Benefits of Gaming

My friend Bill Walton posted links to several interesting articles this week. If you're not following Bill's work, you should, as he has all sorts of great discoveries and links in the area of game advocacy.

In a recent blog entry of The Nerdy Teacher, Nicholas Provenzano lays out his reasoning for having all teachers play D&D or, presumably, any other role playing game: the creativity he describes as part of his own experiences would be an excellent training ground for those hoping to inculcate similar activities into the lives of their students. No one is going to convince the Educational Industrial Complex to transform the way we train teachers, but exposing current and future teachers to greater variety and innovation is always a good idea and what we're all about at this blog!

Susan Silver at 12most.com wrote recently about the 12 Most Advantageous Life Lessons from Playing Dungeons & Dragons. It's a relatively simple list that makes connections between game elements and business practices. Other such lists exist and vary widely.

Silver has a link to the Gamestorming blog, which presents dozens of business-focused  games. These kinds of activities tend to be much more streamlined and abstracted than tabletop entertainment games, but they are kin.

Every Game Master makes choices and modifications when crafting a game. Players build upon this process once the game commences, and the interplay results in experiences and stories of whatever quality. We can learn from these collateral branches of our kinds of games, and they can certainly learn from what goes on in our games.

Share! Have fun!