By: Noah Trujillo
Digital Resource Coordinator
The Reacting Consortium

Hello everyone, my name is Noah Trujillo and in August I was hired to manage the website and our digital game resources. You may have already met me if you updated a game or had an issue with the site in the past couple of months. I wanted to take this opportunity to introduce myself and offer some perspective on what Reacting games can mean to your students. I had the pleasure of attending an institution where Reacting games were embraced and integrated by its history department which meant I got to experience tons of Reacting games. In the Spring of this year, I graduated from Simpson College with a degree in History and Political Science. I plan on pursuing a graduate program in History, but right now I’m taking a gap year.  I have a lot of fond memories from my alma mater, but my most vivid memories have come from playing Reacting games.

When I first got to college, I already had my next four years planned out. I would major in political science and focus on nothing but politics. The proximity to the Iowa caucuses was the main reason that I chose to leave the beautiful Colorado Rockies for the Midwest. But over time my devotion for politics was replaced with a love for history mainly because of the Reacting to the Past games that were ingrained in most of the history classes at my institution. I owe a lot to these games, they've made me more empathetic, creative, a better speaker, and a stronger writer. 

My first and most memorable Reacting experience didn't actually come from a Reacting to the Past game. It was actually during a semester-long orientation class led by Nick Proctor that showed me what role-playing in the classroom could look like and how much fun it could be. The class was called "The Galactic Senate'' and stood in stark contrast to the other orientation classes, which followed the usual lecture or discussion format. Instead, Proctor's course had us taking part in a mock Senate filled with fictional representatives from the Star Wars universe. It was incredible. Every day we would come in, in character, and pretend to debate different issues straight out of science fiction. Anything from deciding the rights of robots and AI to the legality of highly addictive spices or even the fate of entire planets. I had some of the best moments in my college experience during that class, mainly because we, as students, got to really decide how each day would go. Despite being a gen-ed class I spent more time thinking about the Galactic Senate than I did in any other class, including the classes in my major. I remember spending hours drafting proposals or arguments for this mock senate and staying up at night thinking about what the next day's session could bring. At the end of the semester, I signed up for two history classes because they also used role playing games as teaching tools.

I'll never forget playing my first game, which was set during the French Revolution. How after reading primary sources for a week, hearing that role sheets were being handed how the class would suddenly get quiet. And how that quiet anxiety would turn into relief and excitement after I got my role sheet, with my mind abuzz thinking about how the game would play out and what strategies I would employ to try and win. And then experiencing the actual game with all of the action and chaos. Once again, I would spend hours writing articles, rehearsing speeches, and cajoling other players for votes. Despite being graded, it never felt like work and was actually quite fun.

So, I ended up taking more history classes so I could experience different games. I ended up being able to play seven different games in total, with the majority of them being in my first two years at Simpson College. By the time I reached my junior year the games started to become replaced with more traditional forms of research and learning. But I was still excited to go to class because at that point I was hooked on studying history. Reacting had shown me a side of myself that I didn't know existed and allowed a deep appreciation and love for history to flourish. By the end of my undergraduate experience, I had gone from a student solely focused on studying politics and who had based his college choice on its proximity to the Iowa caucuses to considering myself a History major first and taking political science classes as more of an afterthought. In all of my years as a History major, even when I was taking three four-credit history classes in a single semester, it never got boring. I think that if I didn't experience Reacting to the Past games at the beginning of my college experience, I would have never pursued history as anything more than a passing interest. The part of me that thoroughly enjoys studying history would have remained dormant and I definitely would be less fulfilled.

I owe a lot to Reacting games and the tremendous instructors who made them come alive, which is why I'm very excited to be able to help make these materials more accessible. I am always astounded by the amount of thought and effort that I see on the Facebook Reacting Lounge or in the constantly updated game files. In case you don't hear it enough, the effort that you put in is incredibly important. Take it from me, Reacting games are doing incredible things for your students and the energy that you spend making their experience better do not go unnoticed.

If you ever have any questions or concerns about the website, please feel free to email me at noahtrujillo77@gmail.com.

About the Author

Noah Trujillo serves as the digital assets coordinator for the Reacting Consortium. He earned a bachelor’s degree in History and Political Science from Simpson College in 2022. Right now, he is taking a gap year but intends to pursue a graduate program in History. Noah currently floats around between Littleton, Colorado and Austin, Texas.

Blog Author Questionnaire

One word to describe faculty: Dedicated 

Two words to describe your school:  Faculty Carries

Three words to describe students: Empathetic, Hesitant, Scheming

Four words to describe your favorite games: Reward Creativity, Chaotic, Focused

By: Harry Shontz
Social Studies Teacher
The Leffell School

“Well, what do we do now,” asked one of my seniors, as a class full of bewildered twelfth graders stared back at me. I had just explained the rules to “Monumental Consequence” (formerly known as Bomb the Church) to my class on the second day of the semester. None of them had ever played a Reacting to the Past game before, and all they knew of the pedagogy was from my syllabus (which they likely did not read). I had given them role sheets the day before, but not even I was prepared for what would happen after I responded to that first question. I looked back at this student and said to the class, “I don’t know, but in five minutes you need to vote on whether or not you are going to bomb this church, or send in an army to try and save it.” We maintained eye contact for a few seconds, with my department chair watching the first real day of this new class, and immediately, like clockwork, all thirteen students and two playing teachers (friends of the program—Columbia University alumni) leapt up and started strategizing, debating, and gaming.

This senior course–a three game sequence class called Gaming the Government: Reacting to the Past in World History–was not our school’s first go with Reacting, but the course was designed and proposed long before any Leffell students role-played history in their classes. I learned about Reacting to the Past from my cousin (Barnard, Class of 2009), who would tell me stories of her classes while I was in high school. I loved history and I loved the reality show Survivor; this seemed to be the perfect blend of both and I knew I wanted to use this in my classroom when I became a teacher. After years in my early career of trying to break into the RTTP community, I temporarily put the idea on hold… until COVID hit. 

When our school was preparing to return in person for the Fall of 2020, I knew that my students were going to need something different. In addition, I had been teaching the same ninth grade World Civilizations course (Neolithic Revolution through French Revolution) for four years, so I needed something new as well. I started to reach out to professors that alluded to using RTTP in their courses on their faculty pages. As it was rather new that high school teachers were being brought into the community, most professors were giving the same answers: “we do not think that it is appropriate for the high school classroom.” Eventually, as the school year was quickly approaching, I received a response from a professor saying: “I do not know if it would work in high school, but I am not a high school teacher, and I am happy to help answer any questions you may have.” Over the next nine months, my ninth grade colleague and I continued to converse over email and zoom meetings, as we got ready to launch Confucianism and the Succession Crisis of 1587 in May of 2021. 

Thursday, April 29th: “He gave us 8 pages and called it a game…”

In our last zoom meeting with our RTTP advisor, my colleague and I were told, “You’ve done enough work. You need to launch the ship, and the rest will play out.” With that in mind, we distributed eight pages of the Confucian Analects to our ninth graders. I couched the distribution of this “long” reading with the notion that this would ultimately lead to a game that we would be playing in class for the next three weeks, and that we had spent the entire year planning its roll out. That may have been a bit of an exaggeration, but we wanted to increase their buy-in as much as possible. Apparently, in this ever connected world of social media, students were snapchatting one another with the “absurd length” of the reading assignment, and my ridiculous assertions that this would somehow lead to a game.

Monday, May 3rd: The First of the Second Guessings

The first day of setup progressed like any other week in our class that year. I lectured about the Ming Dynasty, I retaught them the Mandate of Heaven and Confucius’s “Five Relationships” (both topics from earlier in the year), and learned that none of them had started the reading for the following day. All typical. I was then asked by what seemed like 17,000 freshmen, “how is this any different from what we normally do?” Contrary to all of the prep work that I had done, this was apparently not a game (I really wish someone had told me). The teenagers were definitely correct in their assertions, and I did not know what I was talking about (obviously). Clearly none of this is true, but I began to wonder if they would actually take the bait? Will they buy into all the hype? 

Tuesday, May 4th: The Last of the Second Guessings

Despite 60 minutes of me second guessing myself, there was no turning back at this point. We had done too much preparation work to abandon the project. After a surprisingly decent discussion of the Analects (they were a smart class, so they could discuss documents relatively well), I reluctantly handed each student a manila folder, each with a giant red “TOP SECRET” stamped across the front. There was a palpable silence in the classroom for the next fifteen minutes of the period as I watched each student dial through their role sheets. I had planned to individually pull aside my Wanli Emperor, my First Grand Secretary, and my Hai Rui to check in with them and to explain the details of their roles and to answer any questions. Clearly, this would not be possible; every student had questions, ideas, and strategies that they wanted to run by me. The remaining days of the saw heightened sense of anticipation among all ninth graders. They were all scheming, plotting, and planning, but despite all of their ideas, they still did not know what they were in for (honestly, though… neither did we!).

Thursday, May 6th: The Calm Before the Storm

With their first memorial topics distributed, students had the opportunity to write for the last day of the setup week. There was a clear excitement in the room, even though nobody was actually talking to one another. I had one-on-ones with each student this day, building on the strategies they had started to develop in the previous class. While the class was truly moving towards something great, though, the class was calm. Nothing had happened…yet.

Monday, May 10th: Greatness Skips a Generation

One character in Wanli–the follower of Hai Rui–plays a Confucian radical, and will stop at nothing to further and support the moral rectitude of the emperor. In one class, Hai Rui was slated to speak first; a Hai Rui who I gave to the class clown. Calling upon the Analects in ways I had not seen him do all year, he delivered a blistering memorial to the emperor about his corrupt First Grand Secretary and his unwise decisions to name his third-born as heir. This student spoke eloquently, and then he concluded his quote referencing a long term joke from our class. In studying a variety of leaders, such as Shi Huang Di and his not so successful son, and Vladimir the Great and his similarly fated child, my students came to the conclusions about the merits of the children of great leaders. With this in mind, my Hai Rui concluded his memorial by saying “Emperor Wanli, with all due respect, we have seen that greatness in history tends to skip a generation; it seems to have done so with you.” My sassy ninth grader had dropped the mic, everyone else dropped their jaws, and my students were hooked. 

Tuesday, May 11th: "Live Tribal"

As inspiring as Hai Rui may have been with his speech, it was the first in a long line of reasons behind his execution. The execution was not all that exciting–we cannot reenact everything in its entirety–but it sent a shockwave through the classroom. I dismissed the Grand Secretariat after the emperor’s responses to the memorials, and told the Grand Secretaries that they could ask me questions or go out and talk in the courtyard in the remaining 20 minutes of class. As with my seniors in their first game of Monumental Consequence, it was go-time: everyone lept up, and started congregating in different groups and alliances, as discussions continued about who they could trust, who they could work with, and who they could scapegoat. Once the dust settled, one of my students came up to me and likened the experience to a "live tribal" on the show Survivor–we had discussed the show at length; we both knew we were fans.  In Survivor, castaways vote one person out of the competition every few days at "Tribal Council." In older parts of the series (when people still watched), "tribal council" was a very formal interview experience: Jeff Probst would sit in his seat, the players in theirs, and there would be a formal back and forth to talk about the game. More recent seasons, however, have seen the introduction of “live tribal,” where players will huddle and continue to strategize and scheme in front of each other. In my opinion, it  has produced some of the most chaotic moments of reality TV competition. Everyone gets involved in these discussions because everyone has invested interest in the million dollar grand prize. This was the state of affairs in my ninth grade class that day; my students had created a "live tribal" council in the middle of the Forbidden City. I was sold on the pedagogy–as was my department chair–and with a whole week left in my first RTTP experience, I knew I was never turning back.

About the Author

Harry Shontz joined the history apartment at The Leffell School in the New York suburbs in the fall of 2016. Since the spring of 2021, he has used reacting to the past in each of his high school courses in 9th through 11th grade, in addition to all reacting 12th grade elective.

Blog Author Questionnaire

One word to describe faculty: Innovative 

Two words to describe your school: Creative opportunity

Three words to describe students: Unrivaled raw enthusiasm 

Four words to describe your favorite games: Secret factions; playing blind

Five words to describe Reacting: Freshman passionately discussing dynastic politics

So I feel like I’m replacing Nick Saban or Steve Jobs or Amy Sherman Palladino (bonus points if you can identify all three).

Nick Proctor invented the position of Chair of the Reacting Editorial Board. He shaped the REB and its role, shepherded game after game after game to publication and became friends with almost everyone in the Reacting community.  

But now Nick has moved on to a new challenge-that of succeeding Mark Carnes as Executive Director of the Reacting Consortium. You can see his vision elsewhere in this issue.  In his place, I’ve assumed the position of Interim Chair of the REB.  

What will this mean for the REB? In one sense, it won’t change anything at all.  The REB will continue to work with authors to move their games up the ladder to publication (stay tuned to the facebook lounge and other channels for information about submitting and reviewing games in development).  We’ll work to ensure that Reacting games remain extraordinary vehicles for student learning.  And we’ll continue to reach out to you for ideas, input and creativity.

But both Reacting and the world have changed since Nick formed the REB.  So my hope is that we’ll also spend the next couple of years extending Nick’s vision in new ways  and wrestling with new challenges.  Several of these are too ‘inside baseball’ to spend time on here. But others are important for the entire community. 

Working with UNC Press
First and foremost, we will be working closely with UNC Press to provide as much support as is possible to authors as they near publication. I’m thrilled that Andrew Winters, the point person for reacting at UNC, will be with us on the REB.  UNC-Press is an excellent partner. But what Andrew and his colleagues do differs somewhat from what Norton’s editors did. Our goal is to create structures and provide support to maximize the opportunities UNC-Press provides authors and instructors.

Diversity on the Reacting Editorial Board
Second, and equally important, we hope to increase the diversity of backgrounds on the REB.  This has been a long-standing goal of Nick’s and one we will work toward in the next year or two.

HELPING STUDENTS RESEARCH AND UNDERSTAND TEXTS
Thirdly.  Anyone who has paid attention to the Facebook Faculty Lounge will have seen the large number of posts concerned about students’ ability to do research and understand complicated texts.  Some of this is Covid-related.  But some is not.  We need to think hard about how to create game materials that are accessible and valuable to a wide variety of students and institutions.

SCAFFOLDING MATERIALS IN A POST-LITERATE AGE
Finally.  We are moving into a post-literate age.  Anyone with a teenager knows that.  So we’d like to think about that means for Reacting.  It does NOT mean that we eliminate core texts or Gamebooks.  But it does mean considering how we might create video and audio materials to supplement the texts and consider more carefully how to scaffold game materials and primary texts.

So that’s my agenda. No one ever accused me of dreaming small. I suspect it will be the agenda of whoever follows me in this position.  But for now, this will work.

Kelly McFall
Interim Chair of the Reacting Editorial Board

Read Nick Proctor's post here. And watch Kelly McFall and Nick Proctor talk with Beth Wightman here. 

HELLO EVERYONE –

Coming off many years as the chair of the Reacting Editorial Board, it is no surprise that my first set of priorities involves game development and publication.

UNC-Press Transition
My first priority is to complete the transition to University of North Carolina Press. For the fall of 2022, the press covered orders with “stopgap” editions, which re-wrapped Norton games in new covers with new ISBNs, but my real excitement is about the new games that will be published in early 2023: Weimar, Vietnam Memorial, and a second edition of Greenwich Village 1913. Six more titles are queued behind them. The press is confident that they will be able to publish new games at a tidy clip, so I am expecting 5-6 new full-length titles to come out every year. 

New Editions
In some cases, these will be true new editions of older games. To this end, we are play-testing revised versions of Charles Darwin and Indian Independence, 1945 at the Winter Conference in January 2023. Future conferences will include opportunities to playtest and preview expansions and improvements for all the games in the back catalogue. In addition to encouraging authors to take community feedback into account, I am asking them to improve the ways in which their games address minoritized and marginalized populations, issues of social justice, and player safety. The Inclusion and Accessibility Committee of the Reacting Consortium Board is working with me on this initiative.

Expanding Our Library of Reacting Games
Improving existing games is good practice, but we also need to continue expanding our library. We need more good games about more important topics set in diverse locales with a rich array of roles. With Kelly McFall as interim chair of the Reacting Editorial Board I am confident that he, the REB, and the volunteer reviewers will continue to shepherd a variety of games through toward eventual publication. 

More Short Games and Microgames
In addition to expanding the  full-length flagship library, we need more short games. Developing and distributing short games should serve the community, create a new base of users, and provide additional income without overtaxing our resources. To this end, I spent the first half of 2022 working with a small team to develop a framework for designing and developing games with 2-3 sessions of gameplay. One of the biggest questions that we asked ourselves was, “what makes a Reacting game a Reacting game?” We broadly agreed that the clash of ideas must take center stage. The team, ably led by Ray Kimball, created a report, which was presented at the GDC in July. The REB and RCB are now considering the implications of the report, with particular attention to game development and possible methods of distribution. Hopefully, these guidelines will be ready by the end of 2022. 

The same team discussed developing an official outlet for games that only have one session of gameplay. We called these “microgames,” although in the broader community of gaming, they would probably be classified as “parlor larps.” We currently host several of these on our website even though they are very different from other Reacting games. The team decided that although these are useful for our community, we lack the infrastructure to develop them. Consequently, the team proposed that their development should perhaps be shifted to a collaborator (like Central Michigan University Press, Experiential Simulations, or 42Ed). Our community will continue to play and discuss these games, and we will link to them through our website, but they will not officially be Reacting games. 

Reacting in High Schools
In addition to developing new games, I hope to find new ways to aid high school instructors who use our games. This summer, we launched a Discord server for high school instructors. We are hoping to build on this by working with others to host a conference focused on using the Reacting to the Past pedagogy in high school some time in 2023. 

Events and Programming
This relates to ongoing conversations with Jenn Worth and Maddie Provo to figure out the right balance between face-to-face conferences and online programming.  We should capitalize on the expertise that we have built with online programming, but we must do so without overwhelming our limited staff. In addition, even though online conferences are affordable, in-person conferences are immensely helpful for community building. All this means that we anticipate holding an in-person Summer Institute at Barnard in June of 2023.

Community-Building and Diversity
When thinking about community building, my thoughts turn to diversity. While we are diverse in terms of institutional affiliation, faculty rank, and academic discipline, but there is an obvious and pressing need to increase our ethnic diversity. At present, we are taking two major steps in this direction. First, for the upcoming Winter Conference we are working with the University of Georgia, Athens, to subsidize the attendance of faculty of color. Second, I am working with the nominations committee of the RCB to find ways to increase the diversity of our governing bodies. If you have a great idea for what should be third on this list, please let me know. This is an area in which I hope to be listening as much as telling. Maybe more.

Financial Stability
Finally, I hope to improve the financial stability of the Reacting Consortium. This will require growing existing income streams as well as increasing their number. Fortunately, Mark Carnes has agreed to lead our efforts to secure grants. Little did he know what awaited him when he stepped down at Executive Director! Under his guidance, we currently have three teams of scholars working on grants from different institutions.

This is an exciting time for the Reacting community, and I am honored to have the opportunity to be a part of the continued growth of this special group of scholars and educators. I look forward to the work to come. 

Nicolas W. Proctor
Executive Director

Read Kelly McFall's Editorial Comments here, and watch Beth Wightman's interview of Nick and Kelly here. 

VIRTUAL WRITING ROOMS

Reacting's best kept secret is its ad-hoc virtual writing groups. They started with one session a week in the spring semester of 2022. Due to demand and Reactors who can host more sessions, Zoom Writing Rooms (ZWRs) for Reactors are running five days a week in the fall of 2022! These member-organized and led groups are organized as spaces where Reactors can block off time in their calendars and join a supportive virtual space to work on their writing.

How It Works
Each one is 1.5 hours long. Generally, everyone is invited to say "Hi" and check-in on what they will be working on during that session. Then, participants go on mute and work on their writing. Some people leave cameras on, but most turn them off for this part. A few minutes before the session ends, we check in on how things went. Many Reactors who participate in the rooms say they help them to block out time and focus on important work. (Sometimes, people grade and don't write per se! But, that's still helpful.)The ZWRs are a different set up than the writing accountability groups (WAGs) for game designers that was featured on this very blog. Another perk of the group is all the cat tails and dog snoots that join us on screen during the check-in times!

How You Can Get Involved
You can find the F22 ZWR schedule, hosts, and links here. If you can commit to hosting a weekly ZWR at a time we don't already have one organized, please contact Traci Levy, Levy@adelphi.edu, so she can add your information to the shared Google Sheet.

Reacting to Mark Carnes with Gratitude
A Tribute and Brief History from the Reacting Membership Committee

In the fall of 1996, Mark Carnes, a history professor at Barnard College, restructured his “Great Books” seminar as a set of debates. During the second such debate, set in Ming China, two plucky students—playing the role of the Emperor and “his” top adviser—managed to take control of the class.

As the focus of the class shifted from the instructor to the student leaders, the entire class became passionate and engaged. Mark had never seen anything like it.

He wondered: Might this be the “Holy Grail” of higher education pedagogy? Students teaching themselves? But he puzzled over a conundrum: How could students, who don’t know the material, “run” a college-level class? The answer, he concluded, was to regard a course as if it were a mansion, with each room designed and furnished with rich content.  Students would learn the content by inhabiting and exploring the mansion.  And they would be drawn into the mansion through the motivational power of games and make-believe, supplemented with enticing liminal elements. Barnard’s new president, Judith Shapiro, an anthropologist, embraced the concept and encouraged Mark to experiment. He did so during the next few years.

A few grants and multiple consultations with scholars later, a handful of new history games were being developed. Within the next few years, an emerging core of several dozen faculty embraced Reacting with special zeal.  In 2004, Reacting won the Theodore Hesburgh Award (TIAA-CREF) as the outstanding pedagogical innovation in the nation; publicity for the award further facilitated early dissemination of the program. Eventually, a team of scientists applied for and received a grant from the NSF to develop and assess other Reacting games in the history of science. Reacting moved into the realms of English literature and art history.

By 2006 the Reacting community had grown to include several hundred faculty and administrators. They brought a wealth of ideas that transformed Mark’s original concept into a rapidly growing pedagogical system.

The spread of Reacting resulted in the proliferation of new games, and an editorial board to oversee their development. Games were published--first by Pearson, then by W.W. Norton, and now by the University of North Carolina Press.

From the start, Reacting spread by word of mouth, via publicity about Reacting; through articles in higher education publications and awards conference presentations; and on social media. Reactors began to meet yearly at the Annual Institute, the Game Development Conference, the Winter Conference, and at regional workshops.

Former students of Mark’s, now professors themselves, got involved. Reacting has entered high schools, prisons, and senior centers. It has appeared in Canada, China, Norway, Australia, New Zealand, Egypt, Hong Kong, South Korea, Switzerland, France, Denmark, Spain, and Israel.

Undergraduate students were the impetus for Reacting, and they have been some of its best participants, sounding boards, and shepherds.

Nearly all game designers have received substantial feedback from students; often this includes detailed suggestions on how to shape roles and rules. Undergraduates have also played a major role in organizing and running faculty training workshops. The importance of undergraduates was recognized by the Reacting Board, which included two voting undergraduate members almost from its inception.

Reacting has grown because of the extraordinary (and almost entirely unpaid) activities of hundreds of volunteers. Mark was and remains “boggled” by this outpouring of voluntarism. But those of us who know Mark, have worked with him, haggled with him, dreamed along with him, and look forward to continuing this almost magical thing he has created are aware of the debt we owe to him and to his innovative response to a mid-career teaching crisis.

Thank you, Mark, from all of us involved in Reacting.

    .  

 By: Mark C. Carnes 

Professor of History
Barnard College

(This is a shortened version of the blog post, go to the Brilliancy Prize Page to see the extended version) 

The Brilliancy Prize, the first major award of the Reacting to the Past program, takes its name from a chess tournament in New York City in 1876. The match pitted two of the finest players in the world: Henry Bird, an English accountant, and James Mason, an Irish-born American journalist. Siegfried Leiders, a chess enthusiast and Broadway restaurateur, offered a silver cup for the most “beautiful play” during the tournament. Bird won the “brilliancy prize”--as it came to be known--after he sacrificed his queen to gain a winning positional advantage. (Here’s that remarkable game: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jtuz4LioR78).  Soon most chess tournaments featured brilliancy prizes that celebrated imaginative play over workmanlike victory. The message was clear: Winning isn’t everything: we cherish creative genius.

During the 20th century, however, chess grandmasters increasingly aspired to precise play rather than flamboyance. Brilliancy prizes were offered less frequently. Then they faded away entirely, remembered--if at all--as a relic of an amusingly swashbuckling era of chess.

So why did the Reacting Consortium resurrect the concept?

Because the Reacting to the Past pedagogy is fundamentally an exercise in imagination. Reacting obliges students to transcend what they know, to enter worlds far different from their own, to advance ideas they may have never imagined--much less articulated or defended. And because Reacting is meant to inspire imagination, a Reacting game should itself embody imaginative exuberance. The Brilliancy Prize encourages game designers to do more than build solid intellectual structures; it inspires them to find ways to make the experience unforgettable and astonishing, to entice students into working harder by losing themselves in play.

An early and indisputable example of this transformative brilliance was--is--the “post-mortem” session of Mary Jane Treacy’s Greenwich Village, 1913. During the game, radical labor leaders and woman suffragists contend to win over the Bohemian artists, writers, and philosophers of Greenwich Village--the “influencers” of their time. The game seemingly ends in 1913. But at the outset of the next, “post-mortem” class, set in 1917, students are informed that the game is not over: they must resume it, playing the same roles as before, but this time under entirely new conditions: the United States is at war, and labor leaders, suffragists, and everyone else must rethink their positions entirely. Treacy’s ingenious stratagem teaches students that the rules of life change--unexpectedly and profoundly: real-life never achieves easy resolution.

Reacting is predicated on one major element of subversion. After setting up the game and introducing its philosophical underpinnings, the instructor sits in the back of the room, shuts up, and becomes a GM (a gamemaster, or game manager) while students are transformed into legislators, kings, and religious leaders who take charge of the classroom. Students do the talking, make the crucial decisions, and change the course of history; the instructor, though important behind the scenes, has a visibly diminutive role.

Reacting game designers have found other ways to impart subversive elements to the games. Treacy’s Greenwich Village “post-mortem” switch-a-roo gave ostensible losers a chance to reverse the outcome of the earlier game. The French Revolution game employs a similar subversion. Set during the French revolution in Paris in 1791, most students are members of the National Assembly. But some students play roles as the “section leaders” of Paris who cannot vote in the Assembly. Unbeknownst to the members of the Assembly, however, the section leaders possess the power to summon the pent-up anger of the sans-culottes of Paris to de-stabilize the city, driving conservative delegates from Paris (and France). Once the “section leaders” have engaged in mob action, the game suddenly shifts from being a debate on issues of policy to an exploration of the merits of revolutionary violence. The outcome is very much in doubt.

Game designers have access to an infinite range of subversive elements in game design. That’s because human beings are irrepressibly inventive at getting themselves into messes. Game designers, by trying to mimic that whacky historical reality, inevitably happen upon ingenious game mechanics.

The first Reacting Brilliancy Prize (2019) was awarded to Martha Attridge Bufton, Interdisciplinary Studies Librarian at Carleton University, and Dr. Pamela J. Walker, Professor of History at Carleton University. Butfton and Walker recognized that students playing the Greenwich Village game confronted an unusual challenge:  The game shifted swiftly--it was filled with surprises--and students needed to find materials quickly to write papers and give oral presentations. They needed ready access to a research library. But rather than wait for students to find their way to the library, Bufton and Walker wrote a new role--based on an actual Bohemian librarian--and had Bufton take on the role in the classroom. Students, who often regard librarians as forbidding custodians of propriety, came to regard Player Bufton as a teammate they could lean on for support.

The second Brilliancy Prize (2020) went to Terri Nelson, a professor of French language and culture at California State University at San Bernardino. When the pandemic thrust hundreds of Reacting instructors into Zoom classrooms, Nelson, almost overnight, figured out how to take many different in-class Reacting game elements and convert them to online play. She subverted the assumption, shared by myself and many others, that Reacting was an active-learning pedagogy that could only be played in a classroom.

The 2021 Brilliancy Prize was awarded to historians John Giebfried and Kyle C. Lincoln for their ingenious mechanics in Remaking of the Modern World, 1204, based on the Fourth Crusade. The game reaches a climax during the siege of Constantinople, when each player must relinquish their “factional” identity and independently decide on their character’s next action, chosen from a list of categories such as violence, piety, plunder, and sacrilege. These decisions are entered into a scoring formula that determines the overall outcome of the siege. This mechanism encourages student accountability and moves the game to an exciting and plausible conclusion. After the siege, moreover, the game is not over. Student-players, having made decisions, acquire “Nefa” points, which measure “infamy”--actions that may alienate Greek and Bulgarian subjects. Those who won the siege may now face a debilitating backlash. Students learn that every action we take has consequences, some of them unforeseen.

The winners of the Reacting Brilliancy Prize, in short, are worthy heirs to Henry Bird, a mild-mannered and very proper English accountant, who rocked the chess world by casually tossing away his queen to ensure that his remaining pieces worked together more effectively throughout the board. What glorious--and subversive--audacity!

About the Author
Mark C. Carnes, Professor of History, joined the Barnard faculty in 1982. His academic specialty is modern American history and pedagogy. His courses include The United States, 1940-1975, and several courses featuring the Reacting to the Past pedagogy, which he pioneered in 1995. Professor Carnes served as General Co-Editor (with John Garraty) of the 24-volume American National Biography. He is Executive Director of the Reacting Consortium, which directs the Reacting to the Past pedagogical initiative, now used at over 400 colleges and universities. His most recent book is Minds on Fire: How Role-Immersion Games Transform College (Harvard University Press, 2014). 

By Nick Proctor, Chair of the Reacting Editorial Board 

During the fall and into the winter, most of the work of the Reacting Editorial Board has been focused on the transition to publishing all of our full-length games with University of North Carolina Press. Our new arrangement offers several advantages including:

·  Lower prices for Gamebooks
·  Ebooks for every title
·  More fully integrated editorial process
·  The Reacting Consortium will host all Role Sheets and IMs, allowing these to be “living documents” that authors can change and update
·  Publishing with a university press may aid some authors with promotion and tenure
·   More generous royalties for authors and the Reacting Consortium

In addition to a mass of paperwork, the transition has involved making some tweaks to the templates for all the game materials, developing a universal style sheet that improves accessibility, and contemplating ways in which our games might better deal with particularly sensitive issues. As a consequence, some of the Norton and RC Press games will go into new editions fairly quickly. Others, particularly those that were originally published by Pearson, need significant editing. As a stopgap, UNCP will provide copies of all existing games under new covers, but authors are working hard to bring forward significantly revised editions of old chestnuts like Defining a Nation: India on the Eve of Independence, 1945, and The Trial of Anne Hutchinson: Liberty, Law, and Intolerance in Puritan New England. Mark Carnes is at the center of his efforts. He is being assisted by a variety of co-authors who promise to bring exciting new dimensions to these well-established titles.

In addition to transitioning existing games to UNCP, three new games should come out in time for spring 2023 courses. These are:

·  Democracy in Crisis: Weimar Germany, 1929-32
·  Memory and Monument Building: The Vietnam Veterans Memorial, 1980-1982
·  A new, significantly expanded edition of Greenwich Village, 1913: Suffrage, Labor, and the New Woman 

We anticipate that other new titles will follow. This list is particularly exciting because all but one of the authors of these games are new to the series. These include:

·   The Crisis of Catiline: Rome, 63 BC
·   Radical Reformation: Wrestling with Religion in Augsburg, 1530-1534  
·   Korea at the Crossroads of Civilizations: Confucianism, Westernization, and the 1894 Kabo Reforms
·   The Prado Museum's Second Expansion: The Diverse Art of the Spanish-Speaking World
·    Literary Journals, Dostoevsky, and Tolstoy in St. Petersburg, 1877
·   Argentina, 1985: Contested Memories 
·   Watergate, 1973-74 

We appreciate the patience of these authors. Some of their games have been kept in a holding pattern while we worked out details with UNCP. They will not need to wait until all of the previously published games are in print. Instead, we will begin moving them into the production process as soon it is possible to do so. Hopefully, all or most of them will be available for fall of 2023.

Finally, two games that are often used by members of the community, Bacon's Rebellion and the Birth of American Racism, 1676, and 1349: Plague Comes to Norwich, are nearing approval for publication.

by: Jace Weaver

Reacting to the Past’s new publishing agreement with the University of North Carolina Press is the culmination of years of dedicated work by a number of people both on the side of the Reacting Consortium and UNCP. Reacting enjoyed many years of publishing with W.W. Norton, which stepped in after Pearson abandoned us. Their books from Greenwich Village, 1913: Suffrage, Labor, and the New Woman and Patriots, Loyalists, and the Revolution in New York City, 1775-1776 through Japan, 1941: Between Pan-Asianism and the West were high quality publications that literally saved Reacting. As with any parting, there is necessarily sorrow. We are pleased, however, that we will remain in partnership with W. W. Norton on the Flashpoints series of short games.

A change nonetheless became necessary. Financially, the relationship with Norton became unsustainable, if Reacting itself was to be financially sustainable. The new publishing arrangement with UNCP offers many advantages to both Reacting and its authors. It will offer Reacting a better financial return, helping secure its solvency into the future. UNCP is one of the oldest and most respected university presses in the country. Reacting authors will have an academic press publication on their CVs to aid in promotion and tenure. Though there will be inevitable changes, UNCP publishes quality books that will serve both our authors and instructors.

In the short run, there will be additional work for both authors and those of us in Reacting management and administration. On a personal note, this includes for my co-author Laura Adams Weaver and myself. Our book, Red Clay, 1835: Cherokee Removal and the Meaning of Sovereignty was published by Norton in 2017. Everyone at Reacting and UNCP, however, are working hard to ensure there is no disruption of service for instructors using Reacting. Once this transition period is past, I am confident the benefits will outweigh any current hardships. We look forward to a fruitful relationship with University of North Carolina Press for years to come.

Read the original press release on our new partnership with UNC Press here, and additional thoughts and updates from Nick Proctor, Reacting Editorial Board Chair. 

By: Vincent Thibeault
Professeur de Philosophie
Collège André-Grasset

I discovered Reacting to the Past pedagogy while doing research for my college on gamification and education. I was looking for a way to energize my philosophy courses, and decided to see whether using games in the classroom would work. I attended the Serious Play conference in Montreal in 2019 and took part in a game demonstration with Tony Crider, where we had to decide on the status of Pluto. I was taken aback by the energy level that I felt in that workshop. After trying out different ways to gamify my class, I had the feeling that, right then,I had stumbled upon a very promising teaching pedagogy. Maybe that was what I was looking for: a new and almost magical way of teaching that would take my classes to another level. I had to try it. 

I consulted the Reacting Consortium website and was thrilled to see the plethora of games offered. Understandably, several of them were centered on the history of the United States, but quite a few were more internationally-minded, which was more relatable for my target audience. I presented the pedagogy to my colleague and research partner Frédérique Desharnais, who, despite being skeptical at the beginning about gamification, decided to join the project, even if it meant quite a bit of work implementing it in our classrooms. 

The Quebec CEGEP education curriculum requires an “Ethics and politics” class be taught,  and we decided to integrate in “The Needs of Others”, a Reacting scenario based on the Rwandan crisis of 199,4 where players reproduce the UN Security Council and must debate what to do. The game spotlighted the French-Canadian general Romeo Dallaire and did not demand an extensive knowledge of the American constitution.

Nothing was in French, so we needed to translate most of it, which seemed at first an incredibly demanding feat as we were also teaching almost full time. We asked the author of the game, Kelly McFall, if we could translate his book, and he graciously agreed. We contacted the editor and publisher, and asked if we could use the translations legally by paying a fee per student, and they generously accepted as well. The cost was then included in the printed textbook price paid by the students.

We did not have the funding to pay a professional translator, and we wondered if achieving our goal was even possible. However, after doing some research online, we discovered the European platform deepl.com, which uses artificial intelligence (AI) to translate texts. The quality of the translation was impressive, and, despite having to carefully reread and rework the texts to correct mistakes, a large part of the work was done painlessly and automatically. This program allowed us to complete the translations at a rate that was unimaginable at the start of the project. 

Between the textbooks, the handouts and the role sheets, translating all the material involved in a Reacting game was quite time-consuming, even with the help of AI. We had to scan the book, extract the text via Adobe Acrobat Reader, put it in a word document, and readjust the layout. We then passed it through the Deepl translating service and reviewed everything carefully. For the Core Text sections, most were already available in French online, so we just made sure we used the right versions.

 After all this work, the time finally came for my first Reacting class in the second part of the winter semester 2020.  Then, the Covid pandemic started, colleges in Montreal had to move to 100% online, and the project was in jeopardy. Thankfully, with the help of fast internet, reliable wifi and the community of the Facebook group Reacting Faculty Lounge, I managed to get enough support to move everything online on Zoom and Slack. 

At the end of the semester, while many of my colleagues were complaining about the low quality of online teaching, I had found a very effective pedagogy that adapted to online learning marvelously. I received some of the most positive comments of my career from students who really enjoyed the intensity and dramatic qualities of Reacting. 

Since then, Frédérique and I have been busy translating other games. So far, alongside “The Needs of Others,” we have translated “Threshold to Democracy,” “Food or Famine 2002,” and “Enlightenment in Crisis.” We are sharing these translations with the Reacting Consortium community, and you can find them all here. We are glad to share this ground-breaking pedagogy.

About the Author
Vincent Thibeault obtained his master's degree from the University of Montreal and has been teaching philosophy at Collège André-Grasset in Montreal, Canada, since 2017. He realized that he needed to change direction within his own teaching practice and explore other pedagogical methods to engage with his students on a deeper level. The integration of technology in education and the gamification of teaching are his most recent areas of interest in pedagogy. He uses simulations from the Reacting to the Past series in the classroom, a method which he hopes to introduce and promote within the French speaking world of education.

Blog Author Questionnaire
One word to describe faculty: Cooperative
Two words to describe your school: Innovative, Open-minded
Three words to describe students: Passionate, Courageous, Enthusiastic 
Four words to describe favorite games: Competitive, Complex, Strategic, Intense 
Five words to describe Reacting: Dramatic, Immersive, Interactive, Nail-biting, Revolutionary