Author: Petri Wessman (---.netsonic.fi)
Date: 12-03-2004 13:04
Wow, Juhana seems to have transformed himself into an academic/political roleplaying elitist while I wasn't looking. :). Not a bad (if heavily skewed) writeup of Ropecon last year, though I have to pipe in here and say that Juhana does not exactly represent the general "Finnish roleplayer" view of things, if such a beast exists. Most of us here are quite happy to play games just for fun, and find the endless academic panels that the "roleplaying theory" crowd indulge in either dull or humorous, depending on how many drinks one has had. For some reason a small but vocal clique of "academic roleplaying" people has formed here during the last years, but they are mostly harmless... and fun guys, once they get a couple of beers and cut the crap level down a bit. ;).
Dark secret: last time I spent any time with Juhana was when he was writing a WoD LARP chronicle with us. The stuff he and a certain M.L. wrote up are still legendary, most people do not get to that level of pure powergaming goodness that easily. So underneath all this serious "roleplaying is serious art!" facade is a man who is responsible for serious WoD High Weirdness (tm). I won't even mention the endless anti-Salubri hordes that sprang from nowhere. Or the... never mind. :).
Seriously, that's not a bad article Juhana. Don't agree with all that much of it (I find Dork Tower very funny and hey, Tweet gave us Over the Edge!), and like GNiko said you got the "how did Ropecon come to be" story a bit wrong -- but the fact is that Ropecon is *very* different from U.S. cons. I think the main difference is just the lower level of commercialism and bigger emphasis on actually playing games (vs. selling them), but maybe that's just me.
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