Dr. Raymond Kuo created a Statecraft and Negotiations course when he was a professor, and he has shared his Statecraft and Negotiation Simulations:
I created about a dozen original simulations that:
- Could be played in ~1 hour or less.
- Examined 1-3 concepts at once (I find the commercially available sims too sprawling and pedagogically confusing).
- Could be scaled for many different class sizes, but with teams no larger than 4.
- Ideally don’t use points.
They are listed and linked below. You might need WinRar to open the zipped files. A few notes/caveats:
- Please attribute them to me.
- If you modify the design, please let me know! I’m not a professional game designer, so many things need improving. I’d love to see what you’ve done and would be happy to host new, better versions here.
- They are purely a teaching aid. Feel free to substitute fictional countries if you’d like. I think (?) the learning goals and teacher’s guides are in the negotiation packages, but please let me know if not.
Aid and Development
Three players (USAID, USTR, DRC) negotiate an aid package for the DRC. Explores aid conditionality.Electoral System Design
Design an election system for an ethnically fractionalized country emerging from civil violence.Human Rights
Acting as specific countries, players create the UN Declaration of Human Rights. Negotiate over wording and try to exclude certain rights to align the declaration with your domestic political, legal, and economic systems.Nuclear Weapons
Go nuclear! Or try to mutually disarm. But don’t get tricked. A simple game requiring only 1-2 decks of cards for the whole class.War Initiation
Can the players avoid starting World War 1? My largest sim, 5-6 countries, ideally represented by teams, not individuals.War Termination
Companion to “War Initiation.” Players relive the Versailles conference, attempting to end World War 1 on the most advantageous terms. Can you do better than the real diplomats?COIN and Laws of War
A four-stage tactical decision game that requires some instructor moderation/adjudication. Can you defend a town without violating the laws of war?Trade
NOTE: A couple of my students designed this simulation, and I think it’s better than my trade sim. Negotiate NAFTA!
Personally, I prefer FAAFO since overwhelming unrelenting and unbounded force usually brings a quick conclusion.
Is there any interest in playing these? I will spin up a discord specifically for it, fully armored and will be deleted after gameplay. If not, I understand, but it could be fun… assuming we aren’t all being audited by the IRS while we get investigated by the FBI.
Chris Crawford had made a similar game of foreign policy called Balance of Power in the 1980s. You could do things like foreign aide and treaties and economic assistance. It may even be freeware somewhere. It’s not an easy game to play. If nuclear war happened, it ended with a black screen.
I remember Balance of Power! Apparently you can play it online.
>Would you like to play a game?