This paper offers an introduction to larp, its transcultural history, and its disruptive and creative possibilities, as well as key aspects, such as immersion. Live-action role-play (larp) has been named a “new performative art,” an immersive experience, and an educational tool, but it is much more: A playground of intermingling social and cultural realities, a door to new worlds. In the last section, I reaffirm my previous claim about subjective spatial point of view as the primary mode of perception / representation in larp, which constitutes a major difference between larp and the (audio)visual media which universally prefer intersubjective representation. Thon, Ryan, Fludernik), role-playing studies (Bowman, Harviainen, Montola, Stenros, Lukka, Henriksen), semiotics of drama (Elam, McIntyre) and semiotics of embodied experience (O'Neill). It also reaches for literature on imaginative and embodied experiencing of storyworlds, coming from the angles of narratology (e.g. The paper I am presenting here focuses on the perception of larp storyworlds from the double perspective of players and their characters, shaped in the process of semiotic re-signification (previously discussed by Harviainen, Montola, Stenros and Waern). A thorough investigation of markers of subjectivity in larp will come in the next article (currently in development). This I began with 'Live Action Role Play: Transmediality, Narrativity and Markers of Subjectivity' (forthcoming), which focuses on the creation and representation of the larp's storyworlds by gamemasters and players, and only briefly sketches the application of Thon's framework. However, before I could commence a detailed analysis of subjectivity in larp, I found it necessary to discuss the non-subjective modes first, as a necessary point of reference. Thon's study of subjectivity in computer games, films and graphic novels inspired me to replicate it on the medium of live-action role-playing games. Thon's framework for analysing representations of subjectivity includes three kinds of representation (subjective, intersubjective and objective), four modes of subjective representation (including spatial point-of-view), and three types of markers of subjectivity.

The initial idea came from Jan-Noël Thon's 'Subjectivity Across Media: On Transmedial Strategies of Subjective Representation in Contemporary Feature Films, Graphic Novels, and Computer Games' (2014). The aim of this study is to lay groundwork for an analysis of markers of subjectivity in larp.

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