Tag: LARP

Five or So Questions with Moyra Turkington on War Birds

Today I have an interview with Moyra Turkington of Unruly Designs talking about her amazing project, War Birds, currently on Kickstarter. 
Tell me a little about War Birds. What excites you about it?

War Birds is a gigantic passion project for me, and so just about everything about it gets me excited. J

It was going on twelve years ago that I was in a discussion about what makes a flying ace a flying ace (It’s generally five aerial kills, but rules vary based on country). I did what all internet era folks do and looked it up on Wikipedia. There I found a list of flying aces of World War II and in it was a name that sparked immediate interest: Lydia Litvak. A female flying ace??!! How on earth didn’t I know about that? The link was red though (there was no bio page for her) so I started feverously searching the internet. Not only was she a flying ace, she was a flying ace way back in WWII! The White Lily of Stalingrad – part of the 586th Fighter Regiment of the Air Defense Force of the Soviet Union, and there were others, lots and lots of others that flew with her!

This started a very long fascination for me about WWII and history in general – about what women did and really what we were and are. The more I read, the more I wanted to know. When I was in school and they taught the history of Women and War, it was an addendum – one story. Rosie the Riveter, the middle class white woman who came to work in the factories to free a man to fight and through that, heralded a new era of economic independence for women. But that’s an extremely narrow story, and not an entirely true one.

The stories I read were about women who served on the front lines as nurses and as ambulance drivers, snipers and tankers, spies and code-breakers! And of course I read about the prisoners and POWs and civilian women whohad the war come down on their heads. As I read, a much fuller multiplicity of women’s experience in the era started to unfold before me. I started to think about how we choose whose stories get told, and how we determine who the heroes are. I started thinking of the hardships of women on the home front, I started thinking about the courage of women in war zones. And I started thinking that I had to do something to make that story wider. To let other women experience the joy I had in finding out that we were always greater than I’d been taught we were.

And larp and freeform is a fantastic way to give people access to that experience. To become it, to feel it thumping in your chest. To really understand the courage, the compassion, and the resilience of the women whose shoulders we stand on.

And that’s just one of the things I love about this project.


When Against the Grain is happening, how does the structure and any mechanization of the game promote the vibe of the game and interaction between players?
The aim in Against the Grain was to create a story that was emotionally engaging and satisfying to play, that also acted as an exploratory model of how intersectional bias works. The game isn’t just about a moment in history where a bunch of random racists decided to launch a hate strike. It’s about everyday people that are a complex product of an unequal and unfair system, that have real struggles and who think they’re just doing what they need to survive. And it’s about how they will end up marginalizing others for what they think is their own survival. It’s about how what we want and think we need is often in direct opposition with equality because we’ve never been taught to find a better way.

To support that, in designing the structure of the game I contextualized the characters to help modern players feel like they could advocate for their character goals — even when they strongly disagree with them — to allow them to play functionally and in doing so, to create a situation of dramatic tension. I carefully calibrated the characters into a position of scarcity to ensure that the game wouldn’t result in easy answers, and I encouraged embodiment and emotional investment in that scarcity with physical mechanics that keep the pressure on. I borrowed on Nordic larp techniques to put tools in the facilitator’s hands to ensure the players could not escape the pressures and social context of their world. Perhaps most importantly in a game with particularly difficult subject matter, I framed the whole game in a context of transparency, safety and community to help players approach the game vulnerably and take as much away from the experience as possible.

You have some amazing stretch goals, and some great goals already hit. When looking for creators and authors for games, what did you look for, and what did you expect from them in theme and development?
I looked for passion — people that were really excited about the stories of women in the era, and people who could really connect with the goals of the project. I also tried my best to look for diversity across multiple axis points: in designers, in games, in the stories we were telling and who and how they were being represented. The base framework I put down in front of the designers was this: each game should explore a story about an experience or contribution that was real for women in WWII. The game should explore what opportunities the war provided to the women involved and also to look at the costs of the opportunity. The game should illustrate how it affected who the women were, how society’s view of them changed, what they could do, and what they could become.

What is your favorite moment in the experience of creation, research, and application of the games in War Birds?

Favorites are too hard! I’ll have to give you a few:
  • As a designer, the eureka moment of figuring out how Against the Grain was going to work and then watching playtest group after playtest group engage with it vulnerably and meaningfully, and tell me about the power of the experience. This was despite the fact that I thought there was a good chance that no one would choose to play the game due to its difficult subject matter. It taught me that big design risks really are worth taking.
  • As a creator, the moment I played We Were WASP at Fastaval. I was deep in gleeful research for an British Air Transport Auxiliary game called Spitfire Sisters when I saw the preview in the Fastaval program. I had an insecure, frustrated, competitive response to seeing it there, as creators sometimes do. But after being powerfully moved by playing the game, I had to let all of that go. I asked Ann that very night if she would consider submitting We Were WASP to the anthology, because she’d gone and written the game I wanted to write, and done it better than me. It made me totally recalibrate how I defined success on the project, and the project is 1000% better for it.
  • As a curator, the moment I read the first draft of Kira’s Mobilize. Including Ann was easy, because her game was already complete and my experience in play was proof it was the right decision. Kira was the first person I asked to write a game from scratch. I saw Kira talking on social media about _Coming Out Under Fire,_ a book I had on my (way too long) research list. It was clear that she was a right fit for the team by her approach to the history. I approached her to write a game and she committed right away. I always had faith she would do well, but tend to hold my breath when a thing so close to my heart is in someone else’s hands. The day I got her first draft I rushed home to read it, and it was great! The experience taught me that I can and should approach people to collaborate in creative projects, and it allowed me to get to a new level of trust in giving control away.

Finally, what do you hope people get out of playing the games presented in the War Birds Kickstarter?
I’m ambitious in my hope.

First and foremost, I want them to have great play experiences! I hope they connect with the games and the stories they’ll be telling, and I hope they serve as compelling communal experiences with their fellow players. I want the games to help them engage with history: I hope that play will expand the story of what women are and do and allow players to see the women that enabled the core infrastructure of the war through their work both at home and on the front and have a new appreciation for why it was important. And I hope the games are all thought provoking in their individual ways and individual themes. I hope they help us appreciate how hard we have fought to get here we are, and how far we still have left to go.

This post was supported by the community on patreon.com/briecs.

Five or So Questions with Avonelle Wing on Convention Organizing

Tell me a little about what you do as a convention coordinator. What’s exciting about it?

What do I do? that’s a very complicated question, because I wear many hats, and the list of things I do could read like a resume.
From the practical and very concrete perspective, my job is to make sure the resources are available for the convention staff to provide the most satisfying convention experience possible to the broadest segment of our population. Among the things I do are:
  • Remembering to buy the right envelopes (peel and stick, #10), card stock, poster board, tape, packing tape, duct tape, and knowing which brand and why.
  • Keeping track of ridiculous things, like remotes, wires, plugs, components – making sure everything gets packed to and from every con, and I know where each important piece is. all the time. 
  • Refreshing our extension cord supply. 
  • Counting bed spots accurately so senior staff and guests all have a place to sleep.
  • Soliciting and tracking prize support and library copies of games.
  • Keeping track of special guests and making sure they have satisfying experiences at the con. 
  • Maintaining a social media presence so the conventions are people, not faceless corporate entities to attendees. 
My brain holds a million vital little details that mean we don’t ahve to reinvent the wheel. and we never have to deal with the experience of buying the wrong duct tape again. (the whole Big Board system fell off the walls at DEXCON. Within hours of putting it up. It’s my job to remember that horror and to make sure we avoid it in the future. 1,000 events on the ballroom floor. oi.)

I talk to game masters. I help piece the schedule together (my husband does the lion’s share of the scheduling and I still get a little swoony when I look at the sheer magnitude of the task he takes on every convention.). I coordinate staff.

On a more ephemeral level, I get to be part of the magic of our community. I am the welcome wagon – I notice when somebody is looking a little lost and I loop them into something exciting. I forge connections, solve problems. When somebody is in the middle of a devastating breakup and needs to hide, they end up in my room, because that’s a safe place to hide and I always feed you after I scrape your sobbing self up off a hallway floor. Our conventions are described by lots of people in our community as “giant family reunions” and I get to make that magic happen. It’s akin to being the eccentric aunt who rents the pavilion, hires the magicians and buys 100lbs of charcoal. The difference is that our community has chosen to be here. and I love them for that.

I get to facilitate our evolution. When somebody comes to me and says “freeform. it’s a thing. we need more of it” I get to say “ok! fill out the form and let’s do it!”

When somebody says “gender. It matters in gaming and we need to talk about it.” I get to say “OK! space, exposure, attention. let’s go.”
18 months later, somebody said the same thing about race. “Great. Let’s talk. Let’s talk long and loud and let’s get angry and let’s do positive things to change our world. Let’s go!”
We hear “old school roleplayers feel lost. we want a home too!” and we launch a convention within a convention to serve them too.
Our job is to be responsive and supportive and encouraging. and I think we do a decent job of it. It’s exciting to me to hear somebody say “I want to…” and to be able to say “and I can help make that happen. I’m excited! let’s go!”

I am often humbled, watching our community support each other. and I get to know that they’ve come together because I’ve given them the venue and the opportunity and the reason to do so.

What is the biggest challenge to hosting a con?
The biggest challenges of any convention lie in the unknowns – will the air conditioning be able to keep up? how many bottles of soda will we blow through this year? The system and process stuff? We’ve got that down, and it’s entirely on us. Once you set the machine in motion, you become dependent on other people to see things through, and on the universe to cooperate.

I drove all the convention badges, the printer and all the other registration materials to a convention once through a storm system that spawned tornadoes. As I drove down the highway, I watched trees falling behind me – it felt cinematic and not as terrifying as it should have been. Those things, you can’t plan for. You just have to keep your head screwed on straight and keep moving.

What do you think is the most valuable advice you could give someone starting their own event?
Talk to other local events. Make sure you’re not crashing their party. Ask them about venues – sometimes there’s a reason an event moved suddenly. Schedule so you’re not stepping on anybody’s toes. Ask for help – Double Exposure is always happy to help a small even negotiate for space and sometimes we even help staff for your first couple of years.

Figure out a reasonable budget and double it.

Carry the best insurance you can possibly afford. Wait. what? insurance? Yes, insurance. Trust me, it’s worth it.

Don’t run by committee. Take personal responsibility for things that go wrong and be generous in sharing the credit for things that go right.

What are your goals with Maelstrom and DEXCON, which are two wildly different cons?

Maelstrom is an experiment, and I’m still sorting out my goals. I need to go back to my brain trust and discuss what worked and what didn’t, and to set community-guided goals.

DEXCON’s goal is, always, to provide the most action-packed, diverse, intense, intimate five days of gaming anywhere. We’ve got the excitement of one of the mega-cons with the comfort and friendliness of a local con.

What’s big for the next year for Double Exposure?
Big… I’m not sure we are ready for much bigger than 2014! We’re up to four conventions a year of our own, plus we’re doing the First Exposure Playtest Hall at Gen Con.

I’m just getting my feet under me when it comes to talking about the importance of social justice – of advocacy and representation. That has become a bigger part of Double Exposure’s program over the last several years, as I’ve realized that we were above the curve, but had more we could be doing. the rest of 2014 and likely most of 2015 is going to be continuing to present the best possible product to our community while refining and advancing our approach to outreach, education and representation. I have so much to learn, and so many brilliant people to learn it from.

I have a still-flickering hope that we will be able to do a larp-oriented project in 2015, but that won’t be decided until we’ve gotten home from Gen Con, at the soonest.

Why do you run these conventions?
Riding home from Gen Con last year, I found myself pondering the fact that these conventions – even with their stress, financial exposure, physical toll, worry and effort – are as close to worship as I come. We create a thing that is ephemeral. It’s temporary, like a play, and when we’re done, we strike the set and we go home. But while they exist, we create something that is as close to a Divine act as possible.

Conventions connect people in a very tangible way. We step outside of our daily lives and enter a space outside of time. We storytell – one of the most human and most sacred of acts. We trade pieces of ourselves. We laugh. we cry. We see friends we only see a couple of times a year, and we pick back up right where we left off. There’s an emotional resonance to conventions that is unlike anything else I’ve experienced.

Also, it’s safe place to be a nerd – to love My Little Ponies. to know the dialogue to every Star Trek movie. to remember every model number of every Terminator to show up on screen, ever. There’s very little fear of mockery or disdain. As somebody who was vexed for being a reader, for being a nerd, for having a grown-up vocabulary, sometimes it moves me to tears to watch folks (often younger folks) come in – a little awkward, a little wound up, a little too much – and to see them unwind, slow down, find their own unique pace. We create a space where we protect each others’ weirdnesses, and share them. It gives folks who find themselves on the fringe at school, at work, in their daily life, a chance to be in the middle of the puppy pile – to be respected, to acknowledged and seen and known.

It’s a calling, and I’ve known that since I first walked into a Double Exposure convention in 1997. I welcome each new face like a companion on this path to carve out a spot of acceptance, creation and joy every few months.

Five or So Questions with Aaron Pirnack on Renaissance Adventures

Check out Renaissance Adventures at www.renaissanceadventures.com!

Tell me a little about Renaissance Adventures. What excites you about it?

We incorporate experiential education into a live-action roleplaying game in a way that kids can have a fantastic time outdoors while developing 21st century skills (such as critical thinking, teamwork, self-esteem, leadership, and so on). We’ve been doing this since 1995 and are excited that others are wanting to join in on our business and educational model.

What type of live-action games do you typically play?

​Our programs are usually fantasy themed with challenges that emphasize a myriad of skills sets. Yes, we do plenty of boffer combat, but each quest has a number of other physical, mental, social, emotional, and ethical challenges packed in. Furthermore, because this is a children’s program, the game also develops 21st century skills of critical thinking, teamwork, ethical reasoning, self-esteem, fitness, and social awareness. I’ve actually found that our live-action games are unique. There is a single storyteller (“Quest Leader”) that leads a small group of six or so “Questers.” As a group, they adventure over the course of an entire week’s day programming (30-40 hours of questing). Then, next time they play, the Questers are in a new group with a new Quest Leader to take them on a new adventure.

What do you think the positive side effects are of your teaching model?

​The children and teens are engaged and motivated to succeed in a dynamic story, and thereby have a passion overcoming its challenges. By couching real-world issues and skills development into the ​framework of a quest challenge, the participants easily intuit the lessons’ importance, context, and self-initiation that is otherwise very difficult to teach in the classroom. Our emphasis is also in experiential education, so the participants reflect upon and redo many of the more difficult challenges. Finally, I believe that setting any lesson into a story means that it is more memorable. That includes historical events (imagine being at the Battle of Waterloo rather than being lectured about it), language arts (imagine writing a story about what your character did), and even mathematics (imagine solving a hexadecimal based puzzle-door that must be opened before the vampire lord’s minions discover the heroes).

What work did you have to do to set up the organization and spread the word?

​I personally have been working for Renaissance Adventures since 2000. By then the company was five years old, but it was still fairly small – just a dozen of us “Quest Leaders” leading groups in Boulder. As word of our glorious adventures spread to more families, I transitioned to become the primary quest and resource writer. Then, in 2009, I become co-director and business manager to help maintain the momentum, help craft a business and marketing plan, and explore options of branching out to other locations.​ Now we have four major locations in Colorado and one in Washington. We have sold a license to utilize our business methods and program resources to a company called Lore Adventures in Michigan; they have been so successful that they are ready to expand into Texas. We are about ready to open the license to a larger pool of “beta licensees” that have a passion for education, youth development, and of course live-action roleplaying games.

How can people support Renaissance Adventures, and who benefits?

​Spread the word of what we do, and should someone want to open up their own Adventure Quest license in their area, we would love to start a conversation about what that looks like. We have spent nearly 20 years perfecting this program and creating resources so that those who want to do what we do can support themselves as a successful business owner without reinventing the wheel. In fact, our business model requires very little overhead cost from both our own pricing as well as equipment and administration costs that a business would have to incur. We truly believe that this could be a great renaissance in experiential education, summer programming, and live-action roleplaying.

Five or So Questions with Moyra Turkington on Fastaval

Tell me a little about Fastaval. What’s got you excited about it?
Fastival is a roleplay and boardgame festival that takes place yearly on the Easter weekend in Denmark (since 1987). New scenarios and board game designs are premiered there, and it is also a friendly competition. This year there were about 700 participants in attendance, playing 34 scenarios and 13 board games that were making their debut.

It was very exciting to have our own game on the program, and to travel there to see it live. They have a phenomenal culture of service and feedback happening in the Fastaval community – I’ve never seen anything like it. Every single person who lays eyes on a game – from the players to the GMs to the Jury who select the nominations for the Otto (Fastaval’s golden penguin equivalent of the Oscar) take the time to provide plentiful, constructive and really remarkably articulated feedback to the designers. They have whole subcultures of support staff that work tirelessly to make the venue happen: maintenance crews, Food and logistics volunteers. informational squads, and a fleet of translators for us international folks.

And the games were phenomenal!

What did you find most valuable about Fastaval’s feedback process?
So many things! Because it is a place where giving feedback is an integrated part of the process, a lot of the feedback was extremely articulate and thoughtful. Because there was so much of it at once we could easily identify trends that would indicate a systemic issue vs. a place where one individual play style didn’t work with the game. Most importantly because there were so many runs happening in so short of a time, it really allow you to measure the breadth of the game and understand how many different stories it could tell, and how reliably. It’s definitely a design process that gets me excited and that I would like to explore again.

What game did you take to Fastaval? Tell me all about it!
Run Them Again is a scenario for five players and a GM. It’s a science fiction space drama about the indifference of the systems we live under, and the cold equations of life within their grasp. Essentially, it is a labour drama; It came out of a conversation Brand and I had when driving through rural Newfoundland, a place that was devastated in economic collapse once in the 70’s and again in the 90’s when the Atlantic northwest cod fisheries bottomed out.

We talked about fishers and farmers and miners and labourers. We talked about my dad working high steel and his dad having to pick up work as a janitor for a while. We discovered we both had mining in our blood: one of his great granduncles died in a cave in. My grandfather went into coma after three tons of rock ruptured his spleen and stayed there for three days till he was dug out. My grandfather’s cave-in resulted in safety reviews, Brand’s granduncle’s death resulted in union strikes and a resulting massacre. We talked about how random that felt. And we made this game.

The characters are long haul space miners, working much like deep sea crab fishers do… going on long dangerous runs to mine valuable minerals from asteroids on ships that have seen too many runs for wages that are shit but the best they can hope for. They wake from cryosleep to find something has gone wrong with the ship, and they have four hours to help right the course and save their lives as the universe gives not one fuck about them.

I was very nervous about designing a new style of game (Danish freeform) for an audience that I had never met before. It was also the first fully co-operatively designed game together. I was worried with all those unknowns that the Fastafolk might look at us like crazy North Americans (that we are), but the game was a hit! The players really enjoyed it, we scored two nominations (Best Storytelling and Jury’s Selection), and took home an Otto (Fastaval’s answer to the Oscar)!

I’m still blown away.

What did you find useful about the logistics at Fastaval?
It was a well run machine – there was always an answer in support of a game or event… and it seemed that no one minded pitching in on the work. Some came just to be part of the work! A side note on our logistics is that the Østerskov Efterskole made itself available for people to stay and we got to take a tour. This is a high school who’sentire curriculum is based on roleplaying! They play everything from steampunk to historical re-enactment to crime dramas and learn all of their math, natural sciences, languages, ethics, history… all of it through larps. They have a full medieval town on the school grounds! It was phenomenal. I can’t imagine what life would be like now had I been able to attend a school like that.

Are you planning to go back? What are you looking forward to doing next time you’re there?
Yes! I hope so. It was amazing fun and full of creative energy and I met so many amazing people doing so many amazing things. I’d look forward to seeing them again, and having the chance to be part of that community for another glimpse in time. I didn’t feel like I had enough time to talk to anyone!

My Design Process, part 1 of ?

A lot of creators talk about their design processes, and since it’s kind of a new thing to me, I wanted to write about this a little. I’m guessing I’ll have more to say about it the farther along I get, so that’s why this is a “part 1.”

Most of the time when I do creative work, I do it on a whim. I’m still learning to create on a schedule and design in windows of time granted by my already busy schedule. I’ll sit down and write a whole bunch and then leave it go or forget about it for a while.

There are two different methods by which I design: solo and collaboratively. We’ll focus on solo for this post.

When I first started working on Clash, I wrote the whole thing in one big swoop and then came back to it and fiddled with it for a while later. This is how it tends to go when I work on my own. I will come up with an idea, basically blow my load, and then take forever to get back to it and really work on it and make it right. It’s even harder when I add in an editorial process, which I think is the biggest challenge for me as a creator. It’s not that I don’t think my work needs to be edited – it does – it’s that the editorial process exhausts me. I feel like I can’t satisfy my editor or anyone giving me feedback. Every comment is like a cut. I’m getting better, but it’s still a huge challenge.

I am also still learning how to effectively research. My current research process for projects involves about 10 open Chrome tabs, open books scattered across my desk, and using my phone to e-mail people for questions while I read. I never read other game books deeply while researching because I don’t want to be too strongly influenced, but I skim and filter through for techniques and tools. I also read other people’s analysis of game rules.

For me, designing is learning. I know I’m still a n00b and that it’s going to continue to be challenging, but I think that I am making good progress. I’m hoping to have Clash as an ashcan at Origins and Gen Con, and soon thereafter take it to crowdfunding. While I’m doing that, we have continued work on Tabletop Blockbuster, and my larp, Girls’ Slumber Party WOO!

Next time I’ll write a little about the differences between designing a froofy story game like Clash, a more traditional style game like Tabletop Blockbuster, and a larp like Girls’ Slumber Party WOO!

Please comment with questions! I like to discuss this kind of thing with my readers. Tell me about your game design process – link me to any blog posts you have done about this subject!

Five or So Questions with Jason Cox

I interviewed Jason Cox about his PhD!

Tell me a little about what you are doing. What has you excited about it?
I am working on my PhD in Arts Education at The Ohio State University, where I am just about to finish my second year. During my time here I have begun to realize the potential to unite a lot of areas I feel very passionately about, namely art, education, and role-playing games. Currently I am designing the proposal I am going to submit for my dissertation, which focuses on using American freeform as the Media of Inquiry for collaborative arts-based research. The general idea is to use the media with arts educators to consider alternative viewpoints within an educational community, such as those held by administrators, students, parents, and other teachers, and to consider how they believe the discourse of power operates in such a setting. Leading up to that I have built several pilot studies into my coursework to experiment with techniques and concepts that might be of particular use to me. My research is a bit of an odd duck, which is slightly terrifying as well as exciting, but I believe it has the potential to do real good in the world and could open up some tools to academia that many artist-researchers have not yet become aware of.

Why American freeform?
The short version is that American Freeform is remarkably accessible, is typically structured in a format that feels in alignment with that of arts-education, and has an assortment of different meta-techniques that can be used to explore conceptual and emotional states. Let me go into a bit more detail though…

By access I mean a few things. Firstly that the narratives American Freeform games normally use as settings are within the realm of understanding of most players, either in terms of emotions experienced or contexts explored, as opposed to the more epic flavor of fantasy larps. The generally minimal rule systems mean that players do not have to be heavily invested in learning complex systems, and because costumes and props are de-emphasized a game can be played with relatively little in the way of expenses or additional planning. All these traits also mean that anyone within the community of play could alter the form with ease, which is important to me because of the the goals I have regarding collaboration.
The format of most American Freeform is to begin a game with workshops that teach techniques that players might use, encourage familiarity between players, and establish an atmosphere that feels safe enough for the players to take a few risks. The games themselves are often intense for individuals, though it is impossible to know what is going on inside and between every character, and the collaborative nature of the media comes back into play. After the game is a period of reflection, often in a form of group discussion, that allows players to discuss their interactions during the game, make meaning of the event, and remind each other that whoever they were in the game they are once again themselves. This parallels a common format for education which goes along the lines of having a pre-assessment, introducing a new concept, working with the concept through a media, and reflecting on the experience. The reflection is where we believe a lot of the education really occurs, because it is the analysis of the experience that allows a student to look for what their next steps might be.
The meta-techniques get past the straight diegetic layer of any given game and explore things like inter-relationships, interior states, and the nature of time. To me they really open up larp as an art form and allow players access to unique states of exploration that are difficult to find in any other art form. They can affect the tone of the game, or create affordances for how different states are shared or explored, or offer opportunities to enrich the collaborative effort that just do not exist otherwise. Because they are so contextually specific they have a fluid nature that is dependent not only on the framework of the game, but on the players who are playing it… returning again to the collaborative focus I am trying to maintain.

Can you tell me about your pilot studies?
Sure! The first one I did was a game meant to examine the works of Michel Foucault I called “What to do About Michael?” Foucault’s ideas focus on the relations between power, knowledge, and authority, and I found that while most people (including myself) could understand that the systems he identified existed they had a harder time admitting to the idea that they themselves might be a part of such a system. So for this game I had players take on the role of different teachers and administrators at an imaginary school where a young male student was running into some difficulties. Each player selected whatever contextual details they wished in terms of age, gender, subject they taught, and their attitude about the school. Leading up to the game they were sent readings by Foucault as well as short narratives I had written about different events “Michael” was involved in. Each event was actually based on events that had really happened to Foucault, including the last one wherein another student was attacked. The actual game took place as a faculty meeting that was specifically discussing the student’s actions and what an appropriate response may be. In the reflection after the game players realized the positions they had taken to defend the institution, interpret Michael’s actions, or interact with one another were all bound up in the systems of power they operated within.

The second and third studies I actually did concurrently. I used the experience of gathering players to play J. Tuomas Haarvianen’s The Tribunal as an exploration for Action Research and to explore different narrative theories, specifically those of David Herman which are tied to cognitive science. Action Research is communally based research wherein problems, methods, and solutions are all identified and explored by the community itself, and I wanted to see if my goals for creating a community of play that was also a community of inquiry were viable. The narrative theory aspect was an examination of how players created and used their characters to support the rhetorical, synthetic, or thematic aspects of the game. In general my conclusion was that for the systems to work as I wanted them to it requires several different games, both in terms of forging a community through shared experience and so they players get to know and trust the people behind the characters. I also realized my own tendency to make assumptions about what players do or do not need, which I suspect is a bad habit I carried over from my time as a classroom teacher.
Most recently I have been doing an independent study and interviewing different people who work with a lot of ideas about role-playing. This is very much a reaction to the realization that there were things about the form that I simply did not know as well as a way to round out my ideas for what I want from the work I will be doing in my dissertation. The very fact that I can talk about any of this with any confidence is due to the kind people who have helped me out with this.

I’d like to hear a little more about the meta-techniques. Which ones do you find most valuable, and why?
My two favorite are probably monologuing and bird-in-the-ear, both of which give a view of a co-created reality that is concurrent with the one the characters are portraying. The general idea behind monologuing is that when a player is either asked to or chooses to monologue (depending on the game) they give a description of thoughts or events that inform on their current experience. I saw a beautiful example of this at a workshop in the Living Games conference where the other players took on roles described in the monologue, which in that case was a grieving parent discussing an experience that might have happened had they not lost their child. Bird-in-the-ear is kind of like having another player act as a “Jiminy Cricket” and whisper thoughts your character is having to you during a scene. It can color your perceptions and inform your actions, though it doesn’t really control them. In a game of Previous Occupants I was in this was used very effectively to keep the tension high and the story moving. In both cases the techniques employ a lot of (surprise!) collaboration, but they also give a peek at the non-diegetic world I referenced earlier and tap into some very strong emotions.

Finally, what do you expect to see going forward from your research? Do you want to continue on with more game research?

In the near term I would like to work with a wider range of people. Right now I am really just planning on working with art educators, but I would like to open it up to other stakeholders (such as parents or administrators) in educational communities fairly soon. I also would like to apply the techniques in other sorts of institutional communities like hospitals, because I think there is a value in the multiple lenses of role-playing that really has not been explored outside of creating simulations. It’s my hope that eventually other people in arts-education will take the media and run with it, do things I have not even begun to imagine yet, and then work with me to create yet more new things.

My answer probably makes my interest in continuing games-based research pretty clear, though when I started my program I never imagined that this is what I would be doing. I am absolutely thrilled by it because it is a place where so many of my interests come together and it is a place where I feel like I can make a real difference. The only thing I find more amazing than being a researcher into what that difference might be is how many people have supported me in my efforts trying to find out.
Thanks Jason! 

Five or So Questions with Jason Morningstar

I interviewed Jason Morningstar of Bully Pulpit Games! Thanks to Jason for his time. 

You’ve been way successful with Fiasco. What’s been the best part of that success?

I’m really proud of the game and love to hear people’s dumb Fiasco stories, particularly when it serves as a gateway drug for people new to roleplaying. I love to see the places people take it, and how they make it their own. That’s very satisfying.

Tell me about Night Witches. Who would enjoy it? What do you want people to get out of the game?
Night Witches is a game about Soviet women who served as bomber pilots during the Great Patriotic War. It’s a crazy focused setting and provides a really interesting feminist window. While as players you experience the terror of conducting actual combat missions in shitty, 20-year-old biplanes, the real heart of the game happens between missions. The Red Army is massively sexist and wants these women to fail, and in many ways that is the greater enemy. There’s a constant tension between retaining your female identity and functioning within this massive masculine war machine. Since it’s an Apocalypse World engine game, that tension plays out directly and mechanically as the fiction unfolds for your group. I have no idea who will enjoy it. I’m always surprised. I take great, great care to make sure you don’t need to be a history nerd to get into it, though. I’ve been working on Night Witches on and off since 2007!

What other projects do you have in progress?
I always have a few things cooking. Beyond Night Witches I am poring over my back catalog of projects that really needed economical short run card production to be viable. Expect to see some of that come out. Medical Hospital, the medical game of medical melodrama, is back on track and in semi-active development. We’ve commissioned a guy you might know, Mr. John Sheldon, to do some art for us. More Fiasco material is coming out in 2014 for sure. I’m also helping with a few Kickstarters and supporting my friends.

The Climb has gotten a lot of great feedback. Do you have plans for more LARPs?
I’m really gratified that people are playing and enjoying The Climb. I remain super excited about the potential of live action play and continue to push at the form, using what I know about tabletop generally and GMless play specifically to inform it. I’m working on three different live action games right now. One, Villa Air-Bel, will get its first playtest at Dreamation. It’s about a bunch of weird American expats who smuggled Jewish intellectuals out of Vichy France in 1940, a true story. Another is a sort of thematic companion piece to The Climb that takes place on a commercial fishing boat in the Gulf of Alaska. A third (man, I need to focus!) is about Mexican villagers coming to grips with the looting of their ancestral tomb.

What is your biggest goal as a game designer right now?
My #1 goal right now is to really understand what live action roleplaying has to offer and cross-pollinate lessons learned between larp and tabletop. This is a tremendously exciting area with many, many opportunities for cool new stuff. Thanks for your questions!

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What a great interview! I’m looking forward to seeing what Jason brings out with Night Witches, Medical Hospital, and more LARPs!