I was wondering what (if anything) folks think WoTC/D&D Beyond could or should do to better support school clubs? Mainly middle schools / high-schools but maybe also college/university clubs.
My son just started playing D&D through a middle-school club. It seems to me that school clubs could be an incredible on-ramp into D&D (and D&D Beyond). However, the club has struggled to use D&D Beyond and it has had a somewhat slow start (party as a result of the lack of access to online tools). I will say that my son just had his first actual mini-campaign this past week and had a ton of fun so things are moving forward but I have noticed a few opportunities to improve things. Some ideas (I am new to D&D / D&D Beyond so it is possible that I am totally missing things or misunderstanding the ecosystem of support that exists)...
1) Make D&D Beyond accessible on chromebooks / through firewalls. The biggest issue that emerged was the kids could not access DnDBeyond from their computers at the school. Some had phones that could allow them to access the D&D Beyond tools but I think this became the biggest barrier to adoption.
2) Make D&D Beyond FREE for school clubs. This was a 2nd barrier. The Teacher / DM had purchased and had access to most tools and was able to create a campaign for the students to create characters in. However, some books were missing so some classes were limited. I think that giving access to everything in some way that locks this access to the club would be a great way to assure that D&D Beyond becomes the default platform that all these students learn to play D&D on (for example, teacher / DM would need to create a separate school club account). I assume / hope that some of these students would want to keep playing D&D outside of school and would then need to buy manuals or otherwise pay into the normal D&D Beyond financial ecosystem.
3) Create more tutorials. I have been trying to teach my son how to play D&D (and relearning myself). However, there is a pretty big learning curve. It seems that it would not be too difficult to create tutorials based on the manuals - could be 3rd party created or could be AI created (w/ editing).
4) Make a bank of one-shots available (maybe this already exists in D&D Beyond, I am new). There are 16 people in the club so this requires that some of the students play the role of DM for subgroups with oversight / help from the DM. However, most of the kids have never played, much less DM'd. I think that there needs to be a model to help those nescient DMs get started. I found tons of "one page campaigns" online but the club did not identify these resources on their own.
The first idea isn't something DND beyond can really solve
The second idea is a bit unreasonable because it would be hard to ensure it doesn't get abused.
The third idea has already been done, there are tons of tutorials for explanations on how classes work, and among other things, on youtube so feel free to check those out
In a vacuum, supporting a middle school D&D club is an admiral endeavor. It should be pursued.
However life is not a vacuum, and if the choice is between historical or fantasy should a fantasy setting overtake historical? Kids are in school to learn and history can be a very dry subject due to books, but an after school historical miniature game can do more for actually teaching our children. Miniature Wargaming can branch into the political causes, the industrial capabilities, the social aspect of populations, etc.
Another reason D&D should be secondary to historical type games is actually long range growth of D&D. There is so much of D&D that is based on history. By having middle school age children learn and acquire a solid base of history, then their ability in D&D can actually flourish as it is based on the history that actually created D&D.
Thanks - to be honest I am thinking both about how to help the club and also about how WoTC can help themselves. I teach graduate courses in Business Model Innovation so I cannot stop myself thinking about business models, how to drive adoption, and how to create value for customers.
4) Appreciate the link to the encounter of the week. I will check it out.
3) It was actually some other videos critique about the approachability of D&D Beyond that made me add that note - like what do you do when you first login? Is there a roadmap that helps you know what to do on the site? There is definitely plenty out there to provide training - I was really focused on making D&D Beyond a one-stop location for new players in a club, streamlining the onboarding process - this helps lock people into the site so they don't get lost going all over the web.
2) There are many examples of freemium models that work in all different industries. Restricting free accounts to a school email account w/ campaigns linked to a faculty / staff school account should eliminate most abuse (frequency of validation is key since you don't maintain access to your school account after you graduate in most cases). This is totally feasible if they were really committed to this approach (which has been proven to drive adoption in MANY industries).
1) I don't know if the issues they faced were related to simple firewall settings or if it was related to the way the site is structured (i.e., requiring components that make it more difficult to run on a Chromebook or that make it impossible to simply whitelist a site on the school's side - potentially only during club hours).
Thanks - to be honest I am thinking both about how to help the club and also about how WoTC can help themselves. I teach graduate courses in Business Model Innovation so I cannot stop myself thinking about business models, how to drive adoption, and how to create value for customers.
4) Appreciate the link to the encounter of the week. I will check it out.
3) It was actually some other videos critique about the approachability of D&D Beyond that made me add that note - like what do you do when you first login? Is there a roadmap that helps you know what to do on the site? There is definitely plenty out there to provide training - I was really focused on making D&D Beyond a one-stop location for new players in a club, streamlining the onboarding process - this helps lock people into the site so they don't get lost going all over the web.
2) There are many examples of freemium models that work in all different industries. Restricting free accounts to a school email account w/ campaigns linked to a faculty / staff school account should eliminate most abuse (frequency of validation is key since you don't maintain access to your school account after you graduate in most cases). This is totally feasible if they were really committed to this approach (which has been proven to drive adoption in MANY industries).
1) I don't know if the issues they faced were related to simple firewall settings or if it was related to the way the site is structured (i.e., requiring components that make it more difficult to run on a Chromebook or that make it impossible to simply whitelist a site on the school's side - potentially only during club hours).
That's interesting for number two I didn't realize that was possible.
Thanks - to be honest I am thinking both about how to help the club and also about how WoTC can help themselves. I teach graduate courses in Business Model Innovation so I cannot stop myself thinking about business models, how to drive adoption, and how to create value for customers.
4) Appreciate the link to the encounter of the week. I will check it out.
3) It was actually some other videos critique about the approachability of D&D Beyond that made me add that note - like what do you do when you first login? Is there a roadmap that helps you know what to do on the site? There is definitely plenty out there to provide training - I was really focused on making D&D Beyond a one-stop location for new players in a club, streamlining the onboarding process - this helps lock people into the site so they don't get lost going all over the web.
2) There are many examples of freemium models that work in all different industries. Restricting free accounts to a school email account w/ campaigns linked to a faculty / staff school account should eliminate most abuse (frequency of validation is key since you don't maintain access to your school account after you graduate in most cases). This is totally feasible if they were really committed to this approach (which has been proven to drive adoption in MANY industries).
1) I don't know if the issues they faced were related to simple firewall settings or if it was related to the way the site is structured (i.e., requiring components that make it more difficult to run on a Chromebook or that make it impossible to simply whitelist a site on the school's side - potentially only during club hours).
That's interesting for number two I didn't realize that was possible.
It's kinda the same reason schools get office 365 and such.
EDIT: I accidentally posted under my son's account to start (he logged in via my computer to play with his character) but I am the OP.
"However life is not a vacuum, and if the choice is between historical or fantasy should a fantasy setting overtake historical? Kids are in school to learn and history can be a very dry subject due to books, but an after school historical miniature game can do more for actually teaching our children. Miniature Wargaming can branch into the political causes, the industrial capabilities, the social aspect of populations, etc."
This is interesting - I have not thought about it and I don't necessarily disagree. I do think that fighting / killing becomes much more realistic in a historical fiction setting. One thing to fight and kill a dragon and quite another to shoot at a confederate battalion (although I have no idea if that is really what a historical miniature game is like).
One thing that I do love about my son's school is that they focus on project-based learning. They actually did an applied math problem looking at supply chains during WWI during last semester as a project.
There is always an opportunity to learn about creativity and story telling. I have been looking at information about the 5-room dungeon to help my son understand story telling as he tries to design his own one-shot. It is more motivating to him than writing a story so I think that is worthwhile.
This is interesting - I have not thought about it and I don't necessarily disagree. I do think that fighting / killing becomes much more realistic in a historical fiction setting. One thing to fight and kill a dragon and quite another to shoot at a confederate battalion (although I have no idea what a .
One thing that I do love about my son's school is that they focus on project-based learning. They actually did an applied math problem looking at supply chains during WWI during last semester as a project.
There is always an opportunity to learn about creativity and story telling. I have been looking at information about the 5-room dungeon to help my son understand story telling as he tries to design his own one-shot. It is more motivating to him than writing a story so I think that is worthwhile.
Just a suggestion but it is usually best to keep things simple for your first one shot you probably already know this though
Yeah, I actually recommended that he run a couple of established one-page dungeons first to get used to it before he tries to create something from scratch.
This thread (which really should be stickied!) has a list of free content available on D&D Beyond. One of the subsequent posts on the first page lists some of the free adventures on it, which is probably useful to you. I believe most of the mini adventures there are more in depth than the encounter of the week content, so make for a good stepping stone from one-off adventures to longer sessions that might take more than a single club session.
There are also fun things like free monsters and lore dumps, both of which can be helpful when folks move to the stage of making their own encounters and adventures.
You can’t get everything free but if someone with a school account applies for this they can unlock a couple of the core books here for free. Not sure what it is now but used to be a Players Handbook and Dungeon Masters Guide which was enough to give the players in a shared campaign a big chunk of the species and subclasses. It doesn’t give the Master Tier free so someone will still need to pony up $5 a month in order to share but it goes a good way to making the whole thing cheaper
You can’t get everything free but if someone with a school account applies for this they can unlock a couple of the core books here for free. Not sure what it is now but used to be a Players Handbook and Dungeon Masters Guide which was enough to give the players in a shared campaign a big chunk of the species and subclasses. It doesn’t give the Master Tier free so someone will still need to pony up $5 a month in order to share but it goes a good way to making the whole thing cheaper
In a vacuum, supporting a middle school D&D club is an admiral endeavor. It should be pursued.
However life is not a vacuum, and if the choice is between historical or fantasy should a fantasy setting overtake historical? Kids are in school to learn and history can be a very dry subject due to books, but an after school historical miniature game can do more for actually teaching our children. Miniature Wargaming can branch into the political causes, the industrial capabilities, the social aspect of populations, etc.
Another reason D&D should be secondary to historical type games is actually long range growth of D&D. There is so much of D&D that is based on history. By having middle school age children learn and acquire a solid base of history, then their ability in D&D can actually flourish as it is based on the history that actually created D&D.
Opposite take to this. Fantasy can be an inroad to Historical reality, and be a good way to bypass the "Ugh, Edutainment. They won't let me just play." by actually meeting both needs. There is also the aspect that more Middle schoolers want to be fantasy superheroes than they do Generals, so Wargaming is a hard sell. Let people play in fantasy then have bits in there that link the fantasy to history. It is how i started to care about History. I got invested and interested the real versions of fictional worlds. You just need to make sure when teaching from an interest in fiction to separate the fiction from reality, something that is hard to do even in History proper. You can even have little extra assignments that give game rewards for research. I did this when teaching college kids 4E* , and i will give an example, but make it more simple than what I did for middle schoolers. *This Phrasing makes it sound like I am a teacher, I am not, I just taught D&D 4E to people who went to the nearby College. *
"I know some of you scoffed when i said 'Cloth armor' but it was a real thing, next session, I will ask for what you found to Support or disprove me. Those that bring me the right answer, or compelling evidence for why you disbelieved me will get Additional Healing Surges for the session." Answer was "Gambesons"
"So These armors in the book, 'Ring mail' and 'Studded leather' are of dubious historicity. I will give the table extra magic items if you all present your findings on if they are real or not." This one was difficult because people in the 1800s thought they existed, and the table research showed it was believed. I later found out it Ring Mail was inspired by art like the Bayeux Tapestry which depicted chain as large rings and Studded leather by Paintings of people wearing Brigandines, Armor with a series of plates rived to inside of the hauberk, leave it looking like a coat with metal studs.
I knew all these things because i got interested in fantasy and worked my way out to the history that inspired it. I also learned a bunch of things that i have been warned not to talk about on this forum because they D&D topics that were inspired by real life extant religions as well as dead Mythologies. So almost any field can be made interesting by tying it to a fantasy game that everyone gets into.
He/Him. Loooooooooong time Player. The Dark days of the THAC0 system are behind us.
"Hope is a fire that burns in us all If only an ember, awaiting your call To rise up in triumph should we all unite The spark for change is yours to ignite." Kalandra - The State of the World
Dndbeyond will run fine on a Chromebook. I think you were correct initially that school access is a firewall issue. However, there are no workarounds to that, it's kind of the point of having a firewall (which school's obviously do to prevent access to adult/inappropriate content, etc). The teacher running the group could look into having the DDB site whitelisted, but that might not be an option for many different reasons. If kids have phones with cell service they can get around the issue, either directly or possibly by using their phone as a hotspot (just make sure there aren't any school rules against that). Also, there is a DDB app available for phones if they aren't already using it, although I haven't used it so I can't speak to whether it makes DDB more accessible to use on a phone.
I was wondering what (if anything) folks think WoTC/D&D Beyond could or should do to better support school clubs? Mainly middle schools / high-schools but maybe also college/university clubs.
My son just started playing D&D through a middle-school club. It seems to me that school clubs could be an incredible on-ramp into D&D (and D&D Beyond). However, the club has struggled to use D&D Beyond and it has had a somewhat slow start (party as a result of the lack of access to online tools). I will say that my son just had his first actual mini-campaign this past week and had a ton of fun so things are moving forward but I have noticed a few opportunities to improve things. Some ideas (I am new to D&D / D&D Beyond so it is possible that I am totally missing things or misunderstanding the ecosystem of support that exists)...
1) Make D&D Beyond accessible on chromebooks / through firewalls. The biggest issue that emerged was the kids could not access DnDBeyond from their computers at the school. Some had phones that could allow them to access the D&D Beyond tools but I think this became the biggest barrier to adoption.
Your IT department controls access and they would NOT be amused by some spoofing shenanigans.
2) Make D&D Beyond FREE for school clubs. This was a 2nd barrier. The Teacher / DM had purchased and had access to most tools and was able to create a campaign for the students to create characters in. However, some books were missing so some classes were limited. I think that giving access to everything in some way that locks this access to the club would be a great way to assure that D&D Beyond becomes the default platform that all these students learn to play D&D on (for example, teacher / DM would need to create a separate school club account). I assume / hope that some of these students would want to keep playing D&D outside of school and would then need to buy manuals or otherwise pay into the normal D&D Beyond financial ecosystem.
There are or were an educaional discount program offered. The basic ruleset IS free and provides everything required to start playing, and as long as one account is a Master Tier account any player in a campaign can share sources with the campaign.
3) Create more tutorials. I have been trying to teach my son how to play D&D (and relearning myself). However, there is a pretty big learning curve. It seems that it would not be too difficult to create tutorials based on the manuals - could be 3rd party created or could be AI created (w/ editing).
I imagine that there are enough Youtube tutorials out there to handle that one, and AI should not be involved.
4) Make a bank of one-shots available (maybe this already exists in D&D Beyond, I am new). There are 16 people in the club so this requires that some of the students play the role of DM for subgroups with oversight / help from the DM. However, most of the kids have never played, much less DM'd. I think that there needs to be a model to help those nescient DMs get started. I found tons of "one page campaigns" online but the club did not identify these resources on their own.
There are free resources that DDB provides and a near infinite amount of adventures/campaigns freely available online. No, the text won't be in DDB but you can import the maps to use with DDB so you have a paper copy or another screen with the adventure and DDB open for the characters and such. We end up doing that frequently now and we own most everything.
I played in the high school club in my youth, and ran it for a time before I graduated. Learning the game together without all the support available now was just part of it. The kids can handle it, and it might even be beneficial to have discourse and critical thinking to figure out how to apply some of the rules and such.
This has been my experience. I wrote a paper in High School English class about the Fortification and Siege of a Medieval Castle due to my interest in D&D.
However, ultimately I think the ability to stretch our imagination, to understand the social concept of helping other people have fun (and the deeper aspects of empathy involved in that), practice problem solving, appreciate good story telling, etc... are all more important than the knowledge gained of medieval life and warfare.
This has been my experience. I wrote a paper in High School English class about the Fortification and Siege of a Medieval Castle due to my interest in D&D.
However, ultimately I think the ability to stretch our imagination, to understand the social concept of helping other people have fun (and the deeper aspects of empathy involved in that), practice problem solving, appreciate good story telling, etc... are all more important than the knowledge gained of medieval life and warfare.
This is very true and should be the case.
Sorry it is the only instinct of having to justify the merits of something to Schools/parents and how it can actually align with purposes. Which is what the person i was responding to was also doing suggessting wargaming. I think kids should just get to play, but often times I have to convince a school that there is educational merit for it, while the Chess club gets a pass because of the 'chess is a smart person activity' perception. Even though D&D uses way more of the brain than chess, a lot of faculties don't give it the same grace.
I also haven't helped set one up since the 00s so maybe my perceptions of the education system are out of date.
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He/Him. Loooooooooong time Player. The Dark days of the THAC0 system are behind us.
"Hope is a fire that burns in us all If only an ember, awaiting your call To rise up in triumph should we all unite The spark for change is yours to ignite." Kalandra - The State of the World
Best practice for school kids would actually be to NOT use D&D Beyond. Physical books, dice, and paper character sheets will let them practice reading and math skills in a much more solid and meaningful way.
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I was wondering what (if anything) folks think WoTC/D&D Beyond could or should do to better support school clubs? Mainly middle schools / high-schools but maybe also college/university clubs.
My son just started playing D&D through a middle-school club. It seems to me that school clubs could be an incredible on-ramp into D&D (and D&D Beyond). However, the club has struggled to use D&D Beyond and it has had a somewhat slow start (party as a result of the lack of access to online tools). I will say that my son just had his first actual mini-campaign this past week and had a ton of fun so things are moving forward but I have noticed a few opportunities to improve things. Some ideas (I am new to D&D / D&D Beyond so it is possible that I am totally missing things or misunderstanding the ecosystem of support that exists)...
1) Make D&D Beyond accessible on chromebooks / through firewalls. The biggest issue that emerged was the kids could not access DnDBeyond from their computers at the school. Some had phones that could allow them to access the D&D Beyond tools but I think this became the biggest barrier to adoption.
2) Make D&D Beyond FREE for school clubs. This was a 2nd barrier. The Teacher / DM had purchased and had access to most tools and was able to create a campaign for the students to create characters in. However, some books were missing so some classes were limited. I think that giving access to everything in some way that locks this access to the club would be a great way to assure that D&D Beyond becomes the default platform that all these students learn to play D&D on (for example, teacher / DM would need to create a separate school club account). I assume / hope that some of these students would want to keep playing D&D outside of school and would then need to buy manuals or otherwise pay into the normal D&D Beyond financial ecosystem.
3) Create more tutorials. I have been trying to teach my son how to play D&D (and relearning myself). However, there is a pretty big learning curve. It seems that it would not be too difficult to create tutorials based on the manuals - could be 3rd party created or could be AI created (w/ editing).
4) Make a bank of one-shots available (maybe this already exists in D&D Beyond, I am new). There are 16 people in the club so this requires that some of the students play the role of DM for subgroups with oversight / help from the DM. However, most of the kids have never played, much less DM'd. I think that there needs to be a model to help those nescient DMs get started. I found tons of "one page campaigns" online but the club did not identify these resources on their own.
The first idea isn't something DND beyond can really solve
The second idea is a bit unreasonable because it would be hard to ensure it doesn't get abused.
The third idea has already been done, there are tons of tutorials for explanations on how classes work, and among other things, on youtube so feel free to check those out
The fourth idea already exists, and it's called the Encounter of the week https://www.dndbeyond.com/tag/encounter-of-the-week. Here's the link, and I wish you luck
I hope these suggestions help
Extended signature
In a vacuum, supporting a middle school D&D club is an admiral endeavor. It should be pursued.
However life is not a vacuum, and if the choice is between historical or fantasy should a fantasy setting overtake historical? Kids are in school to learn and history can be a very dry subject due to books, but an after school historical miniature game can do more for actually teaching our children. Miniature Wargaming can branch into the political causes, the industrial capabilities, the social aspect of populations, etc.
Another reason D&D should be secondary to historical type games is actually long range growth of D&D. There is so much of D&D that is based on history. By having middle school age children learn and acquire a solid base of history, then their ability in D&D can actually flourish as it is based on the history that actually created D&D.
Thanks - to be honest I am thinking both about how to help the club and also about how WoTC can help themselves. I teach graduate courses in Business Model Innovation so I cannot stop myself thinking about business models, how to drive adoption, and how to create value for customers.
4) Appreciate the link to the encounter of the week. I will check it out.
3) It was actually some other videos critique about the approachability of D&D Beyond that made me add that note - like what do you do when you first login? Is there a roadmap that helps you know what to do on the site? There is definitely plenty out there to provide training - I was really focused on making D&D Beyond a one-stop location for new players in a club, streamlining the onboarding process - this helps lock people into the site so they don't get lost going all over the web.
2) There are many examples of freemium models that work in all different industries. Restricting free accounts to a school email account w/ campaigns linked to a faculty / staff school account should eliminate most abuse (frequency of validation is key since you don't maintain access to your school account after you graduate in most cases). This is totally feasible if they were really committed to this approach (which has been proven to drive adoption in MANY industries).
1) I don't know if the issues they faced were related to simple firewall settings or if it was related to the way the site is structured (i.e., requiring components that make it more difficult to run on a Chromebook or that make it impossible to simply whitelist a site on the school's side - potentially only during club hours).
That's interesting for number two I didn't realize that was possible.
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It's kinda the same reason schools get office 365 and such.
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EDIT: I accidentally posted under my son's account to start (he logged in via my computer to play with his character) but I am the OP.
"However life is not a vacuum, and if the choice is between historical or fantasy should a fantasy setting overtake historical? Kids are in school to learn and history can be a very dry subject due to books, but an after school historical miniature game can do more for actually teaching our children. Miniature Wargaming can branch into the political causes, the industrial capabilities, the social aspect of populations, etc."
This is interesting - I have not thought about it and I don't necessarily disagree. I do think that fighting / killing becomes much more realistic in a historical fiction setting. One thing to fight and kill a dragon and quite another to shoot at a confederate battalion (although I have no idea if that is really what a historical miniature game is like).
One thing that I do love about my son's school is that they focus on project-based learning. They actually did an applied math problem looking at supply chains during WWI during last semester as a project.
There is always an opportunity to learn about creativity and story telling. I have been looking at information about the 5-room dungeon to help my son understand story telling as he tries to design his own one-shot. It is more motivating to him than writing a story so I think that is worthwhile.
Just a suggestion but it is usually best to keep things simple for your first one shot you probably already know this though
Extended signature
Yeah, I actually recommended that he run a couple of established one-page dungeons first to get used to it before he tries to create something from scratch.
This thread (which really should be stickied!) has a list of free content available on D&D Beyond. One of the subsequent posts on the first page lists some of the free adventures on it, which is probably useful to you. I believe most of the mini adventures there are more in depth than the encounter of the week content, so make for a good stepping stone from one-off adventures to longer sessions that might take more than a single club session.
There are also fun things like free monsters and lore dumps, both of which can be helpful when folks move to the stage of making their own encounters and adventures.
Thank you. I will look at it and send to my son (he shares with all the folks in his club).
For point 2 what you want is this https://dnd-support.wizards.com/hc/en-us/articles/9485614877588-Educator-Resources
You can’t get everything free but if someone with a school account applies for this they can unlock a couple of the core books here for free. Not sure what it is now but used to be a Players Handbook and Dungeon Masters Guide which was enough to give the players in a shared campaign a big chunk of the species and subclasses. It doesn’t give the Master Tier free so someone will still need to pony up $5 a month in order to share but it goes a good way to making the whole thing cheaper
Thank you. I did not know this was out there!
Something to consider: Apply the rules Adventurer's League used to for which books are eligible to be used. (I don't know if this is still the case.
Player's Handbook + 1 additional book
In the case of a school club, maybe even just limit to PHB. Simplifies options for everyone to jump in with.
Opposite take to this.
Fantasy can be an inroad to Historical reality, and be a good way to bypass the "Ugh, Edutainment. They won't let me just play." by actually meeting both needs. There is also the aspect that more Middle schoolers want to be fantasy superheroes than they do Generals, so Wargaming is a hard sell.
Let people play in fantasy then have bits in there that link the fantasy to history.
It is how i started to care about History. I got invested and interested the real versions of fictional worlds. You just need to make sure when teaching from an interest in fiction to separate the fiction from reality, something that is hard to do even in History proper. You can even have little extra assignments that give game rewards for research.
I did this when teaching college kids 4E* , and i will give an example, but make it more simple than what I did for middle schoolers.
*This Phrasing makes it sound like I am a teacher, I am not, I just taught D&D 4E to people who went to the nearby College. *
"I know some of you scoffed when i said 'Cloth armor' but it was a real thing, next session, I will ask for what you found to Support or disprove me. Those that bring me the right answer, or compelling evidence for why you disbelieved me will get Additional Healing Surges for the session." Answer was "Gambesons"
"So These armors in the book, 'Ring mail' and 'Studded leather' are of dubious historicity. I will give the table extra magic items if you all present your findings on if they are real or not." This one was difficult because people in the 1800s thought they existed, and the table research showed it was believed. I later found out it Ring Mail was inspired by art like the Bayeux Tapestry which depicted chain as large rings and Studded leather by Paintings of people wearing Brigandines, Armor with a series of plates rived to inside of the hauberk, leave it looking like a coat with metal studs.
I knew all these things because i got interested in fantasy and worked my way out to the history that inspired it.
I also learned a bunch of things that i have been warned not to talk about on this forum because they D&D topics that were inspired by real life extant religions as well as dead Mythologies. So almost any field can be made interesting by tying it to a fantasy game that everyone gets into.
He/Him. Loooooooooong time Player.
The Dark days of the THAC0 system are behind us.
"Hope is a fire that burns in us all If only an ember, awaiting your call
To rise up in triumph should we all unite
The spark for change is yours to ignite."
Kalandra - The State of the World
Dndbeyond will run fine on a Chromebook. I think you were correct initially that school access is a firewall issue. However, there are no workarounds to that, it's kind of the point of having a firewall (which school's obviously do to prevent access to adult/inappropriate content, etc). The teacher running the group could look into having the DDB site whitelisted, but that might not be an option for many different reasons. If kids have phones with cell service they can get around the issue, either directly or possibly by using their phone as a hotspot (just make sure there aren't any school rules against that). Also, there is a DDB app available for phones if they aren't already using it, although I haven't used it so I can't speak to whether it makes DDB more accessible to use on a phone.
I played in the high school club in my youth, and ran it for a time before I graduated. Learning the game together without all the support available now was just part of it. The kids can handle it, and it might even be beneficial to have discourse and critical thinking to figure out how to apply some of the rules and such.
Best of luck!
"Fantasy can be an inroad to Historical reality"
This has been my experience. I wrote a paper in High School English class about the Fortification and Siege of a Medieval Castle due to my interest in D&D.
However, ultimately I think the ability to stretch our imagination, to understand the social concept of helping other people have fun (and the deeper aspects of empathy involved in that), practice problem solving, appreciate good story telling, etc... are all more important than the knowledge gained of medieval life and warfare.
This is very true and should be the case.
Sorry it is the only instinct of having to justify the merits of something to Schools/parents and how it can actually align with purposes. Which is what the person i was responding to was also doing suggessting wargaming.
I think kids should just get to play, but often times I have to convince a school that there is educational merit for it, while the Chess club gets a pass because of the 'chess is a smart person activity' perception. Even though D&D uses way more of the brain than chess, a lot of faculties don't give it the same grace.
I also haven't helped set one up since the 00s so maybe my perceptions of the education system are out of date.
He/Him. Loooooooooong time Player.
The Dark days of the THAC0 system are behind us.
"Hope is a fire that burns in us all If only an ember, awaiting your call
To rise up in triumph should we all unite
The spark for change is yours to ignite."
Kalandra - The State of the World
Best practice for school kids would actually be to NOT use D&D Beyond. Physical books, dice, and paper character sheets will let them practice reading and math skills in a much more solid and meaningful way.