A lot of people are playing Battle for the Presidency right now. The American players are still a select lot, but it is in more or less every corner of Denmark. One teacher, Stefan, has just finished his first game out of five with different classes. I am enclosing his notes for general use and inspiration at the bottom of this text.

The main message here is that the rules are not a law set in stone. If you follow the rules as well as possible, game-testing shows that you will probably have a good experience, but if you change them because you feel some variation will work better for your specific class. Then, you are probably right, it’s your class after all.

Today, I have also added another gamified teaching material for older pupils. Hamlet – a play for everyone, is essentially an introduction to working with Hamlet. It can function as a stand-alone product or as a prequel to more serious work with the actual text of the play. What the teaching aid does is produce a compressed play with the students in all the roles and no need for scene, props or costumes.

I have chosen a significant quote from the play for each character. The quote is both signatory for the character and well suited for use in the activity. The rest of the material is a text – a narration of the whole story of Hamlet with some details (reading time 10 minutes). Each student (or group of students) is given a character and the relevant quote. As the teacher reads the narration, she will regularly read the name of a character, pause briefly and wait for the student to rise and say the line of that character.

The exercise is partly humorous, the quotes are chosen to be apropos and sometimes funny, but also commanding concentration since the students cannot know when they will be called on to say their line again.

At the conclusion everybody has a general understanding of the plot and actions of Hamlet, and all students have proven, if not immediately then eventually, that they can say and understand at least one line of Shakespeare correctly. As I prefer, the task is simple, but doing it in cooperation with everybody else leads to understanding and a feeling of success.

I hope you will find Hamlet, a play for everyone useful as well as entertaining.

 

Battle for the Presidency

Game log by Stefan Lægteskov

 

1st run through result:

http://www.270towin.com/maps/jA8x6

Hillary won by a whopping 287 to Trumps 176, good planning of speeches and policies in active states won the day, even though Trump had more money generally.

The game took just under 3 hours with 8 rounds in total.

The rules were given to the students beforehand to study, but not many had. Setting up, explaining the rules and the first round took just under 1 hour.

Notes, rules and adjustments:

We only had 16 players, so I combined some of the HQ roles, Vicepresident and treasurer and HQ manager and communications officer.

I gave every region a campaign worker for each side, to speed things up and to give more decision making to the regional managers.

I also started with 20$ million for each side, again to speed things up.

Finally I had 2 communications officers in each HQ to help with the coordination each round. Otherwise a bottleneck quickly forms, as everyone wants to talk.

Notes:

The random events that have decisionmaking in them, as in deciding where to put a single vote, I will simply skip over. It brings another layer of complexity that breaks the pace and takes time, while being of minor consequence.

When campaign workers are given in the random events, they are given to the HQ instead, to be assigned in the next planning phase instead, directly to a state, which then generates votes that round. Also to avoid confusion on whether they can be used immediately or not.

Next game I will start each region with 3$ million each for both parties, and have 10$ in the treasury at the HQ. Again to give more things for the regional managers to do.

I’m also going to set a timer for each round after the first 2, to put pressure on the sides to work quickly, otherwise the planning can be very time consuming.

Also I’m considering a 3^rd communications officer to help with the planning across regions again to speed things up and to make more people engaged.