Eirik is writing that pressenting his theories in a generally availible form will make his statements too long. I disagree. Most of the spechialist terms that he (and certain other theorists) like to use, are little more than av overly clever way of stating a basically simple consept.

I have an extra job teaching shcool-clases at the museum of natural science in Oslo. I find it mentally stimulating to present a complicated consept to pupils in easily understood terms. It forces myself to think clearly about the subject in question. Sometimes, "translating" tecnical terms into real life words let me see the plain stupidity of some popular consepts within modersn science. Often seemingly advanced stuff is really quite simple.

I strongly belive that theorists should strive to make their theories as accsesible as possible. Apart from being a healty mental exerchise, the remaing 90-95% of LARPers form what I belive is a needed corrective to the often somewhat airy theoretical works of the theorists. After all, our ramblings should ultimately serve to make better LARPS. If our theories never reach the common organiser, all our writing has mearly been a fancy way to kill time.

A note on theoretical developement:

The various disiplines of science tend to move through certain stages. These are not absolute, and pequliarities within the different branches of science may obscure or exclude certain stages. These are the stages:

1) Formative stage.

2) Descretive stage

3) Analytical stage

The first stage is where the very consept of the discipline is being formed. It is where one start to understand that the discipline is an actual discipline in its own right, and not merely a subgenere of some other scientifick branch.

The second stage is where the discipline is describing itself, inventing terminology, finding its borders an charting the fenomena it seeks to cover.

The third stage is where the real science is getting under way, and the hereto loose theoretical framework starts to produce apliccable results. Though this stage is deffinetly the morst productive, it is also the dullest.

I personally belive LARP theory to be somewhere around the early part of stage two. Understanding our own artform (or whatever one like to call it) should be our prime priority. Presenting these thgoughts to the people should be the next, so that the more practically minded people can take over and apply the theories to real life (or in our case, fake life).

I am sorry. It should have read: "...or young and not overly bright boys for those of that inclination".

I am an old sexist fart, but I try not to be gender-specifick about it

And here we go again on a saturday night...

Though we like to pretend that LARP exists in a cultural vacuum, it doesn't - there's plenty of relevant theory out there that we don't need to re-invent.

So I've opened a separate topic to work as a dictionary, drawing on some previous discussions we've had. Everybody happy?

comments, comments
Oh, Mike - I dig your dream. The 'ractive revolution may be a re-discovery. And it certainly has something to do with human nature. After all - what distinguishes LARP from any other medium of fiction is that we do the fictive stuff. Physically. And that's a pretty radical difference we tend to forget because we take it for granted. It's also interesting to note that LARP was popularised (not invented, that's earlier) by the first generation to fall victim to cable TV and the video. More on this later.

"The Diamond Age" (Neal Stephenson) should be essential reading for any LARPer with ambitions for the medium. It should also show the hobbyists why the avantgardists have wet dreams about the theoretical future of LARP. Yeah, it's science fiction, but those with both feet firmly planted on the ground stand still.

My brief comment on post-modernist the ofcourse wasn't well thought-through, except for revealing my taste for Hegels view of history. But it invoked Olle, and that's good. Olle - I'm not ignoring your posting, I'm eagerly anticipating the long one..

.eirik.
Onthology - the philosophy of what exists, of the nature of things.
Post-modernism - check this

quote:

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der Alte Böck: [B]Having said this, I notice that we bouth, at a friday night, are writing postings on the obscure subject of LARP-theory, while we should bouth be drinking beer and chasing young and not overly bright girls.[B]

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As for the rest of we should be out looking for the old overly bright men, obviously mythical creatures of lands yonder

*sigh*

More to the point: I think Neal Stephenson's nanosteampunk romp "The Diamond Age" - apart from being a clever and entertaining novel - has a lot to say about larping in the form of virtual reality. Or as he calls it, 'ractives.

And henceforth I shall refer to virtual reality as VR and occasionally abridge the interactive to ractive.

And of course it's about seeming arrogant and snobbish and that's a party to which everybody's invited. Just trying to shake everybody's command of the 'franca up a bit before KP, that's all. ;D

Joc

I am sorry if I sounded crass. Your vision is ideed a beautiful one (and very beautifully written). And natuarally I partly agree to it. When I am slightly more sober, I will consider your vision together with the consept of "streaming" (you might have heard of it).

The consept of LARP as a form of shamanism is, shal we say, entertaining. Several other theorists has consentrated on the communication and ineractivity of the medium. You should have a loock at Tomas' Key manifesto.

About me taking the most facist points of the Turku manifesto litarally: That is just me. You are just rattling my personal chain, thats all. I prefere to see LARP-as a _form_, and being a zoologist, I love the consept of variation over a given them (in this case LARP).

Having said this, I notice that we bouth, at a friday night, are writing postings on the obscure subject of LARP-theory, while we should bouth be drinking beer and chasing young and not overly bright girls. Must be the age...

In my "Dream" I'm not saying how things should be, I'm just trying to create a hypothesis of how things perhaps could be. Anyone's comments would be appreciated, because I think that is one interesting aspect of the interactive art that hasn't been explored at all (or very little).

(And with the Manifest, you don't need to take all the most fascistic points literally

About language:
Using non-lay terms may be an effective way of saying something, but when your readers are lay people (and here on Forum, most of us are), it is a terribly ineffective way of communicating something. (If the message you want to communicate is that you're a bunch of arrogant snobs who're only interested in talking with each other, you are doing beautifully )
Since you are new here, I'll assume you have been doing it out of ignorance. (Eirik really should have known better, but I guess he has fallen into bad company lately. Sigh, he used to be such a nice, well-behaved girl ) I humbly suggest that you take into account your audience in your further writings here.

Hilde
Author of the widely acclaimed Angelltrøa Manifesto

You have a beautiful dream, Mike. There remains but one objection to it: It is not the only one. To me, that is also the worst side of the Turku Manifesto: It's claim to universality. Feel free to pursue your dream, but it is essential that we remain open to radically different ways of LARPing.

In order to understand what LARP is all about, I belive we need go no further than to the name of the phenomena itself: Live role-playing. It is live (not tablebound), it is about assuming a role, and it is about playing. Does it have to be more complicated?

Then why do we do it? My fundamental axiom is that we do it for our own emotional kick. It may be for fun, for the excitement, the challenge, the courtship, the chatarsis or whatever. Each has her or his own preferences, but essentially we do it for our selves.

The second axiom is that a LARP happens inside one's own head. Only you can feel your own feelings. Thus, LARP is by nature a subjective experience.

Following my two axioms is this theory: What benefits the game, benefits you as a player. Thus, you as a player should seek to understand the nature of each particular game, and try to add to it, much in leu with the Turku wowe.

There are a number of different games though. Some are played for fun, other for the excitement and some (perhaps most) for the feeling of being in someone else's shoes. One should, out of fidelity to the game (and thereby to one self), strive to find the form of role-playing wich best suits the game. The Turku style will possibly be the best solution in 4 out of 5 games, appropriate in 9 out of 10, but sometimes actually inappropriate.

A LARP-game is a vision made flesh by the organiser. The moment players enter into it, the players will influence the vision. In order to make the game remain true to the vision, the organisers shold make their vision as clear as possible to the players, and players shold strive to understand it.

Dang! I need to make a manifestum...

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Gamle-Bøck

[This message has been edited by der Alte Böck (edited 16 February 2001).]

Strangely enough, my demand that people should eläytyä -- immerse themselves in their characters -- was the one that caused most objection among Finnish players.

I remember there were many who called me a fascist because I said they shouldn't come to my games if they won't eläytyä.

They sayd there was no way for me to look in their heads. ...don't worry, I'm not gonna say they were wrong

The point is that this is just reason I made such demands before the game -- during the game or after the game I couldn't know if somebody immersed in a character or not.

"Then how will you know?" I won't. I never do. All the game master gets is what the players tell him. And the players only get what the game master gives them. And that's why I think the game master should be allowed to tell his players in advance what to expect to be given.

I'm confused again.

We have spent lots of time trying to define what larp is, and what should be done with it. I don’t think larps should have plots, and as few non-diegetic methods as possible. Some don’t agree. I think there’s a general concept of roleplaying, of which table-top and live-action are just two opposing types. Some don’t agree. But the big thing about larp and all roleplaying, what really makes it different from anything else, is the interaction.

Interaction! That’s something huge. It’s, in a way, the thing that defines us as human beings. We’re social, we use a language, we communicate, we interact. Most traditional artforms -- either passive or active -- are a way to communicate ideas. But roleplaying, the interactive art, is communication in itself. That’s what it’s all about.

And hell no, we didn’t invent it! Those war-gamers in the sixties didn’t invent it. Nobody invented it. It’s always been around. If there’s a collective subconsciousness, then the interactive art is definitely a part of it. Little kids have always remembered it, and been aware of it. That’s what most of their games are all about. Playing home, that’s roleplaying. Playing Star Wars -- you be Han Solo and I’ll be Luke Skywalker -- that’s roleplaying. Playing, roleplaying, it’s all the same. But kids didn’t invent it either, they just preserved it.

Interactive art has been around for as long as humans have had any culture to speak of. Actually, it’s what culture is all about. Many shamanistic rituals and spirit quests are simply roleplaying with another name. You enter the spirit plane, you become the totem animal or the legendary hero, you meet holy characters and interact with them, you do what you wanted to do, and return to the earthly plane. That’s your basic shamanistic journey for you. That’s also your basic roleplaying game for you.

In some rituals you interact with spirits that can’t be seen. In other rituals your co-shamans or tribemates take on the roles of the spirits and your companions, and then you act it out. But in some strange way, it’s not you. You may still look like you, but inside, something has changed. Could this happen through the process of eläytyminen, immersion into another consciousness, that’s so central to all roleplaying. Only in shamanistic rituals the state of eläytyminen isn’t created with character descriptions and concentration, but mushrooms and drumbeats.

What we have, or what we could have, is shamanism reinvented. The game masters of today could be the wisemen and shamans of tomorrow. Personally, I don’t think there are any invisible consciousnesses living in the animals or the trees or the air. However, I do know, that inside our heads there’s a whole lot of gray matter we have no use for. Maybe, just maybe there’s something in there that allows us to really become other people, other beings, real and maginary, for a while. And maybe, just maybe we’re somehow better off afterwards.

This is something I’ve been thinking about lately, partly thanks to this discussion, partly thanks to some movies I’ve seen and books I’ve read lately, partly thanks to playing just a bit too much King of Dragon Pass, partly thanks to some other -- even stranger -- ideas that have been bouncing in my head.

This means that it doesn’t matter what we think makes a good larp or what makes a good table-top and whether something is LARP because it has a plot. Not yet anyway, that comes to play later, when we have a clue. Currently, we should concentrate on getting that clue, trying to find out what’s essential to the interactive art. We should try to find out how we can use our collective shamanistic past to understand the interactive present.

What possibilities there really are in store for us in the interactive art? It certainly doesn’t just have to be trying to create societies and set semi-interesting social games in worlds we’ve created. It could be a gateway to the unconscious, the unseen, the unfelt -- the unreal that’s waiting inside us. The link back to what humanity is all about.

Or maybe not. But I really, really want to find out.

Joc:

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The "elitist" theorists tend to be normative, writing about how larp should be. In lay terms, writing about what they want.

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I know your scenes have distorted the word "elitist" beyond recognition, but in plain English and Norwegian it's still taken to mean someone who believes that a few people are superior to most people, that they are one of those superior people, and that this is a good thing. Which makes "elitists" a different thing from "elites" and definitely a different thing from theory, ideology or politics.

quote:

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The academic theorists, drudging away silently at universities and especially places like Interaktiva institutet, tend to be descriptive, writing about what the player actually gets.

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All of what I've read of academic theorists on LARP have been about the content or the people, not the form, dr.Philips being the only exception. If you have examples to the contrary, I'd love to read them.

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The problem, as I see it, is with the normative theorists like yourself confusing their wants with the reality of the hobby, making ludicrously cathegorical statements that have no bearing whatsoever on something like 90% of the games out there.

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And the problem with media people like yourself is that they scan texts for points that can be dragged out of context to make a sellable story, and then convince themselves this horrid distortion is the "truth".

If you re-read your Dogma 99 I think you'll find that most of it is actually within your definition of descriptive theory, with the only really normative stuff being statements to the effect of "OK, we don't mind that you like games but we'd like to point out that the stuff you do doesn't really work as a game, so why not try something new?" or "we're concerned about LARP as art and think that most of the methods under the label of "conventional" LARP work contrary to LARP as art". The description of the stasis quo is coupled with a desire to develop LARP as an art form - hence the Vow of Chastity which really is a LARPmaking tool and not a puzzle you can solve to prove your worth, which is what Jaako seems to think.

Ofcourse, this is all packaged to resemble normative theory, which was very provoking to a number of people, and which is the only reason you heard about the manifesto anyway.

If we miss 90%? Perhaps. We've reacted to conventional LARP methods, which are further defined and described in the manifesto - and if 90% of LARPs don't use those methods then we really wouldn't have anything to complain about, would we?

The same would be true if conventional methods were shown to work fine, and didn't leave 40% of the players frustrated after each event - but so far, the critics have been carefull of touching that subject.

.eirik.

That's a very good question indeed My flatmate Pia spent a week at the university figuring that one out so I tend to bow to her authority on the issue What WE mean is that we very strongly suspect that the "old-fashioned" kind of cultural studies might not have concepts to describe what role-pleying is about.

While you're at it, I'd like an explanation of "diegetic" as well.

That's easier - it means something that's a part of the truth of the story. Like when there's music on film, usually the charachters can't hear it, and then it's non-diegetic. But sometimes there's a radio on in the movie, and then the music is diegetic.

And please keep it in lay terms, huh?

And I want to emphasize that our use of non-lay terms has two separate uses:

1) very often it's the most precise and effective way to say something.

2) a lot of the time it's considered a feat to get Eirik Fatland to stop and think about something We're just doing it to fuck our old "enemies" around, and THAT is ridiculous behaviour, of course.

However, it's a good idea to use the words anuway because of the first reason, but maybe we better try and explain them as we go along. I suspect that the most common terms will be thrown around a lot during Knutepunkt anyway...

The Swedes will resent your suggestion that they can't write.

The Norwegians will ignore it because some of them don't want to write

But this sounds to me very much like Carolus Rex II, the probably forthcoming Martin Ericsson epic.

Martin would be the Auteur - the writer/director, but in the end they don't do much of the writing anyway because they don't have the time. Another word for that might be Creative Director.

Then there are the producers (in this case probably Henrik Summanen and Tomas Walch) and the "studio", their company Alternaliv.

Then you'd have an unusually big cadre of good writers, say one for each twenty players; this takes for serious coordination of their effort by the Auteur and maybe a "ten", a floor manager-for-the-writers of sorts.

Somebody conducting international effort and managing the recruitment and casting process.
Being in charge of a shitload of personnel appearing in different places.

And before any of this could start, everybody on the production team would have to have a very long conference about larp theory, where they decide what every word means (larp, story, plot, charachter) in their particular context and what the genre and ambience of the game should be like, and what their relation to the sanctity of diegesis should be. And how all of this should best be communicated to the writers and players.

Any project that size should be a practical test of all larp theory so far, which btw is what the Wanderer project failed to do - they said "we'll do the biggest most international larp" but forgot to decide what they thought a larp should be.

Would it then be usful to say "we want Turku style players" or "we'll be anti-dogmatic". Would a manifesto or a vow be a useful tool at all for a game that isn't, you know, Polish Art House gaming.

Less vow, more wow? Gentlemen?

Could one of you please explain what you mean by "postmodern"? I've checked several dictionaries, but the best I found was a description of "postmodern" as "a reaction against or rejection of modernism" and "modernism" as "pertaining to things present and recent", which didn't help me very much.

While you're at it, I'd like an explanation of "diegetic" as well. I'm afraid the 1800+ pages of Webster's Encyclopedic Unabridged Dictionary has let me down most shamefully

And please keep it in lay terms, huh?

Hilde

quote:

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Originally posted by Mike Pohjola:
If you feel you must drive the game to some special direction, it's okay to use diegetic methods to achieve this (e.g. NPCs). Using non-diegetic methods to impose a plot is, IMO, a non-LARP method.

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OK, so what Mike is talking about here is limited to his honest opinion and he's arguing with Eirik's honest opinion and the rest of us needn't really care.

Except this is interesting because we again enter the uncharted territory of the inherent larpness of some things and the lack of larpness in others.

I very much doubt the descriptive and even statistical validity of what Mike just said. Obviously no studies have been done, so if I now claim that using non-diegetic methods of directing the story is quite unusual, it's just my own assumption.

Personally I do suspect that using non-diegetic methods like faiths or having the GMs step in during a fight or whatever is quite rare... but it's guesswork. You know what I'd like to do?

I'd like a questionnaire with about twenty questions that we could make all game arrangers visiting Knutpunkt fill out... Or even people who have just visited games as a player... And just find out whether boffers are still widely used, whether non-diegetic soundtracks are normal and whether faiths or similar off-game "commands" are considered larp proper?

But I don't really have the time to put one together. Or do I? Anybody else interested? Do you think it would be useful?

Probably it should be an on-line questionnaire. Yeah that's it.

Joc

Eirik:
> I also consider them different, different
> to the point that I for a while argued that
> fateplay was a medium separate from LARP.

Then there was a while when I might've agreed with you

I do consider fateplay to be somewhat different from what I consider to be a LARP. This has to do with the discussion about not having stories in a LARP.

Okay, let's forget the concept of a story, and focus on plot. I don't think you should impose a plot on LARP. It's fine to have sort of "beginning" plots, as long as you don't expect them to go any particular way during the game itself.

If you feel you must drive the game to some special direction, it's okay to use diegetic methods to achieve this (e.g. NPCs). Using non-diegetic methods to impose a plot is, IMO, a non-LARP method.

This doesn't mean that such things lose their value, just their value as LARP.

All:
The discussion about fateplay is a fork; it is in itself important, but the question on the status of the text/the Text is a completely separate discussion.

Eirik [and all you other people]:
A modernist definition of LARP before any post-modernist discussion is to take place? Are we to take a notion of a Universal Subject as a starting point? "The Player", as if there were only one subject-position from which to conduct playership? Doing this would seriously hamper many fruitful paths of inquiry into what we do.

A discussion of LARP would have more to gain from a multiperspectival critical position than from simple Modernist reduction. (I am talking about a discussion informed by feminism, post-colonial theory and/or Marxist class thinking, [among many interesting theories that can serve as starting points] or a combination of all these.)

"There can be only several."

[My real input forthcoming.]

Olle of PROJEKT BANDHAGEN

Well no, it's just that we're active in different fora.

The "elitist" theorists tend to be normative, writing about how larp should be. In lay terms, writing about what they want.

The academic theorists, drudging away silently at universities and especially places like Interaktiva institutet, tend to be descriptive, writing about what the player actually gets.

The problem, as I see it, is with the normative theorists like yourself confusing their wants with the reality of the hobby, making ludicrously cathegorical statements that have no bearing whatsoever on something like 90% of the games out there.

It is not for you or me or especially Mike to say that they're not larpers just because they're bad players whose games suck.

And we should be clearer in communicating what it is exactly that we're trying to achieve with each specific piece of writing.

Joc

BTW don't be intimidated by the tone of this conversation. Generally Finnish theorists tend to be ruder the better they know their opponent.

[This message has been edited by Joc (edited 15 February 2001).]

> "Fateplay is nothing more than a distribution of definitions along the temporal axis of a work of LARP, creating a fable around a few key definitions, and as such not much different from what larpwrights do in any case. The differences between interpreting predefined symbols on the spatial axis and the temporal axis are minimal. We allready force players to relate to church-times, or dinner being served and the diference between such definitions and fates is in prejudice - neither theory, experience nor possibility."

Thus writes Eirik.

But hullo.

I can choose not to attend church or to go without my dinner if I feel that such is the nature of my charachter, under the specific circumstance of the, you know, temporal/spatial relation.

I can't ignore a skjebne, and thus have to succumb to the GM's view of not only my charachter but all charachters in the game and their actions.

As a player, I'm not sure about what I think about that. I've tried it, and the discomfort of thinking of your skjebne lasts seconds at most.

As a GM, I find it deplorable and cheap.

Yours truly.

Mike:

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I'd say more parody than irony. And parody of manifests, not of the ideas.

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About eight months after .laitos I tried to run my first and only fateplay "Much Ado About Nothing", which was no such a success (nor did I expect it to be). But it still further illustrated the medium of LARP for me.

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There are almost as many fateplay failures as there are successes. But then; the successes are legendary LARPs - Moirais Vev, Knappnålshuvudet, Dance Macabre. The last of which used a fateplay-derived method ("optional fates") that pretty much worked as fateplay in the end. Writing fateplay is harder than most LARPwriting, and I assume you only had my brief English-language intro as a guide, not Lars' how-to, when doing "Much ado about nothing". My article really doesn't offer a good enough explanation of fateplay.

Though it's hard to find LARPs untainted by gamism (getting better these days), I've jumped onto all pure dramatist or simulationist LARPs I could. I enjoy both forms. I also consider them different, different to the point that I for a while argued that fateplay was a medium separate from LARP.

Joc:

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In their wake we've seen games and playing highlighting other issues that have as of yet been ignored or overlooked by the entire field of theorists. And those areas are what I find exciting.

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I agree. But there isn't an "entire field of theorists" out there. Some "old farts" in Finland, some "elitists" writing in vintage Fëas, some frequent posters to this forum. That's pretty much it, as long as we continue ignoring the anglo-american theorists because they occasionally roll dice at their LARPs.

On the note of post-modernism; No matter how post-modern our medium is, I believe we need to develop a modernist philosophy of LARP until we are able to conceive a post-modern position in relation to it. At the moment, LARP theory seems to be on the level of pre-Socratic philosophers agressively arguing about whether the world is actually made out of water or fire.

Oh, and then there's Brian David Philips - the worlds only dr.LARP - who wrote this nastily convincing piece on interactive drama as deconstruction theatre - "deconstruction" in the Derrida sense. An interesting argument, a hard spot to proceed from.

pax & agape,
.eirik.

Pure definition isn't very arty, but the LARP artist tends to add meaning to these phenomena. The predefined phenomena then act as navigational lights to the players, who while playing will interpret the larpwright-defined phenomena through a hermeneutical process. I use the word "meaning" here in its broadest sense, to inlude also symbols whose meaning isn't formulated by the artist but intended to invite interpretation as if it were.

Both the choice of phenomena to define, as well as the meaning attributed to them, tend to be according the pattern dictated by a vision, occasionally defining non-diegetic phenomena for the sake of this vision or for lack of posibility to include them. The latter being the typical cause of game mechanics.

A fable may be understood as a series of meaning-carrying phenomena distributed along a temporal axis and where the sequence of and relation between events is interpreted as carrying a meaning by itself. I.e. - a story as "told" through a LARP, but not in Mikes use of the word.

A player experience is the sum of all things thought and sensed, obviously dependent on the progress of a player along the temporal axis in the exploration of the spatial axis.

This also brings us to the core problem of LARP theory: we can analyse a novel or a stageplay knowing that every sentence is defined and imbued with meaning by the author. The limited powers of the LARPwright prevent us from applying traditional litterary or theatre analysis and dramaturgy to LARP.

What's my point? There are three, actually:
1) If the art of LARPmaking is about defining key phenomena of the work, the "artist" is the one who defines these phenomena. In some cases, that's the players. In the first 4 Dogma LARPs, it was the players.

2) Time and space sharing so many properties that many metaphysicians sincerely doubt they are separated - the temporal and spatial axis of a LARP are similarily undivisible. The hermeneutical spiral of any participants understanding of the LARP receives input from both the predefined spatial phenomena, the predifined temporal phenomena, and the interpretation of these phenomena in the light of new events.

Fateplay is nothing more than a distribution of definitions along the temporal axis of a work of LARP, creating a fable around a few key definitions, and as such not much different from what larpwrights do in any case. The differences between interpreting predefined symbols on the spatial axis and the temporal axis are minimal. We allready force players to relate to church-times, or dinner being served and the diference between such definitions and fates is in prejudice - neither theory, experience nor possibility.

3) Time and space being infinite, the diegesis is never defined in its entirety. On the contrary; the majority of the required decisions and definitions are left to players. For this reason, and a couple of other, I reject the Turku position that LARP can be science because you can simulate a society through it. You can't, because memory limits the amounts of definitions and talent limits our capacity to interpret them. A complete simulation would require a complete set of definitions, which basically means you need to abduct babies and raise them in your LARP society if at all to make them behave "realistically". What the Turku school believes in is voodoo - not science.

pax & agape,
.eirik.
PS: Sorry for my use of technical terminology above. But a "popular version", with illustrations and all terms explained, would be three times longer. Maybe later.

>Yeah - but I think you didn't PLAN for it to >be great. Now this weekend I attended the >prelude to Europa, which was not a larp in a >dramaturgical sense, nor in the Dogme sense >nor Turku, but which would have been called >a larp in Finland, and it was intense and >revolting physically and psychologically. >And bloody great.

Ah, the eternal question of what is larp. But there are some major differences between the nordic countries. Or at least this is an impression I get.

If I were to compile a dream larp team (get ready to be offended), I would like to have Finnish writers, Norweigian rules and Swedish Art Direction with an non-Finnish organization.

Yes, this is extreme, but this is pretty much my view. Finns do not know how to prop properly (or do not have the money or inclination). We also tend to solve the problem of rules by having as little as possible.

Note how boldly I use national stereotypes a week before Europa.

Of course those used to four day to week games in Norway or Sweden would never get a kick big enough from a Finnish game. We like to have compact games. Get the rush and get out. No need to waste time doing the same emotional voyage for any loger than neccessry.

>>It was coined by Dare Talvitie. Back when >>he was a "somebody", but neither you, me or >>Jaakko were "anybodies" larp-wise.
>If this is this a popularity contest, cover >boy, I've already lost

This might not be strictly speaking a popularity contest, but a popularity contest mixed with beauty pagant and shouting exercise. Popularity or public recognance is not given, it is taken.

>The thing is, though, that I do think the >vow of chastity as the central point of your >manifesto is a very very very very good >description of an ideologically, though not >numerally, dominant form of playing (in >Finland).

Well, at least the most vocal (see my last comment). Even if I agree with most of the manifesto, there are some basic exaggarations that I think are pointless and some points which most finns tend to dismiss. The advatage of the Turku school is, that you can always claim that you follow their dogma as long as you can after the game explain every action from the character. There is no way for Mike to actually peek inside your head. This - in many ways - is the ultimate downfall of the manifesto.

>I also think the Dogme manifesto, intended >as a shake-up and a wake-up call, served its >purpose admirably.

When I first read the dogme 99 way back when I thought that it was just preposterous. Now when I was able to read the Europa writers' guide's interpretation of the Dogme I find it almost trivial. The Vow of Chastity seems to be very strict, but the interpretations have been rather flexible.

Oh well, it did create a lot of discussion all around. PR and marketing points, boys.

>You can't say a LARP was good _only_ because >of some one aspect (characters, world, >players) was good. All those aspects make >the LARP, and are all parts of the GM's art.

Of course you can. There is the whole and then there are the parts. .laitos was a great game, but many of the pieces were crappy. Kalevala: Vainovalkeat was very well written but the game was mediocre at best.

I still believe in the Montola axiom: "The game rises or falls with the players - game masters can only ruin a game." GMs can do all in their power to make perfect game, but if the players are crap then the game is
crappy. If the handouts and characters are bad and the propping is lousy
good players can still make a good game.

If you have to see larp as art created by a GM, then you need to realize, that one of the most important strokes of brush is the selection of players.

(The concept of genre is another very important ingredient in a succesful game, but that is a whole different converstion.)

>And don't worry, I wasn't offended. But next >time you have a point to make, it might be a >good idea to make it instead of just >attacking other people's points.

Oh yes, the writer of The Turku Manifesto wants you to be low key and non-confrontatious.

>Water under the bridge

Wooosh. Wooosh.

-Jaakko Stenros

sorry -

I was talking about the prelude, which was a sort of linear adventure for testing security systems, player stamina and charachters (and a very good experience in my book).