"Writing Back" to Which Empire?: Constructing Chinese Identities in Tabletop Roleplaying Games in Singapore

This paper examines how Chinese identities among tabletop roleplaying game (TTRPG) players in Singapore are constructed in relation not only to the West but also to the rising power of China. It responds to a postcolonial turn in games studies that has largely centered Anglo-American perspectives and the legacy of empire, arguing that Singaporean Chinese players occupy a doubled geopolitical position, often describing their identity as neither Western nor mainland Chinese enough. The author frames this as a question of which empire a "writing back" through play is addressed to.

The central argument is that players experience their identities as dynamic and processual through homebrewing practices. Call of Cthulhu sessions are described as enabling a form of postcolonial irony, in which players revisit imperial history as historical flâneurs, while streamed games that adapt Dungeons & Dragons mechanics to Chinese xianxia and wuxia genres offer a subtle critique of Chinese nationalist politics and the creation of a "rogue archive." Millennial players in particular are shown to approach being "not Chinese enough" with irreverence and remixing, and the study finds that colonial and migration histories are experienced differently across generations.

The findings rest on twenty months of ethnographic research between 2021 and 2023, including participation in at least 245 public and private gaming sessions and thirty-eight semi-structured interviews with players. The analysis is situated against rising xenophobia toward newer Chinese migrants in Singapore, drawing on migration scholarship that links Singaporean Chinese identity to the evolution of China and state narratives of Chinese homogeneity. Overall, the work concludes that play in this context is not merely escapist but a means of reshaping reality through creative acts, and that the addressee of any such "writing back" may be as much the rising power of China as the former colonial West.