Operation LAPIS is a two-year, game-based (practomimetic) introductory course in the Latin language and in Roman culture. It can stand on its own as a full curriculum or supplement other materials, and programs often start with it as a supplement before transitioning to it in place of a traditional textbook.
"You are standing, in the Italian sunshine, in a road. In the distance rises a mountain so perfectly-shaped that it must be a volcano. Near the road is a tree, and in the tree is a boy. Under the tree, you see a rough-looking man. The man looks up menacingly at the boy, and says, 'Ubi est Lapis?'"
Thus begins a two-year epic adventure to find and interpret the LAPIS SAECULORUM. By the end, the operatives of Operation LAPIS, whether students in a traditional classroom or learners in cyberspace, will read Latin with fluency and understanding. More importantly, they will know why their learning mattered, and how to use it to help save civilization and build their communities.
Three Ways to Play, One Shared CODEX
Operation LAPIS now comes in three modes. Pick the one that fits your students, your goals, and your comfort with role-playing. All three are powered by the same engine: a shared CODEX that holds the Latin reading, grammar, vocabulary, and cultural material at the heart of the course. The mode you choose changes how students experience the story. It does not change the Latin they learn.
| Latin Role-Playing | English Role-Playing | Choose Your Own Path | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Best for | Classes ready to commit to full Latin role-playing experience | Classes ready to commit to role-playing or after-school clubs and exploratory programs | Students or teachers who want to experience the story without the role-playing element |
| How students engage | Teams collaboratively perform as a young Roman of the gens Recentia through 171 unique episodes across 28 missions | Teams collaboratively perform as a young Roman of the gens Recentia through 171 unique episodes across 28 missions | An individual reader or class follows one version of the LAPIS tale through two Recentii siblings, Octaviana and Bellator, and makes choices that steer how the story resolves |
| Immersion text | Latin | English | Latin guided narrative |
| Student responses | Latin (a teacher may choose to allow English responses, which remains pedagogically valid) | English | Choice-based, no in-character composition required |
| CODEX materials | Latin | Latin | Latin |
| Assessment | Latinity Points via Mission Control, Attunement section of the CODEX | Latinity Points via Mission Control, Attunement section of the CODEX | Teacher choice, Attunement section of the CODEX |
Latin RPG
The full practomimetic experience. The immersion narrative is delivered in Latin, and students respond in Latin as their team's young Roman. A teacher who wants to lower the barrier early on can permit English responses without breaking the pedagogy, then ramp up the expectation for Latin as the year develops. This is Latin-learning as performance, with the richest payoff for proficiency.
English RPG
The same narrative, the same team collaboration, the same CODEX, with the immersion text and student responses in English. Students still read Latin and collect Latin throughout, because the CODEX supplementary texts remains entirely in Latin. This mode is ideal for exploratory programs, after-school clubs, classes with a wide range of readiness, or any teacher who wants their class to experience the interactive story without the pressure of role-playing in Latin.
CYOP (Choose Your Own Path)
A single, branching narrative for students and teachers who are unsure about the role-playing experience or who simply prefer a more traditional way through the story. The CYOP tells one version of the LAPIS tale through the eyes of two characters, and the reader's choices steer the path. There are no teams and no in-character composition. It is the most familiar on-ramp to the world of Operation LAPIS, and it still draws on the same CODEX for the Latin and the culture.
Everything Lives at lapis.practomime.com
All three modes run from one place. Every role-playing immersion episode, every CYOP episode, and the entire CODEX live at lapis.practomime.com. The site is fully responsive, so it works the same on a classroom laptop, a tablet, or a phone, with no app to install.
The reading experience has tools built right into the page:
Rollover tooltips
Surface help exactly where a student needs it, without leaving the passage.
Alpheios plugin
Instant access to dictionary entries and full morphological analysis for any Latin word, turning every text into a guided reading environment.
Because the content is hosted and maintained centrally, updates reach every classroom immediately, and you never manage files or versions yourself.
The Shared CODEX: The Key Factor
The CODEX is what makes the three modes one course. It is a set of web pages holding everything you expect from a textbook, reorganized so that students consult it because the story demands it, not because a syllabus says so. Every CODEX entry exists to help an operative perform better in the narrative.
Each episode's CODEX includes:
Rather than dictating the learning, the CODEX flips the role of the textbook and becomes the resource learners reach for as needed. Because all three modes share it, a program can run different modes in different sections and still teach the same Latin.
VERBA, Rebuilt Around Frequency
Frequency-aligned vocabulary with one-click export
The VERBA sections are now tightly aligned with vocabulary frequency based on the Dickinson College database (with an eye on the Advanced Placement® test), so the words students glean and review are the words that matter most for reading real Latin. The companion tools at lapis.practomime.com/verba make VERBA both a reference and an active practice space, and the VERBA Selector tool gives an instant export of customizeable content to popular platforms such as Quizlet, Blooket, and more.
Mission Control: Dossiers and Character Sheets, Made Simple
The character sheets and operative dossiers that were once spread across Google Docs now live in one purpose-built web app: mc.practomime.com. It was designed to take the busywork out of running the course.
Built for ease of use
No accounts, no passwords
Each student opens their dossier or character sheet with a single unguessable code. Nothing to set up, reset, or forget, and no identifying information (grades or email) is tied to the student. Latinity Points work best disaggregated from traditional grades.
Works on any device, instantly
Mission Control is fast, server-rendered, and responsive. Any current browser on a laptop, tablet, or phone works with no install.
Feedback that lands immediately
Enter a score or a short note and the student sees it the moment they open their dossier. The assessment loop is continuous and embedded, not a stack of papers to return.
For students
The operative dossier shows each student's Latinity Points, their level and progress to the next one, their per-mission progress, and any feedback you have sent. From there a single button opens their team's character sheet, where the team manages its young Roman: persona, traits, gear, and an ongoing narrative log of the journey.
For teachers (Agents)
The Agent console at mc.practomime.com/agent lets you create a class in seconds and manage everything from one place:
- Award Latinity Points one student at a time, or bulk-award an entire class for an episode in a single screen.
- Bulk-mark attunement and key-text completion across the whole roster at once.
- Send a short transmission of feedback to any student instantly.
- Group multiple class periods inside one cohort with optional sections, kept visible to you alone.
- Color-coded inputs let you see the spread of a class at a glance as you grade.
- Manage classes, sections, rosters, and characters from one place, including quick links for access codes.
Mission Control replaces the old document workflow with something faster, cleaner, and far easier to run at the scale of a full class.
Key Features
Performative demonstration of learning objectives
Each session, students receive a new piece of the narrative (in Latin or English, depending on the mode) and a prompt their Roman must respond to. They read the narrative, engaged with various texts, do relevant research in the CULTURALIA, and collaborate with teammates to decide what their character will do. Across 171 unique episodes, students learn to read, write, speak, think, and act like a young Roman by collaboratively performing as one.
Latinity Points as a replacement for traditional assessment
In discussing a response, each team member cites the source of their information, considers their Roman's unique world-view, and includes as much Latin as possible. Doing those things earns Latinity Points (LP), the course's version of experience points. Traditional grading starts students at full credit and subtracts for errors. Latinity Points work the other way: the better a student performs a task, the more LP they earn. That single twist shifts the focus from the grade to the collaborative process. A clear rubric guides both instructor and learner, and every point is tracked automatically in Mission Control.
A real role-playing game layer
The team's character sheet is more than a name. Each team controls one of eight Roman personas with its own background and abilities, ranks up six traits over the course of the story, earns and equips gear, and keeps a running narrative log of the adventure. The role-playing mechanics give students a concrete reason to keep reading, researching, and writing Latin. As their character improves, they improve.
Student-centered by design
Because deeper knowledge of the content gives operatives more freedom in the prompts, students become genuinely invested in the material. Static teams create healthy competition both in the immersions and in the classroom, and a strong sense of community forms as teammates work to help one another contribute.
Operation LAPIS is available to instructors in traditional classroom settings free of charge. To learn more about using our practomimetic courses in your classroom, contact us at lapis@practomime.com.
Instructor Overview
What Operation LAPIS is
A two-year introductory Latin curriculum covering the same content found in a wide variety of Latin textbooks, including the Cambridge Latin Course, Suburani, and Ecce Romani. It can take the place of a textbook or serve as a supplemental set of materials, helping students reach the standard learning objectives of first- and second-year Latin at the high-school and college levels:
- Read Latin
- Write Latin
- Identify key products, practices, and perspectives of Roman culture
- Summarize key events of Roman history
How Operation LAPIS differs from traditional curricula
Operation LAPIS is an interactive adventure in which students perform their learning. You can call it a game, and students do, but it is also a story and an ongoing collaborative performance. Where traditional books let students follow a story across their Latin learning, Operation LAPIS lets them play a story about ancient Rome and integrate their growing skills into that play. This is experiential, project-based, problem-based learning: students learn Latin by playing Romans.
For example, instead of reading about how a famous Roman was present at an important battle as a young man, students in Operation LAPIS collaborate in small teams to perform as young Romans present at the battle of Cannae and later the sack of Carthage.
The course uses the most compelling aspects of modern digital games, including role-playing in an imaginary world, collecting, leveling, and questing, in service of an adventure with both digital and decidedly non-digital sides. The concept is direct: students are recruited to save the world by learning Latin. You, the instructor, play an agent of the shadowy figure called the Demiurge, an organization founded to keep the values of the ancient world alive by giving students the skills to do so. On day one you recruit your students, telling them they have been selected to enter a text-based simulation of the ancient world in which they must find and decipher the LAPIS SAECULORUM.
The story takes the Recentii from Pompeii to Britain to Egypt, back to Britain, and finally to Rome itself, with journeys in time and imagination to the Titanomachy, the Trojan War, Carthage, and Alexandria at the moment Octavian took it. Following the trail of the LAPIS, students learn that it expresses the never-ceasing struggle in Roman culture between traditional authority and populism. To understand the LAPIS, they have to understand the social history of Rome, and they learn to answer the question "What made Rome great?" in many different ways, gaining the ability to evaluate our own cultural practices by comparison.
How the pieces fit together
The content hub. Every immersion episode, every CYOP episode, and the full CODEX live at lapis.practomime.com: responsive, with rollover tooltips and the Alpheios reading tools built in.
The TSTT. In the two RPG modes, the Texto-Spatio-Temporal Transmitter is where operatives respond to the adventure. It works like an internet forum on your social learning platform: you post what is happening, and students post what their teams' young Romans will do, collaborating in team-only spaces along the way. The TSTT accepts posts whenever students are ready, so the course gains the benefits of both asynchronous student-centered learning and synchronous social learning. The CYOP mode is self-contained, so a student moves through the story directly on lapis.practomime.com.
Mission Control. The web app at mc.practomime.com houses each student's operative dossier and the team's character sheet, with the Agent console at mc.practomime.com/agent. This replaces the shared Google Docs that previously held dossiers and character descriptions, and it is where you enter the scores and feedback students see instantly.
The technical stuff
Two kinds of platform drive the activity. A social learning platform (we officially support Google Classroom, though any LMS works) serves as the bulletin board where the RPG story unfolds. Mission Control handles the dossiers, character sheets, Latinity Points, and role-playing progression. All course content sits on lapis.practomime.com. You just have to provide the links and engage in the experience.
The story is broken into twenty-eight missions (think of them as books), three episodes per mission (chapters), and usually two parts per episode (scenes). Every platform involved is browser-based and runs on most devices, including iOS and Android, giving instructors and students real flexibility in how they connect.
Your role as an Agent of the Demiurge
The best learning happens with an active guide right beside the student. Each episode gives a beginning for the ancient action, and it is up to you and your students to continue it. As students post their team's Recentius's responses, you have full rein to play any other character they meet. Get involved in whatever style feels comfortable, and remember that the more your students see you take risks, the more open they will be to taking their own. The greatest reward is to get so lost in playing the story that you have as much fun as they do.
Operation LAPIS is not more work, in our experience, just a different kind, one that often feels more important and more fulfilling. The rhythms differ from other ways of teaching Latin and take some getting used to. You will quickly find you could spend all your time helping students learn in LAPIS. The skill is learning when to stop helping, so other students can do the helping instead. That balance feels difficult at first, but the learning usually goes better when other students provide most of the answers, even when those answers are not the complete one you would give.
We are trying to change the way you think about teaching. Teaching, we believe, means providing opportunities for students to learn, and those opportunities multiply when the instructor lets go.
Jumping in mid-semester?
Our experience suggests your results may not reflect how Operation LAPIS works when started at the beginning of the year. Students who meet this restructuring of their learning in the middle of a traditional cycle tend to resist the commitment it asks for. Do not let that deter you if you want a feel for LAPIS, but do not be discouraged by the resistance either. LAPIS can be fun, but fun is not the point, and taking responsibility for one's own learning is hardest to enjoy when it breaks from a methodology students have come to rely on.
Next Steps
Access the Agent's Field Guide, or reach out to talk it through.