Archipelago II

After a year or so of playtesting with friends, and having other people pick up the game and play it without my supervision, I’ve done some rewriting and redesign. Feedback on the previous version was very positive (i. e., people had a lot of fun playing it). From the new version of the game:

About the game

Archipelago is a story/role-playing game where each player controls a major character. Player take turns directing and playing out a part of their character’s story, leading them towards their selected point of destiny, while other players interact with and influence that story.

Who is this game for?

If you like the story-telling part of games, and enjoy the creative challenge and inspiration that comes from working with others, this game is for you. If you like tactical mechanics, resource management, or player-vs-player competition, there are other games that might work better for you.

The vibe I’m aiming for

I wrote this game trying to capture the feeling of Ursula K. LeGuin’s «Earthsea» books. I wanted a game of grand destinies, that at the same time had time to dwell on the details of plants, words, everyday lives. I wanted a game that was about great conflicts, but at the same time treated its characters’ stories with respect. I wanted not a steel framework, but a spider web of thin threads creating subtler stories.

This game works best if you play it slow. Sometimes, the best thing to do is wait a little and see how things unfold. Ged stayed with Ogion for years, learning about the old language, the names of flower petals and bugs. There’s time to let the characters evolve.

Breathe in. Breathe out. Take your time.

Changes from the previous version

• The wording of the ritual phrases has been changed; some phrases have been added; and the effect of some of them is different. Yes, that means you need to re-read them all if you’ve played the game before.

• Fate and resolution cards have been added. Fate cards make ownership more active, and get the map more into play. Resolution cards are more fun than just red vs black cards.

• There are a lot of little clarifications and expansions – on creating characters, creating destiny points, using the map, active ownership etc.

• I’ve included a section on group dynamics from Wikipedia, along with my comments relating to Archipelagoan design.

Download the new rules here!

Reviews of the book

So far we’ve seen two reviews of the Nørwegian Style book. Interestingly, one is in Finnish, the other in Danish. It seems that while the aim was to reach an English-speaking audience, we’ve primarily succeeded in getting attention from our neighbors. Or, perhaps, they’re the ones most eager to find out what we’ve been up to.

Since both reviewers write in their own language, I suggest you use Google Translate to find out what they’re saying. I did this with the Finnish review, with some entertaining results.

Alter Ego: Norjalaisittain!

Stemmen fra Ådalen: [Anmeldelse] Nørwegian Style

Handouts for the book (downloads)

As promised in the book: Here are all the handouts you need, for all the games, for download. They’re all in one PDF.

Downloads

The Nørwegian Style book is OUT!!!

They said it couldn’t be done! They said it was impossible! (Well, I did, at least). But out of the blue I got an e-mail saying that the Nørwegian Style book HAS BEEN FINISHED, and is available on Lulu! I’m speechless (though I can still type), and am ordering it RIGHT NOW. After I’ve publised this blog post.

Oh! The link, you need the link! Here: The Nørwegian Style book!

A different book, with some Norwegians in it.

The Knutepunkt book is being published online, bit by bit! Here’s the official announcement:

——————————————-

It’s official. The 2009 Knutepunkt book is called “Larp, the Universe and Everything”, and is currently at the printer’s. All KP participants will get their copy at the event.

But for those who can’t wait, or would like to read up before Knutepunkt, we’ll be publishing the book in PDF format – a few articles at the time – in the days leading up to KP and AWIN. The first articles are online:

Katri Lassila, Fun for Everybody:
http://knutepunkt.laiv.org/2009/book/FunForEverybody/

Eirik Fatland, Excavating AmerikA:
http://knutepunkt.laiv.org/2009/book/ExcavatingAmerikA/

Markus Montola, Jaakko Stenros & Annika Waern, Philosophies and strategies of pervasive larp design:
http://knutepunkt.laiv.org/2009/book/PhilosophiesAndStrategiesOfPervasiv…

Oh, and there’s also an introduction:
http://knutepunkt.laiv.org/2009/book/Introduction/

Once all is published, said and done – the book’s permanent home will be here:
http://knutepunkt.laiv.org/2009/book/

(Oh, if you’re interested in discussing the book, you can do it over here.)

Goodbye, dear book.

This post marks the end of my work on the Nørwegian Style book.

I’ve spent more than a year working on it. The past six months have been filled with anger and frustration. The files have been with someone else for that time, and it seems that they won’t ever be finished, nor will I be allowed to finish them myself.

I feel that I can’t promise that the book will ever be done, and there’s nothing I can do about it except start all over. I’m not willing to do that now. So to preserve my own sanity, and to be able to move on to other work, I’m letting go of this project.

Goodbye, dear book. I hope they’ll finish you some day” If I see you, I’ll buy you.

The 2009 R.I.S.K. competition

Yesterday 11 candidates submitted their entries for R.I.S.K., a yearly Norwegian game design competition where entrants design a game in one week.

This year, the theme seems to be news and the media, covered by more than a third of the games: “Dagsrevyen” (The Daily News), “Hund bet mann” (Dog Bites Man), “Reality” and “Vi har visst mistet kontakten med studio” (We Seem to Have Lost Contact With the Studio). Some Norwegian game designers are journalists, and others (like myself) talk a lot about What’s Wrong With Today’s Media. Still, though – 4 of 11 games?

There’s also a strong undercurrent of meta-fiction, if you can call it that. “Jon Quixote”, a parody of Don Quixote involving a D&D fan and constant reality twists; “Paradigme”, where players contribute and discuss rules to determine the laws of nature in the fiction; and “Hamartia”, where players are authors controlling Greek heroes from literature.

Interesting stuff, most of it. People seem to be going for the idea and the vibe this year, more than actually playtesting and finishing their games, so there’s a general feel of half-baked conceptual stuff. On the other hand, organizer Michael Sollien is encouraging participants to use the coming week to hone their games and make them shine. Not sure if people will actually do that, since it doesn’t influence the competition results, but we’ll see. This year’s HolmCon will see some hours of R.I.S.K. gaming, though; it’s always fun trying out some of these games, and experience from previous years shows that the competition winners aren’t necessarily the games you remember a year or two later.

(If you can read Norwegian, or just want to look at the PDFs, they’re here.)

What’s that light at the end of the tunnel…?

Is it daylight? Is it a steam train heading our way? Is it a moonbeam reflecting off Gustav Vigelands bottom?

It’s kind of all three, actually.

For more than a year, we’ve been working on the Norwegian Style book. Work, as with all projects of this sort, has gone in leaps and bounds – starts and stops – frustrations and exultations. However, we’re getting really really very near the end. I’ve said this in Norwegian fora for some months now; the fact that I’m saying it out in the open here on the Nørwegian Style blog means that I actually believe it this time.

You should see the book! But you can’t yet. We’re artists. In the words of David Byrne: You can’t see it – ’till it’s finished!

I’m guessing that by february, you should be able to buy it on Lulu.

Stealing like ravens

It has been said that plagiarism is the sincerest form of flattery. And, like any creative scene, the Norwegian game design scene is full of… people who are inspired by each other.

In a recent design contest, I wrote a game in three parts, where the third part was strongly inspired by Tomas Mørkrid’s unpublished game “Flukt”. To be fair (to myself), the rest of my game is very different from Tomas’, so in context my ending has a different meaning – but still: It fit so well I just had to use it.

Magnus Jakobsson’s game “Until We Sink” has inspired several other games. Ole Peder Giæver and myself wrote the football game “Until We Score” as a birthday present for a friend; Tomas wrote “Livets Høst” based on some of the same techniques; and many other recent Norwegian games use similar methods. Even my grim Holocaust game “We All Had Names” uses a scene-ending technique from Magnus’ game.

Then again, who knows where Magnus’ inspiration came from? It was written after playtesting a completely different game, which doesn’t use the same techniques. The ideas seem to come from one of his own earlier, abandoned designs, “Den glemte dalen”*. (A wonderful working process for a designer is to create lots of stuff, and then steal whatever works to build better designs afterwards).

Back when I was designing “Draug”, and Ole Peder and Martin were designing “Itras By”, we were a bit worried for a while that since we were playtesting each others’ games and pitching ideas, we might end up having our brilliant designs stolen by the other party. What if I came up with something great for “Draug”, and they published my ideas in their game – before I could publish mine? We talked about it, and quickly reached the agreement “fuck it, let’s steal from each other, good luck to whoever publishes first”**. I think that little talk was an important step for our part of the Norwegian design community – we’re very open-source, and share our ideas and games freely. “Itras By” incorporates elements from many different writers, and continues to do so on the Itras By wiki.

And this blog right here gives all our ideas away for free, to anyone who wants to use them.

Steal our ideas. Steal like ravens.

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* Some similar thoughts went into my own “Will the Emperor Fall?”, around the same time as “Den glemte dalen”. There’s an old thread on it over at the Forge. The thread is an interesting read; it shows some differences between the style we were trying to develop back then (”we just talk, and whatever has been narrated is true in the fiction”), and the Forge paradigm (”use a point system to reward people for correct behavior”).

** I searched through my old mail, and the exact quote is: “Vi kom fram til at vi får stjele idéer som ravner fra hverandre, og måtte den best skrevne utgivelse vinne” – “We arrived at the conclusion that we’ll just steal like ravens from each others’ ideas, and may the best-written publication win”. That’s kind of scary. I wrote the title of this blog post before re-reading that four-year-old message.

Amar – echoes from the past

In 1987, the first commercial Norwegian-made RPG was published. It was written in English, and called “MEGA”. Mega was fun, rules-heavy and focused on realism. Due to some misadventures in business the game never reached a bigger market, and it’s fairly obscure even in Norway.

But apparently, in 2002, the authors wrote down a simplified set of rules – sort of a “Basic MEGA” system – and called it Amar. That system can be found on Geir Isene’s ::artweb pages, as a free download. It’s a labor of love, and it looks really nice!