In this ACE and Creativity series blog post, find out how to play a card role-playing game whilst learning about ancient mythology!
This year at the Classical Association Conference held at the University of St Andrews, Friday 11 – Sunday 13 July 2025, Eleni Giamarellou Bourmpouli, Dr Amanda Potter, and Dr Guen D.M. Taietti are running a panel entitled “What's in a Monster? Ancient and Modern Reception of Monster-Hybrids”.
One of the hands-on educational activities will involve the creation of a monster card and a role-playing game to expand our knowledge of ancient mythology.
How to play
Below you can find the instructions written by Amanda:
1. Creating Your Creature
• Choose a creature. This could be a monster or a composite creature from ancient mythology
• Assign your creature 20 points across the following 5 abilities:
o Strength
o Beauty/Glamour
o Wisdom
o Agility/Speed
o Magical Powers/Witchcraft
• Draw the character on the front of your card and add the abilities and points
• Do not share your card and points with other players until you are required to do so in game play.
2. Game play
• The first player chooses a counter, which includes an ability
• The player challenges any other player on that ability, the players then each share the name of their creature and the ability scores
• The player with the lowest ability score is out
• The winning player takes a counter, and this continues until only one player is left in the game
• The player left in the game is the winner, and their creature takes over the world.