Nordic LARP

A few weeks ago, I was introduced to The Monitor Celestra. Celestra is a game setting place in the Revised Battlestar Galactica on a ship of the same name. Located in Sweden, the game took place OOCly on a decommissioned Cold War era ship, which is in keeping with the aesthetic of the TV series. It's a game of politics, survival, interpersonal conflict. With the threat of Cylons looming over them, humans trapped in claustrophobic halls of steel are the biggest threat.

There's videos of it on youtube. It looked and felt like an episode of BSG. Those weren't actors doing scenes, those were LARPers enacting their roles. There was high tension and drama, with standoffs and political jeering in a way that felt like a bleed in between reality and fiction.

And apparently, it's coming to the States.

So yes, I made Seal Noises. I like the concept, and I would love to play in there. I even have the idea of playing a Colonial Priest, as Religion was very much a factor of the show and my love of the Hellenic Mythology is known. I would like to explore the nature of the gods and faith in such a chaotic nature, and as my friend Sarah mentioned, I could have or create myself a copy of the Sacred Scrolls.

So as I began my research, I learned that the Monitor Celestra was a Nordic LARP. Most people would go "Well, yes. The game was run by Swedish gamers." However, I've heard the term before. Nordic LARPs are experimental games developed from the ground up. Their main focus is primarily immersion. You aren't a PC with Stats, you're a character living out these lives. Through my studies and watching videos in Youtube (Look up: NordicLarpTalks) I saw games that had players as mental patients, and the marshals did contradictory things to give the impression that the players were perceiving reality in a distorted way. I saw a video about a LARP where the developers had created a space where not only did they simulate a desert region, they could control the lighting to set up an 18 hour day/night cycle. The theme of this LARP was not "We have powers and therefore let's see what we can do" it was an exploration of Love and Intimacy when things like biological gender are not the social norms for relationships.

Most of these games are one-shots, meant only for a few days. The players and devs set up before hand with workshops to get them prepared for their roles and exploration. Where most Larps are interested in rules, mechanics and errata, Nordic Larp do workshops to explore the culture of their people. From how they live to how to translate things like Sex and Violence into LARP. One Nordic LARP developer even commented that in most LARPs it is oddly more likely to die than have sex. Where most games are escapist in nature, these games seem mostly geared towards exploration and delving into themes.


This is what strikes me most. LARPing in the Nordic countries doesn't seem like a dorky way of playing games, not entirely. They're exploring themes and learning. They're discussing using LARPs as teaching exercises. Culture, social norms, languages, conflict resolution, and god knows what else. This is a burgeoning field  of interactive education and counseling.

I was blessed with an internship under a Drama Therapist. She taught me about putting on external roles to explore and juxtapose with internal ones or to express the conflict between them. For some of the patients, it worked and they got some insight. For others, it was at the very least fun to explore and play and forget their situations for an hour. I say I was blessed because in most other careers, my hobbies of pretendy fun times would lead to me being committed more often than not being treated like someone with a mental disorder than treating someone with a mental disorder.

A lot of the work we did in my internship started with warm up practices, exercises, practices, then a debriefing at the end to see where everyone is at the end and to help them come out of their roles (a key thing, if you've been in a particularly long and/or strong session). This is the same thing as what is going on during preparation for these Nordic Style LARPs. What would happen if my supervisor had access to this system? What if the psychology field saw benefit from it and wished to explore?

Nordic LARPing strikes me on the fact that it's an all or nothing thing. You're in there the whole time, minimal breaks if any. You're in the world, fully immersed. I see a lot of this being used in boffer LARPs like Dystopia Rising, whose staff often use their plots as messages, social experiments and examinations of character. Considering some of the staff for DR, who are in ways associated or also keeping tabs on the Monitor Celestra coming to America, it doesn't surprise me that their game is more than just an excuse to go out into the woods to club one another with foam.

In the end, I find myself drawn to Nordic style. I'm too much character driven narrativist. I enjoy having myself taken out of myself and made to view things differently. With projects like Celestra and others coming through the pipeline, hopefully I'll be able to partake.

Or hell, I'll make one myself.

Later