Larp

Воробьева О. Конструирование групповой идентичности в процессе ролевой игры живого действия // Антропология города глазами молодых исследователей. По материалам конференции молодых ученых. Москва, 22-24 декабря 2014 г. М.: ИЭА РАН, 2015.
Статья посвящена скрытым отсылкам к внеигровому культурному контексту, происходящим во время российской ролевой игры живого действия. Разные типы отсылок актуализируют разные уровни групповой идентичности ролевиков.
The paper analyzes implicit off-game references taking place during Russian larps. Such references are used as a source to construct different levels of group identity within larpers.
English version on request: Vorobyeva O. Constructing of Group Identity During Live-Action Role Playing Games // Anthropology and Archaeology of Eurasia, vol. 54, issue 1, 2015.

Jesień 2016 roku upłynęła młodzieży z kutnowskich szkół pod znakiem walki o tron. Dokładnie tak, gdyż właśnie „Walka o Tron 1733” to tytuł dużego projektu edukacyjnego realizowanego wspólnie przez Fundację Budzenie Pasji i Muzeum Regionalne w Kutnie, którego pomysłodawcą był niżej podpisany. Projekt oparty był na metodzie larp, którą będę chciał poniżej przedstawić i poniekąd zarekomendować. Doświadczenia realizacji kilku podobnych projektów, w których wzięło w latach 2012-2016 ok. 1700 uczniów, skłaniają mnie do sformułowania kilku zasad (wcale nie żelaznych!), które powinno się uwzględnić tworząc a następnie przeprowadzając taki projekt dla młodzieży.

EDU-LARP como una herramienta de refuerzo de contenidos, hace que la información que brindamos en nuestras sesiones lectivas se vuelvan relevantes. Brinda una manera fresca de salir de la rutina y es una excelente herramienta en un proceso de gamificacion explicita en clase.

The paper presents the results of “Live Action
Role Plays in School Education,” a quasi-experimental
project piloted in 2010 and 2012 and conducted in
2013 by Games Research Association of Poland and
educational publisher Nowa Era. In this project, larp
was used in high-schools as a revision class before a
test in History, the hypothesis being that larp as pretest
revision leads to higher retention of knowledge
than traditional revision classes. Small sample size
cannot be considered conclusive evidence, but the
preliminary findings seem encouraging for further
research. Beside students’ test scores, the report
provides non-standardized qualitative observational
data on participant attitudes, plus information about
practical issues of edu-larp research in public school
environment. Next to the findings, the text reports
on the research process and the rationale behind its
modification

This document provides an overview of the origins, evolution, debate, and current applications relevant to the Transtheoretical Model (TTM), also known as Stages of Change (SoC) and relevance to role-playing games. It includes some of the debate about the viability, or argued lack thereof, for programs based on the TTM in any setting. The paper also includes suggestions for the potential relevance this model may have in the development and use of recreation education and therapeutic recreation interventions and role-playing games. Additionally, this paper includes some examples of potential implementations based on the TTM / SoC approach. Using the TTM as a guide from a TR perspective, it may be possible to develop a graduated series of role-playing gaming interventions for various populations.

Revision F, As presented at National Annual ATRA Conference by RPG Research & RPG Therapeutics. Diagram Summary & Relationship to Role-playing Game Interaction Patterns and RPG Formats according to the Hawkes-Robinson RPG Model at http://www.rpgtheories.com & http://www.model.com
RPG = Role-playing Game
ERPG = Electronic RPG
CRPG = Computer-based RPG
LRPG = Live-action Role-Playing Game
Larp = Live-action role-play
HRPG = Hybrid RPG
ARPG = Audio RPG
ORPG = Online RPG
MERPG = Multiplayer ERPG
MCRPG = Multiplayer CRPG
MORPG = Multiplayer Online RPG
MMORPG = Massively Multiplayer ORPG
SABM = Solo Adventure Books / Modules
SCRPG = Solo CRPG
TRPG = Tabletop RPG
CCG/TCG = Collectiable/Tradeable Card Game
PvP = Player vs. Player
GvG = Group vs. Group
GvP = Group vs. Player
PBP = Play By Post

OldTown to największy w Polsce konwent fanów fantastyki postapokaliptycznej, w ramach którego odbywa się kilkudniowy larp. Rozgrywa się on na terenie opuszczonego lotniska w Stargardzie Szczecińskim. Jest to przestrzeń odizolowana od zabudowań miasta, gdzie infrastruktura wojskowa (m. in. pasy startowe, podziemne schrony, bunkry i zniszczone hangary) jest adaptowana na potrzeby gry.
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OldTown is the largest convention of post-apocalyptic fantasy fans in Poland, as part of which larp takes place over several days. It takes place in an abandoned airport in Stargard Szczeciński. It is a space isolated from the city buildings, where the military infrastructure (e.g. runways, underground shelters, bunkers and destroyed hangars) is adapted to the needs of the game.

Gli edu-larp (Educational Live Action Role-Playing) sono giochi di ruolo educativi in cui i partecipanti vestono i ruoli di personaggi, interpretando fisicamente le narrazioni su diverse tematiche. Questo volume – scritto da studenti, insegnanti, professori e professoresse universitarie, associazioni ludiche e culturali, educatori ed educatrici – è rivolto a chiunque creda che il gioco sia forma di comunicazione, generatore di comunità e metafora dell’educazione.

The presentation from April 11th, 2015 "The Therapeutic and Educational Uses of Role-Playing Games (RPG) as Intervention Modalities for Individuals and Groups from the Therapeutic Recreation Perspective" at Seattle Children's Hospital for the Washington State Therapeutic Recreation Association (WSTRA) 16th annual conference. The live version of this presentation was certified for Continuing Education Units (CEU's) by the American Therapeutic Recreation Association (ATRA).
Provides in-depth information about all forms of role-playing games (tabletop, live-action (LARP), computer-based, and choose your own adventure), how they benefit users in normal diversional use, how professional may use them in standard approaches to achieve client goals, and how they may be modified to meet specific client needs.

This paper investigates the psychology of bleed-out, in which in-character dynamics spill over into out-of-character thoughts and feelings (Montola, 2011). We pair emerging neuroscience theory and research with classic models of emotion and motivation to examine the causes and consequences of this important larp phenomenon. Regarding positive bleed, hormones associated with trust and love may promote social bonding between players through shared in-character experiences (Kosfeld et al. 2005). Negative interpersonal dynamics could also develop, however, during antagonistic character interaction via “neural alarm bells” -- increased activation in brain areas associated with social rejection (Eisenberger, Leiberman, and Williams 2003). Such neural activity could in turn set off defensive aggression or social withdrawal (Twenge et al. 2001), behaviors that could bleed over into out-of-game interactions. The impact of these and other neuropsychological reactions on players’ behavior may be determined by the degree to which the line between self and character becomes blurred during play. According to Lankoski and Järvelä (2012), however, such blurring is a baked-in feature of human embodied cognition. Therefore, we propose that compartmentalizing “in-character” reactions requires immense self-regulatory control – a limited resource which is known to be depleted through many activities common to larp, e.g., effortful decision making and self-presentation (Vohs, Baumeister, and Ciarocco 2005; Vohs et al. 2014). Connecting self-regulatory resource models with bleed in this way is especially important since negative
bleed-out can be a source of conflict in player communities (Bowman 2013). As such, we offer proactive solutions for those players or designers who wish to tailor a particular larp experience in order to avoid
bleed-out, building on pre-existing best practices: informed consent, safe-spaces, and debriefing (Burns 2014; Atwater 2016; Brown 2016; Bowman, Brown, Atwater, and Rowland 2017).

Le concept de "bleed" a été inventé au sein de la communauté du jeu de rôle grandeur nature (GN) pour parler d'un phénomène de perméabilité entre le réel et la fiction. Nous commencerons par exposer à travers la notion d’alibi la façon dont le réel et le fictionnel sont en théorie distincts en GN, avant d’introduire ce qui vient troubler cette séparation formelle en admettant l’existence de transferts entre l’un et l’autre. Nous nous intéresserons ensuite au potentiel émancipatoire de cette porosité, afin d’illustrer la façon dont la fiction peut être utilisée comme médium pour produire de l’effet dans le monde réel.

Live-action role-play (larp) has been named a “new performative art,” an immersive experience, and an educational tool, but it is much more: A playground of intermingling social and cultural realities, a door to new worlds. This paper offers an introduction to larp, its transcultural history, and its disruptive and creative possibilities, as well as key aspects, such as immersion. It sets the theoretical frame for the game “Staying Alive,” in which the researchers and also the audience engage in a shared “mimetic evocation of ‘real-life experience.’” Many aspects of “everydayness” can be called “collateral realities,” realities that are done implicitly, unintentionally, such as nations, cultures, time, or distinctions of subject and object, or of presenter and audience; realities that could be different. Taking performativity seriously, larp can be a tool to step outside of a Euro-American commonsense ontology and its singular reality “out there” by playing with collateral realities and making their production explicit. During a larp, players (“larpers”) consciously undo objects and meanings, space, and even their very bodies to creatively weave new material-semiotic fabrics. They become cultural mediators between a world-that-supposedly-just-is and its partially connected others, in which Japaneseness or Chineseness may fade and Elvishness is translated into a reality. With a global player base, larping is not only a practice of intersubjective or cultural negotiations but also of intra-subjective mediation of cultural realities.

This work examines the relationship between LARP and depth psychology, explains how depth psychology can be used as starting point for describing what happens between players and their characters, and provides language to describe the outcomes of said interactions. It briefly describes archetypal engagement in Western and non-Western environments and examines the rise of LARP in the West in the context of societal need for myth. The aim of this work is to illustrate how depth psychology can be used as a theoretical framework to evaluate certain functions of LARP from a psychological perspective. This work draws on the ideas and research of academics across disciplines, including psychology, anthropology, game studies, and comparative mythology.

Магистерская работа (2014 г.), основанная на анализе собранной базы данных, о фреймировании российской ролевой игры живого действия, о триггерах переключения фреймов, о вариантах оформления этого переключения и о преодолении "поломок" целевого (внутриигрового) фрейма.

Faisant le pari que la connivence étroite entretenue entre jeu de rôle grandeur nature et engagement politique dans les pays nordiques n’est pas accidentelle, l’argumentaire de ce mémoire vise à aborder la question suivante : quels sont les éléments ludiques, structurels ou communautaires associés au jeu de rôle grandeur nature qui favorisent le développement ou le maintien d’une conscience politique chez ses pratiquantes ?
Le propos s'appuie principalement sur une ethnographie de six mois menée auprès de pratiquantes de jeu de rôle grandeur nature en Finlande.

This article will cover the current literature pertaining to educational live-action role-playing games (edu-larp) and related phenomena. Though edu-larp is a rather recent development emerging from the leisure activity of role-playing games, various other spheres have emphasized the pedagogical value of role-playing as a method, including education, theatre, psychodrama, military, business, and health care. This literature review will streamline the discourse surrounding games, simulation, drama, and role-playing with the recent development of edu-larp, emphasizing the various cognitive, affective, and behavioral benefits detailed in the research. The review will also discuss the challenges faced by edu-larp designers and instructors, offering possible solutions.

Реферат к кандидатскому экзамену по антропологии (2016) для обоснования темы диссертации. Рассматриваются подходы к игре Й. Хёйзинги и Р. Кайуа, а также ролевая игра по отношению к таким феноменам, как ритуал, театр и взаимодействие лицом к лицу.

A brief background summary of research information about the effects of role-playing gaming upon participants, including their use as an intervention modality to achieve therapeutic and educational goals for various populations, including: Autism spectrum (ASD/PDD), at-risk youth, brain injury (stroke, traumatic brain injury (TBI), etc.), the Deaf community, ADHD, depression, and social phobias.
While the focus is primarily on tabletop & live-action RPGs, all formats of role-playing gaming are discussed, including Choose Your Own Adventure (CYOA) books, offline and online computer-based RPG, live-action role-playing (LARP), and tabletop RPG.
Briefly provide historical information and examples of each game format in a typical recreation setting, then proceeds with the existing research using RPG for various educational and therapeutic interventions from other disciplines (psychiatry, psychology, education, sociology, cognitive, behavioral, etc.), then illustrates how TR methodologies are ideal for optimizing these activities as an intervention modality for many populations in group and individual settings to achieve client therapeutic & educational goals.
This paper focuses on a more hands-on practical application of RPGs for education and therapy, rather than a more abstract theoretical discussion, though these theories are referenced for the reader to read elsewhere in more depth.

This article is a chapter in the game research methods book (p.117-132). It concentrates on stimulated recall as a game research method. In a usual stimulated recall study, first an action with the informant is recorded. Using the recorded action as stimuli, the informant is interviewed and the interview concentrates on the informant explaining the reasons and thoughts behind his or her choices or actions in the video.

The article introduces the research method’s history, current uses and a step-by-step stimulated recall study guideline based on Dempsey’s (2010) steps for stimulated recall in ethnography and methods to analyze data gathered with the stimulated recall method. It also contains cases of stimulated recall studies and suggestion for potential future directions in game research.

The live action role-playing community as a
subculture within the United States represents an
aspect of repression within the greater society, just as
most subcultures in some way do. Due to the unique
qualities of the activities in which participants within
this subculture engage, indeed because of the very
fabric of the subculture itself, it becomes imperative
to examine issues of psychological repression and
engagement of repressed materials. Within live
action role-playing, players both consciously and
unconsciously engage in and enact archetypal
roles in a liminal and communal setting. Because of
the “safe space” that is often created during these
forms of play—sometimes referred to as the “magic
circle”—participants often find themselves free to
explore psychic materials that would be considered
part of the shadow. Shadow is a Jungian concept of the
repressed, the unknown, or unrecognizable within
a consciousness. Just as players may delve into their
individual shadows within the frame that archetypal
enactment provides them, so too does the subculture
as a whole have its own group shadow that can be
enacted. In a manner that is somewhat unique to this
subculture, group shadow is engaged directly when
groups of players play games that evoke shadow
issues through their structure.
This paper is an examination of shadow within
larp. There are many models and methods through
which to interpret this concept. However, because of
how relevant and heavily related Jungian concepts
of archetype and other depth psychological
perspectives are to the issue at hand, and because
of the sheer lack of previous academic exploration of
this topic through this lens, they will be the primary
models through which the issue is viewed. In the
case of the individual, I will explore the relationship
between shadow work in larp and individuation.
From there, I will move on to a wider perspective
of the group shadow and its engagement. I will
investigate the possible consequences of group
shadow enactment, as the individuation process is not
possible for group consciousnesses.
Shadow enactment has the potential for
both positive and negative effects on players and
the community as a whole. Providing a structure
with which to identify, categorize, and understand
shadow can contribute to the overall awareness of
the psychological processes that occur within and
because of larp. This awareness can help players,
larpwrights, and organizers to make informed
decisions as to how they write, run, and play larps.

Une présentation générale débute ce mémoire, nous permettant de définir en quoi consiste le jeu de rôle Grandeur Nature, quelles sont ses origines et comment Kandorya se place-t-il parmi les autres événements. La seconde partie détaille les structures juridiques rattachées à cette pratique et son encadrement administratif. Puis, la troisième partie parlera des enjeux du processus de création d’un GN, en partant de la communication en amont de l’événement jusqu’au différents biais d’investissement personnel et d’initiatives des joueurs.  Enfin la dernière partie traitera de l’impact durable  que peuvent avoir les GNs sur leurs participants et sur les territoires qui les accueillent.

This work frames larp as a multimodal medium: based on live-action role-playing but also open for inclusions of other media and technologies. It is approached as a narrative medium, used for performative and participatory co-creation of dynamic storyworlds. The emergent story is experienced by the full sen-sorium of the players' bodies and simultaneously uses the bodies as a medium of representation. Players combine the roles of authors, actors, characters, and audience. In its prototypical model, larp strives for a high degree of perceptual unity between player and character and prefers iconic representation via live action and live acting, with lesser importance of indexical and symbolic signification. This study reaches for J.-N. Thon's (2014, 2016) typology of forms of representation of character's subjective perception in film, graphic novels, and video games, and applies it to live-action role-playing. The fundamental difference lies in the 'first-person audience' (Sandberg 2004; Stenros & Montola 2010) mode of participation in larp. Unlike the audiovisual media discussed by Thon, in which it is intersub-jective perception that comes unmarked, larp by default is experienced from a subjective spatial point of view. The first-person audience mode makes it hardly possible to switch to (quasi-)perceptual overlay, and to ever leave subjective spatial point of view, unless some of the prototypical principles of larp are broken. By contrast, representations of (quasi-)perceptual point of view and of imagined internal worlds are possible, although with some danger of unwanted metaleptic contact with another character's delusions. For this and other reasons, larp has limitations in the use of simultaneous content markers and representational markers of subject-ivity, whereas contextual content markers and all narratorial markers present no difficulty. The paper adds one category to Thon's framework: symbolic markers, which are based on a pre-established code of arbitrary signs and are used to regulate the active agency or perception of the audience, e.g. a player's gesture marking off-game status of the character, or movement from the main game area into a metaroom used for role-playing internal worlds. The overall discussion compares medium-specific affordances of live-action role-playing, which are fairly limited in

DISCLAIMER: There have been many developments in Japan since 2012, making parts of this article no longer reflecting the current state of affairs. There is larp now in Japan.
Please see my new article about adapting larp in Japan at: http://hdl.handle.net/10367/11682

Even though similar practices like cosplay (masquerading as media characters) exist in Japan, larp is quite unheard of. The aim of this study is to understand why Japanese roleplayers do not see larp as an activity they can easily adopt. Instead of following a common, Western research perspective on Japan that repeats notions of Japanese uniqueness, an interactionist approach is adopted. This is done by engaging in actual exchange with the researched subjects, and through the introduction of a theoretical model for the process of experience evaluation in order to understand how former experiences form expectations. It shows the importance of individual ascriptions of meaning and their connection to the historical, discursive, societal and personal contexts that frame these meanings. Fieldwork and qualitative interviews were conducted and analyzed in respect to larp in Japan. The interviews were later contrasted with the interviewees‘ experience of a mini-larp. Most players expressed a desire to learn about larps and try them but felt uneasy regarding the space and time restrictions they experienced in Japan. These restrictions have influenced roleplaying tremendously and have formed the expectations towards what roleplaying encompasses — and what people deem possible. Especially the perceived non-availability of knowledge about larp and of space is of importance.

This paper discusses the prevalence of exposure
to trauma, the discourse about trigger warnings, and
the embodied nature of larps. The goal of this paper
is to inform players, designers, and critics about the
nature of psychological triggers, how they arise and
function in a larp, and what makes them an important
issue for larping communities. Larps can contain
triggering content; a trigger reaction is a powerful
response that affects individuals, communities, and
the games they play. Lastly, this article considers
steps that can help prepare and care for those who
experience a triggering reaction at a game event.

A study of live action role plays as transmediations of a global franchise universe, this work analyses two cases: College of Wizardry (world of Harry Potter) and Witcher School (world of The Witcher), using Mark Wolf's (2012) framework of eight infrastructures: space, time, character, nature, culture, language, mythology and philosophy. The case studies lead to questions and predictions about franchise larps in general. For example, characters, culture, mythology, and philosophy are most useful as vehicles for direct imitation / adaptation of elements from the franchise media (books, films or video games) to larps; philosophy is most likely to be subject to ideology-based modifications; whereas space and nature will be heavily influenced by the physical features of the game site. The text ends with a look at possible relationships between larp creators and the copyrighted multimedia entertainment industry.

El LARP es una actividad que procede por una parte de los juegos de rol clásicos, y por otra, de las artes escénicas. Se basa en la interpretación de un personaje de manera improvisada en contacto con otros personajes, es por eso que suele decirse que el LARP es teatro alternativo o interactivo. Además, no existe un público a la manera habitual, sino que el público participa en el propio evento, y todos y cada uno de los participantes son público al mismo tiempo. Los personajes
forman parte de una historia que va formándose entre todos los participantes, y que nunca puede predecirse como acabará, ya que es decisión de los propios participantes.
Debemos tener en cuenta que alrededor de esta actividad y a raíz de que la comunidad que la practica ha reaccionado de una manera concreta, nos hace pensar que nos encontramos frente a una subcultura, con su propio lenguaje y su propia manera de entender lo que les rodea a través de esta actividad. Actualmente, en toda Europa y, en concreto, en el territorio español se está desarrollando esta actividad cultural y de ocio y, cada vez más gente participa en ella. Más allá de ser únicamente una actividad de ocio, el LARP puede considerarse como creación y producción artística.
Abstract: The LARP is an activity that comes from some of the classic role-playing games, and from the performing arts. It is based on the playing of a character in an improvised way in contact with other characters, that is why they say that the LARP is alternative or interactive theater. In addition, there is no public as usual, but that the public participates in the LARP itself, and each and every one of the participants are public at the same time. The characters are part of a story that is formed among all participants, and you can never predict how it will end, as it is up to the participants themselves
We should note that this activity and the community has reacted in a certain way, it makes us think that we are facing a subculture, with its own language and its own way of understanding the world around them, through this activity. Nowadays, across Europe and in particular in the Spanish
territory it's developing this cultural and leisure activities, and more people participate in it everyday. Beyond being just a leisure activity, the LARP may be considered artistic creation and production.

Les études sur le jeu restent aujourd’hui encore largement influencées par deux auteurs classiques, Johan Huizinga et Roger Caillois. Tous deux ont considéré le jeu essentiellement dans ses rapports à la culture. La culture, que ces deux auteurs ont souvent entendue dans le sens de « civilisation1 », est décrite par l’entremise du jeu et selon deux axes : l’ensemble des normes sociales qui caractérise un groupe humain ; l’ensemble des procédés de création artistique ou intellectuelle.
Pour le premier, historien néerlandais spécialiste du Moyen Âge, jeu et culture s’entremêlent :
« La civilisation humaine s’annonce et se développe au sein du jeu, en tant que jeu » [1988, p. 11].
Pour le second, philosophe français et haut fonctionnaire à l’Unesco, les choses sont bien différentes ...