A Quest for Clean Air
A slight drizzle patters against the concrete as seagulls swoop toward the Bay Bridge. Massive 20-sided dice rest on a wooden table, primed to be rolled. A group of costumed citizens gather in front of the Exploratorium, humming with theories about their imminent mission. Just moments before noon, the clouds shift to release bright rays of sunlight and the cool air stills — seeming to hold its breath — in anticipation of the adventure soon to begin.
Role-Playing as Climate Justice
On July 30th at the San Francisco Exploratorium, three teams of 10 to 15 adventurers, ranging from ages 9 to about 50, assembled to participate in a live action role-playing event unlike anything most had experienced before. The event, titled Death by a Thousand Breaths, was an environmental justice Dungeons and Dragons (D&D) campaign organized and run by the climate education organization Mycelium Youth Network.
Starry wizard’s hat resting on a pile of colorful D&D costumes. Photo: Aiyana Washington.
D&D games, called campaigns, lead brave — and often eccentrically outfitted — players on quests into fantastical worlds, where they make choices that alter the trajectory of the story. Their fate is swayed at times by the verdict of a 20-sided die that lets them cast spells and fight monsters if they roll the correct numbers. Typically, D&D takes place indoors using a board game, but live action role-play encourages players to interact with their physical surroundings and dramatize the fictional worlds that these characters inhabit. Inspired by Oakland and the city’s battles with air pollution, Death by a Thousand Breaths introduces players to Cerulean Port City, where a toxin-spewing, magical potion plant has recently moved in. The family-friendly game requires players to band together to find evidence of the plant’s negative environmental impacts then conspire to shut it down.
Though D&D isn’t a conventional avenue for exposing environmental injustices, Mycelium Youth Network finds that gaming makes climate activism tangible while uplifting youth voices and voices of people of color. To Lil Milagro Henriquez, the organization’s Executive Director, these campaigns are about empowering the players. Climate change presents a scary and overwhelming issue for many, yet tackling it through storytelling, Henriquez explains, “creates space for you to see yourself and your community as leaders in solving an issue.” Above all, Henriquez wants individuals of all ages to realize “how powerful they are” as change makers.
Lil Milagro Henriquez speaks to players in the Exploratorium’s Bay Observatory. Photo: Aiyana Washington.
And The Game Begins
The one-and-a-half hour live action game began with a group of about 15 adventurers mingling outside of the Exploratorium and meeting Dungeon Master Marcy Brown, their leader and guide throughout the campaign. The participants were a mixture of first-time role-players and seasoned D&D youth, each adorned as magical wizards, rangers, healers, druids, and even self-named heroes, including one “warrior-who-doesn’t-know-it-yet.” Each character had unique powers, such as the ability to create fog that freezes opponents or to summon a charismatic nature that lets a player sweet-talk their way out of danger.
An Adventurer Reflects
For Aya, a player who asked that only her first name be shared, Death by a Thousand Breaths was a refreshing deviation from the more common settings of environmental action: meetings, hearings, conference rooms. As a climate novelist and activist in the Movement for Black Lives, she relished the opportunity to instead prepare her pre-teen daughter for on-the-ground activism through play and imagination. Aya’s major takeaway from the campaign is that people need to work together to solve the climate crisis. Young people are leading this fight, she ventured, and older adults must learn from younger adults to shift their priorities. She believes it’s important that folx are playful and hopeful, just as the people that journeyed through this mission with her daughter were.
A City Hopeful
Seeing participants rallied in homemade costumes and charging forward to save the illusory Cerulean Port City, I felt the tangible optimism, excitement, and even nervousness in the air. At the start of the game, a few eager players admitted that they “just didn’t want to mess up,” having never played D&D before. Yet this care for the success of their team ultimately propelled them toward a thrilling victory. The players’ conquests required creative problem-solving, stealthy investigation, and some intense battles, but their unwavering spirit reduced the adventure’s obstacles to temporary hiccups.
Flint, a volunteer, laughing with players before they enter the potion plant. Photo: Aiyana Washington.
These brave adventurers reminded me that we must band together — all generations, abilities, and backgrounds — to protect our communities from environmental dangers, and from magical, air-polluting villains.
Photo: Aiyana Washington.
