When we arrive on a cold night in January, we're told we're on the Red Team — that is, the team that will try to take over the U.S. Capitol and find Vice President Mike Pence.
Others are on the Blue Team, playing the police officers who are trying to defend the Capitol from attack.
A man dressed as Uncle Sam takes the stage.
"Welcome to the Fight for America!" he says.
About 20 of us are here in Brooklyn to play a large-scale war game — think Risk — but we're also each assigned a character, which is a bit like Dungeons & Dragons. We're told it's Jan. 6, 2021. We're given rows and rows of hand-painted mini-figures, a bowl of dice, and a measuring stick showing how far we can move each roll. We all stand up as we strategize because the board — green lawn and marble steps — surrounds a detailed plastic replica of the Capitol that's almost 14 feet long.
The idea, the creators say, is a bipartisan experience that teaches something about American democracy. But what?
'I thought it was a joke'
Fight for America! has been in development for over a year from the american vicarious, an artistic not-for-profit that calls itself a "generator of creative content" that reflects on America and Americans. The game was designed by Alessio Cavatore, who's known for tabletop games such as Warhammer and The Lord of the Rings.
Although artistic projects are outside his comfort zone, Cavatore agreed to design the game because he liked the intent: to encourage dialogue. "Making the red and the blue engage in an activity and speak to one another instead of demonizing the other as bad" is important, he says in a conversation over Zoom. "Let's play a game and then let's have a chat. Let's talk about things. We may not change minds, but at least we're getting an understanding from the other side."
Cavatore is based in England — he's not at this workshop, which is one of the final, large-scale test runs before Fight for America officially opens in London in the spring.
This Brooklyn test run is not necessarily meant to be a blue and red conversation — we're playing in a neighborhood that tends to go for Democrats; 92% voted for Harris in November. But Brooklyn liberals are not the final audience, the creators say.
"Our ultimate objective is to take it across the [United States] and engage people in game play, to have a conversation about the state of our democracy," said the american vicarious artistic director Christopher McElroen, who worked with Cavatore to create the game. "The beautiful thing about playing a game is it requires participation ... and that's what democracy is. Democracy requires participation."
Yet, participating in this particular game seemed absurd to some, at first. That was Korey Dowell's response when someone who worked on the game invited him to play.
"I thought it was a joke. I don't want to play Jan. 6, the home game. What is this, this is nonsense!" Dowell recalls thinking. He's been assigned to the Blue Team. "But then [the creators] explained to me it was an art installation, and I live close, so I said, 'Let me come and do it.' "
'Maybe a historic first'
He's not wrong that it's an outlier. Most war games with dice and mini-figures are about historical wars, not about current events. You don't often play a character. And they tend to be a couple of people around a table, not a couple dozen playing all at once.
I invited Naomi Clark to come play, and we're both assigned to the Red Team. She's a game designer and professor at New York University, where she heads the NYU Game Center.
"I'm not sure if there has been a game exactly like this before. This is a really interesting and unusual event, maybe a historic first of some kind," Clark says.
She points out that tabletop war games started off as training exercises for the Prussian army — they were simulations for battle. Later, they turned into hobbyist re-enactments and eventually, family games like Risk.
"Part of the interesting thing about games is you can imagine all of these what-if situations ... it's a different way of studying or looking at history," Clark says. This means that although a game about Jan. 6 might at first seem bonkers, it actually makes sense.
"Games are traditionally about fun, right? By which I mean they produce pleasure," she says. "But they don't only have to produce pleasure any more than a song or a play only produces pleasure. They can also make us think or they can pose questions."
Happy chaos
Fight For America! is more than a game — it's a social event. There's an edge of happy chaos, with beer and snacks pushed around on a cart, many people talking and rolling their dice at once, and regular interruptions by actor Dana Watkins, who plays the game master dressed as Uncle Sam, as well as characters in sketches that appear on the video monitors, everyone from a conservative broadcaster to Nancy Pelosi to the Red Team leader.
"Together, we resist tyranny. Together, we stop the steal. Together, we reclaim America," he tells the Red Team. Our mission, he says, is "to find Mike Pence."
Each player has a character card depicting a real person who was at the Capitol on Jan. 6. Dowell says he is Harry Dunn, an officer with the Capitol Police. Clark is playing as Elmer Stewart Rhodes III, a founder of the Oath Keepers. I'm Joseph Biggs, who, at the time, was a leader of the Proud Boys. We are given name tags — mine says "Joe."
Every time I roll the dice, I think: What would Joe do?
Clark's plan is simple: "Just pure aggression. I think it's the Oath Keepers' strategy. Just push for it on all fronts. I guess we've got to get Mike Pence. I don't know what we're going to do when we find him, but something."
Winning is everything
We retreat, we attack. Every now and then, one of the game masters will hand someone a card that will give them an advantage, like tear gas. Or a tweet will come on the screen, and suddenly, one of the teams will get a morale boost — or extra troop reinforcements.
As the game continues, it's stopped being about how you might feel about the storming of the Capitol and more ... how do we win?
Game creator McElroen says ... yeah, that's the idea.
"The framing device is absolutely political, but it's a game, and that is metaphorically what America is at this point. It has become a game where winning is the only objective, regardless of the toll it exacts," he says.
The blue team is flailing
Over an hour in, it's clear the Red Team has the advantage. Wave after wave of mini-figures in MAGA hats, one holding a baseball bat and one a sword, are approaching the Capitol steps.
"Hold the line!" someone shouts on the Blue Team.
"They are throwing bike racks!" Uncle Sam warns.
Uncle Sam reminds the Red Team that their goal is to get into the Capitol — and hang Mike Pence. He starts chanting, and the Red team takes it up: "Hang Mike Pence!"
It is a shocking thing to hear in this deep blue part of Brooklyn.
And the Blue Team itself is starting to feel discouraged.
"We were advised to fall back," says player Julia White. "We've lost quite a few men. It's extremely stressful."
The Red Team, on the other hand, feels great.
"Our men are at the door of the Capitol at this point," Clark says. "It doesn't seem like Blue has a good chance."
The End Game
There is a siren — the U.S. Capitol has been breached by the Red Team.
We're corralled over to a second game board, where we search for Mike Pence. And, unlike on Jan. 6, 2021, the Red Team finds him.
"Hang Mike Pence," some of the team cheers again, led by Uncle Sam.
Then there's a twist.
"Team Red will now vote!" Uncle Sam says. "Vote to protect the Vice President ... or vote to hang him." There's uncomfortable laughter. Are we voting as our characters? Or as ourselves?
We look at each other. For a minute, I'm not sure which way it's going to go. There's a lot of shuffling around.
We vote no.
Clark explains her vote this way: "I just don't think they would have done it ... I could be wrong, of course." She adds, "In that moment, I just sort of think, well, what do I really want this story to be? And I don't really want this story to be that these people are so evil, so unredeemable, that they would actually hang someone."
After the vote, there is pandemonium for a minute — a confetti cannon goes off, there's music, the Red Team cheers — and then everyone falls silent to watch the video monitors, which are suddenly playing tape from Jan. 6, 2021. Our "characters" are real people, and there they are on screen. Storming the Capitol. Defending it. Clark says: it's sobering. A gut punch. And, she says, that makes Fight for America! a particular type of game.
"Some people call this complicity gaming. Where you take the role of somebody you wouldn't sympathize with in real life and you see it from their point of view," she says. "And then you watch it in real life and you're like, 'Oh, I just did that.' "
Which is a discouraging way to feel about human nature. But Dowell, on the Blue team, says that after playing the game, he sees a different way to think about Jan. 6.
"I think what the Red Side showed was that community is important. Like, that's what that is. That's the most tragic part is that they're actually a community, and they came together to fight. So we need the community on the other side. And maybe at some point, we'll all be [a] community again together?"
It's a question, not a statement.
But then he says, "I still have hope."
Audio and digital edited by Ciera Crawford. Audio mixed by Chloee Weiner. Web page produced by Beth Novey.
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