Archive

Sanningen om Marika nominated for Emmy!

Published
by
Mike Pohjola
on March 5, 2008
in News
. 3 Comments

More information and links can be found at The company P blogpost. (update by Andie)

Last year The Company P (of Prosopopeia 2 fame) created a crossmedia event called Sanningen om Marika pervasively combining larp, internet and television drama.

The tv series was jointly produced with the Swedish Public Broadcasting Company SVT. The idea was that the tv show would be a dramatization of actual game-related events, and work as a kind of world book for the roleplaying and provide clues for all the community-based riddle solving going on in blogs, forums and irl.

Anyways, Sanningen om Marika is now nominated for an International Emmy Award for best Interactive Tv Service. All the other candidates are English language shows: Doctor Who Interactive, Emmerdale, and Spooks Interactive.

I’ve always said Nordic larp know-how is something great and unique, but recognition like this was not what I was expecting!

Interactive Emmy press release

Credits and other stuff

Solmukohta website down

Published
by
Andie Nordgren
on March 3, 2008
in News
. 0 Comments

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

Katvealue: Larp goes museum

Published
by
Mike Pohjola
on February 23, 2008
in Events
. 0 Comments

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.

Art Larp at Art Festival

Published
by
Tor Kjetil Edland
on February 19, 2008
in Events and News
. 3 Comments

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

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.

Tähti

Published
by
Mike Pohjola
on January 23, 2008
in News
. 8 Comments

Just a short blurp about something only available in Finnish, but which might be of interest anyway. It’s my third published roleplaying game Tähti (Riimuahjo Publishing, 2007). (Ask to see or buy a copy at Solmukohta!)

The cover of Tähti

This is a tabletop roleplaying game where you play the member of a Maoist mutant girl band in the Finland of 2017. The action of the game revolves around dating, school, parents, rehearsals, fans, gigs, managers, celebrity and so on.

The insides look quite a bit like a teen mag. The 90s RPGs that read like phone books are ancient history by now. The only conflict resolution mechanic here is based on interpreting fortune cookies.

I wanted to mention this, as I know at least many of my Norwegian and Danish friends consider larp much more experimental and artistic and interersting than tabletops, but the situation is much more balanced in Sweden and Finland. …or am I just being prejudiced here?

Ingenmansland - Swedish post apocalypse July 2008

Published
by
Andie Nordgren
on January 12, 2008
in Events
. 4 Comments

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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.

April 25-27 - “The Motherland”

Published
by
Claus Raasted
on January 10, 2008
in Events
. 0 Comments

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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

In the making: System Danmarc III

Published
by
Andie Nordgren
on January 9, 2008
in Events and News
. 2 Comments

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The last System Danmarc game - setting the standard for what to expect

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.

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Coming up: System Danmarc III

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

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<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

Solmukohta, 4-6 April 2008

Published
by
Andie Nordgren
on December 6, 2007
in Events
. 0 Comments

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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.

Hello world, Nordic Scene!

Published
by
Andie Nordgren
on December 6, 2007
in News
. 5 Comments

nordicscene.org
A website that covers news and upcoming events on the nordic roleplaying scene in a way accessible to people outside it.

To be properly launched at Solmukohta 2008.

With nordicscene.org I would like to specifically solve three problems:

1) I often talk to people outside the live role-playing community about some of the events I’ve been to, and they think it all sounds wonderfully exciting and want to hear about the next thing coming up. These are people I meet at parties or other subculture happenings, who often have some skill or interest where some live role-playing events seem highly relevant to them. Theater people, writers, film makers.. list goes on and on. These people are not part of the roleplaying scene at all, and thus have a pretty hard time finding their way onto it without some very hands on guidance by people already on it. This rarely happens, since you talk to people, they find it interesting, but then you move on and have nowhere to point them for hooking into the scene. I want somewhere to point people where they can find out what events are coming up, what they can expect and how they can participate, written in a style that does not suppose you know everything about this already.

2) There is actually no website presenting the nordic style roleplaying a style that can be linked to for clarification to outsiders. This part is the least ambitious at the moment - I think that if the first problem can be solved and there is a need for more of a wikipedia style info center website about the nordic scene, this will follow if the site gets visitors and as people feel the need. The simple way to start this is to collect a few links and texts that make up some starting points if you want to explore.

3) News about what’s going on around the nordic scene are very scarce. When not at Knutpunkt, I have little or no idea what people are up to in the other nordic countries. Maybe I’m just not looking in the right places, but I would like to try to make this website some sort of hub where editors from each country will post news items about the local scene. Still in a way that would be accessible to outsiders, though.

/Andie Nordgren