2.1 Profile

Due: September 19th, 2023, 10am.

Profile

I want to start the year with a bit of a playful exercise. I want you to describe yourself (i.e. you the student a real person) as the character of a role-playing game – as we will soon begin to play in class. Your goal will be to describe yourself using a character sheet template – trying to creatively imagine your (real) self as a conglomeration of skills, character traits and the such. I'll provide a template and you are free to play with it to make it work for you.

You can "make a copy" (via google docs) of the template and then share it with me/the class. The template is modelled on the character sheet template for Reacting to the Past games, which we will make use of in the Fourth Crusade game we will use in the second part of Fall term to understand the medieval world.

The goal of your profile is to imagine yourself as if you were a character - how would a player quantify your skills and abilities, how would they describe your background and preparation for university, and what special knowledge, ideas, and creativity help define you. And also think about how you want to develop - if you want to level up, what skills would you seek to master next?

Contents

Your profile should include:

• your name

• your backstory (is there something about your biography which drives you to study the past? or games?)

• what are some ideas that are important to you? What is your idea of the goal of history, or what is religion to you?

• what are the conditions for your personal victory in class? What does it take to make this class a successful experience for you?

• do you belong to a "faction"? How would you locate yourself if you had to place yourself as the centre of a network ?

The template asks you for more information, which you have the freedom to modify as you see fit. Your major goal is simply to see yourself as a game developer-historian might in two hundred years.

Alternate projects

Maybe you have a hatred for RPGs, maybe you love to write short fiction and want to star yourself as a protagonist, maybe you paint, maybe you prefer a confessional video profile? If you don't want to do the faux-RPG profile, let me know and we can agree in advance on a creative and fun alternative that you can complete. The key goal of this assignment is to present yourself in a playful fashion - so that your classmates get a sense of who you are.