In the field of legal education, playful teaching aims to facilitate the understanding of the complexity of social reality and the relationships among the different actors in the legal field (Bourdieu, 1986).

The teaching experiences gained over the past few years in the context of undergraduate courses at the University of Turin – including the Legal Clinic “Carcere, diritti fondamentali e vulnerabilità sociale” (Prison, Fundamental Rights and Social Vulnerability) – and in orientation activities for legal studies aimed at upper secondary school students have provided the authors with the opportunity to verify the ability of game-based education to combine a theoretical approach from the perspective of law in action (Frank, 1933; Kruse, 2012) with the objectives of pedagogical pragmatism (Dewey, 1916).

The edu-larp (educational live-action role-playing) (Gussoni, 2020; Castellani, 2020) I Soliti Sospetti (Blengino et al., 2021) was specifically designed by the authors to improve critical thinking in law students, and also to foster in people who are not legal experts an understanding of inequalities in the criminal justice system in order to promote social justice.

The edu-larp, through a simulated but realistic experience, projects participants inside a courtroom, causing them to identify with the condition of defendants or in the role of lawyers within the context of a morning of criminal hearings. The game cards contain the personal stories of the LARP characters as well as the legal and social elements of the legal cases discussed. Participants make decisions and choices that stimulate socio-legal reflections with respect to the issues of law interpretation, selectivity of criminalization processes (Hester - Eglin, 1992), deviance and social marginality.

The game has been tested in school, university, and active and inclusive citizenship education contexts, constituting a valid methodology for teaching law from the perspective of interactive competence-based teaching (Zullo, 2019).

Through the analysis of the reflections of those who have participated in the editions of the game carried out so far, collected through specially developed reflective practice sheets (Gibbs, 1988), the contribution dwells on the potential of LARP in promoting the understanding of the functioning of law as a social practice (Viola, 1990) and in the creation of shared knowledge among participants that fosters the overcoming of stereotypes and prejudices (Pennazio, 2020).

This presentation aims to explore the use of role-playing games (ttrpgs) in foreign language teaching, specifically in relation to the practice of playing in the target language to stimulate spontaneous oral production and ease anxiety related to foreign language use. Starting from Jonathon Reinhardt's writings on games and language teaching, we will reflect on the process of creating games that are specifically designed with a learning goal (in our case, language learning), discussing the skills necessary to design a playful teaching activity, test its effectiveness, and facilitate it in the classroom.

Within the category that Reinhardt names “Game-based L2 Teaching and Learning,” or games explicitly designed for educational purposes, we will present the tabletop role-playing game Planétes, which we designed, as a case study.

Planétes is multi-table, map-drawing, and city-exploring tabletop roleplaying game aimed at fostering L2 proficiency among language learners. It encourages players to think creatively about topics that often figure in elementary and intermediate L2 courses, such as urban life, traveling, migratory processes, and interacting with new cultures and places.

Designed to be played by the whole class with a single facilitator and to reduce the difficulty of playing in a foreign language thanks to visual supports and map-drawing activities, Planétes provides a clear distinction between moments of conversation in the mother tongue and moments of interaction in the target language. The game encourages peer interaction and promotes scaffolded independence from support tools as the game progresses, allowing players more agency to practice the target language in a protected context.

In our presentation, we will delve into the different phases of game creation , withparticular focus on the choice of design objectives compatible with the specificteaching context, the major sources of inspiration, and the playtest experiences that highlighted different areas of improvement – a pivotal part of our iterative process

We will conclude by discussing some future developments for the project, , which include the creation of a set of language support tools designed to facilitate role-playing in a foreign language.

In correctional settings, where occupational stress and interpersonal tensions run high, the need for innovative approaches to leadership development is vital. This abstract promotes innovative ideas centered on developing game design for social change activities tailored to enhance leadership competences among correctional staff. The primary objective is to prevent occupational-chronic stress and anxiety, to improve organizational health, resiliency, emotional intelligence, safe and prejudice-free learning environment, for diverse and vulnerable learners, and foster harmonious relationships among staff, inmates, and their families. The understanding that effective leadership is pivotal in cultivating a conducive atmosphere within correctional facilities, requires to equip staff with enhanced leadership competences, addressing underlying stressors and tensions prevalent in these environments. Through a game-based approach, the goal is to engage participants in immersive learning experiences, where they navigate various scenarios mirroring real-life challenges they might encounter in correctional settings. Central is the recognition of the interconnectedness between staff well-being, institutional dynamics, and the potential for rehabilitation among inmates. By targeting stress reduction and conflict resolution through leadership development, the initiative tries to trigger a triple effect: positively impacting staff morale, institutional culture, and ultimately, the outcomes of rehabilitation efforts. Key components of the game design modules aim to address communication skills, conflict resolution strategies, empathy-building exercises, and stress management techniques. Crafted to be interactive, adaptive, and reflective of the nuanced complexities inherent in correctional work, their goal is to encourage the participants to experiment with different leadership styles, collaborate with peers, and devise creative solutions to common challenges faced in their professional roles. The efficacy of the game- based approach is evaluated through pre- and post-intervention assessments, qualitative feedback sessions, and longitudinal studies tracking indicators such as absenteeism rates, staff turnover, and inmate-staff interactions. By fostering a supportive and inclusive work environment, the initiative not only may improve staff well-being, but also enhanced the quality of interactions between staff and inmates, laying a foundation for effective rehabilitation practices. In conclusion, the development of a game-based intervention for leadership development in correctional settings represents an effective novel approach to addressing multifaceted challenges prevalent in these environments. By leveraging game design principles to promote social change and enhance leadership competences, we aim to offer a promising avenue for fostering positive transformation within correctional institutions.

Games are today recognized as effective tools for synthesizing a real-world experience through an abstract set of rules, physical or virtual components to interact with and a finite number of outcomes that represent a value for the player. As such, games are already great tools for teaching didascalic content in a thoroughly interactive fashion, providing an embedded feedback system that further powers the learning endeavor. Recent developments in behavioral sciences are also pointing out that games absolutely belong to the field of cultural experiences as a source of behavioral changes for individuals, communities and societies. Whereas games' strengths and weaknesses are different from those of other cultural experiences, the act of playing a game holds relational, risk, symbolic, identity and experiential incentives which retains a transformative potential within key issues related to social development. Pro-activity, pro-sociality, empathy and creativity are some of the most well-known positive impacts which can be brought over through a gaming experience. Yet, in a lifelong-learning society the educational potential of games seems untapped, both in a positive and a negative way. In order to address a clear area of intervention for the wide array of stakeholders who are considering the use of games as a tool for fostering positive social change, this paper would like to focus on the role of game designers as crucially relevant and powerful agents in shaping society and its functioning.

Far from being an add-on, learning is indeed a foundational characteristic of games. Our willingness to play games finds its base as a human need because of the more or less intense learning processes embedded with every game experience. What we consider a “fun” activity is actually an intense session of what cognitive psychologists call “chunking”, a process in which our brain generates positive stimuli because it is learning new informational patterns. The more this novelty is kept alive alongside a challenge which we perceive as feasible, the more “fun” persists and tunes us within a learning process while we play. However, we are actually learning more than what we think we are actually doing. The relationship between an actual challenge (ie: throwing dice in a wargame) and the abstract symbolism of games’ formal content (ie: fighting a war) is never linear.

This leads us to a question: can the game designer hold larger responsibilities towards social challenges than we collectively and institutionally recognize, a role that is often dissociated from its political potential? If games are powerful means to indirectly learn from an experience, creating a game should be highlighted as a subtle yet potentially crucial

political act, one that should be very clear in its intentions and finalities in order not to engender a dangerously manipulative experience. In this work we review a large body of interdisciplinary research and relevant case studies in order to delineate a research perimeter in which the role of the game designer is aptly included within social design agency and accountability.