Project System: totalitarian utopia as a role-playing game
| DOI | https://doi.org/10.1108/WJSTSD-08-2016-0051 |
| Pages | 218-227 |
| Date | 06 April 2017 |
| Published date | 06 April 2017 |
| Author | Lujza Kotryová |
| Subject Matter | Public policy & environmental management,Environmental technology & innovation |
Project System: totalitarian utopia
as a role-playing game
Lujza Kotryová
Court of Moravia, Brno, Czech Republic
Abstract
Purpose –The purpose of this paper is to determine how to educate people about complicated social topics
or politics?; how to lead them to critical thinking?; and how to convey emotions or life experience they never
lived through?
Design/methodology/approach –Project System is a three-day experience for adult participants
concerning totalitarian regime, freedom and inequality. The Project System does not give fast and easy
answers but leads participants to find them on their own. For 30 hours, participants find themselves within
a larp, which is a very intense type of role-playing game based on human interactions.The author has chosen
a larp as a medium as one of the most immersive and influential method of game-based learning which can
facilitate topics that are normally hard to explain through conventional methods of learning. Participants
learn firsthand through their roles, emotions, story and experience.
Findings –Project System was a really strong and important experience for many players that may have
partially changed their lives. After more than 500 players walked through it, the author can say that this
method is beneficial.
Originality/value –Larp as an educational tool is used all over the world; however, there are still only few
professional organizations. Most of them are focused on using larp (or similar role-playing methods) as a tool
at elementary or secondary schools. Using larp in andragogy is currently pioneering.
Keywords Gamification, Education, Game, Andragogy, Larp, Role-playing
Paper type Case study
How to educate people about complicated social topics or politics? How to lead them to
critical thinking? How to convey emotions or life experience they never lived through?
Project System is a three-day experience for adult participants concerning totalitarian
regime, freedom and inequality. Project System does not give fast and easy answers but
leads participants to find them on their own.
For 30 hours, participants find themselves within a larp. Larp is a very intense type of
role-playing game based on human interactions. We had chosen larp as a medium because it
is one of the most immersive and influential method of game-based learning which can
facilitate topics that are normally hard to explain through conventional methods of learning.
Participants learn firsthand through their roles, emotions, story and experience.
Let us see how Project System works and what its advantages in terms of andragogy are.
Larp as a medium
Larp as a separate medium emerged in the late 1970s separating itself from tabletop
role-playing games. As Tychsen et al. (2006, p. 256) explain “LARPs can be viewed as a form of
a distinct category of RPG because of two unique features: (a) The players physically embody
their characters, and (b) the game takes place in a physical frame. Embodiment means that the
physical actions of the player are regarded as those of the character. […] The game spacemay
range from a room to, in extreme cases, acres of countryside[1].”Edu-larp isthe special type of
this medium used to impart pre-determined pedagogical or didactic content.
Larp is an interactive medium of active learning. In this meaning, we can understand it
as a part of forming participatory culture in education. Frontal presentations as part of
a classical education can be considered a spectator culture, as they depend largely on the
one-way stimulus-response pattern. In contrast, participation can be explained as a process
World Journal of Science,
Technology and Sustainable
Development
Vol. 14 No. 2/3, 2017
pp. 218-227
© Emerald PublishingLimited
2042-5945
DOI 10.1108/WJSTSD-08-2016-0051
The current issue and full text archive of this journal is available on Emerald Insight at:
www.emeraldinsight.com/2042-5945.htm
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WJSTSD
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