Semi-related thought: One thing that I’ve been dealing with is the willingness (or really, the unwillingness) of members of the faculty in my department to really engage with me on the kinds of game design work that I want to do. It’s possible that folks involved in theater or arts would be more open, but generally speaking it seems like the folks I work with are more open to something that at least presents itself as a board or card game than they are some of the more RPG, larp-y, or experimental things that I do. Actually, even the experimental games can kind of be framed as performance art or interactive installations or something, whereas larps and RPGs are things that they’re less comfortable interacting with, even if I’m dealing with serious themes that they might otherwise be interested in. It’s like they lie in this weird space between structured and unstructured interactions: they know they’ll be expected to proactively participate and that there will be expectations for that participation, but they don’t know what they are or how they’ll be able to do that. That’s not related to Cartel, but is related to RPGs being literally the worst.