My project is to develop a game for my course Introduction to Health Care Ethics class (HSAD 210), which explores moral, social, and policy issues related to climate justice. This is a required class for all undergraduate majors in the College of Nursing and Health Professions, and enrollment is capped at 25 students at all stages of their degree work. There are no dedicated classes on the health or social impacts of climate change in CNHP, and I am not aware of any classes that include climate issues as a topic. For many (perhaps most) of my students, this will be the only classroom encounter they have with issues related to climate change and climate justice, so I want to provide them with a memorable experience that encourages further reflection and exploration either in other classes at Drexel or beyond their formal coursework.
Interest and tension will be heightened by making the game an opportunity to earn a significant amount of extra credit points. Distribution of these points will be unequal at the start of the game, representing inequality in society. Students may adjust this distribution through game play, but whether and how much they do will be up to them. However, if the class fails to sufficiently mitigate and adapt to climate change during the game, all extra credit will be lost.
The game will be part of an existing two-week module on distributive justice in health and health care, and will take approximately two hours of class time spread over two 80-minute class periods – part of one period to frame and teach the game, a full period to play it, and some additional class time for debrief if needed. I will also provide an option for the module assignment to give students an additional opportunity to reflect on the experience.
Below I will sketch out the general game concepts and mechanisms. (If unfamiliar with the board game Daybreak on which this project is based, you may want to watch the 11-minute quickstart guide before reading on).
The game is based on the acclaimed board game Daybreak, which explores climate action by having players take on the roles of major global powers working together to manage the climate crisis while balancing economic and social needs. My variant of the game will use the physical components and central mechanisms of Daybreak, and add an economic mechanism to emphasize dilemmas of climate justice in a society like ours that is riven by radical economic and social inequalities.
The game will require one copy of Daybreak, about 50 additional wooden cubes (ideally all the same color, but not required), a cell phone mounted on a tripod, and a classroom with a large video monitor. The instructor must be thoroughly familiar with the rules of the board game. They will manage the central game board where a society’s greenhouse gas emitting activities, and their impacts on the climate are tracked, and where students play cards representing the development and deployment of technologies and policies aimed at climate mitigation and adaptation. The instructor will need to be able to efficiently teach students the rudiments of game play, and shepherd them through their turns as needed, especially in the first round of the game.
Set the central game board and one player board up on a table at the front of the room. Use a cell phone mounted on a tripod over this and use zoom or some other connection to send live video of the play area to the room’s large video monitor. This will allow the students to see crucial game state information at all times and add some drama by creating an atmosphere of being in a climate response “war room.”
Divide the students into five groups as evenly as possible Each group represents a different socioeconomic stratum of society, and key resources will be unequally distributed throughout of the game to reflect differences in wealth and the size of the population in the different strata. The wooden cubes represent the financial resources needed to undertake actions to mitigate or adapt to climate change; the deck of project cards from Daybreak are the actions that can be taken.
Explain that one group will start the game with a relatively large number of cubes but few cards, representing the relatively small number of people who possess most of the wealth in society. Each additional group will get successively fewer cubes but more cards, representing larger segments of the population that are less affluent. All groups will play an equally essential role in the game, because it will take both money to finance climate action and people to carry it out.
Then take 25 cubes and the deck of project cards and distribute them as follows:
Group 1 (most affluent, least populous): 15 cubes and 1 card per student
Group 2: 5 cubes and 1 card per student, + 3 more cards
Group 3: 3 cubes and 2 cards per student
Group 4: 2 cubes and 2 cards a student + 3 more cards
Group 5 (least affluent, most populous): 0 cubes and 3 cards per student.
The game is played in a maximum of six rounds, consisting of the following stages.
Global Stage. Follow the rules of Daybreak, with the instructor leading a brief class discussion to review the Forecast Crisis card and selecting a Global Project card perhaps though not necessarily on the basis of a class vote.
Local Stage. This is the heart of the game. Students will play as communities in their groups, playing, discarding, and combining project cards into sets to take actions to the central player board following the rules for the local stage of Daybreak. Cards and cubes can be exchanged between groups freely, but when playing them to the player board at the front of the room to take climate action, cubes must be paid. Every time a card is placed or moved in the central area of the board, a cube must be paid by the group doing the action. Keep track of the cubes paid by each group as they will be returned to them at the end of the round during the Growth stage. The local stage is limited to 10 minutes. Groups may take as many actions as they can pay for during this time.
Emissions Stage. Following the rules of Daybreak, the instructor will total the among of carbon cubes generated this round, sequester as many as possible, and add the rest to the global heating thermometer.
Crisis Stage. Following the rules of Daybreak, the instructor will resolve planetary effects and crisis cards to show their impacts on the planet and its communities.
Growth Stage. Add wealth cubes to the cubes to be returned to the groups as follows. If current energy demands are met, add five wealth cubes + an additional number of cubes equal to to the current round number, then subtract from these cubes by the number of communities in crisis. Then distribute these cubes back to the piles of cubes spent by each group. If the additional cubes cannot be distributed evenly, favor the groups in order of the most affluent (i.e. group 1). Return the wealth cubes to the groups. Then students draw back any local project cards they have played or discarded during the round so that they have the same number of cards they started with. Finally, following the rules of Daybreak, the instructor will check to see if the student have won, and if not they will increase their energy demand representing further economic growth.
Ending the game. The game ends immediately when the class has won or lost, or after six rounds.
The class wins by reaching drawdown (more carbon is removed from the atmosphere than is produced) during the emissions stage while managing to keep society intact through one final crisis stage.
Players lose the game if any of the following conditions occur:
The global heating thermometer on the central game board reaches 2.0 degrees C.
The player board has 12+ communities in crisis.
Players haven’t won by the end of round 6.
If players lose, no extra credit is awarded (society collapsed or failed to address the climate crisis). If players win, five extra credit points are awarded per wealth cube for each member of the group that possesses them. (For example, if a group ends a winning game with five wealth cubes, each member of the group will get 25 points of extra credit).