CEP 957 Teaching Complexity

Birthday: September 16

Describe teaching something complex

I like "running" tabletop role-playing games (RPGs), like Dungeons and Dragons. Running such a game is something like running a meeting, but more sophisticated in many ways. A tabletop RPG includes:

• Storytelling, as the storyteller/dungeonmaster/gamemaster (different games call this role different things)
• Board gaming, with dice, rules, and other manipulables, especially a character sheet with the character's attributes and abilities, and possibly a miniature model of the character
• Theater, through voice and gestures, presenting a character and interacting with other characters, especially the characters in the players' party of adventurers
• Conversation, as the storyteller and other players take turns narrating events in the game, and co-constructing characters' actions and reactions within the guidelines of the rules
• Salon-like debate, since my tabletop games have usually been played in a living room, not at a table, and ideas, expression, and drama take precedence over victory/loss conditions. Also, players often have to negotiate and compromise with the storyteller

Hence, playing a tabletop RPG is complex. Several times a novice has expressed interest in learning to play. I'm thinking of one person in particular ("Sam"), but our interaction is fairly representative of many.

I encouraged Sam to sit in on a session first, and to primarily watch and listen. We encouraged her to ask questions and participate in meta-game dialog as much or as little as she preferred. As the session progressed, she became more involved in the characters' adventure, including making suggestions for specific actions. She wanted to play in the next session (or, rather, play a character; she was already playing at this point). So she began to consider how she wanted to interact with the world. What kind of character did she want to play? She based her decision off other characters, emulating some aspects of some characters (especially those aspects that seemed essential or highly influential in the game), while trying to fill apparent gaps in the party and thus distinguish herself. She started learning the rules for character creation and actions, which would have seemed archaic and enigmatic without the observed session to contextualize them and motivate learning them. We didn't require players to know all the rules; important rules were learned in-game as needed. We also had a standing rule that a new player could make changes to her character after the first session of play, since many nuances only became apparent when the rules were played out.

Sam played with us for many years, growing in her confidence and ability as a player. She also helped welcome and teach other new players.

Analyze your analysis

First I had to describe role-playing a little, for myself. This was also a good starting place, to move from the familiar to the less familiar. Of course, this risked confining possible strategies for teaching role-playing to my perspective on what role-playing is.

This method was developed without clear intention. Some aspects I experienced as a novice player, while others were co-constructed in our group. Some aspects were developed through trial and error with successive novices. Our sessions were partly about having people over as guests, so my wife and I wanted people to feel welcome regardless of ability, and that influenced our methods.

There's a natural narrative to a teaching situation, and that helped me. What happened first? Then what? How did it end?

It's hard to analyze this now that I know so much more about gaming, teaching, and groups. On the one hand, I risk attributing "teacherly" behavior to myself that may not have been there. On the other hand, I may be missing "unsophisticated" behaviors that my commonly-used schemas no longer include, and are thus harder to retrieve.

This made me think about how I'll do this differently in the future. For example, I gave very little thought to using analogies, or drawing on Sam's prior experience (e.g., in musical performance). It also made me miss running and playing, which I haven't done for more than a year.