The Roleplaying Realities platform will be a dedicated space for performers, creative technologists, game developers, writers, and grassroots activists to come together and simulate more inclusive, visionary, and radical prospective worlds through the making, workshopping, and distributing of new games and theatrical gameplay experiences in an effort to carve out spaces for socially and politically engaged TTRPG worldbuilding projects for those who have been historically marginalized from the mainstream games industry.
At their most impactful, today’s tabletop roleplaying games can create immersive and performative storytelling experiences designed to radically imagine other pasts, presents, and futures. In tandem with developments in accessible technological infrastructure for TTRPGs, there’s a growing movement of intersectional trans, non-binary, queer, feminist, and disabled communities embracing this artform who are creating new experimental roleplay systems for exploring identity, simulated futures, decolonial praxis, ecological issues, multispecies commons, alternative systems of governance, and more.
When people hear the term “tabletop roleplaying games”, they often imagine the most well-known game first distributed in 1974, Dungeons and Dragons. Filled with swords, dragons, vampires, goblins, thieves, and more, D&D cultivated a community of avid players exploring improvisational performance and worldbuilding together. From its inception, Dungeons and Dragons had been marketed to young boys through commercials featuring young, primarily white boys, but more recent conversations around exclusivity, cultural appropriation, and cultural insensitivity within its lore and player community have led to demands for change.
This lab aims to research, collaborate with, and contribute to this new intersectional, queer, intergenerational, and feminist tabletop roleplaying movement led by people of all abilities and backgrounds who have been historically ostracized from the art form.
Through the Roleplaying Realities Lab, students and faculty will come together to research (and play!) new experimental roleplaying games being presented and distributed across a wide variety of fields (theater, art, games, comedy, and more). Students will also work with faculty to develop an archive of intersectional activist-oriented worldbuilding TTRPG games, participate in facilitating workshops on making tabletop roleplaying games, bring scholars and designers within the field to campus for talks and workshops, and author their own independent games to share with the university community through exhibitions, conferences, and festivals.
Students apply to a specific role on team as follows:
Researcher / Archivist (2 Students)
Preferred Skills: This role involves working with other students to determine the game systems we will research, play, analyze, and archive. Possible background in art history, design history, library and information sciences, or game design history. Writing and administrative skills required, familiarity with Google Sheets preferred. Interest in immersive or interactive storytelling, tabletop games, and video games preferred.
Likely Majors/Minors: AMCULT, ARTDES, CASC, COMM, DATA, EDUC, HISTART, HISTORY, SOC, SI
Game Designer (4 Students)
Preferred Skills: This creative role involves analyzing existing tabletop roleplaying games and ultimately designing your own. Background in interactive storytelling and/or game design preferred, but please apply if you are an artist or writer who is interested in exploring game design but haven’t had the opportunity to yet.
Likely Majors/Minors: ARCH, ARTDES, COMM, CS, ECE, INTPERF, SI, THTREMUS
Illustrator / PR Designer (1 Student)
Preferred Skills: The student in this role will create announcements about events and collaborate with game designers to illustrate game assets from character design to illustrated environments/settings. Looking for artists and designers with Photoshop and/or InDesign skills, as well as digital drawing and traditional drawing as well.
Likely Majors/Minors: ARCH, ARTDES, COMM
Performer / Playtester (2 Students)
Preferred Skills: The games we research, make, and workshop in the lab will have to be played and analyzed for feedback. Students with backgrounds in theater, performance art, improv, comedy, or music are encouraged to consider joining the lab to help bring these roleplaying experiences to life.
Likely Majors/Minors: ARTDES, INTPERF, MUSICOL, THTREMUS
Lab Coordinator (1 Student)
Preferred Skills: The lab coordinator will work with the lab director to create a schedule, conduct correspondence with visiting artists/scholars/game developers, and help oversee responsibilities for the lab members. They will take on a student leadership role and assist the faculty member in the operations of the lab. This role also involves taking both photographic and video documentation of events, student works, workshops, and research activities going on within the lab. Familiarity with photographic and video cameras, tripods, Adobe Premiere, and media file management preferred. Ideally, they have administrative experience, strong communication and organizational skills, experience working on a team collaboratively, and familiarity with Google Drive tools, Google Calendar, file management, and a willingness to learn other relevant software.
Likely Majors/Minors: ARTDES, COMM, FTVM
Faculty Project Lead
Angela Washko is an artist, filmmaker, and experimental game developer who creates new forums for discussions about feminism in spaces frequently hostile towards it. Her practice spans interventions in virtual environments, performance art, media installation, documentary film, and video games.
A recipient of the United States Artists Fellowship, Creative Capital Award, National Endowment for the Arts award, Franklin Furnace Performance Fund, Impact Award at Indiecade, and Jury Awards for Best Documentary at the American Film Festival, San Francisco Documentary Film Festival, and Buffalo International Film Festival, Washko’s practice has been highlighted in The New Yorker, Frieze Magazine, Time Magazine, The Guardian, ArtForum, The Los Angeles Times, Art in America, The New York Times and more.
Her projects have been presented internationally at venues including Museum of the Moving Image in New York, Centre Pompidou-Metz, Los Angeles Museum of Contemporary Art, the Milan Design Triennale, the Shenzhen Animation Biennial, and the Korean Film Archive. Angela Washko is the Catherine B. Heller Collegiate Professor of Art at University of Michigan.
Students: 10
Likely Majors/Minors: AMCULT, ARCH, ARTDES, CASC, COMM, CS, DATA, ECE, EDUC, FTVM, HISTART, HISTORY, INTPERF, MUSICOL, SOC, SI, THTREMUS
Meeting Details: In Person. Location TBD.
Application: Consider including a link to your portfolio or other websites in the personal statement portion of your application to share work you would like considered as part of your submission.
Summer Opportunity: Summer research fellowships may be available for qualifying students.
Citizenship Requirements: This project is open to all students on campus.
IP/NDA: Students who successfully match to this project team will be required to sign an Intellectual Property (IP) Agreement prior to participation.
Course Substitutions: CoE Honors