With a growing list of clubs at Granada, Recreational Geopolitics is an exciting, new stand-out all about providing students a space to discuss and collaborate on realistic world issues. Founded by a group of friends with similar interests, it’s for any student who has an interest in the dynamics of geopolitics.

Only starting this year, Recreational Geopolitics has already grown to over 30 members. Through connections and word of mouth, R.G. has garnered a lot of interest. Started by Will Hodges, president of Recreational Geopolitics, and a group of his peers, the club “give[s] students an outlet to take over any sort of country and essentially act as the leader and representative of that country. Creating actions, they’ll create their own goals, their own politics, all of that, in this virtual world filled with other players also doing the same thing.” With the majority of activity going on on Discord, when the club meets every Friday in room 303, members get the chance to bring up topics and issues that are happening on the platform so they can talk and discuss about it with other members.

Most actions and decisions will happen online, an essential summary from Will being, “…everyone with their country is able to create actions, essentially do whatever they want with what’s reasonable with these stats and overviews we’ve provided for their country. Once again, which is all visible through the Discord and then moderators, like myself, go through and evaluate that and decide what reasonable repercussions and consequences happen as a result of the actions they’re taking.”

The goal of the club has been to unite students together to get to talk about such topics in relation to geopolitical issues and Will has said, “…it’s been really big for me on getting to teach people real world issues and a lot of historical things because we noticed even though what we have is simulated and not real a lot of the topics and things that come up in the game and problems are parallels to what happens or has happened in real life.” With exciting events still going on in the club, such as several countries’ recent alliance against Russia, Recreational Geopolitics is a chance to recreate realistic scenarios that are true to real life.