Tabletop-Roleplaying Games as Informal Learning Spaces: Classrooms & Dragons
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GM: As you narrowly escape the flaming tavern, your eyes, squinting from the bright crimson and golden blaze, turn to a familiar face, the Halfling who greeted you upon your arrival. The silver grip of an Imperial Guard tightens around his neck, like a thick cladded necklace. “Where are they?” the Guard questions him. “I- I- I’ll never-,” the Halfling’s words squeak out like a hoarse whisper from a mouse. What do you do?
P1: “I dress myself in a Cloak of Invisibility and save him!”
GM: “Ok, roll for stealth, but with advantage.”
P1: “With advantage, so, I roll twice. A 7 and a 13.”
P2: “Wait, don’t forget to add your stealth modifier.”
P1: “Right… it’s a plus five, so an 18!”
GM: Kiao covers himself with a dark speckled coat, and vanishes into the mist. A slight tap on the Guard’s left shoulder, “huh?” “Surprise!” Kiao rips off his coat and slams the Guard right in the face. “Let me do a constitution saving throw… yup, a 2, the Guard falls flat on his back.”
P1:“I want to loot the guard!”
P2: “Wait, I want to run a History Check!”
P3: “Medicine Check on the Halfling!”
GM: “Let’s take this one-at-a-time, would you like to go first?”
The scene above, and many like it, are played across the globe and are known as tabletop-role playing games (TTRPGs). TTRPGs are forms of narrative games that rely on arithmetic, literacy, and communication skills. The example above is from a self-written Dungeons & Dragons club that took place in an afterschool setting. TTRPGs clubs often employ an interactive-narrative pedagogical design led by an instructor with post session feedback from players. However, team collaboration is at the forefront of TTRPGs; so, players may act as secondary instructors and help out or instruct fellow peers.
A TTRPG club is defined by two main roles, the players (a Party) and the main instructor (a Game Master). The players, typically a group of five individuals, create and perform as their own character, who then work together to solve complex problems across “adventures.” The Game Master constructs, narrates, and manages these “adventures” that are a part of an overarching “campaign;” a structure akin to lesson plans and curriculum. Each adventure takes place during a “session” and post each session, players share feedback and provide any suggestions. TTRPGs clubs emphasize a “learn-as-you-go” style; therefore, instructors adopt impromptu and adaptive teaching styles that are shaped towards the needs of the party.
At the surface level, a Dungeons & Dragons club seems purely for entertainment; however, Stefanie L. B. Kaylor’s research paper, “Dungeon and Dragons and Literacy,” shows that TTRPGs include many learning opportunities, like strengthening players’ literacy, problem solving, and communication skills. Since TTRPGs allow for media to be shown in an interactive format, they can reach reluctant and disengaged students plagued with the boredom of traditional arithmetic and literacy curricula.
Kaylor shares the findings of researcher and educator Kip Glazer, who “sought to discover whether a pedagogical model shaped around TRPG construction would work as well as or better than current [educational] methods” (2017, p. 9). Glazer employed this TTRPG pedagogy with two high school sections reading at grade-level literature. Students underwent the same structure as a TTRPG club; they created game boards based on setting, characters that were both textual and imagined, and wrote imagined adventures based on the text. The students later played the games they created, using the game mechanics and rules of Dungeons & Dragons 5th edition. Glazer found with his first section, students “frequently expressed enjoyment with the tasks, utilized critical thinking throughout, and scored as well as or better on a traditional post-test than a control class studying the same book without TRPG use” (Kaylor, 2017, p. 9). With his second section, students similarly made positive improvements and even demonstrated “significant enough content knowledge during gameplay that final gameplay was sufficient to be used in place of a test or other traditional assessment” (Kaylor, 2017, pp. 9-10). Also highlighted in Kaylor’s paper, educator Csenge Virág Zalka designed a template for teachers to employ TTRPGs methods while also addressing literature and social studies standards. Zalka created three games around academic standards, played with high school or college students, and recorded feedback after each session. Zalka was successful in creating a TTRPG template as she noted that “players were engaged, used creative thinking, expressed curiosity about the original story or legend, drew on background knowledge to make choices, and discovered solutions while playing that were similar to the original story or legend” (Kaylor, 2017, p. 10).
In both of these employment of TTRPG based pedagogies, the blend of informal gaming club spaces mixed with the formality of classrooms boosted intrinsic motivation, higher comprehension, and stronger creativity skills. TTRPGs highlight a new form of literacy skills, those focused on creative prowess. With a focus on creative design and interactiveness, TTRPGs implement a more engaging approach to text-based curricula because goals were desirable, obtainable, and useful, as shown with Zalka’s example. With Glazer’s approach, youth faced a project-based curriculum by creating game boards, characters, and storylines, which focused learning on “how-to” learning style rather than “knowing that.” In sum, TTRPG clubs present an informal learning space that can be translated into that classroom to increase education prowess and motivation amongst students.
References
Kaylor, S. (2017) Dungeons and Dragons and Literacy: ‘The Role Tabletop Role-playing Games can play in Developing Teenagers’ Literacy Skills and Reading Interests. Graduate Research Papers, 215, 1 – 47. https://scholarworks.uni.edu/grp/215/.