DFRPG Camp

[Dalin]

Today was the second day of our second week-long session of RPG camp. We've got eleven kids this time. To our amazement, one of them flew in from New York just to participate in this camp with a Minnesota friend of his. Pretty fun to attract someone from out of state!

Things that have gone well:

• Everyone seems to be having fun.
• This group gets the joy of disadvantages and quirks. In some ways, choosing disadvantages is their favorite part of character creation.
• We have some creative kids who are excited about the building-block nature of GURPS in terms of designing new races and character abilities.
• Like last time, we had a student spontaneously claim that DFRPG is "so much easier to figure out than D&D."
• Ignorning equipment was a good choice. We basically just said that everyone has the weapons that go with their skills, basic adventuring gear, and a bit of armor. (Two, three, or five DR for Smart, Fast, and Strong delvers respectively.)
• On Monday, when we introduced the dice, we had everyone roll a bunch and record the results on the whiteboard. Made a nice bell curve, of course. It was a great advertisement for constructivist education—the kids clearly understood the underlying principles better when they did it themselves than when we presented it via slides during our first week.
• Our modified version of "You All Meet at an Inn" was a hit with everyone. We timed it perfectly this time, managing the grand finale in the last 15 minutes of camp. (See a bit more below.)

Things that could go better:

• One of our tables is lower energy than the other two. We're not entirely sure, yet, if that's just their happy place or if they need some help revving their creative engines.
• Character generation with 11 kids all at once remains challenging. I think we did a better job guiding them through the Delvers to Grow process, but there was still a chaotic period of Q&A about oh-so-many details. We're considering building an even simpler process for next year where we basically pre-apply the Basic and Advanced modules to the Journeyman template for every profession and then just have the kids choose their Upgrade and Disadvantage modules.
• Our initial rules intro on Monday, despite the cool bell curve activity, still felt too expository. (Too much teacher-talk.) We should have started with some ice-breaker activities so that the groups were better equipped to have conversations with each other. (Kids in this age group can be so awkward on this front.)

You All Meet at a ... Marketplace!

We had two veterans from our first camp last summer at one of the tables for our intro adventure. Since we ran it last year, I wanted to change it up so it wouldn't feel like they were playing the same adventure twice. On the fly, I transformed the inn into a small town marketplace. Instead of a well, there was an obelisk in a fountain. This gave us ample time for roleplaying in the market (especially fun for the kleptomaniacs) instead of in the common room. When the Bad Things started happening, the obelisk grew into a tower with an ominous balcony at the top. Instead of climbing down the well, they climbed up the tower. The ceramic idol looked different and was in a different sort of room. To my delight, the two students had no idea that it was the same scenario as last year.

On another note, my son invited a bunch of kids from the first camp over last week to continue their adventures. They had a good time and hope to keep going in the future. One of the kid's parents told me that he enjoyed reading the DFRPG rules and that they had played as a family over the weekend. It made such a difference that we provided them with boxed sets this year. That's a requirement for the future.