It’s All About the Kids

Before anything got any further, we had to get the students on board.

If you’ve read the other posts you know what happens, but I honestly had no idea how this was going to go over.

The whole project would fall flat if we a) didn’t get enough players right away and b) if students dropped out each week.

The teacher and had a class meeting one afternoon to suggest the idea. I started out asking who had heard of D&D before. There were several who had seen it in various pop culture (Gravity Falls, Stranger Things), and two who had parents who played. When I explain D&D to kids, I describe it as playing a video game but with your imagination. One student, immediately, said: “Oh, like Skyrim?” YES!!

After introducing the game, I asked who would be interested. Everyone said yes. Now, with 19 students involved, I knew I would have to break them into smaller groups. I also knew that I may not have enough adult support to run games for everyone each week. So why not just have the students do it?

I explained the roles of player and DM/GM to the kids. I wanted to make sure they got a fair shot at a GM role if they wanted to. I was worried that letting adults pick the roles would cause some resentment or students thinking we (the teacher and I) were playing favorites. I told the students they had a week to “apply” for GM if they wanted to. The students who were interested wrote me a letter with why they wanted to and what qualified them.

We closed the meeting by building a story. Each student added a sentence to make the most ridiculous story. Then, we had them use the rest of the time thinking about who they wanted their characters to be.

This seems to be turning out better than I expected.