Starting a D&D club after school.

[Jernau35]

Hi everyone!

The school where I teach has put out a call for more teachers to run clubs. There was a D&D club last year but the teacher transferred. I'm considering volunteering but a little reticent because:

1. I've never done anything like this before, I'm generally an introvert and it's only my second year at the school.

2. It's 5e. I've played for a few years but haven't DMd since 1e back in the day. (I ran a bit of Lost Mine of Phandelver with my kids. Didn't go well. Kids gradually lost interest, I stumbled with the material.)

3. I'm not sure what to run with the group. How do I pick an adventure that they've never done, when I haven't met them. Poll them in Session 0?

4. I think I can do it, despite these problems. I love DMing and I've picked up a lot of tricks over the years. The kids will obviously want to play and having been a teacher for years I know not to show fear

5. Coincidentally, I have an old 1e adventure from White Dwarf (The Sunfire's Heart) that I'm planning to run for my tabletop group. I'm halfway through converting it to 5e. I was thinking this is a guarantee of fresh material. (Also, I've been waiting to run it for nearly 40 years. No chance I'll forget stuff or mess up the plot). It just comes with the problem of actually balancing it for 5e.

So, can anybody offer advice or point me in direction of useful materials? I'd really appreciate it.

I just came down with COVID today, so I apologize for the rambling tone. There's definitely details I haven't mentioned, my brain is just a bit foggy.

Thanks!

[dmw71]

I'm considering volunteering...

I definitely encourage you to go for it!

For original material, maybe select and convert something published as a system-neutral product, or from a previous edition (like the 'White Dwarf' adventure you mentioned).

[Rex]

I ran a 1e game for several years at my public library. It was a long time ago (mid to late 80's). Really fun and I enjoyed it. My recommendation is go with something short and then just go with what feels right, which you will have a much better idea of after a couple of sessions. You may even find they will be willing to switch to an older system to give it a try.

[hedgeknight]

2. It's 5e. I've played for a few years but haven't DMd since 1e back in the day. (I ran a bit of Lost Mine of Phandelver with my kids. Didn't go well. Kids gradually lost interest, I stumbled with the material.)
So, can anybody offer advice or point me in direction of useful materials? I'd really appreciate it.

Hey Jernau > I'm quoting this one point because this really nails it all in a nutshell. I work in a middle school and we had an "Adventurer's Club" last year that was primarily composed of 8th graders. A teacher sponsored it and asked me (guidance counselor) to help out because she knew I am an old grognard and love D&D.
Fortunately for us, one of our 8th graders wanted to DM and he was running the Lost Mines of Phandelver...sort of. That way, the teacher and I could just sit back and supervise. And we laughed our asses off at these kids! Lots of fun, LOTS of loud energy, and very little gaming was accomplished. BUT...fun was still had by all (or most).
After several weeks of not getting a lot accomplished, another DM stepped up and tried to "herd the cats" into his game. Very difficult even with the teacher and myself helping and monitoring and encouraging, etc.

There were several positives about all this:
1/ It game a bunch of students an opportunity to yell, throw dice, eat snacks and unwind at the end of the school day.
2/ Kids bonded and loved being "gaming nerds" (their term for themselves) who spent more time geeking out about their characters than actually playing their characters.
3/ We were very fortunate to get 10 FREE Players Handbooks from a contact our teacher knew, so everyone had a PHB...even though this generation is pretty much plugged into technology and had all of their characters on D&D Beyond. This was a challenge because the character sheet is difficult to navigate online. Lots of buttons, lots of options (too many IMHO), and we found having an actual paper character sheet helped.
4/ Kids love rolling real dice! And again, our teacher came through > providing dozens of sets of dice for kids to use.

My advice would be to teach your players how to create a character on a piece of paper; trust me on this. It will help them know where to look when rolling dice and which dice to roll and what skills they have, equipment, etc. Get them to KNOW their character! Know what they do, what spells work and how they work, etc.
Good luck and keep us posted on how it's going.

[hedgeknight]

Oh, as for what adventure to run...keep it simple and keep it short. Run a one-off with a few encounters and some rewards. There are tons of one-shot 5e adventures out there; many of them free. Unless your group is highly disciplined, it will take several weeks to complete a short adventure.

[tibbius]

Also, it couldn't hurt to start simpler. Like, "this is a D&D club, it's about roleplaying games. Unless everyone already is comfortable with the latest D&D, we're going to start with a simpler roleplaying game to make the learning curve smaller. Roleplaying games are about stories and having fun, more than rules, so using a simpler system should still work out well."

(Unless you really want the kids to get into the complexities and arguments of rules lawyering. I remember that entertained some but not all of my high school gaming groups. The girl particularly got annoyed by it.)

[dmw71]

Oh, as for what adventure to run...keep it simple and keep it short. Run a one-off with a few encounters and some rewards.

This got me thinking, and digging through my scattered notes:

1. I would strongly recommend taking a look at Trilemma Adventure or the One Page Dungeon Contest. Both have published compilations of products, but all/most of the individual adventures are also freely available. Trilemma Adventures has a blog where the adventures were originally published as posts. The One Page Dungeon Contest entries are all listed as PWYW on Gumroad; here's the link to the 2021 entries: 2021 One Page Dungeon Contest Compendium.
2. It's not free ($4.95), but one of the first 5e adventures I played in (and really enjoyed) was Rats of Waterdeep. It has a nice mixture of encounters with a lot of puzzles/problem-solving that, I think, would lend itself well to a school environment.
3. I haven't played in or run it, but Tomb of the Serpent Kings, and the PDF is free. I was mainly drawn to it for its maps (I think they're awesome!), and it's written like a how-to in dungeon design, which also might lend itself well to a group of students.
4. If you're set on running 5e, I feel compelled to plug Kelsey of the Arcane Library. She has expanded since, but she began by writing one-shot 5e adventures with an excellent layout. I haven't played in/run it, but her 'The Secrets of Skyhorn Lighthouse' is free on the DMs Guild and is extremely well-reviewed.

Good luck!

[ravenn4544]

I would happily donate material or resources if you find what you are looking for or have ideas for what you need for the kids. Dice? Books? graph paper? you name it.

Pay it forward!

[Jernau35]

Thanks everyone! Lots of useful stuff here. I'm almost certainly going to go ahead and volunteer for this. I just want to make sure it doesn't get in the way of my job (October is a busy month for me and that's when the club will start).

Rex: Yes, I was thinking of starting with something short so we can all get used to the rules.

Hedgeknight : I'd never even considered that one of the kids might want to DM. That could be interesting. And that's a good point about using technology.

Tibbius: Rules-lawyering is definitely something I'm worried about. I don't want to rush ahead, but neither do I want to have to go through everything on the character sheets. The club only runs from Oct to December. Using an older, simpler system would certainly save time, but since kids these days are most familiar with 5e I'll go with that first. Once they know me better, I might run treat them to a classic .

dmw71 Thanks for the links! I was thinking of starting with a couple of short adventures to get it rolling. The previous teacher told me he used to let them choose a pre-gen and personalize it, then start an adventure. I was thinking that maybe beginning with pre-gen's, then a short adventure for a session or two, to get everyone involved, then a session where everyone can make their own character might be the way to go.

raven4544: Wow! That's really generous of you. I'm going to have a "final think" about signing up to run this over the weekend. I'll talk to the previous guy to see what he used or recommends. Then I'll let you know. Thank you!!

[hedgeknight]

Saw this link today in my email about starting a D&D club at school:

https://dnd.wizards.com/resources/educators

[Jernau35]

That's a very useful link. I'm going to get started on it right away. Thanks!

I told my AP the other day that I'd definitely like to run a D&D club. She said that quite a few kids had been asking about it. Still waiting to hear when everything is expected to start.

[Jernau35]

I thought it was about time for an update for you all. The club is up and running now. We've reached session 4. I'm running them through The Lost Mines of Phandelver. (I'm actually surprised none of them have played it).

I'm running two groups, one on Tuesdays and one on Thursdays. The Tuesday group is mostly kids who have played before. The Thursday group is mostly kids who haven't. Definitely different experiences to run as a DM. The Tuesday group is much louder and tries to constantly push the rules (who would have thought DND players would do that!). It's a challenge to run because I'm no expert on 5e, so there's a lot of "keep the lid on the box" going on there. I also have to ensure the 2-3 newbies get their chance to take part.

The Thursday group is quite different. With fewer experienced players, everyone gets a turn. And the experienced players are more helpful to them. The main "problem" in this group is that they don't know the unspoken "rules": Don't split the party!, If the DM says "Are you absolutely sure .." so I'm doing a lot more "cat herding" (which admittedly is more fun than just hammering down rules-lawyers.)

Hedgeknight: I sent off for the stuff in that link right after you passed it on to me. The boxed set arrived on Monday. Looks pretty cool. I think there's a double set of pre-gens etc in the box since it's meant to be used with a school club. Thanks again!

raven4544: Unfortunately I wasn't able to take you up on your offer. I put up a sign up sheet, expecting it to fill up fast and give me an idea of how many players I would have, then I could have let you know. But despite the fact that many staff were telling me how popular the club would be...I got 6-7 names.

So I figured it wasn't worth contacting you for such a small number. I left for home on Friday evening (sign up deadline) figuring I'd have a small group to run and I'd take the list down when I got to work on Monday morning. Over the weekend I ordered what I thought I'd need from Amazon.

When I went to take the list down at 8:30 on Monday morning there were 22 names (for 16 spots). i just decided to keep things simple by doubling my Amazon order. Thanks again for the offer though!

[dmw71]

I thought it was about time for an update for you all. The club is up and running now. We've reached session 4.

This is awesome... and a fitting milestone post!

5000k.png (140.29 KiB) Viewed 820 times

Definitely feel free to keep sharing the occasional update. I know I'd love to hear them!

[Rex]

Agreed, excellent update. I ran a D&D club at the local library in the late 80's for 3 years and it was fun.

[hedgeknight]

6-7 is about right. Our afterschool club has about that right now. Any more and you run the risk of doubled chaos! It's like herding cats to get everyone onboard anyway

[Jernau35]

An update from my school groups that I thought you might find amusing. (We're playing the 5e "Lost Mines of Phandelver" adventure).

Both the Tuesday (experienced) and Thursday (newbie) groups had reached the town of Thundertree. The druid there agreed to help them with the next part of their quest if they chased away a young green dragon from a ruined tower in the town.

I nerfed the dragon's bite & claw damage, and the druid cast Resist Poison on all members of each group, so if they stayed away from it's teeth and claws, it should have been tough but not deadly.

The tower also had half of its roof missing and the dragon piled up fallen debris from this inside the only door into the tower, making it impossible to get in. I made sure that each group had a pair of Boots of Levitation prior to arriving in town.

So...the obvious thing for the party to do would be to Levitate & climb up to the roof and rain down destruction on the surprised dragon below, right...? How could it fail?

Experienced players: the entire party snuck up to tower, then relentlessly attacked the barricaded door until it finally collapsed. Whereupon, the fully alerted dragon breathed upon them. The dragon then escaped via the roof and flew around menacingly. The characters didn't actually take much damage because of the Resist Poison. However, the experienced players meta-gamed how much damage they'd probably take in a fight. Not liking the odds, they offered to pay the dragon a ransom to let them go (which he accepted).

Newbies: half the group wandered around outside, laying bear traps, shouting abuse at the dragon and hiding in a tree. The other half relentlessly attacked the barricaded door. A very good dice roll actually broke through the door quickly, but the waiting dragon still breathed upon them (again, minimal damage). The newbies immediately charged, with the barbarian leading the way.
Round 1: players roll terrible, dragon rolls great.
Round 2: Rest of party turns up. Players roll terrible, dragon rolls great.

At this point, I was terrified that I was about to TPK the whole group. I was trying desperately to think of way out of this. Being newbies, the players were completely ignorant of the level of danger they were in, and attacked again.
Round 3: players roll very well, dragon rolls terrible.
Round 4: players roll very, very well. Dragon rolls terrible.

In two rounds the players inflict over 100 points of damage and the dragon bugs out. The dice (and Dunning-Kruger) saves the day!

[Scott308]

I ran this for my kids years ago. My daughter's bard was incredibly charismatic. She ended up telling the dragon of a larger property, much more fitting for such a magnificent dragon. Then she rolled 20-something on her Persuasion check. The dragon jumped at the offer and left Thundertree for his new residence.

[Jernau35]

That's a really creative solution. Cool!

When I created the pre-gens for these groups I didn't include any bards (or warlocks or sorcerers). Warlocks because I didn't want to have anybody claiming that their patron was a Demon Lord (don't need any angry parents!) and Sorcerors because I'm not sure how they work.

I'm not sure why I didn't include a Bard. Probably because I don't need to deal with 8th grade boys asking me if they can roll to seduce the serving girl!

[Rex]

LOL, all good points though.

[Jernau35]

One of the groups finally arrived at Cragmaw castle, the goblin lair. I'd googled a picture of a dank looking castle in a forest, with a few tufts of swamp grass in the foreground.

As soon as I displayed it I was met with a chorus of:
"They said I was daft to build a castle in a swamp!"
"It fell over. So I built another one."
"That one burned down, leaned over, then fell into the swamp."
"So I built another one. And that one stayed up".



The editions may change but some things stay the same.