On April 30th 2025, the Utrecht Gamelab and the Manchester Game Centre at Manchester Metropolitan University collaborated on a first-of-its-kind hybrid three-hour co-design workshop, building on the work of Chloe Germaine and Paul Wake on ‘game hacking’ and the ‘franchise hacking’ technique developed by the Utrecht Game Lab on the basis of Germaine and Wake’s earlier work to experiment with re-designing Magic: The Gathering (MTG) as a medium for climate education.

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Article by Sören Henrich, originally posted on The Conversation

Dungeons and Dragons (D&D) is crossing a new frontier, as the game may soon be used as a form of psychological therapy. Over the last five years, I have researched possibilities for the game’s clinical implementation, as well as potential hurdles. The therapeutic interest in the game only arose in the last five years, when D&D experienced a renaissance. Once a niche nerdy interest, it now has flourished into a multi-million dollar business, including a new movie franchise.

Several organisations used the rise in D&D’s popularity as the perfect opportunity to marry mental health with fun. This includes, for example, the US Critical Role Foundation, which supports creativity and empowerment in disenfranchised children. In the UK, youth group the Scouts encourage their members to learn skills of entertaining by facing fantasy adventures.

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Three years ago, Sam, James, and Chloe approached me to discuss the possibility of using Trophy as a teaching tool in the environmental sciences, specifically to counter the feelings of powerlessness that come up when facing the climate crisis. They saw how tabletop roleplaying games can use fantasy as metaphor for contemporary struggles, can shift perspective and broaden empathy, and—most importantly—can empower people and drive them to action.

From those early conversations, Rooted in Crisis was born. Roleplaying games are inherently collaborative—magic happens when diverse voices and talents come together in an act of creation. We recruited game designers and climate crisis researchers, pairing them together to share ideas and find common ground based on their own interests, fields of study, and lived experiences.

The end result is five diverse but interconnected games exploring different facets of humanity’s impact on the ecosystem. Each game shares a foundation based in the push-your-luck mechanics of Trophy Dark and Trophy Gold, but each adds innovative twists to tell their own unique story.

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