The Turku School

What is it about scandinavian gamers?

I've been reading through the Manifesto of the Turku school, and the first thing that comes to mind is that we've been doing a lot of this stuff in Sydney since the late 1980s.

Live gaming and immersion are such an intrinsic part of the Australian-style freeform that we just never bothered to formulise the proceedings. As far as we were concerned, it was all a part of the word free-form.

Just like most Australian endeavours, we innovate, but no-one can be bothered ritualising the details or refining the patents. Aussie attitude, probably...sheer laziness, maybe.

I've played games under The LARPers vow of Chastity, and have had really great times doing so. Often adding immensely to the theme of the session for other players. In fact I spent the L5R freeform at Gencon 2008, simply sitting in the corner painting pictures in character, not following agendas because I didn't have any, I simply painted and had other players approach me, following their own goals.

It's interesting that Scandinavians have become known for this style of play. It seems to share something deep with the notions of Jeepform.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

A Guide to Geomorphs (Part 7)

Image
A working computer and scanner...that means it is time to get back to work on the geomorph sequence. A lot of the discussion in this set of tutorials has been focused around square geomorphs. They're the easiest for most people to wrap their heads around.  But my preferred form of geomorph is based around the hexagon, these tend to produce more organic and interesting shapes. This is true for natural environments, but it's no less true for urban environments. The example set of geomorphs above as a simple two-phase system. One edge type is plain, the other edge type has a road piercing the centre. There could be dozens of combinations and permutations for each of the two phases around the hexagonal edges, but a quick look at the variety of buildings and road shapes shows that there could literally be hundreds of possible options when drawing these map fragments. But you certainly don't need to create hundreds of designs for the system to be effective. Usin...
Read more

A Guide to Geomorphs (Part 1)

Image
After numerous requests to get back to map tutorials, it's time to start our new series. This time focusing on the concept of geomorphs, modular map fragments that can be mixed and matched. We'll start with a couple of theoretical tutorials before sinking into a few more practical posts. I'm predicting a dozen or so posts in this sequence, but let's see how long it lasts.
Read more