Play Like a Kid

14 Aug, 2025

Introduction

There is something intrinsic to life about play. In another life, I may have said “human play”, however we know that play appears in both human and nonhuman animals. In her formative book Play, Catherine Garvey states:

“Play, like Proteus, keeps changing shape.”

She refers to the children discussed throughout the book as “students of play”, a phrase I absolutely love. Of course children learn through play! From the very start, when in the womb, children know to play; they blow bubbles in the amniotic fluid of their mother’s womb, practicing breathing reflexes. Nonhuman animals, as stated, also play: bear cubs play-fight with their siblings, young chimps play with dolls made of sticks, and orcas (this blogger’s favourite animal) engage in porpicide, not to eat the porpoises, but to practice hunting. Young creatures in so many stretches of life learn and know how to play.

If you’re reading this blog post, you probably know what Dungeons and Dragons is and what the OSR is. My wonderful supervisor at university did not know what either of these things were. Her module facilitated a volunteering opportunity in a primary school wherein I would observe a classroom and create a project that meaningfully engaged with the children, teaching them something worthwhile whilst engaging in the classroom blind spots.

From the offset, I knew I wanted to do something with TTRPGs, though it was crucial I took a step back and relied on preliminary classroom observations to craft a meaningful experience for the children in my project group. With the help of their teacher, I picked four students (whom I will refer to by character names later) to take part in my project. Three of the four exhibited classroom shyness, so my initial goal was to improve that through having them engage in TTRPG-style play. Little did I know, my goal would quickly shift.

Background

To paint you a picture, the school was in Northern England, in a high-catchment, low-population area i.e., lots of schools, not so many kids. This school in particular housed many children exhibiting a variety of special educational needs ranging in severity. It also had children from a variety of ethnic backgrounds despite the white-majority city it was in. Finally, the specific neighbourhood this school was in was an economically deprived one. What I anticipated, and later observed, were the aforementioned blindspots relating to the different factors above. With one teacher to a classroom of thirty 7-9 year olds, things are bound to be missed, emphasising the importance of classroom assistants in UK classrooms (though that is an essay in itself for another day).

In my module coursework, I had to justify why I was using D&D as a baseline for my project, covering the bases of oral and written literacy practices. Very simply, a literacy practice refers to the social and cultural patterns of how communication is used day-to-day¹.

The big oral literacy skill D&D covers is group negotiation. The group had to negotiate turn-taking and collaboratively problem-solve through spoken interaction, which was especially significant given my classroom observations noted challenges with collaborative listening. With peer status impacting social interaction² and my choosing of three shy children and one confident child, I expected this would be fascinating to observe. The children were encouraged to communicate how they felt comfortable, but were especially encouraged to speak “in-character”. This was inspired by research detailing the positive impacts of structured performing arts within primary schools³ as well as the self-regulation, goal formation, and identity development skills that arise with pretend play⁴⁵.

Written literacy was less clear from the offset. There are roles that players may take in campaigns that cover the basics of written literacy as covered by our favourite Gav in the Dolmenwood Player’s Book. However, the game I built for the kids was nowhere near as structured as the standard TTRPG, focusing more on theatre of the mind play. There was no hex map. There were no cumbersome inventory sheets. Heck, there weren’t even any stats! What the game became was a guided game of pretend with coloured in character sheets and a collaborative campaign booklet they crafted at the end. The kids wanted to run into the woods? No roll, they just did. It was as simple as that, and for what this project was and what I knew of these kids, it had to be.

Meet the Characters, and other highlights

Picture it: you are invited into the halls of the Cat King’s grand palace. He lounges atop a great, cat-tree pedestal, a huge, feathered pillow beneath him. He sighs and yawns that he is ever-too tired to retrieve his stolen treasures from the great caves in the north. You must go and retrieve them, especially his great jade statuette. Who do you have accompanying you on this quest?

A huge reptilian creature with razor sharp teeth and claws, crimson red in colour and a jewelled crown atop his head. His name is Timmy and he is ravenous.

A sweet princess with a graceful smile and lovely purple dress. She has kind eyes and seems curious about her surroundings. You may call her Leah Rose.

A tall, confident figure in a long, pink gown with even longer hair. Floating above her head is a halo, and on her back are wings. Her eyes are on her manicured nails as she introduces herself as Miss Preppy Sassy Angel.

You can barely see the blur of colour zipping about your head. Though he is small, he is fast, clever, and incredibly funny. He is Zoo Zo Afa, a sapient fly.

Bringing you back from that immersive scene, that was the plot hook the kids were given and those were indeed their characters! From a theoretical, ideal-self standpoint, these characters were fascinating: the girls’ characters were beautiful, witty, and strong, whilst Timmy was big and scary, but still tried to be funny. Zoo Zo Afa was especially interesting because I still cannot tell you why, out of all the animals, this child chose to be a fly. It was clear he favoured his speed and his humour though.

I won’t take you through a step-by-step playthrough of the session, because that would be boring. Instead, I have compiled some highlights showcasing how roleplaying games can be useful teaching tools.

Emotional Literacy and Narrative Framing

When Zoo Zo Afa hurt his knee and began to cry, Timmy teased him, amplifying his distress. In response, Leah Rose, still fully in-character, turned to Timmy and said, “Don’t be mean to my prince.” Her choice to remain in-character allowed her to defend her friend while preserving the shared fictional world. This subtle move wove real empathy into the game’s fabric, demonstrating perspective-taking and emotional literacy⁶. This blending of performance, identity, and emotion exemplifies the way D&D can act as a bridge between real-world feelings and imaginative play. It resists the view of pretend play as mere escapism, instead positioning it as a safe container for processing lived experience⁷⁸. Leah Rose’s affectionate phrasing reinforced prosocial norms while also exposing a group dynamic: Zoo Zo Afa’s vulnerability was disruptive until reframed as part of the story. This underlines the need to actively scaffold emotional equity in group literacy activities rather than relying on the game structure alone.

Divergent Play Styles and Social Cohesion

Over the course of the session, a pattern emerged: the boys gravitated towards humour, chaos, and sudden shifts in tone, while the girls worked to maintain plot cohesion and narrative clarity. Timmy often drove the story into violent or silly detours, while Miss Preppy Sassy Angel in particular displayed traits of an old-school “Caller”, steering the group back toward structure. Rather than viewing this as a deficit, it can be read as two distinct forms of literacy investment; comedic play as transgressive literacy ⁹, requiring sharp timing and tone awareness, and structured storytelling, which prioritises coherence and continuity.

However, these approaches sometimes collided. Leah Rose would visibly disengage when her narrative arcs were derailed, and the dominant social position Timmy held meant his disruptions were tolerated more readily than others’. To address this, I introduced light, in-world consequences for chaotic play that required teamwork to resolve, while rewarding narrative progression and validating quieter contributions. These small adjustments preserved immersion while encouraging a more balanced distribution of influence. Left unchecked, GM-less or open-ended formats risk mirroring existing classroom hierarchies, so will often require conscious mediation.

Negotiating Gender and Ideology Through Character Creation

During character creation, Timmy remarked that his special skill was “eating anything” and that the girls’ characters would “clean up dishes.” This dampened the girls’ enthusiasm and prompted me to step in, redirecting the moment into an age-appropriate discussion on gender stereotypes and their potential harm. Timmy did not make further comments of this nature, but the exchange nonetheless illustrates Barton and Hamilton’s observation that literacy events often surface underlying ideologies¹.

In this context, his remark can be understood less as a deep-seated belief and more as an example of “voices”¹⁰ absorbed from his social environment. Still, the moment highlighted a key limitation of the D&D framework: imaginative freedom can reproduce problematic social scripts unless carefully scaffolded. Here, my role was both pedagogical and ethical, ensuring that the collaborative world we built remained inclusive and socially aware. Even in its brevity, the incident reinforced group norms and demonstrated how character creation can become a site of ideological negotiation.

The Takeaway

So, a rather academic leap away from my last blog post, though one I am equally enthusiastic about! But the big question: so what? Sure, there are things to take away if you’re a teacher or a parent, but what about me? The average TTRPG enjoyer?

There are the archetypal RPG players joked about online just as there are the player roles earlier discussed. What I have found playing a variety of TTRPGs is that often less is more. Sure, that 336-page rule book is gorgeous to look at, but gods is it dense (I’m looking at you Sanderson)! In that way, the simpler OSR games with 10-page rule books have been somewhat of a godsend when I feel so weighed down by page after page, discrepancy after discrepancy.

I mentioned earlier three of the four kids I chose for the project were shy in the classroom. As soon as I took them out into a smaller group, their confidence grew immediately. My new goal became emotional growth and collaboration. Their rules-lite game enabled this growth to varying levels in each child. When you handle a game with care, even if it is simple and unstructured, it can spark creativity, connection, and empathy, something we all need a little more of nowadays. Yes, in some games we play to master spreadsheets and dominate maps with armies, but at the core of so many others is the essence of storytelling.

I got 80%, an A, on that project, my joint-highest grade of my undergraduate degree. The project is something I was, and still am, very passionate about. Play belongs in education, but it also belongs in day-to-day life. If you haven’t played recently, try to. Damn the scheduling gods and just find someone to play with, because you often don’t know you were missing out until you’re retrieving a cat king’s treasure with four bizarre and wonderful companions. We all need to find more time to play like a kid.

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