Role-playing Game Aims to Help You Learn a Language

Oct. 13, 2012 - PRLog -- Loosely based on the book, The Magicians, by Lev Grossman, the tabletop roleplaying game, Magicians, is designed to do more than just get players telling a story like ones they would find in their favorite fantasy books; Magicians gets you learning a language by tying key vocal mechanics of the game to language learning.

Roleplaying is a technique that has been used for decades in language classrooms for good reason. Oftentimes students are unwilling to make mistakes and take risks when learning a language, roleplaying provides that disconnect that allows students to open up, take some chances and really learn a language. “Once I started playing tabletop role-playing games I wondered why not take it to the next level and make a game designed entirely to teach a language?” said Kyle Simons, the project’s creator.

Unfortunately, not everyone has a teacher or someone fluent in the language they want to learn to teach them or to tell them when they are speaking incorrectly. To compensate, Magicias, uses the dictation app on your computer or smartphone to mediate success and failure in the game and to teach yourself pronunciation while telling fun, collaborative stories with your friends in a more casual, less formal environment.

The game is about giving the players all of the creativity they want in a game about magic with none of the complexity. The only thing constraining the player and their character in the game when coming up with spells is their knowledge of the subject matter – the language they want to learn. As you learn the language and get better at it, so does your character in the game; you start to really feel connected to your character and become more and more motivated to keep learning.

The kickstarter for Magicians launches on Wednesday, September 17. The first book, and focus of the crowd funding campaign, is for learning the Korean language, one of the easiest written languages to learn in the world. “If the kickstarter is successful and there’s enough interest, I plan on doing books for other languages as well – Japanese and French and the very least but I hope many, many more. It’s important enough to me that I’ve invested all I can afford to bring the book to the point it’s at today and I’m really happy to be working with industry veterans like Ryan Macklin and Daniel Solis.”

More about Kyle Simons: Kyle Simons has been living and working in South Korea more than 5 years and is completing his degree in Korean Education from Kyunghee University in Seoul, South Korea. The game and project is also going to be inspiration and source for his thesis paper. He is an avid gamer on all platforms and always sets some time aside every week for some tabletop gaming. Contact info: kksimons@gmail.com, kksimons@magiciansrpg.com or http://www.magiciansrpg.com/

More about Ryan Macklin: Ryan Macklin is a tabletop RPG who works on both developing and editing RPGs. He has been closely involved in the development and editing of several award-winning tabletop RPGs like The Dresden Files, Leverage and A Penny For My Thoughts. Contact info: http://ryanmacklin.com/

More about Daniel Solis: Daniel Solis is a graphics designer, layout artist and game designer who has both produced and worked on many award-winning RPGs like Do: Pilgrims of the Flying Temple and Happy Birthday Robot and has funded said works partially through his own kickstarters.

More about the kickstarter: The kickstarter will begin on Wednesday, September 17th, 2012 and will run for just over 30 days. It has a minimum goal of $5,000. The project can be found at:

http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1858774754/29317510?token=f2546a79
(Hi-res images will be provided within 24-hours of request to kksimons@gmail.com)