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2023 Copenhagen Talks

We’re Here, We’re Queer and We’re Ready to Feel Good – Eva Wei

Not all queer narratives have to be about death, despair or being hidden away from the public eye. In her talk, Eva Wei will delve into the things she learned while organising Perfect Match, a feel good-larp about a reality dating show for disaster queers.

Eva Wei is a Swedish lawyer, sword fighter and larpwright. She has been one of the main organisers of Knutpunkt and delights in making close-knit larps about current subjects. She is currently the chairman of the larp collective Bread and Games and has a thing for interacting with new larp cultures and genres.

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2023 Copenhagen Talks

Aesthetics of Randomness – Kaisa Kangas

The international larp scene has gone more and more to the direction where players are in control of their character’s fate and story arc. In her talk, Kaisa Kangas argues that this does not always lead to the best larp experience. She talks about the aesthetics that random outcomes can bring to larp, drawing on the experience of running Seaside Prison several times a row.

Kaisa Kangas is a Finnish larp designer who has been making larps for more than 20 years; her best-known larps are probably Halat hisar and Seaside Prison. Kaisa is also a regular contributor in KP books and has edited the book Larp Politics. She will also be the editor in chief for the 2024 Solmubook. She is currently writing a non-fiction book about larp for a general audience.

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2023 Copenhagen Talks

Designing the Apocalypse – Avoiding that Big Plot crushes the character’s journey – Janusz Maxe

Most large starts with an interesting setting. A vampire court, spaceship at the edge of the galaxy, a village in a time and place that is very different from ours. But then we go “What should happen during this larp?” and thus add the plot. That in itself is all fine, but when the plot becomes THE BIG PLOT there’s a danger it will crush the setting like a sledgehammer to an eggshell. This talk focuses on this. The warning signs that this might happen, the problems with that, and how to mitigate those problems, both as a designer and a player.

Janusz Maxe is from Gothenburg, Sweden. He has been role-playing since the mid 80ies, but did only get into larping 30 years later. What made him take the step was the larp The Monitor Celestra, since that was run in his hometown AND provided costumes. It turned out well since he promptly attended two of the runs, and a decade later he is still here as part of our community. He’s of the designers behind the larp The Devil You Know; and one of the creators of the character-memorising tool Ensemble.

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2022 Linköping Talks

Napping with Purpose – Frida Lindegren

The world and the larp community have been through a lot lately. In her talk, Frida Lindegren talks about how we can slow down and explore how we can play and design for rest.

Frida Lindegren is a Swedish psychologist, experience designer, and larper.

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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

Practical Applications of Lovecraftian Horror – Olle Nyman

There are more adaptions of Lovecraft stories and his horror mythis than there are originals. Olle Nyman will talk about a how they tried to bring some of them alive in different larp-settings.

Olle Nyman is a Swedish organiser and gamer. Active since late the late 90-ies he´s been part of Scandinavia’s oldest gaming-convention GothCon, as well as organised a slew of larger and smaller larps together with the Storytellers, often with focus on social issues and dilemmas, or horror.

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2014 Gothenburg Talks

Does larp design matter? – Eirik Fatland

Can larp design be used for something more than creating stories to live in? Interaction designer and larwright does think so. Going through a cascade of different larp projects one thing stands out, with larp design you can direct human creativity into a shared purpose.

Full transcript of the talk.

Eirik Fatland is a larpwright and interaction designer from Norway and has has since 1994 been involved in the design of around 10-15 larps. Both for dark of dark, ambitious larps with political themes (Europa, Inside:Outside, and PanoptiCorp) and strongly narrative and occasionally comedic larps (Moirais Vev, Marcellos Kjeller, What Happened at Lanzarote). He was the editor of Larp, the Universe and Everything (2009) and has written several articles for the Knutepunkt books, larp magazines and at his website The larpwright.

Site: The larpwright

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2014 Gothenburg Talks

Sketching larp – Bjarke Pedersen

How can we simplify the way larps are designed? In this talk Bjarke wants to inspire designers not only to create more great larps by working with sketching as a method. “Why in the larp community do you not sketch?”

Bjarke Pedersen has played, designed and organised larps since the late nineties. He runs the Copenhagen-base company Odyssé which focuses interactive storytelling, larping and participatory events.  He is one of the founders of Denmark’s largest larp-organization Rollespilsfabrikken. His work spans everything fro

m children’s larps to interactive performance pieces at major international art museums in Europe and USA.

Site: bjarkep.com
Twitter: @bjarcore