Section Intro - Getting Started
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If you are an educator who has never rolled a die before, or a seasoned game master new to educational programming, this section contains resources for setting up and running role-playing games in educational or community spaces.
Resources
Let’s roll: a guide to setting up tabletop role-playing games in your school or public library
By Lucas Maxwell
This is a guide for prospective game masters new to tabletop role-playing games or to running them in a professional setting. Let’s Roll discusses the necessary steps to run a successful table-top program in an educational setting, all the way from first conception to sitting down at the table. Maxwell provides invaluable information on the best practices of developing and running the game, including advice on writing a game’s setting, getting participants interested, and staying focused and organized.
Dragons in the stacks: A teen librarian's guide to tabletop role-playing
By Steven A. Torres-Roman & Cason E. Snow
This text contains a wealth of technical detail useful for librarians looking for a deeper understanding of the field of tabletop-roleplaying games. Torres-Roman and Snow provide a detailed guide to terminology, the history of rpg publication, and advice on purchasing and cataloging a new gaming collection. The book is over a decade old, and while its extended reviews of different games are not up to date, the theory behind each review is sound and makes for a useful blueprint with which to evaluate newer games.
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Matthew Colville's "Running the Game" Youtube Series
If you don’t have the time to digest an entire book but still want an authoritative guide to running games, Matthew Colville’s youtube series is as good as it gets in a free visual format. Each episode of the series addresses a different topic or issue on the art of game mastering, allowing viewers to tailor their learning experience to their needs. Colville is an experienced dungeon master and an author of his own game and publishing house, MCDM, which he spun out of the success of this youtube series. This is a good resource to reference for specific questions about running games, although it is not as pertinent to running role-playing games in schools or libraries.
Three Different Paths for Tabletop Gaming in School Libraries
By Teresa Copeland, Brenda Henderson, Brian Mayer, & Scott Nicholson
Not every role-playing game is about adventures and plucky heroes. This article presents the experiences of three educators who implemented the principles of role-playing into their curriculums in unique ways. From Athenian speech writing to game development, this article is a useful resource for thinking about unorthodox ways to bring the benefits of role playing games into different educational contexts.