Welcome to Prelude’s Forge, where two early career scholars—who just happen to play a wide variety of tabletop games—attempt to build one of their own.
Born from a melding of our different research goals and interests, Empire and Resistance will be a tabletop role playing game that will put players into the tumultuous lead-up to a major historical event, the English Civil Wars, or the Wars of the Three Kingdoms. The game will focus on one historical moment before the breakout of the war which would eventually consume the whole of the Atlantic Archipelago (also known as the British Isles), the Irish Uprising of 1641.
Not content to suffer alone, we want to bring you along on this journey, and this blog is a one way that we will do that. We will post on our progress and process of creating this tabletop experience. We will be posting our challenges and successes, as well as bits and pieces that may work their way into the module handbook. Expect thoughts on critical gaming, including gaming in the classroom, and other types of games to sneak into the blog from time to time.
Who are these intrepid posters?
Geoff Gimse is a PhD candidate in the English Department at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee. His research is on participatory culture in online and offline spaces as well as digital technology, publics, organizations, and the individuals that comprise and build them.
Courtney Herber is a PhD student in the Department of History at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. Her research interests are early modern Europe, specifically the Atlantic Archipelago. She has presented research on English, Irish, and Scottish history, and her publications on several early modern queens (Katherine of Aragon, Anne Boleyn, and Marie Antoinette) are forthcoming. Her dissertation will focus on intersections of the performative nature of queenship and women performing in English theatre.