''Rosenstrasse'' is an historical

indie role-playing game An indie role-playing game is a role-playing game published by individuals or small press publishers, in contrast to games published by large corporations. Indie tabletop role-playing game designers participate in various game distribution netwo ...

by Jessica Hammer and Moyra Turkington that explores the erosion of Jewish civil liberties in

Nazi Germany Nazi Germany, officially known as the German Reich and later the Greater German Reich, was the German Reich, German state between 1933 and 1945, when Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party controlled the country, transforming it into a Totalit ...

, culminating in the Rosenstrasse protest, an uprising in which nearly 1,500 non-Jewish wives of Jewish men saved their husbands from deportation. Each player is responsible for playing two pre-generated characters from a set of four married couples, in order to examine the historical scenario from different perspectives. ''Rosenstrasse'' was nominated for the 2023 Diana Jones Award for Excellence in Gaming and the 2022 ENNIE Award for Best Writing, was an official selection at

IndieCade IndieCade is an international juried festival of independent games. Game types include video games, live-action games, and tabletop games. Independent game developers are selected to demo, screen, and promote their work at the annual IndieCade fe ...

2017, and was featured at

XOXO (festival) XOXO was an annual festival and conference held in Portland, Oregon, that described itself as "an experimental festival for independent artists who live and work online". XOXO was founded in 2012 by Andy Baio and Andy McMillan with funding from ...

in 2019. The game has also been the subject of academic scholarship.

Inspiration

In an article for the

Association for Jewish Studies The Association for Jewish Studies (AJS) is a scholarly organization in the United States that promotes academic Jewish Studies. History The Association for Jewish Studies (AJS) was founded in December 1968 by a small group of scholars at Bran ...

, Hammer and Turkington explained that their goal in creating ''Rosenstrasse'' was:

to educate players about a lesser-known historical moment; to inspire them to resist oppression in their daily lives; and to help them start conversations about activism.

Scholarship

In ''Designing Ourselves: Empathy, Bias, and Game Design'', Dr. Karen Schrier discusses ''Rosenstrasse'' as a tool for honing ethical decision-making. Anthropologist Nathan LaBlanc wrote an article about ''Rosenstrasse'' as an example of how roleplaying games can be used in the field of

ethnography Ethnography is a branch of anthropology and the systematic study of individual cultures. It explores cultural phenomena from the point of view of the subject of the study. Ethnography is also a type of social research that involves examining ...

References

{{reflist Anti-fascist role-playing games ENnies nominees Historical role-playing games Indie role-playing games Jewish games Political tabletop games Role-playing games introduced in 2022