The Classroom Ready TTRPG Toolkit

Taking TTRPGs from "educational" to "classroom ready"

With a wider community acceptance of the idea that games provide players with benefits to skill development, many publishers are releasing "educational" TTRPGs. 

However, for these games to be widely accepted in a classroom setting and to actually be accessible to educators who are stretched on time and resources, it’s important to make sure that your game is not just educational but that it’s also going to work in a typical educational setting.

How does this toolkit help?

This toolkit provides you with explanations, templates, and an example for turning your game from "educational" to "classroom ready" so that teachers can quickly and easily use your TTRPG in their classes. 

The files below include steps for creating the following for your game:

• Class setting check list
• Curriculum focused lesson plan
• School approval proposal
• Classroom accessible safety tools
• Student reflection activities
• Post-game evaluations
• Tips for further improving accessibility

All of these steps are shown alongside examples from an actual classroom ready TTRPG about teaching photosynthesis that was created using this method (and is included, in full, at the end of the document) so you can see how each step fits into the needs of a classroom and how a "classroom ready" TTRPG will look different from most other TTRPGs.

Made for creators to support teachers

This toolkit is released under CC-BY 4.0, so you may use the templates provided directly in your games with the proper citation.  My hope with this toolkit is that it will help raise the bar on educational TTRPGs by providing accessible resources that give creators what they need to tailor their games to what  educators and their classes need.  Please use this guide to support teachers who want to use your games in the classroom, and thank you for checking out this toolkit for use with your next project!

Additional resources

The game that's shown as an example in the toolkit, Photosynthians, can be found here and additionally includes presentation slides that teachers can use in their classrooms:

https://ttrpgkids.itch.io/photosynthians-a-classroom-ready-ttrpg-for-4th-grade

You can also find additional resources in my article on TTRPGkids here (which directly supports and references this toolkit) and via the educational resources section on the TTRPGkids site.  I hope it can help, and thank you again!

This toolkit is also submitted to the TTRPG’s TEACH game jam, which includes many other educational TTRPG resources and games that may be of interest: