We want your papers. We want your articles on engaging play, your well-written seductions, your entertaining and bright ideas. We will help you write them.

The working title for the Knutepunkt 2009 book is “What matters”. What really matters in larp design? What matters in larp experience? What matters for you personally? What matters for the hobby? We want to identify and document tools and methods that makes it easier to realize your larp dream. We want to make it easier to create more and better larps for more people.

The subtitle of the book is “Fun”. Fun can be serious. Fun can be subtle and sophisticated. Fun can be many-layered. But it is fun.

Our hobbies, lifestyles, art are something we love being a part of. Show us that love. We especially want articles based on personal, real experience. LARP reviews. Techniques and experiments. Reflections on a life of LARPing. Please send us your ideas as soon as possible!

Formats

We accept contributions of different lengths and genre, including journalism, photography, personal recollections and the traditional academic paper. We encourage authors to choose the size and genre that best fits their content. This year, we’re particularly looking for “one-pagers”: a statement, an observation, a question that fits onto a single page - or less

What is Knutepunkt?

Knutepunkt (Knudepunkt/Knutpunkt/
Solmukohta) is an annual Nordic festival/conference focusing on live roleplaying (larp). In recent years, Knutepunkt has been accompanied by the publication of an anthology of articles on the practice and theory of (live) role-playing. Work on the 2009 Knutepunkt in Oslo is underway. The Knutepunkt web pages can be found at knutepunkt.laiv.org.

Timeline

July - August: Exchange of ideas and abstracts
September: Writing, writing, writing
October: Editor comments and rewrites
November: More rewrites
December: Editing and proofreading
January: Layout and printing
At least two weeks before Knutepunkt: Papers published online
Knutepunkt: Papers published in a printed book

Contact

The book is edited by Matthijs Holter, Eirik Fatland and Even Tømte. Send your abstracts, ideas and questions to knutebok09@yahoogroups.com.

Höjdpunkt vill ta rollspel till nya höjder oavsett om det är levande, friforms- eller sceniskt rollspel. Vi vill föra samman lajv och friform, föra tillbaka friformen till konventen, undersöka gränserna mellan klassisk och interaktiv teater, laborera med vad det är att vara en bra spelare eller spelledare, och vi vill göra det genom att göra det som vi först fastande för: att uppleva genom spel.

Höjdpunkt skall vara en vitamininjektion i lajv- och rollspelssverige. Det är ett ambitiöst mål, och vi behöver din hjälp för att nå det. Vi vill ordna höjdpunkt lite som ett knytkalas där så många som möjligt tar med sig något för de andra att uppleva, känna och prova. Det kan vara nytt eller gammalt, lånat eller eget, stort eller smått.

Vi vill gärna att alla deltagare bidrar med någonting och precis som vanligt blir det billigare för alla som tar med något till kalaset, i det här fallet ett arrangemang, en insats som medarrangör eller spelledare. Men vi vill också att alla skall delta i andras, eftersom spelande är ett skapande det också. Naturligtvis får du komma på Höjdpunkt utan att arrangera något, men tänk efter — det behöver inte vara så fruktansvärt allvarligt eller pretentiöst. I vår erfarenhet har nya arrangörer ofta en fräsch vinkel eller nyskapande idé, och det är med dessa idéer som vi kan ta rollspels- och lajvsverige till en ny nivå.

Nu kör vi.

Anmälan och mer information på: http://www.hojdpunkt.org

Ole Peder Giæver, one of the authors, says:

It’s been described, by authoritative sources, as “LSD for nerds” and “It’s a surrealistic role-playing game. Imagine if Jorge Luis Borges and Salvador Dali had redesigned Over the Edge.”

It’s just a link to the forum thread with all the pictures… but some of them are VERY nice… especially those taken by Christina Molbech (who played a Red Army Press Photographer) and Jeppe Permin (who played one of the soldiers with a career in the Red Army Photo Journalism Corps)

http://clausraasted.dk/forum/showthread.php?t=1819

The pervasive game Sanningen om Marika is now the winner of an 
international interactive Emmy award!

The joint The company P and Svt participation drama Sanningen om Marika eng. The Truth about Marika did a grand slam in Cannes and just took home an Emmy in the best interactive television service class.

Amazing is a word I would like to use to describe this recent event.

Updates with details will follow! 

The company P blogpost

Interactive Emmy press release 

Nordic scene blogpost about the nomination

The website is run by Tor Kjetil Edland, Arvid Falch and Erling Rognli who felt the need for a publishing space for this type of larps after producing the Limbo game. If you want to try making a larp for the first time, try a game outside your usual larp genre or just explore some really good games, a visit to Chamber Games is well worth your while. And remember to write the original organizers if you re-run their game, since you probably have a lot to learn from each other!

Do you have a game that would fit the Chamber Games website? Get in touch with the editors and get it published for the world to see.

Playground Worlds is a collection of articles on role-playing games by leading researchers, artists and other experts. The book documents the theory and practice of the Nordic role-playing scene – one of the most vibrant in the world – and presents numerous methods and techniques that are directly applicable to larp design and production. It also offers a peek into some Anglo-American role-playing cultures.

The book is divided into three sections. Community and Journalism includes articles on role-player communities written particularly with an eye for approachability. Art and Design covers role-play as the product of a creative process, exposing philosophies and intentions behind specific role-playing works while providing advice and guidance for prospective designers. The Research and Theory section focuses on recent advances in analytic and academic thought on role-play.

The book will be published online at some point in the future, but for now you need to get hold of a physical copy. Details about how to do this can be found at the book page at the Solmukohta website. You can also read article abstracts and look at some images from the book.

This year is no different, and the Solmukohta book will be released on March 31 in Helsinki. You can see the table of contents at the book website, and the book will have three parts: Journalism and Community, Art and Design and Research and Theory.

The book is given to all participants of the Solmukohta conference, but will also be published online like all the books from the last few years of conferences. The books are a continuting debate on what larp is or could be and a platform for ideas and experiements to spread from one larp culture to another. You will find both academic style papers on roleplaying theory and columns, rants, game analysis and political vision in these books. They are an excellent starting poing if you want to know more about what kind of larps happen on the Nordic scene and what some of the ambitions in the community are.

Following is links to the online versions of previous conference anthologies:

Knudepunkt 2007 in Denmark: The book is called Lifelike.

All of the 30 articles in Lifelike can be downloaded as pdf documents here:

Lifelike Table of Contents

Knutpunkt 2006 in Sweden: The book is called Role, Play, Art

The book includes 12 articles and can be downloaded as a pdf document:

Download the entire book (2 MB)

Knutepunkt 2005 in Norway: The book is called Dissecting Larp

The book contains 15 texts that can be downloaded as pdf documents.

If you want to know a thing or two about the Nordic larp environment (at least as it was in 2005), make sure to read Knutepunkt and Nordic Live Role-playing: a crash cource by Eirik Fatland.

Download the whole book at this page: Dissecting Larp

Solmukohta 2004 in Finland: The book is called Beyond Role and Play -Tools, Toys and Theory for Harnessing the Imagination

The book has almost 30 articles that can be downloaded as pdf documents at the book website:

Beyond Role and Play

Knudepunkt 2003 in Denmark: The book is called As Larp Grows Up

As Larp Grows Up has five chapters on larp, including a dictionary. All chapters can be downloaded as pdf documents here:

As Larp Grows Up - The Book from Knudepunkt 2003

This has been posted as a note in the post about System Danmarc III, but deserves it’s own headline:

The organizers of System Danmarc II have posted the trailer, end film and behind the scenes documentary from System Danmarc II online. These were previously avaliable only on the game DVD.

System Danmarc II was a larp held in Denmark in 2005 about a political system where C-class citizens who could not support themselves where dumped in C-sector areas by a State system that was not fascist but still incompetent when it comes to a reasonable distribution of resources in a rich society. It was a cyberpunk larp set in a small city built from freight containers in central Copenhagen, and at the same time a very strong comment on society today.

Take a moment to have a look at this fantastic documentation.

System Danmarc II movie material

One of the most rewarding things that can happen to a larp organizer is when your participants really believe in your project. Especially so when you’re organizing something in an unforgiving genre with a long track-record of failures and half-handed organizing, such as the Post-Apocalyptic genre. Most larps in this category, at least here in Sweden, tend to be rather cliché, with stereotypical worlds and visions, with esthetics pulled right from Mad Max and Tank Girl. Say post apocalyptic larp and people almost always think about teenagers with oversized guns, leather trenchcoats, gasmasks, spiked hair, mutants, canned foods and anarchy. It’s all very cool and movie-like, but not very creative. And when you serve clichés, it’s hard to get participants. Many PA-larps cave in and get cancelled because there is low interest among larpers for these kinds of larps.

Therefor, it’s very exciting to see the developments of our own post-apocalyptic larp Ingenmansland. During the initial planning we were pessimistic and hoped for 150 participants by May, with a theretical maximum of 220 participants. In the middle of february we had to close the door on new participants since we had allready filled our maximum of 220 participants (which grew to 240 participants counting organizers and functionaries). We have swedes, norwegians, danes and even germans coming the larp. We are now in the enviable position of having almost a hundred people who want to participate but can’t, unless we decide to open up new slots for participants (which in turn depends on our ability to provide living quarters, character coaching, props and logistics).

Why this sudden and overwhelming interest in the post apocalyptic larp genre? Without sounding cocky, I think it is because we’ve managed to get people to believe in our project in all its aspects: the fiction, the logistics of the larp, the competence of the organizers, the budget etc. And one other important factor: we’ve reached a “critical mass” of highly active, creative and skilled participants who help create our larp, both on the fictional and the logistical levels. We’re truly blessed with excellent participants.

We’ve believed in this from the start, and the recent developments prove it: people don’t want clichés. People want something different, something that, on the whole, feels realistic and believable while at the same time being escapist enough to warrant actually larping it. You don’t have to go full-out avant-garde neo-dramaturgic free-form high-level larp to attract larpers (odds are you won’t), but a simple rethink on genre-specific stereotypes might bring very rewarding results. If you believe in it, your participants will believe in it.

Original post.