What follows mirrors the production code. The projector is dark-themed - it is meant to read as a Convention chamber at the front of the room, not a slide deck. The Reckoning workshop modal in Turn 5 switches to a parchment palette and a locked frame to mark a change in register. Use the toggle at the top of this page if you want to hide all of this for a text-only printable.
The projector shows a Delegations strip on the right of the game view: a colored dot per delegation, the state name, and a status ("Active" or "Walked Out"). Roles are teacher-assigned in the lobby. Each delegation card below uses the same state color the projector uses; the figure is a uniform charcoal delegate distinguished only by a simple prop (a quill, a plan scroll, a ledger, a balance scale), never by appearance.
This is a faithful reproduction of the production projector (display.html) during a representation vote, with five of the seven still-seated delegations having submitted. Real panels: the engine header with the game name, turn and phase, room code and clock; the submissions bar (which subtracts any walked-out delegation from the total); the key-question card with the three plans; the Delegations strip (with South Carolina showing a Walked Out status); and "The Constitution So Far" running document, still reading "Not yet decided" until the teacher reveals the tally. The colors are the display's own theme variables.
The same moment, panel by panel. The projector shows the turn name and phase, a countdown timer, the key question for the turn, and the three voting options. Students can cast their ballots once you press Next into the Vote phase.
At key moments the teacher reveals a Convention Event. The projector dims and a single quotation takes the room. Bedford's threat in Turn 2 is the canonical example - it is the moment small states put a walkout on the table.
Turn 5 changes register entirely. The projector switches from the dark Convention chamber palette to a parchment workshop frame. The dashboard will not end the game in Turn 5 until you confirm the three workshop packets (Same Summer, What Came Next, Black Voices). End game in Turns 1-4 skips the Reckoning after a warning; use Pause for next class instead. The text below is the verbatim Packet B opening from the What Came Next phase.
The representation question and the counting question were both settled in July: on July 12 the Convention voted to count three of every five enslaved people for representation and taxation, and on July 16 it adopted the Connecticut Compromise. Southern states demanded enslaved people be counted - it would give the slaveholding states extra House seats (and the corresponding electoral votes) until the Civil War. Some Northern delegates argued enslaved people should not be counted - some on principle, some because it would weaken Southern political power.
The Three-Fifths Compromise (Article I Section 2): three out of every five enslaved people would be counted for both representation and direct taxation. This was not a compromise between treating enslaved people as people and treating them as property. Every position in the room treated enslaved people instrumentally - as units of political math. No delegate proposed counting enslaved people AND enfranchising them.
The Slave Trade Clause (Article I Section 9): Congress was prohibited from banning the importation of enslaved people from Africa for 20 years - until 1808. The Constitution would not say the word slavery; it said "such Persons as any of the States now existing shall think proper to admit." Between 1783 and 1808 an estimated 170,000 enslaved Africans were carried into the United States (McMillin), more than 40,000 of them into Charleston between 1803 and 1807, after South Carolina reopened the trade in December 1803.
Packet C presents named Black voices from 1787 and the years immediately before and after. Each entry has a date, a place and a primary-source detail. The two excerpts below appear verbatim in the workshop.
Before the Convention met, Black Americans were already speaking in public about slavery and freedom. Here are four of those voices.
Elizabeth Freeman (also known as Mum Bett), 1781 - her lawsuit Brom and Bett v. Ashley helped end slavery in Massachusetts, with the Quock Walker cases of 1781-1783, six years before this Convention. Her reported words: "Any time, any time while I was a slave, if one minute's freedom had been offered to me, and I had been told I must die at the end of that minute, I would have taken it - just to stand one minute on God's earth a free woman."
Absalom Jones and Richard Allen, April 12, 1787 - founded the Free African Society in Philadelphia. Blocks from the Convention. Six weeks before the delegates met to design a federal government, free Black Philadelphians founded one of the first independent Black mutual-aid organizations in America.
The Pennsylvania Abolition Society - Franklin its president, Franklin himself a delegate at this Convention - had a memorial against slavery prepared for the Convention. Franklin chose not to submit it. Historians think he feared it would split the Convention; he left no record of his reason. The moral argument was not just "in the room" - it was in Franklin's own pocket, and he chose silence.
The final minute of Turn 5 is the Closing. The dashboard prompts the teacher to read the Douglass quotation aloud, slowly, with no synthesis prompt after it. Then dismiss class. The card is shown verbatim, exactly as it appears in the workshop packets.
The visuals in The Great Compromise Engine are load-bearing for five specific lifts the simulation has to make.
Turn 5 cannot end until the three workshop packets are confirmed (Same Summer, What Came Next, Black Voices); End game in Turns 1-4 skips the Reckoning after a warning. The parchment palette and locked modal frame are the visual cue that the activity has changed register: the room is no longer voting, it is being held inside the lesson. This is the design choice that lets the simulation scope voting to federalism while still teaching Three-Fifths, the slave trade clause, and the fugitive slave clause. If you must cut something, shorten a debate phase, never the Reckoning.
Every seated delegation is visible at all times: name, color, and status. When a delegation walks out, its status reads "Walked Out" (in the Reckoning, "Walked Out - rejoined for the Reckoning") until you undo it. The room sees who is in the conversation, who has been silenced by the room, and who has chosen to leave. Coaching tip: when the room is silent, point to a delegation by name. The strip tells you who has not spoken yet.
As each vote resolves, the result becomes a line in a running summary card on the projector. Representation. Executive. By the time the room reaches the signing vote, students can see the document they have actually built - not the document they imagined. This is what makes the signing vote feel like a choice rather than a formality, and what lets the Reckoning land: the room signed a document that has gaps it never voted on.
Events are teacher-triggered. The dashboard suggests when to fire each one; the teacher chooses the moment. Bedford's threat in Turn 2 is the classic "the room needs a push" moment. Franklin's plea in Turn 3 reframes the executive vote as a moral question. Hamilton's "awful spectacle" in Turn 4 sharpens the signing decision. Trigger an event when the debate has gone flat - the verbatim quotation is usually enough to restart the room.
Turns 1-4 use the dark Convention-chamber palette: navy, gold, parchment text. Turn 5 switches the entire projector to a parchment workshop palette with an explicit "Workshop in Progress" frame. The Closing card flips to a near-black background with a single italicized quotation. These shifts tell the room: the simulation is done; the lesson is now. Do not rush the transition - the visual change is doing teaching work.