How can these games be scenographic interventions?

I wonder whether games should be seen as an event, rather than a tool. That the things they are comprised of are scenographic tools (rules, players, playgrounds, playthings, …) that help orient (Rachel Hann) us into a world of play. 

There are all types of games of course. Not all of them will take the spatial dramaturgy into account when creating experiences for their players. However I have noticed that those who do, invoke a greater level of immersion into the world they are sketching. Attunement?

During the book release of 'Playing Our Cards Right' by James Parnell at WORM in Rotterdam, a question was posed to the panel about why adults do not have the same play spaces as children. Some said we should just use them as well. Another person brought up a good point that these playgrounds are not interesting for adults, in the way that they do not serve any challenge. There is no tension to play with.

During Knutepunkt 2025 in Oslo, I attented a talk/exhibit called 'Where The Wild Kids Are'. It was a group of LARP’ers that had become parents and were wondering how they could design play spaces for children, youth, adolescents, and adults alike. They also brought up the aspect of different levels of challenges in the enviroment in an attempt to engage with multiple age groups.

Dr. S. Walker (she/they)

"To those readings this, I am happy to share this speck of time with you. My job mainly concerns holding our spatiotemporal position in the timelines of the universe(s), granting us the possibility of visiting past/present/future sites. In doing so, I facilitate the expeditions and make sure the researchers of M.O.L.E. can do their job.

For this I use the timepiece that has been in my family for years. The next Walker will cary on this burden. It is in our flesh.

I try my best to hold open these windows as long as possible, but you my friend, must know time was/is/will be both limited and endless.

Through the sand we traverse to lands lost to time, greed, wrath, sloth, ignorance, and many other sources of devestation. I hope our work will result in more appreciation for what we had, have, and might have still in futures to come.

May we meet, again and again."

What does capturing the moment do for the game play? How do we capture a moment through/of play? What does that mean for the play itself and the way we contextualise it?

I have learned that many game designers have attempted to capture the essence of their LARPs. In these communities it is frowned upon to document the playing as it breaks immersion and never fully succeeds in capturing what that moment was like, or that only that moment doesn’t mean much in comparison to playing out several moments in a sequence. 

Sille Storhille made this work called Open Call which explores this navigation of documenting a LARP in a very interesting way. They said they still had no answer to the question of whether this film/art piece/LARP was an actual LARP and posed that exact question to us at Knutepunkt 2025. A fierce discussion broke out and nobody agreed.

I am not married to calling what we are doing a LARP or art or theatre or whatever. It is an amalgamation of multiple things, a soup, compost. For me it is not important what the medium is called, only that it encourages play in a meaningful way.

In this case that is speculating futures and collaborative storytelling. While the media I use for facilitating this is still very important, I think it is also important to allow it to be imperfect. To broaden its practice, mix it with others, or find out it is not the best medium for what I want to achieve.

Play is the medium through which I want to tell stories, build better worlds, and create spaces. This is the central stone of my practice.

Puck's Dr. S. Walkers Reflections

With this project I wanted to start my exploration into role-playing practices and collecting as artistic research. I am fascinated by their speculative potential, combined with a collaborative worldbuilding process, and becoming something other. It is a wonderful tool/framework that can create empathy and meaningful reflection by embodying the other. The starting point for this project was my research question:

How do you capture moments/impressions of environments in a playful way? 

How can I best prepare an audience for participation?

I suppose what all of our experiments can tell us, is that no audience is the same. Themes, methodologies, amounts of instruction, set boundaries, meditations, use of poetic VS pragmatic language; it all works differently for others. 

We tried out different methods with every playtest and learned along the way, tweaking our onboarding and offboarding strategies to encourage immersion, agency, and ofcourse play.

What can speculative game design do for us? Do all role-playing experiences have the potential for speculative worlding?

While I strongly believe all games have the potential for meaningful connection, empathy building, and learning, I know not all of them will inspire this to the same degree.

It is the task of the Game Designer/Game Master/Warden to create a framework, a world to interact with that might invoke these meaningful interactions. This is not an easy task. I am still learning how to best facilitate this. But perhaps it is also meaningful for me as a maker to accept that sometimes things can just be fun.