Nordic Larp Talks

Nordic Larp Talks is a series of short, entertaining, thought-provoking and mind-boggling lectures about projects and ideas from the tradition of Nordic Larp. Subscribe to Nordic Larp Talks with RSS. For questions, contact Petter Karlsson at [email protected] Nordiclarp.org Nordiclarp.org Nordic Larp Wiki Nordic Larp Calendar Nordic Larp Forum Nordic Larp Talks

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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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Halat hisar - State of Siege - Kaisa Kangas

How is life under occupation? A team of Finnish and Palestinian organizers created the larp Halat hisar, which took place in a modern day Finland under a fictional occupation.

Halat hisar (State of Siege in English, Piiritystila in Finnish) was held near Parkano, a small town in southern Finland, the 15th – 17th of November 2013. About 70 people participated, coming from Finland, Palestine, Sweden, Denmark, Norway, Germany and the U.K.

The story took place in at the university of Helsinki, in a Finland occupied by the fictional nation of Uralia. At the university there was student council elections and preparations for the Great Literature and Humanities Conference. This as well as other events caused sparks among the students. Halat hisar in the Nordic Larp Wiki Halat hisar webiste

Kaisa Kangas is a Finnish larpwright. Her most recent game is Ha- lat hisar (2013) in which she was in charge of the fiction. Earlier works include Ghost Express (with Dare Talvitie, 2001-2002), a campaign that pioneered pervasive larp in Finland. She holds a M.Sc. in mathematics and a BA in East Asian Studies, and is currently working on her Ph.D. in mathematical logic.

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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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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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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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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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Bringing larp to a refugee camp ...without really knowing how - Martin Nielsen

With the goal to create a more fun and fantastic society, the project driven organisation Fantasiforbundet really has done just that, in many parts of the world. In this talk, Martin Nielsen gives you the story of how the brought roleplaying and larp to kids in a refugee camps.

Martin Nielsen, political scientist of education, has his dayjob in UngOrg, an NGO promoting empowerment of young people in Oslo. He has been larping since 1999 and has been a key contributor to Fantasiforbundet’s projects in Lebanon, Belarus and Palestine as well as meeting places such as Grenselandet, Knutepunkt in Norway and The Larpwriter Summer School. He is also partner in the company Alibier AS that works with participatory methods, including larp.

Site:  Fantasiforbundet Project site: Fantasiforbundet’s project portal 

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Identity Crafting: 
Keeping the Black Dog at bay - Nathan Hook

Identity is a multifaceted gem. Psychologist Nathan Hook's research investigates the relationship between player identity and character identity.

Nathan Hook (MSc MBPsS) lives in Bristol, UK and works as a data analyst for the UK Civil Service. He trained as a psychologist and is working on a distance PhD at University of Tampere, Finland on identity in role-playing games. He has larped since 1996 and been active on the Nordic Larp Scene since 2006. He publishes the Green Book series of psychodrama freeform scenario books and the literary scenario Heart’s Blood. Site: Nathan Hook Publications: Nathan Hook at Lulu

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Freeform and larp - Terminology and Strategies - Anna Westerling

In the field of roleplaying terminology can be on of the trickier parts since it's a constantly evolving movement. During the last decade the freeform scene has come much closer to the larp scene. Anna Westerling put's some of these terms on the map.

Further reading Naming the Middle Child in Crossing Habitual Borders (2013)

Anna Westerling is a Swedish organizer and game designer who is part of the Vi åker jeepcollective. She was the designer and producer of En stilla middag med familjen (tr. A nice evening with the family, 2007), and produced Nordic Larp (Book) and Knutpunkt 2006 and Knutpunkt 2010. Since 2013 she organizes the Stockholm Scenario Festival.

Site: Anna Westerling Twitter: anna_hoppetossa

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The Knutpunkt 2014 Books - Eleanor Saitta

2014 brings to brand new books to Knutpunkt. The Foundation Stone of Nordic larp is a collection of articles and media as a canon for the Nordic Larp discourse. Accompanying the conference is also the a book of new articles for this year, The Cutting Edge of Nordic Larp. Eleanor Saitta from the editorial team presents them here.

Download the books at PDF's from The Nordic Larp Wiki. The Foundation Stone of Nordic Larp  The Cutting Edge of Nordic Larp 

Eleanor Saitta is a hacker, designer, artist, writer, and barbarian. She makes a living and vocation of understanding how complex systems operate and redesigning them to work, or at least fail, better. She’s new to the Nordic larp community but has had pieces in the past two Kn- ute-books and is looking forward to more. Eleanor is nomadic and lives mostly in airports and occasionally in London, New York, and Stockholm. Site: Dymaxion.org Twitter: dymaxionlife​

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Nordic Larp Talks Gothenburg 2014

Welcome to Nordic Larp Talks Gothenburg 2014 - an evening of entertaining, thought-provoking and mind-boggling lectures about projects and ideas from the Nordic tradition of live action roleplaying games.

The evening was hosted by writer and radio & television host Johanna Koljonen at Visual Arena Lindholmen.

Facebook event: Nordic Larp Talks Gothenburg 2014

Nordic Larp Talks is Gothenburg 2014 was organized in connection with Knutepunkt 2014 and A Week in Gothenburg with support from Interactive Institute Swedish ICT and Visual Arena.

PROGRAM

Eleanor Saitta Anna Westerling Nathan Hook  Martin Nielsen Shoshana Kessock Carl Heath Bjarke Pedersen Siri Sandquist Kaisa Kangas Eirik Fatland

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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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How Can we Know what Actually Happened in a Larp
 - Annika Waern

The stories people tell about larps they have attended, lie very far from what they actually experienced in the game. Also, everyone tells a different story, and this is particularly true for players and organizers.

Is there a way to understand what actually happened in a larp, and can we tell a single more coherent story about how a larp played out? This talk is about techniques to study larp.

Annika Waern (Ph.D) is a professor and game researcher at the department of Informatics and Media at Uppsala University, Sweden. She has a long-standing experience of studying games that play out in the physical world, including but not limited to larp. Together with Markus Montola, and Jaakko Stenros she is author of Pervasive Games: Theory and Design (2009).

Site: Annika Waern

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

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

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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The Mixing Desk of Larp - Martin Eckhoff Andresen

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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Three Ways to Make Games More Inclusive - 
Lars Nerback

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