Dog Eat Dog : A Philosophical Exploration of Settler-Colonialism in Role-Playing Game

This project began during the Summer Institute in American Philosophy (SIAP) at the University of ‘Hawai‘i at Hilo in June 2024. The Hawaiian Islands inspired our exploration of Dog Eat Dog, a tabletop role-playing game (RPG) by Liam Liwanag Burke, a Filipino-Hawaiian designer. This game interrogates settler-colonialism through storytelling gameplay. Initially conceived as a single gaming session, our engagement extended into several sessions. Together we explored the game's mechanics and themes, uncovering its potential as a tool for philosophical reflection and pedagogy. The following reports explain how simulating colonization and resistance reveals crucial moral complexities and challenges dominant narratives.In line with the theme of SIAP 2024 and The Pluralist, we propose that games are elemental. They embody the interplay of community, engagement, place, and relationality, serving as microcosms of the broader human experience. Games and storytelling are meaning-making processes that define our existence within natural and cultural environments. Role-playing games, like Dog Eat Dog, exemplify the elemental by immersing players in an existential narrative. Dog Eat Dog is not merely a game but an exploration of what it means to be human in an impossible situation. It invites players to reflect on their own responsibilities and roles within our intricate shared web of relationships. These reports present Dog Eat Dog as an example of how games and storytelling can serve as tools for understanding and transforming, through a medium that bridges philosophy, art, and social critique.The game's structure is simple yet impactful. One player assumes the role of the Occupation, while all other players portray individual Natives of the island. The gameplay unfolds in a series of scenes, framed by a central dynamic: the Occupation enforces a growing list of rules, and the Natives must navigate these constraints to survive, resist, or assimilate. Here are the core mechanics of the game: The First Rule: The foundational rule states: “The (Native people) are inferior to the (Occupation people)” (Burke 8).Tokens: Tokens represent the willpower of the Natives and the determination of the Occupation to maintain control. If a player loses all their tokens, then their Native character must Run Amok by engaging in a destructive act and ultimately dying (Burke 11).Judgment: At the end of each scene, players reflect on whether the actions of the Natives upheld or violated the established rules. New rules are then created based on the Occupation's actions, adding layers of complexity and oppression (Burke 17–18).Endgame: When either the Natives or the Occupation run out of tokens, each player composes an epilogue for their character, and then they collectively determine the island's fate (Burke 22–23)These mechanics simulate the asymmetrical power dynamics inherent in colonialism, forcing players to grapple with ethical dilemmas, strategic decisions, and the erosion of cultural identity. The game's brilliance lies in its ability to simulate the experience of colonization's psychological, social, and material impacts.When I coach kids, I console them after losing games or failing at individual acts. I emphasize that these build character and teach us how to improve. This is not merely being a good sport, but it is moral development that will have a profound effect on their moral inquiry. I even want my kid to lose occasionally so he learns how to lose gracefully. Usually, winning is a possibility, which is why we practice and improve. However, what about unwinnable situations where we cannot improve the outcome? Typically, we contemplate this in art, not games. For example, the story of Sophocles's Antigone is a tragedy because there is nothing the titular character can do to both maintain her obligations to her society and to her religion. She cannot “win.” Games usually do not have this structure—with some exceptions. One of those exceptions is Dog Eat Dog. The game is designed for all players to lose. Even the Occupation player walks away from the game thinking about loss. This game requires players to contemplate their losses, but unlike literature or art, players still exercise agency—even while losing. These intractable ethical dilemmas educate the moral imagination because players must rehearse loss and suffering.1The somewhat unique feature of Dog Eat Dog is that the players are bound to lose, but not due to a lack of skill. If I challenged a golf pro to a round, I would likely lose due to my skill level, yet I might hit the ball well and improve my game by playing against an advanced player. However, even when I played the Occupier in Dog Eat Dog, I experienced the weight of loss, which created an omnipresent feeling of dread. In one session, some characters decided to surrender what they initially valued, and others chose to double down. In part, this was determined by the persona of each character. For example, a priestly character would be dedicated to values different from those of a chief. However, all would feel the overwhelming and pervasive dread of loss. Thus, the game creates a safe space to dramatically rehearse the stressful challenge of choosing between loss, suffering, and destruction.In our first session, I played a native priest committed to the traditional values and norms of the fictional Indigenous group we invented. He was also the first to die. In the game, this means I was able to choose when and how to “Run Amok.” I did so by saving a child of the occupiers and killing a few aggressive characters invented by the Occupier. Paradoxically, it was a victory—albeit one requiring sacrifice. Granted, we decided to stop the game because it was late, and upon reflection, we wondered if the appearance of the victory would have faded if the game continued. Would it have become one more loss on the path to total defeat?The game also demands that the players rehearse suffering and contemplate how to avoid future suffering at the hands of the Occupier. In the context of suffering, characters often made choices that did not appear rational. This undermines the bias of some to dismiss the actions or beliefs of oppressed people as irrational or nonsensical. Dog Eat Dog demands players make choices in the context of suffering and to react to how it affects the other participants. Likewise, the game requires players to reflect on each round, which reveals different strategies for making sense of the senseless. Thus, processing suffering both as an individual and as a group deepened our empathy for each other and the situation. This even occurred when I was the Occupier. With my motives obscured, I watched the other players vainly trying to guess what behavior would ameliorate their suffering and realized that it did not matter because the Occupation has the power to ignore its own rules at will.While brief, this overview of playing Dog Eat Dog provides enough evidence to show how it informs our moral imaginations and allows players to inquire into themselves and potentially transform themselves through dramatic rehearsal.2 I see Dog Eat Dog specifically accessing and educating empathy—which is foundational for moral inquiry (Fesmire 66ff.). Moreover, instead of just asking that people feel along with each other, the reflections and structure of the game require players to inquire into why they feel as they do. This moves us from merely feeling empathy to a discussion of—and potentially an understanding of—when and how empathy should work.The following essay explores the themes of colonialism and restrained decision making as experienced through Liam Liwanag Burke's tabletop role-playing game Dog Eat Dog. It enables players who genuinely immerse themselves in the experience of dehumanization and restrained decision making under colonization through role-play to collectively embody what María C. Lugones has defined as “active subjectivity” throughout her work. Moreover, by embodying active subjectivity as an “active subject,” persons role-playing those being colonized begin to envisage a person under colonial occupation who can still think and act without being reduced to a helpless victim.What makes Dog Eat Dog so special for understanding colonial practices of oppression is that, unlike a thought experiment that inhibits the participants’ ability to detach themselves from their lived social identities, by allowing the players to determine the time period of the fictional occupation, and even the type of beings that can be embodied by both the native and colonizing groups (e.g., in one session we were alien mariners and avians, respectively), Dog Eat Dog creates a rupture in perception. This rupture disrupts the social dynamics of the players’ lived experiences and creates a brief disconnection that allows players to envision colonial occupation free from their unrecognized biases and assumptions. Thus, they can genuinely immerse in the experience of dehumanization and restrained decision making under colonization through role-play. Furthermore, the presence of other players and their characters also undergoing this imaginative process, creates the conditions to embody the active subjectivity defined by María C. Lugones (“Tactical Strategies” 211).Lugones theorizes the “active subject” as expressing the kind of resistance that emerges when people experience oppression. It contrasts with both the classic-modern model of agency and the “tactician” developed in Michel de Certeau's theory of oppression (Lugones, “Tactical Strategies” 211). The classic-modern model ties subjectivity and agency to intention by suggesting that effecting desired outcomes is entirely dependent on a subject's intentions, with little to no regard for structural barriers that hinder those for whom structures are not designed to effectively operate within. Thus, subjectivity and agency in this context suggest that a person who fails to assert their will is either an incompetent subject, amoral, or a being without agency; which ultimately justifies their oppression (Lugones, “Tactical Strategies” 210–11).In de Certeau's theory of oppression, there are two types of subjectivities coexisting in each state: “strategists” and “tacticians.” Strategists look down at a city to organize and theorize it given their position as city planners building invariant structures. Tacticians possess a myopic, street-level view informed by their existence between bodies. 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