Learning Through Dungeons & Dragons

A course for students in the age range of 13-17 years

Playing the Game 

Dungeons and Dragons is a Fantasy Tabletop Role-Playing Game, where friends can get together and enter a fantasy world through the eyes of characters that they create. The players create characters that not only populate the world, but can actively change it, and save it from disastrous, and often world-ending events. The Game Master creates the world and adapts it to the decisions the characters make in the most realistic way possible.

When playing the game, players must show skills in problem-solving, teamwork and leadership, while Game Masters must show skills in improvisation, storytelling, and sometimes even acting.

In the course, we will play an adventure of Dungeons and Dragons that the Game Master (GM) has created, where each student, with the Game Master’s help, will create a character that they find interesting, and play the game, as that character. During the game, the characters will use logic, strategy, and creativity to progress through the situations the GM has set up, and cooperate with each other to achieve an objective. Along the way, the GM will be throwing challenges in their way, like mazes, puzzles, traps, and monsters.

Learning Debrief 

After the game, we will have a discussion session in which we will go back through the developments of the story, analyzing their handling of the various situations, the alternatives they could have considered, and opportunities missed. We will also discuss the way the GM created the adventure, and how the GM had to adapt to the choices of the players.

In doing so, the students should start getting an understanding of::

1. Co-operative problem-solving in open-ended situations
2. Decision-making under uncertainty
3. Out-of-the-box thinking
4. Teamwork (and missed opportunities at teamwork)
5. Improvisational storytelling
6. Storytelling techniques like worldbuilding and character creation.
7. A new platform through which stories can be told, and the many differences between this platform, and traditional approaches to stories.

 References for Dungeons and Dragons in Education 

1. This article talks about how different skills are developed through playing the game.
2. This article speaks about the benefits of the game in promoting socio-emotional learning.

Links to participate in the course

You will receive links to participate in the course by the morning of May 28, the day on which the course starts.