The State of Larp in Finland 2003

Markus Montola

In Norway, the cutting edge includes In English.Panopticorp, In English.Europa and In Norwegian.Amerika. In Sweden, the cutting edge includes Hamlet, Carolus Rex, Knappnålshufvudet, In Swedish.Mellan Himmel och Hav. Is the cutting edge of Finland really In Finnish.The Executive Game? Our best shot is ten people playing cards in a room? Or is it the "satiristic" In English. I have presented my critique on Roulin' Moose elsewhere.Roulin' Moose?

In Finland, we have a well developed culture of rpg-cynicism, the southern Finland scene has 50 elitistic larp-critics for every true organizer. While our elite clique used Ropecons 1999-2001 to create a strong, permanent rift between the isolated bubble and the larger larp audience with pride and disdain, Ericsson preached our duty to take more and more people into the scene of world-changing quality role-playing. He obviously didn't know how faux pas it is to call the listeners intelligent or beautiful in the historical context of Ropecon audience mocking.

Cynicism ties in with an other phenomenon plaguing our scene: the desperate need to be taken seriously. Martin's words from the first of his two excellent presentations: "I want to feel my heart beating, I want to feel the rush and the brushes hitting my face when I'm charging the orcs shouting the name of Elendil on the top of my lungs". He was speaking honestly, enthusiastically, energetically -- the man's obviously willing to put his head on the stake on fulfilling the dreams he believes are cool.

At the same time, the Finnish larpers interpreted being serious to mean the so-called mature themes of Vampire or nerdy political scheming games. While the Danes were living the larp honestly to the fullest, Finns flocked into two dozen Vampire chronicles, forgetting the sense of wonder maybe permanently. Sometimes we should larp just for the rush itself. Shouting instead of using the library voice, sweating instead of discussing the wine.

In his controversial multimedia presentation Below, one of Ericsson's big lessons was that we must not be ashamed about day-dreaming about our games. To the greater extent, we must not be afraid to face the fact that living our larger-than-life dreams is one of the fundamental reasons to play.

The Finnish larpers often credit the success of the megalomanic Swedish larp scene to the fact that the Swedish state gives strong support to the hobby. We are rapidly running out of this excuse, as lately there have been hints that the Finnish scene might get soon more resources as well.

In this point we face two overwhelming problems: as the rats fled the quarrelsome and elitistic banner of SuoLi, there is no really legitimate organization to represent the larpdom left. In the beginning there was no democracy in SuoLi, because there were no stakes large enough to motivate going to voting meetings more than an hour's ride away. Then there was no democracy in SuoLi, because the organization was dominated by numerous people having huge internal differences and conflicts. Now there's no democracy in SuoLi, because there are too few interested members left.

The other problem the Finns now face is that even if we got the governmental support, who would put their asses on the line organizing the games? In Knudepunkt 2003 HP Hartsteen had an excellent macchiavellian presentation on the crude facts of larp organizing. As the prestige and respect are among the most important motivators in working for a larp, we are in trouble. The self-appointed inbred Finnish "elite" already has the prestige based in the past deeds, so they don't need to organize games. And as the elitists are isolated and cut out from the still larp-organizing scene, they cannot recruit crews to create larps with them (because seldom anyone works in a project lead by someone of equal or lesser prestige). And as the grey masses are separated from the clique, the elite can't inspire anyone to make better games. This pitfall is probably threatening the Helsinki Solmukohta 2004 as well.

In short, we are at least three, more likely five years behind Sweden and Norway in larp organizing. Especially in the field of quality larping, but in mass-larping as well. What is worst, currently we are not doing anything to catch up.

As an answer to these problems, we must wake up and get our hands dirty. My answer would be the creation of the long-planned society for role-playing art. Some years ago the problem was that we didn't know what the society would actually do, but in this point, the social need has become a crystal clear. We need to muster ourselves to produce larps again. To create a larp-organizing machine with same kind of professionality and experience as, for instance, Ropecon has. The easy starting point would be to import some tried-and-true games of quality (such as Panopticorp, which the Norwegians are willing to share). In my vision, after some well-done replays the larp auteurs would be standing in the line creating better and better larp concepts in order to get them produced by the society.

The larp elite clique has to start earning it's status again (if it ever did). If we can't regain the enthusiasm and interest of the experienced people, we'll lose half a dozen years more. The other choice is to get to learn Swedish quickly.

Call it a challenge. I'm in if you are.

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There has been discussion about this essay during the last days. It should be admitted, that the cutting edge of Finland includes Bratislavan Syntiset Yöt, Ground Zero and .laitos. The common thing about these games is that they are all several years old now.

The other thing often claimed is that the quality of mass larping is about the same or lower in the other countries than Finland. It's only the propping, size and volume that are different; there are more longer and larger games which are propped better.

Hopefully they are raising new generations to take the larp to Martin's wildest visions.

• Juhana talks about Martin in No Good.