World of Wordcraft: Foreign language grammar and composition taught as a term-long role-playing game

Origins and course overview

Latin prose composition courses are the crucible of advanced language study. One of the best ways of learning Latin grammar and classical prose style is through the exacting translation of English into Latin. Prose composition courses are important but often dreaded by teachers and students alike. These apprehensions are compounded by a lack of excellent textbooks. Bradley’s Arnold (Arnold, 2006) is reliable but over a century old, and its very British, very military-focused exercises are both drudgery and too high a cognitive load for rudimentary practice. North and Hillard (1998) is similarly old, and its answer key is freely available online; Minkova (2007) and Minkova and Tunberg (2004) are not focused on classical canon enough for the curricular expectations of many classics departments. Whichever path the instructor chooses, ample supplementation will be required.

At Wake Forest University specifically, the Latin Advanced Grammar and Prose Composition course is intended for third- and fourth-year Latin majors who have had experience with both introductory grammar and a number of reading courses on authors of both prose and poetry. It is the only language course specifically required for the degree as the other language requirements are chosen from a range of offerings. In the spring 2013 iteration of the course, there were 12 participants—the largest cohort in recent memory but obviously too small a sample size to make rigorously verifiable, rather than anecdotal, claims. Students’ pre-existing skills and familiarity with Latin grammar varied widely from razor-sharp command to rusty remembrances from high school; so, unlike in a more structured curriculum, it was not feasible to assume a certain body of knowledge or level of mastery as the baseline for instruction.

So the issue I faced was tackling a complicated, potentially discouraging topic with insufficient, potentially stultifying textual support (I settled on Bradley’s Arnold) and a student cohort possessing varied backgrounds and competencies. I wanted to hold my students to high standards of growth and mastery, without leaving them feeling overwhelmed or burnt out. The design concept grew out of my brief encounters with the topic of educational gamification—the use of games for pedagogical purposes. In particular, the course idea was prompted by calls in Bowen (2012) and Sheldon (2011) for reshaping education to function more like video games because, as they argue, video games provide a series of pedagogical benefits.

First is customization, or the empowerment of students through choice and a certain degree of control over assignments or the direction of the course. Second, the encouragement of risk taking by offering early, low-stakes opportunity for failure. In a game, the ubiquitous tutorial level is a safe sandbox for getting to know the rules and risks without significant danger to the player’s overall success, whereas in traditional courses, students are often conservatively cautious and shun intellectual originality because exams or papers comprise a large portion of the final grade. Third, video games offer enjoyable challenges and inducement toward mastery. Playing the game is fun, but (generally speaking) not if it’s too easy, and repeated attempts or gradual increases in difficulty push players to become experts at the game. In other words, the structure of video games fosters player learning and skill mastery.

Fourth, video games at their most basic consist of interaction and prompt feedback, two key features of effective student-centered learning. Fifth, story-based games that are focused on the player’s character or avatar—such as the MMORPG (massively multiplayer online role-playing game) World of Warcraft—provide agency, identity, and a stake in the outcome. Players feel that their actions drive the story and matter and that their characters are in some way personalized and connected to their own individual experience of the game. In a classroom context, these traits would translate into a sense that individual student contributions are important to the course as a whole, an awareness of individual student roles in the class dynamic, and a shared interest in fulfilling content objectives. Sixth, technical terms and other pieces of knowledge in video games are presented not as mere definitions but as situated meanings. Players are not expected to memorize and regurgitate or figure out how to apply lists of arcane vocabulary, but rather are introduced to the terms in an active, relevant context.

Seventh, just-in-time, on-demand knowledge: players of video games get the instruction that they need to complete new tasks right as they begin those tasks or, in some cases, through low-stakes trial-and-error attempts at the tasks. Eighth, video games encourage systems thinking, sequential problem-solving, and lateral, reflective thinking—all in all, a focus on the application of previously acquired skills and knowledge. While earlier challenges in a game may test a single action or skill, “boss levels” or other endpoints generally require the seamless integration of a variety of tools and techniques. And finally, video games, like many games of all sorts, foster creativity, whether in solving puzzles, imagining wondrous stories, or devising winning strategies and tactics.

Major drawbacks that I see with video gamification specifically are the need for extensive instructional technology support to design a video game for a course and the potential to alienate students unfamiliar with or uninterested in video gaming. (For Sheldon, whose courses are not only run as MMORPGs but in fact are video game design courses, the technical requirements are no obstacle.) On the other hand, the analog equivalent of MMORPGs—the tabletop role-playing games on which computer role-playing games were modeled—offers essentially all of the same learning benefits that video games do. Accordingly, Latin Advanced Grammar and Prose Composition was designed as a “pen-and-paper” role-playing game, more like the tabletop-based, interpersonally interactive Dungeons & Dragons than video games like World of Warcraft or Final Fantasy. The instructor assumed the role of “Gamemaster” and each student chose a “Player Character” (PC) from Graeco-Roman mythology (e.g., Circe, Perseus, Romulus, Cassandra). Having students adopt personas or avatars that they maintain and develop over the course of the semester gives the participants a sense of ownership in the course and promotes buy-in on course content—just as the conceit of a mythical role-playing adventure superimposed upon the course infrastructure links the extrinsic value of “in-game” storyline achievements with the intrinsic values of mastery over course material.

The basic plot for the semester’s game was that the Sphinx, returning to its base of power in Thebes after the tragedy of Oedipus, was trying to destroy sources of knowledge about ancient languages across the Mediterranean, in order to confound any who would try to overthrow the Sphinx by solving its riddles. The students’ heroes traveled across the Mediterranean, fighting beasts, negotiating with merchants, chasing down criminal informants, and exploring the wilderness for magical materials, all while gaining experience, new items, and powers by defeating all obstacles in their way. The students, meanwhile, were propelling their heroes forward by in-class and out-of-class exercises in advanced concepts of Latin grammar. The students worked harder than they worked for any other Latin class—as did I—and they mastered the skills instructed admirably.

Student motivation

The role-playing game superstructure fosters student motivation through the three “levers” of expectancy-value theory (for an overview of the theory and of research on student motivation, see Ambrose et al., 2010: ch. 3). Successful motivation requires conditions whereby students see value in the course content; have a sense of self-efficacy that they are capable of doing what is asked of them; and perceive the environment to be supportive. The environment must be supportive not only in the student–instructor interaction but also among students, in and out of the classroom.

The course design and implementation were carried out consciously with these factors in mind. Playing a character in a story ties together extrinsic and intrinsic values for the course: because the advancement of a student’s character depends on his or her success on in-class and out-of-class content exercises, the value of personal, game-related rewards induces students to find value in the course content itself. Facing in-game monsters, challenges, riddles, and obstacles as a team (an “adventuring party”) produces a spirit of camaraderie and a feeling of a supportive environment. And restructuring grading from a traditional system to one whereby students earn “experience points” (XP) by completing assignments and thus “gain levels” toward their final grade provides early feedback, low-stakes opportunities for risk-taking and errors—and ultimately a sense of control, flexibility, and self-efficacy.

A team-centric role-playing game format also allows for these three elements of motivation to interact with each other additively. The extrinsic value of player-character advancement prompts students to find self-efficacy in teamwork (“I can get by with the help of my friends”) and to offer each other a supportive environment (“if my hero is to succeed, so must theirs”). Self-efficacy generated by earning XP, getting early feedback, and gaining levels keeps students from rejecting the course content as undoable and supports classroom morale. And the adventuring-party camaraderie makes communal values out of both course content and the perception of self-efficacy (“all for one, one for all”).

In a discussion of Vockell (2001), David M Grimes (presenting a case history in Sheldon, 2011: 231–238) identifies the key factors fostering intrinsic motivation or value as challenge, curiosity, competition, cooperation, recognition, and control. The RPG format provides elements of each of these factors. Students find challenge and curiosity both in-game and out-of-game: puzzles and mysteries in the story are paired with new language skills and knowledge in the coursework. Students can compete with each other in gaining levels and finishing in-class exercises (and thus story plot-points) first, while cooperation is a crucial element for success in the game and in the class. The gaining of levels and of other in-game rewards provides recognition of student achievement. And the reorganization of the course structure into one centered on earning XP for effort and accomplishment in assignments rather than receiving grades for performance on exams promotes a degree of student control over coursework and success in the course.

Course structure and introduction

At its core, the pedagogical mechanism was the idea that students would feel compelled to work and study hard in order for their heroes to do well in the game’s story. I did not give grades in this course. Instead, students earned XP by completing assignments well and had essentially unbounded opportunities to do more practice and review and thus to earn more XP. By earning XP, students’ heroes would “level up” or “gain levels” according to a progression chart included in the course syllabus (see Appendix 1). These levels brought with them in-game rewards—heroes would earn an item or an ability or a special title or bragging rights—and the level achieved by the end of the semester determined the final grade for the course. Because the assignment–grade relationship was mediated by the artifice of XP, student anxiety and grade-grubbing were reduced essentially to nothing, and students were braver in tackling the hard work of learning Latin grammar, style, and writing.

Between the first- and second-class meetings, students had to choose their PC, a figure from Greek and Roman myth, who would be their avatar or persona for the entire semester. Homework assignments would be focused on fleshing out their character’s personality, background, goals, and abilities. During in-class exercises, students were called by their PCs’ names rather than their real-world names. Specific in-game events might highlight the agenda or back-story of a particular character (as when Clytaemnestra had to deal with a coup d’état in her hometown of Mycenae, or when certain PCs ran into trouble late in the game because they had made some powerful enemies at the story’s beginning). The only requirement for PC selection was that it be a mythic persona, rather than a figure from history or postclassical fiction. Although it is common in role-playing games for players to create PCs with gender identities different from the players’ own, none of the students (seven women and five men) in this iteration of the course did so.

A different kind of class requires a different kind of syllabus, and the syllabus (reproduced in Appendix 1) was designed accordingly. The most important feature in establishing the tone of the class was the cover image, which was a commissioned work by comic-book artist Jason Strutz. The cover depicts a band of stalwart adventurers (both men and women) in combat against a fearsome monster. The heroes use different tools in the fight, each tool labeled with a Latin grammatical term corresponding to the tool’s usage (the sword is an ablative of means or instrument, the shield an ablative of separation, and so forth). In a sense, the cover image served to “re-skin” the course, to place a role-playing game overlay on the topic. Similarly with the XP table replacing the customary “Grades” portion of the syllabus, and with the assignments detailed therein, each of which got a special name. Homework became “scribing spell-scrolls,” grammar infographics “dungeon maps,” documents advocating the study of Latin “magic items,” paired presentations on Latin authors’ style “side quests,” and extended composition exercises “eldritch tomes” and “solo quests.”

Setting expectations for this kind of course is crucial, and the two initial means for creating the kind of expectations needed for a successful role-playing course are the “Format” section of the syllabus and the opening of the first day of class. Sheldon (2011: 144) offers his “Format” section as a sample; my own version is a close adaptation of his. Sheldon (2011: 251–252) also describes how he opens the first day of class by telling everyone that they are currently failing the course—that they are starting at 0 points and earning their grades throughout the semester. My approach in Latin Advanced Grammar and Prose Composition was different: rather than begin with the out-of-game underpinnings of the course, I immediately immersed the students in the world of the story, confronting them with an initial riddle of the Sphinx. The first thing I said as the clock struck the hour and class formally began was as follows:

The thirteen of you have reached the Great City of Thebes after many hard and dangerous days of travel. Before you stand the fabled Seven Gates, built by Amphion himself with the aid of his magic lyre. But to enter the city through the main gate, a passphrase must first be uttered in front of each of the other six gates. In teams of two or three, using the clues I am about to give you, compose a passphrase for each gate.

Assignments in and out of class

During class meetings, Latin Advanced Grammar and Prose Composition was a student-centered “flipped” classroom. The moment of first instruction was prior to class, as the homework assignments involved reading the next chapter of the grammar text and doing initial practice exercises on it. Class sessions then combined question-and-answer periods with some exercises that targeted particular complexities and offered scaffolded rehearsal of key points from the new material and others that called for review or for skill integration. Exercises were sometimes conducted with the class as a committee of the whole, so to speak, while most had students working in pairs or small groups, with my role being that of quality-control expert, cheerleader, and deus ex machina for especially thorny problems.

These exercises were all couched within the RPG superstructure. While students drilled ablatives and iterated the sequence of tenses, their PCs were fighting monsters, exploring (and escaping) dungeons, investigating, chasing suspects, carrying out magic rituals, shopping, competing in contests, and making decisions. Successful completion of exercises resulted in benefits for characters: new equipment, gold medals, clues to move the story forward, glory. Errors entailed revisiting and learning from what went wrong. In occasional whole-class “monster fight” drills, student error would cause the PC to become wounded. To heal the wound, the student had to complete a worksheet tied to the specific error, and in doing so the students spent time on targeted review, practicing the very things that tripped them up in the first place.

Whereas in-class exercises tended to advance the goals and story of the group (adventuring party), out-of-class exercises allowed students to develop and advance their PCs as individuals. Daily “scribing spell-scrolls” assignments—i.e. homework—generally centered on short compositions, using grammar from the most recent chapter, in response to prompts such as “what are your PC’s hopes and fears?” or “Tell me more about your PC’s motivations.” Mid-semester projects, namely the “side quest” done in pairs and the “crafting magic items” to advocate for the study of Latin, called for application and conceptualization of content and themes studied independently and discussed during class sessions. The end-of-term “solo quest,” a continuous-prose exposition of the student’s PC, called for review, revision, and integration of the individual “spell-scrolls” written over the course of the semester. Solo quests had no word-count minimum attached to them, and no required draft stage, and yet every student of her or his own inclination went through multiple drafts to perfect their Latin prose, and the typical final length was 1500–2000 words, a remarkable amount for any modern Latin prose author, undergraduate or otherwise.

Results and student feedback

The role-playing format for Latin Advanced Grammar and Prose Composition was over all a great success. The student participants showed dramatic improvement in their Latin grammar skills and mastery of Latin prose style, both in their own self-evaluations and in my observation of their progress. At the same time, the students rarely expressed sentiments of being overwhelmed or unable to accomplish content goals in regular mid-semester feedback forms. And student products for open-ended assignments such as the “dungeon maps” were surprisingly creative, often tied into specific in-game story elements (as when the student whose PC had a magical bag filled with useful items actually turned in a bag filled with items representing all the various uses of the ablative case). The course generated publicity within the university that was circulated more widely both within the field of classics and in broader academic-focused online media (Korbey, 2013; McGrath, 2013; Meadows, 2013; Thomas, 2013; Poovey, 2014). My colleagues reported buzz inside the department, too, with lower-level students eager to continue their Latin studies in order to take part in the next iteration of the course, scheduled for the spring 2015 term.

One of the most important results from this class format was a high level of student engagement. Thanks at least in part to the course design’s focus on expectancy-value theory, students were extremely motivated to complete the work of the course and develop or improve the skills required. Absences were unaccustomedly rare, and students never failed to turn in homework, not once. I offered early in the semester to allow students to revise and resubmit homework to earn back some XP and to do additional practice and review exercises focused on their own weaknesses for bonus XP. To my great surprise, the class welcomed the extra work, and over the course of the semester completed approximately 90% of these opportunities offered (with some students revising and reviewing at every single chance). Though advanced concepts of Latin grammar are complex and often frustrating—and though students did feel and express frustration—there was never a sense of despair or lack of buy-in. Students achieved at a high level: all earned a final grade of A or A– and several earned perfect scores, despite exacting standards and expectations.

The role-playing game format made more palpable the idea that students should leap at early, low-stakes occasions for risk-taking; that failure at a task was not necessarily a bad thing; and that the best way to learn was to learn from making mistakes. My students, some of whom had been timid in previous courses I had taught, were bold and explorative, almost never self-conscious. They interacted more readily, more frequently, and more richly with each other and had more frequent opportunities for student–instructor interaction, as well. The authenticity of the game’s setting and plot (discussed below) as well as the extrinsic rewards of “leveling up” their characters helped generate intrinsic value: where initially students wanted to do well so that they would not suffer in-game consequences, by the end of the semester, they wanted to do well because they wanted to master not only their quests but also the intricacies of Latin grammar and style.

Anonymous end-of-term student evaluations were all positive, with some useful critiques. Examples of typical positive comments include “[t]his class has expanded my thoughts on what a classroom can be,” and “I will definitely remember this class as one of my favorites from college.” My own basic pedagogical goals in adopting the role-playing game format were fulfilled for at least one student, as evident from this comment:

I feel like I have gained a deeper connection to the language than I would have if this course had been presented in a more traditional way. The development of the story and my character over the semester allowed me to really build Latin into the story in my head; it did not become some abstract skill used only to translate oddly specific pieces of English into another language.

One of the commonest complaints expressed by students in anonymous end-of-term evaluations was that the role-playing game’s plot could be hard to follow from one class period to another. Indeed, I found myself needing to do short recaps at the beginning of most classes; in the future, I will take a page from experienced tabletop-RPG gamemasters and appoint one student player as “scribe” for the group to keep the adventuring party up-to-date on the story’s progression by email, social media, or text messages. (One student offered an intriguing idea for structuring the storyline: students would “have a specific major goal, but have to tackle minor goals to build up to it,” in the style of the original Zelda video game, with each minor goal being a broad grammatical concept whose mastery earns magic items that are required for defeating the final “boss” and accomplishing the main goal.) Another student critique was that the story was not always compelling or internally consistent, an issue wholly attributable to my own lack of sophisticated storytelling skills and my inexperience as a gamemaster in general.

Some students also expressed discomfort at the fact that the moment of first contact with new subjects was at home, not in class—a discomfort typical of flipped classrooms of all genres but one perhaps exacerbated by the dense, dated presentation of the Bradley’s Arnold textbook. I myself noticed, and some students also mentioned, that it was hard to estimate how long in-class exercises and homeworks would take, and learning to calibrate these assignments took me almost the entire semester, especially since the difficulty of topics varied widely from lesson to lesson. Both the discomfort and the uneven assignment lengths could be addressed with additional scaffolding: for some lessons, I was able to create “companion” handouts explicating particularly vexed points in the textbook, but I did not have enough spare time during the semester to do this for every unit that merited such a handout.

Recommendations and cautions for implementation

Gamifying a course is not an all-or-nothing proposition. The easiest small-scale implementation is simply to replace grades with points. Instead of “receiving” a grade, students “earn points” by what they do and how well they do it; they start with 0 and progress toward 100. This brings in the virtues of self-efficacy—because students’ final grades come down to the amount of effort they put toward their point total, not how much they screw up from their presumed 100% starting point—and of a sense of progress and early feedback in the course. If students are earning points rather than getting grades, and going from nothing to something instead of from perfection to ever-greater imperfection, their own learning and growth will be more visible to them. In fact, I now structure every course I teach, even the most traditional seminar or general-education offering, in this way.

Another means of implementing role-playing game pedagogy on a small scale is to teach one unit as a game. In a composition course, students could complete one writing assignment from a particular cultural persona or perspective. Sample prompts could be to “write a narrative of the CODESA talks from the viewpoint of Winnie Madikizela-Mandela” or “take on the role of a poor rural farmer writing a petition to Emperor Hirohito/Shōwa-tennō for assistance in August 1940.” Similarly, the role-play format could be used to teach a single unit, theme, or period. The Reacting to the Past methodology of Carnes (1995–2014; see also Carnes in this volume) does just this: students take on the personas of specific individuals and cultural stock-types to role-play a conference, debate, or negotiation set in one of the great crises or turning points of world history (such as the Simla Conference at the end of World War II or the restoration of Athenian sovereignty after the overthrow of the Thirty Tyrants in 403 bce).

For a full-scale implementation along the lines of the Latin Advanced Grammar and Prose Composition course described above, a considerable investment of time is required, in course design, in class-to-class planning, and in implementation and, likely, grading. This investment, however, has a real probability of offering immense dividends for students and instructors alike. Though I worked myself to the bone teaching this course, I will unreservedly teach it in the same way (with substantial improvements) in the course’s next iteration.

I offer three key recommendations for full-scale implementation. First, let the students and their PCs drive the narrative. Rather than coming up with a fully thought-out story that the heroes must follow on rails from point A to B to C, start with an initial “hook” or mystery or question or problem and let the students’ reactions lay out the next steps in the narrative. Second, don’t be afraid of open-ended homework prompts. In teaching grammar and composition, the subject of the writing is less at issue than the quality of the writing, and so letting students pursue the aspects of the game and their characters that most interest them will produce richer, more engaged efforts and drafts. Some of the most inventive and complex Latin sentences my students composed were ones in response to vague prompts or topics that pushed them to be as creative as they dared.

Third, become familiar with the “player personality types” of Bartle (1996), described by Sheldon (2011: 100–102). Players play games differently and get enjoyment out of different aspects of games. Some students may be what Bartle calls “socializers” and thus prefer non-combat interaction with other players, while others may want fights (Bartles’s “killers”), and others want to explore the game’s environments (the “explorers” and “achievers”). A good game—whether it’s an MMORPG, a tabletop role-playing game, or a foreign-language course taught as an RPG adventure—offers something for everyone, regardless of gamer type or preference. One way of offering this in class is to have workstations with different kinds of exercises: if you want to trek through the enchanted forest, go to the front of the classroom; if you want to try to fight the dire wolves plaguing the town, go to the back; and if you want to schmooze with the local nobles, meet in the middle. This workstation setup can also allow students to work on skills or content areas in which they have self-diagnosed (or instructor-diagnosed) weaknesses. In the Latin Advanced Grammar and Prose Composition course, for instance, students were sometimes able to choose which in-class activity to do on the basis of which grammar topic they needed to practice most (for ablatives, do the boxing match; for indirect discourse, track down the escaped villain; and so on).

A prime consideration in implementing any sort of game-based pedagogy in coursework is the issue of authenticity: in-game fidelity to the course content. The Latin Advanced Grammar and Prose Composition role-playing game was set in the mythic past of Greece and Rome, and students were required to choose specific extant mythological figures. Both of these measures, along with the locations and people heroes encountered (e.g., Carthage, Arcadia; Dido, Teiresias, Pamphile), ensured authenticity in the fundamental setting. By contrast, Sheldon (2011: 36–38) allows students in his MMORPG courses to choose their own “handles” or “usernames,” resulting in the kind of online-identity authenticity (names like “Panda.jpg,” “TBA,” and “Coconut Monkey”) perfect for his subject matter that would have ruined the setting for a Latin role-playing game.

Authenticity in my course, however, was not consistently rigorous. I allowed both myself and my students to incorporate fantasy-game elements that were not characteristically Graeco-Roman. For instance, the basic sword-and-sorcery plotline I developed is more native to Dungeons & Dragons than to Roman civilization, where a picaresque adventure like Apuleius’ novel Metamorphoses, or the Golden Ass would have been a better fit. Similar with our conception of “magic items,” and magic more generally; in the ultimate defeat of the Sphinx, the student playing Laocoon decided that he would use his magic staff to create an abysm into which the Sphinx would fall, a direct reference to Gandalf’s confrontation of the Balrog in Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings.

Perhaps the most effective way to get at a more thorough authenticity for a role-playing game is to set it in a specific historical or literary situation. A Latin course could take place during the Punic Wars, a French course could take place during the Revolution, a Chinese course could reenact portions of the Records of the Three Kingdoms, a Russian course could have students playing characters from War and Peace. This sort of approach would require more effort to get students on board with the theme because their fidelity to the period or text would entail independent research: to get the role of Natasha Ilyinichna right, a student has to know the novel really well.

A few cautions are in order. First, to reiterate, the design and execution of RPG pedagogy is enormously time-intensive, but (in my view) the rewards more than compensate for the immense efforts required. Second, students who do not have a background in speculative fiction (sci-fi and fantasy), video games, or tabletop games will need early support in adapting to an RPG course’s novel format. It is important to reassure students that no prior gaming experience is necessary to succeed in the course and to model (and call out student models for) good gaming practices. I intend to develop a one-page “how to be a gamer” handout to offer students on the first day of class in future implementations of this course.

Third, students need early opportunities to gain levels. My XP and level schema follows that of Sheldon (2011: 145), but I found that with the way XP were awarded during the semester, it took a long time for students to start leveling up. Levels are a tangible way to provide early feedback and offer encouragement and a sense of accomplishment early on in the game or semester. Indeed, most actual RPGs that use XP and levels, both tabletop and online, have lower levels earned rapidly and higher levels requiring exponentially more XP to attain. For a course like Latin Advanced Grammar and Prose Composition, with daily homework assignments plus a few more substantial projects, perhaps the most effective setup would be to compress the lowest and highest levels, so that students’ find that their PCs gain levels quickly early on, need more effort to achieve levels during the middle of the course, and have nearly reached the highest level they’ll attain by the final day of class, with the very highest level earned (or not) with the final project or exam.

Additional resources

Sheldon (2011) is an invaluable innovator and resource in gamification pedagogy. His book also has a Facebook page (www.facebook.com/MultiplayerClassroom); instructors interested in the Reacting to the Past methodology can find excellent support in the Reacting to the Past Faculty Lounge (on Facebook: www.facebook.com/groups/reactingfacultylounge). To run a role-playing game well, it helps to read advice for gamemasters from actual tabletop role-playing games, and the best source for advice is Cook (2013: ch. 22) (about a particular RPG, but with plenty of useful, easily generalizable tips). Stavropoulos (2012) treats the need for individual players to be able to stop in-game situations that make them feel uncomfortable or under attack, while Cardboard Republic discusses “gamer archetypes” and even has a short quiz to assign oneself an archetype (http://www.cardboardrepublic.com/gamer-archetypes).

A number of other gamification initiatives exist in and out of the field of Classics, in higher education and in secondary schools. Within the field, Reinhard (2012) suggests the use of virtual-reality simulators like Second Life to enhance instruction, and both The Pericles Group (www.practomime.com, cf. Maton (2011)) and the Living Epic of Travis (2008–2012, cf. Young (2010)) tie the study of classics to video gaming. Richlin (2013) details a method of assigning particular character types (such as recently returned soldier or senator’s wife) to students studying Roman culture, who must write responses to texts and topics from the perspective of their specific characters. Barbara McManus has developed two role-playing games for teaching Roman civilization, both housed by the VRoma website (www.vroma.org/course_materials/). Nelson et al. (2013) present an “alternate reality game” that teaches rhetoric, digital literacy, and techniques for building community. My own course has inspired RPG-format Latin courses at the Latin School of Chicago, Royal Holloway University of London, University of Maryland-Baltimore County, Beloit College, Earlham College, and Longmeadow High School, as well as a “choose-your-own-adventure”-style unit on the ancient city of Rome at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, and a library reference guide for my course itself (Younger, 2013). And of course, I would welcome questions, inquiries, or stories to share from anyone working on the intersection of gaming, teaching, and learning.