This is the first in a series of guest posts by Martha Attridge Bufton, member of the Reacting Consortium Board and author of "Do We Take Shelter? Evaluating 'High Stakes' Information." We hope you will follow along in the weeks to come!

By Martha Attridge Bufton, MA, MLIS

I grew up in a United Church of Canada household. My parents were born in the 1920s and raised to attend church on Sundays, abstain from drinking, and avoid playing cards or board games. So, when my dad taught me how to play Chinese Checkers, I was thrilled: I had entered the forbidden world of gaming. This limited childhood exposure to games, and a decidedly uncompetitive streak, make my current foray into game design remarkable: I am not a gamer. However, the choice to design an immersive roleplaying game makes sense in the context of my training as an historian and my work as an academic teaching librarian–there are always new and effective approaches to teaching students to be informationally literate.

So here we are with a chronicle of my journey on the road to designing Do we take shelter? Evaluating “high stakes” information (hereafter abbreviated as DWTS)–a Reacting to the Past-inspired game for teaching information literacy to university students. In this blog series, I share some of the joys and concerns of writing, playing, revising, and replaying DWTS since the fall of 2023 from an unusual perspective, that of an academic librarian.  As a caveat emptor to my readers, I have not written an historical game. I have written an information literacy game with an historical storyline. The purpose of the game is to engage with the idea that authority is constructed and contextual, as well as to evaluate sources in terms of this concept.

Round 1: Start small: Writing a role for Maud Malone in Greenwich Village, 1913

The inspiration: Greenwich Village 1913
The mentors: Prof. Pamela Walker and Prof. Mary Jane Tracey
The design task: Write a role sheet

Playing is believing. Students can be “set on fire” and learn more deeply by playing games in the classroom (Carnes, 2014). I’ve seen and experienced this fire firsthand, most notably in my initial experience writing a librarian role for Greenwich Village, 1913. Writing a single role for an existing game proved to be a doable “first step” in learning how to design a game because I could focus on developing a single but significant game element.

 
Maud Malone, circa 2018 (above).  Photo: I.E. Bufton
Maud Malone calling card, created in the Carleton University Book Arts Lab (2023).

Step 1: Play a game at the Summer Institute

To write a Reacting-inspired game, it helps to have experienced a Reacting game My colleague, Prof. Pamela Walker, had joined the Reacting community in 2016 and was playing Mary Jane Tracey’s Greenwich Village 1913 (GV 1913) in her undergraduate history classes. At her invitation, I attended the 2017 Summer Institute, played GV 1913, and had an epiphany: there was a role to be made for a librarian in this game, a role that involved more than helping students find stuff and buying books for faculty. I could be embedded in the game and, potentially, contribute more effectively to teaching students how to look for, find, and access relevant information.

Step 2: Play a game with students

The following fall, I created and played the role of librarian/suffragette Maud Malone so that I could participate more directly in Pamela’s first-year history class when they played GV 1913. Maud Malone–the “Commander of the Flying Squad of Suffragettes”–was well known in New York in the early 20th century as a suffragette and labour organizer. She was often featured in New York Times articles on suffrage, debated Emma Goldman, got arrested multiple times, and worked with her sister Marcella to form the first North American public library union at the New York City Public Library.

As such, Maud is a rich historical character whose experiences and ideas aligned with the historical issues central to the game.

My initial teaching plan for Pamela’s class was traditional–a combination of an in-class one-shot demonstration of a search for newspaper articles in the New York Times Archives, individual research consultations, and access to a web-based course guide. I also taught “outside the librarian box”: I dressed up, created a mobile costume lending library that I wheeled into gameplay, and supported suffrage advocates as well as labour organizers during speeches with many a “Hear, hear!” rather than scripted speeches.

In addition, the character of Maud introduced a new mechanic to the game. Maud has lost her job at the New York Public Library. To regain her position, she is available to consult with individual students. For each research consultation, Maud earns PIPS. Maud must earn 10 PIPS (i.e., consult with at least five students on finding relevant sources) to prove that she is a good librarian and worthy of being rehired. 

I had fun, the students seemed to enjoy engaging with Maud, and a few consulted me in searches for primary and secondary sources.

Maud Malone (centre) and students in Pamela Walker’s first-year seminar The long civil rights movement (2018). Photograph: Pamela Walker.

Step 3: Write a role for an existing game

Over time, however, I wanted my contributions during class to be more authentic and more historically plausible. I also thought that the role of Maud was an opportunity for other academic librarians to become more involved in the Reacting community. So I proposed to Mary Jane Tracey that I write a formal role sheet for this character. Maud could be an “adjunct” character, available to faculty and librarians who might want to work more closely to improve student research skills. When Mary Jane greenlit the idea, I began the writing process and:

• Joined the Reacting Consortium and downloaded game materials such as the role sheets;
• Reread the GV 1913 game book;
•  Searched in the New York Times Archives and the NYS Historical Newspapers for firsthand accounts of Maud’s activities and stories about her family;
• Did archival research at the New York City Public Library Archives, where I found the letter calling for Maud’s dismissal by other library staff;
• Read Nick Proctor’s Reacting to the Past Game Designer's Handbook (at least the first two chapters);
• And most importantly, talked with Mary Jane about her expectations for any additional role.

Then I drafted the role and reviewed it with Mary Jane and Pamela, revising the copy until it met Mary Jane’s standards. To some extent, the role was already play-tested because I had been Maud several times in Pamela’s classes. However, reviewing the role sheet with the ultimate gamemaster ensured that my facts were well supported, that I had enough information to make Maud interesting and relevant enough to contribute to meaningful discussions about the historical issues in the game.

The role sheet has the same structure as those for other GV 1913 characters and includes:

•  Title
• Name and age
• Role description
• Historical biography
• Objectives
• Responsibilities
• Challenges
• Individual victory objectives

Writing this role was an excellent introduction to key elements of Reacting games, elements that align with basic Reacting game design and immersive roleplaying game design in general. As Nick Proctor details in his designer handbook, Reacting game elements include:

• A real historical setting
• Roles with well-developed characters
• Intellectual collisions
• Accessibility to non-specialists

The Maud Malone has these basic features: a real historical actor that fits the historical setting of the game; enough detail about background and political ideas to enable a player to voice historically plausible opinions; views that collide with other game characters such as Emma Goldman; and no details or objectives that require a player to have an in-depth knowledge of the labour, suffrage, and Bohemian movements explored in the game.

Granted, the opportunity to create the Maud Malone character is probably unusual. However, the “small is beautiful” principle is a good one–beginning the design process by focusing on one component can perhaps feel less intimidating and allow a new designer to work through some core ideas first before tackling larger components of a game.

Maud Malone role sheet, 2022. Written by M. Attridge Bufton

Three design takeaways

Have more librarians taken up the Maud mantle? Not to my knowledge. And Pamela is now teaching other Reacting games, so my Maud costume is gathering dust. However, I learned some important lessons from this initial game design experience, which did inspire me to write my own game.

Here are my big takeaways–mostly joys, not concerns.

Playing an immersive roleplaying game is a prerequisite for designing a game. Designers benefit from the firsthand experience of playing through mechanics that work and those that do not. Designers also need to understand concretely the feelings that may arise during gameplay and how emotional experiences impact a player’s engagement in a game-based learning environment.

Designing a single component for an existing game can reduce barriers to entry for new game designers. A Reacting role sheet requires elements that are needed for a successful Reacting game, such as historically plausible characters and inherent challenges or tensions. Working with a limited number of elements introduces some of the basics of a Reacting game without overwhelming the new designer with complexities and details. Likewise, writing for an existing game means that the designer has significantly fewer decisions to make and has an established frame of reference in which to write. Much less work and stress than starting from scratch.

Finding a supportive and trusted mentor (or two) can create a safe intellectual space for a newbie to try a new genre of historical writing and teaching. I benefited enormously from Mary Jane’s advice and direction, both in terms of identifying the historical research I needed to do to write the role and also in terms of structuring the content so that the role would work within the parameters of the game. And Pamela’s continued support for a larger, more creative role for librarians in the classroom has reinforced that this work has pedagogical value–she gets that one-shot search sessions offer limited opportunities for collaboration between instructors and librarians.

Next Round: Choosing a Compelling Narrative

References

Carnes, M. (2014). Minds On Fire. Harvard University Press.

Proctor, N.W. (2018). Reacting to the Past. Game Designer’s Handbook (4th ed.).

No author. (1909, December 13). The suffrage quest a wild goose chase: And woman ever a fetish worshipper, Emma Goldman tells an audience of suffragettes. The New York Times, p. 16.

Biography

Martha Attridge Bufton (MA, MLIS) is the Interdisciplinary Studies Librarian at the Carleton University Library. Martha’s research interests include labour history, computational methods for the humanities, and game-based learning. She teaches at a comprehensive Canadian university, including a for-credit course in information literacy entitled Critical foundations in undergraduate research. Based on her historical research on the unionization of white-collar workers in Canada, she has produced the documentary short film Women at the bargaining table: White collar unionization at Carleton University. Martha is the co-recipient of the inaugural RTTP Brilliancy Prize with Dr. Pamela Walker and currently sits on the Reacting Consortium Board.