Education Board Games

Hi Raj,

We get one or two of these questions every few months. It's neat that so many teachers out there assign board game projects to their students. At the same time, it's a little disheartening that most of these teachers expect "question games" as a solution. There is so much more that can be done!

Depending on the genre, you can create a simulation of an historical event and let the players re-live it. For example, players might take the roles of shop owners in pre-Revolutionary Boston. They struggle to make a living selling their goods in spite of British taxation and trade legislation. An event deck generates realistic conditions as the game progresses. This allows kids to appreciate the buildup to the Revolutionary War by "living it".

You can use similar tricks to design science-oriented board games: encode the physical rules you want to teach into game itself. Then, as people play the game, they'll automatically come to understand the physics. For instance, you could make a simple "card battle" style game where players try to create certain elements by bombaring a nucleus with protons and neutrons. If they imbalance between protons and neutrons becomes to great, the nucleus decays into a lighter element, otherwise it continues to grow. If a player can make it reach a certain type of element, he collects it (e.g., maybe you are trying to collect gold and I'm after lead this turn, etc). You could take it one step further and let people try to collect elements from certain regions of the Periodic Table (e.g., "noble gases"). This would teach kids about atomic structure, the periodic table, and radioactive decay all at once.

As you've pointed out, "question games" are the lowest common denominator for educational games. They're the easiest to produce, but the least interesting to play and the least effective for teaching. If you can encode the concepts you want to teach into the game system itself, the players will learn them in the process of reaching the game goal.

Good luck and keep us posted on your work.

Cheers,

Mark

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Raj

You could do an "inventor" game with two decks of cards, Elements and Inventions. The Element cards show an element and list useful properties. For example:

Hydrogen (H)
Gas
Lighter than air
Flammable

Uranium (U)
Solid
Heavier than air
Radioactive

Inventions are items that require combinations of Elements to create.
Example:

Hot air balloon
Gas (lighter than air)
Fuel (flammable liquid)
Gondola (lightweight, strong)

Players draw Elements and try to build the most inventions (basic set matching). Maybe they can trade cards. There should be some interesting mechanics to the acquisition of Elements and the competition to build Inventions.

Each invention is worth a number of points based on the total build cost. In other words, complex inventions that require many Elements are worth more points than simpler ones with fewer Elements. In addition, certain inventions may be worth fewer points if certain requirements aren't met (for example, the Hot Air Balloon may be worth 1 less point if the lighter-than-air gas used to create it is flammable).

Not to beat a dead horse, but this shows how you can integrate the "stuff you're teaching" into the game itself: people will have to learn the Elemental properties as they play the game.

You could do something similar with the "learn about locations" game. Maybe players draw cards with facts related to places on the map. For example, they draw "silver mining" which lists several silver mining states (Arizona, Montana, Nevada -- I'm just making them up, but you get the idea). Players collect a handful of these different "facts and states". The actual *game* requires them to drive around the countryside and visit states. When they go to a state that matches one of their facts, they can discard that card. In the example above, if the player visited any of Arizona, Montana, or Nevada, he could discard his "silver mining" card. The first person to empty his hand wins the game. So, the actual "game" is about planning the most efficient route to dump your cards -- but in the course of play, you'll inadvertently learn which states produce what, or were the birthplaces of which famous people, etc.

You've got some great ideas so far. Keep running with them.

Mark

Thanks

Raj

Hi Raj,

Now you're starting to ask questions about the actual game design. :) That means the answer is really up to you. Movement is the heart of this game, so you want to use a mechanic that is fun and appropriate for your target audience.

I believe you can draw a world map using 1 of 4 unique colors for every country. In such a map, no country will border on another of the same color. If you created such a map, you could use dice with colors on their faces. This would use 4 faces, leaving two extra. 1 of the extra faces might be "wild" (played as any color). The other might be an "event" which would result in a draw from an "event" deck. Players would get to roll a certain number of dice on their turn and move however they pleased based on the colors.

For example:
Player 1 starts in France, which is blue. Suppose players roll 3 dice for their move. Player 1 rolls blue, red, and Event.
Looking at the board, he sees that Italy is the only adjacent red country. From Italy, only Monaco is blue. He checks his "locations" cards and sees that he has nothing suitable to either Italy or Monaco. He decides to play his Event first.
He draws an Event card and reads it aloud. It says, "World Trade Organization: you may give one of your 'location' cards to another player and take one of his, chosen randomly, in exchange." Player 1 gives his "Ancient Astronomers" card to player 2 and draws "History of Flight". Fortunately, thanks to Da Vinci's drawings of possibly flying machines, "History of Flight" can be played in Italy, so player 1 takes his 'red' move and plays the card.

This is a pretty simplistic system, but you get the idea. It's not very strategic and involves little player interaction, so it might not be much fun for older players.

You could improve it a bit by giving each player his own dice. Everyone rolls simultaneously in full view of others. Players can then trade dice back and forth as they try to set up the best move they can. If you add some other element -- such as each country can only be used once as a point to drop off a card -- players now have to weigh their trades more carefully. For example, you might want someone else's red die, but you're afraid to give him the yellow that he wants as it might allow him to reach a country you'll need during your turn.

Colors and dice are easy to understand, but they only take you so far. You will probably find it easier to create more interesting game designs if you tighten your theme's focus even more. Rather than using the entire world throughout history, "drill down" to a specific era -- say Rennaissance Europe. This can suggest more interesting mechanics and questions. For example, players might now represent great patrons of the Arts. The 'learning cards' could now be classic works of art from that time period. The cards themselves could be color-coded to match the artists that created them. As a patron, you could use gold to buy items and/or make payments to entice artists to your villa and once there create these great works of art. The patron with the most masterpieces wins the game.

Bam! Instant "art history" game.

K.

Then your "dice and maps" design is spot on. Good luck with it. I hope you'll post some photos of the final product!

Cheers,

Mark