Jonathan Lawrence teaches religious studies and theology at Canisius University in Buffalo, New York, a Jesuit institution. He is the designer of Ban the Jesuits, a Reacting to the Past microgame recently honored with a Silver Medal at the Serious Play Conference. Last month, Reacting Intern Kyla Toombs spoke with Jonathan his game, his path into Reacting, and the upcoming Reacting Game Development Conference, which will be held at Canisius University, July 9–11.

Can you introduce yourself and tell me how you got involved with Reacting to the Past?

I teach religious studies and theology at Canisius University in Buffalo, New York. I’d actually been hearing about Reacting to the Past for years before using it myself. I was drawn to it in part because I’d had similar experiences as a student. In college I participated in a simulation about negotiations over the future use of the Temple Mount, where the Dome of the Rock stands. Two classes played different roles: my class represented the participants, and I was a member of the Muslim foundation that controls the Dome of the Rock; the other class played the negotiators. We had a full-day simulation with written priorities and instructions about where we had wiggle room. I loved it, and when I heard about Reacting, I immediately saw the connection.

For years it stayed a long-term plan. Then in fall 2019, my dean announced funding for faculty to experiment with new pedagogies, and I put together a grant proposal. With support from the school and from the American Baptist Churches, I was able to attend the January 2020 Reacting Winter Institute in Athens, Georgia — just weeks before the pandemic arrived. My original plan was to use the games in a Western Civilization honors course I’d been teaching mostly with lectures. I tried a couple of games in those first weeks and they seemed genuinely promising. Then, of course, everything changed.

That summer, the Reacting Consortium organized conversations about adapting the games for online play. Some people said it couldn’t be done — that these games were designed for the classroom – but we found ways. When we could get back into the classroom, I started using the games in almost every course, and I’ve been hooked ever since.

What keeps me committed, beyond the content itself, is what the games do for students’ communication skills: public speaking, argumentation, careful reading. I had a student who took three Reacting classes with me. When she enrolled in the first one, she asked me explicitly not to give her a speaking role because she was terrified of public speaking. So, I assigned her a non-speaking part. She came back for two more courses, and in the third one — playing the Council of Nicaea — she was assigned as a bishop required to argue for priestly celibacy. This formerly shy student walked to the front of the room, slammed her hand on the podium, and said: “I have one thing to say — no sex.” The whole room erupted. She made her argument confidently and persuasively. A few months later, she asked me to write her medical school recommendation letter, and I was able to speak to her remarkable growth in confidence and public speaking. That’s the kind of transformation I see repeatedly using Reacting to the Past.

Can you tell us about the narrative arc of Ban the Jesuits?

I teach at a Jesuit university, and our religion department courses — especially introductory ones — are meant to help students understand the Jesuits. I had started writing a full-length game on the subject, but realized it would take considerably more development. So, a few months in, I pivoted to a microgame.

The historical backdrop is the campaign in the 1700s to have the Jesuits banned. Gradually across the second half of the century, one European country after another expelled them, and ultimately the Pope declared the order suppressed entirely. The game compresses this into a single trial-like meeting in Rome, where three groups bring accusations against the Jesuits and the Jesuits must defend themselves.

There are four groups in the game. First, the Jesuits, who argue they are neither troublemakers nor a threat to secular rulers or church teaching. Second, the ambassadors, who represent European kings and accuse the Jesuits of attempting to assassinate the King of Portugal and of financial misconduct (a Jesuit in South America had invested donors’ money in his own ventures, bought three ships that subsequently sank, and left the entire order liable for the debts). Third, there are the archbishops, who are troubled by reports of the Jesuits absorbing local traditions into their rituals in India and China. And finally, there is the crowd, who are hungry and angry, and care not about theology or politics — only about the wealth they believe the Jesuits are hoarding in their large houses.

The game is structured around nine accusations, three of which align most closely with each non-Jesuit group. The Jesuits are given a set of defensive cards keyed to those accusations, but without labels — they must listen carefully and figure out which defense responds to which charge. This keeps the debate dynamic and requires genuine engagement with the historical material, since most students arrive knowing almost nothing about the Jesuits and can’t improvise arguments on the fly.

The structure is modeled on games like Monumental Consequence, where an imbalance is built in from the start: certain roles cannot vote in the first rounds, so the debate can’t be short-circuited by an early vote. As the game progresses, the Pope sends word that he’s impatient with the delay, and full voting opens. Special actions become available: the ambassadors can arrest someone, the archbishops can excommunicate a Jesuit, and the crowd can kidnap someone,  all resolved with die rolls. There’s also a secret negotiation track: the Jesuit leader and the Russian ambassador have both been instructed to find each other and discuss the possibility of the Jesuits taking refuge in St. Petersburg to educate the tsar’s family and the Russian nobility.

The Jesuits have never yet survived the final vote in any session I’ve run. After they lose, the remaining groups debate what to do with the seized Jesuit property: give it to the kings, to the Church, or to the poor. Then the Jesuits must announce, one by one, whether they will renounce their Jesuit identity and ask for forgiveness, or depart with the Russian ambassador under his offer of safe exile. The other factions gradually realize they’ve been outmaneuvered. And if the crowd was never given any of the Jesuits’ wealth, they have one final move: a riot. A die roll determines whether it produces an orderly redistribution of wealth, or a rebellion that tears apart the nations of Europe. This was, of course, right around the time of the French Revolution, so it’s not entirely inaccurate.

Ban the Jesuits won a Silver Medal at the Serious Play Conference. Can you tell us about that?

The Serious Play Conference has been running for at least a decade. About ten years ago it was held in Buffalo, and I attended with a card game I’d made about creation stories — a kind of Go Fish variant — well before I’d gotten into Reacting. Last summer the conference was in Rochester, just a couple of hours away, which made it easy to submit.

The conference accepts submissions across many categories — higher education games, games for young children, video games, board games, and so on — and reviewers evaluate them much like a publication review process. I was thrilled to learn I’d received an award, and even more so when several attendees introduced themselves as reviewers who had looked at my game and had very positive things to say. They also offered useful suggestions, which I incorporated during a sabbatical last fall.

One of the real pleasures of attending a game conference outside the Reacting community is encountering the broader landscape of serious games scholarship. The conversations happening there — about psychological safety during gameplay, about respect and inclusion — are the same ones we’re having in Reacting. It’s valuable to see that those concerns are widely shared, and to make connections across communities.

Can you tell us about the Game Development Conference coming to your campus?

The Reacting Game Development Conference will be held at Canisius University in Buffalo, July 9-11, 2025. I’ve attended every in-person Game Development Conference since participating in the online version in 2021, and it’s one of my favorite events in the Reacting calendar.

What I appreciate most is that it meets game designers wherever they are in the process. This year we have nine pitch sessions for designers who are at the earliest stages — some with just a theme or a general idea — as well as six games being play-tested over the three mornings (two Thursday, two Friday, two Saturday). There are also six or so microgames in various stages of development, and a handful of workshops and conversation sessions, including a presentation by Nick Proctor on Reacting 3.0, the new framework and standards for developing game materials. The main program runs from the morning of July 9th through early afternoon on July 11th.

For those who want to make a trip of it, we can arrange dorm accommodations for early arrivals or those staying an extra night. Our campus is urban, situated along Main Street, which a century ago was the dividing line between Buffalo’s wealthier and more working-class neighborhoods. There’s a lot of history in the surrounding area, easy access to Niagara Falls for those who want to make an excursion, and plenty of excellent restaurants nearby.