Authors
Agnese Dzervite
Agnese Dzervite is from Latvia – a small country with no great significance other than the constant wish of larger nations to conquer it time and again. Having hosted as its rulers many international ‘guests’, the Latvians are forever a renegade band of people that just can’t get a grasp on their own political and economical management. With many woes on their heads, they tend to escape into games and roles of fantasy that prosper in their minds and their youth subcultures. This particular aspect of a group of people generally viewed as escapists has been the topic of Agnese’s sociological studies at bachelor and master’s level. But more than that, the local live action role-playing community has become her home for the last 4 years. Many thanks have to be given to Agnese’s loyal partner in crime, Diana Kazina, who helped out in more ways than she believes.
A bilingual history of Latvian larp
33 ways to have fun at a Latvian larp
Andrea Castellani
Andrea Castellani passed smoothly from pretend play to murder mystery games, then to the ”Flying Circus” tradition of Italian theatre-style larp, and you can read in this book what he likes to do now. He lives in Prosecco (near Trieste) and Milan, and he works in zoology, science communication and history of science. His latest larp is ”Români” (with Anca Burescu), about Romanian immigrants in Italy, and his next larp is ”The Truth Shall Make You Free”, set in an alternate history Gospel: quite appropriate, as he’s currently 33 year old.
The Vademecum of the Karstic Style
Anita Myhre Andersen
Anita Myhre Andersen is a Norwegian teacher at the Rudolf Steiner school in Bergen. She also works with larps for children for the company ”Tidsreiser”, creates larps for the human rights house ”Raftohuset” and works on her master’s degree of medieval history. She has been working with larps since 1995 and has, among other things, been involved in the production of ”1942” (in Bergen, 2000) and ”1943” (in Belarus, 2008).
Annika Waern
Annika Waern (Ph.D) works as a research leader in the Mobile Life center at Stockholm University and Game studio director at the Interactive Institute, both in Stockholm, Sweden. She has a long-standing career as a computer science researcher focusing most recently on pervasive games, and has published about 50 articles in conferences, journals and books. She coordinated and led the Integrated Project on Pervasive Games 2004-2008. Her other merits include two and a half years as technical director of the company Gamefederation, developing a platform for online distribution of mobile games. Her next book, Pervasive Games: Theory and Design, will come out in summer 2009.
Philosophies and strategies of pervasive larp design
Eirik Fatland
Eirik Fatland is a pan-Nordic larper, larpwright and theorist of Norwegian descent who has organised larps in Oslo, Turku, Copenhagen and Istanbul. In his other life, he has a master’s degree in interaction design, and plays the character of an information architect and social media consultant in Oslo.
Erik Aarebrot
Erik Aarebrot is co-owner and managing director of Uro in Bergen, Norway. He has worked as an actor and facilitator in various capacities since 2001. His academic background is from comparative politics, history and psychology at the University of Bergen (UiB), the University of Amsterdam (UvA) and Institut de Sciences Politiques in Paris. He nurtures a healthy interest in history and contemporary politics, with a special interest in Eastern Europe.
Florian Berger
Florian Berger, living in Leipzig, Germany, began to play tabletop RPGs as a schoolboy and soon started to write his own adventures. Since 2003 he has run annual game mastering workshops at the biggest independent German RPG convention. He recently published the first German book on dramatic game mastering techniques. Currently he works as a PhD student in the field of ”Interactive Storytelling”.
Tabletop RPG meets performing arts
Bringing pen & paper role-playing to the stage
J. Tuomas Harviainen
J. Tuomas Harviainen is a chief librarian and larp designer, who after a master’s degree in theology moved on to studying information in games. He is currently writing his doctoral dissertation, on the subject of information behaviour in live-action role-playing environments, at the Department of Information Studies and Interactive Media, University of Tampere. Harviainen’s minilarps have been run in at least a dozen countries.
Notes on designing repeatable larps
Jaakko Stenros
Jaakko Stenros (M. Soc Sc.) is a game researcher at the Game Research Lab and a doctoral candidate at the University of Tampere, Finland. He has studied pervasive games in the EU funded Integrated Project on Pervasive Games. He is passionate about role-playing games and larps as a player, gamemaster and researcher, and has co-edited two books on the subject: Playground Worlds (2008) and Beyond Role and Play (2004). His next book, Pervasive Games: Theory and Design, will be published in summer 2009. Before finding his way back to academia he worked as a support manager, technical trainer and a film critic. Currently he lives in Helsinki.
Philosophies and strategies of pervasive larp design
Jakob Thomas Holm
Jakob Thomas Holm was part of the early D&D-live movement around 1990 as an organiser and player. He has since matured and educated himself in media science with focus on larp. He works as a science teacher on Østerskov Efterskole.
Elements of Harry Potter
Deconstructing an edu-larp
João Batista Martins
João Batista Martins is a PhD in Education and Master in Social Anthropology. He is a professor at the master’s degree course in Education and at the Department of Social and Institutional Psychology at Londrina State University, Brazil, and a researcher in the field of anthropology and education, developing research on games, human development and psychology.
Role-playing games and education in Brazil: how we do it
Juhana Pettersson
Juhana Pettersson is a Finnish journalist and role-playing artist. He’s the editor of the role-playing magazine Roolipelaaja and has written a book about role-playing games called Roolipelimanifesti (Like, 2005). He has created role-playing games such as Luminescence (2004) and Muovikuppi (2008). He studied media art at Studio national des arts contemporains le Fresnoy in 2003-2005.
Katri Lassila
Katri Lassila is a Finnish photography artist and is doing her doctoral studies in the film department of the University of Industrial Art in Helsinki. She is an active larper and larp writer. She wrote her first larp in 1998 with Kaksi Kuuta ry, and since then has participated in the writing of more than ten one-shot larps and the longest running Finnish live action vampire campaign. Together with Laura Kalli, in 2003-2006 she created a playing style called Adventurous Romanticism (explained in Solmubook 2008). Her last larp, The Albión, written in that style was created together with Tuomas Hakkarainen and Laura Kalli, and took place in a Finnish forest in the summer 2008. For the summer 2009 she’s writing a larp called Crowheart with Tuomas Hakkarainen, taking inspiration from the old westerns and Quentin Tarantino’s movies.
Malik Hyltoft
Malik Hyltoft is the antediluvian of Danish larp. He has been active organising conventions, writing books and generally having fun since the early 80’s. Currently Malik is the co-principal of Østerskov Efterskole and contemplating the founding of yet another larp school.
Elements of Harry Potter
Deconstructing an edu-larp
Markus Montola
Markus Montola (M.Soc.Sc.) works as a researcher at the Nokia Research Center. Before joining NRC, he worked at the University of Tampere, Finland, focusing on the Integrated Project on Pervasive Games since 2004. He is also a doctoral candidate at the University of Tampere with a grant from the Finnish Cultural Foundation. He has coedited two books on larp with Jaakko Stenros: Playground Worlds in 2008 and Beyond Role and Play in 2004. His next book, Pervasive Games: Theory and Design, will come out in summer 2009. www.iki.fi/montola
Philosophies and strategies of pervasive larp design
Morgan Jarl
Morgan Jarl is a theatre teacher, director, larp organiser since 15 years, role-player since 20, adventurer, scholar and changer of human lives. He tries to live with love, respect and passion – and with as little fear as possible. Morgan believes in participation in arts, community, politics and economy and believes we can change the lives of our selves and others if we believe, work hard and keep up hope – with our feet under us, holding up heaven with our heads, standing like a human being on earth, digging our hands into the soil. He has a Master of Fine Arts degree in ensemble theatre and works as a manging director at a youth art center in Katrineholm, Sweden. He also tends to use too many words to say simple things.
Towards a larp-acting culture
A manifesto
Creating a character
A summary of a process with exercises and advice
Tadeusz Cantwell
Tadeusz Cantwell is an Irish larper who began going to L.T. events in the UK with the Armengarian group in 2001. He has since been to P.D. and Hicks with Sticks (both EOS and L.T. faction) events, as well as to games in France run by ’Les Deux Tours’. He has studied Television and Film Production. His hobbies include writing fiction and role-playing scenarios for conventions.
Ten comparisons between UK LRP and French GN
Thales de Lima Ferreira
Thales de Lima Ferreira is an English professor who has been role-playing for fourteen years. He is also interested in the relation between RPGs and learning.
Role-playing games and education in Brazil: how we do it
Wagner Luiz Schmit
Wagner Luiz Schmit is a Psychologist with a master’s degree in Education. His dissertation was about the use of RPGs in education in Brazil. He has played tabletop RPGs since 1994 and a couple of larps per year since 1996. He has organised regional RPG events, given a course for teachers on the use of RPGs in education and used role-playing games as an educational tool in an institution for low income teenagers and for some schools. Now he is an Education Psycology Professor at Londrina State University – Brazil.
Role-playing games and education in Brazil: how we do it
William J. ”Bill” White
William J. ”Bill” White is an associate professor of communication arts & sciences at the Altoona campus of the Pennsylvania State University in the United States, where he teaches courses in public speaking and mass media. He is interested in the scholarly exploration of role-playing as language use and social interaction. Bill is also the designer of the forthcoming small-press tabletop role-playing game ”Ganakagok”, and is an occasional contributor to his brother Mel White’s actual play podcast, ”Virtual Play” (virtualplay.podbus.com). He lives in Huntingdon, Pennsylvania, with his wife Lynn Cockett and his daughter, Hannah.
Face and figuration in RPG play