I am a high school teacher, and recently another teacher and I who play started a DnD Club. We were hoping to get maybe 10 kids, but we are currently at 24 students, and counting! The other teacher is a more old school dungeon crawler, while I am the only one with actual DM experience. Does anyone have any tips for how we might be able to manage this. My current ideas are as follows...
1. Run multiple sessions with multiple groups and die of planning overload and trying to keep 5 different campaigns separate and straight.
2. Run a campaign where students who are available for certain days can show up and play, and all players, whether regulars or more infrequent, would level up together, regardless of playtime (milestone style)
3. Teach 24 high school students, most of which have never played, how to DM
halp.
EDIT: Thank you all so much for your help, these are some great suggestions. I will definitely be utilizing a number of methods mentioned here. After all, too many players is a great problem to have.
What kind of rewards can you offer to students who want to DM? Because that's basically 4 groups worth of players, and odds are very good that at least 2 of the students joining this are interested in DM'ing.
I'd recommend starting with a few "Adventure League" style one-shots... simple games without an ongoing story where the players can just pop in or out depending on their availability. Then as everyone gets more used to the game start asking students if anyone is interested in DM'ing... provide them with resources, some training and advice... I don't know if you can give extra credit or some other tangible reward for taking on the duty of DM'ing, but whatever you can do to reward any students willing to take on the task. Who knows... maybe eventually they'll be DM'ing and you can join in as a player for once.
High school kids are perfectly capable of DM’ing. Let them read over Phandelver, and most of them could run it just fine. You don’t have to teach all of them to DM, just 3-5. On a sports team, they’d be the captains, here they’re the DMs. Maybe even just have kids DM, while you and the other teacher float between tables to troubleshoot.
But I’d definitely do milestone leveling, and try hard to keep all of them in roughly the same place in the story, so a player can float between tables if a DM is out. I know, much easier said than done.
How confident are you that they’ll all stick with it? Surely some will decide it’s not for them and bounce off of it. Others will start spring sports soon, others will be absent, others will just be flaky. After things settle down, won’t you end up with fewer kids? That could change the equation a bit for how to handle it.
I would google "West Marches" which is a style of cooperative campaign where multiple groups have adventures in the same world. (You don't really want to run five separate campaigns).
You'll need to figure out how many sessions you would run a week, where and when so that it fits everyone's schedules as well as school constraints. This gives you an idea of how many players you might accommodate and how many DMs you might need to run it.
After that, I would suggest seeing if any of them are interested in trying to DM and then have a session or two of "Introduction to DMing". If you are lucky, you might have one or two already familiar enough with the game to save on time teaching them the rules.
Teach them all aspects of the game. Build a character generation lesson, a session 0, as the first time they meet. Build a combat lesson, and teach it, like a classroom lesson. Have it last maybe 10-15 minutes of the game session. Let them loose to try it. The next meeting tackle the use of skill checks and Death saves. Some will identify as players and some will express interest in DMing.
Alternatively get 5 together and teach them to DM. Then flit between the games if they have difficulty, just like classroom monitoring.
The ones who stay after 3 sessions will probably stay a while longer.
I have a friend who was in a similar situation--teacher who had far more folks show up for the D&D club that he started than he expected. His best piece of advice is to start as small as possible--run some mini-adventurers that last 1-3 sessions, assuming that the 24 players will eventually whittle themselves down. I think he started with about 20 students, but, after a couple months, is down to about 6ish who show up regularly.
When there were a lot more students, he just ran a couple campaigns--you have two potential DMs and four groups of six. I would recommend you and the other DM build the same campaign together and just run it four times, with the students in each of the groups. Doing that for a couple of weeks should hold you over until you get down to a more manageable number of players.
Once you are down to a smaller group, you can consider doing a longer campaign (knowing that summer break is on the horizon, which is a fairly hard stop to the campaign). My friend and his co-chair are likely going to make an adventure where their two groups are working on different paths to stop the same evil. That way everyone is in the same campaign, but they are far enough apart that they will not directly interact with one another. It also allows some crossover between the groups if you need to shuffle things up.
Think of the campaign a little bit like Arthurian legend. Heroes just kind of show up from time-to-time, hang around for a little, then disappear from the Matter. It is not always sensical in the story, but, hey, it is a historical storytelling device that easily allows you to shift characters between the campaigns/have players drop in and out depending on their availability.
That sounds bad, and I would try to get DMs or set a limit to the amount of students. Limiting the students is not a great solution so if it is just an introduction to D and D then run a large throwaway dungeon crawler and just let students join and leave as they want untill some know the rules enoughf to try there had DMing
Anecdote: I'm in geography that still has pretty strict COVID protocols, school reopened to in person learning this academic year after about a year and a half closed. I know a middle school, not sure how representative it is of other schools in the area, but the D&D club largely meets up to just talk about D&D (so the proposed workshops would work in this situation) but largely play off campus over Discord.
Other thought, and maybe WilsonJ or someone else with experience may be able to help on its viability. I've brought it up before in threads but have yet to hear if it ever plays out. Is there a local college with a TTRPG club or FFLGS or comic shop that hosts games in your community? Either may be sold in the interest of community service to offer some people power to lighten the DM load, at least early on until your student members come into their own and want to try DMing themselves. Volunteers would of course have to be vetted through whatever process your school district uses for community volunteers, I suppose if they all run games in proximity of you and your co-faculty advisor they would be classed as "escorted" volunteers. Other than "promoting the hobby" and the general virtue of "community service" the college students could be sold on having a volunteerism line on their developing resumes and the game shop would be getting a line on a new market (though I imagine you can't push that too heavy). With 24 members you probably need 2-3 volunteers (you or your partner DMs while the other serves as all around supervisor, or if volunteer supervision isn't an issue you just need two).
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
Jander Sunstar is the thinking person's Drizzt, fight me.
I am a high school teacher, and recently another teacher and I who play started a DnD Club. We were hoping to get maybe 10 kids, but we are currently at 24 students, and counting! The other teacher is a more old school dungeon crawler, while I am the only one with actual DM experience. Does anyone have any tips for how we might be able to manage this. My current ideas are as follows...
1. Run multiple sessions with multiple groups and die of planning overload and trying to keep 5 different campaigns separate and straight.
2. Run a campaign where students who are available for certain days can show up and play, and all players, whether regulars or more infrequent, would level up together, regardless of playtime (milestone style)
3. Teach 24 high school students, most of which have never played, how to DM
halp.
When it rains, it pours!
Options 2 & 3 both, and at the same time. I'm a fan of letting people get behind the screen and learn how to lead a group. Also, the suggestion for a West Marches style campaing or a neverending megadungeon are strong candidates. A goal that you might strive for is to get the older, more experienced students to DM for the newer students. I'm sure you've probably got some younger students that could easily handle the DM's chair. If you have the facilities to host multiple, simultaneous sessions in the same location, this would allow you to still have oversight of the individual groups.
I'm glad to hear that your success has outpaced your expectations!
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
“Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry, and narrow-mindedness, and many of our people need it sorely on these accounts. Broad, wholesome, charitable views of men and things cannot be acquired by vegetating in one little corner of the earth all one's lifetime.” - Mark Twain - Innocents Abroad
In addition to looking into running a West Marches style game (Matt Coville has a great video on it), you could also maybe ask for students to volunteer to learn how to Dm and try their hand at it. You could have three or four tables playing at once during meetings, and all the DM's can collaborate on where the story will go and what adventures to put into a shared map.
Or you could impose an "everybody DM's" rule and have a rotation so everyone gets a turn as a players and nobody is forever DM'ing if they don't wanna be.
And, if student DMing works well enough, maybe you don't have to run a table and can instead float around between tables, lending a hand and settling disputes, or bolstering a new DM as needed.
I am a high school teacher advising the school D&D club. A student approached me already with DM experience and wanted to start the club.
We have about the same number of students and have 4 groups currently running. Two more experienced DMs showed up to the first meeting, and we had one student that I gave a copy of the Essentials Kit so he could first-time DM.
I float between groups and monitor and make sure the DMs have resources they need.
Have you figured out what prior experience your students have with D&D and role-playing games in general, even if just video games? You might already have some capable or potential DMs that you just need to encourage and support with resources.
I got students into groups first meeting after a rules overview. Learning the game is done better making characters and actually playing the game.
@MidnightPlat My FFLGS is not that local so I made the email to the rest of the staff for help to GM.
Nobody had experience/wanted to help, but do poll the rest of the school for help. There may even be staff spouses that want to pitch in. Be sure they meet the school requirements for "outside" student contact before you bring them in.
@MidnightPlat My FFLGS is not that local so I made the email to the rest of the staff for help to GM.
Nobody had experience/wanted to help, but do poll the rest of the school for help. There may even be staff spouses that want to pitch in. Be sure they meet the school requirements for "outside" student contact before you bring them in.
I am a high school teacher, and recently another teacher and I who play started a DnD Club. We were hoping to get maybe 10 kids, but we are currently at 24 students, and counting!
...
3. Teach 24 high school students, most of which have never played, how to DM
Great work! You've already won D&D. Ha! But that's almost serious, as you have a great situation. You have kids enjoying the game in a good environment.
I ran games as a DM in a similar situation. We had success by running one campaign. (I agree with David 42.) We had each party start from the same keep on the same map in the same world. Each party had an adventure that was different, but each was tied in some loose way to a larger plot. It wasn't tight, as the plot could roughly continue even if a few quests failed. Each week/month we would write new adventures that were very basic, e.g., go save the village from giants, or find the assassin. After the round of adventures, the results would inform the next round. Adventures that didn't make the first cut (or even from prior years) could be added. If the adventures were generic enough, it fit very well. The story told itself.
After each round or two, the players as a group could vote on using their success (gold, alliances, etc.) to upgrade the keep. If they had gold for example, they could hire a blacksmith, and thus they had access to new weapons after each session. They could even trade or sell to each other their loot, like magic items. That happened occasionally, and modern tools could possibly make that achievable online.
#3 is hard. I saw 1 or 2 advanced players become successful DMs. It might be enough. I'd advise against expecting more than that.
@MidnightPlat My FFLGS is not that local so I made the email to the rest of the staff for help to GM.
Nobody had experience/wanted to help, but do poll the rest of the school for help. There may even be staff spouses that want to pitch in. Be sure they meet the school requirements for "outside" student contact before you bring them in.
Good thoughts!
Yeah, most schools, actually schools systems, at least here in the U,S. have protocols to authorize adult volunteers from the surrounding community. It's usually not a high bar barrier, but nevertheless in the interest of school safety.
Canvassing the campus itself for other faculty or faculty spouses/partners etc. is another good call. There are so many "you know, I used to do this back in the day, and now it's a trending thing" types, and if you can learn how to teach a curriculum, you can learn to DM a new edition. I'd say there's actually a lot of DM/teacher skill sets overlap from my own teaching experience in a few capacities.
Work with your towns hobby shop, discuss having a high school night for the table and see if they have any DM's available. Explain that it would be a high school group so whatever requirements you have from the school has to be followed. You'd need about two more DM's to volunteer for each DM to run 6 people. It would benefit the hobby shop by them selling players hand books and it would take some of the load off you. This is assuming the school will allow it. Make sure you apply for the Wizards Digital Club Kit, it might still be going, you would qualify being a teacher:
The next thing you need to factor in that a lot of those players will melt away. They've watched Matt Mercer and a good number of them will have unrealistic expectations. According to WotC, most players quit in about seven sessions or by the time they reach level 7. So probably in 3 or 4 months, you'll be down to a more manageable level of 12 kids. That being written, if you are in a poorer area, they'll probably have more players sticking around because its cheap and better than going back home a lot of times for kids.
I concur that "train them to DM" is probably one of your best plans. And DMing doesn't have to be really heavy work either. You could have 5 tables and literally all run the same basic encounters at each table at once. Let the DM get used to adjudicating combat, managing the NPC's, etc. If possible have some pre-printed templates for intiative and hit point tracking. Remind the DM's that their job is to keep the game fun for all, and it's not to kill the PC's. Let them collaborate but keep it simple.
A few of these sessions and people might be ready to Role play more.
Many of us old farts are spoiled by how much of our DND time was spent kicking down the door and killing the monsters. All of that prepped us to see DND for the richer options. I think for newer players diving into heavy RP is fine as long as someone at the table is ready to help guide the chonkier parts. You could use your school groups early weeks to be "let's just throw dice and kill monsters" for a while and let them organically build more into the Role Play side.
I'd say to get a simple adventure like Frozen Sick on this site, or a one-shot for level 1 characters, run a group of them through it, and then have those players become DMs for the rest of the students. You can serve as a floating DM who can help out with rules queries while they're playing.
If you don't want to run them through the whole thing, write a VERY simple game as follows. I use this as a training tool for new groups:
Five Room Dungeon Adventure for level 1 characters:
In room 1, there is a puzzle that the PCs must solve. Give something visual to make it as fun as possible.
In room 2, there are 2 goblins. PCs learn the basics of combat. There are 2 paths to take. One leads to Room 3, the other to Room 4. Whichever they go through, they'll then move to the other room before the final room, to show them they have choices, but so you don't have to plan more that won't be used.
In room 3, there is a trap of some sort to navigate.
In room 4, there is a ghost that needs to be Persuaded or Intimidated into unlocking the door. No combat allowed.
In room 5, there's a final boss to fight. Then they get the treasure and level up.
I'd say to get a simple adventure like Frozen Sick on this site, or a one-shot for level 1 characters, run a group of them through it, and then have those players become DMs for the rest of the students. You can serve as a floating DM who can help out with rules queries while they're playing.
Echo this. Candlekeep Mysteries is a good book for one shot adventures that are (Generally) ready to run out of the book. Clear puzzles, traps, encounters. Chapter 1in particular is a very solid classic dungeon crawl that isn't too hard to mitigate. The dungeon is small (it's a big house) and the hook is fun and easy to imagine. There are, I think, 3 combat encounters in the whole of it. Could be fun for the kids.
Plus it's an easy one to do a big "everyone listen up... here's what's happened" stage setting and then let the players go RIGHT into the start of the "dungeon".
I am a high school teacher, and recently another teacher and I who play started a DnD Club. We were hoping to get maybe 10 kids, but we are currently at 24 students, and counting! The other teacher is a more old school dungeon crawler, while I am the only one with actual DM experience. Does anyone have any tips for how we might be able to manage this. My current ideas are as follows...
1. Run multiple sessions with multiple groups and die of planning overload and trying to keep 5 different campaigns separate and straight.
2. Run a campaign where students who are available for certain days can show up and play, and all players, whether regulars or more infrequent, would level up together, regardless of playtime (milestone style)
3. Teach 24 high school students, most of which have never played, how to DM
halp.
EDIT: Thank you all so much for your help, these are some great suggestions. I will definitely be utilizing a number of methods mentioned here. After all, too many players is a great problem to have.
What kind of rewards can you offer to students who want to DM? Because that's basically 4 groups worth of players, and odds are very good that at least 2 of the students joining this are interested in DM'ing.
I'd recommend starting with a few "Adventure League" style one-shots... simple games without an ongoing story where the players can just pop in or out depending on their availability. Then as everyone gets more used to the game start asking students if anyone is interested in DM'ing... provide them with resources, some training and advice... I don't know if you can give extra credit or some other tangible reward for taking on the duty of DM'ing, but whatever you can do to reward any students willing to take on the task. Who knows... maybe eventually they'll be DM'ing and you can join in as a player for once.
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A combination of 2 and 3, I’d say.
High school kids are perfectly capable of DM’ing. Let them read over Phandelver, and most of them could run it just fine. You don’t have to teach all of them to DM, just 3-5. On a sports team, they’d be the captains, here they’re the DMs. Maybe even just have kids DM, while you and the other teacher float between tables to troubleshoot.
But I’d definitely do milestone leveling, and try hard to keep all of them in roughly the same place in the story, so a player can float between tables if a DM is out. I know, much easier said than done.
How confident are you that they’ll all stick with it? Surely some will decide it’s not for them and bounce off of it. Others will start spring sports soon, others will be absent, others will just be flaky. After things settle down, won’t you end up with fewer kids? That could change the equation a bit for how to handle it.
I would google "West Marches" which is a style of cooperative campaign where multiple groups have adventures in the same world. (You don't really want to run five separate campaigns).
You'll need to figure out how many sessions you would run a week, where and when so that it fits everyone's schedules as well as school constraints. This gives you an idea of how many players you might accommodate and how many DMs you might need to run it.
After that, I would suggest seeing if any of them are interested in trying to DM and then have a session or two of "Introduction to DMing". If you are lucky, you might have one or two already familiar enough with the game to save on time teaching them the rules.
I run my High School Club as well.
I agree with Xalthu on the combination of 2 & 3.
Teach them all aspects of the game. Build a character generation lesson, a session 0, as the first time they meet. Build a combat lesson, and teach it, like a classroom lesson. Have it last maybe 10-15 minutes of the game session. Let them loose to try it. The next meeting tackle the use of skill checks and Death saves. Some will identify as players and some will express interest in DMing.
Alternatively get 5 together and teach them to DM. Then flit between the games if they have difficulty, just like classroom monitoring.
The ones who stay after 3 sessions will probably stay a while longer.
I have a friend who was in a similar situation--teacher who had far more folks show up for the D&D club that he started than he expected. His best piece of advice is to start as small as possible--run some mini-adventurers that last 1-3 sessions, assuming that the 24 players will eventually whittle themselves down. I think he started with about 20 students, but, after a couple months, is down to about 6ish who show up regularly.
When there were a lot more students, he just ran a couple campaigns--you have two potential DMs and four groups of six. I would recommend you and the other DM build the same campaign together and just run it four times, with the students in each of the groups. Doing that for a couple of weeks should hold you over until you get down to a more manageable number of players.
Once you are down to a smaller group, you can consider doing a longer campaign (knowing that summer break is on the horizon, which is a fairly hard stop to the campaign). My friend and his co-chair are likely going to make an adventure where their two groups are working on different paths to stop the same evil. That way everyone is in the same campaign, but they are far enough apart that they will not directly interact with one another. It also allows some crossover between the groups if you need to shuffle things up.
Think of the campaign a little bit like Arthurian legend. Heroes just kind of show up from time-to-time, hang around for a little, then disappear from the Matter. It is not always sensical in the story, but, hey, it is a historical storytelling device that easily allows you to shift characters between the campaigns/have players drop in and out depending on their availability.
That sounds bad, and I would try to get DMs or set a limit to the amount of students. Limiting the students is not a great solution so if it is just an introduction to D and D then run a large throwaway dungeon crawler and just let students join and leave as they want untill some know the rules enoughf to try there had DMing
Anecdote: I'm in geography that still has pretty strict COVID protocols, school reopened to in person learning this academic year after about a year and a half closed. I know a middle school, not sure how representative it is of other schools in the area, but the D&D club largely meets up to just talk about D&D (so the proposed workshops would work in this situation) but largely play off campus over Discord.
Other thought, and maybe WilsonJ or someone else with experience may be able to help on its viability. I've brought it up before in threads but have yet to hear if it ever plays out. Is there a local college with a TTRPG club or FFLGS or comic shop that hosts games in your community? Either may be sold in the interest of community service to offer some people power to lighten the DM load, at least early on until your student members come into their own and want to try DMing themselves. Volunteers would of course have to be vetted through whatever process your school district uses for community volunteers, I suppose if they all run games in proximity of you and your co-faculty advisor they would be classed as "escorted" volunteers. Other than "promoting the hobby" and the general virtue of "community service" the college students could be sold on having a volunteerism line on their developing resumes and the game shop would be getting a line on a new market (though I imagine you can't push that too heavy). With 24 members you probably need 2-3 volunteers (you or your partner DMs while the other serves as all around supervisor, or if volunteer supervision isn't an issue you just need two).
Jander Sunstar is the thinking person's Drizzt, fight me.
When it rains, it pours!
Options 2 & 3 both, and at the same time. I'm a fan of letting people get behind the screen and learn how to lead a group. Also, the suggestion for a West Marches style campaing or a neverending megadungeon are strong candidates. A goal that you might strive for is to get the older, more experienced students to DM for the newer students. I'm sure you've probably got some younger students that could easily handle the DM's chair. If you have the facilities to host multiple, simultaneous sessions in the same location, this would allow you to still have oversight of the individual groups.
I'm glad to hear that your success has outpaced your expectations!
“Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry, and narrow-mindedness, and many of our people need it sorely on these accounts. Broad, wholesome, charitable views of men and things cannot be acquired by vegetating in one little corner of the earth all one's lifetime.” - Mark Twain - Innocents Abroad
In addition to looking into running a West Marches style game (Matt Coville has a great video on it), you could also maybe ask for students to volunteer to learn how to Dm and try their hand at it. You could have three or four tables playing at once during meetings, and all the DM's can collaborate on where the story will go and what adventures to put into a shared map.
Or you could impose an "everybody DM's" rule and have a rotation so everyone gets a turn as a players and nobody is forever DM'ing if they don't wanna be.
And, if student DMing works well enough, maybe you don't have to run a table and can instead float around between tables, lending a hand and settling disputes, or bolstering a new DM as needed.
I am a high school teacher advising the school D&D club. A student approached me already with DM experience and wanted to start the club.
We have about the same number of students and have 4 groups currently running. Two more experienced DMs showed up to the first meeting, and we had one student that I gave a copy of the Essentials Kit so he could first-time DM.
I float between groups and monitor and make sure the DMs have resources they need.
Have you figured out what prior experience your students have with D&D and role-playing games in general, even if just video games? You might already have some capable or potential DMs that you just need to encourage and support with resources.
I got students into groups first meeting after a rules overview. Learning the game is done better making characters and actually playing the game.
@MidnightPlat My FFLGS is not that local so I made the email to the rest of the staff for help to GM.
Nobody had experience/wanted to help, but do poll the rest of the school for help. There may even be staff spouses that want to pitch in. Be sure they meet the school requirements for "outside" student contact before you bring them in.
Good thoughts!
@MidnightPlat My FFLGS is not that local so I made the email to the rest of the staff for help to GM.
Nobody had experience/wanted to help, but do poll the rest of the school for help. There may even be staff spouses that want to pitch in. Be sure they meet the school requirements for "outside" student contact before you bring them in.
Good thoughts!
Great work! You've already won D&D. Ha! But that's almost serious, as you have a great situation. You have kids enjoying the game in a good environment.
I ran games as a DM in a similar situation. We had success by running one campaign. (I agree with David 42.) We had each party start from the same keep on the same map in the same world. Each party had an adventure that was different, but each was tied in some loose way to a larger plot. It wasn't tight, as the plot could roughly continue even if a few quests failed. Each week/month we would write new adventures that were very basic, e.g., go save the village from giants, or find the assassin. After the round of adventures, the results would inform the next round. Adventures that didn't make the first cut (or even from prior years) could be added. If the adventures were generic enough, it fit very well. The story told itself.
After each round or two, the players as a group could vote on using their success (gold, alliances, etc.) to upgrade the keep. If they had gold for example, they could hire a blacksmith, and thus they had access to new weapons after each session. They could even trade or sell to each other their loot, like magic items. That happened occasionally, and modern tools could possibly make that achievable online.
#3 is hard. I saw 1 or 2 advanced players become successful DMs. It might be enough. I'd advise against expecting more than that.
Yeah, most schools, actually schools systems, at least here in the U,S. have protocols to authorize adult volunteers from the surrounding community. It's usually not a high bar barrier, but nevertheless in the interest of school safety.
Canvassing the campus itself for other faculty or faculty spouses/partners etc. is another good call. There are so many "you know, I used to do this back in the day, and now it's a trending thing" types, and if you can learn how to teach a curriculum, you can learn to DM a new edition. I'd say there's actually a lot of DM/teacher skill sets overlap from my own teaching experience in a few capacities.
Jander Sunstar is the thinking person's Drizzt, fight me.
Work with your towns hobby shop, discuss having a high school night for the table and see if they have any DM's available. Explain that it would be a high school group so whatever requirements you have from the school has to be followed. You'd need about two more DM's to volunteer for each DM to run 6 people. It would benefit the hobby shop by them selling players hand books and it would take some of the load off you. This is assuming the school will allow it. Make sure you apply for the Wizards Digital Club Kit, it might still be going, you would qualify being a teacher:
https://magic-support.wizards.com/hc/en-us/articles/360042264872-How-do-I-get-a-Wizards-Digital-Club-Kit-
The next thing you need to factor in that a lot of those players will melt away. They've watched Matt Mercer and a good number of them will have unrealistic expectations. According to WotC, most players quit in about seven sessions or by the time they reach level 7. So probably in 3 or 4 months, you'll be down to a more manageable level of 12 kids. That being written, if you are in a poorer area, they'll probably have more players sticking around because its cheap and better than going back home a lot of times for kids.
I concur that "train them to DM" is probably one of your best plans. And DMing doesn't have to be really heavy work either. You could have 5 tables and literally all run the same basic encounters at each table at once. Let the DM get used to adjudicating combat, managing the NPC's, etc. If possible have some pre-printed templates for intiative and hit point tracking. Remind the DM's that their job is to keep the game fun for all, and it's not to kill the PC's. Let them collaborate but keep it simple.
A few of these sessions and people might be ready to Role play more.
Many of us old farts are spoiled by how much of our DND time was spent kicking down the door and killing the monsters. All of that prepped us to see DND for the richer options. I think for newer players diving into heavy RP is fine as long as someone at the table is ready to help guide the chonkier parts. You could use your school groups early weeks to be "let's just throw dice and kill monsters" for a while and let them organically build more into the Role Play side.
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Run a seven player meat grinder. When you die, next person on the list steps in and you go to the back of the line.
jk.
I'd say to get a simple adventure like Frozen Sick on this site, or a one-shot for level 1 characters, run a group of them through it, and then have those players become DMs for the rest of the students. You can serve as a floating DM who can help out with rules queries while they're playing.
If you don't want to run them through the whole thing, write a VERY simple game as follows. I use this as a training tool for new groups:
Five Room Dungeon Adventure for level 1 characters:
In room 1, there is a puzzle that the PCs must solve. Give something visual to make it as fun as possible.
In room 2, there are 2 goblins. PCs learn the basics of combat. There are 2 paths to take. One leads to Room 3, the other to Room 4. Whichever they go through, they'll then move to the other room before the final room, to show them they have choices, but so you don't have to plan more that won't be used.
In room 3, there is a trap of some sort to navigate.
In room 4, there is a ghost that needs to be Persuaded or Intimidated into unlocking the door. No combat allowed.
In room 5, there's a final boss to fight. Then they get the treasure and level up.
Echo this. Candlekeep Mysteries is a good book for one shot adventures that are (Generally) ready to run out of the book. Clear puzzles, traps, encounters. Chapter 1in particular is a very solid classic dungeon crawl that isn't too hard to mitigate. The dungeon is small (it's a big house) and the hook is fun and easy to imagine. There are, I think, 3 combat encounters in the whole of it. Could be fun for the kids.
Plus it's an easy one to do a big "everyone listen up... here's what's happened" stage setting and then let the players go RIGHT into the start of the "dungeon".
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