Simon has been busy! Since last autumn, he has organized Hantverksklubben (roughly, “handicrafts” or “hands-on” club) here in Sweden, through the Rollspel.nu forum and conducted at the Hem-Con Discord server. All of this is in Swedish, but I’ll say more about that in a moment. As of the discussion presented in the video, they’ve played 19 sessions, no small feat considering what they’re doing.
Simon describes it fully in the video, but briefly for text here, this is an open group which meets to play with deliberately no preparation. They arrive at a few parameters of play through discussion for a little while, then play for about an hour. Once done, that’s done, and the next meeting starts from scratch.
From my perspective, without any implication of project or product-oriented workshopping, they are fully engaged in game design – of the right kind. I’ve designed all my classes in the context that design is a subroutine of play, and practically simultaneously with that coursework, that very principle has been enthusastically in practice, as organized by one of the best qualified persons to do it whom I know.
Anyway, watch the video. I disclose fully that I was skeptical – when Simon told me, “yeah, we’re meeting with no GM and no mechanics,” the chorus of differently-toned alarm bells in my head was deafening. But then again, I’ve played several of his games, and there is no shred of no-rules blither in any of them … so I said, “let’s see what you mean.” As it turns out, it means a lot.
Last point: Simon is also offering to help and participate with anyone who’d like to do this in English too!
(dammit, I misspelled it in the videos. I’ll fix that as soon as I can)
5 responses to “Hantverks play”
Thanks for a great conversation!
I love talking about Hantverksklubben, because it's something that really excites me. It's the most interesting thing I'm doing in gaming right now. I'd love to hear if people have any comments and thoughts.
I forgot to mention that I also wrote a book (in Swedish) about GM-less freeform. It's free to download in PDF or EPUB, and can be bought for production cost plus shipping from Lulu (I don't make any money from it, so don't buy it to "support me"): http://simonpettersson.com/spelledarlos-friform/
Interested
Simon, I'm totally interested into doing this!
Alright! Maybe we’ll try and
Alright! Maybe we'll try and set up an English session to try it out. If you know anyone else who is interested, you can invite them, too. Maybe I'll check with some of my French-speaking friends to see if anyone is interested.
Maybe the easiest thing would be to add me on Discord (Simon Pettersson#3627) and we can continue the conversation there. And that goes for anyone else who reads this and is interested (You, too, Helma!).
Interesserat!
att lyssna på det här seminariet har väckt min nyfikenhet även på en glöjdhet fredag kväll.
Jag skulle verkligen vilja försöka mig på experimentet att spela utan mekanik och säkert skulle jag kunna lära mig massor om både mig och rollspelandet. Enda problem, jag är blyg, jag är osäkert om jag kan göra det, jag ser mig fortfarande som nybörjare när det gäller rollspel, jag har inga designambitioner och har bara börjat nosa på att leda rollspel för andra, så jag undra om jag ens är del av målgruppen här.
Tillkommer att jag visserligen är hyffsat bra på svenska efter över 20 år i landet, men jag har hittills enbart spelat på engelska. Få se vad framtiden har att erbjuda, men en sak är säkert. Jag kommer att slucka spelrapporterna när de kommer hit.
short version in English: I'm hyped, I'm interested, if you ever do it in English for people here I'm in. This was a great seminar to listen to.
Helma, du är mer än välkommen
Helma, du är mer än välkommen att hänga på och spela med oss på svenska om du vill. Jag lovar att det är en prestigelös grupp där alla är välkomna. Men om du föredrar att spela på engelska så kan vi såklart ordna det, också. Verkar ju som att Greg är intresserad.