Tuesday, July 23, 2013

Magicians - The Korean Language Learning RPG

I'm really excited about Magicians, a new role playing game from the pen of Kyle Simons. Drawing on the rich folk tales and legends of Korea, he has created a setting with all kinds of storytelling possibilities. Player characters begin as novice spell casters in a school with distinctive Asian qualities but also more than a nod to Hogwarts and modern Manga and Anime. Players create stories collaboratively through a pre-game brainstorming process and off they go. It is, of course, possible to run Magicians as a more traditional tabletop RPG as well.

The best part of the game, though, the part that really excites me, is the way that language learning is built into the core of the system. In order to cast spells, players must use the Korean language. At the most basic level, the Prodigy Magic System, the correct pronunciation of various important syllabic sounds creates the magic. The next step, the Apprentice System, players need to work with nouns and verbs to cast more complex and efficacious spells. The full magic system for the game, the Master System, adds the other parts of speech and the vibrancy of more complex grammatical constructions. It's awesome! My daughter, who is bilingual in Korea, pronounced the game, "credible."

I am so impressed by Simons' creation. His game makes language learning integral to a game, a chance to tell stories to practice your Korean language skills. It scales to different levels of experience and competence. Magicians makes targeted learning an intrinsic part of the game, with built-in rewards, as well as any role playing game I've ever seen.

Simons produced Magicians through a highly successful Kickstarter campaign, which included many achieved stretch goals, among them expansions for Japanese and Chinese. As an avid student of the latter, I can't wait to see what his team does with that! Whether you're interested in teaching a foreign language or want to explore the story possibilities of this setting, Magicians is well worth your time to explore.

Have fun!

P.S. Part of my enthusiasm for Magicians at this moment may come from having just watched the delightful 2005 Korean film Welcome to Dongmakgol, which I also very much recommend.

Monday, July 8, 2013

Kickstarter

I've just backed The Chuubo's Marvelous Wish-Granting Engine on Kickstarter. I've backed several other role playing game projects over the last year, including Magicians: A Language Learning RPG, The Guide to Glorantha, Deluxe Tunnels and Trolls, Call of Cthulhu 7th Edition, Fate Core, and Golden Sky Stories, among others. Kickstarter is definitely the new way to fund many major RPG projects, and I'm very excited to be part of these endeavors.

If you're not familiar with Kickstarter, have a look. Usually, when you support a project, you get some sort of reward, game books, sometimes print, sometimes digital, in the case of those above. If you're a teacher, ask your accountant about treating them as tax deductions!

Sunday, July 7, 2013

Getting Back to Work

It's been a busy school year, much more busy than normal, but now that I have returned from leading a student trip overseas, things are settling back to normal, and I should be able to share more through this blog than have in many months. There is plenty to do!

Though I will not be attending any of the big summer conventions other than Dragon Con in my hometown, I have several role playing games I've been exploring for use in classroom, and I will have more to share about these in the coming weeks.

For now, though school has ended for the moment, I am already working on my games for the coming term. While my role playing style these days, both with adults and children, tends to be light on mechanics and heavy on story and what works, sometimes it's necessary to pop the hood and dig into the engine under the game to make it work better. Such is the case for the big classroom game I'll be running this year. Zhongguo is a simulation of life at the court of Empress Wu, the only woman every to rule China directly as a full emperor. She reigned in the seventh century, during the early years of the Tang Dynasty, and while she was derided and sensationalized by later historians, her time on the throne provides a wonderful array of issues and conflicts: roles for woman, the growth of Buddhism in China and the attendant crises in Confucianism and Daoism, international exchanges of all kinds, corruption and reform, and much more.

This simulation has been a mainstay of my students study of China all school year, but when I last ran it I realized that the economic mechanics were too vague, making this aspect of the game confusing for my students and more work for me. As it is now, each provincial governor gets cards representing the wealth of that province, and that's it. Once they spent them, they were gone. Most years, this has stymied economic activity and experimentation, and I've always ended up having to inject some more cards into the game, which is never satisfying, though sometimes necessary.

I am going to change this part of the system. Rather than starting with all of their wealth pre-alloted, each governor will roll on a table unique to that province once each game year. Higher rolls will generate more diverse and more plentiful resources. Investing certain wealth cards into the province ahead of time will provide a bonus on the roll later. Game events - like fires, disease, raids, war, and so forth - will reduce the roll.

So, for the governor of Shannan Province, I now have the table below. This will create more variability and excitement than the old system, and it should keep the economy more liquid. I am sure I will tinker with these tables during the school year and for future iterations of the game, but it already has a better feel.

Have fun!

David


Shannan Province Wealth Table

Roll a six-sided die and consult the table below.

For each combination of ten (10) of any of the following Resource cards, add one (+1) to the first die roll.

Certain events – including but not limited to fires, disease, earthquake, raids, war – will subtract from the die roll.

Roll Result
1 1d6 Iron
2 1d6 Slaves
3 2d6 Iron
4 2d6 Slaves
5 Roll twice.
6 Roll three times.