Climate Cascade: A fast-paced role-playing game about the impact of global disruptions

Imagine you are rural solar power technician and an earthquake hits your country, causing wide scale destruction How might this impact your family, and your community?

What will you find difficult (or impossible) to acquire because of this event? What injustices become more visible to you? What new alliances might you explore to help you stay resilient? Could you work with local government, community members, or other stakeholders to find solutions?

Climate Cascade developed out of a desire to better understand how macro level events impact food systems, energy systems, and the environment, and how the ripple effects of these disruptions impact the lives of societies and individuals.

Climate Cascade encourages role-playing and creative, out of the box discussions as players consider how global disruptions might have disparate but related effects on different individuals within a certain region. Additionally, the game is designed to understand the impact of compounding events, and how shocks can happen together to create disruptions to global systems. Ultimately, the game prompts players to consider how disruptive events create either challenges or opportunities as we work to accelerate a just and regenerative future.

About the game

In this fast-paced futures game, players take on the roles of individual citizens of an unnamed country or region. In each round, a “shock” card is pulled, and players must consider how these shocks impact individual characters while also thinking about what a character might do differently because of the shock. What this means for individual players may be unique, but everyone comes from the same place, and disruptions that happen in this game will happen to everybody. In groups, players will then discuss together the collective opportunities and challenges that arise as their characters strive to build a more just and regenerative future for their societies.

Process

Climate Cascade was developed as a result of desk research, expert interviews, and horizon scanning on topics including food, energy, trade policy, and geopolitics. This project aims to explore possible future impacts on climate funding strategies. The research for Climate Cascade builds off a game developed in 2023: Shocks to the System: Fast Forward to 2028.

Building on this existing body of research, we asked:

How can we bring horizon scanning work to life in a way that is thought-provoking and collaborative?

Can a game help us explore the cascading impact of large-scale disruptions on different scales – from individuals to global systems?

To help climate funders and others experience narrative-driven play and social interaction, while experimenting with strategic thinking and collaboration around impact, we drafted Climate Cascade. Our hope is that the game will be a starting point for a longer conversation about how we build a more equitable and sustainable future through greater cooperation and resilience, amid increasing volatility and challenges.

Download the game

Credits:

This game was a joint project between Forum for the Future, an international sustainability organization, and ClimateWorks Foundation, a catalyst for accelerating climate progress, driving bold solutions that benefit people and the planet.

Project Leads: Alisha Bhagat, Christina Daniels-Freeman, Elin Matsumae
Project Team: Siddhi Ashar, Bhairevi Aiyer, Casey Cronin, Evgenia Kyanova, Cynthia Morel, Kristina Simundo
Advisors: Randy Lubin, Jason Morningstar
Visual Design: John Stavropoulous

If you have questions about the game, please contact Alisha Bhagat, Futures Lead, Forum for the Future at [email protected]

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