[Roleplaying] Playground Worlds

[Jaakko Stenros]

PLAYGROUND WORLDS PUBLISHED!

The latest Nordic collection on role-playing games, Playground Worlds:
Creating and Evaluating Experiences of Role-Playing Games was
published last week. Edited by Markus Montola and Jaakko Stenros
(editors of Beyond Role and Play four years ago), the book features 25
papers written by authors from six countries.

KEYWORDS: role play, role-playing game, larp, pervasive game, ARG,
participatory art, educational role-play, Happenings, pretence play,
gaming culture, larp production, rpg criticism, rpg genre, larp
design, Forge theory, jeepform, Nordic larp

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

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

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

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

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

(At the moment the actual page is still hosted in a different location
and only redirected from the address above. Still, please link through
the above address as that will be the permanent address.)

HOW TO OBTAIN A COPY

The Solmukohta 2008 book Playground Worlds: Creating and Evaluating
Experiences of Role-Playing Games will be on sale in a few random
role-playing game shops around the world. Your local shop probably
isn't one of them, so you can order the book by emailing the editors
at <book-at-solmukohta-dot-org>. The price of a first copy is €20
(plus post and packaging), but the further copies are sold much
cheaper: You may want to gather up a few friends or take some to your
local convention to get the discount.

You can pay with PayPal or a domestic money transfer. Please note that
PayPal accepts all major credit cards. You will get the payment
details with email from the editors.

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

MORE INFO

www.ropecon.fi/pw , or the editors at <book-at-solmukohta-dot-org>.