Intersectional Pleasures of Imagining Non-Western Futures for Tabletop Role Playing Games

This paper presents the design process behind Island Istanbul, a system-agnostic setting sourcebook for tabletop role-playing games (TRPGs) under development as part of a practice-based research project at the University for the Creative Arts. The work aims to produce a playable speculative future for Istanbul that foregrounds non-Western urban futures, shaped by climate adaptation imaginaries and by tensions between the city's authoritarian neoliberal urban renewal and its layered urban heritage. The central argument is that worldbuilding for TRPGs can serve as a critical space for reflecting on the ecological, socioeconomic, and political risks and opportunities facing underrepresented cities, while giving players genuine agency within the imagined setting.

The methodology is qualitative and thematic rather than quantitative. The authors combine scientific studies and forecasts with tropes drawn from fictional works featuring a future Istanbul, compiled from the archive of the Turkish science-fiction society Bilimkurgu Kulübü and expanded through additional speculative and future-city media. Design follows a critical typology of fictional cities comprising five categories: urban setting, urban planning, urban dynamics, urban imaginary, and architecture. The worldbuilding moves from broad, predictable macro conditions toward detailed "vertical slices" of two coastal districts, the historical peninsula and the coasts of the planned Istanbul Canal, paired with generative tools such as roll tables that add flexibility to the system-agnostic structure.

The paper's stated scope is a design-and-process account rather than a completed evaluation. Preliminary findings come from ongoing tests with professional game masters, who are assessed on setting comprehension, session planning, improvisational flexibility, and adaptability across rule systems. The authors position their approach against the conventional "outside-in" model of commercial urban settings and against Western or American city templates, arguing that Istanbul's specific cultural heritage requires distinct design logic. The work is thus best understood as an early-stage methodological contribution to speculative game design and urban futures research.