Quickstart

You do not need a game or any experience with tabletop roleplaying to run Narrative Crossroads. You need a text your students have read, one pivotal scene, and about forty minutes. It’s a solo journaling game played by everyone at once: students write in character, then the room compares readings.

This page is the shortest path from reading about it to doing it. Everything linked here is free under CC BY 4.0 — download it, print it, change it, use it with your students. No account, no email, no paywall.

The name is borrowed from tabletop publishing, where a quickstart is the free starter booklet: characters already made, one scene ready to run. Same idea here.

One Card. One Scene. One Question.

This is the minimum viable version. It takes one class period, and the only die is optional.

There’s no PDF to download — printing this page gives you the whole recipe on paper, with the site’s furniture stripped out.

1. Pick the scene (your prep, 10 minutes)

Find a threshold moment in a text your students have already read. A good one passes this test: a reasonable reader could argue the character should have done something else.

  • Rainsford deciding whether to reveal himself to Zaroff
  • Juliet holding the vial
  • Mrs. Jones deciding what to do with Roger
  • Any moment your students have already argued about without being asked to

If nobody could disagree about it, it isn’t a threshold. Pick again.

2. Fill the card (students, 10–15 minutes)

One Character Frame card per student. Two evidence boxes, each requiring a line or page number:

Box Prompt
Wants What does this character want right now?
Fears What are they afraid of?

Print blanks from the Character Frame Card — two to a page, half-sheets, one cut.

Circulate. When a student writes something vague, ask where they see it. That’s the whole teacher move.

3. Take a lens and write (10–15 minutes)

Describe the moment out loud, in second person, and leave them in it:

“You are Juliet. The vial is in your hand. The Friar’s plan depends on your waking up at exactly the right hour, in a tomb, alone. Paris is coming in the morning.”

Each student takes one lens — they can pick, or roll a die so the room spreads across all three:

Roll Lens What it asks
1–2 Confrontation What are you facing, and what will it cost you?
3–4 Comprehension What do you understand now that you didn’t before?
5–6 Connection Who is this about, and what do you owe them?

Then they write a few sentences in the character’s voice, at that moment. The die only chooses the way in — there is nothing to succeed or fail at, and nothing is rolled against the character.

4. Harvest (5–10 minutes)

Read several aloud, at least one from each lens. Then ask the question that does the work:

Which reading does the text support, and what’s your evidence?

You are not looking for the right answer. You are looking for readings the text will carry. Collect the cards. You now have documented evidence of RL.9-10.1 and RL.9-10.3.

What to Print

Resource What it is
Character Frame Card (PDF) Blank cards, two to a page — half-sheets, one cut
Solo Framework SRD (PDF) The System Reference Document — the full system, once you want more than the minimum. The web version is canonical.

Ready-made scenes for specific texts are on the Downloads page — The Most Dangerous Game, The Interlopers, The Outsider, Romeo and Juliet, and a template for historical figures.

Teaching Multilingual Learners?

The minimum version was built in an ML classroom and holds up there without modification. Three things to know before you run it:

  • The card is the scaffold. Students who won’t speak in a whole-class discussion will read from a card they filled in themselves. Let them.
  • The writing is the play. The whole activity happens on paper, so oral production is a goal rather than a gate.
  • Home language is allowed in the thinking. Plan in L1, produce in English. The analysis is the learning target.

Full detail, including sentence frames and a WIDA alignment, is on the ML Scaffolding page.

When You Want More Than the Minimum

The quickstart is deliberately stripped down. The full method adds prepared characters, several threshold moments per text, and repeated rounds that build a body of writing — all worth adding once the basic move is working in your room.

Attended the Workshop?

If you came out of a Quest-Based Learning session, the follow-up materials — including the scenario you played and the toolkit segment — are on the From the Workshop page.

Questions, or want to tell me how it went? geoffrey@geoffreysperl.com