If you start teaching people using Roleplaying games like Dungeons & Dragons they will be able to learn real life skills without even realising.

Mathematics as a skill is in decline

Using dice to generate numbers has been proven to help people stimulate their ability to perform maths. When an immediate game reward is based on the success of the dice roll it becomes apparent that players try to understand how to improve their success chances.

Skills developed using roleplaying dice rolls are;

Adding various numbers together quickly
Being able to calculate probability of success of an action
Working with addition, subtraction, divide, multiply about 15 times an hour of roleplaying
Advanced maths of percentages, statistical deviations, and working out averages
Interacting with a diverse group of people

Nothing builds effective skills in dealing with other cultures and people than a roleplaying game. As a player you get to choose your race and culture and are required to interact with up to eigt other players that have made different choices than you.

Diverse cultures that are interacted with by roleplayers;

Non-humans like elves, dwarves, and creatures
Different age ranges (players & characters) from 10 to 1200+
The different backgrounds and education of the characters
The different backgrounds and education of the players themselves
Different approaches and respect for many religious viewpoints and behaviours
Interaction with the different legal consequences of neighbouring countries that can be visited without leaving the room
An enormous lexicon of languages, myths, writing, and social behaviours from tribal to world-spanning civilisation
Excellent problem solving skills

At the core of Roleplaying games is the ability to meet problems while in character and come up with solutions for the current problems. This problem solving behaviour can be applied as easily in real life as in roleplaying games.

The process to solve problems is the same and like any new skill, the more times you practice it the better you get. And roleplayers get plenty of practice without any risk to real property, assets or person.

On average a roleplaying game will serve up 10-15 minor problems to be solved and a major problem or two in every eight hour gaming session. This is more effective than any problem solving workshop I have gone to as an adult.

Problem solving skills include;

dealing with difficult negotiations
travelling to one location without having the funds
understanding the local economy to trade items better
being able to navigate in unknown worlds or locations
responding to unplanned events that range from low risk to highly dangerous (to the characters not the players)
As you can see these are all core skills to have regardless of the career path you decide later and is a fun and cost effective way to teach kids maths and english skills they will need later.

Information supplied by Paul Baker

Over twenty years of business development & change management strategies successfully used in National organisations across Australia. The focus is on continuous improvement of business systems to stimulate growth through our principles of Initiate, Inspire, Innovate.

Customer-centric focus using our extensive experience in consumer behaviour and business process operations to find ways to help business owners manage their organisations.

In the 80′s, pencil and paper roleplaying games were the most common form. Games like Dungeons and Dragons set the standard for RP. This form of RP took a great deal of inventiveness and imagination on the part of the players. There was not a detailed environment to look at or even a visible avatar. Everything was created through a person’s own thoughts and imagination, with some guidance of books and others playing.

With the start of home computers, AOL became another source of roleplaying. Early on, home computers were most often used for chat rooms. This broadened the number of people that a person could RP with and an ease of creating variety of scenarios. Personally, I feel that this also opened the door to bending the rules of RP. With pencil and paper games, there were established rules of how players could interact. With the use of chat rooms, most rules went out the digital window.

As computers became more common in households, computer games began to flood the market. MUDs or mutli-user dungeons, were around before the 80′s, but most homes did not have a personal computer. In the late 80′s, these games grew in popularity. This was basically a pencil and paper game, with a basic set of rules, only texted on a computer. This brought back some of the older presets of roleplaying with access to a larger spectrum of users.

Many people will consider a game called Everquest to be one of the first roleplaying computer games. While this is extremely untrue, it is one of the first recognizable games to younger people. Everquest allowed for a living, breathing environment to roleplay a story. A person could actually stand face to face with another person’s avatar, make motions, choose an environment that suited the story being played out. The options became seemingly unlimited. Many people chose to play the game like a console game. Questing, leveling, learning, exploring were all the general gameplay styles. However, there were a number of gamers who took advantage of this new environment to RP.

Over the years, some people have stayed the course and still use pencil and paper games today. Others have chosen MMORPGs as their roleplaying platform. Whichever you choose, remember that it is a game and should be fun to the people involved. RP should never feel like a job or chore. If a story line ever begins to feel this way, it might be a good time to change characters, redevelop a story, or walk away from RP for a bit.