From refugees to Aids, live action role-play games are exploring critical issues. But is the idea of social change via larp a fantasy?

The detention centre sits on the border. Once a low-security prison, it is in a depressing state of disrepair. The private company running the government facility plans improvements, but the flood of desperate “residents” has pushed these firmly on to the back burner.

Residents are not prisoners, but a perceived scarcity of social resources means public opinion towards them is volatile; in response, the government has set an extremely small immigration quota. Residents undergo rigorous assessment in order to have their immigration applications even considered.

The border is with Wales. The refugees are from England, Scotland, Ireland and parts of Europe whose economic status has crashed post-Brexit.

The setting is the near future, and this is a game.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Participants in the Fortune & Felicity larp, based on the works of Jane Austen. Photograph: Kalle Lantz and Frida Selvén

Live action role play, or larp, is a combination of re-enactment, storytelling and gaming – players are given a role and act out their character’s actions within an overarching story. These interactive games can last a few hours or spin out over months and years, with players adopting familiar characters time and time again.

If you’ve come across larping before, you might associate it with orcs, elves and swordplay – a dynamic offshoot of tabletop games like Dungeons and Dragons. But although mythical creatures can be involved, a growing number of larp games explore situations, stories and characters as a form of activism.

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The creators of a new experience, The Quota, decided to use larp to tackle one of the most fraught issues facing the world today: the refugee crisis. Halat Hisar, a Palestinian-Finnish larp, explores life under occupation. Other larps include the seminal Just a Little Lovin’, set in a fictionalised New York in the early years of the Aids crisis. Even a recent Jane Austen-inspired larp had lessons to teach on social inequality – alongside dancing and witty conversation, of course.

One worry is that these larps involve people of comparative privilege “playing” at being refugees or people with Aids. Helly Dabill, one of The Quota’s creators, understands the concern. “We acknowledge that people who are not familiar with larping, or whose idea of it remains firmly entrenched in fantasy games with orcs and goblins, are often shocked at the topics that larp is willing to explore.”

But, she adds, people also write novels about difficult subjects, or plays, or make feature films. “All of these things can be harrowing, powerful and informative. They make people think. Most importantly, they start a dialogue about difficult subjects.”

The Quota’s charitable partner, the Refugee Council, agrees. “Thousands of people, including children, are deprived of their liberty and detained arbitrarily in the UK every year,” says the council’s chief executive, Maurice Wren. “The Refugee Council is hugely supportive of events and productions which, like the Quota, aim to raise awareness of this terrible wrong in an original and creative way.”

Larp creation often begins with personal experience. Dabill has worked in Israel with displaced Palestinians, as well as with child refugees. Halat Hisar is run by a creative team that includes four Palestinians living on the West Bank, while Just a Little Lovin’s designers, Tor Kjetil Edland and Hanne Grasmo, are HIV and Aids activists. The impetus for all these creators is to educate through empathy.

“Larp is a medium of personal, direct experience. The things that happen in a larp happen specifically to you. It feels different to actually walk through a checkpoint rather than just read about it,” says Kaisa Kangas, one of the people behind Halat Hisar.



Facebook Twitter Pinterest A ‘foreign national’ is detained at a checkpoint during the Halat Hisar larp. Photograph: Tuomas Puikkonen

Grasmo agrees: “We want [participants] to build stronger communities, to understand how it was and is to be queer, whether they are themselves or not. I personally hope that when having experienced how easy it can be to express and accept your desires, the black emotions of fear of death, the hard dilemmas over what to do with their fictional lives and friendships, they will think about what is important in their own life.”

But can larps really be transformative? Andreas Lieberoth, associate professor of education at Aarhus University in Denmark, believes so. He says: “The more I study larp and the learning sciences together, the more I become convinced that larps can hold immense educational potential.”. And learning though role play is not a modern phenomenon, he stresses.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Players participating in Just A Little Lovin’. Photograph: Petter Karlsson

“Since the 1930s, social psychologists have been aware that we are more open to new ideas, and willing to give ideas that may seem irrelevant or even contrary to our own beliefs fair consideration, if we are asked to take on the role of a person holding such beliefs.”

Larp is even used in some schools, including one in Denmark where all teaching is achieved through immersive “learning games”.

The Quota is recruiting its final players before the game takes place in May. Dabill says she hopes the experience will change its participants. “You will deepen your understanding of the ties that bind people together and their ability to withstand the forces of dehumanisation and alienation – and, above all, the costs to everyone when these bonds break.”

That detention centre on the Welsh border may not be real, but it’s clear the stakes are high.

The Quota takes place on 24-27 May in Rutland, UK. The deadline for ticket applications is 31 March

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