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Message: <blockquote data-quote="I'm A Banana" data-source="post: 4787549" data-attributes="member: 2067">Games teach things by repeated behavior (practice) and basic carrot/stick reinforcement (you loose, which is bad, or you win, which is good).Any skill that you want the kids to "learn" from the game should be part of the victory conditions.For instance, say you want "social skills" to be one of the benefits. They game should reward you for talking to other players, maybe even having a conversation with them, or trying to team up with them. The more you talk, the better you do (up to a point, of course -- you probably don't want to encourage spotlight-hogs). One way RPG's do this is by having you play a character, and then having you work on a team with other characters. You have to describe what your character looks like, what he acts like, what his abilities are, and how others can help you in order to do your best. You can't just sit there and roll dice and be an effective player...you will loose. I'd keep the mechanics simple. When going with simulationism, simplicity is also a byword for "abstract." Say each kid has a character, and maybe also has a hand of, say, 5 cards that represent their "powers" or "attributes" or something. You can go with basic poker hands: the better the hands, the better the powers, but no hand starts off as a good hand. What makes it a good hand is when they combine their cards to make a "group hand" of five cards. In order to find out what cards they have, they need to talk and interact. If, amongst the "team" they can put together a royal straight flush or something, they'll win when compared to the other "team's" cards. Of course, you'll want to keep the randomness in there so that one team doesn't just come up with the best hand and keep winning...But yeah, basically, whatever you want to teach, have it happen over and over again as the prerequisite for victory, and if you don't do it, you'll loose. Math, writing, social interaction, whatever -- if you need it to win the game, you'll either develop the skill, or you'll keep loosing (possibly to the point of not liking the game, but that's a more subtle design issue).</blockquote>

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