Magnus Seter started playing role-playing games in the 1980s. Just like me and so many other kids who grew up in that a decade. My first roleplaying game was Dungeons and Dragons. Magnus played Drakar och Demoner ('Dragons and Demons'). The difference is that he grew up in Sweden, I grew up in Denmark. Where the US tabletop rpg Dungeons and Dragons swept over the rest of the world, it didn’t get a foothold in Sweden. A young Swede named Fredrik Malmberg cornered the market with his game Drakar och Demoner, sold in every toy store in Sweden and thus invading the home of every Swedish teenage boy who preferred reading and rolling dice over running and playing ball.
Today Swedish publisher Free League crowdfunds multimillion pen and paper role-playing games of top tier IPs such as Blade Runner, Alien, and Lord of the Rings as well as IPs rooted in Sweden (Mutant, Coriolis). The two man hobby project Mörk Borg became a breakthrough brand spawning thousands of derivative works and products. A plethora of small and medium sized publishers publish games in Swedish for the local market.
For the first time in English
The story of how Sweden became a major player in the niche market of pen and paper roleplaying games otherwise dominated by US game designers have been told before in Swedish. With his book Outside the Box, Magnus Seter tells the story for the first time in English and closes the loop back to where the hobby began in the flat frozen US midwest.
The 250 page hardcover book recounts the events chronologically from Fredrik Malmberg's Äventyrspel to Free League. Rich on quotes from many of the key players, Magnus draws on his rich network and deep personal history with the subject to give us a unique and personal account of how the story unfolded.
Not structured by topic for bite sized browsing, it’s a book to sit down in a cosy corner and read from cover to cover. Here and there the text takes small asides to explain a game or a concept in a bit more detail. As messy as real life history is, it’s easy to get lost in parallel events and the people and concepts interweaving over the four decades the book cover. However, I think Magnus strikes a fine balance between detail and pace. A fine selection of full colour images brings depth to the words.
"One common thread that run through interaction with all Swedish game creators [...] is the passion they display for creating the games they like, and not necessarily the games that will sell to a large audience [...]"
Outside the Box, page 248.
The book ends on a high note. New generations of game designers and publishers have entered the scene. People creating and publishing games not for commercial goals but for the love of it. A open and welcoming community of game designers and publishers that propels each other forward.
Well worth a read
There are many other aspects of the history of tabletop roleplaying games in Scandinavia. Game conventions. Live action role-playing. Play culture and local game clubs. Games and scenarios written for play and never published. This book focuses on Swedish publishers and the games they have published. It’s well worth a read. Well done, Magnus.
Outside the Box: How Sweden conquered the world of role-playing games by Magnus Seter. Fandrake, 2024. ISBN 978-91-986942-8-4. I found my copy in Alphaspel for 299:- SEK. PDF is available internationally.