Tabletop RPGs as Environmental Texts – Mehitabel Glenhaber

Analysis of the Player Experience Across Digital and Physical Worlds – Giacomo Lauritano

Feeling Clever: Thematic Design in Sid Sackson’s Games – Abby Loebenberg and Robert L. Mack

In game studies, often discussions about design are crucial. In this spirit, this issue offers three essays that interrogate design in different ways. In their essay “Tabletop RPGs as Environmental Texts,” Mehitabel Glenhaber looks to the representation of nature in tabletop RPGs in order to investigate nascent environmental rhetorics. Where Glenhaber considers environmentalism in design, Giacomo Lauritano asks questions regarding the affordances of analog and digital materiality in his essay “Analysis of the Player Experience Across Digital and Physical Words.” Finally Abby Loebenberg and Robert L. Mack do a deep dive into Sid Sackson’s catalogue to consider his approach to theme in design in their essay “Feeling Clever.”

We hope these essays offer new insights for game designers interested in new vistas of design .

–The Editors, September 6, 2022