How The Team “Anal Riot” Role Played to Solve A Civic Challenge

There I was at MozFest … reading over the schedule and “role play” caught my eye. You want me to do WHAT to solve civic challenges?

Because Comic-Con was happening in London, not to mention gearing up for Halloween, the session had impeccable timing and I was ready to do some serious acting.

And serious acting is what we did.

The session was centered around using guided role play as a framework to brainstorm solutions to civic challenges.

We began with a reflective discussion about why traditional approaches have often failed. As a civic hackathon advocate, I raised my hand instantly to share the common threads I have experienced regarding limited public agency and diversity representation.

Photo Credit: Sarah Sharif

The game we were going to play drew on frameworks from several role-playing games. The objective was very simple: create a space to build empathy, deconstruct how negotiations happen, and elevate the success of solutions shared from a diverse group.

Photo Credit: Sarah Sharif

My role was a playing farmer, which was not as exciting as I hoped for. My role had a detailed agenda in the meeting and I had to keep it hidden from my team during our negotiations. Our team’s question asked how to make the community more connected to their local government.

Photo Credit: Sarah Sharif

My team consisted of: A real estate agent, a single parent of two, and a high school student/punk musician.

“Anal Riot” formed after we made several jokes at the start about the high school student’s rebel attitude and musical influences. This was the name chosen for the student’s band, which ultimately became our team name as well.

Each member of our team had a chance to defend an idea on what we thought would better connect the community and the local government. Of course, the objective was to stay true to our hidden agendas and advocate for as many points as we could.

We had a designated facilitator listening to our ideas and challenging our viewpoints. Afterwards, the facilitator would choose a final proposal and winner (basically the one person who hit all their agenda points in the final proposal would win).

From the start, our team wanted to collaborate and find a win-win for everyone. As each of us presented an idea we thought could work, we found ourselves building on each other’s ideas. We eventually settled on a more expansive farmer’s market with pop-ups from certain selective sponsors and government officials, including voting booths.

We all agreed pretty easily out of respect for each other. Other teams had clear winners , but we decided to break the rules when we presented to the entire session.

Although we didn’t know each other, we quickly learned we all had the same sense of humor and enjoyed playing our roles. We deviated from our discussions to dive deeper into our fun roles and ask about each other’s lives, building a level of respect and connection between us.

I loved this activity for its length and ease of learning, and I would certainly recommend others check it out.

However, a few things were left to be desired:

1. More diverse roles. I wanted to have a Chinese-American single parent, a retired Texas politician, and a South Asian Founder of a technology start-up. In reality, you never know who you might be working with and I feel that the cultural lens could add some more insights to this game.
2. Collaboration points. I feel that our team won overall and that we were more successful than others since we did not have one winner. The gameplay itself should encourage more teamwork. If the team can find a way to navigate negotiations and submit a beneficial proposal for all, give them some extra love.
3. Clearer audience. I feel that this game could be targeted towards governmental professionals, but this was a question which came up frequently. Who is this game for? Who needs it the most? Who should play it?

(What do you think, folks? Would you be game to play?)

More info here: Civic Creativity: Role-Playing Games in Deliberative Process