Sunday, July 13, 2025 - 12:30pm to 3:30pm
For this 4-part series of workshops, we will explore tabletop game design! These are no-experience-required workshops that introduce attendees to making games with cards, dice, tokens, boards, or in the mind with plenty of rules!
Part 4: Telling a Story with Games and Rules
Our last workshop of the series is a writing and drafting session, where we’ll explore how to tell a story with game rules and the language of gameplay.
We’ll look back at our previous workshops to find elements of genre in storytelling and game mechanics from high fantasy settings to outer space moon bases. We’ll explore some examples of gameplay language from copyrighted materials and original patents of popular titles to see how game writing changes in all of these areas. We’ll also workshop writing about game mechanics and gameplay with our own projects.
We’ll end this session by covering special areas of making rulebooks, such as choosing typesetting elements, typography and images, writing rules, and making tables, charts, and options for variations of games.
Participants will leave with writing organizers for drafting stories and game rules!
Please register for each workshop separately. Other workshops in the series
Instructor: Victor, Digital Media Lab intern
We recommend that participants remember their email logins or bring in flash drives to store files over the course of the series.
Iowa City Public Library Iowa City Public Library America/Chicago publicDigital Media Lab
For this 4-part series of workshops, we will explore tabletop game design! These are no-experience-required workshops that introduce attendees to making games with cards, dice, tokens, boards, or in the mind with plenty of rules!
Part 4: Telling a Story with Games and Rules
Our last workshop of the series is a writing and drafting session, where we’ll explore how to tell a story with game rules and the language of gameplay.
We’ll look back at our previous workshops to find elements of genre in storytelling and game mechanics from high fantasy settings to outer space moon bases. We’ll explore some examples of gameplay language from copyrighted materials and original patents of popular titles to see how game writing changes in all of these areas. We’ll also workshop writing about game mechanics and gameplay with our own projects.
We’ll end this session by covering special areas of making rulebooks, such as choosing typesetting elements, typography and images, writing rules, and making tables, charts, and options for variations of games.
Participants will leave with writing organizers for drafting stories and game rules!
Please register for each workshop separately. Other workshops in the series
Instructor: Victor, Digital Media Lab intern
We recommend that participants remember their email logins or bring in flash drives to store files over the course of the series.
If you need disability-related accommodations in order to participate in this event, please contact the Library.
This event is open to the public.
The Digital Media Lab is not available during this event.
