School RPG Club Resources

Starting & Running a Club

You have the desire and maybe some ideas, but there is a tremendous amount of logistics (and marketing!) that needs to happen before you even have the first student walk in the door. How should you do all of this convincing and planning?

• Detentions & Dragons is a podcast that gets pretty deep into the "how to" element of running games in schools. At the time of writing, they have over 80 episodes giving advice in this area. It makes for a great listen on your commute to and from school.
• Hand Her a Sword, moderated by Ethan Schoonover, is a PAX Unplugged panel discussion that discusses the value of tabletop RPGs for instilling confidence in girls (sell this hard to administrators if you need to).
• Running a School RPG or D&D Club, also by Ethan Schoonover, goes over the ins and outs of running a club.
• How 'Dungeons & Dragons' Primes Students for Interdisciplinary Learning, Including STEM discusses how D&D literally makes kids smarter, and may help improve their standardized test scores (another good one if you need to convince an administrator).
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Funding

So, starting a school RPG club is not the cheapest thing in the world. You need dice. You need gaming books. You need some kind of mapping surface, and maybe a few miniatures. You need more dice. Your principal or local library probably can't pay for it. What to do?

• Donorschoose.org is a crowdfunding site that lets you shop off of Amazon prime and several other major retailers, then get donors from all over the country to donate towards the cost of the materials. Materials get shipped directly to the school. This is a viable option for classroom teachers who are starting a club or using RPGs in their classes.
• Social media is your friend here. Ask gaming celebrities or industry people for a retweet. They have huge geek audiences. Geeks have money. They love to spend it on getting young people into the same geek hobbies that they themselves enjoy.
• Amazon.com has lots of inexpensive dice and discount books. Five sets of standard gaming dice can be had for around $10. D&D 5e books are around 40% off the list price.
• Many gaming supply manufacturers and vendors are extremely generous. If you can show them that the materials are for use with students, they may be willing to send you some stuff. Some even have product donation programs already in place (Tabletop Loot comes to mind). Also, be sure to check with your local game store to see if they would be willing to sponsor a club.
• If all else fails, follow us on twitter and send a tweet or DM letting us know what your needs are. We might be able to get some folks to broadcast it and/or get you connected with donors.