Category: Talks

Whether it’s about the longevity of our community, our ability to break boundaries, or basic safety, organizer wellbeing is an essential design consideration. Juhana Pettersson talks about his own experiences with larp burnout as well as possible solutions.

Slides: The Piss Room – Juhana Pettersson

Juhana Pettersson is a Finnish larp and roleplaying game designer, novelist and writer. The best-known larps he has worked on are Luminescence, Halat hisar and the trilogy of Vampire: the Masquerade larps End of the Line, Enlightenment in Blood and Parliament of Shadows. His most recent larp Tuhannen viillon kuolema (Death By a Thousand Cuts) was about climate change and class war.

To the larp maker, costuming is a practical matter; to the participant an emotional one. Sizing should be simple, but it isn’t. In her talk Anne Grove shares why this is and what to do about it from a larp maker point of view.

Slides: Costumes for real bodies – Anne Serup Grove

Anne Grove is a Danish larp maker and professional design thinker. She has been part of the Fastaval team for more than 12 years, and has produced larps in both Denmark and Sweden, most recently The Solution. Usually you will not find her at center stage but behind working with communication, volunteer management and safety. Currently, Anne is involved in a large scale safety project involving both Fastaval, Bifrost and Rollespilsakademiet.

There are two basic tools to structure a larp: scheduling pre-determined content and designing for emergent content. In her talk, Kaisa Kangas gives some insight on how to use them.

Slides: Two tools to structure a larp – Kaisa Kangas

Kaisa Kangas is a Finnish larp designer with more than 20 years of experience with making and playing larps. Her most known work is the Palestinian-Finnish larp Halat hisar (2013, 2016). She is also an editor for the Solmukohta 2016 books, Larp Politics and Larp Realia, and a contributor in many KP books. Kaisa is currently employed as a postdoctoral researcher at the Department of Mathematics and Statistics at the University of Helsinki. She also holds a BA in Japanese Studies.

Mo Holkar talks about the fertile middle ground between larpwright-designed and player-designed characters; and how to empower players to make characters their own without the risk of their creativity breaking the larp.

Slides: Fleshing the Skeleton – How to empower players to make characters their own, without the risk of ‘breaking the larp’ – Mo Holkar

Mo Holkar is a UK larp designer and organizer. He is an editor at nordiclarp.org, and an organizer of The Smoke: London’s International Larp Festival. As well as his own designs, he has written characters for other people’s larps ranging from Fairweather Manor to Suffragette! to Reborn.

Are there any similarities between the arts of DJing and GMing. In his talk Simon Brind draws some parallels between the two forms.

Slides: Lost in Love – from DJ to GM – Simon Brind

Simon Brind is a British larp designer and academic. His PhD research “Combat Narratology: Strategies for the resolution of narrative crisis in participatory fiction,” looks at how stories emerge in larp. He has been writing larps since 1986. From 1988-2008 he was a goth/alternative DJ and club promoter. During that time he played gigs and club nights across Europe and North America.

Imagination (and cognition) is multi-sensory, and effects/is effected by the whole body. How does larp already design for the somatic experience how how can this be pushed further using somatic (body awareness/mindfulness) practices? Drawing from her background in somatic practices, mixed with a bit of brain and cognitive science, Susan will use the design and mechanics from her larp experience “Xenosomatics” as an example of the narrative and affective potentials of adapting somatic practices for larp design. 

Slides: Designing for the Somatic imagination – Susan Ploetz

Susan Ploetz (US/DE) is an artist and somatic practitioner, conducting artistic research through somatic role play as affectual/effectual experiences. She was a lucky participant in the Larpwriter’s Summer School in 2016 and has presented work, spoken, or taught at Berliner Festspiele/Martin Gropius Bau, Universität der Künste Berlin, The Pervasive Media Studio, Sophiensaele, ABC Art Fair, Dutch Art Institute, Documenta, Portland Institute for Contemporary Art, and Performa, among other venues. She lives in Berlin.

We often talk about larp as a tool to create new relationships, but what about deepening already established ones? In this talk, Sagalinn Tangen will introduce you to the benefits of intergenerational storytelling from both a player and organiser perspective.

Slides: Intergenerational Storytelling – Sagalinn Leo Tangen

Sagalinn Tangen is a Swedish-Norwegian second generation larper and larp designer. She started larping a decade ago and organised her first larp at age 19. Last year she joined Avalon Larp Studio, and she is currently acting as Creative Lead for their project Tale of the North Wind.

Magic has been a part of larp from the first fantasy scenarios, but it has always been tied to complicated rule systems and communicated verbally. Jeppe & Maria Bergmann Hamming introduces a new technique developed for the larp Spellbound that gives a physical way of letting magic actually feel magical. And also holds the potential for being used to simulate physical control, domination and even abuse in a safe yet intense way. It can potentially be used in everything from Black Box larps to 360 degree costume larps.

Slides: Ars Rego: A technique for physical magic and control – Maria and Jeppe Bergman Hamming

Jeppe & Maria Bergmann Hamming are Danish larp designers and organizers. They have created scenarios since the end of the 90ies, including everything from big fantasy campaigns, vampire larps to freeform and black box games. They are behind award winning games like Sarabande and Deranged that have been played all over the world. They have also organized events like the Danish roleplaying convention, Vintersol, and have acted as headmasters of the Danish summerschool for larp designers. When they don’t travel the world setting up or playing larps, Maria is a teacher using larp as educational tool with young people and Jeppe is a sociologist working as Head of Analysis for one of Denmark’s largest advertising agencies.

The world is multicultural, its time we design our larp in that way to!

Slides: Designing larp for multicultural participants – Qla Zetterberg

Qla Zetterberg is celebrating 25 years as edu-larp designer and works at LajvVerkstaden in Västerås, Sweden.

http://lajvverkstaden.se

Upon reading on many larpers and organizers self-reporting many instances of anxiety and stress connected to larp practice, Muriel tries to ponder about the causes of the phenomenon, whether it can be considered systemic, and if so, which strategies can we devise to alleviate the pressure of anxiety?  

Slides: Not good enough: on larp and systemic anxiety – Muriel Algayres

Muriel Algayres is a historian, teacher and researcher who has been creating larp and writing articles for 15 years. She has been running since 2016 the first French international larp Harem Son Saat, both in France and in the Czech Republic. Her short larps includes Flowers of May, Sorority and Between Limbo and the Veil. She was a guest of honor at the Smoke, contributor to the #feminism anthology, a character writer on the Suffragettes larp in Sweden in 2018, and is an administrator for Larp Women Unite France.