Story Go Round
A collaborative disaster preparedness game.
Story Go Round is a community future visioning tool that uses humor and the creative spontaneity of improvisational storytelling to address disaster preparedness in high-risk communities across the globe.
Saving lives through serious play.
Story Go Round was first tested in New York City and was further tested and developed in villages on the Zambezi river basin and other high-risk communities with support from Red Cross Red Crescent organization.
Image from The Journal of the International Institute by the University of Michigan.
Goals
Encourage creative thinking and collaborative planning.
Teach probability, simulating forecasting, and opening communication about tradeoffs.
Create spaces for discussion of what items to prioritize in disaster scenarios.
A flexible platform.
The purpose of this game is to spark creative thinking about how communities can mitigate disaster by using local capacities in resourceful ways, as well as to encourage collaborative problem solving and planning. Further, the game is designed to help bridge the gap between the local knowledge of the community and organizations and services that engage with the community. The game can be adjusted for different cultures and contexts.
This game activity was originally created for use in African villages with the intent of creating a flexible platform that could be used in different contexts. Villagers in the Zambezi river basin are challenged with flooding that due to global warming, is less predictable than in the past. Our mission was to create a game for the Red Cross Red Crescent organization (RCRC) that would help facilitate the creation of new visions of future action.
Story Go Round adjusts for different cultures and contexts. For African villagers, the game uses rural iconography and for American audiences, it uses a zombie theme, Zombie Attack!
How it works.
Participants work together to create a story about how they could escape or mitigate disaster while saving their valuables, using only the tools and items they have around them.
Their time to build this story and their selection of tools are limited, to mimic the pressure of impending disaster. As players create their story, they are able to constantly add to the deck of potentially useful resources throughout the game, with that deck eventually forming a portrait of the village’s capacities.
Early game testers help us refine the game at Parsons the New School for Design in New York, NY.
The game uses storytelling to help approach the seriousness of disaster with the energy of creative spontaneity. It can be used for discovery and planning purposes, as well as for “breaking the ice” between players and warming them up to work together and think in novel ways.
If there is enough time available, it is suggested that each game begins with a “warm-up round” using a ridiculous scenario that is appropriate to the community (e.g. “Goat Attack!” or “Zombie Attack!”). The players then move onto future rounds that use realistic scenarios such as floods, drought, hurricanes, etc., depending on relevance to the region.
Player details
The game can accommodate 4-30+ total players, as several groups can run simultaneously. Each group should include a minimum of four players (including the facilitator), but should not exceed seven players.
There is no limit to the number of groups that can play simultaneously, provided there are enough facilitators and enough time. If there is more than one group, one person is designated as the ‘workshop’ facilitator, who will oversee the final steps of gameplay for all the teams.
Story Go Round was created with support from the Red Cross Red Crescent and Parsons the New School for Design.
Story Go Round is a collaboration by Jane Friedhoff, Kelly Jo, and Mike Susol.