in the 1980s at first as the 80s at MTV
went a little astronaut and the moon
when they showed like actual music
videos its Ghostbusters it’s Indiana
Jones right its et it’s uh it’s a time
in which we had things like pac-man and
when we had a Donkey Kong when we had
Atari and television and colecovision
it’s also time when a game a tabletop
game was gaining in tremendous amount of
popularity surging in interest and that
game of course is Dungeons & Dragons
this is a picture of my own personal
collection a small very small fraction
of my own personal collection dungeon
dragons was not invented in the 1980s it
was invented in 1974 by Gary Gygax and
Dave Arneson but by the 80s it had taken
off and for people like me it was just
absolutely fantastic I remember when I
first got my red box set of Dungeons &
Dragons this came one winter night
Christmas Eve my uncle got it for me and
I never looked back I absolutely I
absolutely adored the game of him
playing it for the the remainder of my
life now it turns out that not everyone
even though the game has been around for
decades not everyone this makes me makes
me a little sad it’s true not everyone
knows what Dungeons & Dragons is about
so I will point to Gary Gygax himself
the inventor of Dungeons and Dragons he
gives us a little bit of an idea of what
it is in the introduction to the first
edition advanced central Dragons players
handbook but roughly that’s such an
interesting game is it didn’t have edges
and by that I mean it wasn’t a board you
sat down at a table with your friends
most people took on the role of an
individual character right and it was
all bottles all borrowed from tropes
involving fantasy characters from
Tolkien’s swords and wizardry this sort
of thing so you were a row you were a
warrior you were a spell caster and you
had a sheet in front of you and the
sheet would give you information about
what your character could do what your
character couldn’t do there’s a set of
rules to resolve some things and then
there was this other person the dungeon
master and she or he would would invent
a world and invent certain scenarios a
dungeon to explore and a lot of it was
talking back and forth you know I’m
go here I wouldn’t want to go there and
the Dungeon Master would then help
resolve certain things through a set of
through set of die rolls and so it was
it was a tremendous amount of fun we all
had a great time with it but something
else started happening in the 1980s with
Dungeons and Dragons and that was the
satanic panic or the moral panic believe
it or not in the 1980s dungeon dragons
came under scrutiny a lot of scrutiny as
the sort of game that would lead to
physical harm and moral ruin and this
was not just this was not just found in
some small towns across the United
States there ended up being a 60 Minutes
episode about this there ended up being
a movie called mazes and monsters
starring of all people Tom Hanks about
this there was a little pamphlet from
Jack Chick notoriously called dark
dungeons that was supposed to show a lot
of terrible things that were happening
you had you had people who were
professionals saying that the content of
this game was uh was really problematic
and this satanic moral panic ended up
hitting home for me literally hometown
right I grew up in Chardon Ohio it’s a
small town east of Cleveland population
five thousand one day as a kid 1980s I
see pamphlets going around saying that
there’s going to be a town discussion
about Dungeons and Dragons in the
basement of the library at least they
got the basement part right because most
dungeon dragons playing took place in
parents basement right so all right
we’re going to be in the basement and I
went there and it was just a spectacular
moment there was a psychiatrist who was
sharing her stories about how she was
absolutely convinced that some of the
cases that she saw people who wanted to
kill themselves were wanting to kill
themselves because of Dungeons and
Dragons
there was there was a police officer
dressed as a police officer with a you
know with a gun and a badge saying that
he had gone to arrest someone on drug
charges and when he went to arrest this
person this person was playing Dungeons
& Dragons and when he then went to make
the actual rest this person seemed to
reveal supernatural power and the only
thing I could think is I’m playing this
game wrong
and I want to start playing it like that
right maybe I read too many comic books
as well but none of this rang true with
the lived experience of this game I mean
it’s a bunch of gut geeks sitting around
you know drinking Mountain Dew you know
– eating Doritos fighting over who got
the last Oreo the content of the game
you know I was Dungeon Master often and
my players would spend 45 minutes
arguing about whether to listen to a
door or not you know you want to listen
to the door I don’t know if I want to
listen to the door what if it’s trapped
well if it’s trapped someone should look
for the traps well wait but I’m not
gonna look for the trap this is the
content of the game it was still awesome
I probably didn’t describe it right then
is sounding awesome but is still awesome
all right so at that moment in the
basement of the library of my hometown I
stood up and said that I would devote my
life to showing the goodness that
dungeon dragons brings into the world
that’s absolutely not true right I mean
that’s what was going on my head at the
moment but I was still really young and
completely intimidated but it turns out
that I found myself decades later in a
profession where I could demonstrate
that this game gives us some interesting
insights that can help us make people
better moral agents and that’s what I
want to turn to now so I am a professor
at the Harvard Kennedy School of
Government and my my job is to help
teach ethics in an impactful meaningful
way for professionals to find ways to
make ethics sticky and so um common
ethics pedagogy when you take a look at
it is mostly some back-and-forth between
between theory and cases so some courses
lean pretty heavily on theory and we’re
going to go through it all we’re going
to go through consequentialism
deontology John Rawls and so forth and
maybe just do a little bit of dabbling
with cases others leaning hard on cases
let’s look at protagonists in these
situations and seeing what they’re doing
but it’s typically this back and forth
however I recognize that there there was
much merit in the movement to add more
experiential learning into the classroom
experience you’re learning not just
being generally active learning
I think classrooms and ethics can have
active learning when you just have
people you know engaging the Socratic
method back-and-forth talking to each
other in small groups about what’s going
on but experiential learning the kinds
of things that you get with simulations
and so you know I wanted to add
simulations into this cycle where you
can have students engage in
some kind of an activity that’s not just
analyzing a case or not just you know
consuming theory and come out of that
with some really really interesting
insights about their own moral character
and about how they want to navigate the
world the challenge that I found is that
standard simulations worked in great
ways for teaching things like
negotiations or leadership and so forth
it wasn’t entirely useful for what I
wanted to do in ethics so a typical
simulation is one where participants are
given roles and sometimes those roles
are fairly fairly tight you’re supposed
to you know you like this person you
don’t like that person here’s your goal
here’s what you’re supposed to do you
use simulations to develop skills
sometimes as I said their leadership and
negotiation skills professionals
sometimes go through live simulations to
make sure that they can help in
emergency situations there is an ethical
dimension that I’ve seen in some
simulations where you take on a wholly
different perspective you get inside the
skin of someone else and you use that to
build your ability to understand how
different people think about the world
and see the world and I thought all that
was was fine and well but I wanted to do
something different one of the things I
found happening with my students
especially when they looked at cases is
they would look at this case it was you
know are often a real case not just an
imaginative one and when going through
the case they would always imagine
themselves as the protagonist acting
heroically right I recognized that for
my dungeon dragons playing as well right
but they they would always they would
never have made the mistakes that these
other individuals have made and look
that’s a very natural disposition to
have right we all sort of want to think
about ourselves as acting heroically in
these sorts of situations I wanted to
put students into situations where they
got we got to test that we got to see
well what what would you actually do in
some of these things without really
putting them into a situation where
there’s high-stakes ethics in play so
what I ended up doing is stepping back
and thinking about some of the general
design principles from Dungeons and
Dragons because it turns out that in a
lot of dungeon dragons gameplay you end
up thinking about ethical issues you end
up doing things that I thought would be
extraordinarily useful to bring into the
classroom and so here are some
abstractions of gameplay from Dungeons
and Dragons that I wanted to then use to
design ethics simulations one is you
confront scenarios where there’s no
clear line of authority on
on how to make a decision right and so
the thought here is you can’t just say
wow this is a really tough issue who
should be the person that is answering
this it’s up to you so someone has to
figure out how to go about answering
this thing roles are assigned but
they’re minimal and old school dungeon
dragons you know you or fighter you or
you were wizard whatever you had some
invented personality but mostly was you
the decision-making the rest of it was
is entirely on you you couldn’t hide
behind this being an exercise in acting
that has changed a little bit in the
years since the original game came out
but I like that old-school feature of it
there’s a simple set of rules that can
adapt to any sort of course of decision
that’s made you know you are not it’s
not choose-your-own-adventure dungeon
dragon does not choose your own
adventure you know if you go this way
turn to page five if you go this way
turn to page 25 really it’s very
open-ended you can end up doing whatever
you want then the rules will help
resolve whatever it is that you do all
right
so participants must cope with ongoing
uncertainty there’s those dice and this
is something that I found especially in
simulations that a lot of simulations
did not build into them which is
uncertainty not arbitrariness
uncertainty you always know that when
you make a decision there’s going to
have to be a roll of the die that’s
going to determine what actually happens
and you can play the odds a little bit
but at the end of the day you have to
live with the consequences of what the
dice say and last is that you have to
establish most of the goals you know
this is a running joke in people who are
just learning about dungeon dragons they
say well you know who won yeah there’s
not winning in dungeon dragons really
you play just to keep on playing you
play to have your characters advance and
so forth and so on if you want more
goals than that you have to put them in
play they don’t come by way the game so
what I want to take you through now
briefly is an example of a simulation
that I built using these design
principles and the simulation is called
patient zero a game of ethics leadership
and negotiation and the first thing I
want to mention is that this is inspired
by a lot of the design of dungeon
dragons but it’s importantly different
in some respects so what happens is I
get and I typically do this in
professional schools like the Harvard
Kennedy School I’ve done it at the
Harvard Graduate School of Education
I’ve done at the School of Business I’ve
done at the Harvard Extension school and
so you get individuals into groups of
about five and there are simulation
managers we call them simulation
managers not Dungeon Master’s for what I
hope are completely obvious reasons and
they they have been trained with me on
how to how to do the work that a Dungeon
Master would do in these sorts of things
but if groups of individuals at tables
let’s say five or seven individuals and
the first task that we give them is to
create a country so this is a simulation
where rather than handing them hey
you’re Brazil right hey you’re the
United States and so forth it’s no
you’ve got to actually invent your own
country some of that is done with just
decisions right on the ground and some
of that is done through the rolling of
dice and so the first thing that we get
is buy-in because the country is created
right there on the spot it is the player
character in the simulation this country
co-created by individuals somewhat
randomly and somewhat by decisions that
are made and the country has attributes
likability scores that I consider to be
the sort of core features of a country
which the country’s economy like with
its infrastructure like military
institutions and health and again what
you end up getting is some distribution
and choices here based on what the group
decides is most important and also what
happened with the dice roll so some
groups were all very well and have a
nice pool of points to distribute
amongst these things others won’t it’s
it’s always interesting to see what
happens when the first dice roll made is
a bad one and you have a team that’s
like ugh because we’re going to go
through the simulation with a country
that’s already a little bit hobbled but
that happened in dungeon dragons too
with some characters so just to give you
an idea when you distribute points
across these various attributes what we
do is we give individuals a chart like
this that helps explain what the numbers
are supposed to mean so it’s you know
there’s a level of abstraction but we
don’t want it to be too abstract it’s
kind of it’s kind of crazy to just say
to someone hey you know do you want a 1
a 2 a 3 or 0 military the response to
that at first is I have no idea what
you’re talking about right but here with
this you get an idea of what the what
the numbers end up meaning narrative lis
in the in the simulation all right and
then we get some short we give some
choices to them so that they can help
really build their country from the
ground up what kind of government do you
want to have what’s the environment of
your country like the cuisine obviously
the most important one right the cuisine
tourist sites but you would be amazed
right and again this is modeled off of
some dungeon and Dragons you know
character development there’s the core
abilities and that’s really important
but then there’s the things that
sometimes called fluff that ends up
really playing an important role as you
as you move on and we also asked
participants to decide two things that
are true of their country doesn’t mean
that the others are false but these are
the things that are really important and
in some sense identity forming for their
country what is your country essentially
like you know do you have
constitutionally guaranteed rights is
there homogeneity in religious beliefs
etc etc so this is a bunch of decisions
that are made and then the team is given
a generic role so I don’t spend much
time building in details of the role
because that’s not what the simulation
is supposed to be about they’re just a
group of high-ranking officials they’re
told that they’re going to be the
closest advisors to their leader their
leader could be a queen a king right now
whatever kind of country that they
decided why president Prime Minister you
get the idea and they’re told that they
have to make the best decisions they can
under the information constraints and
time constraints that they’re given the
main dynamic of the simulation is
they’re given an event at first it’s an
event that everyone has and then it’s
events that the simulation manager gives
them they come up with something you
know think about it they argue with
themselves they come up with some
response and then there’s a resolution
and that resolution involves rolling
dice what is patient zero about
specifically zombies yes I have gotten
away with running a eight hours on B
apocalypse at Harvard Kennedy School
Harvard Business School Harvard
Extension school etc etc turns out
though that a zombie apocalypse is
actually a really interesting simulation
in that you can model the evolution of
pandemics very well with it and it puts
you into that very nice place where you
know that absolutely no one sitting down
at the table will had any experience
with this whatsoever right that’s a
really interesting and important boy
right I mean this simulation was
designed for people coming from all over
the world with all sorts of experience
and I always tell students at the very
beginning of this if you in fact have
had experience with the content of the
simulation you should talk to me
individually right uh and uh and we’ll
go from there so we give we sit them
down we
give them this opening outbreak the
opening outbreak is exactly what you
might imagine there have been rumors
about some kind of some kind of events
people are cognitively compromised
they’re behaving violently they’re not
responding to reason or any of these
sorts of things then we have them make
some decisions and the core mechanic is
to roll a couple of six-sided dice and
add their country tribute that’s not a
dungeon dragons mechanic it’s a mechanic
from a different game that I found very
useful the the basic way that this
unfolds is that if you get a ton or
higher you got a success if you get a
seven to nine you get a success with
some complications if you get a six or
lower you fail Obamacare is the perfect
example of a 7 to 9 if you do the math
on this there’s going to be a lot of
rolls that fall into that range you
succeed but it’s complicated
so you can imagine an Obamacare roll is
what do you want to do I want to create
better healthcare roll 7 to 9 all right
well here’s the good news you succeeded
here’s the bad news
it came a tremendous political cost
right and you’re going to be tied up in
the courts for a long long time that’s
the kind of complications that you want
in these simulations success happens but
it’s never exactly as clean as you would
you would want it to be this mechanic is
powered by a system called apocalypse
world and so I want to give credit where
credit is due and so I just want to step
back for a minute and say that it’s a
really fun and exciting experience to do
this and you can move in a couple of
different directions based on what you
want to do if you want to take away
simulation managers because that’s too
much you can do so but it’s and that
will improve scalability if you want to
on the other side of it really increase
individual roles you can do that as well
so you can really play with this in a
couple of different directions that I
think is is quite quite exciting and
useful um I think if you want to just
mention three big takeaways one is
simulation should be introduced into
ethics pedagogy I think that Dungeons &
Dragons and the games that have been
designed in light of dungeon dragons
gives us a really good way of thinking
about how to do that and simulations
like patient zero end up showing us how
this can happen in a way where you merge
ethics with leadership and negotiation
I’ve been doing this for years now and
the reason I’m standing in front of you
is because there’s been overwhelming not
Universal but overwhelming enthusiasm
from professionals
raus the world in running through this
if I have one last thing to say it’s
this and I hope this is obvious it’s
certainly not original but I think it’s
worth mentioning all the same and that
is that playing and learning our
complementary not incompatible and it’s
been a great great opportunity to share
this with you today and also to
rehabilitate I hope the role the dungeon
dragons can play in in moral reflection
thank you very much [Applause]