The Path of the Wises

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NEW EUROPEAN BAUHAUS RISING STARS : concepts or ideas submitted by young talents (aged 30 or less)

Project title

The Path of the Wises

Full concept/idea title

Description

The Path of the Wises is an educational roleplaying game that pushes the players to empathize with a hero that will settle current issues of our world, in a fantastic kingdom that is inspired by the greek myths. The game fuels creativity and pushes collaboration because no one knows the ending, that will be built with the players’ choices. The non-judgmental ambience opens the people in a condition of great creativity, fundamental to think innovative solutions to problems dealt with.

Where is your concept/idea being developed or intended to be implemented in the EU?

Please provide a summary of your concept/ idea

Andromeda is a team formed by five young designers that has the simple aim of saving the world, but since human beings don’t want to work, we decided to save the world by playing. “The Path of the Wises” can be intended as an educational, innovative and interdisciplinary model. A roleplaying game is storytelling, problem solving, imagination, possibility of creating new bonds and lots of fun addressing current issues such as environmental issues. The game, beyond raising awareness and expanding creativity, has the purpose of including high-functioning autistic people in the playing groups. In order to play you need a group of friends, some dice and character sheets to play a hero. The group splits in two, the narrator and the players. The former tells about a present-day problem in a fantasy setting, imagining a tragic finale. The players create a hero that they will play during the game session and a character sheet that describes them, their skills, missions and the value that will guide them in their choices. The heroes come on stage before the tragic ending chosen by the narrator, changing its fate unexpectedly.  Playing a hero and following their will, it is possible to develop the story creatively and uniquely. The same plot, given to different groups, will evolve differently and in an unrepeatable way. At the end of the session the players are called to return to themselves in order to analyze with the others how the session went, having fun imagining what would have happened if they took different choices. The game is designed as the main touchpoint of an entire ecosystem of products and services: it is presented in a paper format and also in a digital format, in our future website that will guide the customers to discover the project.  

Please give information about the key objectives of your concept/idea in terms of sustainability and how these would be met

Our project is sustainable since every part of the game is made with recycled materials: the box carton, the guide, the cards and the dice tray. The dice are 3D printed with PLA. The sustainability theme is a fundamental element of the game adventures, in which are faced topics that regard the environment and social issues as pollution, global warming, plastic islands and food waste. Living this kind of adventures and stories the players’ sensibility towards these topics will grow, expanding their knowledge about our world's issues. With the TPOTW’s app, the users are invited to walk around the city in search of local hints and suggestions that will be the topics of their next adventures. With a virtual reality system the user can frame with their phone some urban elements that are connected with ambiental issues. The VR system works in Palermo (Andromeda’s tested city), but it is scalable to different european cities because they have many common problems.  

Please give information about the key objectives of your concept/idea in terms of aesthetics and quality of experience beyond functionality and how these would be met

The Path of the Wises makes people with different traits and backgrounds dialogue together about possible solutions to current-day, solid problems, experiencing them in a fantasy world. Our game’s setting takes inspiration from greek mythology’s heroes, monsters, myths and ancient cities. Even though the setting resembles an ancient, fictional imaginary, we gave the players the possibility to set there every story and to talk about every topic. Putting today’s problems in an environment strategically far from ours it is possible to look at them in a different way, enlightening them with new lights. The beauty in the game is in the possibility to imagine non-existing places and sharing with the players stories that are as epic as funny to play to. Creativity is the moving engine of the game. On one hand, the narrator prepares a world that is alive and coherent, just like he was a movie director, while on the other hand the players experience and live that world, telling an improvised story and deciding its fate. Another crucial point that makes the beauty of the game is the discussion that, coming out of the characters at the end of the sessions, the players have about the outcome of the adventure, analyzing the actions made and imagining alternative endings together. Thus a creative solutino can be found also in the conclusive moments, once back to the real world. The experience offered by this game is a deep personal growth. In fact the player is involved in two different times, one inside the game, full of emotions and empathy, and one outside the session, a moment of personal and shared reflection. The inclusion of props, soundtracks to play during the session and cards with evocative textures offer a multisensorial and rich playing experience. A playful, non-judgemental context lets the players experiment without limits, suggesting uncommon, funny and potentially innovative solutions to problems and actions.  

Please give information about the key objectives of your concept/idea in terms of inclusion and how these would be been met

Inclusiveness is a key word in our project, for which we chose to introduce high-functioning autistic people to roleplaying games. They are usually excluded from this kind of activity because of the too complex rules and excessively elaborate game system. Thanks to a collaboration with psychologists, we developed the elements of the game (character sheet, cards and rules) making sure that they are fully comprehensible and stimulating on an imaginative level. During the development of these elements, copious tests have been made, to understand better the difficulties that may appear when an autistic person plays the game. Further features can be added to the game such as visual, auditory and tactile supports that have the function of stimulate the imagination of whoever will play the game, allowing anyone to immerse themselves in the story. TPOTF aims to stimulating also empathy towards others, because the players, interpreting their characters, can experience multiple kinds of emotions and be willing to listening to the other players in their differences and similarities. We also made further tests with both autistic people and usual players, to bring people with different difficulties to play and cooperate together, and overcome communicative and imaginative limits in both sides. A psychologist and a psychiatrist, after seeing the tests that the conducted, informed us that the game sessions we tried had a potentially terapeutic effect to some of the boys we played with.  

Please explain the innovative character of your concept/ idea

There are a lot of unique features that make The Path of the Wises an innovative and avant-garde roleplaying game. The first peculiarity of the game is the will to let autistics and neurotypicals play together, sensibilizing them to current-day, environmental and social topics, also giving them the possibility to study and try solving modern problems together by acting as a new person with different ideas and points of view. The Path of the Wises, in addition to being a paper-made game, presents also a digital portal made by a website and a mobile app. In the app there's a forum where every user has the possibility to read and ask questions inherent to the game, and also read and publish adventures written by players themselves. It also hosts monthly events connected to social and environmental cases, in order to gain points, which are necessary to publish adventures in the forum. The app lets the user meet other players being in real time in the same city, with the help of a notification when another user is near them. We thought it was a way to help people find others to play with and grow new bonds, since it's difficult to new or solo players to find a group. Also en extract of the game manual will be freely avalable on the website. It will include the some basic rules to play with, but without offering narrative suggestions, since they can be purchased separately.  

Please detail the plans you have for the further development, promotion and/or implementation of your concept/idea, with a particular attention to the initiatives to be taken before May 2022

Thinking about future developments of TPOTW, we focused on new targets, like people with other kinds of disabilities apart from the autistic spectrum. We were considering extending the sperimentation involving subjects in an evolving age with Adverse Childhood Experience (ACE) and/or diagnosed with Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD), including, where possible, sanitary institutions and local agencies. Beyond the manual we designed an array of satellite products that will enhance the experience with gaming props such as cards that provoke unexpected events, some d6 dice, cards with evocative textures of different places and materials, musical playlists to use as soundtracks for adventures and a mobile app that makes the community share opinions, suggestions and adventures with other users and also participate to mothly events in different cities. The game system is in constant evolution, and every test we conduct brings us more ides for future machanics, every time more fluid. The gaming experience will expand further and further thanks to constant updates for the mobile app and the paper-made game. We plan on doing collaborations, asking streamers and bloggers to try The Path of the Wises and rewiewing it on their online channels and platforms. TPOTW is adaptable to different settings: it could be a new tool to spread awareness about the environment and diversity in schools, encouraging kids to play with their disabled schoolmates; it could also be used as a brainstorming prop to brands willing to try new design thinking methods. Asking help to the community will be a way to clarify hypotetically unclear aspects of the game (that would be immediately fixed or updated), getting to know more and more tips and befriending other players. The community members will have the possibility to meet during events like Comic-cons, events connected to environment awareness as Friday for Future, and downtown events organized by the developers of TPOTW through the app.

By ticking this box, you declare that all the information provided in this form is factually correct, that the proposed concept/idea has not been proposed for the New European Bauhaus Rising Stars Awards more than once in the same category.