Follow-Up Interview on the German Worldgame Magira

A major theme that has developed on this blog is that of the beauty--and yes, fun--of a shared world-building experience. Invariably when talking about Tekumel or Glorantha is the comparison of those world's broad, expansive visions to that of Tolkien.

But what those observers often don't get, or at least state, is that the nature of gaming in a world, even ones that have fine level of detail courtesy courtesy of a single creator and final authority, invariably makes that world a collective experience. Hundreds of Tekumels and Gloranthas have existed in varying degrees of canonical imitation.

What I find most interesting about our recent exploration of the German-Austrian worldgame Magira  is that since 1966 this world has allowed thousands of participants a chance to build a corner of that world—and as you will see in this following (pun somewhat intended) interview a chance to fight for your collectively-shared nation in that open world.

Thanks to the recent articles here on Magira I received some great and helpful responses from German readers. One of them was from a long-time participant in the fantasy society that founded Magira, the Fellowship of the Lords of the Lands of Wonder (FOLLOW). His “character name” in Magira is Dhokaj.

Hill Cantons: Can you tell me about the history of FOLLOW? How did it start? What were the society's goals?

Dhokaj: FOLLOW was founded in 1966 by Hubert Strassl (aka Hugh Walker), Eduard Lukschandl, and Axel Melhard. They wanted to create a club about fantasy literature (which was practically non-existent in Germany at that time).

They also had the idea of a structure that resembled medieval European society with its nobles and knights. They wanted to have a hierarchy in which you could rise by being active (writing stories, etc.)

Therefore they founded “Clans” that represented realms, nations or civilizations. Each Clan had a “Lord” or a “Lady” who was the leader of the clan (the top of the hierarchy) and a crest, normally with an animal as a symbol.

HC: How did Magira start? When and how did Armageddon and other games begin?

D: The first Armageddon boardgame took place in 1968. This marks the beginning of the world Magira and of the Ewiges Spiel, the “Eternal Game”, that is still being played today. They needed a game plan and created the Old World of Magira (the one you posted in your blog) as a hex map for that purpose.

So Magira is a fantasy world that contains the civilizations that are represented by the Clans. Each Clan has the right to take part in the Eternal Game to defend its territory or to wage war on others.

Each member of a clan represents a personality of the people that is simulated by their clan. But this is not a role playing approach in the form of rules. It is more a literary approach, so the personalities could be a slave on a galley, a mighty demon or a skilled bard–this depends on the clan you're in.

An assault on the Citadel of the Gods in Armageddon

HC: Who is involved with FOLLOW and Magira in current years? What kinds of activities do you do?

D: At the moment Follow is made up of 78 clans but not all of them are active and not all of them are taking part in the eternal game. But the Eternal Game is still being played once a year for three days and what is played is the basis for the political structure and the historical development of the world Magira.

There are roughly 400 to 500 fellows (members of FOLLOW) and the clans range from 1 to 40 members.

The activities cover a very wide range from playing Armageddon to creating costumes, writing stories, composing and performing music, role playing and so on.

Map and Links for Magira and Midgard

Unfortunately nearly all meaty information for things Magira and Midgard is in German. For all us hapless non-German speakers—hey, if it was in Spanish, Czech, or Slovak I would have it already covered—I am working on getting some translations up in the following month or two.

Big thanks to the kindly folks who have already stepped forward to help—we can always use more.

Links:

Empires of Magira and Adventures in Magira here 

Midgard here  and here 

FOLLOW (the fantasy society with Tolkein leanings that kicked this off) here 

Armageddon (the complicated massive mini/board game pictured below that has some continous games reputedly lasting over 30 years) here and here (English info, linked to yesterday, here )

How Empire of the Petal Throne Helped Birth German Roleplaying

Yesterday, Irbyz threw out a tasty bit in his comments here about the worldgame Magira that can't be ignored by a Tekumelphile like me.

Magira is a complicated multi-layered business. First created as an open-world fantasy experiment in the 60s by the German-Austrian fantasy society FOLLOW (Fellowship of the Lords of the Lands of Wonder), it remains running in a diminished form to this day. Magira has been built in the imaginations of its thousands of participants in a crazy-quilt variety of ways: miniatures/board hybrid games like Armageddon, play-by-mail games, collective fiction, LARPs, costume play, and, yes, tabletop rpgs.

Indeed, I had read several times over that the worldgame didn't just spawn an entry into German-language role-playing, it spawned the first commercially-available German pen-and-paper rpg game. Arriving in 1981 as a thick 216-page manual, Midgard has chugged along up to the present through four editions. Like many second-generation American fantasy rpgs of that era the game has been described as evolving from a variant D&D into an increasingly more complicated system.

I had also read a few times in passing that M.A.R. Barker's Tekumel had had some influence on the Magira experiment and always assumed that this influence was in the world-building department. Much of the world's collective identity had been created by it's many players who had assumed commanding positions in the various player-founded imaginary nations. Most of these nations had stand-ins to real-world equivalents and like Barker, the influences of India and China prevailed over western European.

I was wrong.

Actually I was wrong twice over in my assumptions. I was wrong about Midgard being the first German rpg. Midgard's author, Jürgen Franke, it seems had released a small-circulation set of rules titled Empires of Magira in 1978 that should be awarded that distinction.

Turns out I was wrong too about Barker's influence. Empires of Magira wasn't just influenced by Empire of the Petal Throne's world-building, it was EPT. Literally.

At first glance, parsing through the garbling of a Google translation it looked to me like Franke had adopted a few rules from EPT here and there--percentile-based attributes, spell names, torch-bearing slaves, “eyes”, etc.--maybe even lifted a few Sutherland illustrations (see the EOM pages right).

Noticing the handful of rule section numbers and their corresponding themes, I compared them to the original EPT rulebook. Sure enough they were all direct matches. In fact,  Franke didn't even bother to translate into German certain English terms like "hit dice" and "damage dice".


Seems EOM was basically that very thing a few small group of old schoolers have been kicking around recently, an EPT clone divorced from Tekumel.

Interestingly, Midgard (which separated itself from Magira in 1987) looks like it contains trace elements of its EPT origins, such as percentile attributes, to this day.

And that my friends is at least part of the story about how EPT wasn't just the first link in the chain of English-language Tekumel games, but helped spawn a lasting line of games on the other side of the pond. 

A big hearty thank you to Irbyz/Harami/David for his yeoman's work in digging up this (and other) stuff in the first place.