The Reacting Consortium - Fresh Files

Fresh Files - Summer 2023

June 28, 2023 5:42 PM | Anonymous

The summer is heating up and our wonderful game authors have been hard at work creating and updating game materials! Here are the latest files that you can use today!

We'll update this page as we get new files, check back later to stay up to date on the latest games and materials from the Reacting community.

New Files:

Game of Sages

New Level 3 Game!

From the authors: This game takes place at the end of the Warring States period in China, at a time when Qin state has already absorbed two of the previously existent seven states, and is threatening the remaining four states of Chu, Qi, Zhao and Yan. The simulation is structured as a debate amongst the four most influential philosophical legacies of the Warring States era: Confucianism, Naturalism, Legalism, and Mohists.

Grandsons of Genghis: The Mongol Kurultai of 1241

New Level 3 Game!

From the author: This game brings together the rival members of the Mongol royal family and representatives from across Eurasia to debate the legacy of Genghis Khan, appoint a successor to the Mongol throne, promote interreligious dialogue between Islam, Buddhism and Christianity, and plot where the vast Mongol Empire should expand next.

The Investiture Controversy: Church and State on the Road to Canossa, 1075-77

Pope Gregory VII (r. 1073-1085), riding high on reformist spirit, has progressively sought to expand the temporal power of the papacy and to bring the Western Church into stricter obedience to Rome. In the spring of 1075, Gregory issued the papal bull Dictatus papae, boldly claiming that the pope, and only the pope, had the power to depose both bishops and secular rulers—even emperors. When Emperor Henry IV (r.1056-1105) invested his chaplain Theobald with the episcopacy of Milan later that year, Gregory responded by excommunicating five of Henry’s advisors despite imperial investiture being a time-honored tradition. Tempers flared and a series of strongly worded public letters flew between the two men, bringing Western Christendom to a crisis point where it had to decide who held ultimate authority, St. Peter’s representative on Earth or God’s divinely anointed secular ruler of the Holy Roman Empire.

Christine de Pizan and the Querelle des Femmes, 1413

Christine de Pizan and the Querelle des Femmes examines the power, authority, and roles of women in the 1413 French court. Debates over misogyny in literature, legal theory, and political roles demonstrate the centrality of both women and gender to major issues in late medieval France. Two noble factions, the Armagnacs and Burgundians, negotiate the power vacuum left by the extended illness of King Charles VII, while two factions of authors, the Humanists and the Profeminines, publicly debate misogyny in legal theory and literature—Salic Law and the Romance of the Rose. Authors seek patronage from the nobles, while nobles seek the authors’ support—and to use authors’ skills to promote their own positions. The game is set during a peaceful interlude in the Hundred Years War, and an opening phase of the French civil war managed by Queen Isabeau of Bavaria. Meanwhile, Christine de Pizan, an influential author at the French court, engaged in debates about misogyny, morality, and the capabilities of women, and wrote a long defense of women in The Book of the City of Ladies, showing women’s abilities, power. Christine puts women and gender as issues at the center of game debates, and includes important female characters as roles. It has resonances for continuing debates about representations of women in art and political participation.

Ban the Jesuits: Jesuits and Their Opponents in the 1700s

New Microgame!

From the author: Jesuits, Royal Ambassadors, Archbishops, and members of the Crowd have gathered in Rome to decide the fate of the Jesuits. If they are banned, further decisions must be made about what happens to individual Jesuits and the Jesuit schools and property.