that’s predominant in the 1980s culture from which the characters emerge. However, questioning binarity, and every other aspect of gender which young people take as given, is an important part of the larp’s potential. The characters start Real Men generally perceived as male, but that can cover or develop into a range of genderqueerness, which players may wish to explore. And players of any or of no gender can, we hope, get an interesting and valuable experience from the larp.

    We should also note that the characters’ sexuality isn’t prescribed or suggested. Each player can define their character’s sexuality as they wish, and again the journey of exploring that as it develops is one that we hope will be a productive one.

    The Game

    The game spans 30 years, beginning in the 1980s of the Joe Jackson song ‘Real Men’, redolent of that decade’s confusion around male identity, masculinity and sexuality.

    What’s a man now, what’s a man mean?
    Is he rough or is he rugged?
    Is he cultural and clean?

    …

    Time to get scared, time to change plan
    Don’t know how to treat a lady
    Don’t know how to be a man

    Joe Jackson, Real Men

    The characters are then aged nineteen and have just completed their schooling. Another innovation in the most recent run was that the first scene takes place following a meeting the characters have attended of the ‘Real Man Group’. This group is the brainchild of James Tyler, a post-feminist masculinity guru, and it opens the characters’ minds to new possibilities in being men. Tyler doesn’t have all the answers, and turns out to have feet of clay, but he has sown a seed in which some of the characters may grow.

    Subsequent scenes, each of 30 minutes, and accompanied by a period-appropriate soundtrack, were set in the 1990s, 2000s, and in the present day, as the characters, who have become friends, reunite in various situations to explore their relationships and reflect on their life’s journey over the previous decade. James Tyler’s suicide rocks their belief in him, leading some to question more deeply, and others to cynicism. Throughout, the song ‘Real Men’ is used as a focus. The meaning of the song’s lyrics – its questioning approach to the perception of masculinity – will shift for each player, as their character evolves through the scenes towards middle-age.

    Character Psychology

    Kevin, who has a background in psychotherapy, created a new approach to character psychology for the game. Each character (see example below) was assigned a secret fear which signified a deep psychological issue that would drive behaviour over a whole lifetime. The characters were offered two responses to the fear: The first was a fantasy, which was the vain hope that they could simply avoid dealing with the problem; and the other was a dream, which was a vision of life in which others would be less likely to suffer in the way that the character had.

    T_______

    The Showman

    Your secret fear (unknown even to yourself): ‘I’m worthless’.

    This compels you to perform and prove yourself constantly.

    Your fantasy is fame, success and adulation.

    The impossible dream is that your ordinariness will be accepted.

    So for example, a character with a secret fear of ‘I’m worthless’ would have the fantasy that he could convince others of his value, thus avoiding the pain of the wound; however, the dream would involve a deeper engagement with the fear of worthlessness, and perhaps inspire a life’s work helping people who are seen as worthless by mainstream society.

    The Future of Real Men

    In response to comments from players, we are in the process of developing Real Men from its current four-hour extent into a one-day experience. The pre-game workshop would consist mainly of a recreation of the imaginary ‘Real Man Group’, with exercises in which the characters talk to each other about their fears, fantasies and dreams. Afterwards we will leave time for a full debrief. Real Men will be aimed at the general public and at mixed gender groups.

    Kevin is working on a short film based on Real Men in collaboration with artist Christian Thompson.

    Player Responses

    We will end with some anonymised player responses, which say better than we can what the impact of Real Men was. All seven players in the latest run wrote at least one piece about their experience.

    Real Men

    On reflection there is something of my Dad in Peter. I didn’t feel loved by my father. He abused me when I was young. He thought I was there to serve him in some way I guess. He was dark and mysterious and very unavailable. He became more available when he had been drinking; only the next day to return to a dark, morose character, working hard and not there for his family. I feel such compassion when I think of my Dad and Peter. How would their lives be different if they had experienced a fully loving and present father; and how would mine be, too?

    ‘Peter’

    I’ve been feeling a lot of bleed about the larp… it was an interesting and intense play experience. The way that Shaun felt intimidated by Peter and Mick, and his discomfort when the banter and teasing turned towards him, flashes me back to my own youthful experiences of trying to fit in with groups of young men who were generally more yang-forward than me. And the way that gaining confidence with age led to him making a considerable arsehole out of himself, confusing arrogance with self-belief; that was I guess a writ-large version of the stupid and sometimes unkind things that I did, once I’d come into myself a bit more. (And, sadly, continue to do occasionally, when I’m not being thoughtful).

    ‘Shaun’

    The paradox is that his secret fear was overcome not by his compulsion or his fantasy (to dominate others), but by laying them aside. This paradox, however, would be unresolvable by Mick: he could not see that he had found the significance and status that he desperately sought. A conception of masculinity that became clear to me as I played, is that it is a suit of armour (or, more accurately, a variety of suits of armour) that one puts on.

    Mick simply could not bear the feeling of nakedness and vulnerability that came from being without his armour.

    …

    So what have I learned – if anything – about myself?

    Masculinity as armour: do I have this? If there is any doubt, one has only to read what I have written here. When trying to talk openly and sincerely about myself, I adopt a sort of hyper-formality (note the obsessive disinclination to dangle prepositions, for example). This is like a shield that keeps ‘too much truth’ at a distance, and protects my vulnerability. Perhaps this is something that I need to work on.

    (See what I did there?)

    ‘Mick’

    Yesterday was very emotional, powerful and touching. I can’t even begin to unravel it.

    I wrote a letter to Dean this morning asking him if he’d be my friend. I realised I have disowned the part of myself that is him quite substantially.

    He may need time to answer.

    I imagined climbing a mountain with him and holding his lonely hand as we looked at the view silently…

    My father, much like Dean’s character, was a runaway. I met him at 22. This week he wrote to me like a lost little boy to tell me his partner is dying.

    It’s hard to know how to support someone so not present… not even to themselves.

    All of my sadness around this played out in a colossal text argument with my boyfriend when I got home who is also going through huge father stuff. His father has cancer.

    The argument was good though. I let Dean speak and be his total arsehole self and it was a release.

    Something got released.

    ‘Dean’

    Real Men

    Real Men

    Credits: Designed by Kevin Burns and Mo Holkar; GMed by Kevin Burns

    Dates: 4 Oct 2015 (Lewes), 31 Oct 2015 (Grenselandet, Oslo), 7 May 2016 (Lewes)

    Length: 4 hours

    Players: 4–8

    Game Mechanics: meta-box for internal monologues; music for timing

    This article was initially published in The Nordic Larp Yearbook 2015 published by Rollespilsakademiet and edited by Charles Bo Nielsen, Erik Sonne Georg, et al.

    Cover photo: Tommy (centre) welcomes his friends to his beachside villa. Real Men playtest, Lewes, UK; by Kevin Burns. 4th October 2015. All other photos from the second Lewes run, 7th May 2016, by Christian Thompson. All photos provided by the authors.

  • A Refreshing Take on Larp in Film: Review of Treasure Trapped

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    A Refreshing Take on Larp in Film: Review of Treasure Trapped

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    Treasure Trapped (2014), directed by Alex Taylor, is a documentary about larp made by the UK company Cosmic Joke. In a short article in the Wyrd Con Companion Book 2012, the filmmakers describe the background of the film’s journey. The movie started as an exploration of modern day fantasy larp in the UK and its roots in the seminal 1981 larp Treasure Trap, in which players engaged in a dungeon crawl-type adventure wearing full costume in a castle. The filmmakers summarize their work as such:

    “Whilst making our documentary, Treasure Trapped, we have been trying to focus on the unexpected twists and turns in the development of larp—not least that, in the Scandinavian world, it has become a method of teaching, something completely unheard of in the UK. No matter how far our journey takes us into the intricacies and developments of modern larp, we always unearth the same core values: ideals of warmth and community spirit; jokes and eccentricities; language and rules; all of which have stayed with the hobby since a group of people set out to acquire a Victorian folly in Thatcher’s Britain and could only have dreamt of what they’d create.”((Alex Taylor and Michael Surman, “In the Beginning: Treasure Trap – Opening the Pandora’s Box of Larp,” in Wyrd Con Companion Book 2012, edited by Sarah Lynne Bowman and Aaron Vanek (Los Angeles, CA: Wyrd Con), 55.))

    Treasure Trapped

    Expectations for the documentary have been high based on the lofty scope, especially with the inclusion of Nordic larp and edu-larp placed in conversation with more mainstream forms like fantasy boffer and post-apocalyptic genres.

    Many readers may already find Cosmic Joke’s work familiar, as they recently produced the documentation footage for the Polish-Danish Harry Potter-inspired larp College of Wizardry (2014), which transpired in a gorgeous castle in Poland. The footage went viral last year, reaching dozens of media outlets((Johannes Axner, “College of Wizardry 2014 Round-up,” Nordiclarp.org, December 9, 2014.)) and placing high-quality, immersive larp at the forefront. At the time of this review, the trailer for the College of Wizardry documentary has reached almost a million views, with the longer documentary itself at over 64,000 views.

    Previous to this footage, mainstream audiences were likely only familiar with the infamous “Lightning Bolt!” video (2005), in which an American boffer larper throws lightning bolt packets at a foe, which became a viral sensation and a rallying point for the mocking of larpers. The movie Role Models (2008) was one of the only other mainstream representations of larp, which emphasized boffer combat and the social ineptitude of the players engaged in the activity. Even before these representations, role-playing games have faced extreme stigma and moral panic since their inception in the ‘70s and ‘80s, with parents terrified that their children would engage in occult activities or “lose touch with reality.”((Lizzie Stark, Leaving Mundania: Inside the Transformative World of Live Action Role-playing Games (Chicago: Chicago Review Press). You can read Lizzie’s review of Treasure Trapped here.))

    While the College of Wizardry videos may not reassure parents on either of these points, the high production values of the larp in the video footage ignited the excitement of Harry Potter fans around the world who have always dreamed of having the opportunity to attend a school like Hogwarts. More importantly, perhaps, the footage made mainstream viewers more aware of the term “larp” and its potential as an art form. As Claus Raasted, one of the College of Wizardry organizers, explains in an article about a Nordic larp documentary featured on the Discovery Channel, “I don’t think we benefit from having ‘Lightning Bolt! Lightning Bolt!’ as one of our strongest media representations. If we don’t do something to change it, we’ll never move past that image.”((Claus Raasted, “Taking Nordic Larp to Discovery Channel,” in Wyrd Con Companion Book 2013, edited by Sarah Lynne Bowman and Aaron Vanek (Los Angeles, CA: Wyrd Con), 65.))

    Due to the early hype around the film, even before this newer footage went live, many of us waited in anxious anticipation for the release of Treasure Trapped. Never sure if journalistic representations will mock or otherwise misunderstand larp, the production of a new documentary tends to arouse emotions of both excitement and apprehension for researchers and practitioners. Fortunately, Treasure Trapped does not disappoint, offering a series of examples of high production quality larps interspersed with excellent interviews from experts like UK scholar Laura Mitchell and several larpers in the UK, Scandinavia, and Germany. Many of the interviewees are familiar faces in the Nordic larp scene, such as Cecilia Dolk, Mads Lunau, Eirik Fatland, Claus Raasted, Astrid S. Andersen, and Jamie MacDonald, among many others.

    The movie starts with the filmmakers seeking out their first larp experience by shooting the last session of a 6-year run of Maelstrom in the UK, a larp run by the company Profound Decisions. Maelstrom is notable for featuring elaborate props and costumes, as well as a large player base. They then travel to other local larps, including the post-apocalyptic themed Wasteland. While we do see the filmmakers’ confused reactions to these initial experiences and hear the confusion common to outsiders trying to understand larp, their attitudes are more curious than scornful. Eventually, they dip their toes into larping themselves, taking up foam swords at a boffer practice.

    Interested in seeking out other forms of larp, the filmmakers journey to Sweden, where they film the first run of Monitor Celestra (2013), the Battlestar Galactica-inspired larp that took place on a real historical warship. The filmmakers explain Nordic larp in broad strokes, then offer detailed footage of the Danish rerun of PanoptiCorp (2013) and the Danish all-larp boarding school Østerskov Efterskole. The filmmakers had released these vignettes previously on YouTube; I found watching them edited together in their entirety quite special, especially when streamlined with more traditional styles of larp to demonstrate the wide spectrum of the form.

    Overall, the film does an excellent job of presenting larp at its best, emphasizing high production values, its educational potential, strong community bonds, and the potential for psychological transformation. The footage is visually gorgeous and carefully spliced with thoughtful interviews from a nice variety of sources, such as experts on larp and students at the school. Particularly touching are the interviews with original Treasure Trap attendees speaking about how much the larp changed their lives and their nostalgic yearning for that past experience. I was especially pleased to see workshopping and debriefing shown in the film in the Nordic section, including scenes with Norwegian larp designer Eirik Fatland leading players through rituals to start and end the PanoptiCorp larp.

    Despite the excellence of the content, notable inclusions to the documentary would have enhanced the finished product. I would have liked to have seen the high quality British theatre-style games, such as the Regency larps that take place in nineteenth century period costumes and locations. Brief footage of mainstream fantasy larps in Sweden or Denmark would have provided a larger picture, as Nordic larp is but a small subset of overall larps in those regions. Ideally, the film also would have touched upon the freeform scene and filmed at Fastaval or the Stockholm Scenario Festival, although admittedly freeform is less visually stimulating than full-costume larps.

    Portrait PosterThe film would also benefit from a brief explanation about larp around the world. Though Grand Expedition founder Rick Wynne discusses the worldwide scope a bit, a sense of the history of larp in other locations from a scholarly perspective would add to the utility of the film as an introduction point for uninitiated viewers. Alternately, the filmmakers could explain that their scope is limited to the UK and Scandinavia and is not representative of all larp. These are minor critiques, however, and did not detract from my enjoyment of the film.

    In summary, I highly recommend Treasure Trapped as an excellent larp documentary. The inclusion of various styles — from fantasy boffer to educational to Nordic larp — gives a much broader view than other documentaries to date. The interviews are thoughtful and deep, while cute animated graphics and editorial comments by the filmmakers add a bit of levity to the piece. From a big picture perspective, the documentary provides a refreshing counterpoint to many of the notably shallow representations of larp in past films.

    From what I understand, aside from film festivals, the documentary is currently only available if groups set up a special screening through Tugg, though the film should see wider availability at the end of 2015. I definitely suggest setting up a screening if your local community can draw enough people to buy tickets, as the visual imagery and sound quality is worth seeing on the big screen.

  • Nordic Style Larp in the UK

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    Nordic Style Larp in the UK

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    The UK has a large and thriving larp industry, going back to the early 1980s and with an estimated 100,000+ current active participants. But awareness of larp traditions in other countries, and in the Nordic scene in particular, has been minimal until very recently.

    In particular, the few months since Knutpunkt 2014 have seen a flurry of Nordic-related activity. Twelve people attended the conference from the UK (and a few from Ireland), and several threads of action have spun off subsequently.

    SarcophagusAdam James has organized a series of short larps in London. From the Norwegian Larps from the Factory book, he first ran at two-weekly intervals The Hirelings, Limbo, A Mothers Heart and Sarcophagus. Next was The Checkerboard Crew, a game Adam himself wrote together with Nina Runa Essendrop, on 22 June 2014, which I blogged about; and the series concluded with ‘Fallen Stars’, again from Larps from the Factory, on 13 July 2014.

    Cat Tobin (who is Irish but currently based in the UK) has set up a group called The Game Kitchen (Facebook group here) – whose purpose is to “talk about the design of Nordic larp, freeform games (UK and American) and story games, and then – using what we learn from each other, and from what other people have done before us – we’ll create some games. We’ll then share those games, and our conversations about the process, online so that others can learn from what we’re doing.” So far The Game Kitchen has had three monthly meetings, in London: and Cat ran a Larp from the Factory, ‘What Happened in Lanzarote’, which I blogged about.

    (Cat was also responsible for writing and running The Outsiders, together with me, which I believe was the first Nordic-style larp to have been written and run in the UK.)

    Mothers HeartRichard Williams is prominent in both the above projects, and has also established a Meetup group to help coordinate activity. His hope is that this Meetup will be the one-stop shop to hear about everything Nordic-related that happens in the UK and in Ireland.

    Both Cat and Richard appeared on the story-gaming podcast The Twitching Curtain to talk about their experiences at Knutpunkt 2014, and the impact they expect it to have on the UK larp scene.

    Kevin Burns has started a blog about Nordic larp and related topics – its purpose is “to explore Nordic larp. Partly, I’m doing that from the point of view of a psychotherapist who wonders about how it could be used in therapy, and partly because I find the whole thing tremendously exciting and I want to PLAY.”

    LimboFinally, an excursion to neighbour country Ireland – where Carla Burns is organizing Nina Runa Essendrop’s and Simon Steen Hansen’s White Death (Hvid død) on 8–9 August 2014 in Limerick, and has already run the Larp from the Factory ‘Before and After Silence’.

    As you can see, Larps from the Factory has been a really powerful tool in helping us get Nordic larp off the ground here. We are very grateful to the authors, editors and publisher!

    (There’s bound to be other stuff that I don’t know about, too. Please get in touch and let me know what you’ve been up to and what you’ve got planned!)

    My own hope is that we will over time develop a strand of Nordic-style larps with a UK flavour. For that reason I’m particularly interested in what The Game Kitchen is doing, reaching out to other UK gaming styles and sharing with and learning from them: and in Adam James’s work with creative people from outside gaming. It’s a powerful brew!

    Photos provided by Adam James.

    This article has been edited to remove a reference to a known abuser.