NSDM team's new American Revolution Game. Insights creating RPG model. Essential & flexible factual/counterfactual injects, roles, outcomes, keeping it credible. Moderator Jason Corner, lead designer.
Description:
Discussing NSDM's new American Revolution Crisis MegaGame variant, the NSDM game design team will discuss insights gained in creating a model of the event for roll playing purposes. What historical figures to include, to amalgamate, or to exclude? What historical events to plan as inserts, what to leave out, what counter-factual events to stimulate game play and keep outcomes uncertain? When to begin the simulation, and how far to take it? Sensitivity issues with slavery and with relations with Native American nations. Panel will discuss issues of target audience and expectations of their baseline knowledge, background material to present, the balance between politicking and fighting, and how to keep the simulation from going off the rails. Moderated by Jason Corner, lead game designer for the Revolutionary War Crisis game variant, on the National Security Decision Making Game staff.
RPGs for Social Good: A Conversation with Authors and Designers
Summary:
What are the possibilities for socially conscious gaming? Join Patrick Mooney (Lead Designer, Nations & Cannons), Lucas Zellers (Author, “The Book of Extinction”), and more for a panel discussion.
Accidents, weapons: radiation is real, but effects dramatized or fictionalized? Fact v fiction, potential. Capt. Mark McDonagh, USN/ret., physicist, 12 years' Naval War College experience, NSDM staff
Description:
Nuclear reactor and weapons accidents, radiological assassination tools and terrorists' weapons of mass destruction, fallout from nuclear tests and even nuclear combat, hazards of medical waste. Radiation is real, but how much of the threat is dramatized or fictionalized by authors and screenplay writers, or demagogued by activists with agendas? Lecture discusses the history and the potential, and attempts to separate the facts, engineering and science from the science fiction and demagoguery. Presented by Capt. Mark McDonagh, USN/ret., a physicist with 12 years' experience at the Naval War College, currently on the National Security Decision Making Game staff.
Russians overrun Europe’s largest nuclear reactor site. Shells fall in sites' perimeters. Media sensationalize doom. The real risk, what's been done. Capt. Mark McDonagh, USN/ret., on NSDM staff.
Description:
With combat raging across Ukrainian nuclear reactor sites and sites changing hands between Ukraine and Russia, with shells, rockets and missiles landing inside the sites' perimeters, concerns of nuclear accidents spring to mind with memories of Three Mile Island, Fukushima and, ironically in the case of Ukraine, Chernobyl. Minimally-informed media personalities breathlessly proclaim gloom and doom. What are the facts, what is fiction, drama and demagoguery? Lecture examines the accident potential, discusses the recent war history, steps taken to reduce the threats, and disinformation campaigns. Presented by Capt. Mark McDonagh, USN/ret., a physicist and former nuclear submarine officer with 12 years' experience at the Naval War College, on the National Security Decision Making Game staff.
Real People in a Fantasy World - Leveling Up Your D&D Character
Summary:
How do you make your TTRPG character to feel like a real person? Join the Avantris crew as they discuss their process for bringing three dimensional characters to a world of imagination.
Description:
If you want your TTRPG character to not just feel like a game avatar, the first step is ripping up your character sheet! Find out what that means at this panel on the "Avantris Process" of character creation, and learn why theme reigns supreme!
Reflecting on DEI Success and Failures in Tabletop Gaming
Summary:
In this discussion, we will talk about DEI and how once it was a hot topic and now it is nowhere to be found.
Description:
Three years ago, the wave of protests following the death of George Floyd sparked promises of change from many within the tabletop gaming community. Today, diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) are still hot topics...but many aspects of tabletop gaming remain inaccessible to historically excluded communities. Join us for a workshop in which we reflect on the success and failures of DEI initiatives in tabletop gaming with an eye toward developing new ways to create equitable and inclusive experiences in our spaces. Let's work together to learn from the past and forge a better future!
Professional editors discuss avoiding ableism in writing and word choice.
Description:
Join our experienced panel of editors as they discuss the nuances of writing and editing to exclude ableist tropes and language, no matter how time-worn. Panelists: E.D.E. Bell (moderator), Diana M. Pho, Cat Rambo, Dedren Snead. Track: GCWS Editing.
Rivers are barriers, travel routes, and watering places. Place your players/readers in memorable river scenes! Examine their distinctive challenges with a GM/geologist.
Description:
This session is for GMs, game designers, and writers (any genre). Your adventurers make journeys on rivers, struggle to cross them, and seek them to sustain life (also maybe for a badly needed bath). See how your story can be enhanced by richly depicting one of the distinctive types of river channels, considering natural patterns of sandbars and islands, and incorporating tricks that currents and streambed erosion can play on unwary travelers. How does a river’s look and behavior change as you travel downstream? What interesting, game-changing terrain elements inhabit river floodplains? How are floods different from one river to another? Make each river scene memorable, with the help of a GM/geologist. Scott Rice-Snow is author of 'Landscapes for Writers and Game Masters - Building Authentic Natural Terrain into Imagined Worlds', from McFarland Books.