Suggestions and hints? Role-playing with adolescents in school
Jaakko Koivula:
First run down!
Went about as well as could be expected. Role-playing values not that high, but rather successful and interesting otherwise.
Some of the students had curiously hard time to understand how the rules went, while others grasped the mechanics pretty much instantly. Very interesting to see how people who haven't played any RPGs before at all, just seem to be on so completely different starting level about narrating stuff. Some can't/won't come up with anything, while others happily take hold of the story and move it along.
Im not sure how much of it comes down to skill, how much to self-confidence and how much to just actively not wanting to "get it" and then playing sub-optimally.
As I said, the game itself can't be called very successful, but it showed some interesting things. For example, students seemed to have a great urge to move the story forward ten years, to make the Child as old as they were now. My kitchen-psychology explanation could be, that they are more interested about the issues they are having now, than with the baggage they have left from earlier childhood. For adults this might be rather different. The Child is further away and you can use it easier to handle stuff, than if that childhood is still rather close etc. Not sure about this, just some hunch or idea.
I might try to make the Child really young for the next group. Like three or something. It could help the students to disconnect themselves more from it, and also maybe help them treat the Child better. Tahvo (our 6-year old Child) got nearly beaten up some seven times, was taken into a foster home from his nazi-parents and was an utter bullying bastard himself. Looking back I realize, that he was actually pretty much a 15-year old multi-troubled youth, in the body of a first-grader.
I also have a question. How do you present the game, so it turns into a Toy Story adventure with talking and moving toys? So far I've always tried to compare the game to Toy Story etc, but not once we've had a moving toy yet. If I managed to take the game into a more magical singing and dancing toys -direction, it might help to break the ice and also make the game more fun to the students.
If Im playing with my adult friends, it's ok if the game turns into a gritty story about how grown-ups treat children horribly. We'll still think it was a nice session. On the other hand if I want to show adolescents that role-playing games are fun and nice, I might want to keep the domestic violence etc. to a minimum...
Still, interesting session. Live and learn, gotta try to do some things differently with the second group.
JoyWriter:
I actually wouldn't have gone with a child themed game; 15-18 year olds are basically immature adults, and especially at the younger side are moving on from childish stuff to learning about the adult world. Many 15 year olds are first getting the hang of the political and philosophical world outside them, at least to the point of thinking they've worked out "how it goes". In my experience they don't want to escape back into childhood, they want to grab hold of those adult things and use them themselves, even if they don't have a full comprehension of how they work. That's just 13-16, older people are considering the pattern of where their life will go, where they will go to uni, what they are really about etc.
If you can hit some of that stuff, you can create some powerful experiences. As with empowerment, don't hit it too square, don't require them to "solve it" to keep playing, but add it as overtones and undertones, things that they can make a statement about, or be inspired to think about.
In terms of actual games, what does that mean? Well you might want a game that specifies overlapping forms of identity, and contains a mix of human and mechanical problem solving, but that's all I've got for the moment.
Noclue:
I think I would recommend My Life With Master. I know its about violence and villainy, but you can easily make that more cartoon violence and villainy rather than the usual sick and twisted stuff. You play the master and send them out on monstrous tasks all over the fictional town until one of them rebels and destroys you.
Jaakko Koivula:
Cheers for the input. I won't go more deeply into the discussion about adolescents not wanting to deal with their childhood but rather going for the adult stuff straight. I just think that they need to do a bit of both and that they get enough chances to think about adult stuff in their normal lives.
And yeah, Im on the same lines about empowerment as JoyWriter is. I sort of think that you can't "empower" anyone else, you can just try to create a situation where someone can accomplish something and gets a chance to feel good about it.
Learning the rules, creating a cohesive story and spending nice time with other people (not that given with all of these guys) might actually be pretty energizing experiences for these guys.
The game I've chosen was Under the Bed and for good or bad, that's what we have been playing and will play.
One session to go anymore, I'll try to do a summary of the whole experience once the whole thing is over.
JoyWriter:
Fair doos!
Wish I could be more helpful, look forward to hearing how you make it work.
Navigation
[0] Message Index
[#] Next page
[*] Previous page