Game #1
Deltaland Student Sheet

The game starts in the year 1900 and goes through ten rounds, each round representing one decade. The 4 million people in Deltaland are well-off for the year 1900, because they have always had rich delta soil and active commerce. Your land is arid, but has always been irrigated with the plentiful water from the Quint River.

Roles: You will need someone to be a mathematician who determines how many chips to move, an historian who records the history of the country that the game is simulating, and a facilitator who consults the rules and helps the team decide what to do.

Set Up

• Start by spreading out the game map.
• Place the counters. You should have some white and some blue counters.The blue counters represent people; each population counter stands for 1 million people. Place two population counters on Upland. The white counters represent water; each counter stands for a fixed amount of drinkable rain and river water.
• Put all the water counters in the ocean.

Play Your Moves

Repeat Steps 1 through 5 ten times, representing the ten decades in the 20th century. (Shorten?)

1. Make it rain: place new water counters.

• Roll the dice to determine the amount of rain that falls on Deltaland. The amount of rain on Upland is three times the roll or 24, whichever is smaller.
• Place this number of white water counters on the part of the Quint River in your country. This represents the water you can use during this decade.

2. Move together, adjusting the population, and passing remaining water downstream.

BOTH Upland and Deltaland move, a decade at a time, one after the other, with Upland moving first in each decade.

A. Determine your standard of living.
Consult the Standard of Living Table below to see how well-off Delta dwellers are this decade (that is, this move). This, and your population, determine how much water you will use. Have your historian record your current standard of living, by the water counters used for each population
counter.

B. Use your water.

Withdraw the number of water counters indicated by the Standard of Living Table (above) from the Quint River. This represents the water you used during the decade. Place these counters on top of the population counters. If your calculation results in a half-counter, round up to the nearest even number.

C. Adjust your population.

Your mathematician should consult the Population Growth Table (located on the Simulation Map) to determine how much your population will grow. For instance, if your current standard of living requires two water counters for each population counter, your population will grow by 30% in a decade. If you start the decade with seven counters, you will add 30% or .3°—7 = 2.1 more. Round that to two and add two population counters

For example, if the year is 1900, each person (each population counter) “uses” one water counter. Place one water counter on top of each population counter. Since the population is two, then two water counters are used in total. If the year is 1980, Deltaland is very rich, and you place four water counters on top of each population counter.

D. Pass on the water downstream to the ocean.

Move the water counters remaining in the Quint River downstream to the ocean.