Dungeons, Dragons, Difficult Deliberations: Campaign Settings and Contemporary Considerations

Board Game Academics, June 2026
Published in Vol 3. Issue II.
DOI: https://doi.org/10.70380/t9g2h6j4k8p1z

Pascal Verheul
Nottingham Trent University

Abstract

This paper explores the representation of contemporary environmental issues and their socio-economic entanglements within the Obojima: Tales from the Tall Grass (1985 Games Inc.) campaign setting for Dungeons & Dragons, which, this paper argues, exemplifies how the tabletop role-playing game (TTRPG) format allows for strong engagement therewith. The campaign setting–a book that serves as a worldbuilding resource for TTRPG adventures–brings these issues to the foreground through a fantasy lens, thereby allowing for an immersive form of engagement that can be carried out of the game and into the real world. In particular, this paper analyses how Obojima features these contemporary concerns in the form of fantasy creatures, narratives and concepts, as such translating matters that can be more abstract and hard to tackle in real life into distinct palpable conflicts and interactions. This paper furthermore aims to showcase that these topics, such as climate change, pesticides, anthropocentrism and capitalist structures, are inherently difficult for one to grasp through their nature as hyperobjects, which warrants their revisioning into more tangible concepts. This paper posits that the TTRPG format is especially effective for this, through its communal, imagination and narrative driven gameplay which relies on collective immersion through role-play, providing limitless potential capped only by the imagination of the players and game master. 

Keywords: Anthropocene, Dungeons and Dragons, environmentalism, game studies, immersion, posthuman, social engagement, tabletop role-playing games, TTRPG

Introduction

Through the tabletop role-playing game (TTRPG) format, players and dungeon masters (DM) have the opportunity to explore varied fantasy worlds, built upon official or fan-made sourcebooks and their collective imagination. While the foundations of these worlds may lie in these books, the choices made by the players and DMs ultimately determine how their story goes and what elements are considered most crucial. Chemers and Sell express this approach to collective narrative-weaving by stating that “unlike board or card games, but similar to the improvisatory games of children or actors, TTRPG players often modify or ignore rules to ensure greater fun (this is sometimes known as “the rule of cool”).” (2025, p. 246) In line with this playstyle, homebrewing–the act of designing one’s own classes, races, spells, etc.–allows players to work their own ideas into the world at hand. These worlds serve as more than mere backgrounds, instead anchoring the players’ collective story, encouraging some things while discouraging others, all the while keeping track of the potential consequences. (Schrier et al., 2024) Approaching the world as such, a TTRPG adventure can be used to engage with real-life concepts in the guise of fantasy. 

In the TTRPG Dungeons & Dragons (D&D), these worlds are the stage for the campaign (a series of adventures), oftentimes based on the aptly named campaign settings (source books). These campaigns can take place over the course of any number of sessions, be it a singular session, a one-shot, or a multi-year campaign with monthly gatherings. The campaign binds together these numerous sessions, keeping track of players’ actions and the consequences thereof. Much like the campaign, these consequences need not expire and can even be used by the DM as future story hooks. Accordingly, in-game concepts are not limited to one-off encounters, but can present themselves as either recurring engagements or even overarching issues that demand greater attention than a throwaway enemy. 

An important shift occurs when the players immerse themselves in the world of their player characters (PCs) sufficiently to elevate these imagined acts and effects to a semblance of realness. Herein lies the opportunity for the game world to be used as a reflection of the real world, introducing difficult-to-grasp concepts through a fantastical lens to make the engagement therewith more approachable. In acknowledging that “worldbuilding is an essential component of RPGs,” Schier et al. state that “a desire to be immersed in a new world is a primary motivation for many players.” (2024, p. 349) While balancing the familiar with the fantastical, the fictional equivalent of a real-life concern can be woven into the story, allowing for gamified yet meaningful engagement. 

In particular, this paper will focus on the manner in which engagement with contemporary environmental concerns can be facilitated through D&D by focusing on the crowdfunded campaign setting Obojima: Tales from the Tall Grass (2025), published by 1985 Games Inc., which presents a mix of familiar fantasy and real-world elements with an overarching threat to the environment lying in wait. Obojima aims to immerse players into the mundane aspects of its world as much as the more adventurous parts, advising that

Before you roll up your first character, we invite you to live in the world a little before you take the plunge and start rolling the dice. Learn a bit about the island, read over some of the locations, look at the art and allow your mind to make up stories in your head. Absorb the backgrounds and the factions sections to get a feel of what it’s like to an Obojiman out here on this idyllic, magic island filled with spirits and mysteries.¹ (1985 Games Inc., 2025, p. 1)

While TTRPGs commonly take a combat-centric approach, Obojima’s quotidian roleplay focus is essential to priming players for a playstyle that allows for the overlapping of the fictional and the real. To further support immersion, Obojima presents a fresh take on the existing D&D ‘inspiration’ system–in which the DM can reward players with ‘advantage’ on die rolls based on their own metrics–with the “Hero’s Journey Boon System.” This system is described as a way for the DM to “reward [a player] for character development and great roleplaying. It reminds both the GM and the players to pay attention to those iconic moments when a critical choice transforms a character’s development toward or away from a certain personality trait or archetype.” (1985 Games Inc., 2025, p. 249). This paper analyses the manner in which Obojima presents opportunities for environmental engagement through its worldbuilding, player character options, and playstyle. 

Paving the Posthuman Way

The environmental takeaways from the Obojiman world depend on the players’ ability to recognize themselves and their real-world anthropocentric systems therein. The world of Obojima aims to do so by presenting a mesh of medieval and 1980s tech, the latter of which exists in-game as remnants of an ancient race that has long since disappeared. In-world, the time during which these technologies were created is referred to as the “First Age,” with little known about the specifics of its people and their craft. While classic TTRPGs started out with medieval fantasy settings, adhering to the classic Arthurian knights and castles, they have since evolved far beyond to allow for new genre crossovers and innovative worlds in which players get to live out their adventures. (Zagal & Deterding, 2018, p. 30) Building on this, Obojima’s classic medieval fantasy exists alongside VCRs, scooters, keytars, and other such real-world technologies, albeit functioning solely through imbuing magic into them (known in-game as whelming). Ekman and Taylor state that “the more different a fictional world is from the actual world in which we (authors, readers, critics) live, the greater the effort required to bring the world to life—to build it,” as such demanding some familiarity with which to begin to immerse oneself. (2021, p. 244). Through its incorporation of recognizable technologies in the classic fantasy setting, Obojima balances the otherness of the game world with the familiarity of the real world.

The world of Obojima frames its modern technologies as being the oldest, having been around since before its unique character races, such as the Nakudama and the Dara, and before its current iteration of humans. These ‘recent’ humans, however, are explained to have arrived with “a greater understanding of the First Age—far beyond what Nakudama scholars had ever understood.” (1985 Games Inc., 2025, p. 13) Herein, the reader might find an interesting implication, namely that the world of Obojima had, at one point, a technically advanced human race that has been lost to time. Accordingly, through the loss of this initial human civilization, the Obojiman world is, essentially, posthuman. Although a new iteration of humans arrives later on, they are not directly connected to those that came before. As such, it aligns with other works of posthuman fiction that explore “how the Earth and the natural world might fare in the total absence of human beings.” (Jendysik, 2011, p. 35) Obojima, however, presents a natural world that has, since the loss of its humans, been repopulated by anthropomorphic frogs (Nakudama), blue and red people born from trees (Dara), elves, and the aforementioned ‘later’ humans.

Obojima’s posthuman setting partly adheres to Haraway’s visions of the results of continued anthropocentrism, musing that “[o]ver a couple hundred years from now, maybe the human people of this planet can again be numbered 2 or 3 billion or so, while all along the way being part of increasing well-being for diverse human beings and other critters as means and not just ends.” (2016, p. 103) D&D’s innate diversity of character options take the place of the “diverse human beings,” while the setting provided by Obojima aims to reenvision the systems and structures that brought the posthuman world about to begin with. While some speculative fiction might imagine a “new sort of posthuman future, one in which nature survives the extinction of the human race,” Obojima’s post-First Age races aim to live in harmony with nature, thereby circumventing an all-out extinction narrative in favour of a symbiotic way forward.

The campaign setting does not explicitly state this, however, instead casting the First Age as an in-world mystery for the players to explore and enjoy. Obojima provides player engagement with the First Age through these real-life technologies scattered throughout the island of Obojima, such as “sunbaked cassettes” that offer spell slot regeneration, “instaprint cameras” that reveal magical effects through their pictures, or a “gametoy” of which the game cartridge can provide a unique skill proficiency. (1985 Games Inc., 2025, pp. 171-176) Elemental wear and tear accrued over time, such as the sunbaked nature of the cassettes, speak of the ancient nature of these First Age artefacts, as such leading players to the potential conclusion that these familiar items are the remnants of a bygone human civilisation, casting their own PC’s presence, whether human or not, in a new light; they are inhabiting a world that may have come to be following the demise of those quite like their real life selves. Having presented this analysis to Obojima’s creative director, Jeremiah Crofton, in personal email communication, he confirmed that “the First Age is meant to represent a post-human world without the baggage left from the fallout of a terrible doomsday. The nostalgia of the 80s mixing with the whimsy of a fantasy setting without the crushing weight of a future that couldn’t be avoided.” (2025) Obojima hereby circumvents the established dystopian trope that sets its posthuman worlds in barren hellscapes full of environmental decline and raving bandits, to instead explore a world that went seemingly unaffected by the downfall of its prime industrial civilization. 

Morton aptly states that while “ecological texts frequently strive to disconfirm the end of the world, their rhetoric of ecological apocalypticism revels in the idea that nature will be permanently ‘gone.’ We imagine our own death via nature.” (2007, p. 185) Obojima is contradicting precisely this selfish understanding of the nature-human relationship, doing away with the mutually assured destruction that contemporary capitalist expansion seems to spell in favor of a perhaps more realistic one-sided finality. Stepping into the world with that overarching understanding and engaging with its environmentally harmonious peoples, the players might find the in-game perspectives extend into the real world. As per Vervoort et al., “if games can be understood as more meaningful, more worthy of deep reflection, players might imagine more powerful inroads between games and society.” (2024, p. 187) Herein Obojima begins to near the vision Vervoort et al. describe in their analysis of the role of games in societal change, clarifying the need for 

games that take the idea of utopian development further, and activate and motivate people to get out there, to organize, to get involved in politics; games that stir up the trouble needed for systemic change; and, specifically, games focused on tearing down existing structures and systems. (2024, p. 189)

Through the familiar human foundation, the Obojiman world eases the player into its fantastical otherness, slowly introducing core concepts with which Obojimans concern themselves so that the players may take them on in turn. As such, the player might be spurred on to engage with its real-world counterparts to stave off a posthuman world of their own. 

Roll for Environmental Initiative

The island of Obojima offers a myriad of landscapes, ranging from mountains to coasts, grasslands to forests, and magical variants in between. Scattered throughout these landscapes are varied settlements generally living in harmony with their surroundings, providing an altogether idyllic setting for the adventurers to explore. While the pastoral provides a pleasant escape, D&D, much like any adventure, demands some form of conflict. In this, Obojima is no different, as the book warns:

[this] isn’t to say that everything in the world of Obojima is pastoral and easy going. There are monsters and plenty of peril here that the GM can use to turn a delightful stroll through the countryside into a harrowing situation where blades, bloodshed, and arcane magics are required. (1985 Games Inc., 2025, p. 2)

While these conflicts can make for the occasional thrill as the adventurers journey from place to place, a looming danger that hangs over the players and non-players alike demands greater attention and engagement, as an environmental threat slowly encroaches upon the Obojiman peace from the oceanic depths. 

This threat is called the “Corruption” and takes on the form of a tarry ooze that infiltrates the island’s waterways and coastal regions, occasionally manifesting as anthropomorphic creatures or infecting creatures that come in contact with the mysterious substance. Its presence in an Obojiman region called the Brackwater Wetlands is described as “[having] spread its tendrils across the Wetlands, twisting and warping everything it touches, birthing living manifestations—corrupted muk—among the flora and fauna, and ensnaring unwary travelers in its suffocating embrace.” (1985 Games Inc., 2025, p. 81) Likewise, an area designated the Corrupted Coastline has turned from “pristine” to “the site of an unsettling encroachment of […] a black, tar-like substance that can shimmer in iridescent purples, greens, or reddish-orange veins.” (1985 Games Inc., 2025, p. 82) This paper argues that the Corruption is a reflection of multitudinous anthropogenic concerns that haunt the real world. These concerns are derived from hyperobjects, which, as conceptualized by Morton, are

things that are massively distributed in time and space relative to humans. A hyperobject could be [the biosphere,] the sum total of all nuclear materials on Earth […], the very long-lasting product of direct human manufacture [or] the sum of all the whirring machinery of capitalism. (2013, p. 1) 

Accordingly, the Corruption is an amalgamation of varied negative hyperobjects made tangible in the form of D&D foes and landscapes, thereby rendering them easier to confront in the guise of a fantasy conflict as opposed to real-life engagement with such vast, overwhelming concepts. 

Its slick oil-like portrayal reflects impactful creations and disasters of human origins in which negligence wreaked great havoc, such as oil spills, microplastics, pesticides, and toxic waste. More than a mere enemy to defeat, the book invites the players to engage with it more meaningfully, as such 

[f]or an adventurer who asks, they will hear grim tales of forests turning into stagnant, barren fens, their creatures and plant life withered and mutated. The strangest thing, they say, when you walk into a forest afflicted with the Corruption is that you no longer hear the animal sounds or see their movement. (1985 Games Inc., 2025, p. 83)

Herein, the Corruption echoes the crucial warning Carson shared in her seminal Silent Spring, of which the opening chapter states the gloomy reality of the ‘silent’ spring at hand, namely that “no witchcraft, no enemy action had silenced the rebirth of new life in this stricken world. The people had done it themselves.” (Carson, 1962, p. 4)

Obojima’s fantasy take on Carson’s all-too-real foreboding message changes things up by taking away the explicitly human source, thereby posing that it might in fact be witchcraft that brought this corruption about. A section of the book meant solely for the DM–so as to leave the players the pleasure of unraveling mysteries–does state that “the Corruption can’t be caused by a person or a creature. It’s a natural force that has existed in the ocean for some time.” (1985 Games Inc., 2025, p. 337) This, however, poses a problem for the aforementioned engagement. If the corruption is merely a natural force, the players might not consider anthropocentrism as having had a hand in causing it. Then again, this same ambiguity and lack of taking responsibility exists in the real world as well, as per Vogel, who states that 

We are alienated from our environment when we fail to recognize it as the consequence of our own actions and so fail to acknowledge our own responsibility for it, and so instead it starts to look like a natural fact about which there is nothing we can do: global warming simply part of a natural cycle, pollution an inevitable by-product of technology, urban sprawl the inexorable consequence of market forces, and so on. (2011, p. 197)

Obojima is unknowingly presenting the players with a crucial component of contemporary ecological discourse, namely, in regard to the role of humanity in bringing about these threats to the environment. Crofton explained that the Corruption “was inspired by the harmful waste that’s been dumped into our real oceans. A great evil brought on by a people, not a single entity” (2025). Accordingly, while the book’s lore states otherwise, the root cause of the Corruption lies in human interference with the environment. 

The Corruption furthermore mimics real-life dangers to the environment in the way that it slowly spreads across the land, as the book explains that “the Corruption might be seeping into the groundwater and using it to move throughout Obojima—polluting wells and springs as it goes.” (1985 Games Inc., 2025, p. 83) Within the Obojiman world, the extent of the Corruption’s spread and prevalence can be influenced by the DM, acting on these mechanics to confront the players with manifestations of the Corruption’s polluting qualities that can halt their adventures in favor of investigating and, optimistically, undoing its environmental impact. 

A more combat-centric manifestation presents itself in the form of the “Corrupted Muk,” described as “shallow mockeries of human form.” (1985 Games Inc., 2025, p. 274) In this form, the Corruption is able to bring hyperobjects that are normally difficult to comprehend to the foreground, demanding actions to be taken to stop it from doing further harm. Hyperobjects serve to “reflect on our very place on Earth and in the cosmos. [Hyperobjects] seem to force something on us, something that affects some core ideas of what it means to exist, what Earth is, what society is.” (Morton, 2013, p. 15) Obojima’s Corruption, especially in its anthropomorphic form, aims to bring similar questions to the surface, evoking an existential introspection and reconfiguration of one’s beliefs in the more manageable microcosm of Obojima, building on the TTRPG’s immersive format and the collective storytelling to bring these takeaways into the real world accordingly.

Through its engaging and malleable format, an Obojima campaign is able to translate these concerns into fantasy conflict and flourish to inspire reflections within the players. Cross analyzes the TTRPG as 

a site of creation that necessarily expands the mind of the player. Fantasy is never a far-off country that is forever foreign to even the peripheries of a person’s consciousness; this is what makes it both dangerous and productive. The roleplayed world is one that is constantly in the making. (2012, p. 83)

Cross’s not-so-far-off country allows the players to step into it and actively create within its boundaries, thereby countering the problem of engaging with hyperobjects that are otherwise difficult to grasp through their expansiveness across space and time. Morton explains this accordingly, stating that “the essence of reality is capital and Nature. Both exist in an ethereal beyond. Over here, where we live, is an oil spill. But don’t worry. The beyond will take care of it.” (2013, p. 115) In the real world, this ethereal beyond often refers to marginalized communities and the global south. This aligns with Buller’s contention that “the maintenance of the enormous demands for materials and environmental sinks for wastes made by the globally affluent has always been predicated on the exploitation of ‘elsewheres’ – people and regions rendered invisible in global economic production.” (2022, p. 236) In Obojima, the ethereal beyond and ‘elsewheres’ are brought home, leaving the player to deal with the consequences of environmental devastation directly. This provides the groundwork upon which the players are able to build and from which the players can derive the needed initiative to engage with real-world environmental concerns, which are not as easily contained in the form of corrupted muk monsters or the die rolls needed to dispel them. 

Beyond the Corruption’s monstrous manifestations and effects on the environment, the player is furthermore provided with the opportunity to understand its harrowing effects more intimately through a specific player class. Obojima’s unique subclass, the Corrupted Ranger, allows the player to roll up a character that carries the Corruption with them, thereby setting themselves on the path to becoming one with Corruption. The Corrupted Ranger loses their individuality as the Corruption encroaches upon their being, thereby bringing its anthropocenic devastation to the player character itself. The Corrupted Ranger is

afflicted by the mysterious illness that haunts the island known as the Corruption. This same foul magic, which has stained the coastlines black, now resides within your body. It curses your skin and seeps from your pores, and in time it will even become difficult to distinguish you from it. (1985 Games Inc., 2025, p. 143)

The Corrupted Ranger takes the manifestations of human-caused hyperobjects to its most visceral, reflecting the very real extent to which microplastics, pesticides, forever chemicals, and other such matters have burrowed into human bodies the world over. Once it becomes difficult to distinguish the character from the Corruption, so might it become difficult to distinguish environmental devastation from human actions.

The Corrupted Ranger is the acute embodiment of this birth-to-death exposure, becoming afflicted by the Corruption, which serves as a penalty to the player more than a boon, causing physiological decline and evoking negative status effects at random with accompanying dangers for enemies and allies alike. This is most clearly exemplified in the growing manifestations that result in “graying vision,” “failing lungs,” and “losing feeling,” all of which serve to negatively influence the player and those around them. Furthermore, any benefits derived from the Corruption come at a personal cost, such as the “curse marker” mechanic, which tags the PC’s body with a sign whenever a hit is taken, with the option to expel it as necrotic damage when the PC makes a weapon attack on a creature; extra damage at the cost of being hurt first.  (1985 Games Inc., 2025, pp. 143-144) Suffering these effects, the player character becomes, in a sense, one with the land. One could therefore argue that to be afflicted by the Corruption is a crucial step to overcoming the alienation from nature that might otherwise stifle any actions from being taken. Accordingly, until humans experience the effects of anthropocentrism directly, confronted with the tangible manifestations of the hyperobjects borne on their continued apathy, the necessary actions might never be taken. 

The Obojiman Way of Life

Obojima’s 80s tech, infused and reinvisioned with magic, along with the magical city of Yatamon, are the only remnants of the illustrious First Age, providing the players with nostalgic items with magical elements such as vending machines, Kei trucks, and tape decks, throughout the land. Lacking from the land, however, are the industrial systems one might imagine were responsible for bringing them about. As such, Obojima seems to enjoy certain technological delights without the destructive industrialization that spawned them. Instead, the Obojiman landscape combines the pastoral aesthetic of its rustic villages and cities with idyllic vistas containing the remnants of a bygone technologically superior age, lacking the pollution and socio-economic degradation that accompanied similar advancements in the real world. Obojima’s idyll, therefore, seems to exist within that which Marx called the middle landscape–a space that harmoniously fuses the urban with the natural–allowing for the existence of social networks that benefit society while not severing its link to nature. 

Beyond the First Age city of Yatamon, settlements are scattered across Obojima, providing varying examples of harmonic civilizations. One such example, Matango Village, is located in “a patch of woods so steeped in magic that the lichen and fungi they grew there have reached such extraordinary sizes, some being large enough to live inside of[.]” (1985 Games Inc., 2025, p. 27) Largely inhabited by mushroom farmers, the nature connectedness of Matango Village provides a glimpse into a symbiotic Obojiman-nature (and human-nature accordingly) relationship. The foraging nature of the village runs through Obojima, as it offers a rich array of unique potions and potion ingredients, the majority of which can be foraged by the players themselves. To support this further, the campaign setting offers the feat “Forager” to provide additional success in this hands-on, uninvasive approach to nature. Accordingly, community-driven approaches are prevalent in Obojima’s settlements, with festivals aplenty to share abundant harvests, a “farm collective” in Okiri Village, and a habit of bartering rather than monetary exchanges. 

The Corruption seeks to alienate the Obojimans from nature, removing its life-giving and life-supporting qualities as its inky tendrils continue to take more of the land and waterways. The aforementioned settlements and others like them provide examples of socio-economic alternatives that find the middle ground between technological advancement and the preservation of the natural environment. Akin to the middle landscape, it is “neither wild nor [over-civilised], where the dream of harmony between humanity and nature might be attainable.” (Marx, 1999, p. 377) Herein, the Corruption’s ontological issue, seemingly having spawned from nothing rather than being the result of some obojimagenic mago-industrial system, allows for the players to consider the socio-economic systems at hand to be an alternative that proves less (or altogether not) harmful to nature.² Future campaign settings could tackle anthropocentrism more directly by making the environmental threat the result of the world’s industrial configuration, linking it to real-life anthropocentrism accordingly, rather than being a standalone manifestation. 

Obojima’s worldbuilding provides a vision of how one might live symbiotically with nature. One way in which Obojima breaks from the D&D norm is through the absence of gods and pantheons, instead focusing on a reverence for nature. Lacking this, Obojima urges players whose characters would normally derive power from deities (such as Paladins and Clerics) to draw their power from the environment and the elder spirits spawned from it. For Paladins, Obojima provides the Oath of the River subclass, allowing for a deep engagement with waterways to guide and power the PC. Furthermore, through the socio-economic factions and systems in place, the players can immerse themselves in these alternative modes of living. Crofton provides insights into his work accordingly, stating that as the Obobjimans “[grow] up in a world that’s filled with magic and allows for the possibility that any and everything can be awakened (become sentient), [they] have to have a more ecocentric mindset.” (2025) The idea that nature can become sentient and therefore defend itself against harm might sound like a magical fancy, but it might be worth considering whether global warming is not a manifestation of nature defending itself against human negligence and selfishness. As Obojima’s posthuman world presents, humanity might come to an end without nature following suit. Following this, Obojima aligns with Vervoort et al.’s interpretation of games as visions for social change, as they “allow for the playful experimentation with systems, rules, and structures that make up real and fictional worlds.” (2024, p. 182) TTRPGs allow for collective building and learning, experiencing worlds made in part by the players themselves.

Conclusion

The TTRPG format meets the Obojiman landscape to provide a campaign setting that promotes player engagement with environmental issues and their anthropocentric entanglements. The manner in which Obojima presents threats to the natural environment and the harmonious socio-economic modes of living allows for the players to meaningfully confront real-world concerns through a fantasy lens. In analyzing games as ecological narratives, Chang asks

Why must games replicate the same kind of costly obliviousness we see every day in the nonvirtual world–the refusal to acknowledge or even attempt to understand our role in climate change, environmental degradation, and species loss–when they could instead take such factors into account, with very interesting results? (Chang, 2011, p. 61)

Obojima asks the players to take these matters precisely into consideration, with a world that is not afflicted by a cookie-cutter lich, evil monarch, or fearsome dragon, but rather a threat to the very habitat that supports life at its roots, which is, in its fantastical way, a reflection of the selfsame threat present in the players’ real world.

Beyond the immersion of the TTRPG format, its social effects and the desire for action is further supported by the underlying communal nature of the tabletop setting. As per Chemers and Sell, its very name “communicates the idea that the TTRPG is a social occasion, an opportunity to get together with others and play—to have fun together.” (2025, p. 243) The communal immersion of the TTRPG format allows for lessons learned and perspectives gained to carry over beyond the game session, into the real world, where players can apply this newfound information and these problem-solving desires and approaches accordingly. (Hlavacska, 2024; Reynauld, 214)

This paper aims to contribute to game and narrative studies from ecocritical and Marxist theoretical perspectives, providing analytical insights into worldbuilding and its role in facilitating engagement with contemporary real-world concerns. This paper further argues that there is more space for research into the community aspect of crowdfunded worldbuilding, especially in relation to online platforms used by developers to engage with the fan base and the effect thereof. Ultimately, Obojima’s setting revolves around introducing the players to modes of living and thinking that, while not at the forefront of the contemporary world, are both necessary and possible. Crofton duly explains that “Obojimans are meant to represent the best version of ourselves. I think most would dream to be a part of a world where sustainability is at the forefront of the people’s mind.” (2025) 

In conclusion, Obojima: Tales from the Tall Grass presents a D&D campaign setting that allows for a role-play and immersion-heavy experience through which players can engage with pressing environmental and socio-economic concerns, systems, and hyperobjects in a tangible way. Through the creative freedom inherent to the format, the Obojima campaign setting allows players to step foot into a posthuman world in which they can engage with pressing contemporary issues that, if engaged with in the real world accordingly, might prevent a posthuman world from coming about in turn.

1. Author’s emphasis. ↩︎
2. The term ‘mago-industrial’ is a neologism by the author to describe the combination of industrial and magical systems. The term ‘obojimagenic’ is a play on Obojima and anthropogenic. ↩︎

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