New Age Mages: An Interactive Way to Explore and Subvert Gender Biases

New Age Mages is a tabletop role-playing game designed for younger players to explore and subvert gender biases through an indirect, immersive experience. Its central device is an elemental magic system in which "waxing" magicians are favored and "waning" magicians are dismissed, a thinly veiled analogue of gender roles. The authors contend that tabletop RPGs provide a safe and engaging setting for this kind of learning, and they detail the game's design, including its moves, a Condition-based system in place of combat, and a Token-based 2d6 roll mechanism revised after playtesting.

A playtest with 13 experienced TTRPG players offers the game's principal empirical evidence. Using the Gender Role Attitudes Scale administered before and after roughly two hours of play, the researchers found a statistically significant decrease in Sexist Attitude scores (Wilcoxon p = 0.03, Cronbach's α = 0.75), with nine of thirteen participants showing reductions. Transcendent Attitude scores changed negligibly and proved unreliable as a measure (α = 0.58, p = 0.86). The authors are candid about the study's constraints: the sample was small and already gender-aware, the analysis did not separate results by participant gender, and the specific game mechanics were not tracked, all of which limit how broadly the findings can be generalized.

The paper closes by proposing that New Age Mages could be used across multiple sessions and by educators seeking to introduce gender bias concepts to younger audiences. Its framing draws on a body of research into the educational, therapeutic, and personal development benefits of role-playing games, as well as studies of serious games and gender role attitudes. Taken together, the work positions the game as a promising but preliminary tool for experiential bias education, with its strongest claims resting on a single small, short-term study that calls for larger and more diverse follow-up research.