Went to a party, I danced all night, I drank 16 beers, And I started up a fight

I’m doing an exception and I shall write about something not straightly related to roleplaying. As these days when I’m not working at fast food restaurant, or at school at Turku uni, I don’t think that much about roleplaying stuff, in fact I even think Solmukohta when I have time scheduled for that, but what I do, is that I watch Big Brother Finland. I have the 24/7-thing, that makes it possible to watch it all day (and night) long. So I watch it always when I have nothing else to do. Not because I like it, but because my little sister is there.

It’s kinda addictive, though I of course feel stupid. But I’m having same feelings while watching my sister at internet, as I’m having while gamemastering a larp. The Finnish gamemastering with pre-written characters causes game masters know all the characters’ secrets, personality and so on, without any control what they’re going to do with them. “Please don’t tell them that your child’s father doesn’t know he has a kid. Oh, you did.” and so on.

If I could be someone else for a day, today I would definitely want to be the director or producer of the show. Mostly to know how it feels, to have that much power over REAL human beings, throwing them into different kinds of situations trying to make them lose their nerves and reveal their real person. Does it make the producers and directors feel almighty, and how they cope with it. Three months of controlling lives on 20 persons, does it affect, even on the subconscious level, your real relationships, when you play their God every day. As I’ve seen some game masters get high from the feeling they’re controlling fictional lives, how much higher one must get while doing it for 3 months, for real people.

I’d love to continue with the subject, but I have to go back to watch TV, as during last 24 hours, my sister has thrown a chopping board and a knife towards her fellow house mate, hidden alcohol around the house while being drunk and is now running there around in a stupid bee costume collecting honey from plastic sunflowers.

And I’m trying to live with the fact that she’s now the most famous person on our family.

But your lovin’ don’t pay my bills.

Ropecon is over. I managed to even participate a couple of program items, and do some producing needed. How ever, what was mostly left on my mind was a thing, some people who were sitting in the audience complained during both of lectures I was listening.

They complained how gamemaster can’t make any profit from a larp, maximum profit accepted is what covers pizzas to gamemasters afterwards.

Seriously, are you re-enacting the 90′s? Most of the larpers in “our circles” (I have 450 people on my facebook-friends, who I consider to be larpers) are adult and though some of them are more poor, some of them are richer, everyone of them would be able to put 50 euros to a game they would REALLY REALLY MUCH like to participate, most would be able to pay even more. And if the game would be a blast, they wouldn’t really be interested if you make some profit from it. If it wasn’t, they won’t come to sequel, even if you didn’t get profit.

This is no nineties, we’re not anymore highschoolers (though a couple of us still acts like they were and some still prefer their women that age) and as we pay 10 euros for a movie ticket, 100+ euros for a corset, 80 euros for a hairdresser, 70 euros for a video game or 60 euros for a bar night, we could also pay easily more money for larps if they would reach some quality standards with giving us powerful experiences.

And of course with more money they easier could. Money won’t cover bad planning, but let’s face it, clever special effects, atmosphere nicer that a youth house, live band, identical tunics, computer network etc. that would fit in your concept, might make the game more real for players.

If your game doesn’t intend change the world of any of the players, or doesn’t even plan entertain them as much as the newest Pirates of the Caribbean, or you just purely enjoy doing the games that you’re doing right now, then it’s okay you to stick with 5 to 10 euros, and dream about a free pizza.

But then you have no right to complain.

But I shouldn’t be thinking at all

So yesterday we were looking the LotR-trilogy with my bf. I suck at keeping my mind on the matter I should be concentrating on, so I started thinking about how LotR had been one of the two big things that had made the number of larpers rise exponentially. (Another one was the Daughters of Siam – the teen larper drama series on our primary TV-channel a couple of years before.)

We didn’t get the best out of it. This ain’t Denmark. Not every kid has tried it, but most of them at least know what it is. In theory we might have had the chances to do the same stuff as they did on Denmark with kid larping, but we didn’t. We were either not prepared, interested or what ever.

But Hobbit is coming on theaters next years’ December and this time we are interested and we might be prepared to that too.

As people in Ropecon, SuoLi and so on have been worried about the number of larpers descending and there has been stuff done and planned to attract new people in the world or Larp. There has been Arpacon, Jupe’s games for beginners and kids, roleplaying course for teachers etc, some gaming stores are organizing places and evening, where people might play tabletob RPGs. There will soon be Democon and so on. Those haven’t caught as much interest as we would have hoped, but some at least.

So if we’d do same kind of stuff after first part of the Hobbit movie, we might succeed alluring a new generation of larpers on the hobby. Maybe even have some “professional larpers” here too, professional meaning people who get paid for stuff they do, we’re already as competent to be that, we just do it for fun not for money.

Of course Hobbit won’t be that big thing that LotR was, but we’re now better. We have people with PR-professions, some people capable of doing association politics and/or funding bureaucracy, some larps that can be replayed, some cloths and swords that can be borrowed, persons already co-operating with culture centers, teachers that have used larp as an educational tool and so on.

And it doesn’t need 1000 people selling their soul again to the hobby but a couple of persons doing good PR and some people on the biggest cities to organize games for newbies and some to answer on newbies questions on web forums and stuff like that. Stuff that there’re already people doing.

I personally believe that the year between first and last part of the Jackson’s Hobbit will be our best shot to make our hobby again In, Pop and interesting to new people. Let’s do that?

Cherish the joy, you keep bringing it into my life

We accidentally found out on a dinner table of Knudepunkt, that Fabe, who was sitting on the same table, was studying at The Aalto University School of Art and Design in Helsinki, but she hasn’t participated even on one larp in Finland, because they’re all in finnish. And of course many larps have characters that one might play even without speaking finnish, but it’s impossible to find out which they are and what are the themes and genres of those games.

I guess idea of putting english summaries at the end of each event would be nice, but too much work as I usually don’t even bother to correct misspelling and bad structuring while updating calendar. (I say it’s because I wanna people to get a realistic view on each game, but it’s also laziness.

So either it could be put on the line of “This would be nice to see happening someday, maybe someone should do a wiki page, but before that we can start arguing what wiki we should use”-projects, or make it happen with the resources we have.

And the resource we always have, is Facebook. So there it is, Larps Looking for International Audience. Massi has already been spamming the link everywhere today, but if you haven’t yet bumped into it, there it is. Use it, like it, share it. And share your games there, or I’ve used that half an hour this morning for nothing.

If you don’t eat yer meat, you can’t have any pudding.

If I wouldn’t use stupid lyrics on topic, I would have named this Read more! But as I am, I use some lyrics from the another brick in the wall. It’s the song that goes with “we don’t need no education” and so on. As Pink Floyd is wrong and everyone would need some education. Or at least some new ideas to open their eyes.

As most of you didn’t know, Knudepunkt 2011 put out three books this year. Think Larp is about theory and academic stuff, the things you might want to use when you do your bachelor degree or master’s thesis. Yes, some of them are boring, some of them are not easily understandable, but they’re there for a reason. They’re part of the academic research that we simply need to make our little hobby look good in the eyes of adults and to let it evolve.

Do Larp is much more interesting. It tells about larps that have been organized. It gives you ideas. As nobody will never know, if you steal an idea for a character or event or whatever from a danish larp organized some years ago (except if you tell it to them yourself). So it is something that people who organize larps should read. Maybe it won’t change a thing. Your games are already perfect. Or maybe you will remember some of that stuff when you’re organizing your next game and think would something fit there. It’s pretentious to say that nothing influences you that you made all that amazing stuff just out of your head. Maybe it’s movies, maybe it’s books. But other larps can inspire your larps as well, so I would suggest anyone to read or at least browse through it. At least you know then if it has nothing to give to you.

Talk Larp is something I would vote even those read who don’t make larps, just sit on a bar and talk about them, whine about them, gossip about them. Not all points are valid from my perspective, and as I stated on Facebook, it was too much with Stop!, Not! Don’t! and Fuck! but still most of the texts gave me some thoughts. First I thought I should just recommend some of them to some of my friends like “hey you, you should really read this, because you’ve been giving lectures about same subject”, but then again, no. Those articles are so short that you can even print the whole book and read it in a toilet in a week.

How ever there’s a couple of articles I might have to recommend. Start with Berner’s Stop Crying. And if you’re planning after reading Do Larp stealing some of those ideas, I’m not holding anything against you, but maybe you should read J.Tuomas’s You’re not that Brilliant before doing it.