Exhibition "Monk Don't Get Angry" at Museum Abtei Liesborn (28.08.-20.11.2022)

From 28.08. - 20.11.2022, the Museum Abtei Liesborn will host the exhibition "Monk don't get angry. Fighting nuns, drinking brothers and mysterious monasteries in modern games". More detailed information, especially on the accompanying programme, can be found in the exhibition flyer, the page of the Museum Abtei Liesborn and the blog entry on Boardgame Historian.

The Idea:

games are booming – In recent years, many people have (re)discovered a passion for playing games together. Games with a historical background in particular are becoming increasingly popular and there is a great variety of such titles on the market. Among them are also numerous games with a reference to monasteries as places of action and monks or nuns as characters. Monasteries offer many possibilities as places of action, since various aspects of religion, rule, economy and education flow into one another in them. At the same time, monks and nuns behind supposedly closed monastery walls are surrounded by something mysterious, which promotes mysterious narrative threads and thus arouses additional interest. In addition, in the modern design of game types such as role-playing or tabletop, Christian occidental motifs are mixed with Asian-oriental motifs of monasticism. The representation of monastic culture in games, digital or analogue, has hardly been studied so far. Together with Yvonne Püttmann and Dr Sebastian Steinbach from the Museum Abbey Liesborn, Anna Klara Falke and Lukas Boch (both from the University of Münster) from Boardgame Historian set out to change this situation.

The Goal:

time of origin and the environment in which they were created influence the design of the respective games just as much as many a Hollywood film or historical novel. The exhibition therefore focuses on the perception and reproduction of history and historical events. In an entertaining and amusing way, the exhibition explores the question of how monasteries, nuns and monks are characterised and portrayed in games and what conclusions can thus be drawn about how they are viewed by the public in the 21st century. Role models, clichés and historical parallels are deciphered with the help of numerous examples.

The Structure:

In order to answer the question of the public perception of monasteries and nuns and monks, various game genres and game mechanics are presented and examined: classic board games, dice and collectible card games, pen & paper role-playing games, game books, tabletops and serious games. Based on concrete game situations, the various perspectives on historical monastic culture will be vividly presented. Young visitors will of course also have the opportunity to actively immerse themselves in the monastery games and the monastery world. The exhibition’s extensive supporting programme also offers the opportunity to develop your own games to develop games themselves, to get in touch with game designers or to discover the world of different games.