Front Cover

Beyond Role and Play
tools, toys and theory for harnessing the imagination

edited by Markus Montola, Jaako Stenros
forward by Frans Mäyrä

Back Cover

Beyond Role and Play - Tools, Toys and Theory for Harnessing the Imagination is a collection of articles by researchers and role-playing game enthusiasts from seven countries. This book offers practical tools, analytical viewpoints, inspirational game reviews and fresh methodological ideas for all who take role-playing seriously. The book covers both tabletop and live-action role-playing as an artform, a political tool, an educational method and as great entertainment.

The THEORY section consists of articles that are mostly of interest to researchers, PRACTICE includes tried and true tools for both game designers and players. GAMES holds descriptive reviews of completed projects and analyses of a number of Nordic larps, and finally OPENINGS provokes with radical new ideas that are of equal interest to both researchers and game masters.

"[E]xtra effort must be taken to underline the significance of larp and role-playing - as art, as popular culture, as something that not only a small core group of the initiated, but a much wider audience can learn and profit from. This is an important book, indeed."
Frans Mäyrä, in his Foreword

Solmukohta*04
Ropecon ry

ISBN 952-91-6842-X (paperback)
ISBN 952-91-6843-8 (pdf)

Cover and Layout by Henri Hakkarainen


Contents

Forward
Frans Mäyrä
Preface
Markus Montola & Jaakko Stenros
 
In Search of the Self
A Survey of the First 25 Years of Anglo-American Role-Playing Game Theory
Paul Mason
Play to Love
Reading Victor Turner's "Liminal to Liminoid, in Play Flow, and Ritual; An Essay in Comparative Symbology"
Martin Ericsson
 
Theory
 
Immersive Story
A View of Role-Played Drama
John H. Kim
A Semiotic View on Diegesis Construction
Mike Loponen & Markus Montola
Tilting at Windmills
The Theatricality of Role-Playing Games
Edward Choy
Role-Playing: A Narrative Experience and a Mindset
Satu Heliö
Notes on Role-Playing Texts
Jaakko Stenros
Autonomous Identities
Immersion as a Tool for Exploration, Empowering and Emancipating Identities
Mike Pohjola
The Character Interpretation
The Process Before the Immersion and the Game
Ari-Pekka Lappi
On the Transmutation of Educational Role-Play
A Critical Reframing to the Role-Play in Order to Meet the Educational Demands
Thomas Henriksen
Deconstructing Larp Analysis
Or, "Let's Recognize a Bias Where There is One"
J. Tuomas Harviainen
 
Practice
 
Character Design Fundamentals for Role-Playing Games
Petri Lankoski
Narrative Function
A Larpwright's Tool
Erling Rognli
Chaotic Role-Playing
Applying the Chaos Model of Organisations for Role-Playing
Markus Montola
Genre, Style, Method, and Focus
Typologies for Role-Playing Games
Jaakko Stenros
On the Importance of Body Language in Live-Action Role-play
Terhi Säilä
Rules of Engagement
Emma Wieslander
 
Games
 
"I Could a Tale Unfold Whose Lightest Word Would Harrow up Thy Soul"
Lessons from Hamlet
Johanna Koljonen
Post Panopticon
Gabriel Widing
Temporary Utopias
The Political Reality of Fiction
Tova Gerge
Infinite Possibilities
Mellan Himmel och Hav From a Science Fiction Point of View
Karin Tidbeck
Creating Music for Live-Action Role-Play
Henrik Summanen
 
Openings
 
Positive Power Drama
A Theoretical and Practical Approach on Emotive Larping
Emma Wieslander
Participatory Education
What and Why
Elge Larsson
The Storyteller's Manifesto
Aksel Westlund
Battle Against Primitivism
Juhana Pettersson
Genesi
Larp Art, Basic Theories
Christopher Sandberg
 
About the Community of Role-Players
Merja Leppaälahti
 
Contributors

John H. Kim <jhkim-at-darkshire-dot-net>
Last modified: Sat Apr 3 19:01:59 2004