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.

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.

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?

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.

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.

This year has not only been inefficient, but also tragicomic to association and its activity. The orders haven’t been taken care of, only I and Jenni are answering on the information/PR-messages we get (neither of us are really information persons on this association, member affairs haven’t been taken care neither. The biggest thing done is a member initiative about changing the rules, which was voted down, and for some reason the same member that gave the original initiative, tried to vote down the other board member, that was present in that general assembly, where to voting was done. She pulled it back, but still these are the only activities we can put on the official annual report of activities. Even if I’m not on the board, I feel shame how things are.

The larps I’d like to write. As I only organise Ysaria (Ninetiesia) these days and even though making parodylarps about 90′s fantasygames is much fun, I have other ideas as well that I’d like to fulfill at some point. So I’ll present a coople of them here:

Offgame 1.
Of course these days I would give it more rocking name, but the basic idea of having a weekend long larp where larpers play larpers who prepare, play, debrief and afterparty at a fantasygame. Different from Aftergamelarp, Turhautuneet Teinit (Frustrated Teens) and others with same theme, I’d prefear organazing both the game and the game in the game properly. Not underlined Stereotypes, larp versions of my friends but a fictive larping scene that Finland might posses as well as the one we have.

Teen Harry Potter Game.
I’m so jealous that some others than me are making the first ever Harry Potter teen game in Finland. Teen game in the “OC meets HP” sence. It would be so cool, but as they’re already doing it, I couldn’t organize it, not as a public larp calendar game at least…

Moomin game
I’d love to have a game based on Tove Jansson’s Moominsummer Madness with some fateplay elements so that even if the game might not end as the novel did, it would still have some same scenes on it.

As most (or both) of my readers are more or less experienced and capable larp wrights, I want to present the idea of 80%/20%. I’ve heard it from Claus R, of course the idea isn’t his, but putting it on a context of larping, might be.

Most of people spend 20% of the time they use on doing larps, to get it 80% ready. The last 80% of time they use to make the last 20% of it ready. So if you just accept your game to be only 80% ready, when you deliver it, you could make 5 games on the same time that you make one. And don’t just take it on gamemastering. If you accept that you can go to a game with the props you get together in 20% of time, you would spend if you sew every ornament, accessory and decoration, you will have plenty of more time to sleep so you will lighten the place with your wonderful, well-slept persona that will be reflected in the way you play your character, so nobody will notice that your dress doesn’t have ornaments on every stitching. Except the ones, who have stayed awake the whole night with making their props so they’re so tired they won’t be able to concentrate on the essential stuff.

I know this isn’t something everyone would accept, but I just wanted to give it to you to ponder. Because even if I won’t make my games only 80% ready, I will do it with my larp clothing, maybe somebody else might want prioritize other way around or find some other part of the hobby where (s)he would tolerate only doing it by 80%.

Besides: 80% ready game is more playable, than a game that a gamemaster won’t run, because it’s not perfect. As it never will be perfect, there are better causes to burn out for.

Many people have stated their own opinions why this is happening in the scene and more likely what we should do to stop it. And I’m not talking only about Ropecon visitors, if we’d want more of them, we’d simply make our program more anime/manga friendly. But what we really need, is more roleplayers, both larpers and tabletoppers, not participants on that one event.

I think one of the simplest ways to better the scene is to stop the accusation, whose fault is it. It’s not because of humor larps, boring court larps, furry larps or invite-only larps. In fact the accusing is one of the biggest problems. Because if you keep telling what one does is bad, she more likely won’t start doing games you like, but instead stop doing anything. I, for one, can either do humor larps and serious roleplaying conventions, or sit home and dig my nose (metaphorically speaking). And I guess the first one still keeps the scene more alive than the latter one.

So instead of trying to please someone, please yourself. Make games or events you like. May it be 300 player adventure game, minilarpweekend, 5 person immersion for 5 days, hard sci-fi on the second christmas day or what ever pleases you. And talk about it, advertise it. Put it on the (these days often updated!) larp calendar so that everyone will see how wonderful event you’re doing; Even if they couldn’t make it there, they might get inspired and organise their own larp with same themes next month. Make it a facebook event so that people will see that all their friends are going there and enjoy their time when you just sit home playing WoW. It’s not that “someone” should do “something”, it’s not that you should do everything. You just need to do what you do, and a bit more better. And advertise it a bit more. Even if you’re just a player, you can advertise the games you’re going. Hype them a bit more so that others will get interested too. It’s not really that hard. But of course harder than whining or getting depressed about the state of the roleplaying scene.

Planning

I was the Finnish country contact, so I was responsible for our group trip by ferry. Not only did I manage to make a better deal at Viking Line that we’d deserve, but also took care of bunch of other things from buffet dinner to group payment of the event itself. Multis calling me and asking what he should wear at the Saturday’s ball made me understand that I’m not even their secretary, I’m their mother.

But everything went smoothly with organising. Only moment when I was worried was when the ferry back was leaving in three minutes, but the bus hasn’t yet arrived. Leaving late and stucked in the traffic jam, but surprisingly we all made on the ferry on time and had even 30 secs extra.

Still if I organise something like this again, I guess I should change my organizing style more like Perv’s style of organising things: Less flexibility, more professionalism.

But to the event itself:

Disclaimer: We had the pre-event “a-week-not-in-sweden” on Tuesday, so when we got into the boat Wednesday, we were already hangoverish. And unfortunately they sell cheap booze on ferry too. And I won 50 euros at the Blackjack, so I had “some” extra money to drink.

Thursday

For some odd reason I wasn’t sharing room with my boyfriend. This being first time ever I’ve asked same room with him (this is the fourth time I’m there with my bf though it hasn’t always been Miika) and not getting it I was kinda surprised but instead of making all the drama out from it, we just carried his mattress on our room, and changed Jo to Massi, so at the end the room included me, Massi, Miika, Aarne and Ellis.

On Thursday there was opening ceremony and after it the kickstart game. I skipped it and finished my presentation, as I was holding it at that same evening. Considering how much we had problems communicating beforehand with other speakers, everything went fine. My presentation supported by Jukka and Ellis was mostly same as held at the ELC, so was Anna’s. Unfortunately Elin’s PP-slides could not be shown from my computer, which is a pity as the stuff she talked was interesting but it would have been easier to follow, when you can read the main points from the screen. And I was glad that the Danish part was held by someone else than Claus to get at least a bit different point of view than he had. If we believe Søren, Kasper was chosen because of his looks, but he funny and informative too.

Program also revealed the worst part of Fiskeboda; there were no big lecture rooms, that was biggest and as I let everybody in who wanted, we had to keep the windows and the door open to be able to breathe there.

As there has been some talk about the numbers I gave, specially about the 67% of the larpers are girls and “it’s common that girls play male characters to get into games.

First one isn’t really taken by counting three larpers I shared my room with. It’s a number counted from the player lists of the Finnish games in larp calendar at the summer 2008 excluding those whose first name doesn’t tell if they’re male or female. That and other numbers I usually use as facts can now be read (in finnish) from the larp.fi. Most of the “research” or counting there is done by Juho Reivo. And I know they weren’t there during Knutpunkt, but now they are.

And about commonness about girls playing male characters. It’s common in the sense that in more than half of the games I’ve been in last four years, there has been girls playing guys. But it’s not common in that sense that every girl would have to play a male every now and then. I personally haven’t played male even once.

I wished somebody would have asked these in the convention instead of reading the debate about it after KP from Facebook. I personally don’t feel like wasting my KP on hanging on Facebook.

Friday

Luckily there was an article about Larp in Russia in the Knutbook, as the lecture was at 9 am. Although we made it to the breakfast both on Friday and saturday, it was impossible to get up so early that you’d eaten your breakfast before that.

Massi’s eye infection and a trip with Larson to pharmacy kept us busy on the morning, so I missed a couple of interesting sounding program items (luckily we had experienced Armageddon already at ELC) but had time to socialize with others while waiting for the doctor to call back. On the evening we went to see Claus’s Larp Revolution, which had its points. It’s nice to hear it occasionally out loud that more you do and organize stuff, more you get enemies. So technically it’s not my fault. On the other hand, when it’s said out loud, it a good excuse not to do anything.

The night we spent at the Danish Bar. Which was one of the best concepts of the event. A cottage ment for partying and a bar desk with the idea “bring booze so you can take booze”. So almost everybody were there. The Danes also repeated their Pl’unch ritual, which was funny and filled the “you must participate on one ritual”-part of KP.

Saturday

The idea of Larp Plaza was wonderful, people presenting their own projects (and some also offering cookies) in the program rooms of the Mansion. As I couldn’t decide if I’d go to listen re-runnable larps of the vision for next years Knudepunkt, I went to bake a cake for evening’s party.

This year there were no attempt to add gala dinner to the party, which worked very well. The tent was slightly too cold, so only way to keep yourself warm was dancing or going to private parties at the hotel rooms. To make this sound less suspicious, I was at Laura’s room party. After the disco ended, we head to the Danish Bar again. This night I was less easy than the night before as it would have not been cost-conscious. I went to sleep around 3 am. Miika had gotten sleep even earlier and Aarne for instance came sleeping around 6.

Sunday

Sunday was the first day we couldn’t make it to the breakfast. not only were we tired, but also because the program had two different times for breakfast and we of course looked the wrong one. I left with Jukkarainen before the ending ceremony to claim the boat tickets from VL which later when bus timetables failed, turned out to be most clever thing to do.

Heidi out. I did participate in more program items, but as I’ll write something about KP on Ropecon webpages too, I put that “official” stuff there. Still tired, still happy. One of the best Knutpunkt ever, possibly the best.