CAPAS RESEARCH PROJECT - Adrian Hermann Modelling, Simulating, and Playing the End of the World As We Know It: Tabletop and Computer Role-Playing Games as (Post-)Apocalyptic Story Engines
Visions of the apocalypse and the building and exploration of (post-)apocalyptic worlds have been a central topos of the history of tabletop and computer role-playing games (TRPGs and CRPGs), which can be understood as attempts to model, simulate, and make playable (post-)apocalyptic worlds through creating a setting, providing a system of rules, and facilitating the creation of characters to play in these emergent narratives. This project explores these games both as expressions of the (post-)apocalyptic imaginary but also as already representing the result of an analysis of the elements that make up such narratives. In my analysis I will focus mainly on North American and Southeast Asian case studies. As (collaborative) transmedial “story engines” (Merwin/Sniezak) role-playing games do not provide a single linear narrative but rather present the ‘building blocks’ out of which a potentially infinite number of stories can be developed. Engaging with (post-)apocalyptic TRPGs and CRPGs promises a significant contribution to research area A (an archive of imaginaries of the apocalypse) and will help to establish a transcultural archive of images, tropes, and discourses that are used in modelling and making playable narratives of the (post-)apocalypse. This ludic imaginary is a repository of possible futures, which can be analysed in regard to the ways in which the games model (through identifying ‘building blocks’ of such narratives), simulate (by creating game mechanics and systems of rules), and open up to playful engagement (by providing occasions to create concrete narratives around particular characters) via the breakdown of social order and the creation of utopian or dystopian future worlds.