This is one of our Tokyo JET Lesson PlansFeel free to use, modify, and upload your own lessons!
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Description[]
DUNGEON SQUAD A rules light Table Top Role Playing Game for teaching English. Similar to DnD but with simple rules that allow lower level English students to engage and learn in a fun, exciting adventure.
Materials[]
- Game Guide, character sheet, and a set of dice
- File:Dungeon-Squad-Game-Guide-Full-size.pdf
- File:Dungeon-Squad-Character-Sheet-Final.pdf
--- a more nifty booklet format on A3 paper---
Procedure[]
- Read Game Guide with students
- Have students create their characters according to the guide
- Teacher guides an adventure (GM) while students react to the story's events. The students roleplay as their created characters and engage in jolly cooperation!
Adventures[]
- The adventures below are open source, feel free to add or change however you see fit.-
The Forbidden Fortress
Sources[]
Why teach English with Role Playing Games?[]
Why use the Dungeon Squad rules?[]
Paraphrased from harlandski on [3]
Note: Some of the aspects of the game harlandski mentions were tweaked in my version to further simplify confusing aspects.
Dungeon Squad is-
Rules light: The central mechanic is similar to Savage Worlds, in that players roll the relevant die for a given attempt and compare their roll to a target number. The default difficulty is set lower than SW (2 rather than 4), but that is also good for beginners' sense of competence.
Character Creation Chargen is super quick (though in class not the 30 seconds promised by the rules). Introducing the limited amount of fantasy vocabulary (via pictures from films) and chargen took between 30-50 minutes depending on the English level and creativity of the students, and it was possible to fit a whole game into three hours even with the students with the weakest English.
I solved the problem of having larger groups by having groups of 2-4 students control one PC, which meant:
The PC party was of a normal size.
Those who understood the idea of the game could support their groupmates. Chargen and play was a lively set of group discussions in English. Of course this did slow play down a bit, and required some chairing on my part, but at the benefit of all the students participating and using English.
The game provided ample use of polyhedral dice, and is available as a free pdf from here. I also used miniatures and a Battlemat which provided visualization support for all students, including those with weaker English. The Dungeon Squad rules are entirely silent about movement - so I improvised.
Although my adventure was incredibly simple (a short NPC encounter and then the assault on a small dungeon with some combat and puzzles/traps), I was pleasantly surprised how quickly the students got the idea, and very different games ensued. Of course, not all students were as interested as others in the game, but the keenest players have now formed the core of a new tabletop roleplaying game club in the university, and are learning D&D 5e.