The Power of Table Top Role-Play

In this class we go on an adventurous campaign each week to work together, solve mysteries, battle monsters and creatures and get to level up our characters with an engaging storyline led by the Dungeon Master (teacher).

Dungeons & Dragons is a fundamentally social experience. A team of adventurers, known as a party, are immersed in a pseudo-medieval world of sword-and-sorcery run by the Dungeon Master (“DM” for short), who narrates setting and events and adapts the emerging game to the players’ free actions and decisions. The world of the game is orally constructed and conjured in the imagination with the help of rule books, reference guides, charts, multifaceted dice and maps. Rather than compete, players work together to coordinate their complementary skill sets to problem-solve and overcome diverse challenges. Their co-dependence translates into a sense of belonging and genuine social cohesion.

The tabletop role-play game emphasizes a therapeutic approach to student learning. It also uses a variety of personal learning strategies formed around the students’ passions and interests, notably using the tabletop role-playing game (RPG), Dungeons & Dragons. We have started with a short one-shot (1-2 hour self-contained session) with pre-generated characters so that students can get a feel for the rules and the game. Once they have completed the one-shot, they will create their own characters, each with their own uniquely crafted backstory.