At long last, I’ve finished The Curse, a freeform game about hereditary breast cancer, the BRCA mutations, and making decisions around these issues.

It premiered at the Danish gaming convention Fastaval in 2013, where it nabbed an Otto nomination for best larp script.

I wrote The Curse in the Fastaval style. This means that it features a strong game master who cuts together the scenes like an improvised play. The game attempts to tackle a serious topic — BRCA mutations and the decisions they spark — with nuance. It’s not meant to be fun in the funny ha-ha sense, but it’s meant to be interesting and provide insight into a situation that many women face.

It’s free to download and distribute so long as you don’t try to make money off it. If you run or play it, I’d love to hear about your experience at LizzieStark@gmail.com.

FREE DOWNLOAD (PDF) OF THE CURSE  HERE.

THE CURSE AT A GLANCE

Would you cut out healthy body parts if you thought it might save your life?

Rita and Elle bear a heavy legacy: a mother who developed breast cancer at 30 and died of ovarian cancer 20 years later. When it comes to their family tree, that’s just the tip of the tumor. There’s a BRCA mutation lurking in the family DNA, an inherited genetic error that dramatically ups a woman’s chances of developing aggressive breast and ovarian cancer at unusually young ages. After Rita and Elle test positive for the family mutation, they can choose to live with their fear or cut it out with a scalpel.

Will they mutilate themselves to avoid their mother’s fate, or stay strong and face down dread? How should the men in their lives deal with the news? Will this condition mutilate their romantic relationships as well?

This freeform game is about making life-altering decisions in uncertain circumstances and passing on the horror of that choice to the next generation. A scenario about fear of death, vanity, and relationships under pressure.

Factfile

Time: 4-5 hours.

Number of players: 4 +1 game master. Preferably two women and two men.

Genre: Cancer narratives, relationship drama, realism

Player type: You want to explore some challenging emotional territory, including cancer, unclear consequences, and amputating body parts you’re fond of. And you don’t mind talking about breasts. 18+ only, please.

Game master type: You’ll be the players’ guide and teach the techniques of the game. You’re equally happy pushing the players when they need it, or standing back and watching them twitch like fish on hooks.

The game is about what happens after death, is mechanics light, contemplative, and perfect for anyone wanting to get a little flavor of Nordic larp. We emphatically welcome new larpers!

You can read more about the game — and sign up! — over on Emma Waldron’s site.

In the past year, I’ve watched lots of internet arguments — some ugly, some not — unfold within the gaming community, most recently around issues of gender and inclusion in the aftermath of the Knutepunkt convention.

These debates have crystallized some thoughts on argumentation and tone. Forgive me for meandering a bit below: my core point here is that tone matters — sure, it doesn’t affect the content of your argument, but it does affect how that argument is perceived by your core audience, and therefore it affects your overall persuasiveness. This is my pragmatic world view — that if you want your argument to achieve maximum effectiveness, tone matters.

Yeah, “Tonal Arguments” Are Problematic.

I should point out that, yes, I am familiar with the inherent problems around tonal arguments. In a nutshell, the problem with tonal arguments is that when used abusively, they can derail the content of a debate and silence people who need to be heard. In other words, if I’m  just in from two weeks of exposure in the desert and I say, “I’m dying of thirst, fetch me a glass of water, jerk,” you might respond with “hey there spanky, you get more flies with honey. Say please!” you do have a point, but your point doesn’t actually negate the contents of my speech. I still really need a glass of water, like, now. The idea is that you should respond to the content of my speech, rather than the manner in which I’ve made it. And in general, I agree with this. But the tone of an argument also hits people on a gut emotional level, and that means it affects how likely your message is to penetrate your audience.

To reiterate: I agree that tonal arguments can be problematic, especially when they’re used like a weapon to deliberately derail productive conversation. I also acknowledge that sometimes, people — often people from non-dominant groups — just get tired of explaining stuff over and over again. If I had a flame thrower for every time I’ve had to argue about concepts that seem like feminism 101 to me, well, let’s just say there’d be a lot of crispy bodies scattered around the earth. I assume that trans people get tired of explaining trans issues, that people of color get tired of explaining racism, that larpers get tired of explaining larp, etc. etc. For me, at least, this fatigue causes the phenomenon of “ragesplaining” (it’s what mansplaining makes me want to do!). This is what happens when I feel like I have to explain X to a new group of people for the bazillionth time for me, although perhaps it’s only the first time for my audience.

I think all of this comes into play when talking about sensitive stuff on the web, or honestly, in person. And while tone doesn’t negate the contents of anyone’s speech, it makes a huge difference in how your message is received by others.

(Sidenote: Though the “basic” conversations can feel frustrating to have repeatedly, I think they’re some of the most important conversations to have, because they bring outsiders up to speed on what must sometimes seem like inside baseball. And usually, people who haven’t encountered basic concepts before simply haven’t thought about the issue very deeply yet, so it’s a good opportunity to spread some basic knowledge, and persuade these noobs over to your side.)

Pick a Tone Appropriate To Your Audience

Though there are lots of reasons to to engage in debate about sticky wickets like, say, gender or free speech, or whatever, I see four main reasons:

• To rally the base that agrees with you
• To change the mind(s) of the person(s) that you disagree with, but who are weighing in on the debate
• To persuade people on the fence who may be listening, but not necessarily posting.
• To give voice to people who may feel the same way you do, but who don’t feel comfortable speaking up.

All of these audiences are important. But to my mind, the middle two are the most important because they are the most likely to create real change by growing the base of people who agree with you. Persuading someone who is a fierce advocate of an opposing position has ripple effects as well — if I can change Darth Vader’s opinion on planet explosion, how many storm troopers will follow? My argumentative mantra is: every “enemy” is a potential ally.

To my mind, ragesplaining may feel really really good, but it pretty much only appeals to an audience that already agrees with you. I think it alienates fence-sitters, and it makes the people you disagree with feel attacked. It also takes focus away from the issues at hand and gets people’s pride involved.

How do I know this? Well, I’ve been on both sides of the equation.

During and after Mad About the Boy, I had a lot of arguments about feminism with different sects of people. Early-on, this argumentation meant persuading some men in the community that it was OK to have a game and invite only women. Later, the game took a lot of heat around gender issues from a number of feminists. I don’t want to reopen what was a painful episode for people on many sides of the equation, but this discussion felt frustrating to me, and others on the organizing committee, in part because we consider ourselves feminists and felt we had many goals in common with our adversaries. However, from our perspective, the tenor of the arguments made it difficult for us to want to engage in debate. Plus, we’d used up much of our energy for debate before the game. For me, this felt like a wake-up moment, because I learned what it feels like to be told that you are not being politically correct/understanding enough, and so I feel like I have some empathy for both the critics and the criticized.

Giving the Benefit of the Doubt

To me, the best arguments begin by giving your opponents every advantage — by giving them the benefit of the doubt. Here’s why I think it works:

• If you couch your opponent’s position in the strongest way possible, then your devastating critique is that much more damning. It doesn’t leave them the wiggle room of, “you misinterpreted me.”
• As much as we like to think debate is abstract and about the issues, most of us identify strongly with the beliefs we hold and the activities we do. Attacking these can feel like an attack on a person’s identity. That gets pride involved, which makes it emotionally more difficult for the opposition to “give in” on points you might have otherwise persuaded them about. Giving someone the benefit of the doubt, generally includes assuming that:
  • most of us are normal human people who sometimes make flawed decisions
  • most of us don’t intend to hurt others, but sometimes do so inadvertently
  • most of us are thoughtful people who have tried to do their best

As the saying goes, “intent isn’t magic.” To borrow a metaphor from the Knutepunkt debate, even if I didn’t mean to kick you on the dance floor — even if my intent was good — your shin may still hurt, and perhaps you’ve got a bruise to contend with for a few weeks. No apology can fix that. But surely, “I don’t know if you noticed, but you kicked me rather hard, and I’d like to talk about the dance moves you try to bust,” is likely to get a better return than “you’re a horrible person. Why’d you kick me, jerk?” (By the same token, “I’m really sorry I kicked you, but this is the dance style I strongly prefer,” will get a better response than “Stop being so sensitive, it was just a little shove.”)

I don’t want to put the burden on the person who is already hurt to be extra understanding and extra nice and to overcome lots of natural rage. That isn’t fair. It sucks. It’s a nearly superhuman demand. I think people in the position of handling critique should also exercise their empathy, to understand that perhaps this isn’t the first time I’ve been kicked on the dance floor and that I’m having a compound reaction, to give me space to calm down, perhaps to help calm me down so we can have a productive discussion, and so on. Of course, that can be difficult as well. But as Lewis Carroll put it, we should all try six impossible things before breakfast, right?

I think this is particularly important to remember within debates about charged topics within the gaming community, in part because most people do gaming stuff on a hobby level, not for money, but because they want to create things for others. Hostile debate and not giving organizers the benefit of the doubt can produce a chilling effect on the community. After all, we want to encourage people to organize stuff because then there’s more cool stuff to go to — if the perceived social cost of organizing an event becomes too high, that’s going to discourage well-meaning people from participating, and I think that’s not good for the community in general.

Venting vs. Arguing

When I’m really mad, it’s hard to argue, because I can’t control my tone, which doesn’t effect my goal of bringing people around. It can alienate fence-sitters. It can make the opposition dig in its heels merely out of pride. For that matter, it can make me dig in my heels out of pride.

So before I argue, I vent privately to a small circle of trusted people I know won’t judge me for saying stuff that will be mean. And sometimes, I really need to say stuff that is mean, to get it out of my system. To calm down. Only then am I ready to argue, that is, to give my opponents the benefit of the doubt and try to win them over to my side.

I’m not anti-anger. Anger is important — it’s part of what drives us toward passionate and needed debate, but it’s possible to explain why you’re angry/hurt/etc without making the person you’re talking to angry as well.

TL;DR

I’m not concerned here with what’s fair or easy — the world is neither — but I’m concerned with what works. And in general, I think a kind tone, working hard to understand your opponents, and giving them the benefit of the doubt works. Sometimes that means dampening the natural urge to ragesplain things, even though that feels SO JUST AND GOOD.

When things get heated, try to remember that the point of communication is to get ideas across, which means considering what your audience is able to hear.

Since I’ve described the convention in lots of other places, this time around, I’m sticking to the content.

Scenography and Ritual

The site for the convention — cabins on the bank of a freaking giant frozen lake, was beautiful. And true to the rumors I’d heard, the Norwegian hosts were big on scenography and ritual.

Destroying Personal Limitations…WITH FIRE

On the bus ride to the convention, we all received tickets for the opening ceremony. The ticket instructions asked us to write something that prevented us from crossing borders on the back. I wrote “fear.” Then came a hilarious and spot-on Twin Peaks parody set in the red room, which represents the spiritual world in the TV show. Watch the video here.

At the end of the opening, we deposited all our tickets into a golden egg held by the log lady. During the Saturday night ritual — which involved drums, chanting, high priestesses of larp, and a giant paper mache phoenix, someone placed the egg into the bird. During the closing ceremony, they put the bird on the edge of the giant frozen lake and set it on FIRE, thereby burning all our boundaries.

The ritual in full swing on Saturday night.
Photo: Eleanor Saitta

Phoenix burning with all our boundaries inside it
Photo: Eleanor Saitta

Of course, during the opening ceremonies, and per Twin Peaks lore, one of the players informed the audience that “the owls are not what they seem.” Obviously, the organizers had littered the campground with stuffed owls in trees, in roof beams, etc.

The owls are not what they seem. Photo: Eleanor Saitta

Program

An embarrassment of riches this year — I couldn’t show up to lots of good stuff because it was scheduled across my own program items, or other stuff I wanted to go to. A great problem to have. Here’s what I learned.

Blackbox Larp: Totally Its Own Medium

When many larpers hear “black box,” they think of the metatechnique of black boxing. Metatechniques deliberately break the flow of narrative in a larp to heighten the drama. The black box metatechnique provides players with a room with controllable lighting and sound that allows them to play scenes outside of the linear narrative of the larp — scenes from the past, the future, the possible future, dreams, etc. During a larp, if I reference that one time that I choked during my lecture to the adventurer’s club, I can grab some people, go to the black box, and play it out one or more times.

At Kristoffer Thurøe’s talk on black box larp, he redefined the term. In recent years, he explained, the black box larp has emerged as its own separate form. A black box larp takes place in a black box theater or similar room. Although at the upper end, games in black boxes can last several days with players sleeping and eating on set, more commonly they last for less than a day. For organizers, black boxes have the advantage of permitting total control over the setting of the game. This means you can use cool theater stuff to make the experience better for people. Stuff like:

• Lights. Different colors of lighting can set the mood. You can also spotlight certain areas but not others, which creates intriguing opportunities for play. Lights can simulate stuff like campfires, or the grace of god, or metaphorical space, etc. If the players sleep on site, you can also control how long the “days” last for.
  
• Sound. Add crackling noises to that campfire light, and you’ve added to the setting. You can also play sounds that influence the mood. A low-level grating noise during a tense scene might enhance the atmosphere, for example. Or record pre-interviews with your players about their earlier experiences with love and then pipe them into scene at strategic moments to make them feel quite mad, as in the game Delirium, about love in a mental institution.
• Scene jumps. Much like in a freeform game, in a black box, it’s possible to jump forward and backward in time by setting scenes.

Getting Physical as a Player

I went to two great workshops on larp and physicality. The first revolved around physically embodying a character, run by Jana Pouchlá and someone else whose name I failed to catch (bad reporter! help me peanut gallery!), but who are the awesome folks over at the professional Czech larp group Court of Moravia. Here’s some of the stuff we did:

Interacting with just the eyes.

Make eye contact with a partner, walk up to them. Get close. Raise up on your toes and then down. Break eye contact. Find a new partner. We did this several times, with different levels of eye contact and different emotions crackling between us. Super-intimate, and cool to see how much one can communicate using only the eyes.

Interact with simple gestures.

We split into pairs, and our crack workshop organizers provided us with four simple gestures and responses that we could use to tell a story:

• Person A strokes person B’s cheek. Person B returns the gesture.
• A puts one hand on B’s shoulder. B uses their opposite hand to remove it.
• A puts both hands on B’s shoulders. B moves their arms between and up to break A’s grip.
• A puts both hands on B’s shoulders and slides them down to hold hands. A and B lean away from each other, and then come back to center.

Note: anyone could take the role of initiator at any time during this exercise.

Using these four gestures, but keeping our faces neutral, we practiced telling little relationship narratives. It’s possible to fling off someone’s arm, for example, or to remove it slowly and sensually. A cool exercise.

Walking As Your Character

We envisioned a character and established two default postures — relaxed and open, and closed and anxious. Then we practiced walking as our characters, and our fearless organizers advised us to crescendo. In other words, at count 1 we were normal people at number 10 we were outlandish cartoon exaggerations of our characters. We walked around, and the organizers counted. Then we tried walking as our characters again. It was different and better.

Getting Physical as a GM

I also went to Morgan Jarl’s excellent workshop on GMing in black box games, and much of what he said is applicable to GMing freeform as well. Some of the tactics he described were familiar to me, for example, getting the quiet character to monologue, or drawing focus to a conversation during scenes with two plus conversations happening by freezing half of the players, etc. But he added a few tools to my toolbox, namely noise and physicality. You can use the noises of finger tapping, scratching, stamping, snapping by players’ ears, etc. to add to their distraction, tense-ness, etc. Cool!

By the same token, it’s also possible to touch players during scenes to heighten the drama. For example, if a character feels depressed, the GM might physically represent this sorrow by pressing down on the player’s shoulders. If a character’s in love, a GM could lift them slightly by the armpits. If a character is supposed to be in love with X but is talking to Y, the GM can direct the player’s gaze by simply turning their head lightly. Another interesting technique I’d like to try.

Swedish Shocker on US Play Style

I was part of a program item on the US run of Mad About the Boy, along with one of the Norwegian writers, one of the Swedish players, and one of the American players. Coolest thing I learned? Well, the Swedish player talked about how frustrated she’d been during the larp because she’d tried to provoke characters and it seemed like no one responded. She’d wanted the public drama, and the US players didn’t give it to her, so she wondered whether the game had truly engaged them. After the larp, during the epic email debrief, she’d been shocked by the depth of emotion. To me, this revealed something about the US play style.

As Sarah Bowman (larp academic and US player of Mad About the Boy) pointed out, much US larp relies on secrecy, and so perhaps we’re used to playing close to the vest. By the same token, public emotion isn’t something that’s considered cool here — remember that one time Hillary Clinton got teary eyed on the campaign trail? or consider how much flack John Boehner takes for crying in public — so perhaps there is a cultural prohibition against visible public emotion. Perhaps, emotion here is private. And finally, Americans are pretty polite — the cultural standard for critique is something like a) share five compliments, b) insert gently phrased critique, and c) close with a general compliment. In other words, if you’re trying to provoke US players, the response to it might come inserted in the middle of a bunch of compliments.

Check out the free documentation book for the US run of Mad About the Boy, edited by Sarah Lynne Bowman and produced by Rollespils Akademiet!

Larpscripts and Mistakes

Along with Trine Lise Lindahl and Elin Nilsen, I’m co-editing a book of Norwegian larp scripts this year, so we ran a short workshop on writing game instructions. Some day, the hand out will be available on the ‘net. The book project will also have a partner website with video of some of the the techniques, including workshops and metatechniques.

And on the Mistakes I’ve Made panel, I said a few words about stuff we could have done better for the US run of Mad About the Boy, like inter-organizer communication, leaving food near an open door accessible to raccoons, internet drama and more. Other speakers included Anna Westerling, Martin Ericsson, and Mike Pohjola.

Rants

This year, the rants — short speeches ranting on topics as diverse as “screw larp misery” and “let’s use toilet brushes to break immersion — were excellent. Last year, I delivered a rant “write a damn rulebook,” inspired by my fruitless search for simple definitions that could help me understand the scene. This year, a quartet of women subverted my request for a damn rulebook by writing a “f***ing rulebook” and presenting it at the rants. You can download its hilariousness here.

I’d be remiss if I didn’t mention Rantgate 2013, in which some dudes gave a rant about not viewing them as sex objects (a reasonable request) but unfortunately included a Powerpoint with photos and names of women they’d slept with. Some of the women had been asked if this was cool, and some hadn’t. The rant-givers had clearly not done this to make anyone feel bad — rather, they thought of Knutepunkt as a space so safe and equal that even jokes like this would be cool — but then again, intent isn’t everything. So then everyone talked about it and group dynamics and slut shaming, and so on for much of the rest of Knutepunkt. Plus there was a poster war! The rant-givers apologized publicly on more than one occasion. More on Rantgate 2013 in a later post…maybe. If the flayed horse corpse hasn’t bored us all to death by then. (Update: some oblique thoughts on Internet debates spurred by the response to the rants here.)

Other Revelations

One weird thing I learned in Norway: it’s hard to tell what time it is based on the sun, because that far North it doesn’t seem to pass into the center of the sky! It feels like 10am/2pm all day every day! Is this why Nordica can seem crazy at times? Space…er…sun madness?

At the Saturday night party, the dead walked among the living. Or as I also learned at Knutepunkt this year: if you want to give someone alibi, put them in a mask. Photos: Sarah Bowman

Danish Design Braintrust

Here’s a cool thing that happened to me in the lavo, a giant conical tent that I presume is part of traditional Norwegian culture, where you could sit around a central fire and drink canned beer, or eat snacks. A group of expert Danish designers put their heads together and offered advice on a larp about racism that my US team is working on. Best part of the chat? They pointed out the endemic challenge of working with racism as a subject matter — part of racism is ostracism, so you need 50 people to ostracize 15. That means that it’s really hard to give all players the same experience, which is more of a Nordic game design goal than a US one. Hmmm. Lots of great and thought-provoking ideas.

How to Troll Nordicans

There are lots of great ways to execute this sacred American duty, which is not at all a jerkform game. Here are a few I found particularly effective:

• Talk about how social democracy, socialism, Marxism, and fascism are totally the same thing!
• Remind your peers about how America is, not just a really awesome country, but the BEST country in the world. Extract compliments about the US from your peers. (Actual play report: “It’s pretty great that you don’t execute your albinos.”)
• Learn how to say, “I am an American spy. Give me liquor now. Thank you,” in a local language.
• Americans learn to give compliments before most of us can talk. Nordicans have this whole super-modest thing happening. Extravagant compliments work. I found them particularly effective on a specific Finn.

I’m Pretend Finnish

It’s no secret that I’m Nordicophile. I love the social fray of the Danish conventions I’ve been to, and the openness and individuality on the Norwegian scene. Perhaps it’s not fair to judge, since I haven’t fully immersed myself in the Swedish scene yet — looking forward to next year, Sweden! — but in the Nordic thunderdome, I think I’d use my chainsaw of justice to back team Finland. Weird hair? Yes please. Linguistically distinct (read: weird) language with no word for ‘please’? Yes please. Addition of weird licorice flavor to random comestibles such as vodka? Um, I guess it’s part of the package. (Translation: I spent much of my Knutepunkt with Finnish people, talking theory, and participating in the secret Finnish sunshine unicorn rainbow ritual they’ve been hiding from you all these years.)

Looking forward to next year…maybe.

Other Takes on Knutepunkt 2013

My post on my extended stay in Norway
My post on A Week in Norway, the run-up to Knutepunkt
Swedish game scholar Annika Waern’s post
French larper Thomas Be’s subjective recap, part 1, part 2, part 3
Norwegian designer Ole Peder Giæver’s recap
German larper Stefan Deutsch’s take
Norwegian larper Secretmoose’s take
US larper Shoshana Kessock’s take
A Russian larper’s take (in Russian)
Italian larper Raffaele Manzo’s take (in Italian)

Photos Galore

Peep Eleanor Saitta’s Knutepunkt 2013 collection on Flickr.
Photos from Eugenia
Johannes Axner’s photos from day 1, day 2, day 3, day 4

 And feel free to post links to other photo sets/blog posts I’ve missed in the comments.

Toot toot! Getting this limbo on the road. (Photo: Johannes Axner)

Yeah, I spent more than a week in Norway, but I also attended the “A Week in Norway” events, a week of planned gatherings, games and talks aimed at getting people comfortable with one another and introducing folks to the local larp culture before the Knutepunkt convention. Aside from mingling with excellent people from all over the world (hi, friends!), I also went to some actual events.

Ritual Workshop

Learning about rituals from our Norwegian masters. (Photo by Johannes Axner)

Choosing a favorite “A Week” activity is a little like choosing a favorite child, but, well, this kind of blew my mind.

As I understand it, rituals and scenography are important to the Norwegian larp scene. But how does one hold a cool ritual, you ask? There’s a workshop for that. Run by local larp kings Eirik Fatland, Erlend Eidsem Hansen, and Matthijs Holter, the ritual workshop taught some 30+ participants how to hold an improvised ritual. Here are the techniques we learned:

• How to incorporate speech into a ritual. Basically, if one person is speaking, she does so with a raised fist. If she wants the group to repeat the last phrase she spoke, she holds two fingers aloft while doing that.
• How to chant like champs. We all tried humming together on one tone, and were encouraged to improvise. Of course, humming gets boring after like five minutes or so, and there was a natural move to hum harmonies, or to use percussive consonant sounds, or  to sing with different vowels and different sets of tones. THIS SOUNDS REALLY FRAKKING AWESOME IN A BIG GROUP. It reminded me a little of improv warmup for the a capella group in high school. Many of us wanted to do it for hours, and spontaneous chants broke out at strategic moments during Knutepunkt.
• How to move in a group. We split up into smaller pods of around 7 people, and practiced moving together. We used two different formations, a line, and a diamond. They key, as we learned, is to stand really close to one another, and to follow the person in front. When they turn their bodies, the new person in front is the new leader. In order to move the whole group, small deliberate steps are needed. The other key is to follow what the people around you are doing.

After having a sense of the basics, we headed to a pretty cool site to try out our skills, an actual artist’s tomb. The space is really cool. Artist Emmanuel Vigeland had serious inadequacy issues — overshadowed by his brother, who designed the most famous park in Oslo — and so Emmanuel designed his tomb to promote his own awesomeness. The artist’s ashes are in an urn that sits over a doorway so low that you must stoop to enter. So everyone bows to his remains. The interior of the tomb is one huge dark archway, with acoustics so resonant that a pindrop would echo. As your eyes become acclimated to the soft light, large black and white paintings seem to emerge on the walls, depicting different stages of life and death. (See a photo of the site here!)

Here, we split into groups and began the ritual. Each of the four acts dealt with one stage of development — childhood, love, parenthood, and death, which one of the organizers announced. The amazing acoustics made some of the instruction difficult to hear, but we got the general gist, and embodied each stage in our small group.

My group — a bit smaller than the rest — was situated with me in the center, which means I didn’t get an opportunity to lead the gestures or anything, and I found that an intriguing experience; I always had to follow, which is not something I’m used to. For me, this involved a high level of concentration, and an openness to accepting the leadership of others. I came out of the ritual feeling the repercussions of the background noise and concentration, but also felt quite close to one of my fellow participants in particular, a person who said that the experience was the closest they’d gotten to a religious experience, that it helped them understand the draw of religion. So certainly, something worked quite well there, and the bond between us proved enduring — we hung around each other quite a bit at the convention later.

TL;DR: Ritual rocked. Would ritual again.

Larp Exchange Academy/How to Collaborate to Create a Larp

Earlier in the week, I rambled down to the Larp Exchange Academy with my cohorts Elin Nilsen and Trine Lise Lindahl to give a short talk on larp scripts. (We’ve been thinking deeply about how to write them, as later this year we’ll co-edit a book of Norwegian larp scripts.)

The Larp Exchange Academy (LEA), organized for the first time this year by the Norwegian organization Fantasiforbundet, in conjunction with Lajvverket (Sweden), Bifrost (Denmark), Court of Moravia (Czech Republic), Peace and Freedom Forum (Palestine) and Minsk Larp Factory (Belarus). Over three days, the 46 participants were split into small groups and created 8 larps later played during the “A Week in Norway” activities.

This was a tall order — for groups comprised of different national identities and play cultures to find common ground and create a larp in a mere three days, but somehow they pulled it off. The program included short talks from experts on how to create characters, collaborate, etc., and featured plenty of time for group work and feedback.

When I visited LEA, I was intrigued to see large pieces of paper up on the walls, each one covered with Post-It notes that had been neatly organized under various headings. So naturally, I sat down with Lars Nerback, a professional larpwright who works with a Swedish company to produce edu-larps for use in schools. He explained a little bit about the method the groups were using. (And he has a killer Powerpoint presentation on this that will go up on the internet along with some text in the coming weeks).

The first piece, Nerback said, is to get the group to agree on a vision for the larp which takes the form of a purpose, goal, and target audience. What is the difference between a purpose and a goal? It’s a subtle thing, and one this rookie doesn’t feel confident of yet, so I’ll wait for the experts to weigh in. Once this short group statement has been drafted, Nerback said, the group can use it as a yardstick during later collaboration.

Then comes a series of targeted brainstorming, performed with a time limit, during which participants write down stuff on post it notes that comes to their mind as they ponder the group statement. They present those Post-Its to the group by sticking them onto the wall. Then the group uses the original statement to determine whether what’s on the Post-Its fits. So sure, a battleship would be really cool to larp on, but if you’ve decided to make a quiet domestic drama, it doesn’t fit the concept. They eliminate half the Post-Its, then go a few more targeted rounds, during which like notes get clustered together with like notes and given headings. Then the group looks at the headings and sees if any are lacking. A 3-day larp in the woods for 50 people definitely needs a section on practicalities, for example. Part of the reason for this, Nerback told me, is to help avoid a rookie mistake: often, new designers will burn most of their time and energy on say, characters, or plot, to the exclusion of all else. This method ensures that at least a little thought/work has been put into the other areas.

My description here is by no means exhaustive or fully descriptive — I simply wanted to get at the gist of the process.

Let’s Face It

A few days later, I had the opportunity to try out one of the LEA games, a four-hour thing that dealt with how cyber reality relates to actual reality. I thought it was pretty solid, with an interesting mechanic standing in for Facebook profiles. The game was divided between the “real world” of an office party and the “cyber world” in which we all interacted on social media through large pieces of poster board with profile pictures, friend numbers, and status updates (delivered verbally or through pieces of paper taped up) that we could read, comment on (with sticky notes) and like (also with sticky notes). The game had a few kinks that could use ironing out, but the game was totally playable and pretty much fun — and I found it amazing that they created it in such a short time.

One of the LEA organizers tells me that a full .pdf of all eight larp scripts should be available later this year. Oh, and for those attending Camp Nerdly, I’m bringing a Danish larper bent on running a superhero dance game for kids produced as part of the program!

Limbo

A real antique tram car! (Credit: Sarah Lynne Bowman)

Guys, the Norwegians played true to their “scenography matters” mantra by RENTING A REAL ANTIQUE TRAM CAR for us to larp in.

Along with many others, I played the game Limbo by Tor Kjetil Edland, about the place where souls go after death but before the hereafter. It featured a short character-creation workshop and lots of existential discussion about who we had been in life, how we’d screwed up, and what sort of experience we wanted after the hereafter. As we drove through the streets of the eternal city. In an awesome tram car.

A great larp, and one that comes complete with some very nice directions. It doesn’t require a whole lot of scenography, props, prep, or play time, so I’m hoping to help put it up on the East Coast sometime soon.

Nordic Larp Talks

The Nordic Larp Talks are a short, TED-style series of talks about Nordic larp, and they are always pretty awesome. This year was no exception. Go to the site and check out the excellent content on stuff as diverse as “What the hell does ‘Nordic larp’ actually mean?”; how to figure out what happened during a larp; what happens when player and character emotions get mixed up; how to build more inclusive larps; the connections and challenges of larp, training, and nonprofit work; and much much more.

Go there and watch them immediately.

I mingled with many wonderful people during my tenure and learned a lot about larp culture in Norway from them. Here are a few of the things I enjoyed before the convention even started:

Larper’s Beer

Although the city of Oslo is small by American standards — about half a million people — it has a robust larp scene, easily composed of — and I’m estimating here — more than 100 very active players and organizers, as well as some old hats who pop up at parties. Every Wednesday, this rag tag group meets at an Indian restaurant in central Oslo to talk over old projects, new projects, larp and more. I had the pleasure of showing up twice. The first time around, perhaps 20 people showed up, and the second time we had only 10 or so. I understand that attendance was a bit low because so many people had sequestered themselves in pre-Knutepunkt committee meetings.

The Norwegians worked so very very hard to plan Knutepunkt, y’all.

Itras By

I had the pleasure of playing this rocking RPG with one of its two creators,  Ole Peder Giæver (the other creator is Martin Gudmunsen), in the GM seat. Itras By takes place in a surreal city that looks rather 1920s/1930s. It’s home to talking apes, people whose faces froze when the wind changed, prophetic opium, and more oddities. Things in the city center can be quite normal at times, but as one ventures further out, things become increasingly surreal.

The game is quite mechanics-light, and focuses around collaborative storytelling. The core mechanic is two sets of cards. Resolution cards have text that begins “Yes, but” or “No, and” and inspire the player to create how things went right or wrong for the character. Chance cards introduce new elements into scenes and are often drawn by players who are not in the current scene, who then have the opportunity to introduce random elements, such as monologues, or cut scenes. Not a lot of game mechanics, and the ones that exist are focused around improv and storytelling? Yes, please.

Aside from the creativity of the setting — most of the game book is dedicated to describing it — and the improv rules that make for good collaborative play, I like that Itras By is a forgiving game for players. Since the setting is surreal, we could improvise fish with long sexy lady legs attached to them, back-door clinics that perform leg-ectomies, and so on, without fear that we’d be breaking the game. I found that liberating.

You can find out more about Itras By, including reviews, a surreal video trailer, and places to buy over at the Itras By website.

Stocking Larps

I met some stocking larpers at the Wednesday beers. From what I gathered (and please correct me if I’m wrong, oh peanut gallery), stocking larps are games set in particular historical periods, and for which historical accuracy in dress is somewhat important. The genre includes stuff like Civil War era larps about slavery, Jane Austen games, French revolution games, and WWII games. These aren’t reenactments, but larps with a strong historical basis. My understanding is that the stocking larp scene has been dominated by women organizers and players.

Ritual and Scenography

Apparently, Norwegian larp is known for using improvised rituals — more on this later in my post on A Week in Norway and on the actual Knutepunkt — and realistic scenography. While touring Oslo with various larpers, I heard stories of dark rituals performed in public parks for game, and earlier Norwegian Knutepunkts where everyone arrived in a train station to find that the organizers had painted it prettily. I heard tales of doorways to Knutepunkt made into eight-foot-tall velvet vaginas, and rituals that featured sentences such as, “Behold! The cow of larp!”

Starting a Scene Through Social Engineering

Like many Nordicans, the Norwegians love them some social engineering, which is the practice of setting up environments to facilitate a desired social result. An example of social engineering originating at the last Danish Knudepunkt is the open chair rule, in which groups of people sitting and talking must have an empty chair in their circle, signifying that anyone is welcome to come join. The idea is that this will create group inclusion, and I have to say it’s pretty effective.

Back to the Norwegians though. The Oslo larp scene has a lot of people interested in helping create new scenes in far-away places such as Palestine and Belarus. They’ve been very active both in helping produce larps in other countries — including the US run of Mad About the Boy — and in organizing places where new people can learn to make larps, through this year’s Larpwriter Exchange Academy (more on this in a later post), and through the Larpwriter Summer School. They’ve also been at the forefront of making and disseminating larp scripts, which make Nordic larp re-runnable all over the world, and are a boon to small, hungry scenes like the one in the US.

Here in the US, there’s a group of people interested in fostering a Nordic larp/freeform style scene, so naturally I asked some of the organizers of these different ventures for tips. Here’s the best one I received: To make a robust scene, you want many different groups to feel they have the initiative to do cool stuff, because that’s what keeps the scene vibrant.

So how to do this? Lots of different ways. Let’s say that on this new scene there is one established organizing group, called X, full of people who know each other. X can straight up encourage other people to form a new group Y, which is good for the scene, since when there is an X and a Y, newcomers might feel more ennabled to make Z (and P and…). If people aren’t ready to form Y yet, though, X can help things along by inviting new people into X. Perhaps after running a few games under the umbrella of X (and thus gaining some of its cred), the new folks will feel comfortable enough to depart and make Y. Alternately, the members of X can absorb everyone into X, stick around for a while to help the new people learn, and then depart to make a new group, Q.

Did that make any sense?

I found a new favorite game, learned about the Norwegian larp scene, and even discovered something about social engineering in Oslo before Knutepunkt even approached. Oh yes. And did I mention that plenty of this knowledge came from the fabled Awesome Nordic Ladies (TM)?

This means I’ve been lucky enough to get an up-close peek at Nordic culture, and in the process I’ve learned a few things I’d like to share.

And now…a paean to Awesome Nordic Ladies of the Nordic larp scene.

Nordica apparently has a long proud tradition of awesome women. They differ a bit geographically — if stereotype is true then Sweden is on the bleeding edge of gender equality/political correctness, with Denmark — still great on plenty of gender stuff — lies at the other pole, with Finland and Norway in between.

However, Awesome Nordic Ladies know no national boundaries, and they support one another across them. Here are some of their qualities:

Awesome Nordic Ladies…

• …show solidarity for each other by supporting each other’s projects. For example, at Fastaval, four Nordic ladies agreed to run my scenario about breast cancer. A couple of them also helped by reading the game text and offering feedback. (Note: “solidarity” isn’t the same thing as “unquestioning acceptance of everything women say or do.” Awesome Nordic Ladies also critique with love and care. They say how they feel and what you could do better, but in a manner that’s geared toward making your stuff better.)
• …unapologetically espouse feminist ideals and act on them. In addition to speaking up, this also means looking out for other women.
• …have mad style. 1950s dress seems “in,” as are androgynous looks. Lots of iconic fashion choices going on.
• …take risks and do projects. They’re frequently in charge of things. They are active participants in their scenes, as players and game creators.
• …deal with their emotions openly and rationally. I’ve sat in on lots of interesting talk about body image, jealousy, and scene politics. What’s cool is that they seem able to talk about this stuff and acknowledge others’ feelings without things turning bitter and competitive.
• …are super-smart and able to converse intelligently about a wide variety of topics.
• …have keen social antennae and include others socially. This can mean working as a team to include folks who are less socially savvy, for example, by rotating around hanging out with less savvy folks in big groups. It can also mean they make good larp casting choices, or think about how to help their friends grow as people.
• …think about social engineering. That is to say, how to maneuver situations to produce the best social outcome. This includes…
• …foster leadership skills in the next generation of Awesome Nordic Ladies. They do this by giving honest feedback, including less experienced women in their projects, and by serving as mentors for other women working on their first or second projects.
• …own their own awesomeness. 

In conclusion, Awesome Nordic Ladies are awesome. Start a sect near you today!

What else makes Nordic women so awesome? Post your bit in the comments.

FASTAVAL

For those who aren’t familiar, Fastaval features juried selection of about 30 freeform games, which are then entered into an Oscars-style competition called the Ottos, where participants have a shot at winning a coveted golden penguin. Although the convention also features larps and board games – the latter of which earned its own awards this year – it’s mostly about the freeform scenarios. Freeform scenarios are short (2-4 hours) roleplaying games for between two and ten un-costumed players, featuring a strong GM who cuts together scenes, sort of like the director in a movie, and uses the tools selected by the scenario writer to push the characters.

This year I had a scenario in the running called The Curse, a short game about hereditary breast cancer and relationships, and I’m pleased to say it received an Otto nod for best writing. I have a few tweaks I’d like to make based on the feedback I received, but then I’ll post it up soon.

For more on Fastaval, check out my report from last year’s convention, or last year’s list of 5 Things US Conventions Could Steal From Fastaval.

THE SCENE

Fastaval takes place in a school rented out for the occasion, and all the participants pitch in with a work shift to help out the staff who spend the convention making things awesome for everybody. It also means that unlike conventions in the states, there are no non-gaming outsiders around. In addition to running a boatload of games, the convention is set up for socializing. Inside the venue there is a participant-run café that sells food and cocktails, and sometimes has performers, both burlesque and guitar-and-singer style. It’s a great place to hang out and have a chat, and it’s populated with an older crowd. The bar is just down the hall, stays open much later, and has a beer, shots, and death metal vibe. The Danes definitely believe in alcohol as a social lubricant, and the drinking age is younger here, though there is a separate booze-free lounge provided for the youth.

In addition, there’s a TV crew running around shooting little amusing sketches about the convention and its culture that get edited into an episode shown each night in the bar at 4am. If you think you can’t stay up that late, you’re wrong.

The Dirtbusters, a pervasive larp about fighting the forces of chaos (read: cleaning) runs alongside the convention and provides much-needed cleanup services. They have their own culture, and rumor has it, a beer-and-porn laden command center somewhere on the premises. They provide a vital service to the convention, and seem to be in the midst of an important cultural transition – in recent years, as women have become more vocal on this scene, there has been some tension around issues of sexism and Dirtbuster culture. While the situation hasn’t entirely resolved itself, most of the chatter I heard suggested that things have been improving at a fast clip.

At the same time, the convention consists of only about 25 percent women – far less than other conventions I’ve been to – and you can see those demographics (or sometimes more skewed ones) reflected in the organizing committee, who ends up writing scenarios, the Otto awards etc. As a woman, I sometimes found it intimidating to talk to the other writers and participants, for example – watching ten tall dudes who all know each other well standing in a circle having an important-sounding discussion in another language – made me hesitant to approach. At the same time, the women I’ve met at Fastaval have been highly highly awesome, so it seems like it’d be in everyone’s interest to increase their numbers.  One thing I learned from running the all-women larp Mad About the Boy is that often women don’t feel comfortable taking space, but rather need to be invited in. Having women in a space also often “proves” that it’s safe for other women. I wonder if Fastaval could benefit from a “get women gaming” initiative of some sort.

In the cafe with game designers, sporting mad Fastaval steeze.

International participants felt particularly welcome this year, with a host of nods to our presence — the usual games in English, typically with a few locals mixed in for flavor; subtitles for the awesome Otto Channel TV series; and translators available during the award ceremonies. In addition, most people speak pretty kick-ass English, even when  tired or inebriated.

The crowd represents an interesting mixture of the usual gamers, present at every convention I’ve been to in any country – black t-shirts, long hair, relaxed attitude – and then folks sporting some pretty serious style. Of course, go anywhere and you’ll find women with sharply honed senses of style, but here there are many men working a specific look – certainly many more than I am used to. Yes, Fastaval, I am complimenting the outfits of many of your dudes. Here are some things that appear to be “in”: waxed moustaches, bowties, ties of any sort, blazers, interesting hair (long, short, dyed), suspenders, squarish glasses, monochromatic anything, newsboy caps, pocket squares, lots of facial piercings. And of course beards. Always beards.

THE OTTOS

Otto, Vincent Baker, and me.

This year, I learned a lot about the Otto awards, both through doing, since I wrote a scenario, and by way of research – I spent quite a bit of time talking to former judges about how they do their thing, since there’s some interest stateside in getting up our own competition, and we like to do our homework. Here are the most surprising things I learned:

• There are no hard guidelines on which scenarios are able to be submitted to each year’s Fastaval. In general, they want new scenarios, and good ones. What does “new” mean, you might ask — like, written in the last year? Or not played at other conventions? what about edge cases? The answer is unclear, perhaps by design. Two folks who organize the convention use their discretion in picking scenarios.
•  The committee of six judges agrees on all nominations and winners unanimously. As you can imagine, this means a lot of long meetings and therefore, presumably, arguing. People sometimes refer to this as the “judges’ larp.” I’ve heard that it sometimes turns into its own sleep deprivation competition, as judges passionate about certain scenarios out-argue and out-last their fellows into the  night.
•  The judges spend most of their time reading scenarios, as opposed to playing them. This supposedly gives an edge to scenarios that are well-written.
•   In addition to reading scenarios, the judges look at feedback forms written by players and GMs. The questionnaires, handed out after every run, feature questions like, “how did your group function?” “what was the best thing about the scenario?” “What could have been improved?” “What do you want to tell the writer?” and so on, along with a numeric score. Finally, each judge spends some time hanging out in the café and bar and so on, listening to people talk about their game experiences. Interestingly, the judges are also assigned a couple of authors to talk to informally during the convention. I found this very low-key and nice.
•  The Otto categories include things like Best Characters, Best Story, Best Scenario, Best Mechanics, Best Presentation (writing), and so on. Rather, the committee interprets these each year. When a judge retires, someone with a similar perspective to that judge is invited to fill in.
•   In addition, a separate committee awards an honorary Otto to a person who has contributed a lot to the scene. And of course, there’s an audience prize too.

As a writer, it’s pretty cool to have the scenario you labored over read with such care and attention to detail. It’s a little scary of course (is there anything worth doing that isn’t?), but typically writers write because they’d like to be carefully read. I’m looking forward to the feedback that the committee offers.

WRITERS’ CULTURE

My sparring partner, Troels, and I.

Fastaval supports scenario writers. I understand that for folks local to Denmark, there are weekend retreats and scenario workshops designed to nurture both experienced and new writers. Although writers are spread out across Denmark, I believe there are activities in a few different cities to help folks connect, play test, and get feedback on their writing.

In addition, there’s the option of a sparring partner, which is also available to international participants. Sparring partners help improve your scenario by offering pointed feedback and challenging design ideals. Often, they seem to specialize in something particular. I wanted special help with play testing, since I was new to scenario writing, but my sparring partner ended up reading a truly sick number of drafts, discussing structure and format with me, and working as a general sounding board for new ideas. Super super helpful.

The culture at this convention – or perhaps it is a facet of Danes in general? – has a marked absence of bullshit. Feedback is direct and honest, and there wasn’t the veneer of fake praise and excessive politeness over everything that so often marks gatherings of writers. I found this in turns refreshing, exciting, and intimidating.

THE GAMES

Dulce Et Decorum had lovely packaging.

I played two scenarios and ran two scenarios this year. My best experience was running Dulce Et Decorum, a tabletop game about the trenches of WWI, written by my sparring partner Troels Ken Pedersen. Since the game ran long, I had a fun time cutting viciously and controlling the spotlight of the scenario. And from the feedback sheets I collected at the end of the scenario, the players enjoyed themselves too, which is the whole point.

I wish I’d played more scenarios this year, or perhaps played them in a different order. The convention starts on Wednesday, with most play wrapped up by Sunday morning. Stateside, the best stuff usually runs on Fri/Sat night of conventions, so that’s what I signed up for, but here, it seems the opposite is true. Conventional wisdom among participants suggests that the best stuff happens on Wednesday night, and Thursday and Friday during the day, mainly because as the convention wears on and the parties stretch out into the night participants and GMs alike become more fatigued and hung over as the convention progresses.

PLAYERS

Recently, renowned Swedish person (and bad-ass GM/designer) Anna Westerling visited the US, and we all ran freeform games for Americans. She observed that Americans tend to follow directions really well and quickly — if the point of this scene is for A to flirt with B, then they get right in there and make it happen quickly. This can make cutting easier, and often means that emotions for players escalate rather quickly.

With her observation in mind, I found the Nordic players fascinating. Their style of play seems more subtle to me; rather than cutting to the chase many of them approach the point of the scene sideways rather than head on, and they layer tension slowly and often rather quietly. This approach has advantages, of course — it’s more realistic, and often the conflicts created felt quite intriguing. Not better or worse; just different.

This makes me wonder having both sorts of players in the same game would make things mismatched or perfectly matched. I’d imagine that the Nordic way of playing would add richness and detail, where the American style of play drives the plot forward and raises the stakes. I’ll be watching future games carefully to see how it works out in practice.

HIGHLIGHTS

Here’s Claus Raasted on a brass hotel tiger.

Some of my best Fastaval fun took place in the café, talking design and American culture with guest of honor and new freeform convert Vincent Baker, and chatting with other designers and folks I feel I’m starting to know now that I’ve been to a few international conventions.

I also happened to stay in a pretty pimping hotel room with an international crew. In addition to two small rooms for sleeping, we had a large common area decorated with animal skulls and preserved deer heads, a set of elaborate golden couches, and a long baroque dining room table. The room opened out onto a little terrace with a view up a wooded hill, perfect for watching the sun rise.

THE FASTAVAL CHALLENGE

Need some Fastaval, but live outside Nordica? Many of the scenarios are available in English at the Alexandria project. I know that my local scene would love to see many more sets of GM instructions translated into English, and so I offer this incentive: if you translate your scenario, my GM crew, Sex & Bullets, will make sure that it runs at least once at a con or private gaming event.

(Caveats: we can’t play some topics here, though, and we’ll be the final arbiters of what those are. When in doubt, ask! lizzie.stark@gmail.com We’d love both traditional sad-sack scenarios as well as ones that are a bit lighter and more fun. And we can only promise for scenarios with 1-15 participants and a minimum of set/costuming)

“Larp Love, Not War: Nordic methods for sexy roleplaying” – a talk I wrote for a Valentine’s day event held by NYC game collective Babycastles. I also gave it at Gen Con in 2012, and I’ve given abbreviated versions before various Ars Amandi Workshops.

“Don’t Touch or I’ll Sue: American larp as national metaphor” – I wrote this talk based on some work I’d done for the 2012 Knutebook and on a few blog posts. I delivered it in 2012 at Solmukohta, Wyrd Con, and Gen Con.

“Playing in Graveyards: Terror collides with larp“ - the story of a set of larpers who gamed in a public space in NYC, and how 9/11 affected their community. I delivered this as part of the Nordic Larp Talks in 2012. You can see the video here.

Introduction

This talk was inspired by my 2011 visit to Knudepunkt, an art larp convention that rotates its way around the Nordic capitals. As I watched, tried, and learned about their way of larping, it struck me as really Nordic, in the stereotypical sense of the word – communal in important ways.

That got me thinking that if Nordic larp is Nordic, maybe American larp is American.

I had the idea that Nordic folk took roleplaying – which originated in America – and evolved it to fit their local culture. Perhaps the reason that American larp hasn’t changed greatly since its inception is because it already had that quintessential American-ness about it.

So I went looking for American-ness – surely a slippery quality — in one of the games that I followed extensively for Leaving Mundania.

I looked at Americanness in larp in two ways.

•  The effect that American values have on larp
•  The American values that arise out of larp

*Disclaimer: The US is a huge and diverse country, with many different larp scenes – I can’t presume to speak for all of them, and I don’t presume to think that the idea of Americanness that I’m using is the only sort of Americanness. I did the bulk of my research on the Eastern seaboard between DC and Boston.

Knight Realms

Knight Realms – I didn’t want to focus on generalities, so I decided to examine a specific larp, Knight Realms, which is a boffer campaign typical of US boffer campaigns.

• Based in New Jersey
• Has been running since 1997, meeting about once per month
• Events typically last a weekend, and take place at a Boy Scout or Girl Scout campground in the tri-state area.
• It’s well attended – 150-200 people regularly show up for events.
• The setting is medieval fantasy, and it uses boffers – padded weapons – for combat.
• Most plots revolve around NPCs, non-player-characters, who attack or offer puzzles. Player versus player action is permitted but not encouraged.
• It’s got a ton of rules – more than 166 web pages worth.

US Culture’s Influence on Knight Realms

How American Culture affects Knight Realms on a structural level:

• Litigiousness. Lawsuits, and legal liability, real or threatened, are a facet of life in the US. (explain attractive nuisance tort). And they create incentives to run larp as a business.
  • Litigiousness creates a high financial bar
    • KR takes out liability insurance, which costs money.
• Litigiousness means that someone must be legally liable for stuff that might go wrong:
  • So it makes sense to incorporate larp, so that the corporation and not the person is liable.
• So our cultural litigiousness makes running larp expensive, and encourages organizers to incorporate themselves. In short, cultural litigiousness creates an incentive for organizers to run their games as businesses.

 Litigiousness affects the stories told in game:

• implied no-touching rule, which means that some themes, like say, love, aren’t typically played. This is true at KR. If players want to play romance among each other, they can, but it’s not something that’s part of the game plot.

Running larp as a business affects the game dynamics at KR via the following:

• Death systems
  • Players sink time and money into their characters in the form of admission fees, event attendance, and costumes. From a business point of view, if a character permanently dies, that represents a player’s lost investment in the game. So at Knight Realms there’s a forgiving death system – everyone is allowed five deaths.
• Inheritance from one character to another.
  • If you retire a character (or the character dies the last death), the investment isn’t toally lost – you can role over a percentage of skillpoints to your new character. This means that new characters aren’t always low level – keeps the social structure rigid
• No end of the world plots
  • They’re a staple of high-fantasy literature, but in order for the game to be interesting, the players must have the chance to succeed or fail at any given plot. If the players fail at a world-ending plot, the game has effectively written itself out of existence, and that’s not in the business model.

 An anti-realist tradition in larp:

We’ve got an anti-realist tradition. If you want realism – go find some reenactors, because in general, you won’t find clearly consistent worlds with hard historical underpinnings in larp.

• The Setting: Disneyland style; atmosphere as pastiche.
  • Knight Realms, while set in the 1200s, isn’t historically accurate in setting. It’s really a pastiche of medieval fantasy movies, myth, and history, and because of that, you’ll see many different sorts of dress among the characters. The owner, James C. Kimball, spends a lot of effort trying to make things look medieval, trying to evoke the medieval era without necessarily replicating the medieval era.
  • I’ve got a theory about this phenomenon: Maybe this is because we don’t live alongside our  history the way, for example, that Europe does. Therefore, larps set in older time periods necessarily require suspension of disbelief.
  • This is echoed by the game reality. because things have to go back to normal between games, there’s not much institutional memory within campaign larps.
• Tendency to play hyperbolic characters – mighty heroes, not ordinary people…even though we’re a democratic country that deifies folksiness (eg Joe the Plumber) The dream is to be an exceptional person who will achieve extraordinary goals – someone who can get ahead.
  • This hyperbole is written into the KR rules put it, “Every PC in this game is a ‘hero’ in the Knight Realms world. They are above and beyond the normal man.”
  • The irony at Knight Realms, of course, is that everyone is exceptional by definition – we’re all heroes above mortal man; it’s a new form of equality, and one that by design can’t satisfy the desire to be the center of attention.
  • I see it as fitting in with the only national myths we have; the tall tales from the frontier, which tell of exceptional people doing exceptional things – Pecos Bill riding a giant cat fish down the Rio Grande – Paul Bunyon clearing redwood forests with a sweep of his hand, and so on.
  • Liberal-minded anxiety also affects how we play Racism and classism – we come from a country where “anyone can grow up to be president,” as the rhetoric goes, a country that prides itself on offering equality and freedom and upward mobility. So racism and classism make us profoundly uncomfortable
• Racism
  • The US has a fraught relationship with race and racial dress up. Playing race produces liberal minded anxiety.
  • It’s more common to see larps with green people and blue people than with black, white, and Hispanic people. This is certainly true at KR.
  • When racism is played at KR – and it’s written into some racial descriptions – it typically isn’t played, except among friends. Or when it is played, we get a Mary Sue type plot to the effect of “it’s not right to make the Khitanians live on one side of town.” In other words, KR plays racial stuff that we settled in the 1960s – most games don’t touch current issues of racism because they are seen as too explosive, or because they’re too complex.
• Class culture.
  • In the US, we like to think that class isn’t a thing. The idea of upward mobility, regardless of class, is linked into how we construct our national identity. Even when we’re pretending to live in medieval times, it’s hard to overcome the idea that we’re all equal.
  • Travance, the barony where Knight Realms takes place, is ruled by nobility. Real medieval nobility inherited their titles, but at Knight Realms, it’s a meritocracy – nobility gain titles through acts of bravery and by proving, out of game, that they are responsible enough to handle a role important to the plot.

How Knight Realms Reflects US Cultural Values

So that’s the background for the rest of the talk. I wanted to talk a bit in general about some cultural forces that shape larp in the US, and how those elements effect KR directly. Now, I’m going to talk more in depth about how the elaborate rules systems of Knight Realms, and games like it, reflect American values.

We love us some rags to riches stories in America. We love stories about people who start out at the bottom of the social order and head to the top in one generation. And we pride ourselves of being a nation in which upward mobility is possible, where hard work and the protestant work ethic pay off, because everyone starts on an equal playing field. That’s the rhetoric, at least.

Excessive rules help create a similar atmosphere in game.

 Why do we have rules?

• Emma Wieslander says organizers introduce rules whenever they want player and character to experience something differently. E.g. death. (see Beyond Role and Play)
• That may be a fine description for rules-light Nordic games. But it doesn’t explain why Knight Realms has rules for stuff like reading, which isn’t physically impossible or unsafe to other participants.
• I think that the excessive amount of rules at games like Knight Realms create equality.Take the literacy skill at KR. In real life, my literacy skills are pretty awesome – I’ve got some graduate degrees. And a book! But in game, I’m no different from a 14-year-old high schooler playing a warrior until my character uses a point to obtain literacy. In effect, the literacy mechanic deprives me of my educational advantage. It means that the 14-year-old and I start the game on equal footing. I’d connect this to an American vision of equality

The American Vision of Equality

• We think if “equality” as equality of opportunity, not equality of access or outcome.
  • The 14^th Amendment of our Constitution says, for example, that the law must treat people equally. The law’s equal treatment of citizens, this supposed lack of structural boundaries to success is supposed to give every citizen the much-vaunted equal playing field. If we’re all beginning at the same starting point, then we succeed or fail by virtue of how much effort we put in.
  • So Knight Realms’ rules ostensibly evoke equality of opportunity – the large amount of rules create an equal playing field, they try to promote the meritocracy of the game, which is something players are very concerned about.

So the rules create an equal playing field. But elaborate numeric systems also imply leveling up.

• The rules also imply leveling up – if I have +5 strength, I want to know when I’ll get +6 strength.
•  At KR, they keep track of levels in the form of build(explain how build works, that it’s the raw stuff of character creation that you can spend by investing in stats, skills, or professions. For every 10 build you invest, you gain one level)
•  You can get extra build through:
  • paying more
  • doing service for the game
  • excellent roleplay.
• However, because KR doles out build for event attendances, characters will inexorably gain power and influence whether they take advantage of the extras or not.

In other words, KR characters follow the path of the ideal American immigrant.

The Rags To Riches Myth

The Emma Lazerus poem on the statue of liberty says, “Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free.” The implication is that we’ll take them in, and through the magic of capitalism and democracy, (and if they’re good immigrants who follow the rules) make them rich and awesome over the course of one or more generations. That’s the American dream – to work hard and get ahead.

Tied into this is our rags to riches myth – we love to hear about people who go from immigrant to famous in one generation. Eg Obama, Sotamayor, Jay-Z.

So games like KR mirror the path of the ideal immigrant. When we enter a new game, we leave behind our everyday worries, our community relationships, and our very conception of self—in favor of taking on a new identity and new position within the game world. If the rules strip players of their natural abilities, then new characters—the huddling masses immigrating to a new, fantastical world—enter the game virtually naked, without many health points, skills, or protections. Over time, players who follow the rules – making real-life investments of time (event attendance), money (costuming and admission fees), and talent gain influence in game, their road to power conveniently quantified by level.

Achieving the American dream isn’t easy in real life. It requires hard work, ingenuity, old-fashioned gumption, and no small amount of luck – how many people are still living in the projects for every Jay-Z or Sonya Sotomayor? However, at Knight Realms, power, wealth and influence inevitably accrue to players who simply show up; leveling up is the perfected, democratized version of the American dream in which everyone is exceptional enough to “make it.”

Conclusion

So in conclusion – America’s culture of litigiousness impacts game play both structurally – creating incentives for larps to run as businesses, which in turn impacts storylines through forgiving death mechanics, continuous plots, and lack of touching.

America’s complex relationship with history and cultural rhetoric of equality mean that accuracy in setting, race and class aren’t motivating goals.

Finally, elaborate rules systems enforce in-game equality among players and enforce a certain kind of meritocracy in which hard workers get ahead, recreating the American rags-to-riches trope.