Teaching with Frankenstories

Game 2: Moderate replies

Once everyone has the basic idea, try playing another random game where you encourage the class to work together to create something satisfying.

For many students, that's harder than it sounds.

Creativity requires courage and skill, and it's a normal response to panic and derail the game away through cheap jokes or nonsense responses.

For example, the game might open well, but then someone writes something stupid but funny in R3, wins the round, and soon everyone is writing cheap-laugh responses and the story gets derailed, as in this game:

Screenshot The Story of How a Dog Became My Sibling Frankenstories

Sometimes silliness is good...

We want to be clear: part of the fun of Frankenstories is silliness and chaos.

And writing jokes and entertaining your peers is a legitimate part of the craft.

But the problem is...

If jokes and memes are the only responses that win rounds, then soon that's all anyone will write, and the class will get stuck.

Stories will be pointless, writing skills won't improve, and you'll wonder if you wasted your time.

Keith Johnston writes at length about the same dynamic with adults in improvised theatre.

Creativity can be scary and nerve-wracking, leading players to act out in all sorts of dominant and avoidant ways. Part of the value in Frankenstories is having a vehicle to push through this initial response.

So use Approval mode to smite bad faith replies

  • Approval mode is on by default.
  • You’ll see student replies as they are submitted.
  • Reject any reply that you don’t want to progress to voting.
  • The player will be notified.
    • If the round is still open, the player can edit and resubmit.
  • When the timer ends, the game will wait for you to click Approve round, and then any approved replies will be allocated for voting.
they all died the end reject reply
Smash that Reject button

What to expect when using Approval mode to police quality

  • The game will feel calmer, not as anarchic.
  • Some writers who were getting obliterated by votes for memes in previous games might now get more traction. 
  • Other writers might struggle and disengage. The next goal will be to build these students’ skills so they can participate more fully.

You can define your own criteria for rejecting a response, but a good rule of thumb is whether or not it feels like the player made a genuine effort to respond to the prompt or the previous entry.

The point of Approval mode is to remove the reward for trolling and encourage students to attempt genuine (and creatively riskier) responses.

Long term, you don't want to be approving replies in every game.

The point of Approval mode is to show players that the power exists and to help moderate games while you establish group norms.

After that, ideally, all students will be making genuine replies. Once they have an intuitive sense of what is appropriate in Frankenstories in your class, you won't need to use Approval mode.

Generally, you reject replies because you don't want students to see them at all.

However, some teachers have told us they get a lot of value from displaying their moderator view on the whiteboard and discussing what should and shouldn't be allowed to go through to voting with the whole class.

Their feedback is that the metacognitive discussion is hugely valuable and great fun, and that the students are often thoughtful and serious about quality.

So give that a try!

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