Lying Lips is simpler and usually quicker, but contains less teaching material. Use it when you want an easy-to-learn game and are happy to develop teaching points separately, or when you want to examine trials in detail using the role-playing option. The Dregs of Days offers a fuller exploration of the historical backdrop of the witch hunts, but has more complex rules. Use it when you have focused students and want to explore the historical context and community dynamics of the witch hunts.

It depends on the group sizes. Lying Lips takes about 5 minutes per player in the group, plus 5-10 minutes for the trial role-play. The Dregs of Days takes about 10 minutes per player in the group, plus 5 minutes for rules explanation and clarification. If you need to stop a game of The Dregs of Days before it has finished, the rules offer guidance on how to determine the winner.

For both games, groups of 4 players strike a good balance between sociability/experiencing game content and keeping the game concise. If you have an odd number of students, one group of 3 or 5 will work fine. If you don’t have enough copies of the game for 4-player groups, you can also play with larger groups, but the games may take longer.

If you are playing Lying Lips with the trial role-play component, groups of 5 or 6 work particularly well.

Our recommendations:

Lying Lips: Explain the rules for the trading component. Wait for each group to finish, then explain the rules for the trial component.

The Dregs of Days: Explain the main rules. You can omit the rules for witch trials and instruct students to follow the guidance on the Story cards. Alternatively, ask students to read the rules or watch the video rules in advance, or play the video in class.

Lying Lips seeks to represent the significance of rumour and slander in driving forwards the witch hunts, so a game could be followed by a discussion of that theme. A trial role-play educates students about the process of trials and common accusations. See below for more information on trials.

The Dregs of Days looks at the community misfortunes and tensions that drove witchcraft accusations, as well as the kinds of accusations that were made. Story cards provide additional historical context. After a game, you can begin discussion by asking students how their game reflected – or failed to reflect – the cultural environment of the witch trials. Encourage students to think about cooperation and conflict within communities, and the ways in which trials wove together neighbourly disputes and elite demonological theory.

For more detail, and discussion of how far specific elements of the games reflect historical reality, see history in the games.

It’s possible to play online, but if you have multiple groups it becomes difficult to supervise. We’ve played online via a playing cards site (see get it now for details), but each group of students will also need to be in a video call together, and ideally you should have some supervision over these calls to answer queries about rules.

The Black Mark cards reproduce accusations from witch trials, which include references to sex with the Devil, murder and cannibalism. When used in teaching settings, the games are probably most suitable for A Level or university students, although they have been used in primary schools following removal of cards with more mature themes.

The game contains instructions for a quick role-play that will give students a sense of how local trials might work. If you want to develop this into a longer activity, see the further guidance on trials.