orichalcum

So, I've not been posting because I've spent the last three days at Reacting to the Past, the Barnard-based pedagogical conference about, essentially, running roleplaying simulations of key historical moments as a class, usually as a replacement for a class in general education/Western Civ/World Civ/1st year frosh seminars.

It's been a wonderful experience, partially because of the chance to spend 4 days talking with 60 other professors of wildly different backgrounds, ages, and university backgrounds - ranging from a fellow classicist who's also a lesbian Congregationalist at Bates College in Maine to a male evolutionary geneticist and animal behaviorist at Montana State.

For right now, I'm just going to focus on the goods and bads of the first game I played, the :

This game, the "Threshold of Democracy" is set in 403 BCE in Athens, at the end of the Peleponnesian War, which the Athenians have just lost. The students are members of the Assembly, the democratic voting body of Athens, trying to decide on the future of their city-state. There are 4 equally balanced factions:

The Radical Democrats, interested in expanding the definition of citizenship, aggressive imperialism, and trying Socrates for his crimes against Athens;

The Moderate Democrats, interested in rebuilding Athens at a stable level, maintaining the democratic forms of government, and trying but not executing Socrates;

The Oligarchs, my faction, the rich property-owners of Athens, interested in restricting the vote to the wealthy, ignoring Socrates, and not pissing off Sparta again with military moves;

and the Socratics, a bunch of crazy idealists who want to restrict the vote to the well-educated of whatever background, spread Socrates' ideas to the world, and either not try Socrates or execute him and turn him into a martyr for the cause.

There are also a number of indeterminate individuals, each with their own character background (the faction members do not generally have individual character sheets) and personal agenda, such as the Carpenter who wants to build sets for plays; the Retired Sailor who's scared of another war; the Rich Athlete who wants a war so he can be a general again, and so forth. These indeterminate individuals are courted by the factions for their votes, obviously.

There are a variety of agenda items which the class goes through, ranging from discussions of voting rights to the trial of Socrates; the agenda is set by the President of the Assembly and the Archons, picked each day by lot. Other random events are handled by die rolls (d6es). Students are required to base their arguments on the background readings, principally Plato's Republic, especially during the trial of Socrates.

So, it was a lot of fun - chaotic arguments back and forth, back-room negotiating and bribing and deals and so forth. There are, as it turns out, in-game secrets, which I won't spoil in case any of you get to play it, but suffice it to say that the highlights of the game for me were first, managing to get people to acquit Socrates by one vote on the grounds that "we should laugh at Socrates like Aristophanes does, not condemn him!" and second, using a deal that someone had attempted to make with us to discredit them openly and throw mud on their favored cause, bringing it into defeat.

We Oligarchs were very strong, but the Moderate Democrats won. Apparently, the ModDems almost always win, and the game is sort of designed that way, which I find mildly problematic partially because it's frustrating and partially because a small percentage of the students' grades is determined by how well they do in the game. My overall impression is that the writing and research on these games is excellent, but their concepts of game design and balance and what makes a good LARP are severely limited.


Still, a great couple of days. I'm happy to answer questions, and will talk about the China game tomorrow.

Also, Batman Begins rocks. and on Sunday, I got to purge my memories of a disliked and boring minister by parodying her sermon style in A's D&D game, where I play a priestess with 18 Wis, 16 Int, and 7 Cha. Rambling, irrelevant personal story and vague platitudes all the way, baby. :)