Any advice on running an extra-curricular gaming club at school?

[johnsemlak]

I've been thinking of trying to start a gaming club as an extra-curricular activity at my school. I was wondering if anyone who teaches here has had similar experience and could offer some advice.

I teach at an international school in Moscow. Kids are aged 12-19 and come from countries all over the world (but most speak English). The student body isn't large--about 200 or so. I'm not sure if they're will be enough kids who have gaming interests (outside the computer variety of course) but I know there's a few.

If I wanted to attact kids to this sort of thing, what would be some advice? And what are likely to be the main game interests of kids that age nowadays?

 

[Zenodotus of Ephesus]

Just make sure all of the proper paperwork is filled out so that the school is covered and make sure there is more than one adult present at all times.

 

[Harmon]

Advertise that American women (esp models, and big movie actress) love gamers.

 

[Eridanis]

I would make sure to include several types of games: chess, card games, other board games, as well as RPGs. That way, the kids can find something they really like; they may not enjoy D&D for some reason, but perhaps they'd kick at Risk.

Options are good, as well as organization. Don't have just "open gaming" every week; have a schedule for what will be played. Don't structure every week, though - go half-and-half to start. And let the kids help guide the choices after the first month or two.

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

I ran an RPG club at a Catholic HS for 2 years without incident...it only died when interest waned.

So, try to avoid the controversial...given where you are, don't bring games that might portray the locals in a bad light.

Keep things interesting and in motion. Even if you're primarily running RPGs, introduce board games, minis games, CCGs, regular card games, and the like so that prospective members don't feel like they're intruding into your long-term RPG campaign. Encourage others to run RPGs or suggest games to try. Of course, availability of certain games may vary- from what I understand Confrontation (a French fantasy minis combat game) is a bit more popular in Europe than DDM...and its not a collectible game, either.

As for Chess- once again, given your location, its a different thing than it is here. Here, Chess is a pastime- in Russia, Chess is a sport. Don't bar it from the game club, but don't let it overwhelm the club either.

 

[dragonhead]

If you plan to run like d&d, ect. make sure that they are g to pg rated. or the board will give you a hard time and you might lose your job. also, make sure the club has some relevence to a subject being taught. that will help the paperwork go through faster

 

[Jedediah]

Think about how often you are able to have meetings for this club. If you are getting less than an hour a week, a role-playing game is probably not a great idea. It takes people about 20 minutes to get settled in, back into their characters, and remember what was going on. Takes about 10 minutes to put everything away also. So you are going to get about 30 minutes of gaming a week, which isn't enough time to get 10 kids to do anything.

I'd suggest board games that can be played quickly and are easy to learn. Games like Bohnanza, The Great Dalmuti, Flux, and Robo Rally are all easy to learn and quick to play. Bohnanza and Robo Rally also make people think quite a bit and could be good in a school setting.

Regarding chess and other games like that, having them available is defiantly a good idea but most schools I've heard of already have chess clubs. Also games like Bridge and most games that can be played with a standard deck of cards tend to draw people that will make gamers uncomfortable.

 

[takyris]

I'm coming at it from the viewpoint that if you're posting this here, you ARE thinking of running an RPG. If that's not the case, everyone else's points above are great -- and they're still pretty good points even if you do want to run an RPG.

For kids that age, I'd suggest a couple of things:

1) Keep things as bright and cheerful as possible. Many of the kids might want to work out their aggression in a dark game, and heck, that might be helpful, but it runs the risk of blowing up in your face if someone in authority decides that you are making antisocial kids who are going to cause trouble.

2) Keep things as unrealistic as possible, for the exact same reason. I would, frankly, not run any game that let the PCs use a gun. So d20 Modern is out. (Again, you know better than we do what the situation is like there. I could be wrong. But with all the concern in the U.S. and Canada about antisocial teens and guns, if I were running a game at school, I'd keep far away from anything that might cause someone like a principal to even SUSPECT that this was a chance for some kid to work out his aggressions by shooting at people with imaginary guns.

(Note: I don't think that that's a valid complaint. I'm just saying that unless you really want to fight that battle, this is what I'd do.)

3) Since you'd be running a game for kids of various age ranges, I suspect you'd be better off running games where most of the work is on the GM, not the kids. Your ideal game puts most of its complexity in character creation and lets the game itself flow pretty easily in play. (And thus, you'd make characters for most of the kids, save the ones who wanted to do it themselves.)

4) You might also benefit from a loose, episodic format, so that your game isn't ruined by variable attendance on a weekly basis.

With those considerations in mind, I'd suggest either D&D with a dungeon-hack and puzzle theme, with as few humanoid monsters as you can use (so that they're slaying dragons and beholders and giant spiders and not goblins they can name after the jock who picks on them in gym class), or Mutants & Masterminds with a strong Silver Age feel, making sure that the heroes are really heroes and that the villains are your typical "I'm going to blow up the world" bad guys.

Simple, fun, and when you bring in feats like Power Attack and Expertise and such, you can even turn it into a pretty good mathematics and probability exercise. (My wife is not a big math fan, but she eventually warmed up to it when I showed her how to use Power Attack to maximize her damage output per round, based on percentage chance of hitting at least once and what that damage would be.)

Those would be my suggestions. They're not what I'd suggest for every campaign, but for a game like this, where it is important to avoid any appearance of impropriety, this would be what I'd recommend.

Good luck! I hope it goes well, whatever you end up deciding.

 

[HellHound]

I teach at an international school in Moscow.

Quick footnote: what school do you teach at? The private school I work for is working on a partnership with two international high schools in Moscow to offer Ontario Secondary Credits through e-learning, and I was just curious if you might be at one of the schools in question.