Collaborative Unit: LARP

Brief: Design and build a LARP themed around future dead zones (Light dead zone)

Group: Chaitanya, Dabeen, Diya, Grania, Lancy, Mustafa, Primrose, Sakshi, Sian, Uday

Research Methods: Affinity mapping, Embodied Research, Playtesting

Week 1

Live Action Role Play (LARP) is an improvisation-based activity where participants take on imaginary roles in an immersive experience.

For world-building, we explored what could cause a dead-zone of light in near-future London. Would darkness be constant or sporadic? Would light be accessible, to who, and at what cost? Forlano (2017) encourages designers to look into non-human actors who can reshape our understanding of the world. We looked into how life adapts to darkness in the forms of people and nocturnal animals and plants. Prim proposed that humanity moved underground, probably in an attempt to shield themselves from dangers such as climate catastrophe.

Everyone individually gathered their thoughts and explored possible directions. We synthesised our ideas via Affinity Mapping, narrowing down into main areas of interest, thus making sure everyone contributes. The emerged themes explored light as currency, and as a metaphor for morality, as crime rates tend to go up at night (Erturk, Raynham and Teji, 2024).

Our initial plot revolved around two groups - Light Holders, who have access to light which becomes a form of capital in this new society, and Dark Dwellers, who don’t possess access to light but have adapted to life in darkness.

↑ Initial group brainstorming on FigJam.

↑ For collaborative ideation, we opted to conduct affinity mapping of everyone’s ideas and directions.

↑ Initial LARP plot storyboard

↑ Impromptu attempt to create darkness in class in order to gain tacit knowledge.

We considered how a sightless society would impact the visually impaired. Without embodied knowledge, data gaps might occur in our design (Criado-Perez, 2019). To address this, and lacking direct conversations with visually-impaired participants, we conducted Embodied Research using blindfolds to gain missing tacit knowledge.

Our insights included:

  • Shift in senses: While we expected to rely more heavily on sound without sight, we realised it was in combination with a heightened sense of touch. Sound aided us in general spatial navigation but we used touch to confirm exact locations.

  • Increased need of trust: Without sight, we had to depend on others more.

Upon speaking with our tutors we decided to move away from a competition-centred LARP, but rather focus on character collaboration. This aligned with our curiosity regarding trust, and our desire to explore how it’s affected in a sightless society.

↑ Playing blindfolded version of games like Marco Polo, we sometimes used makeshift rattles to mark of our positions (photo credits: Primrose)

↑ Snippets from the blindfolded exercises (clip contains sound) (video credits: Mustafa)

I suggested an expedition-based story, featuring roles like Scientist, Cartographer, and Journalist. Each character would have personal motives but share a collective goal of mapping an unknown cave.

We debated whether the setting should be underground or underwater, ultimately choosing both. We situated the LARP in a familiar London landmark - a Tube Station. The element of flooding added another layer to the gameplay as it limited movement, temporarily restricted speech, and reinforced the climate disaster theme.

Once we situated the story in a Tube station we decided to redesign the characters as common Tube commuters to ground the experience in a realistic setting that would be easier for our players to immerse themselves into.

↑ Initial expedition story roles and onboarding story.

↑ First draft of roles once we decided to place the story in a Tube Station.

↑ Playtesting within the group to surface issues and points of frustration. We had no physical objects to give, instead writing it on a piece of paper but players had to be told what object they found as they couldn’t see (video credits: Mustafa).

↑ First onboarding story.

Week 2

We began the week with a test of our LARP. Characters had a desired object they looked for, as well as special abilities and inventory limitations. Our tutors suggested focusing on character traits instead of abilities, giving players more freedom and agency to shape their roles naturally.

Given our story structure of individual characters rather than groups, we plunged into a tangled discussion about character traits, their abilities, their objects, their personal goal and how this all fits into the overall story. We should have done more testing prior to this, letting tests highlight the issues. Building a LARP is similar to constructing a complex system, as there are lots of moving objects. Meadows (1999) likens systems to filling up a bath, where running it allowes to spot points that need addressing.

Upon testing our idea within the group, we realised we needed to simplify the game. As it were, it felt overly complex and frustrating even for us, signalling that external players would struggle too.

Tutor feedback also suggested clearer divisions between "above water" and "underwater" spaces, with game masters enforcing rules. We introduced sound design to mark gameplay boundaries, a game master to signal when players need to resurface, and “water” game masters who could confiscate objects from rule-breakers, raising the stakes.

Much of the week was spent refining details, such as onboarding and off-boarding processes, sound and set design and objects and costumes. Whilst these elements were crucial in shaping the experience, it left little time for additional testing before the presentation.
Through this process, I realised the dynamic nature of LARPs. It’s difficult to define a rigid game structure, as each group of participants interacts with it and each other differently.

↑ First playlets run with participants outside of our group. They raised attention to trouble differentiating between over and under water. We also decided to add costumes to help them immerse into the roles.

↑ Second version of roles.

↑ Characters were further simplified (photo credits: Diya).

↑ We added curtains to provide sensory divide between above and under water, but participants were only further disoriented so it was removed.

↑ Our allocated location for the LARP, at the stairs in the University’s canteen.

↑ We attempted to use sound design to mark the differences between the below and above water. Tests later revealed players were relying on sound to navigate and communicate, so volume was lowered.

↑ Additional testing with a new group of participants.

Final outcome:

↑ Characters in costume with the character cards given to participants

↑ Instruction cards given to participants during onboarding (credit: Diya)

↑ LARP progression (this clip contains audio)

Feedback:

We had a good process for onboarding and offboarding, whilst the LARP itself was slightly unorganised. The group invented a “turkey language” to communicate underwater using sound, which they had fun doing. Participants mentioned costumes and character cards helped the players immerse in the world and embody the characters, but could have been more inclusive.

Reflection:

Testing our ideas would have strengthened the experience, in my opinion. Small changes can drastically alter a LARP, therefore running it more times would have helped in this regard. Additionally, we treated the LARP as a research method to answer our question regarding collaboration and trust in the dark. Whilst this isn’t inherently wrong, I think our focus should have been on creating a seamless experience. Having said that, our participants enjoyed the experience overall.

This experience reinforced the importance of iterative testing in design. In future projects, I would implement early, low-fidelity tests to refine mechanics and hone on ideas, and “put it on its feet”, as we were advised.

References:

  1. Criado Perez, C. (2019) Invisible Women: Exposing Data Bias in a World Designed for Men. Vintage Books.

  2. Erturk, E., Raynham, P. and Teji, J.U. (2024) ‘Exploring the effects of light and dark on crime in London’, ISPRS International Journal of Geo-Information, 13(6), Article 182. Available at: https://doi.org/10.3390/ijgi13060182 (Accessed: 18 March 2025).

  3. Forlano, L. (2017). Posthumanism and Design. She Ji: The Journal of Design, Economics, and Innovation, 3(1), pp.16–29. Available at: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.sheji.2017.08.001.

  4. Meadows, D. (1999) Leverage Points: Places to Intervene in a System. The Sustainability Institute. Available at: https://www.donellameadows.org/wp-content/userfiles/Leverage_Points.pdf (Accessed 18 March 2025).