Museum: The Historians Rulebook

Table of Contents

Table of Contents

• Overview & Goal
• Components
• The Cards
• Setup
• The Year
• Actions
  • Research
  • Publish
  • Attend a Conference
• Your Office
  • Career Milestones
• Peer Review
  • Outcomes
• Scoring an Accepted Manuscript
• Conferences
• Citations
• End of Game
• Sample Argument for Peer Review
• Glossary
• Quick Reference

Overview & Goal

Your goal is prestige. The historian with the most prestige at game's end has had the most distinguished career. Earn it mainly by publishing — articles, books, and conference papers — plus citations of your work and end-of-game awards.

Play solo, or with up to five players. Solo and multiplayer share one ruleset — the same stats, thresholds, and actions. The only differences: multiplayer has other players to cite and trade with, and turn order in shared steps. Solo uses the card-tag system to judge manuscripts; in multiplayer you must persuade the other players.

Components

Quantity	Component
1	Archive Board — Shared prestige track, archive stacks
5	Offices — Player mats that each player should keep
30 per color	Citation Tokens — Translucent acrylic asterisks, five colors
6 per color	Upgrade Markers — Translucent acrylic, five colors
150 – 250 cards (varies)	Archive Decks — American Revolution, Montgomery Bus Boycott, or Early / Middle / Late Cold War
24 per player	Conclusion Cards — 12 article and 12 book theses per color

The Archive Board. A 100-space prestige track beside four archive stacks to be placed within reach of all players.

Offices. A playmat which keeps track of your six stat upgrades, three project workspaces, and citation tokens.

CITATION TOKENS. Acrylic counters placed in the middle of the playspace. Every time you gain a citation token, you will place that citation on the sticky tabs located on the top right of your playmat.

The Cards

Evidence cards represent real primary sources. The front of the card shows information from the source itself and only the writer reads it. The back shows the sorting tags of the cards. Only reviewers see this information.

Evidence card layout (numbered on the card diagram):

1. Title / Research Question
2. Context Terms
3. Verbatim quote or context description
4. Prestige value
5. Author
6. Sorting tags — the arguments this card supports
7. Historical significance
8. Citation of the real source

Conclusion cards represent your thesis statement. When you build an argument, you'll select cards to support your research question. Players may select cards based on the themes they see in the evidence, the sorting tags, and prestige value. When a manuscript is published, the conclusion card becomes the cover of the publication.

Card diagram captions: Thesis face, Published article, Published book.

Setup

1. Pick an archive. Shuffle it and divide it into a market of four roughly equal decks, all face-up on the archive board — the top card of every deck is visible to all.
2. Pick a game length — Short (8 years), Medium (11), or Long (15) — solo or multiplayer alike. The game ends at retirement.
3. Give each player a playmat and their conclusion deck — a conclusion's prestige value may be a citation ladder (see p. 9). Set every stat to level 1; only the first workspace is open.
4. Each player draws 3 evidence cards.
5. Set the year counter to Year 1; everyone starts at 0 prestige.
6. Randomly choose a first player.

The Year

Every round is a year: choose an action, draw, confer, and face review — then the year advances. Multiplayer resolves these together; solo steps through them.

1. ACTION — In turn order, each player chooses one action (see p. 6). Publishing normally costs the year — at Workspaces level 4 it is free.
2. DRAW — Players draw from the face-up archive market (see p. 6).
3. CONFERENCE — Attendees resolve the shared conference floor (see p. 9). Skipped if nobody attended.
4. PEER REVIEW — Verdicts on any manuscripts put up for publication (see p. 8). Skipped if nobody published.

Map caption: A plan of Boston and its harbour, 1775 — the road to Concord, the late engagement between the King's troops and the provincials, and both armies' encampments, taken from an actual survey.

Actions

The actions are Research, Publish, Attend a Conference, and Peer Review (resolved in its own phase — see p. 8). Each year you choose one.

Research

The archive is a face-up market — the top card of every pile is visible. Take evidence cards of your choice equal to your Research Funding level (3 / 5 / 7 / a full notebook); each card taken reveals the card beneath. You can never draw beyond your notebook's free space (your Personal Archive limit).

Publish

Adding evidence or a conclusion to an unlocked workspace is free at any time. When you submit your manuscript, you can supplement your evidence with any already published works, and then submit the manuscript to peer review. To submit a manuscript, it needs to contain the following:

ARTICLE	BOOK
1 conclusion + 2 – 4 evidence cards.	1 conclusion + 5 or more evidence cards.

These thresholds are fixed — no stat changes them; the label matters for which awards a publication qualifies for. Publishing normally costs the year (free at Workspaces level 4). Your manuscript then waits for the peer review phase (see p. 8).

Attend a Conference

Stage any number of evidence cards in a project and choose Attend. When the Conference phase resolves (see p. 9), your staged cards join the shared conference floor, you add two archive cards of your choice, and you draft back as many cards as you staged — trading less useful cards for better ones. Attending also earns a one-card publication, citation tokens equal to your Association Memberships, and one upgrade.

What drives a high score? Rare evidence (higher printed prestige), a focused argument (shared context doubles the total), and your Literary Agent rank (a per-card bonus).

Your Office

Six stats, each level 1 to 4, identical in solo and multiplayer. You earn one upgrade each time you publish a manuscript, each time you attend a conference, and on each promotion — never on a timer. Specialize — no historian can master everything.

Stat	Effect	Lv 1	Lv 2	Lv 3	Lv 4
Research Funding	Cards taken per Research action	3	5	7	Full notebook
Personal Archive	Notebook (hand) limit	7	9	11	15
Literary Agent	Bonus per card, every publication — cited works count	+0	+1	+2	+4
Workspaces	Unlocks your project slots	1	2	3	publish free

Career Milestones

• Start — Visiting Assistant Professor
• 1 manuscript — Assistant Professor (Tenure Track)
• 1 book — Associate Professor (Tenured)
• 3 books — Full Professor
• 6 books — Endowed Professor

Image caption: Recruitment poster for George Washington's Continental Army

Peer Review

If any player has submitted a manuscript, follow the peer review phase process:

Solo. Flip your cards and read the backs. If one tag is shared by every card, the manuscript is Approved — score it. Otherwise it is Rejected: the manuscript does not publish and you lose 5 prestige. Solo has no Revise & Resubmit.

Multiplayer. Present the backs of your cards to the reviewers and pitch your argument; they may question your evidence. You see everything on your side — they see only tags, significance, and citations. Bluffing is possible, but it has a price. Reviewers give one of two verdicts — Approve or Revise & Resubmit — by majority; ties become Revise & Resubmit.

Image caption: Paul Revere's "Bloody Massacre," 1770

Outcomes

• Approve → Publish the manuscript. Score it, discard the evidence, flip the conclusion face-up on your bookshelf where others may cite it.
• R & R → A reviewer flags the specific cards — evidence or citations — that don't fit. If Revise carries the vote, that reviewer earns +5 prestige. On your next turn, choose Accept or Object.
• Accept → Republish the manuscript with the reviewer's suggested changes applied.
• Object → Objecting is free: stand on the original manuscript and reveal the tags. If they match, the work is published and each reviewer who voted Revise loses 5 prestige; if not, it is rejected and you lose 5 prestige. Academic trust cuts both ways.

Citation tag rule. A citation whose tag does not match your conclusion cannot be published — it blocks approval, and even on Accept the writer must drop the mismatched citation or the manuscript is rejected.

Scoring an Accepted Manuscript

1. Add the printed prestige of every evidence card and your conclusion's value — its citation-ladder step, if it shows one — plus your Literary Agent bonus per card. Cited works count as cards.
2. Double it if every evidence card shares one common context field — context tag, source type, location, or author.
3. Flip the conclusion to its published face, name your work, and discard the evidence. Others may now cite it.

Conferences

If any player has chosen to attend a conference, you follow this conference phase process:

1. Every attendee's staged cards go onto the shared conference floor — they are not discarded.
2. Each attendee, in turn order, picks 2 cards of their choice from the face-up archive piles and adds them to the floor.
3. Each attendee, in turn, drafts up to as many cards as they staged — any card on the floor, including their own.
4. Leftover cards become conference papers — one per attendee, placed on the bookshelf.
5. Attendees earn citation tokens equal to their Association Memberships (1 / 2 / 3 / 6) and one upgrade. Solo works the same way, with one attendee.

Conference papers are single-evidence publications: each earns its card's printed bonus in prestige, may be cited like any article or book, and counts as a publication for the Toynbee Award.

Citations

You may cite another player's published work — an article, book, or conference paper — inside your own manuscript. It must tag-match your conclusion (see p. 8).

• To the citer: the conclusion's prestige is a citation ladder — "3 · 6 · 10 · 15" reads 3 with no citations, 6 with one, 10 with two, 15 with three or more. (A single printed number pays that number regardless.) Each cited work also counts as a card for your Literary Agent bonus.
• To the cited author: one citation token, placed on the cited publication. Citing your own work mints no token.

At game end, each banked token is worth prestige equal to your Publicist multiplier (×1 / ×2 / ×3 / ×5). The Publicist is the lever that turns influence into victory.

End of Game

When the final year passes, scoring resolves in three steps: ① prestige earned during the game, plus ② citation tokens × Publicist multiplier, plus ③ awards. Ties share awards at full value; an award nobody qualifies for is not given. Most prestige wins — break ties by most awards, then by the Arnold J. Toynbee Award. The game ends at retirement, set by the chosen game length — there are no mid-career deadlines or eliminations.

Award	Points	How to win
Francis Perkins Award	15	The single publication built on the most evidence cards
Arnold J. Toynbee Award	15	The most publications — articles, books, and conference papers
Michael Foucault Award	10	The most citations received — must have published at least once
Alice Loxton Award	10	First player to publish a book

Sample Argument for Peer Review

"Boycotts were foundational to the Revolution: New York, Philadelphia, and Boston merchants answered taxation with boycotts."

Card	Context	Bonus tags
Was the war about profits? (conclusion)	—	+4 Economic
Boycotts Cut British Trade	Boycotts	+3 Econ, Colonial
Merchants Refuse British Goods	Boycotts	+3 Econ, Colonial
Boston Halts British Imports	Boycotts	+3 Econ, Colonial

1. Valid? Every card shares the Economic tag → reviewers should approve.
2. Article or book? Three evidence cards → an article (a book needs 6+).
3. Base prestige: 4 + 3 + 3 + 3 = 13.
4. Double? All evidence shares the Boycotts context → 13 becomes 26.

Note from the transcriber: the printed sample says "a book needs 6+" in step 2, while the Actions section (p. 6) and the Quick Reference give the book threshold as 1 conclusion + 5 or more evidence cards. Both are transcribed as printed.

Image captions: "What the writer sees." and "What the reviewers see."

Glossary

Approved. (pp. 2, 8, 9) This is a peer-review verdict that allows a manuscript to be scored immediately and sent to the bookshelf, allowing the writer to receive an upgrade.

Archive (Board · Deck · Evidence). (pp. 2 – 10) The shared board at the center of the table, holding the prestige track and four stacks of evidence cards that represent the archive decks created at the start of the game.

Article. (pp. 3, 4, 6, 8, 9, 10) A publication that represents an accepted manuscript that had one conclusion and two to four evidence cards.

Association Memberships. (pp. 6, 7, 9) This is a player stat tracked in their office that affects how beneficial the Attend a Conference action is. It modifies the order in which you draw cards from the conference and how many citations you receive for attending a conference.

Attend a Conference. (pp. 2, 5, 6, 9) The action of joining a conference, which will trigger the conference phase. This action allows you to remove less useful cards from your hand in order to add more useful cards to your hand. It also provides you with a 1-card publication that can be cited by other players in the future, plus additional citation tokens that will be scored at the end of the game.

Book. (pp. 3, 4, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10) A publication that represents an accepted manuscript that had one conclusion and five or more evidence cards.

Citation (Cite · Tokens). (pp. 2, 3, 4, 7, 8, 9, 10) This is the act of using an already published work as evidence within your own manuscript. When you do this, the player who owns the publication being used gets a citation token placed on their publication (i.e. conference paper, article, or book). Citing your own work, merits no citation token. At the end of the game, all of the citation markers each player has achieved will be worth prestige equal to its owner's rank in Publicist.

Conclusion Card. (pp. 3 – 6, 8, 9, 10) A thesis card carrying a research question, sorting tags, and a prestige value. There are two types of conclusion cards, articles and books. When published, the writer discards all of the evidence used in the manuscript and flips the conclusion card over to represent his publication.

Conference (Floor · Attend). (pp. 2, 5, 6, 7, 9) The third phase of the year is called the Conference phase. If at least one player has taken the "attend the conference" action, then each player can stage any number of cards to the conference floor. After all players have staged their cards, the players then each player choose two cards from the archive to add to the floor. From there, all players at the conference are able to draw new cards into their hand equal to the number of cards they staged from their hand, and then they all gain citations equal to their Association Memberships stat.

Context Field. (pp. 4, 6, 9) This is a field represented on the cards that helps the player understand the historical context of the primary source. It often includes data like the location, source type, or relevant historical events. When a manuscript is scored, the writer checks all the evidence cards in the publication to see if they all share one similar context field, and if so the score doubles.

End of Game Awards. (pp. 2, 10) There are four awards that are scored at the end of the game worth either 10 or 15 prestige (p. 9).

Literary Agent. (pp. 2, 6, 7, 9) This is a player stat tracked in their office that offers bonus prestige per card whenever a manuscript is scored.

Manuscript. (pp. 2, 4 – 9) This is a collection of cards that includes one conclusion card and a number of source cards (evidence and previous publications) that have been submitted for peer review. Accepted manuscripts become publications.

Multiplayer. (pp. 2, 8) This is a game mode where two to five historians may play the game. During this mode, players will act as peer reviewers for each publication.

Objection. (p. 8) (Multiplayer Mode Only) This is a free action a player can take after the peer reviewers decide a manuscript must be revised before it can be published. It allows a player who believes in his work to circumvent the opposing players' peer review process and reveal the tags for themselves, but it comes with additional penalties for the players who were wrong.

Office (Bookshelf). (pp. 3, 9) This is the playmat that all players get that keeps track of your six player stats, your workspaces, and your citations. The bookshelf is the space on the play surface right above your office where you store any published manuscripts.

Peer Review. (pp. 2, 5, 6, 8) This is the fourth phase in the year that functions differently in solo and multiplayer modes. In solo, the peer review process occurs immediately after the action is taken, and requires the writer to flip the cards over to see if the tags match. In multiplayer, this phase is only triggered when one or more players have taken the publish a manuscript action. During this phase, peer reviewers hear the argument, review the tags, and then issue a verdict of Approve or Revise & Resubmit. It is also the phase of the game where the writer may score prestige and accept office upgrades for accepted verdicts, or even take the Objection free action for Revise & Resubmit verdicts.

Personal Archive. (pp. 6, 7) This is a player stat tracked in their office that increases your hand limit (7 / 9 / 11 / 15).

Prestige. (pp. 2 – 10) This is the term in the game used to refer to victory points, allowing players to determine who wins the game. The historian with the most prestige at retirement wins.

Publicist. (pp. 2, 7, 9, 10) This is a player stat tracked in their office that improves the amount of prestige earned for each citation token at game end (×1 / ×2 / ×3 / ×5).

Publish. (pp. 2, 4 – 10) This is the action of submitting a manuscript from a workspace for peer review.

Rejected. (p. 8) This is a peer-review verdict that is the result of a writer revealing the tags on the back of sources during the peer review stage. This verdict forces the writer to lose 5 prestige points.

Research. (pp. 2, 4, 6, 7) This is the action of drawing evidence cards up to the player's Research Funding rank from any of the archive decks on the archive board.

Research Funding. (pp. 2, 6, 7) This is a player stat tracked in their office that modifies how many cards are drawn from the archive deck for every Research action (3 / 5 / 7 / hand limit).

Revise & Resubmit. (p. 8) This is a peer-review verdict that has the reviewer flagging any source cards that do not work with the conclusion card and asking the writer to drop those cards from the manuscript. The writer is then tasked with choosing whether they accept the verdict or issue an Objection.

Solo. (pp. 2, 5, 8) This is a one-player game mode where the player relies on only the Approve and Reject verdict options during the peer-review phase.

Sources. (pp. 4, 6, 9) These are represented by any cards used in a manuscript. They can include the evidence cards that make up either the archive decks or the previously published cards found on other players' bookshelves.

Tag. (pp. 2, 4, 8, 9) This is a unique tagging system located on the back of source cards that indicates which conclusions the card supports. A valid argument shares one tag across every card.

Upgrade (Markers). (pp. 3, 5, 7, 8, 9) When a player publishes a manuscript or attends a conference, they are allowed to upgrade one of their player stats on their player board (office).

Workspaces. (pp. 3, 5, 6, 7) This is a player stat tracked in their office that modifies how many project slots each player can use to store evidence cards from their notebook while building manuscripts. After a player has unlocked all three project workspaces, the player can upgrade his publish action to not cost an action to perform.

Writer. (pp. 4, 5, 8, 9, 10) This is the player who has compiled sources into a manuscript for peer review.

Year. (pp. 2, 5, 6, 7, 10) This is exactly one round of play for all players, that includes up to four phases: Action, Draw, Conference, and Peer Review.

Quick Reference

The Year

• I Action — one action each, in turn order
• II Draw — take cards from the archive market
• III Conference — resolve the conference floor
• IV Peer Review — verdicts on submissions

Actions — Pick One

• Research — take cards = Research Funding level
• Publish — submit a project for review (free at Workspaces 4)
• Conference — stage cards & join the floor

Publishing Checklist

• ☐ 1 conclusion + 2 – 4 evidence (article) / 5+ (book)
• ☐ One tag shared by every card
• ☐ Cited works match the conclusion's tag
• ☐ Shared context field? Score doubles

Scoring a Manuscript Sum evidence prestige + the conclusion's citation-ladder step + Literary Agent bonus per card (cited works count). Double the total if all evidence shares one context field.

Verdicts

• Approve — publish & score
• R & R — cards flagged; carrying reviewer +5, then choose: Accept · Object (free; tags decide — wrong side loses 5)

End of Game Prestige earned + citation tokens × Publicist multiplier + awards (15 / 15 / 10 / 10). Ties: most awards, then Toynbee.