In Nordic and Nordic inspired larp, we do love our workshops. However, it feels like there’s a trend to workshop for the sake of workshopping. At the same time, there seems to be a lot less love and attention for debriefs. Both in workshops and debriefs, we tend to stick to the same exercises without giving it any further thought. Instead, we could come up with some specific exercises that fit the larp and the experience we want to create. Workshops and debriefs have the potential to become more valuable elements in our game and experience design than they currently often are. Workshops as bui ..read more

In September 2022, I began a new job as the middle school drama teacher at a school in upper Manhattan, New York City. In the months before, I had been picturing a dream job in which I was teaching both theatre and larp. When I accepted this position I imagined that after a year or two, I could create an after-school larp club. To my surprise, during orientation, my principal, Rinaldo Lumumba Murray, told me that he had complete trust in me as an artist. He said I was free to design my curriculum however I saw fit. What a gift that turned out to be!   New Heights Academy Charter Scho ..read more

The fact that there is a separate term for larp shows that it is quite a peculiar type of role-playing. It has its own history, culture, and audience. At their origins, the terms LRP, LARP, and larp already denoted an agglomeration of radically different games with some RPG “DNA” in them (Arjoranta 2010, 10). As the praxis of larps evolved and expanded, the term became increasingly diluted. As a consequence, the term larp is often used in larp circles as an all-encompassing category that includes every kind of embodied role-playing (Hyltoft 2010; Kot 2012; Bowman 2014). It is weird because, be ..read more

The Muses of antiquity live on Mount Helicon (a mythological place, but also a real mountain in Greece). Perhaps because of this, the mountain’s name has come to symbolize creativity and inspiration. Helicon is also the name of a larp created by Maria Pettersson and Katrine Wind, run in Denmark for the first time in January, 2024. The larp is about a group of friends who enacted a ritual in their student days, binding the Muses to themselves, granting themselves the genius to become superstars in their own fields. As their stars rise, they also deprive the world of inspiration, hogging it all ..read more

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