Overview:

How do museums build their collections? In this game, you will step into the shoes of prominent European and American museums, and amass your “Cabinet of Curiosity” (a real term for collections!). Through each time period, you will experience how historical events have shaped the different ways museums have collected cultural belongings, as well as the consequences of these methods. Compete with your friends, learn about the real artifacts and historical events, challenge yourself to earn more money, and have FUN! As you play, wrestle with your decision-making as you consider: 

“What are the power dynamics that shaped museum collections, and can a museum collect ethically?”

The game is suitable for 3-5 players aged 14+. Game play takes around 1 to 1.5 hours. 

Note from the designers: Museum collections are not neutral. Many prominent American and European museums were shaped by colonialism, war, unequal power relationships, and changing ideas about ownership. However, many have historically avoided talking about or taking account for how cultural belongings in their collections were acquired. In this game, we ask that players hold onto their ideas about museums, but be open to these ideas changing. Try to pay attention to how you feel throughout the game, and if this changes. If you feel uncomfortable with the choices you make while playing as a collecting museum, lean into that discomfort! We encourage you to think about how you can hold museums more accountable for their colonial legacy and how to involve the communities they harmed in their efforts to repair that harm.

Rules: 

Cabinets of Curiosities Rulebook.docx

Game Bits:

• 1 Game Board
• 1 Rulebook
• 44 Artifact Cards divided into three decks: Warfare, Market, and Commission
• 15 Historical Event Cards divided into three decks
• 5 Player Boards (aka your “Cabinet of Curiosities”)
• 5 Visitor Trackers (to track the number of visitors who visit your museum at the end of each round)
• 5 Cheat Sheets
• Paper Money
• 1 d6

Assessment Goals:

Our learning goals include information and attitude on museum acquisition, provenance, and repatriation. We used pre- and post- game interviews. 

Information: Most of the artifacts and events are real. As players handled cards with printed information and images of artifacts and events, they were curious about what was included. The acquisition methods are also real. Player actions for adding, flipping over, and removing artifact cards (acquisition through war, commission, and market, provenance investigation, and repatriation) were built in as mechanics.   

During the interview, players said they enjoyed looking at the artifacts image, learning the historical events, and learning the acquisition methods.  

Attitude: The player’s own choice of action (stealing vs commission) is one of the key game mechanisms meant to change attitude because they must constantly make ethical judgments. We want the players to weigh and understand why historically there were incentives to acquire cultural products unethically, and why it was hard or costly for museums to do provenance research and repatriation. The increasing awareness on ethical issues is reflected in the event cards. In the first stage, events focused on colonialism and incentivized stealing, but in the third stage, players started to see more cards that demand provenance, repatriation, and penalize earlier actions of stealing.

responses to the questions: “What do you think about museums?” “What types of things do you pay attention to when you visit museums?”
Pre Game	Post Game
“Not a big fan of museums” “Place for educational stuff, for learning something specific. Not that fun!” “Some museums focus on giving experiences ” “Can be fun for solo exploration, haven’t had lot of group experiences ” Art, expensive stuff, expensive to get into, sometimes free (museums for all) Tech Museum Anthropological →  Here’s an arbitrary thing a culture has made/we have made Fun, interactive design like the Exploratorium Focused on set-up, atmosphere, lighting, how you get to walk around in a museum (tunnel), music. How spacious. Depending on what themes Way they present info. Description for each item (too long to read!) Items themselves	“Much more fun?” “More as a business now than before, that has consequences (social enterprises) “How translate into real life (interest more)” “I wondering how many of the stuff I’ve seen at museums are stolen” “If the museum collects stuff from the same area, they might attract more visitors” “I think a museum should definitely say how they got the piece, if ethically relevant” “Well I think that becomes interesting because you’re talking about the history, so it’s like, ‘We have this piece from this collector,’ is where they [museums] stop. They don’t say, ‘And that collector purchased it from this person, who stole it during Nazi occupation’” “It’s not like I wouldn’t go to a museum, I just think like, ‘Oh, it’s interesting to know.’ I don’t think they should be fearful.”

History Versions of Game:

Our major changes focus on:

1. Investigation process. Whether an artifact is stolen or not is not random any more. Initially we thought that if the method of collection (i.e., war, black market, donation, commission) is attached to the card, players who replay the game would know each card’s provenance, and then the investigation mechanism would fail … so we changed it to by rolling a dice, but that is less educational. And later playtests showed this mechanism felt random and confusing. We came up with a solution that the stolen artifacts and commissioned artifacts are real with their sourced corresponded. And with the market one, we use generic names such as “Greek vases” in the front and their backs differ (some legit some stolen), which now the game is still replayable with investigation. 
2. Added Player mat and center board. There are sequences of iterations where we continue to use fonts, spaces, colors to make players rely on the board to keep track of the large amount of information. On the center board, we added a place for 3 different historical event card decks corresponding to each of our time periods. Also on the center board were 3 sections divided per acquisition method (warfare, market, and commission), which corresponded to three decks of artifact cards. Players also have their own mat to keep track of their progress and a small reference card for action. This helps to maximize game playability.
3. Simplify acquisition and historical periods . The consideration is how realistic /information the game can be and how much we want the player to have fun and get the main message we are trying to teach. Initially we were thinking about  other acquisition methods such as donation, black market, and dividing into five historical periods. But after iterating, we learned that too much information can overwhelm players, and might distract them from reflecting on the important ethical questions. Therefore, we simplify the mechanisms to reduce the less-relevant information.
4. Increase game playability and onboarding. We added images in the instructions, especially for the components and setup sections. This could make the game significantly easier for new players to set up independently. There was feedback on how hard it is to reference information only from the center board with text orienting one way, so we created a cheat sheet card. We also added different colored stickers to each player board to make tracking their visitor marker easier.

 

The playtests history:

Playtest	observations	Corresponding changes
Playtest #1:oct 2, 3 players (internal)	Too easy to do repatriation, players just repatriate all in the last round	Increased the cost of repatriation  Add history event cards that punish players with obviously stolen throughout eras
	Mechanics work but how obvious is learning?	added object facts & pictures and historical events
Playtest #2: oct 5, 3 players (other CS377G students – all from GSE)	Felt confused in general because of complex mechanism	Added cheat sheet that includes moves.  Getting rid of “points,” just use the money system
	Too many things to keep track of	Added score tracker  + center board (Outlines for where each artifact card goes, sorted into three sections per collection method)
	Confused about the special achievements	Added a player mat for each player to understand their own progress.
Playtest #3:. oct 6, 3 players (2 internal + one friend from GSE)	“The rules are too complicated, i rarely read the rulebooks, i always learn from playing with people who already know”	Add an introduction for the rule book and simplify for readability + cheat sheet
	Players keep forgetting to put on ‘legal’ or ‘illegal’ labels.  Investigation kind of random	Get rid of this mechanism entirely and use flipping
	Objects are placed randomly, wished it was placed according to historical truth. AM learning about pieces, wondered where they are NOT the dice	Sorted Artifact cards into 3 decks that feed specific acquisition methods. Color coded all researched and confirmed stolen artifacts as “red” and ethically commissioned artifacts as “green.” Added both stolen and ethical artifacts to Market, but kept ambiguous on front-facing side, with confirmation if “red”/”green” on back.
	Test player – want to learn more about historical event or artifact, but names too long and no photos. Lack of regional specificity and don’t know if card has positive/negative effect.	Bold – game effect Italicize – event description Write a clear title + lose or add points
Playtest #4: oct 7,  5 players (other CS377G students, 3 GSE players, 2 not)	https://drive.google.com/file/d/1cRo_hiB-e9KKxB9RZTD3WyxCXMraoalM/view?usp=sharing (visual recording)	Blind playtest. Low moderation playtest. Players play from rulebook.
	Need space for event cards because they place it in the market  Not enough space to place the artifacts  The orientation of the player mat is confusing …. (7:15)	More change in the board and player mat. Game board was made twice as big for more space and to include event cards inside. Bold important things, font size for headers Images of how it should be set up,
	Confusion over the difference between coins, points, and visitors (10:00)	Added clarification in the rulebook. Points eliminated. Instead, victory is based on coins at the end of the game.
	Players struggled to remember which color they were on the visitors track (11:46)	Added matching stickers/colored circle on each player board.
	Was not able to reach end of game where the reveal /punishment for stolen artifacts are	Reduce to three historical periods so that the reverse happen quicker and players have time to learn
Playtest #5: oct 12, 5 players (other CS377G students, 3 GSE players, 3 blind players)	https://drive.google.com/file/d/1wU-OvqFSspsQijyivJSOJNvbvsGt4gcS/view?usp=sharing	Confirms replayability Little to no moderation – success
	Players are confused about onboarding and rules. “Okay, this [the rulebook] seems like a lot” (7:05-7:08)	Simplified cheat sheet, and separated each action out into individual charts Rulebook – added photos, changed font to read more accessible Little change: Based on previous playtests, seemed players would prefer to have more information than too little. Kept most of content same.
	Players confused about what special achievement bonus numbers on player mats means (18:01-18:12)	Added labels of “visitors” to Cabinets, Score tracker, and Artifact cards so players can connect bonuses on player mats to score tracker
	Players expressed desire for more distinct feeling of progressing from one time period to next with event cards. Suggestion for adding info about time period to back of historical event cards. (1:02:53-1:03:38)	Each history card now says which time period from on back (help players more clearly feel time progression through eras as move through rounds)
	Players confused about who starts subsequent rounds. (47:41-47:53) Jessica mentioned that going first feels like a disadvantage because you get less money. (20:15-20:26)	Rule clarification: Player #1 begins each round, weighing out disadvantage from round 1 because same person always starts and has most options to pick from each round (can block other players, fill out their cabinet to unlock bonus points, etc.)
	Confusion on whether still receive money after Round #3: Michael mentioned in Round 3 that “nothing I do gives me more points” (53:24) However, after re-reading rulebook and talking with the other players who clarified he would still receive money at the end of Round 3, he decided to continue buying. (53:24-55:03)	Rule clarification, bolded and underlined in rulebook: “Money is added at the END of each round (including Round #3).”
	Confusion about coin denominations (10:30-10:55)	Changed to paper money, distinct by color and amount
	Better balance between new and returning players? (feedback form)	NO change: A big thing we aimed to design with this game was its replayability. While our game has elements of a statement game, we also wanted to ensure returning players could have a different experience.
	“I would love to see repatriation celebrated more.” (feedback form)	NO change: Important to ensure repatriation did not become completely doable or easy in the third round. Drew from Emma’s experience working in museum cultural collections and our research into stolen artifacts even post-1950s. Repatriation today remains a complicated, expensive, and lengthy process for both museums and the communities stolen from.

MDA and learning:

The goal for this game is more than to succeed within the game’s systems. Rather, the focus is on also developing a deeper understanding of museum acquisition, provenance, and repatriation. Is winning (i.e. gaining most points) winning? When they know that all the artifacts that are in the stolen category are REAL artifacts that have been stolen at some point. The emotional response and the continued reflection is the goal of our game. One player (out of class) said the biggest piece of info that shaped what she thought about museums now was that these pieces were stolen. She knew some were commissioned or were obtained through warfare, but she hadn’t thought about the black market before. There are longer moments of silence instead of laughing throughout the game. 

We set up incentives for players to collect cards from specific regions or all regions. This mechanic reflects the reality that collecting artifacts from the same region could help attract visitors. More importantly, our artifacts are set up in a ratio that makes it particularly hard to achieve the goal without warfare. Players commented that they felt inevitably needed to acquire artifacts through warfare, but also found it an important learning point. The discomfort around their own  decision-making was precisely what our game wanted to invoke. By placing them into the roles of museums (rather than, for example, communities trying to steal back their pieces) and designing the game that prevented players from playing an entirely “clean” game to win, we wanted to motivate players to make morally difficult choices and put themself in the mindset of a colonial institution like a museum, understand why institutions make ethically questionable decisions, and reflect on how that (re)shaped their ideas of museums. 

A player commented that museums should disclose the origins of their collections rather than being fearful of doing so. As this player’s comment reflects, we wanted to motivate players to question the authority of museums that we often take for granted and actually challenge them to confront their collection history. By including many Artifact cards that show real collection pieces that were stolen before making their way to museum collections, we intended to teach players to think more critically about museums as colonial sites of power. 

There are three kinds of fun: Narrative, Challenge, and Expression that we aim to create. The main one is Narrative. As we move through three different historical eras, Rounds 1 and 2 set the stage for Round 3, representing the rising action. Players during the 10/12 playtest talked about the “payoff” they felt in Round 3 (the climax) built up from previous rounds when suddenly faced with historical event cards that penalized those who had taken stolen Artifact cards. A mini denouement occurs when players calculate their money totals and penalize/reward players with the most and least stolen cards, respectively, setting up a big reveal for who has won the most money in the game by the end. Such a narrative is representing the realistic social/cultural/historical situations museums face and what we want the players to learn by experiencing the event cards themselves. The second one is Challenge, this is in a sense that players need to compete for artifacts, considering historical event cards AND each other’s actions (“opponent play”). The strategizing component. Players negotiated or argued with one another, which created competition. Finally, players assembled their own cabinets of curiosity through the selection of artifacts, but also expressed their own ethical stance. 

Playtest video Clips

• Playtest #4: oct 7,  5 players (other CS377G students, 3 GSE players, 2 not) – https://drive.google.com/file/d/1cRo_hiB-e9KKxB9RZTD3WyxCXMraoalM/view?usp=sharing 
• Playtest #5: oct 12, 5 players (other CS377G students, 3 GSE players, 3 blind players) – https://drive.google.com/file/d/1wU-OvqFSspsQijyivJSOJNvbvsGt4gcS/view?usp=sharing 

Corresponding time stamps are in the playtests history table. 

Link to a “Print at Home” Version (PDF):

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1rIhO8ywaj9NaAUB8L6yT7IW1i1BLXoQb/view?usp=sharing