Photo: D. Sharon Pruitt

Apologies for the pause in Monday larp posts — my site was hacked last Sunday, but now, courtesy of the awesome Daniel Quinn, everything’s back to normal.

Today we’re tackling a thorny issue: how to come out of the larp closet.

While reporting for Leaving Mundania, I encountered many gamers who kept their weekend selves separate from their work-, friend-, and family-selves, often reminding me of “the first rule of fight club” at parties where non-larpers were present. One of them, a nameless larper who wishes to leave the closet at work, asked me to ask my panel of experts for advice on how to make the leap.

Their de-closeting advice requires three easy steps: 

Step 1: Explain it in terms that non-gamers can understand, using analogy.

Avonelle Wing:

I might be lucky, in that nobody in my world has ever been dismissive of larp as a hobby and an artform. Anyway – when I’m shopping for costuming or makeup and need guidance, I tell people it’s like street theater meets flash mob meets cops and robbers for adults, and then I reference the 90′s murder mystery games.  Everybody seems to “get it,” at least a little, and sometimes people bowl me over with their enthusiasm

Michael Pucci:

Finding if the person likes fantasy books, MMORPGs, or even fantasy based TV series helps a lot.  That way when you want to broach the subject of gaming you can mention a story that relates to a similar interest with the other person.  Explaining to people that you go and live a ‘World of Warcraft‘ type environment, or that you do a more in depth version of a ren fair allows people who are not gamers to have a point of reference to your hobby.

We find that the easiest way to come out with Dystopia Rising is to say “You know Zombieland or ever play Silent Hill or Fallout?  Yeah, I spend a weekend a month living in that.  Fighting zombies and camping and the like.  What did you do this past weekend?”

Part of explaining larp is explaining the medium’s variety, J. Tuomas Harviainen advises:

I suggest mentioning some of the more cool games, in a context where they are appropriate, without taking up the word “larp” at once. There is nothing wrong with it, but it does tend to create immediate associations when non-larpers hear it. When I describe a larp, I treat it as an individual role-play work, and can then say that “Others of course like to do the same but in a different fashion, such as fantasy larp in the woods. To each their own style of play, just as there are different kinds of TV programs, but it’s the same medium.”

As Kate Beaman-Martinez points out, the corollary to this step is “know your audience.”

I suggest easing people in. First be aware of what they think of it. If it’s a sweet church lady who might think that your zombie-raising dark mage might really be a cover for devil worship, odds are you should just say that you’re playing a murder mystery dinner party and leave it at that. More times than not I describe it as “cops and robbers with rules on who shot who first.” If it’s your weekly poker buddies, talk about whats cool about it like getting to hit your friends with foam bats or getting to do wild things with your makeup.

Step 2: Once you’ve explained what the tarnation larp is, own it. Because larp is awesome. And eff the haters.

Mike Young:

Just tell them and don’t worry about being mocked.  In fact, I’ve found that you less often get mocked as you do complete ignorance.  They just can’t wrap their heads around larp no matter how much you explain, and some of my family still think that I do some sort of theater thing on the weekends. But every so often you get responses like I did from a completely mundane cousin who had seen larp on a tv show and thought it was really cool that I do that sort of thing.  That makes it all worth it. And finally, anyone who mocks you for your hobbies just isn’t worth your time.

Aaron Vanek:

Show up to work or family’s home in full costume. FLY YOUR FREAK FLAG LOUD AND PROUD!

Seriously though, it depends on who you are coming out to. Here in Los Angeles I say things like “improvisational acting” or “structured communal storytelling” and most people get excited and want to know more. My wife says larp is a “themed improvisational costume party.” I mention that the United States military uses taxpayer dollars to run a larp that trains soldiers before deployment to the Middle East. My analogy is fantasy foam combat campaigns are to larp like super-heroes are to comic books. They’re the most prevalent, the most colorful and flashy, the most recognizable, but they aren’t all of the art form of live action role playing.

Both larpers and non-larpers need to separate the content of larp (World of Darkness or NERO) from the form of larp (the bubble or magic circle of play pretend). I got that concept from page 6 of Scott McCloud’s brilliant (and highly influential) Understanding Comics.

Sarah Bowman points out that owning it helps defy the stigma’s power:

I never felt the need to stay “in the closet” in terms of my role-playing and it saddens me when I hear stories from other people who do feel that way. I understand that role-playing incurs a stigma, but I believe that the best way to dispel a stigma is to provide a good example of someone who does not fit the negative stereotype. I find that most people remember the experience of playing make-believe as a child and think fondly of those days. Also, the ability to play dress up tends to draw the interest of females, at the risk of sounding totally stereotypical. Men like dress up too!

Step 3: Some cool documentation doesn’t hurt.

Claus Raasted:

Show them the Nordic Larp book. )

[Lizzie's note: I hear that Leaving Mundania is now available in ebook form and makes a great gift for the non-larper in your life. And also, the Nordic Larp Wiki and Nordic Larp Talks might provide some helpful material.]

But remember, you can’t win everyone over. Know when to fold ‘em.

Geoffrey Schaller:

Be warned – some people carry notions, and others will talk about your hobby to people you don’t want them to – like the CEO of your company. Just like some people don’t get rap, opera, or show tunes… some people don’t get larp.  Know when to explain it, and know when to avoid it, and that gossip travels in professional environments.

Finally, know that the geek closet isn’t as dark and deep as it used to be.

Frederik Berg Østergaard:

I think that these days it’s become less of an issue. If you look at how often old-skool Dungeons & Dragons is portrayed in TV-series and films, it has become a part of the broader cultural luggage that we all carry around these days. I mean, the founding fathers have all died, and we’re all getting older. The geek shall inherit the earth and so we have. Of course coming out of the closet as a larper can seem to be a *big thing*, but lets face it, people have a lot nerdier hobbies these days, and how often do you get a chance to say “Oh, yeah. I larp. In my last larp I came out of the closet in a dark room at a gay larp.”

Read more First Timers’ Guides.

____

Kate Beaman-Martinez  has been acting since she was 11 and started gaming at 17. She cut her teeth on White Wolf’s Werewolf: The Apocalypse and naturally got up when there was a heated debate on the proper uses of torture in her weekly table top group. Shortly thereafter she joined The Avatar System and hasn’t looked back. Through larping, she has found her partners, and moved to New York. Kate is currently a full time student and the Executive Assistant for Double Exposure, Inc.

Sarah Lynne Bowman received her PhD from the University of Texas at Dallas in 2008. McFarland press published her dissertation in 2010 under the title The Functions of Role-Playing Games: How Participants Create Community, Solve Problems and Explore Identity. Her current research focuses upon understanding social conflict within role-playing communities and applying Jungian theory to the phenomenon of character immersion.

J. Tuomas Harviainen comes from Finland, and is one of those pesky  professional larp researchers. In addition to studying larps, he also designs them. His mini-larps have so far been run in at least 14 countires and translated to seven languages.

Frederik Berg Østergaard is a Scandinavian game designer and jeepform evangelist. His work has mainly focused on taking the medium further and farther away from its tabletop roots into an adult oriented form,  that has more in common with performance and psychodrama. He also holds an M.A. in History of Religions from the University of Copenhagen.

Michael Pucci is the CEO of Eschaton Media and the creator of multiple larps, tabletop books, scripts and gaming-related media.  He has more than twenty years experience storytelling for larps, tabletops, and convention games, and spent five years in the business side of the gaming industry. He proudly holds the title of ‘Zombie Lord‘ while looking for more inventive approaches to modernize gaming.

Claus Raasted (32) claims to be the world’s leading expert on children’s larps, and so far nobody has challenged that claim in earnest. He’s the author of six books on larp, is the editor-in-chief of Denmark’s roleplaying magazine ROLLE|SPIL and has been a professional larper for nearly a decade. He also has a past in reality TV. But these days, who hasn’t?

Geoffrey Schaller is a gaming gypsy, having wandered into and out of tabletop RPGs, Collectable Card Games, Miniatures, larp (WoD, boffer, and other), Board Games, MMOs, and countless other forms of gaming, as a player, play tester, demo-runner, author, and staff member.  He still dabbles in all of them when he gets the chance. He is the Technical Director of Double Exposure, Inc.

Aaron Vanek has been playing, designing, running, and thinking about larps for 25 years. His larp publications include the illustrated essay “Cooler Than You Think: Understanding Live Action Role Playing“; “The Non-United Larp States of America“ in the Talk Knutepunkt 2011 book, “Predictions for Larp” in Journeys to Another World, the Wyrd Con book, and the blueprint for “Rock Band Murder Mystery” in the Do Knutepunkt 2011 book. He hopes for at least another 25 years of larp.

Avonelle Wing is the Senior Vice President of Double Exposure, Inc. Along with her partners and a team of friends, comrades and co-visionaries, she works to produce two full-sized gaming conventions and a variety of other gaming related productions each year.  She is a larper at her core – collaborative storytelling is her art form of choice.

Mike Young has been writing live roleplaying games for over 20 years.  His award-winning larps have been run across the world, and many of them are available for free download at his website.

In other news, Matt Rice of Geekadelphia wrote a great review of the book, proclaiming, “Anyone with an interest in gaming, pop-culture or even sociology will be fascinated by Leaving Mundania.”

Today is a pretty special day for me: I get to check an item off my bucket list. I’m delighted to say that today is the official publication date for my first book, Leaving Mundania, a narrative nonfiction book about larp, or live action role-play.

It’s available for purchase nation-wide, including at retailers such as Indiebound, Amazon, Powell’s, and Barnes & Noble.

And in a felicitous bit of timing, the Oxford English Dictionary added the word “LARPing” to the dictionary in March. Good news for those who like pretty typography: the downcaps version is included in the definition.

Check out the other fascinating talks:

• Johanna MacDonald talked about the distinctions between larp and traditional theater.
• Drawing on their work on video games such as Eve Online and Alan Wake, Mikko Rautalahti and Andie Nordgren talked Johanna Koljonen about the parallels between larp and digital game design.
• Claus Raasted talked about why people should just call it larp, a sentiment with which I heartily agree.
• Mike Pohjola linked larp to ancient ritual and told us how to become gods.
• Jesper Bruun, who created the tango larp I write about in the book, discussed the process of creating that game.
• JP Koljonen took us inside a larp about asylum seekers.

Come on down to the Fallout Shelter (Comics, Games & Collectibles!) tomorrow night for the launch of Leaving Mundania. I’ll be reading from the book and signing copies.

Date: Saturday, April 28
Time: 7pm
Location: The Fallout Shelter, 320 Raritan Avenue, Highland Park, NJ.

If you’re on Facebook, it’d be great if you could RSVP via the Facebook invite.

Cheers!

When I tell Americans about Nordic larp, their first response is, “That’s messed up. That’s not a game, it’s therapy. Do people get PTSD from games?” And at Solmukohta this year, I heard a ton of discussion about psychological safety in these games. The community seems pretty self-aware, and cognizant that their impulse to play with dark topics is, perhaps, a bit twisted and potentially dangerous. As a lit-mag editor, I’d argue that trauma is a legitimate topic for art, provided that it’s handled sensitively.

At Solmukohta this year, I attended a fascinating panel on “The Great Player Safety Debate” designed to suss out safety quandaries and brainstorm on how to mitigate them. Journalist/author/larper Johanna Koljonen hosted the panel, which included game researcher Jaakko Stenros, and larpwrights Peter Munthe-Kaas and Bjarke Pedersen.

The Culture Around Roleplay

Some of the discussion revolved around the Nordic culture of roleplay. The discussion started on a hopeful note — for all the harm it might do, it’s clear that larp, even super-intense larp, doesn’t break most people. And that’s definitely a good thing. Other points that came up:

• In the past few years, the need for psychological safety has changed due to the rise of bleed as a concept; organizers are now designing games for bleed. Bleed destroys the roleplay contract — the implicit agreement among players whereby they pretend not to judge each other by their characters, and vice versa — by intermingling what’s in and out of game.
• There’s a cult of hardcore-ness; players who push their own boundaries gain status. This has transformed boundary-pushing into a competitive game with social rewards, and potentially dangerous consequences. Social pressure to be cool and hardcore can prevent players from using the safety measures available.
• Tools designed to help players manage their own risk can urge players to go further than they would ordinarily. When more safeguards become available, organizers and players simply push themselves further. This discussion reminded me, very explicitly, of this Freakonomics podcast on the dangers of safety.

Tools

The panel discussed the pros and cons of many of the current safety tools employed in larps.

• Pre-game workshops. They allow players to get comfortable with one another, introduce the games’ themes and mechanics. As one panelist put it, “Workshops work, but we don’t know why.” Another panelist posited that during workshops, “We rehearse [...] We try out the extremes of the game.” However, through rehearsal, larpers often discover that they can go further during the game, when there’s not a game master there to modulate the impact. However, like the larps themselves, workshops can be experimental and boundary-pushing; though they enhance safety, they may not be safe themselves. Pre-game workshops may work both because they ritualize the start of the game and because they help create…
• Off-game relationships. The consensus is that these definitely help, possibly because they make the boundaries between game and real life clear — if you know that guy yelling at you is really a mild-mannered accountant in real life, that helps mitigate bleed. Larp is about trust, so it can be easier to play with people you know.
• Cut and brake words (safewords), words that player can use to get out of a scene or regulate its intensity. In practice, these words are rarely used, perhaps due to the social pressure to be hardcore and not to disrupt the experience of co-players. There’s also the sense (as laid out in one of the convention’s beginning rants) that once a player says “cut,” the damage has already done and it’s already too late. The consensus seemed to be that these words are broken tools. Because they aren’t used in practice, they create a false sense of safety. In fact, the existence of the words urges players to push themselves further by suggesting that personal boundaries will be tested. (I wondered: If people have trouble using cut words due to social pressure, why not just make their use mandatory for each player once per game or whatever?)
• Off-game rooms. They’re great if people actually use them — there’s that hardcore social pressure rearing its head again — and so experienced players should encourage noobs to head in to them when needed.
• De-f***ing buddies. Before the game, players are assigned partners to whom they must talk both before and after the game is over. These work because talking can help people assimilate and understand their larp experiences. Buddies also overcome the problem that the people who are most damaged are the least likely to talk.
• Impartial listeners. Talking to uninvolved friends, or impartial researchers after a game helps, possibly because active listening affirms the experience of the player.
• Debrief. A structured post-larp talk among participants and organizers can help people return to reality after a game. There was consensus that the meaning of the game is really created during the post-game discussion. Our brains can’t tell the difference between fiction and reality — this is one of the awesome things about larp — but that we are good at putting these things in boxes after the fact. So, the most important part of the debrief is when players agree that they didn’t damage each other — saying it makes it true in some important sense. In other words, the debrief helps players fit the reality of the game into the old reality of their lives.

Safety and Informed Consent

Stenros floated an interesting definition of safety toward the end of the panel, that it means, “not risking more than we are willing to risk.” This explanation led into a discussion between panelists and audience about informed consent, and what that means in larp, and whose responsibility it is. One panelist mentioned a core problem with intense larps, namely, “If we tell people it’ll be dangerous, they won’t believe us.” Many of these games only run once, so there’s an experimental element to them, where not even the organizers know what will happen — how is it possible for players to give informed consent if it’s unclear what they’re getting into?

Some members of the audience agitated for player responsibility. One compared first-time larpers to virgins. Sex, like Nordic larp, is an intense experience, and yet virgins are able to negotiate this successfully and take responsibility for their actions. Another audience member countered with, “but we don’t toss virgins into an S&M dungeon on their first time out.”

There was some consensus that there needs to be more communication around who is responsible for risk and safety.

Responsibility

During the lively audience discussion at the end of the panel, the topic turned to responsibility for cutting a scene. Apparently, the onus is often on the in-game victim of abuse to cut the scene when it becomes too much, a pro-active move that may be difficult to execute for someone who is feeling badgered. Players perpetrating abuse should also feel free to cut and should cut more often — even though they are in in-game positions of power, they are also susceptible to psychological harm. Maybe there should be continual check-in, someone proposed, a sort of call and response that perpetrators and victims could exchange in game to make sure everyone is on the same page, a sort of code for “Are you ok?” “Yes.”

For a different take on this topic, check out this thread on the Knutepunkt forum.

Symptoms may include:

• using the prefix “knute-” for everything, regardless of appropriateness
• greater-than-normal addiction to social media
• new Facebook/forum friends
• excessive honesty
• logorrhea that may include long emails, excessive blogging, wiki contributions, or marathon internet chats
• for foreigners: the sensation that although body has returned from Nordica, the mind remains there still
• existential malaise
• lowered inhibitions
• weight gain or loss
• inflated sense of own coolness; insecurity about coolness of hair-do
• sarcasm
• cleverness
• excessive use of academic terminology in relation to ordinary life. (“This steak dinner is Dionysian. And I mean that in the Nietzschean sense. I can feel myself immersing into it.”)
• con-plague
• plans to run larps or other roleplaying games, or to travel to attend said games
• role-playing books
• disinterest in mundania
• moose bumps

Treatment

• antibiotics
• sleep
• dance party
• two episodes of reality television weekly
• larp
• travel plans
• chocolate

Did I miss some symptoms? Did I miss some cures? Let me know in the comments.

Travel Fatigue

Foreign travel depresses my natural level of pep. There’s something about the unfamiliarity of small events — the rude-sounding “toilet” instead of the “restroom,” the luncheon meat for breakfast — that is exciting, but tiring. It’s hard to catch a cab, use a non-chip credit card, or buy a bus ticket. After a week in Denmark, I felt oddly subdued at Solmukohta. Or maybe just by the Fastaplague.

Conflict

The Nordicans (if I can call them that) seem to view conflict in a different way from my local community. Wherever I went — panels, parties, the bar — I overheard vociferous and to-the-point debate over issues ranging from politics to game terminology to artistic vision. And yet, the debates remained friendly.

I found this to-the-point way of treating conflict refreshing, and different from my local scene in the states, where intellectual debate can quickly give way to hurt feelings and broken friendships. For this reason, we often avoid talking about disagreeable topics unless strictly necessary.

I was also interested that critiques seemed short and to-the-point, rather than couched in complex phrasing designed to mitigate the blow. Since I come from a culture in which attitudes and beliefs seem correlated with personal identity, some of the critiques levied toward folks sounded quite blunt to me. But here, the vitriol never seemed personal; it seemed intellectual — I could disagree with your take on the roleplay contract without disrespecting you. Very cool.

Fashion

The beards were not as impressive as Fastaval’s haul this year, but the hair continued to hold its own. Special points to the mohawked woman at the Design lounge ball. The dearth of prosthesis (elf ears, demon horns, etc) did disappoint a bit, but the fabulous hats more than made up for it.

Anti-American Sentiment

Did you know that not everyone likes the US? Surprise! Noridcans had lots to say about the current presidential race, and exuded a subtle pressure to behave in more Nordic fashion on the American invasion, which numbered an incredible (and incredibly awesome)  ten or so of us. As fellow American Evan Torner pointed out, most of the US contingent is involved in the indie-game community or in scholarship around gaming, and a significant percentage had published a piece in a Knutebook, so we felt welcomed in a “gobble gobble we accept you one of us” sort of way.

In Thomas B’s  Solmukohta recap, he called out Americans for being excessively apologetic about our country and its way of gaming. From my standpoint, this was a defensive posture, undercutting potential anti-American sentiment with the twin powers of sarcasm and conflict-avoidance. It was passive-aggression. Or maybe that’s just me.

And yes. We’re all envious of Nordic public transit. And the bike lanes.

Leaving Mundania

The most un-mundane thing about Solmukohta, for me, was being around so many people who’d read my work (or parts of it). Under normal circumstances, I mostly encounter family members who have read my columns and they’re obligated to like them (hi, Dad!) so it felt cool to meet impartial parties who’d given my book a try and liked it. The coolest compliment? One guy told me that my book robbed him of much needed Solmukohta sleep — his bedtime reading stretched on longer than he’d intended.

Parties

On Saturday, we partied like it was 1999. Namely, to techno music of unknown provenance with goth-kid dance moves.

Odds and Ends

Interesting discussion to be had everywhere. A few bits overheard:

• If larps have the power to reenvision the world, what should larpwrights aim to create, cautionary dystopian futures, or future utopias that aim to model the way a better world might be?
• Alibi. The idea that players need an excuse to play certain characters. If I elect to play a child rapist, that’s super creepy on an out-of-character level. But if I’m assigned the role by a GM, I’ve got a reason why I have to play that role, an alibi. Seems like the game itself is an alibi to act in ways not permitted by ordinary society, whether that means acting like a orc or a prison guard.
• Lines and veils. A way of talking about player limits in games; an American indie game analogue (sort of) to the safety “cut” and “brake,” explained to me by Jason Morningstar. Players draw lines in content that other players may not cross. So for example, if violence against kids really offends me on a personal level, I can draw that line and restrict the game’s content. Veils are more porous. So if domestic violence is a hot-button topic for me, I can pull a veil over it — basically, the game can include domestic violence, but the group agrees not to dwell on it or depict it in agonizing detail. More description over on The Forge.
• When I arrived back in New Jersey I discovered a black bowler hat of unknown provenance in my bag. It was a good con.

For some takes on Solmukohta by other bloggers, check out blogs by:

Thomas B: part 1, part 2, part 3, part 4
Evan Torner
Annika Waern
Rafael Bienia
Mike Pohjola
Oliver
Twinners
Story Games Forum
My first post on SK
The Solmukohta documentation page has tons of content from other panels too!

The convention took place at a building that seemed like a cross between a hotel and a boarding school, a labyrinthine complex of hallways, lounges, and classrooms that seemed built into a hill.

Zombies and Bleed

Rather than attend the opening ceremonies, my Fastaplague-ridden body required a nap. When I awoke, I stumbled through the corridor, blithely ignoring the “game area,” signs, since I wished to find the info desk without wandering out into the snowy forest. (Although the skinny, red-barked pine trees looked lovely).

Scores of groaning conventioneers shambled through the hallways, their mindlesss half-witted expressions and limping gaits perfectly mirroring my physical well-being. Apparently, I had stumbled onto the convention’s opening scenario, a zombie game. The zombies inexorably advanced, and I could find no escape from their gnashing teeth, which latched onto my shoulder.

I, too, became a zombie, damned to wander the corridors, limping, until the government arrived and killed us all.

Rants

Later that evening, I attended the Hour of the Rant, where various folks get up on stage and make pointed comments, sometimes funny, sometimes serious, often a mixture between the two. There were rants on why larps may not change the world, and why they should. Rants on how current measures for psychological safety don’t work as well as they should, and rants on how larpers should do a better job of giving out credit to everyone involved in a project. American game designer Jason Morningstar zinged the crowd with a rant on why they ought to play more and document less.

Like an American jerk, I delivered a rant titled “Write a damn rulebook.” Last year, while reporting for Leaving Mundania, I’d gotten frustrated that there weren’t readily available easy-to-understand materials explaining basic concepts on the scene. In what may have been a case of “arrogantly demand and ye shall receive,” (or just serendipitous magic) the Nordic community has remedied this as of Sunday, with the delightful, searchable, work-in-progress Nordic Larp Wiki. Run! Run to your nearest new browser tab and check it out!

Mistakes

I love the Beckett quote “Ever tried. Ever failed. Try again. Fail again. Fail better,” so I attended a panel titled “All the Things I’ve Learned From All the Mistakes I’ve Done,” a run-down of larp-organizing errors, presented by larp organizers, including panel host Rasmus Høgdall. Among the lessons learned:

• as an organizer, it’s possible to spread yourself too thin
• know when it’s going to be a disaster and don’t be afraid to cancel
• it’s better to have a few awesome things in game than lots of mediocre ones
• also, bribing your players with booze only works if you buy a lot of booze

Safety

When explaining Nordic larp — with all its serious, emotional impact — to Americans, their first response is usually something like, “that’s not a game; that’s therapy” or “that sounds like the Stanford Prison Experiment. Do people come out of these things permanently damaged?” So I was fascinated to attend The Great Player Safety Controversy Panel and listen to a well-reasoned, in-depth discussion of these issues. I took tons of notes, so check back here later this week, when I’ll post them. (4/26/12 update: here are the notes.)

The Roleplay Contract

Riffing off the safety panel, larp maker Bjarke Pedersen gave a talk titled “Five Things We Lie About in Larp,” which generated some interesting discussion. He suggested that the “roleplay contract” is a lie, which was doubly interesting both because I’d never before heard of the roleplay contract, and because lies are fascinating.

The roleplay contract, apparently, is an agreement between players not to judge players for their characters and vice versa. So if I’m a jerk to you in game, you agree not to judge me for it later at the diner. Or if we’re both dark elves in game, I’ll roleplay with you even if I don’t personally like you, because that’s what makes sense for the narrative.

As Bjarke pointed out, this isn’t always true in practice. People want to roleplay with their friends and may shut others out. Sometimes we dislike people after seeing the way that they roleplay. I came out of the session thinking of the roleplay contract as being a bit like philosophical debate around freewill: whether or not we have it is irrelevant, because we behave as if we do.

His point that not everyone is equally capable of playing every role also generated some discussion. He suggested that super-tall dudes can’t really play hobbits, because it breaks our idea of what a “hobbit” is too much. Some members of the audience disagreed, noting that players have a remarkable ability to overlook out of game stuff during games, and that “hobbit” is a fictional category anyway, arguably one capable of expanding or contracting according to the game’s surroundings.

Saturday

I had a big Saturday at this con, but since I flapped my yapper instead of listening, I didn’t learn all that much. I caught the end of a really interesting talk on a game based around a Norwegian brass band (I think), and a bit of Sarah Lynne Bowman’s talk on social conflict and bleed, which I’m hoping to catch in its entirety at WyrdCon.

I went to Johanna Koljonen’s fantastic talk, “Designing Supernatural Terror,” in which she outlined myriad ways to make players feel creeped out, frightened, and terrified. Her slides are definitely worth a look, especially if you organize horror games!

I gave a talk based on my paper “We Hold These Rules To Be Self-Evident” in the convention book States of Play (free download!), which was about American larp as emblematic of American national values. I also incorporated some ideas floated on my blog that had to do with American hyperbole and lack of historical accuracy and American litigiousness. In addition, I sat on the panel “How to Communicate About Larp to a Mainstream Audience.” More on that at a later date — including some press tips — in this space.

The Next Episode

These formal programming items only capture half of the fun of this con. Stay tuned this week for the second installment, featuring more of a social angle.

For some takes on Solmukohta by other bloggers, check out blogs by:

Thomas B: part 1, part 2, part 3, part 4
Evan Torner
Annika Waern
Rafael Bienia
Mike Pohjola
Oliver
Twinners
Story Games Forum
The Solmukohta documentation page has tons of content from other panels too!

(Got more links? Post them in the comments, please!)

Write a damn rulebook.

Rulebooks are first and foremost, books. Do you have something against books? Write a damn rulebook.

A short rulebook – you know, something that’s only 70 pages or so – builds community pride. Everyone who’s touched the book, copyedited it, illustrated it, come up with arcane rules for it, or argued vociferously about the minutia of those rules feels responsible. It takes a community to create a rulebook. Are you against communities? Write a damn rulebook.

Rulebooks are great for fitness. The triple set of D&D manuals weighs like fifteen pounds – hoist it in three sets of twenty, three times a week, and you’ll develop excellent biceps. Write a damn rulebook.

I get it: rulebooks are all about mechanics and flavor text, and y’all aren’t in to unicorns or saving throws. But mechanics aren’t all bad. I know that Nordic games are about pain, terror, and the death of humanity. But consider how your lack of mechanics might discriminate against someone who injured her tear ducts in an auto accident, or say I’ve paralyzed my face with Botox to the point where it’s incapable of showing human emotion. If I can’t visibly emote, why not just let me roll a d-7 — yes, a d-7 —  when you tell me that my entire family has been tortured to death by a slavering mob of post-modern malaise? Write a damn rulebook.

I know that rulebooks are hopelessly passé – you haven’t used them since the 1990s, or whatever, but let me tell you that 1990s nostalgia means that all those old tomes will be vintage and hip again. Write a damn rulebook.

What, are you afraid of trees? As someone who has personally killed…hundreds…with her work, I am here to let you know that they don’t carry grudges. Or knives. Write a damn rulebook.

They don’t answer any of the questions an outsider wants to ask, like “do I look stupid in my elf ears?” or “Must I really know all of the rules?” or “Will you still like me if I’m a shitty roleplayer?” But reading the rules, knowing how the mechanics are supposed to work can help mitigate concern. I may not know how to ask your character about her spleen cancer, but I’ll sure as hell know that if I hit you with my latex dagger you’ll take two body damage. Write a damn rulebook.

Rulebooks are darned useful things when they have glossaries. Let me give you a little example here. When I wanted to know what the word “freeform” meant last year, I asked a bunch of Nordic larpers for some brief, handy definition, expecting the query to take about five minutes and end in some rulebook. Instead, this simple question launched me on a fruitless two-week inquiry that quickly mushroomed from the simple question “what does the word “freeform” mean,” into a brain-melting eternal train of emails that had me questioning not just what larp was, but how anyone could know anything. Write a damn rulebook.

I know you’ve got theory books — plenty of them – and these are great for deep heavy questions, like “how does anyone know anything?” But they don’t provide conveniently easy answers needed for a working knowledge of your scene. If I want to know what a buzzword means, please don’t give me nine volumes of heavy theory. I’ve got back problems, plus rulebooks are supposed to speak to me in my language. As an American, I need you to explain it to me in monosyllables. Write a damn rulebook.