Greetings! The school year is coming to a close. The afterschool games ended well, and the simulation of Empress Wu's court is coming to its intrigue-laden conclusion. It looks like the empress will survive, but it's anyone's guess about everyone else. Everything is in play.
It has come together for me to attend Gen Con this year. I will be a speaker at Trade Day this Wednesday, August 15, the day before the regular convention opens. I will be at the rest of the con though the morning of Sunday, August 19, mostly taking part in various seminars. I hope to get into some games, but you never know at Gen Con. If anyone wants to meet during the weekend and discuss games and education, let's put it together.
Have fun!
Sunday, May 13, 2012
Sunday, March 4, 2012
Happy GM Day!
Today
is the official day to celebrate the hard work of our many game masters. Of
course, in today’s Internet age, any of us can create an official day of anything,
but I think it is a good idea to have a day to acknowledge those that referee
our many stories. For all of the people that have run games for me to enjoy,
THANKS
My
own games in my classroom and after school continue apace. In Tang Dynasty China,
the swirl of conspiracies around Empress Wu grows stronger. My real life math
game for the fifth graders has a new cupcake bakery, and after school the kids
continue to explore Second Age Glorantha.
Today I mostly want to share some interesting links and possibilities I’ve come across. The
Youth in Gaming column at RPG.net recently had an interesting entry aboutrecruiting people for a game. The comments are great for thinking about new
young people in gaming, but they apply equally well to new gamers of all ages.
Wizards
of the Coast is hosting a new site called D&D Parents. It includes several
columns and blogs, resources, and photos to lend support to parents bringing
their children and their children’s friends into the gaming fold. Again, while
some of the discussions invoke the play of Dungeons and Dragons, many work for
all kinds of RPGs and other games.
April 28 is Creative Play Day,
designed to encourage getting games into the hands and minds of youngsters. It
doesn’t have to be just one day each year, so do what you can to support the
cause in any way you can!
Have
fun!
Sunday, February 5, 2012
February Updates
2012 is off to a good gaming start! I'm running three games and playing in three games. My classroom simulation of life at the court of Empress Wu of China continues to be a soap opera of intrigue and discovery. Our empress is asserting her power a bit more, and two executions have occurred since I last wrote about the game here, both for treasonous behavior. Those students have returned as the empress' son and daughter-in-law, much to their delight and to the drama of the game. Everyone plots and plans. More than in many past years, these students are looking up information about their characters and times. They delight in both matching and defying the known facts.
After school on Fridays, I have the second term of a gaming group for kids ten to eleven. Some of them are in my regular classroom, but many are from other fifth and sixth grade classrooms. Mostly, it is the same kids as first term, but we have a couple of fun, new members. One of them is a boy that also studies Mandarin with me on other afternoons. It's fun to see his whimsical side manifest in the game group. All of the kids in the game really thrive on the activity.
I'm running a weekend afternoon game set in Glorantha, for which I've enjoyed the chance to write lots of new material. My game runs for five or six weeks, and then three other GMs run their games in succession before mine comes around again. This lets us all be players too and takes off some of the pressure of running a game every week. It has also been a wonderful opportunity for me to learn from other storytellers.
I'm making early plans to participate in some of the summer game conventions. I may have a workshop at Gen Con, and I'm hoping that I'll again be running lots of games at Dragon Con. I'd like to get back to Origins again, but that's probably asking too much of life. If you think you'll be at any of these, let me know.
Have fun!
David
After school on Fridays, I have the second term of a gaming group for kids ten to eleven. Some of them are in my regular classroom, but many are from other fifth and sixth grade classrooms. Mostly, it is the same kids as first term, but we have a couple of fun, new members. One of them is a boy that also studies Mandarin with me on other afternoons. It's fun to see his whimsical side manifest in the game group. All of the kids in the game really thrive on the activity.
I'm running a weekend afternoon game set in Glorantha, for which I've enjoyed the chance to write lots of new material. My game runs for five or six weeks, and then three other GMs run their games in succession before mine comes around again. This lets us all be players too and takes off some of the pressure of running a game every week. It has also been a wonderful opportunity for me to learn from other storytellers.
I'm making early plans to participate in some of the summer game conventions. I may have a workshop at Gen Con, and I'm hoping that I'll again be running lots of games at Dragon Con. I'd like to get back to Origins again, but that's probably asking too much of life. If you think you'll be at any of these, let me know.
Have fun!
David
Sunday, January 1, 2012
Review: Game Design in the Classroom
David Niecikowski has written and wonderful and helpful book in Game Design in the Classroom. When I was first leading conversations about games and education, back in the 80s at Gen Con, I speculated about various degrees of game integration into a school ranging from afterschool groups and clubs all the way to a classroom curriculum built around games of all kinds, as an actual focus of study. David Niecikowski has now written that curriculum. Even better, it is delivered in many forms, variations, and units, allowing teachers and homeschoolers to experiment with it in many ways.
David Niecikowski begins with an account of his own history in gaming and schools and that of gaming itself. He then follows with his first unit, a series of interview forms to help students (or anyone) define favorite games and their history. The first two, for students and for them to interview others, are great introductory activities at any level, but the third, an initial research project on the history of a game, would be a challenge for most primary and secondary students and require significant adult guidance to direct their work. If I were using this with my own students, ten and eleven year olds, I would wait until later in the year, when the students would be familiar with games, game companies, and sources of information.
This book then describes in detail the many benefits and applications of games. He draws on his own observations of classroom games and those of others, and he also points out a number of studies and articles on the positive roles games can play in learning. The research cited focuses primarily in the areas of math and social skills. There is also a chapter on accommodations for special needs students, helpful for a variety of contexts.
The book then moves to the implementation of games in general. These include games as tools for skill development, enrichment, fostering community, intervention, literacy, and assessment but also game use for small groups, large groups, centers, thematic instruction, and even lending libraries. These articles give anyone the basis for experimenting with games as educational materials and methods.
David Niecikowski then discusses the elements of teaching, modifying, and selecting games and has advice for parents and for those interested in running a game event or hosting a school club. There is also a short but valuable chapter on game etiquette and the behavior to expect and model for young people playing games.
What follows is the richest part of the book, Niecikowski's discussion and directions on leading students to examine published games rigorously and design their own games carefully. He has loads of helpful advice, work sheets, exercises, rubrics, and game-piece templates to aid teachers and students in their work. The elements he discusses work for students of all ages, from limited applications with the youngest students to full-blown research and development from middle primary grades and up. These chapters could form the basis for a major curriculum, or they can be used to create a briefer unit, still with potent possibilities. I look forward to using many of these ideas myself!
The book ends with interviews with hobby industry members of various backgrounds and forms of work and even ideas for publishing games. David Niecikowski has cast a wide net and found bountiful results in his work. Though my focus in this blog is on role playing games, I admire greatly what David Niecikowski has done and know that it is a great boon to all gamers interested in the educational applications of games. There's something for everyone in this book. Check it out! Use it!
Have fun!
David Niecikowski begins with an account of his own history in gaming and schools and that of gaming itself. He then follows with his first unit, a series of interview forms to help students (or anyone) define favorite games and their history. The first two, for students and for them to interview others, are great introductory activities at any level, but the third, an initial research project on the history of a game, would be a challenge for most primary and secondary students and require significant adult guidance to direct their work. If I were using this with my own students, ten and eleven year olds, I would wait until later in the year, when the students would be familiar with games, game companies, and sources of information.
This book then describes in detail the many benefits and applications of games. He draws on his own observations of classroom games and those of others, and he also points out a number of studies and articles on the positive roles games can play in learning. The research cited focuses primarily in the areas of math and social skills. There is also a chapter on accommodations for special needs students, helpful for a variety of contexts.
The book then moves to the implementation of games in general. These include games as tools for skill development, enrichment, fostering community, intervention, literacy, and assessment but also game use for small groups, large groups, centers, thematic instruction, and even lending libraries. These articles give anyone the basis for experimenting with games as educational materials and methods.
David Niecikowski then discusses the elements of teaching, modifying, and selecting games and has advice for parents and for those interested in running a game event or hosting a school club. There is also a short but valuable chapter on game etiquette and the behavior to expect and model for young people playing games.
What follows is the richest part of the book, Niecikowski's discussion and directions on leading students to examine published games rigorously and design their own games carefully. He has loads of helpful advice, work sheets, exercises, rubrics, and game-piece templates to aid teachers and students in their work. The elements he discusses work for students of all ages, from limited applications with the youngest students to full-blown research and development from middle primary grades and up. These chapters could form the basis for a major curriculum, or they can be used to create a briefer unit, still with potent possibilities. I look forward to using many of these ideas myself!
The book ends with interviews with hobby industry members of various backgrounds and forms of work and even ideas for publishing games. David Niecikowski has cast a wide net and found bountiful results in his work. Though my focus in this blog is on role playing games, I admire greatly what David Niecikowski has done and know that it is a great boon to all gamers interested in the educational applications of games. There's something for everyone in this book. Check it out! Use it!
Have fun!
Saturday, November 12, 2011
Games in Society This Week
This week has been particularly full of blog articles about social issues and gaming. What follows is mostly a series of links, but I think the maturity and ferment of ideas in these important posts points both to a continuing maturation of our hobby and its many interconnections within wider society.
Bill Walton continues to uncover interesting stories and writes so well about them. Just this week, his own blog at The Escapist has covered today's National Gaming Day, which covers RPGs and so much more and is sponsored by the American Library Association, and Teach Your Kids to Game Week, sponsored by DriveThruRPG and starting this Monday. It would great to hear from everyone about their experiences in these areas.
Bill also found an interesting article in The Harvard Crimson, "Life Out There," about a homeless gamer, and Bill has a new page on his web site, "The Five Ws of RPGs," which neatly describes the world of gaming to non-gamers, a useful tool for many of us!
Over at Role Playing Tips, Katrina Middleburg-Creswell writes about playing role playing games with children, a topic near to my own heart. She discusses both conversations with concerned parents and various methods for deploying games in different ways with kids at various ages, depending on your goals. It's a great, clear read and outlines the covers you should consider before running games with kids, especially with other people's children or with students.
Here's to more fruitful conversations!
Bill Walton continues to uncover interesting stories and writes so well about them. Just this week, his own blog at The Escapist has covered today's National Gaming Day, which covers RPGs and so much more and is sponsored by the American Library Association, and Teach Your Kids to Game Week, sponsored by DriveThruRPG and starting this Monday. It would great to hear from everyone about their experiences in these areas.
Bill also found an interesting article in The Harvard Crimson, "Life Out There," about a homeless gamer, and Bill has a new page on his web site, "The Five Ws of RPGs," which neatly describes the world of gaming to non-gamers, a useful tool for many of us!
Over at Role Playing Tips, Katrina Middleburg-Creswell writes about playing role playing games with children, a topic near to my own heart. She discusses both conversations with concerned parents and various methods for deploying games in different ways with kids at various ages, depending on your goals. It's a great, clear read and outlines the covers you should consider before running games with kids, especially with other people's children or with students.
Here's to more fruitful conversations!
Tuesday, November 1, 2011
Review: The Functions of Role-Playing Games
Sarah Lynne Bowman has written a fascinating book, The Functions of Role-Playing Games, published by McFarland & Company. She traces a carefully argued series of propositions, taking a wide view of roleplaying in its many aspects and incarnations and tracing its links both to pretend play, storytelling, and primeval ritual and to modern theories of psychology and sociology. Bowman states many of these significant connections as well as anyone has done so.
An early emphasis of Bowman's is the manner in which roleplaying creates community through narrative ritual, something as old as humanity. While she does not explore every interesting anthropological comparison, she does make a strong case for modern recreational roleplaying as simply a recent manifestation of human's primal need to engage in group ritual practices.
Bowman also notes out that roleplaying games exist in diverse contexts, from theater to business, from therapy to leisure, and more, and she points out that the reputation of these various forms of roleplaying enjoy varies, some neutral or positive, while others, like theater or roleplaying games and even psychological roleplaying, are sometimes viewed with suspicion. She engages in an interesting discussion of differing perceptions of play among children and adults and how this has colored society's conclusions about games, roleplaying in particular.
Moving from this, Bowman points out that roleplaying games all create opportunities for skill training and problem solving. Some games do this purposefully, while others have incidental moments of challenge, transformation, and learning. Different fields, as mentioned above and discussed in greater depth in the book, have different focuses when it comes to overt didactic elements, whether in content or style.
All such games, though, offer their participants the change to engage in identity alteration, which ties back in with ritual enactments, but Bowman's main avenue for exploring this aspect of games is psychological. She concludes that, generally speaking, this sort of activity is normal and common to many activities and that most people engage in such self-transformation will learn from the experience or come out stronger for it, but she acknowledges that identity alteration does shade into several serious mental illnesses or conditions.
The first half of The Functions of Role-Playing Games is, for me, a satisfyingly rich literature review and analysis, in which Bowman expands or definitions and understandings of roleplaying, while the second half of the book, based mostly on individual anecdotal accounts coupled with an emphasis on Dungeons & Dragons and Vampire, the games most familiar to the author, was also interesting but particular to the assembly of information she had available from her subjects and may not have broad applicability or led to real understanding of the fascinating questions she raises. For example, a significant proportion of her subjects discussed feelings of alienation, which in some cases led them to roleplaying games or fashioned their understandings of it. It is hard to compare the degree of this alienation to that experienced by the general population or to assess its actual impact on the subject's game behavior, since all of the accounts are self-reported.
That said, Bowman has provided a well-written and captivating exposition of many theoretical and cultural aspects of roleplaying, linking the games we play to many more venerable and valuable fields of study. I gained greater understanding of my own games and their players, whether adults or children, and I can now perceive more deeply and richly what occurs in such games.
An early emphasis of Bowman's is the manner in which roleplaying creates community through narrative ritual, something as old as humanity. While she does not explore every interesting anthropological comparison, she does make a strong case for modern recreational roleplaying as simply a recent manifestation of human's primal need to engage in group ritual practices.
Bowman also notes out that roleplaying games exist in diverse contexts, from theater to business, from therapy to leisure, and more, and she points out that the reputation of these various forms of roleplaying enjoy varies, some neutral or positive, while others, like theater or roleplaying games and even psychological roleplaying, are sometimes viewed with suspicion. She engages in an interesting discussion of differing perceptions of play among children and adults and how this has colored society's conclusions about games, roleplaying in particular.
Moving from this, Bowman points out that roleplaying games all create opportunities for skill training and problem solving. Some games do this purposefully, while others have incidental moments of challenge, transformation, and learning. Different fields, as mentioned above and discussed in greater depth in the book, have different focuses when it comes to overt didactic elements, whether in content or style.
All such games, though, offer their participants the change to engage in identity alteration, which ties back in with ritual enactments, but Bowman's main avenue for exploring this aspect of games is psychological. She concludes that, generally speaking, this sort of activity is normal and common to many activities and that most people engage in such self-transformation will learn from the experience or come out stronger for it, but she acknowledges that identity alteration does shade into several serious mental illnesses or conditions.
The first half of The Functions of Role-Playing Games is, for me, a satisfyingly rich literature review and analysis, in which Bowman expands or definitions and understandings of roleplaying, while the second half of the book, based mostly on individual anecdotal accounts coupled with an emphasis on Dungeons & Dragons and Vampire, the games most familiar to the author, was also interesting but particular to the assembly of information she had available from her subjects and may not have broad applicability or led to real understanding of the fascinating questions she raises. For example, a significant proportion of her subjects discussed feelings of alienation, which in some cases led them to roleplaying games or fashioned their understandings of it. It is hard to compare the degree of this alienation to that experienced by the general population or to assess its actual impact on the subject's game behavior, since all of the accounts are self-reported.
That said, Bowman has provided a well-written and captivating exposition of many theoretical and cultural aspects of roleplaying, linking the games we play to many more venerable and valuable fields of study. I gained greater understanding of my own games and their players, whether adults or children, and I can now perceive more deeply and richly what occurs in such games.
Wednesday, October 5, 2011
Review: Argyle & Crew
Argyle & Crew by Benjamin Gerber is a delightful role-playing game based on sock puppets. The game draws on some basic but sophisticated elements of childhood imagination and play to create a game of whimsy and great potential. I was immediately reminded of the work of Daniel Greenspan in the area of floor time, encouraging caregivers to think about the form and quality of their work with the very young. I definitely recommend this game to parents and others working with young children or looking for a diversion, but I also think many other gamers should get a copy of this game to mine it for several other inspirations.
Character creation, using socks or paper bags or whatever comes to hand, is a concrete way to proceed, but it also could inspire interesting ideas for adult gamers. The basic game is diceless, so elements attached to the puppet create opportunities for powers and storytelling within the game itself. I have been in a couple of gaming groups where we have tried to add character illustrations and other imagery to the game, but this routinely foundered on some players' self-consciousness about their own artistic abilities. Anyone reading through the short description of character creation in Argyle & Crew would realize that it's worth another chance. This method of character creation could also be elaborated into more sophisticated forms as well.
The game also includes insightful sections on saying yes to players and about working with conflict in a game group. I would hope that Gerber would share some version of them online or in his blog. Appendices include ideas for expanding the basic game into a dice version with additional ideas for more complex, adult play.
The Argyle & Crew game is currently available in pdf form from Drive Thru, but there is a drive to raise $3000 to fund the publication of the game in full.
Character creation, using socks or paper bags or whatever comes to hand, is a concrete way to proceed, but it also could inspire interesting ideas for adult gamers. The basic game is diceless, so elements attached to the puppet create opportunities for powers and storytelling within the game itself. I have been in a couple of gaming groups where we have tried to add character illustrations and other imagery to the game, but this routinely foundered on some players' self-consciousness about their own artistic abilities. Anyone reading through the short description of character creation in Argyle & Crew would realize that it's worth another chance. This method of character creation could also be elaborated into more sophisticated forms as well.
The game also includes insightful sections on saying yes to players and about working with conflict in a game group. I would hope that Gerber would share some version of them online or in his blog. Appendices include ideas for expanding the basic game into a dice version with additional ideas for more complex, adult play.
The Argyle & Crew game is currently available in pdf form from Drive Thru, but there is a drive to raise $3000 to fund the publication of the game in full.
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