Running an Afterschool RPG Club: Part 1, Getting Started
Over the last two winters, I’ve run an afterschool enrichment class at my kids' school called Introduction to Tabletop Role Playing Games. We met once a week over the ten-week academic term. The students were all middle schoolers. This is the first in a three-part series about what worked, what didn’t, and what to keep in mind if you plan to start your own RPG club. Here, I will focus on best practices when getting started.
Teaching, Playing, and the 80-20 Rule
Temper your excitement to play RPGs with a mindset that, at some point, you’ll have to be a teacher as well as a game master. Whether you’re starting an RPG class in a school setting, as part of an afterschool program, or for a group of your kids’ friends, expect that you will have to teach the rules of the game to many of the students in your group. You may even need to introduce what tabletop gaming is to some of them as well.
I went into my class with an estimated rule-of-thumb that turned out to be pretty accurate. I figured that the first two-to-three sessions in a ten-session academic term would require me to teach the game 80-percent of the time and play 20-percent of the time. In fact, the first session was nearly all teaching until the students had created characters. But, as each session progressed, the amount of teaching gradually decreased to about 20-percent of the time while the amount of playing increased to 80-percent.
Because I was teaching in an academic setting, I felt the need to always teach something each session, so my teaching percentage never fell below 20-percent. I tied table-top role playing games to academic subjects like math, literature, creative writing, theater, and art. Your particular group’s context might not require that you relate gaming to academics, but tabletop role playing games are a wonderful way to introduce or reinforce academic topics like probability, genre, setting, archetypes, plot, and more.
One Game Per Term
When I started the group, I was determined to introduce the students to Dungeons & Dragons. After all, D&D is the game that created the genre. How could I not include it in a class called Introduction to Tabletop Role Playing Games? I handed out pre-generated D&D characters and jumped right into playing a session. My plan was to play a session or two with the pre-gens and then switch games, genres, and characters to an RPG by Evil Hat Productions called FATE: Accelerated Edition (FAE).
Looking back, I decided to include D&D against my better judgement. As a middle aged guy who was introduced to RPGs through the 1981 Moldvay D&D Basic Set, I felt a duty to introduce my students to the granddaddy of RPGs. The problem is, I didn’t choose to use the old basic set. I chose Fifth Edition D&D.
I wish I hadn’t. I only had ten one-hour sessions, and I squandered the first two or three sessions playing a game that we abandoned in the middle of an adventure.
My loyalty to D&D ended up diminishing the amount of time and attention I devoted to FAE. It was jarring to switch games after three sessions, and we ended up having to deal with two introductory periods of game play—with 80-percent teaching and 20-percent playing—rather than just one.
For me it was a lesson learned. Pick one game to play per term and stick with it.
Find a Fast-play Ruleset
Which brings me to another point. If you’re tight on time, Fifth Edition D&D is not the ruleset to use to introduce tabletop RPGs to students. Even the Basic 5th Edition Rules are too detailed, too long, and character creation is too much of a slog to do in a one-hour session.
Find a lighter, faster-playing RPG if you’ve got time constraints. If you’re set on playing D&D, I recommend an old-school clone like Sword & Wizardry, Labyrinth Lord, or Basic Fantasy Role Playing Game (BFRPG, which has the advantage of being a free PDF).
If your students aren’t excited about playing in the fantasy genre, I recommend using FAE. It’s a light, genre-neutral game system that’s easy to learn, teach, and play. It provides opportunities to play modern, science fiction, superhero games, and more. As of this writing, the PDF is available for pay-what-you-want and hardcopy books are $5.00.
One thing to keep in mind with FAE is that your students will need a set of FATE dice (also known as Fudge Dice).
Ask for Help
RPGs cost money, but the costs for starting an RPG club shouldn’t fall on your shoulders alone. Ask for help. Students and parents can help defray the cost of books and dice by charging a small club fee.
Remember to think about the cost of things like pencils and pens, paper, erasable battle mats, index cards, and whatever else you might need. While you can’t expect parents and students to cover everything and will likely have to use quite a bit of your personal gaming gear, don’t be shy about asking for help with some materials, especially inexpensive books and dice that the students can keep after the class is over.
Prior to my first class, I reached out to Evil Hat Productions directly and asked if they ever supported after school programs with dice or books. I was specific about what I was doing, the number of students I planned on having in the group, and I offered to pay, at-cost, for FAE books and fudge dice. Evil Hat, and Fred Hicks specifically, were extremely generous to my group and went above-and-beyond in helping me with books and dice.
Be creative. Ask to borrow game gear if you’ve got friends who play and are willing to share. This is especially useful if you’re wanting to introduce the group to playing with minis if you don’t have any. If you’ve got a friend with a hoard of minis, be up-front with how you’ll use them, and ask to borrow them for the group.
Next Up
Those are my insights about the outset of starting up an after school RPG club. In the next article, I’ll discuss what I learned about actually running the game for my middle school students. In the meantime, do you have insights you’d like to share?
