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I am a teacher at a small rural high school and for the last week of the academic year, I am allowed to teach any topic of my choice. I would like to teach my students how to play Pathfinder. I was thinking that I could teach them the rules, make characters, run them through some PFS scenarios, and even perhaps take them on a field trip to play some Pathfinder Society with other players. However, I need to justify this subject is some academic way. I am looking for some help in being able to articulate to my administration why Pathfinder would be so beneficial to my students. What are some of those life long skills that I am trying to teach that can be taught through role playing games? What are the 21st century skills that this game fosters? If any of you have some thoughts on the matter, or can refer me to some articles, I would be most appreciative.
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Socialization, team-building, problem solving, applied mathematics, reading comprehension, visualization, creative development, creative writing, moral development.
Just a few for starters.
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I think you should call it roleplaying games and just use pathfinder if that is the system you are most comfortable with.
The system is just a way of doing it and what you will really be teaching is empathy, story telling and all the stuff Ashtathlon mentioned.
Look up the book playing at the World it is about D and D and all the good stuff that came from it.
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Wayne D. Blackman has a great little study on the use of Dungeons and Dragons in therapy. I'm sure that there are other sources to showcase the positive effects of roleplaying on young minds.
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One word: Imagination. It's underrated and even spit on in some circles (which often happen to have lots of money and influence in political circles), but ask yourself: As a teacher, is your function to create A) the citizens of the 21st Century, made brave, optimistic, and agile-minded in order to not only survive on history's frontier, but thrive in a whole new paradigm that could be better than anything that has ever come before it, or B) a new generation of slaves who live to sustain an old, not-yet-dead-but-long-since-damned paradigm that fears Chaos, the Unknown, and Justice for lack of vision, and who serve this monster willingly because they too, are unable to imagine anything new or better, and when faced with the new, strange, and different, react with fear and hatred?
Imagination is both the foundation and capstone of intelligence; everything else is ultimately subsidiary to it. Anyone can be trained to perform the preordained tasks that most people call "work" (you'd be amazed at what B. F. Skinner was able to train pigeons to do - sadly the most impressive videos of that I've seen I seem unable to find online) - but only a creative thinker can properly wield POWER. The simple credo "work to live, don't live to work" is actually a powerful life lesson in and of itself, and all the more relevant when certain particularly odious political machines push an Orwellian neologism dubbed "right to work" (the fundamental subtext being that an individual is inherently worthless and has no rights outside their ability to perform labor - why is this idea obscene and nefarious when it is advocated under the banner of "communism," yet sacred and irreproachable under the banner of "capitalism?"). To play the part of an adventurer is to play the part of a HERO - an empowered individual who disdains the beaten path in order to achieve higher goals, who sets their sights ever higher as they fulfill their own unguessable potential, and is not deceived by the all-too-common claim that there is some kind of conflict between advancing oneself and advancing others.
"Imagination rules the world."
- Napoleon "Not Many Career Military Men Will Tell You That, And I'm One Of The Best There Ever Was" Bonaparte
"Play is often talked about as if it were a relief from serious learning. But for children play is serious learning. Play is really the work of childhood."
- Fred "Well, Gosh, Wouldn't It Be Nice If You Could All Just Bring Me Back As The World's Immortal Lich-Emperor?" Rogers
"If you want your children to be intelligent, read them fairy tales. If you want them to be more intelligent, read them more fairy tales."
- Albert "TIME Magazine's Person Of The 20th Century, And Boy Oh Boy, Was That Ever A Competitive Field" Einstein
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Hmmm. Positive effects of Pathfinder.
1. I'm usually a pretty big introvert. Pathfinder has made a huge impact on my ability to be social. I have a much larger group of friends now, interact regularly with people I never would have before, and interact MUCH more often. My 'do something to get out of the house' type activities have gone from once every week or two to three or four times a week.
2. It sharpens my imagination and ability to tell a story, both of which I've heard are concerns for the video game generations. Eventually you start understanding how the different personalities of the characters you create would react to various circumstances. I think that's a big benefit- particularly for someone who doesn't read fiction regularly. It allows a person to imagine the reaction of others more easily.
3. It gives me a lot more practice doing math in my head. I feel a little more sharp than when I started playing.
4. It allows players to explore ethics/morality in a way that is meaningful and engaging without seeming like a class. I feel I have a greater understanding of human nature and metaphysical choices about good and evil after watching so many people grapple with playing their characters. Watching how someone chooses to play a character and the out of character comments they make can be just as educational as the chance to explore ethics and morals using my own characters.
What Ashtathlon said. Plus:
Role playing gives a good view into situations you have not (yet) experienced in real life. And, with the right GM, you can find out with is the best way of handling it in the long run.
And you learn to make decisions. I, for example, always have to balance between fun and power because the most powerful pc is not always the most fun and the most fun one might end up too weak.
Another point is that you can use roleplaying to vent frustration because you once are not bound by your usual societal restraints. And you don't even have to play evil to do it. A paladin can work wonders in this.
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Here's a copy-paste from The Escapist:
David Millians is a teacher at the Paideia School in Atlanta, Georgia. Every weekday, he meets his class of thirty 10- and 11-year-olds for a full day's worth of education. Currently, he is teaching them about the Civil War; they read, do art projects, watch videos, and conduct research. On Tuesday and Thursday mornings, they become the citizens of a northern Georgia village during the Civil War.
David runs a live-action role-playing game, or LARP, entitled "Crossroads," in which his students play their own individual parts. In a LARP, the players interact with each other in a much more freestyle manner, and traditional RPG elements such as dice and rulebooks are rarely consulted. As a result, the game becomes more of an impromptu performance, and, in this case, an educational experience.
RPGs are no stranger to David's classroom; in the past, he has run other games in simulations, and some of his students are permitted to run their own games during breaks. Decks of Magic and Once Upon A Time, a card game in which the players create their own faerie tales, are readily available to his students to play during break times (Millians).
At it's most basic level, an RPG can be used to teach the process of cause-and-effect, as well as the benefits of acting as a group. In a case study written by Luis Zayas and Bradford Lewis, eight boys of ages 8 and 9 were introduced to D&D in an after-school program that took place in a grade school in New York City in the fall of 1985. Each of the boys were identified by school staff members as having displayed hyperactivity or problems with personal interaction. With the help of a worker, the boys created characters for the game, and began to play. During the course of these sessions, the children were exposed to the importance of acting as a group to achieve their goals, and to take advantage of each individual's strengths. In one example, two of the boys who were playing fighters faced a long, dark corridor. When asked what they would like to do, they decided to rush down the corridor. When the boy playing a thief asked if they would like him to check the corridor for traps first, they declined his help. After getting to the end of the hallway, a pit trap opened in the floor, and one of the fighters fell in. When asked about their decision, the boys stated that they had learned their lesson, and that it was important to keep the fighters safe in order to combat any monsters that they would encounter in the future. As a result, they not only learned the consequences of their actions, but were also considering the possibilities if those consequences had been more severe (Zayas 60).
Other teachers have used Magic exclusively to teach a variety of lessons. Jeff Brain, a teacher in the San Francisco school district, uses Magic cards as visual aids, as well as allowing his students to play with them. In a lesson in database management he has prepared, he allows his students to create computer databases of Magic cards that are based on their various elements; the colors, numbers, and symbols found on the cards. Then, he has them access their database to find all cards that contain a certain element. To teach statistics, Jeff gives each student seven mountain cards and one dragon card, then asks the question: What are the odds, if the cards are shuffled and one drawn, that the dragon will come up? He repeats this lesson, changing the selection of cards each time. Jeff also uses the visual elements of the cards to teach mythology: "When you break the colors of Magic down, you can look at how primitive peoples start using color to describe certain elements, such as red for fire and green for growing things and blue for water or air (Mohn 56)."
Susan Mohn, head of the Education and Training team at Wizards of the Coast, the company that brings us Magic: The Gathering, has begun a plan to bring the card game to the classroom to teach a number of skills. These include critical thinking, reasoning, computational, reading comprehension, communication, interactive, and resource management skills, as well as improving attention span (Mohn 3).
The advantages of role-playing and card games are not only tapped in the classroom; these games are, after all, designed to be played at home. Without a teacher or supervisor, a child can learn a variety of lessons just by opening an RPG book. Many games use the metric system for measurements, such as how far a character can run in a set amount of time, or how far they can throw an object. In order to fully understand these concepts, the player will have to be familiar with the metric system. In the same vein, text found in a book or on a card may contain words that are unfamiliar to the player; often, this will result in the player having to do a little bit of research.
The act of playing an RPG involves many brief lessons in mathematics and statistics; for example, if you need a 18 or better to hit that dragon with your sword, and you're rolling a twenty-sided die, should you try running away instead? What if your sword is magical, and adds 2 to the result of that die roll? Or your armor and shield give that dragon the same number to hit you as well? This same lesson is learned in a more concrete sense when a player creates a deck of Magic cards, or cards for any other game; if more cards are added to the deck, it increases the odds that those cards will not be drawn.
These educational benefits are, by no means, universal. As David Millians said in an interview, "Simulations and storytellings are not every learner's best avenue to understanding." (Millians) Many are accustomed to or simply respond better to more traditional methods of teaching; handing them the responsibility of portraying a character would probably do more harm than good. An educator using these methods must be fully aware of their student's needs.
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Okay, I meant to tack on two other things to my previous post, but I took longer than an hour. :(
- I STRONGLY discourage getting involved with the "optimization" scene - while there are certainly a few obviously wrong things to do with characters (unlike in editions prior to 3.0, there is nothing in the rules that prohibit you from making a Wizard with an Intelligence so low they can't cast any spells - you, the player, are just supposed to not be dumb), there is no "right/best/objectively superior" way to do so. Look up the forums of almost any contemporary RPG, pen-and-paper or computer, and you'll always find plenty of threads where arithmetic fetishists build up pages and pages screaming at each other over how their accounting proves such-and-such a type of character is underpowered or overpowered or should be banned or should be the standard by which all others are measured etc. etc. - it's strange: I've learned to hold that all in contempt, and one person on these boards once went so far as to tell me he hoped never to meet me at a convention because, since I'm not a bean-counter like him, that meant my characters would be so useless that my presence would cause everyone to die...and in spite of that, what do I keep getting from my DMs and fellow players, including the occasional "redbox" veteran who's come and gone? A steady trickle of commentary on my proficiency as a rules lawyer, my ability to find weird and memorable ways to solve problems, my talent as a DM (on the few times I've done it; I do prefer being a PC), and even how "broken" my characters can wind up being.
- Maybe rather than teaching "Pathfinder," you want to teach "tabletop RPGS," so you can teach past rigmarole and specifics and expose what really matters, and provide a more xenopolitan (my word - like it?) perspective on the infinite. Don't try looking for or teaching "patterns" or "universal rules" - if they're there, they make themselves known to exactly the degree that they're useful to know and no more. In addition to Pathfinder, other, more esoteric gaming systems include EXALTED (the game where, to hear tell, you're expected to fight Cthulhu and win), Call of Cthulhu (the game where simply knowing who that is can cause irreparable harm), GURPS (all I know is everyone says good things about it), TORG (where The Shadow, Tarzan, cyborg Joan of Arc, Sarah Connor, Ma Ti from Captain Planet, the Japanese equivalent of Edward Snowden, Merlin, Erin Brockovich, and Victor Frankenstein, among countless others, can team up in a quest to save ALL their universes), PARANOIA RPG (be sure you and your students know what you're getting into), Legend of the 5 Rings (I know the setting from when it was converted into 3.0, but precious little beyond that, aside from combat being very lethal and preferably avoided), Shadowrun (D&D meets Blade Runner), Vampire: The Masquerade and related White Wolf games ("Lesson #1, Class: 'Twilight' is just a time of day"), and of course other editions of D&D.
I would simply add two words that even the most head-in-their-ass school administrators will like to hear: Critical Thinking.
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I would simply add two words that even the most head-in-their-ass school administrators will like to hear: Critical Thinking.
Problem with that: If they're truly "the most head-in-their-ass school administrators," then that would make them these people.
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You can also check out the Gifted Children's Association of San Fernando Valley's website. They've endorsed D&D as a creative and social outlet for their gifted kids.
http://www.giftedca.org/
As noted, primary benefits are advanced socialization and creativity. Unlike traditional board games, the game is created in the imagination, and solutions to problems are only limited by the capability of the players to be inventive. Pathfinder rules should not be seen as a mechanism to restrict this creativity (e.g. "you can't do that because the rules say so..."), and the GM running the game should instead strive to accomodate innovation and not stifle ("you want to break the dam in order to flood the dungeon, and you've hired engineers to do so? Let's hear your proposal..."). It is unmatched in socialization and is an excellent way to get socially awkward students engaged. By assuming the persona of a character, they can express more easily through a character than may be possible one on one. Eventually, as gamers build relationships, the socialization will expand past the table and into other activities.
If you're really innovative, you'll find a way to slip in math problems, moral dilemmas, puzzles, and the like into your game as traps or challenges. Dungeon Magazine had 6 prints of a "Challenge of Champions" that created puzzle solving tournaments where heroes of any level could participate since it relied on player cooperation and ingenuity rather than the character's game mechanics. It gives you a chance to make learning fun.
Finally, I'd recommend against a field trip to Society play given you can't be sure the nature of the people you'll find and Society play is pretty structured. While I'd like to think everyone in Society play would leave a good impression on kids, my wife has visited our gaming store on "no deodorant Saturdays" and wasn't impressed. You can figure the reason why...
A personal story:
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Please don't pass over the Fate system. It is simple to learn and can be used to play any genre, also (I believe) still available as a "Pay what you want" download, making it highly accessible to students for "homework." I think RPGs are great for developing quick math skills, critical thinking, story comprehension (not just reading, but being immersed in a story), teamwork and social skills. These are all things I have taken from RPGs, in my case D&D mostly, along with it's spiritual (if not corporate) children. I have taught at a university and I have seen that many students could have benefited from these things. Seeing a junior in college use their fingers to add single digit numbers was all I had to see to know America needs more bonus/penalty math.
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From a power gamer's point of view, looking at Pathfinder and trying to find every possible benefit I can and then comparing those benefits is a regular exercise. As such, I often work with a lot of statistics.
Creativity is certainly part of the game. There are tons of activities you can do with your students:
Have them create a character, write a story regarding their background, draw a picture of their character, describe what their character is like etc... (I especially like this one, it gives students a way to express themselves, and lets you see what kind of people they want to become)
Explain the alignment system, and then begin to teach about the effect each one has on society, or something to that effect (Maybe explain a little about politics?) Play a game of guessing which alignments previous famous people have been (A history recap, though avoid people commonly known as "evil", that can lead to some sticky situations. Perhaps explain the rules of a formal debate, and have them defend their ideas).
If it's just pure pathfinder you'll be teaching, then what everyone said above is great. But if you throw in a bunch of little activities related to it, I think you'll spark the interest of all types of students, and each activity would have direct application to what you've been teaching.
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They can learn to sacrifice the other party members in the name of Asmodeus.
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With only a week to start and play a game, I wonder if a simpler OSR game, like Swords & Wizardry or Basic Fantasy RPG, isn't a better option. There's a lot less crunch that a player has to do in order to make a character and it leaves a lot more up to their imagination.
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- I STRONGLY discourage getting involved with the "optimization" scene -
This is crap.
Most high level business jobs are about mathematical optimization methods in some form or another, and all the best optimizers I've ever met in the business world come from a gaming background.
If I were a high school teacher, I would teach a class called "Strategic Optimization Methods." Curriculum:
1) Stochastic Methods
2) Statistics
3) Game Theory / Decision Theory
4) Microsoft Excel Basics
5) Axis And Allies
6) Titan
7) Pathfinder
8) Blokus
My students would be almost guaranteed $10k additional salary compared to the baseline student.
beej67,
engineer, small business owner, and college adjunct professor
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I'm going to have the unpopular opinion here, I'm afraid, but that's precisely what compels me to write it. First, make sure you know what you're getting into. Remember the D&D Satanism scare back in the day? Your students' parents were probably fresh out of school themselves when that happened. Make sure you're not going to get yourself fired, sued or ostracized. I don't know your community; only you can make that call.
Second, don't do Pathfinder unless you're really bent on it. Pathfinder's a great game, and I love it to death, but if you told me to teach Pathfinder to ~6 new groups of rookies (I dunno how big your class is) for the purpose of having ~5 sessions with them, I would laugh at you. The barrier to entry (i.e. teaching the PF system) is just too high. Teach them something simpler that can do all the same stuff you tell the school board you're going to do with it. As awesome as teaching games in high school is, choose the lesson you want to teach, and then fit your choice of game around it. And choose your lessons well, because I've played RPGs for 80% of my life, and I'm still learning new things. There's no way to fit everything into a week.
When I was in middle school our P.E./ home room/ history teacher was big on computer games and rpg's. There was a club he had going for a few years after school called 'A Step Back in History'. It was D&D (late 2nd edition).
Being a small group of 4 or 5 we slowly learned over the coming weeks:
Risk assessment- never separate from the group, analyze enemy weaknesses/strengths to see if it was worth the consequences.
Applicable mathematics- adding up all the bonuses, penalties a character will deal with
Public/group speaking- we might have had a face for the party, but we all chipped in here
Critical thinking- using what you know, and what you didn't know to figure out a possible solution.
Group dynamics- learning each person had certain strengths we needed to utilize which wold cover other characters weaknesses, defining leadership and trust within the group.
Problem solving- using our imagination to solve out of the box issues.
Socialization- being at the table with 5 other people who enjoyed doing what I enjoyed made the entire experience that much more real and entertaining. Also helped those who were more introverted to ease out of their 'shell'.
And others.
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I am a teacher at a small rural high school and for the last week of the academic year, I am allowed to teach any topic of my choice. I would like to teach my students how to play Pathfinder. I was thinking that I could teach them the rules, make characters, run them through some PFS scenarios, and even perhaps take them on a field trip to play some Pathfinder Society with other players. However, I need to justify this subject is some academic way. I am looking for some help in being able to articulate to my administration why Pathfinder would be so beneficial to my students. What are some of those life long skills that I am trying to teach that can be taught through role playing games? What are the 21st century skills that this game fosters? If any of you have some thoughts on the matter, or can refer me to some articles, I would be most appreciative.
How many students? I would say the less people the better. It's a lot easier to learn with 4 players than it is with 6.
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You don't need to just focus on skills, you can focus directly on content.
Set the game in Beowulf's England, or Hamlet's Denmark, or anything else that's already part of the curriculum.
Give the students the situation, and let it rip. What would the students do without the hindsight of history?
Pathfinder is pretty well set up for medieval fantasy, things like Tolkien and Rowling are simplest. However, there are a wide variety of system neutral games.
Finally, I'd suggest the Beginner Box, or a simpler game system like Savage Worlds or Fate. You want students playing, not reading through rules and getting frustrated.
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First of all, I want to say thank you to all of you who contributed to the discussion on this thread. I really appreciate it! In one day, you folks have given me a great deal of material to write about! I cannot thank you enough. If you think of anything else, please be sure to include it in the thread. I will be checking it periodically.
How many students? I would say the less people the better. It's a lot easier to learn with 4 players than it is with 6.
I do not have any numbers yet, but I could easily see it around 20 people. Naturally I would not GM all of them at once. My initial steps would be to create characters with them, teach them some basic rules and then teach the strongest of the students how to GM. I would give them examples, share with them some scenarios or modules and let them go at it.
I'm going to have the unpopular opinion here, I'm afraid, but that's precisely what compels me to write it. First, make sure you know what you're getting into. Remember the D&D Satanism scare back in the day? Your students' parents were probably fresh out of school themselves when that happened. Make sure you're not going to get yourself fired, sued or ostracized. I don't know your community; only you can make that call.
Jaunt, I do appreciate your concern. I played this game as a kid in the 80's and I remember D&D Satanism scare of the time. Indeed this has been my hesitation about bringing Pathfinder or any other RPG into schools. However, I also know that since Harry Potter and Lord of the Rings became movies, it appears that the fantasy genre in general has gained much more acceptance.
In fact, there are already a group of about twelve kids who meet after school on a Friday who play a version of D&D 3.5. This started completely independent of me. However, they don't have miniatures, battlemats, or flip mats or anything of the sort and I think if I came in with my cases of miniatures and gaming resources, I could take that foundation they have and expand on it to create a great experience for them.
Quite frankly I see some potential conflict of issue problems with tieing your student's experience to PFS network play.
1. For one, it means exposing your students to the toxic atmosphere of this messageboard.
2. If you are reporting PFS scenarios as an organiser on this school, theres a definite conflict of interest with you gaining table credit for your student's class work, or spending teacher time setting up and reporting PFS scenarios that should be spent elsewhere.
3. Quite frankly, I've come to the conclusion that Pathfinder and D20 games are about the worst way to teach roleplaying as an avenue of imagination because of their emphasis on mechanics. I would consider Storyteller, and Crucible Seven families of games because of their de-emphasis on mechanics. But on the same time, it might be harder to justify these games to a school board.
I think you are right. The more I consider the reporting and messageboard aspect of PFS in this grand idea, the more I think that I should keep it non PFS. However, I do like the idea of being apart of a larger community. I also love the pathfinder scenarios and think that they would serve really well for a four to five hour session. It also frees up characters in case some students are absent one day and present the next. I also like the philosophy of the Pathfinder Society in the game. I feel like it gives an incentive for my student's characters to do something besides kill monsters. The tenets of "explore, report, and cooperate" would go far in most anything in life! I could really use the idea in creating a teachable moment.
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As a Dutch kid I learned a great deal of English by reading the 2.5 D&D books. Wanting to actually read cool stuff like the Bestiary can be a powerful motivation to learn a language. (Not so useful if you're a native English speaker though.)
You might be surprised...even growing up as a native speaker of English, my vocabulary was significantly larger than any of my school peers due to my exposure to fantasy and scifi literature.
Testing at a college graduates level when you're in 7th grade is a non-trivial boost to ones ability to learn.
Simply having "more words" in your head makes the act of grasping and integrating newly introduced concepts a much smoother process.
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- I STRONGLY discourage getting involved with the "optimization" scene -This is crap.
Most high level business jobs are about mathematical optimization methods in some form or another, and all the best optimizers I've ever met in the business world come from a gaming background.
If I were a high school teacher, I would teach a class called "Strategic Optimization Methods." Curriculum:
1) Stochastic Methods
2) Statistics
3) Game Theory / Decision Theory
4) Microsoft Excel Basics
5) Axis And Allies
6) Titan
7) Pathfinder
8) BlokusMy students would be almost guaranteed $10k additional salary compared to the baseline student.
beej67,
engineer, small business owner, and college adjunct professor
That's an interesting lineup of games (items 5-8) you've got there. I've played and enjoyed them all at least once (that being said; Titan as part of a high school class? Good luck scheduling games).
My question to you would simply be this: "Optimizing" what - and at what cost?
Your career path sounds a lot like my very own father's (and to a slightly lesser extent, that of the person who introduced me to gaming), by the way: There comes a point in such a career when one realizes that while everyone would like more money rather than less, and math is not only very useful, but can even be, as some say, "sexy," there's no escaping the fact that there is a certain mentality common to those in "high level business jobs" that is both seriously myopic and toxic, and attempting to understand everything in mathematical terms is a fool's errand at best.
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Somehow I managed to post my reply to a different thread on Take 20!
Here is my response from yesterday:
I second the idea of promoting the idea in general RPG terms, this also gives you the option to use another system if PF doesn't work for your class.
I know Fate Accelerated has been used by teachers for example, and FAE is also much cheaper to purchase for a class ($5 per hard copy with a PDF that is pay-what-you-want including free!) and a much quicker read at less than 50 digest sized pages.
The key thing is to go into this with a goal in mind and how you will determine if you were successful, in the FAE example linked above the the goal was to "to get them [the students] thinking of characters and narrative, of using their imaginations and sharpening their improvisational skills".
So as well as playing I would suggest organising discussion groups after a scene or scenario to have students describe how they felt about the game, what they learned etc.
I think a few posters here have mentioned the fear that Pathfinder is pretty complicated when it comes to rules. If you like the flavor of Pathfinder, but want something much similar and easier to teach, check out Dungeon World. Wouldn't take but a few hours to teach that one, and you get a lot of similar atmosphere, and dynamic player development.
The single most important thing pathfinder can teach kids is problem solving. In an adventure what you are doing is encountering problems and figuring out a way to deal with them. You could create a situation where there is an obstacle to overcome and grade them on how well they do it. The obstacle could be combat or noncombat or a mixture of them both. This also teaches that there is more than one solution to the problem.
Another thing it can teach is planning and preparation. After the characters are created you should have a discussion on what they missed. For example did the kids forget to purchase important items that they will need. For example do they have both ranged and melee options, did they forget to purchase rations or other appropriate gear.
I would simply add two words that even the most head-in-their-ass school administrators will like to hear: Critical Thinking.Problem with that: If they're truly "the most head-in-their-ass school administrators," then that would make them these people.
Point. I try my best to forget that people like that exist.
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To chime in another benefit, if any of your students are aspiring to creative careers in illustration or writing, tabletop roleplaying games will help them tons.
To start with, being a GM, you get a much better sense of how real people interact with the scenarios you create if you actually DO have real people going through them, and not just yourself. Not to mention a lot of great "stranger than fiction" things happen at the table that you just can't make up.
The amount of inspiration that can come in on the art side goes without saying: when I'm not taking a turn, I'm sketching my character or other characters, and in those rare instances where I have time to work on things between assignments for class, sometimes I'll start paintings based on the last session. It's great practice in-and-of-itself, but also important to note that, professional as an illustrator (or writer), you're often working with other people ideas and finishing them, or are required to take a lot of input from someone else on an idea of your own.
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My question to you would simply be this: "Optimizing" what - and at what cost?
Your career path sounds a lot like my very own father's (and to a slightly lesser extent, that of the person who introduced me to gaming), by the way: There comes a point in such a career when one realizes that while everyone would like more money rather than less, and math is not only very useful, but can even be, as some say, "sexy," there's no escaping the fact that there is a certain mentality common to those in "high level business jobs" that is both seriously myopic and toxic, and attempting to understand everything in mathematical terms is a fool's errand at best.
I find this a most interesting variant of the Stormwind Fallacy ;-)
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I think the fear of using Pathfinder is that, if run literally with all rules in place, mechanics replace creativity. Rather than role-play a way to unlock the door, a player can simply select a skill and roll a d20, no intuitiveness involved. You may wish to require a player to describe how they might open the door before you allow a skill check (e.g. "I don't have a tool kit, so I look for a thin wire or maybe a bone or rock..."). The same goes for social interaction with NPCs. The system taken literally can discourage players to roleplay out an encounter with words and simply declare "I'll influence his behavior using my Diplomacy. I got a 26."
Simply rolling dice does not contribute to social skills nor inventiveness. Suggestions to simpler systems iterate the belief that less rules are better if you want your gamers to "think outside the box, think outside the game." For kids, I'd also shy away from letting the dice rolls resolve all matters. In older (and other) editions, the GM had to resolve creative actions without a specific rule to govern. You want to reward such efforts when reasonably possible, or at least praise them. If a player wants to leap off a cliffside to "backstab" a dragon with a 20' fall, there's no specific rule and you shouldn't spend your time looking for one. It's daring, it's feasible, and while the player should take some damage in the fall, maybe if they hit you'll give a bonus to damage.
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I'm going to have the unpopular opinion here, I'm afraid, but that's precisely what compels me to write it. First, make sure you know what you're getting into. Remember the D&D Satanism scare back in the day? Your students' parents were probably fresh out of school themselves when that happened. Make sure you're not going to get yourself fired, sued or ostracized. I don't know your community; only you can make that call.
Second, don't do Pathfinder unless you're really bent on it. Pathfinder's a great game, and I love it to death, but if you told me to teach Pathfinder to ~6 new groups of rookies (I dunno how big your class is) for the purpose of having ~5 sessions with them, I would laugh at you. The barrier to entry (i.e. teaching the PF system) is just too high. Teach them something simpler that can do all the same stuff you tell the school board you're going to do with it. As awesome as teaching games in high school is, choose the lesson you want to teach, and then fit your choice of game around it. And choose your lessons well, because I've played RPGs for 80% of my life, and I'm still learning new things. There's no way to fit everything into a week.
All of this.
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That's an interesting lineup of games (items 5-8) you've got there. I've played and enjoyed them all at least once (that being said; Titan as part of a high school class? Good luck scheduling games).
Titan has an iPad app now, with pretty good AIs. I play it on the treadmill in the gym. I can usually finish a 25 round game in about 30 or 40 minutes vs 3 AIs, which admittedly take their turns fairly fast.
If I were doing it in my own classroom setting (not the OP's one-week constraint) I'd set it up in the corner and have everyone take a turn a day.
I think I'd also add Diplomacy to the list. While not about probability, it's certainly got some fantastic game theory elements in it.
My question to you would simply be this: "Optimizing" what - and at what cost?
Your career path sounds a lot like my very own father's (and to a slightly lesser extent, that of the person who introduced me to gaming), by the way: There comes a point in such a career when one realizes that while everyone would like more money rather than less, and math is not only very useful, but can even be, as some say, "sexy," there's no escaping the fact that there is a certain mentality common to those in "high level business jobs" that is both seriously myopic and toxic, and attempting to understand everything in mathematical terms is a fool's errand at best.
And yet, it pays the bills. There are other lessons to be learned in Pathfinder as well, lessons about cooperation and leadership and the like, but all the social skills in the universe don't amount to a hill of beans in the business environment unless you know a skill, and skills worth a heck require math, and optimization. Once you have your career figured out, there's plenty of time in your life to go back and figure out how to live an enlightening existence.
Money doesn't make you happy, but poverty sure doesn't help any.
I'll second Jaunt's comments on Satanism / etc, especially if you're in a small town environment. Angry Christians get people (like teachers) fired.
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I am a teacher at a small rural high school and for the last week of the academic year, I am allowed to teach any topic of my choice. I would like to teach my students how to play Pathfinder.
I pray they don't fire you for making the suggestion.
In my experience, bringing a tabletop roleplaying game to a "small rural school" guaranteed you were an outcast, if not much worse. I've had to deal with parents, teachers, pastors, bullies, and a host of other "rural-minded rednecks" who just didn't understand (or want to understand).
I wish you the best of luck in your endeavor. If it is allowed to happen at all, I'm sure your students will absolutely love it.
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Titan has an iPad app now, with pretty good AIs. I play it on the treadmill in the gym. I can usually finish a 25 round game in about 30 or 40 minutes vs 3 AIs, which admittedly take their turns fairly fast.
*Hmph* Now where's the fun is that? ;P
I think I'd also add Diplomacy to the list. While not about probability, it's certainly got some fantastic game theory elements in it.
I've only heard about Diplomacy - what I heard was, "don't play it with your friends, because by the end of the evening, they won't be." The professor who sponsored the college gaming club I used to attend (before he retired) had a standing wish/offer to attend and participate in any Diplomacy games we ran. He was a psychology professor....
And yet, it pays the bills. There are other lessons to be learned in Pathfinder as well, lessons about cooperation and leadership and the like, but all the social skills in the universe don't amount to a hill of beans in the business environment unless you know a skill, and skills worth a heck require math, and optimization. Once you have your career figured out, there's plenty of time in your life to go back and figure out how to live an enlightening existence.Money doesn't make you happy, but poverty sure doesn't help any.
I'll second Jaunt's comments on Satanism / etc, especially if...
I was wondering before whether we were thinking about different things - now I'm fairly certain of it. I'm thinking primarily from the perspective of a gamer, but also as a lifelong big-picture thinker and, for want of a better word, skeptic of established ways of thinking who's demonstrated a certain knack, when given the opportunity, for pulling off what others assume can't be done (minor relevant example: I only played Axis & Allies once, but I remember seeming to surprise people when, having taken the role of the USSR, I wound up playing it "wrong" in that, rather than invest solely in infantry and artillery and try losing to Germany slowly enough that the USA could build a massive enough force to singlehandedly save the day at the 11th hour, I invested more in tanks and played "2 steps forward, 1 step back" across Eastern Europe, and was even able to expand downwards into neutral Asia a little - and everyone else who was playing this, especially, if I'm thinking of the right person, the guy playing Germany, was the kind of person who talked and played as though they'd taken your hypothetical class; admittedly, we never actually finished the game, but in the end, Germany and Britain were hurting worse than anyone else).
If you'll read my paragraph you originally responded to, understand where my aversion to "optimization" comes from: Seeing it associated (am I making a mistake in doing so?) with a certain mindset - that of the the "bean-counter," "technician," or if I wanted to risk being charitable, "neo-Pythagorean" - that I've watched needlessly ruin gaming over the past decade (in particular). It's one thing to favor a certain tactic; it's another to insist that it's objectively superior to all other ways to the point of ideological imperialism, and even worse to insist that the mechanics ARE the game, and everything else is just "fluff/flavor," and the result of all this (and I'm naming only three here) is that you have endless threads on, for example, the World of Warcraft forums where people argue endlessly with each other about "this class/type of specialized class/specific feature of this class sucks/is broken/is the only way to play otherwise you're screwing yourself and your party," those of us who dare to ignore such things and do whatever we want with our characters keep on discovering that most things work just fine (not all things; I learned the hard way that you shouldn't embark on a dungeon crawl with a party of only Death Knights, but on the other hand, one of the best healers I ever knew in that game was an "Enhancement" Shaman, which is something I know some people might cry "Blasphemy!" at and refuse to join a party for that reason alone, and then there's one of my proudest moments from my time playing that game, when my "Balance" Druid singlehandedly reversed a TPK, and then of course there was City of Heroes/Villains, where a travel power was a practical necessity, but beyond that, ANYTHING worked), and as a vaguely "Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court" mentality became the norm, the game lost its original magic and began to slowly die (and then there's the famous Greek tragedy "Dracoi & Tartaroi Delta Epsilon") - so the last thing I'd want is new generations being introduced to the game in a way that institutionalizes (in their minds) that mentality as "THE way to play the game."
These games are all about expanding your horizons, experimentation, overcoming obstacles, doing things others dare not do for reasons that seem perfectly sensible, and accomplishing that which seems impossible - and THESE are the most important skills that ALL effective citizens of the next 100 years are going to need. Though this fact can be easily hidden behind the curtain of daily life, the whole world is in crisis, and it's all because the way of life most people today have been taught to live doesn't really work, and we need people who are willing to value risky endeavors and strange ideas more highly than probability and conventional wisdom in order to find ways that DO work. Now, truly, is a time for HEROES.
"Human salvation lies in the hands of the creatively maladjusted." - Martin Luther King, Jr.
I really wish I had written that. Well said.
It's one thing to favor a certain tactic; it's another to insist that it's objectively superior to all other ways to the point of ideological imperialism, and even worse to insist that the mechanics ARE the game, and everything else is just "fluff/flavor," and the result of all this (and I'm naming only three here) is that you have endless threads on, for example, the World of Warcraft forums where people argue endlessly with each other about "this class/type of specialized class/specific feature of this class sucks/is broken/is the only way to play otherwise you're screwing yourself and your party,"...
Ahh, see, those people aren't optimizers. They are optimization sycophants, who worship the work of the truly creative people who are pioneering the process of optimization by thinking out of the box. While somewhat valuable in business, people like that can actually be a barrier to innovative thought because they presume there's only one answer to a given question.
Ever heard of anyone beating the Axis by buying battleships as UK? :) I have. True optimization is situational.
The fun in Pathfinder for me, as a self proscribed optimizer, is finding new and interesting game theory saddle points which produce effective combinations nobody has thought of before, not trumpeting the value of some other build I found on the forums brewed up by some other guy. Additional fun, for me, is in actually doing the mathematics to show what sort of ROI I'm getting from my choices. And the capstone of fun, for me, is developing a character and personality that supports that newly discovered optimization.
For example, here's one of several characters I'm playing right now in PF:
Gnome magus with a riding dog and a wyroot club sidearm. He uses the gnome alternate racial spells to get chill touch, uses the gnome alternate magus blade buffs to get Merciful and Vicious on his scimitar, and rolls five (or more) dice on swings, taking one die of subdual himself. After combat he Coup De Graces his unconscious foes (auto crit) with the club to absorb back his spent magus points. Pretty sure that little game theory saddle point doesn't show on any optimizer lists.
And then, because I'm also a roleplayer, I have brewed up an entire character history and personality to support the optimization, predicated on how the character is a necromantic nature gnome, and wyroot is a necromantic wood.
The people who really, really make the money in business are the guys who understand the process of optimization at such a fundamental level that they can see, and work out the math, on optimizing systems in new ways nobody's thought of before, and capitalize on that optimization in the marketplace.