by Nicholas Proctor, Executive Director of the Reacting Consortium

Since Mark Carnes began writing games in the late 1990s, Reacting to the Past has undergone significant changes. Some essentials have remained constant: the centrality of a clash of ideas, immersive roles, historical context, and the use of rich historical texts, have been and will remain hallmarks of the series. Encountering any of these elements has great pedagogical potential. Combined, they can be breathtakingly powerful.

And yet, many instructors and students express difficulty playing our games. This, combined with the onslaught of AI, declining reading proficiency, and various lessons learned from hundreds of playtests of existing games, led our Editorial Board Chair, Kelly McFall, and others to begin asking in 2024, “What’s next?”

To answer this question, he and I began gathering community feedback later that year. Together and separately, we conducted listening sessions at various conferences. What changes did people want to see? What was sacrosanct? What could we learn from the broader world of game design? We combined these thoughts with discussions that arose as the REB reviewed new games, ongoing conversations in Reacting’s governing board (RCB), online chatter, and many, many one-on-one and small-group discussions. What’s working? What’s not? What have people figured out? What challenges remain?

I gathered our notes together in preparation for a weekend-long retreat in October 2025, during which a dozen experienced Reacting instructors, drawn from across the community, created a series of templates. We then shared these with the full RCB and REB for feedback and editing. This ultimately yielded a draft document that we presented at the 2026 Reacting Winter Conference.

Going forward, the specifics will undoubtedly shift a bit – using them to build actual games is sure to reveal some rough edges, but I think the big changes have been made. Internally, we’ve been calling it Reacting 3.0 – new guidelines for games heading into 2026 and beyond that promise to keep our curriculum vibrant and relevant in the face of challenges both old and new. I’ve sorted the remainder of this blog post in an overview of the major changes we expect to implement going forward.

ROLE SHEETS

The first set of changes concerns the role sheets. These are the game materials players read most carefully. The elements of existing role sheets will all remain, but we’ve reorganized them to foreground the game schedule. This way, players can see exactly what they need to do during any given session in the game.

As part of this reorganization, we also decided to clearly define the difference between responsibilities and assignments. The former are tasks players need to complete for the game to function. These might include activities such as performing rituals to mark the beginning of gameplay, casting votes, or advocating for specific positions at designated points in the game. These are clearly integrated into role sheets.

Assignments – the artifacts instructors use to assess student learning and assign grades – often vary wildly in practice. At present, individual instructors tailor these to their students, curricula, and learning objectives. Few people use the “vanilla” options, which appear in the published game materials. Consequently, students become confused by conflicting instructions from their instructors and the game materials. We decided it would be better to share these as editable addenda to role sheets. The game would still come with default assignments, but making them addenda makes them easy to edit and customize.

Vignettes

The concept of Reacting is difficult to introduce. Since its inception, Reacting gamebooks have opened with second-person “you are there” vignettes. When they work, these little pieces of historical fiction draw you into the game. When they don’t, they are discordant and weird. Most often, according to surveys I conducted, instructors do not assign them. Consequently, in Reacting 3.0 their use will be strictly optional. They now appear only as handouts in the appendix.

In their place, there are two short new introductions to the game. The first, What Just Happened? explains the immediate event that led to the beginning of the game. The Thirty Tyrants have been cast out of Athens. Now what happens? The second, The World of the Game, describes the immediate situation of the game, e.g., the political, cultural, religious, social, and economic context. In clever hands, these could be written in the style of the original vignettes, so it may be possible for all sides of the Vignettes debate to walk away happy.

PRE-GAME WORKSHOPS

Workshops are low-stakes introductions to roles, mechanics, and ideas. This is a term from recreational LARP, but it is not a new idea; workshops are part of many of the earliest Reacting designs. Sometimes these take the form of pre-game faction meetings. Other times, they are one-shot microgames, like the Hermitage debate in Red Clay. Since most people find them useful, these introductory Workshops are now required to ease entry into our games. Like most game elements, there are provisions allowing individual instructors to opt out of using them if they prefer.

Managing reading load

Most faculty have noted a decline in their students' ability and willingness to engage with lengthy or complex written texts. This is particularly vexing because rich historical documents and thick descriptions of historical context are so fundamental to Reacting’s approach to the past. Determined to retain both elements, 3.0 suggests the following:

First, these readings should focus on the player in the game. This means trimming discursive passages and interesting (but nonessential) details.

For the historical context essay, we encourage simplifying the vocabulary and limiting the use of proper nouns to those that appear in the game itself. For the documents, we encourage separating texts into those essential to play the game (“core”) and those related to a subset of roles (“supplemental”).

For the documents themselves, headnotes should be longer, glossing of unfamiliar ideas should be included, and elisions should be judicious. One hope here is that reading a curated version of the texts in the gamebook provides actionable information. Ample subheadings make it easier to parse the readings. They should also make them easier to navigate for people using e-readers.

Finally, we encourage authors to do what they can to break the wall of text. Diagrams, line art, and illustrations all aid comprehension. UNCP will work with us to incorporate these into our games that go to publication. I purposely added a bunch of these to the manuscript for my forthcoming game about the Reconstruction era in Louisiana. They were very helpful in figuring out how to integrate these into the text.

As is the case with most elements of 3.0, some games already use this organization and include these elements, and to good effect. Reacting 3.0 makes these approaches into requirements.

SCHEDULING WITH EPISODES

In classrooms, Reacting games get chopped up and recombined in all sorts of ways. This is because of differences in the length of class meetings, expectations about speaking and oration, and variations in class size. Consequently, the schedule laid out in gamebooks rarely survives first contact with the reality of our syllabi.

Consequently, 3.0 breaks games down into constituent parts or “episodes.” These may or may not correspond to a classroom instruction day (“session”). They usually culminate in a decision. This refinement to our terminology will aide newer instructors in implementing our games in their classrooms. The IM must provide advice on how to combine these, but ultimately, the decision is left with the instructor.

To help visualize, here is a default schedule:

Here is a modification that emphasizes debriefing:

Here is a third that emphasizes setup:

IM ADDITIONS

The Reacting 3.0 IM Template includes over a dozen small tweaks and optimizations. These stem from years of field experience by the people who put it together. The IM template will include significantly more direction, describing what should go where and why. This component also includes some significant additions.

Learning objectives are described in the 2.0 IM. In addition to describing those connected with content, the new version also asks authors to describe those associated with skills.

Every game picks pivotal moments, salient debates, and essential ideas. This means that they are historical interpretations. Consequently, the IM should now include a brief statement on the game's position in the historiography.

Instructors are sometimes surprised by the logistical demands that accompany certain games. These are never hard-and-fast requirements, but taking some steps ahead of time can optimize the game experience. Consequently, the IM should now include advice for pre-game preparations. Both what to do before the semester begins (What sort of classroom works best for this game? Are there particular props that aid the game? Do you need to build online resources?) and what instructors should handle two weeks before the game begins.

Other additions to the IM are components that many authors have already developed and included in their games. Given their positive impact in the classroom, these are now required. They include guidance on controversial content and suggested safety mechanisms to help players navigate through it. More general guidance that is applicable to all Reacting Games will be outsourced from the IMs to a document that we are tentatively calling the GM Bible. This document will be hammered out this year alongside the finalized version of Reacting 3.0.

Finally, as I mentioned above, there should be provisions for workshops. These might be faction meetings, which already appear in many games, dry runs of the game mechanism, low-stakes role-playing exercises, or microgames that help set the scene or debrief at the end of the game.

Exiting the game: The Debrief

Instructors regularly struggle with debriefing. Consequently, 3.0 asks authors to provide more guidance. Best practices in recreational LARP call for three stages of debrief. They begin with emotions. Players need to address questions like, “Who stabbed me in the back?” and “Why did I get executed?” Before they can exit their roles. This part of the debriefing might be best if it came immediately after the final episode of gameplay. To aid in “de-roling” authors might suggest a ritual or two, like tearing up name placards.

This can in turn lead into an intellectual debrief. At this point, players can step back from the action enough to think about the outcome of the game as a whole (rather than their individual fates), the clash of ideas, and the degree to which the game aligned with and diverged from history. The “What Actually Happened” and “What Happened Next” parts of the 2.0 IM fall here.

Finally, instructors should encourage their students to have some level of integrative reflection. This should help them connect their experience with their preexisting knowledge.

TEARSHEETS

"Tearsheets" are instructor-facing, quick-reference guides to game mechanics and specific episodes. They largely replicate information from the gamebook and IM, but in quick-reference form. No longer will you need to fumble around trying to figure out the odds for a tribute-gathering expedition! Bring the tear-sheet for the final session of Threshold of Democracy, and it is at your fingertips. Going forward, we expect game materials to make ample provisions of tearsheets where the mechanics call for them.

NEXT STEPS

We are close to finalizing 3.0, but some work remains. Over the spring semester of 2026, we will continue to refine the design based on community feedback. The most important source will be the handful of authors who are working to align their games in development with 3.0 standards. This is where the rubber meets the road. We expect that this will result in some judicious tweaking, reorganization, and editing, but I think the broad contours are set.

At the end of spring, the Reacting Editorial Board will take over. They will then decide how to interpret the templates, oversee their implementation, and decide how far to extend the grandfather clause for 2.0 games in development. They will also help to identify older games that would most benefit from new editions in 3.0 format.

I’ve taken the lead on this because, at some point, having one set of hands on the tiller made things more efficient. This should not obscure the fact that 3.0 is a set of standards created by the Reacting community. I sincerely thank everyone for the many hours they have put into making this significant step forward possible. While much has been accomplished already, making Reacting 3.0 the best it can be can only be accomplished through continued input from the Reacting Community. To that end, we welcome feedback, so if you’ve read this blog post and you have something you want to share, you are welcome to email it to reactingeditorialdirector@gmail.com. Otherwise, you can expect to hear more details about the final shape of Reacting 3.0 throughout 2026!