I am not an overly emotional guy.

Sure, I cry over tragedies like a normal human being. Other than that, my tear ducts are largely unemployed.

There have only been two moments in stories or media that genuinely got me misty-eyed.

The first was Artax sinking into the Swamps of Sadness in The NeverEnding Story. For Gen X kids, that scene wasn’t just sad — it was almost like a shared childhood trauma. It resulted not only in tears, but in mild hysteria and a three-day emotional recovery period.

The second was much more recent.

In Avengers: Endgame, when Tony Stark is dying at the end, Pepper Potts strokes his face and says:

“It’s okay, Tony. You can rest now.”

I nearly lost it right there in the theater...and I wasn't sure why.

The first one made sense to me. I was a kid. It was his horse. Another kid was devastated. Tears were understandable.

The second one confused me.

Later that night, I started thinking about why it hit me so hard.

Tony Stark spent his entire life trying to “put a shield around the world.” Beneath all the arrogance, sarcasm, and ego, he saw himself as a protector. Deep down, he genuinely wanted the best for people — even if he often went about it like a complete jerk.

He would never stop as long as there was still a threat remaining. Protecting people had become his purpose.

And the only moment he finally allowed himself to rest was when Pepper — the one person who saw through every mask, every performance, every defense mechanism — told him:

“We’re gonna be okay.”

That was the moment he knew he had completed the task.

So where exactly am I going with all of this in a blog post about Academy of Heroes?

Because I now have to add a third non-tragic moment that made me tear up.

As I write this, it’s been about two hours since I completed the final boss battle of the inaugural year of Academy of Heroes.

Alongside a full class of real students, I just watched a six-year vision fully come to life.

And honestly?

The entire experience exceeded anything I could have hoped for.

This is going to be a long post. But stick with me. Even if you never plan to use Academy of Heroes, I think fellow teachers may still find something meaningful in this story.

“Wait…You Made This?”

At the start of the school year, I announced to my Biology class that I had spent years tinkering and building an educational RPG platform called Academy of Heroes. It had several "versions" previously...mostly using google sheets and powerpoints...but this year....the real version was ready, and we were going to test it out.

I told them:

I wrote the app myself.
I wrote the story.
I made the videos.
I designed the campaign.
And they were going to be my alpha testers.

We were going to fine tune this plane mid-flight.

There would be bugs.
There would be confusion.
There would be chaos.

And we were going to survive it together.

Their reactions were split almost perfectly:

About 20% lit up immediately.
Another 30% assumed it would be something lightweight like Kahoot or ClassDojo and thought, “Cool.”
The remaining 50% looked at me like I had spilled spaghetti sauce all over my shirt.

Truthfully, none of them had any idea what was coming.

Because none of them had ever experienced a classroom like the one we were about to build.

The Moment Things Changed

The first step was account creation.

The second they logged in, the room exploded.

“Wait…we can customize avatars?”
“What class should I pick?”
“You can LEVEL UP?”
“What do these powers do?”
“There’s a reward shop?!”

We hadn’t even started the actual coursework yet.

They were just staring at the dashboard.

We began with Hub 1, Chapter 1: A Summons From the Throne.

We went through the narrative, transitioned into the biology lesson, completed the quiz, and marked the chapter complete.

Then it happened.

BOOM.

Their stat cards updated.
Gold appeared.
Experience points rolled in.

Most of them were suddenly only fifty experience points away from leveling up.

Then they tried to access the next chapter.

Locked.

Because that was tomorrow’s lesson.

The reaction was immediate:

“How do we get more experience?!”

At that point, I hadn’t even implemented daily trainings, patrols, or duels yet. I promised I would set them up over the weekend.

For the rest of the week, they kept asking about the solo systems.

So Sunday night, I finished implementing patrols, duels, and daily training.

And then something happened that honestly floored me.

Within one hour of activating the features, six students had already completed ALL of their allotted dailies.

Now, just 6 students may not sound impressive at first.

But it was Sunday night.

I hadn’t made an announcement.
I hadn’t sent an email.
I hadn’t posted a reminder.

They were already there.

Waiting.

The next day, I asked them how they knew.

Their answer?

“We never logged out. We kept checking to see when you turned the features on.”

I was stunned.

They Started Grinding Lessons Like an MMORPG

Over the next several weeks, the students attacked their daily trainings with absolute ferocity.

They wanted leaderboard positions.
They wanted new powers.
They wanted avatar unlocks.
They wanted gold for the reward vault.

They were grinding review questions like World of Warcraft players farming reputation.

And the whole time?

The 200 practice questions I had built into the system were being burned directly into their memory through repetition.

By the time we reached the end of the unit, many students had half the question pool memorized.

Not because they had to.

Because they wanted to.

Horzak the Devourer

Then came the first boss battle.

Horzak the Devourer — a colossal earth elemental erupting from the streets of the Capitol City of Luminaria — arrived to “test” the heroes and determine whether they were worthy of his master’s concern.

I played the intro cinematic.

The students immediately started trash-talking Horzak out loud.

They were READY.

The battle began.

By that point, most students had unlocked three class powers thanks to my admittedly terrible low-level custom curve.

And they used every single one.

Wildfire spells exploded.
Intercepts blocked attacks.
Healing magic flew across the board.
Divinations were cast.

Meanwhile, I made the catastrophic mistake of using the same question pool from the daily trainings in the boss battle itself.

They absolutely vaporized poor Horzak.

Lesson learned.

Different question pools next time.

But when the battle summary screen appeared and students saw the avalanche of experience points and gold rewards?

Chaos.

Pure chaos.

Everyone leveled up.
Some students leveled twice.
They immediately started checking new avatar unlocks, new powers, new shop rewards, new patrol upgrades.

The room was electric.

And for the first time in years, I remember thinking:

“I think this actually works.”

Building the Plane Mid-Flight

Over the course of the year, we completed the entire Battle of Luminaria saga:

11 hubs
Hundreds of chapters
Two semesters of story-driven science content

But the students weren’t just participants.

They became collaborators.

They found bugs.
Suggested features.
Reported balancing problems.
Identified confusing mechanics.

I would implement fixes.
The code would break.
We would fix it again.
Then I would add new features.
Then it would break differently.

When outages prevented them from logging in to complete dailies, I would get emails at 2:00 AM on Saturday.

It was insanity.

But they were incredible.

I genuinely could not have asked for a better alpha testing group.

The Final Battle

And now we arrive at the tears.

We completed the final boss battle today.

Mortarian — the self-proclaimed God of Entropic Decay — is finally dust at our feet.

I’ve used the same ending cinematic for years in my old classroom RPG systems back when everything was run through Google Docs and spreadsheets.

I know the video word-for-word.
Beat-for-beat.

(Ive linked by final video at the bottom of the page. You won't have any story context...but check it out if you like. MASSIVE shout out to Megaworld, Silverleaf, and Dave for level capping...which I thought was set to an impossibly high number.)

But this time was different.

Watching that ending alongside this class hit me hard.

These students were the first.

The founders.

The pioneers who hacked their way through broken systems, bugs, crashes, confusing mechanics, and unfinished features so future students could eventually have a polished experience.

And honestly?

The students were emotional too.

They begged me to convince next year’s teachers to use Academy of Heroes.

They told me they didn’t know how they were supposed to go back to “normal” classes after this.

They were genuinely upset at the idea that I might eventually delete their accounts.

Not because there was still content left to complete.

Because they had become attached to their heroes.

Their avatars.

Their story.

Their journey.

We eventually made a compromise:
I would keep their accounts active through the summer.

No promises about new content.
But they could revisit the stories, run dailies, reread lore, and keep their heroes active a little longer.

Honestly?

That may accidentally solve summer learning loss all by itself.

So…Can I Rest Now?

Which brings me back to Tony Stark.

Have I completed my purpose?

Have I truly created something capable of making students eager to complete schoolwork?

Was this successful because the students knew I personally built it?
Because they felt ownership over the system?
Because they were shaping it alongside me?

I honestly don’t know yet.

Time will tell.

But can I rest now?

Oh hell no.

This journey has only just begun.

-Jason Evans

-Grandmaster, Academy of Heroes

Academy of Heroes - Year One - My Story