Category: FROG 2024

Giuseppe Femia is a PhD Candidate at the University of Waterloo. Overall, his research in disability game studies observes different types of gaming media and the design, purpose, and function it has while approaching disability identity. His current work observes disability representation and disabling mechanics in TTRPG narratives and systems.

Disability, Magic, and Technology in TTRPGs

FROG 2024 – Talk

This presentation delves into modern public perception of failure and how our learned fear of it makes it difficult to incorporate disability into pre-existing TTRPG systems, like D&D. Observing failure as a rhetorical tool, I will discuss scholars concerning the conception of the queer art of failure to situate losing a game as a productive affordance of game systems that should not be thought of as failure (Juul 60). In this manner, I will also be investigating alternatives to the traditional conventions governing success in games to provide affordances and set precedence for the experience of disability in games to abate a neoliberal dystopian/apocalyptic world. This will be done from two angles: 1) loss illustrated through the game mechanics; and 2) perceived failure within the narrative.

Concerning game mechanics, the RPG systems that are being considered will have different methods of taking action and navigating the world for the players’ characters. Mechanics that accommodate or exemplify disability could potentially be exploited to fetishize disabled characters and appropriate the culture. Mechanics that punish or make playing a disabled character harder might deter players from wanting to attempt to do so or lead the outcome of the story to seem more like a tragedy. By observing the mechanics available to the player in the object gaming texts I have selected, I can develop an understanding of how disability is, or is not, approached.

Concerning narratives, the perceived disabilities of a character could play into a story that is made and interpreted entirely by the players. However, the settings of the games might have pre-existing narratives that guide the gameplay into a tragic enactment of their disability. Therefore, the framing of the story provided by the game system sets a precedent of what the players’ expectations might be. For example, the dark fantasy genre of TTRPGs tends to implicate tragedy so depictions of characters with a disability are not afforded a positive setting to frame themselves in. Within the narrative, we can observe how failure is depicted and how disability might be framed.

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Klemens Franz studied “Information Management” in Graz and “Digital Games Research and Design” in Tampere, Finland. He worked as an assistant for new media technologies at the FH Joanneum. In 2006 he founded the atelier198 where he has worked on over 400 analogue games as an illustrator, graphic designer and editor. In the last couple of years he started to talk about analogue games and his experience with their visuals. He worked on the interactive aspects of exhibitions, held game-design workshops and wrote about gaming culture. He teaches “Digital Imaging”, “Cultural Studies” and “Media Theory” at the FH Joanneum.

Thematic Transparency – How metaphoric Structures in Analogue Games can help us understand

FROG 2024 – Talk

There are board games focusing on the apocalypse, the post-apocalypse, and how we could rebuild our world. They deal with topics like surviving, gathering resources, feeding people, killing Zombies and renaturing the environment. The post-apocalyptic setting is great but maybe too far along the road we are heading. Analogue games can help to really understand how fragile structures and systems are and how they work and feel. All because players are forced to execute all those things to keep the game alive.

This talk gives an overview on how the apocalypse and its surrounding topics are handled in analogue games. As it turns out the deepness of the thematic integration varies heavily. In many cases those games are just a retheming of existing mechanisms. But some of them combine those mechanisms to create a challenge that addresses actual problems.

An interesting potential of analogue games lies within their biggest flaw: Players have to know the rules, execute the procedures, overwatch the handling, manage the bookkeeping and move pieces on the board. Analogue games are transparent.

If all those aforementioned actions are implemented in an evocative way into the core gameplay they not only make it easier for players to get into the game and keep all the rules and procedures in their mind. They also create relatable and comprehensible experiences.

Two main examples will highlight this approach: Atiwa by Uwe Rosenberg and Forest Shuffle by Kosch. The theme of both games is how nature is interconnected and players have to manage those interdependencies to gain as many points as possible. Both games achieve this in a different way but give players an insight on how those processes work and therefore create an understanding based on experience rather than theory. The core gameplay integrates those thematic metaphors in a comprehensible way. And to experience the fragile structure of our planet is an important step toward more awareness and prudence.

So analogue games really force us to understand processes. They are not hidden. You want to understand them. So you can play–and probably win–the game.

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