Gaming the Past

(Please pardon the roughness; I’m adapting a longer BSky thread to save a little time in my world — De Ag II has taken a significant amount of time) At long last, I am done preparing for getting cubes & dice & new cut-out cards & revised rules & all ready for De Agricultura 2: The Universal Overly-Simplified Pre-Modern Peasant Agriculture & al Little Village Politics Game.

This game marks at least an order-of-magnitude depth from De Agricultura I (still on the prototype page; still playable in class). As I noted earlier on BSky I shifted from a pure Roll&Write to an extravagant version with cubes and quite a few dice because I have small classes and I knew it would be easier and more enjoyable for my tenth garde history students to play. The prototype print&play pack includes the instructions for keeping the game a pencils-and-few-dice-only Roll&Write. Amazon has really cheap dice and cubes.

The designer, Jeremiah McCall (i.e. me) sitting and sorting and counting bags of counters and dice for the next class run of the De Ag II prototype.

Student playtests from last week & this (ending 10/29/26) were very successful, spurring several iterations through the prototype. The game reached a decent balance of playability and defensible models of the kinds of choices available to peasant subsistence farmers, though absolutely NOT defensible numbers. Please note, the 1.9 packet has the original numbers I worked from (thanks to Bret Deveraux and Nate Rosenstein’s works) but I strayed far from these as I iterated into greater and greater playability for students.

Some of my 10th grade students playtesting in class

he goal had always been to design a reasonably playable game about subsistence farming in an ancient or pre-modern society. I had a classroom version developed, De Agricultura I (see here for a fully playable prototype: gamingthepast.net/wp-content/u… ) that was workable but very simple.

I wanted more details about subsistence. Happily for me, @bretdevereaux.bsky.social went from his first awesome series on bread and peasants to a much more detailed series: acoup.blog/2025/07/11/c…. This gave me the information I needed to think about labor and think more granularly about food.

I ended up with an arithmetic heavy Roll&Write prototype that worked but was slower to learn and play for students than I would have liked. It also missed role of “the respectability basket” Bret discussed. Peasants could increase comfort & respectability by acquiring certain goods beyond subsistence.

An early iteration of De Ag II — completely Roll and Write

Figures for food & cloth units & consumption were simplified from Bret’s model families and consumption, but within ballpark. But a LOT of fractions and arithmetic, which tends not to go over well with my high schoolers. AND I really wanted them to get a more tactile experience

So even though it would mean that teachers interested in using the game would have to acquire more cubes and dice to create a play set, (I try to have my games for educators use few outside game materials neyond printing). Hence De Agricultura II, which added luxuries the shift to cubes.

The last completely Roll&Write iteration.

My friend and esteemed colleague (always), Vinicius Marino Carvalho did some playtesting with it and found it functionable (thx for nudging me to do this too, Vinicius). I ran it with my students as a pure Roll & Write (game play consists of dice and decision where all in game effects, states, and changes are written on a record sheet — think Yahtzee or RTTA or my own beloved Path of Honors)

2 Reasons (okay 3) I went with a Roll&Write

1. I am obsessed with them as a superior classroom tool
2. The easiest, logistically and in terms of expense, for other teachers to use.
3. It allowed me to have more precise numbers — still very much simplified orders of magnitude + fractions

The result: As predicted: the full R&W felt mathy and overwhelming to some, and I really like the physicality of harvesting cubes them losing them when one eats. So even though I knew it would make the game more expensive in terms of materials (quite a few cubes and meeples and dice)

BUT I often hobble myself with grand delusional plans of sharing these games when my #1 job is MY class, and I did have the materials. So I made the game the way I wanted in terms of cubes, meeples, dice, and no writing. First revised prototype, the player mat for one family: 3 pages!!!

Still more fidgety bits than I wanted, especially using black marker cubes for all this. Also the cognitive load of deciphering which sheet did what was overwhelming.

Note too that by shifting to a more manageable number of cubes and meeples meant that my game quantities were increasingly off from historical figures for subsistence requirements, labor needs etc. I tried to keep broad brush strokes though.

From the three-page player mat system and all cubes and meeples, I simplified down and put the fields and family members on cards so that a one page mat would hold most of the information. Here’s the one we used yesterday (10/29/26)

The game is in a playable state for people out there who want to try it out in classes or for personal interest. It does not have a full rulebook, but a two-page play guide that should be clear enough (here).

De Agricultura II A1.9