About The Game
The Pluriversal Chronicles is a multi-player game inspired by the Columbian anthropologist and scholar Arturo Escobar’s critical work on development, sustainability, and the intersection of culture, politics and ecology that argues for alternative, localized, and pluralistic approaches to societal progress.
Pluriversal Chronicles can be played in multiple formats. This website offers larger-scale engagement of communities that may be loosely connected, enabling different teams to play asynchronously.
The physical toolkit enables in-person play so that smaller or more connected groups can play together through a more intensive experience. The toolkit is available for download here and includes the pluriversal cards and a printable game board.
Behind the Scenes
A Large Scale Participatory Futures Game
Principles
Hearts & Minds
It asks us to examine our existing mindsets and heartsets, to challenge the official narratives we may be constrained by and to begin from a posture of inclusion, positivity and plural human-centered progress.
Game Play
Collective Imagination
The game invites us to explore how we might harness our collective imaginations and commit our shared capacities and resources towards equitable, inclusive, pluriversal futures.
Intentions
Intention of play mechanism
Game play mechanisms will help players practice and become familiar with empathy, relationality, and design thinking without needing to get deep into technical solutioning. By creating interesting constructs of characters for game play, players exercise self and inter-relational reflection that is foundational for pluriversal existence.
Intentions
Intention of cards
Players construct unique worldviews as composites of different ways of being, knowing, doing, and creation. The cards represent characteristics of identity, values, culture, and behaviours framed in unconventional but familiar terms. This approach helps players construct relatable worldviews that do not get stuck in mainstream and potentially polarizing tropes.
Game Play
The Set up
The game is purposefully starting with a successful scenario. Players choose a challenge based on the groups interest and purpose, and state a one-sentence description of it using this structure:
Principles
Empathetic
Integrate compassionate understanding and genuine concern for others in how you think, feel and act.
Principles
Improvisational
Start with "Yes, and…" mindset. Include and build on all contributions. Make simple offers that add something tangible to the story.
Principles
Flexibility
Players can choose the game’s duration, depending on their needs, size and nature of the group.
Principles
Optimism
Players begin with a transformation scenario in which a systemic challenge has been successfully solved for through various interventions.
"It seems to me that Pluriversa embodies at its best the current search in design fields, broadly speaking, to formulate and implement transformative and socially innovative perspectives based on the emergent notions of pluriversality, regeneration, interdependence, and just transitions.
In this light, I would very much hope that Pluriversa receives the support it is seeking and deserves as a genuine alternative consultancy practice."
Distinguished Professor of Anthropology Emeritus.
Author of Designs for the Pluriverse.
Arturo Escobar is a Colombian anthropologist and thought leader known for his critical perspectives on development, ecology, and the politics of knowledge. Born in Manizales, Colombia, he studied chemical engineering before turning to anthropology and social theory, earning his Ph.D. at the University of California, Berkeley.
The Making and Unmaking of the Third World
Escobar's interdisciplinary approach bridges fields like political ecology, anthropology, and sociology, making his work influential across the humanities and social sciences. He critiques the dominance of Western-centric development paradigms, which he argues marginalize local knowledge and perpetuate inequality. His seminal book, "Encountering Development: The Making and Unmaking of the Third World" (1995), is a cornerstone of post-development theory, exploring how the "Third World" was constructed as an object of intervention by the West.
Escobar has had a profound impact as an educator, particularly during his tenure as a professor of anthropology at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, where he taught for several decades. His teaching focused on critical development studies, political ecology, and the anthropology of design, offering students a fresh perspective on global issues.
Escobar was known for encouraging his students to question dominant paradigms, engage deeply with diverse worldviews, and consider the implications of their academic work on real-world communities. His interdisciplinary approach attracted students from fields like environmental studies, sociology, and design, making his classes a hub for critical thinking and collaboration. Many of his students have gone on to pursue impactful careers in academia, activism, and policy, applying the principles of relationality and pluralism that Escobar championed.
Designs for the Pluriverse
Escobar’s work intersects intriguingly with the worlds of design and futures, particularly through his advocacy for rethinking design as a tool for social transformation and his emphasis on reimagining possible worlds beyond the dominant paradigms of modernity, capitalism, and anthropocentrism. His concept of "design for the pluriverse" calls for moving beyond traditional, industrial-era design practices that often prioritize profit and efficiency over sustainability, justice, and diversity.
The concept aligns closely with speculative design and decolonial futures, encouraging alternative imaginaries that prioritize relationality, ecological interdependence, and cultural diversity —the coexistence of diverse ways of knowing, being, and relating. This contrasts with many futurist narratives that prioritize technological innovation while marginalizing traditional knowledge systems and lived experiences.
Territories of Difference
Escobar’s ideas have been embraced by designers working on community-driven projects, particularly in the Global South, where the impacts of globalization and ecological crises are most acutely felt. with Indigenous and Afro-Colombian communities resisting displacement and environmental degradation. His book, "Territories of Difference: Place, Movements, Life, Redes" (2008), examines how these communities use their cultural and ecological practices to challenge globalization and defend their territories.
A Hopeful Counter-Narrative
By highlighting the creativity and resilience of local communities, Escobar offers a hopeful counter-narrative to the homogenizing effects of global capitalism. By emphasizing the agency of Indigenous, Afro-descendant, and local communities in shaping their destinies, Escobar positions them as key contributors to global futures discourse.
