Interview 3: David Harris on Adaptation and the Public Domain Game Jam

This interview is the third in a series of essays and interviews about repurposing board games in RPGs. This interview is about the Public Domain game jam and how David Harris views adaptation in his design process. I wrote it as part of the design process for Violent Delights: A chess-based RPG about Shakespeare’s Romeo & Juliet.An Interview with David HarrisDavid Harris (he/him) is a six-time winner of the Public Domain game jam, a game jam that requires you to incorporate at least one work that has entered the public domain within the last year. He has a background as a research physicist, journalist, artist (interactive, mechatronic, public art, science art, bioart), and designer. He has worked in the university system or adjacent institutions both in Australia and the US, including tenured positions in art and design. His PhD thesis built a framework for how artists and scientists collaborate, based on the first broad accounting of the field and including a large body of creative…