We bring an announcement. The roleplaying Festival, Fastaval, is now open for summaries for anyone, who wants to present a roleplaying-scenario at the convention. Fastaval is a Danish roleplaying festival taking place during the Easter. The convention caters to all sorts of roleplaying games, though traditionally the emphasis is on various kinds of tabletop roleplaying – systemless, freeform, parlor larp, indie, story game, traditional etc. – and now is the chance to apply to present a game at Fastaval, the leading Danish roleplaying convention. 

And now the formal announcement:

Summaries for Fastaval

Once again, it is time to think about roleplaying scenarios for Fastaval. The last couple of years we’ve received a large number of summaries, and we sincerely hope the trend will continue, so we’ll be able to offer a great and varied selection of RPGs in 2012. Send us your idea as a summary, so you may contribute to the big con in 2012.

Formalities

The summaries must be sent to the two scenario coordinators, Kristoffer Rudkjær and Klaus Meier Olsen at: rollespil@fastaval.dk no later than Thursday, September 15, at 23:59 (GMT+1).

The finished scenarios must be sent to Kristoffer and Klaus no later than February 15, 2012.

Please note: Over the last many years, there’s been a very loose deadline discipline. For FV2012 we will enforce a tight deadline for scenarios. Therefore, we are willing to cancel scenarios, if we haven’t received them on February 15.

Summaries and the writers behind them

Primarily, we look at the presentation of your idea. A summary is a short piece of text that describes what sets your scenario apart from others, what makes it awesome, and what the players will experience by playing it. You can read more about the form in Mikkel Bækgaard’s fine description from 2005 here (only in Danish): Den gode synops

In addition, we need the following information:

• Type (scenario, novella or grind night – see below)
• Number of players
• Number of Gamemasters
• Expected playing time
• Name, e-mail and phone for alle participating scenario-authors *

What’s new this year?

During the last couple of years, we’ve tried some new things regarding scenarios for Fastaval. This year, there’s not much new under the sun, except for a tuning of last year’s initiatives. Therefore, in relation to the creative processes, we will once again focus on workshops, sparring partners, as well as host a weekend for the writers. We will focus specifically on better and ongoing communication between writers and the people in charge, as well as maintaining a very hard deadline. For our program, we will continue last year’s division between standard scenarios, novellas and the very successful Grind Night concept – with minor adjustments of the latter.

Novellas

The average length of scenarios is currently 3-5 hours. This creates a challenge in regards to our “block” system on the full days, as there isn’t enough time for three blocks, but two blocks would leave too much “gameless” time. To solve this problem, Fastaval introduced a novella block last year, which we will use in FV2012 as well.

So, again this year, we are looking for summaries for novella scenarios. A novella scenario is typically meant for four players or five players without a gamemaster, but we will not make any requirements in this regard. We will, however, require, that the scenario can be played in max two hours, including introduction and wrap-up. Novellas are, in other words, a somewhat limited scenario idea, perhaps with an oblique approach or point of view, that works fantastic for 1½ hours, but not for 5. In addition, it is a slightly more approachable project for e.g. debutants or scenario writers with kids or exams. We are looking forward to see what exciting ideas this format will produce!

Novellas participate in the Otto Awards on equal terms with all other scenarios.

Grind night

Last year, we offered a particular night block for games with horror, fright and grind. It was so successful, we’ll be bringing it back for Fastaval 2012. We will, however, make two minor adjustments. Firstly, the block will start earlier (but don’t worry, it will still be late night gaming), and secondly, we will only accept grind night novellas. That way, it will be possible for players to participate in more than one game (and the writers will have more player groups). Practically speaking, the players will still sign up for the block and be allocated to games in the “Midnight Lounge”.

We are looking for novella scenarios inspired by gore films and late night B TV shows with monsters, murderers and darkness, etc. It can be horror, it can be comical or very grim. The most important thing is, it focuses on the terrifying.

Grind night novellas participate in the Otto Awards on equal terms with all other scenarios.

Live

Lastly, we would like to briefly mention live scenarios. Live is more than welcome on Fastaval, both in standard blocks and as novellas or as part of the Grind Night. So, send us your summary, and we will look it over. Please note, that Fastaval has a live coordinator, who will help with the practicalities of live scenarios.

Live scenarios participate in the Otto Awards on equal terms with all other scenarios.

Selection

So, this year we ask for three types of summaries: the “classical” scenario – which is longer than a novella and can be played in a normal 6 hour block, novellas for our 2 hour blocks, and finally grind night novellas for the grind night block Friday night. Some ideas may break these broad guidelines, in which case we will look at it.

Just as last year, we will try to find a reasonable correlation between number of scenarios and gaming blocks. Because of this, we will be forced to choose between the submissions based on the following three parameters:

Spread

We want a broad selection of scenarios in terms of genre, system and player accessibility. We also want a broad selection of writers, so we have both newcomers, intermediates and old veterans in this year’s program.

This year, there might be cases of having a good idea for a normal scenario, that can’t be accepted for space reasons, but which we think would fit nicely as a novella or on Grind Night, or vice versa. In these cases, we will contact the writer and ask if he/she will participate under these slightly changed circumstances.

Finally, the past two years we have had cases of writers submitting more than one summary. This presents us with a dilemma: the more scenarios from one writer at Fastaval, the less scenarios from different writers. This will be taken into account when we make our selection, which means you must have some really good ideas to get more than one scenario included in the program.

Maturity of the Idea

The more developed the idea, the more likely it will be accepted. A fully developed idea increases the chance of having a ready scenario in February.

Quality

We want the best scenarios possible, to give the con-goers at Fastaval the best playing experiences.

Response and Presentation of the Program

We receive the summaries on September 15 and respond no later than October 1. Shortly hereafter we will publish the program on Fastaval.dk.

 

Best regards,

Klaus & Kristoffer

* It is possible to write under a pseudonym, but the scenario coordinators need all the requested information.

So, are you tempted? I am. I plan to participate with a summary on my alternate history love story about a young theologian investigating strange rumors of witchcraft in the town of Køge in the year 1810.