Journalling Role-playing games

Many people are familiar with Dungeons & Dragons, the original tabletop role-playing game. A group of players led by a game master collectively tell a story, the outcome of which is guided by rules and dice rolls. Role-playing games have been used by educators for years as a way to engage learners when teaching diverse subjects such as English, maths, and history and as a way to develop sociolinguistic competence in collaboration, negotiation, empathy and compromise.

Numerous studies have confirmed the educational and therapeutic benefits of role-playing games. Little attention has been given to the emergence of a new genre of role-playing game — solo journaling RPGs.

Getting English as Additional Language students to keep a journal has been used by TESOL teachers for years, but why not make that more engaging by gamifying the journal? In recent years there has been a lot of innovation occurring in tabletop role-playing games and we’ve seen the rise in popularity of solo journaling games. Players who were unable to meet with their gaming groups due to COVID lockdowns turned to solo games which often involve keeping a journal of their characters’ adventures. Tools like random encounter tables, non player characters generators, and mission generators assist in creating a narrative which the player authors and interacts with by rolling dice or dealing cards. For this assignment I wanted to explore how journaling games can facilitate the use of higher order thinking skills and foster creativity. Learners will be creating, evaluating and analysing as they progress through the game.

As learning designers we should be thinking about fostering inclusive learning environments which cater to a variety of learning styles. Gamification is all well and good, but we miss out on opportunities to support multiple learning styles, specifically kinesthetic and tactile learning if we only think in terms of video games. Learners get to roll dice, shuffle cards, move tiles and figurines around, shuffle and write in a journal. Another point in favour of pen and paper journaling games is that they’re incredibly cheap in terms of what you need to get started.

The precursor to solo RPGs were the popular Choose Your Own Adventure books that engaged young readers by providing a branching narrative and giving them a choice as to how the adventure turned out. How many Choose Your Own Adventure books have been sold worldwide? Take a guess and then click the arrow on the side to reveal the answer.
A. 6 million
B. 50 million
C. 100 million
D. 300 million

Answer: D. - The original Choose Your Own Adventure books have sold 270 million copies. Other series that followed the same mould such as the Fighting Fantasy series by Steve Jackson and Ian Livingstone have sold 20 million and the Lone Wolf series by Joe Dever has sold 12 million. The Choose Your Own Adventure books continue to sell about 1 million copies each year.

Source: The enduring allure of choose your own adventure books. The New Yorker.

Sweaters by Hedgehog Echidna

The other videos in this journal have been 'curated', but the one on the left has been created and it's quite charming so please do give it a watch.
Twice a year I run a five day ESL course for Japanese junior high school students visiting Australia. The timing this year corresponded with the need to come up with some content for this assignment. I thought it would be a good chance to try out a simple journalling RPG and record the results. I choose 'Sweaters by Hedgehog' by Haunted Oak Press because the whole game only fits on six pages and is kid-friendly.

I taught English in Japan for twenty years. Many school students I taught lived incredibly busy, regimented lives. It’s no exaggeration to say that for many kids there, one week was much like another, with zero changes to routine and their diary entries reflected this. It was a chore for them to write a journal and they found it boring because Friday saw them writing the same thing they wrote on Thursday, Wednesday, Tuesday and Monday.

I was pleasantly suprised by the enthusiasm with which this most recent group of students approached 'Sweaters by Hedgehog' and the results it produced. They all wrote imaginative journal entries that used new vocabulary, phrases and grammar. They employed the higher order thinking skills of Bloom's taxonomy by synthesising known and new information to create something new. I know that had I told them to write about a normal school day in Japan they would have groaned and the end product would not have employed the same quantity and quality of new language.

My students responding to the game's writing prompts which are selected randomly by drawing from suits of cards. These are thirteen-year-old junior high school students from Osaka, Japan. They are accustomed to writing an English journal but this was there first time to try a journalling RPG, one which required them to use their imagination to create a text in response to random prompts.

Hearts tell you what kind of animal customer has come into your store. I thought it would be a good opportunity to elicit what Australian animals the students knew and to teach them some knew ones. Yuki, featured in the video, drew the Queen of Hearts. I taught her that Tasmanian devils are notoriously aggressive and she incoporated this into her journal entry by saying her Tassive devil needed a sweater with no frills for good mobility while fighting!

A journalling RPG, even one as simple as 'Sweaters by Hedgehog', exposes students to new vocabulary, phrases and grammatical structures. I had to teach the meanings of the highlighted words and phrases. Yuki chose the 2 of Diamonds whic prompts you to think of a reason why your customer is a respected member of the town. Knowing that Tassie devils are aggressive she came up with the idea that her customer was respected because he had protected the town from an Ibis' attack.