Old School Education
Posted 20th October 2008 at 10:08 PM by Gears
Another quick update on using D&D in my classroom this year:
Things are continuing along dandily. One of my classes has begun modeling, researching, and painting figures for use in our games: a mixture of Old Glory historical figures and a few Reaper goodies tossed in as well. All of the figures are 13th century medieval, but students have picked different cultures to focus on: one is doing a variety of Templar/crusader types; another is doing Germanic medieval soldier types; one group is doing Saracen warriors; another group is doing Mongols; etc.
One issue I've run into, which I'm looking to rectify, is the learning curve on 4th edition. My classes that meet twice a week have picked the game up really quickly, and now plow through skill challenges and battles with only the occasional rulebook reference (I've printed off some power cards, which helped tremendously). My classes that meet only once a week, usually for only one hour/or 1.5 hours, are another matter. Some students are taking to the rules, but I can tell that many students need half our class time to refresh their memories on the rules each week. I may simply need to give it more time, but I'm also seriously considering another option:
Kickin' it Old School.
I've gotten out the BECM (no I for me) Basic D&D boxes, and been giving them a good hard going over...and my gut is telling me that this classic system might be a better fit for classes with limited time to learn and play. Is it just my nostalgia talking, or do others find these rules pretty fast and intuitive?
As an added bonus, the lovely old school rules for hiring followers and establishing a realm would allow for some great historical scenarios to be explored: whether in the Dark Ages, High Medieval Europe, or Ancient Rome, I could see these rules working as a great basis for roleplaying that shifts over the course of the year into more of a high-level strategy game....
So my D&D classroom may soon be running different editions in different classes...I'll keep you updated as my methods continue to develop.
Also: anyone know of resources for using Basic D&D in historical settings? My gut says someone out there must have done this sort of thing over the years....
Things are continuing along dandily. One of my classes has begun modeling, researching, and painting figures for use in our games: a mixture of Old Glory historical figures and a few Reaper goodies tossed in as well. All of the figures are 13th century medieval, but students have picked different cultures to focus on: one is doing a variety of Templar/crusader types; another is doing Germanic medieval soldier types; one group is doing Saracen warriors; another group is doing Mongols; etc.
One issue I've run into, which I'm looking to rectify, is the learning curve on 4th edition. My classes that meet twice a week have picked the game up really quickly, and now plow through skill challenges and battles with only the occasional rulebook reference (I've printed off some power cards, which helped tremendously). My classes that meet only once a week, usually for only one hour/or 1.5 hours, are another matter. Some students are taking to the rules, but I can tell that many students need half our class time to refresh their memories on the rules each week. I may simply need to give it more time, but I'm also seriously considering another option:
Kickin' it Old School.
I've gotten out the BECM (no I for me) Basic D&D boxes, and been giving them a good hard going over...and my gut is telling me that this classic system might be a better fit for classes with limited time to learn and play. Is it just my nostalgia talking, or do others find these rules pretty fast and intuitive?
As an added bonus, the lovely old school rules for hiring followers and establishing a realm would allow for some great historical scenarios to be explored: whether in the Dark Ages, High Medieval Europe, or Ancient Rome, I could see these rules working as a great basis for roleplaying that shifts over the course of the year into more of a high-level strategy game....
So my D&D classroom may soon be running different editions in different classes...I'll keep you updated as my methods continue to develop.
Also: anyone know of resources for using Basic D&D in historical settings? My gut says someone out there must have done this sort of thing over the years....
Total Comments 2
Comments
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Green Ronin has several great books for playing in various periods of history using 3E. I realize that's not exactly what you're looking for, but you can certainly use all of the fluff. As far as the rules go, at the very least you can use them to inform the way you apply the 1st-Ed rules to an historical setting:
Green Ronin Online Store: Mythic Vistas
I own "Testament," "Eternal Rome," and "Medieval Player's Manual," and like all three. I have only run one [very brief] campaign using them: the game was set in the later Roman Empire, after the establishment of Christianity. Since Eternal Rome focuses on pre-Christian Rome, we had to draw a lot of the religion rules from the Medieval Player's Manual. Also, one of the characters was a Cabbalist, so we drew appropriate rules from Testament.
If your games to wind up at the scale of conflict between kingdoms, and if enough minis get painted, you may want to consider incorporating some wargame rules. DBA/DBM are always an option, but probably aren't a good choice for first-time gamers, and don't lend themselves very well to improvised army lists or smaller skirmishes. I would recommend Warhammer Ancient Battles, which isn't as "historically accurate" (whatever that means, in regards to a game), but which is, IMO, more fun as a game:
Warhammer Historical WargamesPosted 23rd October 2008 at 05:47 AM by lucasjung
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I know it may not be much of a help, particularly since they'd be hard to find, but there were a number of decent historical resources for 2E... green soft-covered books as I recall... Ironically, I don't think I ever purchased any of them, but I thought the ones I saw were pretty cool.Posted 23rd October 2008 at 03:01 PM by Orryn Emrys
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