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Limbo larp

Welcome to Limbo. Betwixt and between life and death. Beyond time. A waiting place to reflect on life as it has been so far before either returning to life once again or facing the unknown on the other side of death.

Scenography setup

Limbo is a nordic chamber larp written in 2007. by the Norwegian author Tor Kjetil Edland. It had been run several times since, by various organizers in various settings - even in this year. One of the significant runs this year was during A Week in Norway which was before this year's Knutepunkt. Another was this Saturday in Highland Park, New Jersey. The run in Croatia happened yesterday in my house, and it was played by a total of 17 players, 10 of them female and 7 male (plus me and Jasminka who organized it).

The event was pretty much invite-only at the time. There were a couple of reasons for that, but chief amongst them was available space. With 17 people playing it, there was very little free space, but it served to create a nice "crowded waiting room environment". One of other reasons was: this larp was played in underwear (there will be no photos of this for obvious reasons), most of which were white - to symbolise vulnerability of the characters, and to aid in certain discomfort and feelings of displacement and exposure felt by players while the larp was going on. This was aided by the selection of music, which was classical and selected specifically to make players as disturbed as possible.

Before the larp started there was a short workshop where everyone worked their characters and shared some ideas about death that they had - this took about an hour. The larp lasted for 2 hours, and then there was a debriefing which took about an hour and a half where people shared how they decided some things about their characters, what happened to them during this larp, and where they ended up.


The debriefing - same place as above, but with most of the set dressing removed

One of the very powerful things about this larp was learning all the ways in which people faced death. Some were terrified by it. Some were more accepting. Some already faced it in their lives, and weren't shaken as much by the experience. And some people explored alternatives and various beliefs. It was as deep as players allowed it to be, which also varied a lot, but in the end it was very educational, mostly in the way how everyone would face it.

All in all it was a very rewarding experience to run, and I'll probably run it again at some point. Perhaps publicly this time, such as on some convention - of course, this will require a different dress code. But I bet it will be an interesting experience again.

For those interested, larp is fully documented and can be found here if you wish to do a run of your own.
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