Choosing a direction
The topic I have been given for the test lecture can easily occupy me for an other five years. If I try to make an exhaustive presentation of the relationship between live action role-play and culture, I will have to do a world-wide study of how participants use, shape and perform their many different types of games. So if I want to do something meaningful in the 45 minutes I have, I have to limit this. I have to restrict myself until it's a tiny little topic that will fit into 10 pages of text.

So here are my initial limitations: I define Live Action Role Playing as full immersion LARPs - what in Norway is known as a "laiv" (from live). I will focus on the LARP culture in Norway. I will interpret culture in an anthropological sense, and thus include tradition, myth, folklore as well as present day Norwegian culture.

Since there is no real question in the topic, I will not attempt at making a conclusion, but think of the lecture as a presentation of the RPgames and how they (in Norway) connect to culture. To the extent I go abroad in this discussion, it will be to demonstrate how the Norwegian laiv is flavoured by Norwegian culture, while it's part of a youth culture movement which has spread over the world over the last 30 years.

I will probably redo this many times in the weeks to come.