Rusch, Doris C. 2019. “Existential, Transformative Game Design.” Lecture presented at the Center of Excellence in Game Culture Studies, University of Tampere, Oct. 2019. Ghosts in Liminal are echoes of the living rather than actual souls. They tend to fade away after a week or so. Particularly angry or powerful ghosts can linger and gain sentience, or at least the appearance of sentience. A loose collection of thugs, rebels, and thieves who make their living from the Hidden World. They include mortals, magicians, and supernatural beings. They seldom bother with purely mundane crimes, though sometimes a magical crime will have a mundane component. You see, Sigil & Shadow might have been six years in the making, but you’ll get the game within six paragraphs. The mistake I made was to assume that’s all there is to it. Words that Bind is particularly flavourful. You are adept at manoeuvring others into promises. Anyone who dares to break such a promise takes damage to their Will.

This is also the closest I’ve seen to a magic system that replicates a lot of the magical abilities you see in urban fantasy fiction. ( Scion could give it a run for its money, but Scion takes more time and effort to get to grips with.) Chapter 6: Supernatural Beings and Factions What considerations are necessary to foreground when designing culturally responsive and inclusive play experiences? Baird, Josephine 2021. "Role-playing the Real: Designing for Trans and Nonbinary Experiences and Explorations in Larps." Paper presented at Knutepunkt 2021, Oslo, Norway, October 6 2021. Video linked here.The strong points: If, before receiving Liminal's Core Book for review, somebody asked me to name the most British RPG, I would have unflinchingly replied WFRP. Today however the answer is Liminal. This is the most British roleplaying experience one can hope for; you can practically smell the fish n' chips. Here's why. Rusch, Doris C. 2019. “Existential, Transformative Game Design.” Lecture presented at the Department of Public Health and Social Medicine / Social Medicine / CHAP (Child, Health and Parenting), Uppsala University, Dec. 12th, 2019.

How can we research processes of change over time and assess the effectiveness of playful interventions? Vampires in Liminal don’t just need blood, they are also inherently sadistic, they struggle to resist the urge to inflict anguish on humans. (Rather like the demonic vampires in Buffy and Angel.) Vampires can dominate any human that drinks their blood and are masters of manipulation and influence.

About This Game

Phelps, Andy, and Doris C. Rusch. 2020. “Navigating Existential, Transformative Game Design.” In Proceedings from DiGRA ’20 – Proceedings of the 2020 DiGRA International Conference: Play Everywhere: 1-4. There are some more practical points, such as a note that Glasgow doesn’t deserve its reputation for violence (at least, not anymore), or the incredible ethnic diversity of London’s population. (The Fae beings of London are similarly diverse, including Rakshasas, Loogaroos, Djinn and other creatures from around the world.) There are older vaguer stories too, of Cerdic landing at Netley Abbey during the Saxon invasion. Just a typical English village and it’s so deep in history and folklore. And that’s the point – everywhere is like that, to a greater or lesser extent. And that’s gameable. Weathermonger lets you control the weather, of course. It has the potential to be the most awesome and awe-inspiring style in the game. At the base level you can simply change the weather, given time. With the right Traits you can walk through a blizzard without taking harm or leaving a trail, throw gusts of wind the way other people throw punches, or strike your enemies with lightning from the sky.

Rusch, Doris C., and Andrew M. Phelps. 2020. “Existential Transformational Game Design: Harnessing the ‘Psychomagic’ of Symbolic Enactment.” Frontiers in Psychology(November 4). Gutter Mage. An informally taught magician, looked down on by the establishment but no less powerful for it. Doubles matter; if the dice pops up something like 33, 55 or 77, then it could be a double success or a double failure. The advantage and disadvantage system lets you swap the dice around so that a 19 becomes a 91, but as you can see, a 99 is still a 99. There’s an exception for shapechangers and lycanthropes, though. Normally shapeshifting is the art of the magician but if your character can only change into a single shape – like a wolf – then they can be created as a tough. Examples of thoughtful consideration like that are peppered throughout Liminal.Westborg, Josefin, Josephine Baird, Kjell Hedgard Hugaas, Sarah Lynne Bowman. “Higher Education for Edu-Larpers: The Transformative Play Initiative.” Presented at the Edu-Larp Conference in Oslo, Norway, October 4, 2021. Liminal Designer Paul Mitchener discusses the inspiration behind this groundbreaking RPG available now here. Bowman, Sarah Lynne, Josefin Westborg, Kjell Hedgard Hugaas, Josephine Baird. 2021. “Agents of Empowerment: A Role-playing Game in Service of Cultivating a Soulful and Sustainable Academia.” Presented at the Gamification for Sustainable Development at Heriot-Watt University, Edinburgh, Scotland, December 15, 2021. Video linked here

Rusch, Doris C. 2020. “Symbolic Enactment in Digital Games.” Lecture presented at Gotland Higher Seminar Series, Department of Business Studies, Uppsala University, Campus Gotland, Feb. 13, 2020. One less lovely feature of the city is the number of almost empty shopping centres, which seem to be replaced by new developments every few years. In the world of Liminal, that has to mean something supernatural. So for me, it made sense to make these shopping centres the abodes of ghosts. And with ghosts I invented a necromancer who studied them, someone officially in the good graces of the Council of Merlin, a group of rich academic magicians, but who could be up to something more suspect. Clued Up Criminal. Hidden societies are a natural refuge for criminals. This character is mortal but finds opportunities in the Hidden World nonetheless.We get four sample Crews, each based in a different part of the UK and possessing a different core motivation. At the Games & Society Lab, we research the ways in which games can be vehicles of change and ignite processes of transformation. We are particularly interested in applied play, in which games are employed as a means to assist participants on their journeys of growth. Guiding questions include: There’s lots of urban fantasy that feels a bit like Liminal, but the game is its own thing. As I read through the introduction of the Hidden World and those few humans who are aware of it, including the police force’s P. Division, I was sure the game’s inspiration was Paul Cornell’s London Falling Shadow Police series. I’d just finished the audiobook. As it happens, Liminal wears its influences on its sleeve, dozens of titles like The Rivers of London (Ben Aaronovitch), Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell (Susanna Clarke), The Dresden Files (Jim Butcher), and even Hellblazer, Dracula and the BBC’s version of Neverwhere. I think you could easily use Liminal to turn any of those stories into an RPG.