Editing and layout
Sadly, the editing on “Dissecting larp” is atrocious. It’s one of the first things a reader will notice. Obvious typing errors, bad grammar, mangled sentences, logical errors and a lack of a standard practice for notes and references undermine the book’s academic ambitions. (According to the editors, the electronic version, to be released in April, will be much improved).
The layout is amateurish, but readable. The choice of font and use of space on the pages makes for pleasant and unobstructed reading. Some errors have snuck in here as well, as there are references to diagrams that aren’t in the book, and one existing diagram has been printed in a near-invisible shade of light gray.
Don’t be scared by the presentation, though. The contents are, in general, well worth the read. I’ll go through the articles one by one, in order of appearance.
SECTION: INTRODUCTION
Knutepunkt and Nordic Live Role-playing: A crash course (Eirik Fatland)
In the first article, Fatland presents the context of the book: The “Knutepunkt” event and the Nordic larp tradition. The information given is comprehensive and well presented, covering similarities and differences between the larp cultures of the Nordic countries, such as the differences in organisational structures and theming.
SECTION: APPLICATION
Live Action Role Playing - Teaching through gaming (Torstein Utne)
This digest of Utne’s term paper on using larp as a teaching tool is confusing. Several models of larp are presented, but Utne often fails to present the reasoning behind his use of the models, and his attempts to explain them are incomplete, even with the use of diagrams. His classification of larp as a game by Klabbers’ definition “actors who utilize rules in order to gain resources” is contradicted by his own claim that “larp is almost free of rules and conventions”. His claim that information is the resource actors want to gain in larp seems far-fetched, and is not explained. Utne does, however, make a major important point with respect to the use of games in education: Games can be used for education, but the nature of the school system is such that students may be forced to participate, which necessarily means that the participants will dislike the game. This is a central issue in the debate on role-playing in schools.
Lived Scenarios - Combining Role-playing and Design (Juha Huuhtanen)
“Lived Scenarios” was a Finnish project aiming to develop concept design methodology, where students explored possibilities for using media. Students used participative acting and video scenarios to co-design possible everyday practices in the future. The article is interesting and well-presented, and although the connection with traditional larp is tenuous at best, experimental larpers and concept designers clearly have techniques they can share with each other.
School of Flour - Developing methodology through eight experimental larps (Mike Pohjola)
Pohjola is an experienced larpwright, and in this article he describes some of the methods he has used in the last 8 years. His development as a larpwright has clearly been a continuous influence on finnish larp, and can be read as a commentary on the development of the Nordic larp scene. Pohjola writes both of his successes and failures, and of others’ successes, giving a very useful overview of what methods have been tried and found to work. Comprehensively written, wonderfully structured and chock full of useful ideas, this article should be read by all larp organisers and theorists.
Corresponding Expectations - Alternative Approaches to Enhanced Game Presence (J. Tuomas Harviainen)
Harviainen is one of the more theoretically critical theorists, with a fondness for comparing and deconstructing theories. In this article, he presents some of larp’s preconceptions of distinctions, such as “Immersion vs Simulation” and “Scale and Quality”. He then presents four approaches designed to break the mould of these schools of thought. Simply paraphrased, the “Being/Doing” approach requires the player to understand his motivations for play (roughly, experiencing a character or telling its story), and communicate it to the organisers. “Manipulation of the Perikhoresis State” says that character and player influence each other, and by making one of the pair (usually the player) change its state of being, a larpwright can affect the other. “Advance molding of expectations” is about presenting the game beforehand to help players understand what’s expected of them. “Multi-layering” is about using correspondences between layers (such as metaphor/genre/character layers) to create a sense of meaning and artistry. Harviainen’s writing is a bit dense, and somehow has a negative feel to it. Phrases like “By manipulating one half of the perihoresis relationship, it is possible to also influence the other. For example, any discomfort experienced by a player usually transfers also to her character” give the impression of a twisted puppet master afflicting pain on his helpless puppets. Unintentional, I’m sure, but it detracts a bit from the positively practical purposes of the article: Creating good larps. The methods described are useful, and mostly grounded in theory - a good example of how thinking about games can help us design them better.
SECTION: ON LARPERS AND THE LARP SCENE
Danish larp by numbers (Morten Gade)
Gade aims to find out how many larpers there are in Denmark. With data from a survey conducted with Danish children in the summer of 2004 and data from Danish larp portal Liveforum, he shows that of 27,000 children larping in July 2004, a large majority were not part of the traditional larp scene. They participated in events organised by schools and other institutions. In his conclusion, his comments on the public perception of larp seem more based on personal opinion than research, and have little to do with the rest of the article, which is informative and to the point.
Larp organizing and gender in Norway (Ragnhild Hutchison)
Obviously an experienced writer of research articles, Hutchison has done a scrupulous study of the changes in gender distribution amongst Norwegian larp organisers over the last 15 years. Through analysis and discussion of data from questionnaires and the laiv.org calendarium she concludes that the community is fairly gender balanced, and girls don’t encounter significant gender-based barriers when taking on the role of organiser. The article may not be of interest to the role-playing community at large, due to its limited scope. However, it appears to be part of a previous (and ongoing?) debate on the subject, and as such is impressively well-researched and consistent.
Profiling the larper - what is actually at stake (Thomas Duus Henriksen)
Why do people participate in larps?, asks Henriksen, psychologist and designer of educational games. Based in a large part on Vygotsky’s claim that “we play in order to compensate for needs or desires that we are currently prevented from fulfilling in the real world” (quoted from the article), Henriksen speculates on the need fulfilment motivations of the different types of larper, as defined by a. o. Bøckman. Combining this with thoughts about what different age groups might want, he presents a picture of larpers as playful, but immature and childish, and perhaps unable to participate in the real world as adult people. He also comments on the attitudes of larpers, and how they stem from, and result in, a large concentration of “weird” people - among them, the mentally ill. Henriksens description of larpers are easily recognisable, and seem to fit tabletop roleplayers equally well. Many of his observations seem spot-on, and explain much of the behaviour we see in these hobbies. However, this easy recognition can’t hide the fact that Henriksen presents no actual research on the personalities of larpers. He also makes some strange and obviously unverifiable claims - such as that there are a handful of untreated psychopaths loose in the Danish larp scene. It strikes me as strange that Henriksen, an educated psychologist, doesn’t seem to see the need to base his opinions - of the psychological makeup of tens of thousands of people - on research. Without facts to base his argumentation on, the article is reduced to being an intricate statement of one person’s opinion.
SECTION: DOING LARP
Nothing is true; everything is permissible (Markku Jenti)
Jenti is a pseudonym for a group of Finnish larpwrights. Here, they present methods for “deceptive design”, describing how to use lies and illusions to make better games. Written in a light tone, the article is a collection of practical instructions. Some of the tone may have been lost in translation - examples that seem to be meant ironically are, according to the writers, not. While seemingly controversial, “deceptive design” is in fact mostly harmless. Some methods are already fairly common and accepted in larp design: Describing what a game is like will make the players create that game; have hidden gamemasters within a game to keep it going in the right direction. The basic tenet, however - that almost any amount of deceit is permissible, as long as the larp is a success - will be harder to swallow for many. The article is interesting, but vague. Some methods are described in such general terms that it’s hard to say exactly what the larpwright is supposed to do.
Testing larp theories and methods - results for years Zero to One (J. Tuomas Harviainen)
The biggest disease in current role-playing theory is the lack of testing. While many methods are widely used, there have been few analyses of the results of their use. Harviainen attempts to rectify this by testing several well-known larp design methods and principles in the field. Turku School immersion, Axel Westlund’s narrativism, KMSKM and Ars Amandi have been applied to different larps. Harviainen admits that his findings must be regarded as contaminated data, and that the structure of larps makes it impossible to use normal scientific methods in studying them. Still, it’s a beginning, and an important one. The author encourages other teams to test larp theories and methods; I believe that might be the most important suggestion in this book.
Incentives as tools of larp dramaturgy (Eirik Fatland)
Fatland presents an overview of known incentive methods - techniques the larpwright uses to encourage specific events to occur during the larp. Lids, triggers, puzzles, instructions, fates, suggestions and tasks are described and compared, and related to theory. Different ways of using these incentives in larger dramaturgic structures - incentive webs - are shown. Fatland makes much use of Montola’s concepts of integrative and dissipative techniques and attractors, and coins the term “fog of larp” based on Bøckman’s maxim. These concepts prove very useful tools for analysing the incentive methods and their application. Incentive-based dramaturgy is not applicable to all forms of larp, and Fatland acknowledges this. For those that do, however, the article is mandatory reading.
The collective’s little red book (Martine Svanevik)
This article describes a method for creating larps with a flat power structure, where there is no organiser in the traditional sense. Instead, organising is a collective effort. The collective method is not, however, an anarchy; it requires several key people - an initiator and persons responsible for the economy and practical matters. Advantages and problems of the model are discussed, and suggestions for solutions to the problems are given. This is clearly a method that has been tested. I would have liked to read a more detailed account of how it worked out in actual play; while the text is clear enough, examples would have given a stronger feeling of how the method works. I’m a strong believer in player participation, and while the collective method is not ground-breaking (player-created plots, for instance, have been around for some time), the article points the way for further experimentation.
Quantifying in-game economy - a contribution to the analysis of the in-game economy of larp events (Mathias Lysholm Faaborg)
I must admit that I was skeptical before I read this article, as I assumed it would have little practical relevance. I was happy to be proven wrong. Faaborg uses basic economic theory to show the strong practical implications of decisions organisers may sometimes take without proper consideration. By focusing on the relationship between the stock of in-game money and merchandise, price levels, and the rate at which money is recycled, he shows why inflation is so common in large-scale larps, and what measures can be taken to prevent it. He also focuses on practical considerations (people don’t save up money for later in a three-day larp, and at the end, they don’t care what happens to it anyway) and their effects on the economy, such as shortage of goods, lack of incentive to provide goods (which can get ugly if those goods are food for 1000 players), sudden inappropriate richness of the middle class etc. A wonderful example of applying theory from other fields to give practical advice to larpers, and a must-read for those about to organise large-scale larps.
The process model of role-playing (Mäkelä, Koistinen, Siukola and Turunen)
(Note: I may have the wrong names here; I’ve lost the errata that came with the book, but seem to remember something about author names for this article. If anyone can provide the right information, I’d be grateful).
This is a very ambitious undertaking. The authors propose a new model of role-playing - the Process Model - on the scale of the Forge’s Big Model. They define an environment for interaction (the Shared Space of Imagining, or SSoI) in which participants use circumstances, role-playing processes and methods to affect the Shared Imagined Space (not the same as the SSoI), and combine these with social processes to get results. The model is clearly meant as an alternative to the Big Model (although comparisons to GENder, Threefold and just about all other models are examined). It is fairly theory-heavy, although it is meant to help participants better define their gaming needs. By way of defining the results they want, participants can focus on processes that lead to that result, and choose suitable methods. (E. g., a player wanting the results of “meaning” and “entertainment” might prefer the process of “immersion” and support that with the method of “pure in-SIS causality simulation”). I’m in two - well, several - minds about this article. The core idea is good, and compared to Big Model, it does RPG theory a huge service by not mentioning gamism, narrativism or simulationism - thus putting a stop both to unending and sickening debates of definition, and to the common misunderstanding of that central part of the model (that players believe they have to classify themselves as G, N or S). The ideas of processes and methods are sound enough, though a bit vague. Much of the model seems interchangeable with the Big Model, and it’s unclear why it should be presented as something new. My main problem is, as so often in this book, that the authors provide no test results. They claim to base the model on experiences from actual play, but don’t share those experiences. I wish they would have. Afternote: Apparently, the larp “The Process” is an attempt to test the model. The authors are writing a follow-up article on the results of that experiment.
SECTION: FOR THE AFTERTHOUGHT
Larping as real magic (Elge Larsson)
The title is misleading: The author doesn’t believe in real magic, nor does he claim that larp is such magic. He does, however, claim something less controversial - that larpers would like the world to be more magical, and re-experience the magic of childhood. Interestingly, he makes many of the same claims as Henriksen - larpers don’t want to grow up, they play because they’re discontented with reality etc. He also has more positive suggestions: Larpers want to grow up without losing their creativity, and because they want to be their True Self. He also makes the claim that some other larpers do: Larp is a revolution, saying NO to the powers that be. I strongly disagree - if you want to make a statement to those powers, you must make it so that they have to listen, instead of creating a fantasy space nobody else has to relate to at all. The article is positive, and makes some good points - especially those borrowed from Winnicott. It is, however, rambling and, to me, not entirely convincing in the end.
