Edited by Elin Nilsen, Lizzie Stark, Trine Lise Lindahl
Review by Steve Hatherley
The Larp Factory ran monthly larps in Oslo from 2009 to 2012. They ran over 34 larps before stopping in 2012, and this book contains 23 complete larps that are ready to run.
Well, the larps don't all fit in the book. The book contains the instructions for running - there are other materials (character details, worksheets, checklists) that can be downloaded on their website. In fact, you can download them right now.
By the way, I've not actually played any of the larps yet. And know very little about "Nordic" larps, so I don't know if they're representative of those.
I'm not quite sure how to describe these larps. They're not larps in the usual British sense that the word is used - no rubber swords, no running around outside, no campaign worlds. (I know that I'm generalizing dreadfully here.) And they're not quite freeforms either (and by freeform I mean the kind of intricately plotted games promoted by UK-Freeforms and Peaky Games).They're sort of somewhere in between.
Some examples:
- Cafe Rene is set in the world of television’s 'Allo 'Allo. This is fairly freeformy, although everything is sketched out very loosely and the players are expected to behave in the manner of their tv characters and improvise rather than have any specific plots to go for.
- Fade to Grey explores what happens when important people stop caring about their conflicts.
- Oh Dear! We Seem To Have Run Out of Time is a time travel larp, full of paradoxes.
- In Sarcophagus the characters are trapped in a bomb shelter following a nuclear explosion.
- The Great After-Party is set during a post-larp party.
- The Association for the Advancement of Rights for Fairytale Creatures (AFC) is set at the AFC’s AGM, with lots of fairytale creatures with differing agendas trying to get their own way. Unusually in this game, the GMs, playing the Magic Mirror, also have their own agenda.
The Factory larps rely on player creativity and improvisation. The larpwrights want to create feelings and emotions in their players, and occasionally boundaries are pushed to their limits.
To help with this the larps are usually preceded by some kind of workshop activities. This may include the "ball of yarn" to cement relationships, or other activities to warm up and get into the spirit of the larp. A single larp may have several workshops - Fade to Grey has three (lasting in total over an hour), one coving “fading to grey”, one about “voices in your head”, and one on secondary plots.
Unfortunately, I find myself with a bit of a problem with some of the larps. In wanting to create feelings and emotions in their players, I feel that sometimes the writers are removing what for me is a fundamental part of larping/freeforming: fun.
I play games to have fun. I'm not sure that I would have that much fun playing some of these games. (One game, Linda’s Birthday Party, is set at a six-year old's birthday party - and despite all the words in the book, that's pretty much appears to be it. The party bit of the larp is supposed to lasts 1.5 to 2 hours. I think that's about 1.5 to 2 hours longer than I can bear pretending to be a six year old.)
I do appreciate that “fun” means different things to different people, but I’ve got a pretty good idea where my limits are.
Then there are the larps that really push boundaries, including Kink and Coffee (introductory night at your local BDSM club) and Screwing the Crew (which explores monogamy and open relationships). I really don't want to play these. I'm not particularly prudish, but they just don't appeal to me. They don't seem fun.
However, I'm making it sound like there's nothing in Larps from the Factory that I want to play, and that's not true. I estimate that I would be interested in running or playing about half of the games, and that's certainly not a bad percentage.
And Larps from the Factory certainly contains a number of interesting concepts:
- "Cut" and "Brake" are safety words that apply to all the larps (and could easily be used more widely). "Brake" means to slow down, if the situation is nearing a problem area. "Cut" is more serious and means to stop the action as it's gone too far. I don't I've ever needed either term in my freeforming, but I can see the benefits of them.
- I like the idea of the workshops. My traditional approach to warming up is to have a pint of beer, a workshop might be a better way of doing that.
- I like the way that some of the rules have been written to encourage behaviour. This makes a pleasant change than our usual freeform rules which are mostly about mechanical stuff. For example in Cafe Rene there’s a section on playing style with “rules/guidelines” such as:
- Don’t play to win
- Play theatrically
- Keep the intrigues going
- Make shameless use of stereotypes to portray different nationalities
I also really like the production. It's a lovely looking book, and the idea of separating out the player characters with the rest of the book makes a lot of sense.
So overall I’m glad I funded it, and it has really made me think about freeforms in the future.
Larps from the Factory costs 15 EUR for the pdf or 30 EUR for the book from the website.
Article by Steve Hatherley.
Larps from the Factory has made me think about how we publish the Peaky freeforms. Here are some thoughts, mainly around the model of how we publish our games.
So we could change our approach and present a volume of games from Peaky. The purchasable bit would contain the instructions and the stuff that the GM needs, while the downloadable stuff would be the character sheets, handouts and so on. (I think I'd hide them behind a password rather than make them available to the world, however.)
I think a key lesson is that not everything has to be perfect. We tend to be perfectionists, wanting the games to be the best they can before releasing them into the wild (and I’m as bad as anyone). But Larps from the Factory shows that it doesn’t need to be like that. So we could, for example, just tidy up the games (correct blatant errors and the like) and put them out there for the world to enjoy.
That should lead to a quicker turnaround as the games won’t need so much work. And of course we’d only do that for the games that we’re not planning on developing further. If a game is getting developed, then develop away!
(I don’t think I’d fill the book with just the stuff we haven’t developed. Like Larps from the Factory, it probably ought to be a mixture.)
It would also be nice to make beautiful books, but that requires better design skills than I have.
I can envisage publishing a collection of 10 freeforms for about £15 as a pdf. I think that has promise and is worth discussing.
(And if we include the US Peaky, we’ve written 50 games since Peaky started in 2001!)
steve
www.freeformgames.com
I posted a link to this review on the UK-Freeforms Facebook group and I was challenged on my use of the word "fun" in criticising the larps. I didn't defend myself very well, but Petter Olsen, in an unrelated post on the UK-Freeforms mailing list, put it much better:
"As I see it, there is a different feeling in the Nordic groups and in the Nordic LARPs. While there are exceptions to this, it seems to me that the Nordic LARP writers and players take LARP more seriously. My limited experience with UK freeforms (25-35 games or so) is that while there may be angst, drama and conflict, they are mainly written for fun and entertainment; at least you're supposed to look back on them after they have finished and think "That was fun!". From my even more limited experience with Nordic LARPs it is quite often the other way round there. The main goal is often the learning, the experience, the immersion; not the entertainment. Fun may occasionally be had, but as a sort of side effect."
steve
www.freeformgames.com