RPGs serve many purposes, most of which can be designed goals. One of these purposes is to provide the players with some new knowledge or insight from playing. Two months ago, I discussed the ways in which we learn from our games things that we can apply after we finish playing. And last month I discussed the learning of language, not simply to play a RPG, but to act as a way to communicate and understand something new. This month, I am continuing that series by discussing how games can teach skills and perspectives for use outside of play.

Learning the Ropes

Games in general, and especially games as flexible and reactive as RPGs make exceptional tools for learning. One of the major hurdles for this application is ensuring that the game teaches the desired lessons. RPGs are especially dynamic, meaning that the actual learning will not be from the game text, but from the dynamics of play. It is not enough to have a RPG set in a forensic investigation or historical period, even of that you wish to teach. The dynamics of the game must serve to explore and structure its subjects.

To intentionally design such a game, you must be aware of how the skill or information is to be learned, and impart that process into the RPG. The process is at once holistic, ensuring that the system and setting support each other in your goal. If you wish to educate players about social history in Carolingian France, research is only a part of the task. You must also ensure that the system encourages situations that challenge the players' knowledge, and encourage them to more deeply explore the relationships and societies of that time, and avoid spurious distractions.

Making this even more difficult is the fact that people will only play your game if it is enjoyable. Learning is one of the most fundamental forms of fun, which means you must ensure that all the players will be able to continually learn. A player who is overwhelmed or underwhelmed with opportunities will fast become frustrated with your game. Often this means flexibility for players of differing skill levels. Other types of fun are more ephemeral, but they often are less important for a game such as this, except as an enticement for players to learn something they wouldn't otherwise.

Using Foundations

One of the simplest ways to build your learning structure, is to use an existing foundation. For example, making a mechanic in your historical RPG which benefits players who bring primary or secondary sources of their character's backstory. This allows you to leverage any existing knowledge of research techniques to enhance your game. The problem being players without such skills will be limited in their ability to play.

Foundations can be powerful, but they constrain who can effectively play your games. Some foundations are present in most RPGs, such as simple mathematics or writing ability. But as you demand more and more, you should expect some players to balk at those requirements, even if they are intensely interested in the subject and the RPG.

Rarely is a foundation truly necessary. They act as short cuts, allowing the designer and the player to skip over introductory skills and knowledge as prerequisite, and move to the subjects of interest. It is the simplest way to focus the learning in your game to just what you intend, narrowing the scope and the field of possible players. Like all design decisions this one should be made carefully.

The Long Haul

Even if you bypass many of the foundations, many skills and topics are complex and difficult. Only the simplest things can be learned in a few hours of play. Learning must happen for these simple ideas first, before more complicated ones can be learned. So not only must the dynamics of the game enable learning, they must enable learning in a sequential manner. Learning in a RPG must build in complexity and difficulty, or at least change to new simple topics over time.

Just as in more conventional education, players may become frustrated with the forestalling of more complex matters, or with their presence too early. One of the advantages of RPGs interactivity is that the rate of difficulty can be made to adjust to each player. Designing these long range dynamics means including evolving elements across setting and system for this purpose. Returning to the historical example, these dynamics could be traveling through the Frankish kingdoms, experiencing events as they occur, or changes in social status and rank. In any case, these elements are needed to keep player involved and interested as they develop a deeper understanding.

Simplicity and Depth

At the core of any effective approach to learning via RPGs, is the core underlying structure of the knowledge or skill to be imparted. This core is communicated to the players as a dynamic object, experienced by how it structures the ideas and information present during play. To function well, this core concept must be simple enough to be communicated. Returning once more to the historical example, learning could be organized by the concept of military obligation, nominally the feudal system.

To be truly effective this core idea must be expandable. Feudalism has many variants and levels, each of which reflects further depth on the basic concept. This makes it a compelling structure, simple to understand, but able to grow into an understanding of much greater complexity. Selecting this core structure is one of the most important design decisions for designing a RPG of this sort, and requires thought as well as research.

A Tactical Perspective

Last month I presented a design of mine called Savagery (warning pdf), a game of social and emotional combat. I discussed how Savagery offers a language for describing social conflicts, in the form of its social combat maneuvers and mechanics. This language also serves as the core structure to learn a skill, that of perceiving tactics in social interaction.

Typically in social interaction people are unreflective, they respond to other's statements without considering what may be the speaker's goal. Savagery repeatedly brings players into social combat. In this case, players have the opportunity to learn what is nominally a game playing skill. Indeed, Savagery uses conventional combat as a foundation to build a similar structure in a social context. By translating this tactical perspective, a new skill is achieved.

This skill, while useful to deal with high risk social interaction, is also used in the observation of other players. In this way, learning from the game gives a new foundation for learning about the other players and even about themselves. Next month I'll discuss that type of learning in RPGs.

Next Month: Encountering Each Other