Episode 5: Role Playing Games

• A Riddle in Ruby kid lit
• Epic RPG, the tabletop role playing game
• Pop & Play, Season 2, Episode 1:  Role Playing Games with Matthew Berland and Antero Garcia
• Pop & Play, Season 2, Episode 5: Choose Your Own Adventure

Haeny:

Welcome to Pop and Play, the podcast all about play. Play in all its frivolous, joyful, serious, and powerful forms. This award-winning podcast, yes, someone actually gave us an award, is hosted by myself, Haeny Yoon.

Nathan:

And I'm Nathan Holbert, and we are two educational researchers that think play matters. Each week we chat with scholars, artists, activists, parents and children about the significance and the value of play in their lives.

Haeny:

In this season, we've been exploring what it means to play roles, whether in games, craft or theater. What is role-playing all about? What compels us to try out new identities?

Nathan:

And today we look at the idea of risk-taking as it relates to role-playing. In our conversation with educator and author Kent Davis. Kent has co-designed his own RPG system with Chris Organ called EPIC RPG, so Kent is the perfect person to break down RPGS for us. We'll talk to Kent about the risks we take when we experiment with roles and identity, how those risks might be part of the important work we do around identity, and how we can create educational spaces that encourage learners to take those risks and yet support them while they do that. But before we get into that, I want to ask you a question, Haeny, as somebody who is known far and wide across the lower 48 states, less so in Alaska and Hawaii. As a well-known risk-taker, can you tell us a bit about a risk you've taken in your life?

Haeny:

Okay, I'm not a well-known risk-taker, obviously.

Nathan:

Far and wide.

Haeny:

Far and wide, okay. Okay. I did actually think of something because our illustrious guest, Kent Davis, is quite an improv theater person. I actually thought about the last time I did improv or a theater, which was one time.

Nathan:

I was going to say you imply the last time as if this is a thing I do pretty regularly.

Haeny:

Actually, no, I did it twice.

Nathan:

You've done it twice. Okay.

Haeny:

I did it twice. I think a few years ago, maybe over a decade ago, I went to this improv show where we had to put our names on a piece of paper if we wanted to be involved in improv. We went to the show, we watched improv troop, and then we put our names in a fishbowl if we wanted to actually try it out. And I put my name in there because-

Nathan:

You're a risk taker.

Haeny:

I was 15. And I was like, yes, I will do it. I wasn't 15. Just kidding. I put my name in there and lo and behold, they called my name and I thought it was kind of a miracle, but I was like. Maybe only 10 people put their name in the fishbowl.

Nathan:

Lo and behold.

Haeny:

Yes. I actually learned how to do improv from that little theater experience, which was actually kind of fun, and I realized how hard it was.

Nathan:

Yeah.

Haeny:

I did do another soiree into improv this past year, and it was really tough. It was four hours and there were definitely some rules in improv. One of them was to make eye contact, one of them was to pivot. The third thing was trust other people so that when you throw something at them, you don't assume that they're not going to know what to do, but that you kind of trust them in the process. And then I feel like the fourth thing was to listen without intention.

Nathan:

Listen without intention.

Haeny:

Yeah. Or without an agenda.

Nathan:

Right.

Haeny:

You're actually listening carefully to the other person.

Nathan:

Not into that rule. I like the other ones.

Haeny:

Yeah. I mean we love listening with agendas in academia, don't we?

Nathan:

Absolutely.

Haeny:

It was like all the anti things of academia were the four rules of improv, which was actually frightening because I'm used to the opposite of those things.

Nathan:

You're used to the five rules of academia, which...

Haeny:

Which is-

Nathan:

Rule number one.

Haeny:

Don't listen.

Nathan:

Don't listen. Have things to say at the ready.

Haeny:

Be inflexible, don't pivot.

Nathan:

Do not look someone in the eye.

Haeny:

Trust no one.

Nathan:

Trust no one.

Haeny:

Okay. Anyway, we did that and we had to do all these different exercises and kind of practice all five of those things and you had to kind of remember them as you go along and it was kind of scary, right? It was a small group and the teacher was so... She pointed out when you made a mistake.

Nathan:

As the best teachers do.

Haeny:

Yes, as the best teachers do. No, they do not. Okay. They do not do that. Anyway. It felt a little bit risky, but as time went on, I actually was glad that I did it.

Nathan:

That sounds very risky. Do you feel like you learned something that's useful outside of improv or outside of what you presume to be improv?

Haeny:

Yes. That's a great question. I feel like I definitely learned some things outside of improv. I thought those principles were actually really good to remember just when I'm in a group talking with people.

Nathan:

Yeah.

Haeny:

How about you?

Nathan:

How do I feel about looking people in the eye?

Haeny:

No.

Nathan:

Not into it.

Haeny:

Tell us about a time you took a risk.

Nathan:

Oh.

Haeny:

'Cause I already know you do improv and theater.

Nathan:

You used the present tense and I think it'd be more appropriate to use the past tense when we talk about me and improv and theater. I have done that before in a former life. Definitely when I was in college, I did a lot of improv and I did a fair amount of theater back then as well. I'd never found improv that stressful because I think as you were just talking about your youth as a young person, you just sort of believe that of course you're going to be great at whatever it is you try to do. And so I think just the absurd confidence of youth made me think that improv should be easy.

Haeny:

How do we get that back?

Nathan:

I don't know, this is long gone for me.

Haeny:

How do we get back to absurd confidence?

Nathan:

You can have confidence if you were young and an idiot, but now when you're not young, maybe still an idiot, you really need the preparation, right? You have to have some sense that I'm going to go out here and I'm going to take a risk, but I have all of these things to fall back on. I have the fact that I've memorized my lines or the fact now that we're academics, we give talks all the time or keynotes and it's like I know my talk forwards and backwards, but it's still scary to take those risks. It's still nerve racking for me even still to get up on stage and give a talk. Yeah, I don't know. I mean, do you still feel the same kind of pressures that you maybe feel at an improv show or when you were younger and engaging in these types of activities? Or is that all gone??

Haeny:

I feel like when I, okay. I don't know. Is this kind of therapy? I'm not sure, but-

Nathan:

Yeah, why not?

Haeny:

I feel like when I was younger, I was a lot less secure in myself. Unlike you, I always feared that I was going to look like an idiot. I took less risks.

Nathan:

When you were younger?

Haeny:

Yes. I think now I'm a little bit more free and maybe more sure of myself.

Nathan:

That's nice.

Haeny:

I guess so.

Nathan:

I'm wondering though, this notion of risk. This season we're talking about identity, we're talking about playing roles, and the more I think about what it means to play a role or to take on a new identity, or whether it's the stories that we're going to talk about today or whether it's something more theater oriented or improv or whatever, it feels to me that risk might always inevitably be involved in this kind of role-playing component.

Haeny:

Mm-hmm. I mean, I feel like there's no version of play without risk.

Nathan:

Oh man.

Haeny:

Yeah.

Nathan:

That was it. Wow. What a turn.

Haeny:

What a turn.

Nathan:

That's that preparation I was talking about.

Haeny:

I mean, yes. I was just thinking obviously this last year you and I have been in some role-playing situations.

Nathan:

We've been in some situations. Yep, yep.

Haeny:

And I think my takeaway, I definitely appreciate the art.

Nathan:

Yeah.

Haeny:

I appreciate the art and the aesthetics and the creativity and the imagination it took for someone to build a thing and to create these conditions for all this to happen. I realize it's not my jam.

Nathan:

Yeah.

Haeny:

And I'm realizing-

Nathan:

I'm noticing none of this is your jam either, by the way.

Haeny:

And I think I'm just realizing that that's part of it is that you do have to take a lot of risk and you have to just kind of go in all the way.

Nathan:

Yeah.

Haeny:

And I think sometimes I kind of just hold back a little bit and maybe if I didn't hold back and just jumped in and took some risks that my experience would be a lot different.

Nathan:

Maybe we should get to our expert instead of us just kind of rambling on about risk.

Haeny:

Yes. We're very excited about Kent Davis, who's going to teach us how to take risks and be better role players.

Nathan:

Finally.

Haeny:

Yes. Today we have with us writer, game designer, teacher and actor Kent Davis. More importantly, he lives in a little gray house in Montana. Nathan keeps laughing at Kent's little dramatic gesturing.

Nathan:

It's not often we have a guest do a dance as they enter the space.

Kent Davis:

I'm full of energy and life. What am I supposed to do?

Nathan:

It's perfect. It's perfect.

Haeny:

Exactly, Nathan. Don't cramp his style. Kent lives in a little gray house in Montana with his amazing partner and what he describes as his "wily bat dog and astonishingly mustachioed cat." He screwed up that time, and so he needs no further introduction. I feel like you should tell us your fun fact about your cat.

Kent Davis:

Oh yeah. My astonishingly mustachioed cat is, he does have a full name. He has this amazing sort of handlebar mustache, black with a big white handlebar mustache. And so we're big mystery fans, so we felt required to name him Hercule Perot.

Haeny:

That's awesome.

Nathan:

That is hilarious. It would've been perfect for our episode on detectives last season, but we'll have to make it work for this season. Today we're excited to talk with you about your experience as an author and writer and somebody who thinks a lot about designing roles and designing places and categories for people to inhabit and roles for people to take on. Before we dive too deep into that conversation though, we always like to have a game to get us started to try to capture the playful spirit that we're going for here. And we have a game that we've designed specifically for you, and I think it's best described this way. We're going to be trying to categorize a list of people and potentially objects as either on the Reeves Davidson Parton Sauron scale. Now, that's a little confusing perhaps, but let me try to put this in a different way. You may be familiar with the D&D alignment chart where you have Lawful Chaotic. Our scale is the Reeves Davidson scale named after Keanu Reeves and Pete Davidson.

Kent Davis:

Oh, okay.

Haeny:

Keanu Reeves is Lawful and Pete Davidson is Chaotic. I guess that's like a spectrum.

Nathan:

Yeah. You got a spectrum.

Kent Davis:

I will live inside of your conceit, but I passionately disagree with its conception.

Nathan:

That is fair. And that might be up for argumentation here at the moment.

Kent Davis:

Okay. Keanu lawful, Pete chaotic.

Nathan:

Chaotic, and of course the other dimension in this scale is good or evil and or in our case, Dolly Parton or the Dark Lord Sauron.

Kent Davis:

Which I passionately agree with. I'm going to get a tattoo of that on my back.

Nathan:

It's nice to see that. We have our alignment chart, and I'm going to give you a list of names or objects, and I'd like for you to try to tell me where they fall on this scale here.

Kent Davis:

Got you here.

Nathan:

Let's get warmed up and then we'll just see where we go. The first person we'd like for you to place on this scale is Taylor Swift.

Kent Davis:

Taylor Swift. Wow. I feel like Taylor is right on the, I think she's smack dab in the middle of, I would say she's almost full Keanu Dolly, way up in the corner.

Nathan:

Oh, I like that. Okay. Yeah.

Haeny:

Okay.

Nathan:

Interesting.

Kent Davis:

Yeah, although see in my conception of Keanu, I really feel like she's almost Dolly to me anyway.

Haeny:

Ooh, nice. I love it.

Nathan:

She's fully in the dolly land here.

Kent Davis:

Right. She is riding the Dolly land roller coaster.

Nathan:

Exactly.

Haeny:

You'd consider her lawful and less chaotic maybe?

Kent Davis:

Yeah.

Nathan:

I was wondering what you thought about that.

Kent Davis:

In presentation and also, I don't know, to be able to organize yourself in the way that she has organized her situation.

Haeny:

You got to be lawful.

Kent Davis:

There's a lot of order there.

Haeny:

Yeah.

Kent Davis:

I have a feeling.

Haeny:

Yes, you're right. You're right.

Nathan:

I think that's reasonable.

Haeny:

I think that's reasonable too. We love Taylor on this pod. FYI. Come

Kent Davis:

Come on. Awesome.

Nathan:

Why not? Yeah.

Haeny:

Yes, you do, Nathan. You love Taylor.

Nathan:

I'm fine with her. Seems great. I have no qualms. Here's another character that shows up on this podcast occasionally, and that is Kim Kardashian.

Kent Davis:

Oh, I'm less of a real pop culture, but Kim Kardashian for me is, I don't detect any Sauron sort of nature, but certainly from my limited experience watching, I'd say it's full Pete, full Davidson.

Nathan:

Oh, fascinating. Steve, because your explanation for Taylor Swift needing organization to run the sort of enterprise that is Taylor Swift. I think one could make an argument that Kardashian is also a similar type of thing.

Haeny:

I thought that's what you were going to say.

Kent Davis:

Oh. You're so right. You're so right. And that's something I'm going to need to take a look at myself through my categorization.

Nathan:

I just need to reflect a little more is all.

Kent Davis:

Yeah, I am.

Nathan:

I do think I could have find myself arguing, and I like that I'm doing the arguing for Kim Kardashian as opposed to you, Haeny. But I feel like I could find myself giving her kind of the Reeves esque organizing quality. But I think when it comes to the Dolly Sauron scale, she's flat neutral. I don't think there's evil intent, nor is there any good intent here. It's great.

Haeny:

I agree with that too. I have to agree.

Kent Davis:

There's a thing on the D&D alignment chart called true neutral, I believe. And I think that, yeah, that fits.

Nathan:

Maybe that's where they are. Yeah.

Haeny:

I'm very impressed.

Nathan:

Do you have time for any more or should we move on?

Haeny:

I think we should move on.

Nathan:

I think it's probably best that we dive into talking about role playing, and I think one thing that might help us to structure this conversation is to hear a little bit about how you got into this concept of role play and role playing.

Kent Davis:

Yeah. I think I am, in some ways I am Stranger Things. I was a kid in the early eighties who a friend invited me over to their house and there was this box on the table with a dragon and some adventurers facing off the dragon, and they were like, look at this thing. And I went, my head just exploded. And I am actually a pretty solitary person except for I'm perceived as an extrovert, I think, which is I think something that a lot of creative people have in their lives. But I was always into myths. I just read Joel Airs the Greek myths and all of the King Arthur tales and all of, and I also got into the Mahabharata and just a lot of different Mythical traditions, and I just ate them like candy. And then suddenly there was somebody in front of me, this kid who was my age, who said, oh, guess what? You can be inside of those stories as opposed to just witnessing, as opposed to just spectating them.

Nathan:

Yeah.

Kent Davis:

And that for me, I think was the genesis. And most of my early years though were not Stranger Things at all. I don't remember that kid's name. I think I maybe saw him one more time in my life. But mostly what he [inaudible 00:16:04] was a love of role-playing books. And so I would just devour, I read all of the early Dungeons & Dragons books, and then I eventually got involved weirdly enough around the same time in theater and in live performance. And so most of what I did through most of my role playing through junior high and high school and college, and then after that grad school and my professional life was on stage living inside of stories just like that. That's where it came from. And when I moved to Bozeman, I started spending time actually playing in a group with my buddy who eventually turned in my business partner, a guy named Chris Organ. That was actually when I really leaned into getting back into the RPG sort of situation. I've been playing hardcore tabletop games for about 20 years now. And going to conventions.

Haeny:

Tell the audience what you mean by a tabletop game.

Kent Davis:

Yes. Okay. A tabletop role-playing game is four or... There are five people that come over to your apartment and they sit around the table and you hand them out little sheets of paper and they roll randomly generated dice. Basically the idea is through a marriage of creativity and storytelling and chance, you develop models of the characteristics of a person that you are going to inhabit inside of a play scenario. And it's basically those three or four people who people often refer to as PCs or player characters. And then there's another person oftentimes, although not always, inside of a gaming session that's called the, in D&D it originally started as the Dungeon Master and then it turned into a game master and other people call it a guide. And it's basically the facilitator of the rest of the universe. You are oftentimes pretending to be an individual who is navigating their way through a complicated and challenging and organically unfolding, not predetermined story that is facilitated in concert by you with the guide or the game master. Does that make sense? And there are snacks.

Nathan:

Did we mention that there's dragons?

Kent Davis:

There's dragons and snacks. Yes. But the key is that it's a communal improvisation. It's communal storytelling.

Nathan:

I like that explanation. I think one thing that I think is cool about it, and you started to get at this, is it's collaborative storytelling, but it's collaborative storytelling in combination with a system. And that's what kind of makes it a game is that it's not just people improv-ing a story together around a table. It's doing that in combination with these systems that allow for a great degree of unexpected happenstance that can kind of unfold. I think that's-

Kent Davis:

Yeah. Yes, that's a great point. The improvisational terminology, yes and, right? Tina Fey wrote this book called Yes, And, right? Okay.

Haeny:

Uh-huh. Yes.

Nathan:

He talked about that a bit ago. Yes.

Haeny:

Yes.

Kent Davis:

A lot. Okay. The thing is about stories inside of a tabletop game is that everybody, if it's going in the way that I prefer it to go, everybody's saying yes and to the choices around the table. And oftentimes that means that it's basically saying, yes, you did that and I disagree with it, or whatever.

Haeny:

It's really just, but no, but you're saying yes, and.

Kent Davis:

No, but that's the thing. It's acknowledging the existence of the thing and not negating the existence of it, but also allowing for an impression or an interpretation of the action that is from the point of view of this other character that I'm inhabiting. But the thing about role-playing games is they take that sort of yes and of we're all telling a story together to Nathan's point, and oftentimes they will include either dice or another type of randomizer, like a card or something. Basically what that does is it creates a moment of tension or suspense because we are, if you want to go all Bhagavad Gita, we all control our actions but not the fruits of our actions, right? And the thing is that you roll the die. And in the systems that I like, there's a cascading level of possibilities of success or failure as opposed to just binary.

Nathan:

Yeah.

Kent Davis:

But the idea is that the physics of the world are generated by the chaos and entropy of the game mechanic in concert with your intentions.

Haeny:

Yeah, I just had an epiphany just now.

Kent Davis:

Yes. Awesome. Great.

Haeny:

What the dice actually does is it makes everybody kind of pivot their course of action, right? Because you might go with a very solid intention of what you think you're going to do, but what the dice does make changes and shifts the story so that you're forced different kind of situation, right?

Kent Davis:

Yes.

Haeny:

Yes. That's why you have it. Okay. My other question then is what do you do with those but no, people? The but heads of the group. This is my perennial question. I've played a whole bunch of role playing games lately, and I think I've had a hard time every single time. Literally anything that has to do with role playing, whether it's live action or some kind of immersive theater or a tabletop game, I have a hard time with it. And I think-

Nathan:

She's a but head is what she said.

Haeny:

I'm a but head. Yeah. How do you involve the but heads so that they can start really diving into it? And I guess this goes with the thing that you said you were thinking a lot about was the idea of risk and how do you model risk to people and really help them to engage in that sort of risk taking?

Kent Davis:

I think that, yeah, it's a great question. I think one of the things that's really interesting about tabletop gaming is that it is a quintessentially social and a quintessentially collaborative endeavor. There has to be kind of a shared trust around the table and also a shared intention or an agreement that essentially this is the kind of story that we're going to tell. And it's actually really hard, in my experience, to convince somebody that they want to tell a different story than the story that they want to tell. And this goes back to the alignment chart, right? There's whole entire demographic populations of people who play tabletop games, but they're like, no, we're murder hobos. We wander around and we kill things, and it's awesome. And if that's what gets you going and gets you going, that's great.

Haeny:

They join games so they could do that?

Kent Davis:

Yeah. They come up with stories together. And oftentimes it's a way that people talk about a particular player that's a roadblock where you're like, we're trying to get the rent forgiven for this old lady. And the person who is a self-styled murder hobo might be like, yeah. I see the old lady and I walk up to her and I put an ax through her skull. Problem solved. I'm using that as an example. Not to say that's bad behavior. You shouldn't do that.

Haeny:

Mm-hmm.

Kent Davis:

It's more like one of the basic questions about coming to a table to tell stories together is that you need to find a way to agree what type of story you want to tell.

Nathan:

Yeah, yeah.

Haeny:

Mm-hmm. I think it's making me think about zooming out outside of role playing, all the things that you said are so important for the conditions of play.

Kent Davis:

Yeah.

Haeny:

You have to collaborate with people, you have to share the space with people, you have to trust that others are going to go with you. You can't judge people for their participation. You have to be willing to share the story, right? And I think that happens with really young kids and happens with adults. And now I just realize that I'm the jerk.

Nathan:

Murder hobo. You're the murder hobo.

Haeny:

I'm the murder hobo.

Kent Davis:

Oh my God, you're a murder hobo?

Haeny:

It's very possible.

Kent Davis:

I want to endorse your ability to make whatever choices you want and to kill that landlady.

Nathan:

Don't encourage her, don't encourage her. I want to continue that line a little bit, and I want ask it a little bit of a different way though, because I think there's a tendency for any of us to talk about play and these, oh, it's all great. You just have to figure it out. And people have to know how to do this, and people have to know how to do that. And that's true. But part of, I think thinking about this from an educational standpoint is thinking about, well, how do you help create the conditions where people make those choices or people know how to collaborate? But are there ways in which you can think about designing within your systems or within your writing or within the stories such that it assists in creating the conditions for some of the things that you're talking about?

Kent Davis:

I think so. I think you can, and I think that the key word there too is encourage. I've always been someone who's a huge fan of low stakes, small moments, leading someone to exploring a concept that is uncomfortable for them or challenging, or again, getting playful or having sort of humorous moments about that. Crafting as sort of a progression of intensity or stakes can be a great way to invite somebody into exploring a behavior that they may have thought of as previously uncomfortable or something like that.

Nathan:

Right.

Haeny:

Is there a reason, okay. I have a question. Is there a reason why you choose fantasy as the genre for your role playing games? Because earlier we were talking about what's a role that you played a lot in childhood? And I said, oh, I was always a cashier at the grocery store or a librarian or something very realistic. I wasn't trying to be like She-Ra or something. I cannot think of anything. I don't know why. I don't know why I even said the She-Ra, okay. But you know what I mean.

Nathan:

She-Ra is awesome, and we've been through this.

Haeny:

Yeah, I didn't really play within fantasy roles, but I played realistic roles that obviously I'm not five, I'm not going to be a grocery store cashier, but there was something based in reality.

Kent Davis:

Yeah.

Haeny:

But is there something about a fantasy genre that kind of mobilizes something different, or do you feel like it can happen in any kind of genre?

Kent Davis:

I think that that sort of play and imaginative play can happen in a lot of different venues. For me, fantasy, one of the reasons that fantasy pings me is for whatever reason inside of my, I think progression through childhood, I got this kind of operatic tendency in terms of symbols and cosmicness, and it just feels big and it feels really cool to me.

Haeny:

Yeah.

Nathan:

Mm-hmm.

Kent Davis:

One of the things I struggle with is what's a meaningful life? And that sort of high opera can have an impact on me in the size of the stakes of the choices. I'm also a huge Shakespeare fan, so part of what draws me to those big stories is the sort of life or death stakes and the cosmic consequences and stuff like that.

Haeny:

Yeah. Essential questions too, right? About life and meaning. Yeah.

Kent Davis:

Absolutely. Absolutely. And I think that one can explore those questions in a different way if one is informed by different sort of ideas that are powerful that they want to play inside.

Haeny:

I could definitely make a Kim Kardashian Calabasas role-playing game where we hide from the paparazzi.

Kent Davis:

It would be amazing.

Nathan:

Absolutely.

Kent Davis:

Yeah. Because I feel relatively certain that Kim lives in a high stakes environment.

Nathan:

Right. Yeah.

Kent Davis:

It's just that the challenges and questions and victories are built differently, but yeah, playing around inside of that story, super fun and super exciting. Or it could be if that was something that you're drawn to.

Haeny:

Yeah.

Kent Davis:

And I think that one of the things that gets in the way here is that there is a lot of orthodoxy surrounding gaming, and so you'll get so many people in the world that basically are telling you that you're doing it wrong.

Nathan:

Yeah.

Kent Davis:

I don't know. I think that you're just doing it in a way that satisfies you differently from the way that these other people are doing it, but that just means you got to look for another game.

Haeny:

Mm-hmm. Love that.

Nathan:

Yeah, that's great. I think that's a good way to wrap this conversation too, around trying to create spaces that are inviting for people that want to play with identities, play with this kind of risky identity exploration in all sorts of different domains and spaces and contexts, and whether it's Kim Kardashian or Dragons.

Haeny:

Mm-hmm. And community looks different in all of its shapes and forms and modes and formats. And I think that is the most important part, right? We've been talking to so many people about what it's like to be in community and very different practices of play and gender, different kinds of community building.

Nathan:

Yeah. It's the third theme, pop, play and community.

Haeny:

Okay. Great.

Kent Davis:

Okay.

Haeny:

PPC.

Nathan:

The secret third theme of this podcast.

Haeny:

Yes.

Nathan:

But I think that's great. Love it. One thing we like to do towards the end of our conversations is to invite our guests to tell us about things they're into. And we like to ask you, what's poppin? What's something, a book or a story or your nose? Sorry, you're pointing at your nose.

Kent Davis:

I'm desperately hoping, I'm realizing I'm analyzing all of my choices if this is going to be on YouTube or not. I'm terrified.

Nathan:

You're safe. No YouTube. Good.

Kent Davis:

Okay. I've got two, if that's okay.

Nathan:

Perfect. Yeah.

Kent Davis:

First one is a non tabletop role-playing game called Baldur's Gate three.

Haeny:

Neal's playing that.

Kent Davis:

It's popping. Oh, it's so poppin.

Nathan:

I'm also playing it. It's so good.

Kent Davis:

It's so poppin. It's so good for so many different reasons. I'll say that. And I'll say, as a system nerd, Haeny, the way that they model action, it's brilliant. And also the depth of relationships. Part of this conceit of this type of game is that you have a character and you go on an adventure and you gather around you a group, a community, dare I say, of companions, each of which have their own personal stories. And totally part of this game is deciding who you want to have a relationship with and whether or not they want to have a relationship with you. There's all of this sort of very Kardashian sort of stuff going on.

Haeny:

It's basically a dating game, is that what you're telling me?

Kent Davis:

Yeah. But the way that you decide if somebody is right for you is the type of adventures that you go on together. And whether or not you liked your adventure.

Nathan:

Also like dating.

Kent Davis:

Totally like dating, but it is amazing in terms of the way that it tells a story. I think actually the storytelling and the story arcs for each of those characters, each of those commanding garages is so sophisticated and so rich and so surprising. And so for me, utterly satisfying in a way such that, and the way that it's built with regard to choices is that I am certain that I have played, I played through a couple of times now.

Nathan:

Wow.

Kent Davis:

Yeah, I really like this game. But I'm pretty sure that I haven't seen a lot of it because it's built so many stories and it's built to be explored in so many different ways using that sort of Sauron Dolly-

Nathan:

Reeves.

Kent Davis:

Keanu Pete scale. Absolutely.

Haeny:

I mean, video games have come such a long way since back in the day when I was a child, which was yesterday.

Nathan:

Yeah, yeah. When you came up in the Nintendo 64 era, right?

Haeny:

No. No, no. Oh my

Kent Davis:

Oh my gosh.

Haeny:

I'm just kidding. Yes.

Kent Davis:

Oh, me, definitely. And the other one is Children of Time by Adrian Church.

Nathan:

Yes.

Kent Davis:

This book is, its far future, it's space opera. It's been out for a while.

Nathan:

Yeah.

Kent Davis:

But basically without spoiling it too much, one of the edges of the end of humanity is trying to terraform this world with a nano virus. This all happens in the prologue, like a terraforming nano virus that they're going to send down to some apes that they have pre planted on the planet, but things go awry. And the nano virus, the evolution nano virus actually gets inserted into spiders and ants.

Nathan:

It's really good. And I think you described it really well. It's the idea that you spend so much time thinking about, okay, if it were spiders that were evolving on a planet, what would a society look like? What would the technology look like?

Kent Davis:

Yeah.

Nathan:

And they develop computers, but computers are based on ants and pheromones, so it's a more kind of chemistry oriented, it's very weird and cool, but essentially space spiders.

Kent Davis:

And it's really tempting, I think, in a sort of community representational way. It's really tempting to anthropomorphize those spider societies. But I think the author does a really good job of trying to resist that impulse and trying to genuinely think about what a culture that was derived from that species particular set of advantages and disadvantages might look like. It's really cool.

Nathan:

Yeah.

Haeny:

Sounds awesome.

Kent Davis:

I highly recommend.

Nathan:

Great suggestions.

Kent Davis:

It's popping. Thank you.

Nathan:

Both of those are poppin. I feel like Kent and I should stay on the line and talk for another hour about other cool stuff we like.

Haeny:

While I leave because I have no idea what you guys are talking about.

Nathan:

Kent, thank you so much for being here with us and helping us think about role-playing and games and systems and risk in those spaces. Really enjoyed this conversation with you.

Kent Davis:

It's my pleasure, y'all. Thank you both so much. It's really been great.

Haeny:

Thank you so much. Pop and Play is produced by Haeny Yoon, Nathan Holbert, Lalitha Vasudevan, Billy Collins, and Joe Riina-Ferrie at Teachers College Columbia University with the Digital Futures Institute. Audio recording for this episode by Jen Lee. This episode was edited by Billy Collins and Kyle Arlington.

Nathan:

For a transcript and to learn more, visit tc.edu/popandplay. Our music is selections from Leaf Eaters by Podington Bear used here under a Creative Commons Attribution non-commercial license. Blake Danzig provided our social media and outreach support. Follow @popandplaypod on Instagram and TikTok for more of what's poppin like the Trashies with Ioana Litterat. Thank you to Meier Clark and Abu Abdelbagi for support with our website and additional materials. And thanks to you for listening.