About Shrine Mother

Shrine Mother is a project that dwells at the crossroads of play, creativity, social commentary, and spirituality. Shrine Mother understands that crossroads as art, and the medium of choice for Shrine Mother's art is tabletop role playing. Shrine Mother explores my long relationship to Dungeons & Dragons and its descendants, and develops a parallel game (or perhaps games) that emerges from my critical reflection on the legacies of Dungeons & Dragons.

In the early years of the indie story games community, a thought experiment prompted several creative projects: what if the role playing hobby as we know it had emerged from another culture or cultural context, what if the earliest games emerged from something other than war gaming? I wonder if the best answer to this question upends the question, demanding that we grapple with the necessary entanglement of war gaming and tabletop role playing games.

In other words, how do we develop a new relationship with the legacy of war gaming in the game? There isn't a single answer to that! Shrine Mother pursues one that explores the other side of war and its modern connections to forms of colonial and capitalist violence.

Shrine Mother explores survival and its creativity in fantastical settings. I am not going to reinvent the wheel here. Many creators in the Old-School Dungeons & Dragons Renaissance (OSR for short) have already pushed and stretched the framework for the game. As I explore my relationship to Dungeons & Dragons and develop a mode of play consciously in response to it, I turn first to games like Yochai Gal's Cairn to center my system work.

Shrine Mother is a one-woman show, and so any tips and subscriptions are much appreciated and alleviate the burdens that keep me from dedicating more time to this project.