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.
We talk about larp as taking place within a ‘magic circle’ that separates ‘larp reality’ from the ‘real reality’ outside in the real world. And if everyone larps as intended, then the circle can be maintained smoothly — right? Mo Holkar is here to talk about ways in which participants — and perhaps some types of role especially — can find themselves unexpectedly doing unacknowledged work to patch holes in the magic circle. And to ask: should we be recognizing and planning for this need?
Mo Holkar is a UK larper, designer and organizer. His recent projects include working on Reunion; Bubbles: a hot-tub larp anthology; and the upcoming A Place of Greater Safety. He is part of the Larps on Location design collective, and is an editor at nordiclarp.org. Mo’s articles about larp have appeared in many KP-books and elsewhere; and a bunch of his chamber larps are available to download from holkar.net
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.
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.
Organizing larps and larp-related events can leave people prone to burnout. This talk looks at why this happens, and how participants, and organizers themselves, can try to avoid it.
Mo Holkar is a UK larper, larp designer, and larp organizer. He works within the design collective Larps on Location and was one of the lead organizers of The Smoke: London’s International Larp Festival, and of The Game Kitchen design workshop. He has experienced his share of burnout, and didn’t like it.
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.
