Learning Goals
Students will be able to analyze Renaissance, Enlightenment, and Scientific Revolution ideas and events to create historically grounded characters, settings, and conflicts for a tabletop RPG.
Students will be able to write believable character backstories for printer’s apprentices, natural philosophers, artists, or political thinkers using historical knowledge and personal perspective-taking.
Students will be able to structure encounter scenes and branching choices to build tension, surprise, and consequence in a playable story.
Students will be able to prototype and revise rules, maps, cards, and role-play materials to improve clarity, balance, and replayability.
Students will be able to collaborate with peers to playtest, gather feedback, and justify design decisions using evidence from users and historical research.
Students will be able to transform historical research into a cohesive game kit that communicates setting, rules, and narrative purpose for public players.
Products
Historical Character Dossier and One-Scene RPG Prototype
Each student creates a research-based dossier for one playable character and a single-scene paper prototype that shows how that character would act, speak, and make choices in the selected era. The prototype must demonstrate how individual research informs the team’s final game design.
Playable Timekeepers’ Tabletop Game Kit with Designer Guide
Each team produces a polished, playable tabletop RPG kit with a shared historical problem statement, revised rules, maps, cards, character sheets, and a short designer guide for festival players. The final kit must show how individual research and prototypes were combined into a collaborative, testable game experience.
No rubric has been generated yet.