Politics - Designing Historical Roleplaying Games: Game Mechanics and Historical Accuracy

Supervisor: Dr Robin Whelan

Supervisor bio: 

I am a cultural historian of the Mediterranean world in late antiquity and the early middle ages. My research and teaching focus on the later Roman Empire and its early medieval successors, with a particular interest in issues of religious diversity, social identity, ethnic communities, and political culture.

I have spent most of my life on Merseyside: I grew up on the Wirral and moved to Liverpool in January 2018 to join the Department. But my journey in between was slightly longer than a trip across the Mersey: I first did a BA in History and then an MSt in Late Antique and Byzantine Studies in Oxford, before moving to Cambridge for a PhD in Classics (which included Erasmus doctoral study at the Universität zu Köln). I then went back to Oxford to take up a research fellowship at Brasenose College and The Oxford Research Centre in the Humanities (TORCH), with a stint as a temporary Departmental Lecturer in Early Medieval History at Balliol College, Brasenose College and St Peter’s College thrown in for good measure.

Email: robin.whelan@liverpool.ac.uk

School: Histories, Languages, and Cultures

Department: Politics

Module code: HIST001

Suitable for students of: History, Classics & Ancient History, potentially Education

Desired experience or requirements: You will be highly self-motivated, able to work independently, and to define, pursue, and solve problems. You will have experience reading scholarly literature in history and/or pedagogy, and in conducting literature reviews and developing bibliographies. You will be able and willing to read large documents (100+ pages) and process information efficiently and accurately. You will be computer literate (MS Office, esp. Word/Excel). Interest in any form of gaming (computer, boardgames, card, tabletop, RPG) is desirable.

Places available: 2

Start dates: Session 1 (15th June 2026)

Project length: 4 weeks

Virtual option: Yes

Hybrid option: Yes

Project description:

I am currently developing a historical roleplaying game for use in the classroom, based around the ecumenical Council of Ephesus (431). This roleplaying game takes the model of the US Reacting to the Past series of games (https://reactingconsortium.org). In RTTP games, students re-enact a key debate from history. They are assigned historical ‘characters’ to play with specific goals to achieve over several game sessions. I am currently teaching at the University of Liverpool using the Council of Nicaea (325) game; other games cover periods of history from antiquity to the modern day, including everything from the Catilinarian Conspiracy, through the Black Death and the Reformation Parliament, to the Partition of India.

This Summer Research project will involve analysing the game mechanics of pre-existing Reacting to the Past games. The student researcher will read the instructor’s manuals of selected games and identify patterns in how game developers have structured game sessions, voting procedures, and session-to-session development of the characters and situation. In this way, they will help contribute to my design of my own roleplaying game. They will choose specific games and/or game mechanics to analyse in depth. They will consider these in the light, both of the scholarly literature around roleplaying and Reacting to the Past pedagogy, and around these particular historical events and episodes. They will use their essay and presentation/poster to think through the combination of gameplay and historical accuracy.

A starter pack of pedagogical articles will be provided at the start of the project, as well as the instructor’s manuals of a set of RTTP games tailored to the interests of the student.

Additional requirements: N/A