Scaffolding Role-Playing: An Analysis of Interactions with Non Role-players of All Ages

This paper examines a series of scaffolded live action role-playing (larp) activities, specifically a form of educational larp called edu-larp, used within a STEAM summer program for indigenous youth in Seattle. The study is framed as a design-based research project exploring how embodied perspective-taking from the standpoint of plants, animals, and other more-than-human actors can deepen respectful, reciprocal, and responsible relationships with lands, waters, and communities. Its central argument is that dominant Western divisions between nature and culture weaken both environmental and educational engagement, and that role-play can help dissolve those boundaries.

The study draws on video recordings from handheld and point-of-view cameras during a five-activity larp series, with the finale analyzed in depth. Participants aged 4 to 60 took part, including 31 youth aged 4 to 16 alongside staff and family members from the local urban native community. Using grounded theory and interaction analysis, the authors report that children took up multiple perspectives on local plant and animal systems and role-played their relationships with nuance. They also observed a phenomenon called bleed, in which emotions and relational dynamics carried between player and character, and found that a lack of physical representation for non-human characters interrupted immersion and produced an emergent mechanic in which participants repeatedly asked "What are you?"

The authors conclude that edu-larp, combined with traditional outdoor education and culturally grounded stories, can support perspective-taking and ecological reasoning among indigenous youth. They recommend improving physical representation of non-human characters, emphasizing cycles of death and rebirth, and incorporating time and seasonal change in future iterations. The work is presented as preliminary and situated within a single site and program year.