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.
In her talk Maiju Tarpila presents the Manifesto of Playing to Live Elsewise, a collection of principles that suggest a starting point for practising larp in the times of the ecocrisis.
Maiju Tarpila is a Finnish artist and pedagogue who’s larp practise is embedded in questions of community, resilience and living within the ecocrisis. Her previous work includes larps such as Projekti X, Viimeiset and the Kaski-trilogy. At the moment she teaches larp at the University of Arts Helsinki and is working on a two year grant on larps that imagine and embody experience beyond fossil capitalism. For there to be a future filled with play, there needs to be huge shift in how we live and play.
Climate change represents the gravest challenge yet to face mankind. International larping — however progressive and beneficial in other scopes — mostly contributes to the crisis: not the solution. This is a call to action.
The speaker (Søren) has asked to add the following corrections:
The thoughts presented in the video are based on the work and insights of Nór Hernø, Eva Maersk and Søren Ebbehøj – the original KP23 sustainability team – Any conclusions or recommendations presented here or elsewhere do not necessarily reflect the views of the other team members or KP23.
The pie chart and numbers presented in the video are based on calculations by Nór Hernø and Søren Ebbehøj as part of the initial work on Knudepunkt 2023 in Denmark. Also, some of the concepts in the talk (greenhushing in particular) were brought into the larp discourse by Nór Hernø.
Søren apologizes sincerely for leaving that information out of the presentation and recognizes the importance of the work done by Nór and Eva. Søren never intended to ignore the work of the other team members.
Note: In the talk, Søren mentions the emissions from KP22 in Sweden incorrectly. The pie chart shown is based on calculations made for a theoretical KP based on a series of estimates in 2022. The footprint from participant transportation was calculated based on the countries of origins of participants at KP22 in Sweden as a model of the participants of the upcoming KP23 in Denmark. Thus, when Søren talks about KP22, he should have said “the model calculations of a theoretical KP in Denmark with the participant spread of KP22 in Sweden”.
Søren Ebbehøj 2024-04-17
Søren Ebbehøj is a Danish larp organizer and engineer working in climate and energy politics. Søren has been a co-organizer of four large-scale Nordic larps and a handful of conventions including Knudepunkt 2019. From his everyday job, Søren has almost ten years of experience with developing and implementing climate policy — something he utilized in the initial work on Knudepunkt 2023, formulating the sustainability strategy and initial mapping of the KP19 carbon footprint.
In 22 years, the Knudepunkt community has published 29 books that together form the greatest collection of larp writing in the world. This talk explores that legacy, the current situation of the KP book and its future.
Juhana Pettersson is a Finnish writer, novelist and roleplaying game and larp designer, who has edited two Knudepunkt books – Knudepunkt books are also his topic today. His larps include Luminescence, Halat hisar, End of the Line, Enlightenment in Blood, Parliament of Shadows, Redemption and Saturnalia. He’s currently working at Renegade Games Studios as the Lead Developer for the World of Darkness series of roleplaying game releases.
You also hate having to decide if you’d rather talk to wonderful people or listen to amazing talks instead of playing a 5 hour larp during KP? What if we just spent the whole weekend playing larps instead? This is the idea we had 12 years ago when organising our first IFOL.
Steve Deutsch is a German larp wright, facilitator and event manager. He was part of the team creating the German larp conference, Mittelpunkt, and is guilty of coauthoring one of Germany’s most complex and loathed Boffer Larp Rules Systems. Nowadays, he mostly runs larps on sailing ships and for companies who want to understand their power dynamics, communication and unwritten rules.
Larson Kasper is a professional Educator and Coach. He uses Edu-Larp as a method in his work with troubled kids as well as in the field of political education. Over the last 25 years he wrote, orgnised and facilitated multiple Larps and related events. Nowerdays he sudies “Counseling in the Workplace” and hopes to use the skills and overall experiance he gained as a larpwright, organiser and facilitator in his new area of work.
Organizer burnout is an issue in our larp community, but have we stopped to think about how it might not be an individual, but a cultural problem we’re facing here? In this talk, Sandy Bailly will touch on the issue of burnout culture in larp organization, and she will equally argue how we already have the tools to do better, as we are already using them in how we educate our players.
Sandy Bailly is a Belgian larper who occasionally also crews, writes, designs and organises larps. She is interested in small, collaborative and altruistic play in larp, and she believes in re-imagining reality through play and building communities of care.
During the pandemic, Jamie MacDonald and Jaakko Stenros ran a series of Zoom-based Nordic larp virtual pub quizzes, called Knutepedia. We ended up learning some things about our community in the process.
Jamie MacDonald arrived at Nordic larp through the theater and performance route, and over the last decade has written extensively on the potentials and pitfalls of that field’s crossovers with larp. He is also the co-creator of a series of theater/larp pieces, like Walkabout and The Lovers’ Matchmaking Agency, along with Aarni Korpela. He is Canadian and lives in Finland, where he is pursuing a PhD on stand-up comedy performance.
We all make mistakes. But what to do when you are the one who puts people in real physical danger. Ria Böök tells about she being the dangerous player and what she learned from it.
Ria Böök is a Finnish player and organizer. She organized her first larp in 2002. Sine then, she has been responsible of ie. design and character writing (Tartuntavaara / State of Infection with Jae Takala), Empty epsilon scenarios and coding (Odysseus), kitchen (Pyhävuoren perilliset x 5) and safety (Merirosvopoukama / The Pirate Cove). Ria’s special interest is accessibility, especially for visually impaired.
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.
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.
During her talk, Agata Swistak would like to encourage established larp organisers and community leaders to change their style of management and open themselves to something new. Equipped with a number of tips and advice, she would like to inspire people to discussion on how to be more inclusive and supportive towards young folks in our communities – and why it will make the larp better.
Agata Swistak is a community leader and a professional project manager working with larp and event design. In her work, she puts an effort to create safe and empowering spaces. In 2013 she was part of the group creating one of the loudest larps in the world – College of Wizardry, and later became a main coordinator of the entire event. She believes that empathy and inclusion create not only strong communities, but also unforgettable and transformative experiences.
White Knighting is a phenomenon Aina only recently has heard about. Fear of White Knighting is currently potentially holding back allies, and in her talk, Aina Sivsdatter addresses the unseen issues with the white Knight phenomenon.
Aina D Skjønsfjell has been larping since she was 15, and has organised a shy dozen of larps in her life. However, it was only in 2014 that she learned that there are several strikes of larps and that her style is called Nordic. In her spare time, when she isn’t larping , writing larps, prepping for larps or playing D&D, Aina works as a translator and is unnecessarily overfond of how languages work.
