Nordic Larp Talks

Tag: community

  • Larping Fascism to Understand the Allure of Toxic Communities – Katrine Wind

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    Some people today watch their peers drift into extremist forums, conspiracy theories, and other toxic communities. At the same time, many societies are shifting in a more authoritarian direction. If we dismiss the people drawn to these spaces as simply stupid or hateful, we fail to understand what is actually happening – and we lose our ability to respond to it.

    In this talk, Katrine Wind presents Epos Daimon, a Nordic larp for teenagers that allows participants to experience life as an esteemed member of an authoritarian system from the inside. By exploring how fascist and hate-based systems can feel meaningful rather than threatening, the larp creates a deeper understanding of their emotional appeal and why that appeal makes them so powerful.

    Katrine Wind is a Nordic larp designer, writer, and speaker known for Daemon as well as co-designing Spoils of War and Helicon. While based in Denmark, she has run her larps internationally across Europe and the US in collaboration with local producers.

    Her designs focus on strong social structures, highly playable characters and relations, as well as mechanics and pacing to support immediate emotional impact (naming the approach River Rafting Design). Katrine regularly writes and lectures on larp design, contributing to concepts such as Dyadic Play, River Rafting Design, Dinner Warfare, and Playing an Engaging Victim to the international larp community.

    Professionally, Katrine is a political scientist working with leadership, digitalization, and organizational structures.

  • Where Are the Belarusian Larpers? – Darya Skorokhodkina

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    The Belarusian larp community has seemed to be quite off-radar in recent years. In her talk, Darya Skorokhodkina tells us where they are and what they are (not) doing when they are not around – and whether there’s gonna be a grand comeback.

    Darya Skorokhodkina is a Belarusian larp events and community organiser. She was one of the organisers of Minsk Larp Festivals in 2017–2019, co-founded and co-ran The Second Floor Space in Minsk which was a homespot for the Belarusian Larp Community, and was a Chairperson of Education Centre POST, Belarusian larp organisation. Currently based in Warsaw, Poland, Darya works in non-profit project management and event organising, specifically in the field of human rights. She has recently got an MA degree, defending her thesis about community care and neighbourliness in a community-cultural centre of Wolny Jazdów in Warsaw.

  • A Season of Work, Chaos, and Fun! The KP26 Book – Frederikke Sofie Bech Høyer, Simon Brind, Anne Grove

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    The Knutebooks are the embodiment of the longstanding tradition of codifying what, how, and why we as a community play, design, think, and push towards new futures of larp. In this talk you will get to know this year’s book and how to be part of future books.

    Simon Brind is a writer, academic, and larp designer from London. His PhD thesis is about the emergent narratology of and moments of narrative crisis in participatory fiction. He is a part of the Avalon Larp Studio collective, as well as author and part of the editorial team of this book.

    Anne Serup Grove is a service designer specialising in interactions and communication across both the private and public sectors. She has since the 2019 volume Larp Design been a significant contributor to multiple KP publications. She is lead designer on this book and part of the team of next year’s book.

    Frederikke Sofie Bech Høyer is a larp designer who works at Østerskov Efterskole, where she creates, teaches, and facilitates larps. She has a master’s degree in Communication Studies, is an author in this book, and is part of the team for next year’s.

  • Larps against Sexism – Julia Leśniewska

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    Sexism is currently a growing and pressing social issue, with concerns being shown in particular for young men. At the same time larps are being studied in the context of aiding interpersonal growth and relating, as well as their transformative potential. Julka Leśniewska will talk about her upcoming research into how larps that use sexism as their in-game world element can affect their player’s sexist views and attitudes.

    Julka Leśniewska is a Polish larper and designer, with professional experience in pedagogy, communication, and theatre. She designs short games and organises them for small local communities, has co-organised the 10th Portal Larp Conference in 2022 in Kraków, Poland, and most recently has established the Berlin International Larpers community. Currently Julka is finishing her MA in Transformative Game Design researching deliberation with Larpocracy, and beginning her PhD research in pedagogy on affecting sexist attitudes in young men through larping.

  • Larp in  Wartime: Palestine – Tammy Nassar

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    In 2024, the Palestian larp organisation Bait Byout ran its Larp Factory training programme in social impact larp design and game design for 43 young adults aged 18-30 from the West Bank and Jerusalem. In this conversation, Tamara Nassar discusses the outcomes of programme, Bait Byout’s other activities, and why playing games – and playing pretend –still matters for both adults and children in the midst of war and occupation. 

    The conversation also touches on Tiny Steps in Heaven, a larp created in remebrance of child casualties, as well as the work in support of traumatised children Bait Byout is preparing and seeking partners for.

    Tamara Nassar is an experienced larper and the lead game designer at Bait Byout, as well as its Projects Coordinator, responsible for projects like Drosos (the Larp Factory). She contributed to the 2015 book Birth of Larp in the Arab World. In 2025, her larp about the children of Gaza, Tiny Steps in Heaven, was on the programme for Knutepunkt Week in Oslo, Norway, and the Immersion larp festival in Turku, Finland.

  • Community Building as a Coping Mechanism – Carnelian King

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    Sometimes we wonder, is larp escapism? Does it have to be? Carnelian speaks about his work with Monstrous Immersive in creating a community in Berlin specifically tailored to be a safer space for neurodivergent queers, and share thoughts about what he learned from this experience. He will discuss larp writing as a form of activism and tips to make a community stay cohesive.

    Carnelian is a trans nonbinary American living in Berlin for the last decade. He has worked as a professional dungeon master, freelance event designer creating custom larps for companies such as Wizards of the Coast, and has for the past 3 years has been organizing a LARP community in Berlin called Monstrous Immersive.

  • Playing to Live Elsewise – Maiju Tarpila

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    In her talk Maiju Tarpila presents the Manifesto of Playing to Live Elsewise, a collection of principles that suggest a starting point for practising larp in the times of the ecocrisis.

    Maiju Tarpila is a Finnish artist and pedagogue who’s larp practise is embedded in questions of community, resilience and living within the ecocrisis. Her previous work includes larps such as Projekti X, Viimeiset and the Kaski-trilogy. At the moment she teaches larp at the University of Arts Helsinki and is working on a two year grant on larps that imagine and embody experience beyond fossil capitalism. For there to be a future filled with play, there needs to be huge shift in how we live and play.

    Photo by Tuomas Puikkonen

  • Our black blind spot: A call to climate action – Søren Lyng Ebbehøj

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    Climate change represents the gravest challenge yet to face mankind. International larping — however progressive and beneficial in other scopes — mostly contributes to the crisis: not the solution. This is a call to action.

    The speaker (Søren) has asked to add the following corrections:

    The thoughts presented in the video are based on the work and insights of Nór Hernø, Eva Maersk and Søren Ebbehøj – the original KP23 sustainability team – Any conclusions or recommendations presented here or elsewhere do not necessarily reflect the views of the other team members or KP23.

    The pie chart and numbers presented in the video are based on calculations by Nór Hernø and Søren Ebbehøj as part of the initial work on Knudepunkt 2023 in Denmark. Also, some of the concepts in the talk (greenhushing in particular) were brought into the larp discourse by Nór Hernø.

    Søren apologizes sincerely for leaving that information out of the presentation and recognizes the importance of the work done by Nór and Eva. Søren never intended to ignore the work of the other team members.

    Note: In the talk, Søren mentions the emissions from KP22 in Sweden incorrectly. The pie chart shown is based on calculations made for a theoretical KP based on a series of estimates in 2022. The footprint from participant transportation was calculated based on the countries of origins of participants at KP22 in Sweden as a model of the participants of the upcoming KP23 in Denmark. Thus, when Søren talks about KP22, he should have said “the model calculations of a theoretical KP in Denmark with the participant spread of KP22 in Sweden”.

    Søren Ebbehøj 2024-04-17

    Søren Ebbehøj is a Danish larp organizer and engineer working in climate and energy politics. Søren has been a co-organizer of four large-scale Nordic larps and a handful of conventions including Knudepunkt 2019. From his everyday job, Søren has almost ten years of experience with developing and implementing climate policy — something he utilized in the initial work on Knudepunkt 2023, formulating the sustainability strategy and initial mapping of the KP19 carbon footprint.

    Photo by Tuomas Puikkonen

  • The Wisdom of the Community – Juhana Pettersson

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    In 22 years, the Knudepunkt community has published 29 books that together form the greatest collection of larp writing in the world. This talk explores that legacy, the current situation of the KP book and its future.

    Juhana Pettersson is a Finnish writer, novelist and roleplaying game and larp designer, who has edited two Knudepunkt books – Knudepunkt books are also his topic today. His larps include Luminescence, Halat hisar, End of the Line, Enlightenment in Blood, Parliament of Shadows, Redemption and Saturnalia. He’s currently working at Renegade Games Studios as the Lead Developer for the World of Darkness series of roleplaying game releases.

  • The Great Larp Swindle – Steve Deutsch & Larson Kasper

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    You also hate having to decide if you’d rather talk to wonderful people or listen to amazing talks instead of playing a 5 hour larp during KP? What if we just spent the whole weekend playing larps instead? This is the idea we had 12 years ago when organising our first IFOL.

    Steve Deutsch is a German larp wright, facilitator and event manager. He was part of the team creating the German larp conference, Mittelpunkt, and is guilty of coauthoring one of Germany’s most complex and loathed Boffer Larp Rules Systems. Nowadays, he mostly runs larps on sailing ships and for companies who want to understand their power dynamics, communication and unwritten rules.

    Larson Kasper is a professional Educator and Coach. He uses Edu-Larp as a method in his work with troubled kids as well as in the field of political education. Over the last 25 years he wrote, orgnised and facilitated multiple Larps and related events. Nowerdays he sudies “Counseling in the Workplace” and hopes to use the skills and overall experiance he gained as a larpwright, organiser and facilitator in his new area of work.