johnsemlak
First Post
Situation
I run an informal game club at the school I teach at. It's an international secondary school in Moscow, meaning that the kids are from all over the world. Many are from Korea and Japan, though there's some from Eastern Europe. I like to encourage games to get them to practise English. Right now they mostly play Risk, the Bang! card game (a great Western-themed game if you're not familiar with it) and Uno. They play during their lunch break so sessions are very short.
One of the kids really wants to play D&D (no, the 'kid' isn't actually me, though of course I'd love to see it happen). Actually, the boy acquired my 3.0 D&D books (he bought them cheap and the money went to charity). Unfortunately, true to the negative stereotype of gamers, he's got very poor social skills and to be brief he can't convince anyone to play with him. I don't think any of the others really know what an RPG is beyond computer RPGs.
Still, I do have a rule that the kids should try different games, so I might be able to have them give D&D a try given that one member is interested.
Problem
How do I run a session that interests the kids, given that they're complete newbies? The key limitation is that the session would probably have to be less than one hour as they play during their lunch break. Due to transport difficulties they can't stay after school. I hope one day to organise a Saturday session but that's also difficult. The first session doesn't have to be a one-shot but it should if possible provide a meaningful taste of what D&D is all about, and hopefully encourage them to keep playing.
In my mind, I should run a session with as little rules-explanation as possible and emphasise the fun in role-playing. I thought of giving them index-card size PC sheets with very brief stat info but with interesting character background descriptions. I'd encourage the kids to say what they want to do and let me work out the mechanics and rules (though I'd still let them roll their d20s).
Any ideas?
Thanks in advance.
I run an informal game club at the school I teach at. It's an international secondary school in Moscow, meaning that the kids are from all over the world. Many are from Korea and Japan, though there's some from Eastern Europe. I like to encourage games to get them to practise English. Right now they mostly play Risk, the Bang! card game (a great Western-themed game if you're not familiar with it) and Uno. They play during their lunch break so sessions are very short.
One of the kids really wants to play D&D (no, the 'kid' isn't actually me, though of course I'd love to see it happen). Actually, the boy acquired my 3.0 D&D books (he bought them cheap and the money went to charity). Unfortunately, true to the negative stereotype of gamers, he's got very poor social skills and to be brief he can't convince anyone to play with him. I don't think any of the others really know what an RPG is beyond computer RPGs.
Still, I do have a rule that the kids should try different games, so I might be able to have them give D&D a try given that one member is interested.
Problem
How do I run a session that interests the kids, given that they're complete newbies? The key limitation is that the session would probably have to be less than one hour as they play during their lunch break. Due to transport difficulties they can't stay after school. I hope one day to organise a Saturday session but that's also difficult. The first session doesn't have to be a one-shot but it should if possible provide a meaningful taste of what D&D is all about, and hopefully encourage them to keep playing.
In my mind, I should run a session with as little rules-explanation as possible and emphasise the fun in role-playing. I thought of giving them index-card size PC sheets with very brief stat info but with interesting character background descriptions. I'd encourage the kids to say what they want to do and let me work out the mechanics and rules (though I'd still let them roll their d20s).
Any ideas?
Thanks in advance.
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