Roleplaying is good stuff, and it can be a wonderful tool when applied to the education sphere. Especially, when it comes to kids. Children are natural, adept roleplayers given the right situation and 9^th Level Games is about to bring their new Venture Village RPG to Kickstarter in February!

Venture Village is an RPG that’s completely aimed at kids, ages 5-15 and it’s been designed for use in both therapeutic and educational settings, especially those which are focused on social-emotional learning and wellness compared to smashing down orcs or anyone to solve problems.

Venture Village casts the players as animals who live in a fun, cute, and accessible animal world. You go to school, help around town, and have fun adventures with your friends. The kind of play that this group of children particularly engages with, and totally enjoys.

These adventures are designed to hone the child’s social-emotional skills such as problem solving, flexibility, cooperation, and communication. Things which are not hard-baked into other RPGs on the market, and a reason that Venture Village should be a big hit with educators and even parents alike.

“Social-Emotional Learning is a significant area of focus for Venture Village, as it is a huge area of focus in the worlds of therapy and education. Defined by the Collaborative for Academic, Social, and Emotional Learning (CASEL), social-emotional learning is the acquisition and application of knowledge, skills, and attitudes necessary to develop healthy inter- and intra-personal identities.”

9th Level

SEL has four areas that the RPG focuses on, briefly described here:

Communication – effectively providing and understanding language in order to understand and be understood.

Emotional Wellness – identifying and managing emotions in order to successfully and healthfully cope, cooperate, and communicate.

Social Awareness – acknowledging the presence and role of teamwork and collaboration, knowing how your decisions impact others and acting/ reacting accordingly.

Personal Strengths – acknowledging and celebrating the traits, skills, and abilities you possess and using them to contribute to situations.

When COVID lockdown happened in March 2020, Venture Village development started, and it uses the polymorph system from 9^th Level. A key feature of that system is that it’s designed to facilitate simple narrative gameplay, with a focus on how you solve the problems presented to you.

“Since the polymorph system focuses on HOW you solve your problems we felt it was the perfect system to address HOW children deal with stressful, social or emotional issues.”

9th Level

9^th Level’s new game is a boxed RPG, so it’ll come with a guidebook for educators, therapists, and parents to run the game for their groups. It sounds like it is going to be an absolutely perfect RPG for kids, and we’re really into the idea that at least one of the parts of the 45m adventure has to be non-dice related, and is something like a puzzle, a coloring book page, or something to engage the kids beyond the act of flicking dice around.

We’ll be taking a closer look at this when Venture Village’s Kickstarter launches next month.