Argumentation - A Game About How History Works

Argumentation (ahr-gyuh-men-teyshun) Noun. A gathering of historians, so named because of the contentious nature of their debates. How does history work? This question has fascinated thinkers since the earliest days of civilization, and exerts a powerful unseen influence on our politics, spirituality, and self-image. Concepts about the nature, purpose, and direction of history shape seemingly random collections of names, dates, and events into tools that help us to understand the world around us; and sometimes even to destroy it.

Argumentation is a tool in the form of a storytelling card game that allows players to examine various theories of history. It is GM-less, for three to six players, requires no preparation, and take two to four hours. Players take on the role of underpaid instructors at a poorly funded liberal arts college, drinking burnt coffee in the faculty lounge and arguing about the nature of history between classes. They pose a series of great historical questions to one another, some counterfactual, others more abstract, which are answered using a selection of framing cards representing theories about the nature and function of the historical process. These include historical materialism, classical realism, dialectic idealism, Whig historiography, great man theory, paradigm shift, the fourth turning, negative conquest theory, and many others. Gameplay functions on a mixture of original rules, Apples-To-Apples mechanics, and inspiration drawn from Alex Roberts' For The Queen.