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Larps are a form of analog game in which participants co-create and collectively inhabit diegeses (Montola 2012, cf. Gennette 1980). Larp may also be thought of as a medium, and codic larps are a type of larp platform that use diegetic code (Steele 2016) to represent parts of the story, allowing conflicts about what happens next to be resolved through contests in which diegetic material has been congealed into code and rendered deployable. Codic larps offer a unique opportunity to teach and study code, and the analog nature of codic larp allows advanced engagements like platform modding to happen with fewer layers of technology to navigate than digital code platforms, ostensibly lowering the barrier of entry to coding, while allowing diegetic code to serve as a "boundary object" (Star and Griesemer 1989, Star 2010) through which scholars and professionals from many backgrounds may develop common language to engage in cross-codic critique.Recently, embodied gaming activities including codic larps have come under scrutiny by those who question the power relations inherent in physically embodying one’s own avatar, as well as in rituals surrounding the embodied deployment of diegetic code. In the wake of developing and touring their digital Shakespeare game, Play the Knave, Gina Bloom, Nicholas Toothman, and Evan Buswell have explored the argument that having players physically embody their characters is troubled by the degree to which out-of-game asymmetrical power relations like racisms and sexisms attach themselves to bodies (Bloom et al. 2021), an issue that is part of a phenomenon that I call creep, which is when unwanted out-of-game assemptical power relations creep into the fantasy world you are trying to make with your game. 

Additionally, sociologist Steven Dashiell has criticized meta-coding rituals that often surround algorythmic analog gameplay for reinforcing the power relations that underpine structural forms of sexism and other inequalities (Dashiell 2017, 2018), fueling arguments within larp communities that diegetic code deployment should be removed from games altogether (cf. Fatland et al. 1999).

Pushing back against these anti-embodyment and anti-codic sentiments is the work of other gamemaker-scholars who have engaged larp's embodiment and rituals of code deployment to ostensibly develop interventions into pervasive forms of systemic inequality. Jonaya Kemper's work on emancipatory bleed (Kemper 2017, 2020), Diana J. Leonard's efforts to develop anti-racist scaffolding for codic larp (cf. Leonard 2013, 2018), as well as the work I have done on anti-code (Steele 2016, 2018), and the efforts to develop larp consent mechanics by Johanna Koljonen (Koljonen 2020), Sarah Lynne Bowman (Bowman 2017), and Maury Brown (Brown 2017), demonstrate efforts to not only salvage different facets of the larp medium, but to "fork the code": using the larp medium's unique embodimemt and of code-based play to offer game mechanics and scaffolding as interventions into the creep of systemic racisms and sexisms.

References:

• Bloom, Gina, Nicholas Toothman, and Evan Buswell. (2021): "Playful Pedagogy and Social Justice: Digital Embodiment in the Shakespeare Classroom." Shakespeare Survey 74, special issue on Shakespeare and Education (forthcoming). Accessed April 9, 2021.

• Bowman, Sarah Lynn. (2017): "A Matter of Trust - Larp and Consent Culture." Nordiclarp.org, Feburary 3, 2017.

• Brown, Maury (2016): “Creating a Culture of Trust through Safety and Calibration Larp Mechanics,” Nordiclarp.org, September 9, 2016.

• Dashiell, Steven. (2018): "Rules as Written: Game Algorithms as Game Capital." Analog Game Studies 5(3). Accessed April 9, 2021. 

• Dashiell, Steven. (2017): “Rules Lawyering as Symbolic and Linguistic Capital,” Analog Game Studies 4(5). Accessed April 10, 2021. 

• Genette, Gerard. (1980): Narrative discourse: An essay in method. Ithaca, N.Y: Cornell University Press.

• Haraway, Donna J. (1991): “A Cyborg Manifesto: Science, technology, and Socialist-Feminism in the Late Twentieth Century,” in Simians, Cyborgs, and Women: The Reinvention of Nature (New York: Routledge), 149-181.

• Fatland et. al. (1999): Dogma 99: A programme for the Liberation of Larp. Also see: https://nordiclarp.org/wiki/Dogma_99

• Koljonen, Johanna. (2020). “Larp Safety Design Fundamentals.” RPG学研究 | Japanese Journal of Analog Role-Playing Game Studies 1: 3e-19e.

• Kemper, Jonaya. (2017): "The Battle of Primrose Park: Playing for Emancipatory Bleed in Fortune & Felicity Documentation." NordicLarp.org June 21, 2017. Accessed April 9, 2021. 

• Kemper, Jonaya. (2020): Wyrding the Self. In Eleanor Saitta, Johanna Koljonen, Jukka Särkijärvi, Anne Serup Grove, Pauliina Männistö, & Mia Makkonen (eds.). What Do We Do When We Play? Helsinki; Solmukohta 2020. Accessed April 9, 2021. 

• Leonard, Diana. (2013): “The Dynamic Life Cycle of Live Action Role-playing Communities,” in Wyrd Con Companion Book 2013, edited by Sarah Lynne Bowman and Aaron Vanek (Los Angeles, CA: WyrdCon, 2013).

• Leonard, Diana. (2018): “Conflict and Change: Testing a Life-Cycle-Derived Model of Larp Group Dynamics,” International Journal of Role-playing 6:15-22.

• Montola, Markus. (2003): "Role-Playing as Interactive Construction of Subjective Diegeses." In Gade, Morten, Thorup, Line & Sander, Mikkel (eds.) (2003): As Larp Grows Up. Theory and Methods in Larp 82-89. Copenhagen, Projektgruppen KP03. The book for Knudepunkt 2003.

• Star, Susan Leigh, and James R. Griesemer. (1986): "Institutional Ecology, 'Translations' and Boundary Objects: Amateurs and Professionals in Berkeley's Museum of Vertebrate Zoology, 1907-39." Social Studies of Science 19, no. 3: 387-420. Accessed April 9, 2021. http://www.jstor.org/stable/285080.

• Star, Susan Leigh. (2010): “This Is Not a Boundary Object: Reflections on the Origin of a Concept.” Science, Technology, & Human Values 35, no. 5: 601–17. https://doi.org/10.1177/0162243910377624.

• Steele, Samara Hayley. (2018): "Code Critique: Port of Secrets/Snippet of Anti-Code from the Irvine-Based GM-Less Larp Community." Critical Code Studies Working Group 2018, January 29, 2018. 

• Steele, Samara Hayley. (2016): “The Reality Code: Interprepating Aggregate Larp Rules as Code that Runs on Humans." International Journal of Role-playing 7: 30-35.

• Steele, Samara Hayley. (2016): “Code as Diegetic Language in LARP.” Presented as part of the “Critical Code Studies and Creativity Panel” at the 30th Annual Conference of the Society for Literature, Science, and the Arts (SLSA), Atlanta, Ga. 3-6 November 2016.

Steele's talk begins at 12:50:

Background

At a recent ELO meeting about options for increasing the accessibility of Deena Larsen’s work "Chronic", Deena mentioned us that the next ELO Virtual salon would be dedicated to the topic of accessibility. Since I am writing an essay about the accessibility of electronic literature, Deena invited me to share my work-in-process at the salon.

Presentation

My essay rewrites and overwrites, with all the political and creative connotations those terms contain, Joseph Tabbi’s essay "Electronic Literature as World Literature, or, the Universality of Writing under Constraint" through the lens of disability. Using three small case studies, I explore the concept of digital accessibility through the concepts of defamiliarization and writing under constraint.

Electronic literature uses defamiliarization to provide a powerful force against mainstream rhetoric surrounding digital media, considering reader engagement and reflection in its success rather than attention counted in time and size of the audience. Using Eugenio Tisselli's The Gate as a case study, I argue that for a work to defamiliarize, its authors need to consider what is familiar to a variety of audiences.

In electronic literature, the practice of writing under constraint is widely accepted as a creative catalyst; through self-imposed textual restraints, we find new meanings and forms. I argue that constraints can become meaningful through  the lens of disability because you have to interrogate your medium by making it more accessible. I use Franci Greyling's Byderhand as an example.

Not every work can be made accessible for everyone, but one must still think through which groups of people are systematically excluded. Through the case study of Lyle Skains' No World 4 Tomorrow, I argue that considering accessibility is key in successfully addressing the intended audience.

Discussion

During the long and engaged discussion that followed, we considered various elements of accessibility, including the overlap and difference between literary constraints and accessibility restraints, the necessity of identifying intended audiences, how to experience works created by disabled authors. More practically, we discussed various approaches that could help us improve the Accessible Bits document, including types of tagging and spider graphs.

E-lit is amazingly interdisciplinary. Every one of us is a citizen of & a practitioner in multiple overlapping worlds of literature, technology, art, theory, history, and not to mention archiving. Join Bill Bly and the rest of the salon in yet another intellectual discourse to explore a life long work and passion with We Descend.  The one thing exploring We Descend requires of its dearReader is *study*: careful reading and re-reading, pondering, patience while the overall story takes shape in the mind, and perseverance, because no single pass through the writings will tell the whole story. Claro, this isn't everybody's idea of a fun thing to do, but We Descend is addressed to those for whom it is. Bill will tell the story from  scribbling with a fountain pen on notebook paper jammed in a clipboard to its lyrical presence now at  https://www.wedescend.net/