Classroom Activity: Pre-Assessment

Before my students can start learning the basics of tabletop role-playing, even before they can start learning a "baseline" board game like RISK, we'll need to do some pre-assessment so that we can demonstrate student growth across the marking period.

The class isn't really focused on acquiring content-area knowledge (what a literary allusion is or how to calculate the volume of a cylinder for instance), but rather on analytic skills. These will be much trickier for me to assess!

Here's what I'm trying (at least for the first nine-week marking period) -- students will be given the following prompt:

Lights Out!

In 2003 a software bug caused a “domino effect” that took more than 265 power plants offline and left 55 million people in eight U.S. states and Canada without electricity.  In 2005 Hurricane Katrina swept north from the Gulf of Mexico, leaving many Americans without power.  Even in our own county, almost a thousand miles from where the storm made landfall, some people were left without power for more than a week.

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Now imagine this … during a late-September heat wave another massive blackout hits, but just as utility workers race round the clock to get things back to normal, a huge Category 4 hurricane with a 600 mile radius and wind gusts of 140 miles per hour sweeps up the East Coast of the United States, ripping up trees and powerlines!

Now you are in the dark … maybe for weeks!  If you have a generator the gas may last for a while, but not long enough.  Damaged towers and the loss of electricity means that nobody can get a signal on a cell phone.  Soon the weather begins to turn colder … what will you do?

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Think about how you will survive.  What resources will you need, where and how will you get them, and how will you use them?

Students will be instructed to use a “Force-Fitting” model for creative problem solving where they consider objects that may not be directly related to their dilemma [securing shelter, food, water, transportation, security, waste-disposal, etc].

How can the object (or part of it) offer new ideas for dealing with your problem?

Choose one or more of your new ideas and, on a separate sheet of paper, describe in greater detail how it may help you with your problem.

Your answers will be evaluated as follows:          

Is it practical? Is it detailed? Is it ethical? Is it creative?

Now I realize that this may not look much like crawling through ruined temples or knocking the heads off of orcs, but I'm sold on the idea that the thinking skills cultivated down in the dungeon translate to habits of analytic thinking that will leave students better equipped to grapple with scenarios like "Lights Out!" after nine weeks of practice.

Classroom Activity: Learning the Ropes

Now that I've been approved to teach an enrichment class using role-playing games to develop critical thinking and collaboration among middle school students, I'm slowly covering all the flat surfaces in my home with legal pads and post-it notes upon which I scrawl ideas for class activities, resources needed, and questions I have to answer.

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It's a bit of stress and a LOT of fun.

Here is a sample of my random scrawl:

• How to deal with character fragility?  Incr HP?  Death save?
• Level limits: drop them?
• What order for attributes?  Moldvay/Labyrinth Lord? Pathfinder? 5th ed?  Does it matter?
• Use saves or ability checks?
• Skip minis: kids think they need them to play, they break "disappear", take extra prep time

Of much more importance than those fun little mechanical puzzles are the classroom activities I'm starting to design to form the core of my lessons.  Good lesson design starts with the end in mind of course ... in other words, "What do I want my students to be able to do as a result of the instruction?"

In Unit One, I want the kids to learn to play some basic form of a role-playing game (so that we can build off of that foundation for later units) and I think it would be cool to use role-playing to look at how bias and point of view can affect the way that people interpret (and recall) the same situation in different ways.

Unit One: 

Learning the Ropes -- The Rules of Play for a Collaborative Storytelling Framework

Key Objective #1: Students will develop familiarity with the basic rules of a collaborative role-playing game.

Key Objective #2: Using the framework of a storytelling game, students will explore the effects of point of view in narrative

My first two activities will focus on helping kids get some basic understanding of our rules (whatever those end up being). If an activity is to be worth anything, we've also got to answer the question: 

"How will I know if the students "got it" (learned what I wanted them to learn)?" 

So I'll need to build in assessments for each meaningful activity.

c 2006 leshiy3d.com

Activity 1: Reading the rules of play as an informational text.

• Technique

• read-aloud, think-aloud, think-pair-share, reading partners
• examples! Let the kids roll the dice
• each student with digest versions of the rules

• Assessment: short answer quiz on rules, roles, and terminology
• “What do hit points represent in the game?”
• “What are the basic types of characters you can play?”
• Which is better, an armor class of 10 or 16?”

Activity 2: Play in three-person teams, each team controlling one character

• Technique
• arrange students in groups of three
• furnish pre-generated characters (one per group)
• use Smartboard to run simple dungeoncrawl



I'm from the Voltron generation,
but to my kids the whole team
robot thing = Power Rangers

• Assessment: 3x5 reflection on the activity
• “What was the best part of this activity?”  
• “If we had been able to play longer, what would you have done next?”
• “If you had controlled the character by yourself, what would you have done differently?”

Not ground-breakingly different stuff there, but a start. I think that the novelty of the game itself will give me significant traction. While I'd prefer to just hand out pre-gen characters and toss the kids right into play, I may be working with 35 or more kids at a time so I need to keep the steps pretty basic and structured (at least until I can get them running games for each other).

In the weeks ahead I'll continue to post activity ideas as I flesh them out.

The Win

from deviantart

image from Night at the Museum: Battle for the Smithsonian 

(C)Fox, Shawn Levy

My meeting went really well today so, starting in September, I will be teaching 

Adventure Games: Storytelling & Game Design.  

It will be a 90-minute-long enrichment class for middle schoolers grades seven and eight, taught once every other day. Yes, that's right, I WIN. I've achieved The Dream ... nerdery for fun and profit!

Of course while gaming is the "what", the "why" of the class is all about student growth.  

I look for my kids to grow in areas like these:

• critical thinking and problem solving
• written and oral expression
• sportsmanship and emotional maturity

Here's a first pass at the class outline:

Unit Zero: Risk -- Theoretical and Experimental Probability through Gaming

Key Objective: Students will become familiar with the concepts of theoretical and experimental probability and will use their understanding of probability and analysis of ratios to develop a strategy and inform rational decision-making during game-play.

Unit One: Learning the Ropes -- The Rules of Play for a Collaborative Storytelling Framework

Key Objective: Using the framework of a storytelling game, students will explore the effects of point of view in narrative.

Unit Two: Creating a Setting

Key Objective: Students will extend their knowledge of geographic tools by generating maps and map keys.

Unit Three: Managing a Game

Key Objective: Students will begin to develop proficiency as the lead narrator of a collaborative storytelling framework.

Unit Four: Game Design

Key Objective: Students will identify a setting or genre that interests them and will develop their own unique narrative structure and rules framework for managing storytelling games within that setting.

I've got a million details to work out of course -- not least of all which version of which games system(s) to use -- and I'll be hashing out many of those details right here (so stay tuned).

The Pitch

Okay, with just a few weeks left until school starts, it's time for me to make my pitch for a games-focused enrichment class. If this goes off the way I hope it does, I could be spending 90 minutes every-other day teaching middle schoolers the basics of role-playing!

So here's my draft pitch ...

Working Title: Adventure Games - Storytelling and Game Design

Course Objectives: Students will develop proficiency in a collaborative narrative framework which emphasizes cooperation, analysis, creative problem-solving, oral communication, and good sportsmanship.  Once conversant in the storytelling framework, students will extend their learning by generating their own settings and by developing the skills to manage peers through the narrative process.  Finally, students will be challenged to go beyond the existing framework and develop concepts, settings, and rational procedures for their own storytelling games.

Kid-friendly course description: Hercules, The Hobbit, Hunger Games -- what would it be like to step into those stories and become part of the action?  Adventure Games will give you that chance as you learn to play storytelling games, explore new challenges, and discover new worlds with your friends.

"How many can I put ya' down for? A lot?
Please say a lot.  I need this ..."
-- Ol' Gil

Hopefully I'll know something by the middle of next week.

What do you think?  Do you like my odds?

While I'm in the Kitchen ...

While I'm busy cooking up something for the new school year, here's some player-generated artwork from my Homeguard Campaign (elementary aged B/X D&D) for your enjoyment.

A bugbear (with pants)

Some core members of the gang ... wizard, bogger, fighter, fighter, and elf

I think this mini inspired the artwork ...
dunno, we haven't tangled with
warg-riders in a couple months

... and a close up of Bogger with a gobo in the background.

Ability Scores: A Character Built for the Dungeon?

If we were to re-engineer the ability scores of a classic adventure game like Dungeons and Dragons not around the abstract and eclectic wargaming roots that it emerged from, but instead around the concrete actions and themes of dungeon exploration, what might that look like?

This is not without precedence in old school games of course.

In TSR's Marvel Super Heroes (1984), every character's very first ability score is "Fighting" while in TSR's Gangbusters (1982), one of the six abilities defining every character is "Driving".

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This communicates a lot about what those games are all about, and aligns with the primary activities of the game.

So what would a stat block look like if it were built not from the classic formulations D&D has used since 1974  ("Strength, Intelligence, Dexterity, Wisdom, Constitution, Charisma"), but rather built around assumptions made about the fundamental activities of dungeon crawling?

Here's my crack at it:

Primary Abilities: [listed in order of utility]

• Observation - This ability score would replace listen checks, searching for secret doors or their triggers, detecting traps, etc. with bonuses/penalties by class & race.

• Charisma - This handy ability modifies those NPC reaction rolls, establishes retainer morale, and determines my maximum number of henchmen.

• Dexterity - Used to determine initiative, shoot a bow, balance on a ledge, climb a sheer wall, pick a lock, try to avoid being hit by dart trap, etc.

• Fighting - The character's ability to hit stuff, it increases by level (more quickly for fighters, slowly if at all for magic users).  A bit of complexity is added based on weaponry, splitting the score for multiple attacks, etc.

• Strength - Modifies my weapon damage.  Used as a raw score, it determines probability for opening stuck doors, bend bars / lift gates and how much the character can lift.

• Constitution - This would stand in for hit points.  Increases would be awarded by level depending on class.

• Aura [hate that name] - The character's magical attunement, it not only informs spell casting, but also detection of magical effects and resistance to those same.  Clearly the prime requisite for magic users, it would determine the maximum spell level that a character could learn. It would increase by level, based on class.

Secondary Abilities:

• Stealth - Derived from Observation and Dexterity, negated by carrying light and penalized based on how much is carryied (including armor), this is the standard sneaking through the dungeon ability.  Take the lowest Stealth of any member of the party and you've got your chance to achieve surprise.

• Load - Derived from Strength and Constitution, it measures how much treasure or gear  can be carried around before taking penalties to Fighting, Dexterity, and Stealth.

So a character with ability scores built with dungeoneering in mind, each score rolled 3d6 in order of course, might look like this:

Reinhardt, Level 1 Explorer         

Obs 13 -- 13% chance to passively notice secret doors and traps

Cha 14 -- modest bonus of +1 to reaction

Dex 6 -- [descending AC], needs a d20 roll of 14 to hit an AC 10 with ranged attacks

Fight 13 -- needs a d20 roll of 7 to hit an AC 10

Str 10 -- no damage bonus, 10% chance to bend bars

Con 16 -- (divided by two?) = hit points

Aura 4 -- roll 4 or under on d20 to save vs spell

Steal 10 -- 10% chance to surprise

Load 13 -- >65 pounds of weapons, armor, gear and treasure = encumbered, >130 pounds = heavily encumbered (-5)

This is a silly exercise of course.

The Arneson & Gygax formulation has served just fine for the past four decades and certainly doesn't need to be overhauled at this late hour.  Still, it's fun to imagine how things may have developed differently with just a few minor changes to the basic organization of characters.

Would distinct character classes or party roles have emerged, or would there just be variations on the basic dungeon-explorer theme?

On the other hand, if that original template for role-playing characters had been less abstract, more complex, and more focused on the core activities of the game, would it have proven less versatile and ultimately less durable and engaging in the long run?  Would D&D have died out after a ten years or simply remained utterly obscure?

Perhaps the four-decade long endurance of D&D (and its many offspring) rests not in the specificity of its ability to simulate action, but rather in the very abstraction of its system.

Rube Goldberg reminds us that greater complexity is always better ... isn't it?

In the face of longer, more specific spell descriptions, longer, more detailed character stat blocks, and longer monster descriptions from OD&D to AD&D to 3rd Edition, the strength of abstraction makes a pretty interesting case for the continued place of minimalist, rules-lite sets like Risus, Labyrinth Lord, and Dagger for Kids within the hobby.