Progress Report

This week we pass out interim progress reports to our students, so it makes a natural point at which to take a look at my various campaigns and projects to see where they stand.

• Homeguard B/X D&D has stalled a bit for the moment as we shuffle the kids through the usual host of fall activities. Will my elementary aged players ever come up with a scheme for dealing with their first dragon? Grade = C

• My Adventure Games class is progressing much more slowly than anticipated. I thought we'd spend a week on Risk to give kids something to sink their teeth into while I started training my neophyte GMs, but the lessons on probability and rational decision making have taken way more time and hand holding then expected. When I finally got my squad of would-be GMs together the kids balked at reading the rules doc (which boils down to about six pages including charts and artwork). They were interested, and even started filling out character sheets, but weren't willing to read.

Student: "What should my armor class be?"

Me: "What does it say on the character creation page?"

Student: "How many spells do I get?"

Me: "What does it say on the page about wizards?"

Student: "How many dice do I roll for ability scores? We just rolled 3 six siders."

Me: "What does it say on the page about character creation?"

Student: "What bonus do I get for a 16?"

Me: "What does the chart on the character creation page say?"

Hmm ... This is not encouraging for kids tapped to be my leaders. Grade = D

• My Olde School Wizardry homebrew all wizard campaign is chugging along with about two sessions a month (now somewhere in our third year I believe). We added a new player recently, helping make up for the loss of Brown (nothing but love for the Brown). Grade = B

• My after school games club is running strong. Today I had 34 kids grades 6-10 hang out for an hour and a half of good clean Nerdery. I ran d&d 5th ed, a student ran Arkham High, a second student ran Dagger for Kids RPG, and yet another student ran a monster anime homebrew RPG called "Laurel" while Settlers of Catan, Munchkin, and The Adventurers: Pyramid of Horus were played at other tables. Grade = A

So that's where things stand at the moment. Hopefully I can increase face time with my five junior GMs (four of whom have RPG experience) and give that part of my program a shot in the arm.