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Highland has an after-school running club for students, led by volunteer teachers, and Dixon said they’d have to start an indoor club to balance it out, perhaps focused on gaming. Sarah Dixon, a Highland Elementary School speech pathologist, started the school's roleplaying club with teacher Mitchell Daily in the spring of 2019 (Rachel Alexander/Salem Reporter) Sarah Dixon, a speech pathologist at Highland, started the club almost by accident after a joke at a school staff meeting. Guided by teachers and other adults who volunteered to help, the Highland students worked together to rescue artifacts and fight spiders, magical bulls and other creatures in a Pathfinder game. Leaders, called dungeon masters, guide players through an adventure which has a semi-prewritten narrative that leaves room for improvisation and chance as characters test their skills, often by rolling dice to determine the outcome of a spell cast or attack on a foe. Players create a character, who may be human, dwarf, elf or another race, and give that character a fantasy role like wizard, bard, fighter or monk.Įach character has skills that may come in handy while adventuring, like intelligence, diplomacy, perception, healing and survival. Role-playing games are a form of guided, collaborative storytelling that can take many forms.ĭungeons and Dragons, perhaps the best-known, and Pathfinder, a spinoff with similar rules, are fantasy-based. “It was super interesting, like nothing I’ve ever played before,” she said of the game.
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She was among about 25 students who signed up for an eight-week game, played in one-hour increments Fridays after school. “Right away I was super interested because my parents play Dungeons and Dragons,” Donecker said. The fifth-graders are members of Highland Elementary School’s roleplaying club, started in the spring by two teachers looking for a way to engage kids after school.
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Now, they’re getting ready to do it again. Last school year Emma Donecker and Aly Mason fought a dragon, talked to a moon goddess, adopted a dinosaur and saved a small town.
#AFTER SCHOOL DICE CLUB TOWN MANUALS#
Highland Elementary fifth-grader Emma Donecker, center, shows off new Dungeons and Dragons manuals for the school's roleplaying game club, now in its second year (Rachel Alexander/Salem Reporter)