Kommunernes Landsforening (Local Government Denmark) Interest Organization Secondary education, 7th-9th grade Teaching young people about municipal government in a fun and engaging way Stemmer fra Markland is a mixed-media, facilitated roleplaying game for the classroom, where students take on the roles of local politicians trying to solve problems in an imagined Danish municipality, and satisfy different voter demographics. Students are grouped into four different political parties, each with its own strategic goals. However, no one group can push its agenda alone, so gameplay is largely social, with students trying to forge alliances and convince other parties to support their position. The parties’ goals are also not directly opposed, and there is no single winner – each party that satisfies its own goal wins at the end. This emphasizes the preference for pragmatic compromise over ideological rigidity often found in municipal politics. The game presents students with 4 different cases, played all at once. Each case offers a problem or opportunity, with different solutions for players to discuss and eventually vote on. As the game takes students through different parts of the legislative process, they both learn about real-life parliamentary procedures, but also practice debating, strategic thinking, and compromise-making. Two simple numeric scores, Economy and Happiness, are used to translate the complex realities of municipal politics into something tangible, with each political party having its own view of how these scores should be prioritized. This makes it easier for students to engage with the game strategically, even if they are not avid strategy gamers. At the same time, the numeric impact of the different solutions students discuss and vote on are only shown at the end. This ensures that the game does not devolve into a simple “number’s game”, but keeps the focus on classroom discussion, roleplay and narrative. This game was developed for Kommunernes Landsforening (KL, Local Government Denmark, KL) to be used in social studies (“samfundsfag”) in Danish secondary education. KL offers the game for free click here Client
Organisation
Audience
Purpose
Turn your classroom into a municipal council
“We make your learning experiences come alive through dilemmas”
Simon Egenfeldt-Nielsen
DiBL CEO
