Key Principle
Workshop design is gap analysis: identify the gap between what the larp requires and what participants already know, then fill it with the fewest exercises that build the most critical skills. Every exercise must be justified by the specific larp's needs -- cargo-culted workshops waste time and erode trust.
Why This Matters
Workshops consume the scarce resource of participant bandwidth. Participants detect waste. The diagnostic question is not "should we have a workshop?" but "what gap between participant readiness and larp requirements does each exercise close?"
Core Frameworks
Must / Should / Nice-to-Know Prioritization: Triage workshop content into three tiers. Under time pressure, cut from nice-to-know first, never from must-know.
Nine Workshop Goal Functions: Workshops serve distinct purposes -- skill building, trust building, calibration, culture norming, relationship seeding, safety practice, physical warm-up, information delivery, and co-creation. Each function requires different exercise types.
Co-Creation Bucket Design: "Inventing things on the spot is hard, and the easiest way to fill a bucket is with low-hanging fruit -- stereotypes and common tropes." (Section 2:2) Smaller, more specific buckets constrain choices productively. Even minimal co-creation ("a small amount of choice") generates meaningful investment through "creative sweat equity."
Herd Competence (Teresa Axner): When enough experienced players are present, beginners learn by observation. When herd competence is low (diverse or new groups), designers must compensate with explicit instruction. Participant composition is a designable variable.
Play Culture Design: "Nordic larp traditionally has had a collaborative play style, but this style is designed and grown through the community: it is not naturally inherent in larp as an artform." (Section 2:1) The loudest player faction will design the culture if you don't.
Good Examples
- Avalon (Poland, 2018): Used videos, blog posts, design documents, website, and social media for diverse international players.
- The Quota (UK, 2018): Communication tone (swift, supportive) designed to match sensitive themes (refugees, economic migrants).
- Inside Hamlet (Denmark, 2015): Required ongoing communication iteration across six runs because diverse attendees (academics, Shakespeare fans, immersive theatre enthusiasts) varied in herd competence.
- Tale of the North Wind (Sweden, 2019): Explicit Dos and Don'ts list: "Our larp is a place for collaborative storytelling. Rather than trying to best our co-players, we aim to engage in mutually fulfilling play."
- House of Craving (Denmark, 2017): Workshop deliberately nastier than the game as a calibration tactic.
Counterpoints
- Co-creation does not save designers time. Even when not writing characters, you must design the process by which participants arrive at elements. Design effort shifts from content to container.
- Workshops are paradoxically often more uncomfortable than the larp itself. Naming this explicitly normalizes the discomfort: "In this workshop we are doing less comfortable things now in order to feel comfortable when we larp." (Section 2:2, Montola)
- Workshop delegation is a failure mode: facilitators who understand the what but not the why will contradict the design.
Key Quotes
"Player comfort is more important to your larp than any individual workshop exercise." (Section 2:2, Montola)
"Any person running workshops or briefings for you must understand your design well enough to understand not only what they are saying, but also why the design is implemented in the way you've chosen." (Ch. 2:2:1)
"You should not, and will not be able to, recap the entirety of the information you've previously given your participants, even if you feel it is all important." (Ch. 2:2:1)
"If you do not spend the time deciding what kind of play culture you want at your larp, the loudest group of players will end up designing it for you." (Section 2:1)
Rules of Thumb
- Every workshop exercise must be justified by a specific gap between participant readiness and larp requirements
- High-trust larps require minimum half-day workshop for bonding
- Workshop group size: 15-20 for hands-on practice; restructure above 60
- If the game is simple or participants experienced, a briefing may suffice
- Script workshops and rehearse delivery -- improvised facilitation produces inconsistency
- The raised-hand silence technique works better than raising your voice
- Content limitation in co-creation is about narrative architecture, not just trigger avoidance
Related References
- Implementation Playbook: Full Lifecycle Design Process -- Where workshops fit in the lifecycle
- Safety, Opt-Out, and Calibration Mechanics -- Workshopping safety mechanics
- Character Design: Interfaces, Affiliations, and Co-Creation -- Co-creative character methods
- Inclusion and Equity: Fun Tax, Accessibility, and Identity Design -- Building inclusive culture through workshops