Creating Imaginary Worlds with RPG Maker VX Ace
Role-playing games, or RPGs, are games that have us, the players, take on a particular part of a story and it’s events. Most of the time, many of us want to become the hero that saves a world from it’s dark possible future. And yet, at the same time, there are some of us who would guise ourselves into a form who’s goal is to see a world’s destruction. No matter the type of persona we take, the RPG allows us to immerse ourselves within a fictional world that can change from the consequences of our own actions. The way RPGs are played and experienced however, is something that is constantly changing within the field of video games.
RPGs are amazing as they draw you in and inspire you with their characters and worlds; the best RPG's have moments that will stay with you forever. As teachers we teach storytelling, characterisation and dialogue in Literacy, it makes up a large chunk of the subject. However how about letting the children create a world full of complexities and lore, interesting diverging dialogue trees and characters that are well rounded rather than the cyphers the children will often write about in their stories? This sis where RPGs come in, many children are familiar with the Pokémon and the Zelda games, but what would really excite children would be to produce a game, of being a producer rather than just a consumer.
There are many tools out there but the tool of choice for my classroom was RPG Maker VX Ace, due to its relative simplicity and useful tutorials. Over the course of a term I worked with my pupils to create a portfolio, produce a game, playtest it and improve it. This integrated elements of Literacy, Computing and D and T as the children designed and created their own costumes. Below I play through one of my pupil's games and there are links to the lesson plans and portfolio that I created to teach this whole sequence lessons.