I've been reading about some slight changes between the Finnish translation of TSoY and the English one - I'm curious, Eero - what differences were made during the translation? Are we missing out on anything really cool?

First things first: the Finnish edition is available at http://www.arkkikivi.net/menneisyydenvarjot/xhtml/ with the same licence as the English original.

Yeah, you're missing out (subjective opinion land, ahoy)! There's vampires, telepathic ratlings, rules for mapping Qekian geography and utilizing it for powerful ranger-type stuff, rules for so called "side cultures" (cultures that currently originate no PCs), four additional side cultures (just small writeups and a couple of abilities and secrets), a bunch of new generic secrets, bunch of new abilities and rules for creating and leveraging Ammenite riches, just off the top of my head. I also rearranged the rules content to what is IMO easier to learn and utilize. The actual game is identical, however, there's no significant rules differences, just new stuff and new ways to express the old. (Well, I guess I'm lying. I also clarified and expanded the multi-player BDTP, so there's a little rules difference there.) Anyway, bottom line: I've yet to play the Finnish version so that something new wasn't used, so I guess the new stuff is pretty thick.

Now, these are all covered by the same licence original TSOY is, so it's just a matter of having the time to translate the stuff. I'm still discussing it with Clinton, but we'll probably do the translation when we have the time ourselves (summer months?). Whether it'll be a complete translation of the Finnish text (yeah, it's different enough that we're considering it) or just me combing through it for the important differing bits, remains to be seen. But the basic principle is definitely that Clinton deserves to have anything I've written for the Finnish version on hand to utilize in English, considering how gracious he's been about the translation in the first place.

Meanwhile, I'll try to make a point and share my experiences if somebody posts something like "hey, I think the ratlings are a bit dull, any ideas for tuning them?" Or if there's something specific you folks want to discuss, I can lift that part from the Finnish edition. As long as it doesn't equal me spending three days translating, of course.

Of course, the above is all contingent on Clinton's pleasure. I'm just inferring from our earlier discussions.

A couple of my favourite bits:

New abilities: some cultures a a bit low on cultural abilities in the English version, so I pretty much wrote to measure and made sure everybody has around ten or so. If I had to pick my favourite new ability, it'd be this:

Female Rites (Reason)
In Khale some things are vehemently tied to gender. Violence is the domain of men, while creating life is for women only. Early on all women learn from the old wives of the tribe many secrets forbidden for men. The rites can be used in the religious events of Khale, but also in childbirth, contraception, abortions and curing women's and children's diseases.

New secrets: I adore the stuff I made for Qek, probably because originally they're a little thin, clearly intented to be played as travellers outside their homeland. They only had secrets for walozi, and a couple of abilities! Regardless of that bias, a good secret is about mechanics, not setting only. So here's the single best Secret from the Finnish edition, for reasons I'm happy to explain if somebody doesn't get it.

The Secret of the Sudden Strike
The qek hunter strikes his opponent without warning. The opponent can only use an inherent (passive? What's the term?) ability ability against this ability check. The secret works in both normal conflicts and BDTP, but only when the opponent is surprised. Cost: 1 Instinct.

Hi, Eero,

Would you know whether Clinton's considering a revised print edition with your stuff included? I was thinking of buying it, but I'm now tempted to hold off instead, especially after I read that storming chargen idea of yours that Clinton posted elsewhere. You know, the one where the PC's major "I shall now assume a life of adventure" decision shapes its Adept ability and the cultural stuff shapes its Competent ones.

If that's the least good of your contributions then I'd really love to see the translation!

Glad you liked the chargen idea. I'd done some chargens with the English edition and the thorough concept-walkthrough checklist advocated there felt a little exhausting, so I restructured that a bit. I've had good experiences with the current method, myself - I usually couch it as a "trailer chargen", where we brainstorm a few visuals for the character, and go directly into picking abilities, instead of worrying about race or culture that much.

As for revising the English print edition, well, that's up to Clinton. Personally, I think that with a game like TSOY it's a tad meaningless to get stuck on whatever happens to be in the print edition - there's tons of stuff, better stuff than mine, written by dozens of players all over the web. Being that Clinton's not compiling an exhaustive edition, nor should he, the decision to include my stuff in any future print edition is not that important. It's not like he should change the book every time somebody thinks up a cool new secret.

On the other hand, we'll surely make the stuff available at some point in English. That being the case, there's little reason to wait on buying the print edition. Just get the current one and print out any good additions you find in the 'net.

It's most likely I'll do a supplement with a lot of what Eero's done at some point in the future. A further reprinting will happen some day to fix a few textual problems, and I might incorporate minor changes then, too, like Eero's chargen idea.

Eero, have you thought about putting your translation on the wiki?

Yeah, yeah. To repeat: we'll translate the stuff when time permits, and discuss it's usage with Clinton. Depends on whether we translate the whole text or just choice excerpts, and whether Clinton wants something more elaborate than just putting it up somewhere. Might be at the wiki, or a pdf on our server, or plain text at Clinton's. No idea yet, except that we'll translate it during the summer, probably, and it's Clinton's show as to how it'll be published (not because of any rights-related stuff, but simply out of respect).

Meanwhile, if you know Finnish and want to translate, be my guest. The licence allows it.

Clinton wrote:
It's most likely I'll do a supplement with a lot of what Eero's done at some point in the future.

Clinton wrote:
A further reprinting will happen some day to fix a few textual problems, and I might incorporate minor changes then, too, like Eero's chargen idea.

Eero wrote:
Glad you liked the chargen idea. ... there's little reason to wait on buying the print edition. Just get the current one and print out any good additions you find in the 'net.

Would it be possible to see some of the other stuff you're thinking about for the Qek? I've been thinking about them a lot recently, as well, for my own nefarious TSOY schemes, and wondering about filling out the culture somewhat. I've been tinkering with at least one "griot" Secret, for wandering storytellers to make themselves useful in places (mostly using a Story-tell ability check to gain information about ancient places, legends, and the like, with a greater number of successes providing more information on the subject in question), but I'd love to see what someone else has done.

Well, it's not like I'm doing anything useful right now. Here's a rought, shortened translation of the Qek "knots" section. It's not pretty English, but should be intelligible for those who know the rules system. I made some new abilities, too, and the aforementioned Secret of the Sudden Strike, which shouldn't be underestimated, either. But this is probably the most substantial bit.

Nobody's been to every valley

The Qek jungles are difficult and dangerous to traverse. Nobody, not even the Qek, knows it's every corner. Qek may, however, improve his chances in the wilderness by listening to his parents and looking carefully at the terrain.

For game purposes there is no map of Qek. Instead the characters may have terrain knots, representing places the character knows. These are frequently oral tradition, crafted in poetic form by local families. A character who creates a new knot is honored with the title of tsafari, a knotmaker. A character who knows many knots may be called a knotmaster. Each knot belongs to a given place or landmark, like the Knot of the Deathriver or Knot of the Birdrock. A Qek character has to be able to name a place to knot it.

Many tsafari spend their lives travelling the jungles and coasts, searching old ruins and crafting poetry of the things they've learned. A tsafari can usually find hospitality with families not his own, assuming he is willing to tell tales and teach knots.

Knots are created and undone with the Secret of the Tsafari. Knots can be learned from other characters, just like any secret. Knots are otherwise like secrets, but a character may learn several of them in a row, like zu syllables. When the roho of a place has been knotted with the secret, no other character may knot it again; he has to learn the knot from somebody who already knows it. When the sasha of the original knotmaking tsafari fades, the knot is undone and all characters who know it lose it (and gain an advance).

Using knots

A character who knows a knot finds his way to it with a successful jungle travel or [the generic wilderness ability, the name of which I forget] check. There is no other way to find your way in the jungle reliably. The check may garner penalty dice if the character is farther than usual from the knot.

The player may use character pools in ability checks without cap (like that secret, the name of which I forget) whenever the character uses the terrain of the knot to his benefit, or works against the terrain. For knotting purposes anything that has not left the location of the knot since it's creation is "terrain" (including buildings or even people in the case of young knots). Example uses are stalking, hunting, hiding, gathering, looking for herbs, building in the location, knowing the history of the location.

If a character tries to use the knot against another character familiar with it, the opponent may prevent the usage for one scene with a resisted jungle travel check. The character with a more direct oral lineage to the tsafari who made the knot (that is, the character who more directly learned the knot from the original source) gets a bonus die for the conflict.

A Path is a way between two knots. An Area is a space limited by Paths. These terms are used by knot-related secrets.

Knots in the civilization

There's nothing in principle stopping a character from creating knots outside the jungle (even if nobody has before the game starts). A single city could be a knot, or in the case of the northwestern plains, a knot could cover a full day's travel. The character needs the equivalent of the jungle travel ability for the terrain in question, however, like plains travel or Maldor travel. Any abilities of this manner are always cultural for both Qek and the local culture. All secrets concerning knots always use the terrain-appropriate abilities instead of jungle travel in these situations.

So that's the gist of it. I should probably give some of the secrets and abilities concerning the knots, to make the above intelligible:

Jungle travel
The Qek cultural ability concerning travel in the Qek jungles, and knowledge of the terrain and geography. Usable in travelling long distances, finding a certain kind of place (a freshwater spring, say) or simply in supporting the ranger ability the name of which I can't remember now for some reason.

The Secret of the Hermit
The character can refresh his Vigor and Reason pools by spending a day alone from sunrise to sunset within a knot he knows. Cost: 2 Instinct

The Secret of the Pathmaster
The character may create a Path between two knots he knows by travelling the route and succeeding in a jungle travel check. The check may suffer penalty dice from distance or difficult terrain. If the route contains several geographical areas, all appropriate travel abilities are checked from best to worst, with bonus dice to latter rolls. Any character may use a path so created to travel the route with a successful jungle travel or [that rangering ability] check. The creator of the path doesn't even need the ability check. The Path becomes undone whenever either knot fades. Requirement: the character knows at least two knots.

The Secret of the Stomping Ground
Whenever the character is in an Area between knots he knows, he can make a jungle travel check to find anything appropriate to the area - people, waterways, caves, animals - whatever could be found in the area in principle. He can look for specific something, or declare a general type of thing like "Maldorite ruins" or the like. The SG creates the details. Unlikeliness may cause penalty dice. If the area limited by the knots contains several geographical areas, all appropriate travel abilities are checked from best to worst, with bonus dice to later rolls. Requirement: The character knows at least three knots. Cost: 2 from appropriate pool: Vigor for geographical features, Instinct for animals and plants, Reason for people-things.

The Secret of the Tsafari
The character can create and undo Knots. In addition, the character can discern whether a given location is knotted, and whether it may be knotted (reasons for why not range from the place not having a roho to it simply being a part of a larger place), with a successful praying check. A Knot can be created by going to the location in question and staying there since the next solar eclipse (the end of the month, in other words) preparing and calling the roho. Before the month is over the character will face a SG-specified mortal danger. During the eclipse the player makes a jungle travel check (penalty dice if the character's been in the place only a little time) to create the knot. If succesful, the knot is created and the player pays an advance for it. A Knot can be undone with an identical ritual, except using praying as the ability. The creator of the knot knows immediately when the undoing ritual starts.

--

That's the most important stuff relating to knots. There's a key for knot collectors, too (and a suggestion about a key for somebody who destroys knots) and some example knots, but that's all basic. The text above might be a little dense, but the Finnish version is perfectly legible. I'm pretty proud of this stuff, because as I see it, it not only makes a Qek campaign viable, but also implies a fresh and different method of campaign creation; the knots, paths and areas give all the necessary tools for making geography a defining campaign feature without getting stuck in the details. The area where play happens can be mapped as a planar graph, more or less, and the map itself will suggest all kinds of story activity. There's all kinds of implications I've not written out here, like the possibility of interpreting all kinds of useful tools as part of the terrain of your knot. Likewise cool is the suggestion of taking a Qek tsafari south and binding some awfully powerful knots out there, where there are cities...

Wow, Eero. The Qek knotworking stuff is great; I'm already swiping for a TSOY campaign I'm planning on running in the near future.

I'm super revved about seeing the Finnish edition translated now, and I'm sure I'm not the only one. Is there any sense of when it'd be available, even in draft form? I know the question's been bandied about on this thread and others before, but I figure it's good to keep pestering you about it, to keep the interest level high.

No, pestering doesn't really enter to it. I'm kinda hoping that Markku, my brother the professional translator, will do the translation so I don't have to. But all this rpg translation is strictly a hobby project for a high-scale technical translator like him, so right now he's translating The Mountain Witch to Finnish. When he gets that done, perhaps he'll have time for TSOY later in summer.

Anyway, no need to get your expectations up about the Finnish version. It's still the same game, and it's not like I've done anything special for the book; TSOY is predicated on all groups, all campaigns displaying the kind of creativity I put into the book at the minimum level. The game's all about making your own secrets, abilities and keys, building emergent structure out of simple building blocks. I've played several campaigns of the game during the last nine months, and every game's been chock-full of interesting crunchy material. That's something I specifically find interesting about TSOY, how it makes tinkering with the crunch a creative and dramatically relevant part of the game!

But anyway, I appreciate the sentiment, and I'm glad you like knotworking. I'll be very interested in seeing if anybody opts to use it in their games outside Finland. Those rules should prove really interesting in extented play, not the least because they give strong incentive for breaking the traditional party-structured play in favor of more free-flowing and human narratives. Of course, you can do some cool heroics with knots, too; one of the more impressive ones was a character who travelled, on foot, from Ammeni to Qek and back in a week and a half via clever use of knots and paths. Well, anybody can do that, but this guy kept up a blacksploitation cop-show storyline the whole trip, and subverted a Khalean warband on the return trip, so it was pretty cool.

I guess it was particularly exciting for me to read because I'm working on setting design at the moment, for what has become some sort of strange gestalt between the core setting described in TSOY and a homebrew world. Much as the game always suggested, I'm fleshing out more of the world for my own nefarious purposes, adding a few additional nations in there, whipping up cultural flavor, et cetera et cetera. I don't want to give the whole thing away here (potentially for fear of stirring up the old "that is or isn't what this game is about" chestnut, which makes me yawn, truth be told...), but it's invigorating to see what other people have done to expand TSOY's cultures, as I try and drop a few new ones in there and expand them, as well as padding on a little extra to the existing nations (i.e. Maldor, Qek, Zaru, etc.).

My current setting has at least two "nations" which have broken away from Maldor during the Year of Shadow and its surrounding revolutions/conflicts/cataclysms which maintain something of the city-state feel that I get off of Maldorite culture. While I like the "wild and sweaty" feel of many of the other nations of TSOY, I felt that the ideas I'm kicking around could benefit from some other nation-states with a more urbanized feel, even if that's an urbanity in the sense of Maldor's-- namely a society whose golden age is over, and is learning to be something new in the wake of an age which has shattered what their lifestyle used to be about.

My hope is to run a game which focuses more on travel than perhaps any other RPG I've ever tried, so that you can get that Indianna Jones vibe going... you know, horseback north from Maldor across the Oranian horse-plains, to a camel caravan through the desert wastes of Hamouad, followed by forest-trekking and great-raptor skyriding across Khale, where you board a cog, sail through Ammeni's ports, fight pirates on the Eastern Sea, and end up arriving at the shattered stone gates of the cliffs of Imrek. That kind of thing. And TSOY not only seems to support that brilliantly and effortlessly, but also potentially allow players to head to different countries in radically different ways and still keep play going in a breezy, exciting way, focusing on what's fun, and not getting bogged down with what's tedious.

In terms of its open scope, it's probably more ambitious than anything I've ever done, and you can see why I'm interested in flavor which promotes new and exciting vistas as you visit different countries and cultures. And the whole knot-working option, well, it dovetails nicely as a good example of a mechanic where cultural flavor promotes, rather than discourages, rambling around the world.

Anyhow, I'm babbling now. Thanks for adding more inspiration to the fire, though!