Role-playing Games - Introduction to Dungeons and Dragons

PictureGREEN SCHOOL CLASS 2015

​Welcome to one of the most creative and engaging courses in modern cutting edge education. Introduction to RPGs combines key educational competencies and social life-skills with one of the most influential games of all time: Dungeons and Dragons.

These 24-40 hour courses (6-10 classes of 4 hours each) engage students in developing characters, maps, illustrations, and campaign modules (adventures) taking turns as Player Characters and story tellers [aka Dungeon Masters]. 

​Each student keeps a journal of his or her adventures with texts, maps, pictures. In a group, players assume roles in a fellowship to create an ongoing chronicle of their campaigns.

Although learning the rules is important, creativity and cooperation guides players to build on their understanding of the real-world as they undergo adventure simulations of heroic deeds and risk taking. Noticing how margins of failure and success work within game mechanics informs learners about initiative, risk and responsibility in the real world.

Post-class survey taken at Green School Bali...



Skill Set Focus:
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  • Critical Thinking
  • Creative Writing 
  • Collaboration
  • Empathy
  • Empowering Others
  • Calculating Risks
  • Literacy
  • Expression
  • Awareness
  • Contingency
  • Planning (Problem Solving)
  • Adaptability
  • Decision Making
  • Strategic Thinking
  • Leadership
  • Organisation
  • Goal Setting
  • Taking Initiative
  • Story Telling

FORMAL COURSE DESCRIPTION - A more technical explanation of experiential and academic benefits

Key Competencies:
In this course, students will:
  • Use, develop and/or build on knowledge of English, Math, Ecology, Design, Physics, Geography, Survival, Climate, Narrative, Anatomy, Biology, Political Philosophy, Logic, Morality, Sociology, Economy, Anthropology, Diplomacy, Combat Tactics, Medieval Technlogy, Arms, Armor, Professions, Motifs and Archtypes
  • Learn to play a new and intricate (role-playing) game system
    • Learn about character creation, backstory development, professional skill-sets, career paths and preparing personal and group inventories for adventure 
    • Learn about joining companions, dealing with strangers, gathering information, facing foes and meeting challenges.
    • Learn to collaborate, empower others and work as a team
    • Learn to take initiative, lead and complement others' skills with your own
    • Learn to prepare challenges for others and be ready for challenges
    • Explore creative solutions to challenges, puzzles and problems
    • Learn to improve your weaknesses
  • Keep a chronicle as a group to keep track of where you go, who you've met and what you've done.
    • Make individual accounts of stories, missions, anecdotes, quotes, recipes, failures and successes. 
    • Aggregate a group journal of stories, anecdotes, histories and adventure
    • Draw scaled maps
    • Draw pictures
    • Write stories
    • Design worlds: creatures, items, characters, cities, traps, encounters, buildings, puzzles, environments, etc...

Course Description: (fun game-lore version)

BACK TO THE GRAVE!” shrieks the yellow robed priestess channeling a blast from the positive material plane through her glowing holy talisman to shatter and dissolve the twisted forms of advancing zombies and skeletons.  Will her deity grant her the power? Has she been pious enough in her prayers? 

A handful of druids and rangers face off against a battalion of reckless orcs warring with a tribe of wicked gnolls in an ancient palisade of trees - home to generations of dryads who maintain the balance of the forest. How will the heroes get the two tribes to stop or move on from this pristine forest? Will the band of heroes engage in full-scale battle against the two evil tribes or will they try to trick or outwit them into leaving?

A halfling (aka hobbit) thief picking the pocket of a psionic minotaur… What are the chances of success and failure? The more nimble fingers or the highly perceptive psionicist? 

Has the devoted knight lived by his code of honor? Will one of the dragons sense his pure heart and accept him to ride into battle wielding a dragon-lance? 

A handful of druids and rangers face off against a battalion of reckless orcs warring with a tribe of wicked gnolls in an ancient palisade of trees - home to generations of dryads who maintain the balance of the forest. How will the heroes get the two tribes to stop or move on from this pristine forest? Will the band of heroes engage in full-scale battle against the two evil tribes or will they try to trick or outwit them into leaving?
A half-elven wizard whispers an incantation as she draws runes into the air to ward against “goodie-goodies”, the name she gives those pesky wardens who roam the highlands in the name of the queen. Will the newly hired gnome illusionist detect her magic and uncover the secret mining operation that has been polluting the water system down river, or will she spring a trap to bring yet another of the queen’s patrol to a fiery doom?

All of these are portals into the imagination. The story is yours. The characters are yours: the more you bring the more you get out of it! The adventure, good vs evil, law vs chaos is all in your mind’s eye! Fate and destiny or skill vs luck? WE LET THE DICE DECIDE! Don’t say, “No.” Determine difficulty! 

Sample Experiential Activities 

  • Emotional: Getting into character! How does your character feel about Good, Evil, Law and Chaos?
  • Intellectual: Mapping, using figures and distance scale to arrive at agreed upon physics, timing and variables that render fair probabilities to represent a common time-line flow of interactions, battles, dimensions, trajectories, areas of effect, consequences and contingencies.
  • Intrapersonal: What is your character’s demeanor vs your character’s nature? Develop challenges for other players that will put them in morally incompatible situations.
  • Physical: Play/simulate challenges and encounters with “foam” weapons to get a real-time sense of action, risk and timing.
  • Makers space: Design, build and play with miniature terrain environments
  • Sustainability: Put a real life ecological issue into a fantasy setting and get players to come up with, consider and execute solutions that are diplomatic, mindful and sustainable. Simulate how the consequences of their actions play out in realistic ways

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Value yourself, empower others, build your legend™