[UA] UA Finland (longish)

Ville Halonen ville.halonen at helsinki.fi
Fri Mar 21 08:45:33 PST 2003


Susan Dohnim <bibadoo at hotmail.com> wrote:
> I'm also interested in what UA campaigns look like in other countries --

MUAC runs in Seattle for whatever reason, but from time to time I've 
thought of running a game in Finland -- so here's my Finnish two cents, if 
anyone's interested. Oh, wait. They're Euro cents. 

I'm ashamed of myself as I haven't read our national epic Kalevala, but if 
anyone's interested in different kinds of myths, go for it. Tolkien was a 
huge fan. Sung spells, fishbone instruments, the great artifact 
Sampo: "[...] he who possesses the Sampo receives prosperity and all good 
things. The loss of the Sampo, on the other hand, portends ruin", 
http://www.finlit.fi/kalevala/finfoeng15.htm. A good thing for a modern 
mechanomancer to try to imitate. IRL a bank has taken the name, for example.

For the summary of the story, see 
http://www.finlit.fi/kalevala/finfoeng8.htm

And why would anyone want to run anything in Finland? Here's a few 
specifics:

1) The one they tell the tourists: hot summers with lots of sun and dark, 
cold winters. Especially in Lappland, where the sun doesn't get up for 
weeks. Santa Claus lives there, in Korvatunturi -- not North Pole! I guess 
you could make a fanatic cult around that, although it might get a little 
too comic.

2) It's relatively safe in here. The papers have made the impression that 
violence is on the rise, but it's been on the same level for two decades. 
Well, we had our first (?) car-bomb last year, and some MC's have had their 
little wars, but nothing major. I guess a waking tiger would be a real 
sight here: "Oh my God, where is this world going to?!"

3) Immigrants are quite a new phenomenon in here. We don't have any non-
white "MPs" (except for one jew), and the foreigners are generally in low-
paying jobs, if at all employed. Many people blame them for a lot of the 
trouble we've been having. This is strengthened by national pride and war 
history: "Our fathers didn't fight the Russians so that foreigners could 
take jobs from decent Finns!" Imagíne what a hard time they'd be having if 
the Tiger awoke. (Okay, maybe I'm exaggerating the negative attitude, but 
we have a sexist-racist professional boxer-writer in our parliament; just 
elected, so I'm quite shocked)

4) Small towns. Helsinki is the capital, and has about a half million 
residents. Six million or so in total.

5) Cell phones everywhere. Almost.

There's a starter.

-V

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