Making the Future Playable: Inside the Dreams and Disruptions Game

I'm excited to share that my article, "Dreams and Disruptions: Gaming Anti-Fragile Futures," has just been published in World Futures Review. This piece represents years of work developing and refining a foresight game that's been played in over 200 sessions worldwide—from military strategists and policymakers to youth activists and indigenous communities.

Why Another Foresight Game?

The inspiration came during a workshop in Bangkok, where I witnessed something really compelling: when people play with the future rather than just analyze it, they surface assumptions they didn't even know they had. One participant later described it perfectly: "The game showed great promise in facilitating an opening that could be nurtured into a deep ontological expansion."

Traditional foresight methods often privilege linear, technocratic thinking. They're excellent to a certain extent for prediction and yes, especially planning, but they can also trap us in single-loop learning—reinforcing the very paradigms that limit our ability to imagine transformative change. Dreams and Disruptions takes a different approach: it treats play, embodiment, and improvisation as valid ways of knowing the future.

The paper positions Dreams and Disruptions as both method and epistemic instrument. It's not just a tool for generating preposterous scenarios—it's a way of expanding what counts as legitimate futures knowledge. By making anticipation experiential and relational, the game functions as an instrument that broadens our anticipatory perception and opens imaginative pathways toward unthought-of futures. As physicist Werner Heisenberg observed, "we do not see the world the way it is, we see the world as our instruments allow."

Dreams and Disruptions is designed to be precisely that kind of instrument: one that helps us see futures we might otherwise miss.

How It Works: Four Phases of Futures Play

The game guides players through a structured five-step process across four phases:

Phase 1: Building Hybrid Future Worlds. Players randomly draw scenario archetypes (preferred, weird, worst-case), time horizons, and forces of change. This randomness is deliberate—it prevents us from cherry-picking comfortable futures and forces us to grapple with the unexpected.

Phase 2: Leadership Archetypes. Drawing on Prabhat Ranjan Sarkar's social psychology, players explore how different leadership styles shape futures. Are you navigating your scenario as a Worker focused on stability? A Warrior prioritizing security? An Intellectual advancing knowledge? A Merchant driving innovation? Or a Sadvipra—an ethically grounded leader who transcends class interests?

Phase 3: Crisis Strikes. Just when players have crafted their future world and strategy, a planetary-scale disruption card enters the game: biowarfare, ocean collapse, AI rebellion, the sixth extinction. Suddenly, the future isn't theoretical—it's a crisis demanding immediate response.

Phase 4: Reflection and Insight. The game concludes with collective sensemaking. What surprised you? What assumptions broke down under pressure? How did improvisation and collaboration reshape your thinking?

Why Randomness Matters

Randomness isn't just a game mechanic—it's a philosophy. From ancient Chinese divination to modern probability theory, humans have long wrestled with chance as a window into possibility. In Dreams and Disruptions, randomness disrupts our tendency to rank and prioritize drivers of change based on what we already believe. It forces us to ask: What if the future doesn't care about our plans?

A rapid-fire Dreams and Disruptions Game at the DCN Global Conference on Artificial Intelligence organized by World Learning and the US State Department, Bangkok, Thailand.

Democratizing Futures Thinking

In 2023, the Association of Professional Futurists recognized Dreams and Disruptions with the IF Award for Inclusivity, calling it "a valuable contribution to the field of foresight, offering a dynamic, inclusive platform for scenario building."

The game has been translated into Mandarin and launched in China, with translations underway in Bahasa, Portuguese, Spanish, Arabic, and Persian.

We've developed localized versions like Rivers of Tomorrow (using Indigenous wisdom to reimagine urban-river relations in Philippine cities) and are exploring AI-enabled play modes that accelerate content generation while preserving human facilitation and interpretation.

What's Next: Play Modes and AI

Inspired by Louis Zheng, Sen Li, and the Futurists Circle, I've developed five experimental play modes arranged across two axes: random emergence vs. focused topics, and open-ended exploration vs. solution orientation. These modes allow facilitators to tailor the game for different contexts—from wild-signal exploration to policy conceptualization.

We're also experimenting with AI to generate scenarios and disruptions, not to replace human imagination but to augment it. The goal is to surface unanticipated connections while keeping the interpretive, ethical work firmly in human hands.

Various foresight games were showcased including the Dreams and Disruptions at the Asian Institute of Management event Gaming Strategic Foresight.

An Invitation to Play

At its core, Dreams and Disruptions is about making anticipation experiential, relational, and ethically situated. It recognizes that the future isn't something we predict—it's something we rehearse, contest, and co-create.

As futurist Jane McGonigal reminds us: "We can play any games we want. We can create any future we can imagine. Let the games begin."

If you're interested in bringing Dreams and Disruptions to your organization, community, or classroom, visit dreamsanddisruptions.com or reach out to the Center for Engaged Foresight.

Citation: Cruz, S. (2026). Dreams and Disruptions: Gaming Anti-Fragile Futures. World Futures Review, 0(0), 1–18. DOI: 10.1177/19467567261422223

About the Author: Shermon Cruz is Founder and Chief Futurist of the Center for Engaged Foresight, Chair of The Millennium Project Philippines Node, and holder of the UNESCO Chair on Anticipatory Governance and Regenerative Cities at Northwestern University Philippines. He is an award-winning futurist and a globally recognized thought leader in democratizing and decolonizing futures thinking. He is currently a doctoral candidate on futures studies at the University of the Sunshine Coast Australia.