World War III: The twentieth century's most important war?
From 1945 onwards, it was a war that never broke out that occupied the minds of millions of people around the world. During the Cold War era, World War Three remained an apocalyptic fantasy, but it was a fantasy with enormous impact, relevance, and resonance. Facing this ‘spectre of ever greater annihilation’ politicians, officials, military leaders, and 'boffins' all pored over its implications, planned for its outcomes, and wrestled with the morality of it all. The global public consumed ideas about a third major twentieth century conflagration through an untold number of novels, comics, films, plays, artworks, news media articles, and games. This talk will cover the imaginary of World War III more generally, and then focus on how analogue games approached this topic and what this can add to our understanding of the twentieth century.
Better Dead Than Red: RPGs and the invasion of America
Since the founding of the United States 250 years ago, fears of subversion and invasion by foreign powers have waxed and waned, but have never gone away. The 1980s saw the emergence of RPGs and board games that explicitly dealt with this threat, either literally or metaphorically. What do we make of these games as historical objects and how do we analyse them within their historical context. This talk by Malcolm Craig will invite you to consider games like Freedom Fighters, Year of the Phoenix, and the infamous Price of Freedom, and think about what they tell us about the United States in the era of Ronald Reagan.
They're not up on the site yet, but I'll be giving 2 talks at @conpulsion.bsky.social in Edinburgh on April 11/12:
11th: 11.30-12.30: World War III: The 20th century's most important war?
12th: 15.30-16.30: Better Dead Than Red: RPGs & the invasion of America
More on the talks in the images below