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Layout and cover Monika Hestad Illustrations Petter Bøckman Printed at Grimshei trykkeri AS Knutepunkt 2005 partners Norsk Kulturråd Letterstedska forening Library indexing information Dissecting larp – Collected papers for Knutepunkt 2005. Editors; Bøckman, Petter and Hutchison, Ragnhild Previous publications for Knutepunkt As Larp Grows Up, Copenhagen 2003 Beyond Role and Play, Helsinki 2004 Includes bibliographical references. 1. Role Playing – Theory 2. Role Playing – Social Interaction 3. Role Playing – Live Action 4. Role Playing – Application © Respective authors, Knutepunkt. 2005. All rights reserved. Dissecting larp Collected papers for Knutepunkt – 2005, the 9th annual Nordic Conference on larp Edited by Petter Bøckman & Ragnhild Hutchison Knutepunkt Oslo 2005 7 Welcome Introduction 11 Knutepunkt and Nordic Live Role-playing: A crash course - Eirik Fatland Application 23 Live Action Role Playing, Teaching through gaming - Torstein Utne 31 Lived Scenarios, Combining Role-playing and Design - Juha Mox Huuhtanen 43 School of Flour, Developing methodology through eight experimental larps - Mike Pohjola 71 Testing Larp Theories and Methods, Results for Years Zero to One - J. Tuomas Harviainen On larpers and the larp scene 83 Danish larp in numbers - Morten Gade 91 Larp organizing and gender in Norway - Ragnhild Hutchison 105 Profiling the larper, What is actually at stake - Thomas Duus Henriksen Doing larp 125 Nothing is True; Everything is Permissible, Using Deception as a Productive Tool - Markku Jenti 135 Corresponding Expectations, Alternative Approaches to Enhanced Game Presence - J. Tuomas Harviainen 147 Incentives as tools of larp dramaturgy - Eirik Fatland 181 The Collective’s little red book, A step-by-step guide to arranging larps the collective way - Martine Svanevik 189 Quantifying In-game economy, A contribution to the analysis of the in-game economy of larp events - Mathias Lysholm Faaborg. 205 The Process Model of Role-playing - Mathias Lysholm Faaborg For the afterthought 239 Real Magic – Elge Larsen Bøckman and Hutchison Larp needs understanding. Understanding requires knowledge. Finding knowledge involves digging into the murky material and getting your hands dirty. Finding understanding requires the will to dissect your own knowledge. Nearly all writers on larp are avid larpers them selves. This makes the process of finding understanding a lot more difficult than most people outside the field would think. Larp can at its best be intensely emotional and inspirational, even a defining element of ones life. At its worst larp’s just boring. Getting to understand larp demands that the writer is willing to cast aside the fondness they feel for their subject, to evaluate the failures and boring bits. You cannot dissect without taking your subject apart. This is the dissection, here are their findings. This is the third collection of articles for Knutepunkt, the annual Scandinavian Congress on Larp. It is our hope that this book will establish a tradition of an annual book compromising articles on larp. The two former works, As Larp Grows Up, and Beyond Role and Play set the standard for us. Hopefully, we have not put them to shame. Hereby, we pass the torch to the next editors. Some notes on the review process: This year, we have elected to experiment with the review process. With broadening and deepening of the field, it has become increasingly clear that reviewing all incoming articles has become too much for a small editorial staff. Thus, we decided to let qualified writers do the review for us. We have named this process “peer review”, though it is not peer review by the strictest scientific standards. Firstly, there exists no set definition as to what makes one an expert on larp matters. Neither is there any larpers 7 Welcome to Dissection larp! holding a doctorate in larp. We have elected to let the writers them selves be each others peers, holding to what academic standard there is. Secondly, the reviewing itself has been fairly informal. The process has largely been an amicable process between writer and reviewer. Larp theory is after all a young discipline, and we have seen no need for imposing rigorous rules for the process. Still, we are proud of what we have achieved. All articles in this volume have been subjected to scrutiny by someone writing in a related field. It is my view that the people involved in these articles best represent the reviewers available. With this edition, I hope to have paved the way for establishing a lasting review system and perhaps a permanent board of reviewers. And with a little luck, the doctorates will be coming. Some words of thanks: I would especially like to thank Ryan Rhode Hansen and Gunnar Fredrikson for volunteering to help out with the review prosess, and to Monika Hestad for doing lay-out. Knuteboka has been made possible by: • Norsk Kulturråd • Letterstedska förening Petter Bøckman and Ragnhild Hutchison Editors 8 Eirik Fatland So, it’s your first time to Knutepunkt. Or you’ve been here several times, but still have trouble figuring out those weird Finns, Danes, Norwegians or Swedes. This article is a quick introduction to the Knutepunkt event and the many traditions grouped together as “Nordic larp”. For the complete foreigner: Geography & Language Scandinavia proper is the peninsula on which most of Norway and Sweden is situated. The ”Scandinavian Countries” are Norway, Sweden and Denmark. The ”Nordic Countries” are the Scandinavian countries, Finland, Iceland and the autonomous regions of Åland, Greenland and the Ferrow Isles. These countries are closely connected through geography, culture, history and politics. Long before the EU, one could travel between the Nordic countries without a passport. The “Nordic larp scene” (more on that later) includes Norway, Sweden, Finland and Denmark and increasingly some neighbouring LARP scenes - most notably in north-western Russia and Estonia. There are reportedly larpers on Iceland, but there has as yet been no contact between these and larpers in the other Nordic countries. The Nordic countries have tiny populations – ranging from Sweden’s 8 million citizens to Iceland’s 300.000. However, while there are no hard statistics to prove this assertion, an exceptionally high percentage of the population seems to be involved in live role-playing. The popularity of larp has recently made it a feature of “common knowledge”, so that a Swedish journalist may refer to something unrelated as “larp-like”, Finnish TV produces a teen soap opera about fantasy larpers, and a Norwegian professor of theatre history routinely ends his course by mentioning larp as the “new theatre”. The languages of Norway, Denmark and Sweden are mutually intelligible – mere dialects of each other. Finnish is a Finno-Ugric language, entirely different from the Scandinavian languages but related to Hungarian, 11 Knutepunkt and Nordic Live Roleplaying: A crash course Eirik Fatland Estonian and possibly to Turkish, Mongolian and Korean. In theory, all Finns learn Swedish at school – in practice few Finns, outside of the Swedish- speaking minority, are fluent in the language. Because of the Finns, English is the common language of Knutepunkt conferences and the books published in connection to them. The non-Nordic reader should however keep in mind some differences between the Nordic and Anglo-American uses of English when talking about larp: For one, we treat “larp” as a word in it’s own right, not an acronym (L.A.R.P.). This is the way we treat the word in our native languages - “laiv” (no), “lajv” (se), “live” (dk) and “larp” (fi). Both “Role-play” and “Role-playing game” translate to the same word in the Scandinavian languages : “rollespill”. “Spill” can mean both “play”, as in “skuespill” (lit. “spill for view” - acting, theatre) and “game” as in “brettspill” (lit. “board spill”, board game). Most Scandinavians therefore rarely talking about larps as “games” in English, as “spill” in our larps rarely is particularly gameish. Instead of “a game” you may hear “a larp”, “an event”, “a role- playing session” etc. The Finns do not seem to have the same discomfort, though whether this is for linguistic, theoretical or ideological reasons is a matter of debate. Knutepunkt: the meeting-place of Nordic larpers. The first Knutepunkt conference was held in Oslo, Norway, in 1997. It was, for it’s time, a fairly unusual event gathering larpers from all the Nordic countries to talk about larp rather than play it. Since then, Knutepunkt has been held annually, rotating between the Nordic countries, and each year being named in the language of the host country. So it is “Knutepunkt” in Norwegian, “Knutpunkt” in Swedish, “Knudepunkt” in Danish and “Solmukohta” in Finnish. The meaning is the same: literally, “the point of a knot”, a nodal point, a meeting place. Knutepunkts are very diverse events, shifting between the atmosphere of an academic conference to the mood of a crazy surrealist larp. Networking, partying, lectures, discussions and entertainment have always been core components of Knutepunkt. In recent years, Knutepunkts have been accompanied by the publication of a book featuring theory and articles, the occasional small larp, and the “a week in..” prelude where foreign visitors are invited to come a week earlier to role-play, socialize and tourist their way around the host city and it’s nightlife. 12 Knutepunkt and Nordic Live Roleplaying: A crash course Eirik Fatland There is no real “Knutepunkt” organisation, only tradition. When it’s time for a particular country to host a Knutepunkt, an organising committee pops up out of nowhere. Sometimes, two committees pop up simultaneously and they resolve between themselves how to do it. The “host organisation” of Knutepunkt varies from country to country and year to year. As does the size, ambition and themes of the conference. Extras, such as the book, the “week in..” programme, mini-larps, “Knutepunkt on-line”, are not essential ingredients of a Knutepunkt but good ideas that may or may not be maintained from year to year.