NEWS AND Announcements 

Dear Reactors,

Reacting has found a way forward for its Short Games (defined as requiring 2-4 class sessions inclusive of prep time and debriefing) and Microgames (requiring only a single class session for all such activities). The Reacting Consortium Board recently approved the recommendations of the Reacting Short Games/Microgames (SG/Ms) Working Group*, which you can read in full here. There is now a lot of work to be done to make this vision a reality, but here are three things you need to know right now:

• None of the SG/Ms currently listed on the Reacting website are going away in the near future. We know many of you have plans for these materials in the next two semesters, so we are keeping that content in place until we have conversations with the individual authors (see below).

• Authors of new SG/Ms should use the new Frameworks to guide their development. Those Frameworks can be found in the Game Author Resources page of the website under Templates, and can also be downloaded using these links (Short Games / Microgames) We are working now to build the intake processes for new SG/Ms. Our vision is that there will be separate systems for Small Games vs. Microgames, but both will be scholarly peer review systems so SG/Ms can count for CV credit. We also hope to eventually have more robust templates to guide development, similar to those that currently exist for Flagship Reacting. Look for more information in the first half of 2023.

• Authors of current SG/Ms should look for outreach from us in the immediate future. We would love to have all of the SG/Ms currently on the website converted over to the new format, but we understand that this will require significant intellectual labor on the part of their authors. We will contact every currently hosted SG/M author individually in the next 30 days about converting their games to the new frameworks. Conversion will put the games through the intake processes mentioned in the bullet above once we establish them. Games whose author elects not to convert them will be annotated as such on the website and will likely be taken down at the end of 2023 (or earlier if desired by the author). We will explore potential ways to archive non-converted games for historical reference. Time permitting, we will also reach out to SG/M authors listed on the BLORG who do not have content on the website yet.

We know there will be additional questions and concerns about this effort as it moves forward. Please feel free to ask them in the Reacting Faculty Lounge or reach out to us individually as you desire. Let’s make great games together!

Ray Kimball, ray@42ed.games

Reacting Microgame Coordinator

Bill Offutt, woffutt@pace.edu

Chair, REB Short Games Subcommittee

*In addition to the two of us, Scout Blum, Nick Proctor, Maddie Provo, and Jon Truitt all served on the Working Group. We are incredibly grateful for their hard work and candor in the group!

GDR-MicrogameFramework-Dec2022.pdf

GDR-ShortGameFramework-Dec2022.pdf

GDR-SGMWorkingGroupReport-Dec2022.pdf

The Reacting Consortium Board is seeking nominations for three open positions and one student position on the Board beginning on July 1, 2023 and extending through June 30, 2026. All positions are for three-year terms.

For the three open positions, we are seeking individuals who satisfy one or more of the following important criteria:

· Contributes to the racial, ethnic and cultural diversity of the Reacting Consortium Board;

· Experience with issues of diversity, inclusion, and equity in gameplay;

· Contributes to the institutional diversity of the Reaction Consortium Board, i.e. community college affiliation, public university affiliation, etc;

· Experience with development and fund-raising;

· Experience with game design, role playing, or game-based learning outside of Reacting.

For the one student position, we are seeking an individual with experience playing RTTP games and a strong interest in promoting the goals of Reacting as a pedagogical experience. We are especially interested in individuals who represent communities of color, members of the LGBTQ community, and increase our gender balance of women to men.

Nominations (including contact information) should be sent to the Chair of the Nominations Committee, John Lucaites (lucaites@iu.edu), by March 6, 2023.

There’s been a lot of changes to our website over the past few months, with more on the way!

It's an exciting time for Reacting, and our website has changed a lot. This summer and fall we have focused our efforts on updating the website to make it more accessible and to reflect some of the cosmetic changes made by UNC Press. But that's not all!

Here are some of the key updates and changes to our website:

Covers for Games Under Review

Thanks to the tremendous efforts made by Maddie Provo, we have been able to create covers for our developing games based on the new covers that UNC created for our published games. Not only do these covers look nice, but we also hope that they will increase the popularity of our developing games and give them more character at a glance.

Browse Games by Subject

We firmly believe in expanding the reach of our games so that our games can be used to enrich the learning of students anywhere. One way we've reaffirmed this commitment is by scouring our game pages to find games that overlap with other disciplines and fields of study (here's a hint, it's all of them). You can now easily search for games that feature Art, Politics, Religion, Journalism, and discussions on Race, Gender, and Sexuality. These can all be found on our new Games by Subject Page. These categories, along with our STEM and French Language game pages, have made it easier than ever to find the perfect game to suit your needs, even outside of the traditional history class.

Reacting in High School

Last week we featured a blog post highlighting how Reacting to the Past has been used in a high school setting with promising results. The Reacting Consortium Board has been looking for ways to make our games more accessible in the high school classroom and support teachers in making our games suitable for their students. In July we created a discord server dedicated to helping high school instructors which will operate in a similar way to the Facebook Reacting Faculty Lounge.

There is also a dedicated Reacting in High Schools page that is still under construction. We'll be sure to let you know when it goes live and has been updated with official materials, recommendations, and more information on our plans to bring more high school instructors into the fold.

Inclusion

The Reacting Consortium has always been dedicated to promoting diversity, equity, and inclusion and we want our website to better reflect that. In the very near future we plan to publish our Inclusion page that will include resources for promoting inclusive roleplaying, information about the programs we've created to promote inclusion, and an official statement on our commitment to accessibility and inclusion.

Updated Contact Information

Many of our board members and staff's roles have changed! Please be sure to check our updated Contact Us page for the most up to date contact information.

File Formatting and Submission Guidelines

On to the nitty gritty. In order to keep our resources uniform we have implemented new guidelines for submitting files.

The new file submission protocol can be found here!

As always, any updates to games, tools for instructors, and community resources for games are enthusiastically welcomed and can be added to the website. Please submit any new files using our new streamlined file submission form.

“Start Here” Page for New Members

While reacting has become second nature to a lot of us, we are constantly welcoming new, first-time reactors to our community. To help new members we have created a “Start Here” page. This includes information about our pedagogy, guides on how to run and adapt games, and a “Reacting Dictionary” to make browsing and using our games more accessible.

Our Game Authors and Editorial Board and always working hard. We want to highlight some of the new Reacting Games Under Review recently added to our library, as well as updated materials.

Art in Paris

Now includes French translated role sheets, instructor guide, and student handout - August 2022

Ashoka 
New Game - August 2022

Bacon's Rebellion 
New Gamebook - September 2022

Congressional AIDS Hearings 
New Files March 2022

Egyptian Prison 
Updated Gamebook - November 2022

Election of 1912 
Updated Gamebook, Instructor's Manual, and Role Sheets - September 2022

Eyeball to Eyeball
New Files June 2022; Soon moving to Central Michigan Press

Liberia 
New Game - June 2022

Prado
Updated Gamebook and Instructor Manual - September 2022

Radical Reconstruction
New Files July 2022
Notes on the Updates from the Game Author: After an excellent run at the conference in Boulder, I've made a bunch of changes to the Radical Reconstruction in Louisiana game. There is a new document and some of the game mechanics are different. There are also some new roles, which means the game can now have 36 players. They include:

J. Stella Martin, escaped slavery, became an abolitionist, advocated for John Brown, and has now returned to Louisiana.

Ludger Bouguille, a Black Creole who is the secretary for a fraternal order, is trying to keep his small school afloat. He is also friends with Henry Rey, the Spiritualist.

Charles St. Albin Sauvinet is another Black Creole who recently became the Director of the New Orleans branch of the Freedmen's Bank. (This role can act as a sort of "banker" so that players do not lose their Prestige tokens).

Stephen Walter Rogers became literate despite his enslavement and secretly taught others to read and write. By the time the game begins, he is a Baptist preacher, which provides Rev. Dove with some competition. He is also a pacifist, which will amplify this position in the endgame.

And in case you missed it...here's the most recent from Fall/Winter 2021 (also found in this announcement):

NEW GAMES FALL/ WINTER 2021

Japanese Exclusion in California, 1906-1915

Ending the Troubles: Religion, Nationalism, and the Search for Peace and Democracy in Northern Ireland, 1997-98

UPDATED FILES

Russian Literary Journals, Dostoevsky, and Tolstoy in St. Petersburg, 1877 
Updated February 2022

1349: Plague Comes to Norwich
Updated January 2022

Bacon's Rebellion, 1676-1677: Race, Class, and Frontier Conflict in Colonial Virginia 
Updated October 2021

The Crisis of Catiline: Rome, 63 BCE 
Updated August 2021

Watergate 
Updated August 2022

• The revised documents include the alternative of a 6 game session full version of the game or a 3 game session abridged version of the game, which is one of the recommendations that came out of the Winter Conference playtest. There are separate Zip files of the role sheets for use with the full version and abridged version of the game, respectively.

• Other revisions include: revised historical context essay, core documents/contemporary texts, and handouts sections; expanded GM instructions for the Senate Watergate Committee report, the Saturday Night Massacre (including a new subplot for Kissinger), the White House’s decision to release tape summaries and transcripts, Supreme Court oral arguments, and the Senate trial; and a scorecard to assist the GM in keeping track of the game’s various moving parts.

COMMUNITY-CREATED MATERIALS
Expanded and Modified Materials from the Community

French Game Resources Added new resources for instructors and students

Restoring the World, 1945: Security and Empire at Yalta New Expanded Files - March 2022 - this includes name tents, additional roles, etc.

Red Clay Added pre-game reading quiz by Lucy C. Barnhouse

Reacting Leadership Transitions
An Announcement from the Reacting Consortium Board

It is an important moment of change for the Reacting Consortium and its community.

Mark Carnes will step away from his role as founding Executive Director of the Reacting Consortium on July 1^st, 2022. Nick Proctor, founding Chair of the Reacting Editorial Board (REB) and an early member of the Reacting Consortium Board, will become the new Executive Director of Reacting. Kelly McFall, a member of both the Reacting Consortium Board and Reacting Editorial Board, has been selected as the Interim Chair of the Reacting Editorial Board with oversight of the development and review of games for publication.

Mark Carnes Founder; Outgoing Executive Director

Nick Proctor   Incoming Executive Director

Kelly McFall Incoming Chair of REB

The Reacting community owes a great debt to Mark and in fact wouldn’t exist but for his original vision for a new way to teach history in his Barnard classroom. From that moment of collaboration with his students about a new way to engage with classic texts in 1996, Mark went on to be a prolific author of Reacting games, grant-writer, fundraiser, recruiter, game-master, and encourager-in-chief to newcomers with fresh ideas about new topics and directions for Reacting. After this first experiment with a game set in Ming China, he went on to develop games about the Trial of Anne Hutchinson, the French Revolution, and India in 1945, making use of a FIPSE grant to enlist co-authors with disciplinary expertise in these areas. In 2001, he hosted the first Reacting workshop, inviting 40 colleagues from around the country. Having always served as Executive Director pro bono, Mark looks forward to being able to devote more time to writing and revising games and supporting others in the game development process.

Under Nick Proctor’s direction, the Reacting Editorial Board (REB) became a formal body that defined a “Reacting game,” established criteria for guiding its development, and set up a system of peer review to determine when games were ready for publication. As he steps into the role of Executive Director, Nick’s vision for the future focuses on continued expansion of the flagship library; deepening our relationship with high schools; figuring out the balance between in-person conferences and online programming going forward; and improving fiscal stability by growing existing income streams as well as increasing their number. As he notes, “We should also capitalize on the expertise that we have built with online programming. In addition to broadening the geographical and institutional scope of attendees, these can offer good opportunities to field test new games."

Kelly McFall’s goals for the REB include management of the process of soliciting, reviewing, and moving toward publication efficiently and effectively; continuing to grow our pool of game authors and game projects; working with the Game Development Conference to pilot and experiment with different structures and mechanisms; serving as an ambassador for Reacting and an effective liaison for game authors; and completing and executing a system for review of existing games that are moving into second editions.

The Reacting Consortium is deeply grateful to Mark Carnes for all of his years of creative and inspired leadership. We are glad that he will remain an active member of this community and look forward to supporting Nick and Kelly as they step into their new roles.

To read a tribute to Mark Carnes, check our blog.

We want to keep you updated throughout our transition to our new publishers, UNC-Press (read more about that here and here).

Here is a spreadsheet with all our published titles and their new ISBN numbers. Details are also copied below.  You can preorder these titles NOW, and they will be available in July! 

BONUS: note the uniform, lower price point for paperbacks ($30), and the availability of e-books for a portion of the games, as well.

Our Game Authors and Editorial Board and always working hard. We want to highlight some of the new Reacting Games Under Review recently added to our library, as well as updated materials. 

NEW GAMES

Japanese Exclusion in California, 1906-1915

Ending the Troubles: Religion, Nationalism, and the Search for Peace and Democracy in Northern Ireland, 1997-98

UPDATED FILES

Russian Literary Journals, Dostoevsky, and Tolstoy in St. Petersburg, 1877 (Updated February 2022)

1349: Plague Comes to Norwich (Updated January 2022)

Bacon's Rebellion, 1676-1677: Race, Class, and Frontier Conflict in Colonial Virginia (Updated October 2021)

The Crisis of Catiline: Rome, 63 BCE (Updated August 2021)

Expanded and Modified Materials from the Community

Restoring the World, 1945: Security and Empire at Yalta (March 2022 - this includes name tents, additional roles, etc)

We'll continue to update this list, and then start a new one for the spring. 

Major Press Release: 12/15/2021 

*Reacting Consortium and UNCP to partner in publishing all Reacting games.

The Reacting Consortium, Inc. is pleased to announce that it has entered into an agreement with the University of North Carolina Press to publish all Reacting to the Past games. Beginning in the summer and fall of 2022, UNCP will publish the thirty games currently published by W. W. Norton and the Reacting Consortium Press. UNCP will also publish, as regular imprints of the press, all future Reacting to the Past games. This will consolidate Reacting offerings and make it easier for instructors to find and use Reacting materials. It will also facilitate and simplify the process for developing and publishing Reacting games.

“The Consortium has long sought to bring all of its games under the broad umbrella of an outstanding university press,” declared Mark Carnes, Executive Director of the Reacting Consortium. “While we’re excited by this opportunity to expand and rationalize the Reacting pedagogy, we appreciate W. W. Norton, whose fine team did so much to promote and refine Reacting to the Past during its formative years.” The Reacting Consortium will continue to partner with W. W. Norton on the Flashpoints series of short games.

“This agreement was the culmination of countless hours of work by the Executive Committee of the Reacting Board, chaired sequentially by Anthony Crider (physicist, Elon University) and Gretchen Galbraith (Dean of Arts and Sciences, SUNY Potsdam), and including Publishing Director Jace Weaver (historian, University of Georgia) and Nick Proctor, chair of the Reacting Editorial Board (historian, Simpson College), along with Dr. Jenn Worth, Administrative Director, and Maddie Provo, Membership Director, of the Reacting Consortium staff,” Carnes added.

You can read more here on the blog of UNC Press. 

The Reacting Consortium, Inc., a not-for-profit 501 (c) 3 corporation, governs the Reacting to the Past pedagogy, in which students play complex games, set in the past, their roles informed by important texts. The Reacting pedagogy is used by over 500 colleges and universities in the United States—and also by several dozen universities elsewhere.

For further information: Mark Carnes mcarnes@barnard.edu
Jenn Worth jworth@barnard.edu
Gretchen Galbraith galbragr@potsdam.edu

The Reacting Consortium Board is seeking nominations for open positions on the Board beginning on July 1, 2022 and extending until June 30, 2025.

The first priority is for someone in a position to provide philanthropic support or experience in fundraising of the kind that RTTP needs to sustain itself and to grow. The second priority is for a Senior Administrator at the level of Dean or above (i.e., Provost, President, etc.) who will be situated to provide the Board with guidance on how to encourage and develop institutional support for Reacting to the Past. The third priority is for someone with experience in technological design who can contribute to the development of innovative pedagogical approaches to online workshops, virtual events, etc. Candidates with a variety of diverse backgrounds and experiences are especially encouraged.

Nominations (including contact information) should be sent to the Chair of the Nominations Committee, John Lucaites (lucaites@iu.edu), by December 1, 2021.

REACTING GAME DEVELOPMENT CONFERENCE CALL FOR PROPOSALS

The Reacting to the Past Game Development Conference Executive Committee (a.k.a. “The Junta”) is pleased to issue a Call for Proposals for the 2021 GDC (held July 1-18) in two areas:

• Level 2 Games to be playtested, and
• Pitches for new games needing feedback and discussion by experienced Reacting instructors, gamers, and designers

The GDC is geared toward the development and enrichment of Reacting through an innovative program of cross-pollination and fruitful inquiry, and is appropriate for those with previous RTTP experience. For priority consideration, download the appropriate Google form below, complete it, and email it to rttpgdc@gmail.com by April 17, 2021.

MORE FROM KYLE LINCOLN
Notum sit omnibus tam presentibus quam futuris...
The Reacting to the Past Game Development Conference Executive Committee for the Benefit of the Consortium and the People (a.k.a. “The Junta”) is pleased to issue a “Call for Proposals” for the 2021 (unfortunately still synchronous and online) GDC. In accordance with the customs of our ancestors, we ask for proposals for L2 Games to be playtested and for “pitches” for new games that need group feedback and discussion. There is a modest amount of paperwork, which the GDCECBCP uses to inventory and vet the games proposed for playtesting. This year, we are able to offer fewer slots than in the traditional years, but our hope is that we can return to GDC customs fully next year. The “pitches” consist of short presentations from practitioners developing games that might benefit from the fertile ideas ecology of the GDC, where game ideas can be enhanced by the cross-usage of extant elements, addition of kinds of source questions, mechanical innovations, and the general insights of the experienced Reacting designer.

“The Junta” also offers a number of workshops, these year to be led by some of RttP’s luminaries, visionaries, and deplorables, for both the benefit and corruption of Reacting as an enterprise. The GDC is always geared toward the development and enrichment of Reacting through an innovative program of cross-pollination and fruitful inquiry, but is usually limited to those with previous experience in the pedagogy as a whole.