Note: This is the “rough cut” of Argumentation: a game about how history works that is provided for free for promotional purposes. It’s zip file contains an incomplete but functional a print-and-play deck, tuck box, and some notes. The final version will be cleaned up, have some different images, and will also have suggestions made by backers integrated into it with the goal of creating the experience that best helps the players examine how history works.

And, of course, it will be a physical product!

Please follow this project to receive updates HERE.

The crowd funding of Argumentation will launch on Backerkit on March 13th, 2025 at 10:00 AM PDT.

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.

As part of the open and collaborative nature of this project, the author (me) has left seven cards unfilled at launch with the intention of allowing you the backers to submit suggestions for framing and question cards. Please feel free to do so. If your suggestion is used, you will receive credit on the card. Additionally, the current rough version of the game is being made available electronically for free so that you can download it, critique it, and offer constructive comments (suggestions from professional historians will be particularly appreciated). All input offered in good faith will be received in good faith.

Please send comments to: highrockpress@gmail.com

Follow this LINK to a longer form video in which I explain the thought that went into the game, and why I felt the project to be important. I share my thoughts on why the models of history we embrace shape our views on politics, culture, and the nature of reality as we experience it through the cultural and intellectual frameworks we exist within.