Tag: NLT

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2015 Copenhagen Talks

Larp as Adaptation – Evan Torner

We have only begun to test all the possibilities of expression made available to us through larp. While adapting material from other media appear ‘unoriginal’ to some, it expands the range of voices expressed in our medium. Evan Torner’s talk focuses on how we seek inspiration from film, novels and the human archive for our future larp work.

Evan Torner (Ph.D.) is an assistant professor of German Studies at the University of Cincinnati in Cincinnati, USA, as well as a larpwright and game event organiser. He has published on a variety of topics, including East German cinema, science fiction, genre cinema and live-action role-playing. His work has been supported by Fulbright, the DAAD, the DEFA Foundation, and the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, among others. Together with William J. White he co-edited the book Immersive Gameplay: Essays on Role-Playing and Participatory Media (McFarland, 2012). He is co-editor of the journal Analog Game Studies.

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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

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2014 Gothenburg Talks

Political larping – Strategies to make a larp accessible to non-larpers – Siri Sandquist

Suffragett was a larp about the Suffragette movement that fought for womens right to vote in the early 20th century. The vision of the larp was to be both political by educating the participants about history but also in how the put inclusiveness on top of their agenda. Siri Sandquist from the organizing teams explains their thoughts. 

Siri Sandquist holds two master degrees in archaeology specializing in gender theory and contextual archaeology. In 2014 she took part in organizing her first larp together with Susanne Vejdemo, Daniel Armyr and Cecilia Billskog. Suffragett! was a larp aimed at nonlarpers as well as already active larpers focused around the feminist movement for vote in the beginning of the 20th century where Siri was in charge of roles and fiction. 

Twitter: @sillysiri

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2014 Gothenburg Talks

Playing as human or robot – Carl Heath

Is it possible to roleplay together with a robot with artificial intelligence? Human and Machine is a psycho-technological theater experiment at the crossroads between man and machine, where the aim is to explore the encounter between man and machine in a context where they are fully engaged on stage, acting, in real time. In this early experiment, Carl Heath talks about the possibilities of the project together with Robert Bolin and Michael Schade.

Human and Machine is a collabortation between Scenlaboratioret, The Collaboratory and Interactive Institute Swedish ICT.

Carl Heath focuses on research and development projects regarding ICT and learning and learning perspectives in game studies. Prior to his current position at the Interactive Institute, Carl has worked for the Swedish Armed Forces, National Theatre Company, Sverok (The Swedish Gaming Federation), The National Council of Swedish Youth Organisations (LSU), the IT consultancy firm Technohuman, and GR (The Gothenburg Region of Local Authorities). Carl is the founder of GR Experiential Learning (now a part of The GR Pedagogical Centre) and the last two years, between 2010 and 2012, he was the Director of the Division of Educational Cooperation, as well as the Director of the GR Upper Secondary School Admissions Office. He has designed numerous larps and educational games. Carl has an educational background at the University of Gothenburg, where he studied political science, social science, pedagogy and ICT.

Twitter: @carlheath

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2014 Gothenburg Talks

Ethical Content Management and the Freedom to Create – Shoshana Kessock

How do we create safe spaces that still spur freedom of creation in larps? Shoshana Kessock presents the concepts of responsible spaces.

Shoshana Kessock is a game designer and researcher at the NYU Game Center in New York City, pursuing her MFA in game design. Shoshana serves as the founder of the Living Games Conference in New York and has written, organized or staffed over twenty five larps across the United States. She is also the co-founder of Phoenix Outlaw Productions, an independent game design company specializing in larp and tabletop role-playing games. Her writing credits include the freeform larp SERVICE, the tabletop scenario No Exit for Fate Core, and the upcoming Larp Dangers Untold. She lives in Brooklyn.

Site: shoshanakessok.com
Twitter: @ShoshanaKessock

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News

Nordic Larp Talks Oslo 2013

Thank you all that joined us in the livestream or at Litteraturshuset in Olso!

All the talks from Nordic Larp Talks Oslo 2013 are now available at the site:
Watch the talks

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2013 Oslo Talks

Bleed: How Emotions Affect Role-Playing Experiences
 – Sarah Lynne Bowman

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What happens when roleplayer’s in-game feelings spill into their real lives? How are role player communities affected by what happens in a larp?

This talk will explain the phenomenon of bleed in role-playing games and advocate for greater awareness of the phenomenon and increased discussion surrounding the emotional content of role-playing games.

Sarah Lynne Bowman (Ph.D.) teaches as adjunct faculty in English and Communication for several institutions including The University of Texas at Dallas. McFarland Press published her dissertation in 2010 as The Functions of Role-playing Games: How Participants Create Community, Solve Problems, and Explore Identity. Together with Aaron Vanek, Bowman co-edited The Wyrd Con Companion 2012, a collection of essays on larp and related phenomena. Her current researchinterests include examining social conflict and bleed within role-playing communities, applying Jungian theory to role-playing studies, studying the benefits of edu-larp, and comparing the enactment of role-playing characters with other creative phenomena such as drag performance.

Site: Sarah Lynne Bowman

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2013 Oslo Talks

No Training can Replace Experience, or Can it? – 
Stefan Deutsch

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Larp is great in building strange realities, far-away worlds and fantasies unheard of. But can it also be used to recreate authentic situations from real life to enable development workers to not only know about intercultural competence, but maybe even develop it before really coming in touch with a foreign culture?

Stefan Deutsch plays and facilitates larps for nearly 20 years, co-wrote one of Germany’s most controversial larp rules system and was one of the organizers of the MittelPunkt larp conference in Germany. He lives in Germany and Tanzania and works as a consultant for a software company and larp.

Site: Reality check

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2013 Oslo Talks

The Mixing Desk of Larp – Martin Eckhoff Andresen

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How do you teach the complexity of larp design to beginners? This was the question that triggered The Mixing Desk of Larp – a framework for thinking about larp design. Like the sound or light technician adjusting faders to achieve the desired effect, the larp designer adjusts the faders of the Mixing Desk of Larp to change his or her game.

This talk explores how this can make larp design easier to teach as a game design discipline. It also helps designers become more aware of the default positions of their larp design.

There are plenty of people who contributed to the Mixing Desk of Larp. All the organizers and lecturers of the Larpwriter Summer School 2012 are to be credited as well as Swedish pedagogic larp company LajvVerkstaden. And also the community at large for developing the tools and terms used.

Read more about the Larpwriter Summer School and find resources and videos at www.larpschool.org.

And read the Knutepunkt book of 2013 and at the Mixing desk article at The Nordic Larp Wiki.

Martin Eckhoff Andresen is a larper, organizer and game designer from Oslo, Norway. He has been involved with Fantasiforbundet’s “Larpocracy” projects in Belarus, that explore the role of games as a tool for informal education. He has edited Playing the Learning Game – A practical introduction to educational roleplaying (2012). At daytime, he’s finishing a master thesis in economics.

Site: Nordic Larp Wiki – The Mixing Desk of Larp

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2013 Oslo Talks

Three Ways to Make Games More Inclusive – 
Lars Nerback

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How do you, as a game designer, work to get a diverse group of participants to feel welcome and included? Lars Nerback talks from his experience in working with educational larps in schools, and gives three examples for making inclusive games.

Lars Nerback is one of the owners of LajvVerkstaden (”The Larp Workshop” directly translated), a Swedish company that designs and runs educational larps for children, teenagers and adults. Apart from his work as game designer and project manager, Lars is deeply involved in issues of social justice and equality.

Site: LajvVerkstaden

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