What’s a woman’s role? – Female characters in larps

In the Finnish larp scene, there are more women than men. Yet, when signing up for a game, female players often have cause to worry whether there will be interesting characters for them to play. Also, in many game settings (e.g. historical games) women have positions of low status. In this talk, I take a retrospective look at how female roles have been designed in the Finnish and the wider Nordic larp scene from mid-nineties till today. The main focus is on various methods that have been used to avoid women characters being stereotypical, boring or powerless.