In order to introduce the basic concepts of RPGs to the students, I brought in example games, dice, adventures, and literature based upon various games - trying to represent several genres. Since students in Taiwan have little experience with this kind of game - most of them only know of RPGs in relationship to their computer game background, I felt it useful to bring in several examples (as well as books, comic books, and computer games - particularly the AD&D games). As part of this orientation to the games, I gave my own version of what Pierre Savoie calls "The Talk" which he uses as a guide whenever he is teaching the basics to newcomers to his own gaming groups (this is a fifteen minute preparatory talk normally given just prior to an introductory D&D game). Any basic introduction to RPG concepts would be fine though. Most teachers would do well to adapt the introductory "What Is Roleplaying" section of their favorite game system to situations and examples from genres the students prefer (just asking them what their favorite films are usually gives enough to go from - I usually end up using Indiana Jones and City Hunter type examples). In a brief message on the Internet, Laird Popkin gave a very succinct summary of key points for the beginning RPGer to remember when just "Starting Up," in the hobby. Briefly, Popkin's main points are: (1) create a few sample characters and play sample combat first, (2) don't get overly elaborate for your first games, (3) don't worry about the rules (bending them if necessary), (4) keep an eye on pacing, (5) don't let dice rule the game, (6) there are many different styles of gaming and different people like different things, (7) make NPCs (non-player characters) interesting (even imitating cartoon characters if that helps), and (8) don't spend too much time preparing but be prepared to improvise.
Once my students were given a brief explanation of the fundamentals of the game, they played a sample game with the teacher as game master. Because there were too many students for the one game to be played well with everyone in the standard interactive style, the class was divided into two groups of eight students. Since the class meets for two hours each week, one group played the game in the first hour and the other group played during the second hour of one class day. This allowed the students to get a more realistic idea of how to play.
It is important that the teacher use a very basic introductory scenario - typically, a "save the princess from the dark tower" story might work. While an average RPG game among serious hobbyists may lasts four to six hours, and involves five to ten players and games may be played as frequently as several times a week, teachers usually cannot make those kinds of demands upon students - however, for my student hobby group, we usually play every other week and will play for an average of seven to ten hours. Most teachers will typically use the activity a few times in a semester, often only scheduling it for a few partial class-periods. Scenarios must be limited in complexity for them to be suitable for the time constraints of a classroom activity.
Once my class of sixteen was introduced to the concepts and mechanics of Role-Playing Games, the students were asked to created their own adventures for their classmates to play. Within the remainder of the semester, the RPG activity was scheduled four times. Each time, the activity took up one hour in the two-hour period. At each time, the students were divided into small groups of four, each with one student acting as GM and the remaining three playing PCs. Each time the activity was scheduled, the students were placed in different groups and new students became GM. In this way, each student in the class was able to "play" with each of the other students - and all of them had the opportunity to GM their own game. Under this system, the RPGs quickly became the students' game and not the teacher's. Michael Cheng, another NCCU teacher experimenting with RPGs in conversation classes prefers to run the games himself and to use short professional scenarios (we have found that some of the short first edition Chill adventures are perfect for play within the constraints of our classrooms, particularly the Evenings of Terror collection "hosted" by Elvira).
Despite its popularity among hobby gamers, AD&D proved too complicated a rules system for a university freshman class (despite it's rating of being for ages ten- to-adult). My students readily abandoned the complex rules and developed a free-form system, following the AD&D model. If I had known of the Dragon's Quest or had access to the Basic D&D books at the time, I probably would have used them - at the beginning of my project I only had access to the AD&D rules though. I will note here that my upper level student hobby group played AD&D and GURPS witha passion. Currently, for most of my lower level or literature classes that incorporate RPG- type exercises, I use a simplified version of GURPS and use standard GURPS rules for my upper level RPG class and for the student hobby group.
Once students have discovered the concept, the actual rules system used by the teacher is not particularly important. While I would strongly encourage teachers unfamiliar with RPGs to purchase at least one of the commercial systems, there are alternatives for classroom use.
For those students with Internet access, there are several systems which are public domain and freely available. These include ARM, Anarcha Australis, Brand X, Extexo, FUDGE, Mage to Mage, System One, URP, and others. While many of these systems are less complicated than many of the commercial systems, they are often more difficult for the beginner to start with as they do not provide role-play information.
Some teachers who have used RPGs in the EFL classroom have developed their own systems - or allowed the students to do so on their own (with proper guidance, this is an excellent option). Scott Orr's approach with his Czech students was of this type:
I let each of them name 4 or 5 skills he was good at, and then roll a d6 [six-sided die] todetermine just how good. Then I just used the die for skill checks . . . I kept it extremely simple - I don't think we ever had any combat - in order to stress the role-playing than the "reality". If you've got the time to prepare, you may want to do something a little more complex - maybe a few basic attributes (the four used in GURPS - strength, dexterity, intelligence, and health - are good . . . .). You also might want to make the skills a little more complex, although I think a simple system like mine should do just fine . . . let them be best in the skills they like best.
My own spin-off project has been to develop a Basic English Role-Playing System (BERPS) specifically intended for EFL students. Peter Adkison, president of Wizards of the Coast Game Company, tells me that he has begun work on development of RPGs for general educational purposes - which should still be useful to the EFL instructor. Also, Dave Nalle's TCT games have obvious educational uses as well as some of Greg Porter's BTRC systems.
Actually quite a few games are readily adaptable to the language classroom. Now that I've provided this overview, perhaps some others would like to share their own views.
Email Brian David Phillips at phillips@nccu.edu.tw.
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