D&D 5E Teachers who DM

[Giltonio_Santos]

Teacher here, and I'd probably be somewhere else, if not for my time as a DM. I believe DMing (and playing RPGs in general) is where I got enough confidence to face a class of Law students without wanting to run somewhere else. I was very shy while growing up, young me would never believe it if you told him that he would grow up to become a teacher...

 

[Prism]

I teach adults - that technically makes me a trainer rather than teacher but its roughly the same skills. I also write courseware and that certainly has similarities with adventure design.

 

[Iskande]

High school teacher. The planning skills, being able to adapt on the fly when so,thing goes wonky, all skills with crossover.

 

[L R Ballard]

I lecture at a top university in the United States. I started playing D&D in the early 1980s. One of the college classes I teach is Introduction to Logic. I'm still getting up to speed on 5e, but, prima facie, the Intelligence (Investigation) check reminds me of the deductive (absolutely certain) inference in Aristotelian logic. That said, the word "deduce" seems to limit the kind of inference, and I wonder where the inductive (merely probable) inference fits into the system.

 

[Harzel]

I lecture at a top university in the United States. I started playing D&D in the early 1980s. One of the college classes I teach is Introduction to Logic. I'm still getting up to speed on 5e, but, prima facie, the Intelligence (Investigation) check reminds me of the deductive (absolutely certain) inference in Aristotelian logic. That said, the word "deduce" seems to limit the kind of inference, and I wonder where the inductive (merely probable) inference fits into the system.

The general looseness of the 5e rules means that you need not, and probably should not, take the skill descriptions as exclusive. Also, I seriously doubt that the PHB authors considered the technical meaning of 'deduce'; my guess is that they would not consider it a substantive change to swap in the word 'infer' it is place.

 

[L R Ballard]

The general looseness of the 5e rules means that you need not, and probably should not, take the skill descriptions as exclusive. Also, I seriously doubt that the PHB authors considered the technical meaning of 'deduce'; my guess is that they would not consider it a substantive change to swap in the word 'infer' it is place.

The rules are flexible. If "looseness" means that a DM has the discretion to substitute one skill check for another, no argument from me.

As regards the meaning of the word "deduce," I agree that the PHB authors have the lexical or connotative definition in mind rather than a theoretical one. That said, even the lexical definition reads "to determine by deduction; specif : to infer from a general principle" (Merriam-Webster's Collegiate Dictionary), which invites a consideration of inference. And, as Aristotle teaches of inference, there are two kinds: deductive and inductive.

Some investigations do not yield absolutely certain inferences; one may say of the result of an investigation, "that's probably the case based on the evidence."

 

[Jensen]

High school teacher.

So many transferable skills AND lots of time off in the summer

 

[MNblockhead]

Dragon Talk, the official D&D podcast has had several guests who were teachers and discussed running clubs and games at their school as well as using D&D for kids with special needs and just general D&D and kids topics. Some to check out:

#23 Ethan Gilsdorf on Why D&D Is Good for You. Even better, watch his TED talk: Why D&D is Good for You (in Real Life): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6PaHJqpQnyw
#34 Dr. Raffael Boccamazzo on D&D and Autism
#59 DnD in the Classroom
#64 Kids and Stories

Link to the podcast site: https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/the-dungeons-dragons-podcast/id189053885?mt=2

 

[Chaosmancer]

I'm not a teacher yet, working on it, but I've thought occasionally about how my experiences with DnD and other rpgs could be made of use in the classroom.

I am now willing to be that being in the classroom will bring experiences into my DnD as well, which is a fun little thought.