Beyond Vampires and Campfires: Engaging with Democracy in Larp

Introduction:

Can larp stimulate deep reflections on how democracy works and how it can and should function? Can larp make us more inclined to value and engage in democracy? Can it even help us develop democratic skills? These questions underlie the Larpocracy project, an EU-funded collaboration project run by academics and larp practitioners in Europe. The project started in January 2025 and is still just in its infancy – much work remains to even begin to answer these questions.

One of the first questions that emerged in the project was a very basic one: What do larpers even mean when they say democracy? To untangle this, we performed a series of workshops with larp designers and participants, aiming to explore how they saw democracy and democratic themes being approached in larp. It turns out that larpers stress as important aspects of democracy such as activism and resistance. But at the same time, they ignore or pay less attention to pivotal considerations that make up the core of democracy, such as fairly managing conflicts in a shared community (Dahl 2008).

Democracy, in a broad sense, is a means of peacefully managing and resolving social conflicts. It allows those affected to express their views and take part in the decisionmaking process. Ideally, the chosen solutions are accepted by everyone, at least
provisionally, including those who did not support them from the start. However, accepting a solution does not mean that those who disagree should remain silent.

The right to organise opposition in order to influence political direction and change previous decisions is a central part of a
well-functioning democracy. This complex understanding of democracy is rarely reflected in larp, and the activities that
larpers and larp designers mainly associate with democracy do not fully capture its power or purpose.