This is a kind of continuation of another thread, but it's a bit off topic so i thought i'd start this one. Specifically, for all those who are, will be, or could possibly be supervising or running after-school gaming programs you may find the advice and opinions on this thread useful.
Firstly, let me tell you that i am an advocate of RPGaming for learning. Whenever we game, we should take something away from story creation, player interaction, self-reflection, etc. I write this more as a disclaimer than for any other reason here because i have to preface this thread by acknowledging that many people game for different reasons and many of those reasons don't include anything about personal or community growth and development. It also must be noted that RPGaming is very different than playing chess or battleship...it is a social game and should be considered a community event every time a group sits around a table to role play.
I believe that a club sponsored by a school or other educational setting provides an execllent opportunity for the moderator (GM perhaps?) to heighten the learning aspects of the game that we enjoy by targeting curriculum learning strategies and intertwining them with the game. To this end, I encourage all to offer their suggestions on how a teacher or educator may take parts of classroom curriculum and expand on them in an RPG envoronment.
I believe that the strongest opportunities can be found in the humanities, specifically in:
1. English/Language/Literature
2. Social sciences/history/religion.
Off the top of my head for point 1, I would recommend tying some of the following cannonized works in with RPGaming depending on the student's curriculum: Beowulf, Grimm's Fairy Tales, The Book of the Thousand Nights and One Day (Arabian Nights), The Metapmophoses of Ovid, Bulfinch's Mythology (This would be REALLY ineresting), Gulliver's Travels, and Shakespeare's complete works. I would also recommend exercises in poetic composition, campaign journal assignments, extensive use of vocabulary and linguistics (you educators brush up on your Latin), and use of different dialects.
For point 2, texts i would recommend for tying religion in with gaming are: Catnerbury Tales, Pilgrim's Progress, Leviathan, Book of Martyrs and Dante's works (Inferno, Paradiso, Purgatorio)...keep in mind that even religious writers used fantastically allegorical to further their religious and secular opinions! RPGaming is also ripe with opportunities for gamers to interact with different cultures, races, religions, languages, philosophies, etc...make the monks in one adventure taoist, have elves speak spanish (or english if you're teaching ESL students) etc...
My point is there are endless possiblities to segue targeted learing into fun gaming and it not feel forced.
I hope this helps somehow and please offer up your opinions or suggestions on the topic.
As ever,
ACE
I always thought geography/cartography would be interesting to cover from a roleplaying aspect as well.
Well, in high school we actually had a sort-of-rpg in class, as an exercise in creative storytelling. Everyone created a student attending another class, and then these students went on a school trip together...no game mechanics, no actual DM (the teacher set as basic rule that she wouldn't be doing anything offensive in the story), everybody just wrote a description what they did on that school trip while also discussing with each other who was doing what where at what time to keep the stories from conflicting too much...
Oh, the total story ended up involving good amounts of sex and alcohol, cruelty to animals, murder, general surrealism and so forth...not surprisingly, when you give free rein to class full of teenagers :) But it was fun exercise.
hehe; I have degrees in both English and History, heh but use my electronics degree to get a job;
anyway; to read and get much from Paradise Lost; you really have to have a really good grip on the Greek classics as well as Bible literature and Dante; if your going to read those, there really is a list of stuff you need to be familiar with. Sure anyone can read it; but this sort of work draws much from previous works; as your campaigns should have plots and subplots that do as well; I think a good gm can read the story of Joshua and how he battled in the middle east as written in the bible and see that as a situation to put a d&d group in and see how they handle it. There are a lot of interesting scenarios in literature; would your pc's cut the Gordian Knot; or try against some huge DC to unravel it; sigh, my spelling has got to seed after being out of school so long.
I'm finishing my degree in psychology this year. In my graduation here in Brazil I've discussed intensively the RPG as a tool for learning.
I even have GMed some in-class sessions to improve the experience in Neuroscience, and used RPG to help high-school students in geography and history lessons.
A couple of modules were created using brazilian history as part of the plot: One was about the Portuguese Settlers and their encounters with the indigenous people; the other one was about a famous painting, the plot involved it being stoled and the necessity to learn about the painting and artist history to get some clues about its whereabouts.
There are a lot of other examples, and I'll try to write about some of it at another post.
I'm sorry about grammar mistakes, but english is not my mother language.
Then there are subjects like politics, economics, and meteorology, even anatomy and physiology. Think about it…
If you don’t have a grasp of politics how can you design or understand a cohesive government of whatever sort? Just learning the difference between monarchy, theocracy, oligarchy, dictatorship and the like in a game setting gives one insight and understanding that can be used in the real world
If you don’t understand economics how can you run a country, or even a business? Appreciation for such niceties as getting a good deal on a purchase or how to shop for room a board for a night on a very limited budget can be very useful in life. And as the knowledge expands, appreciation for governmental (municipal to national and even international) can eventually follow. After all, if you have a plot that involves cross-border smuggling you have to understand and justify supply and demand to make it work.
If you don’t understand meteorology (at least to some extent) how can you make the weather act like it’s supposed to? Having the party cross a 20-mile stretch of land in a day and walk from baking desert to soaking swamp to chest-high snow all in that same day is pretty unbelievable (unless it’s some uber-level NPC’s doing). There has to be a logical flow. You just don’t get monsoons in the Gobi.
Speaking of deserts, if you don’t understand basic physical biology how do you describe what’s happening to a character dying slowly of thirst in that desert. Or, how do you, as a player, understand what the character is experiencing if you don’t get the gist of A&P 101?
The list of educational elements in RPG gaming could be endless and the number of venues for its possible use in an educational setting equally so.