Larp design from a perspective of procedural rhetoric

Let’s talk about larps as communication. Writers, players, and other participants of larps are interlocutors; playing can be seen as a communicative act; larps design is a speech we use. As classical rhetoric explores ways of speaking by speech, procedural rhetoric is a term to describe how we communicate through processes, experiences, and procedures. Thinking about larp mechanics and types of gameplay from this perspective is productive for creating new larps and for reflection of old ones. In this talk, I will analyze how procedural rhetoric worked in many different larps with a focus on war, love and magic mechanics.