Operation KTHMA: Memories of Egypt

One thing I probably could have foressen if I had thought about it, but which has nevertheless taken me by surprise, is the effect that the game framework is having on what looks from an external perspective like ordinary classroom discussion. There are plenty of times when I have to treat the class-meeting as I would treat a class-meeting of any other discussion-based course: that is, telling the students stuff about the ancient world and asking them questions about what they know—that is, what they've read so far for the course and what they may know from previous courses. That kind of discussion has always been my bread-and-butter, since in any pedagogical situation it's an extremely important way of getting students to engage the course material critically, and thus of achieving the key course goal that I call "Skill at Analysis." It's also a key element in achieving the other major goal that I call "Knowledge of the Ancient Material" in a way that makes that knowledge more readily available than would be the case if I just stood up and lectured.

I'm pretty good at getting these discussions going and keeping them rolling in an ordinary class, if I do say so myself (and my teaching evaluations seem to bear this out, thank you very much). But the quality of discussion in CAMS 3212/Operation KTHMA has been beyond anything I've managed before. First of all—though this is finally not the most remarkable development—a larger fraction of the students in the class are talking than is ordinarily the case. That's undoubtedly due in part to the direct link that the experience-point dynamic is drawing between talking in class and final grades. I also think, though, that it has something important to do with the less visible, but in my view more remarkable, development that I've observed, which is the engaged atmosphere in the room.

This afternoon, after another round of skill-practice exercise debriefings (including among other things Herodotean connections to Spinal Tap and Kim Jong Il), the students were accosted in Athens by a veteran of the disastrous Egyptian campaign named Aristides. Under questioning, Aristides revealed that none other than Pericles wanted to see the operatives, because he'd heard about their interrogations around Athens, but that Aristides wouldn't send them on to Pericles until they showed him that they were true supporters of Pericles' cause. (It's very much worth noting that some of the teams have actually been told, privately, that they're not supporters of Pericles' cause.)

In my own conception of the story, this turn towards Pericles is the moment when things start to get serious. I tried hard to convey that feeling as Aristides told the operatives the story of the campaign, of how it had started well, but how, with the First Peloponnesian War looming in the 450's, Pericles and Athens had had their attention diverted, and had allowed horrendous loss of life and treasure in Egypt. Aristides' secret, which is my own fictionalization (though one that has some support from the scant evidence), was that the disaster in Egypt was Pericles' fault.

Class 2 came through to get that secret with a truly wonderful role-playing attack. As a reward for their skill-practice exercise they had received as a reward earlier in the day a pet, a Palaeornis, a small bird/dinosaur creature. (They had linked the idea of empiricism to the empirical basis of paleontology, as demonstrated in a recent article published in Nature about dinosaurs' relation to birds.) They showed Aristides the creature and said that they were sure Pericles would want to see it, since it was such a curiosity and they knew Pericles to be interested in such curious and novel things. In the way they formulated their statement to Aristides, they came rather close to the substance of another class-team's secret, which added nicely to the tension.

After that, the fictionalization grew rather stronger—though again there's nothing in the record that's actually inconsistent with what Aristides said. Aristides told the operatives that Pericles needed help spreading the story that the disaster was actually Cimon's fault. At that moment the Demiurge intervened, to say that the operatives' new imperative is to discover more about Pericles' and Cimon's rivalry. I'm thus hoping that the shadowy figure of Cimon, most unheralded of Athens' great statesmen, will haunt their thoughts until Wednesday. (Discussion in the team forums seems to indicate I won't be disappointed.)

Operation KTHMA: Day 1

(KTHMA means "possession," and it's a word that turns out to be very important in the course. I'm going to try to avoid spoilers here in the early stages, because I'm lucky in that a few of my students actually read my blog, and thus I won't spell the significance out right now, but feel free to find me via e-mail or Twitter and inquire. The irony of a guy who has probably spoiled Bioshock for more people than anyone else in the world being careful about spoilers in his own game isn't lost on me, by the way.)

Day 1 of the course/operation will be an in-class briefing. I'll be taking the role of the Demiurge from the beginning, but making it clear that the Demiurge has disguised himself as a simply university professor, and that that disguise needs to be maintained for the integrity of the operation. I'll start by expressing the premise of the course/game: the Demiurge has made a mistake in his teleological calculations. Western Civilization is in danger of losing vital skills and information that can help world culture survive and help people spread world civilization to the stars. I may throw in a reference to Zefram Cochrane. I will emphasize (as I do at the beginning of all my courses) that Western Civilization and its roots in ancient Greece have no inherent superiority to any other part of world culture; I'll say that the Demiurge is also launching other missions to places like Africa, India, and China.

In order to resolve this crisis, the students must change history in the subtle way that, the Demiurge says, such a thing is possible. The Demiurge can't reveal right now what the method will be, but he promises that he will reveal it soon. He can, however, reveal the reason behind the method: the fundamental importance of play. Because Herodotus and Thucydides, like the homeric bards before them, engaged their culture in a fundamentally ludic (that is, playful and interactive) way, reshaping the past as they found it into a discourse intended to enlighten their audience, the Demiurge has the ability to use his operatives' (that is, the students') imaginations to immerse them in the past, and to allow his operatives themselves to play the world.

The Demiurge realizes he is being obscure, but promises that this fundamental notion will become clear in the course of the mission.

We'll then talk about the central goals and objectives of the course/game, which would be the same whether we were "playing" it as a game or "taking/giving" it as a course. It's worth noting that before now I've never thought of laying out goals and objectives this way for this course; it's a notion that's come to me both from instructional design and from game design, and is not something in which I ever received training in graduate school. I'm nearly certain that I am far, far from alone in that among professors.

The goals of the course are

• skill at analysis of the writings of Herodotus and Thucydides
• skill at analysis of historical discourse across time periods
• knowledge of the writings of Herodotus and Thucydides
• knowledge of the practice of Herodotus and Thucydides (that is, what they actually were doing in ancient Athens in the context of Greek and Athenian culture)
• knowledge of the cultural context of that practice in ancient Athens (in particular homeric epic, tragedy, and Plato, as well as what we know of daily life)
• knowledge of the relationship of the practice and writings of Herodotus and Thucydides to what we know of the actual events of the past

The objectives associated with those goals are, for the skill-based goals, the ability to analyze the relevant discourse, and, for the knowledge-based goals, the ability to summarize the relevant information.

The Demiurge will express those goals and objectives in the form of the students' mission--these are the objectives that they must achieve in order to help save the world's hope. The Demiurge can at this point only reveal that they will demonstrate their attainment of these objectives in completing each of seven individual mission modules, and in completing the entire mission of Operation KTHMA.

Then we'll take a look at what the Demiurge has done with the HuskyCT site for the class, especially the "Pyschometric Sortition Tool" (in some ways resembling the questions at the start of some games from Bethesda like Morrowind and Fallout 3), which they'll be expected to complete before the next operation meeting.

(When they complete the tool, I will assign each of them to a numbered class, with the rank of "Observer Class 1," "Observer Class 2," etc. At that point, I will add them to groups for their classes on the website, and give them access to a document that describes the first level of their class, and the skill that goes with that level; they will have access only to their own classes, and will have to learn about the other classes from one another. Once that reveal has happened, I'll post more here about it.)

If we have time left, the Demiurge will engage the operatives in a discussion about their preconceptions about history, focusing primarily on the ever-new difference between history as the events of the past and history as accounts by people of their ideas about the events of the past. We may get into the etymology of "history," but I'm hoping to save that for Day 2.

CAMS 3212 Greek historical writings as Operation KTHMA--first RPC ever?

One of the directions the Main Quest of this blog will eventually go is into Herodotus and Thucydides, who I believe were playing games they designed themselves based on the homeric bards' AAA titles Iliad and Odyssey. I think that these games were in a genre similar to Sid Meier's Civilization series.

With that nagging thought in the back of my mind, and heavily influenced by a talk by Ian Schreiber at the Game Education Summit in June, I'm taking a plunge into very murky waters and turning my fall course CAMS 3212 Greek historical writings into an RPG with ARG elements called Operation KTHMA. I've come to believe that when correctly practiced game design and instructional design are really the same thing. It's time to see if I'm right. One incredibly neat thing about doing this is that I can enlist the students in helping me design the next iteration of the course, and they'll be learning the material even better that way.

So on this blog through the end of summer and the fall, I'll be keeping track of what I'm doing with the course/game. For now, I'll say that I'm really, really excited to get my hands on Corvus Elrod's Rev 03 system--I'm beyond hopeful that it will be exactly what I need to give this thing some backbone. I'll also say that I would love any advice any of my readers might give as to how to plan things at this paper 'n' web stage to make a transition to a digital format as smooth as it can be, someday.

Finally, here's the premise. The Demiurge has recruited the students in the class to project themselves via his Textospatiotemporal Zapper (think the "Animus" in Assassin's Creed) into host bodies in Athens in 431 BCE. There, they must save Western Civilization by explaining to people like Pericles and Plato what Herodotus and Thucydides are trying to tell them about the proper use of the past and discourses about the past.

The central gameplay mechanic will be the discovery of who each student is in ancient Athens. At the start of the game, I'll sort them into groups (with an assessment on our Web course tools that I call the "Psychometric Sortition Tool"), but they won't know what class each group is portraying, and as they progress (via XP awarded by me), they'll gain knowledge of their role in the mission along with the skills they need to complete it. All the classes have a distinct relationship to discourses about the past, and only together will they be able to explain what Herodotus and Thucydides were really up to, and thus save us all.

So if you've heard of anything like this, I'd love to know, so that I can compare notes with someone. At any rate, stay tuned. I think it's going to be an interesting fall.

(Subsequent posts on Operation KTHMA may be found here, here, here, and here.)