Mantua: A Role Playing Simulation and Game of the Renaissance

Mantua is a role-playing simulation set in fifteenth century Italy at the start of the Renaissance. In it students are divided into teams to play the five major Italian city-states of the time (Milan, Venice, Florence, the Papal States, and Naples) and try to earn prestige points by developing the various skills and institutions that largely defined the era: the printing press, banking, art, architecture, diplomacy, and warfare. The game gets its name from a small, but very influential city-state in Northern Italy whose court was one of the cultural centers of the Italian Renaissance. Although Mantua is not one of the major city-states in this game, it was representative of many of the developments found in Italy at this time.

Mantua can be integrated into and go along with the Flow of History Renaissance unit, which includes flowcharts, readings, and quizzes on the following chapters:

• The Printing Press

• The Rise of Capitalism and banking

• The Italian renaissance

• The revolution in art during the Renaissance

• The Northern Renaissance

• The rise of the renaissance state

Quizzes on each of these earn students’ respective teams prestige points toward skills that allow them to advance their particular city-states through the Renaissance.

More detailed description and a teacher's manual can be fourd in the preview

Mantua: A Role Playing Simulation of the Renaissance by Chris Butler is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License.