Ash Kreider examines found family and ideas of belonging with Our Travelling Home, or their examination of toxic masculinity in the grueling epic war fantasy of The Watch. Avery Alder provides us with space to examine notions of queer survival in hardship in the post-apocalyptic Dream Aksew, a discussion of messy teen interpersonal relationships with Monsterhearts, or the tools to examine our own identities in a poetic form with Variations on Your Body. Many game designers are creating art which examines Gender-Based Violence (GBV), the patriarchy, the social aspects of sexuality and gender or imagine alternative social structures we could live within. However, there are artists working in the tabletop gaming space which seek to challenge dominant narratives.
Like in most art forms, the blockbusters of the gaming sphere usually replicate patriarchal ruling class ideology.
Those playing will pick up this outcome and carry on running with it until the game rules throw a curve again. The outcome of these rules then informs the players as to the direction the narrative should take. Here, the rules of the game ask choices to be made, cards drawn, tokens moved, dice rolled or some other activity to be completed. Narrative is created by the players up until some suggestion requires the “game” element of the “Role-Play Game” to kick in. Those sitting down to play draw a magic circle around themselves they agree to social conventions and rules to use in the creation of a shared narrative (usually done by agreeing upon which game to play) however, nobody knows what will occur in that space during play. While many arts have a (generally) well-defined boundary between creation and consumption, the line between artist, performer and audience overlap when playing a ttRPG. Everything from fictional worlds and flights of fancy through to political ideas or our expressions of self. Nowadays, ttRPGs offer a unique means to create a fictional space where we are granted permission to explore all kinds of imagined alternative realities. Image Credit: AI generated image using Stable Diffusion The re-emergence of the spirit of creativity found in these earlier games can be seen in the way ttRPGs expanded beyond the traditional scope of play and game style set out by D&D. However, roots can be found further back in a wide range of parlour games and structured group storytelling activities. Most mainstream tabletop role-play games (ttRPGs) have their family tree lead back to the combination of wargaming and fantasy fiction which spawned Dungeons & Dragons (D&D). Examining gender-based violence through tabletop roleplay games by Tanya Floaker
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