The Forge Archives

In the four main types of role-playing thread:

Quote from: James Holloway...and it wouldn't surprise me if this were true in most of the US -- obviously, UK LARP culture is very very different, and Scandinavia is different again) they make up the majority of LARPs.

This brings up a topic I'm interested in: what are the major trends in role-playing (table-top and larp specifically here) in different international markets?  What types of games and gaming are most practiced? D&D and White Wolf products have gotten the lion's share of attention in the US; what games hold similar positions in Scandinavia, in the UK, in Japan, elsewhere?

And what is the gaming culture like? What kinds of ideas do people hold about gaming? Who games? What place does it hold in their lives? What place does it hold in society?

An example I recall was someone from Israel posting here about the development of rpg in that country.  My understanding of what he wrote was that free-form with innovative and flexible mechanical techniques became the main form of rpg there. (Quite unlike the mainstream where I live, and much more like the fringe gaming I do.)  So, in Israel, the idea that "system matters" was not readily accepted for quite different reasons than it might be rejected in the US: instead of system being seen as a taken for granted part of roleplaying that "doesn't matter" because the ways it affects play are not understood or appreciated, Israeli players might see specific systems as limiting play rather than enabling it.

It seems helpful to learn about this so that we can see a better range of what role-playing can be, and perhaps lose some assumptions we have based on our cultural context.  

Thanks.

Regards,
Emily Care

Hmmm, interesting thing...

I´m from Austria, so I have a bit of knowledge on gaming in Germany as well.

As far as I understand it, in the german speaking area, both D&D/d20 and WW are major players. The only real competitor is IMO DSA (recently translated into english as "(The) Black Eye", as far as I know), a german game with quite a history.

As of the gaming culture in general:

Gaming is a niche hobby, as pretty much everywhere. Gaming is mostly seen as kinda geeky but it is not as easily branded as "devils-worshiping", although there have been some rather strange anti-gaming initiatives, IMO. There is a small but rather nice community on free games on the net, dedicated to developing own games.

The norm in gaing mechanics and such are rather rules heavy systems like D&D and DSA, with a slight bias against rules light or "artsy" games. In one of the major forums, a lot of arguments had diverging opinions on theoretical questions as a cause and there have been some big "anti-theory" arguments going on. (Something like "We don´t need theory, you people should just play more!".) *shrug*

I think that the subculture (Yeah, I finally found some context to use that word in a post. ;) ) in germany is a lot like the one american and british one, because there is a big exchange on data through web and publishing canals going on.

Austria is slightly different, if only in organisation. While there are periodical conventions in germany, serving IMO as "gaming centrals", in Austria gaming conventions are nearly nonexistent. There are comic and game conventions, but neither of those seem to serve as a representation for the hobby. There will be a gaming convention in april `04, but it will be the first of its sort in austria. We´ll see how it develops.

M

Well, this request for information got me finally to register here. I was quite determined to get my game in order first, but well, here we are. I've lurked in the Forge on and off for some two years, and it was just a matter of time. Time will tell if I'll participate in other discussions now that I have an user account.

Anyway, about the situation in the nordic countries and Finland especially: Finland and the Scandinavian countries have significantly similar cultures overall, from political structures to sociological views. There is a strong tradition of cultural exhange, so everything I say about Finland is to some degree valid in the context of Sweden especially and Denmark and Norway secondarily. Iceland is a little small and a special case, I wouldn't be surprised if there were significant differences.

In Finland the larp scene is the dominant one. There was an influx of new people in the late '90, and the larpers have almost singlehandedly made roleplaying a valid and accepted form. The ministry of culture will evaluate the hobby for cultural significance in the '04 spring, hopefully garnering it the same level of government support that older arts get, opening the grant system for larp writers and conventions. (Finland, as other nordic countries, is a social democracy, if it wasn't clear)

Meanwhile roleplaying is a very fashionable hobby. There was a drama series about larpers in the television a couple of years ago, for example. The main convention, Ropecon,  has gained increasing amounts of media attention, including several articles and mentions in newspapers like the national Helsingin Sanomat (comparable to NY Times or Washington Post or something else important and big, if USA was a little country).

The main types of larps are hardcore fantasy adventure and the artistic, historical kind of larp. There is a significant (although diminishing with the influx of newbies) number of people who play exclusively boffer-style or even with steel. The boffer is the method of choise in fantasy adventures. The local fantasy staple is masquerading as a green orc and running around in the forest, plotting raids on the other players in the village, marketplace or whatever the main event is. Another one are elf ears.
    Outside of the fantasy larp, which sees much continuity and traditionality, there are the other larps. The basic assumption is that the writer designs his own system when writing the game, not a really onerous task when you consider how rules-light larps are. Thus for example Mind's Eye Theatre and other such larp systems are the exception here, sometimes even in Vampire larps (those are as prevalent here as elsewhere, I'd guess).
    Anyway, the more artistically inclined larpers, who aren't stuck in either fantastic or vampire tropes, really make up most of the larpers (or at least they are the most visible). Majority of larpers are women (though writers are men), and thus it is natural that larps are quite versatile and won't really duplicate any generic forms apart from fantasy/vampire.
    The general larps (much better than artistic/historical as a term) range from historical ones based on manorial life in the nineteenth century to dystopial near-future ones.
    I myself don't larp, but can possibly answer further questions about this aspect. The most important things are above, I think.

On the tabletop front we see a strong tendency towards simulationist for character and immersionism. I myself see this as an overflow from larping, which is on GSN terms forced to this kind of mode. The general view among the active people actually seems to be that the three main forms of game are powergaming, newbie gaming and strong illusionism. I of course disagree myself, but relatively few rpg intellectuals here even properly understand narrativistic priority, understanding the word and related consepts to denote play where the GM drives strong themes which are realised through character-loyal portrayal of the players.
    The most popular commercial games are D&D (used mainly for simulationist purposes) and WW games (the staple of immersionist play). Additionally Finnish games are ridiculously popular, and "Praedor" from our very own indie folk hero Ville Vuorela is played throughout the country in delightful numbers. In addition there is a comparatively strong tendency towards artistically independent thinking (as in larps), and I estimate that 80% of long term roleplayers play either heavily customised or original systems. I deem myself a little above average in terms of system independency (although hope my designs are better and more innovative, of course), and have played for some ten years. I designed my own rules system in the third year of play, and have after that written about a dozen games for strictly personal use, including this ridiculous new PHB for d20 which I needed for play in the mythic antiquity. Everyone does it, and I use to talk shop with my D&D players who master their own games and generally tailor the system to the game. There is much less of the idea of dependence on canon, but also the "System doesn't matter" myth is much stronger as a result. If there's something wrong with the system, it's trivial to correct, right?

About the surface structure: the most pressing problem for Finnish roleplayers has for a while been the lack of serious journalism. Some two years ago the long standing magazine "Magus" folded because the editor got tired, and after that there hasn't really been anything on that area. Larpers have their own problems with "Larppaaja", and we have been toying with the idea of drawing both sides under one umbrella in this matter.
    The most important roleplaying assosiations are local for towns and cities, generally operating under the local universities. In Helsinki, for example, there is Alter Ego, which has a couple hundred members. There is thanks to AE a strong influx and outflux of players in the area, and I for example get players for a game simply by asking for them on a centralised "campaign list".
    The most important national organization is Ropecon RY, which is composed of the abovementioned local clubs and the larpers' national organisation. The primary function is arranging Ropecon, the biggest nordic roleplaying convention. The association is however strong and we are currently discussing supporting f.ex. the national hobby magazine with Ropecon profits.
    Selling of games is strongly centralised, mainly because you cannot expect to have too many shops in a country of five million people. The FLGS is for most people "Fantasiapelit", a chain of hobby shops that has some half a dozen shops in the most important cities. There is some selling of games in book stores, but the best times for that were the early nineties. In Helsinki there is then another shop, "Safe Heaven", which deals mainly in CGG and board games, and a couple of comics shops, but neither have to date started with roleplaying games, so it's Fantasiapelit or nothing. This isn't a problem, as Fantasiapelit Helsinki is a big store, they can get what they don't have, and although the harsh manner of the salesmen is legendary, they do serve. And they ship by mail, so they can serve the whole country.
    A significant new development that should be mentioned is "Myrskyn Aika", a roleplaying game by Mike Pohjola, published a couple of months ago. Mike is a rpg-intellectual of long standing, having authored for example that Turku manifesto. Myrskyn Aika was published by a normal book publisher, and it is sold in book stores. The format is not unlike Hero Wars, a paperback. The response to the game is mixed: the greatest innovation (or rather goal) is that the book includes rules for both tabletop and larp gaming, so the game can switch between them easily. The world is a basic fantasy, and I among others have condemned the game harshly for being a simple throwback to the eighties. A fantasy heartbreaker par none, I say, but inspired not by D&D but fantasy larping.

Notes about practical gaming: the gold standard is to play once a week, 3-6 hours at a time. Amongst university students and graduates, which are a significant portion of players, a more common standard is once or twice a month. Usually those playing simple D&D play weekly, while the higher level people simply choose dates suitable for all at a per-session basis. Might have something to do with how D&D continues forever, while those others often have a definite reason for the game and it's planned for a limited number of sessions, and thus people often play more than one game at a time. In university circles play groups vary widely (there is many of us and getting players is easy), while most others play with their close circle of friends. I, for example, have no trouble whatsoever with GSN conflict: the basic form is for a GM to announce a game and for players to pick ones that look interesting. If game doesn't work for someone, he quickly drops it without hard feelings. Most players in my experience at the university level can talk quite fluently about "GM control", "railroading", "plot emphasis" and such, so we get by in communicating what we are doing.

Well, that's what I can think of from the top of my head. Those interested for more should ask, or go check the RPGnet columns by Mike and Juhana Pettersson. Mike tells about the publishing process of his book, while Juhana writes a controversial marginal perspective about intellectual larping in the north.

Hiyas -

Well, not sure if I agree with Eero that the Finnish scene is all that similar to the Norwegian scene...

In Norway, there's a lot of LARP going on, with a whole bunch of small groups doing very different things all over the country. What used to be almost exclusively fantasy gaming, based on a large club in the capital (Oslo), has been transformed into an anarchic, very loosely-knit society where everyone seems to happily "do their own thing". The website www.laiv.org has done a lot to help the hobby grow, and serves as a major discussion forum for LARPers in Norway.

The organization "Hyperion" is trying to get all sorts of hobbyists organized in a larger, country-wide structure, and has successfully recruited people from the tabletop RPG hobby, miniature gamers, LAN/computer network gamers, miniature gamers, manga/anime fans etc. However, LARPers aren't very interested in being organized after this fashion, and have shown only moderate enthusiasm in this project. Hyperion has managed to get significant state funding.

In tabletop gaming, the trend is towards traditional games. A

Quotelot

of people are very happy about D&D 3d ed, which has kind of reclaimed a lot of those who had been playing Those Other Games for years. The Norwegian RPG Fabula is also traditionalist from my point of view, but the way it's been promoted and played lately seems to break a little with that perception. A few gamers are trying a lot of new and inspired stuff, but the majority is quite happy to just play the way their ancestors did :)

The Danish scene seems very interesting from my POV. A lot of diceless games, a strong emphasis on the creation of good and original scenarios, and even some academic debate on games and gaming. Very much seems to have originated from the club Fasta in Aarhus, with its associated festival Fastaval.

The Swedes appear to really love their LARPS, which attract a lot of people. They are also the largest when it comes to publishing RPGs. Kult, Drakar & Demoner, Sagan om Ringen, Western, Khelataar, NeoTech, Eon etc etc. Some of these games have been around for years; I believe Drakar is in its 5th edition now (?). Mostly fairly trad stuff here (though Kult was a bit of a shocker when it first came out).

- Matthijs

Non-computer-based roleplaying, as far as I know, doesn't really exist in mainland China (though Chris "Pale Fire" Lerno said that D&D had been translated and is available in Taiwan).  To everyone I've met, "dang jue se you xi" (literally "becoming-characters games") means Final Fantasy and the like.  If you surf the web in Chinese, you get similar results.  I keep hoping to someday stumble across an underground community, but I haven't found it yet.

I've only been in Hong Kong for a couple months now, so I'm sure I'll know more after I've spent more time here.  I have contacted local gamers, however, and have learned a bit.  

There is one store in Hong Kong, in the Mong Kok area, that sells RPGs.  They sell primarily D&D3, which is available in English and Chinese.  There are RPG clubs at some of the Hong Kong universities--I am at City University of Hong Kong, and the RPG club meets weekly on Thursday evenings.  D&D3 is the predominant game.  It may be the only RPG, as far as I can tell so far.  I assume it was predated by the previous versions of D&D.  I've yet to discover a Hong Kong made RPG.  Frankly, I'd expected to perhaps find Warhammer because of the U.K. influence on Hong Kong.  There are two Games Workshop stores, but they both sell only miniatures and the workers in the stores spoke of roleplayers almost like urban legends--they'd heard about them from friends of friends, but never met them.

It took me two months to find the RPG scene here because players call it "TRPG."  The T, of course, is for table-top, to distinguish it from computer RPGs.  Jonathon, you might try some web searches using TRPG as a search term.  It worked for me.  I eventually found this board at this website and contacted other Hong Kong roleplayers through it.  The discussions at the board are all focused on D&D3.  

There is also at least a small roleplaying scene in Taiwan.  I have no personal experience with it, but this site is a great place to start if you're interested in links and information about it.

Rich

Thanks for the informative replies! My appetite is whetted to know more.

I recall having heard that in Japan people write up scripts of campaigns, and other gaming groups use those scripts to re-run interesting games. Anyone heard of this?

I found a link to the old thread that started me off on this topic:
The Forge dialectic - how do I boil this down?
Dotan writes on the history of Israeli gaming close to the end of the thread.


Regards,
Emily Care

I must admit that I don't know much about my local (Danish) scene, but that's only because I don't play LARPs or go to conventions. The tabletop scene is dominated by WotC and WW products, but all but the most obscure indie games are played here, even if only by one or two groups.

GNS terms are not used much in discussions here, but most people recognize that there are different styles of gaming, attracting different types of gamers. I'm sure that there's more to it than that, but I'm lucky enough to be in a thightly knit network of old-friends type gamers, so I don't get out much. :^)

Emily, if you want to know about the Japanese RPG scene, I recommend that you take a look at mr. Andy Kitkowski's fine essays at: http://www.z-builder.com/trpg/

Regards,
Chris

Edit: I'm a complete tool: His are essays are found in PTGPTB, from issue #18 and onwards: http://ptgptb.org/issue-index.html

Minx: The table-top game industry in Germany seems extremely vital given the many well constructed and popular games (Settlers from Catan for example) being created there. Does this translate into a strong gaming community in general and if so has it affected the acceptance of role-playing? We'll have to watch Austria after the convention there, see what develops.

Rich: "trpg", of course. Shows the bias of a culture. Here rpg is generic and mostly refers to table-top. In Japan, folks would think you mean video games.

Welcome to posting on the Forge, Eero. Thanks for your input! Glad this topic inspired you to register.

Quote from: Eero TuovinenIn Finland the larp scene is the dominant one. There was an influx of new people in the late '90, and the larpers have almost singlehandedly made roleplaying a valid and accepted form.

Eero: What caused the influx? And do you think that part of the reason why larping (and thus rpg in general) was able to become more accepted was because the country is fairly small? Or are there other aspects to society that might make people more open to it?

Quote from: MatthjisThe Danish scene seems very interesting from my POV. A lot of diceless games, a strong emphasis on the creation of good and original scenarios, and even some academic debate on games and gaming. Very much seems to have originated from the club Fasta in Aarhus, with its associated festival Fastaval

Chris: sounds like the Danish scene is pretty good from what Matthjis wrote.  Might be worth investigating. :) What do you know about club Fasta?

Quote from: GrexEmily, if you want to know about the Japanese RPG scene, I recommend that you take a look at mr. Andy Kitkowski's fine essays at: http://www.z-builder.com/trpg/

Thanks, Chris. I found this entry on Andy's site about "replays":

QuoteReplay - (Japanese: RI-p'rei) These TRPG-related books are more popular in the Japanese market than published adventures are in the American RPG market. They are basically scripts, written in screenplay format, of an RPG experience. Normally, when making a replay, one person in the group tape-records the session, and later types it up. Actions, out-of-character talk, and emotions are often noted in replays.

Fascinating. Now, I was part of a play group who for a certain period of time we used an multi-track recorder to tape record session with two microphones and a partial transcription was later made. Now that experience has always been a mark of how far over the edge we were (a point of pride, of course :).  Now see how vanilla we really were!

--ECB

Although I don't know too much about the British gaming scene, having only ever lived in university towns, I will say that I don't think it's much different from the American except in little details (some games more popular than others, etc.). It's really the LARP area that is different, with the British LARP scene as far as I can tell being very heavily dominated by these huge boffer-combat fantasy groups. While these exist in the USA, it would seem that lower population density and other stuff makes them less ... vast ... than the ones in the UK.

Quote from: Emily Care

QuoteReplay - (Japanese: RI-p'rei) These TRPG-related books are more popular in the Japanese market than published adventures are in the American RPG market. They are basically scripts, written in screenplay format, of an RPG experience. Normally, when making a replay, one person in the group tape-records the session, and later types it up. Actions, out-of-character talk, and emotions are often noted in replays.

Fascinating. Now, I was part of a play group who for a certain period of time we used an multi-track recorder to tape record session with two microphones and a partial transcription was later made. Now that experience has always been a mark of how far over the edge we were (a point of pride, of course :).  Now see how vanilla we really were!

BL>  Whoa.  Not international, but I did the same thing for two games in high school (tape recording, although no transcription.)  I think that the Amber DRPG book gave me the idea.
 Also, the American New England LARP culture (both slow-action and tabletop) seems to be totally inundated with the idea of a "session summary" or "personal experience log" where players type up reports of what happened from their sessions.  These are absolutely invaluable to mid and large-scale LARPs, where the GMs don't know (in fact, can't know) everything that went on during a game through direct experience.  In my experience, they also bleeded into tabletop play.
 Come to think of it, I actually played in a game where transcripts were taken on laptop in real-time by presently non-active players.  But that was a strange game altogether, and perhaps worth posting about at some later date.

Just to make this somewhat on topic, if anyone knows of role-playing groups in Mainland China, particularly Beijing, please post about them :-)

yrs--
--Ben

Quote from: Emily CareWhat do you know about club Fasta?

I do know that they are one of the -- if not the -- premiere LARP club in Denmark, but apart from that, not much. I live in Copenhagen, and F. is located in Århus, a 200 mile drive, so I don't visit Århus much. Steve Jackson knows a little, though:

Quote from: Steve JacksonApril 23, 2000: Good Times in Denmark
We're two days into the 4-day Fastaval convention in Arhus, Denmark. Great con - about 800 people in attendance. The big thing here is the Mafia live roleplaying game . . . therefore, the proportion of gamers in good suits and snappy neckties is mind-boggling.

April 26, 2000: Fastaval, Part 2
The con is over, and it ended with a bang. Saturday we had an excellent panel discussion which started out as "What's the difference in gaming styles between Europe and the U.S.?" and evolved into a freewheeling discussion of the nature of the roleplaying community as a whole, and the ways that a creator could contribute. Verrrrrry interesting!

Sunday night was the banquet, and quite a banquet it was - with two bands, and a third one at the huge bar tent in the courtyard of the school which was hosting the convention. (Bar tent? At a school? You bet.)

There were more than 300 people at the banquet, and the energy level was as high as I have ever seen at a convention. The bands were great (the first one, a cover band with some really great, weird arrangements, could fill any club on 6th Street in Austin). We not only had people dancing, we had people pogoing and airplaning . . .

And, not to lose sight of the original goal, we had standing ovations for the winners of the various GMing and service awards. The energy and enthusiasm of the fans here is fantastic. As a matter of fact, if Danish gamers have a fault, it's that they are too modest. I was flat-out accused once of being "political" for saying this was a great convention . . . the fellow seemed certain that cons just had to be better in America. And several people gave me variations on the "But seriously, what do you think?" line. I think they don't know what they've got here . . .

I'm really not much of an authority on this subject, but I do believe that RPgs and especially LARPs are thriving hobbies here. In fact, I have seen RPGs reviewed on national TV, although that's not a common occurrence. :^)

Best regards,
Chris

Quote from: Emily Care

Quote from: Eero TuovinenIn Finland the larp scene is the dominant one. There was an influx of new people in the late '90, and the larpers have almost singlehandedly made roleplaying a valid and accepted form.

Eero: What caused the influx? And do you think that part of the reason why larping (and thus rpg in general) was able to become more accepted was because the country is fairly small? Or are there other aspects to society that might make people more open to it?

Let's see... I'd say the main reason for the influx was simply that society was ready. In the early '90 there were much rumbling going on; computer gaming magazines, rpg magazines and such wrote quite regularly about this new and exciting hobby form the people really "in" in the scene used to do. Light-gun frolicking had beached to Helsinki a little previously. Effectively, after a little experimenting, several people in different parts of the country started forming their own larp-groups all at once. This happens quite frequently in Finland, as the people in general have quite a strong hand on the international pulse. After that the late nineties influx was simply a second-stage result. When the trailblazers had done their job, all interested people simply grasped the opportunity for costume play when different periodicals and newspapers started featuring the hobby now and then.

Now, the main thing of importance compared to some other countries is the homogenuity of the culture. There is no serious stigma associated with roleplaying here, for example, and never has been. Larping never could be something only city kids did. The reaction from most parents was "Hey, that sounds like fun!", and this from my own experience as a kid at the time.

Another explaining reason might be the relatively 'civilized' cultural atmosphere here. Most active people don't believe in any gods (as in practising worship, I mean) and things like abortion are a political non-issue, for example, and other cultural inhibitions are likewise at a premium compared to countries outside the north. The intellectual art scene, with which larping has identified in the last five years, is a strong cultural force.

Adding the above factors together, I can only account that it's natural for people to larp in Finland. Some like movies, others dance, many read books; how is it different for people to larp, now that the idea has been breached? Of course cultural analysis is a complicated subject, so you probably get closer to truth by examining what I as a representative of my culture think the reasons are.

Hi Emily!

Quote from: Emily CareDotan writes on the history of Israeli gaming close to the end of the thread.

I don't have much to add to Dotan's insightful breakdown of the history of Israeli gaming, but I'd like to further describe its current status as I see it.

First of all, Dotan is right. Freeform seems to be touted as a mode of gaming more "advanced" and "mature", since it supposedly enables focusing more on the "story" and less on the "system" - with immersion, or "Deep Roleplay" being the thing to aspire to. (Don't even ask me what they mean by "story" - Dotan hit the nail on the head with his assertion about Illusionism and TITBB.) Note that "system" by this stage had become synonymous with crunchiness as well as with "immaturity"; it follows that in nearly all conventions, which are the major place for meeting new people and cross-pollinating ideas, the prevalent "system" is (almost) no system at all. What receives special attention is situation/setting and, to a lesser degree, character/color (depending on the individual game of course). Running a by-the-book-system game in a 'con is nigh-impossible, and nearly every system boils down to a Fortune-lite "roll d20, high is good low is bad" (substitute d10 for, say, an Ars Magica based game) supplemented with GM-made Drama/Karma rulings.

This said, there are two games which do hold some sway over the local audience, most probably due to their worldwide popularity. The first is a renaissance of D&D with the release of its 3rd Edition, and the second is a steady flow of White Wolf publications. Although these are labeled as "kiddie" and "mature" respectively, D&D3Ed had been recently translated to hebrew and is becoming more popular among many newcomers and *D&D-adherent old-timers. As for using the system verbatim where WW is concrened, whatever information I have suggests that most follow the Golden Rule, so any mechanics are usually defenestrated in favor of freeform or Drama-based resolution.

LARPs were historically on the fringe in Israel (once called RD&D, where "R" stood for "Real") and are used to gross misrepresentation in the mass media every once in a while, but now they thrive, especially with the coming of Russian immigrants who brought their own highly detailed LARP style. These LARPers exhibit a high investment in the hobby, and meet weekly to practice and socialize. The Vampire LARPs are another kind which enjoys some popularity, with a 24/7 game running for several years now (these were represented in the media even worse than the fantasy variety). Plus, every convention has its share of LARPs, from the scheming-political type to a Baron Munchausen story-telling event.

FLGS were once scarce but are now practically non-existent. However, the gaming community is very much alive, with Internet forums serving as discussion boards, and conventions and mini-cons as a place to meet and socialize. For the younger generation there are also D&D "activities" (sort of like after-school courses) run by two commercial companies - these are scheduled events with overly large groups of kids presided over by "professional" DMs. (This, IMHO, is an attempt to scrape the barrel of popularity for some loose change rather than an effort to promote roleplaying as a social pastime - indeed, such a trend would ultimately harm those companies' businesses.)


Anyhow, roleplaying - for adults, at least - remains a relatively subcultural thing. The bottom line is that RPGs, although more "visible" today than ever, are still, sad to say, considered by most of the general populace to be a hobby for geeks or kids.


[An aside about Japan. From what a friend that recently came back from there told me, when he asked people about "RPGs" they did indeed direct him to a computer role-playing game shop. Finally he somehow managed to find RPG material, and it seems that they do have a good amount of locally published material - he found at least 5 Japanese-made games - boasting great artwork and various content, from steam-fantasy to cyber-anime. I will ask for more detail once he finishes reading the game books that he got.]


I hope I was clear and helpful,

MarK.

The history of the hobby in Italy had quite a lot of ups and downs.

In the 80s and early 90s, RPGs became quite popular, and many games (I think at least 50 lines) where published. Companies translated almost everything they could find, and people played many different games
In the late 90s CCGs and CRPGs became very polular and most people abandoned RPGs for those new games. The entire hobby experienced a huge crisis, with companies failing, shops closing, magazines stopping publication, cons and fairs becoming rare.
Recently (after 3E has been published), things are changing and tabletop roleplaying is rising again as a popular hobby, together with new publishers and shops.

I have no actual figures, but I guess that most people play with their own groups and care very little about the community of players as a whole.
Those people play D&D3 and most of them ignore the existence of other roleplaying games; also, they were too young or simply weren't gamers during the "golden age" of ten years ago.
WW games have their own niche of players, even if I think they are less popular now than a few years ago.

On the other hand, there is a big community of players going to cons, discussing on internet fora and so on. These people play basicly every kind of RPG out there, focusing a bit more on the narrativist side I guess.

This community also "gave birth" to a good number of indie authors and publishers. Strangely enough, the only non-indie Italian games published in the last few years I can think of, are based on anime licences.
Anyway you can find here a comprehensive list of what's been published.

About other kinds of games:
Miniature wargames (Games Workshop) are quite popular, while classical wargames are played only by a few people, mainly older ones.

Most people own and play "mainstream" board- and party games, such as Monopoly, Risk (which is Italian did you know?), Taboo, Pictionary and the like.
Other boardgames are played only by the "con people" I talked about above.

About LARPs: I almost didn't know they existed until a few years ago, so I can only talk about the current situation.
Fantasy LARPs with latex swords and so on gained some popularity, with the biggest events having 300-400 players.
Vampire and other LARPs are organized at every con, I don't know how many people play them outside of cons.

...Anything else?

(minor EDIT in the LARP paragraph)