Love in the Time of Surströmming

Wilhelm Person has translated the play material for “Love in the Time of Seið” into Swedish! Everything you need (except the rules) in one convenient PDF.

Download it here!

A Thousand Years Under the Sun

This is a game – or a sandbox – about the rise and fall of tribes, civilizations, creatures and phenomena on the open steppes of an imaginary geography. It’s easily playable in an evening, possibly several times.

Expect play to start out slowly. The setting will grow before your eyes, under your hands. As time passes, interactions and connections tend to develop – organically, because they’re interesting.

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Qualia

«How can the flux of ions and electrical currents in little specks of jelly the neurons in my brain generate the whole subjective world of sensations like red, warmth, cold or pain? By what magic is matter transmuted into the invisible fabric of feelings and sensations?»
–    Ramachandran, Blakeslee & Sacks: «Phantoms in the Brain»

 

“Qualia” is about

immersion.

 

Download the rules here.

 

(Thanks to Ole Peder Giæver for inspiration!)

I Wanna Be a Stormtrooper: Archipelago playset

Anders Nygaard, eccentric game designer & ranting theorist, has designed a playset for Archipelago called “I Wanna Be a Stormtrooper”. (Yes, it’s based on that song.) It’s about young people trapped in dead-end lives on a desert planet, so it should be a lot of fun!

Rules

(Mirrored from Imagonem.org).

The Bechdel Test: A roleplaying poem

This is a simple roleplaying game to be played in about 15 minutes.

1. Decide on a movie you all know pretty well. Preferably a mainstream movie, at least the first time you play.

2. Pick two or more female characters from that movie.

3. Roleplay a scene – one you create yourself! – where they talk together about something other than a man.

Repeat 1-3 with a different movie.

—

This game takes its name from the Bechdel Test. It’s a fun exercise in fleshing out characters, and – hopefully – in creating believable female characters in any medium.

I am not a Jeep.

Moving through the most obscure realms of postmodern entertainment, we find the identity politics and artistic branding of Scandinavian roleplaying subcultures. While these have little importance outside of the rarefied circles of the game designers of the utmost North, to them, these things can sometimes seem to have meaning.

So, yeah. I’m not a Jeepformer.

Sometimes people will explain my games, or my friends’ games, by saying they’re Jeepform. But they’re not. None of us make Jeepform games.

What does that even mean?

Well, you see: Jeepform is a brand. It’s not, I believe, a unique design philosophy (nor is Nørwegian Style, or games conforming to the Hippie Method Manifesto). These are mostly just subsets of the huge monstrosity called “freeform”, and not very stable subsets at that. If I were to design a game that was, word for word, a remake of a Jeepform game, I wouldn’t call it a Jeepform: It wouldn’t have been made by a member of the Jeepform community – a jeeper. In the same way, if a jeeper wrote one of my games, it would be a Jeepform, by definition.

I don’t know what the Jeep policy on, or attitude toward, all of this is. There’s a lot of games being labeled “jeepform” these days; in Poland, they run “jeeps”, which appear to be improvised freeform games, though I couldn’t say for sure.

So, yeah. While I steal liberally from anyone, from any school of game design; and while some of my designs are probably compatible with the design goals of the jeepers, and might look like Jeepform to an outsider – I get slightly annoyed when people claim I’m part of a collective I’m not in. The jeepers I’ve met are cool people, and the (very few) Jeepforms I’ve played are good. If I were a jeeper, I’d happily confess to it. However, I’m not; and just like a catholic probably won’t like being called a protestant, I prefer it when my games aren’t called Jeepform.

You know what? Fuck Youth in Polish.

The wonderful Karina Graj has graciously translated “Fuck Youth” into Polish.

Read all about it here!

(in Polish, of course.)

 

Dear Panda Pirate: On Dangerous Games

On dangerous games

Dear world, here are my opinions. I am sure they matter a lot in the big picture.

On the French forum Pandapirate, there’s a discussion going on about what you can – or what you should and shouldn’t – play in a roleplaying game.

Like all discussions on what people should do, it will not change people’s minds: Those who want to do something, won’t stop doing so, and those who don’t, won’t start, based only on the opinions of a few people on an internet forum. But it’s an interesting (and age-old) discussion nonetheless.

It is possible to play anything in a roleplaying game. If you can think of it, describe it, name it, you’re pretty much already playing it. There are no objective limits to the form.

Is it desirable to play specific games? Should you play games that make you feel uncomfortable? There is no “should” here. Who are you? Is this something you want to explore? If so, you will do it. Is it something that repels you, or something you don’t understand? If you explore it, you will probably learn something. If it’s something you want to learn, you won’t know until you’ve tried it.

Is it dangerous to roleplay something you loathe? I think our reaction to this is based on how much we repress the Other inside us. I believe everyone has pretty much all of humanity’s evil locked up inside, in various forms, various strengths. Any of us could become a torturer, perform genocide, rape someone, given the right circumstances. We don’t want to be that person. We are afraid to wake that person up by portraying him or her.

I think that fear is ungrounded. I am not a killer. I am not a psychopath. I am not a schizophrenic. I am not a fascist. I am not an idiot. I am not someone who’s murdered, or slept with, their parents. I have played all these characters, and they are not me.

I don’t think they’re you, either. Wake up the Other inside you. Look at them. Talk to them. They are you, but not you. You choose what you do in life. Don’t base that choice on fear of what you think you might be. Base it on who you are, and know who you are.

I don’t know if that’s a good idea.

Graham Walmsley asked for pictures of giraffes playing games.

In the Belly of the Ballena

A Spanish version of “In the Belly of the Whale” is available here!