Episode 8: Live Action Role Playing

• Wayfinder Experience 
• Pop & Play, Season 2, Episode 1: Role Playing Games with Matthew Berland and Antero Garcia
• Pop & Play, Season 2, Episode 5: Choose Your Own Adventure

Nathan Holbert:

Welcome to Pop and Play, the award-winning podcast. That's right. We have won an award other than the one my mom gave me. All about play in its many forms, the silly forms, the serious forms, and the powerful forms. I'm Nathan Holbert.

Haeny Yoon:

And I'm Haeny Yoon, and my mother did not give me an award.

Nathan Holbert:

Come on, Mama Yoon.

Haeny Yoon:

I know. We are two education researchers that figured it might be fun to do something other than committee meetings. So each week we chat with other scholars, artists, activists, parents, and children about the significance and value of play in their lives.

Nathan Holbert:

In this season, we've been exploring what it means to play roles, whether we're talking games, craft, theater, what is role-playing about, what compels us to try on new identities, that kind of thing.

Haeny Yoon:

Okay. So while I've been a bit reluctant to use the phrase role-playing, we purposely named it playing with roles, as I described this season. This week, there's no avoiding it. We're talking with Judson Packard, program director of the Wayfinder Experience, a company that brings live action role-playing, or LARP, to kids through camps and after school programs.

Nathan Holbert:

You finally had to say it.

Haeny Yoon:

Had to say it.

Nathan Holbert:

Role-playing.

Haeny Yoon:

Role-playing.

Nathan Holbert:

Yep, that's right. This week we're talking about role-playing. And as we were prepping for this, as we've been kind of loosely talking about LARPing and role-playing for a while now, this movie keeps coming to my mind. The movie Role Models. Have you seen Role Models?

Haeny Yoon:

Well, I saw it because you assigned it to us for homework, so it's a disingenuous question.

Nathan Holbert:

I love it. So the reason I thought about Role Models is because there is a character that is deep into LARPing and role-playing. So then it becomes kind of a central theme of this movie.

Haeny Yoon:

Yes. Let's rewind and set it up.

Nathan Holbert:

Okay.

Haeny Yoon:

So Danny and Wheeler, aka Anson, get into a little bit of trouble. They kind of mess up a car. It's because Paul Rudd's character is having a really bad day, and so they get sentenced to community service, 150 hours. And where did they get sentenced to?

Nathan Holbert:

To Jane Lynch. Jane Lynch runs a Sturdy Wings, I think.

Haeny Yoon:

Sturdy Wings. Yes.

Nathan Holbert:

Yeah. She runs basically like a big brother, little brother, big sister, little sister sort of program, and she's hilarious, and connects them with these two young boys who are struggling with just being young boys in the world.

Haeny Yoon:

So anyway, so Ronnie and Augie. And so, Augie, tell us about Augie.

Nathan Holbert:

So Augie is, I think he's really socially struggling, but he does have this community of people that are really into the things he's really into. They all really engage in this activity together, and that activity is LARPing. It's coming to this big park, it's putting on costumes and...

Haeny Yoon:

Medieval times.

Nathan Holbert:

Medieval times type garb. And they go, they fight, they play, they have teammates, and they have double crossings and all sorts of things. So anyway, that's why I wanted to watch this movie. We should note, this movie is definitely an R rated movie. It is not suitable for young children.

Haeny Yoon:

And it's a little bit old. So some of the jokes don't stand up the test of time.

Nathan Holbert:

Some are inappropriate in a variety of different ways, but the reason I wanted to talk about role models is because I thought this is a really nice example of the features of LARPing that make it worth thinking about and talking about, to my mind. It's obviously a goofy movie and everything's cranked up to 11 for comedic effect, but the key features are there. It's a group of people who want to role play together. They want kind of take on new characteristics, new identities. They want to put on costumes, they want to have fun sword fights with foam swords, which is a part of some LARPing. And so it kind of serves as this nice little example that we could look at, we could laugh at, but we could also get a sense of what is this world even about? So that's why I thought it would be fun for us to watch it.

Haeny Yoon:

Yeah, yeah. And I was thinking, too, that... There's this one part where Paul Rudd basically says to Augie, "This is so dumb, this is so stupid," and he refuses to participate and says, "You know this is not real." And Augie's like, "Of course I know it's not real." It's not like he's in this fantasy world to understand that. But the one thing that he said, which actually made me really sad was he said, "In this world, I don't have to be me." I don't think he actually meant that fully. I think he's a version of himself that isn't the me that everybody sees. And I think it was really nice at the end of the movie, we just gave away the whole movie, basically, the end of the movie where all the people in his life are watching this whole thing happen and they realize, "Wow, this is actually really serious and takes a lot of thought." And Augie's this hero and this person there that has this community of people around him, so he's a different version of himself that everybody else gets to see now.

Nathan Holbert:

Yeah. Yeah, I think that's a really nice point. It's not about escapism necessarily, it's about kind of play. It's about taking on identities, playing with it. It's about bringing yourself into this world and trying it out and tweaking it in different ways. And other people are there also to play with you. You're not playing by yourself.

Haeny Yoon:

Okay. So in this movie, like a lot of movies that feature LARPing, we've seen adults at play in these spaces and sometimes occasionally a kid who joins in the adult play. And what's interesting about this week is that we get to talk to Jud about how LARPing works in communities of children and how that play might look different, look the same, and have different affordances for them.

Nathan Holbert:

Today we have with us Jud Packard, the program director of the Wayfinder Experience. Welcome, Jud.

Judson Packard:

Hi. Thanks for having me.

Haeny Yoon:

Thanks for talking to us.

Nathan Holbert:

Yeah, really excited to have you here today. I've had the privilege of chatting with you a few times about the work that you and your team do up at Wayfinder Experience, so it's really great to have you here to chat with us about it on the podcast.

Judson Packard:

Yeah. Excited to be here.

Nathan Holbert:

So to get us going, we like to play a game just to just kind of loosen ourselves up and get the conversation started.

Judson Packard:

Seems only appropriate.

Nathan Holbert:

Yeah. I mean, play, right? That's part of the name. We got to get a little of that in here. So we came up with a game to play with you today that we hope will kind of connect to some of the conversations that we might have. So what we have here is I'm going to give you a name of a person, a famous person, and I'm going to ask you to think about and eventually choose a D&D class to put them in.

Judson Packard:

Ooh, all right.

Haeny Yoon:

But for people that don't know, that's Dungeons and Dragons.

Nathan Holbert:

Thank you, Haeny. Thank you. Yeah. Dungeons and Dragons class, and a class is kind of like a job, right? And I'm going to give you a really super short list of classes. We're not going to go through all the crazy details that are out there.

Judson Packard:

You don't want me to get a blackguard knight or really get in there?

Nathan Holbert:

I mean, here's what I'm going to say is I'm going to give you a short list, and then you go as crazy as you want to go. So the short list I came up with, and I'll tell you what they are, and I'll give you a very short description. You already probably know all of this, but the short list I have for you is the barbarian. And these are descriptions I got, by the way, from the Dungeons Dragons fifth edition, a barbarian...

Judson Packard:

Oh, okay. Textbook.

Nathan Holbert:

And the description... Yeah, exactly. The tome. The description for a barbarian is, "For every barbarian, rage is a power that fuels them."

Haeny Yoon:

Oh, I'm a barbarian.

Nathan Holbert:

Yeah, don't I know it? The other class you could choose is bard. The bard is a master of song, speech, and the magic they contain. Druid. Druids are an embodiment of nature's resilience, cunning, and fury. The rogue. Rogues rely on skills, stealth, and their foes' vulnerabilities to get the upper hand in any situation. And the wizard. Wizards are supreme magic users defined and united as a class by the spells they cast. So those are the, what is that, five options that I've sort of selected for you. But again, feel free to go crazy and pull some additional classes or subclasses in if you'd like. Okay?

Judson Packard:

Okay. So wizard, bard, druid, barbarian, rogue.

Nathan Holbert:

Yeah. Yeah. Cool. Okay. We'll start with something easy, maybe, I don't know. Tell us, what class is Joe Biden?

Judson Packard:

Joe Biden. I mean, politicians, right, they're talkers, which is kind of the bard's main thing. They're all charisma-based and get people kind of going. I really would love to see Joe Biden down at the local tavern with his lute strumming along. So I'll go, Joe Biden, bard.

Nathan Holbert:

He seems like he would be quite happy in a tavern with a lute, honestly.

Judson Packard:

Yeah, a simpler life.

Haeny Yoon:

A musical speech giver. I don't know if he's a speech giver, though.

Nathan Holbert:

Yeah, maybe not as strong as-

Haeny Yoon:

Maybe not so much talky-talky.

Nathan Holbert:

But charismatic, for sure. All right.

Haeny Yoon:

Yes.

Judson Packard:

Uncle Joe. Back to his good old Uncle Joe days.

Nathan Holbert:

Yes. Yeah. Perfect. How about Kris Jenner? The matriarch of the Kardashians.

Judson Packard:

Okay. See, barbarian seems like the obvious choice because I know the Kardashian... I've never really watched that much, but I know there's a lot of like, here's the biggest yelling, or she really pushed forward their empire, right?

Nathan Holbert:

Yes.

Judson Packard:

She engineered it.

Nathan Holbert:

A little roguish maybe, right?

Judson Packard:

Yeah. So wizard is intelligence based, right? So like Kris Jenner here is... I'll say a wizard. She's more calculating than you might think is my impression, and I mean that in a good way.

Nathan Holbert:

Oh yeah, no, that resonates with how we've discussed... We've discussed Kris Jenner on the show a few times.

Haeny Yoon:

Yes, a few times.

Nathan Holbert:

How about Winnie the Pooh?

Judson Packard:

Oh, barbarian for sure. Just so much rage in Winnie the Pooh. Winnie the Pooh. That'd be the calmest D&D campaign of all time.

Haeny Yoon:

But I love your first answer about him being filled with a lot of rage.

Nathan Holbert:

When he gets stuck in that hole.

Judson Packard:

Oh, sure.

Haeny Yoon:

Yeah.

Nathan Holbert:

He's very frustrated.

Haeny Yoon:

It's always the quiet ones that...

Nathan Holbert:

He says, "Oh, bother," with an undertone of rage.

Haeny Yoon:

Oh yeah, yeah.

Judson Packard:

That's his... Calls up his secret [inaudible] blood magic.

Haeny Yoon:

Nobody can be that nice.

Nathan Holbert:

That's true.

Haeny Yoon:

There's always so something.

Nathan Holbert:

Can't trust him.

Haeny Yoon:

Yes.

Nathan Holbert:

Deep down Winnie the Pooh.

Haeny Yoon:

As the kids say, "They're sus."

Nathan Holbert:

Under the stitches he's a rage monster. How about Mariah Carey?

Judson Packard:

Mariah Carey. I mean, she's a bard, literally, right? In real life. And I think more... I'm picturing Mariah Carey is out there as a bard leading the masses with her insane octave jumping and her Christmas music.

Nathan Holbert:

Yeah, that's too easy maybe. How about Margot Robbie, or recently Barbie?

Judson Packard:

Oh, Margot Robbie is a barbarian.

Nathan Holbert:

A barbarian?

Judson Packard:

Yeah, absolutely. Margot Robbie would destroy you. She does all her own stunts in those movies, and she could simply stab any of us like a twig, I assume.

Nathan Holbert:

I would assume so, yeah.

Haeny Yoon:

Oh, I love that. Love that.

Nathan Holbert:

Well, Jud, thank you for playing this game here. I think we delved deeply into the real personalities and psyches of these characters in our lives, so I feel like I've learned a lot.

Haeny Yoon:

Yes.

Nathan Holbert:

Well, Jud, so as I said, we wanted to have you here to talk a little bit about your work with the Wayfinder, and specifically we've been talking this season about, well, Haeney calls this, "Playing roles." We've been talking about role-playing and exploring identities and risking yourself to go out there and try new things for this whole season. And we were really curious about your experience at Wayfinder, the work that you do with kids, engaging and supporting them as they experiment and play with identities and play with roles. So maybe to get us started, can you just tell us a little bit about how you got involved in Wayfinder?

Judson Packard:

Sure. So the Wayfinder Experience is a summer camp and kids program in... We're centered in Hudson Valley, but we operate all over New York. We run live action role-playing programs for kids and teens, so giving kids the chance to put on costumes and play characters of their own design with us kind of teaching all those building blocks. We like to do things in a summer camp setting so kids have a chance to get to know each other and have a space focused on them. And we have a ton of fun along the way.

So when I was 13, I was not doing very well in school and having trouble in kind finding myself, identity and social-wise. And I was going to a therapist who recommended Wayfinder and a bunch of other clients who also went to the Wayfinder Experience. And my mom signed me up for a week of camp and I never looked back. I went that first week. I had an amazing time. I actually got hurt and couldn't play in a lot of the adventure game. I was sitting in... When characters die, they go to the God of reincarnation. It's re, I was sitting in re all night with a staff member and I had the time in my life.

Haeny Yoon:

How did you get hurt? That's the important question.

Judson Packard:

I must have pulled something in my leg, and it was immediately. We went to one scene and then I got hurt and immediately had to go and sit down for the rest of the night. And this was 19, 20, it's 20 years ago.

Nathan Holbert:

1920?

Judson Packard:

This is 1920.

Haeny Yoon:

Wow, you look really good, Jud.

Judson Packard:

Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. This is 20 years ago, Wayfinder's second summer, and the organization was still establishing itself. So some of the staff who I later became friends with, and they told me, they were like, "Yeah, you got hurt and we'd never dealt with that. We were like, I guess let's just leave this kid in the woods and be done with it."

Haeny Yoon:

Well, so I'm interested how your therapist actually even knew about it. That sounds like a pretty cool thing for someone to do, right? Because I always often think about if you're having trouble in school and you struggle a lot, I think the thing that most likely happens is you get some kind of intervention or you get told that you have to do something outside of the classroom and just becomes worse and worse and worse and spirals. And I think it's really lovely that your therapist was like, "This is a place where perhaps you might be able to find identity, you might be able to play more." That is unheard of. When kids struggle at school, they're not allowed to play more, they actually play less.

Nathan Holbert:

Yeah.

Judson Packard:

Absolutely. Yet he had three other... I think it was three, or a number of other clients who also went to the camp. One of actually whom was a very good friend of mine. It was great. I had friends all of a sudden, and things to do, and an outlet, a place where I was allowed to be weird.

Nathan Holbert:

Yeah.

Haeny Yoon:

Are some of those people your friends now still?

Judson Packard:

Yeah, absolutely. Obviously, I'm still at the camp, but the people who I grew up going to camp with, a number of them, very close with still. We talk a lot about how we're kind of holding the circle and holding the space for one another. And as people step away and come back, there'll always be a spot for them. And they definitely find that we have a very close-knit community even when people aren't able to be at camp itself. And a lot of my very best friends to this day still are people who I met at camp.

Nathan Holbert:

That's great. I love that. I think, and it's such an important piece, I feel like the more we talk about the various kind of role-playing activities that people engage in, I think a word that keeps coming up over and over again is this idea of community, the way in which people build and create and live within these communities and then expand those communities to include more people. It sounds like that was a big part of your experience there at Wayfinder.

Judson Packard:

Absolutely. I often call it social training. The way we do it anyway, we're all agreeing like, "Hey, you can kind of do whatever your character would do here. If you've hit a line, someone will tell you." But so you get the chance to experience a lot of intensity with people, whether it's fighting monsters or grieving a fallen comrade, or even just getting into a character-to-character argument. You get to experience a lot of intensity that normally you don't get to share with people. And then after it, instead of there being some kind of fallout or some kind of awkwardness, every other's like, "That was so cool when you yelled in my face. That was my favorite thing that happened."

Haeny Yoon:

Do you remember how you felt when you walked into your first day at camp? Because I'm just thinking about... Was it exciting right when you walked in out the gate, or did it take a while? And then how did you actually warm up to the idea of being there?

Judson Packard:

So I went to a lot of camps as a kid because my mom was a single mom, and so we needed the child care. So I've gone to several summers of basketball camp and baseball camp, which I was not good at basketball or baseball. And I had even gone to a week of sleight-of-hand magic camp.

Haeny Yoon:

Wait, what? You went to a magic camp?

Judson Packard:

Yeah, I went to one week of... It was at the local community college business extension. It was very serious.

Haeny Yoon:

I would've loved that, to be honest.

Judson Packard:

I couldn't pick up even a single trick. And then, yeah, I got to camp and I think it was probably the swords that really hooked me in because we had these big three-foot foam swords.

Haeny Yoon:

That's kind of awesome that you said that though because I feel like Nathan has said that several times. That's something about the foam swords. He always mentions the foam swords.

Nathan Holbert:

No, no, no. Well, I have mentioned foam swords, but I, for the record, when I said that earlier, I was quoting our guest, Jud. Jud, I don't know if you remember this, but in our last conversation, maybe you've said this before, you told me if we lose the swords, we lose the company.

Judson Packard:

Oh, that's it. The swords are everything. Yeah, absolutely. The role-playing is magical and transformative, and we do a lot of identity work and trust work and all this beautiful stuff. But the swords, that's...

Nathan Holbert:

That's the end.

Judson Packard:

Come for the sword, stay for the people. Because it's like you get the swords, and you're right, you're a kid and the thing you're always told is to be quiet and to not touch other people. And then when we do a sword work trap, we're like, "Hey, so here's the things that you have to do with this. We would like you to swing this thing at everyone else here, whether or not they're looking, and scream. Scream simply as loud as you can and roll around on the ground."

Haeny Yoon:

Yeah, that's like the dream. That is the dream.

Judson Packard:

I often feel like we have a cheat code for keeping the kids' attention because we have the thing they're not allowed to do anywhere else.

Haeny Yoon:

Yeah. Of course. That's amazing.

Nathan Holbert:

But yeah, that's the beauty is that... And then also the thing that frustrates me the most is that why are so many spaces that kids exist in so intent on keeping them quiet and sitting still?

Judson Packard:

Sometimes our program will be in places where there's other programs, something or other things, and all of them are like, "You guys are loud." We're lucky. Thank you.

Nathan Holbert:

Can you tell us a little bit about... You've said a few things about this social training. You're bringing kids in, you're helping them learn to have these kinds of intense conversations. Tell us a little bit about what that sort of training looks like. What does a Wayfinder Experience look like?

Judson Packard:

Sure. We do a lot of... We're building towards what we call the adventure game, which is what we call our LARP, or live action role play, where people are playing, the kids are playing characters of their design. We have them in costume. There's a whole storyline and characters for them to interact with. And the staff know, here are the main beats of what's happening, and the kids kind of go through this journey. And we have done adventure games that cover basically any kind of story you can imagine, we have done probably something in that genre.

But to get to that point where we have all these kids who maybe have never role-played before or never acted before comfortable running around outside and doing that, throughout the week, we're playing a ton of swords, obviously, but then we're doing a lot of improv games and a lot of improv theater work and getting kids kind of comfortable doing that. We are doing focused character development stuff with them where we're introducing them to the game and letting them build their characters and kind of drawing out, like, "Okay, so do you have a relationship with here? What is your character about?" They're learning our game systems.

So we do have our classes. We have warriors, rogues, mages, clerics, and enchanters. That's a class name that I made up and I couldn't remember it. And they picked that, and so they're getting all these building blocks and then the adventure game happens. And depending... Kids have varying degrees of immersion in it, and it doesn't really matter as long as kids are bought in, because I'll play in the same adventure game where I have an eight-year-old being like, "Are we are in the game right now? Are we in the game right now? Are we in the game right now?" And I have a 13-year-old who is weeping on the ground being like, "I've lost my family. How can I go on?"

Nathan Holbert:

Yeah. So you said about how they're creating their characters, and I'm curious to know a little bit more about what that looks like for the kids that you work with. And I suspect there's a range, but is this anywhere from, "My name's Joey and I'm going to use a sword," to a full backstory, a history, a tragedy, all that stuff. What does it look like for these children, most of the time, these kids, most of the time, to build these things?

Judson Packard:

So I have had... These are real character development things I've encountered. A kid named Mr. Beer World. In three games. There's a store nearby called Beer World, he's Mr. Beer World, and his friend Dumbledorf. So one time I was running a character development workshop and a kid, and this was an eight-year-old who... Normally eight-year-olds, it's often kind of difficult for them to come up with some of the stuff on the spot if they're not helping. This kid was like, "I am an underfolk. Allow me to tell you about the history and culture of the underfolk." And I didn't see that kid for years. And I was like, "That was a real life underfolk who just saw their chance." So yeah, I mean, kids get really into it. We do everything we can to encourage them. So literally if they write a story about their character or draw a picture of their character, we'll give them some extra points to spend on spells or an extra piece of equipment like a dagger.

Nathan Holbert:

Okay, cool. You kind of encourage them sometimes to...

Haeny Yoon:

They accumulate points to get more... To have more artifacts.

Judson Packard:

So everybody starts with the same number of points in our system. There's no leveling up, there's no experience system. But we'll basically give you one more spell or one more use of the spell if you write a story. And sometimes I like to have them all standing in the circle and to have them imagine the map of the land they're in or the world they're from is kind of in the circle in between them and have them all come in and place things on the map. And then they're very excited. They've put a village here and mountains that have stories of an old wizard.

Nathan Holbert:

So they build the world together?

Judson Packard:

They build that out, and then once that happens, they have something they're going off of to design these characters. There's very few things that I will be like, "Sorry, you can't be that," when a kid says it. And it's mostly like you can't kill your teammates.

Nathan Holbert:

Aside from a really great place to play, aside from the excellent sword fighting skills that they no doubt develop as part of their time with you, what are the things that you feel like they often walk away with from their time at the Wayfinder?

Judson Packard:

So obviously I think it's different for different kids, right? Because they're all kind of getting different experiences. But I think that they're building a lot of trust with one another and with that, and they're getting the chance to explore what it is. Because literally, the adventure game, you can tell me, "Hey, my character's really funny." And I'll be like, "Oh, okay, great." And so then I will know to laugh at things. And so I don't know, I think you can have any experience and any personality you want to take on.

So I do think kids are getting the chance to explore different facets of their identity that they may not get to otherwise, or to try out personality traits that obviously you're not going to go home and be an evil conquering blood lord every day, but there might be some parts of it that you get to do that you don't normally, right? I think not just the adventure game or Wayfinder where it's in role-playing, I think you get basically no-risk space to try on different personas, which is not really something you get without just going out and lying to strangers.

Haeny Yoon:

Because that's hard.

Judson Packard:

Yeah, who can come up with all that?

Haeny Yoon:

Yeah, but that's so... Sorry, go ahead.

Nathan Holbert:

No, well, I was going to say, and maybe we're going the same direction, but we had a conversation recently with another guest about putting on identities and costumes and things, and one of the things that I kept thinking about was how scary it is. And I feel like role-playing can also be really scary. I mean, there's a lot of risk involved. And Haeny, you said, "That's hard." My first thought was like, "That's scary."

Haeny Yoon:

Yeah. I mean, yeah... Go ahead.

Judson Packard:

I think there's an aspect of, "We're all in it together." There's no audience. As opposed to performance, there's nobody watching you. And I don't know, I often think for myself when I'm writing adventure games, a lot of what I'm creating for them is really the window dressing for whatever story they're going to end up telling. They decide, "Okay, this kid is my brother and this kid over here and I have this ancient rivalry." And then they're playing that out. And the fight with the demons is really secondary for their experience of the game, the story that they have told. I feel like within that, nobody's watching you, and so I do think definitely the first times you're doing it it's intimidating. And sometimes, especially with the younger kids, I don't actually mean this in a negative way, but I feel like we're running kind of just a really advanced haunted house.

Haeny Yoon:

I think we should not say anything bad about haunted houses. That could be a really fun time.

Judson Packard:

Yeah. Yeah. Big haunted house is coming for me. But no, I think that there's definitely an intensity to doing it and an awkwardness, so how do I do this? But I think that when you're role-playing it's about finding spaces that are going to feel good for you to have that kind of play in, and I think that that's one of the things we provide at Wayfinder, especially doing it in a camp setting, is you know the people ahead of time. You spend some time intentionally creating community going into it and getting to know one another and discussing the in-game boundaries.

And we have both physical safety mechanics, and if you're like, "Hey, this seems a little too intense for me," we have... You can say a code phrase and people will back off. And so I think that allows for that kind of role-playing comfort, even for people who are new to it, even if they're super anxious. And also, if you walk through your first LARP or your first five LARPs and you don't say anything and you just walk around and look at things and you're having fun, nobody's going to be upset with you for that.

Haeny Yoon:

Yeah, I think that's the distinction between... I was just thinking about what's different about role-playing in the way that you describe it than cosplay or going to some kind of tournament or performing in a play or something like that. The focus of that somewhat is on performance and how other people are going to see you. And so you are trying on a different kind of thing, but you're trying it on because there's an audience, and that audience, you have to think about how they're going to accept you.

And I think the thing that you said, Jud, about role-playing in the context of Wayfinder is that they can try out some of those personalities and they could do it in a space where nobody's actually watching them, there isn't an audience, that you can actually go ahead and do some of those things. And so I really appreciate that idea. And like you said, Jud, it's not like they're going to go and be a blood sucking monster back at home, but there's parts of whatever they're doing that are really powerful and really important. And I think, I don't know, that's a great outcome of Wayfinder is that they'll be able to try that and find that.

Judson Packard:

Yeah, I don't think there's enough opportunities for kids to try out being the big, scary authority.

Haeny Yoon:

Yeah. They're definitely innocent.

Judson Packard:

Really and truly.

Haeny Yoon:

Yeah, I mean, the thing that I thought about when you said that, too, is that I feel like growing up, everybody told me I was shy because I had to go to an ESL program when I was younger, and then I just felt like I had to always watch what I was doing. And then my parents would always make me talk to different adults and it'd be like, "I don't want to talk to them." And then my parents would always be like, "Well, she's shy." So for a little while you just hear that enough and you're like, "Oh, I'm shy," and then you just kind of take it up. And I think those moves that adults sort of make to box children into a space have really longstanding kind of effects. It's hard to disentangle what other people think of you with what you want to think about yourself. And so I think that's a perfect opportunity to try that, not be shy. You could be loud.

Judson Packard:

Yeah. Oh, absolutely.

Nathan Holbert:

I like that. And that's a beautiful way to connect it all together too, Haeny, just thinking about what does this mean for young people? What does this mean for adults that are interacting with young people, trying to create more spaces where they get to, to use your term, Jud, a no-stakes environment where they can try on these identities and play and experiment, to create... The thing I keep thinking about as you talk, too, is the importance of design here, creating a set of constraints, a scaffolding story, a set of structures that are there that are both inviting you to play, but also creating some of that safety for you to play. All of those things feel really important here.

Haeny Yoon:

And also, why do we decide that kids have to know themselves when they're like eight or 13 or 15 or 17 or something like that? We barely know ourselves right now, and we're old.

Nathan Holbert:

Old?

Haeny Yoon:

Yes.

Nathan Holbert:

You just turned 29 this year.

Haeny Yoon:

I just turned 29 this year.

Judson Packard:

Ancient. It's okay. I'm 33, so I'm a summer camp dinosaur.

Nathan Holbert:

Yeah, right.

Haeny Yoon:

I mean, but talking to you, Jud, I mean, obviously it was a very authentic, meaningful experience for you.

Judson Packard:

Oh, a hundred percent.

Haeny Yoon:

And I'm guessing that the reason why you stay involved in it is because you see it as a really transformative experience for the kids that'll be there.

Judson Packard:

Yeah. I think it gave me the chance to kind of build the person who they wanted to be and to continue to work at that, both when I was a camper and then working there, getting the chance to support people and to give into this place that had offered me so much. And so yeah, I have definitely remained involved because I get to continue to build those spaces for kids that were so formative for me and also to hopefully work to continue to push them forward and improve them.

Haeny Yoon:

Yeah. Do you role play outside of the camp?

Judson Packard:

Yeah, I play some D&D. I do a little tabletop. Similarly, there's often just too many rules that I don't know what they all are, but I actually have a game with some of our staff. My swordsmith runs the game and I play. Right now I'm playing the sweetest looking little gnome who's out to become the dark lord of the world.

Haeny Yoon:

Oh, that's awesome.

Judson Packard:

Her name is Sassapras.

Haeny Yoon:

That's awesome.

Nathan Holbert:

Love that. Awesome. Well, thank you very much for taking us through what you all do and then all the really exciting ways to think about what LARPing is and what it is for kids and how we can kind of...

Haeny Yoon:

It was so fun. I learned so much.

Judson Packard:

I just want to be clear that different people are LARPing in a bunch of different ways. We've met with other people who LARP, and basically every LARP community we've met with kind of is in their history is like, "Oh yeah. And then we invented LARP," and everybody's kind of doing something different, so really everybody's kind of right.

Nathan Holbert:

Yeah. Well, the last thing we like to do in our conversations with our guests is to invite you to kind of off-topic, this can be related to LARPing if you'd like, but it doesn't have to be, to tell us about something you're into right now. So what is a book you're reading? What's a movie you're into? A game you're playing? A play you went to? What we say is, "What's poppin'?"

Judson Packard:

What's poppin'? Sure. So I grew up a fantasy reader. My son is named Theoden from Lord of the Rings.

Haeny Yoon:

That's awesome.

Judson Packard:

Right now I'm reading The Last Unicorn: The Lost Journey, which I loved that movie when I was a kid. And then I read The Last Unicorn book by Peter S. Beagle. It was one of my favorite books. Just on a prose level, it's so beautiful. And this is his first draft of it from his 20s, and then later he wrote the book. And it's just, I love that book. And it's cool to read this other alternate version that could have been.

Nathan Holbert:

That's awesome. I'm trying to remember if I've seen this, the movie. I remember there is a movie, I'm trying to remember if I've seen it.

Judson Packard:

It's an animated movie and it's really crazy. The soundtrack was written by the band, America. It's got Alan Arkin, Jeff Bridges, Christopher Lee, Mia Farrow.

Nathan Holbert:

Oh, wow.

Haeny Yoon:

Oh, wow. Cast of characters.

Nathan Holbert:

That is a cast of characters.

Judson Packard:

The studio that did the animation for it went on to become Studio Ghibli.

Nathan Holbert:

Oh, wow.

Judson Packard:

So it's really worth a watch.

Nathan Holbert:

Yeah, I got to check that out. I got to read that book too. That sounds great.

Judson Packard:

Yeah, it's an amazing book.

Nathan Holbert:

Cool. Anything else?

Judson Packard:

No, that's it. That's all I'm into.

Nathan Holbert:

Perfect.

Haeny Yoon:

Perfect.

Nathan Holbert:

Well, Jud, thank you so much for being here with us today. Really, really, really appreciate it. Enjoyed the conversation with you.

Judson Packard:

This has been lovely.

Haeny Yoon:

Yeah, thank you so much.

Judson Packard:

Thanks for having me on, guys.

Haeny Yoon:

‎Pop and Play is produced by Haeny Yoon, Nathan Holbert, Lalitha Vasudevan, Billy Collins, and Joe Rena Ferry at Teachers College, Columbia University with the Digital Futures Institute. This episode was edited by Billy Collins and Kyle Arlington.

Nathan Holbert:

For a transcript and to learn more, visit tc.edu/popandplay. Our music is selections from Leaf Eaters by Pottington Bear used here under a creative commons attribution non-commercial license. Blake Danzig provided our social media and outreach support. Follow at Pop and Play Pod on Instagram and TikTok for more of what's poppin', like The Trashies with Ioana Literat. Thank you to Meier Clark and Abu Abdelbagi for support with our website and additional materials. And thanks to you for listening.