RPG as a Teaching Tool

A game, in its most basic form, is a model for successes and failures, for incentives and consequences.  The interaction of the player or players within this model generates successes and failures that build the story of play.  This is true for every game from solitaire to D&D to board games to video games.  Specifically in RPGs, where players put themselves into the roles of other people, these models for successes and failures, become a mental model for what the character should or shouldn't do and for how things interact in the game world.

What never ceases to amaze, is that as soon as this model is put in place, the players, without mathematical rigor or even openly stated analysis, begin finding their way to the optimal configurations of characters for the types of interactions they want to focus on.  Give the man some advice, and he'll ignore it.  Give the man a puzzle with some rules, and he'll find the right answer every time.  Struggling to fine the optimum?  Don't worry -- the other players will jump right in and help you.

Given this unique power that puzzles have over people and that people have over puzzles, it seems logical to extend the realm of RPGs into areas where we can use realistic models for real-life.  Take, for example, human health.  Doctors know enough about human health to be able to give advice to people as to what they should and shouldn't do.  The world is filled with articles about how to defeat every disease and health risk that comes along, yet the population continues to battle with these things.  What, if instead of offering advice, we offered a game with a realistic model for human health.

Now the players of this hypothetical game -- let's call it "Live Forever" -- get to make decisions on how to outlive the other players, both by making good decisions themselves and trying to get the other players to make bad decisions.  The human brain builds the model, starts optimizing it, and ultimately incorporates it into their day-to-day thinking patterns.

How many other areas of human knowledge could we reinforce and optimize by simply exposing people to games?  So here is the challenge this week.  Find a topic you care about where people are making poor choices -- global warming, STDs, terrorism, censorship, whatever.  Build a realistic, yet simple model of how the decisions of humans influence the success and failures.  Then build it into a FUN game.  Rinse, lather, repeat, and unleash a plethora of games on the world to do good.