Hello

     In the fall of 2019, I took a class on everyone's favorite subject: financial accounting. It was not a part of my major's requirements, but since I started my first full time job, I fell in love with the idea of running a business. I also felt a deep conviction about stewardship and responsible financial practices, so I thought that I could learn a thing or two about financial management and take it with me wherever I go. One particular activity caught me off guard and blew my mind.

     The professor set up board games around the room and organized us into groups. While we played our games (either Life or Monopoly), we were to record transactions just like we had learned in class. At the end of the game, we would take the information we had recorded and create balance sheets. This gave us the opportunity to take a concept we already knew (i.e. playing a board game) and apply to it the new concepts we were learning (i.e. cash flow sheets, income statements, balance sheets, etc.). I could not remember seeing this kind of innovation before, but it reinforced the concepts we were learning quite effectively.

     When the pandemic hit in 2020 and I had to take my courses online, my free time somehow doubled and in that period I began designing games with one focus in mind: teaching. Since gamification is a great tool for learning, why shouldn't I lean into it when I am designing my tabletop games? Thus, RPG Games was born!

     We could just make more tabletop games which are fun to play and good for game night, but we want our games to tell stories, to teach real world concepts, and to help players return to their normal lives a little wiser and a little stronger. Our first game we are releasing is If You Can Keep It which brings civic concepts like voting, rights, fairness, and justice to the forefront of the game. Players must consider and debate new ideas and keep their rules straight or else they can lose the game. Other games we have in the works include Vigilance: The Role Playing Game where character advancement depends on real world practices and disciplines, Capital where players can practice budgeting and time management, My Dystopian Society where players must rely on social assets like friends and family in order to survive an imminent apocalypse.