Entries sorted by date:
23-Feb-2007
12-Feb-2007
07-Feb-2007
05-Feb-2007
25-Jan-2007
21-Jan-2007
20-Jan-2007
19-Jan-2007
14-Jan-2007
07-Jan-2007
02-Jan-2007
28-Dec-2006
19-Dec-2006
17-Dec-2006
11-Dec-2006
08-Dec-2006
03-Dec-2006
01-Dec-2006
Howling Imam and the Headless Kuffars present Vera the Infidel's ingenious "Out of Context Imam Song" in glorious mp3-format. Woooooooooo!
Lyrics here!
Now also Abu Izzadeen music video!
23...25-Feb-2007:
Too Tired
I am too tired to write my book so I am writing my blog. This is my first week on my new attempt at Atkins/Low-carb and by now blood sugar levels start dropping quickly. Liver is pumping out stored carbs to keep it up and when it runs out, it begins to break up fat and muscle to create more. Eating lots of protein will help prevent muscle loss, so the target is fat. This ketosis is what Dr. Atkins was raving about. Funny thing is that he invented neither the concept nor the protein-based diet. He just productized and marketed it well. I am not there yet but if I can keep this up for one more day, it'll start. Then, after about a week I can increase my carb intake a little. Last time around I got from 132 kilos to 99. Now I am starting from 125. Let's hope it goes as well.
I just got back from London where I attended a wedding of our two dear friends, Ia and Raj. Since R hails from India, the ceremony was Vedaic Wedding (read: Hindu) at the local (and very posh) Hare Krishna -temple. It was long, colourful and light-hearted, with the priest telling us what he was about to do or say before switching to Sanskrit. It is funny to think the ceremony is actually 5000 years old. Hinduism in general is the world's oldest surviving organised religion. Only animism predates it and that is *not* organised. They also offered us a fantastic all-veggie meal at the temple and an occidental reception at the hotel. Frankly, I am not too impressed with British cake but as a social event both the wedding night party and just the evening before it were superb.
We (me and Leena) also went to see a live gig by Indigo Girls. It is not metal but Leena made listen to it and there are some songs I have really fallen in love with. Their arrogantly loud and folksy singing combined with blatant abuse of acoustic guitars with a perfect (and I meant *perfect*) pitch, is the next best thing to my favourite metal bands. It rocked, if you can say for non-rock music. But enough about non-gamey stuff.
Fantasiapelit put in an order for more Praedor and I basically relayed that to the printing press. For all intentions and purposes, Praedor 1.1 has been a hit product as well, with average sales of 2 copies per week for the past year. With these two boxes pre-sold, I'd put the number of Praedors sold at 700. But what really warms my heart is that people are not just buying it, but playing it and developing their own house rules, campaigns and genre mods. I'd like to see more of them published (and I can help with that as long as you don't expect to be compensated) but it is their deal.
Continued on 25th...
Bought some new videogames too:
FEAR: How the hell did they make such an ugly game with those machine specs? Level design is boring as hell, too. Maybe it'll get better but right now I can't stand it anymore. And this was the IGN Game of the Year in 2005?
STOLEN: Didn't really have time to try it out but from what I did see, it had the same kind of rugged "grunge" appeal to me as Rogue Trooper did. If it is half as good, I am really going to enjoy this game.
GROUND ZERO: Scored 1.8/10 in a Gamespot review. That must be an all-time record. Fortunately it did not cost anything either. The premise is so good (isometric post-holocaust settlement building with RPG elements) that I am still going to give it a go.
All in all, the game purchases this time were a bit of a loss.
By the way, my old flame Neocron has got to Neocron 2.1 -stage and I reactivated my account. Slightly (but only slightly) improved graphics, even less character models to choose from, the absolutely obnoxious window frames they introduced in NC2 are still there and none of my pre-existing characters are really playable because of some bad choices I made when quitting. For some reason the game runs stable as a rock and smooth as silk in windowed mode, while full screen mode at any resolution crashed by machine all the time. Let's see if starting a brand new character in the good old city itself works any better than before.The trouble with starting in Dome of York is that I get lost all the time.
12-Feb-2007:
Absorbing Recoil
I've seen things you people would not believe... Jap ships on fire off the tip of Sumatra. I have heard werewolves howl at the moon near the Wendigo Shrine... All those moments will be lost in time... Like tears in rain. Time to go!
Goodbye Rovio Mobile! I will always cherish the memories! You are doing better now than at any time since the founding. Although our every game won some kind of trophy it turned out we were better prostitutes than ballerinas. If you are large enough, subcontracting can actually make you good money. Although I did not exactly plan it, I am glad that I left Rovio when it was doing well and not back when we really hit the rock bottom. I like to believe that the boys (and two girls) at Rovio feel the same way about it. My former underling, Lauri Konttori, perhaps the best puzzle designer in the world, was promoted to a senior game designer. I was particularly moved by his good-bye email to me, where he thanked me for many things but most of all for my faith in him.
No problem, Lauri. You are fucking great! Never forget that!
Good luck to the rest of the new design team as well. I know you are hot and eager but a little luck can't hurt when dealing with your customers. And the rest of you... when I did my final handshake tour around the office on Friday evening I was holding back tears. You guys made me that portrait and all I could leave you was booze and candy. Shame on me! That was all on Friday, February 9th. Technically I am still on vacation from Rovio but that was my last workday there and today was my first day at Recoil Games. Nothing much to it yet and even if there were, I couldn't tell you. In this industry it is impossible to be social. If I ever get to write down quotes from IGDA Pub Night, I could call it the The Chronicles of Paranoia.
Life goes on, the new book is 30% complete and a new issue of Roolipelaaja came in the mail.You probably remember being a little pissed about the last issue and the direction the magazine was heading? Well, they've made a complete turn-about and I have nothing but good things to say about Roolipelaaja #7. Good stuff on the average and occasional flashes of greatness. Can't really ask for more, can you? While I liked pretty much all the articles (you too, Eero and Mike), there were two absolute gems: First is From Start to Finish on PCs' Terms by Merten and Mikki. Read it, learn it by heart and try it! I've used these methods from time to time and my greatest roleplaying experience as a gamemaster ever, Hansa II, was run just like this. I have the PCs' and I know their overall goals, I have the NPCs' and their factions and I know their goals and I have a loose outline of what will happen without PC interference and off we go! If I don't get to Heaven when I die, it does not really matter because I got to gamemaster Hansa II when I lived. Match that, Satan!
Second gem was Juhana Petterson's (yes, that is Mr. Joutomaa) Antarctica: When Hell Freezes Over. Now this is the shit. It is a combination of hard science, even harder survival, realistic yet alien conditions, sophisticated technology, powerful elemental forces, fun trivia (I did not know about the Nazi flags dropped from airplanes) and practical information on using the location and its unique themes in roleplaying games. I have thought plenty about science fiction set in Antarctica, for example scenarios where depletion of natural resources has made world powers finally give up on Antarctic Treaty and attempt to exploit the resources locked beneath the ice. Easier said than done, mate! It would be Total Recall meets Outland meets Thing, using CP2020 or Syndicate rules. No, to hell with it! It would make a great setting for an original hard-scifi cyberpunk RPG! But can it be done? Would it be interesting?
Damn! Do you feel the hook? Right under the jaw, with the point sinking into my brain? This how I get my game ideas.
Last time around Juhana said in Roolipelaaja forums that he (and Mike) rates his success on how much he is derided here. I know he must be devastated but this time I have nothing but praise. Keep up the good work!
Yeah, overall, four stars out of five (and you really have to floor me to get five) and I am one very happy subscriber.
07-Feb-2007:
Star Wreck RPG Wins Silver!
http://www.gamingreport.com/article.php?sid=23065
Parody RPGs are not my cup of tea but so what? Mike Pohjola's (also Timo Vuorensola claims to have had something to do with) Star Wreck the Roleplaying Game has come second in the Outie Awards for licensed games. The link above tells more. Congratulations to all parties involved! It is nice to see Finnish games making a global splash. While I have never heard of this award before, getting any recognition is a pretty big thing. I am also sure that Energia Productions can milk more out of it than anybody could have imagined. At least the press release they sent me was truly over-the-top :)
Two days to go at Rovio. I wish I could say I am taking it easy. Instead, it looks like I will be working my fingers to the bone right up until the last minute. There is nothing wrong with that, especially if you are parting on as good terms as I am but my stress level have really gone through the roof. For the first time ever (I think), I am actually getting physical symptoms from it and they are pretty bad. I haven't even been able to write my book for two days because I am either writing work stuff or on a bad trip from migraine and fatigue. Fortunately I don't have to keep this up for much longer.
05-Feb-2007:
Parting Gift
I still have a week at Rovio left but they guys handed me a parting gift: an A2-sized poster of "Ville the Barbarian" (or The Grumpy Old Man) made by Jukka the Marketing Artist. I am moved to tears! Anyone can give you a singing fish but these people really made an effort to make me feel special. It must have taken a week to draw this bloody thing! And look at all that detail: that is so me! Short, stubby limbs, well-rounded mid-section, heavy shoulders (still working on the biceps, though), goatee (it even used to be reddish), Motörhead logo and finally a bottle of diet cola (the only thing they had in the office was Coke Zero and I am usually never seen without one), held high and gleaming in the Sun. It is still too early for me to write my closing statements on Rovio but thanks guys. Thanks. What the Hell can I get you that will come even close to matching this?
Anyway, although the previous blog cover picture was nice enough (it was drawn by Aura Ijäs), Ville the Barbarian by Jukka Rajamäki will be the new blog cover until at least 2010.
By the way, the new book is 27% complete.
25-Jan-2007:
Publishing Contract
To sum it up, the book publishing contract is in the bag. From now on, it overrides everything else, apart from writing art grant applications. According to the publisher, your average author gets 4+ times more money from grants than from the books. It is quite frightening really: Finnish literature and library system exist mostly because of a network of charitable organisations and government institutions. From the top of my head I'd say there is about five authors in Finland who can live off their book sales.
Now this is the second book where I have the contract before having the script. The publisher was also interested in continuation of my Praedor novels but unfortunately they do not publish fantasy themselves and Johnny Kniga (their guy was present at the publisher office party I was invited to) did not want to compete with their parent, WSOY. Book publishing really is a world of its own. I just wonder how does "no fantasy" -policy match with Myrskyn Aika. But then again, the publisher sold it out so the bosses can't have been too unhappy.
As for the book itself, the working title is Pelintekijän käsikirja. I would like the final name to describe the game maker as an artisan. It is a moron's guide to game design, hobby-level game development and commercialising small-scale Indie stuff. Obviously the focus is going to be on digital games since that is where the sales are but I will make detours into RPGs whenever I can. The primary target audience is young adults who either want an introduction into the games industry or are planning their own game projects. Secondary target audience is any Joe Average interested in his first look at game design and development.
I am aiming for the same kind of tone and style I've used here in this blog and in my Enter -columns about gaming industry and design. If I could also get Aura Ijäs to do some illustrations for it that would be perfect. The picture on top of this blog was drawn by her for the game design column. I have never seen a more cute depiction of a game designer at work. Actually, the guy there seems to be conceptualizing. It is only a small part of the job but perhaps the best.
By the way, has anyone seen Mike lately? I think I saw him at Kaisaniemi restaurant cluster one day but he looked as if he had merged with Syksy Räsänen. Anyway, he has been doing some cool stuff lately. I think the idea of an in-genre/in-game web-blog is a great way to describe the setting and he has really done a good job on it. Great job all around! If I had all the time, energy and creative freedom in the world... I'd still probably be too lazy to it. Then again, maintaining something similar to promote Stalker for a while could be cool.
21-Jan-2007:
Videogame Narrative
Some people seem to think that Narrative Designer means some kind of a "cutscene director". Narrative design is part of the overall game design. In mobile games it was possible to include it into my other design duties but PC and console games are too extensive for one people to handle it all. Hence we have design teams including a narrative designer or a game writer. Even sports games have one, because they have in-game story arcs just as every other game. It is not so prominent in all genres (Sims comes to mind) and but if the player fails to create it by setting his own goals, he will feel that he has failed in the game or simply has no incentive to play.
In short, a videogame is an interactive story framework presenting the player with challenges. It does not care how the challenge gets done and sometimes the order of challenges is freeform (or a story matrix like in Fallout 2) but a challenge typically has a set starting point (e.g. you facing four angry mutants) and a set finish (e.g. you pass through the area the mutants were patrolling). Whether you killed the mutants, talked your way out or sneaked through might affect the next challenge, but this challenge always ends in you getting through the area).
Cutscenes are not about narration. They are transitions, making moving the game "present" (or camera, if you will) from one locale or time to another more comfortable for both players and developers. They don't have to be complex. In Rogue Trooper, loading bar between levels was masked into a line showing your progress on the gameworld map. That too was a cutscene, handling spatial and temporal transitions. Once it is over, no one is surprised that the playable content begins from a totally different time and place.
Videogame story is not in the cutscenes but in the overall concept and logic: Who are you? Where are you? What made you begin your adventure? Who or what is the opposition? Why and how do they intend to impede your journey? What is the prize (not the same thing as "goal", mind you)? From these questions we can then proceed to the logical order of challenges (level design), possible player and enemy actions and causality (game design), atmosphere and mood (graphic design) and so on.
For example, the game designer might ask for a scene where the player can use a mini-gun to take down hordes and hordes of enemies. Narrative designer might then suggest a playable scene where friendly NPC's are repairing the engine of the getaway vehicle and player is asked to cover them with the minigun. Of course the enemies attack en masse and the player has to hold them off with the minigun long enough for the repairs to be completed. It is a simple challenge with a fixed starting point and a fixed end but how the player completes it (Shoot straight at the closest enemy? Pick bosses off from distance and then sweep the grunts are close range? Try to blow up fuel barrels next to them? Collapse the entrances from which the enemies are spawning?) is up to him.
Once we have all agreed on a challenge, game designers and level designers set out to make the features and environment happen, while narrative designers write the dialogue for voice acting in that particular challenge. That's how a design team works. Narrative designer also has a say as to how the scene should look like but he does not make the final call on that. And of course, everything the team does is under constant scrutiny by the design director and eventually by the producer.
There are also plot elements encompassing dozens of challenges throughout the game. For example, one of the NPCs might be falling in love with the player character, becoming more cooperative and changing her dialogue accordingly. Depending on certain player actions (like whether the player takes her flowers or not), this might arouse jealousy in some other NPC who then becomes less responsive to the player character and his dialogue is tweaked accordingly, and so on. Or player's actions in challenges determine his standing with different factions and change the storyline (future challenges) and dialogue accordingly. The beauty of designer jobs in the games industry is that they are hard to pin down and no two workdays are exactly the same.
Does this apply to MMOs, like EVE Online? Well, narrative designer plays a big part in game world changes through updates and -grades, helping to assimilate new content logically into the game world. He also scripts the various missions and makes sure they are a good fit for the factions they are for or against. Actual design is then done by mission designers, according to guidelines and specs issued by narrative designers. While mmo's do not have an end in the traditional sense, the idea of challenges having definite starts (entering a mission, entering an asteroid belt), ends (completing mission objectives, being forced out of the belt by lack of cargo space or hostile craft) and prizes (mission reward, LP, faction changes, loot, ores of various quality) apply just like before. They don't need dialogue but they do need drama. And could use a little more of it...
20-Jan-2007:
Out of Context Imam Song
This is just too good to be missed. Thanks, Vera, I will spread it around. According to her, it is supposed to be sung to the tune of West Side Story's "Gee, officer Krupke". I don't know the tune but I think this makes an excellent poem too. All the people named here are big-league assholes from the Moslem extremist league and everything said in the song is either true or has at least been claimed by the said people.
IMAMS
Dear kindly Western people,
You gotta understand -
It's lack of understanding
That gets us out outta hand.
You quote us out of context
When we say "kill kuffaar!"
That's why, of course, we blow up a subway car.
Gee, infidel swine, we are very upset;
We never have respect that an
Imam oughta get.
We ain't no extremists,
We're misunderstood.
We are fully moderate and good!
We are good!
We are good, we are good,
We are totally good.
We are multiculturally good.
ABU LABAN
Dear kindly Western people,
You have yourselves to blame:
You drew cartoons of Prophet
Without a trace of shame.
And then twelve evil pictures
Did not incite enough.
So we added three more
To make the things more rough.
AHMED AKKARI
Dear kindly Danish people,
Please don't misunderstand:
When Israel is bombing
And shit has hit the fan
Please give me your protection
Under the red-and-white -
Oh shit, I burned all your flags
I found the other night.
OMAR BAKRI MOHAMMED
My dear fellow clerics,
Try to avoid the worst:
Before inciting murder,
Get citizenship first.
I said the subway bombings
Were very, very cute.
Holy shit - now my ass is in Beirut!
ABU USAMAH
All women are dumb bitches,
Avoid them if you can,
Because they have some hormones
Unlike the real men.
You also should kill faggots
And former Muslims too,
But stay away from pigs
Because a pig might be a Jew!
GREEN LANE MOSQUE CHOIR
My dear British people,
Don't blame us for this shit,
We are completely blameless when
The preacher is a twit.
He only preaches here,
Has naught to do with us,
And he hasn't even
Blown up a single bus!
He's taken out of context,
He wasn't preaching hate,
He only meant that gays should
Be killed in Muslim states.
Don't kill the gays in Britain
Or even apostates -
Instead let's work on making
UK a Muslim state.
You damn Channel 4, we are very upset;
You don't give us the context a
Good mosque oughta get.
We ain't no extremists,
We're misunderstood.
We are fully moderate and good!
We are good!
We are good, we are good,
We are totally good.
We are multiculturally good.
SHEIKH AL-HILALI
My dear Muslim children,
It sucks to be alive.
I'd love to be a martyr,
But now I'm sixty-five.
Please meet Allah before me
As quickly as you can.
Only by exploding
You become a real man.
Australians are awful,
Let's tell it to the news:
Their ancestors are convicts
And some are even Jews.
Their women do not wear
A burqa at the beach.
And they print out of context
Most everything I preach.
IMAM CHOIR
You fucking kuffaar, we are very upset;
You don't give us the context a
Good imam oughta get.
We ain't no extremists,
We're misunderstood.
We are fully moderate and good!
We are good!
We are good, we are good,
We are totally good.
We are multiculturally good.
19-Jan-2007:
No More Mobile
Well, it is out and official now; I am switching jobs. In mid-February I am leaving my post as the senior game designer at Rovio Mobile to become the narrative designer of Recoil Games. You'll get the URL when the company is no longer in stealth mode (but anyone with half-a-brain can figure it out). Usually when I switch jobs there is something wrong with the old one. This time I just got a better offer. I am too old to work for peanuts anymore and giving up our own IP production in favour of sub-contracting cost me a part of my soul. But I still feel a little sad about leaving. They are a great bunch of people and from the looks of it 2007 is going to be a red-hot year for Rovio. I'll still be around for almost a month but I already miss you guys. And I'll keep my eye on you!
Opportunities like Recoil don't exactly pile up in a single lifetime. It is a brand new high-profile Finnish development studio for premium PC and next-gen console games. As part of the founding team my deal with them is pretty sweet but let's leave it that. I am still grappling with the time scale of it all. Console game development takes years and I am not going to live long enough to do that many console titles! Still, this is what I have wanted to give a go at since I was 12. For most intentions and purposes, narrative designer is the same as the game writer (Sam Lake at Remedy comes to mind). My jobs are the back story, the in-game story arc, characters and dialogue. According to Sam Lake, I am also going to be standing at the trade shows, showing off our stuff to the press and babbling like a parrot. Same lines, repeat 200 times. I hope somebody else pays for the plastic surgery. Max Payne I ain't.
In other news, me and the book publisher have agreed on all essential details and yes, I will be writing a "hobbyist"-level book about game concepting and design, covering both digital medium and paper roleplaying games. It will be written in my "wicked-grin" columnist-style. The book deal is 99% likely, even though nothing has been actually signed yet. I hope this does not delay STALKER but I will make the book my first priority and will cut content from STALKER if necessary. Writing a book about your profession works miracles for your career and I really hope to be able to retire to Mexico one day. I don't think my lungs can take the Scandinavian climate forever.
I have also made a kind of a New Year's promise. United Nations would like the foreign aid given to developing countries to be 0.7% of GNP. Even if the State of Finland can't do it, I am planning on using 0.7% of my personal income on charity projects. I already own a third of a cow somewhere in Africa and there is still more stuff that I can do. If you are not a big fan of larping post-holocaust settings with real weapons, take a look at these links:
http://www.kua.fi/toisenlainenlahja/
It is up to you, of course. Making a difference always is.
14-Jan-2007:
Changes
There is a change in the air. At least the weather is changing and I can see snow melt outside my window even now, in the dead of night. There are more changes in the making, revealed as they become available (hopefully by tomorrow). One of them I can tell you about. A book publisher has approached me for a book about game design and development with your average hobbyist in mind. I want to do it and can only hope it does not effect the writing of STALKER. But I will get that game ready by summer, as it is likely to be the swansong of Burger Games. I am making my living from games but Burger Games is not part of the equation anymore. Apart from this blog, it is becoming a pointless hassle to run.
Game Design Event at Jyväskylä came and went this weekend. I have heard mostly good things about it. Neither me nor Miska attended but Eero was there and from what I heard he made himself useful. Figures. The guy has a royal talent for pissing me off but I can never stay angry for long as he is really making an effort for the scene. I wonder if I was as abrasive in my younger, scene-activist days? But I digress. One of the #praedor-channel activists wrote a good summary of the events. Not having been there, I have to trust his word on this.
Reading the summary, I can only say that the non-digital projects sounded good and I would have really liked to talk with the Exodus team. Oh well, maybe next time. I also heard that guys from IGIOS claimed that game designers are not used in commercial game development. Err... eh...okay? So what the Hell am I paid for, then? To make matters worse, these people, IGIOS, chatted with me for a full two hours at the most recent Assembly! Since I did not hear them say it myself I will give them the benefit of doubt. But if they really said that, they should cut down on the drugs, get checked for Alzheimer's, or just go read the official credits of virtually any game out there.
Let's see the games I have on the table right now... WH40K: Fire Warrior. Credits list six people under "designers" heading. Boiling Point has three people in "game idea" (probably concepting) and two actual game designers. The golden oldie Delta Force 2 has again six designers, with four of them being mission designers. In mobile games there is usually just one or two game designers and they do pretty much everything. In a console game project design tasks are divided among a design team. For MMOs this team can grow into an entire department with dozens of people.
Remember, just because you could not find a decent game designer does not mean that game designers do not exist. You can't prove a negative.
07-Jan-2007:
Breaking the Writer's Block
At last! After several false starts the STALKER chapter about Oases is moving forward. I settled for describing various ecological niches within an Oasis and providing examples of creatures that might be inhabiting them. The beauty of FLOW is that I don't need to come up with detailed statistics of every creature. Its Toughness and some indication as to what might or might not work against it are enough. I admit this means putting some faith into the gamemaster's common sense but hey, this game is for veterans. Come to think of it, if Ironspine does its RTP-games for beginners, maybe Burger Games could publish a series of FLOW games for gamers who think they know what they are doing?
Seriously, making game development plans and thinking about target groups sort of lost its lustre when I began doing it professionally. Off-duty, I am a creature of the moment, writing as my mood and inspiration strikes me. It is a bloody miracle I ever get anything finished.
Speaking of getting stuff finished, my friends visiting from Japan concluded "Iron Vaults" -scenario in just three sessions and are now safely back in Japan. Having such a finite deadline, I really had to rush things and railroaded the adventure a good deal more than I usually do. It had its moments but I am hurting from a bad case of miscalculated character motivation. It would not have happened in my usual "wide-tube/sandbox" approach to scenarios but this time if one of the players had not put the needs of the group above her personal character immersion, things would have really fallen apart. The disadvantage of the wide-tube/sandbox scenarios is that they typically take a long time to complete (several years in some cases) as characters create new scenarios, encounters and goals within the framework of the campaign. Now I just did not have the time. Maybe I should have made a straightforward dungeon-romp instead.
In any case, players told me they liked the game and wanted more (which can be hard to arrange since half of them are in Japan and I don't like gamemastering through Skype). That was, like, the designer intent (DUH!).
In other news, take a good look at this:
http://www.mutantchroniclesthemovie.com/
I am stunned. Mutant Chronicles/Warzone was an attempt by the Swedish Target Games to outdo Games Workshop in the miniatures wargaming department. They failed but had a decent (and a very high-budget) run at it, producing a miniatures game Warzone and a roleplaying game called Mutant Chronicles. The last I heard about Target was that they gave up games entirely and went into venture capital market but this was years ago. The world of Mutant Chronicles is effectively "Warhammer 40K meets Cyberpunk". I have the game and could never make head or tails of its setting (and it certainly has nothing to do with the present version of Mutant) but it is visually impressive stuff.
When I first heard about a Mutant Chronicles movie with John Malkovich in it I took it for a joke. I was wrong. The site is real and has plenty of footage of people doing the sets and equipment. In all honesty, John Malkovic is apparently in some very minor role but he is there and I am starting to believe that the movie will actually get done. Maybe it will explain me the setting in a way that I can understand. Failing that, I'll settle for a science fantasy fragfest with big guns and as little wire-fu as possible. When it comes to movies, I am easy to please.
02-Jan-2007:
Fantasy at the Baltic Sea
After many hazardous moments, including one when the night seemed to grow dark, lights at the gates of Reval (Tallinn) went and a dark shape passed overhead, our heroes had managed to steal the corpse of a slain devil-worshipper from its crypt. To call a soul from Hell, the shaman would need all the help he could get but luckily he knew a sacred oak, where the ancient Rus, once the overlords of this coast and its peoples, had sacrificed to Odinn (or Woden as Teutonic Knights named him). Once there, they built a circle of stones in the shadow of the mighty oak and buried a sacrificial gift, a bracelet, amidst its roots. Then using his mushrooms, the shaman fell into a trance, summoning the lost soul briefly back into the body and acting as a medium so that others could speak with the dead.
Unfortunately the devil-worshipper was rather miffed and swore he would get his revenge in this world by shouting the characters' names to his masters in the next (to buy a moment's relief from eternal torment). Another secretly not-entirely-human member of the party began to wonder if it could be possible to prevent the soul from getting back to Hell. After all, the soul was in the corpse right now, held briefly in this world by the powerful summonings of the shaman and the magical aura of ancient god.
Not letting the shaman come out of the trance, he tied the corpse, hang it from its neck on the sacred oak and pierced it with a spear, shouting "I dedicate this sacrifice to Odin!" Shaman, still in trance, opened his eyes and briefly one of them was blank. Then in his mind's eye he stood on a rainbow bridge, watching someone fall screaming into the icy mists of Helhaim far, far below. The spell was broken as the soul had been snatched away and he came to in a circle of stones, realising they had done the unthinkable: stolen a soul from Hell. But their names would remain unknown to the lords of Hell. For now.
***
Yep, it was not my intention but the campaign took a turn for the occult. You could call it a witchcraft campaign. The only strike against a living foe has been with a pommel of a dagger to the back of a guard's head. Battles are fought with words, as a courtesan character is making deals of blood, sex and gold with ruthless merchants and broken-hearted privateer captains. Yes, I play Praedor as the mood strikes me, from pulp fantasy to political or sexual intrigue and claim no ownership or control over how it is played. Now that's designer intent (link to a forum thread removed to protect the sanity of the public: I am already mad).
28-Dec-2006:
Merry Christmas!
I read somewhere that atheists shouldn't wish people that but who's going to stop me? And I am not putting up with that "Xmas" crap either, so Merry Christmas! It came and went and I had been such as a good guy that I even got presents: Chinese Jar, lots of chocolate, cool runic dice (I really have to make a full dice-set RPG now so I get to use them all), couple of books and so on. Figuring out what was and what was not given as a present is not that easy since the giving spree began already on 21st and is probably still not over. Anyway, as a last-minute gift I bought Warhammer: Mark of Chaos for my girlfriend and she's been playing it ever since. Girlie game, obviously...
In other news, I just resigned from my corporation (Gradient) in EVE. It is not a loss for either side: I didn't have (and did not really want) much contact with them and they were doing just fine without me. I like playing in a virtual world with thousands of real people and roleplaying my character but I am a bad team player. I don't want schedules, I don't want teamspeak, I don't want to take orders and if you aren't high-up in the corp hierarchy the player politics in EVE don't really matter. I guess that makes me a bad MMO player and puts me at a disadvantage in almost any MMO out there.
When I was in Iceland, I chatted with one of the game designers of EVE. He explained that while EVE enables the player to accomplish most things in solo, they are planning mechanisms to better reward group play, like grouped missions where the measured reward per participant increases with more people (one player = 1.0, two players = 1.2 each, three players = 1.6 each etc.). Lone wolves like myself are slowly but surely being pushed out of the game and perhaps even the whole genre. On the plus side, as long as there are lone wolves out there, there is also market for single player games and I have a job.
STALKER just moved forward a little. I finally got through the writer's block at page 119 and moved on to 120 where I ran smack into another block. This is fucking difficult when you have no genre conventions to draw upon and you don't want to treat gamemasters like idiots. I am also afraid that the 11-point Comics Sans font type I've used is too small to be comfortable. But if I change it, I'll have to redo the layout again. Blah.
There is an interesting industry rumour going around regarding S.T.A.L.K.E.R: Shadow of Chernobyl. Apparently THQ (a big-ass publisher) paid GSC (Ukrainian game developer) some more money for reaching a development milestone (or maybe it was further investment into the game to keep the project going). True to the Slavic stereotype, GSC went on a months-long drinking spree. Schedules were shot to hell, budget was shot to hell, the art team was laid off to cut costs right when they were supposed to be polishing the game. I guess THQ poured in some more money to stop the project from being a total write-off. I've been waiting for this game for four years but I am getting bad vibes. Their website says: "release date confirmed" and then tells you that the launch has been set for Q1/2007. That is not a date!
I am not going to attend the January game design event in Jyväskylä. It is two days out of town, I am low on cash and I've had my fill of the would-be-RPG-designer crowd. Anyway, I wish them best of luck and excellent attendance. We need more scene events, not less.
P.S.
Don't get me wrong. However annoying they might be, would-be-RPG-designers have every right to exist and make noise. They are the future of the scene and some of them actually level up to RPG authors. I am just getting too old for this shit.
19-Dec-2006:
Designer Intent
If I was a king, I would have every person who uses the words "designer intent" hanged, drawn and quartered. Since I live in a republic I have to settle for venting here. I am referring to a discussion at Majatalo.org where a certain person is drawing far-reaching conclusions about my intentions on how Praedor is supposed to be played. He is calling this "designer intent" but what he is trying to define a canonical way to play the game and suggesting that deviation from it would be somehow reprehensible if the Praedor system is used. I can't have him executed but I'll repeat here what I said in the forum: The designer intent of Praedor is that anybody using the term to justify something will cut off their little finger (either hand will do) and mail it to me. If you don't, you are in breach of the designer intent!
17-Dec-2006:
Mutant
Little bird told me that guys from Järnringen (lit. Iron ring) are potential guests of honour for Ropecon 2007. Järnringen is a Swedish RPG publisher and most famous for the rather non-conventional (fantasy-influenced) post-holocaust RPG "Mutant". I have it and I like it, although a post-holocaust roleplaying game by Burger Games would be very different in tone and approach. I am just not into the idea of having mutants as people with animal heads or with the steampunk-approach to the genre in general. Nevertheless, it is a thick hardcover book with high production quality, atmospheric artwork and everything you need to start playing in post-collapse South Sweden.
I am a fan of Järnringen. I am also jealous as hell. Swedish RPG industry was my inspiration when I founded Burger Games and Järnringen has accomplished pretty everything I wanted Burger Games to do back then. You all know how that turned out although I think I've had a pretty good run. I am making my living from other kinds of games now and won't be going back. That does not mean no-one should, though. While I don't believe there is enough roleplayers in Finland to run a commercially viable RPG publishing business (read: "financially worth the effort even if it is not a day job"), I'll be properly ecstatic if Ironspine proves me wrong. Come on guys (where are all the girls?), surprise me!
11-Dec-2006:
Incoming!
My rants usually whip up a storm that will then take a couple of weeks to die down. This time around nobody sent me flamemail, so I think the sky's clearing up already.
I have been named "the most vocal proponent of the Finnish anti-intellectualist movement on role-playing" by Jiituomas in his blog and you know what? He is absolutely right. And to answer his question, I don't think any amount of reading changes prejudiced crap into a clinical observation. On the other hand, it might depend on what about it one wants to observe. For the rest of you, as a roleplaying theory buff, Jiituomas is miffed because I don't give roleplaying theory the respect he thinks it deserves. As a consolation, I would like to point out that I don't respect videogame theory either, so he is in a good company.
Then I have a personal message to Juhana and Mike, who have been lamenting their poor visibility on this blog.
Mike Pohjola; if you want to regain your status in this blog the first thing you have to do is to stop making sense. And frankly, I just don't think you've got what it takes to return to the glory days. I also don't think you are done with the scene yet, so lobotomy is not an option. Myrskyn Aika showed what you can do. I am waiting with baited breath to see what you will do.
Juhana, it has already been a year since Roolipelimanifesti and even that was not too bad. I like to bash current things, on-going trends and roleplaying theorists. Writing an all-around-nice article in Roolipelaaja does not cut it and I am responding to your forum musings mostly as a favour. But unlike Mike, you have hope of a triumphiant return.
08-Dec-2006:
Love Is In the Air
Some of you know already that one of the themes contemplated for the next Ropecon is romanticism (is that a real word?). About a week ago I had an interesting discussion about the meaning of the term and found an important difference: in its dictionary definition the word can be used for almost any idealisation of reality in art or fiction, with or without love. For example, an elven forest kingdom in your average high fantasy RPG setting is as romantic as it gets in this sense: Beauty of nature and living in harmony with it has been taken to such a utopian level that it can't be called realistic by any stretch of imagination. Hence, it is "romantic".
However, for me and probably for most people in general, the term "romantic" is defined by what it sells: Harlequin novels, "chick-flick" movies (although I am a big fan of Shakespeare in Love), poetry about love and beauty, perfume... you get the picture. When in Game Design Challenge 2005 I was asked to suggest a game about romantic myths, I was thinking along the lines of romantic entertainment. That is where my myths, from Giacomo Casanova to the secret societies of 18th century Venice were coming from. Towers of Dusk would be a roleplaying game about seduction. I would do my best to write it "romantic" rather than "erotic" but hey, I am not in control how it will be used.
Still struggling with Oases in STALKER. My pet fault in writing the Gamemaster's Book is repeating too much of what has already been said in the Player's Book. Gamemasters know that shit already and GM book is supposed to be an extension of that information from gameplay and adventure creation perspectives. I'll have to delete this current crap and do a fresh start on Oases. So, there is progress but it is going really slow since I have to write stuff many times over before I know what I want. Why didn't I pick a more familiar genre, for fuck's sake? My own ambition is biting me in the ass here.
While I am struggling with some stupid mutants, Miska and Ironspine are doing the heavy lifting. RTP-minigames (Ready-To-Play) are their take on Arcade Roleplaying and making it easier to bring in new players or fire up a quick game. I am really excited about their planned line of products, starting with Chrysalis (AKA Kylmä Uni). I am not going to say more about that but you can always go to their website to check it out, provided you can read Finnish. The other games do not look too shabby either. I hate to admit it but sometimes it actually feels like Miska actually knows what he is doing, while I am just... throwing stuff in the air to see which way the land.
03-Dec-2006:
Open Source MMO?
While Juhana is lamenting his loss to Eero in rant-publicity contest and I am worried that there is not enough happening in the scene to keep my ranting skills up, interesting things are happening on the videogame side. Saga of Ryzom, a highly acclaimed massively multiplayer online roleplaying game (MMORPG) is going belly up and the Nevrax bankrupcy estate is trying to sell it. One (and perhaps the only) bidder is a group of former Nevrax employees who are raising money to be able to release Ryzom itself, its engine, assets and all its tools to the market as open-source. I don't know if they are able to pull it off but I don't expect there to be that many other bidders.
Having an open-source MMO platform of this level would be a real coup in Indie MMO development and I don't expect there to be compething bids, to be honest. A fully functional and quite popular MMORPG to build on instead of just a graphics engine and some networking tools. Delicious! Now don't go holding your breaths while waiting for the next World of Warcraft to grow out of it. People usually underestimate the amount of work that goes into just maintaining these things and Indies just don't have the resources for that. But a well-focused game with an interesting topic, a smaller but more tight-knit player community and a reasonable amount of updating content... I'd pay for that.
In distantly related news, EVE Online has completed the Revelations expansion and added a whole bunch of new stuff into the game. Nothing new on their acquisition of White Wolf, though. You'd have to be an EVE player to appreciate the pros and cons of Revelations. The short of it is that a whole new can of worms has opened up and my gut feeling is that balancing is now somehow way off, more so than in previous expansions. There will probably be a whole bunch of hotfixes coming this way real soon. And as you can see, my dislike for WW was not enough to make me quit the game. Addictive stuff, really. If EVE had level caps, I would have move on long ago.
Next thing in the Finnish RPG scene is a game design event at Jyväskylä by some people I've seen at #praedor on a regular basis. I don't know what people do in game design events but neither does anybody else, so the event is what participants make of it. I am not sure there are enough serious game designers to go around but that is not a reason not to try. With luck, it can break new ground. If we are really unlucky, somebody writes a dogma about it. I don't know yet if I am attending. Jyväskylä is far off and I don't if I have that much to contribute. I am an adventure game specialist and an old fogey who has already set his ways. Besides, I haven't published anything in years (I am not sure if Code/X counts).
And if we are in the same panel again and Eero repeats aloud what he wrote in Roolipelaaja, I will have hard time not throwing my Diet Coke at his face.
P.S.
How many years do you have to read useless crap before calling it useless crap changes from prejudice to a personal observation?
01-Dec-2006:
Roolipelaaja
I've always been a strong advocate of Finnish RPG media but now I get the feeling that Roolipelaaja magazine is trying to get rid of me. My expectations for an RPG magazine are not exactly rocket science: source material, adventure ideas, product reviews and scene news with some specialised articles. That's it. Then there is the necessary evil of LARP coverage and collectible card games. Computer game news and reviews are a mixed bag; I don't mind them and the vocal minority that does mind is minor enough not to cause serious damage.
Unfortunately, I am not getting what I want. Roolipelaaja is increasingly branding itself a magazine for gaming school elitists, theory buffs and others hard at work taking the fun out of what we do. Our old sandbox wars about right and wrong in gaming are spreading into print; something that Roolipelaaja's predecessors managed to avoid (although the wars were not too severe back then).
December issue of Roolipelaaja has provoked more feedback than usual and to his credit, Mikki is bravely tackling it all in the forums. Being too old for the shit they call debate, I am staying here on my very own publicity channel. If you have a problem with it, sucks to be you. Here is my analysis of the latest issue. Remember, you know where I stand and nobody forced you to read it.
*********************
Cover
Editorial
Contents
News
LARP stuff (mostly from Sweden but what the hell do I care?)
Seikkailujen aika on ohi by Mike Pohjola asks why published games are so focused on adventuring and there are no games analogous to Häräntappoase, Juoppohullun Päiväkirja, Raid, Itsevaltiaat, Kaurismäki or Niskavuori. The short answer is that it is for the same reason people don't like eating shit: Unfairly prejudiced subjective preferences. The long answer is that human relationships, politics, religion and moral dilemmas have been part of a good adventure ever since the genre was invented half-way through the Stone Age. Frankly, it is very hard to have adventure and conflict without them. They are familiar challenges that people can overcome and provide familiar anchorpoints in otherwise escapistic settings (hence Deadlands or Heimot). All games have them. ALL. And it sells. Go watch some more Raid.
Kokeellisempaa kerrontaa, personal gameplay experiences by Juhana Petterson. No manifestoes in sight, kudos for that.
Joitakin peruskäsitteitä by Eero Tuovinen, our favourite RPG author without a single title to his name, has manifestoes in abundance. He basically tells me that Old Skool is shit, we are all secretly miserable with our lives and that he is the Redeemer who will lead roleplaying into a better future (with products he imports and sells). Fuck you too. Fittingly, the text beneath his face says that the author is asking for a bloody nose. I truly applaud the effort he puts into it. On the plus side, most manifesto-waving, narrow-minded RPG prophets claim to be expanding the horizons of the hobby. Eero does not bother.
In Kun kulttuurit törmäävät on the opposite page by Jukka Koskelin basically writes down what many people have told me about narrativist (yet another fancy game theory term for you) games. Having a functional set of brains, he also notes that apples and oranges don't mix and that the playground is big enough for all kinds of styles. The contrast to being told that my preferred gaming style is shit is staggering. If people actually thought this way, my attitude towards roleplaying schools of thought and Forgers would be very different.
Gygaxin Harteilla by Jaakko Stenros is the latest piece in the long tradition of... oh Hell, I should really give it a rest. In 50 years it might be science.
Kahden Maailman Parhaat Puolet by Tube and Räsänen is not bad. It is just stuff that I had already figured out by the time I was 13. Do we really need to bridge two gaming cultures (one of which reputedly did not exist when I was in my teens) to get here? What the hell has everybody been doing? Didn't you ever play megastar-rockers in CP2020? How can you not let players create gameworld content if you ask them to write a background story or choose some friends and foes for themselves? Has anybody over 10 ever started a campaign without first agreeing with the players on the main themes of the game? His take on Shadowrun with apparently using multiple rules system depending on the game stage is very cool, though.
Operaatio Jäämyrsky leaves me cold and not just because of the name. It is a science fiction shooter-adventure for military-minded characters and I am getting a serious flashback of late GDW material pushed for 2300AD. All war all the time. Miska, please, PLEASE, don't go down that road.
Reviews and the biggest surprise ever: Roolipelaaja has actually given something less than three stars! I have no idea what laws of Man and God the World of Warcraft Trading Card Game has broken to invoke such wrath but they really got just two stars! Two! Judging from the fact that this magazine actually gave CP3.0 three stars, somebody must have wiped his ass on the cards before the reviewer got them. In all honesty, they may have given two stars to something else before but really, I have long since lost all faith in their ratings system. Maybe they'll get back at me by giving STALKER just one star.
********************
So, two articles custom-made to piss me off, a whole bunch of irrelevant stuff and an adventure that makes me want to cry. If this was any other magazine I'd tell them to fuck off and be done with it. But it is not. It is the only one of its kind and I am going to give it a second chance. I'll probably give it a third one too. If we lose this one, there may never be another.