Larp Culture and the Southern Way
by Evan Torner
Larps are not only designed; they emerge from specific larp cultures and communities. When we look at this thing called “larp,” its surface of uniformity belies the seething conflicts and ideologies that create the games that we play and the events that we run. Why else would the Italian larpwrights issue a slick website in April 2016 proclaiming the “Southern Way: New Italian Larp” as a manifesto? I speak from experience when I say that such acts are some of the only ways to get a broader audience to listen. Besides continuing to design and run larps, of course. In any case, below is my attempt to situate the contents of this text within some larger international context.



Lizzie, Emily, Kat, and I decided after a couple of years in 2013 that we were “American freeform” larpwrights. Our games were seen as Nordic in the USA, and as American in Europe. Without a home, we created one for ourselves: American-created semi-live larps featuring intense, focused play that often used scenes, transparency, meta-play, and short play periods. Lizzie wrote up a blog post proclaiming its existence, Jason Morningstar called his hit larp The Climb (2012) “American freeform,” and suddenly the Internet was all up in arms. How could we do this? Wasn’t it cultural imperialism to call ourselves “American?” Why couldn’t we just call what we were doing “games?” I wrote a manifesto “American Freeform: A Transatlantic Dialog,” people got mad, and games began to churn out. We got psychologically powerful works such as The Curse (2013), Cady Stanton’s Candyland (2014), and Resonance (2014), as well as the Golden Cobra contest (2014–present). But we also got return runs of Across the Sea of Stars (2004), the ascendance of Planetfall and Dystopia Rising, and other games that alternately rejected and incorporated aspects of this Nordic-American larp exchange. Action.
Reaction. Design. Counter-design.

Which brings me to the subject of this book “The Southern Way: New Italian Larp.” When I first looked at this manifesto, my immediate thought was of what vibrant disagreements must have produced it. Look at some of its strictures. “Play unsafely” means that these larpwrights have slammed into some kind of risk-averse culture and want it pushed aside.
“No customers allowed” means one must adopt a proper attitude to play these games, reinforced with the mandate: “[Choose] to tell stories with a rich allegorical value.” This manifesto speaks volumes about the intentions of the games contained within the Crescendo Giocoso anthology.
These aren’t just larps designed in the “shadow” of Nordic games: these are creations from a very specific milieu engaged in very specific and ongoing debates with other larpwrights. With such thorny seeds and fertile soil, monumental creations that will begin to impact the global larp scene are now sprouting and growing.
Are you paying attention now?
Evan Torner
Covington, KY, U.S.A.