DnD at School?

[Malic]

I have a small problem. Would any of you consider playing DnD at school. I can, not as a club, but after lunch in the school library. You see now that I'm in highschool lunch is 45 minutes long. Me and 2 of my freinds get done in about 15 minutes because our classes before lunch are really close to the lunch room itself.

Which leaves us with 25-30 minutes of browsing the library or just chatting. Anyway from what I can tell its not against the rules or the school handbook, and we don't really have much else to do I was considering setting up a couple games and seeing how it goes from there.

I was wondering what you all think about the idea? It's not cutting back on studding or anything and I'm not forcing it on them so would you do it if you could?

[jameswilliamogle]

as long as your principal isn't an ex-preacher trained in the stone age, you should be fine. we used to game in the HS library until ours found out... then we gamed in the halls. to hell w/ them.

the only real problem is that gamers still have the nerd stigma, and you might not want to put that out in high school (but you might not care, whatever).

[Gaelbert]

As far as I know, it is an option, but I don't really think I would take it. Good luck for you, though.

[MrNexx]

We actually talked about this very thing last year. Let me see if I can find the posts. In the mean time, here's my blog post on the subject of getting a club started, under which you can play at school:

http://rpg-crank.livejournal.com/7729.html

It also includes a little bit about playing during lunch, and most of my advice from the thread (though I'll look for the actual thread, itself).

[Counterpower]

Personally, I don't really think a half hour is enough time to really play D&D. If you can make it work, though, all power to you.

[MrNexx]

http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?t=19287

There's the old thread.

Half an hour works great for some things; it's not great for long combats, but you can run a sidequest for the party thief during the week (having him scout things out), or do some in-character talking that gets you better acquainted with your characters... even bluebooking, if you're of a mind.

[Lord Tataraus]

My group tried that with a low-combat, level 1 campaign, but it was just too awkward (people asking questions and interrupting more than anything else) so we stopped.

[Malic]

Well the thing is we don't really have to worry about people asking many questions and such since we won't be in the lunch room. Our library opens before lunch everyday all through the school year until the last week.

Thanks for the links to. Really helpful.

EDIT: Also I don't think time will be an issue since the class after lunch takes about 1 minute to get to from the library at a slightly brisk walk. So time isn't an issue for packing up.

[Drider]

Some teachers will think that because your in THEIR school, they should be allowed to force you to play with anyone, instead of only your friends. If that one person is a ****-wad, who tries to ruin it for everyone else, while whining to said teacher about "everyone picking on them" when you try to give hints, then you get alot more problems caused than having 30 minutes solves.

[de-trick]

30 minutes would go by to quickly, but a quick little thing sure

Also you may try and keep it a good campaign

or this will happen
Player1: I'll rape the whore, then stab her in the throat
DM; OK she starts screaming and crying then when you stab her, her blood sprays on you
Player2: Can I make a death offering to Grumish with the elf baby
Random guy: (looks at you and runs)
Principle: what in the abyss are you kids doing, I want to play

[starwoof]

Ive actually done this. It was awesome.

We had 2 hours before school every two weeks last year, and we would use it for DnD a lot. It was enough to time to go through a short adventure, even with all of the screwing around we did. Half an hour is a lot less than that but... I think that its possible to play a bit, especially if you do it like every lunch.

During one of those sessions I stood up and yelled 'I AM THE OGRESLAYER!' in the middle of the cafeteria. We were level 1 and I one shot an ogre. :smalltongue: I got a lot of strange looks but no more than normal.:smallbiggrin:

[doliemaster]

Actually, my group can't meet in class or after school due to conflicts so this is how we are going to play our games. I don't know how DnD will work, since I am trying to run a super hero game right now.

[DraPrime]

Personally, I don't really think a half hour is enough time to really play D&D. If you can make it work, though, all power to you.

True words. Just do it on the weekends or something when you have a full 5 hours of D&D available. And learn from Dolie's example, don't yell something random and weird out in public.

[Neftren]

Well, I'm starting a club at my school and we've got scheduled activity periods :D but they're like 40-50 minutes long... not much improvement over 30 mins... the most annoying and inconvenient part is having enough time to do character creation...

[kjones]

I used to have 30-minute lunch periods. We had a lot of fun doing RPGs, but they were mostly free-form, interactive-story type things. We usually used a deck of cards instead of dice, or came up with some other method of generating random numbers. Risus might be good for this. D&D has too much overhead, too much cookie and not enough cream in the Oreo.

[Matthew]

That was the way we usually played back when I was at school. Lunchtime was prime adventuring time; of course, our lunch breaks were an hour long in those days. Even so, it wasn't unknown for adventures to bleed over into classes...

[StickMan]

I use to play magic at lunch but then we did not worry about the whole nerd stigma, cause we had 24 players every lunch period and we had 3 lunch periods and sometimes more. Yea mess with us feel free, 24 to one.

[PMDM]

I've had a really hard time getting a game going in school. You really need a full hour to get anything done.

Learning D&D however, can be much easier in 30 minute blocks. Just enough time to cover an aspect of the game. 24 hours to sink in, and then move on.

[AslanCross]

I run a game at the school I teach in twice a week, with two different parties. We play after dismissal starting 4:10 to around 5:30. We actually only really start at 4:30 because some people come from PE and have to change.
We still get at least one encounter done per game. Really slow, but better than nothing.

We did all of the character conceptualization before the year began (thank God for the Internet), then we only actually rolled up during the first week of school. The second party started a bit later and is behind around five sessions.

We play in the teachers' lounge (teacher privileges, lol), which is big enough for our group of six. I just wish I could book the boardroom for this, but oh well.

[bugsysservant]

Actually, playing at school makes a lot of sense. I know at my school, everyone in a math class is required to have a TI-83 type graphing calculatory, so with a little knowlege of TI Basic, you have your dice bag right there. And if you're playing in a library, you should have plenty of table space. The only issues I can see are
1. Time. If you can manage a session in half an hour, go ahead, but that seems pretty short to me.
2. Noise. If you're in a library, are you allowed to talk? If you get kicked out, is there somewhere else you can go?
3. Privacy. Are you liable to get people constantly walking through, interupting your game?
4. School policies. Depending on what level of education you're at, you could get saddled with terrible players because of exclusion rules. Double check your school's policies before this happens.
5. Stigma. Finally, playing DnD at school is the epitome of nerdiness. If you're cool with that, go ahead, but be aware that you probably aren't going to be the most popular kid at school.

Edit: Also, you might want to look into the rules cyclopedia. It obviously isn't the current edition, but carrying around one book is a lot easier than five pounds of "core" and several dozen splatbooks.

[Kurald Galain]

We used to play Magic during breaks at high school, and that was never all that problematic. Since we didn't sit in the "main" area, we didn't even get all that many onlookers or people boggling what on earth we were doing (although there was one guy who mistook it for a Tarot deck, so I obliged him by telling his fortune over the Llanowar Elf card he drew...)

Anyway I can see RPG'ing working, but probably not with a battle mat.

[CrazedGoblin]

Hrmmmm we have to do something called CAS (Community Active Service) which is helping the communitie and we need to do it to complete our A-Level/IB course i wonder if they would allow us to help the poor folk of said village fight of the dragon and give us the CAS hours for it :smalltongue:

[Malic]

1. Time. If you can manage a session in half an hour, go ahead, but that seems pretty short to me.
2. Noise. If you're in a library, are you allowed to talk? If you get kicked out, is there somewhere else you can go?
3. Privacy. Are you liable to get people constantly walking through, interupting your game?
4. School policies. Depending on what level of education you're at, you could get saddled with terrible players because of exclusion rules. Double check your school's policies before this happens.
5. Stigma. Finally, playing DnD at school is the epitome of nerdiness. If you're cool with that, go ahead, but be aware that you probably aren't going to be the most popular kid at school.

Edit: Also, you might want to look into the rules cyclopedia. It obviously isn't the current edition, but carrying around one book is a lot easier than five pounds of "core" and several dozen splatbooks.

Hurrah Answers:
1: I think it won't be that hard. I'm pretty good with time managment.

2: We are aloud to talk as long as our voices don't raise above the loud whisper.

3: Meh more or less just 1-5 people would see us playing and even then I know 4 of them and they are really into anime. Odly enough the tables are right behind the Graphic Novel and Manga shelf. So really only people who sit down there or look through the bookcase awhile will notice us.

4: Thats one reason why I don't want to make it a club event. As long as its just me and 2-3 freinds we can legally justtell someone who want in no. But hopefully I wont have to. I'm setting the max group at 3 since there are only 4 seats per table.

5: I'm already known as the not so coolish one. But meh, its a game if they want to shun it because of what a bunch of random people said then his/her loss.

6: I think I'm just gonna bring two books at any given time. Mabye even just the PH and DMs Guide. Then I can just browse the Monster Manual when I get home and write the key things down for the next session.

Also I think it will probly be about 30 minutes a day 5 days a week. So in retrospect It wouldn't be much longer than any weekend session I set up.

[Shas aia Toriia]

Yeah, but the players could forget a lot overnight if you play for 30 minutes only per day. And setting up and packing up does take a little while, so you won't actually have a full 30 minutes.

[Citadel]

I also used to play Magic during lunch at school. We had a weekly RPG session after school. There was a teacher who was kind of supposed to be running the club but he didn't show up much. If you ask your science and maths teachers I would be surprised if you didn't find one or two who have role played and would be prepared to get you official authorisation to get a room to play at lunch or after school. RPGs are afterall an intellectual hobby. Now pass me the D20, I'm gonna try and crack this guy's skull open with my boot while he's down.

[crimson77]

A long long time ago when I was in middle school I used to play with a few friends in the library during lunch. Of course we were using the red dnd box set so there was less things to bring. One suggest that I would have is less is more. Take less stuff with you. PDAs work great for holding all the SRD material. You can pick up a cheap pocketPC on ebay then you can put all the rules on it. This eliminates all the headache of carrying books with you. Recommend players only bring one set of dice. Skip miniatures and as another pointed out put character stats on index cards.

[MandibleBones]

I second the suggestion on using a TI for dice - the only problem we ever had with gaming in the Library (D6 Star Wars, not D&D, but the point stands) is using dice. The school policy forbid dice in the library in an effort to curb gambling, and even when we patiantly explained what we were doing, we still got booted because the dice-rolling caused too much of the wrong kind of noise. *shrugs*

We ended up playing outside.

[Citadel]

6: I think I'm just gonna bring two books at any given time. Mabye even just the PH and DMs Guide. Then I can just browse the Monster Manual when I get home and write the key things down for the next session.

I don't think it would really be necessary to bring any books. If you copy out the rules for everyone's skills and feats, monster stats, and the things you might need, you wouldn't need the books with you. During 4 hours games, I only see a book being referred to once every 2-3 sessions. If your playing in a library, could you bring PDFs on a CD or memory stick and check them as and when you need? You are the GM so just interpret how you think things should work and check the rule when you get home. If a player starts rules lawyering, offer to take things to a vote and if there continue to be problems tell him he can carry the books in each day.

[Citadel]

I second the suggestion on using a TI for dice - the only problem we ever had with gaming in the Library (D6 Star Wars, not D&D, but the point stands) is using dice. The school policy forbid dice in the library in an effort to curb gambling, and even when we patiantly explained what we were doing, we still got booted because the dice-rolling caused too much of the wrong kind of noise. *shrugs*

We ended up playing outside.

That sucks.

The thinnest layer of foam will kill the noise of dice. An old foam mouse pad or a few inserts from miniatures blisters taped together do the trick. You can put an edge around with a bit of card.

[Irreverent Fool]

I have a small problem. Would any of you consider playing DnD at school. I can, not as a club, but after lunch in the school library. You see now that I'm in highschool lunch is 45 minutes long. Me and 2 of my freinds get done in about 15 minutes because our classes before lunch are really close to the lunch room itself.

Which leaves us with 25-30 minutes of browsing the library or just chatting. Anyway from what I can tell its not against the rules or the school handbook, and we don't really have much else to do I was considering setting up a couple games and seeing how it goes from there.

I was wondering what you all think about the idea? It's not cutting back on studding or anything and I'm not forcing it on them so would you do it if you could?

Make sure you stand up for your rights to do so. My high school had had a problem with people playing CRAPS of all things at lunch and betting etc/etc. So they banned ALL games of any variety. I can't tell you how many decks of playing cards I lost or how many games of Magic:the Gathering were ruined before we went to pen & paper with die rolls handled by a simple little program on a graphing calculator.

Eventually we stood up to 'the man' when we were told we couldn't play chess and he admitted the rule was ridiculous. If someone tells you to stop, and it's not expressly forbidden, don't stop.

That having been said, you can play hack-and-slash fairly well in that amount of time. In fact, I think it's good training for making people take their turns quickly!

[Vincentrose91]

Me and some friends are trying to get a game going in our web design class, after finishing our projects and all. we were planing on using a chatroom named chatzy and using a die-roller in the chat, so we got quite a bit of it worked out. plus we have certain books on flash drives and the d20-srd site.

[Lost Outrider]

Eventually we stood up to 'the man' . . .

I couldn't help but grin at this. I remember smuggling in dice and being chased out of the library back in the dark ages of Jr. High. Now I'm a teacher along with most of my gaming group.

My word, we've become The Man.

(Watch out, Drider. I'm going to force you to be inclusive!)

Dire warnings about draconic, meddling faculty aside - having staff on your side might help you with this. Find a teacher you like and trust, tell them of your plans and see what options they may have. I've farmed out my classroom before when students wanted to avoid the lunchroom and couldn't congregate in the library. *shrug*

[DraPrime]

I have a friend who actually plays D&D with some of the school staff. Apparently some of the cafeteria people and a janitor like the game. Who knew? :smallconfused: Anyway, apparently the janitors got their own room so they played there. If you manage to pull something like that off then you're good to go.

[Drider]

(Watch out, Drider. I'm going to force you to be inclusive!)


:frown: ...:smallwink: tee-hee

[TSGames]

Actually, my group can't meet in class or after school due to conflicts so this is how we are going to play our games. I don't know how DnD will work, since I am trying to run a super hero game right now.
Although I doubt it's what you're talking about, it reminded me of a bad idea I have sometimes. It's just popular enough at my school, and I swear some of my classes are uninformative enough, that the thought of running a game during a class has crossed my mind.

[EagleWiz]

If they force you to let a jerk play, you can still "discurage" him if he/she gets to be to much of a problem.
One word:
Tarrsque.

[Lavin]

All in all, I'd say that DnD at school is fine. My friends and I used to do it, until we discovered that it was too short of time for sessions. Now we meet at each others houses for real sessions, instead of just a half hour dice roll. My players actually took half that time just to get settled in. Sure makes things difficult on budgeted time, but if your school doesn't have any rules against it, should be good.

[Alleine]

If you can manage it, which it sounds like you can, I'd say go for it. Like others have been saying, it helps to have a teacher on your side. In fact, one of the school's coolest(and IMO best) history teachers is the biggest nerd on campus hands down, so we have a place after school if we want to game.

The biggest problem I encountered was with immature people, and that was in middle school with every card game imaginable except regular cards. Someone would lose or misplace a card, or actually get it stolen, and then fly into a half-crying half-yelling frenzy of accusations. That got every trading card game banned. You probably won't run into that though.

[Hylianbunny]

During my last year of high school, we had about an hour's worth of lunch time (well, closer to fifty minutes), and so ended up getting a game going with a number of new people that hadn't played DnD before. The first fifteen minutes or so would be to go over sheets, ask any questions, and perhaps a short lesson on an aspect of the game, and then we'd actually play for the rest of the time.

Generally, we had a steady four or five people coming out, spanning from grades 9 or so to 12, and it worked out very well; it was short enough to keep their interest but long enough to let them experiment.

[Golthur]

Me and several of my friends did this religiously from about grade 9 through 12. We used the Chemistry class with those huge lab tables - it worked great. No one had any problems, and, in fact, the Chem teacher would let us in the room on other occasions where we had time free and the room wasn't being otherwise used.

I'm not sure how it would work now - but it's not like we asked permission. We just started doing it, and I think the Chem teacher didn't have a problem "enabling" us, since at least half of us were within the top 5% in his class :wink:

[MrNexx]

Like I mention in my blog post... find a sponsor. It's a lot easier if you have a teacher on your side.

[Fishies]

I think a rules-light game would work better.

[Dr. Weasel]

I wasn't so into DnD when I was in high school but some of my friends played in the library every day (before school so they had time. I'm not sure how well a half hour session would work). No one cared; their lunch moneys remained unstolen and their dignities intact. If you think you can manage within the time and want to give it a shot, go for it.

[Justin_Bacon]

I was wondering what you all think about the idea? It's not cutting back on studding or anything and I'm not forcing it on them so would you do it if you could?

This is how I got started. Roleplaying during study halls and at lunch time during 6th grade.

So: Hell, yeah. That was some of the most fun I've ever had roleplaying.

Justin Alexander
http://www.thealexandrian.net

[Viscount Einstrauss]

I tended towards other games during high school, but I never really got ridiculed for any of my hobbies. If you've got the time and you've got the game, go for it. The worst that can happen is they tell you no later.