Designing Interactive Characters Syllabus - The Multiplayer Classroom: Designing Coursework as a Game - page 150

This started to feel too elaborate. So instead I decided to cut way back
on the random extra credit opportunities and give them 5 XP when they
reached four levels to add to any grade they wanted. This I hoped would
give them an additional incentive to do well.

Assignments underwent some changes, too. In addition to short presentations of
their avatar names, they now first described them and then went into far more
detail exploring the three dimensions of their characters. Originally, I hadn t

planned to have the guilds create NPCs. However, between the time I wrote the
syllabus and our first class meeting, I decided that experience creating an NPC
was equally important, if not more important. It is a convenient method for
game writers to bring emotion into their stories.

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So the idea that each guild s quest would require them to escort an NPC with a

certain disability to the tower was born. It was also then I began to toy with the
idea of allowing their NPCs to die, if the guild fared badly on an assignment.

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A new class of assignments was the “ Scouting Expeditions. � I originally planned

for five but have now cut it to three. These “ observations of wildlife in its natural

�

habitat would require the class, divided into guilds, to journey out into the real

world to study real people.

When I kept quest presentations, I decided to drop the random mob reading
quizzes for this class as an experiment. My thought was that the presentations
would be enough to give them the foundations they needed to design their
characters. I wasn ' t so sure, though, if they would be enough preparation for the

midterm.

Instead of analyzing games, they would analyze a real person of their acquaint-
ance (unconnected to the scouting expeditions), an analog character (from
traditional media such as movies, TV, plays, topics, and so on), and a digital
character from a video game.

There would be no pitches to industry guests, and their final grade was divided
into two assignments: the final digital project and a story featuring their avatars,
and other student avatars and the NPCs they designed.

The s clear to me

now that despite noble efforts on the part of a dedicated team, LMS has too

“ Hints � section featured another apologia for the LMS site. It '