What is your backstory? (Can you tell us a little about yourself, including your background in educational gaming?)

I consider myself an “old school” TTRPG gamer. I remember finding the D&D BASIC set in Toys R Us probably in 1980. Like a typical 80s gaming nerd, I played with friends and then had gaming groups in college. We played all sorts of things like Call of Cthulhu, Shadowrun, Vampire:the Gathering, and Paranoia. I also started LARPing in college as well. 

As for getting involved with educational games, I was lucky to be in a gifted program in elementary school where they used “sims” or “educational simulations”. They were essentially educational TTRPGs and I remember we did one where we created an Indian village (obviously not appropriate today), one called “Flight” where we were solo airplane pilots, and another one where we were in small groups and created our own countries. These were a great way to learn and we always looked forward to doing them each year.

So when I got into education and teaching, I naturally wanted to use game-based learning as much as I could. When I’m teaching my own class, I try to use different kinds of games as it does keep the kids engaged. When I am doing curriculum design, I always pitch games…and usually fail because they’re seen as too complicated to produce and teachers tend to be resistant to them. Many are starting to come around though.

But I’m really excited to see that educational or serious games are having a bit of a moment now with the popularity of Minecraft Education, Roblox for education, and many more analog educational games. 

When did you start playing TTRPG’s?  And what is one single favorite moment from one of the TTRPGs you’ve played?

I must have been 8 or 9. Still have my original dice too. Favorite moment was probably from a Call of Cthulhu campaign in college. In typical fashion, it was late into the night and we had been gaming for a while. We played CoC as more camp than true horror. 

As usual, our intrepid Scooby gang was facing some unspeakable horror. This time it was giant, walking telephone pole things. They might have been actual trees or just large, cigar-shaped horrors but I can’t remember exactly. These things were stomping all over the town and we were trying to figure out how to stop them. We got to the local gas station, which was, of course, closed, and managed to wake up the owner, who was confused and didn’t understand the gravity of the situation. 

My friend directed his attention to the oncoming evil telephone pole and very dramatically said, “WEEEEE NEeeenEEED SoMe GAAAS!!” 

It was hilarious but doesn’t convey that well in text. Needless to say, we got the gas and lit those suckers on fire, saving the town, mostly. 

When it comes to incorporating specific educational goals into the games you run, what do you usually take into consideration? 

First is always the classic: Time, Cheap, Well-Made – pick any 2. Working for an educational publishing company, we’re always on timelines and have strict budgets. So we usually opt for mini-games because we know they can be built within time and budget. When I’m designing alone, I can pick cheap and well-made because I’m not on any deadlines to get anything done. 

Overall considerations for designing educational games are subject matter, learning objectives, grade/age of the students, and classroom time/limitations. Teachers aren’t going to use games unless they know it fits into their curriculum and they have ample time to run the game. Everything is going to take twice as long as you think it does, as well. I think a lot of game designers don’t consider this. They think if I make it, teachers will use it and that’s not the case.  

What are your top recommendations or methods that you suggest when it comes to implementing educational goals into TTRPGs?

Number 1 goal above anything else is to clearly define your learning objectives. 

All learning objectives should be action verbs like “identify”, “explain”, “calculate”, “describe”, etc. In the ed world, we start our objectives with “SWBAT” – Students Will Be Able To [objective]. 

A HUGE mistake I see all the time is that people use non-action verbs like “understand” or “know”. How do you know students understand or know something? They demonstrate a skill, right? So understand, know, and related verbs shouldn’t be used for learning objectives. 

On that, learning objectives need to be achievable in a game. This means that you will probably have to break down broader or overarching objectives into what we call “enabling learning objectives”. This is also known as “scaffolding”. For example, if the object is “Create a food web” then an enabling objective would be “Identify predator and prey animals”. 

If you are struggling with your game design, you probably need to go back and fix your objectives. Chances are they are too broad or aren’t scaffolded/broken down into enough to turn into good game mechanics. 

My other big recommendation is to FIRST figure out basic game mechanics BEFORE developing the larger game. Unless your game has to be set in a specific time period or place, you can use an infinite number of settings/worlds/scenarios for your game. But I see too many people hung up on worldbuilding and then have to kludge it into the learning objectives and not the other way around. 

The two biggest issues I see when judging ed games is “mechanics without content” and “content without mechanics”. Ed games are first and foremost, GAMES, and if it is not fun to play, it’s not going to be a good ed game regardless of the content. 

Lastly, simple is better in ed games. Don’t try and cram everything into one game. You can always make more games. 

What advice do you have for someone who is just starting to combine education and TTRPGs?  Where should they begin?

I’d begin by playing as many games as you can – good ones, bad ones, ed games, etc. Like being a good writer starts with reading a lot. Learn about different types of mechanics and game play in both analog/TTRPG and video games. There can be a lot of overlap. 

Ask kids what games they like to play and why they like to play them or why they don’t like to play them. Watch them play games and get them to play your games. 

I remember when I got my niece to play my chemistry Minecraft game, she immediately went to the mine and started mining – in the dark. I told her that she could collect resources to make torches but she was happy mining away in the dark. All my carefully crafted content to teach basic chemistry was ignored for nether blocks, lol. 

That brings me to my final comment: No game survives contact with the players. 

I’ve written scenarios or characters that I was really proud of and thought they were cool and they were either completely ignored by players, glossed over, or used in a way that I had never anticipated. Thus is the way of the game designer. 

You have to be willing to fail big if you are going to make games that people will want to play.

Thank you, Deb, for the awesome interview!! I appreciate your insights into ed TTRPGs, and thank you for working on making these games for others too!

You can find links to Deb’s work here – please go check out her games!

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