Odysseus, a three-day space opera larp, was played in Finland three times in the past few weeks. It was an original work building on fan favourite space operas such as Battlestar: Galactiga, Star Trek, and Expanse, but ultimately it transcended its beginnings as a derivative work and became what science fiction is at its best, a timely mediation of our contemporary world. Odysseus was a remarkable success in Finnish, Nordic, and international larp.
In this blog post I attempt to outline what Odysseus is, how it was created, and what does it contribute to the larger larp discourse. I shall offer some notes on its production, character writing, and runtime management. However, my main concern is in attempting to say something about its meaning and interpretation. On the way, expect some digressions into my personal experience with the larp.
Like a Clockwork
Odysseus was created by Laura Kröger, Sanna Hautala, Antti Kumpulainen, and a production team of over 160 experts. Many of the people involved in the production were bringing in key expertise from their professional fields (e.g. lighting, music, make-up, communication) and have a long history in creating larps, but nothing on this level. Finnish larp has more typically been defined by virtuoso character writing and tight plotting, not this kind of ambitious production. However, after last year’s satirical sci-fi larp Proteus, expectations started to rise. Sign-ups for Odysseus opened last December, and the two runs (one local one in Finnish and one international one in English) sold out in minutes. A second international run was added. Still, the promises attached to the larp (turning a local school into a believable star ship with full scenography, light, sound, and functioning bridge, numerous communication systems) seemed unrealistic.
There have been a few Nordic larps that have attempted to produce militaristic space opera with similar ingredients: a relative large player base (around a hundred players), numerous overlapping functions (e.g. command, science, soldiers, engineering, civilians), and reliance on technological tools (such as piloting with a simulated system). The most well-known predecessors are The Monitor Celestra (2013) and Lotka-Volterra (2018). Both worked for some player, but were huge disappointments for others. (I had a great time at Celestra, but knew from the get-go that Lotka was not for me.)
Odysseus was a clockwork larp. Game designer, scholar, and my long-time collaborator Markus Montola defines the term he invented like this:
Clockwork larp is a larp based on characters working on diverse, sequential and interdependent tasks that feed into each other. In a full-fledged clockwork larp, these tasks constitute loops that are repeated in order to move the larp forward.
Markus played in the premiere of Odysseus, the local run. He had this to say on Facebook afterwards (he is expanding this into an article):
Before Odysseus, I was thinking the perfect clockwork larp was a white whale, a seductive ideal to pursue, but also a recipe for disaster. […]
Running a clockwork larp is a fool’s errand, because the very point of the clockwork is interdependence, and because the very point of larp is agency. Combine a sandbox of agency with interdependence requiring Swiss precision, and you are trying to handle a space combat while the engine room is rebelling, as happened in a Celestra run, and things get very very very complicated.
In Odysseus, the clockwork was running for 48 hours straight, in shifts, seamlessly. No tech glitches, no major communication breakdowns, no out-of-control rumor mills distorting fictional reality, no excessively stupid waiting times for something just about to happen not happening. Simply, you got to be a part of a living machine where dozens of players worked hard together to make their wheels turn. More than half of the players awake at any time being a part of the incredible machine.
I am in full agreement with Markus. Odysseus really did run like a clockwork. Everything was planned and timed. This timetable was partly visible to the players (punctuated by the regular jumps the ship made, and by the work shifts), but much of it was also hidden. There were timed event that only a single player would know, as well as timed environment events. In some ways, Odysseus was similar to the complicated network of events and clear pre-written characters in A Nice Evening with the Family, but here the players did not know where the larp was headed. The larp was on rails and the players knew this (they were instructed to follow the breadcrumbs of the game), but much of the rails were hidden.
Odysseus is the best produced larp I have participated in the roughly 25 years I have larped. First, everything looked great. It was hard to believe one was in a school, so fully the place had been scenographed. With light, sound, and propping the school had been completely transformed. I have been in larps that were more beautiful – but those started with an actual castle or an abandoned nuclear reactor – this was the most boring space imaginable to start with.
Second, the space was used smartly. The production design was very well done, as everything was functional, and playable. One of the walls of the bridge was glass, which meant that any player could walk by and easily see what was going on. Visibility was a big issue in the design: there were eight security cameras distributed around the site and the security office had the live feed. More importantly, those feeds were visible from the brig. While this may not be realistic, it meant that even when confined to the brig, one was able to follow what was going on.
Third, everything worked. Usually, tech just does not fully work in larps. Odysseus had more tech than any larp I have attended. The bridge was built around the open source Empty Epsilon system, with a dozen connected screen and pre-created scenarios. There were three fighters connected to this. In addition there was an in-game communication system – containing messaging systems, medical and military databases – which one could hack. There were purpose built artefacts and systems, such as multiple different kinds of medical scanners, airlocks, maintenance systems, and a beautiful jump engine. There were missions on numerous planets (played outside), which were streamed to the mess hall live.
Fourth, the runtime coordination production and gamemastering worked wonderfully. There was an outstanding, on-call make-up team, the larp was fully catered (the food was vegan, good, and there was enough of it), there were physical puzzles and other props, all the uniforms for the characters were created and produced in a way that fit each player’s body, there were dozens of NPCs portrayed in person, via a video connection, and via chat, and the whole larp was documented by half a dozen photographers who vowed to take pictures of each and every player.
The production run like a dream. It was not completely flawless, as on one of the night missions a few players were lost in the woods for an hour or so, but even that was handled well. Considering the magnitude of the piece – and comparing to other larps of this kind – the production was near perfect.
Of course, Odysseus did not work for every player. Playstyle calibration does not always work, and the Finnish tradition is not as loose as, say, the Dziobak larps such as College of Wizardry and Fairweather Manor. Character relations are created ahead of time, and if there is not chemistry with a fellow player, that can be a problem. Also, the larp was not transparent, meaning that players might face plots they were not a good fit for. There were tools for calibration and fully staffed support room. While the larp worked for a surprisingly large number of the players, some people were disappointed, and their experience is valid as well. Nor did Odysseus succeed at everything. Space opera is to a degree competence porn, where everyone is good at their job. The larp would really have benefitted from a few more hours of workshopping that focused on running the bridge, engineering, and flying the fighters, performing military discipline (such as the salute), and working as part of a marine away team. The skills to do this can be found in the wider (Nordic) larp community, but they were not used here.
The obvious contribution of Odysseus to the Nordic larp discourse is proving that a clockwork larp is possible. It is an example of the fully functional clockwork larp, in an amazing set design, with a fully functional technology, and detailed character writing not relying on transparency and player-created connection. This is the structure and the framework – and it is easy to appreciate and offers a blueprint to emulate in the future.
However, we need to also discuss the meaning of Odysseus. As the larp was particularly controlled through both complicated, fully fleshed characters and a plot on rails, with a full new setting with themes created for it, Odysseus is easier to approach as a coherent work to be interpreted. And this is where things really get interesting.
What Does Odysseus Mean?
Odysseus was a space opera drawing heavily from Battlestar Galactica. In the backstory, thirty generation star ships left the Earth some 700 years ago. After travelling for 158 years, 26 of those ships finally settled a planet, Ellarion, and its two moons. A hundred years ago, machines attacked the human Empire. This started a war that lasted for eighty years. Over the years, humans have learned how to build jump ships that travel huge distances in a single bound – and have discovered a planet with a very distinct human settlement. The twenty-year peace comes to and end seven days before the start of the larp when the machines suddenly reappear and wipe out most of humanity. The larp was largely structured around fleeing the machine fleet, in a very similar fashion as presented in the Galactica episode 33 (which also served as a key influence in The Monitor Celestra).
It is easy to approach Odysseus as a Battlestar Galactica larp, but that would be a disservice. The religious overtones, so important in Galactica, were dialled back, as were machine hallucinations. Instead, the larp also drew from other science fiction sources, with optimistic Star Trek as a key touchstone. Indeed, this friction between the militaristic and dark Galactica and the optimistic Star Trek was a source of tension at the core of the larp. While the backstory of the larp was similar to Galactica, it was an original creation.
My own larp was more in the Star Trek vein. I played Tristan Fukui, a dutiful officer married to another officer. The character was beautifully written by Jaana Takalo. In my mind Tristan was a Jean-Luc Picard type (from Star Trek: The Next Generation), always trying to see the best in others, encouraging respect (and self-respect), duty, honour, integrity, and love. Tristan was the kind of person who felt that in difficult times it is even more important to hold steady and stay true to one’s convictions and values. Of course, he turned out to be a machine-constructed human (“a toaster”), sacrificed himself by walking out an airlock (think Spock’s sacrifice at the end of Star Trek 2: The Wrath of Khan) in order to save the fleet, returned in a new body with a full knowledge of his machine background, but still fully devoted to the fleet, humanity – and his husband. Tristen returned with intel about the machine fleet.
My larp, on a character level, was about optimism, leaving the past behind, overcoming prejudice, and survival. Tristan’s husband was a war veteran who had lost much to the machines, but who still learned to see past that. (The prejudices Odysseus explored were mostly directed at fictional stuff, so the gay aspect wasn’t all that relevant. Indeed, the characters were written in a gender-neutral fashion, and the marriage ended up being more yaoi than gay.) The love between Tristan and his husband Malak Fukui was the emotional core of the larp for me, but friends, family, and collagues were extremely important as well. For some, Odysseus was a space ship simulator or a puzzle to be solved, for some it was a simulation of being a marine, for some it about politics. For me it was mostly about the emotional journeys these other tasks allowed for.
The main plot of the larp was fleeing from the machines, while looking for, decrypting, and following beacons left by the generation ships back towards Earth. While this was taking place, the politicians were rebuilding civic society, ending martial law, and drafting a new constitutional amendment that not only erased the difference between the rich first class citizens and the poor second class citizens, but granted human rights to the odd humans from the nearby planet (who were also almost wiped out) – and even gave human rights to the man-made androids and the machine-constructed humans. All but one of the five machines on the ship were siding with humans, or at least trying to build a bridge between the machines and the humans. Furthermore, the scientists were working on a way to negotiate with the machine hive mind, which had turned out to strongly related to humans.
Odysseus looked like it was on its way from a Battlestar Galactica beginning to a utopian larp democracy and Star Trek.
This is not how the larp played out. The ending was brutal.
The lengthy, heartfelt, and public negotiation with the machine hive mind ship, the Nest, failed spectacularly, and the machines launched a full assault. Humans moved to plan B, and launched the Starcaller, a small, cloaked vessel with a huge explosive payload. Against the odds, the suicide mission was a success. The machine hive mind died, and all the machines, including the machine-constructed humans and the android built with machine technology died. Odysseus ended with a total eradication of the machines, the “cousins of humans” and holders of human rights. The five machine humans on Odysseus fell and died; some of the surviving crew cheered and celebrated.
This, to me, is not a religious Battlestar Galactiga ending, nor a hopeful Star Trek ending. Indeed, this is not so much a science fiction ending, but a fantasy ending. This is victory through genocide, as seen in The Lord of the Rings and Game of Thrones. However, whereas fantasy is often inherently racist in its portrayal of less-than-human races one can kill without remorse (such as orcs, zombies), in Odysseus the autonomous machines-constructed humans, the android, and the hive mind of the machines were all clearly and consciously portrayed as complex, feeling, thinking, dreaming life forms that were seen as worthy.
As a machine-constructed human, my character, Tristan Fukui, died at the end of the larp. As a player I went down twitching, trying to call my husband’s name, and then ceased to move. People gathered around me, held me, carried me to the med bay, tried to resuscitate me, and finally abandoned me on a bed. I stayed still and tried not to breath.
Then the larp ended. While people cheered around me and congratulated each other on the survival and the larp that had just ended, I burst into tears. For once, I had wanted to have the larp democracy win out at the end. I wanted to have a hopeful end, where we break the cycle of violence and become our better selves. I wanted to have a Star Trek ending. Instead, we had the ending where the enemy was completely and utterly wiped out, the minority amongst the humans on Odysseus were sacrificed. The machine-base life forms were extinct. I was inconsolable. This was the worst possible ending for me.
Annihilation
The larp played with player expectations. It promises you one thing (Galactica), then seems to go for another thing (Star Trek), and then gives you neither. This was one odyssey that did not end; Odysseus never makes it back from Troy to Penelope. Instead, the larp offered a thoroughly contemporary mediation on the banality of evil – transcending its origins as a derivative fan work. Odysseus was not about Galactica or Star Trek. It was not a commentary on a popular series nor an amusement park simulacra, but a devastating analysis of our world. It was perceptive in its world-building and ruthless in its interpretation of the contemporary world. Humanity does not come out as heroes in this analysis.
The people on the spaceship Odysseus are very aware of the laws and legislation, of morals and ethics. They feel for the minorities, the “other” and the working class, discuss their rights, and make heartfelt speeches about diversity. They debated and hugged, and truly care for the not-fully-humans. And yet. They never forget that they (for me: we) are not quite fully human after all, and when faced with difficult decisions, they abandon these people with little hesitation.
To me this feel very much like 2019. This is Finland where refugees are sent knowingly back to their countries of origin to die. This is Fortress Europe moving to criminalize helping people in a maritime emergency in the Mediterranean Sea because the left from the wrong port. This is Israel apartheid. This is Trump’s American concentration camps. This is suicide capitalism in the era of climate change. We know better, but we still do the wrong thing because it is convenient.
In Odysseus we achieved victory through carefully considered genocide. It portrayed the banality of evil of knowing the right thing to do, yet doing the monstrous anyway.
Furthermore, this was not the ending of just the first international run that I attended, but all three runs ended with total annihilation of the machines (the two other runs did not even attempt diplomacy). This was the preferred ending.
Now, obviously my reading is strongly coloured by the fact that I played a character who turned out to be a machine. The situation the people on Odyssey were facing was hardly as clear cut as I am presenting here. The machines had almost wipe out all humanity just before the beginning of the larp, genocide was already on the table. The central theme of the larp was survival – and what we are prepared to do to survive. One can also ask if there were other alternatives to wiping out the machines, because the larp certainly did not present any optimal solutions. I know that there were two other ending the larp designers and runtime gamemasters had prepared for, but here I am not analysing the work as intended by the designers or how it ideally could have functioned. My reading and interpretation is based on the run I attended, as it was played, as experienced from my point of view. In the larp I attended, the price of survival of some last remnants of humanity was total destruction of the other.
This theme was woven deep in the fabric of the larp. In the backstory, parts of humanity has fled Earth. During the larp we learned that before doing so, the thirty generation ships had performed genocide on Earth. Later they fell out with each other as well, and one of them tried to destroy the others with a computer virus. It was these people who encountered a sleeping artificial intelligence – and it was from these people “the machines” (actually a combination of the AI and the memory scans of the humans from the generation ship) learned that humans are dangerous and destructive not just to others, but to themselves. As this history was uncovered, one of the leading scientists on Odysseus, Evin Reid, put this history together and explained it repeatedly. She argued that human history was a cycle of division and genocide. She was a not a particularly empathic or ethical character, but she was still arguing for a diplomatic solutions – just to try something new for a change. When the ship’s XO Tan Ellis learned that the generation ships that we all were descended from had poisoned Earth, he reportedly asked: “Are we the bad guys?”
At the end of the larp, the crew of the Odysseus tried diplomacy. After re-introducing some silenced consciousnesses back into the machine hive mind (who were diegetically called, if there was any doubt of the metaphor, “dissenting voices”), there was an extremely nerve wrecking negotiation between the machines and the Odysseus. (In a larp where everything was functional and fully scenographed, this negotiation took place over text chat. That watching a text chat can be so exciting is a testament to how far scaffolding can take you.) In the negotiation there was lofty talk of the machines and humans as cousins, but even if the emotional drive towards mutual respect of present on part of the Odysseus, that part felt fake. Indeed, some on the ship objected or laughed at this attempt at peace. At the height of the excitement, the Prime Minister Jin Komatsu burst out in anger: “I will not have this ultimate attempt at diplomacy and peace ridiculed!” I was moved, almost to tears, at that moment. Yet just hours before he had been talking about true unity among the humans as our salvation. While the notion of unity in front of a common enemy is a typical rhetoric strategy, calls for unity erase difference and minorities. Indeed, the Prime Minister’s words echo the vaguely fascist epithet “Pienen maan suurin voima on yksimielisyys” (Eng. The biggest strength of a small nation is in single-minded agreement.) written on one of the memorials of C. G. E. Mannerheim. Mannerheim was a celebrated, if controversial, Finnish nobleman, war hero, and politician. He is also responsible for the butchery of a remarkable amount of Finns during the civil war of 1918.
It is this tension between what must be done to survive, and how those acts poison anything that comes after, that made Odysseus interesting – and haunting.
Suicide Choices
Finally, there are the suicides.
The ship Odysseus was barely hanging together, fleeing from the machines. The people running the ship were doing all in their power to keep the vessel flying and the crew and passengers going. However, exhaustion set in as everything, both things and people, were driven to a breaking point. (This was visceral in the larp, where there was so much to do almost all the time – and sleeping was something that happened on a tight schedule, if it happened at all.) It was clear that Odysseus was unable to go on for long. As the situation became grim, suicide became a valid choice among many.
My character started this. Tristan Fukui walked out of the airlock when he realized that as a machine-constructed human he would otherwise end up betraying his fleet, his friends, and his husband (this was pre-scripted). This was self-sacrifice in order to save others. It was also egotistical, since Tristan believed that no one could be able to help him.
The second suicide happened a little before the negotiations with the machines were about to starts. Science officer Hali Okuma walked on the bridge with a bomb. He hated the machines with every fibre of his being and wanted to stop any attempt at negotiating. He would rather blow up himself and kill everyone on the ship, than see machines treated as something that can be talked to. He was shot dead as I think he knew he would be.
Finally, there is the suicide run of the machine nest ship with the cloaked vessel Starcaller. A small crew sacrificed their lives in order to eradicate machines completely and utterly.
In the end the machines were right; humans are utter destruction. They go after anything that is different. They attack their own. They even hurt themselves if it hurts others more. And, the worst thing is that “the humans” here are not some hypothetical or abstract group, but the very people who manned Odysseus. We chose victory through genocide. The refusal of Odysseus to give clear answers to the ethical questions at play ensured, for me, that the work stays with me. We have to live with the choices we made.
This is, obviously, only my personal reading of the larp. Larp is notoriously hard to boil down to a single point-of-view since it co-creative, distributed, and ephemeral. Other players, not to mention larp creators, surely have vastly different interpretations.
For me Odysseus is a remarkable achievement. The production and design of the larp were nearly flawless – and fully in service of a creative vision that was an uncompromising and unflinching judgement of humanity.
We are the monsters.
Thanks to Otso Hannula, Mike Pohjola, Markus Montola, and Linn Wilhelmsson for their comments on an earlier draft.
Edit: Corrected a few details of the backstory, the amount of people in the production crew, and the first name of one of the characters.
Edit 2: Added photograps by Mira Strengell and drawing by Laurie Innes. Added the links below.
More about Odysseus here:
Yle covers Odysseus (in Finnish).
Ilta-Sanomat covers Odysseus (in Finnish).
Jukka Särkijärvi writes about the second international run.
Chris Bergstresser’s account of the first international run.
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