D&D General D&D Summer School Course

[LordEntrails]

Some good thoughts.
- Personally I would stick with 5E D&D using the Basic Rules. Everyone can get them. They game is accessible and well known.
- I would highlight the aspects of creative writing and creativity. Expect each person to create a 3 Room Dungeon (the predecessor to the five room dungeon philosophy.) You could also have each person create one or two other things, like; a background, an artifact item, spell, etc
- Start with PreGens, later on have each person create one or two characters.
- You can also do improv type exercises, where each student, or pairs of students, play out a 2 minute scene with each other or yourself.
- I would not bring in older/other people to DM. Let the kids do it themselves.
- Though I'm a supporter of DMing, I don't think I would require/expect each kid to DM. If only half the classes are "game" sessions, then that's only 10 hours of gaming over 5 sessions, probably enough for everyone to run a 3 Room Dungeon, but maybe not. Plus, the comfort/anxiety/willingness aspects for each student.
- Consider a projector and/or VTT for at least demo'ing parts of a game session. I think I would stay with just using it to demonstrate movement on a map and maybe to put up a PDF of a pre-gen to discuss/explain the character sheet. Even though I love VTT's (esp FG), don't add the complexity.
- Have some aspect of character creation where those with artistic talent can draw portraits, while others grab appropriate images from the internet.
- You can also mention and show some ways of creating maps with various freeware and mapping programs.
- Also, have or show how stand-up paper mini's can be used as well as perhaps some mini's (if you have some that might get lost).
- Show/discuss many of the various resources such as EnWorld, DMsGuild, DriveThru RPG, and other RPG genre's and such etc
- Finally, discuss the importance of supporting (financially) authors/publishers and not "sharing" (stealing), how if we enjoy something, we need to make it possible for other to afford to spend their time creating for it.

 

[Paul3]

I'd like to know a lot more about the prospective students and expected classroom structure... is this a class for credit? If so, for what?

Or is this a class for keeping the kids busy over the summer?

Or is it a class that only those kids who are interested in RPGs will sign up for?

What are the expectations? For example, if it was something that was an elective selection (meaning only kids who want to be there are there) then I could see a goal of "By the end of the two week course, students will have a fundamental understanding of the Fifth Edition rules. They will learn by a combination of academic review, classroom participation and small group activities."

For such a group, you'll want to ask who has played before, who has watched Critical Role before, and who signed up for on a whim. You'll almost want to have three weeks of material, just in case everyone has played before.

But if there will be folks who are not interested in the material, or only interested in it in the sense that it checks a box on a graduation form somewhere then you're going to want to structure things much more so that low-engagement students will not frustrate or cause discipline problems for more highly engaged kids.

It is an enrichment class....just for fun. While we do have some classes that are more academic/remedial in nature, the majority of our kids sign up because it is fun. I have run a board game "class" for about 5-6 years now. Basically, we just play games. Kids love it (and learn a lot about cooperation, critical thinking, etc. along the way.)

 

[Paul3]

I am bumping this thread as we are entering year two as I would love to hear ideas. Once again, the big issues is the class size, which should be around 20. How do you keep everyone busy, especially if the teacher is DMing the other group and not circulating. These are 11-14 year olds and they do get sidetracked pretty quickly. Ideally, I would love to have the kids DM, but since we only have 20 total hours, what happened last summer is that as soon as I had some kids ready to take the reins, the class was basically over. Still, that remains the goal.

This year, I am going to split the group into two once again, taking each group for about an hour. I am looking for ways to occupy the kids who aren't playing, especially during those first couple days. Here are my thoughts.

1. While we are using simplified pre-gens, I have left everything regarding character backstories blank. On our first day, they will pick their archetype, but then have to develop the stories behind these archetypes. I may or may not use the flaws, bonds, ideals, etc. format.

2. Then, how do the characters fit together as a party? How did they meet? Why are they together? What things have happened to them leading up the start of our journey?

Any other ideas to kick things off? Remember, these need to be things they can do on their own, or in relatively unsupervised small groups.

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

With a class that size?

First, I know it may sound a tad wargamey, but one solution would be to tailor your campaign scenarios and pre-gens to ones that can accommodate larger groups: caravan defense, a raid in enemy supply lines, etc.

Second, you could break the class up into teams of 4-5. Having done that, you could either:

1) run each group through the same simplified adventure, such as those that were available for The Fantasy Trip/In the Labyrinth.

2) have each team run a character by committee.

Third, as a variant on the 1st variant of the second option, you could have one team act as your co-DMs helping you run a simple adventure for the other groups. Then, after 1-2 sessions, that team gets to play as players while a different team becomes your assistants, rotating through each group in succession. Everyone gets to play on each side of the screen.

 

[Fenris-77]

With that age group I would tend to try and leverage things they already know a lot about, in this case video games. Simple scenarios and ideas about interactions and skills should already be familiar to them, you just need to plug into that schema and transfer that knowledge over to the tabletop. Obviously rpgs are different, but when searching for explanatory gusto I'd probably use video game and maybe movie examples. I'd also probably look for visual examples. Movies and games provide a rich resource for showing how a rpg scenario might look as it played out. Visuals are a strong teaching tool

Teaching anything to kids that age I usually take a part-part-whole approach. I'd start with some scenario level stuff, designed to highlight each of the three main pillars of D&D - combat, exploration, and social interaction.

Done in groups of four they'd work like mini modules, and they should ideally be plug and play for all four participants. Each would have a simple problem to solve, a small map, and just enough detail and role playing info to roll things along. I would also probably tailor each to index player cooperation - give each player a skill or whatever that will be key to solving the problem.

I'm just spitballing here, but it's an interesting idea. I'm moving back to teaching at a middle school next year and was thinking about running a D&D club so it's been on my mind. I'll probably post more later, but right now I have to go prep for my grade five savages.

 

[Rellott]

Have you checked out this post about running D&D for Boy Scouts? It’s more about doing it in a single, brief session, but it might have some useful ideas for you.
http://www.enworld.org/forum/showth...-5-Dungeons-amp-Dragons&p=7601228#post7601228

 

[Paul3]

Thanks for the responses. I may have already said this, but the tough part is that I only have 10 day (20 hours) total to work with. That is why it is hard to use the kids as DMs (barring past experience). You need at least some experience getting a feel for the game before turning them loose on their own, especially since we are talking about 5th-8th graders. With 20 kids, it makes it tough to get them enough playtime before they have enough sense of the game to turn them loose.

As of now, I think I am going to start by putting them in 3 groups and then have them play 40 minutes "mini-sessions" while the other two groups watch, at least for a few days. I would love to hear recommendations for which published adventure to use. It needs to be sandboxy enough to turn loose 3 separate groups who obviously are going to head in many different directions. Still, I would like an overreaching plot that all groups are working towards but has a chance to be more or less resolved after those 20 hours (probably 7 hours per group). This obviously isn't enough time to take on an entire book, but which book has an introduction/beginning that could serve as a nice abbreviated plot. I am thinking Phandelver, but am open to ideas. I was hoping Waterdeep would have been a good fit, but I am worried that it is too investigative for kids who are just beginning and think I will need to hook them with more outright action before getting them comfortable enough to roleplay.

Once I get all groups into the game, I can give them more tasks to do while they are not playing....design a monster...design an encounter...make a map...design an NPC...etc.

 

[Paul3]

Have you checked out this post about running D&D for Boy Scouts? It’s more about doing it in a single, brief session, but it might have some useful ideas for you.
http://www.enworld.org/forum/showth...-5-Dungeons-amp-Dragons&p=7601228#post7601228

I have seen that before. Thanks though.

 

[Rellott]

D&D Summer School Course

As a school teacher, I’m not confident letting them simply observe is the best thing. That creates down time for them to lose interest and find other things (disruptive and/or destructive) things to do.
I would suggest giving them jobs, like looking up rules (getting them familiar with the book, using indexes and ToCs) retrieving wayward dice, assisting a player who has a different class than the one they used so they can be exposed to the breadth of options (or a similar one if you want to let them become “experts”), or even assisting you with the monsters/NPCs.

As for adventures... Not sure. I like Hidden Halls or Hazakor as a nice starter adventure for younger kids, but it’s not terribly sandboxy.

Waterdeep’s chapter 1 is pretty nice and not too investigative, but also not terribly sandboxy. Kobold Press just released their Margreve book that has a pretty interesting (if creepy) level 1 sandboxy adventure titled Hollow.
You could also use some of the material from Princes of the Apocalypse, which is pretty sandboxy at lower levels.

 

[MockingBird]

I havent read every post so I apologize if my post is redundant. I agree with using the basic rules. Print out copies if you can. I'm leaning more toward pregens to simplify things. I dont think the majority of the kids will care but you will have some who are truly interested in customizing their own character. I would also bring in some helpers like you suggested with the high school kids who are familiar and good with kids.

I would go a modular route. Introduce a story seed and allow the kids to add to it in a improv type brainstorming process then explain how they just participated in one of the concepts of RPGs.

I would probably set up an encounter session to teach the basics of turn order and combat. Encourage the kids to describe their actions.

I would then introduce puzzles in the same modular manner as you did with combats, then roleplaying scenarios.

After all that I would round it out with a complete one shot that melds all the concepts you taught them. Something that would only take a few sessions and allowed each character class to shine.

Good luck and keep us updated. I hope it goes really well for you and the kids!