Sociology Noir: Problems, Problems

The third instalment (which, for tax purposes, is actually the second part of Part 1 (An Introduction to Sociology) of the Sociology Noir Adventure Mysteries – “The world’s only Murder Mystery series where you also learn some Sociology”. Probably. I don’t actually know if your students will learn anything from the RPG format but I’m pretty sure no-one else has had the audacity to produce anything vaguely similar.

Anyway, it’s called “Problems, Problems” and the main Sociological theme of this particular Choose-Your-Own-Adventure is the difference between social and sociological problems, while a secondary theme covered in the game play is the diversity of human behaviour.

Let me explain.

The basic premise is that students work their way through the Adventure, making choices that result in different outcomes. While “also learning some sociology”.

It’s a tall ask, I know, but bear with me.

The “sociology part” comes from the fact the underlying text on which the Adventure is based is my original work. Mainly, but not exclusively material from the Cambridge International AS and A Level Sociology Coursebook, currently (2026) ranked 516^th in “Social Sciences for Young Adults”. Which, although I didn’t know it was a category until I looked it up, must count for something. There was also a load of material that didn’t make the cut for the textbook and some of that is in the Adventure somewhere.

The clever bit, for which I claim no credit or responsibility, is that this text has been parsed through an AI chatbot in order to transform it into a clearly-structured Whodunnit built around some solid sociological principles.

How you use the Sociology Noir files inside or outside the classroom is, of course, entirely up to you. I have no influence or opinion either way. I also make no claims that presenting A-level Sociology material in this way will magically transform the understanding and grades of your students.

Maybe it will, maybe it won’t.

If it does then you can send me money. If it doesn’t then don’t blame me.

“Caveat emptor” as they say. Although since it’s all free I’m not sure that really applies.

All I will say is that I think it has potential, given the objective is to try to encourage greater immersion in sociological texts through the medium of role-play. That might just be wishful-thinking and t’s probably more-likely teachers might develop this base work into something that really does help students to understand sociology. 

As with all the Adventures there’s a Page Map for teachers (students don’t need to see this to play the game) that details things like the file associated with each page in the Adventure, the pages to which it links and the location of the clues and flags. It also contains a list of the comprehension questions students encounter with indicative content (which, as I’ve said, they don’t see unless you want to suggest ways for them to answer the questions).

I’ve also added a Revision Recap file that links the clues in the Adventure to the relevant sociological content. It also links the original underlying text chapter to the part of the Adventure in which it most coherently appears. This file is available to students once they’ve completed the Adventure.