Mike Pohjola bio:
Mike Pohjola has written two novels, three table-top roleplaying games, several theatre plays, several larps at art festivals and for fun, some short films, digital games, interactive projects, and lots of other stuff. He has founded two award-winning companies, that together have won an International Emmy Award for Best Interactive Tv Service (The Truth About Marika), two Interactive Rockies (Conspiracy For Good) and a Prix Europa (The Forest of Babel).
Pohjola was born in Ulvila on the coast of the Bothnic Gulf, and has since lived in Naantali, Turku and finally Helsinki, gradually making his way south and east on the Finnish coastline. If this goes on, he’ll live in St Petersburg by the end of the decade. He is married to film producer Elina Pohjola, and together they have a one-year-old son Aslan.
Pohjola has been a guest of honor at several fantasy, anime and roleplaying conventions around the world including cities like ń in Poland, New Jersey in the US, Lucca in Italy, Meinz in Germany, and Tampere in Finland. He has also given speeches and keynotes in countless transmedia conferences ranging from Ontario to Lapland.
Together with Christopher Sandberg, Mike Pohjola has founded the Stockholm-based media house The company P. Through the company, Pohjola has co-operated with Hollywood showrunners such as Joss Whedon and Tim Kring. He has written and designed participatory dramas, interactive experiences and live events taking place in England, Zambia, Sweden, United States, all around Europe, and internationally online.
With his wife Elina Pohjola, he has a production company called Pohjola-filmi focusing on northern and Nordic cinema. Their short film The Forest of Babel won a Prix Europa Award in Berlin in 2010. The film is about three children in Lapland, each speaking a European language that has no official status in the EU – Kurdish, Basque and Northern Sami. The Forest of Babel is still touring festivals all around Europe. Pohjola-filmi now has two longer films in post-production.
Mike Pohjola’s first novel Lost Tears (Kadonneet kyyneleet, 2008) combines fairytale fantasy and gritty reality. It’s about a thirteen-year-old girl who used to visit a fantasy world as a child. Or maybe she was crazy. Now she’s treated for schitzophrenia and the fantasy world is in the midst of a horrible civil war.
His second novel Son of Man (Ihmisen poika, 2011) is an autobiographical story about a young man who thinks he might be the second coming of Jesus Christ. His world-view is influenced in part by the Bible, in part by Star Trek - The Next Generation. The young would-be Jesus encounters girls, Dungeons&Dragons, heavy metal, larp, political activism, communal living, lots of priests, corrupt politics, graffiti, strange Christian cults, goth clubs, and might even end up dying for the sins of the world.
Pohjola’s first tabletop roleplaying game was The Age of Storm (Myrskyn aika, 2003), a fantasy game about people living inside an evil empire trying to overthrow the tyranny. The pan-European larp Dragonbane (2006) was set in the world of The Age of Storm.
His second RPG was Star Wreck Roleplaying Game (2006), based on the Finnish sci-fi parody film series Star Wreck. It was also a parody of the official Star Trek Roleplaying Game, and a whole lot of science fiction cliches. The game is available as a free PDF (without the great art) here: http://rpg.starwreck.com/
His latest and most personable roleplaying game Star (Tähti, 2007), is about a Maoist mutant girl band in the near future. Instead of dice the conflicts are solved by reading and intepreting fortune cookies.
This January saw the premiere of Pohjola’s heavy metal stage show 1827 – Infernal Musical. It’s a grand story about a the Great Fire of Turku in, yes, 1827. The songs are heavy metal classics from Iron Maiden, Metallica, KISS, Judas Priest, and the like, as well as Finnish songs from Nightwish, Lordi, Teräsbetoni, Timo Rautiainen and others. The book for the musical was written by Pohjola, an epic adventure with romance, horror, sword fights, despair and saving the world. All the performances were sold out and the musical got rave reviews from critics. Pohjola is currently turning the story of the musical into a novel.
In roleplaying circles Pohjola is also known as the designer and game master of several larps, the writer of several theoretical or practical articles on roleplaying, and the creator of the infamous Manifesto of the Turku School. Which can be found here: http://www.iki.fi/mikep/turku/
On top of that, Pohjola spends his time writing film scripts, working on new novels, teaching game design at the MediaLab in the Aalto University School of Art and Design, and playing roleplaying games.
http://www2.uiah.fi/~mpohjola/