[Fellows of the Julenius Archive], my game that just got published

[Eero Tuovinen]

Here's a link - it's free and published in both Finnish and English, so all it costs is your time. That's not a trivial obstacle in this case, however, for this is one supremely non-accessible game: it's about Finland, and particularly esoteric aspects of the country at that. Playing it also requires you to set up a hiking trip to one of the most distant parts of Finnish wilderness, so good luck with that :D

(In full honesty, I do acknowledge somewhere in the text that it is pretty easy to transpose the game to other parts of Finland, so you don't have to go to Kainuu to play it. So instead of being completely impossible it's just insane to try to play this if you're not Finnish.)

For anybody wondering why I would write a non-accessible game like this and then translate it to English on top, the short answer is that I got paid to do it with EU funding, and the (somewhat ham-fisted) translation happened as inevitable part of the process. There's this big folklore book, and the project lead had apparently promised to add a "live action roleplaying game" into the book as well, so I got brought in as an expert to develop a little game for it. So now I've written this game that sort of intrigues me, but that I suspect won't find too many players out in the wilds. The nature of the project was such that they didn't mind me putting up the game on my own website as well, so I did just that and also published a bunch of ancillary material that the book didn't have room for. So that's why I'm distributing a game that I wrote as work-for-hire on my own site.

However, the reason why I'm posting about it here is that I suspect that Ron and the Ronettes might enjoy some of the ideas in the game, purely as an academic exercise; it's easy to see that the core mechanical conceit is heavily inspired by Spione, for instance, and I think that you'll find some of the system and setting implications intriguing. In many ways this is a continuation of the kind of design I did in Zombie Cinema: the game ruthlessly flings all responsibility for creative quality at the players, challenging them to be entertaining and intelligent. I doubt that I'm going to attempt to draw any attention to the game in the rpg scene, what with the hyper-dyper-specific subject matter, but if anybody here cares to read it, I'm curious about what you think.

Of course, if you know anybody who likes this sort of shit, by all means send them to it; I'm sort of hoping that within the next 3-5 years the right person (very likely a Finn) stumbles upon the game (perhaps in the book where it's properly published - I understand that it's going to get some exposure in Finland) and decides to actually play it. Because the funding for the game development didn't exactly run to luxurious lengths of playtesting, whoever decides to set this up and play has a chance to play the third session ever :D

I'd also like to say that although I don't quite know what to think of this game now that it's finally published, writing it was an interesting experience. This was the first time ever that I've done a purely artistic commission as a work-for-hire; the money was good, I got to use my expertise, but I find it a bit difficult to relate to the game now that it's done. I mean, I don't technically speaking have anything whatsoever to do with it anymore, and if I got inspired to expand upon it or whatever, that'd just be a big copyright mess, so it's better if I keep my distance and forget the whole thing. I don't think I like doing work-for-hire much, frankly, when it comes to genuinely artistic expression.

[RangerEd]

Awesome. Congratulations!

[Mike Holmes]

Possible to transpose it to, say, parts of Wisconsin in the USA? I mean if you can transpose it from one part of Finland to another. I hear Wisconsin is a lot like Finland... in some... minor... ways...

I've worked on games for others now, too, and I find myself detached from them as well. Interesting. Yet another reason to publish independently, and get the game you want to play. :)

[Eero Tuovinen]

I imagine it'd be easy to play the game in any locale with a reasonable amount of local folklore. If you read the game, you'll find that it's predicated on having a local ghost story or similar on hand. Something interesting, preferably associated with some place you can actually visit.

The actually Finland-specific stuff is in the fluff: the specific situation and its aesthetics are Finnish. Take that away, substitute an American miliey, and you've basically got a GM-less Delta Green larp. Not that that might not be someone's cup of tea, I suppose.

[Mike Holmes]

Cool, Eero. Reading.