Karawhiua, Brave Adventurers! With Lisa Blakie

Karawhiua, Brave Adventurers!
Friday 22 & Saturday 23 April, 11am – 2:30pm

Explore Dungeons and Dragons in this friendly two-day entry-level workshop, led by Narrative Director and a Co-Director of Atawhai Interactive, Lisa Blakie.

These workshops will focus on character development and game play D&D, as an entrypoint to speculative thinking through gaming. 

These workshops explore a D&D campaign designed by Lisa Blakie, set in pre-colonial Aotearoa, with characters exclusively imagined from Te Taiao. By the end of the two workshops you will have the resources and understanding to design your own D&D campaign with your own group, and apply these skills to future art/gaming projects. 

Day One will focus on an introduction to Dungeons and Dragons gameplay and character development.

Day Two will focus on world building and build upon the game play basics covered the day before.

These workshops will be split between in person delivery at Blue Oyster and online delivery via Zoom. If you are joining us in person, we will have limited numbers and will be wearing masks. If you are joining us online we will have resource packs available for you to pick up from Blue Oyster before the workshops.

Please register via email to mya@blueoyster.org.nz and indicate if you will be joining us online or in person.

Please stay home if you are unwell, or have been in contact with someone who has tested positive for Covid-19. Masks will be required indoors, unless eating.

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Lisa Blakie (she/her, Kāi Tahu, Waitaha, Pākehā) is the Narrative Director and a Co-Director of Atawhai Interactive, an indie video game studio based in Ōtepoti, New Zealand. Previously Lisa was the Narrative Designer and the Community Director for award winning developer Runaway Play. Prior to working in the video game industry, she wrote an honours dissertation about indigenous storytelling in video games.

She is also a writer, an international speaker, a community organiser, a scholarship recipient to attend GDC, recipient of the 2020 Te Maunga Kai Kapua Teina award, 20Twenties young alumni awards and has served on the NZ Game Developers Association Board.

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Prototype is a series of workshops and tutorials which aim to introduce artists to game-making. Facilitated and designed by Lisa Blakie (Narrative Director and Co-Director of Atawhai Interactive), in collaboration with Connor Bridson (co-director at Atawhai Interactive). Prototype will equip artists to experiment with elements of game development. The workshops include practical demonstrations of free software used in game development for 3D art and introductions to speculative thinking through Dungeons and Dragons tutorials which showcase the elements needed to build games, including character/narrative creation and world building.