Nordic Larp Talks

All Nordic Larp Talks

  • Larping Fascism to Understand the Allure of Toxic Communities – Katrine Wind

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    Some people today watch their peers drift into extremist forums, conspiracy theories, and other toxic communities. At the same time, many societies are shifting in a more authoritarian direction. If we dismiss the people drawn to these spaces as simply stupid or hateful, we fail to understand what is actually happening – and we lose our ability to respond to it.

    In this talk, Katrine Wind presents Epos Daimon, a Nordic larp for teenagers that allows participants to experience life as an esteemed member of an authoritarian system from the inside. By exploring how fascist and hate-based systems can feel meaningful rather than threatening, the larp creates a deeper understanding of their emotional appeal and why that appeal makes them so powerful.

    Katrine Wind is a Nordic larp designer, writer, and speaker known for Daemon as well as co-designing Spoils of War and Helicon. While based in Denmark, she has run her larps internationally across Europe and the US in collaboration with local producers.

    Her designs focus on strong social structures, highly playable characters and relations, as well as mechanics and pacing to support immediate emotional impact (naming the approach River Rafting Design). Katrine regularly writes and lectures on larp design, contributing to concepts such as Dyadic Play, River Rafting Design, Dinner Warfare, and Playing an Engaging Victim to the international larp community.

    Professionally, Katrine is a political scientist working with leadership, digitalization, and organizational structures.

  • Where Are the Belarusian Larpers? – Darya Skorokhodkina

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    The Belarusian larp community has seemed to be quite off-radar in recent years. In her talk, Darya Skorokhodkina tells us where they are and what they are (not) doing when they are not around – and whether there’s gonna be a grand comeback.

    Darya Skorokhodkina is a Belarusian larp events and community organiser. She was one of the organisers of Minsk Larp Festivals in 2017–2019, co-founded and co-ran The Second Floor Space in Minsk which was a homespot for the Belarusian Larp Community, and was a Chairperson of Education Centre POST, Belarusian larp organisation. Currently based in Warsaw, Poland, Darya works in non-profit project management and event organising, specifically in the field of human rights. She has recently got an MA degree, defending her thesis about community care and neighbourliness in a community-cultural centre of Wolny Jazdów in Warsaw.

  • Austenland: A Bad Immersive Experience and a Bad Larp – Adrian Hon

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    The 2013 movie Austenland is a romantic comedy set in “the world’s only immersive Austen experience” but it has far more in common with blockbuster larps than anything else. What does Austenland do well, where does it fall down, and what can we learn from pop culture understandings of larp?

    Adrian Hon is a game designer, author, and former CEO and founder of Six to Start. At Six to Start, Adrian co-created Zombies, Run!, won Best of Show at SXSW, and worked with Disney Imagineering. Other works include the Perplex City ARG; You’ve Been Played, a critique of gamification; and the novel A History of the Future in 100 Objects. He writes at mssv.net and is Associate Artist at the Traverse Theatre in Edinburgh. Adrian is currently designing Strandfall, an highly physical outdoor larp using custom spatial computers, funded by Immersive Arts UK, and writing a book about the history and future of immersive experiences.

  • Song scene stage – Designing for performance arts in larp – Suus Mutsaers

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    We all know those moments: singing a shanty around a campfire, or school larps where drama is part of the curriculum. But what design questions can we, as designers, ask ourselves when incorporating performing arts into our LARP experiences?

    Suus Mutsaers is a larp designer working at the intersection of play, immersive experience design, and education. After leaving performing arts school at 18 they studied education and social work, and are currently pursuing a Master’s in Transformative Game Design. Suus is driven by curiosity about why play affects us so deeply and their work often explores isolated communities.

  • There Must be a Simpler Way – three ways to less work on character writing – Trine Lise Lindahl

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    Many a larp designer has struggled while writing page up and page down of unique character texts. In this talk Trine gives three examples of larps that have used reusable elements to reduce the time and work that go into writing a large number of characters, while maintaining the quality.

    Trine Lise Lindahl is an experienced larp designer, communicator and community organizer based in Oslo, Norway. She has co-designed multiple notable larps, including Mad About the Boy (2010), Play the Cards (2012), KoiKoi (2014), and 1942 – Someone to trust? (2017). She produced, edited and wrote for the anthology Larps from the Factory (2013) that pioneered the rerunnable chamber larp as a viable format of Nordic larp, and taught character writing at The Larpwriter Summer School. She has a background in history, education and design, and works as a content designer.

  • Body and Soul – Inge-Mette Petersen

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    Often, we analyze larp as an intellectual experience, we describe the acts and tell the war stories of our characters as if they only took place in our mind. But larp is different from almost any other game, we dress up, move and act as someone else, acting out genders, ages and social classes not our own in settings from history, movies and fantasy. We use our body and soul, but what do we see when we look in the mirror? This will not be a talk that gives the final answer, but maybe it can be a beginning to a new way to look at larp.

    Inge-Mette is a teacher who until now has worked as a reenactor and education officer at the Danish Open-Air Museum. She started larping in 2016, and has been doing so regularly since then, mostly international larps. She has an MA in Pedagogy and is finishing an MA in Transformative Game Design from Uppsala University.

  • Facilitating Metareflections – Nór Hernø

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    In this talk, Nór Hernø introduces how metareflections and multiverses intersect: and how designers can initiate player metareflections, as well as establish group consensus, by utilizing different methods of facilitation.

    Nór Hernø (they/them) is a Danish larper and larp designer with more than 25 years of experience. Throughout the years, they have lectured in narratology, larp- and workshop design, and worked professionally with process facilitation, larp-, learning- and experience design. On a volunteer basis, Nór organizes community events, teaches and mentors new larp designers, and is dedicated to supporting fellow larp designers and local communities.

  • A Season of Work, Chaos, and Fun! The KP26 Book – Frederikke Sofie Bech Høyer, Simon Brind, Anne Grove

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    The Knutebooks are the embodiment of the longstanding tradition of codifying what, how, and why we as a community play, design, think, and push towards new futures of larp. In this talk you will get to know this year’s book and how to be part of future books.

    Simon Brind is a writer, academic, and larp designer from London. His PhD thesis is about the emergent narratology of and moments of narrative crisis in participatory fiction. He is a part of the Avalon Larp Studio collective, as well as author and part of the editorial team of this book.

    Anne Serup Grove is a service designer specialising in interactions and communication across both the private and public sectors. She has since the 2019 volume Larp Design been a significant contributor to multiple KP publications. She is lead designer on this book and part of the team of next year’s book.

    Frederikke Sofie Bech Høyer is a larp designer who works at Østerskov Efterskole, where she creates, teaches, and facilitates larps. She has a master’s degree in Communication Studies, is an author in this book, and is part of the team for next year’s.

  • Shadows of the Backstory: Shadow relations as a tool to bring internal play to the surface – Lara Hartung

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    The inner lives of characters can offer a lot of play. In her talk, Lara Hartung presents a relationship mechanic that can make backstories come alive, externalize inner conflicts and enable direct interaction with distant or abstract themes: Shadow Relations.

    Lara Hartung is a larp designer, writer and science communicator from Germany.  As a member of the design collective Fractured Reality Studios, she is a lead designer for Blankspace and has worked on Greylight 2142.

  • Larps against Sexism – Julia Leśniewska

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    Sexism is currently a growing and pressing social issue, with concerns being shown in particular for young men. At the same time larps are being studied in the context of aiding interpersonal growth and relating, as well as their transformative potential. Julka Leśniewska will talk about her upcoming research into how larps that use sexism as their in-game world element can affect their player’s sexist views and attitudes.

    Julka Leśniewska is a Polish larper and designer, with professional experience in pedagogy, communication, and theatre. She designs short games and organises them for small local communities, has co-organised the 10th Portal Larp Conference in 2022 in Kraków, Poland, and most recently has established the Berlin International Larpers community. Currently Julka is finishing her MA in Transformative Game Design researching deliberation with Larpocracy, and beginning her PhD research in pedagogy on affecting sexist attitudes in young men through larping.