Tabletop Role Playing course set to kick off at Surrey Schools
Image via iStockYou’re a rogue sneaking through a crypt, avoiding traps and enemies as you search desperately for the coveted treasure. You come face-to-face with a minotaur who doesn’t look like they’re there for conversation. They begin to charge at you. What happens next will be determined by a roll of the dice.
It may sound like an excerpt from a fantasy story, but the scene is one of many that could play out in a new course at Surrey Schools called Social Dynamics in Tabletop Role Playing Games 12.
Recently approved by the Surrey Board of Education, the course will explore the personal and social aspects of the Core Competencies through use of Tabletop Role Playing Games (TTRPG).
The course was brought forth for consideration by teachers Brennan Martin and Jett LaBrash, who were inspired by a similar course in the Coquitlam School District.
“We had seen this course in Coquitlam and both Jett and I have had experience running tabletop clubs at our schools,” said Martin, who teaches at Enver Creek Secondary.
Concepts explored in the course include interactive storytelling, positive relationship building, internal connectedness, leadership and creative design, which will all be looked at through games similar to and including Dungeons & Dragons.
“I see it as a bit of blend between a drama course, leadership course and creative writing,” explained LaBrash, a teacher at North Surrey Learning Centre.
Martin echoed his sentiment.
“For some of these students, they might not be in team sports or other subjects that may give them opportunities to work on developing those social skills in a structured manner, so this course is a great alternative to that,” said Martin.
Creatively, students will have a large degree of freedom to develop and flex their skills with core aspects of the course involving things like creating and fleshing out characters, determining settings and figuring out how all of the variables, including various player characters, will impact one another.
Students would also need to demonstrate leadership, assertiveness and interpersonal skills if they were, for example, Game Master (also known as Dungeon Masters), which lead the narrative for that group session, determining what scenarios and obstacles they may face.
As for how students will be evaluated and demonstrate their learning, Martin said they will look to employ various assessment tools, including journaling, peer and self-assessment and class presentations.
“There will be lots of different skills that will be assessed as students move through the course and begin working together,” he explained.
Instructors will also be able to incorporate other topics and learning elements into their lessons depending which kinds of games or themes they select, such as history using games set during the World Wars, or culture and diversity with games like Coyote & Crow, an Indigenous-based TTRPG set in an alternate future that imagines what North America would look like if it had never been colonized.
“No matter which rules you use, the skills of storytelling, relationship-building and interconnectedness and leadership are elements that are shared across all types of games,” said LaBrash.
The course will initially be available as an option for Grade 11 and 12 students at Enver Creek Secondary and North Surrey Learning Centre to take in the 2024-25 school year, but can also be held at any secondary school in the district with enough student demand and a teacher willing to teach it.
