Nordic Scene

Mad about the Boy is a larp about survivors of a global disaster which killed more than half of humanity. An inexplicable disease killed all the men in mere minutes. Now, three years later the surviving women are facing not only the enormous task of rebuilding society, but also the possible extinction of humanity.

It was published a day before, and I was selling them at a convention. When I gave Mika Loponen a copy, her burned it at the ash tray. Everyone was watching and cheering. ”Get them while they’re hot,” I yelled.

Yesterday marked the 10th anniversary of the Manifesto of the Turku School. It is a roleplaying manifesto promoting character immersion as a player goal, and honest world simulation as a game master goal, and according to RPG researcher Jaakko Stenros, it’s “perhaps the most influential Nordic text on role-playing games.”

At the time the discussion on roleplaying theory was mostly centered around the question ”should there be roleplaying theory or is it ruining our hobby?” Some of tried to talk about the theory and practice of what we find interesting, and were blamed for ruining the fun for everyone, since you’re not supposed to take it too seriously, it’s supposed to just be fun. But is it good fun? What do you mean by fun? Is it fun to play something horrible happening to your character? Is it fun if the game master pulls everything out of his ass? Aren’t some kinds of fun better experienced if you really try to feel what the character feels, instead of just going through the motions?

In the summer of 1999 Norwegian roleplaying theorists Eirik Fatland and Lars Wingård wrote the Dogma 99, a ”Programme for the Liberation of LARP”. They argued that larp can be a meaningful medium for artistic expression and that you should take it seriously. We agreed on that. Then they went on to treat roleplaying games more as acting than as character immersion, and made the game master a linear storyteller instead of an interactive or multilinear enabler. I couldn’t stand for that, of course, and had to write the first part of the until then speculational manifesto. This became the Larper’s Vow of Chastity, published in the fall of 1999.

Dogma 99, like it’s Danish predecessor Dogme 95, contained rules that a game master could try out to challenge their way of making art. Most people understood the rules as something every game must adhere to according to the writers, and dismissed the whole thing. The Turku Larper’s Vow of Chastity did contain such rules, meant to be be obeyed when playing in a Turku style larp. ”I shall not speak out of character during a game”, and so on. Most people noticed that the player is also expected to follow the game master’s vision, and misinterpreted this completely assuming that this meant the character’s wouldn’t have free will within the game. I probably should’ve written it better.

Nevertheless, the Vow got lots of discussion, and I decided to go ahead with writing the Manifesto itself. The annual Nordic larp conference Knutepunkt was taking place in Helsinki that year, and there was a pre-party at (now celebrity journalist) Johanna Koljonen’s mother’s place. That was Wednesday 23rd of February, 2000. That’s where I first gave and sold copies of the manifesto that I’d written in the preceding couple of days, and picked up at the printers’ that morning. The title had a typo, since I didn’t know ”manifest” and ”manifesto” are two different things.

There was not yet a tradition for conference journals on roleplaying theory, so people were pretty amazed, and also amused. A copy of the manifesto was burned to protest its horrors. There was a panel discussion where Eirik Fatland and I duked it out. Later Eirik Fatland and I became fast friends, organizing many larps together, such as inside:outside and (with Juhana Pettersson) I Regret Nothing.

Next year and the year after that, people started writing their own manifestos in response to the Turku Manifesto and Dogma 99, and there was a Roihuvuori Manifesto, Meilahti Style, Bristol Manifesto, the Manifesto Manifesto, The Manifest Sunday, and dozens of others. Some were about roleplaying theory, some were parodies, most were descriptions of the writers’ own preferred styles without trying to force it upon anybody else. (Although then they’re not really manifestos, if I may say so.)

The manifesto creeps up every now and again in silly online discussions and such, and new people get angry at it. (Check out this one archived from 4chan!) Then somebody points out there’s a nice idea here or there, and the discussion turns into one of roleplaying theory. And occasionally somebody likes the text so much they want to translate it into their own language. So far we have Le Manifeste de l’Ecole de Turku in French, Manifest Školy Turku in Slovak, and Manifest Školy Turku in Czech. Today I’m publishing the Russian translation by Larnir Haigh. Enjoy!

I’m thinking of doing something cool about regarding the Manifesto at this year’s Knutpunkt in Stockholm. Any ideas?

PS. I’ve added a photo page on the Turku School webiste, commemorating the publication. Check it out!

For the annual Nordic live-action role-playing conference there is usually a book with interesting ideas on larping and larp design, methods for playing and organizing, critique and theories on larp, and much more. This year the book will be produced by Interacting Arts.
This means that if we are lucky, we will have two books this year, since Markus Montola and Jaakko Stenros likely will be done with their book Nordic Larp at about the same time as KP. That book aims to present some of the most important Scandinavian larps. Read more about it here: http://nordiclarp.wordpress.com/

About the KP book
I had the idea to ask you to write your papers as historical or fictive personas – what would Freud or Batman say about larping? – or from a point 50 year from now. That may or may not be a good idea, if you like it, fine, if not, forget it.

It really doesn’t matter if the KP-book has any special theme, you will anyhow write what ever you want, so do that.

Still, let me ask you a question – How will we get larp out of the marginalized position and into the mainstream? Because admit it or not – we need to get there to survive, and secretely (I’m talking for myself here but I’m sure it goes for most of you), we want to get into the mainstream. So: HOW?

But I am convinced that beside that question you have a lot to say about larping, past, present or future, how it should be done (or not done), why your way is better than anybody else’s, how to save the world and whatnot. I am also convinced that you are eminently good writers that would like to see your thoughts in print. Go ahead, write what’s on your mind, and we will make it into a good KP-book.

Practical things
I would like to see proposals for papers as soon as possible, and must needs have the complete papers at the 1st of January. Proof reading will be done in dialogue with the writers, and the finalized papers should be done around 1st of February.

No, you won’t get paid for writing.

Write in English. If not, we will try to find translators, but since that will be time-consuming, you’re at risk to not be included in the book.

The guidelines for submission that Stenros and Montola made for the Solmukohta 2004 book are very useful. Check them out! http://www.ropecon.fi/solmukohta/submission.html

Regard them as GUIDELINES, NOT HOLY WRIT. Do not feel that you have to write in the academic style, but if you do, use them with common sense.

You can always reach me at elge@interactingarts.org

AND NOTIFY ALL YOUR FRIENDS!

Elge Larsson
Editor-in-Chief

When: March 5-7 2010
Where: Västerås, Sweden
Price: 250 to 500 SEK

Prolog | 2010 is a Swedish larp convention that aims to connect Swedish larpers from all different styles and cultures. Integration and inspiration through meeting new people, attending great workshops and of course by playing all kinds of larps.

In our program we aim to go as deep as possible in every aspect of larping. Ranging from workshops in reenactment handicraft to creating and playing small intriguing free-from roleplaying scenarios.

Our goal is to unify the Swedish larp society and to create a big sandbox for trying new things and evolving the whole movement. You are all invited, but as we turn to a diverse Swedish audience, most of the program will be in Swedish. With Knutpunkt 2010 also happening in Sweden next spring, we are hopeful that will be one of the best years for the larp movement in Sweden in some time.

Best regards to all of you in the Nordic Scene,
inspiring us to make this happen!
Petter Karlsson, Miriam Lundqvist and Martin Gerhardsson

Prolog | 2010 – Ett svenskt lajvkonvent

An important message from Germany about the difference between European and American larpers:

watch?v=Od8Ka7bdqvU&feature=player_embedded

(Actually a sketch video by Viennese performance artist Johannes Grenzfurthner.)

Jaakko Stenros and Markus Montola are putting together a book showing the different forms and styles of Nordic larps in texts and photographs. This document is a call for proposals on games that should be included in the book. While the texts themselves will be rather brief, all cases must be also presented with a number of quality images. The papers will be selected in an editorial process, based on abstracts or samples.

During the recent 10 or 15 years, a number of great larps have been organized in the Nordic countries, in and around the Knutpunk community. Unfortunately, only very few of those have been documented in any proper fashion. In an effort to correct the problem, Stenros and Montola are editing a book focusing solely on documenting larps; their innovations, designs, significance and expressive power. This book will be a celebration of the unpaid effort and creative work that has been put into building the Nordic tradition of larp.

The plan is to publish a high quality coffee table book. Larpers are the focus audience, but they hope to also gain the attention of people in theatre, visual arts, street art, game research and game design. Thus, the book should be self-explanatory, readable, intelligent and ambitious. The book will include approximately 20-25 case descriptions, selected with numerous criteria:

- Spectrum. The book should be representative of the different sides of Nordic larp.
- Photographs. The book needs photographs of sufficient quality (technical, aesthetic, journalistic).
- Impact. The significance of the game within the scene either as having impact on the scene or as having been influenced by the scene.
- Description and analysis. The quality of the proposed text about the game.

The first criterion is the most important. In practice, we will use “soft quotas” in the process: If the book has one Vampire proposal and five fantasy proposals, it is a reason for favoring the Vampire. Similarly, the book will have soft quotas for countries and organizer groups.

In a Knutepunkt 2009 workshop Stenros and Montola compiled a wish list for games they would like to include, in order to form an understanding on what the book should be like. The list can be found from the blog http://nordiclarp.wordpress.com/. In an ideal world, they’d include all those games, but all proposals are welcome.

They will look for funding from cultural grants. In addition, there is a contingency plan of possibly looking for a commercial photography book publisher for the book.

Editorial Process

The editors will both ask specific people to contribute descriptions of certain projects, and accept open submissions. Expression on willingness to contribute on a game can be expressed immediately. Papers are selected based on abstracts or representative samples of 500+ words and a few full-resolution images, with an editorial review. The editors need to have the first abstracts by September 20th, 2009. The selections will be made during the end of September and the submitters will hear back from the editors in the beginning of October. Final deadline, including photographs and relevant permissions, is November 15th, 2009.

The editors will provide feedback in all phases of the work, consulting external experts if needed. You should expect around two-three rounds of feedback on the text, one based on abstract and another based on full paper. The editors will provide help and guidance in the process.

The length of the papers is 1500-2000 words, plus captions and references. In addition, there will be fact boxes including credits, number of players and so on. In addition, the authors should submit 6-15 images with captions, out of which approximately 5-10 will be included.

The authors are responsible of procuring the photographs, and all the necessary permissions from copyright holders and people shown in the images. The editors may be able to help in the process. Submissions should follow the style guide available at http://nordiclarp.wordpress.com.

Production Crew

The book is edited by Jaakko Stenros and Markus Montola. It is produced by Anna Westerling and Anders Hultman. In addition, they have enlisted a number of country contacts, including Bjarke Pedersen (of
Denmark) and Eirik Fatland (of Norway). With photography, they will consult Britta Bergersen and Katri Lassila. They are still looking for a graphic designer.

More information: http://nordiclarp.wordpress.com

The shortlist for 2009 Diana Jones Award has been announced, and for the first time it includes some Nordic roleplaying. Two RPGs, a card-game, a mystery and a Scandinavian collective vie for hobby-gaming’s most exclusive trophy

The committee of the Diana Jones Award has released the shortlist for its 2009 award. This year the shortlist contains five nominees that in the opinion of the committee exemplify the very best that hobby-gaming has produced in the last twelve months. In alphabetical order, they are:

* Dominion, a card game by Donald X. Vaccarino (published by Rio Grande Games)

* Dungeons & Dragons 4th Edition, a role-playing game by Rob Heinsoo, Mike Mearls and James Wyatt (published by Wizards of the Coast)

* Jeepform, a game-style from Scandinavia (fostered by the Vi åker jeep collective: http://jeepen.org/)

* Mouseguard, a role-playing game by Luke Crane (published by Archaia Studios Press)

* Sweet Agatha, a mystery game by Kevin Allen Jr (self-published)

The winner of the 2009 Award will be announced on Wednesday 12th August, at the annual Diana Jones Award and Freelancer Party in Indianapolis, the unofficial start of the Gen Con Indy convention.

The Diana Jones Award for Excellence in Gaming was founded and first awarded in 2001. It is presented annually to the person, product, company, event or any other thing that has, in the opinion of its mostly anonymous committee of games industry luminaries, best demonstrated the quality of “excellence” in the world of hobby-gaming in the previous year. The winner of the Award receives the Diana Jones trophy.

The short-list and eventual winner are chosen by the Diana Jones Committee, a mostly anonymous group of games-industry alumni and illuminati. Past winners include Peter Adkison, Jordan Weisman, the role-playing games Nobilis, Sorcerer, and My Life with Master, and the board-game Ticket to Ride. This is the ninth year of the Award.

Vi åker jeep [Eng.: We go by jeep] is a group of Scandinavian roleplayers and gamewrights pushing their style of play, known as jeepform to the rest of the civilized roleplaying world.

The Society for Nordic Roleplaying publishes two roleplaying games in Finnish this summer. Ikuisuuden laakso and Itran kaupunki open up new topics for roleplaying.

The philosophical Ikuisuuden laakso (“Valley of Eternity”) is Juhana Pettersson’s first roleplaying game. It is a tragic RPG set in the Antarctic, in which the players take on the roles of hero penguins living on the borders of penguin society. The life of a hero is not an easy one, even if they are penguins: she must sacrifice everything in her battle against skua gulls and leopard seals, but will always remain a stranger in the eyes of her fellows. The anthropomorphic animals are a cleansing, distancing element in Ikuisuuden laakso, but obviously they also provide comedy.

Juhana Pettersson is a Helsinki-based game designer and journalist. As the editor-in-chief of Roolipelaaja magazine he is a pioneer of RPG journalism. He has also written the much lauded non-fiction book Roolipelimanifesti (“Role playing manifesto”) in 2005. Pettersson has studied media art in France.

Pettersson has been an Antarctica enthusiast for a long time. In 2008 he created the Antarctica-set larp Snowstorm, and in his blog he presents and reviews books and films set in the region. “Years ago I looked at a map of the planet, and said to myself, there’s a white area at the bottom, that I don’t know anything about. Since then I’ve read everything about the southern continent I’ve been able to get my hands on. My dream is to some day visit there, but before that I’ll have to settle on designing games about penguins.”

“The penguin is the everyman of Ikuisuuden laakso. A penguin is noble and foolish at the same time, and can thus avoid the ubermensch ideas which traditionally arise when dealing with the topic of heroes and heroism,” Pettersson says.

Norwegian surrealism

Itran kaupunki (“The City of Itra”) was originally published in Norwegian as Itras by, and is the first roleplaying game translated into Finnish from a language other than English. The game is set in a surrealistic 1920s city that is controlled from the mysterious Moon Tower, and whose streets are filled with the strangest of figures. Itran kaupunki draws from the tradition of roleplaying games, surrealism, futurism, and Norwegian children’s literature.

The creators of Itran kaupunki are Ole Peder Giæver and Martin Bull Gudmundsen. Giæver has roleplayed since he was ten. He works as a journalist in the Norwegian online paper ABC Nyheter. Gudmundsen studies psychology at the Oslo University.

The Society
The Society for Nordic Roleplaying works to facilitate the development and growth of Nordic roleplaying culture in Finland by making works published in other Nordic languages available in Finnish.

We also work to keep the local scene vital by publishing groundbreaking new games by Finnish designers. The Nordic countries of Finland, Sweden, Norway and Denmark are at the vanguard of global roleplaying culture.

Nordic games have broadened the horizons of what can be done in the roleplaying medium and broken barriers between roleplaying and other artforms such as performance art and theatre.

So far,  English has been the language of Nordic cooperation. Ideas have been exchanged at international forums like the annual Knutepunkt event, but actual roleplaying publishing has remained a national affair. Games published in Norwegian or Danish won’t reach audiences in other countries because of the language barrier.

Both games will be published at Ropecon on July 31st, 2009. Ropecon is held annually in Espoo.

More information on Itran kaupunki and The Society for Nordic Roleplaying: Mike Pohjola, email mikepohjola@gmail.com

More information on Ikuisuuden laakso: Juhana Pettersson, email jlp@iki.fi

The Society for Nordic Roleplaying: www.nordicrpg.fi

Nørwegian Style is a collection of 17 Norwegian role-playing games translated to English. The book is edited by Matthijs Holter and Even Tømte, and designed by Håken Lid.

The book includes at least one larp (New Voices In Art) and several short games that can be played as larps, as well as a short introduction to Norwegian role-playing history.

The 225 pages softcover book is available from Lulu for $10:
http://www.lulu.com/content/paperback-book/norwegian-style/5140294

The project also has a blog at norwegianstyle.wordpress.com