Explore and reimagine classic Gippsland folklore through tabletop roleplay at the 2025 Regional Writers Rise Festival!

💻 Rolling Local Legends online tabletop roleplaying game - Session One: Howls in the Night

👤 Hosted by Emma Livesey-Green

What caused the Haunted Hills to be given their name? Did a panther really stalk Gippsland, picking off livestock?

Local legends play an important role in a region’s character, giving us insight into how those that come before us lived and how the places around us came to be. But how to we relive these legends in the present day? And can our retellings of such tales allow us to gain an appreciation and understanding of our home?

Rolling Local Legends is a unique workshop experience that will see participants explore and reimagine classic Gippsland folklore through tabletop roleplay. The tabletop roleplaying game (or TTRPG) is, at its core, a collaborative storytelling system where rolls guide how the narrative unfolds. TTRPGs allow us to put ourselves in the shoes of characters that can be as similar or as different to us as we choose, showing us different ways of seeing worlds both new and familiar.

Over the festival weekend two groups will be run, one on Saturday and one of Sunday, in which participants will tell a story together based on one of two local legends. The TTRPG being used will be Places in Time, an original TTRPG created by workshop facilitator Emma Livesey-Green.

There is also the opportunity, if all participants are consenting, for the session to be recorded. If so, the audio only will be used to create a digital story with images, to be premiered at a later date.

Session Two: A Creature Lurks will feature the much-debated myth of the Gippsland Panther. Set in the 1910s, 50-years after the events of the Haunted Hills, participants and their characters will find their community panicked by sightings of a creature stalking local farmland. Importantly, the narrative created in Session One will be a central folklore for the world that the participants of group two find themselves in.

The online event will be held via MS Teams. Links will be provided via email prior to the event.

Further Information: Up registering for a session, participants will be sent instructions for character creation. This should be done prior to the session date so that Emma can build the story to include your character. An optional Drop-In session will be held two weeks prior to the session so that you can ask Emma share character ideas and ask questions.

Location: Online

Time: 10am - 1pm

Session Length: 3hrs, with a 20min break in the middle

Maximum Group Sizes: 6

About the Facilitator

Emma Livesey-Green is a local Gippsland resident, born and raised in Traralgon. She holds a Bachelor of Arts (Professional and Creative Writing) with distinction and a Master of Arts (Writing and Literature), both from Deakin University. At present, she is a PhD candidate at Deakin University, where her research explores how the tabletop role-playing game (TTRPG) can be used to teach creative writing in the community. Her original TTRPG, Place in Time, is a key part of this research. Emma’s research is supported through an Australian Government Research Training Program Scholarship.

Please refer to Regional Writers Rise Festival - Terms and Conditions at the bottom of our program page.