international rpg

[Ron Edwards]

What an incredible thread!

I'd like to get some input from the French role-players. Fabrice? Philippe?

And there's a big Down Under contingent at the Forge as well, both Australia and New Zealand. Chime in, guys.

Best,
Ron

[gizem]

Greetings Forgers,

Even though I'm no longer active in Turkish RPG circles, (for the last 2 years) I'll try to give you an idea.

Turkish RPG has a relatively short history. About 10 years ago, it was impossible to find RPGs (and related accessories like dice) anywhere in Turkey. Very few people knew that they existed. All rulebooks were photocopies of photocopies of photocopies and we used to make our own polyhedral dice from cardboard or program scientific calculators to roll dice (no kidding). Small isolated groups of people played, mainly in Istanbul (the biggest city with 10 million people). AD&D was the most popular game, but we'd play anything we could find. By 1995, I had photocopies of AD&D, CoC, Cyberpunk 2020, as well as an original Mechwarrior RPG, and that was about it all.

But things changed pretty fast. Soon a store in Istanbul started importing a small but fairly diverse selection of games. It was followed by others in the years to come. Hitherto isolated gamer groups started to meet each other and to organise conventions, mainly in universities, starting from 1996. Later roleplaying cafes were opened, where the gamers met and played (since most young Turks live with their families). Small but frequent conventions were organised in these places with continuing and interacting games (a number of groups playing games that interact).

The number of gamers grew exponentially after 1995 (they are in the low thousands today- my estimate). Soon we (in Istanbul) began to hear of gamers in other towns. Today Ankara (the capital population 4 millions) has the biggest yearly roleplaying event- the METUCON of Middle East Technical University, which hosts at least a hundred tabletop games (with a good selection including independent games like Little Fears, for instance), 4 live action games, workshops, etc, and gamers attend the con from all over Turkey. Well, at least from the bigger towns.

If I'm not mistaken D&D was recently (in 2002?) translated into Turkish. This development is a bit late for various reasons, given the state and spread of the hobby, but I expect the number of players to increase as more material becomes available in Turkish. There is serious internet activity and there used to be a nationwide semi-amateur RPG magazine.

Most popular tabletop games are D&D3e, World of Darkness games (especially Mage, or so is my impression) like anywhere else. Call of Cthulhu and Cyberpunk are also played. In Ankara GURPS is widely played, too. Miniature gaming became popular recently, after 1999 or so.

Recently (2000) RPGs received some positive and a lot of negative media attention. The negative views came after a number of youth suicides, which is a rare event in Turkey. Links were drawn between the suicides, RPGs and satanism, in a sporadic satanism-scare.

Turkish larp started in 1996 in Istanbul, by some first generation gamers, who probably saw something similar in the USA. Two games were made. Then in 1997 a Finnish LARPer (who speaks Turkish) living in Istanbul and a Turkish-american introduced Vampire: the Masquerade LARP in a convention, and the first ever LARP campaign was born. Later a mixed (Finnish-Norwegian-Turkish) group organised a Scandinavian style larp (a Lovecraftian city game), without a meta rules system per Vampire. After the Scandinavians (Nordics?) were gone, the Istanbulites continued to make their own larps, some typical stone-paper-scissors vampire, some more original or Scandinavian style. One important example is a CoC larp campaign. In this period the larp expertise of Istanbul was carried on to the Ankara gamers (they made games for Ankara conventions), who liked the idea and went on to make their own games in conventions.

Since the average Turkish larper (or gamer) has much less money, less free time, and less expertise in larp than the average Scandinavian larper, all Turkish game up to date have been rather amateurish by Scandinavian standarts. They were mostly short (few-hours long), with fewer players per game (average was under 30), with poor equipment/props/costumes and almost all were contemporary or 20th century settings/scenarios. Thus CoC and Vampire are attractive settings. I've heard that recently (after 2000) there were a few outdoors larps with historical costumes. Here's what I did (it was my last roleplaying activity) as a Turkish larp example:
http://peregrjnus.tripod.com/krachfeld/index.htm

There is no separate larper class in Turkey, all larpers are also tabletop gamers. Though a few prefer larp to tabletop. It may be misleading to speak of a Turkish larp scene, since very few games are made per year. Still, there is some expertise which may help future larpers in getting a real scene going.

I'm pleased to answer questions if you have any,

-Gizem Forta

[Emily Care]

Wow! Thanks so much to all who are writing in. It has all been very clear and extremely informative.  I'd love to hear more.  Any word on role-playing in South America or Africa?  Anyone from Brazil? Senegal? Nigeria?

And I have some responses to what has been written:

Meanwhile roleplaying is a very fashionable hobby [in Finland]. There was a drama series about larpers in the television a couple of years ago, for example.

My mind is still boggling about this.  Role-playing seems to have come into it's own in Finland in a way it has rarely elsewhere.  I'm becoming seriously tempted to learn Finnish (or, from what Steve Jackson wrote-- Danish! ). :)

There are two Games Workshop stores [in Hong Kong], 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.

And there's an opposite extreme.  Seems like CRPG (console or computer rpg) has been the primary form of "role-playing" that's hit it big in Asia.  There's a definite tension between crpg and trpg in general. Andrea spoke of a "crisis" of roleplaying in the late '90's when a lot of people in Italy switched from live or table-top roleplay to computer based and the gaming industry was hard hit (stores closing etc).  The forms do compete.

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).

Two things strike me about this: first off-- a 24/7 larp? Yowza! That sounds pretty intense.  Is this something that is more common than I realize?  Reminds me of a friend describing the spy intrigue larp he participated in at the technical college he attended in Massachusetts, where folks wore a pin to tell if they were "in" the game or out (that may be standard, I've never larped)--and the game eventually had to be banned when people started breaking into classes to assasinate their schoolmates.

The second aspect of this goes along with what Gizem Forta shared about Turkey:

Turkish larp started in 1996 in Istanbul, by some first generation gamers, who probably saw something similar in the USA. Two games were made. Then in 1997 a Finnish LARPer (who speaks Turkish) living in Istanbul and a Turkish-american introduced Vampire: the Masquerade LARP in a convention, and the first ever LARP campaign was born. Later a mixed (Finnish-Norwegian-Turkish) group organised a Scandinavian style larp (a Lovecraftian city game), without a meta rules system per Vampire.

We have world-wide role-playing culture missionary-ism going on. :) Or, more realistically, a single group can make a huge impact on a national scene simply by showing up (and presumably, by doing a bang-up job).

By the way, Gizem. Thanks for giving the link to your campaign. The presentation of it was concise yet communicative, and the Kafka story it was inspired by was chilling.  Inspiring to think of doing a sort of existentialist role-playing, where a big part of what is being explored is the inner experience of the player, per se.  There's definitely room for this type of gaming to be further explored.

Late '80's and early '90's seems like it was a moment of growth for role-playing world wide.

And the last major take-home point I get from this thread is one of terminology.  

TRPG - table-top role-playing
CRPG or CCG  - computer role-playing, computer console gaming (?)
LARP - live-action (is this a "universal" term--pending language of course.)
FLGS - what does this stand for? Mark?

Just as idle curiousity, what is role-playing called in different languages?

Many thanks to all. Have a good weekend!

Warmly,
Emily Care

[Valamir]

CCG - computer console gaming (?)

collectable card game would be its usual U.S. meaning

FLGS - what does this stand for?

Friendly Local Game Store.  No idea how that one got coined.

[GreatWolf]

FLGS - what does this stand for?

Friendly Local Game Store.  No idea how that one got coined.

As I understand it, it comes from Spiderman.  "Friendly Neighborhood Spiderman" morphed to "Friendly Neighborhood Game Store" to "Friendly Local Game Store".

Seth Ben-Ezra
Great Wolf

[Andrea Gualano]

In the late 90s CCGs and CRPGs became very popular 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.

CRPG or CCG  - computer role-playing, computer console gaming (?)

CRPG: Computer Role-Playing Games, things like Baldur's Gate or Neverwinter Nights.

CCG: In many people's opinion (including mine), the crisis was mostly caused by Collectible Card Games, first of all Magic the Gathering which became the favorite hobby for many former roleplayers.

Just as idle curiousity, what is role-playing called in different languages?

in Italian it's "gioco di ruolo" or GdR
in French it's "jeu de rôle" or JdR
in Spanish it's "juego de rol"
They all translate roughly into "game of role".
I seem to remember that it's "Rollenspiel" in German (?)

[Eero Tuovinen]

Just as idle curiousity, what is role-playing called
in different languages?

In Finnish that'd be:

a roleplaying game - roolipeli (literally 'role game')
a rpg - rope (from ROoliPEli), and from that of course the
pun 'köysipeli', or 'rope game'
a tabletop roleplaying game - pöytäroolipeli ('table' tacked on), informally sohvapeli (a 'sofa game')
a LARP - LARP (self-explanatory)
a live action roleplaying game - näytelmäroolipeli (literally 'theater role game'), elo(rooli)peli (literally 'live (role) game')
a board game - lautapeli (again, 'board game')
a computer roleplaying game - tietokoneroolipeli (computer=tietokone)
a collectible card game - keräilykorttipeli (keräily=collecting, kortti=card)etc.
Finnish uses compound words in a way reminiscent of German. You can refer to most game types by taking the word 'peli' (game) and putting the appropriate qualifiers ahead of it. Thus football game = jalkapallopeli, boardgame = lautapeli and so on.

In Swedish, more or less:

a roleplaying game - en rollspel (literally 'role game')
a rpg - none that I know of
a tabletop roleplaying game - bordsrollspel ('table' tacked on)
a LARP - lajv
a live action roleplaying game - levande rollspel  (literally 'living role game')
a board game - brädspel (again, 'board game')
a computer roleplaying game - datorrollspel (computer=dator)
a collectible card game - samlarkortspel (samlar=collect, kort=card) etc.
Swedish is the second language here, and technically I, too, know it good enough for academic expounding. Practically I know it probably as well as most of you know French, as I've rather learned useful languages like latin (in which there is no established words for rpgs, by the way). These should however be mostly correct, and you can see that many words are similar in the two languages.

[gizem]

Emily,

Thanks for reading and praising the game.

Since there aren't so much rpg related material in Turkish the name issue is not yet very clear. Many people call tabletop rpg 'FRP' (pronounced fe-re-pe), no matter what it is about. Non-gamers like the press use this term also.

Some gamer groups made attempts to translate RPG related terms in the internet and in print magazines/fanzines. Those who have more experience in gaming tend to prefer 'Rol Yapma Oyunu' as a Turkish equivalent which is a direct translation. Literally it means 'Role Making Game(genitiv?)', i.e. 'game of role making', or something like this. Some other suggestions were 'Fantastik Rol Yapma Oyunu', 'Rol Oyunu', 'Masaüstü Rol Yapma Oyunu' (Tabletop...), etc.

For live action roleplaying, 'larp' is used even though it already has a meaning in Turkish (a rather obscure word though), along with 'Canli Rol Yapma Oyunu' (another direct translation) and 'layv' (Turkish spelling of the pronounciation of the English word 'live').  

Since most people in the hobby speak English, and almost no sources exist in Turkish (this is why they speak English), English terms are also used widely. The gameplay itself is always in Turkish, though.

I hate the 'Fe-Re-Pe' term passionately and promoted 'Rol Yapma Oyunu', and 'Layv' when I wrote essays, columns, or participated in discussions.

[GB Steve]

I'm not a French roleplayer but I played in France during the eighties when gaming was just starting up.

There were a few clubs around in 83 and one shop in Bordeaux that sold RPGs as well as other board games. Board games are quite popular in France, more so than in the UK, but not as much as in Germany where they are cheap and plentiful.

We played English games because that was all there was. We played in a weird franglais: "Je prends mon sword+2 et je hit le goblin". It helped that I was able to read the harder bits of the books that my friends didn't get and their English improved a great deal (although there's perhaps not much call for knowing what dweomer and abjuration mean outside D&D).

Then came the translations and the French games (Mega, Legendes Celtiques) and I went back to the UK. Now roleplaying is bigger in France than in the UK with many more gaming shops and a much more vibrant scene. Mind you some of the companies (Multisim) are feeling the pinch at the moment and I'm not sure whether more might go under.

Roleplaying is called le jeu de role or JdR. Roleplayers are called rolistes There should be hats on the o's in role and rolistes but I don't have a French keyboard. LARPs and other such things are called jeux de role grandeur nature, or just GNs. This means life size roleplaying games, and covers LARPs and Freeforms equally, avoiding the problems of definition we sometimes run into.

The most popular game in France is apparently Nephilim, the original French version, although for a long time it was CoC. Many French games seem to have a baroque feel to them, such as Nephilim, Agone, Lyonesse (actually Swiss), Dark Earth, Rétrofutur and are usually presented with more colour and better artwork than their English equivalents.

Card gaming is enormous in France and if you go to L'Oeuf Cube (a tres cool parisian game shop) any day after school, you'll see hundreds of teenagers swapping cards in the little square near the shop.

Cheers,

[herrmess]

And I have some responses to what has been written:

...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).

Two things strike me about this: first off-- a 24/7 larp? Yowza! That sounds pretty intense.  Is this something that is more common than I realize?  Reminds me of a friend describing the spy intrigue larp he participated in at the technical college he attended in Massachusetts, where folks wore a pin to tell if they were "in" the game or out (that may be standard, I've never larped)--and the game eventually had to be banned when people started breaking into classes to assasinate their schoolmates.

Ok, I have to put up a disclaimer here: I neved participated in said LARP. What I know about it comes from online discussions between some of its participants. Thus warned, this is the gist of the thing as I parsed it:

- The game is loosely based on V:tM and Mind's Eye Theatre.
- There are around 30 players at any given time (there were a lot more than that overall, since the game has been running for over 2 years, starting from year 2000). Plus, there is a host of NPCs and "guest" appearances during major events in the game.
- There is one "Guide" (there were 2 during the lifetime of the game) who is sort of a coordinator/metaplot-creator. Sometimes he has co-Guide(s) or other helpers.
- The players (most of them, anyway) meet once a week in a pre-ordained (usually public) place to play in what looks like an ordinary couple-of-hours-long LARP. The events in this meeting carry over to the next and so on -- the key word here is continuity. It's like a LARP-campaign, if you will.
- In-between meetings there are smaller game-meetings of 2 or more players, with or without a coordinator's presence (depending on the effect that events that take place in such a meeting have on things "outside" of it). Sometimes these meetings are set, sometimes they're spontaneous (if 2 players are classmates they may decide to play between themselves at lunchbreak, for example). These too are live roleplaying sessions, and whatever happens there can also have an impact on the "global" state of affairs. Essentially this is the basis for the 24/7 element, heavily supported by the next item on this list.
- Game-time = real-time. This means that from one week's meeting to the next a character does what he/she could concievably do in a week's time. Both "worlds" progress in parallel.
- There is an emphasis on the inner world of the character -- up to cases in which even when someone didn't play with anyone for a while, he still sometimes slipped "in character" and thought like him/her about in-game stuff. (This raised some interesting debates about "my character vs. myself", both due to this effect as well as due to the continuing nature of the LARP combined with its angst-romantic setting.) I know this sounds borderline, but AFAIK there were none that couldn't as a result distinguish between "real life" and "game". It just brought on quite a fertile discussion between people about the meaning of "immersion" in the context of such a game.

There are other street-based LARPs staged from time to time in Tel-Aviv, most notably a modern CoC-based one (If I'm not mistaken, people were actually wearing identification tags there, for obvious reasons.)

Just as idle curiousity, what is role-playing called in different languages?

(With your permission, I will try to render the names using English syllables pronounced as closely to the phonetical origin as possible.)
A game: miss-KHAK (The KH is "hard" H, pronounced like the sound some do before spitting, or the way the CH may be pronounced in "Bach" or "Yecch".)
Role-playing game: miss-KHAK (plural miss-kha-KAY) taf-kee-DEEM. Literally - game(s) of roles.
RPG: M-T or Mem-Taf. This is used only by some, and mainly in written form.
A table-top roleplaying game: miss-KHAK taf-kee-DEEM (the default form) or miss-KHAK taf-kee-DEEM Shool-kha-NEE (when difference from LARP is needed to be emphasized).
A live roleplaying game: miss-KHAK taf-kee-DEEM KHAI.
LARP: No local abbreviation I know of is widely used, although some might use M-T-KH or (MAE-takh). Most just use "LARP". I was using the term because I am familiar with it.

Anyway, in Hebrew there is a bit of a can of worms, especially when it comes to theoretical discussions. First of all, "player" and "actor" are essentially the same word. There is no single word that means "gamer" (the use of the English term "gamer" is usually associated with one who plays computer games). There is no distinct word for "protagonist" - it  is often referred to as "main character" (and as such confounded by some with the meaning of "character" in the RPG sense). Dotan's post pretty much covers the state of RPG theory here, but I just wanted to mention these few discussion-hampering elements. There is an emergence of jargon (esp. to solve the playing/acting dichotomy), but it is used to discuss RPG-as-art and is mainly concerned with dissecting technique.

A quick aside about gaming and media: I just watched the Israeli Channel 1 piece about the last big 'con we had here, which was a collaboration with the Israeli SF&F society -- a 3-day 15,000-visitor event with Orson Scott Card as main guest. The reporter and anchor at the studio spoke mainly about SF&F, all the while calling the fans and gamers (I kid you not) "a cult" and "extra-terrestrials". So even when you do not want to be a fringe phenomena, there you have it. *sigh*

MarK.

[Mike Holmes]

The 24/7 Larp is actually amongst the oldest forms of modern LARP. The game that you're identifying Em, is likely the Harvard game calle variously Assassin, AKA Tag, the Assasination Game (for movie buffs), AKA Killer as marketed by SJG. This is a game in which, classically, all players have a target, and are, themselves targets for other players. Usually the borders of the game are a campus, or city or somesuch. You are allowed to attempt to kill your target anywhere and at any time in that area (subject to myriad potential restrictions including the classic anonymity rule). Last man standing wins. In games with the "pins" that you note, often it's "open season" instead of the classic ring.

I think that Walt can comment on this as I think he may have been one of the inventors, or at least knew them. I ran several games in college only one of which was moderately successful. People tend to forget that they're playing.

The point of the 24/7 LARP isn't that you stop your normal life, usually, but that you incorporate the LARP into your life. With Vampire LARPS, like Mark mentions, often the people who play use the conceit that their real persona is the vampire's "cover". So, if in the middle of play somebody comes up and addresses you by your real name, in-game, that's just someone unaware of the Masquerade. Makes for a convenient way to play out in the open.

Mike

[Walt Freitag]

I think that Walt can comment on this as I think he may have been one of the inventors, or at least knew them.

The original Killer/Assassin games were well before my time (I think I was in junior high when I first heard of them, and they were an already-forgotten past fad at most colleges by my college years.) So, no, I wasn't one of the inventors and I don't know the inventors.

As far as I know, the original Assassin format had few if any role playing characteristics. There were no player-characters, no in-character dialog, no "motivations" for the killings, and no inter-player interactions other than killings. So while it was definitely a live-action game, I don't regard it as a LARP per se, but as one of many precursors (along with SCA reenactments, murder mystery weekends, and cops and robbers).

Assassin endured at MIT through the early 80s (and well beyond), and after the first SIL LARP at Boskone in Boston in 82, a lot of cross-fertilization took place. The MIT version of the Assassin game had evolved to a form sharing a few of the characteristics of SIL games (though the original SIL group and I weren't aware of it at first). The games were two weeks long as they had always been, but they had shifted their orientation toward team play with team identities (MI6, CIA, KGB, crime syndicates, terrorist groups, etc.) and team rivalries. This naturally led to diplomacy and political faction-building as tactical necessities (a bit like in Survivor), development of player-character personas, and targeting of assassinations based on character motives in the context of an ongoing plot rather than on drawing random names. Under the influence of the SIL style of LARP, these changes accelerated so that for a while the Assassin games looked a lot like two-week-long versions of SIL LARPs, with pre-written character backgrounds, special abilities, and elaborate plots. These games in the mid-80s were the closest I've experienced to the 24/7 LARPs herrmess describes.

The couple who have (at least until just recently) been running SIL-West were leaders of the MIT Assassins Guild (the game organizers) at that time. (However, they've just recently moved back east, so I'm not sure about the current status of SIL-West.)

- Walt

[gizem]

I know of a Turkish real-time larp campaign played in Istanbul in 1999(?). It was similar to the Israeli one, with occasional major events, in-game groups arranging meetings among themselves, etc. It was based on Vampire: the Masquerade but included other World of Darkness elements too like werewolves and changelings. It lasted more than 1.5 years. One major difference was that the game started after sunset, and it was played in the night.

According to a gamemaster, in the beginning they were a smaller group and decided which nights to play it in. Later it became a continous real-time game with 40+ players. They played in public places like bars and gamer cafés. I think players basically ignored people who were unaware of the game. If the people were insistent they told them that a game was going on.

I haven't played in this campaign, because costumes and props were not required (this made playing in public places easier), and it used a modified version of the rock-paper-scissors system of vampire larps. The result was a tabletop-larp hybrid which I was not really interested in at the time. I never liked RPS larps anyway.

[Mike Holmes]

As long as we're talking LARP, could we get someone from downunder to comment on the phenomenon of the "Freeform" LARP as it exists there. It seems to me to be pretty common, tho that may just be my limited exposure speaking.

Mike

[Andy Kitkowski]

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?

Hi- Actually, that's a little off. They're called "Replays", basically single-shot adventures written up in script/screenplay style, like this:

JOHN: I take out my sword and hit him (rolls dice) Oooh! Critical hit! I do ten points of damage.
SARAH: (as monster) "ARRrrrrrgh! You will pay for that, mortal!"
SARAH: What is Rothgar doing?
SAM: Rothgar is stepping back into the shadows, trying to sneak around the creature...
JOHN: A sneak attack again?  Just make sure you pull it off this time (laughs).
etc

Then they are usually transcribed to books and the like, with maybe an illustration here and there every couple dozen pages or so.  In gaming magazines, short replays appear as articles.  Some gaming supplements are nothing but replays with a few rules or ideas thrown in in the side texts.

They're not for recreating adventures, etc.  Basically, they're just to read and enjoy.  In Japan, packaged adventures don't sell because they're so dry and boring.  Replays, good replays, sell like hotcakes: Basically, though them you're getting an idea of how GOOD PLAYERS interact with a GOOD GM in a GOOD adventure.  If you consider how many of us almost got out of the hobby, dismissing it as "juvenile", until we met that One GM or One Group of Players that made the difference, Replays are a Godsend.  By reading them, people get ideas for play styles, adventures, character behaiviors, and how to interact better as a player or GM.

Another big thing about Replays is that it's very hard to just "meet" a roleplayer on the street. Most form clubs, etc at colleges, schools, town community centers, etc. While they certainly don't exclude anyone, they also don't just yell out to people to join.  So recruiting new people to the hobby is a big problem.

With Replays, though, they can be found at bookstores and the like. People can stumble on to them, give them a read, and become REAL interested in RPGs to the point of trying to find a group, else buying one and trying to run them themselves.  According to some figures I've been gathering, about 1/4 to 1/3 of Japanese RPGers didn't learn about RPGs initially from friends or siblings, rather they stumbled on a replay somehow and became interested in RPGs that way. Also included with that number are people that heard about RPGs from friends, and weren't really interested one way or another, but were lent a Replay book and became interested in playing after reading.

That's a huge number when you think about it.

I've been interested in seeing how American/English audiences take to Japanese-style Replays.  I'm working on translating a Japanese RPG now, and when the site goes live and we get a demo game or two together, we're hoping to transcribe our own Replay just to see what people think...

-Andy