Pants-less Monkeys

I recently returned to the States in order to attend a conference and also tie up a few loose ends since moving abroad. 

While in Atlanta, I was fortunate to have stayed here, since I’m technically homeless (we’re renting our loft). It’s a wonderful respite after a long flight across the ocean or a long walk in the summer heat.  

It also starkly contrasts with my temporary quarters at the conference in another state:  a single dorm room at a large university.  The typically thin and lumpy mattress.  A sad little pillow.  (I don’t have to provide a picture for these things; most readers will remember them – from camp, from college, from camp AT a college, whatever- all too well.) You think to yourself:  this is a little like the life of a monk. 

Quite worth the relative discomfort, though. And far more social than those who live the cloistered life.

What brought me there?

This. 

More specifically, this was the Reacting to the Past Game Development Conference.  Reacting to the Past is a college-level pedagogy that entails the use of unscripted, complex role-playing games centered around pivotal historical developments informed by seminal texts. 

I have been using this pedagogy in my classes for the last five years, and have authored a full-length game (about the American Artists’ Congress of the 1930s, which takes about five weeks to play), a micro-game (requiring only one class session) and am working on two short games (each encompassing between three and five class sessions). 

This is from my American Artists' Congress playtest at UGA's faculty workshop in April.  Here, American artists are raucously protesting Philip Evergood's (a.k.a. Janice Simon, my advisor from grad school) selection practices for WPA mural commissions.

The Game Development Conference is largely dedicated to game creation – from workshopping concepts to play-testing prototypes.  While other events staged by and for RTTP are intended to introduce faculty to the pedagogy and empower them to adopt it for use in their courses, the GDC serves the game authors.  Presenters are expected to bring less-than-finished work (which requires a certain amount of willingness to risk appearing foolish or lacking in preparation, which is VERY tough for academicians to do) and to then benefit from the generous amounts of feedback that attendees can provide. 

I was scheduled to present twice:  I workshopped my Sistine Chapel Ceiling Restoration game concept, and I also game-mastered my Bomb the Church/Monument microgame.   Some scheduling conflicts for other presenters necessitated my making both presentations on the same (and first) day of the event.  On top of play-testing another person’s game, this made for a very full, intellectually demanding day. I would have been exhausted even without the lingering jetlag. 

As per the usual, I received excellent feedback on both presentations.  Great ideas were generated for my Sistine Chapel game concept, in which the essential conflict is over the ethics and outcomes of the very lengthy restoration of Michelangelo’s frescoes.  I was a little struck by the fact that few people even know there was a controversy.  The playtest of my microgame was a lot of fun, with 26 people getting a more than a little ‘shouty’ over whether to risk life or art.  While I still don’t quite know how to fully incorporate this set of 3D printed artifacts into the game, they – and the game itself - were a hit with the playtesters.

Thanks to a colleague who was cool about teaching me the basics of 3D printing, the availability of a Makerbot and several free printing templates, I crafted some visual elements for my game.  They're not utterly necessary, of course, but for an art game - why not?

All of the pieces fit inside the church.
For more information on my microgame OR my other games comment here with an email address.  I can send the American Artists' game or the microgame (Bomb the Church/Monument) to you for play-testing!  

 So over the course of three days, in three different playtests, I played the roles of curator at the Prado, colonial-era colonel in Virginia, and WWII veteran at the Montgomery Bus Boycott trial.  I attended workshops on game concepts and development. 

The playtest of Verdis Robinson's Bacon's Rebellion game.

Radical artist group 'GAC' speaking to the room of Latin American artists and dealers in Bridget Franco's Prado game.

A fascinating and productive game creation workshop - timed.  And it worked. 

the simple guidelines, steering small groups to game creation

Resulting game construct, with sketched out scenario, roles, etc for a potential game about the ethics of zoos.

And of course, I went to the traditional board game night. 

People who are involved in Reacting are game enthusiasts of one type or another:  some play any and every kind of game (video and otherwise), some are really only enthusiastic about using games in their classrooms, and a fair number are board and card game aficionados.  At the GDC, the latter crowd hauls in a staggering number of games for people to learn and play.  Here are just a few that I (a person who sits somewhere between the middle and latter groups, but mostly closer to the middle) learned to play, this time. 

Nerdy? Sure.  Unapologetically so.  I had a blast.

A collaborative board game, in which all players are racing together to beat the clock and infectious diseases.

A collaborative card game.

If you love storytelling and a game that requires little else but a small book and some index cards, get Microscope.

When building the story, players declare what they want and don't want in the story.

If you love non-linear storytelling (think Coen brothers or Tarantino) AND improv, get this game.  Get it now.  It's also low on necessary components:  a book, some index cards and dice. 

some elements from my group's game, set in 1963, just before a Presidential assassination

It is tough to find a crowd of academicians who are more sincere, more generous or more passionate about revolutionizing collegiate learning and having a good time while doing it.  They are some of the hardest workers on their campuses, who often have higher than average teaching loads, administrative responsibilities of one kind or another, and several other irons in the higher education fire.  They will tirelessly work on revising class preps, researching new game materials and crafting innovative assignments and assessments (often tied to these games, but sometimes tied to other new methods).  They are – at once – often lone users of the pedagogy at institutions staffed with colleagues who zealously guard their lecture content delivery methods (and sometimes cast aspersions on that department member who uses games <insert dramatic eye roll here> in their classes, which can’t be taken seriously)  AND some of the highest regarded (by their students, if not also their peers and supervisors) educators in the academic arena. And perhaps most importantly, what they are doing leads students to higher levels of performance, critical thinking and academic resilience.  It’s not for everyone, to be sure, but isn't this true of any other pedagogy on the planet?

Honors students playing senators in ancient Rome.  Deep in conversation and plotting. It is tough to not be addicted to this kind of scene in the classroom.

So while I may have had to scale way back on my teaching due to a formidable relocation for a few years, I won’t give this particular thing up. It made the last quarter of my 20 years as an educator in Georgia far more interesting and rewarding.  It is probably a significant reason why I received an award at my institution.  It prompted me to take even more educational risks than I was previously taking.  Thanks to Reacting, I believe that I am better able to articulate learning objectives and develop means for students to achieve them.  It also helped me clarify my interests in the area of the scholarship of teaching.  

And it continues to teach me things about all sorts of disciplines.  I will unabashedly admit that I love learning this way.  And we should all want our educators to still love learning.  If they don’t, then who else will?

Just a sampling of the scholarship I've amassed for my American Artists' Congress game. 

Revisit that hyperlink for Reacting to the Past for more information and to find a faculty workshop near you or a game that would suit your content area, if you’re a professor.  And if you’re a parent and it’s time to take that kid on that college visitation tour, ask those recruiters about course content delivery methods.  Ask to sit in on what they consider is a ‘dynamic’ class.  Think about it:  few people work at jobs where they sit and listen to someone talk at them for an hour three times a week and don’t expect them to ever talk back or to each other, or make independent decisions, or reason their way through complex problems.  If that's the case, then why would you have your future-1st-year-college-student endure a minimum of four years of that? 

And if you are neither of those previously mentioned entities, then just read this book.