Open Your Eyes

Purpose
Establish groups within an larger group. Create (secret) relationships between players. Cooling down moment. In-game ritual.

Instruction
Instruct the player to stand or sit in a circle. Everyone should be able to see everyones eyes. Now everyone closes their eyes. You ask them questions that they should answer by opening their eyes – if the question is applicable to them. For example: Please open your eyes if you want to be the leader of the group. Or: All who want to have a love affair, open your eyes. People opening their eyes will know who their likeminded are. Let them take a good look around. The people who do not open their eyes of course are unaware who opened their eyes. Then everyone closes their eyes again and you ask the next question. Ten questions is doable, sometimes players want more.

Ending
After the last question is asked, everyone can open their eyes. Either: Let them have a break afterwards, so they can talk about who opened their eyes and when. Or: Use the input for a follow up in the workshop. For example: All who want to be leaders go into that corner and do a follow-up exercise.

Variations
1. Let players give input for the questions you are going to ask. What do they want to know or what groups do they want to create? Let them write this down on a paper (preferably in one word) and use these questions.
2. Use a ‘Jokercard’ for ‘cheating’. Give everyone a piece of paper. If the question asked is not applicable to them, but they really want to open their eyes, they can use this paper. Let them rip it two halves (so you can hear a Joker is played) and they can open their eyes. They can only use the Joker once.

Question and feedback: mail@hannemarckmann.nl.

Blind animals

Purpose
Fun, working with senses, working with character foundation.

Instruction
Instruct the players to lie on the floor and close their eyes. The start leading them through a short storytelling session where you go through the senses one after one, instructing them to focus on this particular sense for a while. When you are through, instruct the players to find a “character” in the setting of your choosing (a damp forest full of animals or a cave full of trolls are recommended) and tell them that they are allowed to move around and interact as they want.

You also instruct the players never to open their eyes and not to use language (other sounds are perfectly fine).

Ending
The exercise can last for a long time (20-40 minutes is easily doable) and you can end it whenever you feel that the players have had a fulfilling experience.

Variation
Before you start the exercise hand the players small notes with inspiration for their “characters”, for example “large”, “agressive”, “slow” or whatever you want.

If you want, you can choose to use the characters the players have created as the basis (or an element) of the characters they are going to play in their larp.

Relationship development

Purpose
common understanding of relationships and their development

Instruction
Ask the players to divide into pairs with someone they are going to (or allready are) playing closely together with. Tell them to make an image of their current relationship, for example portraying love, anger, fear, conflict or whatever. Then ask them to portray their future relationship in the same way, for example moving into sorrow, friendship or whatever.

The exercise makes it very visible for both players how their relationship is going to develop during the larp and makes it easier for them to play in the same direction. The physical character of the exercise also creates another kind of understanding than what would occur if the relationship development were to be discussed – and its faster.

Ending
The exercise can be repeated with different players as many times as you deem it necessary.

Advantage

Purpose
Fun, physical understanding, spatial understanding

Instruction
Tell the players to pair up. Then ask them to imagine that they are in a still image of a fight. One player should start by placing herself in an advantegous position, touching the other. The other player should try to “take in” the disadvantage for around five seconds and then move herself into a new position where she has the advantage – not by pushing or using force on the partner, but by moving herself.

Note that an advantegous position will very often be one of superior balance.

Ending
The exercise ends when you think that the participants has had enough.

pressure/no pressure

Purpose
Fun, physical understanding

Instruction
Tell the players to pair up to start the exercise. Then instruct one apply pressure to the other by pushing/pressing softly somewhere on the partners body, the partner then tries to yield to the pressure. You can use the methaphor of the one person trying to squash a mosquito (that little pressure is needed) and the other is trying to save it. The exercise should be dynamic and you should encourage the players to move around.

Ending
End the exercise when you feel the players has understood the basic point of yielding to pressure.

Variation
You can vary the exercise (and increase the dynamic) by letting both players try to push pressure on the other.

Trust

Purpose
Fun, physical understanding

Instruction
Tell the players to stand in smaller circles (of around 5 people) with one person in the middle. Then instruct the player in the middle to close her eyes and lean around in the circle. The people standing in the circle is then supposed to gently keep the central player from falling and keeping her comfortable by supporting her physically.

It is extremely important that the exercise doesn’t go wrong by someone actually falling to the ground or hurting themselves.

Ending
The exercise ends when everyone has had a go.

Variation
A nice development of the exercise is to ask the middle players to walk around and the circle players not to touch, but to keep the central player safe so she will not walk into something or someone.

Interview

Purpose
Creating character depth

Preparations
It is a very good idea to prepare a short questionnaire for the exercise, which the players can follow or draw inspiration from. It can be hard to start from nothing and a questionnaire sheet can provide a good alibi.

Instruction
Tell the players to interview each other in small groups (groups of 5 or 6 is typically good). The player who is to be interviewed should sit with her front towards the others and they can then ask questions to the character of that player. “how is your relationship with your mother”, or “do you feel included in our social group” is some examples of questions. The point is that the player gets a better understanding of her character, more that that the interviewers gain knowledge about the background of the character. Of this reason it is also typically more interesting to work with the feelings of the character that concrete information about where she lives, what she prefers to eat and so on.

Ending
The exercise ends when everyone has been interviewed.

It is important to instruct the players that they only have 5 minutes pr. Person and to keep time for them and tell them when to change.

Sound Well

Purpose
Fun, sound

Instruction
Ask the players to stand in a circle. Then start the exercise by instructing everyone to rhythmically take one step into the circle and back again. When everybody has gotten into the rhythm you say a sound, which everybody then repeats. Then the person to you left makes a new sound, which is repeated by everybody and so on.

Ending
The exercise can end when everybody has introduced a sound or just when it feels like the energy is dying.

Variation
The exercise can be done with the names of the players as an introduction exercise.

Human knot

Purpose
fun, physical contact

Instruction
Ask the players to stand in a cirkle (or several cirkles – around 15 players seems to be a good standard) and close their eyes. Tell them to strech their arm out and walk slowly into the middle of the cirkle grasping the hands of two different people when able.

It can be a bit hard for everyone to find two hands and you may need to help a bit with physically moving hands around.

When everybody is holding hands with two different people you tell the players to open their eyes and tie up the knot by moving around without letting go of the hands.

Ending
The exercise ends when the players have “tied up” the knot, meaning that they are standing in a circle or the figure 8 holding hands. If it takes to long you can just stop them when it feels right – remember clapping.

Monkeys

Purpose
Fun, acting out

Instruction
tell all the player to lie down on the floor and close their eyes. Lead them through a story about lying on a grassy field, feeling the weight of their bodies against the ground and experiencing the sun and breeze. Allow them to relax for a moment.

Then tell them how their bodies feel as they wake up and start to move around, feeling their arms, legs and tail! Keep the storytelling going so you are controlling the development of the story. For each new part of the story you should escalate the turn of events.

Tell them that they are monkeys and they are waking up in their flock. Allow them to meet the other monkeys and to start short monkey conversations.

Divide the group into to flocks of monkeys meeting and battling eachother. Showing off and shouting at the potential danger. You can give them something to fight about by throwing a peace of fruit into the crowd.

Ending
End the story by telling them about the tiger arriving, playing out the tiger yourself and see all your monkeys scared of into a corner, cowering from the danger.