Figure 1: Original illustration visualizing the process of this research: Each puzzle piece represents an integral part of the board game creation process, and the aim of this work is to discover the way the pieces connect with each other.

Tabletop role-playing games (TTRPGs) are a highly entertaining activity, offering players the opportunity to immerse themselves in imaginary worlds and engage in collaborative storytelling.Beyond their recreational value, they have also emerged as a potentially powerful tool for education.By providing a hands-on, experiential approach to learning, TTRPGs can foster critical thinking, problemsolving, and a deeper understanding of historical events and contexts.This paper explores their potential as a once-off time limited activity for history education, focusing on how historical information can be integrated into gameplay.We conducted a study with 16 adult players across four groups, using a TTRPG adventure prototype set in the Archaic Era of Ancient Greece.The sessions aimed to assess learning outcomes and gather feedback on participants' preferences for the inclusion of historical information and the right balance between facts and fiction.The results reveal implications for the design of in-game mechanics as well as supporting, physical and digital, content, to promote learning objectives, offering insights for both educators and game designers.Understanding players' interaction with historical content in a role-playing context can help create more engaging and effective TTRPG-based educational experiences.

In this paper we present the results of our research exploring the possible challenges board game creators might face while developing and playtesting games and we identify user requirements for their ideal digital game development platform. Our goal is to gain insights into the game development process and foster a deeper understanding of the creators’ perspectives and needs to inform our design of an effective digital tool to support them. We proceeded in two stages: (a) researching the web for designers’ views on the creation process, as well as reviews of commonly used digital tools, and (b) creating a questionnaire based on the information acquired in step (a) and organising a user study. 16 board game developers participated in the study, whose valuable feedback along with the data gathered from the online research will set a strong foundation for the development of an innovative platform.