Benefits
What the game teaches
Disciplines that rarely meet, meeting at one table.
Interdisciplinary is the most overused word in education — and the hardest thing to actually teach.
Schools teach chemistry, physics and history in separate rooms, then ask students to 'think across disciplines' without ever showing them what that looks like in practice. CINNABAR's answer is structural: the rules make a single-discipline solution impossible. Nobody can win by being the best chemist at the table.
One question, five rooms
What colour was the robe? Here is what each field can say — and where each one has to stop.
Physics
What it can tell you
pXRF shows copper in the robe. XRD can name the crystal — azurite or Egyptian blue.
Where it has to stop
XRD destroys a sample. Physics cannot say whether you're allowed to take one.
Biochemistry & Materials
What it can tell you
GC-MS finds egg binder; the cross-section shows blue laid over a lead-white ground.
Where it has to stop
Layer order tells you how it was painted, not why — or whether it was repainted centuries later.
Archaeology
What it can tell you
The Provenience Card says it was buried in volcanic ash; a Context Card says kiln waste nearby held copper, sand and natron — the recipe for Egyptian blue.
Where it has to stop
Context can rule pigments in or out. It can never read the paint itself.
Ethics & Law
What it can tell you
The Provenance Card says the object is on long-term loan: zero destructive tests. The Steward decides whether to sign.
Where it has to stop
Ethics decides what may be done. It has no instrument of its own and depends entirely on the other four to make the decision worth taking.
Every row ends in a gap that only another row can fill. That gap is the whole lesson.
How the rules force it
Roles are locked
Only the Analyst touches the sleeves. Only the Contextualist plays Context Cards. Only the Steward signs. A player may not take another role's action. No one can carry the team alone, and no one can sit out.
The three-leg rule
To colour a zone you must lay down a lab result, a context card and — if any destructive test was used — a signed authorization. One piece of evidence from each role. Three legs or no claim.
The budget is shared
Twelve actions for the whole game, taken by the team together. Spending one on a test means not spending it on context. The disciplines compete for the same budget and must negotiate out loud.
The friction is deliberate
The Analyst wants XRD. The Steward may refuse to sign. The Contextualist may have a card that makes the test unnecessary. Teams that argue are playing correctly — and the argument is where the interdisciplinary thinking actually happens.
What a round sounds like
Zone 3 — Robe
- Analyst
- “pXRF says copper. I want to run XRD and settle it.”
- Steward
- “We have one authorization left and the Provenance Card says it's under a restitution claim. I'm not signing for a copper question.”
- Contextualist
- “You don't need it. Context 5 — kiln waste. Egyptian blue was made locally. That card substitutes for XRD.”
- Analyst
- “Then UV-Vis at 470 confirms it. Blue, Egyptian blue, three legs. Claim it.”
Physics proposed, ethics refused, archaeology resolved, chemistry confirmed. Four disciplines, one claim, about ninety seconds.
What students practise
Translating between fields
A wavelength has to become a pigment name; a pigment name has to become a trade route; a trade route has to become a permission. Students move one fact through four vocabularies.
Knowing the limits of your own tool
Each sleeve states what it is blind to. Learning when your instrument cannot answer the question is the start of knowing when to ask someone else.
Substituting evidence
Some Context Cards stand in for a destructive test. Learning that an archaeological fact can replace a laboratory result — and when it can't — is interdisciplinary reasoning in one move.
Deciding under a shared budget
Three actions a round for the whole team. Every choice is a negotiation between what the scientist wants to know and what the steward is willing to spend.
Accountability by name
A signature is not a token. If the claim is wrong, the facilitator reads out who authorized the test. Students learn that cross-disciplinary decisions have an author.
Leaving the question open
Left As Found scores. Students learn that 'we don't have enough evidence yet' is a result, not a failure — in science, in archaeology, and in everything after.
Beyond the statue
The same structure — evidence from several fields, a limited budget, an irreversible decision, and someone whose name goes on the line — describes most real research. The debrief Parallel Cards make that explicit by pairing each in-game decision with one made today in data and AI work.
Parallel
In the game · You cut a sample from an object to learn something true.
In the world today · Training data gathered without the consent of the people who made it — to build something genuinely useful.
Parallel
In the game · You published on an object with no findspot.
In the world today · Building on a dataset whose origins nobody will vouch for.
Parallel
In the game · You signed the line authorizing an irreversible test.
In the world today · Who signs off on a deployment — and whose name is on it when it goes wrong.
In the classroom
Fits one period
Five-minute teach from the Quick Rules, four rounds of about six minutes, a ten-minute reveal and debrief. 50 minutes end to end.
Works across subjects
Run it in chemistry, physics, history, art history or a philosophy of science unit. The Field Guide has a reading section for each.
Needs nothing
Print at home on A4 card stock. No electricity, no internet, no answer key — another team deals your truth, so even the facilitator can't know it.
Who it's for
- Ages 12+
- Teams of 3–4
- 4 teams per set, up to 6 per facilitator
- 50 minutes
- Optional modules for older students: Reassessment (challenging inherited assumptions) and The Hearing (arguing repatriation).