We have created a Twine titled “Fors Fortuna” at the Heritage Game Jam, University of York 11th-15th May 2022. 

We made the Twine in response to the theme of this event: Life in the Decolonies. We created this resource to highlight under-represented diversity in the past. Our twine is situated specifically in the Roman Empire and follows the lived experience of one day in the lives of two fictional persons. It is aimed at an adult audience with no prior specialist knowledge of this historical period. It is also for the participants and wider community of the Heritage Jam event. 

The twine will be hosted on the Heritage Jam website for posterity – this is a freely accessible resource. It will also be available on the Twine platform. It includes hyperlinks to external resources available at the time of creation, which may not remain stable over time.

Through a collaborative approach between the producers, we used Twine to develop the narrative structure based on a fictional (but plausible) lived experience. 

The process involved: brainstorming, a discussion of ideas, the use of coloured post-it notes to move ideas, shared digital documents, and a round-table approach to collaborative editing. An overarching decision in the narrative structure was to explore diversity and lived experience through the mundanity of daily life – this impacted the creation of the narrative, nature of the characters etc. 

The historical setting and some of the content was informed by the research experience of one of the participants. 

As this is a fictional account of lived experience, many alternatives to this account are available. Alternative interpretations could have been made regarding the identity (gender, social status etc.) of the characters and their experiences. 

We have provided some external resources to signpost the player to accounts of the diversity of lived experience in the Roman Empire.