Covering news and events on the nordic role-playing scene
I Regret Nothing was a Finnish-Norwegian art larp played at a city art festival in Turku, Finland in 2006. The minds behind the production were Juhana Pettersson, Eirik Fatland and myself.
Mr. Pettersson has published some documentation of the game. Go check it out!
A pirate radio station, a sheet monster, God and the Super-Ego, an underground complex and abducting passersby into the game. Read all about it.
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.
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.
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.
I’m designing a larp called Katvealue to be played in the Finnish Museum of Fine Art (Ateneum) and the Finnish Museum of Contemporary Art (Kiasma).
The larp is part of the project Art Museum of the Future. The research question of the larp is if larp can experiment with new ways of being in a museum and experiencing both the works and the space itself. The fiction of the larp is still top secret, but has to do with art, as well.
The game is designed by artist Oona Tikkaoja, art historian Henna Kontusalmi and myself. It is produced by us in collaboration with the national art museums.
Katvealue will be played in Ateneum on April 23rd, and then in Kiasma on May 22nd. The name of the game means either Dead Zone or Shade.
The larp “New Voices in Art” has been admitted to Nisjelandet , the art section of the music festival By:Larm taking place in Oslo 21 - 23 February. New Voices in Art will be played at Hausmansgt. 27 (enter from Torggata) from 18 - 20 on Friday the 22nd.
New Voices in Art is a short larp about a group of aspiring artist the night before the opening of the exhibition ‘New Voices in Art’. The participants play a version of themselves as aspiring artists. The main themes of this game are ambition, ambivalence and aloneness. The world of modern art is used as a setting to symbolize our yearning for success and fulfillment as creative individuals. Each participant is randomly given a piece of art for the duration of the game that is their work contribution to this exhibition. New Voices in Art has previously been played in Oslo and at Knudepunkt in Denmark in 2007.
One aim of Nisjelandet is to show a selection of distinct forms of cultural expressions being shared with others through the internet. New Voices in Art as well as some other games are freely available at Chambergames.
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.
Russia 1964.
21 years after the defeat at the hands of the German, and the world is a bleak place. And this is exactly why it’s the setting for our pseudo-historical larp “The Motherland”, which is about 50 Russian soldiers at a secret training camp in Siberia.
It’s 100% English-language, it’s in Denmark and more info can be found at www.clausraasted.dk/motherland
System Danmarc II was a live role-playing scenario set in a perhaps not so distant future where Europe had been united into the System, a super state dividing its citizens into classes based on wealth and ability to support oneself. The System was not fascist or purposefully brutal - it wanted to help you. If you would just stop screwing up and show some good spirit.
As a C-class citizen you were not locked up, but the only place you were welcome was the c-sector where you could get a place to live, food and some money off the System welfare programme. In the C-sector there was also entertainment, a fairly free flow of drugs and not much to do but fuck up your life some more. It’s all about riot control, eh? And keeping the streets clean for the A- and B-class citizens who earned the right not to be bothered by trash like you.
The C-sector was represented by a town built from freight containers in a square in central Copenhagen, inhabited by about 300 people. A documentary with interviews with (real) Danish politicians and homeless people shown at the end of the scenario indicated that the ideology depicted in the game might not be so far from today as you might think. You can read a review and game story from System Danmarc II, and read all the rest about it at the System Danmarc II game website.
System Danmarc III aims to explore the theme of refugees and their situation. Th
e initial idea: the game will be a three day march towards a hope of security northward, but not much is known in a future Europe torn apart by economic collapse and war.
The game will take place in May 2009, a year and a half from now. Now is the time to get involved if you want to be part of making this Amnesty International, Red Cross and Danish Refugee Help supported project real.
First workshop, 26th January 2008
There will be a first workshop on the 26th of January, 2008 in Copenhagen, kicking off the project and locking in on the vision through brainstorming, talking and making plans. This is where you can make yourself a part of the production.
After this workshop, four groups will be formed to work on plans for different parts of organizing the scenario:
– Game design (stories, events, group descriptions and more)
– Scenography (living conditions, transport and more)
– PR (organising communication with player group leaders, players and press)
– Logistics (location, fundraising, budget, cooperation, partners and more)
Second workshop, 24-25 May 2008
A final workshop (24-25 may, 2008, Copenhagen) will bring together all the plans and groups to form a common understanding of how the scenario can be made. A complete project plan is put together and a year of production gets it’s kickoff.
If you are interested in participating in System Danmarc III as a player, mark May 2009 in your calendar right now. If you want to be part of making it happen, get in touch with the organizers right now!
It’s all happening at the project webpage. It’s in danish, but if you don’t speak danish you can help out anyway, just get in touch. The game itself will most probably be played in several of the nordic languages and in english when needed.
System Danmarc III
http://www.munthe-kaas.dk/systemdanmarc
<Edit Mathias Kromann Rode>
Thank you Andie for posting!
We’ve just uploaded a rip of the movies from the DVD about System Danmarc II. It’s a really god way to get to know about the project fast.
The movies can be found here; http://www.mkromann.dk/stash/sdc_dvdrip/sdc_dvdrip.html
Every year there is a nordic conference where people interested in nordic style live action roleplaying gather to have seminars, workshops, parties and catch up on what is happening in the nordic countries. Some germans, americans, russians and other nationalities have been known to show up, apart from the usual visitors from Denmark, Sweden, Finland and Norway. The conference moves between the four nordic countries, and changes it’s name every year to the local language.
The upcoming event is in Finland and is thus called “nodal point” in finnish: Solmukohta. The event will be held at a conference center outside Helsinki on the 4.-6. April 2008. What you can expect as an outsider to the scene is an event with an informal tone and lots of old friends meeting up, some mad parties and very interesting topics in the panels, seminars and workshops. This really is the place to find out about the events to go to and get to know the people behind them.
The event website can be found at solmukohta.org and introduces the event with these words:
Since the first event, Solmukohta has evolved into the main venue of cooperation between Nordic role-playing gamers. The panels, lectures and workshops are a goldmine for finding new ideas about gaming and game organizing, and for floating old ideas around - it is a wonder how many old ideas in one gaming culture are found to be a novelty in another.
If you are not familiar with games and roleplaying at all, expect to do some catching up or prepare to not understand every part of the conversations you end up in. If you are involved with some other artform or just curious and open minded, you will quickly become part of the social context.
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
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