Graduate students used tabletop role playing games as a venue for science communication.
Tabletop role playing games (TTRPGs), like Dungeons and Dragons (DnD), recently exploded in popularity with the help of video games and web series. Unlike traditional board games, TTRPGs combine storytelling with gameplay; one individual in the group acts like a narrator who sets a scene and creates additional characters that the rest of the players interact with to accomplish a goal.
Usually, TTRPGs take place in fantasy or science fiction settings. However, after attending a science communication workshop where a cofounder of the not-for-profit organization Science is a Drag discussed sharing science in one’s own communities, Amanda Weiss, a graduate student at the University of Pennsylvania, thought that she could combine her TTRPG hobby with science communication. As the science communication chair of the Penn Science Policy and Diplomacy Group (PSPDG), she and her peers developed two TTRPGs that teach players about complex biology while they partake in a fictional, interactive adventure. Then, they recorded one game as a podcast.
How did you create these TTRPGs?
I recruited graduate students across campus who played some type of TTRPG and would be interested in making one to teach a scientific topic. At an initial meeting, people shared ideas for what subject they could write a story about and design a game for. We selected two of these, and people chose which they wanted to work on. In addition to coordinating the meetings and each group’s progress, I was also cowriting one of the games. We wanted to balance the educational content with a fun storyline, so as the groups developed their story and game ideas, they traded these drafts with each other to edit them for excessive jargon or missing details. I also shared an early version of my group’s game with some friends who aren’t scientists to learn about what parts they liked and what parts needed to be revised.
Ultimately, we created two TTRPGs. The first, which I helped write, focused on neurodegeneration. We created a fantasy character who was experiencing this type of disease, and the adventurers had to enter his brain Magic School Bus-style to save him. It was created to be used in DnD, which has players participate in combat scenarios, so the players had encounters with the immune system and plaques. In the second game, players actually explore the immune system. People play as immune cells to discover what is causing problems in their host and to try to stop it before it destroys the body.
What was it like to play your TTRPG and record it?
Amanda Weiss (bottom right) cowrote and led a DnD game that put neurodegeneration at the center of a fantasy story.
Naman Srivastava
I actually wasn’t sure how the game would go. I play DnD myself but had never played with the students that joined our gaming party for this recording. However, most of them also played TTRPGs, so they knew how to participate in the interactive part of the game. One challenge that I had as the game master was that players would sometimes do something that I didn’t expect; while writing the game, I tried to anticipate some of these possible scenarios, but ultimately, I had to think in the moment about how I could let the player do something they wanted to try and then pivot them back onto the game’s path. Since we were recording, I was also trying to make sure all of these interactions would make sense for listeners who may not be scientists. It ended up being really fun and posting it to the university’s podcast page was a cool experience.
One thing that we haven’t gotten to do yet is play these with people who aren’t scientists to evaluate how well people learn about the game’s topic. However, one of my players who wasn’t as familiar with neurodegeneration did say that they could tell where certain events represented disease symptoms, so I think that the game communicates the science well. What was great about recording it, too, is that now, people can go and listen to our playthrough to enjoy the story and learn about neurodegeneration. We also published the story outline and supporting material on the PSPDG website, so anyone can play this themselves.
Do you have any future plans for these TTRPGs?
I’m not currently involved in writing any new TTRPGs, but these games provided a foundation to create more in the future. However, some other members from the project and I are talking to a researcher from the University of North Florida who is working on an NSF grant to create a science education TTRPG system that will be much bigger than what we did with our two games. There are definitely a lot of opportunities for scientists to create these types of games.
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
