Nuclear Nightmares: Roleplaying Games and the Cold War

This talk is about how people in the United States and the United Kingdom used TTRPGs and the playing of these games to interpret the Cold War's overarching threat, and in particular the threat of nuclear devastation. For all of the games covered, the Cold War was the symbolic frame, a frame in which other themes were contained and could be played with. While real-world nuclear war represented an unspeakably awful future, that same future also provided a stage upon which games could be played and entertainment found. These games provided a context in which people could grapple with nuclear war and its aftermath in various local and international contexts. This talk examines how and why these games were designed, how these games were played, what this meant to the players, how such cultural products and experiences fitted into a wider Cold War milieux, and how a trans-Atlantic context for these games was born. It does so not simply by looking at the game texts themselves, but also by using the practices of oral history to tease out what happened during play. Play tells us how the games were received, how stories and ideas emerged 'at the table', and gives us a much deeper understanding of the interactions between the text, the game mechanics, the setting, the players, and the wider world. Those involved in TTRPGs that co-opted the Cold War standoff into their settings and systems were far from passive actors. They played out scenarios, considered options for survival, explicitly and implicitly explored the ethics and morality of the nuclear age.