Car News

This story from NetworkWorld (http://www.networkworld.com/news/
2010/052410-japanese-role-playing-textbooks-new-chapter.html) about
Japanese choose-your-own-adventure textbooks hit my inbox yesterday:

"Japanese news outfit Asahi reports that Namco Bandai -- the Japanese
role-playing game powerhouse behind the Tales series -- and textbook
publisher Gakko Tosho have a partnership to produce textbooks laced
with JRPG elements. The new textbooks in development for math,
science, and language arts will hit classrooms as early as next
spring.<p>

It sounds like Namco Bandai is layering a choose-your-own adventure
into the basic work/textbooks most students use in elementary school.
Students follow an RPG storyline by, say, solving math problems and
each right answer nets them a key. Scoring enough keys wins the
student some kind of prize -- but it's not clear if the prize is
contained within the book or something physical the teacher
distributes. It could be pretty entertaining edutainment if it's not
too easy to cheat the game like you can with most choose-your-own
adventures."

Because Namco Bandai is behind it, most people will connect this with
video games - but it's much more like a tabletop RPG than anything
else, and with a carefully planned format and teacher's guide, there
wouldn't be any real concerns over students "cheating" the game. There
are a lot of cues that could be taken from existing RPGs that would
expand and improve upon this idea.

This could be an incredible teaching tool that inspires kids to learn
through roleplaying. It would be really nice to see Wizards of the
Coast attempt something like this here in the US.

Of course, we wouldn't have to wait around for WotC, would we? Pretty
much *anyone* could take the initiative on something like this...
(nudge, nudge)

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