THURSDAY 4/14: Ludic Liberation Lab ~ Arcology World
Playing with Mutations and Mutual Aid
Dear Ludic Liberators,
In Spring 2022, Ludic Liberation Lab is dedicating its monthly sessions to playing speculative world-building games that center solarpunk post-capitalist visions. Last month we played The Transition Year by queer anarchist game design collective Affinity Games (read the lab report on our findings). This month, we’ll be playing Arcology World, a ptba (powered by the apocalypse) game created by the artist Dyer Rose aka BasiliskOnline.
About Arcology World:
In a distant future, after humans have overthrown the blight of capitalism, the Earth is a lush and vibrant world teeming with life. Decentralized communities of all sizes dot the landscape where they adapt and thrive, not as masters of nature and the world around them, but living in harmony with it.
You are members of one such community, working together not only to adjust to an ever evolving and changing ecosystem, but to care for one another and thrive as a community.
Due to the Seeding, a mutating retrovirus released over a century ago to reverse the damage done to the Earth by greed and capitalism, the plantlife of the world not only grows rampantly and often unpredictably, but mutates into wondrous and completely new and alien life. The beast and animals of the world also change, adapt and mutate with each new generation.
The focus of the game will often be split between engaging in social drama and managing crisis. A Crisis is managed by Mutual Aid, ensuring your community will weather the immediate effects of the Crisis, while you also strive to figure out how to adapt your community and lifestyle to accommodate the change in circumstance.
In permaculture, there is the saying “the problem is the solution,” which means that any problem you might have is only a problem because you haven’t thought of a way to make it useful. For example: you’re growing a crop of lettuce, but you discover that there are slugs everywhere! Now, a normal person would see this as a problem which needs to be eradicated, so they go get some poison to kill the slugs. Now they just have a new problem: poisoned, albeit slug-free, lettuce. A solarpunk would see these slugs as a problem too, but not in the same way. The problem, she might see, is not an abundance of slugs, but a lack of ducks. She gets some ducks, the ducks eat the slugs, and now she has healthy lettuce and ducks to boot!
What can we discover by speculative ecological problems through collective harmony and adaptation rather than environmental dominance or control? Join the Lab to find out!
JOIN US to play ARCOLOGY WORLD!
🗓 THURSDAY, APRIL 14, 2022
⏰ 6-7:30pm Eastern Standard Time (use a timezone converter to figure out the start time in your location). The full game may take 2+ hours, we’ll make a decision together about whether to end at 90 minutes, keep playing, or schedule a follow up. A COLLECTIVE DECISION!
📍Zoom
🎟 This lab is donation-based; all proceeds will be passed on to the game designer Dyer Rose aka BasiliskOnline. No one turned away for lack of funds.