Covering news and events on the nordic role-playing scene
Chamber Games is a blog and website dedicated to publishing short larps. Chamber Games publishes all the material and information you need to run several short larps in the Nordic style. The games require only a few hours and a small space like a single room to run, unlike larger larps who usually run for days and are only played once. Published larps include art exhibition larp New Voices in Art, abstract between-life-and-death Limbo and Artistocats style clubnight cat larp Club Felis.
The website is run by Tor Kjetil Edland, Arvid Falch and Erling Rognli who felt the need for a publishing space for this type of larps after producing the Limbo game. If you want to try making a larp for the first time, try a game outside your usual larp genre or just explore some really good games, a visit to Chamber Games is well worth your while. And remember to write the original organizers if you re-run their game, since you probably have a lot to learn from each other!
Do you have a game that would fit the Chamber Games website? Get in touch with the editors and get it published for the world to see.
In April 2009, Norway will host the next installment of the yearly larp conference Knutepunkt. They already have an organization in place, so if you are interested in the conference, have ideas for the programme or want to contribute in any way, make sure you visit the Knutepunkt website. Sign up for the newsletter there to get information about the conference.
The Solmukohta conference is over, and all the participants have a new book in their hands: Playground Worlds - Creating and Evaluating Experiences of Role-Playing Games is a new anthology from the nordic larp conference Solmukohta/Knutepunkt/Knutpunkt/Knudepunkt (Nodal Point) edited by Markus Montola and Jaakko Stenros. You can find a list of earlier books in the series here: Solmukohta 2008 Book and the Book History. From the back cover of the book:
Playground Worlds is a collection of articles on role-playing games by leading researchers, artists and other experts. The book documents the theory and practice of the Nordic role-playing scene – one of the most vibrant in the world – and presents numerous methods and techniques that are directly applicable to larp design and production. It also offers a peek into some Anglo-American role-playing cultures.
The book is divided into three sections. Community and Journalism includes articles on role-player communities written particularly with an eye for approachability. Art and Design covers role-play as the product of a creative process, exposing philosophies and intentions behind specific role-playing works while providing advice and guidance for prospective designers. The Research and Theory section focuses on recent advances in analytic and academic thought on role-play.
The book will be published online at some point in the future, but for now you need to get hold of a physical copy. Details about how to do this can be found at the book page at the Solmukohta website. You can also read article abstracts and look at some images from the book.
Tango for Two is a one-evening larp experiment by Even Tømte and Tor Kjetil Edland. Two players will act different parts of one character’s personality. Either you play the conscious self, or the underlying desires of the person. The two of them work in tandem, each one of them being the dominant part in different phases of the game. - Chamber Games
This one evening larp is played for the first time on March 30. No preparation is needed. The event takes 20 players, costs 50 nkr and you sign up by emailing Even Tømte.
Read all about the game at it’s dedicated page on Chamber Games: Tango for to or if you have Facebook account, take a look at the Event. After the premiere, the game material will be made avaliable under a Creative Commons license at the game page so that other people can host the game.
As part of the yearly conference on nordic style larps, Knutpunkt/Knutepunkt/Knudepunkt/Solmukohta, an anthology is published with articles about larp, roleplaying, theory about larps, game reviews and reflections on the larp hobby.
This year is no different, and the Solmukohta book will be released on March 31 in Helsinki. You can see the table of contents at the book website, and the book will have three parts: Journalism and Community, Art and Design and Research and Theory.
The book is given to all participants of the Solmukohta conference, but will also be published online like all the books from the last few years of conferences. The books are a continuting debate on what larp is or could be and a platform for ideas and experiements to spread from one larp culture to another. You will find both academic style papers on roleplaying theory and columns, rants, game analysis and political vision in these books. They are an excellent starting poing if you want to know more about what kind of larps happen on the Nordic scene and what some of the ambitions in the community are.
Following is links to the online versions of previous conference anthologies:
Knudepunkt 2007 in Denmark: The book is called Lifelike.
All of the 30 articles in Lifelike can be downloaded as pdf documents here:
Knutpunkt 2006 in Sweden: The book is called Role, Play, Art
The book includes 12 articles and can be downloaded as a pdf document:
Download the entire book (2 MB)
Knutepunkt 2005 in Norway: The book is called Dissecting Larp
The book contains 15 texts that can be downloaded as pdf documents.
If you want to know a thing or two about the Nordic larp environment (at least as it was in 2005), make sure to read Knutepunkt and Nordic Live Role-playing: a crash cource by Eirik Fatland.
Download the whole book at this page: Dissecting Larp
Solmukohta 2004 in Finland: The book is called Beyond Role and Play -Tools, Toys and Theory for Harnessing the Imagination
The book has almost 30 articles that can be downloaded as pdf documents at the book website:
Knudepunkt 2003 in Denmark: The book is called As Larp Grows Up
As Larp Grows Up has five chapters on larp, including a dictionary. All chapters can be downloaded as pdf documents here:
Freefall is a larp festival in Helsinki during the week before larp conference Solmukohta. The festival features four days (March 31 to April 3) of short and sweet larps that can be played in a day with little preparation. If you are curious about larp and want to experience nordic style larp the Freefall festival is definately the place to be. Roleplaying and art meet and techniques from many fields are used to bring out the best in short larps.
The whole programme has just been posted to the Freefall Livejournal, and includes everything from violent plastic cups, sad dates and train rides in Italy to war councils and neolithic tribes.
This has been posted as a note in the post about System Danmarc III, but deserves it’s own headline:
The organizers of System Danmarc II have posted the trailer, end film and behind the scenes documentary from System Danmarc II online. These were previously avaliable only on the game DVD.
System Danmarc II was a larp held in Denmark in 2005 about a political system where C-class citizens who could not support themselves where dumped in C-sector areas by a State system that was not fascist but still incompetent when it comes to a reasonable distribution of resources in a rich society. It was a cyberpunk larp set in a small city built from freight containers in central Copenhagen, and at the same time a very strong comment on society today.
Take a moment to have a look at this fantastic documentation.
The Solmukohta 2008 website (www.solmukohta.org) has experienced a major server crash and some other mishaps and will be offline for a while until things can be fixed, says organizer Jukka Seppänen. This post will be updated with any new information about when the website will be back, or if there is some temporary solution.
Update: The Solmukohta website is back
Ingenmansland is a large post apocalypse scenario in mid-sweden, outside Örebro. The location is an abandoned mine called Stråssa (some pictures here) where a group of survivors have settled in a sort of communist inspired village. Everyone is a citizen, except for the Diggers who take their rag-tag vehicles into the various danger Zones to find scrap and other valuable leftovers from civilization. At the time of writing there are 109 Citizen players and 40 diggers. You can still sign up to play a Citizen of Östbacken, as the settlement is called
Below is a game trailer in swedish. The scenario has an extensive website at ingenmansland.com with charachter profiles and an active forum. If you have never been to a larp before you can expect lots of support and good group play since every charachter has a profession and belongs to a group of fellows in that profession. The game will be played mainly in swedish. International players are welcomed but not really planned for from the start, but it is very easy to get in contact with the organizers at the game forum to work out the details of how you could fit into the game.
Andie Nordgren
Sweden
Claus Raasted
Denmark
Eirik Fatland
Norway
Mike Pohjola
Finland
Gabriel Widing
Sweden
Bjarke Pedersen
Denmark
Peter Andreasen
Denmark
Mathias Kromann Rode
Denmark
Anna Westerling
Sweden
Martin Ericsson
Sweden
Axel Löfving
Sweden
Sebastian Utbult
Sweden
Staffan Jonsson
Sweden
Matthijs Holter
Norway
Håken Lid
Norway
Petter Karlsson
Sweden
You?
Register and get in touch to get posting rights!
Recent Comments