Adam Watson shares his XP from using and researching TTRPGs for EDU, and on building a wonderful community of play-focused educators in KY! Learn how he’s connected with others who use games for EDU and how TTRPGs have a different impact on students from traditional teaching methods.

The following is a write-in interview conducted between Adam Watson (the interviewee) and Steph Campbell from TTRPGkids (the interviewer). This interview is posted with permission from the interviewee.

What is your backstory?

As both a career and a calling, I’ve been a Kentucky public school educator since 2005. I was first a classroom high school English teacher.  Even in those days, I tried to find ways to bring my passions into my learning spaces.  

I’ve been a huge Star Wars fan ever since I was four years old and saw Star Wars: A New Hope in 1978, a re-release at a drive-in theater in Las Vegas, where I lived at the time.  Many years later, in my last year as a teacher, I got a mini-grant to purchase a class set of Ian Doescher’s William Shakespeare’s Star Wars: Verily, A New Hope.  

I created a whole “Star Wars and Shakespeare” unit that culminated in Doescher joining the class for a Skype talk.  The Skype reference probably dates the story just a bit!  Anyhoo, the whole experience led to my materials getting hosted online by Quirk Books, who publishes Doescher’s William Shakespeare Star Wars series, and it got me a reference in Star Wars Insider magazine.  I was pretty pumped to have a connection, even in the smallest way, with my most favorite franchise.

After nine years of teaching, I then became a district Digital Learning Coordinator, guiding them in a 1:1 initiative with Chromebooks and a Google Domain, back when both were considered very marginal and uncommon choices.  

A few years ago, my next hyperjump was to the Ohio Valley Educational Cooperative, which serves 14 school districts with over 150,000 students.  I’m currently OVEC’s Digital Learning Consultant.

How did you start with TTRPGs?  

One thing I joke about is that Dungeon & Dragons is my twin sibling.  D&D was born in January 1974, and I was born a month later.  So we both are celebrating over a half century of existence.  Maybe it was always my destiny to play tabletop role-playing games!  

As it turned out, when I was around ten in the mid-1980’s, a cousin introduced me to my first TTRPG, which was TSR’s Star Frontiers.  Remember, I was already marinated in sci-fi, so Star Frontiers was an easy sell. From there, I couldn’t get enough.  

There was D&D and other TSR games I bought or played, like the old FASERIP system of Marvel Super Heroes, but also James Bond 007 from Victory Games, Car Wars from Steve Jackson, Star Trek from FASA. And of course, the first Star Wars RPG from West End Games! I played a bit with making TTRPGs, like homebrewing a custom G.I. Joe RPG with some friends, or trying to adapt the Mad Max world into a game. When I couldn’t get a group together to play, I was devouring solo gamebooks like Joe Dever’s Lone Wolf series.  

The 1980’s was a golden time for TTRPGs, and a golden time for me.  But by the end of middle school, all those boxes and rulebooks got put away in a bin.  It was just too hard to find time and other people to play, and I started spending my money on other stuff.  But the bin followed me around for decades, both physically and mentally.  I never forgot how immersed I was when playing tabletop role-playing games, how much joy they brought me.  

Jump ahead to a few years ago, and I have to share that I started to play again.  It’s Fifth Edition D&D in an ongoing campaign. Along the way, I’ve presented at Gen Con, at GAMA Expo. I’ve visited Gary Gygax’s house where D&D was born.  I’ve learned about so many new game publishers, majors and independents, rocking it with awesome tabletop games.  And I’ve met some delightful gamers, including people that are passionate about TTRPGs in education. Like Dan Reem and Tom Gross, the educators and podcasters behind Teachers in the Dungeon. Organizations like CAR-PGa, NerdLouisville, Dice Alliance, Let’s Quest.  And people like you, Steph!  

It’s really another golden age.  I’m very blessed and fortunate.

Can you tell us a bit about how you started to consider how TTRPGs can be used for educational purposes?

When I was a teacher, I played around a little with TTRPG infusion in the classroom, enough to intrigue me about the possibilities  – another example of bringing my passions into my teaching.  I would also collect the random article here and there about the benefits of role playing games for young people, although mainly about therapy, or an afterschool club.  

I had faith that it could have a positive impact on instruction.  

What I was hoping for was to find stories about actual K-12 teachers using it in their classrooms, particular local ones.  Because, it’s one thing to read about a teacher on the West or East Coast doing innovative things, or a professor using TTRPGs in a college, but it’s quite another to find an actual K-12 teacher just up the highway or the hallway.  

A local example makes it seem more possible.  So, just before I joined OVEC in 2022, I launched Kentucky Educators for Role Playing Games (kyedrpg.com). 

It was a leap of faith, a bit of a Field of Dreams, kind of a “build the site and they will come.”  And pretty quickly, I was delighted in finding educators to celebrate, both inside of Kentucky and beyond.  

I went deep into research, finding great resources, articles, case studies.  I found gaming resources and tools that either could be implemented into a K-12 classroom as is, or could be easily adapted.  And of course, as word spread, I would get recommendations.  “You should talk to so and so.”  Digital platforms or videos to check out, or teachers trying out stuff.  

From there, I started leading professional development sessions on TTRPGs in education, and I have to admit, I was surprised.  About the numbers of people that attended – they turned out to be popular – and the kinds of educators that came.  Over and over, I would hear a variation of, “I’ve never played a game like this, but my students have seen Stranger Things or Critical Role, and they’re excited about D & D. So I want to see if I can bring that excitement into my classroom.”  

D&D just has the name recognition when people talk about TTRPGs, it’s just so popular, now more than ever, which I’d never thought I’d see. But the teachers need frameworks to face their fears.  They don’t want to memorize hundreds of pages of rules, they may want to dip their toes into TTRPGs instead of diving head first. They want to see and hear how it has academic and social-emotional benefits, that it really helps with durable skills like effective communication and productive collaboration.  And how do you facilitate 30+ students when a typical playgroup is 4 to 6?  

So they need a way in.  

I began to develop those frameworks and strategies and tips to help them with all of those things.  At some point, I thought, there’s a book here.  And that’s what led to Tabletop Roleplaying Games in the Classroom: Infusing Gameplay into K-12 Instruction, publishing later this year by McFarland.

In what ways have you seen TTRPGs having an impact on students?

I’ve discovered so many educators doing awesome things with TTRPGs in their schools and classrooms, and I’m so proud to have the chance to celebrate their stories on my website, in my upcoming book, or both.  I’m happy to share some examples!  

I know there are some great role-playing games out there for younger students (games like 9th Level’s Venture Society), but admittedly, finding elementary teachers using TTRPGs can be a bit more of a challenge.  

That’s why I was really excited to visit Morgan Seely’s class last fall.  She’s a Kentucky fourth grade teacher in Shelby County.  Morgan had her students create a character using a simplified version of D&D.  The students got so excited about their backstories, what they looked like.  The plan was for the students to do some mini-adventures throughout the year, using the adventures as a way of experiencing math and other content.

A parochial Kentucky middle school teacher, Mary Lowe, had students take a famous explorer from history and create a character sheet.  What would their stats be like?  What equipment would they have?  What kind of family bonds and flaws?  Then they had to defend their choices.  The students who did the project did better on the unit test, which is evidence that such learning is deeper than some superficial memorization of random facts.  Also, it shows you can bring in aspects of TTRPGs that can positively impact academics without necessarily playing a whole game.

Chad Collins, who was formerly a Kentucky ELA middle school teacher in Spencer County but is now the district gifted and talented coordinator, designed an entire course around a storyline called “The Academy.”  It’s an elective class for content enrichment – it started as an opportunity for the school’s academic team, but has now opened up to all 6th through 8th grade students, with a different class per grade level.  The storyline is that students enter a world of a magical school, and first have to pick a role, which determines what academic content they will focus on for the quarter; for example, The Beastmaster works on language arts.  After a quarter, they can switch to a new role and new content.  

For each of these roles, Chad has a separate Google Site full of academic quests, or projects.  These are all standards-aligned activities.  Completing a quest earns XP, and the amount of XP at the end of each quarter is what determines your grade.   Additionally, there’s opportunities to earn treasure cards that provide in-class perks, and starting this year, Chad had students actually play some TTRPG one shots as their characters.  Even though his position changed, he still teaches one of The Academy classes. I’ve visited a few times and I’m really amazed how the fantasy theming increases the level of engagement and the quality of the student work.  And of course, I’m always impressed by the amount of work Chad and his co-teachers Michelle Gross and Sarah Parnell put into the design of the class.

One more for the road!  Ben Little is a high school science teacher in Massachusetts I met at a conference and recently got to interview. He created a TTRPG game for his chemistry class where students personify an element from the periodic table.  At its most basic level, it’s a battle royale kind of experience where the elements square off against each other.  But the depth of each student’s character design shows how much they really understand not only their own element, but how they are interrelated, and how they interact. 

They put so much effort into creating these characters that Ben has expanded the amount of opportunities and ways the students can play with them in class.  Hearing his anecdotes is really inspiring, because it shows how we can take a subject that traditionally can be seen as, in his own words, “boring” by many students and make it come alive in an authentic, engaging way.  It shows you that the only limit to how a TTRPG can elevate any content or class is the limit of the instructor’s imagination.  And even though ELA and social studies may seem like easier contents to adapt with tabletop roleplaying games, Ben shows that TTRPG infusion can be done in math- and science-centric classes too.

What’s the most notable difference between TTRPG education and traditional education?

That’s a great question.  To me, the heart of TTRPGs is that it is a co-created story.  

When I have only ten seconds to explain a tabletop role-playing game, I usually say, “It’s a co-created story – with funny shaped dice”.  But anyway, the phrase “co-created story” is pretty potent, right?  In a traditional classroom, it’s about a teacher standing and delivering – standing over the desks or tables, talking to students and not with them, telling content.  And if you’re lucky, the students will memorize the content long enough to do okay on a multiple choice test.  

But in TTRPG-infused education, it’s a room full of learners – and the teacher might be the facilitator or gamemaster, sure, but it’s a co-created learning environment.  Teachers don’t have to be standing over the table, they can be at the table.  

Students role-play, practice durable skills and discover empathy.  Content is not taught, it’s experienced.  And because it’s a co-created story, students have real agency.  By playing a role-playing game, they are deeply immersed and engaged.  

Content is not abstract, it’s concrete.  The learning is authentic.  It’s creative.  It’s vibrant.  

You can’t fake articulating as a character – you are articulating.  

You can’t fake collaborating as a team trying to cooperatively achieve a goal – if you don’t genuinely collaborate, you fail.  

TTRPGs can offer the opportunity for the ultimate performance assessment.

Do you have a final shout out, piece of advice, or statement before we sign off?

I definitely have a few!  First, if you’re an educator new to tabletop roleplaying games, find a beginner’s opportunity to play a TTRPG.  Find a local game shop and check out their event schedule – many offer free or super cheap ways to play a one-shot to see what you think.  D&D is certainly the most popular, but don’t be afraid to try out other TTRPGs too.  It’s helpful to see different game mechanics in action – many are simpler than D&D, although some are more complex.  By joining a game, you might make new friends!  And the people who run the game shop can be a great resource too.  If they know you’re trying to bring TTRPGs into classrooms for students, I guarantee they will be eager to help.

Second,  don’t be afraid and start small.  There are ways you can dip your toe into a TTRPG-infused classroom, perhaps short of actually playing a game, like the character sheet activity I described before.  Or have students play a one-shot for a day or two in a low stakes environment, reflect, try it again with more complex content or more rigorous expectations. Third, I hope that kyedrpg.com and my book can help chart a course for you, or inspire you to try a tabletop roleplaying game in your instruction.  Kids nowadays are really desperate for more joy, for something different in the classroom.  Be their hero.  Be an innovator and inspire the next colleague who’s unsure how to transform their teaching.

Thank you Adam for taking time to share your XP! You’ve had some EXCELLENT examples, and I very much appreciate the work you’ve been doing to investigate and further TTRPG use in the classroom AND for building a community around this teaching method in KY!

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