In this immersive session of AfroRithms From The Future, players don’t just take on roles—they fully embody them. The Seer acts as a visionary guide, channeling ancestral signals through ritual and creative play. The Librarian offers knowledge as living memory, sharing layered meanings from real, imagined, and future worlds. The Scribe documents the group’s artifacts through creative renaming and short raps that bring their inventions to life. The optional Listeneer observes and expresses the group’s ideas through visual art, sound, or movement.
In this session, Ahmed serves as the Seer and Lonny as the Librarian, guiding participants through each phase and helping role-players unlock their imaginative power.
Together, players co-create bold new futures using Tension, Inspiration, Object, and System cards. These prompts inspire worlds centered on care, equity, and liberation. The group’s final creation—the Obelisk—represents their shared vision for a better future.
The session begins with a short practice round where participants try out their roles, encouraging experimentation and connection before full gameplay.
This experience centers Black, Indigenous, and queer futures. It’s open to all and great for educators, artists, and visionaries ready to explore new ways of being through collective play and storytelling.
From the Artist
In AfroRithms From The Future, we center Black, Indigenous, and Queer futures to open space for imagining beyond dominant narratives and rehearsing new pathways toward collective liberation. This centering is an intentional act of cultural reclamation and speculative design, inviting all participants to draw on their own Ancestral Intelligence—what we call the real AI. This is a deep, generational wisdom carried through story, ritual, resistance, and imagination. As we co-create artifacts and visions of possible worlds, folx are encouraged to bring forward the wisdom, memory, and creativity of their own lineages. Through collaborative play, we listen to the echoes of many ancestors and experiment with future ways of being that honor their legacies while shaping radically just tomorrows.
Credits
We honor one of our chief storytellers Jade Fabello for his contributions to our team and his continuing work with us though he could not be with us at this retreat. And thank Eli Kosminsky for his continuing support in game design. And to our original artists and designers of our card deck, Paula Te and Alan Clark. And finally want to thank our collaborators the, Fathomers.
We honor one of our chief storytellers Jade Fabello for his contributions to our team and his continuing work with us though he could not be with us at this retreat. And thank Eli Kosminsky for his continuing support in game design. And to our original artists and designers of our card deck, Paula Te and Alan Clark. And finally want to thank our collaborators the, Fathomers.
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