[Interview/preview] Magicians - The language learning RPG

Magicians: The language learning RPG

What if you could learn a foreign language via playing a role-playing game? Soon you can. Magicians is a modern role-playing game set in Seoul adding Korean folklore, superstitions and mythology to create an unique and dense fantasy setting.
In this game characters learn magic while they deal with high-school and university life and learn the mysteries and horrors of the world. There's lots of strange things going on under the surface.
The magic system is really interesting. Your character learns nouns and verbs used to cast spells. And spellcasting is only not in-game. You actually have to pronounce what your character is casting! The magic system allows players to cast more advanced spells as they learn Korean. That is sweet. Imagine Harry Potter where you use these magic words. In Magicians you spell Korean to cast spells.
There are also cards that help building a plot and adventures without preparation. These cards are drawn each round to get unique adventures every time cards are drawn.
Each player needs a set of cards and their characters to begin the game. Magicians is a diceless system. You only need cards and some Korean speak and you are ready to go!
Magicians: The language learning RPG sounds interesting enough so I decided to dig deeper. And what would be better source for information than the author himself!

Hello Kyle. Thank you for your interest in my blog and thank you pointing out your project. In the Kickstarter site you already have written some background for Magicians, but would you like to review it shortly here?

Sure! What I usually tell people is that it's Harry Potter, set in Korea - it's Harry Potter-like in that when the students are around the school and its surroundings there are a lot of fantasy elements that don't blend with a modern-day setting like haunted forests inside the mountain the school is on, catacombs and dungeons, and other such areas I drew inspiration from Asian influences like Journey to the West and The Three Kingdoms along with Korean mythology, folklore and fantasy; instead of seeing things like orks and trolls, dragons and goblins, you still get dragons, just the Korean kind that live in water and achieved their power from yeouiju (think dragon ball!), dokkaebi, which are similar to goblins but can turn invisible and summon any item in the world to them, three-legged crows that live in the sun, bonghwang and other cool creatures you don't normally see in fantasy games. However, when the students are in Seoul, I wanted there to be some cool urban fantasy elements so it's more like The Dresden Files where it's modern-day but it has all these layers hidden just beneath the surface for those that can practice magic and I draw on Korean urban fantasy, superstitions and folklore for cool ideas like an underground magic scene that uses chicken-blood tattoos or embed sesame seeds in their skin as a magical ritual or dogs that barter and collect souls and that wear the face of their victims, which all come from urban legends which I twist for the setting, or superstitions still in use in Korea like whistling at night draws snakes and ghosts to your door, insects shouldn't be killed at night because they could be carrying someone's soul in them or that crows and mice can turn into you or steal your soul by eating your finger or toe nails. It's a big, unique playground to play in I think.

Why did you choose Korean to be the language to be used and learned in this game?

I choose Korean because it's the only second language I speak at a level I'm comfortable with teaching and, since my major is Korean education - teaching Korean to non-native speakers, I'm going to be using the game as a basis for my thesis paper as well. Korean is a really cool, unique language that is really easy to learn and get into but is very deep, interesting and is very different from any other language I've seen. In particular, Korean Hangeul, the alphabet, only takes a few hours of dedicated study to master completely since it's phonetic and was made expressly for easy learning by a Korean king. 

Can a group of players start playing and actually enjoy the game with zero knowledge of Korean? What kind of tools does the game give for the group to start with?

I wanted the game to be something that people could jump into with very little knowledge of Korean, especially for people who hadn't played an rpg before, that's why I set it in modern day and added in all those cool elements but I also created the basic system which uses only 13 words to cast spells. In order to play the game at lowest level of difficulty (there are 3 tiers that build on each other as you learn and get better at Korean) you just need to learn those 13 words as you play the game and get better at pronouncing them. The game uses a smartphone dictation app to check you pronunciation so it's something you can practice and get the hang of even when you aren't playing the game. 

I understood that basically more advanced you get in Korean more advanced things characters can do in the game. It's like while you advance in Korean your character kind of advances also. Is this right?

It's not so much that the more you advance, the more advanced things you do - at any tier of difficulty you can cast any spell you want. There are 7 nouns and 6 verbs at the basic level, you choose one of each to cast any spell you can think of. The nouns consist of the elements - fire, water, earth, wind and then there is also living things and the five senses. For verbs there is create, damage, transmute, remove, compel, and perceive so it works a lot like Ars Magica. The second tier of difficulty takes away that archetypal approach so you have to choose your own noun and verb to suit the situation and build your vocabulary. The third and final tier has you speaking in full, complete sentences and learning grammar patterns you can plug your new-found vocab in and out of as well as learning more target vocab which are tied to types of magic. For casting spells having to do with time magic, you first need to learn numbers, to cast telekinetic spells you learn relative position, directions, etc.

Korean mythology and folklore sounds really interesting. How much tools does the game give to work with? Does it provide superstitious folklore, monsters and other?

I've got a whole bunch of setting material that's going to be in the book - Korean superstitions, folklore, creatures and monsters, urban legends all given a twist so that they all fit into the world of Magicians and so that people can use them in their own games if they want to mine some cool Asian influences for their own games. 

You pledged for 3000 dollars but currently are in over 23000 dollars. How do you feel?

The response the game has been really amazing - I really didn't expect it, I thought it would be this tiny niche within a niche that liked the game but what it turned out being was that it was interesting for all kinds of groups. People who want to just learn another language like the idea of another tool to do so, rpg gamers in general are all educated to begin with and are always looking for something cool and the fact that you can learn more of something and a useful skill while doing something that you already love doing is an awesome proposition I think.

 Can you actually learn Korean with this game?

Of course! The main idea behind the game is the same process that is applied universally when learning any language, first you start out with pronunciation, learning the alphabet, then you start learning some words and building your vocabulary, then you start learning grammar patterns that you use that vocab in as well as target vocabulary associated with language you'll use and need when speaking in everyday life - directions, time, adverbs and adjectives, past and future tense, etc. Not only will you learn Korean with this game but the core of the game is so universal that it will be easily hackable for other languages as well - which is why I'm putting out the "hack pack", a stretch goal we at 15k, which will detail expressly how to hack any and all aspects of the game - the setting along with the themes and tone you want to set and, especially, for different languages as well as some fun ideas for use with other languages that work differently than Korean, like those that use gender, etc.

(Kyle also provided me with this fun little comic about learning Korean in 15 minutes (LINK).)

But what is your roleplaying history?

My dad first introduced my twin brother and I to D&D back when I was in elementary school but it didn't really take as I got into computer rpgs more like Bladur's Gate and stuff; I didn't actually start gaming again until I came to Korea when 4th Edition was released - the guys over at Penny Arcade did an actual play podcast series that made me want to get back into it and I wanted to meet some more people and make some friends so I looked for and found a group and got started. We played 4th edition for awhile but I really got into it and was soon buying and reading rpgs both to play and just to read, I started GMing for the group and have run lots of great games - Marvel Heroic Roleplaying, Burning Wheel, Burning Empire, Mouseguard, Pathfinder, With Great Power,  Fiasco, Cathulhutech and all kinds of other stuff. I started designing roleplaying games as well but more as thought exercises and for fun - my first rpg I designed was a solo one to see how it would play, I made another one to teach how to play go-stop, a Korean gambling game that uses hanafuda cards and then I came up with a language-ed game after teaching English, reading about dictation apps and trying to incorporate elements I love from books about learning magic like Magicians, by Lev Grossman (the game started out as a IP project for Magicians, hence the name with Lev Grossman on board but the rights ended up getting sold to Hollywood for a tv show), Harry Potter, the Earthsea books or The Dresden Files.

Final words from you. What would you want to say about the project and what would you like to say for the people who already pledged and for those who are interesting of it?

To all the people who have backed the game, helped got the word out or both I'd like to say thank you! For those who are interested I'd say come to the kickstarter page and check it out! I've got actual play videos of the first few rounds of a game so you can see how it works along with a video of how the smartphone app works as well. We've already hit the 20k stretch goal which was for a Japanese hack of the game by Andy Kitowski, of recent Tenra Bansho Zero game and kickstarter success and at 30k we unlock a Chinese supplemental system for traditional Chinese by Jonathan Walton, creator of the Geiger Counter RPG, among others, so if you're interested in the idea but not so interested in the Korean language element of it we might have you covered!

_______________________________________________

The Kickstarter campaign page can be found in the following link. The project will be funded on Monday Nov 19, 12:00am EST so now is the time if you want to hop in!

Campaign link: http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1858774754/magicians-a-language-learning-rpg

All the pictures are from Magicians roleplaying game.

Interview: James Edward Raggi IV

James Edward Raggi IV is author of Lamentations Of The Flame Princess roleplaying game, several successful adventures and publisher of roleplaying material. You can find James in his blog ( http://lotfp.blogspot.com/) and website (http://www.lotfp.com/RPG/). He also runs his own webstore of roleplaying games material ( http://www.lotfp.com/store/ ).

For me personally Lamentations Of The Flame Princess was the game what ignited the spark (more like
bonfire!) of OSR and andventure fantasy gaming. Naturally, I wanted to interview him. So here it is, my
questions for James Edward Raggi IV and his awesome answers.

Before we start, could you quickly repeat your roleplaying history?


I started gaming somewhere around my 9th or 10th birthday in 1983 with the Mentzer Red Box. My early
gaming was mostly TSR stuff like D&D, Marvel Super Heroes, Star Frontiers, etc. The next big phase of my RPG life was the "generic systems" and I was hugely into GURPS and HERO for a long while. Along the way I of course experimented with a lot of other games like Bureau 13, Justifiers, DC Heroes, TMNT, Robotech, MERP, Warhammer RPG, and more.
Just as important in those early days were computer RPGs, most notably Ultimas IV-VI, but also Wizard's
Crown/Eternal Dagger, Bard's Tale I and Dragon Wars, Zork and other Infocom stuff.
I guess I should note that I was never a wargamer, never into Vampire or Magic (in the early 90s I found it
difficult to play games I wanted to play because these games got so huge, so White Wolf and Wizards of the
Coast became "The Enemy"), missed Traveler, Tunnels & Trolls, and my brief experience with the Chaosium system (in Runequest III and Elfquest) didn't go so well back in the day.
In the 2000s I've gotten some key "indie" releases, most notably Sorcerer, Burning Wheel, and Dogs in the
Vineyard, (and the superhero trifecta of Truth & Justice, Capes, and With Great Power) but those were all pretty much for reading and I never played them beyond a couple sessions of Dogs. I am not so hot at such
"character motivation" style play. My thing is more "I make adventures without knowing/caring who the PCs will be" and let the dice fall where they may from there. Seeing how they interact with the adventure is the entire fun of it.
These days of course I'm all about things that get included under the Old School Renaissance banner, basically different things based on and tweaked from D&D circa 1974-1983. So easy to tweak and running games is easy since it's been in the blood for over a quarter century. A new coat of paint and a fresh approach (since I'm late 30s now instead of pre-teen as when I started) and the gaming is better than it's ever been.

What did inspire you to write your first gaming material and did you know back then that some day you would be a publisher?

I like writing and publishing - I did homemade comics when I was really really young, trying to sell them to
neighborhood kids, did my own metal zine for just about a decade (which I keep saying I'll revive...) so when I started doing RPG stuff, of course it was for publication!
My first abortive attempt at publishing RPG material started in the early 2000s before I even realized there were places on the internet where people talk about RPGs, but everything that I've "written" (which is an entirely different process than just prep for play) has been with publication in mind.

Did you know that Lamentations Of The Flame Princess would be as popular as it is now when you started to write it?

Nope. Since my interests tend to the obscure (my favorite bands are Hammers of Misfortune, Cathedral, and Reverend Bizarre, and I'll be going to Comus and Arcturus gigs this month, my latest DVD buys include movies like The Woman and I Sell the Dead, to give you some idea) and even within those scenes I don't feel I have a lot in common with other fans of things I like. Hell, I find my taste greatly differs from a lot of people in the OSR, so it is a very pleasant surprise to have a fanbase of my own.

Is the rumor true that you made LotFP rules mostly to publish your own adventures? There's 
already Grindhouse edition which is improved but what was the case with original plan?

I want LotFP to be as large a company as possible, and just publishing adventures for other peoples' games,
especially in a scene that doesn't have a lot of retail presence, is not a good strategy for getting shelf space. The original idea was to publish a game under my own brand to get into shops so then all my other stuff would get picked up too.
That idea got muddled when I went for broke and made a dream box set instead of a more sensible and safe
presentation. "If I don't do it now, when will I?"
And that first box sold like hotcakes. Even the diehards, who already have 4234 or so OGL-enabled more-or-less similar variants of The Game, bought it by the hundreds. I didn't expect that. And it helped get me into an ever increasing amount of stores, so mission accomplished there.

I understood that you use Basic Fantasy (please correct if I remembered it wrong) a lot for your OSR gaming. But how about LotFP. Do you play your own game like it's no tomorrow?

I played Basic Fantasy from late 2007 - early 2010, then I did a few sessions of Labyrinth Lord, but of course once I made my own game I switched everything over to that.

In LotFP Grindhouse what do you like the most? Simple characters what focus on what they are 
doing instead of what they can do (your thought) or elegant encumbrance system or something else?

What I like most is the response it's gotten: people use it, talk about it, come up with their own house rules for it, there's another publisher who releases material for it... As a writer and a publisher, the system, the details, the flavor, all of that is secondary - I have ideas for madcap sci-fi, modern zombie holocaust, and superhero games that all have different flavors that would use their own systems. The important thing is that what I have done - no matter what it happens to be right now - has made a connection with people. That's how you know you did good.

As a Referee, what are your best three and worst three qualities?

Best quality: I come up with some righteously heinous shit to throw at the players. :D That's basically it, I'm an idea man.
Worst qualities: I do my best improv work when there's already a framework in place. Give me a module and I can handle whatever the players want to do within the context of that module, but when it comes to pure improv without anything in place, I'm not so great. I see my role in the game as a referee, and if the playing field and the opposing players aren't pre-determined, it's a bit difficult to be an impartial ref at the same time I'm coming up with things for them to do. Much better to have the "adventure writer" hat on in prep and "Referee" during play... but doing that proper preparation is something I'm a bit lazy about.

You are a Referee but do you play as a player character? Ever?

It's difficult in Finland. When I run a game, I'm in charge, so I can say "This game will be in English." My Finnish is crap for boring reasons, I can read a bit but can't really follow a spoken conversation, so joining someone else's group is difficult. I don't want to be rude and demand these other people to run games in English for my benefit.
It's also difficult for me to wrap my head around the concept of "one-shots" for RPGs so when I do get to play other things they tend to be board or card games.

What are best and worst things for both roleplaying gamer and publisher in Finland? Were there 
any problems with LotFP and later with LotFP store because of your location?

The worst thing about being a publisher in Finland is that 95% of the customers are not in the country, and in
my case the majority are across an ocean. Selling role-playing material is hard enough without those shipping
expenses.

What about Finnish gaming community? In your opinion is there any and how good is it?

I don't really interact with the community as much as others (I'm constantly surprised how everyone seems to
know everyone else since I just have contact with a few people at a time), but I think it's a nice big healthy
community based on three things: Fantasiapelit is a well-stocked store so there's a local point to get new
material, Ropecon is a good-sized convention with lots of gaming and plenty of people hitting the vendor room, and most importantly it's never ever a problem to find new players if need be. Even before I ran a publishing company it was easy to find more players than I knew what to do with both in Vaasa and Helsinki.

What about other Finnish game publishers? Past few years there's been many new products.

I really don't keep up on too much new stuff whether from Finland or elsewhere. Even the OSR stuff I carry in my shop are for the most part just for sale and they aren't things I'm personally interested in. I think it's great that people have ideas and follow through and make games and it's awesome that people buy them and play them, I like talking to other designers at conventions and hearing the ideas, but at the end of the day I'm most interested in what I'm doing. And it's damned difficult to try to get any of these people with ideas of their own to write something for me...

Thank you for your time mr. Raggi. One last question. If I could buy only three items from your  
Lamentations of the Flame Princess store (link) what would you suggest me to get?

The businessman in me says Grindhouse box, Carcosa, and Isle of the Unknown, because those are the most expensive.
The gamer in me says Carcosa, Isle of the Unknown, and Vornheim, since those aren't game-specific so you'll be able to get inspiration for whatever it is you're playing.

Interview: Sami Koponen, Finnish game material writer and a gamer

I already have interviewed Finnish roleplaying games designer Ville Vuorela from Burger Games
and it was a success. It gave me inspiration and courage to interview other people who are
publishing or otherwise active in Finnish gaming.

Second in my mind was Sami Koponen. Sami Koponen is Finnish roleplayer, active member of
Finnish roleplaying community and also author of roleplaying material.
You can find Sami's website and blog here: http://efemeros.wordpress.com/author/samikoponen/
Sami   also   writes   news   for   Finnish   roleplaying   games   site   Roolipelitiedotus:
http://roolipelit.wordpress.com/author/samikoponen/

INTERVIEW

Let's start with Efemeros. Efemeros is a published book slash magazine and there are already 
two episodes. First is compilation of roleplaying articles and second unofficial Praedor 
sourcebook with both rules and gaming reports and other Praedor related articles and 
material. Efemeros #2 about Praedor was more successful than the first one. Do you think 
that the key for the success was that you  handled one of the most popular roleplaying game in 
Finland Praedor in it?

Well, success is relative. Efemeros #1 had smaller print run and I wasn’t able to push it to dealers
too well, so naturally the actual number of sold copies was lower. Still, I do think that gamers found
a sourcebook far more interesting than a collection of RPG articles. How did Praedor itself affect
the success is a tougher question. I decided to make a Praedor-supplement in order to gain more
popularity for the supplement, yes. But would an indie-sourcebook been even more successful, if it
was for Dungeons & Dragons or for Heimot? Maybe. Maybe not.

In any case, it seems that there’s a small market for supplements in Finland. Unfortunately everyone
seems to be too busy publishing their own games. Supplements are good stuff in many ways.
Has your Praedor Efemeros had some impact that you know of in Praedor players' gaming?
Feedback from any Finnish rpg publication is scarce at best. I’ve heard of couple of groups, who
used the material published in Efemeros, but I don’t know if it changed their play style. After all,
Efemeros #2 was a collective supplement, so it’s most likely that any group using it would take
some ideas and discard others. Of course, if anyone reading this has used Efemeros in their Praedor-gaming, I’d love to hear about it!

About your gaming history. How did you start playing roleplaying games, what games did you 
play and how? How is your present gaming style different from the early years?

I think I got the idea of roleplaying from my big brother’s friend, who had roleplayed (I don’t know
if he was active gamer). Then a friend of mine bought RuneQuest, and off we went. We were like
ten year olds or something, so rules, setting and whole consistency of the gaming were wacky, but
the idea of shared imagined space carried us.

After the initial “proto-roleplaying” the actual games played were Stormbringer (4th edition) and
Cyberpunk 2020 (2nd edition). I was mostly the GM, but did get to the player’s seat as well.
Stormbringer was our basic fantasy adventure game without any reference to Moorcock’s fine
novels. We didn’t have any metaplot either, just an adventure after another with the same characters.
Besides making my own adventures, I also used any adventure I could get my hands on from other
game lines or from rpg magazines. Cyberpunk had its share of plotting, but characters also ended
dying quite fast after crossing major corporations. I seem to recall that the
game had some serious issues in firefight rules.

These days in my gaming table adventure has lost its ground to drama: The focus is in the
characters, their duties and their relationships and in all the moral conundrums rising from that.
Still, I haven’t abandoned adventure gaming for good. I’ve played several ten-or-so-session
campaigns of RuneQuest and Praedor within a year.

Go ahead, read my whole personal rpg history from my blog
(http://legendmakers.wordpress.com/2009/05/01/keha-laajenee-henkilokohtainen-roolipelihistoriani/ (editor's note: this site is in Finnish, but you can easily use Google Translate or
other software for other languages.)

You have tried out several different games and gaming styles experiencing for example how 
games run directly as those are presented in the book. Do you think that games give players 
most of it if you play them "straight from the text" or do you think that game material is just 
a toolbox gaming group can use for their own scenarios, worlds and campaigns?

It depends on what you want from your gaming. If you’ve found your way to play and wish to stick
to it, surely you should use games as toolboxes for your style. But if you are interested in trying and
learning new ways to play, discovering new gaming styles, then it’s a good idea to follow the game
rules as is. I myself tend to fall in the latter group, but I’m very aware that it’s not for everybody.

What is your ultimate favourite roleplaying game and how has that changed you as a player?


My Life With Master by Paul Czege, no doubt. The game blew my mind back in 2004, when
Arkkikivi translated it in Finnish. The importance of relationships, simple and effective dice
mechanics, strong emotional content, end game phase… it’s all there and more. I haven’t played the
game excessive amounts and it’s not the best roleplaying game per se, but it had a major impact on
me. Simply put, it showed me that rpgs can offer so much more than mere adventuring.

About Finnish game industry today. It seems that there are more published and upcoming 
games in past few years than ever before. You read constantly about new projects in Finnish 
forums. Do you think that Finnish gaming is at its peak now? What about future? Will in few 
years publishing get slower or is Finnish game publishing growing?


Well, I surely hope this is not the peak, because you can only go down from a peak! Seriously
speaking, while it is true that we have more Finnish rpgs published than ever before, I think this is
mostly because it’s so easy and cheap to publish your own game these days. Finnish game
designing as such hasn’t progressed all that much during the past decade.

It seems  that there are game designers  who are determined to keep on publishing Finnish
roleplaying games, so certain continuity is likely. However, the high numbers of publications are
achieved through new designers. If we are going to see more people publishing their first game is
anyone’s guess. I’ve seen enough to know that forum discussions don’t automatically turn into
published games.

Aside from publishing, I’m more worried whether anyone actually plays these games. It would be
distressing to find out that folks buy Finnish rpgs just to support the game designer, without any
intent to actually play the game. These aren’t books to be read, these are games to be played!

In big world many roleplaying games are going into PDF download business but still in 
Finland printed products are most common. Will this PDF publishing boom catch also 
Finnish roleplaying games industry?


I think it will as soon as someone can produce good and cheap PDF readers. It happens within a
couple of  years is my guess. At the very least I think we’re going to see several projects that use
this new medium.

Then again, there are clear signs of bibliofilia in our hobby. People publish their game just to create
something concrete and gamers buy rulebooks just to feel them and see how nice they look like. As
the gamers’ mean age rises, they also have more money to buy artefacts ie. classy books.

In your opinion, how do you support Finnish roleplaying hobby and what influence do you 
have in it?

By gaming, mostly. I often try to introduce new people to roleplaying. I also support the scene with
filling the ether with game blogs, forum discussions and gaming reports in order to spread the word.
Distant second are publishing projects, my own or helping someone else.

I estimate that during this year I’ve played with maybe twenty people new to roleplaying. If even
two or three of these pick up roleplaying as a hobby, I’m happy. I also hope that my newest game
Pyöreän pöydän ritarit (http://efemeros.wordpress.com/muut-julkaisut/pyorean-poydan-ritarit/
) would shed some light into Finnish game designing, but we’ll see. As there are only a few ways to
see any concrete results, I really don’t know my actual influence.

Tell about your future plans. What will you publish, what games or gaming material are you 
working on and will there be more Efemeros? And do you have any plans to publish 
something in English to see does if your ideas catch also others than Finnish gamers?


I actually don’t have any big plans now. I’m looking forward to get to run more games to newbies,
does that count? I do have an idea of a free, short, PDF-formatted rpg, but everyone has ideas. Even
Efemeros is ice-covered at the moment. I was supposed to publish a collection of Ropecon scenario
contest winners as Efemeros #3, but somehow I don’t think that kind of product would find its
audience. It might be rightly said that at the moment I’m more interested in supporting existing
games and hobby projects than publishing anything new.

This English-thing springs on me from everywhere. I’m mostly not interested. I like to focus on
Finnish rpg scene instead; there’s lot to do here. I also doubt that I would have much to say to
English-speaking audience. My gaming stuff is really not that original. The influences go in the
other way: I’m more interested in localising some cool ideas from English rpg scene than trying to
rebound those ideas back at them. Eero, who helped me in designing Pyöreän pöydän ritarit, has
some ideas of the game’s English version, but we’ll see if anything of that ever realizes.

As a publisher and active hobbyist, what advises would you give for starting game writers?


Stay focused. Think about what your game is about and then design all the rules, setting,
mechanisms and whatnot to support this goal. This doesn’t have to mean a single narrow theme.
Likewise, think about why you are writing a game in the first place. If it’s just for fun, do you really
need to publish it? If it’s something for yourself to play, do you need to publish it? If it’s something
someone else has already done before you, do you need to publish it? Publishing is a whole new
project besides game designing, so I’d advice to do it only if your goal requires it.

I'd also like to remind of the supplements. It might be a good idea to get your feet wet by writing a
supplement for an existing game: a sourcebook, an expansion or a scenario. There you have
something to inspire your own writing while still leaving room for your own innovations. The
mother game gives your product some initial popularity as well. Writing a supplement is an easier,
low-risk option well worth of considering.

INTERVIEW: Ville Vuorela from Burger Games

Ville Vuorela is a man behind Finnish hobby game publisher Burger Games and leading
independent roleplaying game publisher in Finland. He also actively participates in different hobby
related conventions and is active in roleplaying forums.

Ville is not only roleplaying games developer but also an author of the following books:
Vanha Koira, pub. Jalava 2004; Pelintekijän käsikirja, pub. BTJ Finland 2007; Elämäpeli, pub. BTJ
2008 and Häirikkötehdas, pub. Finn Lectura 2011.

You can find Burger Games' website here: http://www.burgergames.com/

For some time I have wanted to interview him and he agreed to be interviewed. Here it is, interview
with Ville Vuorela from Burger Games.

At which point and why did you decide to start to publish your own roleplaying games? I bet that before your commercial games you have done your own games and possibly additional homebrew material for existing games?

I had been writing my own game systems since late 80's but it was only after I became interested in setting
design that I really wanted to push stuff out onto the market. The original impulse to do that came from watching  "Three Musketeers" by Richard Lester (1973). There was a scene where the protagonists engage in a mock tavern fight with the real intention of actually stealing food while at it. Looking at this, it suddenly dawned on me what kind of heroes I wanted and what kind of a world I was going to build around them. Rules-wise it was an evolution of my primitive early systems but the power was in the setting and the role the player characters played in that setting. The end result was Miekkamies (1994).

What happened with Taiga? In the book there are many plans and hints about upcoming sourcebooks but something didn't go according to plan.

Every Indie RPG writer does it at some point: overextends his resources and marketing potential. Taiga was a niche game to begin with and I took a far too big print run of it in 1997. The sales were a disaster and I was left with a big bill and an even bigger pile of boxes. That was the last time I went through with a game project just because of I though it was cool. Most Indie RPG-writers drop out at this point. Fortunately this was already my second game and the first one, Miekkamies, had been a success. Still, continuing the product line did not make commercial sense and I was depressed about the whole thing that it killed off my personal interest in Taiga for a long time.

Why is Praedor so popular? It is still sold and asked and most definitely played.

It was made into a pre-existing franchise and no matter where you open the book there is always something
beautiful and topical from Petri Hiltunen to look at. The system is also very popular and that came as a bit of
surprise. It was a radical departure from my earlier approach to system design but although I did a lot of work on it, I did not expect to get it so right to begin with. But most importantly, I consider Praedor to be a validation of my belief that strongly defined character role in the setting is the key. Experienced players can easily deviate from this niche if they want to but for new players Praedor offers an instant, enjoyable and intuitively recognizable "job" as adventurers and the system really supports the intended pulp-fantasy playstyle and genre.

What kind of gamemaster Ville Vuorela is?

You are better off asking this from one of my players. I would say that he is a descriptive and eloquent, with
great emphasis and even pride in not becoming stymied whatever the players do or wherever they go. My focus is on otherwhere, the sensation that players are in a different world where lots of things are happening even without them. Wherever they go, there is something new and interesting there, even if I have to whip it up on the fly.

Unfortunately Vuorela has also become a very busy gamemaster and my dayjob and roleplaying draw on the
same reserves to some extent. I was able to run multiple campaigns simultaenously as a young student but
now stress at work may lead to creative blocks before and during gaming sessions, which I find very frustrating.

Apart from your own games which ones are your favorites or worth to mention?

Over the years, my favourite games have been those I have been able to pull long and successful campaigns
out of: Stormbringer/Elric, Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay (the old edition and really for the setting), Legionnaire (ancient scifi-rpg by FASA) and finally Shatterzone (the original Masterbook System RPG from West End Games). In addition, I have a great deal of respect for games like CP2020, Harnmaster, Traveller and Syndicate. I also have a special soft spot for D&D Cyclopedia rules and Heimot for its bold and ambitious setting.

However, very few roleplaying games are outright bad and almost all of them are worth mentioning, especially if they do come with a setting. They are doorways into other worlds, in a way that non-interactive fiction can never be.


In which direction in your opinion Finnish roleplaying games publishing is going? Am I right that in late years Finnish roleplaying publishing is in high rise?

I am living fossil, having both seen the previous boom of the Finnish RPG industry and survived the ice age that followed from 1998 to 2004. As far as writing RPGs is concerned we are in another boom, largely because the remaining gamers that were drawn into the hobby during the previous boom are now ambitious young adults. However, I am worried about finding players for all these new roleplaying games. The global RPG market has all but collapsed and from what I know about Fantasiapelit sales the Finnish market is not doing too well either.

This is a point of contention between me and other RPG authors out there. I sincerely hope they prove me
wrong.

With or without miniatures?

As necessity dictates. In a highly tactical scenario you are probably using graph page or other improvised
markers anyway. Having miniatures to help you out does not hurt. However, I find it odd that miniatures would be a core part of the game. I love social interaction and intrigue in my games and neither of those requireminiatures in any shape or form.

Probably Dungeons & Dragons is the most popular just because of its name. What kind of influence the game and it's newest edition's style has in general roleplaying in your opinion?

Actually, it has had surprisingly little impact. The impact of D&D3.5 is still being felt and while D&D4 did
introduce an alternative playstyle for roleplaying games, unlike its previous iterations if failed to replace what
had been before. Lots of people have dabbled with the new D&D and then returned to the older and in my
opinion much deeper style of roleplaying they know and love.

What are current plans for publishing STALKER in English? According to RPG.net forum STALKER as a setting is interesting and you have rights for the roleplaying game.

Yes on both counts. The proofreading is still going on (we are being both busy elsewhere and just plain lazy at times) but should be done this fall. There will be a PDF version of the rulebook available from some relevant store (RPGNow springs to mind) and a crowdsourcing scheme for a small print run of physical books.

Do you believe that something would be different with STALKER if it used dice based mechanics?

It would be easier to sell but far less cool as a game. FLOW really does help to build the atmosphere and I think abstracting the gameplay challenges into dice algorithms would only hurt it. Of course, in retrospect I should not have made the game completely diceless. The anomaly and artifact tables could use some dice and the game as a whole would benefit from a few more loot tables. But I will not give up on the diceless challenge resolution and combat.

From your own games, which one is your favorite?

Stalker. For me, personally, Stalker is not only my best game but one of the best RPGs ever written. Perhaps the best, although it is naturally limited to its specific genre and niche. I know that this sounds awfully selfish but I really do believe all this.

What would you say to Burger Games fans and to foreigners about Burger Games?

There have and always will be these one-man shows in the RPG publishing. What sets Burger Games apart
from the rest is its very survival to this day. And the Stalker RPG.

Thank you for your time and honor to interview you.

No worries, it was fun.