My experimental international relations game design course was a phenomenal success! In the course, student teams designed games primarily through the lens of IR theory, although several blended IR with comparative politics theories. I also gave them creative license to interpret theory through pre-Westphalian and speculative scenarios.
Student creativity was off the charts! One student spent three days scouring antique stores for 1950-era political photos for their game box, while another team packed their design with custom-made 3D models. But to mitigate costs, I reimbursed each team up to $50 for materials. Game on!
I’m pleased to announce that my co-edited volume with Derek Glasgow (lead editor), Mark Harvey, and Ryan Gibb, “Short Games and Active Learning in Political Science: Beating the Clock,” will be released on 13 March!
This volume contains 100 multi-subfield political science classroom games that can be played in 75 minutes or less, written by 90 political science educators (including ALPS editor Jennifer Ostojski).
For more information, click the book cover or visit Routledge. Game on!
Early this semester, my department head bust into my office and said, “Pigeon! Want to teach a game design course in the Spring?” I asked if I could think about it, stared into the middle distance for about three seconds, then heartily replied, “game on!”
Per Dr. Daum’s guidance, my only strict criterion was that the course must be through the lens of international relations theory. This way, it leverages my existing IR credentials and counts distinctly toward Colorado State University’s Global Politics and Policy concentration. However, it is open to any political science major who’s taken at least one of the foundational 200-level courses in any concentration, history and international studies majors who’ve completed specific foundational courses in their disciplines, and other majors with my approval after reviewing their transcripts.
I used my US Air Force Academy wargaming design course syllabus as a starting point, but that iteration was laser-focused on addressing national security questions. For CSU, I’ve widened the aperture to address questions across international relations.
Aye, the reading list is breathtaking for an undergraduate course. How I’m couching it to students, though, is that these are actionable, hands-on readings: they’ll be applying concepts in their game prototypes almost immediately.
By the end of the course, student teams will complete playable, functioning game prototypes, with live play and critique as part of their assessment. Their grades won’t be simple letters; they’ll represent a tangible, tactile product they can be proud of — and even publish!
I’ve attached a 99.9% syllabus draft below for your review and nefarious use (I don’t expect substantial changes at this point, but I certainly won’t sneeze at anyone’s feedback). More to follow as the course unfolds next semester!
I never did follow up on my February post about Ashes of Winter Night, a crisis response game that a team of experienced classroom gamers and I designed and executed at ISA 2025.
Short take: It went great!
I figured you might want more details than that, though. Plus, a copy of the draft rules at the end of the article! 🙂
It all began at ISA 2024, over a coffee meeting with Dr. Sarah Dorr, ISA’s Director of Professional Development. I’d just taught a pre-conference game design workshop, and based on participant feedback, Sarah proposed running a game at ISA 2025. I need little wing twisting to run a game, so I readily accepted.
Fast forward a year and several meetings, during which we settled on an objective. When designing games, I always start with the objective and work backwards. A good objective reads like a testable hypothesis, and every element of my designs must contribute to meeting the objective.
In ISA’s case, my objective was to execute a one-hour experiential crisis response game limited to 25 participants.
One hour is a tight fit (I typically recommend a minimum of four hours), so I had to distill it down to core essentials, with simple rules and a fast onboarding process. We also decided on a scenario that was unifying (a natural disaster) rather than divisive (war), so I modified the Palisades fire. Tying a “fictional” scenario to an actual event lends emotional and consequential weight, as players can relate their in-game experiences to real-world challenges.
We further limited the game to 25 participants based on expected room limitations. Even with “only” 25 participants, though, a one-hour time limit required agile refereeing. Since I knew I couldn’t be everywhere at once in a fast-moving crisis game, I assembled a crack team of experienced classroom gamers: Drs. Charity Butcher, Mark Harvey, Petra Hendrickson, and ALPS’s own Jennifer Ostojski. In addition to serving as referees, they also helped with game development.
During a team meeting, we decided to divide participants into five-person teams, with each team representing an abstract crisis response function. Although I technically controlled the game as the Ops Center referee (more on teams below), Charity, Mark, Petra, and Jennifer had free rein to adjudicate team requests, questions, and decisions.
Standing, left to right: Pigeon, Mark Harvey, Charity Butcher, Jennifer Ostojski, and Petra Hendrickson. Sarah Dorr is seated at the far left. We had enough participants for three teams, each at a different table. This table was the medical team, with a member of the fire team letting medical know that they’ve secured an objective (Michael Twoomey, standing far right).
While the game could have been played through narrative alone, I included dice mechanics to physically represent risk and chance. I applied dice pool and resolve mechanics inspired by the roleplaying game Prowlers & Paragons, since the mechanics are easy to teach (disclosure: I write for Mobius Worlds Publishing, publisher of P&P). A dice pool increases the probability of success as more dice are committed to a roll, while resolve—represented by poker chips—provided teams narrative opportunity to reroll, share, or replenish dice (more on narrative below). If you’ve played Dungeons & Dragons or Savage Worlds, resolve is respectively similar to Inspiration and Bennies.
However, I also added a depleting resource mechanic. That is, teams started with a set number of dice that were removed from play when used. This encouraged debate on how and when to spend resources that dice represented–there were means to replenish dice, but replenishment was not guaranteed.
But storytelling was the core mechanic. It wasn’t enough to simply roll dice or slap down poker chips: players had to describe what they were trying to achieve. Players don’t remember dice—they remember stories. They remember working together to overcome obstacles. They remember what it was like to fail, try again, and succeed, and they remember these through narratives.
To that end, the game generated fantastic discussion, even in abstract form. One participant found me the next day and said he couldn’t stop thinking about the game; later, he ran a modified version in his class. This is the “magic circle” effect at its finest, when players recall the game later and continue sharing stories.
The game was a success. Feedback suggests the design and time limit were just right for a conference, yet easy to modify for a longer-form game. For example, one player suggested using colored dice to represent specific types of resources (e.g., green for money, blue for potable water, red for medical supplies, etc.) rather than a generic pool.
Want to see for yourself? Here are the rules and map as used at ISA (ver .51). I’d like to clean these up for formal publication, though, and am open to comments and suggestions. Game on!
This pigeon needs to get off his roost and write more ALPS articles! I just finished the second of a “four-conference march” that started with APSA – Teaching & Learning conference (shout out to Amanda Rosen for honchoing the Simulations & Games track!). I ran games at GenghisCon this past weekend, am giving the keynote at an International Community Managers Association conference on Thursday (on emergency response training exercise design), and then fly the coop to the International Studies Association conference on Saturday. If you count the Midwest Political Science Association conference in April, it’s a five-conference march! I have a notepad full of ALPS ideas and just need more coffee.
But speaking of ISA, I and a team of experienced gamemasters (Charity Butcher, Mark Harvey, Petra Hendrickson, and ALPS’s own Jennifer Ostojski) are running a one-hour crisis simulation on Sunday, 2 March. Aye, that one hour is going to be action-packed. I hope to see you there, but be ready to hustle: the clock starts ticking at 12:30:00pm sharp!
In every course I’ve taught, I’ve always framed my major undergraduate writing assignments around structure rather than topic. For example, my Current World Problems students must write a paper about a (wait for it) current world problem using news articles and key course terms, but they pick the topic. Ideally, it’s a topic that resonates with the student in some way and almost always shines through the writing. If the topic doesn’t move the student, the paper reads like a forced march rather than visceral thought backed by critical analysis.
That said, I invariably have at least one student who asks if they can write using materials from another class.
My answer has, so far, always been yes.
Why? I encourage students to build expertise in topics that motivate them. I mean, that’s certainly what I do as a political scientist! I’m constantly engaging with new materials and re-engaging with previous works. New projects build on literature gathered over time but encourage me to reevaluate literature with a fresh eye.
So far, I’ve found that students do the same: perhaps the same topic as another course, but my assignments’ structural rubrics require them to revisit and expand their sources. I can see the sourdough starter from their previous papers, but my assignment bread requires different recipes.
However, I’m cognizant of the pedagogical risk of encouraging a deep understanding of a topic at the cost of fostering a broader undergraduate repertoire. My flimsy excuse is that very few students ask to repurpose materials.
Now, if students repurpose material without asking? I’ve only caught it once via a plagiarism checker, compared both papers, and noted they shared material, but also noted they wildly diverged in substance: both papers were clearly written for different courses with different requirements. My solution? I simply asked the students if the topic resonated, and when they answered, “yes!” I replied, “ah, carry on, then.”
But I might either be too idealistic or too lucky. I’m curious to hear your approaches to students reusing material from other courses.
Few things send my calendar into a spiral like a sudden recommendation letter request for graduate school (and sometimes plural, such as a letter I customized for twelve different programs). My hang-up is that I’m a slow writer–think thumbless sloth on a high-gravity planet. How I made it this far in my academic career with a process similar to a toddler fist-gripping sidewalk chalk, I have no idea.
Yet, few requests are so rewarding–especially when students are accepted–and I’ve written them long enough that students still thank me years after graduating and embarking on careers.
However, no single person taught me how to write letters, so I’m merely assuming I’m using a sound method (it’s worked so far, at least). Riffing on a Chinese proverb, the best time to rethink my letter-writing assumptions was almost 20 years ago, while the second-best time is today. My method is as follows…
I ask the student to provide the following information. While I could track some of this down myself, having the student do so is a small measure of their commitment:
1. Their overall GPA and Major’s GPA.
2. Double-check their major and any minors. This seems silly, but I almost wrote a fantastic political science major’s letter for a history major and another for an international studies major.
3. Their academic interests.
4. Their relevant work and extracurricular experiences. I ask them to think broadly on this: to wit, last year, I parlayed a student’s ability to play a dozen instruments and play new instruments live without fear as evidence of discipline, creativity, and willingness to take risks. The student was accepted into their top program.
5. Answer why they want to go to grad school or the internship.
6. Answer where they’d like to see themselves 5 years after finishing the program.
I then review the program they’re applying to and speak directly to that program. I fit everything onto a single page, including my signature block. That means every word must count: action-packed with no deadweight (anyone who quips “you mean, unlike your post” will be docked a beer at their next conference).
Here’s the kicker: I never blow smoke. I write with belief based on data and am willing to look the program director in the eye without blinking or flinching.
Although my method seems effective, I’m definitely open to suggestions for improvement–share your methods in the comments!
In late June/early July I road-tripped to the Connections Wargaming Conference at the Army War College (Carlisle Barracks, PA), along with visiting my mother, twin brother, and sister-in-law in Rock Hall, MD (I gorge on seafood every time I visit them). It priced out cheaper to drive than fly, but I think I’m getting too old to be driving 6 days round trip. My wife had to extract me from my Jeep with a crowbar when I returned home, and my lower back hasn’t been on speaking terms with me since. But I digress!
Although predominantly geared towards the Department of Defense, UK Ministry of Defence, and defense contractors, Connections also features civilian educators (such as this scraggly pigeon), entertainment game designers, and wargaming hobbyists. I attended lectures ranging from game graphic design to social science analytic gaming, the latter of which I’ll expand on in a future post. I also presented on running large classroom games (100 or more students), which I’m also delivering in workshop format at the Serious Play Conference in August (in Toronto). As mentioned in a previous post, Discord is my secret sauce for organizing and running large games, along with having roughly one assistant for every 25 students. So far, my assistant team has typically had a 50/50 split between teaching assistants and student volunteers.
Connections also features game demonstrations and social gaming nights, giving attendees ample opportunity to see new games in publisher pipelines and simply have a good time competing with fellow attendees, leaded or unleaded cold ones in hand.
Ethical statement: when I’m not political sciencing at Colorado State, I write for Mobius Worlds Publishing, a Littleton, Colorado-based roleplaying game design firm. Mobius’s tentpole products are Prowlers & Paragons: Ultimate Edition, a superhero RPG system, and Freedom Squadron, an “ode to GI Joe” setting using Pinnacle Entertainment’s Savage Worlds rule system (I make no personal profit from sharing the links).
At Connections I demonstrated a prototype real-world infantry squad tactical decision game using Prowlers & Paragons (P&P) core mechanics. Core mechanics are the fundamental rules that drive a game. For example, hands are Poker’s core mechanic, and dice modifiers are common RPG core mechanics. Although aimed towards superhero play, the rules can easily be calibrated for human-level performance: think military units, first responders, and experts such as medical, cyber, intelligence, and diplomats. In another future post, I’ll discuss core mechanics, let alone the importance of matching the right core mechanics to a classroom game’s learning objectives.
I’ll go out on a limb and assume that most political science classrooms don’t need to model infantry squads to match course learning objectives. Still, they could model individual political decision-makers in tense crisis scenarios that require immediate decisions.
This was my third Connections and I highly recommend it. The conference welcomes educators with open arms–to wit, I met a college curriculum designer with no military background who was there simply to learn how to integrate games in his curriculum design process. Maybe I’ll see you next year!
Speaking of which, I hadn’t planned on attending APSA 2024, but I received a last-minute invite that I couldn’t turn down. The invite was related to this blog, which you’ll hear more about in a future post. That’s three posts I owe you!
Yesterday, James Fielder published a blog post here detailing his ‘hate/hate relationship with slides’. I had another piece that I wanted to share today but having read James’s impassioned post I felt an equal surge of emotion – but with a need to defend the slides that make up so much of my working life.
Sigh – life really comes at you fast. One day you’re young and cool and the next you’re dropping everything to write a 600 word blog post defending the use of slides…
But, in my mind at least, slides really are worth defending.
There is an old joke about the (very real) Swiss ‘Anti PowerPoint Party’ that goes something like “Switzerland’s Anti PowerPoint Party has got a cause that could convince millions… just as soon as they find an easy and clear way to communicate their message”.
Of course, that such a party even exists shows that James is certainly not alone in his hatred of slides. I can see why one might take such offence to them. There are endless examples of people using slides in ways that are wildly off putting, both in terms of design and delivery.
I certainly wouldn’t claim that I am the rare third type of slide-user that James describes as one that ‘builds a New York gallery-esque deck and briefs confidently without superstitiously looking back at their deck like some sort of mythic totem’. I’m fine with the basic templates that come automatically with PowerPoint and don’t want to spend too much time on fancy production. Occasionally, if I feel the content really demands it, I might add a nicely chosen background image but that’s probably as good as it’s going to get.
So, what’s the ‘sell’ with slides? Simply, I think everyone benefits.
For the instructor, spending time putting together slides for a course means that, next year, when it comes time to teach that course again, you can relax knowing there is something there to turn to and use. Sure, the slides might need a little updating but you are not back to square one. Slides are also a convenient way to pace and structure one’s lectures. It might be great to have the time to rehearse a lecture so slides aren’t necessary but it’s highly unlikely that space will be found in workload models for that.
For the students, the benefits are also clear. Students are often keen to stress some of these reasons – slides are good for taking notes around, they are good for revision, etc. But I also think that there is a benefit of slides that students might not want to fess up to – they are good when the audience stops paying attention. Now, obviously, one hopes that this never happens. But, if and when they do start to daydream about what they’ll be having for lunch, at least they will have the slides to quickly anchor their attention back onto once they’ve decided that it will be beans on toast again today.
Controversially, I also like using slides in seminars. There aren’t a tonne of them and I don’t rely on them too much. But, again, I find that they are a useful anchor point for discussions. I’ve become even more certain in my use of them in recent years of teaching in mixed-language ability classrooms. I’ve seen that they can be a comfortable point of reference for those that might otherwise feel less confident in their ability to engage.
So, I’ll put myself proudly in the other faction and declare that I am and shall remain an ardent slidist.
I hate PowerPoint with every fiber of my being, and other slide apps by extension (PPT receives the brunt of my rage thanks to its ubiquity). Slides represent the truncation of critical thinking into pithy bullets and ill-timed animations. Slides are a lesson prep time sink. When people discuss going back in time to change history, I’d make a trip solely to corrupt the original PowerPoint floppy disks and mind-wipe the code from the programmers’ memories.
My 25-year military career exacerbates my animosity–gods, how much time I saw wasted on building perfect decks, only for a colonel to get irritated over an extra space between words despite the otherwise action-packed content.
There is one thing I grudgingly like about slides: ease of embedding multimedia. I do like using figures, images, videos, and audio clips, and a good piece of multimedia says more than any bullet statement.
The problem is that there are only three types of slide writers. The first designs the perfect deck: lush, tactile, sensual, and brimming with effects. But they spend so much time on the deck that they practice neither the material nor the timing, resulting in them reading from the slides and botching their carefully embedded light show masterpieces. If you’re just reading from the slides, I’d rather have an email (albeit I hate email even more than slides, but that’s a story for another time).
The second is clearly a master of the material. They barely need their slides and likely could get by with no slides at all. But society demands slides, so they slap some black Calibri-font words on a white background–perhaps 8-point, full-paragraph excerpts from the source material–and end up giving a TED-worthy talk supported with decrepit slides that look like they were built the night before in a fit of caffeinated madness (and they probably were).
I also lose my mind when bullets wrap to a second line with a single word. 😐
Rarely do you get the third person who builds a New York gallery-esque deck and briefs confidently without superstitiously looking back at their deck like some sort of mythic totem. Yet, just imagine how much time they spent crafting and practicing the slides, time likely better spent on… anything besides slides.
Alas, my students howl every time I attempt teaching without slides. So I meet them less than halfway and under duress by channeling a modified “second presenter” archetype: I first deliver a stage-eating, Sam Kinison rant-worthy version of this post on the third or so day of class, then prepare (let alone reuse) sparse slides with a few key words and illustrations. This pacifies the vast majority of my students, albeit every semester I get at least two feedback notes that say, “I wish he put more on his slides.” That’ll be my grave epitaph.
Even so, I am and shall remain an ardent anti-slidist!
