By Nicolas Williams
For the last few years, I have been attempting to create and streamline a Dungeons and Dragons unit to be used during my ELA V courses as a brief reprieve between articles and literary responses. To add a bit of context, this type of lesson plan has only been tested in my very particular situation, where my class sizes generally range between eight to twelve. As a result, in a bigger school setting, Dungeons and Dragons might be more effective as an extracurricular or enrichment activity. Managing 8 rampaging warriors and mages is already a bit of a challenge, and 30 might very well be impossible.
In larger settings, playing a video game might be more useful – the narrative structuring and more direct, streamlined style lends itself well to manageability. Dungeons and Dragons often ends up being either more slow paced or chaotic than you expect when you are putting together a campaign. Sessions often devolve into a whole lot of goofing around. This is a reason why it is so awesome – it manages to break down walls and creates a laid back, jokey environment where no idea is too zany to at least try.
When I was in high school, I always wished that I could learn how to play, but all of the rules seemed like an insurmountable roadblock. Luckily, modern software has all but solved this issue.
Using Generative AI to Build Your Adventure
Recently, I submitted a project proposal as the TIF (Technology Integration Facilitator) for my school. I wanted to find a way to streamline the integration of DnD in the classroom, especially for teachers, who might find organization and management of a campaign overwhelming. Every teacher is currently facing the scary prospects of AI in schools, but most energy has been focused on the idea of students using it for plagiarism. I challenged myself to think of ways that we could leverage AI how it was meant to be used: as a tool to enrich and facilitate our jobs as teachers:
| Project Title: Using Generative AI to Unlock Dungeons and Dragons for Students | Duration: 2 weeks |
| Digital Competency Dimensions Addressed: Students will improve their problem-solving skills and strategic thinking by interacting with AI-driven game scenarios. Students will develop teamwork skills by collaborating with AI, which can act as a facilitator, narrator, or adversary in the game. Students will become more comfortable using AI tools and technology in educational contexts. Students will gain insight into how AI makes decisions, particularly in game mechanics like randomness, NPC (non-playable-character) behavior, and environment responses. | |
| Description: To begin, students will use a combination of AI and DnD Beyond, a Hasbro owned and managed DnD platform, to create their characters. For more information on DnD Beyond, see further into the article. Beyond the basic statistical creation, they will start by planning what TYPE of character they would like, and then use AI to flesh out the background of their character. I will use AI to create modular scenarios for the students’ characters to play through. We will then play the actual campaigns live in the classroom using various tools (DND Beyond, Roll20 – which is a map-building tool for the game). We will use a combination of digital tools – laptops, AI, smartboard to project the map, as well as physical tools like pen, paper, and dice. After every session, students will work on reflections to further flesh out the history, backgrounds, and group dynamics of their characters. | |
By asking Chat GPT, which is probably the most commonly known and used generative AI software, for help, I can have it create bite-sized gaming sessions which could be played over the span of a few 50-minute periods. I used the following prompt: “create a short, 3-session Dungeons and Dragons campaign to be played with high school students.” Although in this case, the campaign is broken up into three separate sessions, here is what ChatGPT put together for the first part:
Session 1: The Call to Adventure
Plot Summary:
The adventurers are in a small village near the edge of a dark forest. A wealthy merchant named Valeria Silverwing hires the group, claiming to need their help to retrieve an artifact, “The Heart of Aredal,” from a ruined temple deep within the forest. Valeria believes the Heart has the power to heal her ailing mother, though she warns that it is guarded by traps and wild creatures.
Key Events:
- Introduction to Valeria: The party meets Valeria at a local tavern. She’s dressed in expensive clothes and offers a large sum of gold in exchange for their help.
- The Journey Begins: The group sets off toward the forest. Along the way, they must navigate a few environmental hazards (such as a swamp or wild animals).
- The First Encounter: A group of goblins attacks the party, hoping to steal the map Valeria gave them. The goblins can be defeated, or the players can try to negotiate or outwit them.
Key NPCs:
- Valeria Silverwing: A wealthy merchant with a hidden agenda.
- Goblins: Creatures who might be working for someone else interested in the relic.
What we have here is a great starting point for a discussion-based adventure. The characters (the students) have everything they need to get started. They have a setting, a mission with stakes, and characters to interact with. I would be roleplaying as Valeria Silverwing, the wealthy merchant, and could further flesh out my own character to establish an interesting foil for the players to interact with.
One potential issue with the above adventure is that, if you have never played a role playing game before, it might be too vague. Thankfully, ChatGPT can further develop the scenario, adding more detail.
I followed up with a second query, simply asking ChatGPT to “elaborate on Session 1.” The resulting information is too detailed to include entirely in this article, but it fleshes out every aspect of the session. For example:
The Journey Begins:
After gathering some local information, the players decide whether to accept Valeria’s offer or decline. If they accept, Valeria hands them a map showing the approximate location of the ruin deep in the forest and tells them they’ll need to travel for two days through wild terrain. She also mentions that a guide is available in the village, a tracker named Orin, who knows the forest well and might be able to help them navigate.
- Orin: If the players ask, Orin is a grizzled, no-nonsense tracker who’s seen his fair share of dangers. He offers to guide the group through the forest for a small fee. He’s distrustful of the villagers’ tales about the goblins but warns that the forest is unpredictable and treacherous.
Already, we are presented with two choices that the players must discuss amongst themselves, and to which they must come up with a consensus: do we, as a party, agree to take on Valeria’s quest? If we do agree, then do we believe in our own abilities to find the ruins, or should we enlist the help of the tracker, Orin?
Dungeons and Dragons is also interesting, because oftentimes decisions compound upon the previous ones. For example, if the players decide to find the ruins on their own, which of them should be in charge of tracking the correct and most efficient trail? If they pick the wrong trail, what next? What about if they get lost in the forest, or stumble upon a band of deadly goblins?
Each of these discussions targets various skills under the umbrella of the TALK competency, and beyond that, can help bridge the gap for students who might feel uncomfortable talking through themselves and their own voices. Expressing your ideas might be difficult for Jalen, but for Thorin Stormwind, the dwarven warrior, it might feel easier.
Speaking of Thorin Stormwind (the dwarven warrior) – you might ask, how do students go through the process of character building in the first place?
Personally, I like to use a combination of the official Hasbro tool, DnDBeyond, and classic old-fashioned journaling and creative writing.
DnD Beyond to Help Build and Track Characters
DnDBeyond is a straightforward tool that walks you through all of the steps required to create your dream fantasy adventurer. It also allows you to use some basic functionality that you would find if you were playing using pen and paper, like the ability to track your inventory, upgrade your character, and roll digital dice.
The teacher can create a new account, and then create a limited amount of characters with that account, assigning them to students. The character-creation wizard is robust – you can create a character either by answering a series of prompting questions, or, if you like, you can really dive into all of the statistics and spells.
The above image is taken from a character sheet that I created. Although it looks complicated, the software has useful tooltips to describe the functions of different terms. The DnD Beyond website also provides thorough documentation to explain the basic rules of the game. On top of that, the character sheets are interactive.
Let’s say, for example, a character stumbles upon an injured deer in the forest and wants to attempt nursing it back to health. I (as the dungeon-master), would ask the character to roll an “Animal Handling” check to see if they are successful. The player would simply click the “+4” next to Animal Handling and a digital die would be rolled to see if they are successful or not.
Connecting DND to the classroom
After each adventure module is completed, I like to have students unpack their experiences through more conventional ELA classroom activities such as journaling or creative writing. I often also get the students to illustrate their characters, just for the fun of it. The nice thing about Dungeons and Dragons is that it is not just a fun activity to kill time, it can realistically be used as an assessment tool which hits all three competencies in the Quebec ELA program.