Nordic Larp Talks is a series of short, entertaining, thought-provoking and mind-boggling lectures about projects, ideas and design practice from the Nordic and collaborative traditions of live action roleplaying.
Jamie MacDonald is a stand-up comedian, writer, and player of many larps, who has written frequently on the subject of performativity and performance in larp. Usually stand-up comedians don’t use words like performativity, so it’s worth mentioning that he’s also a performance and theatre artist, and has also recently lectured in Art Larp at SADA in Stockholm. He’s been coming to KP/SK since 2009 and is the co-creator of the Walkabout series of performance games, as well as The Lovers’ Matchmaking Agency.
Nordic Larp Talks is a series of short, entertaining, thought-provoking and mind-boggling lectures about projects and ideas from the tradition of Nordic Larp.
The Nordic Larp Talks was hosted in Oslo at Deichmanske Public Library, Wednesday February 22nd. The Knutebook 2017s Book Launch Party was also a part of the program this evening.
Videos will be posted here in a few weeks.
Speakers
Editors of The Knutepunkt 2017 Book Hanne Grasmo – Larp and I – till death do us apart Shoshana Kessock – Disability Access, LARP, And You Eirik Fatland – “In praise of hypocrisy” Maury Brown – Harassment, missing stairs and community safety Karin Edman – Witches of Ästad farm Simon Svensson – City in a Box – Creating a Dystopian Sci-Fi City in a blackbox Dmitry Ivanov – Infiltrating Reality: ‘Agents of the Future’ project Siri Sandquist – The Currency of “Pepp”
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The event was hosted by writer and radio & television host Johanna Koljonen.
Larp Bouldering: the courage to take your own path over the wall
At the start of a larp, players are often standing at the bottom of the bouldering wall, looking for viable paths up and across it, for places to solidly and safely put their hands and feet on their journey (there is more small talk and diverse costuming of course, but you get the idea). But unlike the recent idea of Herd Competence for larp design, Bouldering considers each player as the unique combination of physical, emotional, psychological, and intellectual skills they are, rather than as a more generic idea of “player.” The theory of affordances and constraints can be applied to larp design, as you consider designing to create appropriate handholds, footholds, and belay support systems to assist any participant in finding a viable, accessible, and engaging journey up and across the wall that this the game. No two journeys will be the same, and the player travels the wall alone, though in the company and support of others, each of whose experience is unique, though similar, to others.
Maury Brown is the co-founder and president of Learn Larp, a US-based larp production and edularp consulting firm dedicated to showcasing the power of larp to build community, trust, and empathy. She is also the co-lead organizer, writer, and producer of New World Magischola, an immersive wizard school larp set in a new magical universe based on North American history, culture, folklore, and geography. She and her partner, Ben Morrow, hosted four 4-day Magischola events in summer 2016, introducing around 600 people to the rules-light, consent-based, character-driven style of larp. She is dedicated to using storytelling and deliberate design principles to open larp to a wider variety of participants by creating safe and accessible play spaces for all identities and abilities.
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.
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).
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.
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!
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.
Nordic Larp Talks is a series of short, entertaining, thought-provoking and mind-boggling lectures about projects and ideas from the tradition of Nordic Larp.
This year Nordic Larp Talks will be hosted in Helsinki, Tuesday March 8th at 19:00 and you are of course more than welcome to join us!
The event will be held at (Updated!) Aalto University School of Arts, Design and Architechture (often called “Taik”, Hämeentie 135 C, Helsinki, on the 8th floor which is located about 20 min away from the central station by bus. The evening will be hosted by writer and radio & television host Johanna Koljonen.
Free admission. Doors opens at 18:30.
PROGRAM 19.00 – 21.00 Tuesday March 8th at Aalto University School of Arts, Design and Architecture , Hämeentie 135 C, 8th Floor. The programme will start at 19.00 sharp.
SPEAKERS The KP Book Presentation – Mika Loponen, Kaisa Kangas & Jukka Särkijärvi Mike Pohjola Mirka Oinonen Tina Leipoldt and Larson Kasper Martin Nielsen Masha Karachun and Zhenja Karachun Maury Brown Martin Ericsson
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.
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.
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.
