Theses & Thrones is the first major project emerging from the Living Stories Lab’s wider hopes for participatory, constructivist formation. It began as an experiment at St. Gregory of Nyssa Episcopal Church: What would happen if young people were invited not to memorize church history, but to inhabit it—argue through it, strategize within it, and discover its theological debates by playing them?

The result is a strategy game set in the English Reformation, designed for youth and intergenerational groups. Players step into the shoes of four historical factions, study real theological positions, craft persuasive arguments, and then test those arguments on a shifting map of the British Isles. Each day introduces a major doctrinal question alongside a real political event from the period, allowing players to experience how ideas, power, and faith shaped one another.

The game follows a simple principle: people learn theology more deeply when they build understanding for themselves. Theses & Thrones invites that kind of learning by combining roleplay, debate, teamwork, and embodied play. Nothing is delivered as a lecture; everything is discovered through participation.

The project is still growing. A full version of the game, refined after multiple pilots, will be released publicly as development continues. What exists now is a clear glimpse of what the Living Stories Lab hopes to offer more broadly—formation that is playful, communal, historically grounded, and attentive to how people actually learn.

Theses & Thrones points toward the kind of formation that takes root when curiosity leads the way and when understanding is shaped in community rather than handed down fully formed.

To read an overview of Theses & Thrones, click here. To request full access to the prototype (and give permission to join the Living Stories newsletter list), click here.