The Golden Dragon award for the year 2018 has been awarded to Juhana Pettersson, a game designer, author and a long-term active member in the Finnish role-playing game scene.
Pettersson is known both for designing tabletop role-playing games (e.g. The Valley of Eternity and Chernobyl, Mon Amour), as well as for his involvement in designing various live-action role-playing games. These include LARPs such as End of the Line and Enlightenment in Blood based on the World of Darkness series by White Wolf, Parliament of Shadows which was played at the European parliament and around Brussels, as well as Halat hisar, a Finnish-Palestinian collaboration project about living under siege.
Pettersson is also known as the Editor-in-Chief of the Roolipelaaja role-playing game magazine between 2007 and 2009, as the author of Roolipelimanifesti (“The Role-Playing Game Manifesto”) and as a game journalist. In the role-playing game scene Pettersson is known for running the Society for Nordic Roleplaying, an organisation publishing translations of non-English language role-playing games in Finnish, new games by Finnish designers in English, as well as producing larps. Pettersson has been actively involved in building bridges between the live-action role-playing and tabletop role-playing communities for over 20 years.
– Receiving the Golden Dragon award is an enormous honour, especially for someone like me who was grew up in the Finnish role-playing game scene, Pettersson rejoices.
– My humble opinion is that non-digital role-playing games and LARPs are at the forefront of innovation when it comes to finding new ways for people to meet each other, be creative together and create meaningful, influential experiences. The Finnish role-playing game scene is surprisingly large and vibrant on an international scale, and it has been a great joy to be a part of its journey.
Golden Dragon award
The Golden Dragon is an award given out annually at Ropecon. The award was established in 2003 and it is given out for long-term contributions in the field of role-playing games, miniature wargaming, card games or board games, or for other distinguished advancements for supporting and developing gaming culture.
Past recipients of the Golden Dragon award:
2003: Lauri ja Jyrki Tudeer
2004: Mika ”Magus” Laaksonen
2005: Ville ”Burger” Vuorela
2006: Risto ”Nordic” J. Hieta
2007: Esko ”ELF” Vesala
2008: Niko ”GNiko” Mikkanen
2009: Kalle ”Killeri” Kivimaa
2010: Mikko ”Mike” Pohjola
2011: Markus Montola ja Jaakko Stenros
2012: Toni Niittymäki ja Markus Bremer
2013: Kersti Juva
2014: Johanna Virtanen
2015: Mikko Saari
2016: Miska Fredman
2017: Johanna Koljonen