Rules of the city is a three part urban artistic research and art game project. It combines research, graphic art with statistics as well as pen & paper role playing games. Rules of the city makes Salzburg its playfield and study ground.
We have already done one preliminary run with a game in 2018 and will return with one pre-production run with a test game in late 2020. Concerning the special nature of the project, including a lot of in-person meetings, interviews and interaction, we had to decide to postpone a bigger part of the project to 2021.
The Survey:
In a first step gold extra and partners will do research in the societal and political power networks and relationships in Salzburg. Questions are very basic as in "Who can make things happen in Salzburg", "What does it take to get granted authorizations, permissions or approvals for buildings?", "Who its setting rules?"
We will attempt a qualitative two-tier approach including a survey with questions from bottom-up, as well as questioning the power elite as far as possible. This phase will end up in graphic documentation and material for phase two.
The Rules:
In a second step we will invite game masters as known as "dungeon masters" or DM from Salzburg and work out rules for a pen & paper game based on our findings. The result of this phase is a set of rules for a "Salzburg game". We will document the process and might use an open session at the end, a "work in progress showing" or podcast to open up the process to people who are interested to participate.
The Game:
At last we will write short game scenarios to play "Salzburg" and ask DM to host a party of four to six characters each in a venue for a pen & paper gaming night.
