Played two at a time

Goal: to finish your degree and get a job without losing your spirit. To do so, you need to interact with other players and create your own winning card set (or deck).

Required equipment: Starter card set, additional (blank) cards, pens

Starter card set:

• Advisor (one-star Status card)
• Required reading (one-star Achievement card)
• Love of reading (one-star Passion card)
• Dingy apartment (one-star Life card)
• Trashy reading (one-star Sanity card)
• Experience record card, divided into Play and Win sections

Play: card duels

There are two types of activities in the game: card play and card creation. Card play is a simple duel: each player shuffles her or his cards, deals from her or his hand, and whoever has the higher rank in the pair wins the duel:

• More stars beats fewer stars
• For cards with the same number of stars, Status > Achievement > Passion > Life > Sanity > Status. (So Status beats every other card except Sanity.)

If both players show cards with the same number of stars in the same category, each player sets aside that card and selects another card, with play continuing until there is a winner. At the end of a card duel, each player puts her or his mark (which may be simply initials) on the other player’s experience record card. The experience record card has two sections on each side: Play and Win. You always put a mark in the other player’s Play section, and if the other player won, you also put your mark in the Win section.

Card creation

As you accumulate experience, you can exchange the marks of other players on your experience record card into the right to create new cards in your deck. Each card you create will be in one of the five categories above, with 2-5 stars depending on how many experience marks you exchange, and the mark of a fellow player (who saw you cross off the requisite marks on your experience record card), and on the mostly-blank side, a declaration of Creative Commons license. It is through the creation of new cards that you progress in the game, either to finish your degree or to get a job.

Stars: Each mark on your experience record card is worth one star. (You must have at least two marks to create a card. You cannot create a new card with only one star.)

In addition, for THATCamp and THATCamp only, you have the right to create a new card for every comment you add to the bottom of this post. (I will put my mark on your card for these new cards–find me and I’ll be happy to read the comment and initial your card. You need to play at least a few card duels between comments, so you have something to write about, so if you write more than one, I’ll ask to see your experience record card.)

Categories: You pick the category.

Specifics within categories: you pick what you get within the category, but you should keep in mind the requirements for graduation:

• Two Status cards in the following areas: teaching, presenting at a conference, being an R.A. for a professor, working on a committee.
• Three Achievement cards: one each in theory, methods, and content. Label each achievement card with both the general and specific (e.g., Cupcake Theory).
• Two Passion cards: a pre-dissertation scholarship project and your dissertation project
• Two Life cards, which are nonspecific (you can create your own such as relationship, join a fitness center, child, moving)
• One Sanity cards: you have to create your own!

You will see that all of the starter cards are marked “CC BY” to indicate Creative Commons license. As you create your own additions to the cards, you will declare what license each card has.

Winning

You win by graduating and/or getting a job. Graduating requires that you create 10 cards (see the degree requirements above). Getting a job requires creating cards worth at least 25 points.

Feedback

If you play this game, please comment below and help improve the game by answering the following questions:

• Best parts?
• Weakest parts?
• Suggestions for change?

4+ players

Required equipment: one die, something to time with, and either paper and pen or a computer to type on.

Goal: To become the last grad student standing, and thereby the next Advisor.

Set-up:

1. Pick one player as Advisor for a round, and all others become her or his Students. (Note: if one player is a faculty member, that faculty member cannot be the first Advisor.)
2. Each Student proposes a dissertation title in the form of “The [noun] of (optional article) [noun].”
3. Advisor “suggests” changes to the dissertation topic by inserting adjectives before the nouns, so that each title becomes “The [adjective] [noun] of (optional article) [adjective] [noun].” The adjectives should be chosen either to be completely irrelevant to the topic or heavily theoretical jargon. English dissertation titles could thus have adjectives related to biochemistry/nanotechnology or the worst of poststructuralist jargon. If pressed for imagination, one can always insert “puppyhood” as the first adjective and “pants” as the second. Or “kleptomanic” and “kludgy.” You get the idea. The suggestions are NOT optional; if you are a Student, you just have to deal with the “revised” dissertation title. It’s good for you; your Advisor knows best.
4. Advisor creates a six-by-two table. One column should be common types of questions asked graduate students: what are your findings, what are the limitations of your research, what are you doing next, what about [specific topic] and your dissertation, how does it tie into real-world or teaching concerns, why should we care about your topic, etc. The other column should be a random collection of topics, with the only requirement that the topics have NOTHING to do with any dissertation topic. Advisor puts this table where it can be seen by all Students as well as herself/himself.
5. Finally, Advisor should write down some wildcard topics that should not be shared with Students.

Play proceeds in rounds, with (at least) one Student dropping out at the end of each round. Each Student takes turns in a round, with the following steps of an individual turn:

1. Student rolls the die twice (or rolls two dice, as long as the dice have different appearances). The first die roll tells the Advisor which type of question to ask. The second die roll tells the Advisor what the topic is to connect to it. Because the six-by-two table is visible to all, a Student can see what the Advisor is about to ask… unless the total of both rolls is seven.
2. If the two dice rolls sum to seven, Advisor adds a second topic (thus the suggestion for the wildcard list kept privately). This topic will be a total surprise until the question is asked.
3. Advisor asks the question.
4. The Student has to answer the question IMMEDIATELY and completely fill the designated length of an answer for the round. Round 1 = 15 seconds, round 2 = 30 seconds, round 3 = 45 seconds, etc. If the Student stops talking before the round length and another Student can finish the answer, the Student is immediately dismissed for failing to have a complete answer.
5. At the end of the answer, all other players should hoot and holler and otherwise make noise, tease, etc.

At the end of a round, Advisor dismisses one Student. If all Students filled the designated length of the answer, then the Advisor should pick the Student with the worst answer (e.g., not answering the question or not addressing one topic) but has the complete dictatorial authority to be capricious and dismiss a Student for any reason whatsoever. If at least one Student was dismissed during the round for failing to have a complete answer (see Step 4 of a turn above), then Advisor does not dismiss another Student. (Yes, more than one Student can be dismissed for failing to have a complete answer.)

The last Student standing becomes the next Advisor.

If you play this game, please comment below and help improve the game by answering the following questions:

1. How many players were in this game?
2. How long did it take?
3. Best parts?
4. Weakest parts?
5. Suggestions for change?