Download Triptych Materials

Triptych is a unit of work designed to engage students in text creation through the use of solo journaling games. Solo journaling games provide such a concise and focused experience, but the genre also have real diversity.

Triptych is a self-contained unit of work that uses solo journaling games to explore the creation of different text types. Across the course of four to six lessons, students play a series of three short games, before creating their own for others to play.

In solo journaling games, a simple set of rules provides prompts for a single player to produce a text as they play, often in the form of a diary or journal. The challenge of the game is in responding to interesting and evocative prompts, and in creating a rich and engaging text as a result. While journaling games come in many formats, the games in this unit are all presented as tri-fold A4 pamphlets.

The three games in Triptych are accompanied by a teacher’s guide that explaining how to run the unit. The guide aims to provides enough structure for you to confidently get these games into your classroom, while leaving you enough flexibility to shape the experience to your students and your context.

Triptych includes three self-contained games, each in the format of a one-page pamphlet. émigré is a game about a journey of exile, in which players write a narrative text. Realm is a game about chronicling the history of an empire, in which they write an informative text. And chindogu is a game about advertising ridiculous inventions, in which they write persuasive texts.

After playing these three games, students develop their own one-page journaling game. This is scaffolded with brainstorming exercises and frameworks for playtesting.

The downloads also contain a teacher’s guide explaining how to run the unit in your classroom and  feedback form for students to use when reviewing each other’s games.

In émigré, players write a narrative text that tells the story of someone who is forced to leave their home and make a dangerous journey in hope of finding a new life. To play émigré they will need the pamphlet, a pen or pencil, and something to write on. This will be their diary, where each entry describes another step in their journey of exile.

Rather than any chance mechanism, the prompts are a result of the player’s birthday and first name – creating an unnerving connection to the emmigrant whose story they are telling.

In Realm, players will be writing the history of a region over many years. They might choose to imagine their realm as a fantasy kingdom, a modern nation, or a futuristic precinct. Using their imagination and storytelling skills, they craft an unusual and engaging chronicle.

Players need a blank page for their chronicle, a coin to toss, and a map showing a number of countries, regions or states. Photocopying random, obscure pages from an atlas is an easy way to provide these. Each player selects part of a map to be their realm. Over the course of the game they will be writing an imaginary history for this area, using the geography and placenames from the map for inspiration, but completely unconnected to the actual past of that area in the real world.

Inside the tri-fold pamphlet, the story begin with a prompt dated 1463. Players read the prompt, look at their map, and make an entry in their chronicle, recording the year and a description of events at that time. Then they move along the path to the next event. If there are two paths, they toss a coin and move along the heads or tails path, depending on the outcome.

Repeating this process, they create an entry in your chronicle for each event. Eventually they will reach a space that instructs them to write a final entry in your history. After that, the official chronicle of their realm is complete.

In chindogu, players have been chosen to design a webpage promoting a catalogue of questionably practical innovations. They will need a sheet of blank paper (ideally a nice big one) to design the webpage on. They will also need something write with, and a six-sided dice.

To find out about the first product they will be advertising on the webpage, consult the product information tables inside the manual. They then consult the target market table on the back of the manual to learn who they will be selling this amazing product to.

Sources of Inspiration

Triptych (as well as emigre, Realm and chindogu) were informed by the many brilliant journalling games that show how diverse and powerful this emerging genre can be. Some particular points of reference were:

I also took inspiration about format and use of space from different one-page games and modules that have appeared in recent years.

All of the materials for Triptych were made without the use of generative AI.