Featured Project, GOOD NATURE: The Complete Facilitator’s Guide – An Educational TTRPG by Marco A. Torres

In 2022, I played and reviewed a copy of GOOD NATURE (you can find the review here) and it was an awesome game to run with my kid. Now, it’s crowdfunding for a physical print and educational guides! Find out more about this awesome project and resource here!

*As a note, the intro for this was written by Steph from TTRPGkids, and the below description was written by the game’s creator

Drawing inspiration from educational tools such as social stories, journal reflections, and positive behavior interventions, GOOD NATURE is a cooperative storytelling game that uses simple dice-matching mechanics and basic journaling to encourage collaboration and creative problem-solving. It is easily adaptable to any audience and genre, but designed for use with students in a classroom setting.

A game of GOOD NATURE features:

• Gameplay structured around scenarios consisting of “Situations” — prompts that are resolved through cooperative dice-rolling and storytelling. 
• Player interactions using the 3-L system—Lead, Learn, and Lift-Up—for supporting one another and determining how many dice to roll. 
• A token-economy system that rewards players with progress even if a resolution isn’t successful. 
• A Player Journal for documenting results and creating narratives out of gameplay. 
• Awards, including physical “badges” to mark player achievements and serve as mementos of the stories they created together.

As a classroom teacher, GOOD NATURE was built from years of lessons and activities I used to gamify my own elementary and middle-school special education classrooms. My focus in using games is to help students develop social-emotional skills and English-language development within a safe, fun structure while also providing practice with writing and discussion skills, and GOOD NATURE lets them do that all while collaborating with peers. 

The original design was released as part of DriveThru RPG’s summer game jam, PocketQuest 2022. That version contains the basic rules and a scenario—Science Camp. The game is now being expanded into a digital and print book that serves as both a rulebook and curriculum guide for educators to help integrate the game into academic lessons and other educational settings.

GOOD NATURE: The Complete Facilitator’s Guide includes the rules of the game and in-depth guidance for educators, parents, and other facilitators to create and run games for students that focus on and fully integrate educational and social-emotional learning objectives and standards. It contains the following:

• Rules: Everything you need to know to play a scenario, including how to create a character, mechanics to resolve situations, and how to use the Player Journal to create narratives.
• Facilitator’s Guide: The core of the book provides guidance on how to use the game in small group or whole class settings, establish norms, build a scenario using Common Core Standards, and sample grading rubrics.
• Situation Prompts for school-based social situations and academic subjects, as well as guidance on how to create your own prompts for each content area.
• Handouts: Master sheets for journals, gameplay awards, badges, and tokens that can be used in game or as classroom rewards.
• The Community Carnival: A complete, ready-to-play scenario!

GOOD NATURE: The Complete Facilitator’s Guide is currently crowdfunding as part of ZineMo and Tabletop Nonstop until March 1st on Crowdfundr.

Go check out the Crowdfundr to support this awesome project, and if you liked this post and want to keep up to date on other features projects, make sure to subscribe to the TTRPGkids monthly newsletter! Stay up to date on the latest reviews, tips and tricks, game and podcast list updates, and more! Thank you for playing tabletop RPGs with your kids and sharing this awesome hobby with the next generation!