Dungeons and Dragons and Beyond

By: Stephanie Campbell, Ian Mustard, Ben Wiebe

Teacher: Stephanie Campbell, Ian Mustard, and Ben Wiebe.

Date: October 18th, 2023
Class: Grade 8 English language arts
Unit: Creating original text

DND and Beyond

Description:
Previous Knowledge:
- Characteristics: motivations, defining traits, physical traits and personality.
- Setting: We have created a setting as a class for our characters to exist within.
- Students will also have had group brainstorming sessions with one another to germinate
ideas for their characters

Summary Overview:

Using Dungeons and Dragons as a teaching tool can be an incredibly effective cross-curricular
tool. Students will create characters and decide their race, class, and background. Students
choose personal and physical character traits and develop an ideology for their character.
Students will decide what their character values are and how they interact with the world.
Characters can also have weaknesses that affect their choices. Once students have created a
character they will write a backstory for their character that considers their traits, race class,
background, ability and flaws.

In this class, we are teaching students how to use DnD Beyond’s Character Builder, and having
them explore it in order to make character sheets for their own stories. Students will use the
quick build feature which generates ability scores for the students; offloading the extraneous
load of the mathematical mechanics of the game.

Objectives:
General Outcomes:
Students will listen, speak, read, write, view and represent to comprehend and respond
personally and critically to oral, print and other media texts.

Specific Outcomes:
2.4 create oral, print and other media texts with both main and minor characters.
Lesson Objectives:
1) Students are introduced to the character creation tool of D&D Beyond and the next
component of their assignment.

2) Students will be able to create their fantasy characters to populate the story world
created in class - with an understanding of how characteristics, backgrounds, and
beliefs can be interconnected.

Adaptations:

● If students would like to work together they may create a character with a partner.
● Reading Adaptation? -> For students struggling with the reading & idea generation for a
character, we will have a slideshow of various “character idea art” from Pinterest on a
projected screen so students can have a visual aid for writing about a character.
● Technology Adaptation? Provide a piece of paper so students can “write down” major
components of the character they want to remember when shifting between tabs on the
site.
● Provide definitions of classes and backgrounds.

Materials/Resources:

- Access to computer lab/laptops

- Paper/Pencil for brainstorming background

Instructions/Procedures:

TIME ACTIVITY
Completed
Anticipatory Set
2 min 8:30 8:32 √
Main Activities
8 min 8:32 8:40 Overview of how to use the (quick build)
Character Creator

30 min 8:40 9:10 Building A Character & Writing a Backstory

Closure
2 min 9:10 9:12
Assessment:

Include the methods that will be used to gauge students' understanding of concepts. This
could include both formative and summative assessment techniques.
- Walk around as students are building their characters (observation)
- Ask students to share their character concepts near the end of class. (Discussion/Sponge)
- This is a component of a larger (summative) assignment, where the students compose a
story with the character(s) they create.

Teacher Notes:

The slideshow should include key slides for character building to be shared with the class.
Also, include a photo slideshow of character ideas.
-
Once the activity is started, the Teacher should give periodic reminders for the students to have
progressed towards writing their character backstories; ex. 20 minutes left (you should be
moving into writing your backstory now), 10 minutes left (you should be halfway done with
your backstory) 5 minutes left (5 minutes left, you should be wrapping up the backstory).

Reflection

Our lesson intended to introduce students to the character creation tool of Dungeons &

Dragons Beyond (D&D). Students will demonstrate their knowledge of the relationship between

people’s characteristics, backgrounds and beliefs by writing a backstory for a character they

create. Students will have to consider how their characters’ traits and ideologies have developed

and how they affect the character. Before this lesson, students have been introduced to

motivations, defining traits, physical traits, and personal characteristics present in our lives as

well as the D&D world we have created. Writing a background story for a character can help

students understand how these factors influence the way a person interacts with the world. Using

the D&D character creation tool allows students to explore character development and creative

writing.
 This technology supports learning by giving students the opportunity to make choices

about their learning. We will be using the quick build function on the character creation tool

because we felt the entire process would be overwhelming for students. With that being said,

students still get to change generated responses and make their own choices in quick build.

Prager (2019) explored the effects of role-playing games (RPGs) in the classroom and found that

students engaging in RPGs showed to be more intrinsicly motivated and interested in learning;

They demonstrated higher levels of self-directed learning and self-efficacy. Understanding that

RPGs can engage students more in learning supports our lesson idea to use D&D to support

student autonomy.

I think the lesson was presented well, however, I think I would have benefited from being

more knowledgeable on D&D. My group members both had experience playing D&D and in the

lesson, they were able to direct conversations better, whereas I only really knew how to use the

character creation tool and the content of this lesson. There was some benefit to being introduced

to D&D as we started the assignment because I had questions that students would likely have as

well. It felt like a practice trial because we got a good idea of how students who aren't

experienced in D&D would handle the assignment. After learning about D&D and its potential

uses in the classroom, I am very interested in using this as a cross-curricular tool; D&D could be

effective for social, math, language arts, and even gym.

One thing I would change would be to present a previous lesson instead. This lesson is

planned after the D&D setting was created. Students have also already learned the characteristics

and brainstormed ideas for their characters in groups. If we had done the lesson that initially

introduced D&D to the class, both myself and our audience would have learned more. The
character creation tool is an excellent resource for students as they explore creative writing,

however, there are multiple ways D&D could be incorporated into the classroom.

At the end of the lesson, we asked the audience whether or not D&D is an effective

educational technology, and there were no arguments against it. We discussed different ways

D&D could be used, including examples of teaching resources available on the D&D website. I

think we did a good job presenting D&D as a tool promoting student autonomy, interaction,

creativity, and self-efficacy.

This lesson would require booking out a computer lab or a set of devices available in our

school. We presented this lesson with a short PowerPoint and would include a slideshow of

character idea art from Pinterest, to inspire students who might be struggling to decide what they

want their character to be like.

For this activity to help students in their creative writing assignments, characters must

align with the objectives of the writing assignment. We will also give students reminders of how

much longer they have to work, along with approximate stages of where they should be. We

predict that certain students will spend all of their time creating their characters, and we want to

make sure that students are focusing primarily on the character's background story, not on the

character creation itself. Throughout this lesson, students watch the character creation process,

collaborate with others to brainstorm ideas, create a character, and connect character traits to

real-life skills and values. At the end of this assignment, students will have created a story that

recognizes how attributes and backgrounds influence a person's interactions with the world.

Overall, I think D&D is a great resource to help students understand how different

perspectives take shape, and how they affect the way we exist in the world. As a writing

assignment, students can explore any or every aspect of their character that they would like to.
Hopefully, students will start to realize on their own that to fully explore one trait you have to

understand different aspects of the character. In the long term, I think that D&D will increase

student interest in creative writing and character development.

References

Prager, R. H. P. (2019). Exploring the use of role-playing games in education. Master of teaching

resource journal. https://mtrj.library.utoronto.ca/index.php/mtrj/article/view/29606/25764

D&D Beyond. Character creation tool.

https://www.dndbeyond.com/characters?utm_source=adwords&utm_campaign=10690194905&utm_term=113938293548&utm_conte

nt=452561258317&gsc=1&utm_medium=g_5651889&gclid=CjwKCAjwp8OpBhAFEiwAG7NaEiRw6XpuDteDSNq6cF6zkB8dEn

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