In the latest issue of Back Alley Games, columnist Jonah White explores Level Up: Writers & Gamers
The following is excerpted from Back Alley Games #013, featuring Jonah White’s bimonthly column “Man About Town.” Produced by Indie City Games, Back Alley Games is a monthly publication featuring Midwest games, art and writing. Order the physical edition of this issue here, or download the digital edition here.
written by Jonah White
Nestled in the heart of downtown Chicago, the American Writers Museum stands as a celebration of American writers from Phillis Wheatley and Thomas Jefferson to Kurt Vonnegut and Flannery O’Connor.
Level Up: Writers & Gamers, the museum’s latest exhibit, continues their commitment to celebrating writing in all its forms. In honor of the 50th anniversary of Dungeons & Dragons, the exhibit focuses on the individuals who turned their pens toward creating engaging worlds for players of both tabletop and video games.
The exhibit takes up little more than a single hallway and a small back room but manages to cram an absurd amount of history into that space, covering 50 years of tabletop roleplaying and video game development while taking an in-depth look at sub-genres like interactive fiction, “Choose Your Own Adventure” style gamebooks, and live-action RPGs.
What is Game Writing?
The first thing one sees when entering the exhibit is a plaque asking, “what is game writing?” The answer to that question is on a nearby bookshelf containing Dungeon and Nintendo Power magazines; Fallout: The Vault Dweller’s Official Cookbook; New York Times bestsellers Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow and Ready Player One; a script from The Last of Us TV series; and more.
From the jump, the exhibit invites visitors to consider not just the words that go into telling the stories told in tabletop and video games, but all the words that flow out of those mediums. While the exhibit focuses primarily on the history of video games, TTRPGs, and the overlap between them, it is also concerned with the impact these mediums have on the broader culture.
Parallel Histories
One wall of the hallway exhibit is dedicated to a massive timeline detailing the parallel history of video games and TTRPGs. Starting in the 1970s, the timeline takes us from early university mainframe computer games like The Sumerian Game and the creation of Dungeons & Dragons all the way to present day, culminating with Baldur’s Gate III, a video game based on the fifth edition of Dungeons & Dragons, and the second video game ever to win a Hugo Award, the first game being Hades in 2021.
The breadth of material covered by the exhibit is truly astounding. Seeing the timelines stretching across an entire hallway impresses upon the viewer both the rich history of gaming and how deeply enmeshed the analogue and digital gaming scenes have been since their inception.
Also along the timeline are profiles of a few major personalities from both industries. Names like Mabel Addis, Roberta Williams, and Porpentine represent the video game industry, while Mike Pondsmith, Monte Cook, and Tanya DePass represent the tabletop industry.
There is an uncanniness that comes with seeing names like these celebrated in the same space as Frederick Douglass, Gertrude Stein, Herman Melville, and Tennessee Williams. But it is an acknowledgement that culture is formed by many voices from many backgrounds, not a select few working in a narrow field.
Far from sticking to the easy history that has been covered a million times over in books and articles, the American Writers Museum seeks to display the breadth and diversity inherent in gaming.
Beyond Dungeons & Dragons
The other side of the hallway is dedicated to interactive activity stations. One station provides pencils, paper, and dice for participants to create and share a roleplaying character. Another station provides a cozy chair with a few Choose Your Own Adventure books to read. A third station has a costume chest for dressing up in a LARPing outfit, complete with a backdrop for photo opportunities.
LARP, a genre of roleplaying games in which players are encouraged to dress up and physically act out the actions of their characters, is a rather niche pastime, even within the broader gaming hobby, so the amount of detail given to it here is impressive.
The exhibit explains the differences between “boffer LARPs,” which are played using foam weapons in simulated combat; “parlor LARPs,” which are played in small spaces and emphasize acting in character; and “Nordic LARPS,” which are fully immersive LARPs spanning multiple days. There is even a short video showcasing typical LARP gameplay, with players in full fantasy dress negotiating hostile trade negotiations while remaining in-character.
A Snapshot of the Past
The rest of the exhibit is on the other side of the museum in a tiny wood-paneled room designed to evoke the living rooms of 1970s America. Classic Dungeons & Dragons box sets are displayed here, art prints from Dungeons & Dragons’ publication history are hung on the walls, and shelves full of games invite visitors to take one down and play at the nearby table.
An unassuming red telephone sits in a corner. When picked up, it treats visitors to voice clips of famous RPG designers sharing their thoughts and memories associated with the 50-year-old game. Meanwhile, a series of projections on the far wall show gamers of all ages sharing their personal experiences of playing TTRPGs. The whole setup evokes the cozy intimacy of playing games with friends in a way that cannot be expressed through a simple plaque and drives home what really makes tabletop roleplaying games so powerful: the sense of community they foster.
Conclusion
Despite its humble size, Level Up: Writers & Gamers is no half-hearted affair. It is a rich and thoroughly researched exhibit made by people passionate about games, people who want to celebrate the richness that the intersection of storytelling and play has produced over the last half-century.
The exhibit reminds us that writing is not just novels and poems, it is music, dialogue, branching narratives, item descriptions, random event tables, recipes, and guides.
What the exhibit leaves us with is not just the acknowledgement that games are an artistic medium, but a deep impression that all games, whether analogue or digital, are deeply interconnected, and their influence can be felt far outside their immediate play spaces.
This exhibit should be an inspiration for game designers who want to learn not just from the history of their chosen craft, but from other mediums as well.
The exhibit is a public acknowledgement of game design as craft that will hopefully be repeated in other museums as time goes on.
In the meantime, Level Up: Writers & Gamers is open through October, 2025.
JONAH WHITE is a freelance writer and narrative designer from Chicago passionate about the intersection of storytelling and play in both analog and digital spaces. You can read more of his work at jonahwhite.carrd.co.
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Back Alley Games is a monthly publication featuring Midwest games, art and writing. Produced by Indie City Games, they believe strongly that small indie and DIY games deserve far more attention than they get. They are a publication that relies mostly on community submissions and pride themselves on platforming writers, artists, and indie game developers from across the Midwest. You can learn more at https://www.indiecitygames.org/backalleygames.