Larpocracy at Knutpunkt 2026
Members of Larpocracy had a busy Knutpunkt this year! The annual Nordic larp conference was held in Gothenburg, Sweden, on April 16-19, 2025. Larpocracy had several programme items ranging from serious to creative to playful.
They also presented work at the Larp Research Seminar on Wednesday, April 15, during A Week in Gothenburg. This blog will offer a short summary of each item.
Wednesday, April 15, at the Larp Research Seminar
"Democracy in Live Action: A Mixed Method Analysis of Political Larps and the Participants who Play Them" -- Sarah Lynne Bowman, Marcin Słowikowski, Weronika Szatkowska, Piotrek Warzyszynski, and Barbara Mos. Presentation at the Larp Research Seminar.
This article discusses several methodological approaches to researching the effects of larp on democratic values and skills. The effects studies research group in the Horizon Europe project Larpocracy has employed several approaches to understanding political larps and the participants, designers, and organisers who engage with them, including literature reviews, design analyses, workshops, quantitative surveys, qualitative questionnaires, interviews, and observational checklists.
These methods and the studies in which they are employed are intended to investigate larpers as a subculture, particularly those invested in larps with democratic or other political themes, with respect to several key factors: demographic characteristics, perspective-taking, empathy, deliberative civic values, and political engagement. The research also aims to identify existing political larps and their design features, and to establish fruitful areas for further design innovation, particularly those grounded in core democratic activities highlighted by the participants. In particular, Larpocracy has identified democratic deliberation as an activity that can be explored through larp, with explicit learning objectives and design constraints informed by political science theory and practice. While this work is exploratory, we hope to shed light on specific facets of the role-playing experience through these methods, inspiring intentional design practices that foster transformative play.
“Confessional Tales from the Realms of Larp: Insider Knowledge in Participatory Observation Studies” by Hanne Grasmo
This essay discusses how to fight biases, activate your insights and harvest useful data when you, as a larp researcher, are deeply and personally situated in the realms of larp. In the study of larp festivals in the Larpocracy research project, the main method is fieldwork, another word for observation studies. This essay is the result of methodological considerations on how to conduct academically sound participatory observation while being well-known participants in the environment we research. We as researchers are participating in the social interaction, while having a different role and status from those they observe. It is a complex balance to be amongst “our own people” while simultaneously interacting and observing, continuously steering between the ethics of observation and the ethics of participation.
The aim of this essay is to discuss useful tools and sound research practices as insider larp researchers, rather than abstract philosophical or epistemological theories: How to do self- assessment and reflecting of biases, which author voice(s) do we use in our notes, do we do observations in a conscious salient way or a comprehensive way, do we gather spontaneous data or triggered data, how do we structure our notes and are we looking for what we know already or abductive findings?
Thursday, April 16 at Knutpunkt
From Larpocracy With Love: A Short Film by Elektra Diakolambrianou 21:00–21:45
A comedic short film created and performed by the Work Package 5 team, who study larp festivals as democratic spaces. The conceit of the film is that Marcin Słowikowski and Piotrek Warzyszynski from Europe4Youth are wanted by Interpol for asking suspicious questions at festivals, while they are actually gathering data for the deliverable.
The film was screened on KP TV, a tradition in which conference attendees submit amusing videos parodying aspects of the larp subculture and other cultural references.
Read more here.
Friday, April 17 at Knutpunkt
Sandleford - Living With Decisions -- A larp designed and run by Annika Waern, Jon Back, and Fuoco Balducci. 10:00–11:45
“The mine made the town, and the town made the mine. For more than a century, they have grown together, both above and underground. The mine shafts now sprawl in all directions, partly undermining the town. Furthermore, some of the richest mineral veins extend even farther beneath it. While children still play in playgrounds and schools, and shops are still open, large areas are no longer safe, and even larger areas risk being affected.
It is clear that the whole town has to move.”
This larp explores what happens after a democratic decision has been made, the role of resistance and the need for acceptance. The game is not about making or changing decisions; it is about how you, as an individual, can protest, change and adapt.
The game is set AFTER a divisive decision to move the whole city has been democratically made. A group of people, champions in their local pub quiz night, will gather each week to play the quiz and discuss the recent events in town.
"Are Larpers Inherently Democratic?" -- Presentation by Weronika Szatkowska, Marcin Słowikowski, Piotrek Warzyszynski, Kjell Hedgard Hugaas, and Sarah Lynne Bowman. 13:00–13:45
This talk summarised early results from a study in work package 2 that assessed the democratic skills and values of larpers within adjacent and sometimes overlapping national and international larp communities. In Spring 2025, we sent out a survey collecting data on demographics, larp experience, other subcultural activities, and political engagement and beliefs. We also gathered data assessing participants’ self-reported perspective-taking and empathy skills, as well as their values related to democratic deliberation.
Additionally, we asked participants to list larps they considered democracy-themed, identifying mechanics, narrative techniques, and other key factors they found particularly effective in the design, as well as areas for improvement. We also asked them to list activities they considered inherently democratic and to assess how well these larps integrated them, if at all. Finally, we asked participants to share what we call their golden moments in democracy-themed larps.
While such data cannot fully answer whether larpers are inherently primed for democratic engagement, it paints a picture of participants who are highly passionate about questions of freedom, justice, and care for others who are different from themselves.
Participants learned about the demographics of our communities, as well as trends regarding their political beliefs and democratic skills. They also learned about larps designed for democratic engagement and design directions for organising political larps in the future.
“97 Politics of Revachol” -- Presentation by Iva Vávrová and Kjell Hedgard Hugaas. 14:00–14:45
97 Poets of Revachol is a larp inspired by the world of Disco Elysium. It revolves around community, art, whimsy, and the bizarre. Yet at its core, it is fundamentally about politics and polarisation. How can one create a political play that includes 118 characters and a wide spectrum of ideologies? Can hope survive in a game with a scripted hopelessly polarised endpoint? Furthermore, can political play actually be fun, hardcore, and dare we say… DISCO?
In this talk, we offer snapshots and lessons learned from four runs of 97 Poets and illustrate how we created a vibrant, authentic political landscape in a game where even the black mould on the walls hides secret conspiracies. There will be statistics, there will be glitter, and there will, inevitably, be taxidermy.
We want to present our design for politics and political play, and how we made it vibrant and connected it to the community in our larp, 97 Poets of Revachol.
"BDSM Larp: Queer Erotic Role-Play as Resistance" -- Presentation by Hanne Grasmo and Tyra Grasmo. 14:00–14:45
This is a presentation of a fieldwork in a queer larp community for leather dykes+, a community few know about. With a following discussion of erotic larp and BDSM role-play games. Hanne Grasmo is doing her PhD in game culture studies, and this is her fourth upcoming PhD article, written together with Professor and larp scholar J.Tuomas Harviainen. Through participatory observation, small-group interviews, and analysis of design documents and workshop scripts, we identify how pleasure is produced, negotiated, and ethically managed through game structures and how this fictional social world can be part of queer resistance. New insights for larp designers of erotic and queer larps, as well as academics.
We argue that these erotic role-playing games constitute queer heterotopic spaces where transgressive acts become safe, meaningful, and collectively held. The play practices not only produce erotic enjoyment but also foster queer resistance, personal transformation, and communal care. By situating BDSM role-play within larp scholarship, we show how pleasure in game design can be both radical and restorative for marginalised players. Still, we are not sure: Is it right to call BDSM group role-play for larp? This discussion with the participants is a part of this program item.
Saturday, April 18 at Knutpunkt
"Designing Narratively Interesting Larp Democracy" -- Workshop by Annika Waern, Fuoco Balduzzi, Jon Back and Sarah Lynne Bowman. 10:00–12:45
This workshop was a first step towards Larpocracy’s goal of developing tools and methods to support the design of larp that reflect democracy and democratic challenges in a narratively interesting and nuanced way. In the workshop, we first talked a bit about how democracy is typically portrayed in larp, and then went through a design exercise to explore known democratic dilemmas as a source to create narratively complex and dramatic perspectives. We expect to run this workshop again in forthcoming Larpocracy events.
"Birth of Larp Festival in Northern Europe" -- Presentation by Jaakko Stenros. 15:00–16:45
This panel discussion explored the emergence of the larp festival in Sweden, Norway, Denmark, and Germany from 2008 to 2013. This discussion focused on how the international festival larp circuit was created and how the format of the larps came about. The panel was chaired by Jaakko Stenros (who was not there) and joined by Anna Westerling, Martin Nielsen, Nina Runa Essendrop, and Stefan Deutch (who were there).
More to follow