I've reviewed my Marx game from last semester and I've made some big changes:
I'll post the full rules soon, but if you read this summary of the students' projects, you'll get sense of what this game will try to accomplish.
I suspect that my class today highlighted a key problem with the Flashpoint style game: that the preparation time and reflection time is disproportionate to the amount of game play. My game is designed to take two class sessions. I did only 10 minutes of preparation the day before, which was scandalously little. The game nonetheless worked, but I suspect that was due to the care with which I assigned the roles.
For example, I chose as Karl Schapper, the president of the assembly, one of the most out-going and studious students. She did an excellent job of reading the instructions and preparing her banner for the class. She also came up with a creative form of the Magic Circle for beginning the assembly: during the roll call, she asked each student to recite the League’s motto. This was brilliant because it hammered home the importance of the motto to the organization. Furthermore, several of the anarchists refused to recite the current motto, instead reciting the motto that wish the League to adopt, “Workers of the World Unite!”.
Furthermore, I inadvertently did a great job of selecting the role of Karl Marx, who has to give a spontaneous explanation as to why he is or is not choosing to modify the Manifesto before the League votes on it. The student who took this role has experience in model UN, so he was comfortable with giving speeches and took the reading assignment seriously. After class, he talked to me about how he wished he had done better in his speech, but he was holding himself to too high a standard.
Unfortunately, due to the minimum amount of preparation, many of the speeches were not of the caliber that I wanted. The student who played the role of Marie Duclos Fretageot prepared an excellent speech, but even that one could have been better with more evidence taken from the text.
That being said, even with the limited amount of preparation, this class really leaned into the conflict and drama inherent in the game. The Bakunin character relished his role as firecracker, frequently butting into debate. But it was also clear that he had a decent understanding of Bakunin’s ideology: he was quick to point out when others were supporting hierarchy of any kind.
A big failure was the vote on the proposal. I thought that I had carefully prepared the vote so that the Marxists, Anarchists and Feminists would have the numbers and the incentive to vote on the Manifesto, even if Marx had changed it. However, in the game, Marx’s followers were enraged that he was willing to make concessions to the Christian Socialists. In fact, in the game, Marx decided to cut out Section III.1.A, Feudal Socialism, which contains some of the fiercest attacks on religion in the text.
Another failure was that the debates did not focus on the frame that I wanted for the text. I currently teach the Manifesto as part of a crash course in theories of history. Therefore, I have a couple of key points that I want students to remember about Marx’s theory of history. Namely, that Marx presents his history as:
• scientific and objective
• there is a single narrative that explains major change through all human history
• that single narrative is class struggle
• Marx uses this single narrative to predict the future
Instead, the major issues of debate were Marx’s attacks on religion. This isn’t too surprising, as one of the faction are the Christian Socialists. However, I think that I need to make them a smaller faction. Probably the next time I modify the game, there will be two main factions: the followers of Marx and the Bourgeois Socialists. I’m torn if I still want the other main groups, the anarchists, feminists and Christian Socialists, to be factions. Likely, the game will better stay focused on this main issue if they are indeterminates instead.
- It's now two classes long
- Students have individualized projects
I'll post the full rules soon, but if you read this summary of the students' projects, you'll get sense of what this game will try to accomplish.
I suspect that my class today highlighted a key problem with the Flashpoint style game: that the preparation time and reflection time is disproportionate to the amount of game play. My game is designed to take two class sessions. I did only 10 minutes of preparation the day before, which was scandalously little. The game nonetheless worked, but I suspect that was due to the care with which I assigned the roles.
For example, I chose as Karl Schapper, the president of the assembly, one of the most out-going and studious students. She did an excellent job of reading the instructions and preparing her banner for the class. She also came up with a creative form of the Magic Circle for beginning the assembly: during the roll call, she asked each student to recite the League’s motto. This was brilliant because it hammered home the importance of the motto to the organization. Furthermore, several of the anarchists refused to recite the current motto, instead reciting the motto that wish the League to adopt, “Workers of the World Unite!”.
Furthermore, I inadvertently did a great job of selecting the role of Karl Marx, who has to give a spontaneous explanation as to why he is or is not choosing to modify the Manifesto before the League votes on it. The student who took this role has experience in model UN, so he was comfortable with giving speeches and took the reading assignment seriously. After class, he talked to me about how he wished he had done better in his speech, but he was holding himself to too high a standard.
Unfortunately, due to the minimum amount of preparation, many of the speeches were not of the caliber that I wanted. The student who played the role of Marie Duclos Fretageot prepared an excellent speech, but even that one could have been better with more evidence taken from the text.
That being said, even with the limited amount of preparation, this class really leaned into the conflict and drama inherent in the game. The Bakunin character relished his role as firecracker, frequently butting into debate. But it was also clear that he had a decent understanding of Bakunin’s ideology: he was quick to point out when others were supporting hierarchy of any kind.
A big failure was the vote on the proposal. I thought that I had carefully prepared the vote so that the Marxists, Anarchists and Feminists would have the numbers and the incentive to vote on the Manifesto, even if Marx had changed it. However, in the game, Marx’s followers were enraged that he was willing to make concessions to the Christian Socialists. In fact, in the game, Marx decided to cut out Section III.1.A, Feudal Socialism, which contains some of the fiercest attacks on religion in the text.
Another failure was that the debates did not focus on the frame that I wanted for the text. I currently teach the Manifesto as part of a crash course in theories of history. Therefore, I have a couple of key points that I want students to remember about Marx’s theory of history. Namely, that Marx presents his history as:
• scientific and objective
• there is a single narrative that explains major change through all human history
• that single narrative is class struggle
• Marx uses this single narrative to predict the future
Instead, the major issues of debate were Marx’s attacks on religion. This isn’t too surprising, as one of the faction are the Christian Socialists. However, I think that I need to make them a smaller faction. Probably the next time I modify the game, there will be two main factions: the followers of Marx and the Bourgeois Socialists. I’m torn if I still want the other main groups, the anarchists, feminists and Christian Socialists, to be factions. Likely, the game will better stay focused on this main issue if they are indeterminates instead.