Hi, I'm a game master. Naturally, I am quite anxious
about being a good game master. I also am a beginner teacher, and there too, I
am terribly anxious about being a good teacher. Yes, it's a lot of anxiety. I'm
doing great, thanks for asking. But both as a GM and everywhere else in my life, whenever I'm anxious to be good at something,
I overcompensate with prep and research. So in hopes of becoming the
best teacher I could be, I fell into a bit of a rabbit hole trying
to learn as much as I could about teaching. And in this rabbit hole, I
found something delightful. Turns out, there are lots of strategies used by teachers that could very well
be applied to the gaming table. I am here to report my findings. So tonight, I will split myself in two. I'll walk you through a few
techniques that I use in my classroom, and tell you how game masters can apply the
principles behind them to enrich their games. But we need to clear a couple of things first. Why would teachers even know
about running good games? Well there are obviously many skills
useful to both a GM and to a teacher. But to me, the most important similarity
is if they fail in in their mission, they both suffer the same dreadful fate: chaos. I talked about this one before, but the
most important lesson I learned both as a GM and as a teacher, I learned years
before I take on either of these mantles, and I learned it from a couple of clowns. In high school, I briefly did some clowning.
And I was terrible at it, but that's okay, because experienced clowns were
brought in to answer our questions. We asked them: "why do kids keep trying to pull
out my red nose?" and this is what they answered: Because they're bored!
If you don't find a way to entertain the kids, they will find a way to
entertain themselves. By pulling on your nose. It means you're not engaging them properly. As a teacher, if you don't keep your students
engaged, the class might descend into chaos. As a GM, if you don't keep your players
engaged, they might turn into murderhobos. Is this secretly a video about
driving player engagement? Yes. Yes it is. For teachers and GMs, engagement is a key factor. But teachers deal with slightly higher stakes (shaping young minds and all...),
so they came up with lots of smart ways to spark engagement, the Holy
Grail that we seek at the gaming table. Which means we can learn
so much from their methods. Starting with the beginning of class. These first few minutes can set the tone
for the entire lesson or game session. It is, however, a challenge. Chances are, when they enter your
classroom, students are not focused. I mean, they just came back from
the chaotic realm of the corridor. Your task here is to transition
them into learning mode. Getting started can also be a bit tricky at
the gaming table. Which is understandable, when my players arrive for the game, they're friends who haven't seen each other
for over a week, they want to catch up. That's absolutely fine, but
when we finally do start, their heads aren't entirely in the game,
and it takes a while to build momentum. For classrooms, some teachers transition
using something called a "do now". That's a very short warm-up activity that students
can do as soon as they enter the classroom, like a writing prompt for example. These activities
are usually written on the board, and they can be done with without input from the teacher.
That way, while the teacher is taking attendance, the class slowly focuses and settles down
instead of filling the room with chatter. At the gaming table, I can't expect my players to
jump right into character at a second's notice. But we can warm up with a small activity about
the game, that isn't quite full-on roleplay yet. Often for me, that's having the players recap
the previous session instead of doing it myself. But that could also be, if
you're going to level up, don't do it at the end of a session:
do it at the beginning of the next one. Or you could ease them into
roleplay with little prompts. If the session starts after a rest
for example, you can have each player describe what is their character's first
thought as they wake up this morning. All of these help students and players
alike transition smoothly into a focused mood. But if warm-ups are too tame
for you, you can go for a cold open. When I started a chapter with my students
about logos, I had prepared a slideshow with a bunch of famous logos on it,
but I had removed all the brand names. Without any context that we
were going to to work on logos, my students had to guess the
brand names slide after slide. Very quickly, the entire class went
into an excited guessing frenzy, all of them calling out the answers in unison. You can start the game session with a sudden
event that requires players to react immediately. Something is moving in the bushes, or a
gunshot echoes from somewhere inside the manor. With that approach, you inject energy
into the game from the very start. Okay cool, but now that we have successfully
shifted gears, how do we keep this energy going? With the help of the Magician. Curiosity is a powerful force. Humans instinctively seek closure
and answers to their questions. And provided your students or players are human
as well, there's ways to take advantage of that. That's where the Magician comes into play. Dominique Bucheton, a French
researcher and professor, came up with a list of what
she calls "teaching stances". To ridiculously and completely
oversimplify it, each of these is a different approach a teacher
might take to piloting a class. And the teacher regularly switches between them,
to adapt to the changing needs of a classroom. I'm especially interested in the one that
she calls the "stance of the Magician". This one aims to catch the attention
of students through storytelling, theatrical gestures, riddles and intrigue. Here, knowledge isn't merely stated, it is to be guessed and figured
out, like the answer to a riddle. You create an aura of mystery, and let the
curiosity of your students fuel their journey. In my classroom, when starting
a chapter on packaging, I didn't explain the concept right away.
Instead, I asked a question: how do I become a millionaire
by selling pebbles for $4 each? If you're from the US, you might know I
was referring to the Pet Rock phenomenon. My students however, had never heard
about it, and they were pretty curious. Translating this to the gaming
table is a perfect match. My first homebrew campaign may
have been filled with mistakes, but I kicked it off with a question mark. Our campaign started at a temple, while a funeral
was taking place. But within the first minutes of play, a group of bandits disrupted the
funeral, and tried to steal the coffin. Why would someone try to snatch
a body in broad daylight? By the time my players captured the bandits, they were pretty eager to interrogate
them and get involved in the mystery. Tempting people with unanswered questions
can be powerful: it can transform the most mundane teaching subject or game
event into a captivating exploration. Hopefully at this point, we've established that teaching strategies can be super
helpful in sparking engagement. But there is one domain in which
they are especially valuable: When it comes to communicating
plot, lore and worldbuilding. This is the point of the game where
the GM takes on a teaching role. They are tasked with delivering that information
in a way that will stick with the players. So, you know, basically the
core of what a teacher does. And there are a variety of ways
that teachers deliver information. Let's look at the basics. Tell: that's when the
teacher explains the concept. Show: when the teacher demonstrates the concept. We could stop there, that's kind
of the basics of a lecture I think: tell, show. But let's take it further. Do: the students must experience
and practice that concept. And finally, apply: the students use
that concept in concrete situations. Tell, show, do, apply. These last two
words put the student at the heart of the learning process. That's
what we call Active Learning, the idea that people learn by doing, and
that's what gets anything to stick, really. As opposed to some lectures where students simply
receive information and try to internalize it. In ttrpg, that is the dichotomy between the GM
infodumping, and the players directly engaging. Roughly put, it means go beyond
narration, and into immersion. And if you want to know what it
looks like, here's an example. Tell: an NPC tells the players that
magic is not tolerated in this city. Show: as the groups walk through the streets,
they see a house that has been completely defaced. Eggs have been thrown at it, and the words
filthy witch are written all over the walls. (filthy witch) This is cool, and the players
can make their own judgment. But TTRPG is an Interactive medium, not a listen-to-long-descriptions
medium, so we can do better. Do: a few people start to corner your group, and they spit in the direction of
the more eccentric party member. "Filthy witch", they say,
"you're not welcome here". A few of them look like they're ready
to throw hands the moment you make a move. If you don't manage to cool down
the situation, you might have to fight. Isn't this much cooler? People are always going
to remember something they experienced or achieved better than something they witnessed.
And more importantly, this requires direct action from your players, puts them
at the center of the unfolding narrative. Which as we know, in ttrpg,
is where the magic happens. And apply, well, that's the moment
of action, when your players are ready to act upon this information.
And I hope they absolutely ace their test. That's all I have for today,
and I hope it was helpful. If it wasn't, or if it was
really poorly explained, don't come at me, I'm a beginner teacher.
Just pray for my students. On this note, have a good evening, and may the nightmare of your high
school days stop haunting you someday.
