Continuing on from last week, at the end of which session the party had reached the doorway to the dungeon through which I meant to have them crawl, the middle-schoolers’ characters proceeded inward. Following the pre-written materials I have been using (with some small emendations to get around some of the metagaming I’d noticed brewing), the party soon found themselves confronting unfamiliar situations, the players trying to figure out how to get their characters to do what needed doing to move ahead in confidence. They were not as successful in that as might have been, rather comically getting in each other’s way out of concern about what lay ahead and a desire to “do something cool.” But it was progress, nonetheless.

One of the things that dungeon-crawls traditionally do is present players and their character with puzzles to solve. This is true in video games, as the various Legend of Zelda games attest. It’s true in Dungeons & Dragons, as well, with many of the titular dungeons being maze-like in their presentation even before traps that must be avoided and doors that require cunning and insight to open are put on offer. Puzzle- and problem-solving such as working against such devices require are themselves often articulated as major educational goals; the TEKS standards for grade 6 make much of such things, for example. Dungeon-crawling, then, is inherently an educational exercise, so I didn’t have to do much to bring in the overtly educational this time…but one thing that I have done, both this session and previously, is start to use more complex and richer vocabulary, sending the players to the dictionary for information about what the words mean. (The game meets in a library. Using its resources suggests itself as another valid educational end.) Between the two, I think I have the explicitly educational covered decently enough.

Honestly, so much echoes my own experience. I might have noted here before, and I have certainly noted elsewhere before, that a good part of what drew me into my formal study was the media to which I had been exposed and in which I was conversant as I moved from high school to college and from undergraduate to graduate study. I took Old English early in my master’s program because I was frustrated at the end of my undergraduate work by being almost able to read and make sense of it, for example, and I had that sense of familiarity in part because I had been the particular type of nerd that I was then. (I’m not quite the same taste, now, but whiskey has a richer flavor twenty-five years after being put into the barrel, so that’s to be expected.) I learned words because I saw them used and did not know what they meant, so I looked them up. (Having the spellings helped; a dictionary’s not as handy when the spelling’s uncertain, something that was long a point of vexation for me with my parents.) I don’t think that any of the kids at my table will be English majors or go out for the professoriate, but I do think they benefit not only from the exposure to new vocabulary, but also from doing the work of finding what it means for themselves.

It’s something that will serve them long after we have parted ways.

Need some tabletop stuff written? I’m your guy–and with no AI!

Or you can send your support along directly!