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Old 10-07-2018, 09:42 AM   #1
Dalin
 
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Default DFRPG at School, the Next Level...

After the success of our experiment with introducing middle-schoolers to the DFRPG last spring (see this thread and/or the May 19 Daily Illuminator), a colleage and I offered the activity again this fall. To our delight, it's even more popular than last time, so we purchased two more DFRPG sets along with the GM screens and some additional dice. (We cleared out the inventory of one of my local retailers, Source Comics and Games, who provides a generous discount to schools.) We will be managing the activity across two classrooms now, to make room for the additional students. We may recommend groups of four instead of five (one GM with three players) since this will give more spotlight time to each PC. Our sessions are only 45-minutes long, so keeping things moving quickly is a priority.

I also have the faculty advisor to the high school D&D club in my personal DFRPG game, so I'm hoping the influx of middle-schoolers and some faculty knowledge will help broaden the club's focus.

I'll post updates here once we see how things go. First session is next Thursday.
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Old 10-07-2018, 09:50 AM   #2
DouglasCole
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Default Re: DFRPG at School, the Next Level...

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Originally Posted by Dalin View Post
(We cleared out the inventory of one of my local retailers, Source Comics and Games, who provides a generous discount to schools.)
Maybe The Source would like to order some Hall of Judgment at a retail discount? :-)
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Old 10-07-2018, 10:33 AM   #3
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Default Re: DFRPG at School, the Next Level...

This is pretty cool. Good luck with your further endeavours in this regard!

And I can only second Douglas' suggestion. The Hall of Judgment does have 16 sample characters and large bestiary that will keep it useful far after the adventure is over.
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Old 10-07-2018, 10:27 PM   #4
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Default Re: DFRPG at School, the Next Level...

I'm glad you're continuing this project Dalin. It sounds fun.

Best of luck, and keep us posted.
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Old 10-08-2018, 10:38 AM   #5
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Default Re: DFRPG at School, the Next Level...

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After the success of our experiment with introducing middle-schoolers to the DFRPG last spring (see this thread and/or the May 19 Daily Illuminator), a colleage and I offered the activity again this fall.
A little tangent, but I'm making a website about gaming for librarians as a grad school project this semester. Are there any lessons learned from your school program that would translate well for this?
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Old 10-08-2018, 06:05 PM   #6
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Maybe The Source would like to order some Hall of Judgment at a retail discount? :-)
I'll suggest it next time I'm there. I bought a second copy of HoJ in the kickstarter so that I could donate one to school. I'm hoping to interest at least one group in trying it out as a starter adventure. Based on Captain Joy's recent thread, I may recommend that they dive right in with the Logiheimli Ruins. If students enjoy it, it makes even more sense for the Source to want copies because kids will go there to buy it.
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Old 10-08-2018, 06:14 PM   #7
Dalin
 
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A little tangent, but I'm making a website about gaming for librarians as a grad school project this semester. Are there any lessons learned from your school program that would translate well for this?
Tell me more about this idea. Like a site for librarians who want to game? Or a site for librarians who want to have RPGs available on their shelves? Or libraries that want to offer gaming nights?

If something like the latter idea, then my big lesson was to just dive in and go for it. Even with not enough rule-books to go around, and very little time, the students last year had a great time. Kids mostly don't care about getting everything right. They'll adopt more complex rules as they get ready for them. I still remember one group of younger (sixth grade) kids who decided that they preferred rolling two dice to three. I think they found it a bit slow to add up three dice every time. Of course this annihilated the 3d bell curve and meant that all of their skill checks were far more likely to succeed. They basically broke the game. But they came back, week after week, and had a blast. So I got out of the way.

One lesson to help me this year, is to mark our inventory more carefully. I'm going to number and label all of the different sets with big sharpies so I can keep track of things more easily. We got all the materials back last year, but I often had no idea where all the books were (especially when students borrowed them). Similarly, we use clear containers for dice at each table so we can easily see if they collected all the dice or if I should be looking around on the floor. (Middle schoolers... not the best at cleaning up after themselves!)
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Old 10-08-2018, 07:30 PM   #8
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Tell me more about this idea. Like a site for librarians who want to game? Or a site for librarians who want to have RPGs available on their shelves? Or libraries that want to offer gaming nights?
The last two. Tabletop RPGs are ideal for libraries—books and space and even sometimes access to 3D printers for minis—but are staffed by folks who are mostly unfamiliar with them. Thus, my project for my web design for librarians class (or Internet Fundamentals and Design, as academics love showy titles) is a site to pitch RPGs and some other geeky games (Munchkin, Axis & Allies, and frankly a few I don’t play but have lots of appeal) for librarians as an activity for the public.
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Old 10-09-2018, 04:52 AM   #9
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Default Re: DFRPG at School, the Next Level...

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The last two. Tabletop RPGs are ideal for libraries—books and space and even sometimes access to 3D printers for minis—but are staffed by folks who are mostly unfamiliar with them. Thus, my project for my web design for librarians class (or Internet Fundamentals and Design, as academics love showy titles) is a site to pitch RPGs and some other geeky games (Munchkin, Axis & Allies, and frankly a few I don’t play but have lots of appeal) for librarians as an activity for the public.
Sounds like a great idea! I hope this works out.
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Old 10-13-2018, 01:15 PM   #10
Dalin
 
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This year I managed to get organized before the students showed up: I sorted and labeled all of the gaming swag. Here's a photo I snapped of everything laid out on a table (including dice and sample characters). It's much easier to keep track of everything now that each set is numbered and each group knows the number of "their" set. Players can checkout material to take home between sessions if they'd like to. (So far, two GMs have borrowed Exploits and Monsters so they can design their own adventures.)

The first session was a group training run. Without much intro, I distributed characters and ran the entire classroom through an ultra-mini-adventure that was intended to require a few skill checks, a fright check, a melee attack, a ranged attack, a defense roll, a damage roll, and some spell casting. I had to compress some elements more than intended, but I'm confident that everyone left the session understanding the basics of the system better than last year. Running a high-speed 45-minute session for a packed room of squirrely middle schoolers was simultaneously exhilarating and exhausting... I felt as tired afterwards as I usually do after a multi-hour game!

Our next session is in two weeks. At that point, each group will be playing independently. I'll just be there for backup rules support and potential arbitration of disputes.
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