Game Design

Haeny and Nathan are back for another season of Pop and Play! They start it out by playing the role playing game "Lady Blackbird" with Matthew Berland from the University of Wisconsin-Madison and Antero Garcia from Stanford University. They discuss how role playing games allow for play with identity, what possibilities different kinds of rules and constraints allow - and more!

This season is all about “playing roles,” and Haeny and Nathan start it off by exploring a long ago and far away galaxy at the Star Wars: Galactic Starcruiser immersive experience. They are joined by fellow Teachers College professors Tran Templeton and Alex Bowers for their journey, and then interviewed by earthbound guest host Professor Lalitha Vasudevan to unpack their fantastical adventures. They ask, what is an immersive experience? What did they learn that could be relevant to designing learning experiences and environments? Why was Haeny’s experience so much different than Nathan’s? Find out all this and more on our first episode of Season 4!

Haeny and Nathan are joined by immersive experience designer Caro Murphy to discuss the power of immersive experiences, what kinds of choices go into designing them, and what parallels they have to learning environments and teaching. Caro is one of the designers behind the Star Wars: Galactic Experience the team visited in last week’s episode! Listen to that too, it pairs great with this episode in either order! Caro shares some tips and reflections from their immersive experience design work, Nathan makes them navigate a haunted mansion, and more, all on this week’s episode!

This week Haeny and Nathan are back at the table - the tabletop gaming table that is, with Kent Davis, author of the A Riddle in Ruby fantasy series and co-author of Epic RPG, a tabletop role playing game. He talks with Haeny and Nathan about how risk comes into gaming. What makes playing roles feel risky, and how can players be encouraged to take risks in a gaming environment, without pushing too hard? And of course, Haeny pitches Kent on her Kardashian themed role playing game. 

There’s no denying it (looking at you, Haeny), on this week’s episode we’re diving into “role playing.” It’s right in the acronym “Live Action Role Playing” or LARPing, the topic of this week’s episode. Haeny and Nathan are joined by Judson Packard, Program Director of the Wayfinder Experience camp in the Hudson Valley that runs LARPing programs for kids. They talk about their experiences as a camper at Wayfinder and now as a staff member, and what LARPing offers people that can make it a special and transformative experience. And they discuss the central importance of foam swords. Also: beware of spoilers for the movie Role Models! (It came out in 2008, so… you had time.)