Planning Table
Larp playtest by
Lore D Selys, Steph Holl-Trieu
& Carina Erdmann
Monday, 24th
November
17h – 21h
17h – 21h
RSVP to participate
Wednesday, 15th October
18h - 21h
The workshop is conducted in English
(French explaination is available)
18h - 21h
The workshop is conducted in English
(French explaination is available)
"The Planning Table" is a role-play workshop that examines and remakes economic systems departing from everyday concerns. Participants embody semi-fictional characters, created via live-action roleplay (LARP) and worker’s inquiry, to act as a speculative council. As part of the council, they play an adapted version of The International Trade Game, a game that is widely used to teach macroeconomic principles to students. The game starts out with unequally distributed means of production and resources, usually leading to an unequal distribution of wealth at the end of the game.
Participants play both as their character, embodying a personalised point-of-view, as well as representatives of the group, therefore as agents of a larger organisation or collective. At first playing with the existing rules, the players successively modify the rules in timed council meetings, proposing amendments to the game system. As they continue playing, they simulate a transition of the economic system by addressing the extraction of resources and the gendered exploitation of labor. They might not be successful in satisfyingly altering the game, but the resistance to change in the system is a crucial element of the game hacking experience. The workshop concludes with a reflection through their characters on how they acted both within their groups and in relation to other groups, and how the system they created through play can be deciphered as a metaphor for the systems of the world as we know it.
The project is an ongoing research project by Steph Holl-Trieu, Lore D Selys & Carina Erdmann. Its first iteration will be presented in the context of the (re)connecting.earth biennale, Les Créatives Festival, FTW (For the Win) at Le Commun in winter 2025.
The two workshops held at au jus will be the first public playtests and will have a dedicated moment for feedback and discussion of the mechanics in relation to the content of the game.
Methods
Live action role-playing serves as a method to enter into systems of our own making. These are not just described in the abstract, but experienced through the complexity of their emotional and social dynamics. It allows participants to encounter contradictions—both individually and collectively. In a reality premised on competition and cynicism, the game offers a space to rehearse what it means to overcome the impasse of capitalism as the end of history. Instead of theorising from above, it is a game about inhabiting the textures of systemic transformation.
Game hacking serves as a method to simulate the economy as an adaptive system. While the project emphasizes the lived experience of an economic model through personal storytelling; the narrative interacts with adapted game systems that stimulate the economy at scale. During the research phase existing pedagogical games will be tested and adapted to metaphorically represent economic systems. As part of the workshops, these games will be adapted and “hacked” according to the participants’ values, desires and needs.