Edmond Chang (he/they), Megan Condis (she), Shelly Jones (they), Evan Torner (he), Aaron Trammell (he), Emma Walderon (she), Luke Hernandez (he), Bea Livesey-Stephens (she)
Analog Game Studies

Moderator: Evan Torner (he)

Mashiur, Zoheb (he), UiT The Arctic University of Norway
Anneliese Furlong-Muir (they), University of Lincoln

In this presentation we look at the missing potential for stories of ecological action and resistance in tabletop roleplaying games. We identify a lack of revolutionary ecogames that challenge political power in the interests of human as well as more-than-human worlds. We call for the creation of games of ecorevolution, in the context of a need for radical alternatives to our present politics in the face of climate catastrophe.

Margarete Jahrmann (she), University of Applied Arts, Vienna
Stefan Glasauer (he), BTU Cottbus
Thomas Brandstetter (he), University of Applied Arts, Vienna
Max Moswitzer (he), University of Applied Arts, Vienna

Using experimental game mechanics, we have designed an artistic board- and role-playing game that investigates new ways of addressing environmentalism, democracy and the relationship between society and nature. In our talk, we will present the core mechanics of the game and offer some reflections on its place in the fields of game art, game design and contemporary culture.

Valerio Moccia (he), Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore, Milano

This talk investigates how popular wargames routinely exclude representations of war crimes, human rights violations, and legal accountability. Through a critical analysis of game mechanics and narratives, it reveals how these omissions normalize systemic violence and perpetuate hegemonic ideologies of warfare.

Marc Lajeunesse (he), Concordia University

This presentation documents the creation, themes, and design philosophy behind Revolutionary Magic, a forthcoming ~20-hour TTRPG experience written and designed by a team of creative writing students and indie game makers. Inspired by the current sociopolitical landscape and the recent radical act of Luigi Mangione, Revolutionary Magic is a roleplaying experience where players confront systemic forces that foster complicity in the face of transformative cultural moments.  Inspired by the Nordic Larp tradition, the designers of Revolutionary Magic aimed to create a “critical play experience” (Stenros and Montola, 2010) by blending mass-market TTRPG design with diegetic opportunities for reflection and debate about the themes of the games through the adventure itself.

Moderator: Megan Condis (she), Bea Livesey-Stephens (she)

William J. White (he), Penn State Altoona

This project presents a cultural microhistory of “punk” as a signifier in online discussions at the Forge, a site for discussing the design, publication, and play of tabletop RPGs active from 2001 to 2012. The presentation constructs a Foucauldian discursive formation surrounding the deployment of “punk” within utterances at the Forge. It traces the sublimation—that is, difference-minimizing conceptual appropriation—of “punk” within articulations of design and publication approaches, treating it as the product of identity-related argumentative discourse at the Forge.

Susan Haarman (she/they), Loyola University Chicago

ohn Dewey saw democracy not as a fixed system but as a collaborative, evolving way of life—radical, relational, and, in a sense, punk. This presentation argues that tabletop role-playing games (TTRPGs) uniquely embody Dewey’s vision, offering players the chance to practice democratic habits like shared decision-making, collective imagination, and negotiated meaning. In an era of civic disillusionment, TTRPGs serve as sites of ludic pedagogy, where democracy is not taught but lived.

Georg Wendt (he/him), Research Platform #YouthMediaLife, University of Vienna

How can popular board games such as Catan, Monopoly, or The Game of Life be modified in educational contexts to become “playable representations” of systems of oppressions? I suggest a critical gaming pedagogy modelled after Paulo Freire’s anti-capitalist educational philosophy to raise students’ critical consciousness, illustrated in my contribution through critical modifications of the aforementioned titles.

Jason Cox (he), The University of Toledo
Lillian Lewis (they), Virginia Commonwealth University

The presenters explore the paradox of creating a game (Mantles in the Museum) that engages in the democratization of criticism and curation in art museums while also running headlong into financial, logistical, and institutional challenges that prevent that game from being circulated. The presenters explore known and speculative reasons that these barriers persist despite institutions claiming they invite broad demographics into their spaces. The presenters also discuss an upcoming version of the game, Mantles in the Museum: Counternarratives, that embraces perspectives that directly confront the hegemonic collection and exhibition practices of US art museums.

Moderator: Shelly Jones (they), Luke Hernandez (he)

Megan Condis (she), Texas Tech University
James Walker Holmes (he), Texas Tech University

In this study, our research team conducted in-depth interviews with 20 ttrpg players who identify as male. The interviewees were asked to create a character that expresses what masculinity means to them. Participants often articulated a desire to strike a balance between offering a nod to traits that are considered to be “normal” or “traditional” ideas of masculinity while avoiding descending into stereotype or farce.  Many of them referenced the expectation that men must be “practical” and “flexible” in order to keep up with their responsibilities, sometimes at the expense of their own happiness.  In keeping with the theme for this year’s conference, we also had two respondents who mentioned that their time in the punk music scene shaped their understanding of gender in a powerful way, so in our presentation we plan to “spotlight” these interviewees and discuss on the intersections of punk culture and gender identity.

Keerthi Sridharan (they), Leiden University

In this talk, I will explore specific instances of explicit sexual content in three actual play shows (Critical Role, Dungeons and Daddies, and Never Stop Blowing Up) to suggest the productive potential of sex and intimacy in performed TTRPG environments. Each show forms the basis for a different mode of sex in an actual play context: sex as “bit”, sex as deviation, and sex as freedom. Grounding this framework in the relational dynamics of actual play–parasociality, intimacy between player-performers, and transformative fanworks–I discuss the implications of “doing” sex for home games and player-consumers.

PB Berge (they/her), University of Alberta
Percival Hornak (he), Independent Scholar

In this talk, we invoke the entangled spirits of the lyric games movement, trans life, and trans play by exploring the ways lyrical design makes play ungovernable and the unplayable possible. Lyrical play and trans life share a commitment to unmaking in the same breath as making: to asking what happens when we place ourselves in proximity to seemingly stable categories like “games” or “gender” while at the same time actively undermining their coherence.

Che Pieper (they), University of Pennsylvania

In this paper, I examine the relationship between queer sexuality and extreme violence in Dungeon Bitches and Praise the Hawkmoth King. These two Powered by the Apocalypse games serve as vibrant examples of Sara Ahmed’s discomforting queer pleasures, and I read them in conversation with Meg Baker’s theorization of game safety beyond the avoidance of pain, and in search of a play experience which leans into the challenging desires to safely hurt and to be safely hurt by one another.

Moderator: Emma Waldron (she) 

Mikael D. Sebag (he), University of California, Irvine

This paper examines the political significance of “gutter magic” in tabletop roleplaying games of the 1990s, with a focus on the games Mage: The Ascension (1993) and Unknown Armies (1998). Emerging in the context of urban fantasy RPGs shaded by real-world ideological conflict, gutter magic systematized resistance to consumerism by reinscribing a badly broken world and its garbage with the power to effect material change. This reinscription, I argue, rejects the corporate soullessness that the various 90’s punk movements so closely associated with Western modernity, moving us instead towards a re-enchantment of the world through what political philosopher Jane Bennett calls “the wonder of minor experiences.”

Drew Borecky (he), University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

The sound of screaming guitars, the image of leather and spikes, and the call to tear down the system all evoke the idea of punk culture and punk rock. While game studies scholars have explored how TTRPGs can impact the literacy of its players in terms of reading and writing (Sidhu, 2024), this research expands on definitions of musical literacy that include cultural knowledge, genre, sonic norms, and extramusical meaning, to demonstrate how punk ideologies are reinscribed, altered, or negotiated via TTRPG play. By drawing on research in game studies, music studies, as well as archival sources, I argue that TTRPGs such as Cyberpunk (1988) and Punk is Dead (2024) rely on a “social index of punk” to evoke their game worlds while promoting their own versions of a “punk” musical literacy that encourages players to contend with, consider, and renegotiate popular conceptions and histories of punk music, and by extension develop their own punk literacy.

Cody Walizer (he), University of Colorado Boulder

The ninja is an ever-present archetype in the cyberpunk genre. This presentation explores how Magic: the Gathering and other popular texts leverage the ninja as a futurist figure – simultaneously constructing the ninja as a potential savior/threat.

Austin Anderson (he), Stanford University
DA Hall (any), University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

This paper rejects the notion that the popular is incompatible with punk by arguing that “popular punk” is a praxis that refuses the exclusionary impulses of punk/TTRPG communities. We argue that both communities are animated by a transformative political imperative which emerged in response to the material conditions of the post-war period. We ground our argument through readings of the popular actual play shows Dimension 20 and Critical Role alongside historical analyses of the goth and grunge subcultural scenes.

Moderator: Edmond Chang (he) 

Edmond Chang (he/they), Megan Condis (she), Shelly Jones (they), Evan Torner (he), Aaron Trammell (he), Emma Walderon (she), Luke Hernandez (he), Bea Livesey-Stephens (she)
Analog Game Studies