Bear in mind that I’m summing up only my personal perspective, from what I see going on. From where you sit/stand, things may look different.

1. People are still playing games

Yes, they are. I am, too. Right now I’m in two campaigns and one semi-regular group, and we’re talking about setting up a new thing for one-shot games. I know my friends play a lot, too. But the visible, communal discussions and design are pretty much gone. Which is too bad, because we’re not sharing our thoughts and ideas. If we’re just the same gangs, sitting in the same basements, playing the same games, the hobby is dead when we die.

2. That scene was just you (Matthijs) and your buddies

Some were my buddies, some became my buddies. I think we were all open to making new friends, and many of us did. In a tiny scene, you get that – people become friends because they share passions and interests. It was me and others who had the same (sometimes obsessive) interests. This is what art movements are.

3. That scene was insular, elitist and made people feel unwelcome

(This tends to come from people I’ve never met, or from anonymous posters).

We’ve tried to make people feel welcome. We’ve tried to bridge gaps. I don’t tell people that their play preferences are wrong or stupid. People have told me that, though. We tried engaging people in discussion, to find out where all this came from, but it was like sitting in a bright room while people would spit at us from the fog outside. This whole “fight” between “camps” is pointless, a waste of time, and something nobody I know wants. Still it keeps coming up from people I’ve never met.

At my “elitist” con, complete strangers stayed at my house for days and played Draker & Demoner or Street Fighter or GURPS. At the “elitist” fora, people discussed Vampire and D&D4 and talked about why traditional games were awesome and how we could make ARCON (the major mainstream gaming festival) even better. In the “elitist” competitions, people won without anyone knowing who the hell they were.

It feels as if people wanted me and others to play and design and discuss for them. We didn’t. We did it for us. We didn’t design the games you wanted us to design, because they were already out there.

4. There’s lots of shit happening right now

Yes, there’s things going on. But not as much as before, and not by new people. My impression is that some of the people from the scene will continue doing things until we die, but still, I feel that the majority has dissipated.

5. Here’s what you should have done: (…)

You’re not really helping.

6. Here’s what you should do: (…)

Thanks. I, and most people I’ve talked to, know what we should do/have done to keep things going. However, the things we never did, we’re not doing now, and I’m not sure we ever will (in my experience, people don’t start doing things they’ve never done). So I’m not very optimistic.

7. I’m going to do some shit!

YES! Do that!

8. Scenes come and go

Yup. They do, and I think that’s just the way it is. And this one is gone now.

9. The scene is still influential abroad

I know it is, and that makes me very happy!

10. The scene was very tiny, and not representative of what the rest of us were doing

We were representative of us, and what we did was pretty amazing. I’m not representing people I’ve never met or spoken to. I do wish you’d popped by and spoken to us, though.

11. We’re all growing old, and don’t have as much time as we used to

Tell me about it! Again, cycle of life. Scenes come and go.

12. I tried to do things for the scene, but nobody listened to me

We all feel like that sometimes. I’ve felt like that A LOT. I know people won’t believe me, since I talk and talk and sometimes people answer, but yeah. The games I’ve made that nobody’s played, the magazines I’ve made that were only read by the people who made them, etc etc etc. People DO listen, even if they don’t cheer you on or answer when you talk to them (strangely enough). But then, nobody’s responsible for cheering you on, either. You do what you do, you see what happens, nobody owes you anything.

13. The things you did weren’t interesting to me or my friends

Okay.

14. I’m doing LOTS of shit ALL THE FUCKING TIME!

Tomas, I love you, you’re one of a kind, our biggest inspiration, and please keep on rocking.

15. You’re just a bunch of guys excluding all the girls

No. Ask the girls.

Today it seems that scene is dead.

How is it dead? Let me count the ways.

1. We’re not writing games and putting them online anymore. Most of the activity on this blog is about our games being translated, re-released or hacked; the games are alive, but we’re not making new ones.

2. The R.I.S.K. competition, which was a major source of new ideas and material, has had less and less activity. This year nobody bothered to run it.

3. Other attempts at game design competitions have failed. Most get no submissions at all. I won one nearly two years ago, with A Thousand Years Under the Sun. I was the only participant. When a few of us talked about maybe setting up a Norwegian Game Chef 2013, it… just didn’t happen.

4. The roleplaying forums at n4f.no (rollespill.net) have almost zero activity. New forums at rollespill.info have about five participants. The Facebook group for Norwegian roleplayers never had much buzz. There’s hardly anything on G+ or Twitter, either.

5. HolmCon, the tiny con at my house where people would come to try out new and strange stuff, had no newcomers this year (and was almost entirely made up of guys over 30).

6. The Arcon festival is struggling to get new roleplaying scenarios, and people to run them.

7. Playground Magazine came and went (although an international effort, it was based in Norway).

8. We’re not publishing game books anymore. (Itras By is a translation of a book published several years ago).

Why is it dead?

1. We’re not recruiting new people. As people grow older and get families and jobs or just grow plain bored with their hobby, there aren’t new people ready to take over. We’ve known about this problem for a decade, and never managed to muster a collective effort to fight it. There’s one light in the darkness: Tomas Mørkrid, who targets young players specifically with his workshops and campaigns.

2. As a result, all our potential designers, theorists, players are picked up by other scenes with more initiative. Through Fantasiforbundet, Laivfabrikken, Grenselandet etc etc etc, the Nordic larp scene is thriving and growing and getting all the fresh young minds. They’re doing amazing work. I just wish we did the same.

3. A few of us have been conspicuously absent the last years. Some have been sick for prolonged periods. I have been making hard priorities in order to get some major projects up and running (Playground, my novel), and am no longer trying to join in on everything. (I miss being part of everything).

4. Although we tried as hard as we could, some of us in the “hard core” of the scene were never able to shake off a reputation as elitists, snobs etc. This alienated people.

What would it take to build it up again?

I’m not sure we can, by now. I think it might just be too late. However, if we want to, we need to look at what the larpers are doing: We need to recruit, recruit, recruit. Teach. Reach new people. Not just go to the same old cons and hope some new faces show up, but do things like:

• Grab young people who are interested and fan their flames. It’s easy to think that “this is just one obnoxious person with zits”, but that person might be running their own con in five or ten years, IF you just get them up and running and welcome them into your crowd. (I’ve done it, and seen it happen). No matter if it’s just one person you manage to recruit – that’s a billion times better than none, and this person might recruit a dozen more in a short time.
• Devote your time at cons to playing with young new people, and get them excited. Make them love the game.
• Go to new places. New cities and new cons and even non-gaming places. Play with strangers, talk to strangers about gaming and game design.
• Take care how you use visibility! Keep some discussions for smaller circles – like your most theory-heavy or meta-advanced or weird and provocative stuff. Try to be welcoming and open, not authoritative and proselytizing.

Links:

A Pebble

A Trip to the Moon

A Trip Through Time Seen Through the Eyes of a Fir Tree

And the text on role-playing poems, too!

Role-Playing Poems

1. First, the easy game. This is a short game for 4 players, which will take 5-15 minutes depending on your mood.

Two players will be the Commuters. They will be silent for the entire duration of the game. They will communicate with eye contact and facial expressions. As the game progresses, they may choose to become more physical, possibly touching.

Two players will be the Human Dream. They will do the talking, describing the inner life and soul of the Commuters – possibly a form of shared subconscious or dream. Sometimes, they will briefly announce stops and portray other passengers.

The game ends when one of the Commuters gets off at a stop.

The game goes like this:

- The Commuters sit facing each other on chairs. They both look down. Perhaps they have phones they’re playing with or papers they’re reading.

- At some point, their roaming eyes meet and lock. This signals the beginning of the game.

- One of the Human Dreams starts talking. They describe some image or thought that arises from the Commuters. Do NOT specify which Commuter; this might come from any of them, or both of them together. – The other Human Dream continues. This goes back and forth.

- Meanwhile, the Commuters can, if they choose, do little physical things. Put down phones, or scratch, or smile, or make facial expressions. Sometimes there are stops:

- After a while, one of the Human Dreams can announce a STOP. This means the train or bus or whatever stops and lets new passengers on. Say the name of the stop, and talk in that loud abrasive loudspeaker voice that all commuters know.

- The other Human Dream very briefly portrays one or more other passengers, saying a few words or lines that commuters might say when getting on the bus/train.

- At this point, any of the Commuters may choose to end the game by getting up and leaving. If not, the game continues, with the Human Dreams talking.

2. Then, the hard game. This is very simple, but also hugely challenging, and there’s no saying what it will lead to.

When commuting, try to find someone friendly-looking to sit next to.

Think back on your childhood, on what you used to do when you were on the bus or train.

Then start a conversation with this line: “I remember when I was a kid and rode the (bus/train), I used to…”

See what happens.

“If the KS for @JamesWallis‘ ALAS VEGAS reaches £20K, I write a completely unrelated mini game just for the hell of it and put it on the net.”

And it did.

So I did.

Oh no… you went and did it again. You’re sitting there reading the comments. The news article itself was actually pretty interesting… so why the hell didn’t you just leave it? Why did you enter this realm of trolling, strawmen, false dichotomies, badly concealed agendas, and ideological sewage?

It’s too late now. You feel yourself being drawn into it. Into the comment itself. That one, on the screen, there.

It’s not just somebody’s warped, malicious, imbecilic and ignorant idea anymore.

Now it’s reality. And you’re inside it.

Luckily, you brought your friends.

 

Read it here! (And feel free to comment, too!)

The title of this game is because I tried writing something atmospheric, but it ended up being pretentious and clichéd, which would prevent people from understanding what the game was about.

The idea is simple. Do this:

- Go outside with two friends. Be sure to dress right for the climate; you need to be comfortable.

- At some point, one of you will guide one of the others in an encounter with the supernatural.

- Then go to a new place. A new person will be the guide; the previous guide will have an encounter.

Okay. So what’s an encounter?

An encounter means that you get into a headspace where you, for a while, believe in something that isn’t there. You imagine a forest creature, for instance. You talk to it. You feel its presence. As you touch the bark on the tree, you feel how it manifests itself.

At the same time, it lives inside you, because everything we see is made from something we carry within us. We’re part of a big channel of energies and modes of being, and here, you allow the expression of one of them through your imagination and interaction.

Your guide will mostly ask you questions, and encourage you to see and open up.

What’s the supernatural?

This will be some form of natural spirit or force, for instance: a water nymph, a stone spirit, Crow or Coyote, a huldre, etc.

Any more tips?

Play slow, and take it as it comes. Don’t expect anything huge or mind-blowing. You’re just letting some stuff out, some stuff in, breathing. Let the mood guide you.

Read it here!

Itras By is a surrealistic game. It started out as a piece of automatic writing by one of the authors. Together they wrote back and forth, developing a setting along the way – a setting at times coherent, at times completely unhinged.

It is yours to play with. No, really: This book is made for you to build, rearrange, cut up, mutate and do what you want with it. It is, in fact, one of the specific exercises written in there.

This is my most-loved game. And I didn’t even write it myself.

Read more here!

This looks like a very fun and interesting setup – check it out here!

You can download the latest version here!