While tabletop role-playing games (TTRPGs) and other games have strong associations with the tropes and themes of a so-called “Western fantasy” or “Western” experiences of culture and history, there are increasing numbers of creators who work with and draw upon different ideas and experiences of fantasy, history, and culture.

In this talk, I provide some sharings from a SEAsian perspective about the experiences, ideas, constraints, and opportunities to working with the cultural resources and everyday realities of our region. These sharings include musings from my positionality as a designer who dwells in a diaspora connected to various cultural and social universes and navigates different identities and worlds, as well as my experiences making games and playable experiences with national and subcultural considerations of ‘culture’, ‘heritage’, or ‘literature’.

Topics which might be discussed include concerns and questions of ‘cultural authenticity’ and ‘cultural appropriation’; I hope to work with and beyond these terms and dive deep into thinking more critically and constructively about just how culture and heritage might be involved in game creation processes.

Tan Shao Han (he/him/them) is an independent TTRPG creator (@curiouschimeras) and freelancer from Singapore. They specialize in world-building, narrative and rules design, and cultural consulting. Some recent works include the Firelights-powered wuxia journaling game “Swordfarer”, the “Dagger Isles” for Evil Hat’s Blades in the Dark, and the “Tian Xia” books for Paizo’s Pathfinder 2e, for which he and the rest of the "Tian Xia" team won a 2024 ENNIE Gold award for Best Setting.