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Jiituomas' LiveJournal:
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| Friday, November 20th, 2009 | | 1:39 pm |
| | Thursday, November 19th, 2009 | | 1:30 pm |
Projects done and underway.
I sent in an application for producing a larp at the Human|Culture festival, sent in my chapter for the Nordic Larp book, submitted an article proposal to the KP 2010 book, learned that Prayers had been played thrice, and well liked, at the rpg analysis course at the University of Tampere (and also once as a hybrid tabletop with Mike's Tähti) and wrote a significant chunk of both master's thesis and a forthcoming article. Quite a productive, uplifting seven-day span of time. Next week will see at least the wrap-up of a ritual article. I need to get stuff out of my hands, so that I can concentrate on my PhD work again. Current Music: Godspeed You Black Emperor - Slow Riot for New Zero Kanada | | Tuesday, November 10th, 2009 | | 9:44 pm |
Duus' Dissertation.
That most nifty of creatures, the mail-daemon, brought me today a copy of Thomas Duus Henriksen's PhD thesis, "A Little More Conversation, A Little Less Action, Please": Rethinking Learning Games for the Organisation, accepted and published a week ago. I am really, really pleased to own a copy of this book. I will make further comments about it here when I have read the whole thing properly through. And I will most certainly quote it in at least two of the papers I am currently writing, as its relevance to learning in larps is undeniable. It also makes me happy in another way: Duus has been one of the (way too) rare people sharing our dream, the dream of turning what knowledge we have on larping so far into something that can and will benefit others, in an academically accepted format which other people will be easily able to utilize. This is one more significant step towards larps becoming a subject of study that does not need its relevance explained in advance. Without a single speck of envy, I applaud my friend's work, and thank him for blazing the trail for the rest of us a big leap further. His triumph is a triumph for all of us. Current Music: Iszoloscope - The Audient Void | | Wednesday, November 4th, 2009 | | 12:02 pm |
| | Friday, October 30th, 2009 | | 4:30 pm |
Virtual economy.
I attended today Vili Lehdonvirta's defense of his doctoral dissertation, done on virtual consumption. The main subject point was the use of real-world money on virtual goods, but present were also questions such as how value is created in such systems, and whether such consumerism differs from real-world equivalents. Very interesting stuff, well written, and well defended. A couple of points (one of which I took up during the audience questions segment) are missing, but that's a small thing. The main work is very good, and written in a manner that people not so versed in economic sociology can understand. It's an important book for furher understanding of the economies of virtual worlds. And you can download it for free here. (A side note: An economist's analysis of how much the use of real money for virtual purchases in MMOs resembles the way black market dollars were used in the USSR would be a very interesting thing to see...) Also, Thomas Duus Henriksen defended his PhD thesis on educational games last Monday, but given the distance, I could not attend. I am extremely anxious to see what he has written. And I bought myself a copy of On the Brink, the official expansion for Pandemic, too. Testing it next week, when my son returns home. Current Music: Triore - Three Hours | | Friday, October 16th, 2009 | | 7:00 pm |
| | Tuesday, October 13th, 2009 | | 9:15 pm |
Neo-Retro-Larping.
Heiccu gave me a copy of a new Danish larp world book, Jarkwelt, by Thomas Kerff and Claus "International Man of Mystery" Raasted. She even got a nice inscription to me in it, from Claus. It's a funny item: A pretty hard-cover in Danish, with such a traditional, cliche-filled role-playing world that one simply has to adore its purity. A hundred pages, with next to no rules (so very different from a German larp book) and some costume pictures, for the mandatory Orcs, humans and various Elf types - and of course also Pirates and Vikings. It's silly, at least to an experienced role-player, but it has a wonderful pick-me-up-and-play charm that triumphs over both questions of originality and any demands for innovation. It looks damn playable, and that's what counts in a land like Denmark where a game any youth can pick up and organize on rather short notice is very much worth doing. The contrast to other recent, more generic role-playing books I have heard about, especially Leppälahti's tract here in Finland (which I have not yet seen), is quite fascinating. Current Music: Hecate vs Lustmord - Law of the Battle of Conquest | | Friday, October 9th, 2009 | | 1:44 pm |
| | Tuesday, October 6th, 2009 | | 9:38 pm |
Roolipelaaja Magazine dead.
The Finnish role-playing magazine, Roolipelaaja, was declared dead today. The scene, while large enough in principle, was not interested in buying enough copies to make it economically viable. I am very disappointed, but not really surprised. Anyway, it was a great mag while it lasted, and offered solid contributions to the field - at least for those interested in role-playing in general, and not just an auto-erotic bunch of game minutiae. It will sorely be missed. I am very glad that I was given the chance to contribute to it several times. And, also, a bit bitter towards the people who failed to see useful connections between game types, skipping, say, all larp texts instead of trying to think "what can I adapt from this to my tabletop". But to each his own. I never saw the appeal of a magazine like Magus, but many others did. A thanks to the editors and financiers, as well as everyone who contributed to what was essentially always a community effort. Current Music: Frigg - Frigg | | Thursday, October 1st, 2009 | | 10:11 am |
Orchard pictures.
Ellis has posted a few of her drawings from our Stalker campaign online, at http://luutar.deviantart.com/gallery/ The captions are unfortunately in Finnish only, but I think most readers following the game reports are locals, anyway, so it should not be a big problem. Current Music: Lustmord - The Place Where The Black Stars Hang | | Wednesday, September 30th, 2009 | | 5:07 pm |
Siege Mentality revisited.
I celebrated my birthday by organizing a re-run of Siege Mentality II, the zombie-survivor minilarp I have been developing with Roger Gammans and ran at Ropecon. It was again quite a success. I did gather 10 or so small things in need of changing, so the text will see some further revisions before release. A special thanks goes to Senni, who offered us an excellent space for playing the game. Also, I have been accepted as a researcher-member to the Finnish Association for Sexology. That will help in my continuing studies regarding BDSM and sexual role-playing. Current Music: Inade - Colliding Dimensions | | Wednesday, September 23rd, 2009 | | 6:15 pm |
| | Monday, September 21st, 2009 | | 4:39 pm |
More Jeepform in Italian.
I received a message today stating that some time ago, three more Jeepform games were translated into Italian. Those were Drunk, The Mother and my own A Bitter Aftertaste. They can be found here. They even preserved our original layouts. Lovely. Current Music: Negru Voda - PromoAppetizer | | Monday, September 14th, 2009 | | 10:03 pm |
Hakim Bey in Finnish.
I received my review copy of Hakim Bey's TAZ today. I of course own all the contents (some in books, some as printouts) in English, due to the number of game studies and study of religion researchers who quote and/or re-apply his theories. Nevertheless, having access to a Finnish version is nifty, and will certainly benefit the next generation of Finnish ludologists. Whether the translation itself is up to scratch remains to be seen - my review will appear in Turun Ylioppilaslehti, issue 12/2009. Current Music: Deine Lakaien - Kasmodiah | | Friday, September 11th, 2009 | | 12:25 pm |
| | Tuesday, September 8th, 2009 | | 9:52 pm |
Broadened Game Mastering.
Today, the mail brought me the second edition of Florian's book, Methodische Spielleitung: Techniken für dramatisches Rollenspiel. At a quick glance, this 85-page pocket volume does something very close to Aaron's essay, of which I blogged a couple days ago, just for German tabletop. It very cleverly combines experience and layman-clarified stuff from rpg academia, in this case for the purpose of creating more interesting play. I like it very much. Current Music: Kreep Ensemble - Rockin tila (2002) | | Sunday, September 6th, 2009 | | 9:35 pm |
| | Friday, September 4th, 2009 | | 7:14 am |
| | Thursday, September 3rd, 2009 | | 1:36 pm |
Cooler Than You Think.
Aaron Vanek has today gotten online his essay on larp as an art form, Cooler Than You Think: Understanding Live Action Role Playing (LARP). It's a layman-friendly text about looking at larp from an artistic viewpoint, meant for especially American audiences. Despite its soft approach, it delves into some very deep issues, discusses variables on larp (up to and including pervasives) and shows both extensive knowledge and insight. I had the pleasure of being one of the pre-commentators for the essay. I really like what Aaron has done. He has effectively written an essay of his own thoughts, compared his ideas to that which has been published elsewhere (ranging from Knutepunkt books to various online fora and commentators from various playing cultures), and then created an easily understandable, strong synthesis of it all. I don't agree with every single point he makes (just with most of them), but I really like the way things are presented in questions and answers, leading a reader to form more questions in his head. This is a solid text which whets the appetite for more, and I love that sort of thing. Give this paper a look, even if you're not an American, and even if you already know a lot about larp (and larp-as-art) theory. Damn fine. Current Music: Viikate - Kuu kaakon yllä | | Thursday, August 27th, 2009 | | 5:32 pm |
More Narrativist Critique.
Today, I received a link to an Italian discussion about Serpent. On it, Moreno presents the very same type of critique as Erlend did about Prayers few days ago: That the core approach is too unclear. I find this very credible. It appears that people with a very strong narrativist bent, particularly those wanting a strong "GM vision" from a game, find my emergent-plot works not very enjoyable or even interesting. This goes to what Ron Edwards, who also often expresses a similar narrativist bias, calls a game being "murky". I agree with the sentiment: You cannot cater for all audiences, it is now very apparent. Given a random sample, some will always find a game concept, no matter how good it is, wanting. (And no, I do not consider mine anywhere near perfect, so the flaws are that much more apparent.) I, however, disagree very much with the basic stance of these people: That a strong, driven "narrative vision" always means a better game. The last few years, strangely enough, it's been the ultra-narrativists (and not the competitive players we in the Nordic area so often see as "bad players") who have always been most critical of other people's works. Luckily enough, we now have stuff like theatre connections, minimalist freeform, and of course jeepform, which cater to that sort of play. Meanwhile, I want to keep doing emergence works, because those are in my view way more interesting to run in the long term. To each his own playing and design style. I simply do not believe that Erlend's equation of "player freedom = confusion = bad design" is appropriate for all players. Current Music: KMFDM - Ruck Zuck |
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