When strolling through the hallways of the Caterpillar Global Communications Center this past weekend, one might have found it more enthusiastic and playful than usual.
The Role Playing Games Symposium was the reason for all the energy and competitiveness.
The Symposium, organized by Bradley game design instructor, Timothy Hutchings, consisted of six award-winning game designers displaying their ideas and games. They were presented through a series of roundtable discussions and game sessions over Saturday and Sunday.
Game designers presented their games through various uses of writings, dice and drawings to explore and push the player’s thinking abilities.
According to Hutchings, this was the first Bradley Role Playing Games Symposium. It was proposed by Ethan Ham, chairperson of the interactive media department, as part of his hiring process.
“RPGs are a small but important part of our moment in games most digital games are using concepts that were developed in the physical game and RPG world decades ago,” Hutchings said. “But RPGs never stopped evolving and we need our students to apply contemporary RPG concepts to their own practice.”
However, role playing games, as Hutchings explained, are not getting the recognition that they deserve, even though they are gaining more popularity in sales, press and conventions.
“RPGs can do important work,” Hutchings said. “They can give us complicated experiences in a way that no other thing can. There is a disproportionate relationship between what these games can offer and the engagement these games get.”
Gwendolyn Collins, a sophomore game design and animation major, enjoyed the symposium and took away something of value.
“It is definitely very interesting to try RPGs that are different than [Dungeons and Dragons] because this is much looser with how the story is formed,” Collins said. “While [playing] Dungeons and Dragons you are following the story that someone else is telling, while you are trying to add your bits to kind of shape it, but not to the extent where it was entirely improvised by everyone.”
One game in particular stuck out to Collins.
“I really liked how the ‘Witch Prom’ went, partially because I was the leading chaotic force in that game where I turned everyone into possums, which you know is a good win when you do that,” Collins said.
“Witch Prom” involved a lot of creativity from the player in creating a character for the game, emphasizing individuality.
This gave the player the task of creating their own witch, their respective pronoun and what type of personality they possess as they try their best to not create too much havoc on their prom at Moontson’s School of Magic.
Hutchings said he hoped people learned something different and enjoyed themselves.
“I wanted the students to meet professional game makers who work outside the popular idea of games,” Hutchings said. “I wanted students to play strange games and have fruitful experiences. This, for the most part, seemed to happen.”
