Nordic LARP Talks just got a bunch of video updates, and I’m making my way through them, but I wanted to flag one up quickly, as it’s a very important topic.  One of the nicest bits of feedback I have ever been given about a game I ran is that players could be confident that they wouldn’t come across racism, sexism, homophobia, transphobia or anything like that in my games – or at the very least, they could be 99.9% sure that the obnoxious attitude was an entirely IC one.  I was delighted to hear that, because I am absolutely determined that my games should be as much of a safe space as I can make them. I have what I hope are clear policies about harassment and unacceptable behaviour at the time in, and in game-related matters, and it seems to have more or less worked.  I definitely feel the responsibility to make my LARP space as safe as I can pretty keenly.

At the same time, I like what you might call “mature themes”.  I like my LARPs to explore real issues, and that means that they have to deal in a “real” world that isn’t all hugs and puppies.  Violence, as I’ve mentioned, is a feature of these games, often quite extreme violence.  We’ve had abuse victims, and abusers, as characters.  So I am very interested in anyone’s thoughts on ways to manage things so as to be able to include this sort of thing, and still remain a reasonably safe space, so I was immediately drawn to this talk:

This is a talk titled “Ethical Content Management and the Freedom to Create” by Shoshana Kessock.  In it she concludes (among other things) that the maintenance of a “safe” space is a community responsibility, rather than just that of the organisers, and further, that by its very nature, LARP cannot ever be considered a 100% safe space.

I think that’s probably true.  But this talk has got me thinking about what to do to improve for next time.  My mental list is roughly as follows:

• An “unsafe space” warning – clear notifications of what kind of content may or may not feature in the LARP, to serve both as a warning and a rough code of conduct.
• Clearer signposting of the harassment policy – in the last game I ran, I had a couple of players not realise it existed.
• A general reminder to everyone that we’re all collectively responsible for the space.
• Formally implementing “Brake”, “Cut” and “Hold” as techniques – we haven’t needed them yet, but I’d like my players to know they are there.
• I’m contemplating a “no IC sexism/racism/homophobia/transphobia/etc” rule, to go along with the OOC rules.

Can anyone suggest anything else I could add?