What is Realm of Knowledge?
Realm of Knowledge is a game made for educational purposes. The goal is to improve students’ motivation, but also to train certain skills depending on which campaign is used. It takes place in a world full of magic, monsters, and gods. Every student creates their own character with the help of a character sheet and a guide containing information about the available options. They can choose from three premade races and five premade classes, but they can determine their own personality and looks.
The setup of the game is meant to not only provide entertainment, but also contribute to language acquisition, as its primary goal is to aid in learning rather than simply being for amusement. Communication is key for games like this, so the idea is that the learners speak the target language as they solve the challenges and battle monsters. Additionally, autonomy is required from players in the Realm of Knowledge, as they will be responsible for checking certain assignments themselves.
The teacher will play the role of Game Master (GM). It is your job to tell the story for the campaign and guide your students. You introduce new events and materials they will need to progress the campaign. As the GM, you possess omniscient knowledge, and players are required to approach you in case their character perishes and requires resurrection. Your role is to ensure that all participants reach the end of the story and to manage time (announce events, encourage groups that may take longer on an assignment to complete it quickly to not fall behind, etc).
If you are interested in the theory theory behind the game, please consult Realm of Knowledge: A Quest for Motivation by clicking the button below.
Basics
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Create Characters
It all begins with character creation. The learners get a character sheet and design their own Realm of Knowledge character. This is done with the help of a guide that explains which perks each race and class has. The races they can choose from are human, elf, and dwarf. The classes are Knight, Hunter, Thief, Mage, and Healer.
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Fight Monsters
Throughout the story, the learners will encounter monsters, each with their own stats and attacks. With a turn-based battle system, players use the actions their character has (determined by their class) to defeat any monsters they encounter. For these encounters they get Experience Points (XP) to level up their characters.
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Complete Challenges
Other than battling monsters, learners will have to complete challenges to progress the story. These assignments can test anything from general knowledge about English to reading comprehension to grammar. The assignments are adjusted as needed. Eventually campaigns about specific subjects will be made.
Try it out yourself…
Click below to go to the quests and find all the files you need to run a game for free!
Pilot impressions
These are some materials created for the pilot version of Realm of Knowledge. Everything for the story (progression, challenges, monster cards) was distributed in envelopes. The learners could put the envelopes in their group’s folder when they were done with it, or return it to the teacher.
For the pilot players had more options than the beta version, so the skill points from the pilot material does not match what will be used in the beta.
Pilot Challenges
On the left is an impression of the monsters the students encountered and examples of some of the challenges they had to solve. Other than this there were brainteasers for reading comprehension, writing their character’s past to practise past tenses, and fill in the gap exercises to test other grammar and students’ vocabulary.
