My freeform live-action role-playing game The Secret Lives of Junk(kin) Drawers, or, Why Marie Kondo Does(n’t) Spork Joy earned an Honorable Mention in the 2023 Golden Cobra Challenge. The Golden Cobra Challenge is a beloved and community-organized “friendly contest open to anyone interested in writing and playing freeform games.” According to the 2023 judges:
We simply had to recognize this cute, prosocial game that actually prompts you to clean out your junk drawers. Beautifully framed, written, and conceived, The Secret Lives of Junk(kin) Drawers, or Why Marie Kondo does(n’t) Spork Joy will help you sort your house – and your feelings – while fostering a reflection on what we keep and what we forget.
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I designed a freeform LARP called After the Comet for my ENG 1100: “Literature as LARP as Literature” course in Spring 2023 at Ohio University.
The LARP is based on W.E.B. Du Bois’s short story “The Comet.” In the story, New York City is decimated by a strange comet that passes near the Earth; its gases kill nearly all of the inhabitants of the city. The only two people left alive are a working-class Black man named Jim and a rich, white woman named Julia. My freeform LARP takes place during the action of the story, just after the passage of the comet. Players are other people who have some how survived, and they must figure out what to do even as Jim and Julia’s story plays out in the distant background.
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“What are the Digital Humanities So Straight?”
This essay-as-code-as-text-game is written and published as a BASIC program in Alternative Historiographies of the Digital Humanities published by Punctum in 2021 and edited by Dorothy Kim and Adeline Koh. The collection is the winner of the American Studies Association’s 2021 Garfinkel Prize in the Digital Humanities.
Building on Tara McPherson’s work on race, critical code studies, and feminist critiques of DH, which is provocatively condensed in her essay and question “Why Are the Digital Humanities So White?,” this non-traditional essay hopes to ask and address, “Why Are the Digital Humanities So Straight?” My essay and project, written as a BASIC program, will use the mediums of code and digital games to challenge the technonormativity of DH…My essay/program explores how the binary, algorithmic, and protocological underpinnings of both game programming and design constrain and recuperate queerness.
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In 2022, “Why Are the Digital Humanities So Straight?” was selected to be part of the Electronic Literature Organization’s Electronic Literature Collection Volume 4, which includes a playthrough video, code file, and directions for play. The editorial statement reads:
Why are the Digital Humanities So Straight? is an academic essay-as-parser game, setting the reader on a course to unlock secrets about Alan Turing, Ada Lovelace and Purna Jackson, a fictional character from Techland’s 2001 Dead Island games. As a mash-up of fiction/non-fiction that explores the “technonormativity of code”, this work offers a special blend of scholarly critical analysis by playing a text-based game in BASIC.
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Wingtopia
Augmented Reality Game/Live-action Role-playing Game for the “Asian American Arcade” exhibit, Wing Luke Museum, February 2012. This gallery game allowed visitors to pick one of five character cards, which offered different paths through the exhibit and ways to interact with other gallery-goers. The welcome to Wingtopia begins:
Welcome! On your journey through the land of Wingtopia, you will encounter mysterious creatures and unusual people. You will investigate strange sights and sounds. You will be called to solve riddles and perform great feats. And you will discover that what you say, think, and do will determine your life’s path. Ready to play? Choose a character card to begin.
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Tellings is a point-based, skills-based tabletop RPG, featuring a robust character creation, 100+ skills, 75+ character strengths and weaknesses, a distinct magic and prayer system, and unique fluid-time combat mechanics. The rulebook is 431-pages and provides a robust system that can be adapted to a game runner’s desired world. I started working on Tellings in the late 1990s, and the current version is the 25th Anniversary edition, which is available via Amazon. A Tellings worldbook is currently in development.
Archaea Live-Action Role-Playing and Wargaming is an independent medieval, high fantasy live-action role-playing and padded-weapon wargaming (LARP/W) game system. Archaea debuted a couple of years after Tellings. I wanted to develop a story-driven, campaign-style, persistent-world LARP. The current edition also celebrates Archaea’s 25th Anniversary and is available via Amazon.
Currently in development is Archaea: Bane, what I describe as a semi-autopoetic, cooperative card game based in the world of Archaea, my live-action role-playing system. The players must work together to destroy a “manifestation” of the Bane (represented by a separate deck, from which it “draws” and self-runs) before it grows too powerful. Here is my initial thoughts and prototype of the game; an update on the cards design; and a brand new version of the game!
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