Thursday, April 3, 2014

Yes, I can teach you how to play D&D

So tonight one of my (advanced, native-English-speaking) tutoring students asked me if I knew how to play D&D.

We were doing a writing prompt using Rory's Story Cubes (great for teachers, let me tell you) and he asked about dice in general. I pulled my dice bag out of the pouch it lives in (since my work bag is also my laptop bag for game). I showed him the collection I use for gaming. I told him some of them were from my old D&D sets, since I play RPGs although I don't play the current version of D&D.

And he asked me if I can teach him to play D&D.

Yes, yes I can.

Heh. I told him about my three faves: GURPS Lite, Swords & Wizardry Complete, and Basic Fantasy Role-Playing. And that I'd teach him one (probably GURPS, maybe BFRP) and show him some books next time. I forgot to mention Labyrinth Lord, but I may bring it. He took down GURPS Lite and S&W in his notes to go check out, and he'll try to go look them up before next week. He's not allowed to play video games, so he's way into the idea of an imagination-and-reading based game.

Naturally, I'm also going to bring GURPS Martial Arts, because, hey, it's nice to have a book with your name on it.

But yeah, maybe if we've got a spare 10 minutes next time after essays and grammar, I'll show him the basics. I'd rather play GURPS, but it might be easier for him to run Basic Fantasy Role-Playing . . . and maybe I can get him running games for his friends after I show him the ropes.

Can I teach you to play D&D? Heck yeah.

6 comments:

  1. I LOVE the story dice. I have all the sets for my classroom!

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. I only have the one set, but yeah - I've got a series of activities I do with them. They can really challenge kids. My favorite is to start with "Once upon a time" and get to "And they lived happily ever after" using all of the cubes once each as a sentence element. It's tough, but fun, and it keeps them from saying "and they all died and the story is over, the end." :)

      Delete
  2. Very cool. I need to see if I can get (and if not get, perhaps make) story dice in French.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. There is all of a few paragraphs of ideas for the dice in the box - and the dice itself are just pictures. As long as someone can make up their up activities for them (like I did), you don't even need translation.

      Delete
  3. Yeah, I can see that. If he wants to play, I can run GURPS from memory. If he wants to play or run a game, I want something he can grab and run with without prep, which GURPS isn't . . .

    ReplyDelete

Related Posts Plugin for WordPress, Blogger...