Solmukohta 2008 book & Forge connections.

[J. Tuomas Harviainen]

Hello, friends & colleagues. Just wanted to mention that this year's book from Solmukohta, the inter-Nordic larp event, contains a few articles that may be of direct interest to Forge readers.

Most significantly, there's an article called "Key Concepts in Forge Theory" by Emily Care Boss. It's a summary of precisely what it says, and should be useful for both newcomers to this site and to researchers needing something condensed on Forgean ideas to reference.

Additionally, there's an article of mine directly inspired by a Forge thread from 2005, and an introductory piece for Jeepform, a larp-tabletop hybrid that heavily favors storytelling, shares many common properties with Forge-style games, and has been increasingly appearing in shared context at American cons. Plus of course lots of other interesting stuff, from theory to professional journalistic views on how to review role-playing games.

Article abstracts are here. When the online version becomes available, I will post the link on this thread.

[Montola]

More information on the new book:

Playground Worlds published

How does a boarding school that uses role-playing games as a primary teaching method function? Can the basics of Forge theory be condensed into one article? What do Happenings and larps have in common? How can role-playing games be criticized? What is jeepform? How is the production side or putting together a larp handled? 

These and many other questions are tackled in the new Solmukohta book, Playground Worlds: Creating and Evaluating Experiences of Role-Playing Games. The book was published last week. Edited by Markus Montola and Jaakko Stenros (the guys behind Beyond Role and Play four years ago), the book features 25 papers written by authors from six countries.

For example, John H. Kim gives a primer on the American parlor larps, short one shot larp scenarios. Heidi Hopeametsä analyses the experience of playing Ground Zero as reflected in the post-game written debriefs. Malik Hyltoft reports how the experimental "Role-Players' Boarding School", Østerskov Efterskole, has functioned in its first 18 months.  Playground Worlds also documents some of the most interesting larps of the last few years (Totem, Dragonbane, Frail Realities and many others).

The book is divided into three sections. Community and Journalism includes articles on role-player communities written particularly with an eye for approachability. Art and Design covers role-play as the product of a creative process, exposing philosophies and intentions behind specific role-playing works while providing advice and guidance for prospective designers. The Research and Theory section focuses on recent advances in analytic and academic thought on role-play. We are hoping that this structure makes the book useful both for random readers and dedicated theory junkies.

The book covers all kinds of role-playing games from the latest avant-garde Nordic live action role-playing games to the history of British action style larps in last 25 years, and from Forge style indie games to jeepform, Happenings and child's play.

Playground Worlds is the latest book in a series of collection that have documented Nordic and international trends in larp. Several new themes emerged this year. Firstly, the staging of larps has previously been discussed mostly as an artistic activity. This year a number of authors have decided to approach the more practical side of project management. Secondly, while the one belief that most role-playing cultures around the globe subscribe to is that role-playing games are not children's play, most are willing to concede that there are important similarities. Two papers explore these connections. Finally, two papers attempt to find ways to capture lightning in a bottle: they discuss criticism and documentation of larp.

You can download a pdf that contain the first page of each article from www.ropecon.fi/pw. The pages also feature a number of pictures from the book. It is possible to order the book from the site.

At a later date, we will also publish an electronic edition as a freely downloadable pdf. However, the pdf version is ransomware; given out only after a sufficient number of paper copies have been sold. The funds raised by the paperback sales are used to support Solmukohta 2008, by partially paying back the financial support we received from our benefactor, Ropecon ry.

For more info, contact the editors at <book-at-solmukohta-dot-org>.