If you ask ten people what larp is for them and why they do larp, you will probably get at least  eleven different answers. For me, it is all about meeting my dearest friends. I recently turned 30, and all the people I invited to my party were people I met through larping. Unfortunately (or fortunately) due to how global our hobby is, a lot of those people live all over the world, and I only see them at larps. However, when I go to a typical weekend larp, though I get to enjoy an amazing larp, I never have enough time to talk to all the awesome people. That’s one of the main reasons why I ..read more

For larps [Non-Player Characters] (…) exist at the service of the larp, and their existence and agency are secondary to those of the player characters (Brind 2020). In many larps, Non-Player Characters (NPCs) are diegetic tools for larp designers and runtime gamemasters to set specific events in motion, to convey important messages and to anchor story beats in the timeline of the larp. Their psychology is often simplified compared to other characters, and they are single-minded in their pursuit of the given task. NPCs are a bridge between the plot and the player characters, and their primary ..read more

A version of this article was originally published in the Knudepunkt 2023 underground book ‘larp truths ready to be heard’. I’ve seen things you people wouldn’t believe… Larp forum threads on fire off the shoulder of phpBB… I watched instamatic photos glitter in albums near the Immersionist Gate. All those… moments will be lost in time, like tears in rain. Time… To die. I’m old, so this might come across as old_man_yelling_at_cloud.gif, but hear me out: we suck at documenting our larps these days. There are no central larp calendars for what larps have been run and which ones are upcoming. Pho ..read more

Experience addicts on a burning plane This is what we know: we are dying. As a species, as a collection of complex ecosystems, we are dying. Not even slowly as one might think, but with exhilarating velocity, with violence, with a chaotic mess of unjust systems, of deadly consequences falling first on those least responsible.  We are dying from hunger and from drought, dying from overconsumption, dying from wars starting from the lack of water at the same time as water is dripping from our eager mouths and polished bodies, billions of gallons of fresh water being washed away with literal ..read more

The historical precedents similar to Nordic larp range from ancient Egyptian ritual dramas (Pohjola 2015) to psychological techniques in the Austro-Hungarian Empire (Fatland 2016), from the war gaming associations of American campuses (Peterson 2012) in the 1970s to Hungarian children’s camps (Túri & Hartyándi 2022). Sometimes a trail of influence can be drawn, at others it is a question of parallel evolution. Yet, no matter how distant the relation, lessons can be learned across millennia by studying similar practices earlier on. One such example is the fruit of the auspicious friendship ..read more

Challenge yourself. Go beyond your comfort zone. Decide to do something you are not sure you can actually pull off. Try something new. Let your character be made a fool, or be seduced by the enemy. Play boldly. Let yourself be vulnerable.  It’s about you, your wants, and your fears. By challenging yourself and going beyond your comfort zone, you learn and grow as a larper. It’s about doing what you want even if it’s scary. About trying something new or letting someone else make your story take an unexpected turn. Playing boldly and letting yourself be vulnerable isn’t about what you do, b ..read more

I started larping late in life. In the last eight years I have played with larpers of all ages, some of whom are now facing the passage of time. I hear them lament the fact that they can no longer play as they used to do. Something has changed. I am old. As I have grown older, I hide behind layers upon layers of knowledge and experience. Like a carapace it hides me from prying eyes and hurting remarks. It will happen to all of us. Like Kafka’s Gregor Samsa we will suddenly wake up one morning as a monstrous vermin. Or at least that is what we think will happen as we grow old. But is it true? D ..read more

Larp is a broad-ranging hobby, covering a plethora of subjects and every situation and scenario under the sun, with participants aged from 8 to 80. It is often stated that imagination is the limit – that anyone can play any role – but is that the reality? We rely on the alibi of larp to allow us to play different roles, the acceptance that the reality of the characters and the setting may diverge from our perceptions. Young can play old and a school can be a spaceship, because we agree it is so. However, while in a fantasy larp the difference from our reality applies equally to all characters ..read more

I vividly remember the first time I played a villain. After years of always opting for and being cast as the sweet and innocent characters, I signed up to a larp with a group of friends and dared ask the big question: “Can I try playing the villain?” Thus started my travels down the road of larp villainy – a travel filled with plenty of bumps in the road! Already during the larp, I started feeling increasingly bad. And after the larp concluded, I became riddled with guilt. I felt physically sick from what I had done to people I cared about, being the manipulative and scheming horror of a perso ..read more

“Everything is a designable surface”, as the larp designer, writer and theorist Johanna Koljonen (2019) says.  This means that every single aspect of larp can be designed for particular effect: scenography, characters, workshops, communications, costumes… Even the absence of design can be designed. You can make the conscious design choice to leave a particular aspect of the larp open to the chaos of emergent play. In many larp productions, the designer of the larp is visible to the participants. Perhaps they post about the larp on Facebook, run workshops or chat with players arriving at t ..read more