Roleplaying Games in the Classroom Trenches, Part Two: The Experiment

If you are just now coming to this article, you might want to glance at Part One, where I detail the challenges that roleplaying games face when they enter the classroom arena. In that article, I also summarize a specific game and design concept I created to face those challenges. What follows here is an assessment of where my efforts succeeded and where I have more work to accomplish.

I start with the good news. Here are some of the most salient positive outcomes I observed:

• The tribal organization of Becoming Beowulf meant that students worked within smaller groups, and this increased the participation and engagement level. The average size of a tribe was around six students. Yes, in any given class, there were a few students who did not get into the mix, but the vast majority were enthusiastically involved in the activity.
• The competitive format of the game provided motivation for the students. This was amplified when the Grendelkin faction was created due to players being eliminated from their tribes. The Grendelkin can target other tribes and derail their efforts, and this adds a dynamic antagonistic component to the game which sparked excitement.
• The resolution mechanic provided a climactic build-up, and the result of the dice roll for each tribe was avidly watched by the class. The mechanics are quickly grasped by the students (though they don’t necessarily think about those mechanics in strategic terms).
• The splitting of the game into rounds meant that the play could be easily halted at the end of one class period and then resumed on the next day with little difficulty. Each tribe had a playsheet that allowed for easy accounting and record keeping, and this allowed tribes to easily pick up where they left off. I was successful in making the game flexible for use within class periods of varying length.
• Students were creative and varied in their plans. I was especially excited when the tribes were adopting very different solutions to the same problem. For example, the game involves a situation when a foundling child washes ashore on a boat filled with treasure (similar to the way that Beowulf begins). In one class, I had one tribe that abandoned the child while taking the treasure, another that gave the child to its enslaved minority, and a third which adopted the child as one of their own. That type of diversity of responses was common.
• The crisis situations prompted immediate, focused discussion within the tribes. Students were quick to consider various options, and there was some vigorous, thoughtful debate as they worked towards their solutions.

But the game in its current form is not an unequivocal success. What follows are some of the areas where the game requires further revision or development:

• Roleplaying: When the tribes are presented with a challenge, they face two tasks: (1) they must decide upon what trait points to allocate to the crisis, and (2) they must frame a scene which dramatizes some aspect of the tribe’s response. Both of these tasks can result in adding dice to the pool (and thus increasing the chances of a positive outcome). But the second task, which involves roleplaying, was typically weak. The students usually presented a simple, barebones “skit” with minimal dialogue and action. This happened even after multiple attempts at prompting, advising, directing, and cajoling students. In the next iteration of the game, I’m going to suggest that Wyrd (the gamemaster) intervene in those scenes, possibly by taking on the role of a tribe member who will ask questions, object, or otherwise create friction for the other players.
• Strategizing: Despite some thoughtful discussions, tribes were typically conservative and cautious in spending trait points to build up their pools. When I asked the class about the game, most students thought that the resolutions were largely a result of chance. Even when I pointed out that they could substantially increase their odds of success by expending more points and by leaning into their roleplaying, they usually failed to take advantage of their opportunities.
• Resolution mechanics: The game has many variables. It doesn’t railroad the players into any set solution to a challenge, and there is considerable room for creativity both in terms of the framing of the scenes and the tribe’s strategic responses. Given this open-ended nature, I was often left scrambling as the gamemaster to come up with resolution outcomes that seemed fair and that made sense to the players. I sometimes wished that I had a more rigorous, programmatic resolution mechanic that I could draw upon—something which would make my final decisions seem more defined and less arbitrary. I certainly would like to have instructions in place which will give more direction to other teachers who might choose to give the game a try.
• Maintaining interest and motivation: The novelty of the game and its competitive nature gave it considerable initial spark, but as the days progressed, this impetus lost its edge. I reacted by offering some bonus points for tribes and players who distinguished themselves in their play and their decisions, and this had a temporary positive impact. The game as I ran it involved five 45-minute class periods: This involved taking part of the first day to explain the rules and then to work through about eight different scenarios or rounds during the remainder of that class and the subsequent classes of the week. There was still energy working in the final session, but I didn’t want to press my luck beyond that. 
• Writing the saga: In the classroom, a game cannot be an end in itself, and I need to consider ways of leveraging the play experience into further experiences for growth and education. In retrospect I wish that I had accompanied the game with a creative writing activity that would allow the students to process their experience and to memorialize their tribe’s triumphs and tragedies. I migh also have them include reflections on whose decisions seemed the most useful, intriguing, dramatic, and/or provocative. .Next year, I’m thinking of attaching the game to an assignment in which the students will recount their tribes’ sagas, modelling their writing on Old English literary models.

Becoming Beowulf engaged, challenged, and educated my students, and I have faith that other classrooms could benefit from this type of game. I’m writing and revising the rules of Becoming Beowulf with an eye towards making it accessible for other teachers. Figuring out how to publicize and distribute this type of game, however, is baffling. Educational roleplaying games are almost by definition misfits. Game designers are usually not in-the-trench teachers, and teachers are seldom aware of the current landscape of roleplaying games.

So there are major challenges to getting this type of game into the hands of people who would benefit from it. I will attend teaching and gaming conventions to discuss educational roleplaying games, but my sense is that I have an uphill battle ahead of me. Teachers are likely to be puzzled by what will be, to most of them, a strange classroom activity, while gamers will be uninterested in a game scaled for classroom use. Bringing those two groups into dialogue with each other will have significant payoffs for both groups. But getting that dialogue moving forward will require some heavy lifting.

I invite you to consider any of the challenges I have offered here and to offer ideas and solutions. And stay tuned for Part 3, where I will offer some insights into sponsoring a roleplaying game club in the high school setting.

Roleplaying Games in the Classroom Trenches, Part One: The Challenge

Periodically, I run across blog posts and articles waxing poetic about the educational value of rpgs and about how they should be used in the classroom. While I’m sympathetic to such articles, they’ve typically suffered from being thick on the idealism side of the scale and thin on the practical, “rubber-hits-the-road” side. Gamers can point out a LARP school in Denmark, and we can learn from those experiences, but a 90-student boarding efterskole is a far cry from your bustling high school in the United States.

What follows here is a work-in-progress report from the front lines of teaching in America. Rather than extolling the potential of rpgs in the classroom, I want to zoom in on some actual experiences, take stock of what I’ve learned, and point the way to future prospects. For ease of reading, I’m breaking the report into three separate posts:

• Part 1 The challenge
• Part 2: The experiment
• Part 3: The club

From my vantage point, the classroom provides a vast, unexplored territory for rpgs, which makes it both exciting and daunting from a game design standpoint. It is so very easy to talk about the educational merit of rpgs: They can provide an immersive experience in a way that reading a book or listening to a lecture cannot; they can involve creative problem-solving on a sophisticated level; they can help to develop the players’ powers of imagination; and the list goes on. If we can figure out how to design rpgs that are accessible to teachers and that enrich the classroom experience, we would uncover a new path to reach and educate students, and these games in turn would encounter a largely untapped audience of young minds eager for enriching experiences which few other art forms can rival.

Lest we get carried away, however, it might be best to begin with our feet grounded in reality. Let me play the devil’s advocate and give you just five reasons why your typical roleplaying game is NOT a good fit for the classroom.

• Most roleplaying games are designed for small, intimate groups typically ranging from 3-6 players. The high school classroom is usually much larger. In my school (a private prep school), I’m working with around 18 students on average, and in some high schools the number can easily be 30 or 35 students.
• In the classroom, students are not volunteering to play the game. I teach English, which is a required core subject. My students have not chosen to be in my course; they are in there first and foremost because it is a graduation requirement.
• Roleplaying games involve intrinsic motivation, and the goal of play is typically created by the gamemaster and the players. By contrast, because of the setup of the educational systems, students are motivated above all by grades and assessments.
• The vast majority of students are new to roleplaying games, so the entire experience is one that requires careful guidance, regulation, and advice.
• The typical class lasts somewhere from 45 minutes (on a regular schedule) to 90 minutes (on a “block” schedule). The actual time for play is actually going to be less once you take into account attendance, announcements, and other matters of the daily routine. By contrast, a typical roleplaying game session lasts from three to four hours.

To state the obvious: Most roleplaying games are explicitly NOT created for the classroom environment. In fact, there is much about the usual design of these games that makes them foreign—even antithetical— to that kind of context. Imagine forcing a group of 25 self-conscious adolescents to play Dungeons and Dragons with minimal instruction during a 45-minute session in a class where they are getting a grade. I would need a 10th level barbarian just to maintain order!

So how does one confront this challenge?

During the final stretch of the fall semester, I ran an original roleplaying game based on the Anglo-Saxon world of Beowulf in my ninth grade English classes (three-sections worth).

I decided quite early that I had to rely upon my own inventiveness and forge my own path. There are some games like Diplomacy and Microscope which can be effectively modified for the classroom, but those games are few and far between. Moreover, I, as a teacher in a core subject, have specific content and curriculum requirements that I must meet, and my classroom activities need to work in conjunction with my educational objectives. I knew that I would be teaching the Old English epic Beowulf sometime in the middle of the year, and I felt that text would offer some rich material for a roleplaying and problem-solving game for my students. Yes, games inspired by Beowulf do exist, but none of those are appropriate for classroom use. So I devoted part of my summer to designing an original game—one that couldnaddress the special demands of the classroom and breathe some new life into the Old English epic.

I’m happy to share the full rules of my work-in-progress, titled Becoming Beowulf, to interested parties (just ask!), but, to keep things short, here is the basic outline of the game:

• Students are divided into Anglo-Saxon tribes, each of which is ruled by a king.
• The tribes have traits (Treasure, Resources, Mead-Hall, Loyalty, Strength, Will) which they can draw upon to deal with various crises. The values of these traits fluctuate during the game.
• The gamemaster (called Wyrd in the game) reads a card detailing a problem which each tribe must deal with. The groups then retreat to their mead-halls to discuss how they will face the situation. This involves allocating trait points to the task and framing up a scene where they will roleplay some aspect of the tribe’s response.
• Based upon their response, their point allocation, and their roleplaying, each tribe builds a dice pool. A dice roll then figures prominently into the outcome of the crisis. Tribes accumulate points of Doom and Fame as a result of these resolutions. In addition, they can lose or gain points to their traits.
• Occasionally, tribe members are eliminated due to battle, hardship, or other nasty events. Those students become members of the monstrous Grendelkin tribe. This tribe can then use the other tribes’ Doom points against them to spoil their efforts to deal with the crises they face.

The game design aims at creating a rhythm: Students spend some intense minutes in their smaller tribes discussing and planning their response to a crisis, and then the entire class comes together to watch the framed scenes and to determine the outcome. It also works to keep students active: No one is ever eliminated from the game, and the small size of the tribes means that everyone can play a vital role.

I initially thought I would use this game alongside our reading of Beowulf or as a fun post-reading activity. The more I thought about the game, however, the more I feared that students would be swayed by the epic and simply replay the responses and events of that narrative. I didn’t want the game to turn into a shallow practice in imitation.

So I zagged: My students played Becoming Beowulf as a preparation to reading the text itself (which will occur in a couple weeks at the start of the second semester). Now, when students encounter the epic, they will read about situations which they previously faced as players in the game. Often, they are going to discover that the characters and tribes in the epic took very different approaches than the solutions tried out in Becoming Beowulf. That should open up some rich discussions about the strategic, cultural, and dramatic situations that factored into those differences.

In a traditional book, the path of the narrative is set by the author and the reader has no choice but to follow along. But the openended nature of the roleplaying game means that the players can explore alternative pathways, and these can give them some valuable alternative perspectives when analyzing narratives. I will be heavily exploiting this resource in the coming weeks. When, for example, we read about Hrothgar offering asylum Beowulf’s outcast father, my students will not see this act of charity as given or inevitable, for they will have already explored different ways in which a tribe might deal with a foreign fugitive seeking help. That, at least, is the idea.

How did Becoming Beowulf fare on the actual field of battle? For that assessment, read on to Part 2: The Experiment.

Gaming with Prince Arthur in Greg Stafford’s Pendragon, Conclusion

The final chapters of Pendragon concern matters of social status, faith, and wealth. After the
presentation of the game’s core mechanics, some might want to skip these sections and get down to playing. But in the world of Pendragon, the topics of religion and hierarchies are central. Nothing is peripheral in this game.
Amid his discussion of different levels of knighthood, Stafford presents a curious interconnection between players and characters. This builds to the curious idea that, to play a lord effectively, one must also learn the ropes of gamemastering: “For a player character lord to be effective, the player must acquire a wider view of the realm than a player of a simple adventuring knight. The recommended path to gain this overview is to require that each lord’s player must become a part-time Gamemaster for short-duration events. Thus, the lord must, at some time, sponsor an event and his player must run the required game session.” Once again, Stafford tries to cut off shortcuts: He wants this game to be deep, immersive, and thorough.
The advice about gamemastering is also put forth to afford relief to the gamemaster. Stafford realizes that running a full-on Pendragon campaign (which is perhaps the only way to run Pendragon) is a marathon: “[The Gamemaster] must mastermind the campaign and oversee adventures for a year or more of real time to sustain a King Arthur Pendragon campaign, and he deserves a chance to play characters occasionally without also having the Gamemaster’s responsibilities.”
The religion of Pendragon is a complex, contradictory soup of myth, legend, and fiction (with a sprinkling of history). Two forms of Christianity exist: a British variety and a Roman one. The British strand is steeped in apocryphal accounts and wildly speculative alternative histories. On this account, Jesus rubs elbows with druids and Joseph of Arimathea later travels to spread the good news after Jesus’s death. Joseph carries with him the Holy Grail.
Aside from having to negotiate (or perhaps choose) between these two varieties of Christianity, the group involved in a campaign also has to decide on whether the church will be represented as “good” or “bad.” That is, do you want your church to be an edifying force spreading education, comfort, and healing, or do you want it to be a corrupt institution that takes advantage of the innocent sheep? Varieties of paganism are also available for exploration in the game, and there is also the matter of determining how exactly good and evil will manifest themselves in the world. For example, evil can be quantitatively defined by certain traits (like Vengeful, Cruel, and Selfish), but it might also be present in supernatural demonic forces.
Oh yes . . . and then there is the faerie realm and the influence of druids. As with other dimensions of Pendragon, you start to dive into a topic, and the layers continue to unfold. The operation of magic in the game is mysterious with key aspects left intentionally vague: “The magic of Britain is extremely potent, partially because of its very mystery. Magic is also dangerous because it is hidden and subtle: Your character knows that it is more likely to drive him mad or age him a century in a day than it is to roast him with a bolt of lightning.” So the rules of magic are left rather undefined by the game: The idea is that player characters will not be wizards themselves (at least not in the core game), though they may come into contact with such forces.
The final chapter takes up the matter of wealth: Being a knight is an expensive proposition, and the game deals with the paradox that, while knights have far more wealth than the rest of society, they are in a curious way among the most impoverished because their expenses are so extensive. Stafford says, “Part of the enjoyment of the game, for some, comes from spending money freely and lavishly.” I’m not sure I would be in that party, but I would also see a group of accountants embracing the economic aspect of the game and having a blast.
The core rulebook ends with a number of appendices. The first of these points forward to the most important supplement, The Great Pendragon Campaign and outlines new classes of knights (such as the chivalrous one, the romantic one, and the Knight of the Round Table). More on the passions (especially that of love) is provided. Now catch this: There is a passion called Amor which is passion directed toward a person but which remains chaste. If amor is consummated sexually, then it becomes “Love (Amor).” The terminology is intentionally overlapping and is used to emphasize the era’s own changing view towards love both as a concept and a passion.
The appendix also discusses future changes in armor and technology, and this brings out another curious aspect of the game. A Pendragon campaign will span a number of years of game time, but the technological development that occurs in that span will be accelerated. So running the game will have the effect of some different timelines running along simultaneously at different paces. I might play a character that ages five years, but in that time frame, hundreds of years of technological innovation might occur.
Appendix 3 provides some introductory scenario, and it introduces what is, in my mind, the most glaring flaw in Pendragon: namely that the game seems to suggest a heavily scripted narrative. At least in the opening scenarios, the entire arc of the game play is established from the start. I can’t judge at this point whether this is the natural default of the game, but at least from this appendix, it seems that the game involves the players following along a narrative whose main beats have been predetermined. This type of play might not be inevitable, though the game’s strong grounding in Malory and other Arthurian literature means that it is strongly inclined to follow along with a standard story line.
The appendices wrap up with a consideration of special combat situations: namely, battles and jousts. And then there are some suggestions for further reading.
My final evaluation? Pendragon is like a gothic cathedral: it is ornate and complex, and its architecture appeals to both the intellect and emotions. My reservation with the game is less its elaborate structure than its inability to generate a genuinely original and creative game play experience. The key question is this: does the game have its players live within an Arthurian tale, or does it allow you and your friends to forge and create a tale of your own? It seems like Pendragon is heavily invested in the former, and that would perhaps be entertaining for a while, but I would want to branch away from the standard tale after a spell, and if I did so, would I still be playing Pendragon?

Demihumans Session 8: An Unexpected Alliance with Orcs and a Two-Front War

Session Opening: Establishing Questions and Moves

I opted to open the session as I did our last one with some establishing questions. That means, after the commonweal move, I asked each member of the company to provide some information about the enclave, their activities, and notable events. Each question was followed by a modified move. Here are my notes for the questions and the accompanying modified move.

• Zuk the troll: Ugluk (orc) and the other halflings whom Ugluck had saved are hanging out in the orchard glen. What do they do to show their deep bond with you and how have you reciprocated? (Intimately share knowledge with Ugluk). 
• Neris the halfling: Jasmine (the halfling family matriarch) has returned with the other halflings who had apparently fallen under the power . What was the reaction of the halfling clan when she returned (fathom a soul).
• Kane: What is the latest visible sign that human antipathy is on the rise? (assess a situation)
• Donna: Breevane (a dwarven follower of Wycraft) visited you when you returned and explained his concern: What was he concerned about? (compel honor)

I like this way of getting the ball rolling. It helps to refresh the memories of the players, it gets them thinking about their role in creating the fiction, and it has them working their moves from the start.

An Unanticipated Company Strategy

The company started by meeting up the tavern--which is also the headquarters in the enclave for the makeshift militia organized by Donna (the dwarf). The company is facing a curious two-front war: The humans are becoming visibly restless and dangerous, and Wycraft (a mysterious elf) has some powerful magic, but it is warping and twisting the natural order. Wycraft is monomaniacal in her hatred for humans, but she is willing to destroy the natural order to satisfy her hatred.

The decision they made was surprising: They decided to try to forge some type of alliance with the orcs ruled by a seasoned chieftain named Madoc Torg. One strategy that I am learning to use more and more: When I don't know what to do as a GM, I turn responsibility over to the company. For example, when the company entered the orc camp (which I had no notes for), I asked them to describe various facets of what their characters saw.

This was a session where there was plenty of discussion and debate. The brief summary of developments:

• The orcs have sealed a blood promise with the company to assist in keeping Wycraft in check.
• The company (finally!) used their boon of the library and has discovered a possible way to use Wycraft’s magic elven stones against her.
• BUT . . . to do this, they need an elven mage, and they decided to attempt to resurrect Eforis Nei (a previous member of the company who is an elf). The resurrection involved using some residual magic from some of Wycraft’s animal mutilations, some orc blood magic (courtesy of Kane the traitor) and, to stir the pot even more, Zuk the Troll used a fruiting bodies move.

So Eforis Nei now is returning to health, and he will be handled now as a Demiurge character. Eforis Nei now has both elements of Wycraft’s evil magic coursing in his veins, but there is also some of the troll’s magic at work (and the troll has some different strong magic coursing through his sap in the form of a strange pseudo-sentient algae).

Demiurge Concerns and Plans:

My sense of these sessions is that there is a kind of oscillation: It seems like we get one session (like this one) which is more about making plans and others which are more about the heavy-hitting action. The planning sessions are intriguing: The players get deeply into the roleplaying and the deep consideration of different angles. They are the type of sessions which probably come off poorly on camera, but there is so much complex thought that I find them satisfying and engaging.

I sometimes worry about the players, however. I enjoy philosophy, ethical dilemmas, and other heady material, but so many people get into RPGs for the action. One thing that softens this concern for me is how the spotlight was getting so equally shared. During the session, I was consciously tuning into how much “screen time” the characters were getting, and it was remarkable how everyone what participating, taking the spotlight, but then also generously pacing the spotlight onto another player.

I was also happy to see how the collaboration was working. When the company met in the tavern at the start of the game, I had some possibilities in mind in case they didn’t run with the ball, but I was both surprised (and very happy) when the company obviated my possibilities and went in an unexpected direction by going back to the orcs. All of us were improvising on the spot, and the session ended at a destination that none of us could have predicted.

What now? The sense is clearly that there is a three-way showdown building where the company will be squaring off with Wycraft and the humans. An analogy would be that famous scene in The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly--the one where Blondie, Tuco, and Angel Eyes engage in a three-way shootout in a cemetery. It’s exciting that I’m not sure exactly where the story will go. To add one more wrinkle, I’m thinking of throwing in a little climatological drama into the mix (in the form of a hurricane). And it's probably time to bring Squire Prador and the mounting human antipathy into focus. But aside from that, it will be up to the company to decide how they want to proceed with their two-front war.

Things seem to be building to some type of apocalyptic moment for our next session. There are so many things that are hanging in the balance.

Gaming with Prince Arthur in Greg Stafford’s Pendragon, Part 2

Today’s post takes us into the heart of Pendragon’s system for resolving conflicts and combat. The
major innovation here: By far the most interesting and important resolution rolls concern the inner state of the characters and not their external accomplishments.

The Mechanics of Personality 

Chapter 4 (“Stats and Skills”) wastes no time in getting to the heart of Pendragon’s innovative role playing system. Understanding the skills side of the equation is straightforward and familiar to RPG players, but in Stafford’s game, the character’s personality is constrained by its own set of statistics, and there is a mechanics in place which forces your character to take (or not take) actions based on relevant personality traits.

Those familiar with Call of Cthulhu or other horror games where sanity is tracked will have an inkling of what is involved in Pendragon, as will those who have played with character alignments.  But Stafford’s system cuts much deeper. Sanity is one trait, as is an alignment. That all seems like child’s play when compared to Pendragon, which has no less than 26 personality traits and 4 passions (actually 5 when you count the default “Hate”).

Here is just one taste to give you a sense of just how bold and relentless Stafford is about this aspect of the game:

“Personality Traits and Passions define the way your character feels and acts. During play, various emotions are revealed and Traits and Passions may thus receive experience checks, just like Skills . . . Passions may also be reduced at the Gamemaster’s option.

Over time, characters’ Traits and Passions come to reflect the story of their lives. The system allows characters to record the changes in their attitudes and behavior accurately and
Consistently.”

In other words, your character’s decisions are sometimes going to be out of your control:

“Since Traits and Passions define character personality, they must be consulted whenever the Gamemaster feels them necessary. In crises, it is assumed, individuals act according to their character, not spontaneous and ambiguous choices. Custom and training triumph over instinct.
Players may not want their characters to do something dictated by a die roll, but free choice is not always possible.”

I’m intrigued by the system, and I’d be willing to dive into the challenge. I realize that many players would balk at the constraints, seeing them purely as negatives: They would look at them as dictating what your character cannot do. But the set-up also provides guideposts and opportunities for role-playing, and inventive, creative players would use them as opportunities for immersing themselves in a character.

A Game about Morality . . . and Glory!

Staffords system of Traits and Passions also sets up an intense examination of morality and ethics. In Pendragon, what I as a player might want to do is now constrained by what my character can and cannot do. But it goes even deeper than that. The game is also about the attainment of Glory, which is another statistic—really, it’s the statistic above all others, the idea that all knights should be trying to attain. So there may be instances when my character’s personality trait might be at cross purposes with the attainment of Glory and/or at cross purposes with a character’s sense of what might, in practical terms, be another “better” option.

“The chaste knight will be able to maintain his chastity, the drunkard will remain a drunkard and the courageous will be courageous even sometimes against his better judgment.”

To further complicate matters, Stafford has another term, reputation, which is related to Glory, but isn’t the same as Glory. Reputation is Glory’s doppelganger: It is a concept which, unlike Glory, doesn’t receive a quantifiable number (it doesn’t even get a nod in the index), and it can run counter to what society considers proper. Thus, I might have a character with a reputation for Cruelty, but that will run counter to the attainment of Glory:

“It is important for players to understand the fact that, since Glory measures not reputation but status, successful evil knights may attain the same Glory as some chivalrous knights. Evil knights lose reputation, not Glory, for their vile deeds.”

And elsewhere:

“. . . reputation is critical in the game. Everyone is a knight, but the kinds of knight one portrays can vary greatly from one’s fellows. A character’s actual behavior is always up to the player, but certain behaviors earn more Glory than others.”

There is some ambivalence here: Elsewhere, Stafford suggests character’s behavior might not always be entirely up to the players. Clearly, there needs to be negotiation between the Gamemaster and the payers.

Glory over XP! 

This social dimension leads to another revolutionary concept. Glory is what the characters ultimately are after: It is Pendragon’s equivalent of XP. But the rule is that Glory is gained through the judgment of the other players (including the Gamemaster):

“King Arthur Pendragon is a social game; Glory represents the respect of one’s peers, not something palpable like gold. Thus, to a great extent, Glory is dependent on the reaction of the Gamemaster and the other players to your roleplaying. . . . If you impress everyone with
your character’s actions, chances are that he receives some Glory.”

Remember that this is coming out of an era when RPGs were tying XP to the discovery of gold coins and to the slaying of monsters. Stafford is charting a very different course here. He is boldly tying the “goal” of the game to the interactive play at the table, and he is motivating the players not simply to defeat foes and grab treasures but to role-play in a way that will win the appreciation of the other players at the table (and the characters whom they are playing).

Selling Out and other Acts of Self-Betrayal

Other delirious wrinkles: If you roll a trait and fail the roll, you then roll the opposing trait, and if you succeed on that roll, your character acts according to the opposed trait!

So, let’s say Eric the Merciful is deciding how to punish the poor peasant who stole bread from the miller, and let’s say he rolls on his mercy, but, as luck has it, he fails. He then rolls against cruelty: If he succeeds on this roll, he would behave with cruelty. And Stafford also takes into account situations where two traits might come into play with a situation which makes for internal conflict.

Similar perils and rewards attend the passions: A player may become inspired upon rolling a critical success, which will offers great advantages during the time of inspiration, but failures of passion can lead to melancholia and even madness with attendant disastrous consequences.

Passions can go up or down during play. I was amused by the Dishonorable Acts Chart which lists the commonly agreed upon distaste for certain deeds. Performing physical labor as a knight, for example, incurs a -2 to honor. And the worst dishonorable deed, going beyond killing a kinsman, is to learn to cast magic spells, which gives you a -8 to honor!

 What I see is a game focused on moral choices, character emotions, and internal conflicts.  Much of the play is going to be about the multiple demands that weigh on a person’s soul—with self-interest, social expectations, ethical constraints, personality traits, bonds, etc. all waging a relentless war on the character’s soul. This does not make a player into a mere puppet, but it is going to make the player constantly aware of the perilous moral road he or she walks. The possibilities are rich and complex.

After an Adventure comes the Winter Phase

Pendragon envisions that 1-2 play sessions will be devoted to playing out some type of scenario or adventure . . . but that doesn’t end the eventful developments for a character. After all, a knight has other pressing demands: finding an eligible spouse, improving oneself, raising a family, maintaining the lands and the stable, dealing with nasty rumors, and considering the inevitable grind of aging. Stafford has a Winter Phase in the game which consists of nine steps to consider all of these less heroic but no less important aspects of the knight’s life.

The Winter Phase or other extended times of rest are also needed for healing and rehabilitation, and characters will need that! The fifth chapter of Pendragon concerns combat, and to my eyes, it is a standard approach clearly based on the miniature wargaming background of other fantasy RPGs of the era. But Stafford is insistent that injury be dealt with in a grim and sober manner: “Violence in King Arthur Pendragon should be realistic and terrifying, never casual or routine, and the best way to achieve this is to make injuries a serious matter.”

So that takes us through the basic mechanics of the game. The final chapters take up matters of Ambition, Faith, and Wealth along with the appendices.

Gaming with Prince Arthur in Greg Stafford’s Pendragon

My encounter with Greg Stafford comes very late. I got into RPGs in the late 70’s in Mobile, AL, with Dungeons and Dragons—first with the Holmes and White Box editions, then graduating to Advanced Dungeons and Dragons. There was a little DragonQuest and Villains and Vigilantes that got into the mix, and I dimly recall the name RuneQuest coming up, but Stafford’s games were not in the orbit of my gaming group in Mobile. There wasn’t even a gaming store in the city at that time that dealt with RPGs, so we had to persuade one of our mothers to drive us to Mississippi for us to get our hands on new material. But, with news of Greg Stafford’s death, I have finally started to dig into some of his material, beginning with King Arthur Pendragon (1985). While the reading is long overdue, it couldn’t come at a more opportune time for me in terms of some of my current projects, which include designing games with morality, the achievement of glory, and the early middle ages in their sights. What follows here is not a proper review or a tribute. Rather, it is a reflection on my first pass through King Arthur Pendragon (edition 5.2). I’m currently through the introduction and first three chapters, which provide an overview of the Arthurian material, “The Pendragon Realm,” “Character Generation,” and “Family and Fatherland.” More installments to follow! Right off, one should say that Pendragon is a role-playing game that HAD to be made, dealing as it does with some of the ur-matter of fantasy world building and literature. And the knights and ladies of Camelot should happily carousing that the first designer to come up with a fully fleshed out game dealing specifically with the Arthur legend was knowledgeable (about history, literature, and RPGs) and also innovative. Pendragon is NOT some dungeon crawl / sword & sorcery game reskinned for Arthurian fantasy. Pendragon IS a historically and socially nuanced game with a system that is almost dizzying in its layers and richness. Stafford was steeped both in medieval history and the Arthurian material, and he aimed for a game that would both be true to the sources and that would enmesh the players in a world that is dizzying not in terms of magic but in terms of its social complexity. It is a demanding game that challenges the players to consider the economic, cultural, political, and moral fabric of King Arthur’s Britain. If you commit yourself to the game, there is no doubt that you will receive a uniquely “lived” education about the middle ages (and don’t come here if you are after gelatinous cubes or kobold hordes!). I’m well into the rulebook (80 pages of 265), and Stafford has scarcely broached any information about combat mechanics or conflict resolutions. While Stafford does pepper some humor into the mix, for the most part, his tone is direct and lucid, not unlike Thomas Malory and other sober authors of the Arthurian tradition. What does Stafford require of his players?

• A basic understanding of feudalism
• A sense of religious traditions (British Christianity, Roman Christianity, and paganism)
• An understanding of the economics of the manor
• An acquaintance with the gender politics of the middle ages (though he does thoughtfully present some flexible ways of involving female characters in the mix)
• An appreciation of lineage and family bonds
• A knowledge of castle architecture and layout
• A sense of the equestrian demands of knighthood
• And more!!

When you are creating a character for this game, skills and stats are only one layer: You have to have an understanding of who you are in terms of the land, your family, your history, and your social environment. There is part of the game that involves going on adventures (more on that on the next post), but of equal importance is your character’s maintenance of the estate. Part of your “job” as a knight involves managing your land, finding a suitable spouse, and preparing for a legitimate heir. (Aside: The discussion of inheritance leads to one of the games terrific puns, which involves the problem of “Premature Heir Loss!!”) Pendragon is sprawling in terms of time: The idea of the game would be to play through multiple generations of a family. So your starting character will hopefully raise a son who will then become a squire and then inherit the mantle of knighthood to carry forth the campaign through the rise of King Arthur to the dissolution of the Round Table. To get the players enmeshed in the game, Stafford resorts to a number of techniques--some innovative, some direct, and some charming. Some examples:

• You are instructed to design a coat of arms for your family, and the rulebook provides a couple of pages template elements to assist in the task. You fill in the coat of arms and color it on your character sheet.
• At the end of the character generation process, you are instructed to hold an actual knighting ceremony which comes complete with a ritualized text for the gamemaster and the characters to complete. I imagine some players will skip this step, but Stafford insists (rightly) on its importance to establish the right tone for the game.
• Stafford includes a number of straight-forward reference sections to give the gamemaster and players some quick efficient overviews of such topics as castles, the layout of England, early English history, etc.

One of my less favorite sections: The rules suggest that you work out the recent history of your family, focussing on your grandfather and father and taking you from 439-485 A.D. (a period which sets the stage for the appearance of Arthur).To accomplish this you are faced with a sequence of charts spanning across 8 pages. You roll on one chart for the year 439, consult the effects, and then move on to the next chart. I understand the purpose behind this set-up, but it is a grind! Many of the “numbers” you enter on the character sheet are what you would expect: attribute scores, skill scores, and combat scores. Notably missing is intelligence and Stafford makes it a point to highlight this absence. His argument is that your character is basically the same intelligence as the person who is playing that character. But there are innovative elements such as personality traits and the passions. Personality traits: There are 26 of them and they come in opposed pairs. These pairing have to total 20, so the more you have of one of the pair, the less you have of the other. For example, if your character ranks high on the forgiving side (say, a 14 score), then your character will be low on the vengeful side (a 6). I like the idea of opposed traits, and it is dealing with an issue that I am playing with. I do wish that the traits were not arrayed as good vs. evil, however. For example, Stafford pairs energetic with lazy, and players are almost always going to gun for high on the energetic side. But what if instead of “lazy” you used something like “serene?” That would give you a far more intriguing pair to consider. Passions: You start with four: Loyalty, Love, Hospitality, and Honor. Stafford also suggests a fifth passion of Hate (specifically aimed at the Saxons). More on this next time, as I know that Stafford’s use of the passions as a mechanic is one of the innovative aspects of Pendragon, but that part of the system has not yet been covered. A second page of the character sheet gives you places to keep track of your family, your holdings, your equipment, and your history. Whew! There is a lot to consider and chew over here. I end with a brief anecdote. As I was reading through the rules in my classroom during one of my lunches, I was engaged but was personally thinking to myself, “I don’t know whether my high school students would have the attention and endurance for this type of game.” But then, low and behold, two students (one a senior the other a freshman) asked me what I was reading, and when I explained to them, they were fired up by the idea. So there might be some Pendragon actual play in my future and in the future of some young gamers.

Demihumans Session 7: The Swamp Chimera: Ally or Menace?

After a two-week hiatus, I had four players reconvene for another session of Demihumans on Sunday.
The main focus of the play became a fateful meeting with Wycraft, a mysterious elven mage. It became apparent as the play progressed that Wycraft wants to take the fight to the humans of Florageist, but to do so, Wycraft is warping the magic of the swamp. So the characters of the company faced a major dilemma: Do they join forces with Wycraft (thus harnessing that powerful magic), or do they oppose her (and hence make another enemy)? No easy choices!

The session ended in dramatic fashion with Wycraft revealing a large, dangerous Swamp Chimera, a monstrosity cobbled together from pieces of bear, alligator, snake, and other creatures. Wycraft is monomaniacal and was insisting that the members of the company (along with many members of the Neris the halfling’s family) join in a pact. Surprisingly, it was Donna (dwarf) who was most in favor of joining forces with Wycraft. But, in the end, Zuk the troll used Garden Pathways to spirit away the members of the company and a couple halflings. This left many other halflings, including their family matriarch, to deal with Wycraft and her Swamp Chimera on their own.

One other twist: Ugluk, a half-orc who was healed by Zuk’s Fruiting Bodies move and who now has the strange pseudo-sentient algae inhabiting her body, was involved in the action. She told Zuk to leave her behind to assist with the Wycraft situation, and, as the company fled Wycraft, they saw Ugluk running to some of the halflings and wiping some of the algae from her shoulder wound across their faces.

A few notable game play situations and recommendations:

Given the fact that we were coming back after a hiatus, I thought it would be nice to have players fill in on some developments that had been transpiring with their characters or the enclave. So, after the session preliminaries and the commonweal move, I had each player make a pseudo-custom move (involving a roll with modifiers) to explain developments. For example, Donna explained what she had been doing to help train the enclave members who had taken the Adamantine Pact. She failed her roll, by the way, and this resulted in one of those Adamantine Pact members falling into the party with Wycraft. The traitor, meanwhile, got to explain what was happening as a result of Human Antipathy increasing and got to ask some “Assess the Situation” style questions about what the humans were doing. This procedure got everyone immediately involved in the game play, and it helped to set some themes and stories in motion.

I’ve noticed that the boons, banes, and wants are not consistently coming into play. Players should be reminded of their boons at the start of the session. Even with that notification, they still are forgetting their boons. Here’s what I’m going to do next session: I’m going to remind them of the boons and then note that they are constantly forgetting them in play. The solution? I’m going to suggest that they look for opportunities to use them early in the session: Even if a boon was used for a minor advantage, that would be preferable than not using it at all.

As a demiurge, I’ve been much better at using the wants and banes that are more dramatic. In our next session, I’m going to do the following: For each want and ban in play, I’m either going to state the cost of that bane/want at the very start of the game play OR I’m going to think of the want or bane as a kind of move. I’m even going to consider asking a player exactly how a bane/want is manifesting itself in the enclave and how that directly impacts the members of the company.

One thing that is working well: There is so much drama being generated from the fact that the enclave has different factions with very different ideas about how to deal with the humans. If the demiurge does some good work at establishing some political intrigue and ethical dilemmas at the start, the game will flourish and the players will be faced with some deeply probing dilemmas. By the end of yesterday’s session, I had players jumping out of their seats, pacing, and knocking over chairs--all of this in a good way. They were thrilled with the complex choices that were continuing to bud and blossom.

The special moves are high points of the game play, but they do not get used often. The basic moves are doing their work, but part of me would like to see those special class moves more frequently. The plus side is that those class moves are very special when they are used, and the players are invested in giving them added meaning and import which is quite satisfying and dramatic.

Despite the impression of some of my players, I don’t know where the fiction will take us, but the game continues to generate a level of thoughtfulness and complexity that I have seldom encountered in an RPG. I had my doubts as to whether my play group would go for Demihumans with its melancholic tone, but they are energized by what the game is generating in terms of both the game play situations and in terms of the story.

Self-realization and Unknown End-points in Games AND in Teaching

Ron Edwards continues to touch on issues that are at the core of what teaching should be about (and also what some game experiences can be about), and that has prompted me to reflect further about my profession and my work with students. See the full conversation at Adept Play. Ron has also been reflecting on some of the toxic effects of social media and his thoughts are leading to some exciting changes that are in the works. Stay tuned!

Ron wrote:

“The second term [“self-realization”] might look out of place, but as I see it, it's necessarily more relevant to K-12 teaching than is safe to admit. This teaching isn't just offering a social service, it's developmental intervention - a risky and conflicted form of parenting, like it or not.”

Self-realization is not out of place. I totally agree that, as a high school teacher, I have an obligation to do much more than just teach content or to build skills. The (often unstated) developmental work of teachers is crucial . . . though many teachers do not receive much direct help that equips them for that role. At least in my case, I was never told much about that aspect of my work. I’m hesitant to equate teaching with parenting, though there is overlap and, in an ideal world, teaching and parenting should work together (though differently) to help young people achieve independence, self-reliance, and fulfillment. On any given day, some of my student can have as much time in my presence as they have contact with their parents, and that gives me a deep sense of duty that goes beyond delivering course content.

“My one intended input is this: in none of the topics I mentioned above, can the result be inserted or implanted, it can only be cultivated. So the game might not work, or if it works, its degree of engagement may vary from person to person, or, and most importantly, for every person so engaged, the reflection may yield varying conclusions.”

Yes. The levels/types of engagement and end-points of reflection will vary from student to student. I’d take it one step further and say that they should vary, though the structure and underlying assumptions of our educational approach often aim at conformity. In other words, education often seems to be set up to achieve a uniform outcome, but if we are interested in developing creative, thinking individuals, then we should embrace variance . . . provided those variances are also accompanied by growth. So if I were successful in designing a classroom game that met with different student responses, I’d be content and even eager to explore those responses.

A bit of a digression for the Beowulf game, but one that touches on the work I do with students and that touches on both the issue of self-realization and the issue of an open-ended result: I’m coming to the conclusion that my sponsorship of a game club at school and to engage with students seriously in playing games is, for many of my students, becoming just as important as my role as a teacher in the classroom (though writing that might be heresy). In that club setting (and the club meets daily during breaks and lunch and even on weekends), there is crucial social, intellectual, and creative work being done. And one thing that makes the club wonderful is that it is divorced from the concept of a prearranged, dictated outcome: Students can develop, grow, create, and imagine in a safe setting without the pressure of a test or assessment. In some cases, students have been learning about games used by me and one of my colleagues in the classroom, and then they find their way to my room during breaks and lunches to join the club. That’s been fun and satisfying to watch.

Why a game about Beowulf?

Ron Edwards asked me a probing, fundamental question in an exchange over at his site Adept Play. I recommend that you see the full exchange there and to look at other posts.

Here's the question he asked

Before really getting into the document, I want to know more. It's not an easy question: why have students at this grade level, today's culture, faced with today's problems, encounter Beowulf at all?

That’s a very complex question, and one which demands multiple answers. Here are a few . . .

One value of reading Beowulf is that it is a text which revolves around problems and crises: It shows characters responding to those crises in different ways, and also shows the consequences (sometimes unpredictable) of those decisions. Are those problems the same as the problems our society faces? Yes and no . . . but both the similarities and differences have important values.

The problems faced within Beowulf are different than our problems: In our world, we face countless situations where groups and people are facing problems that are not our problems. This is the case both globally (the problems facing Vietnam, for example, are often not the problems facing the United States) and locally (the problems facing a single mother living in a housing project in downtown Orlando are not my problems). Does that mean that problems that are not my problems are not important or that I should not pay attention to them or learn about them? Holding to the line that my problems (or our problems) are the only ones worth thinking about would lead to a very narrow and toxic way of confronting the world. We should equip ourselves (and I should equip my students) to be able to build empathy: Even if someone (or some other group) is facing problems that are not my problems, I should develop the ability to see the challenges and difficulties facing them . . . and perhaps see a way to helping them or offering up solutions. That’s one way we can tear down walls and build community.

The problems faced within Beowulf are similar to our problems: This notion might initially seem unlikely. The world of Beowulf is so different from our world. But if we develop the sensitivity to see some similarities, the text might give us a different lens through which to view these problems. To take one example, there are situations where a warrior of one tribe is harmed, and the members of that warrior’s tribe are then weighing the response: Is it better to wage war? to ask for some compensation of material value? to seek help from allies? to withhold resources from the offending party? To decide, I need to look at the options, evaluate possible consequences, and take action. The concerns of Beowulf are not entirely irrelevant to, say, the current situation involving the death of Jamal Khashoggi and the responses being weighed.

Beyond the realm of problem solving, Beowulf is important because, in order to understand that text, we must expend some real effort to grasp the cultural background driving it. And if we are successful in that effort, we are gaining some valuable skills and tools that might help us to deal with cultural differences when we confront them in other contexts. Students might find the actions, beliefs, and values of Beowulf to be strange and foreign . . . just as they will find the actions, beliefs, and values of other cultures and communities to be strange and foreign. To develop an understanding requires imagination, empathy, creativity, and insight--and these are all abilities that can be cultivated and taught. Presenting students with a challenging text like Beowulf can build those muscles in a way that other easier and more accessible texts cannot.

Beyond these more sweeping arguments, there are some other specific topics and themes that make Beowulf valuable: It is about how the “monsters” we face in the future are created by the choices we have made in the past. It is about adapting to new roles and changing situations as we age (and about how we confront our mortality). It is about dealing with conflicting value systems that we hold (for example, what happens when the value of maintaining honor comes into conflict with the value of  preserving health and even life?). These are all important, real issues and valuable to think about.

Beowulf is a great text to confront these topics and more. And there is a real power to Beowulf both in terms of its story and in terms of the aesthetic experience it offers. But is not an “easy” text: It requires imagination and alertness from its reader. My sense is that a well constructed game (and in this case this means a game that can both stand on its own two legs AND also one that faithfully accompanies the poem) can assist in building those imaginative and intellectual powers.

Ben Robbins's Microscope Game and the Teaching of Writing

Early in the semester during my 9th grade classes, I used Ben Robbins's Microscope to talk about narratives and to set the groundwork for an assignment involving the creation of a scene existing within a larger framework. I posted this earlier on Google+, but given the impending demise of that platform, I thought it might be worthwhile to post it here.

What follows is not a systematic overview, but it will touch on some of my experiences and impressions:

1.  Pacing: I felt that, in order to get the most out of the experience, I needed to give Microscope plenty of breathing room. I am working with students who are new to collaborative storytelling games. In addition I'm dealing with many students who are uncomfortable with their abilities in the English class and others who are anxious about the new school year. Some students had difficulty distinguishing between a "period" and and "event"; some struggled to come to grips with the fractal nature of the game play; some were challenged by the idea of a focus. The game is terrific at breaking things down into discrete steps, and by taking a deliberate, methodical approach, I had all the students humming by Thursday. I could have "crunched" the game, but rushing would have made it much less rewarding and the payoff would have diminished.

2. Scenes: I knew from experience that the scene aspect of the game would be challenging, so, instead of avoiding the challenge, I decided to make it the destination and culmination of our week of play! Initially, I took scenes off the table and had the students work with building a history using periods and events. Mid-week, I moved into the set-up and structure of scenes, and I had the students dictate scenes rather than playing them out. At the end of the classes today, student groups had nicely developed histories, and their weekend homework is to come up with an idea for a new scene which is not currently part of their histories but which could be. Next week, I will work with them on developing those ideas into a writing assignment involving a script of their scene (with descriptive setting, dialogue, use of rising action, etc.).

3.  Collaboration and independence: As the week continued, I could see the students becoming more comfortable not just with the game but with themselves and their interactions in groups. It was transformational for some: I saw students who started the class as awkward, self-doubting students and who were able to take some notable steps in developing their sense of ownership and their voice as the gameplay developed.

4.  Teaching narrative: The game is all about constructing narratives from building blocks. For early high school students, it is effective at giving them a visual map and a way to organize a complex narrative in a way that is accessible and not intimidating. In initially setting up the game, I used our summer reading book (Salman Rushdie's Haroun and the Sea of Stories) as an example, and even that activity was useful for them: It showed them how they could break down a multifaceted narrative into components and how to think of the interrelationship of various strands weaving through the novel.

5.  Time:  I'm fortunate in that I'm teaching a new class at a private school. I have a chair who is confident in my skills and my vision, and he has given me the freedom to devote the necessary time to weave Microscope into the course. By the time all this is wrapped up, Microscope will have occupied nearly two weeks of my class time (if you include the writing assignment springing from the gameplay), and I'm sure there are many administrators or chairs at other schools who would step in to shut this type of activity down or demand that it be greatly shortened in order to speed up the delivery of more content.

The game has been fun, and it has engaged students on multiple levels. One student commented to me today that he was thrilled by the game because it was forcing him to think through the layers of the story he and his peers were developing. It was addictive for the class precisely because it was motivating some deep thinking about both the content of the histories and the structure of them.

The game culminated in a writing assignment where each student had to look at their created history and write a new scene. This allowed me to target some elements of the writing craft while they were working on a piece that they were invested in . . . because they had created the rich story surrounding  the scene. It also proved a nice way to introduce scene-setting, and as I continue to introduce some role-playing activities during the year, I'm hoping to build off of that groundwork.

The chair of my department came in to observe the experiment in action, and I'll leave the final word with him:

Among other things, I like how it gives kids a chance to hone their leadership and collaboration skills. For example, the concept of a player becoming the lens gives him or her the chance to define a focus that will shape the decisions of others and the direction of the gameplay. I like how the other players need to follow the lead of the lens and to think about how their own ideas fit into the greater goal identified by the lens. That the role of the lens shifts each turn is also nice. In short, all students will get the opportunity to lead and to follow as they build a world together. I also enjoyed how the students debated decisions as they created their event cards. When one said, “We should bring in nukes,” another responded, “Nah, that tech would take too long to develop.” Here is another quick discussion I observed: 

Student 1: “Where should he die?”
Student 2; “In a trench.”
Student 1: “But WHERE is the trench?”
Student 3: “Germany?”
Student 4” France?”
Student 2: “Yes, how about near the Eiffel tower.”

In other words, they appeared to be moving from general ideas to precise details nicely and to be comfortable politely challenging each other’s ideas as the group moved to resolve some critical details. 

Ideas for an Actual Play Assignment: Becoming Beowulf

Ideas for an Actual Play Assignment: Becoming Beowulf

My playtest group for Robert Bohl’s Demihumans is unable to meet this week, so instead of writing
up a report on a playtest session for that game I’m going to delve into ideas concerning a playtest of a different type this week.

One spark for these ideas comes from Ron Edwards’ “Actual Play” section at adeptplay.com which I’ve been exploring. Ron’s ideas for Actual Play Reports have started me thinking about the usefulness of his approach for an upcoming experience I’m going to try in my 9th grade English classes.

Here’s the set-up: At the end of the semester, I will be teaching Beowulf to a varied group of 9th graders. I’ve been tasked this year with teaching a course that can reach students who have been challenged by English classes (some have learning disabilities, some have attention deficits, some are unmotivated, some have had bad English class experiences, and some are simply looking for a more deliberate pacing).

Beowulf is one of those texts which is challenging to ninth graders under any circumstance. It faces students with issues that they have a difficult time grasping and appreciating. Problems of scarcity, strange rituals, archaic notions of honor, mysterious monsters--these elements and more are baffling to first-time readers.

What is the teacher to do? I’ve taught Beowulf many times, but this year, I’m taking a different approach. Since June, I’ve been creating a nuanced classroom game about Beowulf that involves resource management, tribal negotiations, and role-playing. For those interested, a rough draft of the player’s guide is here.

I’m planning to use the game as a way to bring the students closer to the world of Beowulf as we read the text. The game will put them into situations based on ones encountered by characters in the old English epic.

But what do I do after we play through the game (and finish reading the poem)? I could just leave the game behind, hoping that it has done its work. But now I’m wondering about ending with a written reflection piece modeled somewhat along the lines of Ron’s “Best Practices for Actual Play Posting.” I will obviously have to do some tweaking to set up the writing assignment for students. But I would be interested in getting their thoughts.

One thing that really excites me about my Beowulf project is this: In my mind, there is a lot of literature which is valuable because it provides an experience in a way that history books or other “dry” forms of writing cannot. But the experiential dimension of Beowulf is initially unattainable for many students. If a reader cannot fathom the problems and issues faced by the characters in the text, then how can we expect the reader to feel or to inhabit the text in any powerful or meaningful way?

But what if a well-designed role-playing game can more dynamically put them into the world of an initially mystifying text? What if a student can become a character who now has to make concrete decisions and to discuss with her or his peers the crisis that is bearing down on the tribe? In what way can a gaming experience help a reader to better connect with a literary text--and, in so doing, to give them a more enriched experience of a literary text?

These are exciting questions for me, but it seems to me that I won’t be able fully to flesh out the answers to those questions unless I hear from the people who are playing the game (and who are struggling with reading the text). So I’m thinking that an Actual Play Response might be the ticket and that it will work on multiple levels: It will give the students a meaningful writing prompt, it will spark them to reflect on their reactions to two art forms (one literary, one a game), and it will give me some good evidence for how my game has worked (or faltered) for the players.

Robert Bohl's Demihumans Playtest :Session 6 Competing Magics Mystify the Company

+Robert Bohl's Demihumans Playtest :Session 6
Competing Magics Mystify the Company

The Flower of Human Antipathy sheds another petal, and the Company doesn’t know what magic to
trust!

The Company has sparked some of the demihumans of Bilgeton to prepare for a more direct and violent encounter with the humans from Florageist. The tavern at the center of the enclave has become the headquarters. During the start of this tale, the imprisonment of the elf Eforis-Nei (who is in the clutch of the cruel Squire Prador) was foremost in the company’s mind

The company drew upon the help of Neris, a young female halfling whose family is involved in petty burglaries in Florageist. (Neris is a new character being played by the player who had been playing Eforis-Nei). Neris and her family live in a particularly run-down section of the enclave, and she has a curiously close relationship to Zuk the troll (Neris is helping to raise a human orphan named Lily, and Zuk periodically takes Lily on outings into the swamp).

Zuk, Neris, and two other halflings set out to invade the barracks prison where Eforis Nei is being held. There are clear indications that a major storm (a literal tropical storm) is in the process of ramping up as they set out.  As they approach the building, Zuk’s pseudo-sentient algae radiates some vague type of unease. Neris uses “assess the situation” and gets a reading on the probable location of the prison, but also suspects that something strange is up in the barracks, which is oddly quiet. The three halflings make their way up to the second floor, and they discover a number of soldiers unconscious. Making their way to the prison, they discover the cell of Eforis-Nei open. Inside, she discovers Wycraft, a mysterious elf, who is engaged in some type of strange magic. Eforis-Nei is seated on the floor, but non-responsive.

Meanwhile, Zuk is waiting out in the swamp (using Unseen Sentinel). Ugluk, a half-orc female, appears on the scene: She is weak and delirious. Ugluk had previously been severely injured by Kain the Traitor, and was on the point of death, but had been healed by Zuk’s Fruiting Bodies move. Zuk makes itself visible, and notices that the large wound in Zuk’s shoulder is now inhabited by a colony of glowing pseudo-sentient algae--the same type of algae that Zuk treasures and keeps secured in its mouth. Zuk feels the algae she holds radiating a sense of rightness, and suspects the colony is a result of the Fruiting Bodies move.

Neris talks to Wycraft who says that she is there to free Eforis Nei, and that she has been successful. “Eforis-Nei is free and will always be with us,” she says. She then asks Neris and the other halflings to join her and to exit. Neris (using Fathom a Soul) feels that Wycraft is being genuine, but also realizes that there is much that is being left unsaid or unexplained. Wycraft seems intently interested in establishing some affinity or trust with Neris.

Neris meets up with Zuk, but Zuk’s algae prickles at the appearance of Wycraft. Neris, meanwhile, is quite suspicious of the half-orc with a colony of glowing algae sprouting from her shoulder wound. Other members of the company had previously been suspicious of Zuk's attachment to a magical algae. The tropical storm continues to build  . .  .that can’t be good for an enclave mired in a swamp, can it?

Robert Bohl's Demihumans: Session 5 Adamantine Pact Fails, Then Widens Its Scope

+Robert Bohl's Demihumans: Session 5
Adamantine Pact Fails, Then Widens Its Scope

As the demiurge, I encountered a gordian knot in this session. Here were the factors at play which put
me in a difficult situation (Note: to fully understand, you might need to read the summary of the session that follows):

1. There was an Adamantine Pact in effect: A rag-tag group of ~20 demihumans agreed to defend Eforis Nei’s abode, but not to do anything stupid in carrying out this defense.

2. One bane of the enclave is that “one of the company may have a demand made upon him by the patron (Squire Prador) or his agents once this tale.” This bane was directed at Eforis Nei. (So this bane is in tension with the Adamantine Pact.)

3. When Squire Prador appeared to alert the elf that he needed to appear at an inquest,  I didn’t predict the encounter would escalate the way it did due to Eforis Nei’s diamond refusal to give Prador any satisfaction.

4.Squire Prador’s personal appearance would have been a surprise to the enclave, and it’s not like the enclave demihumans are trained military. Opposing him would have meant violence, and it would have mostly been violence between demihuman characters.

5. Donna the Dwarf (the origin of the Adamantine Pact) was not personally present to direct the demihumans.

Quite the conundrum! I’m still not sure whether I played this out correctly. My compromise was eventually to let Squire Prador have his way, but the demihumans were chastened by Donna due to their refusal to follow through on the Pact. Now I’ve allowed the Pact to have a more broad effect in favor of the Company, especially when Donna is around to direct the demihumans. Those under the influence of the pact are ashamed of their behavior and will go above and beyond to make up for their cowardice.

The company was not as vigorous in seeking to use moves. I’m not sure why this is. As the demiurge, I kept trying to give them opportunities, but there were many situations when they didn’t take the bait, and I was reluctant directly to tell them, “Why don’t you consider a ‘Fathom a Soul’ move. Note to Demiurges:  Be sure to emphasize the use of moves at the start of the session! Players need to plant that idea and hold onto it. I’m going to put this in my beginning-of-session matters that I cover at the start of every session. The players need consciously to think of seizing opportunities to make moves. I’m also going to suggest that they think of “intimately sharing culture” moves and using those as opportunities to create custom cross-cultural moves.

Eforis Nei the Elf was inflexible in his refusal to give any ground to Squire Prador and the humans. In practical terms, this landed him in jail, and it also derailed the attempt of the other company members to enact a prisoner exchange. This was frustrating on one level, but also illuminating of a dilemma faced by those who are marginalized: Do you keep stooping to humiliations for strategic reasons, or do you at some point stand up without backing down? I tried to give Eforis Nei chances to stay or get out of jail, but all those chances involved giving some type of concession to the humans, and he wasn’t willing to cave in.

Here's a full breakdown of the key events:

Battle Aftermath

Zug the Troll retreated into the swamp after the battle with the orchid-raiding Orcs (perhaps to meditate, perhaps to track down Burz the half-orc). Donna the Dwarf and Kain the Traitor had an extended conversation, weighing their options. Initially, they were going to split the magical orchids they had found with Verik Tork with the agreement that they would be sold on the black market for a profit rather than destroyed. But after a more careful weighing of Verik Torg (using a move) they figured that that course would be dangerous due to Verik’s untrustworthiness. They finally agreed to stay the night and then to walk with the two wounded orcs (Verik Tork and Ugluk) to the enclave.

Eforis Nei the Elf Jailed

Before Donna and Kain arrive, Squire Prador descended on Eforis Nei’s (the elf) home with an armed squad. He told Eforis Nei that there was an inquest being held tomorrow morning. The elf was suspected of some mysterious, possibly magical attacks occuring against humans. Eforis Nei refused to give his assurance that he would appear, and when Squire Prador had his men move to put him in shackles, he attacked with Eldritch Might. This escalated the conflict. The Squire was losing his cool, and it became apparent to Eforis Nei that continued escalation would put other people in the enclave at risk, so he eventually agreed to go off with the Squire and his squad.

The Dwarf and the Traitor Confront Squire Prador

Donna and Kain return and hear what has happened, and Donna criticizes the demihumans for falling back on the Adamantine Pact that was sealed (more on this quandary and inconsistency later). They had a lengthy conversation of what to do. Finally, they decided to go to the army barracks in the city of Florageist with a battalion of demihumans who were feeling shame from having let Eforis Nei down. They plot was to spill the beans on Verik Torg and Ugluck: They would let Squire Prador know that the orcs were destroying magic orchids instead of harvesting them for humans to use. Prador was intrigued by the news. The dwarf and traitor said the elf prisoner (Eforis Nei) would corroborate their account. But when the Squire went to speak to Eforis Nei at his cell, Eforis Nei attacked him with more Eldritch Might and he piled on the insults! Squire Prador returned to the dwarf and traitor, trying to regain his composure. He turned them away without exchanging prisoners, and he’s going to increase the stress placed on Eforis Nei.

Orc Chieftain Appears

At the close of the session, Madoc Torg appeared. He is the chieftain of an ancient orc clan which lives in the swamp. Madoc wanted to retrieve his son Verik, but he was  also ashamed of his son for selling magic orchids to humans. He’s also not happy that Verik was on an orchid-destroying mission. Madoc realizes that nature magic is under assault, and he is disturbed by his son’s involvement. He ended up having a private conversation with Kain the Traitor. While the two have been enemies in the past, Madoc knows that Kain holds orc blood, and he was eager to exchange information. There are signs of evil magic on the rise. Kain let him know of Wycraft, a mysterious elf in the swamp, who may hold the key to some of these developments.

We agreed to carry over the session next Sunday. It’s fair to say that human antipathy will be on the rise. It’s also fair to say that the orc clan and the mysterious elven mage will be figuring into next Sunday’s game.

Robert Bohl's Demihumans Playtest: Session 4 A Magic Orchid Raid Turns Violent

+Robert Bohl's Demihumans Playtest: Session 4
A Magic Orchid Raid Turns Violent

After a more tame, focused session last week, today's tale brought plenty of fireworks and dramatic
turns. In attendance were Kain the Traitor, Donna the Dwarf, and Zug the Troll. At the end of the mayhem, the Flower of Human Antipathy withered a petal, the enclave united behind the Company, and a heady brew of dark magic was uncovered in the swamp.

The Company was able to dip into a number of special moves: Endless Fury (orc move), Fruiting Bodies (troll move), Garden Pathways (troll move) and Adamantine Pact (dwarf move) were all activated. I feel that the Demiurge and players need to be in sync to make those moves maximally effective in terms of the fiction.

We did a pretty good job of this with 3 out of 4 of those moves. The one that I fumbled on was Fruiting Bodies, and this was mainly because it was used at the end of the session, and there were two characters in need of healing. The move ended up seeming too much like a D&D cleric healing spell than something really special, which it should be. I might add some pseudo-house rule make sure that the "invoking the unreal" moves count for more. It was cool that it was the troll player herself who brought up this at the end of the session.

Garden Pathways, Adamantine Pact, and Endless Fury were all dramatic and full of spice.

Key developments:

Donna (dwarf) and Zug (troll) were awoken in the very early morning to the sounds of screams coming from the edge of the enclave. They met a halfling and his companion, who led them into the swamp. There, they came upon the mutilated hanging corpse of a giant snake whose body muscle had been removed. There were burn marks laying about and the signs of evil magic. Donna was able to spot some polished stones resembling those worn by a mysterious elven woman magician named Wycraft.

The troll ended up fleeing the scene using Garden Pathways (this was in part the result of a negative reaction from the semi-sentient algae life form she keeps on a rock under her tongue). She rolled a 7, and chose to leave something unwanted behind. This "unwanted thing" ended up being an unnatural grey and cancerous tree growing in the center of the scene where the giant snake's corpse was hanging.

Donna (dwarf) returned to the enclave and awakened Kain (traitor) about Wycraft. The traitor knows the elf lives somewhere deep in the swamp. He advised the dwarf to join him later in the day to set out with an orc named Verik Torg who is leading a magic orchid hunting expedition which will take them deep in the swamp.

Still in the morning, a posse of humans appeared in front of the home of Eforis Nei (elf). They reported a brutal attack that has occurred on two humans (one of whom was killed), and they are convinced that evil magic is at work. (Note: the commonweal move resulted in the want of "horrors" being active.) They were wanting to take vengance on the elf. The members of the Company appeared and, using some Coerce with Violence moves, they got the posse to leave . . . but with threats of letting Squire Prador of the human army know!

The Company set out with Verik Torg and two half-orc women on an expedition to destroy magic orchids. When they came across an especially rich growth of the rare orchids, however, the troll sensed the wrongness of destroying the magic, even if it would make the area less appealing to humans. The company got into a heated, testy debate (the best kind, with good-spirited role playing in full force).The troll and the traitor ultimately turned against the orc and half-orcs while the dwarf reluctantly joined in. The session ended with a dramatic battle, two severely wounded orcs/half-orcs, and the large magical orchids saved.

Robert Bohl's Demihumans: Session 3 Squire Prador Blackmails a Gnome

+Robert Bohl's Demihumans: Session 3
Squire Prador Blackmails a Gnome

I had two player's for our last session, and the events involved the introduction of Squire Prador, a
cruel, sadistic military leader (Demiuge character) who has been given charge of monitoring the enclave of Bilgeton. The scenes of the session have set up some intrigue: The Company learned that there is a psychodelic mushroom drug of unknown origins (it is not manufactured by the Company's gnome) being used in the enclave , and Prador is using that drug (and its nasty side effects) to blackmail the gnome. Specifically, Prador is requiring the gnome to devote resources to fighting a swamp fever that is infecting humans.

There was some nice interplay between the Company's gnome and dwarf. The gnome used her Polymorphic Corpus move to become trollish, but in so doing, she required the Dwarf's artisan-adept hands to help manipulate lab equipment. The use of that move was gratuitous to some extent, but it set up some good role playing moments.

I was working as the Demiurge to give the Dwarf opportunities to use some of her moves to rally some forces together (I mentioned on a number of occasions that there was a sizeable enclave crowd), but the player of the dwarf is somewhat reserved, so she's taking some prompting to fit into her dwarf leader mode. I do think she's primed to step up to the plate in our next session.

Our next session is set to have all the players of the Company in attendance, so there will be some developments along multiple fronts.

A more complete breakdown of last Sunday's session is below:

Last week, Donna the Dwarf and Sansi the Gnome were attending to a halfling adolescent named Nob. He was suffering the effects of some type of mushroom drug that has psychotropic powers. Nob's father supplies mushrooms of various types to Sansi (and in addition harvests edible mushrooms for sale). The mushroom in questions, however, is not one that Sansi uses (though Sansi does know about that variety). Sansi used her Polymorphic Corpus move that allowed her to transform into a troll.

During the drug investigation session (with Donna serving as a lab assistant because troll hands are not so adept with fiine motor activities), Squire Prador showed up. He effectively bribed Donna: He threatened to spread news that Sansi was the origin of the mushroom that caused the negative effect on Nob and he suggested that there have been other negative reactions happening in Bilgeton. He has forced Sansi to turn her attention to finding a drug to help humans with outbreaks of swamp fever, and in return, Squire Prador will hold off on spreading the news that Sansi is supplying dangerous addictive drugs to Bilgeton. Squire Prador seems to have knowledge of many things about this drug situation (How does he know so much?), and he is cruel and sadistic. Sansi ended transforming back to her Gnome form (which was grotesque and somewhat terrifying), but Prador looked upon that transformation as an amusing, entertaining Gnome trick.

So the Company is set up for some confrontation with Squire Prador. There is some drug intrigue on the radar . . . and there is that evil magic involving the mutilation of an alligator lurking in the wings.