Design games as a tool, a mindset and a structure Kirsikka Vaajakallio

Like Hannu and Nina, who began joking and laughing after receiving the
playing cards, the players in the next example, taken from the Character
Game, seemingly change their manner from that of professionals sharing insights
to homo ludens, that is to say, playing humans when choosing and filling
in the character templates, in other words, creating their role characters.
Player 1: “I want to be the lonely woman.” Player 2: “I could be the
dull chairman of the residence board”. They joke and laugh while
choosing the characters. Player 3: “This is mine [keeping one of the
templates that she has in her hand].” Player 4: “Good, I can then take
what’s left.” Pekka takes the last three templates from the table and
looks through them. The facilitator provides images of seniors and
gives some guidelines on how to proceed. They start to fill in the
templates and, after a while, they start joking about the influence
that people’s birth cities has on their personality and behaviour, for
example how people from Savo are funny and people from Häme
are slow [different areas of Finland]. They laugh while speaking
and creating their role characters. (Character Game with KONE,
March 2009, translated from Finnish)
Besides using the visual game material as indicators for the magic circle,
as in the above examples, a playful mood can also be promoted through a
special ordering of time, as was done in the Character Game.
The facilitator reads aloud the pre-created description of the roleplay
context: “It is a beautiful spring evening in 2012. The sun is
shining and the snow is melting. Pedestrian zones are glimmering
from the melting ice. Your happy group lives in a senior house outside
central Helsinki...”
After giving the background and set the stage for the role-play, the
game will start and approximately seven scenarios will be developed
and performed. In one of the performed scenarios one of the
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