Role-playing simulations (RPSs)—a type of serious games—involve face-to-face mock decision making with multi-stakeholder negotiation. In decision making, they are often adopted to operate representations of central features of reality, highlighting rules and trade-offs, knowledge and learning-by-doing, motivations and negotiation processes.

This study applies an RPS to investigate the mechanisms of activation of ecosystem services (ES) flow, as a result of co-production of the actors involved in a decision-making process. Against a common setting and predetermined objectives, arrangements negotiating ES and associated motivations are analyzed in relation to the RPS characters and their roles in the ES flow. This study applies a comparative experimental approach to support a transnational capacity-building process on sustainable local development through renewable energy sources. The RPS was replicated in 10 sessions in eight Southeast European countries, with almost 230 participants from marginal rural landscapes.

From the results, we highlight the variability of the selection of ES, and the arrangements and motivations within each RPS session. ES arrangements emerge from group-based decision-making processes, where pools of players are pivotal in analyzing, assessing, and orienting decisions, beyond pre-existing expert knowledge on ES. Strengths and limitations of the method are discussed in the context of simulation practices.

角色扮演模拟（RPS）是一种严肃的游戏，它涉及与多方利益相关者协商的面对面模拟决策。在决策过程中，通常会采用它们来表示现实的中心特征，强调规则和权衡，知识和边做边学，动机和谈判过程。

这项研究应用RPS来调查由于参与决策过程的参与者的共同生产而激活生态系统服务（ES）的机制。针对通用设置和预定目标，针对RPS角色及其在ES流程中的角色，分析了协商ES的安排和相关动机。这项研究采用了一种比较实验方法，以支持通过可再生能源实现可持续地方发展的跨国能力建设进程。RPS在东南欧的8个国家进行了10次会议，其中有230位来自边缘乡村地区的参与者被复制。

从结果中，我们强调了ES选择的可变性，以及每个RPS会话内的安排和动机。ES的安排来自基于小组的决策流程，其中参与者的角色在分析，评估和确定决策方向方面起着至关重要的作用，超越了现有的ES专家知识。在模拟实践的背景下讨论了该方法的优点和局限性。