Marco Arnaudo (French and Italian) has played the Reacting to the Past game Kentucky, 1861: Loyalty, State, and Nation as well as a game he created, The Fate of Mary Stuart, in his Leadership: From War to Peace (HON H-236) and Arts of War (Intensive Freshman Seminar) classes. For many years, Marco has reviewed board games on YouTube at @marcoomnigamer. He published a book on the “revolution in tabletop gaming design” as well as a volume on storytelling in the modern board game. In 2024, Marco donated his personal collection of over 5,000 table-top games to IU’s Lilly Library, where they are available to all library visitors.

Heather Bradshaw (Psychological and Brain Sciences) has run the Reacting to the Past game Climate Change in Copenhagen, 2009 in the honors section of her Introduction to Psychological and Brain Sciences class (PSY P-155)

Noah Eber-Schmid (Political Science) has used the Reacting to the Past game Raising the Eleventh Pillar: The Ratification Debate of 1788 in his Foundations of American Political Thought (POLS Y-383) class.

Janine Giordano Drake (History) has taught with the Reacting to the Past game Engines of Mischief: Technology, Rebellion, and the Industrial Revolution in England, 1817-1818 and created an exercise where students developed their own history-based characters for a course on the fictional and historical Alexander Hamilton.

Gerhard Glomm (Economics) and Rich Hardy (Biology, Human Biology) co-taught an Intensive Freshman Seminar on the Economics of Major Epidemics in which students played Cholera at the Pump: Contagionism, Miasma Theory and Sanitation, London 1854 .

John Karaagac (O’Neill School of Public and Environmental Affairs) runs the Paul O’Neill National Security Crisis Simulation, with students from his National Security Bureaucracy and Policy (SPEA V-414) class, in collaboration with the IU chapter of the  Alexander Hamilton Society. The simulation is open to all students, and a recent round attracted more than fifty volunteers.

Andrew Libby (Human Biology) participated in a CITL and PIRTL-sponsored Faculty Learning Community on role-playing pedagogies and has created tailor-made exercises for his students. In Food for Thought: Food Systems from Local to Global, (Intensive Freshman Seminar) Andrew’s students engage in a mock-US Senate debate on the US food system and a Hunger Banquet, where students respond to the allocation of varying-sized portions of food. In Global Climate Change and Human Health, HUBI B-200, students participate in a simulated UN Conference of the Parties on Climate Change.

Alex Lichtenstein (History and American Studies) was an early adopter of Reacting to the Past role-playing games at IUB, starting with the Struggle for Civil Rights, 1963 first as an Intensive Freshman Seminar and then an eight-week PACE/History course. Supported by grant from Center for Innovative Teaching and Learning (CITL), Alex developed his own game Freedom Summer, 1964, the centerpiece of his class Reacting to the Past: Freedom Summer 1964 (HIS A-300/PACE C-300/AMST A-399). The game has also been play-tested at Middle Tennessee State University, and Alex plans to finish developing the game during his next sabbatical.

Lisa-Marie Napoli (Political and Civic Engagement Program) taught Women’s Place in Society: Suffrage, Labor, and the New Woman (Intensive Freshman Seminar) with the Reacting to the Past game Greenwich Village, 1913: Suffrage, Labor, and the New Woman.

David Pace (Emeritus, History)—A leading scholar of the teaching and learning of history, David has done historical simulations for many years, and recently used characters from the Reacting to the Past game  Modernism v. Traditionalism: Art in Paris, 1888–1889 in his  Culture and Revolution in Paris, 1850–1900 class (Intensive Freshman Seminar). You can read his thought-provoking review of that game for the American Historical Review here.

Eric Robinson (History) and Joshua Danish (formerly of Learning Sciences, School of Education) designed a tabletop game, Cities of the Edge of War, for use in Eric’s Greek history class of the same name (HIST C-366). You can find a detailed analysis of the game and its evolution co-authored by its creators here and here.

Ron Sela (Central Eurasian Studies and Islamic Studies) created a character-building exercise for his class, Central Asia under Russian Rule (CEUS R-412). Students invent an historically-based character and join a group of explorers, adventurers, pilgrims, missionaries, settlers, soldiers, nomads, migrants, administrators, leaders, or rebels.   

Susan Siena (O’Neill School of Public and Environmental Affairs) employs simulations of U.S. National Security Council meetings in her Terrorism and Public Policy class (SPEA V-272).  In one exercise, created with O’Neill student Lalita Durbha, students represent different perspectives on how to respond to Al Shabaab in Somalia. Another role-play simulates a Council on Foreign Relations meeting in which students must choose whether to attempt a targeted assassination against a known Al Qaeda terrorist.

Dina Spechler (Political Science and Jewish Studies) leads a Model United Nations simulation in a series of combined class meetings of her Politics of the U.N. (POLS Y-399) and Introduction to International Relations classes (POLS Y-109). 

Carl Weinberg (History and PACE) has played a variety of Reacting to the Past games with his students in History, PACE, and LAMP. They include: Paterson, 1913: A Labor Strike in the Progressive Era, The Fate of John Brown, 1859,  Diet and Killer Diseases: The McGovern Committee Hearings, 1977,  Kansas, 1999: Evolution or Creationism, Rousseau, Burke, and Revolution in France, 1791, Patriots, Loyalists, and Revolution in New York City, 1775–76, and The Struggle for Civil Rights, 1963.