New Rules is a collection of writing about play and games during the current pandemic. It’s available as a DRM-free ebook and a paper book; please consider buying a copy! Many of the individual works included in the book are online here, having been posted online over December 2020 and January 2021.

This week’s theme, with support from Sharna Jackson, is Bad Play, which has writers looking at how games can sometimes lead to regret, confusion, conflict and vast exasperation:

Aga Serugo-Lugo with a short play about a long Zoom call, Spiel;
Ava Wong Davies with Animal Crossing regrets in The Island Looked Fine; and
Romie Stott with a Rules Variation for a Tabletop RPG Over Webcam with Social Dysfunction and No Snacks.

No further essays are going to be posted to the New Rules website, but if you want a weekly newsletter around similar themes—contemporary play and games and how the experience of play fits into people’s lives, during the pandemic and beyond—you can sign up here:

New Rules is edited by Holly Gramazio, and features work from Aaron Lim, Adefoyeke Ajao, Aga Serugo-Lugo, Anna Kate Blair, Ariane Parry, Ava Wong Davies, Catherine Bennett, Danny Hawk, Elspeth Wilson, Gabrielle de la Puente, Hannah Nicklin, Joy Frank-Collins, Krishan Coupland, Lu Oulton, Matt Turner and Steph Watts, Maz Hamilton, Miriam Oudin, Nadia Bailey, Orla Foster, Pema Monaghan, Phoebe Whitlock, Raquel Motta, Romie Stott, Samuel Barker, Sedera Ranaivoarinosy, Stephanie Boluk and Patrick LeMieux, Toussaint Egan, Violet Adele Bloch, Zainab Ismail and Zainabb Hull. 

Contact: holly@hollygramazio.net