As a teacher, I use a lot of games in my classroom. In teaching Theory of Knowledge, however, I'd like to enhance my teaching of logic with some games. Any suggestions for games that use classical reasoning strategies-- either as a component or as an end result? I'm thinking of topics like deductive vs. inductive reasoning, syllogisms, fallacies, etc.

We've done lateral thinking puzzles (like "albatross soup") and things like that, including some math puzzles (like get X units of water with jugs that contain different amounts.) I'm looking for something more story-game like, with minimal preparation and as paperless as possible. What do you think?

I played Logic as a PC in Nobilis, but I don't think that helps much.


You could play Mastermind, then play Zendo, to illustrate different kinds of logic. Mastermind is deductive logic (for people playing it well, anyway), whereas Zendo is inductive logic. Playing both games would illustrate the differences, like how you can reach a certain conclusion deductively (if given true starting points) but can never be entirely certain of your answer's validity if arrived at inductively. It's not very story-gamey, but it still might be worthwhile.

Danny,

The issue I see here is that logic puzzle are meant to be "solved".
In other words, the elements should lead to a single conclusion.
In a story game, the elements are meant to lead to infinite conclusions.
The point is that different groups will do different things with the same elements.
So, most games don't say "use this logical form to create this end result", and instead say "solve this in any way you see fit".

Considering that, a mystery investigative game has lots of potential... present different situations which can only be solved through tricky inductive reasoning, deductive reasoning, etc.

As a spin-off of that idea, what about: it's a mystery investigative game where someone killed Thomas McCurrell. Figuring out who did it is dead simple. Constructing the proof, in such a way that his lawyer can't find any loopholes, is the hard part. And so rather than "finding the answer", you are "proving the answer". So, a detective who knows that it was some mafia member (stinky pete), but needs to find bulletproof evidence to present to the jury.

A very different idea: rather than finding a game that "requires" a particular logic, find a game that "operates" under a particular logic. I'm imagining something along the lines of Alice in Wonderland... your students stumble into a bizarre fantasy world, with interesting characters, grandiose set pieces, and some dangerous threats. It all seems like total chaos at first, and if they're going to escape alive, they need to learn the internal logic of the world (speak to royalty in iambic pentameter; crows ignore negative modifiers like "not"; you can only reach the forbidden forest through the murky meadow; etc).

That idea also works perfectly with a game that's set in an alien world. SIGN IN STRANGER!!!!!!!! That game is about learning an alien logic in order to integrate & live on an alien world.

I'm none too familiar with how the subject of logic is taught nowadays, but I'd suggest a game that involves the use of freeform skills, for instance the PDQ system or FATE (of Spirit of the Century / Diaspora fame.) My reason for this is that task resolution partly revolves around justifying why the particular attributes you have are relevant to the current situation.

Really though, I rather agree with Joepub in that RPGs are not built to encourage logic as resolution. You may find it more fruitful instead to use whatever simple system you have, and design a story or adventure that relies on logic to solve.

That, or you could simply invent a new system. Maybe one that uses Sudoku as a resolution mechanic *grin*

-Ash

I ran a D&D adventure years ago as a reunion game for an old group. The setup was an impending invasion from the Astral Plane. The Githyanki were about to unleash massive devastation and there really was nothing the PCs could do to stop it. However, in a sort of send up to the oddity that was D&D the seeds of victory lie in the inexplicable alliance of Red Dragons and the Githyanki. In my world, Dragons were amazing powerful noble creatures, why should they serve the Githyanki who despite their creepy appearance were basically just people?
So I came up with the amusing little fable. Tiamat, the mother of all Dragons, was lured into a riddle contest with the Githyanki. Because the Dragon lost, her most precious children had to serve the Githyanki. Fairly lame, but it served the point. All the PCs had to do was solve the riddle and free the dragons, for the Githyanki to lose a powerful ally, and gain a vengeful enemy.
So I wrote up a riddle. It was fairly complex (if I can dig it up I will post it).


SPOILERS





So, you are asking yourself, how could these PCs solve a riddle that not even the noble Dragons could in thousands of years?
That was sort of the point. The Riddle was not solvable, at least not on the most reasonable translation into Logic.
My more logically minded players (two philosophy majors, and two computer guys) worked hard to translate the English into Sentence Logic, and then solve for the solution. The other players, a Lit Major, an English Major and a story writer (later an Epidemiologist) bored quickly of the all the symbology and started working through the story issues. They figured out that smarts were not going to be enough. And they started on the "real" solution.
The Riddle basically said that four creatures met and agreed to perform certain tasks. (It was more complex than that, but the main idea was there). The four returned and the riddle said that three of them completed the task, the remaining one implied it, but said instead that the fourth (the Dragon) claimed to have completed his task. Eventually, and nearly simultaneously the two groups came to the conclusion that the Dragon, in the riddle, lied about completing the mission.
The reason the Dragons could not solve the riddle wasn't that it was actually unsolvable. Merely that the solution required considered that a Dragon would FAIL at some task and the LIE about it. The idea was beyond their comprehension.
The fun part was that they couldn't just go tell the Dragons this. (A) The Dragons are proud creatures and would not want Humans helping them, (B) The dragons still wouldn't get it.
PC: "The Dragon Lied"
Dragon: "I don't understand"
PC: "You know what lying is?"
Dragon: "Sure"
PC: "And you know what a Dragon is."
Dragon: "Obviously."
PC: "So.. put them together, the Dragon lied."
Dragon: "I don't get it."

They eventually figured out a way to do it. It was a good long adventure, but perfectly suited to the scale and kind of game. It did use logic, but it wasn't about solving the riddle. At least, not just about solving the riddle.

Serial Homicide Unit.

Matt

Posted By: ozbotThe Wonderland thing was another thing that came to my mind when I considered that I might have to write up a game to suit my own purposes.

Have you played the video game Braid? If not, it's a MUST!
Braid is a platformer (and to an extent, a deconstruction of the Mario Bros/platformer genre) about a well-dressed young man who's searching for the princess of his dreams. And he controls the ability to alter time. The game is a series of puzzle levels that rely on you manipulating time in different ways in order to secure puzzle pieces and unlock gates. Beautiful, amazingly clever... and forces people to internalize new/alien logic in order to solve the levels. Requires both "learning how world X works" and constant out-of-box thinking.

Braid is a must.

Posted By: ozbotThe alien world might be a good idea, too. Players are diplomats to an alien civilization, etc.

Definitely check out Emily Care Boss' game "Sign in Stranger". It's perfect. Though it is quite "long form", requiring many sessions.

The suggestions so far are:
1.) A time travel story game, exploring paradoxes.
2.) Zendo and Mastermind.
3.) A Mystery/Investigative game, with an emphasis on preparing cases/proofs.
4.) A game about learning how foreign logic works, in a Wonderland fantasy world.
5.) The same thing, but in space, using Sign in Stranger.
6.) A game using freeform traits, with an emphasis on justifying the use of various traits.
7.) ...steal Sol's cool D&D riddle.
8.) Mutant City Blues.
9.) Serial Homicide Unit.
10.) Braid.

Darn--too bad I'm a bit late to this one; I coulda helped prep Zendo:

1) Use this list of Zendo rules:
http://davidartman.com/print/ZendoRules.xls
It is a fairly robust "scaling" of difficulty of rules, and your class could use them indefinitely.

2) I am guessing that you figured out one could do this with basic Lego bricks, playing cards, matchbooks, matchsticks, pencils, pens, etc? As much as I love Looney labs, you don't have to drop $50 for five Treehouse sets to be able to play Zendo.

3) Check out my variant called Ikkozendo:
http://www.icehousegames.org/wiki/index.php?title=Ikkozendo
It is best for when you have a limited number of components (e.g. a single Treehouse set). It also only has the Master making changes, and there's a guess every turn, so it removes the fiddling with new koans by Students and the whole Master/Mondo elements (this is a plus and a minus, in my opinion).

4) The quickest way to make a hard koan is with noise, NOT with a lot of adjectives or conjunctions, believe it or not. If a koan has the Buddha Nature AND it also has umtpy-thousand other possible relationships or BNs, then there's a LOT of branches of the binary tree to chop down before one can find the correct one. And what's worse, new Students will try to make their own koans as complex as the Master's, thinking the noise is signal... and as such marking their koans as BN or !BN doesn't tell them a lot. The BEST early Student koans are those with one pyramid/Lego/whatever!

I consider Zendo one of the coolest games out there, using Icehouse pyramids--never has a game so consistently captured folks of all ages, backgrounds, and gamer-experience levels!
-----
Another great Looney labs games that you can (basically) play for free is Are You A Werewolf? (AKA Mafia).
Or:
Board Game Geek deduction category
Or:
Baord Game Geek puzzle category

(Note that Zendo appears in both of those categories!)

The game "The 3 Commandments" might also be useful — it involves a lot of inductive reasoning.

From the publisher: "Torches are blazing, mists are wafting ... in the Holy Circle the High Priestess celebrates her ritual with her novices. They sing with all their heart, cuddle the artifacts, and rearrange them in ever new patterns.

"But what if you do not know the religious rules? The best thing is to watch what the others are doing and imitate them. But cautious: Maybe your neighbor just violated a taboo and made the High Priestess angry …

"Each player takes the role of the High Priestess once and determines the rules of her own religion. The other players are novices trying to sense these rules and thus gather as much karma as possible."

The "priestess" player secretly chooses four cards that determine which actions are rewarded and which taboo. The other players simply move a pawn on the board and are awarded points by the priestess based on how their actions (including seemingly irrelevant ones like body movement or tone of voice) correspond with the rules. At the end of a round the priestess receives the same score as the highest-scoring adept, encouraging her to make the rules difficult but not impossible to guess.

Thanks, David!

That list is great. We were only able to go through three rounds, and looking at the list, we only used "level" 1 and 2. Still, I think the students had no idea of what to expect. If I were to do this again, I think I would give them some idea of the types of Buddha natures available in the first place, such as reading through the different rule cards before we started. To have them figure out such parameters is more in line of the logic I was trying to teach, but we simply don't have enough class time and the jump start would have been nice. Also, the Mastermind thing worked nicer since they could try to split up into partners. The groups I had them in were too big-- good to give instructions to but hard to wait for each player to go through their phases.

We used rectangular pieces of wood of various sizes/color that the elementary teachers use with math lessons. Also, your Ikkozendo was what we were on our way to playing as the day went on and I had to adjust rules on the fly. I personally think that would match well with the demands of doing this game in a classroom.

I'm quite familiar with Mafia, and we regularly play that in my 'regular' classes too, especially if I teach The Crucible.

Edit: Also-- yeah, I'd love to see the rules for the rune/spell game! That sounds exactly like what I was looking for originally! What did you think about my Master Thief idea? Am I on the right track?

I like the Master Thief idea. I think the specifics of the Quirks and areas of expertise will make or break it. Does the sum of the areas of expertise map to the set of possible Quirks? Do you ever have finite enough options to do some process of elimination, or not? Personally, I'd most want to play this if the set of Quirks is colorfully large, but each Investigation returns a lot of useful info. Something on the simple side, with a decent amount of story and drama worked into it. Something of LSAT logic game complexity would probably kill the "detective fiction" mood.

If you post (or Private Message) your email address, I'll send you the info for my rune system.