Here's the piece I wrote. I haven't had time to polish it any, and won't have this week. Normal procedure, if there's anything to rip apart, do it. I'm still not native, so the language is obviously all stilted. Likely better for one person to check the grammar side of things.

Specific questions to consider:
- Is it all too strange? I find the text a little wacky myself, reading it after a couple of weeks. Can it be toned down? The most opaque places (like the Demosthenes chapter) would go through with Finnish (and other European) intellectuals, but are the hooks right for Americans? The article kind of rests on the idea that the reader is at least passingly familiar with the rhetoric of the culture war, and I don't know at all if that's the case in America. I've lately read a bunch of american comics that indicate intimate knowledge of the issues (like The Invisibles, say), but I really have no idea how widespread the ideas are there.
- Which matters would require more exposition? There's all kinds of throw-away stuff in there, easily expanded if necessary.
- Structure: I myself understand roughly what's going on here, but how about others? Is it too strange to have subchapters bouncing all over the place?

The front lines of the Great Culture War: one soldat's experience

They get closer as the day moves on... if this is the war to end all wars, then we know how it will all end; not with a bang, but with a whimper. Everything will be overrun by the implacable tread of the Monoculture, molding us in their image: Kill and loot for fun, it's how things are done. This is fresh reportage from the front, the horses mouth, the real McCoy who shoots notions out of the air to defend free thoughtspace. What does the soldier in the trenches believe?

The historian wrote:

A short history of Finnish roleplaying

Finland is a small Nordic country with some five million inhabitants. It's living standard is at least equal to the U.S., while the economy is run as a social-democratic hybrid. Finland is also a multicultural hotbed (in the good sense of the word, they don't play hand-grenade volleyball there): the native language is spoken nowhere else and there are multiple significant cultural minorities: Lappish people in the north, Swedes in the south-east and increasing numbers of various other nationalities. Practically every adult under the age of fifty understands English.

Roleplaying came to Finland at the start of the '80s through individual hobbyists who got their games straight from America. At first the new hobby spread mainly through word-of-mouth, slowly gaining adherents. The trailblazing phase ended in the latter part of the decade with simultaneous media coverage in computer magazines and the like, opening of specialized retail outlets and multiple game translations in quick succession. The years at the end of the decade and start of the '90s were the first renaissance of Finnish roleplaying, when an estimated five to ten thousand players came into the hobby in a few short years.

Games translated during this period include the original D&D (-88), Runequest (-88), Traveller 2300 (-88), a collection of Fighting Fantasy books (87-88), Twilight 2000 (89), Battletech (-91), Cyberpunk 2020 (-91), Call of Cthulhu (-92), Stormbringer (-92), Paranoia (-93)... in a word, about all central roleplaying games of the decade. The most successful were perhaps Runequest and Cyberpunk, becoming kind of baselines of their respective genres. Those two and a dozen lesser successes garnered a multitude of translated source books as well.

Translated games played an important role in developing the hobby, as they became an investment for the massive public library system of Finland, which in it's turn supplied these games for practically the whole Finnish population of potential players. Consequently the number of roleplayers has continued to rise slowly yet steadily even after the golden years.

During this time Finland sported at best five simultaneous roleplaying fanzines and a number of gaming stores. Games were also sold in bookstores all over the country. Roleplaying resided in a curious zone of commonality coupled with obscurity, as every small town had a couple play groups, yet mainstream media noticed the hobby hardly at all. It was not to last.

The Factfinder wrote: There are nearly five hundred borough libraries in Finland, with branches in every town of more than a couple of hundred people. Using the libraries and loaning the books is free and a matter of course.

In the middle of the '90s came a sort of a backlash: The core of Finnish roleplayers had matured through elementary school and gained proficiency in both languages and the internet: the roleplaying scene quickly internationalized. The effect was compounded by the fact that American roleplaying was at the time going through an evolution that, while slow and imperceptible from inside the culture, was near revolutionary for Finns whose roleplaying was largely based on the classic games of the '80s. The time-jump from Runequest to Vampire: the Masquerade was instant, and has left a clear bias in the "second generation" of Finnish roleplayers, who currently form the hard core that gives form to the scene.

The internationalization process was a boon for the small gaming business, as consumption jumped through the roof via imported games, the CCG craze and all that. However, this also meant death for the fanzines and game translation. Neither was needed when the distances suddenly dropped to practically nil, and the hobby oriented to instant response towards America. Even libraries started to invest in English language products when they invested at all.

Enter live action roleplaying

The middle of the '90s was also the time when larping came to Finland. For the first couple of years it followed the development of roleplaying a decade earlier, but the divergence was unavoidable: to this day there is no satisfactory avenues of large scale commercial profiting from live action play.

The second renaissance of Finnish roleplaying happened in just a couple of years, when the number of larpers jumped from a couple of hundred to a couple of thousand hobbyists between -95 and -97. At that point larping became media material, which roleplaying never before was: a couple of television documentaries later the number of at least occasional larpers has risen to rival the numbers of tabletop roleplayers, which had slowly increased to maybe twenty thousand strong.

The revolutionary nature of the live action awakening to Finnish roleplaying scene is best understood by noting that by and large, these were new people. A majority of these new roleplayers had never rolled a ten-sided die, but had instead a mainstream background in amateur theatre, literature, history or simply hanging out. There was and is a clearly perceivable culture gap between the forms, much greater than their purely practical differences.

Live action roleplaying is an extremely young and vibrant form in Finland, still seeking it's place in the cultural field. In the recent years it's become a part of the Nordic movement of roleplaying, as well as building connections to state-support systems and mainstream art scene through skimming the line between theatre and roleplaying.

Meanwhile, the live action renaissance has largely passed tabletop play by. Instead the last decade has been a time of slow maturing and stagnation of Finnish tabletop roleplaying. The currents of influence flow mainly from American mainstream, which is in a simmering cultural conflict with Finnish "old school", based on the late '80s ethos of roleplaying. The latter is nowadays represented by original Finnish games and legacy play of old favourites. The main example of the "old school" culture is the most significant Finnish roleplaying game, Ville Vuorela's Praedor (2000), which is nigh indifferentiable from Runequest itself as far as subject matter and theoretical approach goes.

Eero wrote: Likely better for one person to check the grammar side of things.

- Is it all too strange? I find the text a little wacky myself, reading it after a couple of weeks. Can it be toned down? The most opaque places (like the Demosthenes chapter) would go through with Finnish (and other European) intellectuals, but are the hooks right for Americans?

- Which matters would require more exposition? There's all kinds of throw-away stuff in there, easily expanded if necessary.

- Structure: I myself understand roughly what's going on here, but how about others? Is it too strange to have subchapters bouncing all over the place?

Jonathan Walton wrote:
Personally, when first reading over it, I found myself unsure how to take the Great Cultural War pieces. In the beginning (and even now, to a certain extent) I'm not sure which bits of it you actually believe and which ones are exaggerations to fit the style. I think that can be one of the great strengths and weaknesses of satire, actually, where Jonathan Swift can sneak the baby-eating thing on your before you know it's happening.

All in all, I liked the simplicity and directness of it, but there were a few things I wanted to hear more about:

1. The public libraries investing in roleplaying. Obviously, this hasn't happened yet in the US (or the rest of the Anglo world, I don't think), so I wondered why this caught on in Finland. Why did the libraries decide to stock RPGs? Why did players decide to get their RPGs from the library?

2. You talk about the jump from translated games to directly reading games in English, without really talking about what made this possible: the fact that everyone takes English as a Finnish schoolkid (I assume).

3. You drop a throwaway about there being no way to make real profit in the larp market, which I think needs a couple more general sentences to explain. Just tell us, basically, why you can't sell lots of stuff to larpers in the current culture.

4. Can you add a few sentences/paragraph about the documentaries that helped popularize larping.

5. Next paragraph, you give us "Nordic roleplaying movement," "state support systems," and "mainstream art scene" without explaining any of them. These are BIG differences that make roleplaying in Finland VERY different from roleplaying in Anglo-American culture. Give up the beef.

6. I think the History section needs a conclusion or a way to lead into the next bit of information. Actually, I'd suggest getting rid of the artificial seperation between "background" and "article," making the unified article both a summery of Finnish roleplaying up to now, and then a description of your reaction to the existing situation and how that led you to translate MLwM.

1. I really think you need some more space to talk about the Monoculture and the Great Cultural War that doesn't make you seem like an extremist who exaggerates everything. Honestly, what American and the rest of the Monoculture needs right now is people getting in our face and telling us stuff that the rest of the world knows already: that unchecked cultural expansion and cultural imperalism is crippling and, in some extreme cases, destroying important parts of other cultures. And if this can be said in a serious and honest way, I think that you will get people's attention more than with the overblown stuff. Just my thoughts, again.

I think you nailed it at the beginning of the Zacharias section. More of that. In fact, tell us about Zack, if you're going to bring him in. Not much. Just a few sentences will do. Why do you look to him for inspiration?

2. Players switched to White Wolf games and such. What's the "such"? Be specific. If you just mean "mostly White Wolf games" then say that instead. I'm wondering what else they started playing.

3. I want to hear more about your prediction of d20's dominance in Finland. Is it already gaining a large following, or are you just thinking that Finnish roleplayers will continue to follow America's pattern?

4. I want to hear more about the non-commercial nature of Finnish larping and how this insulates it from America's evil influences. This is very, very important, I think, because it (to some extent) also applies to indie and "non-commercial" games (we can argue about what those are) that sprout from the depths of the Anglo-American mainstream. You know, of course, that American larping tends to be dominated by White Wolf's Minds Eye Theater stuff, and so is often subject to commercialization and trends. Any thoughts too on why MET didn't come to domminate the Finnish larp scene the way the WoD invaded tabletop?

Speaking of which, where did Finnish larp develop from? Was it originally an American import too, but they just took the MET stuff and ran off in other directions very fast? Was it something you guys developed yourselves? This stuff should probably go in the History section.

5. Assume your audience knows nothing about MLwM, because many of them will have probably never heard of it. You're going to have to say more about why the game was a perfect choice for Finland.

6. So, the end of the article doesn't have any "oomph." The game sold 100 copies. People like translated games in Finnish after all. You make it sound like what you did is ultimately just a finger in the dike. Maybe it is, but it'd be nice to have a slightly more hopeful outlook at the end. Or maybe that's just my naive American optimism speaking :)

Well, I think ALL of that stuff is great, but I'm a Cultural Studies fiend, so deciding what things are appropriate to include is, like you say, another matter entirely. I think I'll step back and let a few other people take an axe to it before touching that one.

Besides, I have stickies to work on...

Eero,

This is relatively off-the-cuff, not something deeply considered for days and weeks, so bear that in mind. I'm also going to be blunt, because I love this article and I want it to be brilliant.

1. The drastic tone-shifts about the "great cultural war" don't work for me. They seem affected, even pretentious, and it seems to me that they don't really strongly support the point of the article itself. At the same time, I think it is extremely important for American readers -- and in fact all non-Finnish readers -- to have this stuff laid out clearly. So I'd change the tone but not the basic content.

2. The question of libraries should be foregrounded. You are surprised to hear that public libraries in the US do not have RPGs, and we are a bit surprised to hear that public libraries in Finland have lots of them. For exactly this reason, you need to discuss a little bit the issue of public support for "cultural" products and so forth. In America, this is so hyper-politicized that public libraries are generally very cautious about buying CDs of rap, punk, heavy metal, and anything else that someone might someday consider offensive or disturbing. RPGs are sufficiently controversial and non-mainstream that libraries simply ignore them. In addition, public libraries in America generally have ridiculously small amounts of money to play with, so they really don't buy almost anything except recent bestsellers in fiction and nonfiction, some "how to" stuff that has a proven track-record, and children's books. That's a bit of an exaggeration, but not by much.

3. I know what you're saying about translation, but I think Jonathan's question indicates clearly a potential reader disjuncture here. You have to remember that the vast majority of Americans take so little foreign language in any kind of school that they know just a few words. Further, most Americans do not see this as a problem, since English is obviously the common language of the world and everyone else should learn it just to get with the program here. This is exactly what you're talking about with the culture-wars, I think, and you need to draw out why translating into Finnish matters so deeply in fighting that war. This reminds me of my Dutch friends: sure, they all speak English, most of them better than my American students, but Dutch has value to them other than simple comprehension. I think a lot of Americans simply do not see that language is not merely a means of communicating ideas transparently, that it carries cultural weight and memory. Which, I think, is something you take for granted because you are an educated person from a country other than America. Bear in mind that even on a place like the Forge, where the education level is pretty high, a lot of folks really do believe deep down that in examining prose, it's only the ideas that matter, not the style and grammar and such; thus so long as one writes in a language (such as English) that the reader can understand, there is no particular weight or meaning to anything but the "content". People discuss literature in America largely in terms of ideas, morals, and the like, and there is this whole issue of "elitism" that dominates. For example, there was a whole fight about Jonathan Franzen's book, I forget the title, that Oprah recommended on her show; a lot of people said that because it uses a lot of long, weird words (that can be found in any decent dictionary) it's elitist and bad. This was taken seriously as a criticism! So you may need to restructure your thinking a little bit so as to make an argument that to you (and to any well-educated person) is obvious but in America is still taken as a bit controversial and probably a bunch of egghead intellectual nonsense. Remember that our president's statements that he doesn't read newspapers and that his favorite philosopher is Jesus were and are taken as reasons to vote for him by a scary percentage of the country.

4. The issue of industry and profit seems to me relatively incidental, and if you expand other sections of the article this stuff can remain pretty strongly in the background. Not that you should cut what's already there, but I don't think this is the article for discussing how LARPs can and cannot be capitalized upon in terms of money and advertising. Besides, in order to explain this really clearly, you'd have to explain how Finland's economy works, its moves away from earlier socialism, and so forth. I say leave that for another article -- such as the article on the Nordic roleplaying movement you mention in this last response.

5. Your remark on the state support systems really highlights the differences in assumptions here. I think it would cross almost nobody's mind at the Forge, for example, to try to get federal support of any kind for RPG projects of any kind. Simply impossible. We have enough trouble getting the Feds to support public television! What's interesting here of course is that it's America that is odd on this, not Finland: this kind of state support for cultural products of any kind is normal in just about every wealthy country I know of, but in America it is often derided in the mainstream press as wasting money on silliness; one has only to think of the responses to various art exhibits (Maplethorpe and Bacon leap to mind). Note that what you call "mainstream art" would in America either usually be seen as either not art or not mainstream. Again, I think you need to divide up this kind of issue into the stuff that supports the question of translating into Finnish as part of a cultural war and the stuff that goes better into a Nordic Roleplaying article.

6. I don't love the sidebar on history. I'd keep it right at the front as an introductory section. I think it's far too important to your argument to suggest it's incidental.

7. Use the stuff on Zacharias and Topelius to explain why using the Finnish language has real cultural weight. This seems to me like a useful transition from "Finnish RPGs" to "Translating an RPG into Finnish." One example that may be familiar to a fair number of our readers would be Tove Jansson's children's books, which if I remember correctly are in Swedish. That also gets you into various weird little goblins, trolls, and whatnot.

8. What I think is the only really serious problem here is that MLwM seems almost like an afterthought. Really talk about the process, the game, the choices you had to make, and so on. This should take up a good third of the space. This is the point of the whole article, to which most of the rest is context and setup. I need a lot more detail here! Get technical: how did you render X? why? what other options were there? You gesture at these things, but really do a close study. This is the payoff of all that background, and it's also where your arguments can become concrete and specific.

9. The conclusion, if it comes after a detailed discussion of the translation of MLwM, should slot the whole thing back into the cultural war and the position of Finnish language in it. The number of copies and such is interesting, but the real point is what blow you think you have struck here.

Great comments, Chris. You've articulated simple yet effective ways to mend the text into something coherent. I've been really ambivalent about going any deeper into either the translation or the Finnish roleplaying scene here, but it seems that both you and Jonathan see no trouble in expanding. If that's the case, I could see stripping the rhetorical figures and expanding the text by about a third or so to include a detailed explanation about the Finnish context and the process of translation we went through. More academical and less polemic.

Anyway, I'm starting to have quite a good handle on what this should look like. Anyone else is free to add input, but I'm ready to rewrite myself. I can likely get a revised version ready some time next week. How about it, Jonathan?

As for the revision prosedure Chris opened for discussion in the other thread: I'd imagine that we'll get some better preliminary drafts after a couple of articles are finished and we get some notion about what style, breadth and depth are ideal. I for one would certainly write a better article than this now.

Go ahead and rewrite whenever you feel ready. I agree with everything Chris said. Ditch the economics stuff and focus on the places where the Finnish experience differs from that of the majority of your audience (Anglo-Americans) and the actual translation of My Life with Master. I wouldn't count on another article about the game at this point, so you may have to give some background on Paul's work, but don't summerize the mechanics or anything; just talk about the bits that are relevant to the translation process.

Eero wrote: I'd imagine that we'll get some better preliminary drafts after a couple of articles are finished and we get some notion about what style, breadth and depth are ideal. I for one would certainly write a better article than this now.

Eero,

I have some thoughts to add to the conversation, but I can't possibly do so earlier than the weekend, maybe even Monday. I work best when I do just one thing at a time but do that one thing really hard. I'm doing that right now with my qualifying report, but I'll be free of it again (temporarily) after the weekend. Just wanted to let you know that I'm out here, thinking, and planning to get you some feedback.

Rich

Rich Forest wrote:
I have some thoughts to add to the conversation, but I can't possibly do so earlier than the weekend, maybe even Monday. I work best when I do just one thing at a time but do that one thing really hard. I'm doing that right now with my qualifying report, but I'll be free of it again (temporarily) after the weekend. Just wanted to let you know that I'm out here, thinking, and planning to get you some feedback.

Hi Eero,

I think there's a lot of strong stuff in here, and I have some notes about things that really struck me, particularly stuff I'd like to see more of.

So, to start with -- what they said. And especially two parts – 1) keeping the culture war stuff but shifting the tone, and 2) expanding the stuff about the translation and why it’s so important.

That’s the core of the article, right there. A lot of what I have to say is really just explorations in how that might be done. First, with the culture war, I think it is good for you to include your take on the matter. Don’t strip out the politics. But do think about who you want to address, and shape the tone to your audience. Right now, the tone is a bit like a manifesto. The problem is, manifestos are supposed to fire people up to take action. Ah, but who? In this case, I think the ideal audience for the current version would be specifically Finnish roleplayers who you want to fire up to do more translations and play translated games; beyond that, it might include folks in other countries who you’d want to get fired up to do translations into their own native languages. I’m not sure whether most of your readers are going to actually fall into one of those categories, and if you were writing to Finnish roleplayers about the importance of having games in Finnish, that’d be something you’d probably want to write in Finnish. So who are you talking to? As a reader, I may be able to empathize, but I’m left at a bit of a loss as to just what I’m supposed to do next. Also, I think a lot of readers are going to wonder whether they’re the monoculture. And maybe they are :-)

Now I bring it up sort of humorously, but I do think it would be worthwhile to get into the monoculture stuff more. You mentioned that you didn’t want to derail the point from talking about roleplaying, but in this case, talking about what you mean by the monoculture is talking about roleplaying. It’s necessary context for understanding the article. I’d also add that it would be worthwhile to problematize “monoculture.” Right now, it’s sometimes hard to parse who you’re talking about when you’re talking monoculture. Are you talking Anglo-American, especially U.S. RPG monoculture? Are you talking d20? Are you referring more broadly to say the encroachment of the English language in contexts where previously Finnish would have held sway? Or the prevalence of a very Anglo-American vision of geekery that is growing in Finland? Or the spread of American entertainment industries in general? Or… well… you get the picture. It seems like the essay switches back and forth a bit on these, and it isn’t always clear which one is in view at any time, and it’s especially hard to tell how they’re related. This may in part be a side-effect of talking about monoculture at all, which after all is after all monolithic, as well as an effect of the culture war rhetoric, which encourages drawing clear battle lines and generalizing a bit about the enemy. I think the essay would be strengthened by a lot more clarity about what monoculture means throughout. Otherwise it looks almost like local = good, foreign = bad. But wait, no… foreign = bad except in translation.

Here is where I think the war rhetoric may be holding the essay back. To me, one of the most interesting parts of the essay doesn’t get dealt with because of the war rhetoric – your position as translator. I think it’s a complicated position, but the current text doesn’t show that. The current text firmly places you as striking a blow against the monoculture (see how insidious this whole war rhetoric is?) by translating an American game into Finnish. But if we break that down, aren’t you, in a sense, bringing more of the monoculture in (albeit, you might argue, on your terms)? Isn’t an American RPG representative of the monoculture? Or are you saying that indie RPGs don’t count as part of the monoculture? But then, why not? Also, what makes translating an American RPG a powerful blow when compared to, say, creating a homegrown Finnish RPG? And as translator, how are you implicated in the spread of the monoculture? How do you negotiate your place among American RPGs, Finnish RPGs, monoculture and local culture? Aren’t you, in a sense, a real expert in the monoculture – you are familiar with the American independent RPG scene. You’re also very proficient in the English that you’re arguing Finnish RPGs would be better without. That’s interesting stuff, and I think it’s worth exploring.

Here are a couple of quotes that brought the issue to the forefront of my mind when I read the essay. I’ve added some emphasis to some lines:

Eero Tuovinen wrote: Fine, onward then. It's clearly demonstrated that there is an important function for championing native language in roleplaying, for there is no roleplaying of any caliber without language. It was a fore-gone conclusion that what should be done would be translating a roleplaying game once more: for a decade no roleplaying game has been translated into Finnish, only native games have filled the function. It was time again to remind people of what's what.

*snip*

Paul Czege's My Life with Master fit the bill admirably: a game in a completely new paradigm, one that would never see Finland without our intervention. A game of highest caliber, and one that would be easy to play for younger folks as well.

Eero Tuovinen wrote: In the friendly local gaming store I saw racks over racks of miniatures, a shelf over shelf of D20 merchandice, and a long - admittedly varied - row of other favoured games. All in English. At the long last I finally perceived where all the Finnish games had gone. And here I kid you not: they were tucked away in a far-off corner, all jumbled up in stacks, old games and new. Most of those games were some fifteen years old in the least, only one or two published this side of the millenium.

And then, when I opened my ears and listened, 'lo and behold: whenever I heard roleplayers talk, and whenever the talk turned to matters of technique and mechanics, did I hear correctly? Were they all verily speaking in tongues, not in finnish at all? For it was common occurrence to hear from roleplayer's tongue a curious creol of plain finnish words, mixed with english and various mechanical terms of different games, all twisted in a slang or argot or jargon nigh impossible to understand for a non-roleplayer. The effect is near impossible to duplicate for monolingual readers, but if finnish was english and english was french, it might have sounded like this: "Did you roll le preservatif? I'd have put globe incendie on les squelettes!"

Rich Forest wrote: Also, as an aside, why does the code-switching example use English and French rather than just flipping the English and Finnish? That would be just as effective, wouldn’t it, and also have the virtue of showing us more Finnish?

Chris,

That makes a lot of sense. It is more parallel, assuming the reader has some familiarity with French. I don't really, which is probably why I thought, "Hey, let's get some more Finnish in here." But it is a lot more likely than familiarity with Finnish, and I'm seeing the advantages of hitting the "distant/familiar" target over just getting more Finnish represented.

Rich

Rich Forest wrote:
I think there's a lot of strong stuff in here, and I have some notes about things that really struck me, particularly stuff I'd like to see more of.

This implies that native games can’t show people what’s what, or at least, they don’t seem to be doing it. So the only way to save local Finnish roleplaying from the monoculture is to import games, but in translation. This is the kind of issue, I think, that really needs to be explored. But it really doesn’t jive well with the more strident aspects of the tone. As translator, you’re in a much more complex place than war metaphors allow you to explore. But this is the part that is in many ways most interesting (at least, it is to me).

Those are the some of the most striking areas to me. There’s more I could add, but I think with Chris and Jonathan’s comments, I’d rather not overwhelm you with feedback at this stage. I do have detailed, line-by-line reactions that I wrote all over a printed copy of the manuscript. If you’d like those, PM me a mailing address and I’ll mail the pages to you directly.

Hi Eero,

I think we’re mostly on the same page, except that we seem to have talked past each other a bit. For the record, I like where you’re headed with the article.

So to clarify what I was up to: I was “reading against” the essay intentionally a bit, but you're also right in guessing that I wasn't pulling your strings. But I wasn’t actually taking you entirely literally, either. Hell, Jonathan likens the piece to “A Modest Proposal” in his first comment, so I’d have to be pretty stubborn to ignore that and actually believe you meant every word of the essay and that you and the soldier are in complete agreement :-). I did get that it was somewhat tongue-in-cheek, or perhaps I should say sometimes tongue-in-cheek. But at the same time, I was also being completely genuine in my reactions to what I had to work with – awareness that an exaggerated position is being proposed wasn’t enough to figure out what was really being said. I was still unable to really decipher your own, more complex position.

So throughout my post, what I wanted to highlight was the language used to frame the position/s in the essay along with the context-knowledge that is assumed of the reader. I wasn't really focused on the position/s themselves. As reader, I may know you don’t mean it all to be taken literally, but I also know that you do have a real position on the issue. But I don’t have a clear way to figure out what that is. So I wasn’t just playing devil’s advocate. I was confused about the points mentioned – not in the sense that I couldn’t imagine you might hold another position, but in the sense that I couldn’t guess what that position was. I think a lot of readers would have the same reaction.

So I still stick by what I wrote in the above post, but maybe it would have been clearer if I’d framed it something like this –

Rich Forest should’ve wrote: Eero,

One thing you asked about was how much context could be assumed. Here are some areas where I think readers will need a lot more context in order to understand the essay. I’m going to ask a bunch of questions here because I think these are areas where you understand exactly what you’re saying because you wrote it, but where readers might need more details in order to get what you’re saying. And not only readers who aren’t aware of discourses on “the monoculture.” I think even readers familiar with the various positions that can be taken on this issue won’t be able to tell how they should read the essay.

Eero Tuovinen wrote: (where are those stickies, by the by?) ...Jonathan hasn't really commented strongly on any deadlines, but I assume that we don't have too much time in our hands.

Rich: That's cool, I got what you meant. As I said, it's good to draw attention to the level of detail I'll need to get through.

Let's put this one to rest for a couple of days and come back after I get some writing done.

Here's the next draft of the article (late, sorry). It's a quite different beast (although some history text is there unchanged), and I had beastly trouble in its writing; when stripping the war rhetoric I somehow lost touch with how all of this stuff was supposed to pertain to each other, not to speak of hanging together. I'm not quite sure that the choices I made are the correct ones, but the rules stay the same: rip it apart, and we'll see if it's salvageable.

I opted to keep the MLwM stuff secondary compared to the culture thing, mainly because that was what Jonathan first asked me for. Also, I'd have to get into all kinds of not very roleplayingly detail about translation if MLwM were the main topic. Possible, but not for this journal. There's simply not enough to say about such a translation that would pertain to rpgs.

I should note that I went to this with some vague intention of being a little more formal, but managed finally only conversational (no doubt improvement over "feverish", the mood in the last draft). That's because the topic is a tad important for me personally, and because major parts are based on personal experiences. Easier to be conversational. I left off the literature footnotes as well, mainly because I have no friggin' idea about what titles an American would read for the sociology applied here. And I don't see exact reasoning of the sociological model applied here that important (interesting as it may be), as it's only a basis for my culture politics. We can put together a bibliography, though, if that's beneficial.

To be frank, I'm not very convinced that this is any better than the last version. Maybe somebody can point out why I'm not getting my stuff together. Perhaps the topic is too daft, I seem to have all kinds of trouble with creeping naivete when arguing this stuff.

And if somebody wants more about the actual translation stuff, I'm open for suggestions on what, exactly, is suitable. Perhaps I'm jaded with translations, but the actual job is actually pretty routine.

Against the geek, choice

I'd like to share with you some notions, and adjoint experiences. You see, I was recently part of a remarkable project: a game translation to a small language. It was a strange whimsy, the translation, but certainly reasoned. You see, nobody had done it for years and years, and there was no reason to, really; everybody knows English just fine. Still, an experience to savour. I thought it quite dapper, actually. Let me tell you why.

Have you ever considered culture as a choice? It is that, you know. Everybody's headspace is formed out of uncountable cultures and subcultures that connect in unique ways, while those cultures themselves are only compounds of the very same headspaces - we are our culture, in our opinions and actions, every day.

In roleplaying, too, there are multiple cultures, all intermingling in our heads. There's MET players and dungeon hackers, otherkin and wargamers. Each has various connections to youth culture, commercial ventures, other games, our games, their games, no-games. All these subcultures belong under the umbrella term of 'roleplaying'.

Also, roleplaying differs between countries. Although the form was invented in USA, it has spread over the western world. The early '80s was a time of internationalisation for roleplaying, when it spread through the industrialised world. Since then the local roleplaying cultures have evolved their own special features. Roleplaying will likely be the last art form to develop thus, as the age of the Internet will decimate the national borders.

Everything you know about what roleplaying is depends on how the basic idea connects to cultural points. Popularity of fantasy, say, or the penchant to active-passive disjunction in player roles. This is an article about these connections, and how they change. To be more exact, I will tell you about how American roleplaying affects a country beyond the sea, and about the choices we face as consequence.

You see, with Internet and globalising markets, European roleplaying cultures are confronted by the need to adapt to how roleplaying is understood in America. These are again choices, like I told you in the start: the roleplaying cultures in whole countries will adapt through individual choices, until the global roleplaying culture is found in compromise.

Geek, your name is America

There is one overarching problem with the globalisation of roleplaying, and that is the way American roleplaying is embedded in the geek culture. This is specific to how roleplaying has historically been conceived: it sprung forth from the wargaming culture, slowly developing under huge assumptions.

The geek heritage affects everything in American roleplaying: regular campaigns, mastering complex rules, willingness to dwelve in spurious detail, fetishes over genre cliches, high kewl factor, cambellian notions of content, abnormal social expectations, esteem through proficiency, suspicion of art culture and tribal affectations, to name some aspects. These are all features of American roleplaying, but what's more important, they are features that do not manifest in independent roleplaying cultures.

There's no doubt that there are positive strengths in this heredity, but likewise it's clear that there's much that could be elsewise; myths of unhygienic and asocial roleplayers are based partly in fact after all. While the American roots have given our art strong mechanical background, the taboos around artistic motivations also tend to drag it down.

The geek heritage cannot be ignored; being that roleplaying originated in America and there has been a constant stream of games originating there, it's no wonder that a great majority of the world already shares the geek culture features of American roleplaying to some degree. Global communication and market convergence will make certain of the confrontration.

However, it would be unconscionable for us to simply accept this. Culture is a choice, remember? There is worth in the plurality of notions that the first decades of roleplaying created. Without conscious decisions from the participants of the roleplaying culture there's little doubt that the active currents of the majority culture will dominate the future of the hobby. "Active currents of the majority culture"? That's d20, man, and all the other deliberately commercial forces on the roleplaying field.

You see, the reason for the manner of expansion we've seen in the American enroachment in the late years is simply that not all cultures act the same. The greatest impact is always with the most ruthless culture, and there's not many that surpass the "mainstream" of American roleplaying; while the American roleplaying culture is much more, the greatest influence in foreign countries has naturally always been with the subcultures that are actively expansionist: thus the big corporations are the facade that America shows the rest of the world. Names are easy to name, they are in my local gaming store. The kings of the hill seem to currently be WotC, WW and SJG if my retailer is to be believed.

And it's not really that this cultural expansion would only affect Europe and the rest of the world. Rather clearly the same forces are at work in USA, where the roleplaying field has for a long time been defined first by the companies, and only second by any other interest. The players are taught aggressively to champion the commercially developed geek model of roleplaying, wherein sadly many of the best aspects of American roleplaying are deaccentuated: geek virtues of innovation and intelligence, for example, are de-emphasized in favor of consumerism and strong audience stance. This is real, and it happens now. Culture is a choice, but what you choose is affected by your culture.

So, the point of the argument is pretty simple: when we learn and teach the essence of roleplaying, it's our own choice what that roleplaying will look like. It doesn't matter whether you're American trying to find players for Dread or an European trying to find a non-d20 game in the shop. What you confront is the American "commercial geek", and he wants you to play like he does. There's money in it for him.

In truth this discussion is already an old one, and it applies to all things, not just roleplaying. There are always expansionist cultures in all areas of life - and that is good, for they bring change and dynamism to the world. However, when the expansion is accepted without thought it becomes assimilation, and people no longer decide their own way. There's no reason why the changes in roleplaying culture cannot be likened to currents of language, say, or evolution of folklore - it's all about the cultures we choose to espouse and adapt for our use.

Scene II, enter Finland

That was all pretty abstract, and not especially convincing in itself. Let's dive amongst some particulars. Particularly, let us take a look at how roleplaying fares in Finland (it's a country in northern Europe, doofus). Finns are particularly noteworthy for being a cornerstone in the Nordic movement of roleplaying, one of the more public alternative roleplaying subcultures. They'll be a good example of how an independent roleplaying culture develops and disappears. Let's start with some history:

footnote wrote:
Nordic style?

Nordic style of roleplaying is a vaguely defined group of larpers from the Nordic countries that exhange ideas and participate in each other's games. Their games feature deep immersion and heavy artistic notions in an effort to create strong experiences for the participants.

Hi Eero,

This new draft has some great material, but I miss the spit and vinegar of the original draft. The section on american geekdom sets forth the problem clearly, but the presentation of the war in the first version grabbed my attention more. You seem less certain of yourself in the second draft, your tone is much more subdued. Perhaps somewhere in the middle is where you really want to land. I'd definitely recommend stripping out negative language like your first line in the "Scene II, Enter Finland" paragraph where you write:

That was all pretty abstract, and not especially convincing in itself.

Emily Care wrote:
I'd definitely recommend stripping out negative language like your first line in the "Scene II, Enter Finland" paragraph where you write:

That was all pretty abstract, and not especially convincing in itself.

Unless you meant that as an editorial aside. It shows that you're feeling unconfident.

Also, I'd use your original description of the translation process, the second makes it sound less fascinating than it really is. However the addition of the paragraph about how it was received at Ropecon is right on. Altogether, your translation project is a great example of the issue you're discussing, making it central strengthens rather than weakens your point.

Halfmeme Press wrote:
Arkkikivi Publishing (kustannusyhtiö Arkkikivi), the joint publishing venture of Eero, Jari, and Markku Tuovinen will release their licensed Finnish translation of My Life with Master, Kätyrin osa, this July at the Ropecon roleplaying convention in Helsinki. And Half Meme Press is pretty damn excited. The game has been faithfully translated, in its entirety, and preserved in its arrangement. The cover and interior artwork is all new. Text relating the game to Finnish culture, literature, and film, and additional example text authored by Eero is provided as footnotes and sidebars—in whole, setting a new standard for respectful game translation.

(Forgive my license here:) Seriously, I'd recommend using your original battle intro, followed by a paragraph talking about your front-line status in translating MLWM. Then could come "Geek, your name is America" followed by "Scene II, enter Finland"--but without the disparaging language. Your transition should highlight the contrast between the Finnish rpg scene and the US. I mean, your perspective shoots dead in the water the perceived reality of the folks here who game. RPG's in a library?!? That's crazy talk--well, it sounds crazy to somebody who's been raised in that geek-fetish culture. The case of Finland is a refreshing ray of hope to those of us who took the red pill.

Eero Tuovinen wrote: Then again, currently I'll trust anybody's opinion better than mine. I'm not too convinced that this stuff even belongs together all in all; the translation, for example, feels like an afterthought, while the theory feels not really connected to roleplaying at all.

Jonathan: be ready to pull the plug, that's your responsibility. Might be that I won't get anything representable together, if my drafts worsen at this rate ;(

About the translation, you wrote: But apart from that I don't what I should write about, and even that is doubtful. Ideas are appreciated.

Nice to know that you find a thread going through this mass of stuff. Your suggestions seem considered, that might well be the best approach. I'd say that if the article would manage to import the idea that roleplaying culture in toto can be evaluated on moral and aesthetic principles, then it's as good as I can make it. I don't know what to do to get there, though.

On the plug-pulling business: Emily's right. No worries in that regard. If it comes down to the line, I could just take all the material that you've gushed forth and just edit it into something workable, but I'd rather not do that. You're SO VERY CLOSE here and the material is unquestionably important. Maybe take a bit of time off, help peer edit some of the other pieces that will be coming in shortly (I'm writing the intro on the train to Beijing over the weekend and starting on my half of the wuxia piece), and then come back to it feeling fresh, instead of buried in it like you are now.

OK, I again took a hand to this article. Third draft. The interesting (and a little shameful, perhaps) thing here is that I really couldn't find that much to complain about in the second draft. After letting it lie for a while the second one's looking pretty good, actually. The language is easy on the eye, the argumentation is nice, all pertinent points are touched, and so on. I just switched the confused summary paragraph there, and that's pretty much it.

What do you think? The main thing I'm interested in right now is if the argument is clear enough, and which points would need clarification (and what kind of clarification: more rigorous arguments, less repeating or illustrative examples?). So basicly, if you're not convinced, point me to the place where I drop you. The deal here currently is that the cultural question takes center stage. If you want to see more about the translation process, you gotta tell me what you'd like to know about it; I have the book here right beside me, and I can't for the death of me say anything more interesting than "It had to be done, and we did it.", which I already say in the article. Unless Jonathan wants to print some of the new art we commissioned for the Finnish edition. And even if you can think of something to add, changes are that I'll find a way to do the adding on this structure without a rewrite. I like it.

Also, I included some random excerpts from different discussions MLwM has inspired in Finland. Most are translated by me, some were already in English. As I understand it, Jonathan would use these to bolster the article. Combined with margin commentary and such, we're looking at a pleasingly multisided thing here.

Anyway, feel free to tell me if my current contentment is just an illusion. You all have probably just as fresh eyes as I do at this point in the game.

Against the Geek, choice

English is the lingua of choice for the western world, now. We are all Us, with ties of common language between. Roleplaying is an American art, with both the history and present of the form firmly embedded in the English language. While this is the case, what are the consequences? When language carries culture, what does it mean to accept the American parley?

Have you ever considered culture as a choice? It is that, you know. Everybody's headspace is formed out of uncountable cultures and subcultures that connect in unique ways, while those cultures themselves are only compounds of the very same headspaces - we are our culture, in our opinions and actions, every day. In roleplaying, too, there are multiple cultures, all intermingling in our heads. There's MET players and dungeon hackers, otherkin and wargamers. Each has various connections to youth culture, commercial ventures, other games, our games, their games, no-games. All these subcultures belong under the umbrella term of 'roleplaying'.

Also, roleplaying differs between countries. Although the form was invented in USA, it has spread over the western world. The early '80s was a time of internationalisation for roleplaying, when it spread through the industrialised world. Since then the local roleplaying cultures have evolved their own special features. Roleplaying will likely be the last art form to develop thus, as the age of the Internet will decimate the national borders.

Everything you know about what roleplaying is depends on how the basic idea connects to cultural points. Popularity of fantasy, say, or the penchant to active-passive disjunction in player roles. This is an article about these connections, and how they change. To be more exact, I will tell you about how American roleplaying affects a country beyond the sea, and about the choices we face as consequence. You see, with Internet and globalising markets, European roleplaying cultures are confronted by the need to adapt to how roleplaying is understood in America. These are again choices, like I told you in the start: the roleplaying cultures in whole countries will adapt through individual choices, until the global roleplaying culture is found in compromise.

Geek, your name is America

There is one overarching problem with the globalisation of roleplaying, and that is the way American roleplaying is embedded in the geek culture. This is specific to how roleplaying has historically been conceived: it sprung forth from the wargaming culture, slowly developing under huge assumptions.

The geek heritage affects everything in American roleplaying: regular campaigns, mastering complex rules, willingness to dwelve in spurious detail, fetishes over genre cliches, high kewl factor, cambellian notions of content, abnormal social expectations, esteem through proficiency, suspicion of art culture and tribal affectations, to name some aspects. These are all features of American roleplaying, but what's more important, they are features that do not manifest in independent roleplaying cultures.

There's no doubt that there are positive strengths in this heredity, but likewise it's clear that there's much that could be elsewise; after all, the nerd is hardly seen a paramount of perfection in the larger society. While the American roots have given our art strong mechanical background, the taboos around artistic motivations also tend to drag it down.

footnote wrote:
Features of commercial gaming
- Rules paramount over social interaction
- Enabling play by buying stuff
- Less actual play, more hypothethical play

footnote wrote:
Nordic style?

Nordic style of roleplaying is a vaguely defined group of larpers from the Nordic countries that exhange ideas and participate in each other's games. Their games feature deep immersion and heavy artistic notions in an effort to create strong experiences for the participants.

footnote wrote:
My Life with Master?

My Life with Master (MLwM) is the revolutionary indie roleplaying game of Paul Czege. It's won the accolades of numerous American industry professionals as well as the Diana Jones award. The game has proved an inspiration and a constant reference for roleplaying theory since it's publication in 2003. Heck, it's so good we decided to translate it instead of the d20 SRD, which is free to licence and identical with the world's most popular roleplaying game.

MLwM is about a predefined scenario with a predefined plot into which the players cast their own meanings. The GM will play a gothic Master for the players' minions, which are bound by chains of self-loathing and weariness to their dark lord. The Master will die by the hand of a minion at the end of the game, but the whys and wherefores of this climactic action will only be revealed through play.

The game includes numerous unparalleled ideas, placing it solidly into the crux of experimental roleplaying design. Among these are boardgame-like simplicity of rules and turn structure, communally developed milieu, conflict resolution based on character psychology and dramatic arc controlled by the rules.

footnote wrote:
Arkenstone crew

Arkenstone is a Finnish indie company established by brothers Tuovinen to support innovative roleplaying in Finland. Their first publication is Kätyrin osa, the translation of the hit game My Life with Master by Paul Czege. They have also distinguished themselves by importing and retailing numerous hard-to-get indie roleplaying products, including compilations of Magus, the bygone premiere roleplaying magazine of Finland.

Author is the content manager of Arkkikivi and the editor of the Kätyrin osa project. He's also a roleplaying theorist and designer in his own right in Finland, where multitudes are awed by his name. Not that you'd care. Obviously, he's sickeningly idealistic and theoretical, an unbeatable combo in Magic: the Gathering when he still played it in -97.

Speaking of indie games, Arkkivi focuses on translating pretty strange stuff that certainly has a lot of innovation and artistic value, but in my opinion do not really appeal to the masses. Kätyrin osa, whatever that is in English, is a perfect example. Some people apparently get a better kick out of it than they would from cocaine, but that is a very narrow customer segment. If indies are to become a major factor, they will have to take on wide-spectrum games and genres, feeding the masses with what the masses want, while retaining enough innovation and edge to separate themselves from the old games and take the hobby forward, even if in small steps.
- Ville Vuorela, the premiere Finnish game designer, in his blog

MLwM was a chillingly wonderful play experience. As a long-term cyberpunk my characters have never been any good-deed heroes, but rather ruthlessly selfish bastards. The case of Catalina was different: I got to acquaint myself with how unscrupulous deeds one can do - not for her own benefit, but for the conditions, because of desperation and darkness. Cold shivers ran through my back multiple times during the game, when I really felt my character's desperation: I don't WANT to kill the poor guy, but still I have no choice. No doubt about it, I want to play this game again!
- Noora Huhtanen, the artist of Kätyrin osa

Personally I'm not a big friend of narrativistic roleplaying, but I still intend to GM My Life with Master, because it's chock full of interesting techniques and design claims I want to see in action. The goal of the game seems not to lie in actual character immersion, but rather in creating interesting scenes. But because those scenes become interesting through the emotional life of the characters, I could imagine that the game could strongly support immersion as well.
- Finnish RPG theorist Mike Pohjola

25 years Father Abatoirus built the cloister. And now I have to ask: how many of you would be ready to sacrifice a quarter century of your life to build a house of God for the soulless? Do you understand the kind of sacrifice it requires? Do you understand? Nobody can understand, nobody. But Father succeeded, because God gave him strength and the Crown gave thirty soldiers. However, nobody should say that the villagers were forced to work on the building. They came willingly, convinced by Father's holyness, wanting to build a stone castle for God, to have a sepherding house for their own kind. That is the force within man in whom has settled the spirit sent by God.
- "The Cloister of Holy Obedience", a Finnish forum game of MLwM

Harvestman Banepot, Eater of men
Harvestman is a Brain and a Feeder. This hag of the Northlands is the woman of the house in her halls of Bjarmia, and is reputed as a maneater. The reputation is true, for Harvestman keeps the judicial power in her village and does the work enthusiastically. The life in the Northlands is scanty and meat is rare, but Harvestman puts all criminals and strangers into the pot or roasts them in the great spits of the hall. This feed Harvestman then offers to her household, and greetguests as well, hoping to make an impression with her abundant meatpots.
- Designer Wille Ruotsalainen riffing on his Kalevala-based setting

Everything's lost for Saruman, his color and place in the councils. Only revenge remains. Walls, stony precipices approach from the future, clenching a great mind who at one time saw everything from southern Narmonur coasts to northern glaciers... His mind, it's contracting, and his goals, once great, are lessening greatly. He who once adviced kings is no more even a man's measure... not man's perhaps, but how about a halfling's?
- Prologue for one wicked MLwM from Helsinki

Consider: nothing could deter one from opting for a Master of Goodness, a kind of AntiMaster... Companions, keen knights instead of Minions... Villagers in all their ignorant (Reason)Humanity striving against the moral superiority of the Master... Loyalty instead of Weariness, Conscience instead of Self-loathing... And when the time comes, what is the force to cast down the Master, what would fell king Arthur or Jesus Christ? Instead of Love, Envy growing in His Companions and bursting against (Fear)Love... Question: is the moral of this story even different?
- "Master in Us All", from Kätyrin osa

The bond between Master and minion, it's important to us because it's the same thing we struggle with in our own life. Offering love holds always the risk of pain. We can't know whether the target of our love is a Connection or a Master before it's too late, and we're ourselves held in thrall... My Life with Master offers a fundamentally optimist answer, claiming that true love exists, that love can set us free and allow us to shed our past mistakes. It's talking about redemption.
- "Master in Us All", from Kätyrin osa

The GM should properly make the decision about awarding bonus dice only when the conflict has reached the point of die-rolling. After the decision there is no more opportunity to gain the bonus dice. By playing in this manner the GM ensures that the players do not develop a habit of "fishing" for bonus dice, playing out rigid formulas and building pressure for the GM to respond positively through dice awards. On the other hand, while still learning the game, it's easier for everyone if the dice are given out right when the awarded activity happens.
- Additional advice for play from Kätyrin osa

The task of justifying his loyalty towards the Master falls squarely on the player of the minion himself... the minion should always be designed with ready explanation for why he is in this unnatural situation, the player should not expect the GM to proffer excuses for him to stay in the game... This principle holds for all matters of rulescraft, really: the rules will tell the players what happens, but it's up to them to decide the how and the why of it. Should your minion's Self-loathing go up, it's up to you to decide the psychological reasons and depictions of it. The GM is not there to hold your hand and ensure that the story withstands your every decision, you all share responsibility for the game in equal measure.
- Additional advice for play from Kätyrin osa