Course of Study

• Week 1 - Introductions: Hello! Who are we / who are you? What is this class? What are tabletop games, why are we interested in them? And what do we mean when we say worldbuilding? Plus, our past work in the field.

• Week 2 - Worldbuilding: Why do we worldbuild? What utility does worldbuilding serve? What futures are we imagining, and what histories are we drawing on? What gets remembered?

• Week 3 - Lyric games: Poem games, lyric games, instructions artwork, walking games. The skeletons of structure as play.

• Week 4 - Prompts, questions, tables, tools: Into the nitty gritty - the tools and levers that people use to design games. Looking at design goals, structure, breadth vs specificity, prompts, leading questions, dice tables, random chance, and other techniques for building something from nothing.

• Week 5 - Journaling games: Solo games, drawing games, diary play, journaling as a world building practice. How to play games with and for yourself.

• Week 6 - Playtesting as practice & collaborative design: Introduce the idea of playtests, the role of playtesting, how to run a good playtest, how to see what are games like in motion. Also discuss the role of collaboration inside of development and writing, and some modes in which collaboration can be fruitful.

• Week 7 - Summary week: Pulling in various threads so far, and also discussing going deeper or bigger. Looking at longer games, games with complex mechanics that create specific kinds of play, games with pre-built settings, or games with specific verbs and actions.

• Week 8 - Games can be anything: Looking at the expanded field of games in conversation– considering tools (discord bots, roll20, playingcards.io, miro, google docs, zoom) and alternative tools (the postal service, bulletin boards, custom software). Discussing the where of games– from tables, to larps, to MMO worlds, to phone calls.

• Week 9 - Layout, design & distribution: Discussing presentation, visual information, readability, clarity of information, editing, and language, as well as network of distribution for small and independent games. Professional practices week.

• Week 10 - Conclusions & presentations: A chance to discuss, share, work, play and celebrate.

Expectations

Time & Workload

• During class, participants can expect a mix of discussion, lecture, and practical exploration — including playing tabletop games. Outside of class, participants can expect short weekly readings or assignments. Participants should expect to spend a few hours a week outside of class on deliverables, with less time spent in the beginning and more towards the end of the course. The course will result in a printed book including work produced in class.

Materials

• No specific materials (other than an internet connection) are required for this class, but students may appreciate having physical or digital dice, cards, and writing materials of choice.

Learning Outcomes

• By the end of this course, participants will imagine, design, and iterate to create their own short tabletop game (as well as some smaller experiments). They will also leave with a strong theoretical and practical understanding of the process of designing towards worldbuilding.

Is this class for me?

This class may be for you if:

• You tell stories about arcs of history or cultural trends, big or small.

• You wish you could talk to videogame NPCs about what they had for breakfast.

• You catch yourself flipping to the back of the fantasy novel to look at the map again.

• You always read the Wikipedia.

• You want to practice speaking, playing, and imagining with others.

• You are a writer interested in tools for building out universes.

• You are a game designer interested in conversational or prompt-based mechanics.

• You are a poet who poses questions in your poems.

• You are simply a person who finds the complexity of it all fascinating.

• You believe that a different world will rise out of this one.

This class may NOT be for you if:

• You are more interested in exploring specific characters than the world they live in.

• You are not interested in conversational or collaborative play.

• You feel like history is over, or that culture is static.

• You want to make an improved version of Dungeons and Dragons.