Imagination & Liberation Festival Debrief

Imagination & Liberation Festival Debrief

It started with a phone call with Hunter from Badwolf (formerly of Mercury Adventure Studios). We were both excited about the possibility space of using roleplaying games to support emancipatory politics, and began brainstorming.

Life kept him busy, but I ended up running with the idea, which became the Imagination & Liberation festival. We held it in the back third of Sencha Tea Bar on Hennepin, and made it free to players, with gamemasters donating their time and efforts. The pitch was to run games that excited people's political imaginations and gave them agency.

In that same spirit, we worked with a bunch of local organizations to share their details and projects, so that attendees and bystanders could find opportunities to make small differences, whether that was through local neighborhood organizations, queer rights groups, immigrant support groups, local elections, food shelves and mutual aid, or other forms of activism and involvement.

Despite having to cancel a couple of the games last-minute due to family and medical emergencies for some of the GMs, we held games of Marvel Multiverse, Stewpot, Girl by Moonlight, and Rosenstrasse.

The latter was particularly timely, as it deals with the historical events surrounding Aryan German women protesting the arrests of their Jewish husbands in 1940s Germany. The previous week, ICE had shown up in a militarized fashion in south Minneapolis for what turned out to be a drug bust, but had all the markings of a fascist assault on immigrants. Residents responded accordingly.

Overall, despite being a shoestring event, I'm very pleased with how everything went, and intend to make this a more fleshed-out event next year, with a bit more planning and lead-time. A huge thank you to Sencha for hosting, Gametime Hero for support with ticketing, and for Badwolf for cross-promoting, and for the fellow gamemasters for their time and effort.