LARP classifications
I’ve been thinking about Nordic freeform and American counterparts. I’m not well versed in either LARP or freeform theory, but I’ve figured out that it’s common to differentiate between Live Combat (LC) and Theatre-Style (TS) LARPs. The boffer LARPs would fall into the LC category, but I can’t see what would make Nordic LARPs different from TS. Or rather, when you say “Nordic LARPs”, do you mean LC, TS or both?
This is J from Shifting Forest… I was referred to comment quickly re the status of our website. We are currently in the somewhat eccentric position of failing to update with our web host because all relevant information was on a computer that was recently stolen. The site will still be up by July, but until then please feel free to reach me at cosecant@stanford.edu.
Interesting this with Shifting Forest. This is one of the things that I have been talking about as lacking. I have seen it in the American market before, and somewhat in Sweden too. But here those type of game has been more linked to freeform table top (without a table) for historical reason.
A very good way to, if you ask me.
About you post Jonas: These are tricky things. To clearify my point I think it's important to distinguish between definitions and practice. Often iitäs more fruitful to talk about practice than definitions. Especially using an extremely wide term as 'Nordic LARP'. (To make it more complex I use in two different ways. It can meen all Nordic larping, but it can also be use as Mike Pohjola uses it at rpg.net, about a small section of Nordic larp activity, namely the one realting to the Knutpunkt scene.)
I have read about TS larp before….but now Tomas is here to cathc me with a car. I'll get back to this post.
Sorry for the slow response, I had people visiting over Midsummer's.
J, I'm sorry to hear that and hope everything works out. I see the site's up again, and I'll check it out. (For the Google impaired: http://www.shiftingforest.com.)
Sven, yes. I agree that trying to define things is rather pointless, and that's why I used terms as “distinguish” and “apply to”. Saying I want to pinpoint what Nordic LARPs are is perhaps a bit strong, as I just want to know what I'm talking about when I'm using the term. But as there are no real authorities when it comes to usage of words, the best way is to just use them until someone tells you you're using it differently than the majority of people.
Anyway, I won't get stuck in trying to classify and differentiate. I don't want to argue semantics; just try to learn different ways of doing things, which I've done.
I understand what you are aiming at, and I share your interest. I guess you have read Barkås post on Swedish larp. He has just gotten a little feedbakc; it seems like the fantasy larpers agree with his view. So that's a good start. I wrote yesterday a thing on a discussion on lajvsverige. I think that discussion says quite a bit about Swedish fantasy larp.
TS larp again… TS larp seems to close to what they in Great Britain call 'freeform' (this is the reason for my usage of 'friform'¨when talking about the Swedish genre, since it has roots in table top rather than larp.)
My impressions of these two practices are that they are usually featuring smaller crowds, (below thirty) that name tags are often used and that murder mysteries is quite dominant. I would also imagine that props are of lesser importance.
Maybe Fabels larp In i evigheten (Into eternity) could be somewhat close top this, while U-359, (in a submarine) Europa (Big Nordic refugee camp game) and the upcoming Moira (Nordic urban fantasy larp. The homepage is down for the moment. Number of participants will probably be one hundred.) probably would surprise most people. But I might be wrong. (And of course, every time anyone do a larp in a submarine people get surprised. As far as I know it has happened twice, once in Sweden and in Denmark.)