2:2:2
i- z o
KSf
TO DESIGN
// Lizzie Stark
f  Inroof method or procedure one can follow to generate a There exists no tooip workshop is tailored to both its larp and the
tl;nv,ess workshopMost designers develop a feel for workshop de. parncipant group tor t for       design _ by ^ f
^ ^^Tffl^ow signers for help and advic,
broadly speaking, the overarching goal of a workshop is to prepare parttó-pants for the larp or, to put it another way, to make the participants better participants of your particular larp. In order to achieve this goal, you have to think through (a) what skills and knowledge your larp requires and (b) what skills and knowledge your participants have. Then you design exercises that address the gap between (a) and (b). For example, if your larp prominendy features basket weaving and your participants are experienced larpers with poor hand-eye coordination, you will have to spend a large swath of time teaching them how to weave baskets. On the other hand, if you are running your larp for a local basket weaving guild who are new to role-playing, you won't need to teach them to weave baskets. But you might need to teach them how to use weaving baskets as a mode of character expression, and you will definitely need to teach them how to small-talk in character, a skill most new larpers struggle with.
wJ^£*T' m?St gr°UpS °f larP Participants aren't uniform. In this age of Z^ nenced ' T partidPants ^ "kely include some new larpers, some A fc^lJTJ ^ Wh° «P«ienced but steeped in a co,-«rent audiences Mm^ T*® y°U t0 desi8« workshop fof ^ weave baskets "J 2^°^ Y°U Caďt ass»me that everyone knows how to W i* best to practice boA    'eVery°ne how to talk in character,
h<™ you w'amthe Zr^JT^ iťs wise to start by covering the basics d
providin. an „„' Pr"Clpams to larP' TWs helps nervous new larpers C  1« f J! Umty t0,rke y°Ur d-irecl norms of play expUch
-dersund nsp  "-n " ^' " ~ ^ « otherwise - who strugg
in.i..j- 11 soclal aotir-
>wing
include tins R„.u' M,clal norms Tk v* "uicrwis
PS SUch as     toll()win^S- These opening pitches
to
the play
ers
"Say 'yes and'to build the fiction together' .    "You don't have to be eloquent. When in do h
viousness is different from mine and therefore Y°Ur ob-
sting." tneretore ,t ls inherently intere-
"Sometimes it's your moment in the snnHi^
ment to reflect the light back onto oZ^ZT" * ^ *
Depending on your play tradition, your opening pitch on how to larp mifiht be different. 6
Identifying the gap between the participants' skills and what skills the larp requires takes practice. It's also easier to identify gaps if you marshall your com munity resources: ask your community for help as a fresh set of eyes on your workshop content. If you know someone who has run a game with similar design or content, reach out and see whether they are willing to share their experiences.
The aim of a workshop is to equip participants with the skills they need to have a good experience in the larp, but that doesn't mean you will train them equally. Rather, it's okay to rely on herd competence [See Stenros &Montola!-Eds}. If most of the group has the required skill, they can carry those who don't or who learn more slowly. You should aim for playability, not perfection - you needn't drill the group in basket weaving until they can produce a professional product - something vaguely basket-shaped is likely serviceable enough for most experiences.
Larp groups handle mixed levels of participant competence differently. For example, some US campaign boffer games simply separate the new participants out from the herd and give them special "new participant" training. The trend in multi-day one-shots is to keep all parties together, since no one has special knowledge of a brand-new experience, and workshopping everyone together can help break up pre-existing social structures.
Upending pre-existing social structures can benefit play for everyone at the larp. If a clique of friends only talks to one another during the larp, then the rest of the participants might feel excluded; by the same token, the clique would miss out on the unique ideas and experiences offered by the rest of the paracipant base.
WHAT A WORKSHOP DOES
Designers can use workshops to accomplish many useful goals. For instance, a w°rkshop may:
;    Get participants comfortable with one anotber rf Generate alibi for participants to play and create wiu judged
*    Teach and practice game mechanics or other tools
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e safety rules and calibration mechanics
.   Teach andpracoce^ mood/,one .    Generate hcdon or Q[ fecdons
.    Create characters, rc factions, and relationships
.    Elaborate on P%™*% Cnceded in the larp
i    StilcSrrnanon about the larp, site, etc. in a straight^
wav
SfiSSX to o- — to sh^ng person. st or hu^ng workshop, The list of specific activities that larp designers have ^in35hops would produce a near
A eood workshop does not usually accomplish all of the above goals. Rather, designers have to be tactical about which functions are most vital in preparing participants for this larp. Perhaps, in the perfect world, you'd be able to hone each and every participant skill required for your larp, but in the actual world you will run up against two major constraints: time and the limits of human cognition. The workshop - and thus the design of your larp - must take these into account.
Let's take time first. Larp experiences, from workshop to debrief, have a specific duration. Maybe it's a five-hour slot at a convention, or the timespan of your site rental. Let's say that you've reserved the basket-weaving factor}' for two and a half days. Teaching your participants complex basket weaving requires two days, leaving only a half day for play. As a designer, you have to decide whether that is the best ratio. Perhaps you adjust the design for the larp to require only simple basket weaving that can be taught in half a day to extend the play time.
Due to time limits, you must also prioritise the information the workshop conveys. Some information is more important. Communicating the themes and play style of the larp is more vital than teaching participants to remember the names of obscure trading posts in Middle Earth, and your informational design or°th/n J°P Pri°rity Sh°uld §° to ***** ^at is direct* necessary
zizs: im~with the ficti°n'f- —e wh- ^fanuiy
participants' skill at read Whether this works will depend heavily on your
there are hard limits on h u remembering written information. Similarly,
your larp just through kstenin Pamdpams can lea™ and retain on the day of
When-----       1 •
you design your worksh
eating into "must kk^^™£?* the information you're communi-
ty minimum viable informal u and "mce to know." Try to figure out should highlit and reDp^°n that Participants require to enjoy the larp Y">
*peat the most important
information. Focus on it
first,
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,hen participant minds are fresh, and remind them of . t workshop or just before play begins. °f * Verb% at the end of
Remember: you're designing a workshop for humans an 1 u ^dve limits. Your workshop is only as successful as the ski , vour participants retain so prioritising what you want to convey h^l \( it's possible to shoehorn meaningful information into the     I   ' W1Se' d0 it! Participants that practice using information in an emboTT?*'exercises> e°t,n it better, and doing so can help cater to *U^^££^ learning styles among partictpants. In any case, if theirs are on " ^el listening, it's not a workshop, but a briefing. y PassivelY
.    Groups have an easier time remembering stuff they did, rather than the
stuff they heard or read. Plus, it's less work for you! .    All workshops include some amount of talking, but try to break up
speeches with activities to keep people awake and the information
snackable.
• Include unstructured breaks, not just for obvious reasons of human biology, but also so the participants can speak to each other before the game. As Norwegian designer Trine Lise Lindahl put it, "make sure they feel like that is their time to do what they need to do to be able to play the larp in an hour, half a day, or however long there is left."
• Start with simpler tasks and escalate to more complex ones. Simpler tasks build participant confidence and emotional buy-in. For example, you might like your participants to get comfortable with physical contact. Have them do a low-stakes task like shaking hands before asking them to negotiate a hugging mechanic.
• Always look for opportunities to make one exercise do double or triple duty. If you want participants to practice a particular technique, have them do it as their characters during a scene that builds backstory. The participants get to practice the technique in situ, and you're building backstory at the same time.
WORKSHOPS CONSIDERED AS REHEARSAL . Upon learning about larp workshops, a professor of theater once exclaimed, "Ah! You mean a rehearsal. You rehearse before the final performance . In some se»se, she's right. A workshop is a rehearsal, where the actors (participants) pr -Ctlce what they will do during the larp. , f ^       , ?m4
p Consider Nina Rune Essendrop's blackbox larp UdgU % Innocence), a nonverbal experience for 15 participants about^ naive y clowns who are waiting for the circus to return In ^ communicate with clown noises, move jerkily, wear red^noses tie s    g ^ °the' to make relationships, take periodic naps to luUaby music, sell asp
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alesman and have the opportunity to regain those aspec. their personality to a saic      ^ gven the participants' experience of th
in turn. Every experience ^ ^ Qf ^ ^ participants ^ *
^l^otlldTofthe fictional world. The gap between participant knowledge
?^h^SS^ p~*» each eiement -many of th--
nvo hour workshop th pa« P      P     ^       ^ ^
5S - -n, a participant exceed, "I feel ^ sfplatd the whole larp". She felt quite prepared and delighted to play « now> for re  -the rehearsal had given her a foretaste of the feast to come.
Even if you don't take it as far as Essendrop, considering the workshop throueh the lens of rehearsal can help focus on which actions and activities require practice, and on methods for delivering that practice that mimic the re-„1 t-Jo-u mnHirions.
al-time play conditions.
A WORD ON CO-CREATION
Some larp runners use workshop time to help participants create elements of the fiction, including characters, relationships, cultures, factions, and more. Larp is, by its nature, a co-creative art form. Using workshops to co-create large swaths of fiction has benefits and drawbacks. Participants buy into the larp because they've put creative sweat equity into it. It's also easier to remember the three people a participant has interacted with during the workshop than it is to remember a few pages of pre-written relationships. On the flip side, co-creation requires time, and often in significant amounts. Larp designers cannot control co-creation as tighdy as they can, say, written materials, and they have to be comfortable with that. And co-creation doesn't necessarily save designers all that much time. Even if you aren't writing, say, characters or culture, you still have to design the process by which participants will arrive those elements.
Designing the process of co-creation is vital if you want to avoid some common pitfalls. On an out-of-game level, designing co-creation is designing social interactions that foster creativity. That is complicated! You should figure out how to get people into and out of groups quickly, and in such a way that all participants feel included. Otherwise, you risk some nastier forms of social Darwinism, wKh folks who know each other clumping together and leaving newer folks out. anoXrv y°Uf T reqUkeS kfge §rouPs of Participants speaking to one hatDCmay t0 lntmdUCe S°me conversational mechanics to ensure nati^ CO~n, and not of a single person dom>
some ground rule for phvsi'cal P"**"* ^ ^ thlOU8h ^
On the level of °n the table first
participants will msertTh.i ^ ^ mUSt des& the blank sPaces in ^ bucket is, the more cha        ^ ~ ^ CaU those "buckets." The ^*
a sentence with a f^Z^ ? 1S t0 ^ ~ a blank page is harder to fill ^ few key words missing. Small specific buckets are easier ft*
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nlavers to fill, and you also have more control over them Tu ES because participants carry their own cultural narS'       C°mro118 ^por Inventing things on the spot ls hard, and the *f» bt0 ^
SS low-hanging fruit - stereotypes and common ^ * «■ a bucket is
Lie larps, but it can easily go awry, especiaUy when dealin* 1 WOrk for to ^realisation. It's very easy for all the 1950s housewives!!?*1"*1 rdated damsels, or the gay men as bght-in-the-loafers stereotvoes "P PaSS1Ve
1-ticipants structured choices ("Are you a nuclear p38t r ^ ,mart woman trapped in a dumb marriage?") can help them reach K T ^ subvert the most common narratives. F        reach Wond and
Providing structure is also important because these participant h played your larp^It will not be obvious to them what kinds of stories"^ meaningfully playable - especially if they have not yet seen the play area - and they may not have the design skills to spontaneously invent, for instance, cultural traditions that resonate meaningfully with the theme of larp. You need to tell diem what the metaphorical buckets will be used for so they can know what story elements and social dynamics to carry with them into the larp.
You may also need a mechanism to limit the introduction of certain types of content, or to calibrate story during and after co-creation. You might, for instance, decide that incest or sexual violence cannot be introduced into character backstories. Perhaps it will be dissonant with the larp's themes; perhaps such content is likely to become the emotional focus for the characters' journeys, blocking the players from experiencing other kinds of stories, stories that they do not yet know the larp can offer. In addition, being accidentally confronted with such content in a larp where it was not communicated in advance might be very triggering for other participants. For all of these reasons, carefully design the frame you are asking participants to co-create within.
Remember: if all you want to do is make participants feel like they have some skin in the game, even a small amount of choice or co-creation can go a long way.
A WORD ON REALTIME ADAPTATIONS
Expert workshop designers frequently tweak their workshops on the fly. i lan> create a detailed bulleted list of activities, along with approximate times toi: eac one, but can adjust to individual groups of participants sPontaneOU^ductorv group already knows each other really well, maybe you can cut an in     ^ ^ game. If participants seem tired, perhaps you move up ^™ ^ Participants figure out how to create inter-family conflict more qui   y  ^ ^ anticipated, perhaps you cut an activity and spend more time o wQrkshop character. Calibrating as you go is normal, and it helps you tailor }o t0 this particular audience.
FU*THER READING: . n,aCom
UZ2le Stark "How to Plan a basic Pre-larp Workshop. Leav.ngmun ^ ■
The ^rkshop Handbook https://workshophandbook.wordpress.co / 87
HOW TO RUN YOUR WORKSHOP
// Markus Montola
,,^f nlav vour workshop has to be focused and safe. This In order to V^J^^^^p to" be focused, relaxed, fa Ltro requires the people fehttWg community leadership.
and demonstrating good, sate, ana ega
. Have a solid plan, with backup plans for inevitable scheduling errors. If organisers have to negotiate in front of the workshop audience, they will feu t0 maintain focus. Workshop time is a very scarce and precious resource for a larp
organiser. ,
• Start by rehearsing the following technique: when the workshop organiser raises their hand up all the way, everyone needs look at them, raise their hand, and stop talking. It is much easier to maintain focus if participants shut up voluntarily, compared to a situation where the organiser needs to raise their voice to proceed with the workshop.
• Running a workshop is a performance, and in all performances you should muster all the charisma you can. Many larp teams invite a person specifically to run their workshops to ensure ideal results. This is particularly useful if core team members are likely to be busy with last minute production tasks as the larp is beginning. (If you are not very experienced, you should probably expect this to be the case.)
• Prioritise the needs of the workshop over the needs of an individual. If you have unhappy or confused individuals in your workshop, make sure thev understand that you will attend to their needs after the workshop. If you can,'assign a person to be present in the room to attend to their needs as the overall workshop progresses.
lw°ik;ihOPu ■"* °ften m" """""Moble than the larp itself. Make sure you fonabk thf ***** "In this workshop we are doing less com-
a 't ,W fe ,n°Wu "I"'° fed comfo«*le when we larp." You ean UteraUy .   m t wkward, you are doing it right"
- ^:^:::!^?r:mi" **« ™ <** «. * «*-
your larp than any i„divC| *l ^ COmfort ls more '""P0"^ "
workshop exercise.
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