The 2025 Knutepunkt book, Anatomy of Larp Thoughts: a breathing corpus, is out. PDF here:
And summary here:
I’ve been skimming some of it; thoughts in the next post.
River Rafting Design by Katrine Wind:
Lots of larps follow the standard Hollywood model for pacing, or plot intensity rising towards a big climax, where everything comes together. This has some well-recognised problems (the Aristotelian curse), so the author advocates (partially, at least) flipping the model around: starting big, and using character design to ensure that things can be kept interesting for the rest of the larp from both internal plots and the reaction to the initial kick. Its an interesting idea, and I can see how this can be done in theory, but you’d need to worry a bit more about plot fratricide (big plots killing little ones; less important at the end of a larp, but vastly more important if those plots are killed out early).
The Costume Guide - Some tools, a paradox and an accidental manifesto by Anne Serup Grove & Kerstin Örtberg
A useful little article about how costume guides can be used to signal expectations, help newbies, reduce anxiety about costume, and allow players to signal various things with their characters’ dress.
Design for young adult players - The relevance of designing for hope, agency and inclusion by Frederikke S. B. Høyer
While much of the focus is on designing specifically for young adults, there’s also useful stuff about including young adults in games in general, and useful questions to ask when thinking about that. There’s also a generally useful discussion on “thoughtful use of cliches in your design”, and how they make plots more accessible.
Making History: Use of history in a larp context as a mirror of our own society by Siri Sandquist
Looks at what historical periods Nordic larps have used recently, and why some periods (and approaches to unpleasant themes) have been preferred over others. TL;DR: everyone wanted to be happy after covid, so the traditional Nordic “misery tourism” was out. Also, apparently there was a Badehotellet larp!
Production Models of Nordic Larp by Juhana Pettersson
I was expecting something about the political economy here - how many people you needed, who did what, profit or non-profit, but instead itsa broad-brush description of different game types, with parameters on size and type of venue and how things like food and accomodation are handled. In Aotearoa, our production models are (broadly) “one-shot theatreform”, “day-game”, and “weekend”, with “convention” being a mix of one-shot and weekend depending on the type of con and the level you look at it. Any other obvious types?
[TBC…]