Safety

1. 1. People are more important than the larp. Safety is our priority. Respect all the game security rules.
   2. Each person’s body is their own. They alone may set their boundaries and say what makes them comfortable. Please be clear establishing your limits, both physical and emotional. Don’t be afraid to modify your limits if you feel to during the game. Asking about someone’s boundaries is expected, pushing them is not acceptable.
   3. Consent must be freely given, vocalized and considered inviolable. Respect everybody’s boundaries and don’t tease, gossip about, ostracize or retaliate against someone who has set a consent boundary. In fact, we would like you to thank your fellow co-players for setting boundaries, as practicing active consent negotiations allows everyone to feel more comfortable.
   4. Off-game harassment, abuse, or assault of any participant – or using the alibi of character to harass, abuse, or assault a player – is not tolerated. This includes any reference to the race, gender identity or presentation, sexuality, body size, conventional beauty, age, and experience.
   5. Each participant is responsible for their own actions; for reading, understanding and abiding by the Code of Conduct; and for the consequences of their actions to others.
   6. Everybody might harm another member, whether intended to do so or not, and must accept the responsibility of their own behavior. If you are informed about this kind of situation, you are expected to reflect this in your own behavior and seek to change it.
   7. Don’t deflect, blame, or become defensive if you are informed that you have harmed someone.
   8. No one should ostracize or retaliate against any member for setting a consent boundary or for making a report of harassment or abuse.
   9. If you witness someone behaving in a manner that is against our Code of Conduct, we encourage you to ask them to stop. Please inform the Safety Team of the incident. You may report anonymously if you feel more comfortable doing so and we will respect your privacy.
   10. We won’t serve alcohol in game, but we will do so at the afterparty. We ask you to avoid drinking your own alcohol during the game. You will have time to enjoy alcoholic drinks during the afterparty.
   11. Inform Not Only Larp team about any health problem or allergies we should take into consideration.

For every player in any kind of context:

• Off-game + what you need.

Examples: «Off-game I want to change the subject of this conversation». «Off-game I want to calibrate with you».

In a confrontation:

• Off-game: raise intensity: This is a suggestion.
• Off-game: lower intensity, tap out: This is an order.
• Off-game: stop. This is an order.

Also organizers can say this:

• Off-game make way for this van.
• Off-game EMERGENCY, there is a fire.

No real sex, no touching of genitals, no touching of people who are naked.

Racism or comments about the body of the players are prohibited.

No photography of naked people.

When recreating a public sex scene, one you want other players to witness, it needs to look like sex; this will be covered in the workshop.

The baseline for acting out violence without requiring pre-negotiating is grabbing arms and light wrestling. However, please escalate slowly and actively use safewords as needed.

It is also ok to say “Off-game: please don’t touch me”.

There will be a workshop where we will explain how to depict sex and violence. If you are interested in potentially calibrating with a co-player about sexually violent scenes, you should wear a red ribbon (that we will provide).

You need to negotiate off-game before the scene (from now until the scene happens) with a player that wears the ribbon in person or in Discord.

We suggest you calibrate about what kind of scene you want to live and what are your boundaries. There are many different players from different cultures that might want to negotiate more.

Also: if you would like to experience play as a victim of violence/sexual violence, please do it in a collaborative way, e.g. if you have an idea of a scene, approach the “perpetrator” player and share your ideas and with that also the responsibility of coming up with scenes/being creative. A negotiation could be «play the scene until the kidnap starts, bring me to a dark alley and that is where we end».

When the scene has started, any of the players can and should use the safe words to ask for more intensity or to slow down the scene.

Scenes about sexual violence and nudity will be played in special zones of the location.

This is an out of game space that works as a safety net for the players. If your play is having any negative impact on you, you can come here and eat, rebalance, relax, or get a hug.

Gamemasters or other players can ask if a player is ok with this sign:

You can reply with:

“Yes, I am OK”.

“Not sure”.

This hand signal, which means the player doesn’t quite know how they feel, or that it’s neither good or bad. Please ask the player if they want to stop the scene.

“No, I am not”.

Please bring the player to the safe space. If the player doesn’t answer, stop the scene.

NotOnlyLarp has a First Aid Team to deal with any health problem that can happen during the event. Please inform us about any health problem or allergies we should take into consideration and the way to deal with it. We also want to know any player that can volunteer help to our First Aid Team.

We have a first aid kit but this does not include medication, everyone has to bring their own.

NotOnlyLarp has a Safety Team to deal with any issue that can be considered a violation of the Code of Conduct or threaten attendee safety.
Feel free to raise any complaint to our Safety Team. Each complaint received will be evaluated on a case-by-case basis.

SAFETY TEAM MEMBERS

• Anita Berthold
• Lu Larpova
• Kai Simon Fredriksen
• Esturillo
• Espe Montero

NotOnlyLarp’s definition of harassment may not necessarily align with legal definitions of harassment. Therefore, attendees should regard the following guidelines as expectations of conduct in addition to legally actionable actions. In other words, the legal expectations of tangible proof are not necessary for the Safety Team to take action upon a complaint.

For our purposes, harassment includes:

• Verbal comments or displayed images that denigrate individuals based upon gender, gender identity/expression, sexual orientation, disability, physical appearance, body size, race, age, religion, political beliefs, philosophies, geographic origin, or socioeconomic status;
• Body policing, including gender policing in all bathrooms;
• Non-consensual physical or emotional interactions;
• Non-consensual sexual acts.
• Unwelcome sexual attention, whether verbal or physical.

This harassment policy applies to both in-person and online activities. Participants asked to stop any harassing behavior are expected to comply immediately. Not Only Larp volunteers and committee members are also subject to the anti-harassment policy.

REPORTING HARASSMENT

We will provide members of the Safety Team with detailed instructions and training procedures in case of a violation of code emergency. Attendees can report harassment at any time:

Before the event: If you are privy to information about harassment towards yourself or someone else by someone in the community at large, please email us at notonlylarp@gmail.com. Please include as many details as you consider necessary. These messages will remain strictly confidential, known only to the safety team. Reports received about registered attendees before the event are subject to the same consequences as those received during the game.

Please note that if a harassment issue occurs, at least one of us will need to speak firsthand to the person involved. We will keep any identifying information restricted to the safety team. It’s our policy because we know how misinformation can be spread accidentally between multiple people. We trust everyone here to be honest, but we will require firsthand information before we can take action as a general policy. Anyone in the safety team who personally knows the people involved in the incident won’t be able to make decisions about it.

During the event:

If a violation of the Code of Conduct becomes known, please a member of the Safety Team as soon as necessary. You can reach them personally or through any other member of NotOnlyLarp’s team. We will also provide contact information for on-staff Safety members at the start of the event in case of emergency.

After the event: You may choose to wait until after the event to report a violation, in which case, please email consciencelarp.safety@gmail.com

Possible disciplinary steps for violations

Disciplinary Steps are organized into two levels based upon the severity of the violation.

Level 1: Monitoring the individual in question, pulling the individual aside to discuss the violation, and/or issuing verbal warnings.

Level 2: Removing the individual from the game and, potentially, from future NotOnlyLarp events.

This game is designed to offer you the chance to experience life as your character, albeit during a short period of time and in a controlled environment. It will be a successful experience if you flow with what happens to your character and lift the play of your coplayers. There are no objectives that will cause you to win or lose. The only thing we ask of you is to be in your character’s shoes, to connect with what they feel, to think the way they would think, and behave in the way they would behave, all the while allowing your character to make their own decisions. That’s what we call «flow» or «letting go».

You are your own game master, of course within the limitations of the game- and safety rules. We trust our players to be involved in the whole process, from the character creation phase to the end of the event. That’s why, once the game starts, you don’t need to ask us permission to do something or to decide if your character would think or do something.

Your character sheet is yours. We are happy with players changing their character sheets following some rules: calibrate changes with your coplayers, don’t change the sign of the relationship that you want to change(positive or negative), don’t change events from the past and if you are not going to play or you want to change a plot, please let us know before doing so.

What you see is what there is to see. All you see will be part of the game and you will have to deal with the consequences. Respect other people’s experiences and safety: avoid any behavior or attitude that can hurt the immersion or the experience of other players but also keep in mind that safety comes first.

There might be coplayers that want to play with secrets and know them in-game, as there are different cultures. Please ask the players about this when you calibrate with them.

The off game use of any kind of electronic devices (tablets, phones, computers, etc) during the game should be discussed with the organizers.

«Off-game» has also some meanings that are not related to safety:

• When organizers need you to do something: «Off-game: please move, we need to move a van».
• «Off-game: this is the best speech you’ve ever listened to». When you, as a player, don’t have some skills that your character has.