In the past decade there has been an upsurge of sensual content in larps, brought to spotlight by international productions such as Just a Little Lovin’ (Norway 2011), Inside Hamlet (Denmark 2015), Baphomet (Denmark 2018), and others. With this focus, the sensual has at times eclipsed the intellectual, and House of Craving (Denmark 2019) provides an example. The larp has a trim structure. Twelve characters are friends and family who retire to a newly inherited summer house for a few relaxed days. Unknown to them, the house is self-aware, and evokes twelve ghosts to control the characters. The ..read more

“An hour?!” someone asked me the other day, incredulous. “How can you run a whole tabletop RPG session in an hour?!” I’m all too happy to answer that question. My recent practice of running one-hour-length role-playing sessions over voice channels on the online social platform Discord apparently baffles people. What else can I say? I am proud of the format and, furthermore, know of many folks who might benefit from adopting it as their own. In this short piece, I describe how I run one-hour sessions, whilst also painting a portrait of what “role-play” looks for me now at present. Let’s start w ..read more

This article was prompted by the recent republication on Nordiclarp.org of the article ‘Flagging is Flawed’ (Brown and Teerilahti 2024) from the Solmukohta 2024 book Liminal Encounters. In the article, the authors describe the practice of circulating a list of names of participants prior to a larp event, and inviting ‘flagging’ – the indication of safety concerns about fellow-participants, privately to the organizers. They discuss problems that they perceive with the tool. Our perception is that the article itself is flawed, because it doesn’t discuss the commonest flagging practices that are ..read more

Introduction Talvikäräjät (Finland 2022, eng. Winter Ting) was a larp set in an imaginary village in Western Finland in the 1660s. It was designed as a part of my research project bearing the same name, where I studied the use of history in larp. The larp aimed high in authenticity: the game design was based on authentic court cases and on the most recent research on 17th-century court practices. In this article I present how we, the larpwrights, used history in game design. I will also discuss historical authenticity and how the lessons from Talvikäräjät could benefit the community for histor ..read more

In the narrow hall of an old county hospital building, two rows of people stand facing each other. The Open Heart organisation has sent out an invitation to the general public to meet and stay with the people in their care. To foster empathy, they say. To become compassionate. The people in the hospital’s care stand in one line; The Sufferers, they are called. People on the fringes of society. Drug addicts, homeless people, criminals. Every single sufferer is a tragic tale of how life can beat you down. In the other line, the Compassionates stand, looking around with mixed emotions; curiosity ..read more

There has been said a lot regarding safety mechanics, tools and the safety mindset on nordiclarp.org over the last ten to fifteen years: Design discussions have taken place, talks and workshops have been held at Knutepunkt/Solmukohta, publications in the respective books have been published, and discussions between people who are volunteering — meaning working — in safety, have raised awareness about the need for safety at larps. One topic that has not been talked or written about much is the work and visibility of a Larp Safety person.  Articles from 2017 give very good insight into the ..read more

Leandro Godoy, one of the founders and producers of the larp group Confraria das Ideias (Eng. Brotherhood of Ideas), conducted an interview with a diverse group of larpers, players and designers from different regions in Brazil. He seeks to understand the limitations faced in Brazil, both inside and outside the games. The people interviewed were: André Sarturi, 45. Actor and university professor, founder of the Enigma larp group. Curitiba – PR. Carolina Scartezini, 40. Witch of the word. Creator, actor and artistic advisor at Tudo Teatro group. Itaberaba – BA. Effe Schmidlin, 29. Multi-artist ..read more

The current common safety practices of flagging someone as unsafe to attend a larp were created to handle predators in the scene, specifically to protect sexual assault survivors. However, flagging is also commonly used to prevent people from attending a larp for lesser reasons, such as a bad breakup, disliking someone’s communication or playstyle, simply feeling uncomfortable around someone, or loyalty to a friend who experienced bad behavior from the person. Our goal with this article is to bring these issues into the open for further discussion. While created with the best of intentions, fl ..read more

I have been to so many larps that tried to make a scene in the middle of the night, when the characters are suddenly awoken and something cool happens. Perhaps being dragged from their beds and kidnapped. Perhaps they will all share a vivid nightmare. Perhaps they will be visited by a ghost. Yet, all attempts to suddenly awaken players for a cool night scene tends to turn anticlimactic. Why? People woken in the middle of the night tend to be: Sluggish Really hard to wake Confused (“Is it an out of character emergency? Why is everyone shouting?” ) Bursting and needing to go to the bathroom Bad ..read more

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