Learning Can Be Fun and Build Lifelong Memories

When I was in third grade, I started reading mythology. I think that interest resulted from watching Shazam! on Saturday mornings, wanting to learn more about “the strength of Hercules” and so on. I just loved it. There was a kids’ version of Bulfinch’s Mythology, then I read every single book the school library had on the subject. So that was when I was introduced to Homer, who influenced everyone in fantasy (whether they realize it or not). The next year, when I was 10, I read The Hobbit and it blew my mind in the same way that seeing Star Wars on the big screen did! That was also the same year that I started playing Dungeons & Dragons. So, first, I read this amazing book! Then I get to pretend to live it!

My life was never the same ... mind blown.

Which brings me to the topic of this Education Advice. January 16 is the birthday of Dungeons & Dragons!

When I first played was in 1980 at a birthday party for one of my friends in Gifted & Talented. His mom suggested that he teach me to play. He was reluctant, but his mom said, “No, I think he would like it.” As if he had tried to play with others and it had not gone so well. Which, in hindsight, I’m sure was the case, after all the friends I tried to introduce to D&D or other role-playing games who had no interest of ever playing again. His mom was right: I did like it. In high school, there was a group of about eight of us who played almost every day.

So what does this have to do with education? Everything.

Did you know that there are free resources for teachers to incorporate D&D into the classroom? There are Teaching Kits for grades 4-8, an Educator License, and more.

But that’s not the best part by any means. Playing RPGs like D&D helps people develop incredibly important skills, like creativity, critical thinking, math and literacy, confidence, leadership, and social skills.

Creativity

D&D can help explore creativity and engage the imagination. It not only encourages creativity and imagination, but rewards it. The players not only create their characters, but create their own world, developing stories and back stories, adjusting them on the fly as new events take place.

Critical Thinking

D&D can help teach how to think outside the box and make quick decisions. The best Dungeon Masters (Dms) do not just run hack-and-slash campaigns, but require that players solve problems collaboratively, requiring that they exercise their imagination.

Math and Literacy

D&D involves reading, storytelling, creative writing (if the DM creates his own adventures) and basic math to track experience as well as tracking damage dealt and received in combat. Case in point, it took me years to learn how to pronounce (let alone spell) prestidigitator.

Confidence

D&D can help build confidence by providing a venue where people can express themselves. Sometimes, it might be people who are not allowed to express themselves elsewhere (as was the case with some of my friends). Other times, it might be people who are not allowed to be themselves elsewhere. End result is often that it’s “OK to be you,” which does nothing if not build confidence.

Leadership

D&D can provide opportunities to develop and practice leadership skills. Anyone who has been on a campaign where everyone was off on his own, following whatever whim might come, understands the meaning of chaos. Having someone who can lead a group and direct them can make for a more directed and enjoyable experience and might show a side of someone never seen before (see Confidence, above).

Social Skills

D&D can help teach collaboration, build relationships, and practice diplomacy, and develop empathy. This is so incredibly important. Being able to work with others is important in all aspects of life. Being able to build and maintain relationships is essential. Diplomacy is particularly important to working in management. Most important of all, though, is empathy. Every single travesty inflicted upon humanity has been allowed by a lack of the ability to empathize. D&D can promote inclusivity and diversity. Players create characters from various races, with different backgrounds, abilities, and personalities. What is that if not a training ground for being able to recognize cultural diversity?

Case Study 1

I am an adult, going to play D&D with one of those eight guys from high school. He has a group of people from work he plays with and I don’t know any of them. He said their experience varies, but they’re pretty smart. The last one was a definite plus. I show up and, as we get talking, I learn that all four of his “friends from work” are associate district attorneys at the District Attorneys Office. I’m no slouch, I have a masters degree, but they all have juris doctorates. I was the main DM for years but, this being his group, he would DM. (I was tickled.) For old time’s sake, we were going to play the old Advanced D&D 1st Edition module “Against the Giants.” (One of our favorites.) I usually play a Cavalier or a Fighter, but no one was playing a Magic-User, so I had to dig one out from high school.

We play for a little while and they’re doing all right but, rather than improving, it’s degrading. There’s no clear leader in the group and everyone had been imbibing alcohol before I had even arrived. (Which is not conducive to finding a leader or focusing play.) My friend asks me to lead. So I do, but I’m playing a level-six Magic User, and the others are refusing to follow my lead, because they could probably kill my character. In comes a Frost Giant in an ice tunnel. The others are spread out, no one can react in time to work as a team. The Frost Giant is likely going to kill every character, one by one, before the characters can regroup and work as a team ... starting with me. I don’t have a spell that could kill the Frost Giant, but I have one that might slow him down. No, it’s not a Slow spell ... it’s Melt. One of the ADAs laughs at me and says, “He’s not made out of frost! He’s a Frost Giant! Like in Norse mythology!” I ignored him and said, to the DM, “When I fill my ice-cube trays, I only fill them about two-thirds of the way, because water expands when it freezes. So it makes sense that it expands about 33 percent, right?” He said, “I’m not sure. Maybe 25 to 30 percent.” So then I cast Melt on the ice under the Frost Giant, melting ice, which dropped the level, creating a big pit. I did a quick math calculation, establishing that the Frost Giant would be standing in that pit full of water with only his head showing. The room goes quiet. That same ADA whispers, “Wow ... that’s really smart.” We then proceeded to kill the monster because he could not climb out of the hole and fight effectively while in it. From then on, we played with more deliberate intention. (Incidentally, that ADA is now a sitting circuit court judge.)

So what skills were put to use? Math, leadership, confidence, creativity, problem solving, and diplomacy. In particular, I knew my friend well enough to know that I had to get him to agree to how much the level of the ice would drop when melted (getting that commitment from him) before I could tell him the rest of my idea or he would have had too much leeway to come up with a way to counter me.

Case Study 2

I have spent thousands of hours playing with all five of my kids and three of my stepkids. They are all very smart and, when I write adventures for them (yes, I’m still the DM), I put a lot of effort into making them challenging. There are some really great memories about adventures we’ve gone on together, a lot of laughs, a lot of great thinking, a lot of fun. However, the greatest evolution I’ve seen is with my youngest son. Partly, that is because he started playing at the youngest age: five. For the first couple years, almost every time it was his turn, his response was the same: “I charge in.” He would attack, sword swinging, and his siblings would yell at him not to, that his character was going to die, that he was going to get all of their characters killed, et cetera. His response was to laugh and do it anyway. His siblings were usually correct. He has now graduated with a bachelors degree to program video games with a 3.9 GPA and will still bring up how he is the only one who had a character die three times in one day. (I always had Reincarnation or Resurrection or Regeneration handy, so that we could bring his characters back to life.)

Something else about my son is that he has always had a thing about puzzles. When he was 2 years old, he was putting together puzzles in less than an hour that would take his 10-year-old sister three days. He has a thing about remembering numbers ... like how many experience points for each level of every character class. He also has a thing about remembering magic items, what they do, and which character received them. So, when he grew out of the phase where it was fun to annoy/upset his older siblings, at 9 or 10 years old, he started throwing out little comments to his older siblings like, “No, don’t do that, you have a Wand of Whatever that will do this much damage against multiple targets, and cut down the number of attacks they have against us, which we need, since we’re outnumbered.” Or he might say, “No, don’t do that, they’re under one hit die, but you’re a Fighter, and you can attack six times, because you’re level six, and probably get a kill with every shot, which we need, since we’re outnumbered.” Or he might say, “No, Dad, I think that’s not how that’s actually supposed to work. Isn’t it supposed to be ...?” Then I’d read the description of a magic item in light of how he just explained it, sit back, and say, “Holy crap! I’ve been doing that wrong for thirty years!” By the time he was 12 or 13, I would get frustrated when I had a big, elaborate trap planned out (sometimes one I reused from crushing my friends in high school), but my son would say, “Let’s be prepared. Let’s soak the ground with oil and one of us lead them across it, then set it on fire, which will do 2d6 damage the first round, then 1d6 damage for each round after. At the same time, everyone else should be up in a tree with distance weapons, firing away. You should use your Wand of Whatever, though, because it does double damage in the presence of fire ...” and so on. The response would be, “My Wand of Whatever? How do you remember that? I got that three years ago and haven’t used it since!” Then they would run his trap and what I had planned for a battle to last the entire night would be ended in a matter of minutes and I would be frustrated. Now, I don’t get frustrated anymore, I just shake my head and get out my random tables to fill time since he nuked my plans for the night.

So what skills were put to use? Like the previous example, math, leadership, confidence, creativity, problem solving, diplomacy, and literacy. Diplomacy in the case of pointing out that I was doing something wrong very tactfully (impressive, considering he started doing that while in grade school). He also shows exceptional grasp of tactics, aside from viewing the rules of the game like puzzle pieces, fitting them together in a such a way to maximize those tactics. Last, he implements literacy because he started just devouring the D&D rule books, internalizing the information and processing it unlike anyone I’ve ever seen. In high school, I was our main DM, but there were four others who would occasionally DM and, when we were all there, we all had areas that we knew extremely well, so we didn’t need to look things up very often, because one of us knew the answer. Since my son has committed the data to his internal hard drive, it’s about the same (or probably better).

Learning Can Be Fun and Build Lifelong Memories

I’ll close with this. When I was separated from my first wife, the absolute worst thing for me was how little time I got to spend with my kids. It was devastating. Thus, I wanted to make the absolute most of the time I had with them, trying to make it special and memorable. Money was extremely tight, the age range was wide with five kids, and I was at a loss. In talking to a friend of the family who is also a family therapist, she said, “To make the most of your time, you want the time to be interactive. When you were in school, I remember you having your friends over and playing those games at the table with the dice and the books and the dragons. Do you still do that?” I said I did. She said, “I always got such a kick out of listening to you guys! We would have plans to go someplace, your folks and me, but we’d put them off so we could sit for a while and listen in the other room, because you guys were so funny and so smart and just so involved! I really enjoyed it! That’s what you should be doing with your kids when you have them!”

And so I did. My kids learned all those amazing skills from playing D&D and other RPGs with me. I am grateful to be able to pass along that same love and education in things wondrous and fantastic. Most importantly, the process of learning created incredible, lifelong memories. What a wonderful gift.

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