The Nordic live role-playing (larp) anthology of the year has arrived. For once prior to the Knutpunkt/Solmukohta conference, which is excellent, so that the participants can read up before they go there. This time it’s edited by art-house larp writer and critique Juhana Pettersson. It’s called States of Play – Nordic Larp around the World (Full PDF), which is a good sign of a movement with confidence. Recent years the writings and documentations of Nordic freeform and larp has been spread in the international larp community and definitely influenced a few groups here and there. We are almost reaching a point where Nordic Larp can be considered a genre of live role-playing rather than a geographic specificity. The Nordic style of games are probably marked out by game mechanics being exchanged for either hard-core simulationism or meta techniques (involving player-player interactions to benefit the telling). The Nordic larps has also been noticed for their “grown-up” themes such as social and political issues, gender and identity et c.
I have contributed with an article which dates a few years back (Möjligheternas Labyrint, 2007, swe), generously translated by Thom Kiraly (who run the only Swedish speaking podcast on roleplaying, Märklighetstroget). It’s a very hands on walk-through on how to make a small and simple “pervasive” reality game, based on our experiences with Scen 3 and Maskspel. The article is psycho-geographic in the sense that I try to define which public and non-public places and spaces that could come in handy when you write a story set in everyday life. I will publish it here later.
I have not read through the whole anthology, the contents is a mixed bag of stuff, exploring role-playing as an expanded field, which I think is great.
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