Here's my short, quite subjective review of the MittelPunkt 2010 book, Dombrowski, Karsten (ed.): LARP: Einblicke. (Zauberfeder, 2010; you can buy it here for about 10e + mail). Whereas the 2009 book was just a light first step, this one is a way more serious work. I had the pleasure of pre-reviewing the submissions for the methodology section, which contains five texts.

Things start off with my own article, which is about larp as an art form, a companion piece to my Kaprow's Scions (2008). It was strongly inspired by Vanek's excellent essay on the subject, and sort of a contractual work meant to provide material for that discussion in the local language. (I of course won't review it myself.) Karsten did a very good job translating my text into German.

Myriel Balzer writes of larp immersion, combining the Habermas-based concepts from her own book with some Nordic ideas (mine, Holter, Harding, Lappi, Stenros), and adds some significant new material to the discussion on immersion. For larp character theorists capable of reading German, this article alone is worth the book's price.

In the first of the two texts that are in English, Jupe Rantalainen talks about food as a narrative element, from various perspectives. His approach is very example-based, and not really academic which suits the subject just fine. Again, a fine piece that would have been just as at home in a Knutepunkt book, but may find a nice new audience here. And it's a nice read, too.

In the other one, "Four Reasons Why Edu-Larp Works", Malik Hyltoft brings in his expertise on larp pedagogy and produces one of the future cornerstones on edu-larping. This is the paper at least I have been waiting for on edu-larps: An academic, yet practical-experience text, which to combine with material on training simulations, studies by scholars like Henriksen, and Hyltoft's own earlier works. It also sort of continues from where Harder (2007, in Lifelike) left off, creating a definite sense of theory development on this most popular subject of current-day larp studies.

Ulrich Janus also writes of educational larps, with a less theory-grounded manner, but brings into the mix a German educator's slant, which does the book good. Because of his text, the contents flow smoothly to the next section, Examples, where four articles present case examples on larps. All four of those are about educational games, and while nice by themselves, the presence of the two "explanatory" edu-larp articles before them really allows them to shine.

They are all good, excellently representing the kind of larp-documentation asked for by larp scholars such as Montola and Stenros in the last couple of years. Furthermore, they are sufficiently grounded in theory, so as to be useful as reliable references by other researchers, something that I find highly important. (So if you're looking for case examples on things like larps with handicapped youths, here is your reference.)

As a whole, this is a very solid contribution to the study of larps, and nevertheless offers quite a lot of practical material, too. Don't let the light appearance or the low price fool you, this is a serious book. It's in my opinion the German equivalent of the Sandvik & Waade book published by Aarhus University, in Danish, in 2006 - a native-language treatise on larp as both an aesthetic and educational form. The key difference is that this book's authors are a lot more knowledgeable of foreign works on their subjects than most of the Danes were. This has two advantages: One, the articles are far easier for outsiders to both comprehend and to appreciate, as they show a suffcient level of knowledge of the field. And two, they make it quite obvious to German readers that interesting stuff on the subjects is also being done abroad, and that cannot be skipped any longer as a resource.

The final product looks a bit sloppy here and there, mostly on the references sections of the articles. The whole thing had to be put together in a haste, apparently due to problems with MittelPunkt itself. Knowing that, I am amazed by how good the book turned out to be, and if there are some typos left, that's no big deal. The editor has done a wonderful job, given the situation.

I may of course be biased, but if you're a larp scholar, or a serious organizer, and can read at least some German, this is a great book. (Especially if your specialty is in educational games.) And for German larp theorists and larp-based educators, it should be a mandatory purchase.