RPG Forums scenario using The Grand Pyramid of Giza

Welcome! This is the first scenario using the RPG Forum as an educational tool. We’ll be working on Chugach’s SS 7.4 standard. This covers “early civilizations and pastoral peoples era 4000-1000 BCE.” The objective of this standard is to “understand the institutions, people and events” from this period. The goal of the scenario is to help students connect to the human side of history. By this I mean that when you study history you’re typically reading and/or watching historic events from a disconnected point of view. Creating a very impersonal learning experience, often leading to memorizing dates, events and places without gaining an emotional connection. To solve this problem I’m using the text based roleplaying found on RPG Forums to provide a simulated experience. To do this, I’ve created a set of historic scenarios that allow students to personally interact with history in a dynamic way through cooperative storytelling (you can check out my RPG Forum guide to understand what RP’s are all about).

To showcase the standard we’ll be using the construction of The Grand Pyramid as the context for our role-playing. The Grand Pyramid at Giza is seen as one of the first major events in the BCE. I’ve chosen Giza because it signifies a major advancement in human history in developing large-scale projects that require massive amounts of funding and logistical support. This achievement highlights a defining characteristic of civilizations throughout BCE, that being the ability to coordinate people and supplies toward a unified goal (willingly or unwillingly).

In this scenario we’ll be RPing during the construction of The Grand Pyramid. This pyramid was commissioned by the pharoah Khufu who ruled between 2609–2584 BCE, the construction took place south-west of present-day Cairo on the Giza Plateau. The Grand Pyramid was a project that required workers from all over egypt; bringing in artisans of stone and clay, architects, engineers, boatmen, cooks, and laborers.

To successfully RP this scenario you’ll need to access several resources to accurately play your chosen character’s roles. Basically what this means is that when you choose your character, you’ll need to learn and infer about their professions, potential personality, likely ambitions, daily concerns, and life choices.

The overarching goal of the RP is for the players to join work gangs, see “ Life of Pyramid Workers” linked below. The players will then perform jobs within the worker gangs on the pyramid, they will compete with other gangs, have internal strife, deal with issues constructing the pyramid, loss of tools and etc.

Life of Pyramid Workers:

• http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/ancient/egyptians/pyramid_builders_01.shtml
• Food of Egypt:
• http://www.reshafim.org.il/ad/egypt/timelines/topics/food.htm
• Chain of command:
• http://www.ushistory.org/civ/3b.asp
• Boatmen of the Nile
• http://outline-of-history.mindvessel.net/150-sea-peoples-and-trading-peoples/151-the-earliest-ships-and-sailors.html

To create your character you’ll follow a character sheet. I’ve set one up below as an example:

Character Sheet:

Name (Your character's Name, make sure to keep in historically accurate):

Age (Your characters age, keep in mind the average lifespan of people back then) :

Gender (Male or female):

Job:

Skills:

Appearance (Writing up two to three paragraphs that describe your character is common):

Personality (Same as the appearance for descriptive):

Biography (Same as the descriptives for personality or appearance, just read up on egyptian life):

Now that we have covered the context and character sheets, where do the role-players come in? Well the goal of the RP is to have students role-play their character in workers gangs that are assigned tasks from the pharaoh’s vizor who in turn receives orders from the pharaoh. These two roles will be role-played by the teacher, giving them control of the rp. This means that the teacher will place their students into worker gangs and then give those gangs historically accurate challenges, tasks and rewards based on completion speed and quality. The students goal, or the goal of the role-players is to perform and complete tasks given by the Vizor.

• Vizors tasks
• Assign role-players to roles ( there can be more if you wish):
• cook
• Laborers (actually moving blocks into place)
• Architects:
• Boatsmen (Transporting stone blocks)
• leader of the worker gang
• Set up challenges and obstacles for the gangs. Forecasting low water for the Nile.
• Give the worker gangs jobs related to the pyramids construction.
• Give out rewards based on historically accuracy, and completion of projects.

Thats pretty much it, for comments and questions feel free to email me at cymeks.hun@gmail.com or post in the comments section.