Avery Alder

Alder designs and writes indie role-playing games. She designed The Quiet Year,{{cite web |last=Jackson |first=Gita |date=14 August 2016 |title=How the Quiet Year Brings People Together |url=https://kotaku.com/how-the-quiet-year-brings-people-together-1785265299 |website=Kotaku}} a map-making game{{cite web |title=RPG Review: The Quiet Year - Shut Up & Sit Down |url=https://www.shutupandsitdown.com/rpg-review-quiet-year/ |access-date=14 March 2023}} about community building.{{cite web |last=Dixon |first=Adam |date=19 February 2015 |title=Playing the Quiet Year, a tabletop game about building communities |url=https://killscreen.com/previously/articles/quiet-year-tabletop-game-building-communities/ |website=Kill Screen}} Her game Monsterhearts was one of the first published Powered by the Apocalypse games and an early example of a specifically queer themed tabletop role-playing game.{{cite news | url=https://www.eurogamer.net/pride-week-dicebreaker-recommends-monsterhearts-2-an-rpg-about-being-queer-and-loving-demons | title=Pride Week: Dicebreaker recommends Monsterhearts 2 - an RPG about being queer and loving demons | newspaper=Eurogamer.net | date=July 2021 }} For Dream Askew, Dream Apart, Alder and Rosenbaum created the Belonging Outside Belonging system.

Alder wrote a chapter called "Queer Storytelling and the Mechanics of Desire" in The Queer Games Avant-Garde: How LGBTQ Game Makers Are Reimagining the Medium of Video Games by Bonnie Ruberg.Ruberg, Bonnie. The Queer Games Avant-Garde: How LGBTQ Game Makers Are Reimagining the Medium of Video Games. Duke University Press, 2020. Alder's games have been used to teach social responsibility and decision making in secondary school classrooms.{{Citation |last=Cassie |first=Jonathan |title=Don't Split the Party: Using Games to Enhance Social-Emotional Learning Strategies |url=https://www.taylorfrancis.com/chapters/edit/10.4324/9781003042693-12/split-party-jonathan-cassie |work=Teaching in the Game-Based Classroom |access-date=21 March 2023 |doi=10.4324/9781003042693-12|doi-broken-date=9 February 2025 }}

Alder designs games with the philosophy that game mechanics for fictional worlds reveal the designer's beliefs about how similar systems work in the real world.{{Cite web |title=Mohanraj and Rosenbaum Are Humans: Ep. 27 "Game Design with Avery Alder" |url=https://mrahpodcast.libsyn.com/ep-27-game-design-with-avery-alder |access-date=21 March 2023 |website=mrahpodcast.libsyn.com |language=en}}{{Cite web |title=Worldbuild With Us: Episode 78: Interview With Game Designer Avery Alder on Apple Podcasts |url=https://podcasts.apple.com/ie/podcast/episode-78-interview-with-game-designer-avery-alder/id1478367367?i=1000506932813 |access-date=21 March 2023 |website=Apple Podcasts |language=en-GB}}

Alder has been invited to give workshops and present on game design across North America and Europe.{{Cite web |title=Talks & Workshops |url=https://buriedwithoutceremony.com/talks-and-workshops |access-date=3 February 2025 |website=Buried Without Ceremony |language=en-US}}

Alder also acts Design Consultant on other indie games, and has contributed to Thirsty Sword Lesbians{{Cite book |last=Walsh |first=April Kit |title=Thirsty Sword Lesbians |date=2021 |publisher=Evil Hat Productions |isbn=978-1-61317-197-4 |pages=2}} and Yazeba's Bed and Breakfast.{{Cite book |title=Yazeba's Bed & Breakfast |date=2023 |publisher=Possum Creek Games Inc. |isbn=978-1-954097-19-3}}

Ben Bisogno at the Kyoto City University of Art wrote an in-depth analysis of Alder's contributions to the development of role-playing games that don't use a gamemaster.Bisogno, Ben. 2022. “No Gods, No Masters: An Overview of Unfacilitated 'GMless' Design Frameworks.” Japanese Journal of Analog Role-Playing Game Studies, 3: 70e-81e. In Transgression in Games and Play, scholars Sihvonen and Strenos draw parallels between how the game mechanics in Monsterhearts broke the norms of roleplaying games in 2012 and Alder's transgressive subject matter of "monstrosity, adolescence, and queerness."Transgression in Games and Play. Edited by Kristine Jorgensen, Faltin Karlsen. Chapter 7: Queering Games, Play, and Culture Through Transgressive Role-Playing Games. Tanja Sihvonen and Jaakko Strenos. MIT Press, 2019. Kawitzky's Magic Circles: Tabletop role-playing games as queer utopian method explores Alder's Dream Askew's "intersections between queer theory, dys/utopian theory and the ‘Magic Circle’ in play theory."{{Cite journal |last=Kawitzky |first=Felix Rose |date=16 November 2020 |title=Magic Circles |journal=Performance Research |volume=25 |issue=8 |pages=129–136 |doi=10.1080/13528165.2020.1930786 |issn=1352-8165|doi-access=free }} In No Dice, No Masters, Eric Stein analyses Alder's Belonging Outside Belonging system through the political philosophy of Jacques Rancière.{{cite web |last1=Stein |first1=Eric |title=No Dice, No Masters: Procedures for Emancipation in Dream Askew / Dream Apart. |url=https://www.researchgate.net/publication/353669709 |publisher=GENeration Analog: The Tabletop Games and Education Virtual Conference, with Game in Lab, Analog Game Studies, and GenCon. 2021. |access-date=14 March 2023}}

The Quiet Year won the 2013 Indie RPG Awards for "Most Innovative." The prototype for Dream Askew won the 2014 Indie RPG Awards for "Best Free Game."{{cite web |date=7 June 2018 |title=Belonging Outside of Belonging: Avery Alder's Dream Askew | Unwinnable |url=https://unwinnable.com/2018/06/07/belonging-outside-of-belonging-avery-alders-dream-askew/}}

Monsterhearts was nominated for the 2013 Origins Awards for Best Roleplaying Game.{{Cite web |title=2013 Origins Awards |url=http://www.gama.org/OriginsAwards/39thOriginsAwards/tabid/3265/Default.aspx |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20131227150807/http://gama.org/OriginsAwards/39thOriginsAwards/tabid/3265/Default.aspx |archive-date=27 December 2013}} Dream Askew, Dream Apart was nominated for three 2019 ENNIE Awards: "Best Game," "Best Setting," and "Product of the Year."{{Cite web |title=2019 Nominees and Winners – ENNIE Awards |url=https://ennie-awards.com/portfolio-item/2019-nominees-and-winners/ |access-date=11 July 2024 |language=en-US}}

The Belonging Outside Belonging system was later used for other designers' games like Wanderhome{{cite web |date=16 April 2021 |title=Wanderhome is a Redwall-inspired RPG that arms players with dialogue, not daggers |url=https://www.polygon.com/reviews/22387450/wanderhome-rpg-tabletop-game-review |website=Polygon}} and Balikbayan.{{cite web |last=Carter |first=Chase |date=9 December 2020 |title=Cyberpunk by Asian Creators game jam spotlights neon-and-chrome tabletop RPGS without the racism |url=https://www.dicebreaker.com/categories/roleplaying-game/news/cyberpunk-asian-creators-game-jam-itch |website=Dicebreaker}} As of July 2024, Itch.io lists 211 products with the tag "Belonging Outside Belonging."{{Cite web |title=Top physical games tagged belonging-outside-belonging |url=https://itch.io/physical-games/tag-belonging-outside-belonging |access-date=11 July 2024 |website=itch.io |language=en}}

Critical Role played Monsterhearts on a special Valentines Day episode.{{Cite web |title=Cinderbrush: A Monsterhearts Story (A Critical Role One-Shot) {{!}} Critical Role |url=https://critrole.com/qtvideo/cinderbrush-a-monsterhearts-story-a-critical-role-one-shot/ |access-date=22 March 2023 |language=en-US}}

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Category:Canadian game designers

Category:Indie role-playing game designers

Category:Living people

Category:Role-playing game designers

Category:Year of birth missing (living people)