What is larp?
Larp or Laiv Action Role-playing Game is not the easiest to define, because there will always be larps that extend beyond the framework that we define.
Larp is a type of improvised role-play. We have a setting or framework, and then we improvise our roles within this framework. Larps come in many forms. They can last a few hours or many days, some have an organizer and some have no organizers at all. There are also many different genres, some of which we find in the larp calendar for the coming year includes fantasy, vampire, historical drama and psychological larps.
At Laivlørdag, we will focus on chamber larps. These are short larps that last a few hours, and usually require little preparation.
What is story games?
At Laivlørdag we also want to make a space for “story games”. A branch of roleplaying games that are built to facilitate collaborative narrative, interaction between characters and meaningful storytelling.
Like larp, story games are hard to define, and the boundaries to both larp, and “traditional rpgs” are blurry and hard to define. However they usually have relatively simple rules, made to facilitate a particular collaborative storytelling experience. They are almost always designed so that the person hosting is also a player, and normally without a dedicated game master-role.
We felt like “story games” fit in well in the same sphere as larps, and especially chamber larps, their suspiciously close cousin, and see no real reason to differentiate between them.