Category: Talks

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2016 Helsinki Talks

The Empire Larps Back – Larson Kasper and Kristina Leipoldt

Tina Leipoldt and Larson Kasper introduce a project where they together with Palestinian larp designer colleagues taught larp design to Syrian refugees in Turkey.

They talk about lessons learned (like “war stories” being a really inappropriate term for “larp anecdotes”) and introduce three of the larps designed by the students, the feminist Fairies and Frogs; Death of a Martyr, about dealing with grief without enlisting to fight; and Damascus 2025, about a hypothetical peace and feelings around having fled the country. The talk ends with a greeting from Basem, a Syrian larprunner.

(There is a joke in the talk which makes more sense if you know it was recorded on March 8, International Women’s Day).

Kristina (Tina) Leipoldt has been doing larp as long as she is a professional humanitarian. Combining these two interests became a logical thing once she realized that Edu-larping found more and more prospects. Besides designing and (co-) producing social-critical larps and mini-larps – initially only for the German audience – such as Kommissar Schmidt (2005), The Living Dead (2010), Welcome to Wandaland (2010) and KNB109M (2012), Tina stuck her nose also into training scenarios. She convinced her employer to use larp as a tool to train Syrian peace activists and social workers as well as promoting it as an “in house” technique to train multi-ethnic teams, working in complex humanitarian and crisis settings, in diversity and other funky stuff.

Larson Kasper is German larper and educator. Whenever possible he combines passion and profession into Edu-Larp. He has been part of different teams, writing and producing larps from 3 to 300 players such as the Aelm-Arthosia Series (1999-2002) and the KultUr Series (2004-2006), yksi/üç (2009), Welcome to Wandaland (2010) and KNB 109 M (2012). He is one of the founders of the larp-catering-crew ‘KampfKüche’, a jack-ass larp photographer and did different larp projects for both, traumatized kids and those with conduct disorder. He followed Kristina Leipoldt to Gaziantep to find out about the beauty of Syrian larp.

Promoting Larp in New Places – Riad Walid Mustafa

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2016 Helsinki Talks

Monsters as Metaphors – Mike Pohjola

Finnish transmedia developer and larp designer Mike Pohjola talks about Baltic Warriors, a larp campaign of seven games in seven countries about the Baltic sea in the summer of 2015.

The larps were about political meetings on the topics of the eutrification of the Baltic Sea. “What is eutrophication, and how do you make a larp about it, since it’s an abstract concept that you can’t show?” And how do you make a larp about hubris? About the passage of generations? How do you let your players interact with consumerism, pride, nuclear radiation, puberty, or communism? This inspirational and funny talk answers that question! (Hint: the answers involve DEAD ZONES and some pretty awesome monsters).

balticwarriors.net

Mike Pohjola is a Finnish novelist, transmedia developer, game designer and entrepreneur. He has founded two media companies, that together have won an International Emmy Award, two Interactive Rockies, and a Prix Europa. He is a Master of Arts in Screenwriting from Aalto University, where his Master’s Thesis dealt with participatory storytelling in Classical Greece. He is also the designer and author of Age of the Tempest – a tabletop roleplaying game aimed for kids and beginners.

Site: mikepohjola.com
Blog: mikepohjola.wordpress.com
Twitter: @mikepohjola
Age of Tempest: myrskynsankarit.wordpress.com/age-of-the-tempest

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2016 Helsinki Books Talks

The Solmukohta Books 2016 – Kaisa Kangas and Jukka Särkijärvi

Editors Kaisa Kangas and Jukka Särkijärvi present the two 2016 Solmukohta (Knutepunkt) books: Larp Realia, and Larp Politics (both available as free pdf downloads).

Jukka highlights the varied content of Larp Realia – ranging from an article about a larp buit around actual fistfighting to the first food recipe in the long history of the Knute-books!

Kaisa talks about the new volume – subtitled “Systems, Theory and Gender in Action” – on the political dimension of larp. Among the topics are themes like refugees, fascism, experiences of larping as gay or trans, larp as labour, viewing larps with political science tools, and so on. A big section of the book is about political larps (including educational larps) from a range of countries. To the editor’s surprise, no articles about internal larp community politics were submitted. This is probably a sign of health!

Read the books

Kaisa Kangas is a Finnish larp designer who has been playing and making larps for 20 years. She is the fiction lead for the Palestinian-Finnish political larp Halat hisar (State of Siege) that will be run again in June 2016. She is also involved with designing and running educational larps for University of Arts Helsinki. Her other works include Ghost Express (2001-2002, together with Dare Talvitie), a pioneer of pervasive larp. She holds a Ph.D. in mathematics and a BA in Japanese Studies.

Jukka Särkijärvi is a writer, editor, translator, game designer, conrunner and Pathfinder Society Venture-Captain Emeritus from Espoo, Finland. He is currently working on his master’s thesis in English language and literature at the University of Tampere. His previous work include translations of the Stalker and Whispering Road role-playing games, game design on Vihan lapset, a great deal of role-playing game journalism for a variety of publications both on- and offline, and Roolipelikirja, a nonfiction book about role-playing games.

“What’s a Woman’s Role? Female Characters In Larps”. Lecture by Kaisa Kangas at the Ropecon 2015 convention

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2015 Copenhagen Talks

Girls in Armour – a Danish Feminist Movement – Ann Eriksen

In 2009 17 women made an all female regiment for the Danish game Warlarp V. What started as an attempt to fit into a “mans” world ended as serious and important input in the Danish debate about feminism and womens representation. This is the story about what we did, how we did it, the mistakes we made and the succes we had.

Ann Eriksen is Danish larp organiser, scenario writer and feminist. She has been an major part of shaping the Danish larp convention Forum for several years and has helped fundraise over 150.000 DKK (20.000 EUR) for the Danish central role-playing organisation Bifrost. She is an active participant in debates about feminism and women’s rights, both in Larp and her field of study, which is History of Art. Last year she debuted as a scenario writer for the Danish convention Fastaval; her second Fastaval scenario will premier this year.

Ann Kristine Eriksen

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2015 Copenhagen Talks

Communication Remember the Larper – Massi Hannula

The Nordic Larp community is good at communicating to the world about the hot issues in Nordic Larp. In her talk Massi Hannula is giving her Communication Manifesto on larp organisers’ most important target audience: the participant.

The Communication Manifesto

  • Who? THE PARTICIPANT.
  • What? EVERYTHING.
  • When? NOW.
  • Where? THE WEBSITE.
  • How? CLEARLY WITH ONLY ONE VOICE.

Massi Hannula is a Finnish organiser and professional communicator. She has organised events from Nordic larps like Perintö – Birthright 1963 to Solmukohta 2012 and Fastaval 2014, and spent 2012-13 designing and coordinating PR for Northern Europe’s biggest roleplaying convention Ropecon. Currently Massi acts as a main organiser of Solmukohta 2016 and works with her thesis on communication culture differences in multi-Nordic corporations.

Website: www.koivu.dk
Twitter: @KoivuDesign

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2015 Copenhagen Talks

Theory of Axes – Maria Raczynska

A Russian larp theory that aims to help larpwriters structure and focus the players’ storyline. It helps to understand what kind of experiences the players take out of the larp and how they are affected by it.

Maria Raczynska is a Russian larpwriter currently working with edu-larps. She has organized the talks programme at Russia’s biggest roleplaying convention, Comcon, in 2014 and 2015. She is one of the bridge-builders between the Knudepunkt community and its Russian-langauge equivalent.

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2015 Copenhagen Talks

Promoting Larp in New Places – Riad Walid Mustafa

Larp in Palestine is young but the movement is quickly growing, and not only within the country. In this talk Riad Walid Mustafa talks about what happended in 2014, where they went and what plans lies ahead.

Riad Mustafa has been working with organising, planning and implementing Larp projects since 2012. Organizer for larps such as Halat Hisar, a larp about modern-day occupied ‘Finland’ and the Beit Byout festival. He was one of the writers for “So you think you can dance”, about the political parties in Palestine, “Royal Picture” a larp about royal family conflicts.

Read more about The Larpwriter Summer School and watch Martin Eckhoff Andresens presentation of  The Mixing Desk of Larp.

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2015 Copenhagen Talks

Framing Art with Larp – Ebba Petren

Ebba Petrén works as director, script writer and performer in the field of performing arts. Her works in arts collective Nyxxx is participatory and do often use tech to design play.

In this talk she tells about how she larped, became bothered and did something about it. This process opened the gate to a whole new artistic field.

Nyxxx.se

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2015 Copenhagen Talks

Making Mandatory Larps for non players – Miriam Lundqvist

Every year, Miriam and her colleagues from LajvVerkstaden runs more than a hundred days of larping. Most of these larps are done with players who have to participate and have never larped before. In this short talk Miriams shares some of her knowledge of how the running and design is different in these games.

Miriam is the founder and director of LajvVerkstaden. LajvVerkstaden (The Larp Workshop) works with larps as a tool to create interactive educational experiences. The company’s projects are created in collaboration with schools, museums, businesses and NGOs and are designed to give participants learning experiences that reach them on an intellectual, physical and emotional level.

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2015 Copenhagen Talks

Larp and – Eleanor Saitta

Nordic larp and tools we’ve developed to design and understand games provide a unique toolkit for understanding the cultural and emotional impact of systems that bridge the social and the technical, infrastructural, or political worlds. The 21st century will be defined more than anything by the social impact of infrastructural systems, so let’s look at how larp can interact with other disciplines.

Eleanor Saitta is a hacker, designer, artist, writer, and barbarian. She makes a living and a vocation of understanding how complex, transdisciplinary systems operate and redesigning them to work, or at least fail, better. Among other things, Eleanor is a co-founder of the Trike project, Technical Director at the International Modern Media Institute, a member of the advisory boards at the Freedom of the Press Foundation and Geeks Without Bounds, a contributor to the Briar project, and freelance security architecture and strategy consultant. She is nomadic and lives mostly in airports and occasionally in New York, London, and Stockholm.