When we look at students who say they don’t like school or who seem like they aren’t motivated to learn new material, there are a ton of reasons given for why they’re not engaging.  There are many more than the ones listed here, but some of the common explanations that come up are that: 

• It looks hard
• They don’t like being bad at it in the beginning
• There’s a lack of support
• They don’t see the point
• It’s not fun

When we look at why some students LOVE learning and voraciously take on new educational opportunities, there are many reasons given for this too, including: 

• Wanting to challenge themselves
• It provides a sense of accomplishment
• It’s connected to a social environment
• There is a goal
• And simply that they do find it fun!

While the reason for someone being an engaged or disengaged learner can come from MANY areas not mentioned here, it can often come from this mindset or environmental difference (that’s either part of the system they are in or that is self built).  

And TTRPGs can help shift that mindset and practice several of the attitudes that an engaged learner exhibits while breaking down a lot of the attitudes associated with disengagement AND can help learners find needed resources.

This is true with intentionally educational TTRPGs and with TTRPGs that are just there for fun.  In this post, I’m going to talk about a TTRPG that’s just for fun to see how it can help foster a love of learning by just being what it is (without any intentional educational elements or applied therapeutic aspect built in). 

When we line up points previously listed between the two mindsets, these also show up in tabletop RPGs.  Looking at each separately: 

It looks hard vs. wanting to challenge themselves

TTRPGs are meant to pose a challenge that’s fun to overcome.  The challenge in the game is posed, not as something insurmountable, but as something achievable given a bit of effort through leveling, strategizing, or teamwork.  

Tackling challenge after challenge in a TTRPG gets players used to taking on challenges and succeeding or learning from failures.  It then makes it easier to do this in real life when learning a new skill.  

After playing a game and initially feeling scared about sending their character into risky situations… then watching them take on dragons or fly a spaceship through asteroid fields or perform daring acts of heroism to save the city once they’ve let their character do what was needed in the game….. Maybe the internal monologue for learning a new unit in math goes from “ugh… I don’t understand it!  This is so hard!” to “ugh… this is hard!   But…  I can still probably figure it out.”

They don’t like being bad at it in the beginning vs. it provides a sense of accomplishment

Linked a bit to the previous point, we also get into the self reward side of things.  When starting out as a level 1 character in a TTRPG, you don’t usually have a lot of skills, and when a big plot is introduced, you know that you can’t take that on right away – you need to level up or seek out allies or find some item that can help you.  

You know that you’re going to struggle at first.

When learning something new, this is also very true.  Seeing my kid learn to read, it was REALLY hard at first for just about everyone involved.  Kiddo didn’t like having to take so long to sound out words and was really frustrated about “not being good at it”.  

It took a lot of encouragement to explain that he could take his time and that we were all where he was at one point.  We explained that we used to have a hard time reading, but then that made it feel even better when we did read… just like how some of the characters we played started out with some pretty small spells, and after they learned to use them, it felt REALLY good when they finished the quest because it took adventuring through a whole story to get there!

We continued on with our reading, and kiddo celebrated reading the little booklet we were working on!  

We were able to connect this to our characters because we had seen, over and over, how you can go from being “bad at it” to feeling that much more satisfied about completing the quest in the end. 

There’s a lack of support vs. it’s connected to a social environment

For some kids, school and education is a tie in with their core social environment and doing well academically can have a really positive impact on their friend circles.  

For others, they may feel left behind or not have the support that they need from their school. Academics can also get pretty competitive sometimes, and this, too, can undermine potential support opportunities between fellow students.  

Sometimes, a struggling learner may also just not want to ask for help because they feel like that, in and of itself, is a failure.

TTRPGs are activities that naturally promote a positive social environment and structure because they’re collaborative.  Playing TTRPGs encourages players to work together because it’s necessary; during the game, they are setting aside some of the competitiveness and helping each other reach a common goal.  

It also builds friendships after you’ve had each other’s backs in outrageously challenging situations week after week in the game, creating a structure around students that can help support them both socially and academically, outside of the game, when they may not have been getting that from a traditional educational environment.  

And, it is very good practice in asking for assistance or teaming up with others – you see that maybe you aren’t failing by not being able to do everything by yourself.  Each person at the table has a clearly different set of skills and stats, and someone isn’t failing because they aren’t good at EVERYTHING.  They just need the hand the reigns over to another player for a bit.

The game shows that we’re meant to get help from each other and gives us an avenue for that.

They don’t see the point vs. there is a goal

When I tutored, in moments of frustration, students would often ask “what’s the point?!  When am I going to use this?”  And this was in a college engineering program where students were paying for their degree in a program that they chose as their professional goal in life. 

Somewhere in there, they knew that this was for an engineering degree so they could get a job that they were pursuing, but they were set on shoving away the big picture and questioning why they needed to do something that was, at that time, causing frustration.  

In those cases, I would talk with them about it to bring them down and then map out how some skills built onto each other, using the topic of frustration directly in the example.  Usually after seeing that, it would shift to… “OK, I get it… it’s just hard right now”… and it was!  

That was super valid to feel like it was hard, because it was a hard unit, but we still needed to work on it for them to reach their goal.  After getting the explanation, they’d give it another shot because they could see what was next.

And TTRPGs train us to think like that too. 

From campaigns to one shots, you’re told or are led into a goal by the story guide, and you then devote your character’s attention toward achieving that goal.  

Your group will usually discuss and choose your quests to build up to fulfilling that task because it’s clear what you’re trying to do, and usually the party (maybe with some assistance from the story guide) will remind themselves of that goal over and over again to make sure they’re doing what they need to do to “win” the game.  

What I’ve seen get lost with a lot of students is reminding themselves of that big goal or maybe it’s setting that goal in the first place – TTRPGs give us practice with that so we can apply it to other areas of life too.  

It’s not fun versus it IS fun!

When I’m learning, I generally do find it fun – I just like learning.  There are clinical or studied explanations for this, but I think just expressing that feeling of “learning is usually fun for me” says enough as well. 

With that statement though… learning is usually fun for me.  Sometimes, it hasn’t been, and there were long stretches of that “it isn’t fun attitude” that really undermined myself because… I couldn’t ALWAYS rely on learning to feel fun to be my motivation, and I needed to understand that I had to take a break sometimes to keep it fun and not burn out.  

In TTRPGs, the game, in general, is meant to be fun, but… sometimes it doesn’t always feel like that.  Sometimes, our character goes down, and we’re predominantly scared or sometimes we get stuck on a puzzle and frustration takes over.  

While these situations can be fun while also being scary or frustrating, they maybe aren’t “peak funness” and it can be hard to be in the game at that particular moment.  

As soon as we step out of the game and remember all our adventures, we then generally remember the whole thing as a positive experience and, usually after a break between sessions, feel pretty excited about getting back into the narrative and seeing what challenges come next!  

It’s a great demonstration of how finding fun in education (or really any other part of life) can get, and we’re constantly reminded with a mild 3rd person view of our game table how some “not fun” stuff can still lead to an overall enjoyable experience.  

It tells us that we can enjoy the ride even if we don’t enjoy all the bumps along the way… and taking on those “not fun” bumps can be worth it still. 

—

To summarize, TTRPGs, even ones that are “just for fun”, help learners to practice skills, attitudes, and mindsets that support a positive outlook on educational material and can encourage students to take on challenges and seek out growth while finding balance in their academic lives by using these tools.  

These games help us get a different perspective and provide us with a self-lead support structure through both educational endeavors and life in general.

—

If you liked this post, make sure to subscribe to the TTRPGkids monthly newsletter to 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!