I offer you a new term, a new definition in the ever-expanding lexicon of larp gaming and design. Necessary because as the hobby expands around us into genres and culturally-defined practices, new language creates definitions around these expressions and allows us to capture and discuss what otherwise might drift into obscurity uncommented on. Anyways – I’m calling it Hamburger larp. 🍔
Why am I calling it hamburger larp?
Well, everyone wants a hamburger sometimes. It’s tasty, it’s filling and it’s familiar. Maybe you want cheese, or pickles, maybe sometimes you want fantasy, and sometimes you want the post-apocalypse, but at the end of the meal you want to pat your belly, sigh in relief and say “wow, what a great hamburger that was” and go home.
Am I making sense yet?
Larp is big; inasmuch as it is difficult to pin down definitionally, so we’ve invented words like “Nordic”, “parlor” and “blockbuster” to describe particular kinds of experiences provided under particular circumstances. So what’s the definition of the experience I’m trying to evoke when I call it, of all things, a hamburger larp? Well, simply put, something routine and enjoyable, like a hamburger.
Recurring festivals like Drachenfest, or Neotropolis, weekly combat larps like Amtgard, monthly Dystopia Rising games and Vampire: the Masquerade yearly national events; these are all hamburger larps in their own right. Every event has the same premise, and every time you go – you’re ordering a hamburger, made by whichever organizer is in the kitchen that month, but according to a logic that’s cultural and shared.
Hamburger larps are community-building machines. Every time the players come back for another serving, they return with their previous experience and expectations, and those enhance the experience of new participants. Often this can be observed in the form of physical reinvestment (props, costumes etc.) or emotional reinvestment (mentorship, networking, community aid etc.). By their very nature, that they recur at frequent intervals with low barriers for entry, hamburger larps become natural third places, which are physical spaces where people can connect with their community not unlike a coffee shop or a library, for low and middle income players.
The result of the proximity and consistency of the hamburger larp itself, is often the development of a large and complex community of players whose mutual interest in the larp create the foundation for their relationship as friends and peers. This can, occasionally, put the gamerunner in a position where they must manage both the complex design and production process of a recurring event, while governing a population of players while not necessarily having the education or credentials to do it well. I compare this phenomenon to the local and bustling hamburger restaurant; wherein regardless of the restaurant’s purpose to sell burgers, the living human beings that pass through will inevitably create community. And that community, sooner or later, will experience conflict.
Like the aforementioned restaurant, a hamburger larp relies on its location. Likely the players have a relationship not just with the characters they play, but with the locale and trappings of a recurring event. In the case of some weekend-long games, many hamburger larp communities have held a monthly event at the same scout camp for over a decade. To the same point, other evening-long events held at the same hotel every year generate the same sense of continuity. By providing the players the same backdrop upon which to perform at each event, the gamerunner creates a canon setting in which immersion, pre-scripted scenes and complex modules can more effortlessly take place.
On the flip side, when a hamburger larp’s ability to perform at their preferred location is disrupted, it is my experience that event sales and ratings plummet. This is demonstrated effectively by my experiences organizing the American larp; Dystopia Rising. Successful chapters of this national-scale organization depend on running their events at the same location every month. When changing location, either temporarily or permanently, the drop-off in players has been proportional to the change in routine. The safety and consistency that the players of a hamburger larp crave, simultaneously makes them resistant to change in procedure. Expectation, and expectation fulfillment over and over, is baked into hamburger larp, where the consistency of the recipe is a major selling point.
As a final note on hamburger larps, they’re universally cheaper than one-time blockbuster style games. As monthly events, the player expectations around props, costumes and location should be lower. As community is a natural expression of the hamburger larp model, prioritizing it creates a self-sustaining system wherein the attention and effort of the player base uplifts the value of the game far beyond what the financial model would otherwise allow. Hamburger larps are, at their core, folk art – and always expressions of a local scene, even at their highest level of production value.
Whereas a blockbuster larp might be compared to attending a Broadway show one time, a hamburger larp is the pub you go to after work, or the community center at which you meet your friends on weekends. The expectation for transcendence and performance at a hamburger larp, while offered as an implicit function of the roleplaying experience, is diluted by the surety that the opportunity will come again, and again.
In conclusion, “hamburger larp” encapsulates a recurring, familiar, and community-centered experience. Its framework thrives on consistency, and offers players a sense of comfort and belonging, much like their favorite burger joint. The draw of a hamburger larp isn’t in grand, one-time experiences but in the steady, ongoing opportunities to engage, build relationships, and create memories in a familiar setting. It’s illustrative of how the simple, routine pleasures in gaming can be just as fulfilling as the most elaborate productions. And like a well-made burger, it’s something players can savor again and again.
Cover image: Illustration by Ester Pérez Ribada from Pixabay
In 2017 I was the business operations lead for the Roadtrip “rock band” larp that traveled across the United States, and never before have I dealt with such unique operations related complications in my life. The Roadtrip Experience was a joint project between the Imagine Nation Collective and Dziobak Larp Studios. In this pervasive larp / freeform experience the participants travelled from Chicago, Illinois to Santa Monica, California down the historic highway Route 66. The experience lasted for 7 days and six nights total. The participants took on the personas of a touring rock band and its entourage for the duration of the trip. The story of the event included four band members, one relative, a drug dealer, spiritual guide, life coach, a conservative Christian who got on the wrong van, a video team, and a team of others made up a believable if far-fetched group. The larp also made use of “non-agency characters” and heavy steering woven into the experience.
Genesis
The project originally was genesis as a 1960’s Woodstock Tour larp concept created by Mikolaj Wicher, Jeff Moxley and myself. As the idea developed the group of three discussed the initial concept with Claus Raasted and the initial idea began to morph and change into a modern homage to rock and roll and Americana. Before the teams parted ways in Poland, the initial concept for the event was solidified and we each returned to our respective teams to start design work and schedule a number of international meetings. The Imagine Nation Collective began the design and development while the Dziobak larp studios team began working on character development and media.
With the event concept solidified and the teams dedicated to working on the project, each individual leg of the development design crews went to work. Jeff Moxley, as both the branch operations manager for Dystopia Rising larp Network as well as the front man on a number of bands and independent music projects began to work with Jessie Elsinger, an independent band booking manager from Connecticut, to begin virtually scouting potential tour date locations for the Roadtrip experience.
Within a month, the web page was created for the event, initial videos were developed, content copy was produced, and documentation was created for the experience. We followed best practices of transparency, open communication, and open engagement regarding this experience due to the fact that we were unaware of anyone who had created anything of this scope, scale, or nature before. Fortunately for us we found that the public was just as excited for this experience as we were, and within a few weeks we were funded.
Creating the Band and its Tour
As funding came in the initial design and research that we had done needed to be translated to bookings, reservations, and confirmations. This leg of the development brought up the first unique situation we had to address regarding our Roadtrip operations planning: getting real clubs and bars to agree to let our fictional band of larpers perform at their venues. While our European counterparts encouraged that we should just “say it’s a larp” we here in the United States had a long standing negative history dealing with a culture of outsider distrust for the hobby. Booking sites as a larp would require us explaining the hobby to each venue booker, would increase the perception of chance they were taking (which is saying a lot about perspective in the US since the standard reliability that clubs deal with is musicians), and would potentially endanger the experience. Without wanting to explain the nuances of the situation each time we talked to a potential venue the decision was made to invest heavily into our social media presence for our fictional band, The Runaway Sound. While it was true that the individuals brought together for the “Runaway Sound” were for all extensive purposes a newly formed band, our existing social media connections and trans-media experience was able to generate hundreds of followers and Facebook “likes” for the “Runaway Sound” on social media before their first public performance. People saw that we liked a new band, saw the participants in the band, and responded by feeding the Facebook page with a startup positive social media presence. As the participants were working with the event staff to develop the experience, the media and creations team were farming music and event videos from music projects that some of the participants had been a part of in the past and creating an online narrative. The same way that new bands often refer to prior music projects to build a following for new projects, we were generating interest in a newly formed band by utilizing our existing social media presence and fan base. By the time that we were looking to book events The Runaway Sound had over 300 followers, a few video clips, audio samples, and even mockup album covers. In truth, the line between “a fake band” and “a real band” became very blurred as the participants came together in person and online to practice their intended set list.
With a few months left until the event our combined marketing and media teams continued to work the promotion of the event to gain a few more participants for the Roadtrip experience. The majority of the “fictional” band was organized by Jeff Moxley to choose their setlist and practice before the event. When possible, members of the Runaway Sound would get together in person to have practice sessions in person. When physical face to face interactions were not possible due to distance and time, participants would do the best they could to practice together online or by themselves. As the band practiced, the teams assisted the participants in choosing the narrative that they wanted for their experience and build new “stage personas” that would take the place of traditional larp characters. As the shared narrative was finalized Jamie Snetsinger took care of last minute character development needs for the participants and communication of potential issues and solutions came from each branch of the event management team.
With us having our story design, route, and gigs booked for the event experience the next step was to confirm the booking of the hotels for the event, to haggle prices for group rates, and to book the transportation that would carry us for the entire duration of the experience. Our videographer team was being flown into the area to not only record the event for future prosperity, but also to participate in the experience as the bands videographer and documentation team. The Runaway Sound had a video and audio team to record the live events, to document the experience on the road, and to eventually shoot a music video. In the last days, our event staff settled out (with a few participants falling in and a few falling out as needed), and surprisingly the organization of the event was relatively smooth.
Behind the Curtain
What made the event operations, the organization, and the development of this experience work out the way it did was all of the moving parts unseen by the participants. To the event participants it appeared that less than half a dozen individuals worked together to create (and manage this experience). However, for every person that was an up-front and present persona that directly engaged the participants there were one or two people supporting the experience that never made it to the tour busses. Our character writer Jamie was on call to assist if there were any narrative changes that needed to be handled on the fly. Our booking assistant Jesse was on call in the instance that venue had a complication or if we needed to adjust our booking schedule. The entire Imagine Nation team that wasn’t actively at the event were on call to assist with any issues that might have happened on the road. Seeing how few “faces” organized this event, others might be tempted to organize a similar event with a limited staff. However, given the potential for this experience to “go off the rails” even our veteran team (with decades of experience) needed nine in-house team members working on the project, three outside consultants (band bookers, media moguls, and professionals from the music industry), and roughly a few hundred manpower hours put into the project.
As the event operations organizer, I was able to have the individual pieces of this experienced handled by professionals in each respective field, with very little concern that the individual components of the development would fall through. Zero volunteers were used for this experience, and the entire event from initial concept to completion was organized, written, and implemented by professionals in the field. Each staff member for this event has had over a decade of experience professionally running events, events media, and publication development. The only hurdle was that this project included two separate companies with different procedures, expectations, and practices coming together to work for the first time. Seeing this as the largest potential hurdle, the majority of my job involved organizing the individual team members to be able to work well together, to design functional budgets for each branch of operation to prevent overspending, to review and manage booking and rental contracts for the event, licensing music rights for our commercials, and to keep our in-house expectations high but realistic. While the ticket price for a Roadtrip experience was higher than the average US weekend long larp, the operations cost of the experience was also much higher than most living game experiences. With the costs of multiple van rentals, six nights of hotels, food, and material costs we felt the need to provide a life altering experience unlike any other larp experience in the world without implying more than we were fundamentally able to afford to provide. Expectations were already high for this experience event, in part due to the teams that were working on the experience together and the unique nature of the narrative, so we needed to be sure that what we promised the participants was as accurate as possible to what we provided.
Lessons Learned
There were a number of opportunities for improvement that we saw from on the road that we will take advantage of for future runs of the Roadtrip experience. There were also a number of small mistakes that we made that can easily be addressed for future runs of the experience as well to make the experience better for the participants and the operational teams.
The first oversight for the project was the scope of how many live events a new band could play on a week-long tour. Our event designer and booking team treated the experience as you would treat a real traveling band and booked five performances over a seven-night stretch. While this schedule is doable for most road-grizzled veterans of the music industry, we did not completely consider the fact that the participants would come with more of a “I’m on vacation” mindset than a “I’m looking to make it big right now” mentality. For many of us who were organizing the event, we commonly spend months at a time on the road working conventions and events without stopping. It is not uncommon for us to be doing development work on two new projects while on the road overseeing the operation of a project that is running live. Our perspective of what is “pushing it” on the road was much different than what our participants had as their desired effort level. With the difference in purpose from the participants we ended up changing our gig schedule from five booked shows to three performances. This allowed much more time for the travel experience of the event, and allowed much more time for side adventures.
The second mistake in event planning was an oversight in budgeting that will be easily addressed for future events. Our budget for the event included lodging and food for all of the participants. While it seems like a no brainer that you need to include costs for the staff food and lodging as well, with our history of running one location events where we do not manage meals for the participants, I failed to factor in the cost of hotels and food for the staff. With three operations team members and two videographers wracking up as many expenses as our participants, we needed to expand our budget to include covering the expenses for ourselves. In hindsight, an obvious oversight and one that is easily corrected in the future.
One of the biggest successes of the event blossomed from something we feared might be an issue. In not planning each detail of each day during the experience, and purposely allowing for more time for in the field improvisation we were able to change plans on the fly as needed. During this experience, we originally planned on doing five booked shows, to have the band travel and stay true to the rock star experience, and to create a completely immersed living experience for our participants. We were very successful in doing this, but where we had some degree of limited forethought is in the following truth: Rock stars and larpers often both abhor schedules and keeping to itineraries.
This ended up being adjusted while the larp was ongoing, and became one of the strong points of the experience. Changing the flow of the event and the bookings based on the overall desire and direction of the participants lead to some amazing (unplanned) adventures. The participants got to shoot a rock video at the Cadillac Ranch. The entire team spent part of a day partying in Uranus, Missouri (which was exactly as kitschy as it should have been) filming a music video and shooting guns. I planned a side trip to Meow Wolf in Santa Fe, New Mexico which turned out to be exactly as close to a religious experience as I had hoped. In the day leading up to the larp, our film crew came to us with a request to detour to Las Vegas so they could be married by Elvis which our participants in turn all but demanded happen. This became an adjustment we were thrilled to make to both make our participants happy, and to be a part of an amazing life experience for two great people. This went so far that we cancelled two of our planned gigs, literally took a right turn in Albuquerque New Mexico, and ending up in Vegas where they were married by an Elvis impersonator at the Little White Chapel. For real.
As we often joke, no larp plan survives first contact with the players. The ability and willingness to adapt made the experience more potent than we could have hoped for. Traveling with a large group of larpers for hundreds of miles is going to lead to dozens of unplanned side adventures, so you should plan the extra time to allow these things to happen. Events will cost more than you anticipate, in ways you cannot expect, and you must set aside a larger budget than you anticipate you will need.
Was it a Larp, or a Tour?
In closing there was a unique consideration that came from the Roadtrip larp that borders more on philosophical debate than operational design. Was Roadtrip a larp, or was it a tour? In the experience design we developed personas for the participants to embody, but the most earnest and rawest experiences from the road came when the real person completely bled into the persona they were portraying. The “fictional band” actually performed on stage for audiences, shot a music video, and really traveled down route 66 on tour. We had a professional media team, were interviewed by bloggers and radio personalities, and actually lived the life on the road. All of the issues that we handled as larp experience were issues that are commonplace in the music industry. Getting instruments, lodging, food, gigs, and hotels for the band. Working with music companies to get rights to use songs, dealing with complications at live venues, and dealing with inter-band drama (be it fabricated for the purposes of story or naturally occurring from the road) are all details that a band manager deals with for real bands. With all of the organization, development, and design work that went into creating the larp experience to be as realistic as possible we had to stop and ask “when did it just become reality?”
The philosophical question of “when does it stop being pretend” provides us with the strongest development tool for the creation of events. If as designers we want to create experiences that are realistic, engaging, and powerful as event organizers we need to approach the experience from the same direction that real world event organizers would approach it. When we approach our Roadtrip larp design, we need to approach the development of the experience as close as we could to the same way that a real-world band manager would. In realistic development and design we should take advantage of the years of knowledge, experience, and trial and error experiences for event developers that came before us. This resource of experience and knowledge relating to people who work in the music industry relating to booking and band management is far more extensive than what exists in larp development archives, and as a business event manager, provides infinitely more insight in regards to successful event management. While there were hurdles that we needed to overcome due to the living experience nature of the Roadtrip larp, the vast majority of the potential difficulties we could have run into on the road were preemptively avoided by researching and following in the steps of professional tour managers. While larp documentation may help you manage the bleed, transparency, and expectations of participants we found that learning tour management help us much more when wrangling tour participants who decided to run naked through a cut corn field, or dealing with club owners pulling a bait and switch once we arrived at the venue.
A WARNING: This might be a bit more casual than the other essays in this book. From start to finish, my whole journey of success, I have been in way over my head. I have been surrounded by intelligent, capable people that know exactly what they are doing. If you would like to hear from them, check out literally any of the other pages. If you would like to hear my rambling about how I accidentally became a pseudo YouTube celebrity, keep reading and enjoy the ride.
My dungeons and dragons group made fun of me for going larping. I remember being so excited and talking to them all about the character I was making, and the game I had found, and how much fun I was going to have, and they went to YouTube. I began larping in an age when larp on YouTube was videos of lighting bolt packet throwers and fake looking fight scenes. They went on a marathon to show me how stupid I was going to look, and then we continued to roll dice and describe fighting magic orcs.
My name is Mo Mo O’Brien, and if there’s one thing you need to know about me it’s that I don’t care what people think, so despite the mockery from my tabletop group, I went larping anyway. It was everything I knew it would be, and so much more. I instantly knew this was going to take over my entire life. I went to more events, and uploaded more pictures to my social media, and more people started asking me questions.
I had recently started a YouTube channel, and I thought I’d answer all the questions in a video. I called the video “The Basics of larp” and it covered everything from the definition of larp, to the different genres, to what you needed to start playing. That was the video that began it all. My channel now has over 70,000 subscribers, that video now has almost 400,000 views, the comments are flooded with requests for more larp videos, and I can no longer go to any larp without at least one person coming up to me and telling me they were there because of me. My YouTube channel has even taken me to places like panelling at San Diego comic con and being in a popular candy commercial. Since then, larping YouTube channels have been exponentially growing, and are still growing. So, I thought I’d give people some tips for larp YouTube Channels!
1. Speak to Non-larpers
You don’t have to tell larpers why larp is awesome. They already know. If you see someone with a t-shirt for a band you like, you don’t walk over to them and try and convince them why that band is awesome. They’re already wearing the shirt. If a larper sees ANYTHING larp related, good chance is they’re probably going to like it regardless of content. Don’t limit your audience. Any video where I talk about larp, I always explain what it is as fast and as simply as I can within the first 20 seconds. How I describe it is “an adult game of make believe.” That seems to cover any genre of larp, no matter how experimental, and everyone can picture it since everyone knows what “make believe” is. Then I proceed to talk about it as if i’m explaining it to a group of veteran larpers, and noobies.((Slang on newbies, for beginners or people without any pre existing knowledge and experience.)) People are all secretly narcissistic and love seeing themselves in things. So, try to make videos that non-larpers could see themselves in. In every video I never assume the viewer knows what larp is, and then explain it in a way that could appeal to everyone. Larp is so broad and so many things, there is always something someone will like about it; costume designing, prop designing, writing, acting, combat. There are styles of larp that incorporate more sport, more tears, more competition, more costume showcasing, more set dressing. There’s a aspect and style of larp for everyone, so make sure everyone knows that. Which means….
2. Learn How to Tell a Larp Story
My friend Jamie who runs my main larp campaign once gave me a very long, slightly drunk, speech on how to tell a larp story to non-larpers. First of all: non-larpers do not care about mechanics, skills, or rules. Not at first anyway. When people ask “what was the last book you read?,” their first question will usually always be “What was it about?”, not whether it fit into the three act structure or took a more experimental approach. Do not tell non-larpers that you have a level four fire spell that allows you to hit a monster with 30 health for 10 flame damage. Say “I hit a monster with a fireball.” One of those stories sounds WAY more exciting than the other. Sell your larp adventures for the adventures you had, not the numbers it gave your character sheet. When you’re larping, the emotions are real, so tell the story as if you were ACTUALLY THERE because that’s what larp feels like. Not everyone likes numbers or behind the scenes information, but everyone loves a good story.
3. Sell Yourself
This is not as skeezy as it sounds. What i mean by this is just find all the best parts about yourself, and showcase them. YouTubers compared to a lot of other “celebrities” is that we are a far more personal art medium. We do “question and answers” where viewers can learn all about us, vlogs((Video blogs.)) where they can spend the day with us, and it’s a lot less “glitz and glamour” than other beings of well known status. People watch a video for the content, but they stick around and subscribe for the YouTuber. This doesn’t mean invent a new personality. This means find the parts of your personality people like, and electrify them. That goes for your characters as well.
To expand on this idea, you should check out another YouTuber that’s NOT a larper, but pretty close: Miranda Sings. Miranda is a fictional character with a YouTube channel, created by comedian and singer Colleen Ballinger. In 2008 Colleen started uploading purposefully bad song covers to YouTube as a joke, and Miranda has gained over 7 million subscribers since. As she developed the character of “Miranda” she says she just read her YouTube comments, took note of what viewers found weird or obnoxious, and started to do it even more. Take note of what aspects of your characters and yourself your viewers like, and do it more.
4. Make It Look Nice
Sit in front of a lit window or bright light source. Make sure any fans, or air conditioners, or any other machinery making noise is turned off. Make sure your camera isn’t making you look too orange or too blue (you can change this by adjusting your lighting. Natural light gives off a blue tint, unnatural gives off an orange.) Make sure your background looks tidy and nice.
For a while, I thought none of this really mattered…until I went back and watched my old videos. All these technical things are like the bass line of a song. You don’t notice when it’s there, but OH BOY do you notice when it’s not. So make sure you’re well lit, your sound is good, and your shot is set up nice. Which also means, pay attention to your background. If you want people to pay attention to nothing but your words, consider a blank wall behind you. Talking about costuming? Maybe display some of your pieces behind you. Want people to have a glimpse of your personality? Show your whole bedroom. Let your background tell a story.
5. Get That Larp Footage
Just talking to a camera is fine, but when you cut to something else, it makes sure the audience is paying attention, because it gives them some new to look at. Also it saves you the time and effort of trying to do your awesome larp justice. You can just show your audience so they don’t have to imagine it.
One of the biggest rules in visual storytelling: show, don’t tell.
Hide your camera, stay out of game for a while, ask for filming privileges in exchange for some pictures of the event, ask the organiser if they can make the camera cannon in the game.
Even if it’s just pictures someone else took, ask them if you may use the pictures.
6. Be Picky
Larp is really hard to translate to video because, a lot of the times it’s not a spectator sport. Its meant to be experienced, not watched for entertainment. So, try and pick the footage that portrays what larp FEELS like, not looks like. Add some music or sound effects to fight scenes, so it doesn’t just sound like latex hitting latex matched with grunting. Pick those intense scenes with dramatic lighting. Remember to market to non-larpers. People don’t want to see a larp, they want to feel it. Choose the footage, and edit it accordingly, that portrays how that moment felt when you were in it.
When you larp, a lot of the emotions and adrenaline is real, but this is a little harder to translate to film. When you watch a movie, a scene could have a completely different feel or intensity based on the cinematography, the editing, the music, the lighting. Picture a shot of a few kids splashing in the water. Now picture it with happy, upbeat, ukulele music. It’s a fun day at the beach! Viewers are content, and calm, and are reminded of carefree summer days. Now, picture the exact same shot, but with the jaws theme song underneath. Not a carefree beach day anymore is it? Footage provides what the larp looks like, but what you do with it determines how your viewers feel about it.
I tried to put together all of these things into one of my videos which I called “Lock Stock & Barrel: a five minute larp.” I was dared by another YouTube channel to create a larp that would last 5 minutes, and film it. So I created a simple life or death scenario; 6 people locked in a post apocalyptic shelter that was running out of air, and the maximum inhabitant capacity would drop by 1 every 1 minute. Meaning, in order to survive, one person had to be eliminated or evacuated every minute. They were given items like: booze, poison, water, a gun, bullets, cookies, and other items designed to kill each other. There was an also an exit to the shelter with a 30% chance of survival in the wasteland. This was apparently fun for the players, and they wished it was a little longer. For the sake of a youtube video though, it was the perfect length. Because it was such a short amount of time, it was high energy, panicked, and 5 minutes of intensity. There was no time for spaced out improvised beautiful dialogue. It worked better, because it was messy and all over the place, like the real situation would have been if it was filmed for an audience. I also held it in my own home so I set up my filming lights, I got to set the scene the way I wanted, all with filming this in mind. Like it was an improvised movie.
But the biggest tip I can give, not just to larp YouTubers, but all YouTubers in general: Just do it! Don’t worry about messing up, or having the right equipment, or not being ready. We all had to start somewhere. Watch the videos you make, figure out what you liked, and what you didn’t, and adjust accordingly. Just figure it out as you go along. Fall into your place. So get going!
As an addendum to this piece, Simon Brind conducted a brief interview with Mo Mo O’Brien; edited highlights are included here:
Simon Brind: Would you tell us a little more about the design for the five minute larp? Do the people have characters? Did you pre-write them or did the players do it? Was there a set?
Mo Mo O’Brien: It was very light rules, basically if they wanted to do anything physically, they just asked out loud and I told them if it went ok. They had characters they decided on themselves. Formed their own relationships and backstories. All the knowledge they were given was they had been in this bunker for almost a year. We made up the characters on the spot in a workshop before the game. The set, was my living room, with a spotlight in the middle. You can watch the whole thing here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jgQFuLhe-ks
SB: Are there ways that larp could become a spectator sport? or a spectator event? Would it still be larp?
O’B: If larp was a spectator sport, it would be called improv theatre. If all the mechanics and techniques were designed to entertain an audience and not the player, it would be an episode of whose line is it anyway. Even if there was an audience to an actual larp event, by my definition, it would become improv theatre. Though I’m sure there’s 40 essays out there by people much smarter than me with different theories about it.
SB: How else could YouTube be used in larp? Could one be played out using YouTube videos and responses do you think? Or as a part of a game?
O’B: What I would love to see is YouTube being used as a tool in larp. We have all this new technology that I feel could be utilised better. I recently did a game called As we know it that took place entirely, on my own, sitting in a closet, and all the interactions were over text. It was a game about isolation and through technology, perfect isolation was able to be achieved. There’s so much people can do with video, I think it could be used in larp a lot more.
SB: Can you tell the story of a larp in video? Could the 5 minute experiment scale up to 30 minutes, 3 hours or even 3 days?
O’B: Could I tell the story of a 3 day larp in a 10 minute video? Absolutely. Especially when it comes to internet media, it is typically more likely to hold someone’s attention. It’s important to find the right balance between rambling, and cutting it short. Say what you NEED to say. Sometimes you need to cut what you WANT to say, which is the most heartbreaking thing about good editing. Take notes before you film. It helps you formulate your thoughts, keeps you from forgetting anything, and will help eliminate nonsense and rambling.
SB: Nordic larps have done a great job of documenting their games and they are producing some great promotional videos((Promotional videos for Fairweather Manor, Black Friday and the like.)) too. But what else would you like to see from game organisers? How could they improve?
O’B: Blockbuster nordic larps are EASILY the simplest kind of larp to film, because it is so close to improvised theatre. They usually have the best costumes, props, sets, and scenes since it’s more about characters, than character sheets. Since it’s typically more aesthetically pleasing than a lot of boffer larps, it’s easier to share, and easier to relate to, because you have to worry less about portraying how the experience feels, because it looks so nice from the outside. So I think what the western larp media needs, is to focus on what the western larp community HAS. Focus more on the competitive and self improving nature of western sport style larps, and learn how to translate that feeling of adrenaline and action to film.
Disclaimer: The opinions expressed herein are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of Nordiclarp.org or any larp community at large.
The first time I remember encountering someone who was disabled in a larp was during my long-ago days of playing Changeling: the Dreaming. My fellow players and I were waiting for the game to begin and a new player arrived wearing dark glasses and carrying a white cane. We were waiting outside the game space at the top of a staircase and were jostling one another quite a lot, so I became concerned by the person’s proximity to the edge of the stairs. I stood up from a bench and asked the person quietly if they’d like to sit down. “The stairs are very close behind you,” I said. The new player looked at me, puzzled. “I can see that,” they said. When I blinked at them in surprise, the player’s face lit up and they lifted their glasses to wink at me. “The costume works!” they said. “At least I’m believable. Gotta play up that flaw if I want the points.” The player in question wasn’t disabled at all. To quote the old saying, they just played one on TV. Or in this case, in a larp.
It would be years before I larped with someone who was visually impaired and became acutely aware of the difficulties they faced when interacting with larps due to their disability. Yet in those years, I met people with various physical and psychological differences who encountered challenges when larping due to a lack of accommodation for their disabilities. I was also acutely aware that, much like other forms of entertainment, larp was a rather ableist((Ableism: discrimination and social prejudice against people with disabilities. Ableism characterises persons as defined by their disabilities and as inferior to the non-disabled.)) space, erasing disabled players by creating obstacles for inclusion that kept them out. While conversations about inclusivity in regards to many forms of identity rose to the forefront of thought in the larp community, the issue of disability visibility seemed to remain one of the last unexplored countries.
For a long time I was a larper standing outside of the issue, looking in. Then the issue became far more personal. At the time of the writing of this article, I’ve been larping for eleven years. In that time I’ve gone from an able-bodied young woman with an invisible disability((Bipolar disorder.)) to a woman using a wheelchair to get around. This evolution has given me a different perception, perhaps, than most and opened my eyes to the pitfalls one can stumble into when designing larps: namely the exclusion of the disabled due to lack of consideration for accommodation. As a heavily physical-based activity game and art form, larp requires players to inhabit their character roles with their bodies, experiencing the game space through their five senses and interacting with the environment and other players with their own bodies as their character’s avatar. Larps can be challenging to players physically and psychologically based on the creator’s design, even for those who are able-bodied. Imagine then the challenge presented to those who are disabled if the game is designed with only able-bodied players in mind as their prime customers and patrons.
If those who are differently abled are not taken into consideration during the very first stages of a larp’s creation, designers may inadvertently set up obstacles which block disabled players from engaging with the game. Furthermore, I’ll go so far as to posit another argument: by not taking disabled players into account and allowing them to be under-represented or misrepresented through play, then the game in question and whatever narrative it crafts becomes inherently ableist.
The Design Challenge
Larp design is a complex and ever-shifting ludic space, requiring consideration of many different factors. Designers engage in discussions of narrative construction, community building, environmental design, sociological and psychological interaction and game design when producing any larp, whether they’re aware they’re doing so or not. Larp design is a hybrid discipline, one part improvisational acting, one part theatre production, one part playwriting, and one part game design. Yet at its very heart, larp is an attempt to bring to life imagined worlds with characters being physically inhabited by the players.
No matter the complexity of the physical design, from the stripped-down aesthetics of black box theatre games to the blockbuster nordic games set in castles or the combat-intensive live “boffer” games set out in forests around the world, there is one basic design principle of larps: players move and interact with the game space with their own bodies. And in that single conceit, designers are presented with an obstacle in how to allow people of different abilities to interact with the physical aspects of their game. How they tackle that challenge then determines whether or not their game is accessible to a wider range of players.
It’s important at this juncture to address and acknowledge the difficulty of this particular design challenge. The term disabled is very broad and encompasses a myriad of people whose physical or psychological states put them outside of what society considers the healthy, able-bodied norm. Therefore, speaking about making accommodation for those who are differently abled in a larp means acknowledging that a creator will be designing towards an ever-moving target. The paradigms may need to shift when a new player with specific accommodation needs wants to participate in their games. However, the very first step in heading towards more accessibility in games is to start by acknowledging one base truth: larps are not just made for the able-bodied. Just because the design challenge is difficult does not mean it should not be tackled. If a game wants to truly call itself inclusive and welcome all kinds of players, disability inclusion must be part of the discussion right alongside discussions about the participation of all genders, sexualities, races, religions, classes, etc. To be truly intersectional and inclusive, ableism cannot be forgotten as a potential venue for discrimination through design.
Thankfully, larp designers have the opportunity when creating new larps to approach each game as a blank slate, utilising that mindfulness about inclusivity to create spaces capable of accommodating disability needs. They only need to choose to do so from the beginning.
Larping in Czocha Castle for College of Wizardry 1 as a wheelchair-using player. (Photo by: Christina Molbech)
The Cornerstones of Disability: Considerate Design
There are many areas a designer ought to consider from the beginning if they wish their games to be more accessible. They include:
The role of the disabled in the game’s world building and narrative
The question of how disabled and abled characters will be played, by whom, and how they are portrayed
Physical design of your game space and its availability for accessibility and/or disability accommodation
Consideration for equal treatment out-of-character within your player community.
While this is by no means an exhaustive list of considerations, I believe they cover a range of basic areas a designer might consider to broaden those able to access their games. Let’s break them down and look at their unique challenges.
The Role of the Disabled in the Game’s World Building and Narrative
While this might seem like a simple idea, it is often difficult to recognise where narratives skew towards ableism, perhaps even without meaning to do so. For example, most post-apocalyptic narratives make it clear that those who are disabled would have a difficult time surviving in a world without basic social services and modern technology. Those narratives can default to erasing disabled persons without much of a thought in pursuit of “authenticity to genre.” That same argument is often used when representing those with disabilities in historical games, or medieval fantasy games, as the idea of someone with disabilities succeeding, thriving, or even achieving positions of power challenges the idea that games set in historical periods must be (needlessly) appropriate to every inch of perceived historical correctness.
Games which choose to marginalise the roles the disabled have in the visible narrative then set the tone for how those characters who are differently abled will be treated, and can even translate into how players who are differently abled feel welcome within a space. Additionally, erasing disabled characters due to “magical cures” such as biotechnology, advanced medical science, and sorcery in a game’s narrative also signals that your setting assumes everyone who is disabled should be “cured,” signalling a need to erase disabled stories from that setting and your game. Examples of such settings are cyberpunk futures where technology can cure disabilities, magical settings like College of Wizardry (Nielsen, Dembinski and Raasted et al., 2014-) and New World Magischola (Brown and Morrow et al., 2016) where magic can cure nearly every ailment or injury.
How Disabled and Abled Characters Will Be Played, by Whom and How They Are Portrayed
As mentioned in the story at the very beginning of this article, able-bodied players may opt to play disabled characters in a game. Some larps even incentivise such play by offering mechanical advantages for including a disability in the character. One example of this is White Wolf’s games like Vampire: the Masquerade (Rein-Hagen, 1991), whose system allows disabilities, both physical and psychological, to be taken as flaws on a character sheet. Ostensibly this design choice was meant to motivate people to create more nuanced and interesting characters for the game by representing a world inhabited not only by able-bodied people and monsters but also the disabled. Most of the time, however, I saw it used as a cheap and easy way to gain additional points to buy up mechanically advantageous things on a character’s sheet, since for every point of flaws you took, you received freebie points to spend elsewhere. This process of mechanising a disability in exchange for positive rewards elsewhere provides a problematic view of being rewarded for taking on the “burden” of playing someone disabled, labelling a disability a flaw with all its associated negative connotations.
Similarly, by including disabilities as a mechanical flaw or as an in-character effect gained during play, there is a greater chance a player may be presented with a disability they’ll try to or be required to play without understanding the best way to do so. Games that use mental illness as part of their punitive mechanics will afflict players with “insanity” such as in the Cthulhu Live (McLaughlin, 1997) system, or else give people a derangement as the results of play such as in the Dystopia Rising (Pucci, 2009-) system, without giving them much context or preparation for role-playing what amounts to a psychological disability. Without time to research and understand the illness they’re being asked to portray, players may default to naturally offensive and harmful stereotypes, making the play space a hostile place for people who actually have those disabilities. The opposite side of this question includes whether or not disabled players will be able to play non-disabled characters. In games which rely on more “what you see is what you get” or 360 degree immersion play, organisers often require players to do whatever it is their character would do, including all physical activities. Allowing disabled players to play non-disabled characters, essentially asking others to ignore their adaptive devices during play, is a form of making accommodation during a larp, bending the rules of the full immersion for the sake of making all roles in the game accessible.
Physical Design of Your Game Space and It’s Availability for Accessibility and/or Disability Accommodation
This aspect of designing towards inclusivity involves the design of the actual space and materials to make a game accessible for all, and it is perhaps one of the most difficult and controversial topics when dealing with disability advocacy in larp. Unless you are talking about black box or theatre style games, larps rely heavily on environmental design or utilising already created appropriate venues to host their games so as to create immersion for players. However, often when seeking out genre, theme or mood appropriate venues, designers don’t realise or even ignore the fundamental accessibility issues a venue might have. When choosing the beautiful Czocha Castle as the setting for the blockbuster College of Wizardry games, the organisers discovered a glorious location full of secret passages, lush forests, and amazing rooms ready to become classrooms in a magical school. What the castle did not have, however, was basic disability access, a fact which did not escape me upon my attendance. This limited my interactions with the game, keeping me from attending classes held in the perilously high astronomy tower or down in the steps into the murky dungeon.
Even games that try their hardest to provide accommodation can end up falling short, such as in the case of the 2016 New World Magischola games in the United States. While the game was hosted by a presumably ADA((Physical accomodations and accessibility as described in the Americans with Disability Act of 1990.)) accessible campus in the University of Richmond, the game locations were scattered so far across the campus itself that those who were disabled found it difficult to interact with game events going on at far flung locations, especially at night. Other games which are designed for gruelling conditions as part of the experience, like the Swedish Hinterland (Nyman, Utbult and Stormark et al., 2015), are additionally problematic in that they present physical challenges meant to test even the hardiest of able bodied players and therefore exclude disabled players almost by design, in favour of supporting the taxing gameplay part of the experience. This important obstacle to accessibility ought to be weighed against a location’s appropriateness for play, if the designers want to see their game available for all comers to play.
The Consideration for Equal Treatment Out-of-character Within Your Player Community
This last element is less of a physical design challenge or game mechanic design question, but rather requires game creators to take a closer look at how those who are differently abled are considered within the community. It’s no secret that the disabled face discrimination from the general world. Even well-intentioned people can express demeaning and belittling treatment of the disabled, unsure of how to engage with their differences and needs for accommodation despite the best of intentions. The disabled are often seen as less capable or even worthy of doing things people take for granted, such as opening up businesses, holding positions of leadership, or even having stable relationships and raising children.
When a player who is differently abled is part of a larp community, an organiser must consider whether that player is facing similar discriminatory treatment from fellow players. While it is not an organiser’s job necessarily to police their community, the tacit social contract of a larp as a communal storytelling experience requires players to feel welcome and heard so they can participate wholeheartedly in safety and trust. Should a player be treated differently based on their disability, the responsibility falls on the organisers to address the situation, as would be the case with any instances of discrimination affecting their community.
These cornerstones of thoughtful accessibility design are best deployed from the beginning of a game’s creation, as the accommodations they may require become more difficult when trying to retroactively fit them in after the entire game has been put together. Indeed, tackling accessibility issues only after discovering a disabled player wants to attend requires far more work as a designer must scramble to find a way to shoehorn those accommodations into a space that might not have that capability. While the intention to find accommodation later is noble, it is often not the most e cient and may end with frustrated designers and players both, should the attempts towards accommodation after-the-fact fail. Designers should also be mindful to check back to these design considerations throughout the process and even during gameplay to make sure they are still in place and functional.
Staff and players of Time Travelers After Hours, a Phoenix Outlaw freeform larp, DexCon 2016. (Photo by: Nicolas Hornyak)
The False Dichotomy of “Going Elsewhere”
Considering accessibility accommodations as an afterthought also often ends up with designers simply acknowledging their design cannot support those with disabilities, leading to my least favourite theory regarding the including of disabled persons in larp: the separate yet equal argument. In response to discussing accessibility in games, I’ve often heard people simply shrug and say “not every game is for every person.” They say not everyone likes every game, or is suited to every game, and therefore those disabled players who cannot be included due to lack of accommodation can simply go to another game or seek another role in the game if that will allow for better accessibility. This argument contests that this problem happens even to able-bodied people who must choose based on their tastes what games to attend. This is a false dichotomy.
Able bodied larpers who choose either to attend or not attend a game based on its content or any other myriad of factors are not physically barred from doing so. They are not kept out by virtue of a space not being capable of physically allowing them entrance. The important word to factor in here is choice. Those players are choosing not to go to a game based on their tastes and preferences, opting out because they have an option at all. If a game is not physically accessible to disabled players for one reason or another, designers have taken away a player’s agency to opt in or out and instead set up obstacles to act as gatekeepers that bar players from even making that choice.
It’s that distinction that created the need for laws around the world protecting the rights of disabled people to interact with society on all levels in an equal matter to those who are able bodied. Ability-based discrimination has been a historically contentious topic, as those who are disabled either visibly or invisibly have fought for recognition as equal members of society all over the world. In the United States for example, the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA, 1990), which expanded on the Civil Rights Act of 1964 to include anti-discrimination protections for the disabled, was not put into place until 1990. The ADA as it is known not only protects the disabled against discrimination but requires employers “to provide reasonable accommodations to employees with disabilities, and imposes requirements on public accommodations.” This included provisions that businesses and public spaces would be required to make their facilities and events accessible to those with disabilities.
The ADA later provided the inspiration for countries around the world to adopt similar protections. Since 2000, 181 countries have signed disability protections into law, while in 2006 the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (CRPD, 2006) was adopted by the United Nations and ratified by 157 countries, offering additional protections for 650 million people with disabilities worldwide (Shapiro, 2015). By requiring businesses, venues, and locations to create accommodations for those who are disabled by law, the governments of those countries with equal rights laws recognise that physical design of spaces and events can be discriminatory if they aren’t accessible and require organisers to take that into consideration by law.
Yet certain activities have remained segregated, especially recreational activities which require physical activity such as sports, dance, and theatre. The separate-yet-equal idea has remained the cornerstone of this segregation, allowing for the creation of dance companies, sports events, and theatre troupes for example made up of only disabled persons participating and competing with and against one another. The notion goes that if an activity is based on physical interaction as the primary mode of engagement, and a disabled person is differently equipped to engage with that activity, rather than providing accommodation, a separate space should be provided for them to interact. While the concept of larps only for the disabled may intrigue from an artistic perspective, if only to see what might be created by people with those unique life experiences, it cannot be the hallmark of the entire larp world. To say that “maybe this game just isn’t for you” to a potential disabled player when facing the need for accommodation is based on the same principle and passes the buck away from that designer’s game to some other, theoretical game out there which may better have access.
In short, “not for you” as a response is an excuse and misses the point entirely. The player in question doesn’t want to go somewhere else. They want to attend that game and be a part of their chosen community, and should be freely allowed to, given all other things being equal between them and an able-bodied player. The disabled person should not have to find another game, shuffled along, because considerations haven’t been made to keep a space from being discriminatory. As the laws of so many countries point out, the need to consider accommodation falls on the shoulders of designers and organisers, not the disabled person. And if only the designers had done so at the beginning, perhaps those uncomfortable and potentially discriminatory conversations might not have had to happen at all.
A Two-way Conversation
Of course, it seems easy to say all of this on paper. I acknowledge as of the writing of this article that figuring out the ways to balance aesthetic and artistic choices in larps and accessibility is a difficult design problem. Nor is there anyone out to impose mandates that each game must be accessible in all ways, barring what is required by law in the larp’s home country. And while it might be an intriguing mental exercise to go down the “freedom of creation” versus inclusivity accommodation mode of thinking, that conversation has been tread in regards to intersectional inclusivity ad nauseum. It is an understood right of creators to make artistic choices for their games, and should they choose not to build towards inclusivity, that is their right. However, when a game designer chooses to consider accessibility for the differently abled, especially from the beginning, they are signalling to their player base that they consider their space a welcoming one for people of all kinds, even if it makes them a little more work to design around obstacles. Designing towards accessibility is a signpost that a larp creator considers the health and well-being of their players as important as well, and can create a deeper bond of trust between organisers and players in regards to game safety.
The final piece to the design challenge regarding accessibility, however, is communication. As mentioned above, though the term disabled indicates the need for accommodation to assist the individual with accessing a space or event, each disabled person’s needs might be specialised. Not every wheelchair user needs the same level of accommodation, nor do all those with specific psychological needs require the same response. While designers may create spaces for accommodation in the game, it is often necessary for those who are disabled to speak up and request additional accommodation or else adjustments to what is in place to suit their specific needs. While it can be difficult to self-advocate for one’s needs, it is imperative to have a process in place before or at a larp for these conversations to take place. Should someone feel uncomfortable stating their need for accommodation, an advocate such as a friend or fellow larper might be a good ally to seek out to help communicate with the organisers. This process can be as simple as organisers making it overtly clear they are open to having these discussions, or for a larger game to have a particular staff member acting as accessibility liaison. Each process can be tailored to the size, length and scope of the game in question, but all serve to make the process of creating these accommodations smoother and less contentious.
One other note to bear in mind when considering disability conversations is the notion of trust and belief. It is important when an organiser is approached by someone asking for accommodation to show that they not only hear the person, but that they believe them. Since many disabilities, such as chronic illness, injury, or mental illness, are largely invisible disabilities, they are often questioned by people who cannot see an assistive device as evidence of a disability. Refrains like “you don’t look sick” or “can’t you just deal with it?” are typical. Requiring a disabled person to present evidence of their disability to receive accommodation is difficult and often embarrassing for the disabled person. For communication and trust to be fostered in a healthy environment, the disabled person must feel the organiser is receptive to their issues. Should an organiser feel they don’t have the perspective to understand the needs of their disabled players, seeking out resources from articles, organisations, or even disability advocates within the gaming community can help to create better dialogues going forward.
While individual conversations on the local larp level are the bedrock on which change will come, communication in regards to accessibility needs to be fostered on an even larger scale. Conversations regarding how to create better games, better mechanics, and better communities are sweeping across the larp world, spread by the Internet and fantastic convention and conference spaces. One of those conversations going forward in terms of inclusivity in gaming communities must include further discussion of accessibility for the disabled. Our communities are in a period of sharing for the betterment of all, learning from one another in an age of what larp designer and creator Josh Harrison has coined fourth wave larp design. It is imperative for our communities to continue these conversations so better tools and best practices discovered by individual games can be shared, improved upon, and reshaped through communal iteration.
It’s towards that spirit of communal iteration that I put forth the challenge to designers to come up with new mechanics for players with disabilities to use, new ideas for interaction in our games outside of the able-bodied norms. New mechanics, such as the Avatar mechanic brainstormed by myself and Lizzie Stark (2014), in which a player with mobility issues may have a surrogate step in during play to perform physical actions that player cannot, is an example of how two designers coming together can create a new mechanic for the game design toolbox. Collaboration will be the means by which more of these ideas become about in the future.
Additionally, iterating on already established norms will expand and improve institutions already in place. To that end, I am suggesting an amendment to the Mixing Desk of Larp (Andresen, Nielsen and Stenros et al., 2016), that oh-so useful tool spread from the Larpwriter Summer school and now used to create games across the world. While there are thirteen slots for faders, used to plan and illustrate the various decisions made during the planning process of a larp, the last one is left blank and marked “Your Fader Here.” This space is left for designers to include their own fader, something not covered among the twelve other ingredients the Mixing Desk suggests goes into designing a larp. While it would be convenient to say accessibility is a good option for including into the “Your Fader Here” spot, I would suggest something even stronger. For a game to truly tackle accessibility and make it as much of a priority for larps as the other ingredients so important to design, a fourteenth fader slot marked Accessibility should go up on the Mixing Desk alongside that write-in category. This would signal a tacit shift in thinking, enshrining the idea that accessibility is not and should not be a sometimes consideration if designers wish to see our community tackle ableism in our design spaces. By adjusting this already understood and widely used mechanic, we as a community would be indicating how important accessibility truly is for the larp world at large.
And make no mistake, it is an important part of the future of inclusivity in the larp world. Without considering accessibility for differently abled larpers, our community neglects a fundamental demographic and shuts out a plethora of voices who could contribute to making our storytelling communities even brighter. When a differently abled person cannot even attend an event, we lose vital voices whose presence could enhance and innovate, add and amplify the able-bodied community. All that is needed to make sure their voices can add to the collective artistic space is consideration for their needs at the forefront of design by the (mostly) ablebodied constituency of larp creators. Accessibility in design cannot be an afterthought but should live alongside questions of theme and player motivation as a reminder that larp is and should remain a space equally available for all as we go forward into designing the games of our future.
The United States: Department of Justice Civil Rights Division. The Americans With Disabilities Act of 1990 And Revised ADA Regulations Implementing Title II and Title III (USA 1990), https://www.ada.gov/2010_regs.htm.
Collaboration is in vogue. In Nordic circles and in blockbuster games, non-competitive play is ascendant. Portrayed in contrast to competitive, adversarial games, collaborative games are cast as healthier for participants, arguing for the removal of competition from many games in the name of progress.
You cannot really blame larps for popularizing this idea. Competition has had a bad reputation in Western society as being malignant and encouraging horrible behavior for years. But that reputation ignores the proven benefits of healthy competition and rivalry; while working to stamp out all negative behaviors associated with adversarial gameplay, we misunderstand competition and, in effect, throw the baby out with the bathwater.
We also overstate how beneficial collaborative play is and ignore how it can be just as toxic, in its own right, as the worst competitive play.
Yes, I am an Amerijerk
My resistance isn’t knee-jerk, goddammit.
To a European reader, I must look like one of those gun-toting hyper-aggressive individualist American jerks, set in his ways with a characteristic knee-jerk resistance to change.
My resistance isn’t knee-jerk, goddammit.
Maybe I am biased. And maybe that’s a good thing, because I am willing to defend competition without dismissing it out of hand. I look seriously at how people benefit from it, and am willing to question whether getting rid of competitive play is a good idea. I was raised in Texas, a place that values individualism, mavericks, and heretics.
If there’s an opposite of the Law of Jante, it’s Texas.
As most can tell you, Texans like nothing more than a good fight, whether the brawl is intellectual or physical. Crucially, we excel at staying friends after the fight is over.
So, let’s fight – and by that I mean, let’s play games where we compete and struggle against each other. I’m here to tell you why a little quarrelin’ is a good thing.
Let’s do this.
Writing the Good Fight
I said Texans like a “good fight”, but what makes a fight “good”?
There’s good food and bad food. There’s good friends and bad friends. And there’s good and bad competition. More precisely, there’s adaptive and maladaptive competition.
Adaptive competition
Adaptive competition is the kind of competitiveness that is overwhelmingly good for people. It builds confidence, helps conquer fear, drives excellence and makes us more sympathetic. It accepts that improvement takes time, views opponents as a challenge and promotes cooperation. It has the power to make us better, more empathetic people.
What might, at first, seem paradoxical is that competition promotes cooperation and respect. This is because adaptive competition requires that both parties agree to a set of rules, and promise to abide by them reliably. It creates an understanding between all participants that breaking rules is unacceptable, hurts everyone involved and is not viable in the long term. A field combat game is in many ways just as collaborative as your favorite freeform larp.
Adaptive competition crucially provides something that is missing from collaborative play – it gives competitors a sense of their own agency. Agency is grown from making your own choices, not communal ones, accepting fair consequences or benefits from them, without the need to justify your thinking to anyone but yourself. When success or failure depends entirely on your decisions, you learn to own them.
Building agency can be incredibly transformative. It builds resistance to criticism or oppression, creates feelings of empowerment and self-determination, and makes us less vulnerable to judgment or depression. We learn to look inward for answers to difficult questions.
The growth of agency is almost unique to competitive play, and is not to be confused with acceptance or confidence. In a fair competition with room for improvement and reasonable stakes, the benefits of learning that you determine your own fate cannot be understated. Even if those choices were incorrect, they are yours and yours alone, and in making them you must naturally overcome paralyzing indecision.
Maladaptive Competition
Maladaptive competition is the bad side of competitive play we are all familiar with. It encourages cheating, narcissism, and unempathetic behavior. It is associated with insecurity and the inability to accept losing. It is high risk, views opponents as threats to be crushed, and promotes cutthroat, unfettered belligerence. But these adverse side effects are more likely to be the consequences of bad game design, rather than deep flaws in competitive play or the morality of players.
These aren’t idle speculations on my part. More than a century of psychological data((Bronson, Po, and Ashley Merryman. 2013. Top dog: the science of winning and losing. New York: Twelve.)) ((Garcia S.M., A. Tor, and T.M. Schiff. 2013. “The Psychology of Competition: A Social Comparison Perspective.” Perspectives on Psychological Science: A Journal of the Association for Psychological Science 8, no. 6: 634-50.
)) studying everyone from cyclists((Stone, Mark Robert, Kevin Thomas, Michael Wilkinson, Andrew M. Jones, Alan St. Clair Gibson, and Kevin G. Thompson. “Effects of Deception on Exercise Performance.” Medicine & Science in Sports & Exercise 44, no. 3 (2012): 534-41.
)) to Air Force cadets((Air Force Academy Squadrons Test Peer-Effect Assumptions NPR. Accessed January 30, 2017.)), proves that two distinct sets of competitive situations exist, and we can do specific things to promote the better side of competition. These studies have proven, repeatedly, that adaptive competition is one of the most beneficial and healthy forces we can introduce our players to. It is one of the most compelling and (dare I say) fun things we can put into our games.
Luckily, we have enormous power over the type of competition we create in our games. Specific conditions produce adaptive or maladaptive competitiveness. And we can control them.
Let’s do this.
How to Make Everyone Miserable in 4 Easy Steps
No Fighting Chance
Competition is at its best when it is actually a competition. When we are set against someone we have no chance of winning or losing against, things go wrong. Firstly, the winner has expended little effort to succeed, leading to an unearned sense of superiority that can grow into narcissism and a belief about the inferiority of the opponent. Secondly, the loser becomes discouraged and can form feelings of negative self-worth, having put forth excessive effort only to fail, while their opponent has won so easily. In team play, feeling as if you cannot contribute to the team can be just as damaging as defeat itself.
Further, unfair competition can lead to a feeling of systemic injustice which drives good people to unethical behavior, as they believe their situation is already unfair and they are just balancing the scales. Meanwhile, easy success can lead winners to feel entitled to victory, overestimate their abilities, and make them more likely to cheat if they feel threatened by perceived lessers. It can lead to a situation where one small group thinks of themselves as the natural champions, discounting the role or importance of other players.
Rule: Encourage competition between characters of similar ability. Challengers should be of equal power whenever possible. Maintain a culture which encourages people to look for equals when competing and discourages predatory behavior towards weaker or newer players.
A Crowded Field
We are not wired to compete against one hundred people at once((Garcia, Steven M. and Avishalom Tor. “The N-Effect More Competitors, Less Competition.” Psychological Science 20, no. 7 (2009): 871-877. http://www-personal.umich.edu/~smgarcia/pubs/n-effect.pdf)). The presence of too many competitors makes a competition seem pointless and impersonal. We naturally compare ourselves to small sets of individuals, or single rivals. In a large adversarial game, if a player feels like it is their goal to best every single other player, it encourages insecurity, paranoia, and despair.
When we are given room to choose rivals from a small pool of equals, we stop being discouraged and see our situation as winnable. Rivalries can be healthy, so long as they are balanced and both sides benefit from them.
Rule: Make competition intimate. Make sure competitions are the appropriate scale for participants, giving them room for fair comparison. Have them feel like they are competing with a small group of people, not the entire game.
Winner Takes All
High stakes play encourages maladaptive competition. By creating situations where the only worthwhile outcome is victory, games unwittingly obscure the secondary effects of competition. In the face of a hard and absolute loss, without recognition of effort or skill which might be gained during the struggle for excellence, winning becomes all that matters.
A better model is “winner takes most,” where different levels of success exist; Effort and achievement is recognized on every level. This isn’t an “everyone gets a trophy” model. Rather, it is a recognition of the value and meaning of incremental improvements. And sometimes, being on the board is a meaningful enough achievement on its own. First or last, managing to cross the finish line in a marathon is cause for celebration and pride.
Rule: Avoid crushing victories or absolute defeats. Make partial success count. Make it so all levels of participation are meaningful in some capacity. Avoid giving all the spoils to one side or person.
It Nevers Ends
Healthy competition has a defined start and finish. In games without a clear beginning and end, defeat becomes inevitable and victory is reduced to a useless struggle to temporarily stave off defeat. It drains your proverbial batteries, making feelings of improvement get lost in a fog of anxiety, paranoia, and despair.
The best pattern of competition is marked by distinct periods of preparing, competing, and recuperating. Many games, especially campaign games, do not have this natural pattern. The pressure to play constantly and keep competitive can be overwhelming.
Rule: Have distinct periods of competition and recuperation. The recuperation should far outweigh the competition. Endless online play, between-game actions, and jockeying for position should be limited if not eliminated. It is not the stress of competition but chronic, endless stress that creates maladaptive play.
Why Bother? Just Collaborate!
“All right, Lone Ranger,” you might say, “I get it, competition can be good. But it can be bad in so many ways. Why not stick with collaborative play and steer clear of any problems?”
Unfortunately collaboration, and the absence of all competition, has its own set of problems. The Nordic and freeform larp community already admits this, even if it does not realize it.
We’ve established that competitiveness can be adaptive and maladaptive. Wouldn’t it follow that collaboration has its own adaptive and maladaptive forms? Let’s think about what maladaptive collaboration would look like.
In a situation where all disputes must be collaboratively resolved, those who are most capable of manipulation and building false consensus are liable to push their own egos and agendas onto the community. Alternately, tyranny of the majority may develop where having a unique or discordant opinion is penalized as selfish and destructive, marking you as flawed or leading to ostracization.
This is maladaptive collaboration, and it is extremely resistant to change. It is easy for any effort to correct problems to be seen as the selfish desires of individuals at the expense of the group. Further, in games that emphasize the need for consent to proceed, there’s incentive to pressure those who disagree into quick agreement. Failing to agree can make you look responsible for “ruining everyone else’s experience.” Even through an earnest desire to work together, a good community can become the victim of its own selflessness, descending into groupthink and self-policing, while needing no villains to do so.
Maladaptive competition, the great evil of larping, is rightly accused of teaching narcissism, encouraging cheating, promoting winning at all costs, and breeding feelings of entitlement via unfair victories and perceived competitive ability. But maladaptive collaboration should be recognized as teaching social manipulation, encouraging bullying, promoting submission to the group at all costs, and breeding feelings of entitlement via popularity and social intelligence.
We Have Confronted the Problems with Collaboration
We talked about how healthy competition requires rest and recuperation. Collaborative play is widely regarded as benefiting from guided recuperation — or, as some like to call it, debriefing.
We talked about how adaptive competition is defined by an ability to accept and grow from failure or show humility in success. Many techniques in collaborative play exist to ensure people must accept another person’s limits and not ignore the contributions of others.
We talked about how adaptive competition focuses on putting you into situations you can handle and improve from.Collaborative play features X-cards((Stavropoulous, John. “X-Card by John Stavropoulos.” Google Docs. Accessed January 30, 2017. https://docs.google.com/document/d/1SB0jsx34bWHZWbnNIVVuMjhDkrdFGo1_hSC2BWPlI3A/mobilebasic)), bow-out techniques, and other methods to make sure the player can handle the content of their game.
These policies and rules are the result of the Nordic and greater collaborative game community recognizing the dangers of what I call maladaptive collaboration, trying to safeguard against them through good policies and rules.
Now We Need to Confront the Problems with Competition
The thing to take away from these comparisons is that on the whole, collaborative games have done a very good job developing the techniques that keep the collaboration healthy. We need to have that same conversation about keeping competition healthy without replacing it entirely.
We can improve competitive play and appreciate competition as competition, without treating it as flawed collaboration. We need to have fights, and make sure they are good fights.
In Part 2, Why We Fight, I will discuss all that competition does for a player and how it can provide a uniquely beneficial and transformative experience.
Cover photo: Larpers from around the world partake in some competetive boffer fighting at Knudepunkt 2015 (photo by Johannes Axner).
Be the change! Break the chains! Change the world!
Dan Obeah motto, New World Magischola Run 2
New World Magischola is an American blockbuster larp produced by Learn Larp, LLC about students and faculty attending a wizard university in a new North American magical universe. Inspired by the hugely successful College of Wizardry larps at Czocha Castle in Poland, designers Maury Brown and Benjamin A. Morrow decided to bring a version of the larp to the United States. Bolstered in part by the media fervor around the College of Wizardry documentary((Cosmic Joke UK, “College of Wizardry – Documentary,” YouTube, last modified Dec 9, 2014, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oW0bi_XgMY0. See also the promo trailer: Cosmic Joke UK, ““College of Wizardry – Documentary Promo,” YouTube, last modified Dec 2, 2014, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qVL-ts38-Rs.)) by Cosmic Joke Productions that went viral on multiple media outlets((Johannes Axner, “College of Wizardry 2014 Round-up,” Nordiclarp.org, last modified Dec 9, 2014, https://nordiclarp.org/2014/12/09/college-of-wizardry-2014-round-up/.)) and by the designers’ own successful marketing, the Kickstarter for the larp raised an astounding $303,877. These funds went toward establishing the logistics for four runs of the larp in June and July of 2016 at the University of Richmond in Virginia. This article will discuss the first two runs of the game in June, where I served as a staff member and non player-character (NPC) counselor in the first run and House President player in the second.
While this article will cover some of the content of the game, the focus of this discussion will center upon the culture that has emerged around New World Magischola through intentional design and player contributions. Based upon initial blog posts and Internet discussions, the game appears to be inspiring a paradigmatic shift in many participants about the nature of larp, what sorts of experiences it can produce, and what kinds of community standards a play culture can establish. Therefore, this article will discuss the following topics within these contexts: basic game logistics, my personal narrative as a player, the progressive design goals, the consent-based play culture, and the relative success of introducing Nordic-style larp to a primarily North American audience. I will not discuss specific plotlines in the interest of protecting spoilers for future runs.
College of Wizardry producer Claus Raasted as the Chancellor in NWM1.
While this game stands as a landmark on its own, I invite readers to consider this information as a convergence of trends that have been building for the last several years: increased communication between North American larpers and international players through Facebook, blogs, and other social media channels; innovations in North American indie game design; other cross-cultural collaborations including College of Wizardry; a greater interest in establishing safety, consent, and calibration around play; and the continued development of academic and practical publications including the Nordic larp Knutepunkt books, the International Journal of Role-playing, Analog Game Studies, The Wyrd Con Companion Book, and Game Wrap, etc. Combined with Brown and Morrow’s talents in intentional design and marketing, these factors have culminated in a remarkable experience for many of the players: College of Wizardry veterans, experienced North American larpers, and new participants alike.
The Setting: Progress, not Perfection
New World Magischola presents an environment where much progressive social change has occurred, but the result is far from a perfect utopia. Similar to College of Wizardry, New World Magischola is set in a fictional world similar to that of Harry Potter, but with an entirely new lore based in regional history and mystical traditions specific to North America.
Students attend a late-night club at NWM2. Photo courtesy of Learn Larp LLC.
Players start as either professors, third-year, second-year, or first-year students. Third and second-years are already sorted into one of five Houses with distinct personalities and histories: House Croatan, Maison DuBois, Lakay Laveau, Casa Calisaylá, and Dan Obeah. The larp starts Thursday afternoon with a series of briefings and workshops. Play begins Thursday night with group dining and announcements. Then, House parties take place, where the Houses get to know the first-years and decide who they would like to recruit. Clubs also meet Thursday night. Classes take place during the day on Friday, with the House draft and sorting ceremony on Friday night, as well as clubs. Classes resume on Saturday, with a formal dance that evening. The game ends at around midnight, with structured debriefing on Sunday morning.
Brown playing an NPC hob. Photo by Learn Larp LLC.
With regard to the lore, the designers had to walk a fine line between wedding invented magical elements with real world historical facts and cultures in a way that was respectful, informed, fair, but also honest. The goal of this design was to create a magical universe that did not whitewash history or cherry pick events based upon the stories of the victors, but rather to directly confront the biases, hypocrisies, and violence that stain the American promise of “freedom” while acknowledging the potential embedded in that promise. In this regard, Brown and Morrow consulted with several players of color from diverse backgrounds in order to portray certain cultures respectfully, as they integrated elements into the lore from First Nations, voodoo, slavery, etc. Traumatic moments such as the Civil War are intertwined with invented magical lore to create a universe that feels both grounded in this world and otherworldly.
While these historical elements exist within the lore, the bulk of the game deals with social issues through this otherworldly lens of metaphor, allowing participants enough distance to engage with topics without triggering real world personal issues of social discrimination. Examples include using werewolves, vampires, “Unsoiled vs. Mundane” blood, and cryptid sapience rights as metaphors for real world social issues. In order to help cement these themes, all students are required to take a Magical Theory and Ethics class where such topics are brought to the foreground.
A major topic of debate is the rights of magical creatures. Photo by Learn Larp LLC.
Many are assigned to social clubs that meet after class, such as the Sapience Advocacy group. These issues are also interwoven into character concepts in complex ways that avoid stereotypes and demonstrate their multifaceted nature. In the first run, I played a counselor who held an impromptu group therapy session as the result of inclement weather keeping us from leaving a classroom. Within this session, students shared their backgrounds: a Mundane artificer who hates Unsoiled — the higher class in this world — due to discrimination and wishes to break all the things they create; an Unsoiled whose grandparent was killed for defending Mundane rights in court; an ecologically conscious student who wants to take obsolete Mundane technology and recycle it for magical purposes, etc. By the end of this discussion, characters from multiple sides of issues were willing to expand their perspectives. The sophistication of the writing allowed for students to play “dark” or “light” according to their wishes, but to have complex motivations for doing so that often brought important discussions to the foreground.
As a player in the second run, my personal story involved playing a Light-oriented Astromancer named Sedona Winters who could divine the future and travel the astral plane. Sedona was co-House President of Dan Obeah. Aside from my duties toward my House mates and collaboration with fellow Presidents, my personal plotline involved trying to encourage my estranged ex-boyfriend to avoid committing an act that would land him in Avernus prison. These discussions centered around his feelings of determinism based upon his history in a Mixed Heritage crime family and my more privileged, Unsoiled character’s belief in free will and personal choice. Ultimately, he made the Lighter choice and we attended the formal together, but the play could have gone many ways. As sequels are planned for future runs, this storyline remains open.
House Dan Obeah in NWM2. Photo by Learn Larp LLC.
The progressive intent of the design extends from the themes of the game outward to the practices of casting and the establishment of an inclusive play culture. According to the lore, when their daughter was denied attendance to the Imperial Magischola because of her gender, New World Magischola was founded by Virginia Dare and Maximilian Samson in 1635. In this regard, issues of feminism and social progress are interwoven into the school from the ground up, further reinforced by its current ethos, “New World Magischola strongly believes in diversity – of magical tradition, of gender, of race and ethnicity, etc.– both among students and staff, which has been part of its mission since its founding.”((New World Magischola, “About NWM – The School,” Magischola.com, https://magischola.com/about-nwm/.))
The designers encouraged participants from diverse gender, sexuality, ethnicity, and racial backgrounds to apply for professor and president roles. Photo by Learn Larp LLC.
Brown and Morrow reinforced this ethos by encouraging people from diverse gender, racial, ethnic, and sexuality backgrounds to apply for professor and House president roles. In this way, the design allows for multiple layers of diversity: representation in the lore makes space for the plausible physical embodiment of diverse individuals in positions of authority. In this regard, the progressive mission statement of the school is similar to many real world universities, with some enhancements. For example, the default pronouns in the Magimundi — the magical universe — are “they/their/them”; players practiced using these pronouns in workshops, as well as gently correcting each other with a P hand signal from British sign language and a verbal “pronouns” reminder. While this practice caused anxiety for some players initially, by the end of both runs, corrections became mostly seamless and the players respected this expectation. Expanding upon principles from College of Wizardry, discrimination based upon sexuality, gender, race, or ethnicity is not acceptable in the game, with the lore conceit that the Magimundi are beyond such biases. This practice allows vampires, werewolves, and other supernatural beings to act as stand-ins for players to explore issues of discrimination without potentially harming players who experience marginalization in real life. This design also encourages characters to feel comfortable exploring non-traditional types of gender presentation, relationship types, and sexual orientation; all characters are gender-neutral by default and character ties aside from family relations are chosen by the players. Finally, the play culture emphasizes strongly consensual opt-in play, as I will describe in the section below.
Morrow as an NPC in NWM2. Photo by Learn Larp LLC.
All of these factors contribute to an environment rife with potential conflicts, but sensitively written and deployed in order to create a more inclusive space for each player, specifically for players from marginalized backgrounds. Anecdotally, this space proved transformative for some players, as evidenced by recent blog reviews of the game: Shoshana Kessock((Shoshana Kessock, “Orlanda in the Light of Upraised Wands,” Shoshanakessock.com, last modified June 21, 2016, https://shoshanakessock.com/2016/06/21/orlando-in-the-light-of-upraised-wands/.)) discusses her experiences as a queer player in the wake of the Orlando tragedy; Elsa S. Henry((Elsa S. Henry, “Blind Lady Versus New World Magischola,” Feministsonar.com, last modified on June 21, 2016, http://feministsonar.com/2016/06/blind-lady-versus-new-world-magischola/.))describes the empowerment she felt as a player with disabilities in the larp; and Tara M. Clapper((Tara M. Clapper, “Chasing Bleed – An American Fantasy Larper at Wizard School,” Nordiclarp.org, last modified on July 1, 2016, https://nordiclarp.org/2016/07/01/chasing-bleed/.)) speaks of using bleed in the game to practice interpersonal skills and process grief. Other American players have discussed the psychological impact and transformational nature of the game in a (spoiler-filled) Ace of Geeks podcast interview recorded directly after the second run.((Contains spoilers. Mike Fatum. “AOG Podcast Episode 197: New World Magischola – The Experience,” Ace of Geeks, last modified on July 1, 2016, http://aceofgeeks.net/aog-podcast-episode-197-new-world-magischola-experience/.))
The emphasis on metaphorical social issues and discourse embedded in the design led some players to have deeply profound learning moments that I heard echoed by several players after the game. These elements combined with the freeform and consent-based magic mechanics to empower characters to explore issues, find agency, and make change in the magical reality. Brown and Morrow describe this design ethos in more depth in their documents on “Queering the Wizard World & Using Feminist Game Design in NWM,”((Maury Brown and Benjamin A. Morrow, “Queering the Wizard World & Using Feminist Game Design in NWM,” Google Docs, last accessed on July 2, 2016.)) Brown’s “The Trouble with Gender” article in Analog Game Studies,((Maury Elizabeth Brown, “The Trouble with Gender in Larp,” Analog Game Studies, last modified on September 13, 2015, http://analoggamestudies.org/2015/09/the-trouble-with-gender-in-larp/.)) and the “Who We Are” section on their website, along with other resources listed in the below sections.
Magical Theory and Ethics in NWM1. Photo by Learn Larp, LLC.
The Mechanics: When Nordic Style Meets North Americans
Both College of Wizardry and New World Magischola are designed around freeform conflict resolution mechanics that rely heavily on player choice and improvisation; if a character casts a spell on another character, the recipient player decides the effect. The player casting should telegraph the intent of the spell through verbal description, then use a phrase of their choosing to incant while waving their wands. Magical combat is intended to only take place during duels and is therefore not a strong component of the game, although the school teaches both combat and defense. All effects should be physically plausible in a “What You See is What You Get” (WYSIWYG) environment, meaning that setting something on fire would not be plausible as fire is banned on the actual campus, but a spell may produce a burning sensation with no visible effect if the recipient chooses that response. The designers and volunteers of both larps produced a series of informative, short videos on the magic system.
As many experienced North American larpers are accustomed to complex conflict resolution mechanic systems — sometimes encompassing hundreds of pages of rules — this system was difficult for some players to understand. Most North American resolution mechanics determine for both players who “wins” an encounter, whereas the Nordic style often encourages “playing to lose,” “playing for drama,” or “playing for what is interesting.” In other words, a spell failing can often lead to even more interesting play than its success.
Special NPC requested by players at NWM2. Photo by Learn Larp LLC.
Additionally, this system relies heavily on player-driven plotlines. While some overarching stories in the setting are seeded by the organizers or announced throughout the game, players are enabled to make change in their environment by creating their own side plotlines for people to follow, declaring magical effects have taken place in an environment, and even requesting special non-player characters (NPCs) from the staff to arrive at specific times for a purpose. For example, a character may enlist others to go on a ritual through the astral plane in order to cure their curse, declare everyone in a specific room magically unable to tell a lie, or request a special creature to use for demonstration in a Cryptozoology class. In this regard, professors are considered players, while other staff are considered NPCs with more limited goals. The vast majority of these actions can transpire without organizer assistance, with the exception of ordering NPCs, particular props, or special effects. Such a system relies heavily on “yes, and…” or “yes, but…” improvisational play, where everyone feels enabled to present options within the environment and others should play along as they wish without shutting the other person down completely. This design allows for many and varied personal story hooks and small group plotlines, as opposed to finding and taking part in an overarching staff-run “metaplot” — the latter being a common component of North American larps.
While ultimately, the system was successful, play culture differences did emerge, as was anticipated. Organizer-seeded plotlines had a tendency to become major metaplots, as many players prioritized them as more important than personal plotlines. Occasionally, players did report feeling “shut out” of play or other players “hoarding plot.” “Hoarding plot” is a common complaint in many North American systems that include staff-run plotlines to solve, where certain players receive the bulk of the information about the overarching story and keep it for themselves or their smaller social groups. Many players are sensitive to this issue, as they perceive that individuals who receive “more plot” from the organizers hold more social status in the community.
A student interacts with an NPC ghost. Photo by Learn Larp LLC.
Discerning the dynamics involved in such situations at New World Magischola is difficult: Did players intentionally exclude others? Did participants not fully realize the extent to which their personal creativity could affect play? Regardless of intentions, for some experienced North American players, a sort of larp “muscle memory” seemed to kick in occasionally, where instincts from other play communities activated. Another example of this tendency is that some players tended to look for faculty or NPCs to provide “answers,” operating under the typical assumption that people who possess in- and out-of-game authority have more information and agency to resolve situations than typical players do.
Finally, even though players were instructed to wrap up all plotlines before the formal, many left the dance area to pursue plotlines anyway, including a ritual intervention that took place in a classroom on the other side of campus, a public investigation of a student accused of using blood magic, a duel outside, and other personal NPC requests. The tendency of many North American larpers to want to escalate the plotline at the “climax” of the game overtook simply enjoying the social play of the dance for many players, especially since several characters clustered around to watch these activities, drawn to the “action.”
While some players had trouble adapting to the new mechanics, many embraced the freedom of the creative play style. Photo by Learn Larp LLC.
Despite these difficulties, the vast majority of players seemed to adapt to the collaborative nature of play, particularly by the second and third days. Interestingly, the new players appeared to adapt easily to the style, leading many of us to become surprised when we learned that they were first-time larpers. Sometimes, previous experience can lead to expectations of play that constrict possibilities rather than enhance them. On the other hand, experienced players may know how to better insert themselves into scenes or create play for others. Future runs with experienced New World Magischola players will likely run more cohesively in this regard, as the group will have a higher herd competency in the Nordic style.
Opt-In Play: Negotiation, Calibration, Consent, and Safety
As mentioned above, the larp designers believe strongly in creating a play culture of inclusion, which is evident in the design of the workshops, signaling systems, in-game rituals, and debriefing.((Sarah Lynne Bowman and Harrison Greene, “Sample Debriefing Exercise,” Google Docs, last modified March 18, 2015, https://docs.google.com/document/d/1RcsSBhlhMw8jlZqsMsQLx5azBXT1a3L9hgx85i6TJVo/edit?usp=sharing. This exercise borrows heavily from debriefing strategies in the Nordic tradition.)) Harrison Greene and I were honored to help flesh out some of these systems, which borrow heavily from various techniques in other communities.
Players often created their own rituals, as seen here in NWM1. Photo by Learn Larp, LLC.
The design of New World Magischola included explicit instructions for certain components, including the content of rituals, acceptable vs. unacceptable pranks, a form for first-years to fill out their first and last choices for their Houses during the draft, etc. These elements allowed the designers to set clear expectations for tone and appropriate behavior in the hopes of providing a fulfilling experience for the majority of players, rather than leaving this content open to chance.
Lakay Laveau at a ritual in NWM2. Photo by Learn Larp, LLC.
Workshops included instruction on how to play in the Nordic style, how to cast spells, how to participate in Houses, status lines for various character aspects, “hot seat” interviewing to establish character beliefs/ties, creating an off-game buddy system, etc. We also practiced the safety metatechniques, which included the standard “cut” for stopping a scene and “brake” or “Largo” for decreasing the intensity of a scene. The game included a version the “okay” symbol system developed by Aaron Vanek and Kirsten Hageleit for clandestinely checking in with other players; players could flash the okay symbol to someone else, with that person responding with a thumbs up, a so-so, or a thumbs down gesture. We also included the aforementioned pronoun workshop with verbal and visual signals for correction, which we developed with assistance from Liz Gorinsky and Sara Williamson, inspired by their groundbreaking game about gender identity See Me Now.((Liz Gorinsky and Sara Williamson, “See Me Now,” Fastaval 2017, last accessed July 2, 2016, http://www.fastaval.dk/aktivitet/see-me-now-2/?lang=en.)) In addition, we piloted a new technique devised by Trine Lise Lindahl and introduced by Johanna Koljonen((Johanna Koljonen, “Toolkit Premiere! Let’s Name A Bow-Out Mechanic,” Participationsafety.wordpress.com, last modified on May 30, 2016, https://participationsafety.wordpress.com/2016/05/30/toolkit-lets-name-this-baby-bow-out-mechanics/. See also Koljonen’s keynote from the Living Games Conference, “Opt-in/Opt-out Safety Systems,” YouTube, modified on Jun 10, 2016, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7bFdrV3nJA8.)) that we called “Lookdown,” in which a player places their hand over their eyes to duck out of a scene without being followed or questioned.
Players could also leave a scene by saying, “I need to do something for the Chancellor…” without repercussions. We integrated the hand-raising technique, where when one person raises their hand, everyone follows suit and becomes quiet, as well as the “deaf applause” from American Sign Language, where people shake their hands in the air instead of clapping loudly. Additionally, players were encouraged to go off-game subtly to negotiate any sort of violence, romance, or physical touch, all of which required opt-in consent by all players involved. While some worried about the sheer amount of metatechniques to remember, players seemed to use them regularly, particularly “lookdown” and the “okay” symbol. By the end of both runs of the the larp, most players were freely asking each other for consent to hug and fluidly using “they” pronouns. Several experienced players expressed a wish to bring these techniques back to their home communities.
For player safety, the game included counselors, who players could approach in- or out-of-game with concerns. Greene and I performed these roles in the first run, with an NPC ghost serving as a counselor in the second. These roles were important release valves for some players, helping them process emotions or redirect their play. The game also implemented a Sanctuary Space,((Living Games Conference, “Sanctuary Space, Safety Team, and Crisis Management Programming,” Livinggamesconference.com, last modified on April 15, 2016, http://www.livinggamesconference.com/sanctuary-space-safety-team-and-crisis-management-programming/.)) where players could go to decompress in- or out-of-character with a counselor, a friend, or alone. Adapted from Burning Man culture and the recent Living Games Conference 2016, the Sanctuary Space provides a spot for introverted, overstimulated, or physically ill players to relax until they are ready to rejoin play.
House initiation ritual for Casa Calisaylá in NWM2. Photo by Learn Larp, LLC.
Greene and I also helped write a guide for the House Presidents for creating initiation rituals to welcome first-years. These rituals were not to include any sort of hazing or other humiliating play and should create feelings of trust among the House members.
A member of Casa Calisaylá howls “awoo,” the House chant. Photo by Learn Larp, LLC.
During this ritual, first-years were assigned a second year mentor, giving players an extra connection within the game. Emergent ritual concepts included imbuing one’s intention into an item, puzzle rooms, summonings, finding one’s spirit cryptid in the astral plane, leading first-years blindfolded through a “wall of sound” through instruments and voices, etc. Many players reported having powerful experiences and even moments of catharsis during the House rituals. Additionally, players were warned in workshops against mean-spirited play between House members and Houses themselves. Friendly rivalries were fine, while purposeful ostracization or trash-talking was discouraged unless consensual between all parties.
All of these techniques encourage what Brown and Morrow call “Playing for Empathy”((Maury Brown and Benjamin A. Morrow, “Breaking the Alibi: Fostering Empathy by Reuniting the Player and the Character,” in The Wyrd Con Companion Book 2015, ed. Sarah Lynne Bowman (Los Angeles: Wyrd Con, 2015), 102-116, https://www.dropbox.com/s/xslwh0uxa544029/WCCB15-Final.pdf?dl=0)) and “People-Centered Design,”((Maury Brown, “People-Centered Design,” YouTube, last modified on June 10, 2016, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oZY9wLUMCPY.)) in which the comfort level of members of the community is more important than the story.
A New World Awaits
Having played as a professor in College of Wizardry, an NPC counselor in the first run of New World Magischola, and a House President in the second run, I have seen the power of both larps to bring in new players, re-enchant the Mundane world, and produce powerful experiences.
Players forged new in- and out-of-game friendships, here between two “opposing” House presidents after the larp. Photo by Learn Larp, LLC.
The progressive nature of the themes of New World Magischola in particular produced a powerful sense of belongingness and purpose for many of us in run 2. Our Dan Obeah house motto was “Be the change. Break the chains. Change the world,” a Ghandi-inspired reminder that each of us is capable of social change if we use wisdom and strive toward the greater good. We also developed a five fingered, palm-open salute to show unity between the Houses; characters from other Houses could press palms together to show solidarity. This feeling of collective connectivity was palpable in both runs.
Preliminary data from a survey designed by Markus Montola suggest that player responses to the first run of New World Magischola are overwhelmingly positive, both when evaluating whether they had a “great game” and whether this was their “best larp experience ever.” According to the preliminary results, players generally felt “psychologically and emotionally safe,” and almost all of the respondents reported having made new friends as a result of the game.
How New World Magischola will affect the world of larp in North America remains to be seen, but I hope for great things, as players from previously separated communities come together and experience something unique and magical.
Cover photo: A first year receives their House tie during the drafting ceremony, courtesy of Learn Larp LLC. All other photos used with permission from Learn Larp LLC.
New World Magischola
Date: June 16-19, June 23-26, July 21-24 and July 28-31, 2016
Location: University of Richmond in Richmond, Virginia, United States
Duration: 4 days including workshops, play, and debriefing
Participants: 140-165 per run
Participation Fee: $375 to $895, $450 for a regular ticket
Producers: Maury Brown and Ben Morrow, Learn Larp LLC.
Make-up Lead: Katherine Kira “Tall Kat” McConnell. Prosthetics by Mark Mensch
Costuming Lead: Derek Herrera.
Stitchers: Jenny Underwood, Robin Jendryaszek, Jennifer WinterRose, Amber Feldman, Summer Donovan, Michele Mountain, Nancy Calvert-Warren, Jennifer Klettke, Kristen Moutry, Caryn Johnson, Datura Matel
Music: Original songs (lyrics and music) by Austin Nuckols (Maison DuBois, Lakay Laveau, Casa Calisaylá and House Croatan) and Leah K. Blue (Dan Obeah), lyrics to New World Magischola Anthem by Maury Brown and Ben Morrow, music by Austin Nuckols. Other music and sound by Evan Torner and Austin Shepherd
Props: Mike Young, Carrie Matteoli, Indiana Thomas, Summer Donovan, Kevin Donovan, Gordon Olmstead-Dean, Jason Morningstar, Matt Taylor, Molly Ellen Miller, Michael Boyd, Moira Parham, Martin John Manco, Ken Brown, Dale, Laura Young, Harry Lewis, Mark Daniels, Michael Pucci, Terry Smith of Stagecoach Theater Productions, Yvonne and Dirk Parham, Jen Wong, Caryn Johnson, Jess Pestlin, Orli Nativ, Kaitlin Smith, The Center for the Arts of Greater Manassas at the Candy Factory, Melissa Danielle Penner, Jess Sole, Liselle Awwal, Nathan Love.
Helpers and advisors: Anders Berner, Claus Raasted, Christopher Sandberg, Mike Pohjola, Bjarke Pedersen, Johanna Koljonen, Anne Serup Grove, Mikolaj Wicher, Jamie MacDonald, Eevi Korhonen, Markus Montola, Jaakko Stenros, Staffan Rosenberg, Anna Westerling, Michael Pucci, Ashley Zdeb, Emily Care Boss, Daniel Hocutt, Charles Bo Nielsen, Joe Ennis, Kristin Bezio, Rob Balder, Kat Jones, Sarah Lynne Bowman, Harrison Greene.
Assistance with writing, editing, graphic design, music, art: Frank Beres, Claus Raasted, Richard Wetzel, Bethy Winkopp, Oriana Almquist, Craig Anderson, Zach Shaffer, Erica Schoonmaker, Madeleine Wodjak, Toivo Voll, Marie DelRio, Mike Young, Laura Young, Anna Yardney, Lee Parmenter, Stephanie Simmons, Nancy Calvert-Warren, Jessica Acker, Jason Woodland, Jason Arne, Harrison Greene, Sarah Lynne Bowman, Kristi Kalis, Quinn Milton, Anna Kovatcheva, Browning Porter, Orli Nativ, Rhiannon Chiacchiaro, Miranda Chadbourne, Lars Bundvad, Ffion Evans, David Horsh, Dani Castillo, Frank Caffran Castillo, Dayna Lanza, Sarah Brand, Tara Clapper, Suzy Pop, David Neubauer, Chris Bergstresser, Jason Morningstar, Evan Torner, Peter Woodworth, Peter Svensson, Daniel Abraham, Harry Lewis, Alexis Moisand, Alissa Erin Murray, Jennifer Klettke, Kathryn Sarah, Elsa Sjunneson-Henry, Austin Nuckols, Leah Blue, Joelle Scarnati, Dan Luxenberg, Chad Brinkley, David Clements, Niels Ull Harremoës, Adria Kyne, Emily Heflin.
Production and logistics: Austin Shepherd, Claus Raasted, Olivia Anderson, Kristin Bezio, Shayna Alley, Mike Young, Zach Shaffer, Dayna Lanza, Derek Herrera, Kristin Moutrey, Jenny Underwood, Jennifer WinterRose, Caryn Johnson, Amber Feldman, Michele Mountain, Summer Donovan, Robin Jendryaszek, Jennifer Klettke, Datura Metel, Amanda Schoen, Mark Mensch, Katherine McConnell, Chris Bergstresser, Christopher Amherst, Holly Butterfield, Uriah Brown, Kyle Lian, Evan Torner, Jeff Moxley, Ashley Zdeb, Thomas Haynes, Mikolaj Wicher, David Donaldson, Brandy Dilworth and the staff of the University of Richmond Summer Conference Services office.
I’m a larper, so that’s kind of an expected thing. But this wasn’t just any larp experience: this was New World Magischola, a Nordic-inspired game on American soil. Like many Americans who participated in the game, I was equal parts excited and intimidated.
I knew I’d have a once-in-a-lifetime experience, but I wasn’t prepared for the loving and supporting community that would stick with me weeks after the event.
This article describes how I felt about my experience as someone who comes from an American campaign boffer fantasy larp background.
My Background as a Larper
I’ve been participating in live action role playing games for about eight years. I entered the hobby when I attended a PvP (player vs. player) boffer larp called Vanguard (initially Portal II), the sequel to a popular game located in South Jersey in the Northeastern United States.
After sampling a few other games in similar play style, I joined the staff of Seventh Kingdom IGE to handle the out-of-game responsibility of marketing for the first few years of its run. I marketed the game as more immersive((In a US context immersion usually means something external to the player, what is more often called 360 degree illusion in the Nordic countries. Immersion is mostly understood to be an internal state in the Nordic traditions.)) than other local games. I still play there as a PC (player character).
Years later, I began attending larps in other genres, such as the sci-fi Mercenaries of the Galactic Frontier Campaign in the Mystic Realms Multiverse, as well as games within the fantasy genre. Most significantly, I began larping at conventions and played freeform games such as those in #Feminism: A Nano-Games Anthology.
As I started to expand my interest in larps beyond those played primarily in my region, I felt and acted upon a strong desire to blend the styles. When I started attending Double Exposure events and played in This Miracle, a freeform larp by Lizzie Stark and Nick Fortugno focusing on religion and rituals, I asked the other players for permission to take back one of the rituals we’d created and use it as a ritual to an existing god at my home larp.
When I portrayed my established character in the ritual setting, I brought a more aggressive character and play style more commonly used in American fantasy boffer combat games. It’s my hope that both games benefited from this blend and small exchange, and it’s this satisfaction in doing so that led me to snag a ticket for New World Magischola.
New World Magischola is a larp all about attending college as a wizard. It relies on North American lore and traditions and is inspired by the massively successful College of Wizardry, which is run in a castle in Poland.
My Goals at New World Magischola
Nordic larpers played alongside American larpers at New World Magischola
Having experienced immersion and bleed((Bleed is when emotions bleed over between player or character, in either direction.)) at my regular game, I looked for an enhanced version of this experience at New World Magischola. So often, American larpers in my region see bleed primarily as a negative consequence of immersion and over-committed role-play, but I enjoy it as a way to learn more about an aspect of myself.
After I got to know the experienced role-players I’d interact with at New World Magischola via online conversations and Google Hangout sessions prior to the game, I let them know that I was going for some emotionally driven roleplay centered around certain themes.
This type of play is far from impossible to obtain at my usual fantasy games, I should note – one time I experienced missing someone in character and found the scene a cathartic way for me and others to process the real life sudden loss of a beloved member of our larp community. While this type of play is hesitantly accepted in my usual larp community, it is not the norm. Additionally, other real-life societal expectations sometimes endure in the community. For example, the community may more readily accept a woman crying than a man.
Goal 1: Immersion
“Full immersion is dangerous,” one of my friends had told me previously. And he has a point: if you become the character to the point of losing track of the rules in a game involving combat or if you fail to recognize safety words and others’ triggers, immersion could be very dangerous. However, internalizing rules systems – no matter the complexity – has been a safe, useful strategy for me in the past. (This does require either a pre-existing familiarity of the rules system or a game without too many rules).
Having some experience with immersion, feeling comfortable with other participants, and trusting in the organizers, I decided to play as immersively as possible, even opting for an in-game sleeping space. (At New World Magischola, dorm rooms are considered off-game by default.)
The character I played at New World Magischola — Minerva — was stern and often angry. She was rarely effusive with positive emotions. This is a stringent contrast to My Seventh Kingdom IGE character (Ceara) – she’s one of the bubblier characters in game. Minerva hid her expressive vocal talent; Ceara thrives on self-expression. I wanted to play a markedly different character and felt that in a Nordic-style game, my character development would be less hindered (as compared to the American fantasy setting) if I chose to play a character who wasn’t inherently happy.
In real life, I always encounter articles about finding happiness or avoiding negativity. However, life has negative moments. I need to deal with them, not shove them aside. Playing Minerva allowed me to explore this thematically and as a process in a way that the real world does not allow.
Result of Immersion at New World Magischola:
I was out-of-game for less than an hour between game on and game off. I began to feel fully immersed less than an hour into the game. I felt or actively went out of game only for:
Cut scenes (for emotional safety)
To access my phone to check in with my dog sitters
Experiencing anxiety about getting lost (I’m horrible with maps and the campus is large)
A few selfies to document my experience, which I did off-game only because I smile and my character generally doesn’t
Self-care – I had to pause and take a nap; I had to take medication
Immersion helped me expose and confront many negative behaviors – and play up qualities of myself I wish to show to the world more often. Since the game’s end, I have pursued active bleed for the following positive habits once I noticed them forming as a result of the game experience:
Reduction of negative self-talk (“I’m so stupid; I can’t figure out where to find my keys, how can I possibly do anything of significance?”)
Asking for help when I need it: I had a support network in-game. We’re in an out-of-game Facebook group together. Today I asked them for support with a trying situation and I got it.
Being myself instead of what the world expects of me: Sometimes I’m not happy, and that’s okay. Not going to fake it until I make it – I’d rather just avoid wasting my time worrying about the approval of people who don’t matter.
Creative problem-solving: I often feel a loss of control when there is no immediate answer to the problem. How can I use the resources I have to work around that helplessness?
Only apologize when necessary: Apologies are more meaningful when they are rare and reserved for sincerity. I’m not going to apologize to someone if they’re standing in my way or talking over me – but I will apologize if I stand in their way or talk over them.
Respect for proper pronouns: As an editor of subject matter in different fields and subcultures, I can make an active impact regarding this change. I will not wait for a style book to change the way “they” is used. I’ll just make the change. Small policy, large impact.
When the game ended, the debriefing materials and counselors asked us to focus on what we’d like to take away and what we’d like to leave behind. I was surprised to find that I wanted to take away so many things.
Goal 2: Explore Minerva’s Themes: Grief and Loyalty
Having had a positive, cathartic experience exploring grief among trusted friends at a fantasy game, I elected to explore the topic again here. In everyday life, I feel a pressure to “be strong,” especially since other women in geek culture have confessed to looking at me as an influencer.
However, I understand that being strong also means being real about strong emotions and coping with them. New World Magischola provided me with an opportunity to explore and resolve issues that were holding me back.
Grief
I miss my grandfather a lot. He passed away in 2014. When I received my character sheet for New World Magischola, I noticed that her grandfather was a mundane country musician. When I later had the opportunity to request a scene, I asked that the grandfather’s ghost come to find Minerva at school.
I noted on the request form that I was going for some closure and intentional bleed here to keep all parties informed for emotional safety. I was confident that the people handling this would have good judgment, and they did.
The scene created was extremely touching. My character sang to her grandfather and the scene pushed her to accept and process her emotions more readily. I’m extremely grateful to those who helped with the scene, knowing what it meant, and that no one questioned my ability to determine what level of intentional bleed was appropriate for me.
This scene was part of the reason I felt so much peace after I came home from game.
Some people, even in the larp scene, find this whole experience weird or think that bleed is only something negative. While I’ve experienced negative effects of bleed, I more commonly utilize it as a very powerful tool for self-discovery and self-improvement. However, I struggle with a lack of validation for that strategy in my usual larp scene.
Loyalty
I enjoy being valued. Unfortunately, this can manifest in negative attention-seeking behaviors in the real world, like wanting to be noticed by people who mean to harm or manipulate me and others. I used the game as an opportunity to explore loyalty to an entire group of people (my character’s House).
Although Minerva had more personal connections with some than others (and although some of those people weren’t necessarily doing things for the good of the world), this was a much healthier way for my character (and myself) to seek positive reinforcement, approval, and loyalty.. As Minerva, I was able to turn that constant approval into positive actions, like making new spells or mentoring a new House initiate with confidence.
This process is an exemplary one for me to internalize. I don’t want to waste energy on the wrong people, but there are some people in my life who deserve my loyalty. Roleplaying Minerva helped me learn how to differentiate between the two.
Both Minerva and Ceara are extremely loyal characters. This is one of the more rewarding traits for me to play and makes me feel like I can seek and give approval to others in both settings in an emotionally healthy way.
Exploring a World Without ‘-isms’
The week before I went to New World Magischola, my website about women in geek culture was hacked. This happened as my site hosted a series of panels about women in geek culture, representation in films, and communities of color and safe spaces at Wizard World Philly, an annual fan convention in Philadelphia.
The hack may or may not have been coincidental, but the effects were very real: I felt angry, unsafe, and, defeated.
Going into the game, especially after this, was the challenge of playing in a world without “isms.” I’m white, cisgender, and heterosexual, and I’m aware that I likely project many microaggressions unintentionally towards marginalized people.
Additionally, as illustrated by the website hack example, I feel disadvantaged as a woman living in a patriarchal society. I wasn’t sure how I could even begin to pretend to live in something else, so I made it a personal challenge to recognize equality as part of the Magimundi: the magical world in New World Magischola.
I was somewhat accustomed to this in my home larp as my character represents a “might makes right” society. While power matters more than gender in the game setting and the real-world game culture, there are still occasionally some gender dynamics in play (and I willfully explore some of those in-game relationships).
Without the existence of sexism holding me (the player) back at New World Magischola, I found that my character did not question herself very often, and that other characters challenged her on ideas and associations rather than physical characteristics, appearance, or clothing.
Being Perceived as Capable
Minerva was seen as capable as most others in the world because the roleplay mattered more than a preconceived notion of what it meant to be “able.” While I do suffer from chronic pain, it’s usually not visible. I am, however, short in height and frequently talked over by men. Yet within the world, I did not experience this negativity and I was not held back by it.
From a place of privilege, I also found it immersively easier to think person-first: “they’re a Marshal” or “she’s a member of Dan Obeah” versus seeing differences and disabilities as a primary identifying characteristic. It’s not about defining someone else, but being very aware of how they prefer to be identified and defined (or not). It’s important to recognize how someone else wants to be thought of: is this part of who they are? Do they identify this way as a primary means of definition? New World Magischolacaused me to think about these things and have enlightening conversations about them later.
The game world is all about what you can do, not your real or perceived limitations – and your abilities are based on magical prowess and how you interact with the world, not a character sheet with hit points and skills.
I found my real-world biases exposed and as a result, I commit to fighting them post-game.
I also wish to note that the players of the game did explore themes of inclusion allegorically. I made the choice to downplay my character’s biases in certain instances, especially following the recent shooting in Orlando. As my character felt especially close to a vampire hater, I learned that sometimes hate originates from a pain in someone who feels they can’t be healed.
The most significant adjustments I had to make in going from an American fantasy campaign boffer larp to New World Magischolainvolved game format and timing. In most of the games I’ve played, the climax of the story occurs towards the end of the game in a “main mod,” during which the main characters and their NPC (non-player character) allies take on the big bad villain of the month.
What Is a Larp Module?
Modules, or “mods.” typically involve planned scenes during which PCs are presented with opportunities to interact with NPCs and environments in a battle and/or roleplay context. An example: a known friendly NPC acts as a “hook,” asking for adventurers to help him get to another location safely. On the way, the group is attacked by waiting monsters (NPCs). While this is typical of American fantasy campaign style, mods can involve only two people and a high level of emotional intensity. The “main mod” is typically inclusive of the entire group and may involve grand melee combat.
At a game like New World Magischola, this isn’t necessarily the case. The big event at the end is the formal ball. Like classes and meals, it’s built into the schedule of the game. It’s a protected space with wards, so nothing bad can happen there; I got the impression from some College of Wizardry veterans that you should even have your plot wrapped up before the ball.
Emotionally, I was pleasantly surprised at the way the event worked for me and some members of my character’s House. The game got more emotional for me over time. At one point, my character was upset and there were tears. One of the counselors (who are brilliantly counselors in game, but will also talk to you out of game if necessary) came over to check on me. In the last twenty minutes of the game, I managed to wrap up my plot in a way that prevented too much negative bleed.
Competition: Playing to Win, Playing to Lose, and the “Magic” Combination
It’s often assumed that:
American larpers play to win: competitive play in which the game can be “won;”
Nordic larpers play to lose: making choices to create the most interesting or moving scene even if that has negative consequences for their character.
While I love competitive elements, I’ve also seen them create a destructive or win-focused environment in some games and gaming cultures.
At New World Magischola, much of the in-game competition was enhanced by personal rivalry. This especially makes sense due to the elaborate pre-game relationship building some wished to partake in.
In both gaming environments, I have noticed in-game competition taken a little too far — teasing on Facebook about one culture or House being better than another, chants disparaging one group instead of simply promoting one’s own. Overall, I felt like the spirit at New World Magischolawas more welcoming, but that could also be due to a “grass is always greener” or honeymoon effect.
Immersion was prevalent in both styles, though I found myself more frequently and more fully immersed in the Nordic style game. This was due to several reasons:
I didn’t have to do math to think about how many hit points I had
The setting, while magical, was modern, so things like “mundane cars” didn’t have to be “dragons”
Most out-of-game communication took place before the game, very briefly, or through non-invasive hand signals (as opposed to narration or describing things that weren’t actually there)
Immersion Versus Playing to Lose
That said, I didn’t embrace “play to lose” as much as some Nordic style gamers do. This is because of immersion. I was always conscious of safety and ensuring others’ comfort as players, but I wasn’t thinking “what will make a more interesting story?” or even “what would my character do?” Instead, I had chosen to play a reactive character and I did.
In retrospect, there were things I could have done to make more interesting scenes. There were also actions other players took to ensure better scenes for me, but for the most part, I’m glad I stuck to simply being my character and setting her up in a way that encouraged kindness to other players, involving others (not hoarding information), and dramatic, decisive involvement.
What Others Said: Too Nordic or Not Nordic Enough?
I have not played a larp in Europe, but I did hear some College of Wizardry vets describe some differences between the two games. I got the impression that there is less hand-holding at College of Wizardry and less attention to various sensitivities.
As a player, safety is important to me. I need to feel physically and emotionally safe before I can experience immersion, and the rules set in place at New World Magischola made that possible.
Effects of Bleed: Expected and Unexpected
Having experienced bleed before in campaign games, I did expect some lasting effects. I’ve had players treat me poorly because they did not agree with or understand something my character did. Some of them did this unintentionally or they would simply not admit to bleed — since it’s such a forbidden thing in some American larp.
I found that the intentional bleed I sought at New World Magischolawas there and it was transformative. Weeks later, I feel like I really dove into the grieving process and gave myself closure by experiencing grief in game.
What I did not expect was such a strong bond with the other players. Prior to the game, I’d been going through a great deal of personal difficulty and hadn’t been able to connect with other players to the degree I’d wanted, mostly due to real world strain and time limitations. Plus, I thought I’d only be playing this character for a few days: why was it worth it to invest so much time and money into character creation and relationships?
As I mentioned previously, I did spend time on Google Hangouts with the players of my character’s House presidents and other members of our House before game. I was pretty comfortable with everyone in the Hangouts, so this made me able to hop right into character once we were in game.
They seemed like cool people and once we started talking about character development, I could tell that they were all very talented and creative.
What I was not expecting was the out-of-game attachment I’d feel to other players I interacted with in-game. It’s been more than a week since the game has ended and it feels really weird if I don’t talk to the player of my character’s roommate every other day or so.
There’s also the shared experience: it helps me to know that other people miss me. I feel very validated in all of my emotions and actions surrounding the game.
I did find that my return to “normal life” happened a bit faster than that of others. This was likely due to:
Short travel time (6 hours) and little time spent “in transit” (airports, etc.)
Formal and informal debriefing following the game
Immediate return to work
My own expectations for intentional bleed
Being accustomed to returning to work immediately after an intense RP weekend
The need to remain connected with other players was so intense it was surprising. I found that others in the community were experiencing similar feelings, and once I realized that my feelings were typical for the experience, I accepted them. Now I have New World Magischolafriends I’ve already seen in person again and many more that I speak to on Facebook regularly. Aside from the positive bleed (particularly less negative self-talk) I took away from the game, my new friends are the greatest benefit of having played in this community.
Blending Traditions: Reconciliation and Deliberate Infusions
Moving forward, I’m prepared to blend styles as much as existing games will allow. I find the “main mod” in campaign larps irresistible — but in Nordic style games, players are empowered to create plot themselves. Having emotional scenes at the end of the New World Magischola game was a highlight for me. There’s no reason I couldn’t have also had a big duel as well.
I have to accept the fact that there isn’t a big finale, necessarily, in the Nordic style, but that doesn’t mean I can’t work within the format to create something satisfying for myself and others.
Player empowerment is something I want to bring back with me into Seventh Kingdom. As I play a character in a leadership position, I’m already empowered and expected to do some things for the players and characters in my group. While I don’t want to push the limits of what I’m permitted to do — there’s no making up spells on the fly when there’s a 300 page rulebook — I realize that I can create customs and traditions for my character’s kingdom, get them staff approved if necessary, and run rituals and other events within the player group.
During a run of This Miracle at Dreamation in 2014, I wasn’t sure about freeform and Nordic style games. It felt more comfortable for me to play a familiar character, so I played Ceara from Seventh Kingdom. There were not too many character limitations and playing a developed character seemed to help other players as well.
During the game, we created rituals together. One of the rituals we created reminded my character very much of her culture in Seventh Kingdom. With the players’ permission, I took the ritual back to my home larp and involved them in it at the game. The ritual helped to engage new players by providing them with something to do. In this way, I’ve been blending games and styles naturally and the biggest benefits are:
How increasingly comfortable I become in multiple styles
How I provide engaging content that helps other players and enhances the storylines of other characters.
Financial Privilege and Accessibility
Prior to playing New World Magischola, I had been a bit put off by some players in the Nordic scene. While I was open-minded, some of them didn’t believe that I had achieved immersion in “just a boffer larp.” That’s hurtful, because I’m proud of the intense roleplay that happens at Seventh Kingdom and I work very hard as a player to foster that aspect of the culture at the larp.
Additionally, there are comments like “you need to play a game in Europe.” That implies a lot of financial privilege. Like most American larpers, I can’t simply afford to fly to Poland on a whim and play in a castle (even though I would love to play College of Wizardry). At best, for most campaign larpers, that would involve sacrificing their home game for a once per year experience. And when your social community revolves around larp and you enjoy larp, that’s a depressing thought.
Attending New World Magischola was a privilege for me. I made sacrifices to go, as did other members of my household. I’m eating peanut butter and jelly sandwiches for dinner this week because I wanted to have the right props for the game two weeks ago. That’s not the worst thing ever, but it goes to show that not everyone can easily afford to attend. I was only able to go because I snagged a lightning round ticket during the New World Magischola Kickstarter.
It was worth the equivalent of copay for 19 sessions of therapy that it cost, and was at least as cathartic, providing me with a vehicle for self-affirmation, inclusion, and positivity supported by a loving community.
House Maison DuBois.
American Larpers: A Note on Superiority, Elitism, and Guilt
New World Magischola fell on the same weekend of my beloved Seventh Kingdom IGE. I had no small amount of guilt over heading to another game instead of one I’ve played every month (with one exception, when I was in a car accident) for years.
I lessened this guilt by taking the opportunity to make sure my kingdom group at Seventh Kingdom had everything they needed, to send in my monthly reports and character letters, and to let the game’s staff know I wouldn’t be around.
I had major FOMO (fear of missing out) regarding Seventh Kingdom the whole way down to New World Magischola. By the time the game was over, I was so overtaken with the immersive experience and intentional bleed of New World Magischola that I didn’t even think about Seventh Kingdom until my friend asked – and then I checked the phone to make sure my kingdom still existed in the game and that the king still lived!
The general perception in some international larp communities is that American fantasy boffer larping is pretty low-brow and that Nordic larp experiences are intense, emotional, have less rules, and therefore better. Following New World Magischola, players originating from both styles admitted to these perceptions on Facebook and confessed concern and regret over how it could have affected their play. Most had positive experiences and were so grateful to find that the stereotypes were not entirely true.
Coming back from my first large-scale Nordic-style game and going back to my core group of friends who larp here, I wasn’t sure how to discuss my experiences with them. It was clear I had fallen in love with the new game and the play style; I harbored guilt that I developed a familial relationship in three days akin to one that had taken three years to develop in a campaign setting. This also extended to my non-larp geek friends. “You had to be there” doesn’t sound welcoming. I’m still trying to think of a way to express my appreciation for both styles without sounding superior in either social group.
I tried discussing my experiences with a few close friends from the American larp scene. I called Seventh Kingdom a “boffer game” like Nordic larpers do and got an immediate scowl from my friend. I see myself as continuing to enjoy both styles, but expecting different things out of them:
Games like Seventh Kingdom let you work over time to earn big achievements, which is extremely rewarding. You can’t just “make yourself” a diplomat in that game, but there are avenues to earn it, for example. I like having to earn something over time.
The triumphant feeling of fighting “the Big Bad” at the main mod at the end of the game is exhilarating. I prefer this format of action.
Less rules (like at New World Magischola) promotes immersion and prevents rules lawyering.
Relationship-building is a crucial aspect of both types of games, so long as they involve collaborative storytelling.
Open discussion of bleed, lack of shame, and the unabashed acceptance of the game culture at New World Magischola is refreshing. It’s more than a honeymoon phase, but the fact that it’s new to me only enhances my feelings.
I’m not going to hide the fact that New World Magischola made me a better larper and a stronger, more confident, and more empathetic person. I want to carry those positive traits over to all of my larping experiences.
Recommendations for American Larpers
American larpers attending Nordic games in general and New World Magischola in particular should keep the following in mind:
You won’t get accused of being a “special snowflake.” Make a scene request. Enhance a scene. Do something dramatic. It only makes the collaborative storytelling experience better.
Some preplanned relationships and player interaction helps, especially if you want to feel more comfortable. There’s no need to put an excessive amount of time into it, though. You can do this online, but connecting in person and at the workshops at the beginning of the game is especially recommended.
Wear or do something iconic that is specific only to your character. For me, it was a hat.
In some scenes, you’re a supporting character. In other scenes, you’re the star.
If you need help improvising or can’t figure out a solution to something, ask in-character. Minerva asked her mentor and professors for help with a spell, which made sense in game.
These experiences and comparisons are only mine. Given their own backgrounds and individual larp experiences, each player will have different feelings regarding what it’s like to play at New World Magischola. For me, the game was an unforgettable, life-changing, shared experience.
In the American games I play in the northeastern U.S., admitting to bleed comes with a stigma. At New World Magischola, it comes with the territory. I’d like to see American games adapt a healthier mentality here: it potentially makes role-play and combat more meaningful. New World Magischola wasn’t afraid of empowering players to affect the game world; I’d love to see some of these restrictions similarly lifted in American games. Some do that to a degree — at Seventh Kingdom IGE, characters are encouraged to spend “patronage points” to influence politics behind the scenes. More of that, maybe not dependent on mechanics, would benefit these games.
At New World Magischola, people were focused on the experience. We were told there is no “world plot” like there often is in American games, and there was no guaranteed awesome “main mod” moment towards the end of the game. New World Magischola could meet more American larpers’ expectations by making a slight adaptation to them. The announcement of the house cup winners did provide some closure to the event and players seemed to understand that it was important to tie up plots if possible, but a final, definitive and dramatic surprise scene involving combat might have improved the closure.
Going forward, I aim to willfully contribute to the blending of these styles, especially as games and systems allow. As long as safety is considered, I’m not going to hold back the emotional depth of my roleplay at American games; as long as there is the opportunity to create more final and decisive action, I’ll work on initiating larger scenes in Nordic style games.
My combined experiences in multiple styles and my interactions with game designers have inspired me to pursue larp development. In all styles I’ve experienced, I’ve witnessed sincere community development largely aimed at supporting and caring for other players and the game. I’m inspired – and if I can provide this to others even for a few hours, I will be able to make a positive contribution to the larp community which has changed me for the better.
Cover photo: Wizards posing for a photo before the student ball (play, courtesy of Learn Larp LLC). All other photos used with permission from Learn Larp LLC.
New World Magischola
Date: June 16-19, June 23-26, July 21-24 and July 28-31, 2016
Location: University of Richmond in Richmond, Virginia, United States
Duration: 4 days including workshops, play, and debriefing
Participants: 140-165 per run
Participation Fee: $375 to $895, $450 for a regular ticket
Producers: Maury Brown and Ben Morrow, Learn Larp LLC.
Make-up Lead: Katherine Kira “Tall Kat” McConnell. Prosthetics by Mark Mensch
Costuming Lead: Derek Herrera.
Stitchers: Jenny Underwood, Robin Jendryaszek, Jennifer WinterRose, Amber Feldman, Summer Donovan, Michele Mountain, Nancy Calvert-Warren, Jennifer Klettke, Kristen Moutry, Caryn Johnson, Datura Matel
Music: Original songs (lyrics and music) by Austin Nuckols (Maison DuBois, Lakay Laveau, Casa Calisaylá and House Croatan) and Leah K. Blue (Dan Obeah), lyrics to New World Magischola Anthem by Maury Brown and Ben Morrow, music by Austin Nuckols. Other music and sound by Evan Torner and Austin Shepherd
Props: Mike Young, Carrie Matteoli, Indiana Thomas, Summer Donovan, Kevin Donovan, Gordon Olmstead-Dean, Jason Morningstar, Matt Taylor, Molly Ellen Miller, Michael Boyd, Moira Parham, Martin John Manco, Ken Brown, Dale, Laura Young, Harry Lewis, Mark Daniels, Michael Pucci, Terry Smith of Stagecoach Theater Productions, Yvonne and Dirk Parham, Jen Wong, Caryn Johnson, Jess Pestlin, Orli Nativ, Kaitlin Smith, The Center for the Arts of Greater Manassas at the Candy Factory, Melissa Danielle Penner, Jess Sole, Liselle Awwal, Nathan Love.
Helpers and advisors: Anders Berner, Claus Raasted, Christopher Sandberg, Mike Pohjola, Bjarke Pedersen, Johanna Koljonen, Anne Serup Grove, Mikolaj Wicher, Jamie MacDonald, Eevi Korhonen, Markus Montola, Jaakko Stenros, Staffan Rosenberg, Anna Westerling, Michael Pucci, Ashley Zdeb, Emily Care Boss, Daniel Hocutt, Charles Bo Nielsen, Joe Ennis, Kristin Bezio, Rob Balder, Kat Jones, Sarah Lynne Bowman, Harrison Greene.
Assistance with writing, editing, graphic design, music, art: Frank Beres, Claus Raasted, Richard Wetzel, Bethy Winkopp, Oriana Almquist, Craig Anderson, Zach Shaffer, Erica Schoonmaker, Madeleine Wodjak, Toivo Voll, Marie DelRio, Mike Young, Laura Young, Anna Yardney, Lee Parmenter, Stephanie Simmons, Nancy Calvert-Warren, Jessica Acker, Jason Woodland, Jason Arne, Harrison Greene, Sarah Lynne Bowman, Kristi Kalis, Quinn Milton, Anna Kovatcheva, Browning Porter, Orli Nativ, Rhiannon Chiacchiaro, Miranda Chadbourne, Lars Bundvad, Ffion Evans, David Horsh, Dani Castillo, Frank Caffran Castillo, Dayna Lanza, Sarah Brand, Tara Clapper, Suzy Pop, David Neubauer, Chris Bergstresser, Jason Morningstar, Evan Torner, Peter Woodworth, Peter Svensson, Daniel Abraham, Harry Lewis, Alexis Moisand, Alissa Erin Murray, Jennifer Klettke, Kathryn Sarah, Elsa Sjunneson-Henry, Austin Nuckols, Leah Blue, Joelle Scarnati, Dan Luxenberg, Chad Brinkley, David Clements, Niels Ull Harremoës, Adria Kyne, Emily Heflin.
Production and logistics: Austin Shepherd, Claus Raasted, Olivia Anderson, Kristin Bezio, Shayna Alley, Mike Young, Zach Shaffer, Dayna Lanza, Derek Herrera, Kristin Moutrey, Jenny Underwood, Jennifer WinterRose, Caryn Johnson, Amber Feldman, Michele Mountain, Summer Donovan, Robin Jendryaszek, Jennifer Klettke, Datura Metel, Amanda Schoen, Mark Mensch, Katherine McConnell, Chris Bergstresser, Christopher Amherst, Holly Butterfield, Uriah Brown, Kyle Lian, Evan Torner, Jeff Moxley, Ashley Zdeb, Thomas Haynes, Mikolaj Wicher, David Donaldson, Brandy Dilworth and the staff of the University of Richmond Summer Conference Services office.
Once upon a time – actually, at GenCon 2014 in Indianapolis, USA – several of us discovered a design problem for live freeform games. For the last five years, the independent role-playing game scene here in North America has run an expanding series of crowdsourced events under the banner of Games on Demand. Players show up shortly before the convention slot, choose an available game from a menu, and then sit down with the event facilitator to play. This year, we introduced Larps on Demand, a branch of Games on Demand with its own room at Origins and GenCon, and that is where we encountered our problem.
The problem is as follows: GenCon and Origins are both massive conventions full of interesting things and people to see. As such, few attendees want to make intensive four-hour time commitments in this context, and thus we watched as the two-hour Larps on Demand events filled up, while the four-hour events did not and were cancelled. In response, facilitators began to split their four-hour events in two, and running larps in public spaces to attract visibility.
In our post-GenCon debrief, we decided that established live freeform games that lasted two hours such as J. Tuomas Harviainen’s The Tribunal required too many players, whereas a flexible game like Håken Lid and Ole Peder Giæver’s The Hirelings required too much time, and Lizzie Stark’s The Curse required intimate space that was at a premium in a large convention setting. What were we to do?
Thus the Golden Cobra Challenge for October 2014 was born. We would solve this live freeform problem by considering it as a set of design constraints in itself. Scrappy pervasive freeforms were what we needed. Therefore, the game submissions had to:
Be playable from start to finish in two hours or less, facilitated by people who were not the designer him/herself.
Be playable by a variable but small number of participants, ideally a wide range like 2–8.
Be playable in a public space, like an open lounge in a busy hallway.
Optional: Use the ingredients Chord, Light, Solution, Bear and Minute.
We advertised it as a “friendly contest open to anyone interested in writing and playing freeform games,” and even provided a much-utilized mentor program for freeform designers who wanted to bounce their ideas off a partner. We would award prizes in categories corresponding with our design needs: Most Convention- Ready, Most Appealing to Newcomers, Cleverest Design, and Game We’re Most Eager to Play. That being said, the prize for each category was that the game would be run at least once at Metatopia in November 2014.
II. The Baddest-Ass Snakes in the Jungle
What came of it? Over 50 freeform submissions poured in from around the world, addressing the design constraints with verve and creativity. Designers and theorists once again debated definitions of “freeform”, while others saw fit to troll the contest with unmarked submissions (e.g. Vampire Death Party by A. Nohn Knee-Mus). As the judges volunteering our time, we could only scramble to keep up with the breadth of entries submitted by experienced and novice designers alike. In fact, the contest itself served as a sort of “permission and validation engine” for people who did not consider themselves designers – even for those beset with imposter syndrome – to create live freeforms.
New designers were most welcome. As Wendy Gorman, co-designer (with David Hertz and Heather Silsbee) of Still Life, commented:
I was shocked and delighted [by winning a Golden Cobra], and could not have been more pleased to see something of mine played by people who are well respected in the field of game design, especially since I am not a game designer, and have never considered that I could become one.
Two hours, a public space, and a flexible player number meant that a short set of easy-to-communicate rules proved the best design strategy. Because few veteran designers had much experience in addressing the constraints, the playing field proved more level than in other RPG design contests. After all, we preferred to cultivate a broad community that would produce more games, rather than promoting exclusivity and competition among creators. Mentoring during the contest and rewarding the winning designs with actual play appeared the best ways to nurture such a community of play.
The hard-selected winners of the contest came from a pool of the weird, wacky and dramatic. Some entries in this pool included Active Shooter by Tim Hutchings, a serious freeform dealing with the school shooter phenomenon; Snow by Agata Lubańska, about an explosive family situation in a snowed-in car; Keymaster by J Li, a ritual of creating fictional identities; and If I Were President by James Stuart, which enacts a surreal presidential debate in the far future. Contest winners often adhered closest to the given constraints. Still Life, a game about relationships between rocks, positions players as inanimate objects being moved around by elemental forces in a public space.
Group Date by Sara Williamson embraces chaos, with the same date between two people being played out simultaneously by multiple groups. Glitch Iteration by Jackson Tegu explores fragmented computer memory and has players directly experience their surroundings as unstable simulations. Finally, Unheroes by Joanna Piancastelli deals with a group of superheroes who have altered reality to cover up a terrible mistake and must now make a critical decision. Many of the games would perform well in busy GenCon hallways in Indianapolis, as they did in the Metatopia hall.
III. The Golden Cobra Hand Signal
Live freeform in the United States has a history of being behind closed doors and opaque for newcomers. The Golden Cobra Challenge sought to amend that culture and, at the very least, create a stable of new games to try out at Games on Demand in GenCon 2015 and other conventions. But what it also produced – besides innovative new sets of rules and role-playing scenarios – was a quasi-new social phenomenon: role-players out in public playing games designed for public interference. Emerging from Metatopia, the Golden Cobra Hand Signal – putting one’s elbow in one’s hand and forming a snake face with the other hand – lets others know that, while you may be out in a park or hallway, you are actually also in the middle of playing a game and a role.
Games like Still Life encourage outsiders to affect and interact with these players, but the outside world may still not necessarily understand what they are doing. As these drop-in-friendly live freeforms spread and mutate, we hope to see more of these arcane gestures coming to a convention near you.
One of the most difficult – but also most rewarding – parts of larp is coming up with a good character backstory. A sense of a character’s past gives great insights into how to play them in the present, for one thing; not to mention, it shines some light on where you may take them in the future. For some people developing a history comes easily, but for many others it’s a bit more of a chore, especially if you’re new to a particular game. Or maybe it’s a one- shot game and you want to develop your characters just a bit more before playing, but don’t have time to write out long backstories.
Fortunately, coming up with a fun, interesting backstory (and accompanying character depth) doesn’t ha ve to mean nights of staring at a blank sheet of paper, waiting for inspiration to strike. Which is exactly where these games come in. Most of them require little or no preparation, and can be played equally well with friends or strangers.
In fact, they also make excellent “ice breaker” exercises to help players warm up, get in character, and become comfortable with each other before play begins. These games generally presuppose the presence of other players; while most can be reconfigured to be played solitary, I believe all of them are enhanced by group participation.
As far as game runners are concerned, these backstory games also make good pre-game workshop tools. They do not normally require any form of staff supervision; though if you want to cultivate particular elements, or avoid certain topics, you can offer guidelines, or even sit in and moderate play. This can be useful if you’re using these as quick exercises before a single-shot game, as you can guide players to creating fairly detailed and well-realized personas very quickly with these games.
1 –The Hell of a Hat Game
What You Need: Costumes and props.
How You Play: Going around in a circle, have each player pick one of their costume or prop pieces. It doesn’t have to be a flashy one they might already have stories for, like signature weapons or prominent jewellery – in fact, it’s usually better if it’s not. Ordinary objects like coats and boots tend to work best, because they’re the pieces you might not think about otherwise, but can say very interesting things about a character’s day-to-day life.
Once they pick an item, that player must talk about it. The player can say anything she likes, but here are some questions to provoke thought if they get stuck: Where did it come from? How did they get it – buy it, make it, steal it, receive it as a gift? What does it mean to them? What do they like about it? If they don’t like it, why do they still keep it? If it was lost or stolen, what would they do to get it back?
If you don’t have any particular costume or props – say, because you just came into a game as a walk-on at a convention and didn’t prepare anything – you can still play! Simply describe what your character would be wearing, or is wearing in your imagination, as opposed to what you have on in reality. It might be a little tougher to remember all of it, but the point of the game remains the same.
Variation – Eye for Style: If you want to have a different but equally interesting kind of fun, on each player’s turn have that player pick a piece from someone else’s costuming and props. Tell a story about where the item came from, what that character did to get it, etc. Naturally this doesn’t mean the story is automatically “true” – that’s for the player in question to decide – but it can certainly reveal a lot about how the other players feel about your character!
Variation – Solo Play: If you want to play the game solitary, take a picture of the costume piece and write a short paragraph or two about it. Post the results to game forums or social media if you want feedback!
2 – The Polaroid Game
What You Need: Nothing except 2+ players.
How to Play: Going around in a circle, each player asks the others to describe a snapshot image of his character, something they imagine might have happened at some point before the character entered play or that happened during downtime. It can be a funny image, a serious image, a mysterious image; any kind of moment at all.
It doesn’t have to start off being terribly specific – “I picture your character, bloody, standing over a body while a woman cries out, ‘What have you done?’” is in many ways just as useful for this game as something like “I see your character, bloody, standing over Mary’s body behind the Northpoint Tavern.”
Once the basic image is established, go around to all other player in the group, with each player adding another detail to the picture – “You’re bloody, but not wearing your armor or holding a weapon” – until it comes back around to the original player. Hence the name The Polaroid Game, because the details slowly come into focus as the picture develops. The details added don’t have to be strictly visual, though, despite the name of the game.
When everyone has had a turn adding to the picture, the player being described makes a final comment and play passes to the next person. Naturally what is described isn’t necessarily “true” unless the original player approves it, but it can serve as a good inspiration.
Variation – Topic: Have the person whose turn it is to be described provide a topic or moment she wants the others to imagine. “Tell me about my character’s first kill,” for instance, or “What did it look like when my heart got broken for the first time?” This is good for helping players who have difficulty coming up with appropriate moments for other people’s characters, or for soliciting help with a particular background element with which the player is having trouble.
3 –The Card Game (Larper’s Poker)
What You Need: A regular deck of playing cards.
How to Play: Deal one card at random to each player, before moving around to each player in turn. When it is their turn, players must tell a vignette from their character’s past.
The kind of story being told depends on the suit of the card selected. Hearts centers on mental health or an emotional relationship of some kind (not necessarily a loving one); Diamonds refers to stories focused on wealth, equipment and other material goods (or lack thereof); Clubs requires a story about a physical challenge, battle, illness or ordeal of some kind; and Spades refers to encounters focused around interaction with setting-specific supernatural or science-fiction elements such as zombies, magic, cyberware, superpowers, monsters, etc.
If your game does not have elements of this kind, Spades becomes a “wild card” category where the player can tell any kind of story they like. You may want to at least roughly define what Spades involves before playing, if it could be unclear in your setting.
Stories should be no longer than five minutes or so, and can be much shorter – a snapshot or moment is fine, as long as it says something interesting about the character. Players are encouraged to stick close to the subject matter of their card’s suit, but the categories are pretty broad, so it’s OK if there’s a little bit of crossover. It’s about telling an interesting story, after all.
Variation – Five Card Draw: Each player draws a hand of five cards, and picks a card each round, returning it to the deck when it’s played. This gives players more control over the kind of story they feel like telling each round (and time to think about what they’ll be telling next), making it easier for new or nervous players.
Variation – Face Value: As normal, except that the stories reflect the values on the cards – lower numbers mean it was more of a minor incident, while higher numbers mean it was more important, and a face card means a player must talk about a particular person who came into their life (or left it) as a result of the story.
Variation – Pass Left: Players draw fivecards,butoneachplayer’sturn,the person to their left passes them a card to determine what kind of story should be told. After one full round, pass right instead, shuffle seats, or otherwise change the order so that people have new partners for their cards.
Variation – Take Me to the River: Deal each player five cards and go around in a circle, with each player taking a turn. Each round, players play cards from their own hand, but the player must somehow continue the story they’ve been telling in the previous rounds, even if it is a different suit. So by the end of the game, they will have told one story in five installments, with elements dictated by the cards in hand.
4 – The Mixtape Game
What You Need: A mix CD or music playlist and some way to play it.
How to Play: This game requires a little more preparation than most of the others, but the end result is worth it. Each player contributes several musical tracks to the collective mix or playlist, which is then placed on shuffle (if possible, disable repeated playing of the same track). This game is a good one for long trips to a game or breaks during play, so simply adjust the number of tracks that fits the time.
Play itself is simple – start playing the music, and as each song plays, everyone listens to it and declares either “Play,” “Theme,” or “Pass.” “Play” means that you enjoy the song, but don’t necessarily feel it would be a song for your character in particular. “Theme” means that you could see that song as a theme for your character, something you’d put on a personal playlist dedicated to your character. (You can have more than one Theme, and more than one character can call Theme on the same song. It’s non-competitive that way.)
“Pass” means that you’re just not connecting to the song in relation to the game; it doesn’t necessarily mean you think the song is bad, but you’re just not feeling it in this context.
If you say “Play” or “Theme,” try to add what about it that got your attention – connect it to your backstory, to your impression of your character. Does the beat remind you of the thrill of a battle in your past? Does a line in the lyrics jump out as totally true to your character? Is the tone of the song putting you in the mood for game? Did the music capture a moment in your character’s history so perfectly it makes you jump up and down in your seat?
If two players pick Theme, maybe it’s because they shared that moment in their past? You don’t need to have to be a long, detailed anecdote, just a quick image or moment or impression that it brings up as you think of your character.
Play continues until all tracks have been played. It is perfectly acceptable to ask that a track be repeated, or to return to a track after all tracks have been heard, if players are responding to it strongly and have more stories to tell.
Variation – No Preparations: If you don’t have time to put together a playlist or make a CD, or you want to put together a spontaneous session, you can still play! All you need is access to the internet on a device capable of playing music. Simply have each player look up a song online, and when it comes to their turn, they simply play it for the group on their phone or other device. Giving players a few minutes to find the song they want, making sure their device can play it and otherwise prepare is recommended before starting a round; otherwise, players may be distracted looking up songs instead of really listening on other players’ turns.
Variation – The Score: Another variation is to treat the music like the score of a film or a television program, the music that is playing in the background to provide atmosphere and emotion. When each song comes on, have each player describe what their character would be doing “onscreen” while that song played, as if they were watching a movie and that was the music for the scene.
5 – Post Game
As players, you are encouraged to take some time after a game is complete to think about the material that was generated during play, perhaps even talk about it with the other players. It’s important to remember that while these games are intended to stimulate backstory creation and help flesh out characters, that doesn’t mean you must use it, or that you can’t alter, edit, or otherwise use what’s created as you see fit.
Do not feel bound to keep something as “canon” for your character just because it came up in game, even if the other players really liked it and thought it fit. Even if you wind up using none of it, and take your inspiration in a totally different direction from what came up during play, then great! As long as you have fun making stories, that’s what it’s all about.
On January 10, 2015, 101 days after launching, the first global Larp Census closed to replies. 29,751 responses were logged from 123 different territories in 17 different languages. The data from this survey is freely available via a Creative Commons license at LarpCensus.org.
Barring death, dismemberment, or debilitating drunkenness, the total results from each question will be revealed in a presentation at Knudepunkt 2015. This article goes under the covers to expose the motivations, methods, and madness of the squishy humans behind the hard numbers.
The Beginning
At Wyrd Con II (a Southern California interactive storytelling convention) in 2011, I was out at a late dinner with some friends. Mark Mensch, a longtime boffer larper, asked me what I thought was needed to unify live action role players.
Without missing a beat, I laid out my
Three Big Ideas
A user-customizable larp map-calendar where people can search for any kind of larp anywhere in the world up to a year in advance.
A digital archival repository of larp events—what was run, by whom, when, where, using what system, and any notes or links to further documentation.
A larp census to track all larpers around the world.
I actually mentioned #3 first, but it’s more dramatic to bury the lead.
I don’t know why I said those three things, and I probably had the ideas before I said them, but that was the first time I voiced them aloud.
Regardless, the conversation turned to other matters and never went anywhere. I kept the ideas in the back of my head, however. I repeated them at a workshop session at Solmukohta 2012, where Claus Raasted and a few others offered help in making the map-calendar: which has since been created, roughly, by Larping.org and Larpcore.com.
In mid-February, 2013, New Zealander Ryan Paddy and I started communicating via email after he asked the Larp Academia (or International Larp Academia) mailing list for demographic statistics on larpers. He wanted to know if live action role- playing was “popular” and in which countries.
No one on the list had figures beyond their own larp group’s roster or a few isolated surveys from years past, e.g., Joe Valenti of NERO offered a range from “fifty-thousand to two million.” I again floated my census idea and Ryan took the bait. According to Elizabeth Kolbert((Kolbert, Elizabeth,“The Big Kill: New Zealand’s crusade to rid itself of mammals,”The New Yorker, Dec. 22, 2014)) it is not unusual to find Kiwis with “a cheerful, let’s-get-on-with-it manner” that she claims she “eventually came to see as very New Zealand.” This is good, because without Ryan, I would still be whining about kooky concepts that nobody builds for me.
We get along well and communication between us, while spotty, has been robust. Ryan edits the English language entry on “LARP” for Wikipedia and has a background in psychology and programming, skills I lacked to get the Census done.
Both of us wanted to know the answers to basic questions about larping worldwide: how big is the community, what are its demographics, how long have people played, what are they playing, and why?
We set out to make the Larp Census a reality.
The Grind
The first choice we faced fell between using a prepared polling system, such as Google’s, or develop our own. Ryan said “Google Forms can only receive a limited amount of data (400,000 answers to individual questions); we wanted more. Also, there were several things we wanted to do it that it couldn’t have achieved. If it was up to the job I would have been happy to use Google Forms.” Thus Ryan did the programming for the Larp Census site.
Next we looked for a website host. We hoped to deliver this baby in an academic institution, but they either didn’t reply or replied in the negative, e.g., University of Tampere. We then sought other entities, leading to one of the Big Mistakes (possibly the biggest).
One of the sites I asked to host was Larping.org. They immediately agreed, as they were already considering doing a similar project, but during the negotiation process I withdrew. I worried about protecting the privacy of the respondents and the data.
A massive email list like what the census would generate is gold to larp businesses; but neither Ryan nor I wanted anyone, including us, to make any money off of it. While discussing things with Larping.org, I sent over a first draft of the questions. This boomeranged back, and badly. We cut off talks in mid-April and eventually bought the domain larpcensus.org with money out of our own pockets.
Most of Ryan’s and my time was spent designing the questions, which proved surprisingly difficult. First we had to decide what we wanted to know. I felt that a self- identifying larper’s location, age, gender, and how long they have been larping gave enough information.
Ryan wanted more info (much more), which I quickly agreed with. We split the census into two parts: the first page of questions asked for only the required info. Everything else was optional. Tough decisions and some generalizations had to be made for each inquiry. Plus, each question was weighed for informational necessity against the time it would take to answer it, as we wanted to avoid a too-long questionnaire.
One thing was asked of us a few times, “What is your hypothesis?” But we had no thesis going in, nothing we hoped to prove. We merely strived to gather as much data as possible and turn it over to others to see if it confirmed or refuted their hypotheses. My analogy is that we are farmers harvesting data. It is up to chefs—larp scholars, business folk, and independent researchers—to use what we gather and turn it into dissertations and Power Point presentations.
We sent out two iterations of the motivation questions to a few hundred larpers for comments. The first batch had over 50 questions that we edited to below 30. We also asked as many larp scholars as we could manage (herd like cats) to look over the census and provide feedback. One of the comments we received was that it appeared “too American,” something we aggressively trying to avoid. We remained cognizant of the American spelling of words as well as terminology and larp style emphasis. Our goal was to be as broad as possible, to capture something about every kind of larper, straight boffer action to Nordic arthouse and all in between. But this goal, plus the fact that we were talking to larp scholars who stereotypically ha ve a pedantic viewpoint (not anyone at Knudepunkt, of course!), led to some complaints, which I will discuss later.
Remarkably, Ryan was also setting up the website at the same time. Suddenly in the middle of August 2013, we were blindsided: Larping.org released their own Larp Census.
The Larping.org census, in my extremely biased opinion, seemed to be heavily based on the first draft of questions we sent earlier. They used a Google poll form, required respondents’ emails, and skewed it to American larpers, e.g., using the U.S. dollar as the only type of currency, and asking a lot of questions that only made sense to campaign players.
I was livid, and immediately began chewing out the new census, until Jordan Gwyther of Larping.org proved to me in a private mail conversation that I had given them permission to create their own and even promised support:
Jordan: On the census/survey, I think we should go our own directions. We’ll be launching our own here shortly and will have no problem briefly promoting yours when it is ready. We hope that you will do the same for ours. 🙂
Aaron: Yes, of course!
D’oh!
They received just under 4,000 replies, and, according to their own admission, over 17,000 complaints((Larp Census FAQ (English version)))—I do believe that is an exaggeration, though. Two weeks after their launch, Ryan and I bought our own domain.
Ultimately, seeing the mistakes they made inspired us to tweak and revise our project and make it as good as we possibly could. We dove back into reiterating questions, testing, revising, etc. We were totally on our own, without any group or organization helping, sponsoring, or overseeing us.
Besides the very generous and dedicated handful of reviewers and translators who worked on the Larp Census, everything else was the work of Ryan and sometimes myself. If you’re going to credit anyone, credit Ryan or the other names acknowledged on our FAQ page5. If you are going to blame anyone, blame me.
Securing translations was also partially prompted from the Larping.org census. In order to avoid making ours “too American,” we introduced alternate currencies and continued that thought into offering the census in different languages. We really wanted to emphasize the global nature of larping. This was irksome because some words ha ve diff erent meanings in diff erent countries. Ryan and I spent at least fifteen Skype minutes debating the definition of “park,” which isn’t quite the same in New Zealand as it is in America.
After weeks and weeks of iterations— although really it was days of nothing followed by bursts of work and conversation—Ryan finally decided to pull the trigger after most of the translations had arrived.
The Larp Census went live on October 1, 2014, but the big launch occurred October 2, nearly 20 months after we began. What we had wasn’t flawless, but it was as good as we were going to get and still have it out in 2014. By the time translations started, the original questions in English were locked— we couldn’t change a word without asking all translators to change their versions, an odious task.
Here’s a secret: from the beginning I knew we were doomed to fail. There was no way we were going to get every larper on Earth to answer the census or even close to it. But we wanted to get as many as possible. I hoped for 100,000 replies; Ryan, one million.
The Run
Once we publicly announced the census, it almost went viral. Here are the numbers of responses that came in per day for the first week, which made up more than half the total((Initial week’s totals provided by private email correspondence from Ryan Paddy)):
Date
Responses
10/2/2014
5520
10/3/2014
6564
10/4/2014
1492
10/5/2014
1044
10/6/2014
1637
10/7/2014
1176
10/8/2014
828
I was smugly pleased to know that in two days we got triple the responses the other census garnered after running more than a year. Great numbers for us, but we never came close to these initial daily figures again. The server even crashed for a brief time in those first hours: but it was up and running again soon, thanks to Ryan and, probably, because we never returned to that level of activity.
We didn’t have much of a marketing plan, if any. Social media such as Facebook worked best, while the ability to email your friends (once) was hardly used. Ryan and I are both old, so the new-fangled youth methods of communication are lost on us. Plus, we had no budget to do any ad buys—remember, this was just the two of us.
Some translations required minor corrections in the first two weeks, which Ryan repaired with aplomb. We accepted offers to translate the census into Danish, Swedish, Japanese, and Hebrew, though we only completed the first three.
We did give a few interviews on larp sites, and our push was always to larpers and larp groups. I sent press releases to mainstream geek sites like io9, Boing Boing, and Kotaku, but they didn’t reply. If only we had associated with College of Wizardry.
All things considered the run went well even though we didn’t get the amount of responses we hoped for.
The Lessons and Casualties
Irrespective of the data, I learned a few things just from the census existing.
First, there is no way to ever make everyone happy, ever. This should be obvious, but the point was nailed home after we received specific complaints from four people. Two said the census skewed tow ards boff er combat, and two said it favored theater-style.
It even prompted one newcomer to write, “I’m a little turned off to larping as a consequence of filling out this survey.” By making sure every larp style was represented, we shrunk the spotlight on one person’s particular larp preference, which, to them, seemed like a slight.
Second, race and racism are not the same in America as other countries. On the first page of the census we asked respondents to self-describe their race or ethnicity. I don’t know how it translated out of English, but the question upset a few people. Even asking about race offended them.
On the other hand, for many Americans, to not ask the question would be seen as racially insensitive. Although it appears to be a Catch-22 situation, I hope to repair the issue in subsequent censuses with the phrasing “Please describe your racial and/or ethnic heritage. We understand this question may be offensive to some, and it is not our intention to do so. You can refuse to answer.” Or something equivalent.
Third, and more positively, the census is provoking exactly the kind of discussions and issues we hoped it would. A long thread on LARP Haven spun out of Christopher Amherst’s analysis of the preliminary American statistics((Amherst, Christopher Preliminary Analysis of American Larp Census data)). The original poster noticed the male-female ratio in the U.S. is roughly 60% – 36% (with about 3% genderfluid or not answering) and wanted to know why more women weren’t participating in larps. A boisterous conversation ensued.
Although I am aware of the dangers of relying too much on statistics, especially ones pseudo-scientifically generated, having nearly 30,000 larpers respond to the Larp Census will at least plant a few guideposts toward a deeper understanding about this art, hobby, or sport we enjoy. I am proud to know that our Census will finally provide some factual basis to confirm or refute a few Internet arguments while spawning hundreds more. This, I feel, is a Good Thing.
By the way, we’re going to ask if you consider larp to be a sport, hobby, or art in the next version, coming up in about five years.
For more information and to receive the data from the Larp Census, go to LarpCensus.org or find us on Facebook.
No one on the list had figures beyond their own larp group’s roster or a few isolated surveys from years past, e.g., Joe Valenti of NERO offered a range from “ fifty-thousand to two million.”
Both College of Wizardry and New World Magischola are designed around freeform conflict resolution mechanics that rely heavily on player choice and improvisation; if a character casts a spell on another character, the recipient player decides the effect. The player casting should telegraph the intent of the spell through verbal description, then use a phrase of their choosing to incant while waving their wands. Magical combat is intended to only take place during duels and is therefore not a strong component of the game, although the school teaches both combat and defense. All effects should be physically plausible in a “What You See is What You Get” (WYSIWYG) environment, meaning that setting something on fire would not be plausible as fire is banned on the actual campus, but a spell may produce a burning sensation with no visible effect if the recipient chooses that response. The designers and volunteers of both larps produced 
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