From the introduction:
This game is designed for use in both science and non-science courses. It was purposely developed to bridge the unfortunate division that often exists in students’ minds between natural science and the humanities and social sciences. In particular, it is designed to impress on the students the importance for everyone to be able to evaluate the scientific claims that appear daily in the popular media. Without this ability, it is difficult for students to make decisions on what to eat, how to deal with personal health, and how to vote on important issues of policy related to the environment. Similarly, it is important for science students to understand the policy implications of scientific research and how it may be applied.
To facilitate multiple uses of the game, optional material has been placed in appendices. Instructors can omit this material completely. The days in the setup of the game that would be devoted to this material can be spent instead helping students understand how to evaluate popular scientific material in the media. You can also use this time to work with factions to help them understand the summaries of technical material provided in the core documents in the gamebook.
There is some scientific content as well as some quantitative material that is essential to many games at the interface of science and policy. For example, the Acid Rain game expects that students and instructors can divide emissions by GDP to get emissions per dollar of GDP and similar ratios. Most RTTP science games require students to read simple graphs. We consider these core college level skills. This game also includes summaries of technical papers that are important to various roles. The student Gamebook has a section that discusses how to approach technical material. Instructors should never hesitate to refer students to their science or math colleagues if students ask questions that they really can’t answer. Again, this will model the import interdisciplinary aspects of the subjects of the games and the importance of interdisciplinary collaboration for applying science to public policy.