Teaching Tabletop Role-playing Games as Art and Literature

There are more questions than answers in what follows, but this topic has been on the backburner for too long, and it’s time for me to take action and get this cooking. I’d love to get input, directions, comments, or advice.

The core question of today’s post: If you were teaching a set of precocious, smart high school juniors had a 3-4 week period to introduce them to “Tabletop Role-playing Games as Art and Literature,” how would you accomplish that task?

The background and context: For many years, I have taught AP English Language and Composition, which is, at its core, a class about rhetoric. I’m teaching high school juniors about various techniques, strategies, and devices which writers/speakers use to achieve their objectives. Those objectives span a wide spectrum: A writer/speaker might be trying to to persuade, to inform, to teach, to deliver an experience, or to accomplish diversity of goals. The College Board (which tries to define the parameters of the course) favors non-fiction prose for this particular course, but in my class, I use a much more diverse array of texts. We read novels, stories, poetry, essays, memoirs, speeches, interviews, and more.

At the start of the spring semester, I have a one-month unit on texts that incorporate visuals as a key element. For our reading, we start by looking at Scott McCloud’s Understanding Comics, move on to John Berger’s Ways of Seeing, and then wrap things up with a graphic novel such as Art Spiegelman’s Maus. Along the way, we look at advertisements, political cartoons, and other comics.

Some still consider this type of thing radical, which is a testament to how old-fashioned and entrenched disciplinary boundaries remain at the high school level. It’s odd that we live in an age where images are so pervasive, yet we still insist on viewing rhetoric as belonging to the written world.

But if teaching comics is radical, they ain’t seen nothing yet.

The Task: It’s time for me to do something more genuinely cutting edge—namely, to incorporate a unit on tabletop role-playing games as literature in my AP curriculum. I may be wrong, but I don’t know that there are many high school classes out there that are taking a serious look at these games as serious works of art. (If you know of any high schools where ttrpgs are being taught as part of the curriculum, I’d love to hear about them).So there’s a lot of unexplored territory ahead. This is also a moment that is long overdue.

The problem I’m now facing is how exactly to venture into this wilderness Some key questions:

• Is there currently a book out there that does for tabletop role-playing games what Scott McCloud and Will Eisner have done for comics? That is, is there a cogent and clear summary of the medium of tabletop role-playing games as an art form and a mode of communication? This might involve a brief history, but more centrally, it needs to be a book that develops a clear vocabulary for discussing the elements of various games. It needs to be accessible to a general audience who might be coming to role-playing games new for the first time. And it needs to be engaging. If this type of book isn’t yet out there, what would be a workaround? Are there some key essays that could fill in the gap? Some videos? Some people who could lecture via Google Hangouts?
• If you had to introduce this group to a tabletop role-playing game which is both approachable and which can open up students to the possibilities of this medium, what would it be? Here, I need something like a Maus or Watchmen—some game which will evoke the response, “I had no idea that a game could be that meaningful and complex!” I had thought about Apocalypse World and Monsterhearts, but the sex move rules it out. But I would like a game that has a serious subject matter while also being fun and immersive.
• How would you actually teach the game text? Would you have them read the game and then train them in how to play a role-playing game and how to be a GM? Or maybe you go for some GM-less game? This is going to be sections of 20-students, and I would like to break them up into smaller groups of 4-6 students, but that presents some significant pedagogical challenges.
• What would you do for an assessment? Would you have them try their hand at writing a game or scenario? Would you devise a test? If so, what would that look like? Or maybe you would set up an “actual play” report, but if so, how would you set up those instructions?

There is plenty more to discuss and to consider, but that should be more than enough to get the snowball rolling. I’ll provide updates as I work through the difficulties. Any help or suggestions would be greatly appreciated!