Dungeons and Dragons Lesson?

[rednumberix]

While I really enjoy teaching my After School, one thing I have noticed is that it's hard to capture and keep their imagination. Attendance of course is not mandatory so students flow in when they like and stay for as long as they like. Considering the after school is an hour and a half that means usually they're not there.

To make a long story short I want to turn my after-school class into a Dungeons and Dragons game playing class. AN overarching story and some actual emotional investment into their characters would be just the thing to bring kids back class after class.

Before you criticize the idea, there are a few people that have gotten the full DnD game to work for the middle school grade level without much tweaking at all. Language barriers and time constraints be damned:

http://www.gameskb.com/Uwe/Forum.aspx/games-dnd/4851/Dungeons-and-Dragons-and-ESL

http://www.enworld.org/forum/general-rpg-discussion/273198-d-d-classroom.html

http://odd74.proboards.com/index.cgi?board=campaignstories&action=display&thread=5787

But rather than use the more advanced version of DnD I'd much rather create a new scaled down simpler version of the game. One that holds all the intricate captivating story elements and still allows for unlimited imaginative responses, just with easier access to language and game mechanics.

This is an INCREDIBLY rough syllabus of how I plan to run the class. Keeping in mind that I have an hour and a half (practically two full class periods) with which to cover tons of material.

Class #1 - Character Creation (Personality and Attributes)
-Goal: The Students will create a character
-Students will learn about Personality Traits to describe how their character acts
-Students will learn about Strengths and Weaknesses. (ex: Strength, Cunning, Agility, Speed, Charisma)
-Students will create a character (within certain limitations) choosing their Personality and Attributes and draw their characters

Class #2 - World Creation (Nouns and Adjectives)
-Goal: Students will describe the world
-Students will briefly review Nouns and Adjectives.
-Students will choose a place and describe objects within it, what they do, and how they look.
-Students will create item cards that will be used in the game. They must describe what each item does and how it looks.
-Students will create a weapon card (within certain limitations) that will serve as their characters weapons. - --These card will  be used in the very first game.

Class #3 - First day of game play
-The teacher will create the world and a short story pertaining to it. That outlines a specific goals that must be achieved.
-This is where the teacher will lay very basic rules pertaining to movement on the board and different interactions students can have with items and each other.
-Students must use their characters and work together to achieve the goal speaking only in English.

This idea is obviously in it's infancy and needs much work and fleshing out so I wanted some creative input and maybe a bit of discussion on this idea from my much more intelligent and esteemed colleagues:
Do you think this idea would work?
If you could, would you use this is your own classes?
What language points do you think would be good to focus on? What vocabulary would you suggest I incorporate?
Obviously this is a male dominated game, how would I get girls interested?
I don't mind putting some of my own cash into making the game good, so what materials would you suggest I gather to use?
I don't care much about a time line being in a fantasy setting. I honestly think the kids might get more out if it if it was more modernized. So what scenario would you think works best? Zombie Apocalypse?

[awarnes]

I have considered this idea myself. I think it really can capture almost everything students of English really need to know. They can learn description, how to ask for directions from characters, etc. and still have an amazing time. My biggest worry with this sort of class is trying to run a game with so many people. I haven't ever played with more than 6-7 characters at a time, and even that is too many to really keep the game interesting for everyone.

As for suggestions, it sounds like you are spot on. If you have access to technology in the classroom I would definitely suggest downloading some applications that help with keeping track of characters and the map (try a google search, or maybe the programs at this link http://www.aaasoftwareenterprises.com/DD/DMTools/ ?). Good luck!

[jon-anon]

Man, that's a great idea for the After school class... Particularly in my case, I have an ultra small class (only 4 students) and I've been wanting something different to do for the rest of the year.  I found a pdf that you can print from this site:   http://www.wired.com/geekdad/2010/04/wizards-of-the-coast-publishes-dd-for-kids/   

It has a simplified module that's aimed towards kids that you can play, has characters and monsters already set up as well as a game board and tokens, all you need is a D20 and some 6 siders

Good idea! or We'll see how this works out.

[C.Dennis]

To toss in my two cents...

[please note, this is me and my school and my experience]

I had some grade 1 middle school boys discover Warhammer 40,000 all on their own. They came to me with a very old, very worn quickstart manual/rule guide, cradling it like a holy text... they needed some help with the more advanced sentences (long conditional sentences, etc).

In short, in less than a year the core group of boys who is interested in the game (about a dozen now) has seen their English scores at school jump up as well as their "functional" English when just chatting with me. Through investigating Warhammer (there are zero Korean resources) they have discovered so much more than just "more English" ... they're finding new music, new stories and new literature (they're also deep into the lore).

I've been toying with trying it on a wider scale, or as an advanced class with them as helpers/translators, so I'm interested in anything that comes up here, or ideas.

I think games like this are really a good way to capture attention and drive independent learning in a way the school books are woefully inadequate at doing. I've seen the results it can have (through no real action, aside from enabling, on my own) and they're impressive... so I say go for it! :)

/ramble

[rednumberix]

@awarnes :
Yeah, a huge problem with this would be the number of players versus characters. It's my intention to make this a lesson for smaller class sizes. Really I'm thinking to keep things moving smoothly and quickly maybe 4 characters split up between a max of 12 or 16 students (3-4 people controlling each character).  The hope being that each group would consider multiple options for their character and negotiate (Hopefully in English) as to what they should do with their turn.

@Jon-anon and C.Dennis:
THANK YOU soooo much for the resources. I am no expert on how to run a game. In fact I've never played a game of DnD and although that is the title of this post it is not my intentions on running a DnD game. I want to maybe make a brand new game entirely. Set in a fictional fantasy world that's a bit more modern (allowing for modern colloquialisms to slip naturally into NPC talk and more useful vocab.) But having these resources will help me figure out how to run the game. Your contributions have already given me some ideas that I'll use to script out the lesson plans and gameplay further.

This might really be a great chance to get students studying things outside of the class. And thinking about English and their studies as fun as opposed to just a boring chore!

[awarnes]

@rednumberix:
    I'd really be interested to hear how the class is going. What do the kids think? what issues have you encountered? What kind of game system are you using? I hope it's going well, good luck!

I thought I would also post what I'm planning for my winter class, which will also be a DnD game. I have called it an Interactive Educational Story Simulation (IESS) as a way of introducing it to my superiors, but I plan on playing a DnD 4e game, maybe with a few tweaks. I have 10 two hour classes with about 15 students (luckily they are all fairly high level). I really like rednumberix's idea of assigning more than one student to each character, and I am going to use that in my class too. The plan is to have 5 groups of three, each with their own character. Hopefully they will work together in their character groups to decide what to do, and as a whole class to complete the "missions." I am thinking about offering a pizza party to the class if they can complete a certain amount of the game.

Lesson 1: Introductions
-Introduction game, etc.
-Introduce the game
   -What is it?
   -How do you play?
   -Important words/phrases

Lesson 2: Characters
-How to make a character.
-Make a character in groups.
(This will probably be helped a lot by me and will probably involve some shortcuts too)

Lesson 3-10: Game play
-Set-up
-Review from last game
-Play
-Cool-down (tally experience/get class to clean up)

As for in game, I am planning on making it as much like a regular DnD game as possible. It will be set in a world I have created and the characters will explore it, doing what ever they want (as long as they stick together). Students will be required to speak as much English as possible (otherwise they might lose their turn or maybe take 1d4 damage,  dunno yet). This will be helped by handing out cheat sheets or quick reference cards, with some of the most important words and phrases. I expect that all my students will be able to read (though I don't know for sure at this point).

Also, there will be traps and skill challenges in the game that involve English-y kinds of things. For example, one trap will contain a character and the other characters will have to play hangman to set him free. If they fail too many times the character starts taking damage. I was also planning on some kind of cryptography thing (a=c, b=d, etc.) to get into a treasure room. They could roll knowledge checks to get up to three or four clues. Other encounters will require splitting the characters up so that each small group can work out a problem on their own (english puzzles). Other than that, the rest of the game will be exactly like a DnD game played in a friend's parent's basement back in the states.

As for materials, I got the books on-line and have them on my computer. I expect to use my computer very minimally and mostly use some mini whiteboards as well as the main chalkboard in my classroom. I have made a world map, and also a gridded mat to use for combat encounters (I printed a grid on A4 paper, laminated it and taped them all together) it's not great but it'll work for now. I asked a co-teacher of mine to help me buy some dice online. She went to the auction site (not exactly sure what it is, basically the korean e-bay) and I was able to get 6 sets of 7 dice (d4,d6,d8,d10,d12,d20, and a blank d6) for 25,000 won, which will be mine to keep. I think it will make the experience more exciting than a computer generated number. Other than that some blank paper and a few printed character sheets will probably be everything I'll use. It's possible I'll try to add some music, but I doubt I'll get something like that together at this point.

TL;DR: I am going to play DnD with my winter class... this job rocks!

I'll post again up here once I've played a few times with the class, and let everyone know how it goes. If it works well I'll probably use it in the future and I can also post some of the resources that I'll use. If anyone has any suggestions I'd also love to hear them. Thanks!

[Landis]

It baffles me how you can play such a complex game. Most of my kids can't even make a sentence.

But hey, if u can do it props.

I wish I had learned how to play DnD when I was a kid. We were always into that stuff but never played DnD

[Chemicalsun]

I run a warhammer quest style game in my elementary school. It took a while (for me) to figure out, but in the end it works pretty good and the students picked it up straight away.

First i printed out all the warhammer quest tiles, and character sheets....laminated them, and made some tokens. I'll post the character sheets and tiles here, along with the rules i made (korean and english).

Basically all action and combat is worked out through rock paper scissors, or flipping a coin. I've had to create different mission goals each time, but the stuff for that is in its infancy right now.

So far ive only played with me and about 3-5 students. you could make multiple sets, and play with several groups, with one student running each game like a teacher.

This is simple enough for my elementary kids (who are not particularly high level), so you could make it more complex for middle schoolers.