TTRPGs and GM-less game sessions

robbmccollum

This post evolves from a discussion on the Discord TTRPG (Tabletop Role-playing Games) thread about how to implement TTRPGs in large classrooms.

Typically, the teacher serves as GM (Game master or DM, Dungeon master). This is the person who guides the other players (aka students) through the interaction storytelling session (aka the adventure game session). This approach works fine is the class size is small (about 6 students or fewer) or if the teacher meets with students from a large class in small groups for individual gaming sessions.

But if the instructor wants to conduct multiple, simultaneous group sessions in the same room (or breakout rooms on Zoom), teacher as GM is not viable. Options include:

training students to serve as GMs. This could be an official role or a rotating role. The student GM would receive guidelines from the teacher to help run the session.
going GM-less. This could involve providing all group participants with part of the information that the GM would have. Thus group members would need to discuss when/how/why to reveal their secret information to help advance the story and solve the “problem/quest”. This essentially turns the activity into a sort of information gap exercise.

I have used both GM-less options. I found that the second option worked better and was more interesting for the players because they knew they needed to work together to sort through the information needed to bring the session to a satisfyingly conclusion.

What other approaches have you used with TTRPGs and GMs? Any thoughts? Any research?

PetraKhalil

robbmccollum
In the Games-Based Learning Virtual Conference 2022 Hamid Printer and Hafiz Printer had a session called Adapting Role Playing Games to Class Sized Audiences.
It was very interesting.
Basically they developed this strategy (at least this is what I understood, maybe I didn’t understand correctly or I will explain it badly. English is not my native language so have mercy on me 😅):
Each student was given a dice and then the teacher-GM broke them into different groups.
Each group represented a different character.
Then the students were presented with scenarios and limited choices that they then had to discuss and vote on.
And finally, every “turn”, one student within each group would roll their dice to see how well their character ran in that situation.
The student that rolls can decide to follow the advice of the majority of the group or to go against the decision of the group.
If the student responsible for that roll of the dice was against the majority of the group then the teacher-GM would give them a certain number that would be a little bit harder to reach. If the result was below that threshold, then the teacher GM would ask someone else within that group to see if they wanted to burn their dice to then push that number up and then be able to do that action.
The purpose is to engage each student, because every student has a dice and they each have a voice.
They have to think if they want to save their dice to play it in the next turn or if they want to burn it to push up the result of the classmate because they think it was the right thing to do.

Martin

Thank you for starting this discussion in the forum! I don’t have much experience with using TTRPGs in the classroom setting (I teach preschool kids), but I have thought a lot about GM-less variations of these kinds of games, and have enjoyed playing a few myself.

I have a small gaming group of friends who live in different parts of the world, and we get together now and then online to play RPGs. Due to the time differences and other responsibilities, it just doesn’t work for us to play something as involved and long-term as D&D, so I’ve been scouring the internet for simple one-shot games that are easy to put together and can be completed in a short time (our sessions are normally 2-3 hours). Many of these have involved a DM in a very minor role, mostly to get things started off, but one that was completely DM-less is The Quiet Year (https://buriedwithoutceremony.com/the-quiet-year).

In this game, players collaborate to create a world both narratively and through physical map-making. A deck of playing cards are used to determine certain questions and challenges that the players’ society must face, and the game has a built-in time limit as after moving from spring to winter (with the choices presented by the cards becoming increasingly morally difficult), an unavoidable disaster will end the story.

I think this would be a very interesting system to try in a classroom setting, with perhaps the teacher drawing the cards for the student groups as a whole, and then each group making their decisions and progressing with their individual group’s map/world/story. After the conclusion, groups might present to the class about their world and their choices.

cheapshot

Martin I’ve taught with the Quiet Year, and I think Jonathan has, too.

I changed the length of the game to fit a single class session (90 minutes) by removing cards from each suit. (Though, I should mention, even after removing some cards, a number of groups still didn’t finish their session during the allotted time).

I’m actually really proud of the worksheet I created to help onboard students to the game play session (i.e., we used the worksheet both before and after playing).
The worksheet covers

considering genre/setting
“being creative” with language (adjectives and relative pronoun work)
similies and metaphors
the usual post-play transcription and grammar work
a section on Social Emotional Learning connected to video games

Link to the worksheet here

And some pics of student work:

robbmccollum

Martin and James, thanks for sharing your experiences with The Quiet Year. I like what I see about the world-building in this game. In my course, which loosely uses the Kids on Brooms system, we spend the first few weeks world building: creating characters and the magic school. I’ll have to look into The Quiet Year to see how it might be useful in that context.

And James, thanks for sharing your worksheet. My TTRPG course has been greatly improved by including pre-flection and post-flection worksheets (modeled after yours) for my students to complete before/after each session.

cheapshot

PetraKhalil I like the idea of students being responsible for a single character as a group. that’s great.

Fred Poole wrote about a similar idea in this paper for LLP: https://llpjournal.org/2021/04/27/fred-poole-co-management-llp-approach.html