EPISODE 28: EXPLORING WORLDS THROUGH DIGITAL ROLE-PLAY
Episode 28: Exploring Worlds Through Digital Role-Play | 2 June 2026
Stephen and Trent reflect on their personal favorite digital role-playing games (RPGs), deconstructing various frameworks, implementations, and affordances of linear and open-world experiences. In addition to introducing specific examples, they discuss broad concepts such as:
The fundamentally situated relationship between players and digital RPGs;
Digital RPGs as sophisticated representations of interactive narrative and creative writing;
Fallout 3, education through The Wasteland, and what it means to fail forward;
Designing worlds that pose “productive questions,” pique curiosity, and induce player goal adoption;
Revisiting Plato’s Allegory of the Cave as relates to gaming and its overlap with (or contradiction of) formal education;
Bidirectional communication between players and designers;
Comparing Fallout’s Lucy with the “murder hobo” playstyle to understand player projection of ethics and morality onto RPG characters;
Ludonarrative dissonance and its influence on designer/player behavior;
Core similarities between game design and instructional design;
RPGs as tools for teaching “big ideas” about Government, Economics, Social Relations, and Cultural Influences;
The stories that “on-” and “off-rails” RPGs tell us about player agency and ourselves;
Transactional cooperation vs. meaningful collaborative storytelling in massively multiplayer online role-playing games (MMORPGs);
The perennial tension between designed intent and “Death of the Author”; and
Finding personal, emotional resonance in a game’s characters and world.
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