On this page, I’ll collect some videos and links that may be useful to you.

Basics of Opt-In, Opt-Out participation design – this is my keynote from the Living Games Conference 2016. The series of blog posts expanding on the talk starts here.

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7bFdrV3nJA8]

In the same session of keynotes, my talk was preceded by two very, very useful ones by John Stavropoulos (19 Truths About Safety That Might Be Lies) and Maury Brown (People-Centered Design) – do check them out!

Experience Design Basics – a talk I gave at the Alibis for Interaction conference in 2015. (The Alibis for Interaction webpage has other very interesting talks but almost none are immediately about larp, although many like mine below are indirectly useful).

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yXjEHDBjrXE]

For a week every summer, I have the privilege of teaching larp design at the Larpwriter Summer School. The Summer School is a wonderful experience: if you are a beginning designer, and willing to go to the Lithuanian countryside on the Norwegian Foreign Ministry’s dime to be taught by world-leading experts, you should apply for a space.

I teach different topics different years but also get to give a special Safety lecture. There are different versions of it online but this is the most up-to-date one (still about a year old, and not 100% in sync with my current thinking, but it should be useful). There are also great resources for larpdesigners on the Summerschool web page.

You’ll excuse the relaxed summer camp look, I’m sure.

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YASuW5aDNlo]

The always awesome Eirik Fatland has a really good writeup about larp debriefs. If you are just looking for one tool to introduce directly into your existing game design to allow for some reflection, this is a great place to start.

 

Looking Further/ Digging Deeper

If you’re interested specifically in the Nordic Larp design tradition, a great starting point online is Nordiclarp.org, which also hosts the often-useful Nordic Larp Wiki and a Nordic Larp calendar of games in this tradition played around world.

If you want to read books on Nordic Larp, you should start with the luxurious Nordic Larp Book (for some canonical games) and The Foundation Stone of Nordic Larp (for selected theory and design writing from the last few decades). Two dissertation you shouldn’t miss are Markus Montola’s On the Edge of the Magic Circle and Jaakko Stenros’ Playfulness, Play and Games. All of these are available as free pdf downloads.

If you want to read about larp design in the Nordic tradition, and a bunch of universally useful larp design insight, there is really no-one better than Eirik Fatland (the blog is on hiatus because he’s working on his eagerly awaited book!)

The Nordic Larp Talks are short, informative, often entertaining lectures on larp-related topics of all kinds. I am one of the founders and have had the pleasure of hosting them since the beginning. You can find an archive of some sixty or so Larp Talks on the Nordic Larp Talks homepage; also follow the Larp Talks on Facebook.