Podcast - Game Level Learn

Joe Lasley, founder of Gamenamic Leadership Consulting, earned his PhD in Leadership Studies at the University of San Diego where he researched group dynamics and leadership development in role-playing games. He teaches leadership and organizational studies at the University of Southern Maine. He is a dynamic presenter, facilitator, coach, researcher and writer. His experience includes over a decade facilitating organizational leadership development while working in Student Affairs/Higher Education including residential life, student leadership programs, personnel selection, training, and military & veteran programs. Joe has a B.S. in Organizational Communication and Psychology, a M.S. in Higher Education Administration, a graduate certificate in Organizational Psychology and a Ph.D. in Leadership Studies. His interests and research involve group dynamics, experiential learning, creativity, and leadership development. Specifically, how adults play and can leverage the power of gaming for leadership, learning, and development. He enjoys consulting in diverse sectors to help organizations succeed in changing the world with specific interest in how organizations can inspire leadership development that enhances social well-being. His dissertation, An Examination of Gaming Environments in Dungeons & Dragons Groups, can be found here: https://digital.sandiego.edu/dissertations/170.

Joe can be reached on Twitter at: @thejoeshow13 or @gamenamic

gamenamic.org is his consulting website.

His most recent chapter in the geek therapy book: Integrating Geek Culture into Therapeutic Practice: The Clinician's Guide to Geek Therapy on amazon: tinyurl.com/ycxveu54.

Jon can be reached at [email protected]. Tracy can be reached at [email protected]

You can subscribe to our Discord at: https://discordapp.com/invite/R3dAXpe.

Robbie's Blog: ludoverse.blogspot.com

Robbie's e-mail: [email protected]

Robbie's twitter: robowist@BoerthJ

The Ludoverse Lab: Come experience role-playing games with other educators and discuss how they might be used in the classroom. Games currently run on Saturdays from 11 a.m -2 p.m. EDT. The schedule of upcoming games is at the Ludoverse blog, or you can e-mail Robbie. I'm looking to widen the community of gamifying educators, so please reach out if you have an interest.

The menu of twelve game for Robbie's rpg unit: https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1jFvM10bYt1Z-r-fznpGdPOG4eQy3VeV58hoTDV9xen8/edit?usp=sharing

The actual play report assignment for the rpg unit: https://docs.google.com/document/d/10T6ng7G1dlNFnL4FAgxh0b_PRIqYIX9-321suXazn7I/edit?usp=sharing

The Pool, a role-playing game by James V. West: http://www.1km1kt.net/wp-content/uploads/2013/07/thepoolrpg.pdf

My Life with Master, a role-playing game by Paul Czege, is available from Half Meme Press: http://www.halfmeme.com/master.html

Inspectres, a role-playing game by Jared Sorensen, is available from Momento Mori Theatricks: http://www.memento-mori.com/pdf/inspectres

Player rules for Becoming Beowulf, Robbie's game about the perilous world of the Anglo-Saxons: 

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1vw-TFnwVI9qkt679Bn-tz5LFuaiq1Fz9xCXrnmpsHWg/edit?usp=sharing

The Game Level Learn Discord channel is here.

Thrilled to drop this special episode of season 4, the audio feed from Jon’s visit with Dustin Staats discussing using games for sustaining classroom culture during the COVID-19 crisis.

Story Cubes

Storymatic

“When At Last We Are Together Again”

Delta Green

Letter Jam

Gallerist

Trickerion

Anyone’s Game

Dustin can be found on Facebook and at Board Gaming in Education.

Worlds XP can also be found at the links above.

How We Roll Podcast can be found here.

The game board for the Global Game class can be found here.

Jon and Tracy keep the building up while Luke Johnson avoids the monster, this week on GLL.

Luke Johnson is a teacher at Burlington Innovative Learning Academy in Burlington, Iowa. He teaches English in grades 9 through 12, as well as Composition, Creative Writing, and other elective courses. He is an avid Dungeon Master in his free time and loves his games, his wife, his cats, and his coffee. He can be contacted for collaboration at [email protected].

Call of Cthulhu

Betrayal Legacy

Ori and the Blind Forest

Tim Handley

Betrayal At House On The Hill

Pandemic

Dead of Winter

Clue

Dungeons and Dragons

Numenera

Hillfolk

Star Trek Adventures

FASA Star Trek

Batman Animated Adventures: Gotham City

“The Eight Cs”

Challenge

Curiosity

Controversy

Creativity

Cooperation

Connection

Choice

Competition

Some fun examples of character sheets.

FATE system.

Traveller’s Wikipedia page.

Arcadia Quest’s BGG page.

Stuffed Fables’ BGG page.

Dungeon World HQ.

Funky high octane action - it’s Spirit of ‘77.

The finely calibrated Mars Colony.

Our Discord channel - https://discord.gg/mDXz6H8.

Conceptualization notes when I was designing America 3.0

America 3.0 is a course in which students study the history of the United States from 1970 to the present.

Game-based model of instruction and work.

Nearly all work is self-directed, except in "Section J" - which is to say, the entire class working together as if it were one guild (the difference between 5 and 25 man content). Students must always choose what they're learning and how they're learning it.

Students level as they quest to become "level 100."

When students "do" they connect by means of tags to "knowing"

     "Scratch work" goes in the Schoology page

     "Finished work" goes to the Tumblr page

Students are required to attain a minimum of 100 achievement points in each branch of the knowing and the doing trunk

Every 100 achievement points = 1 level?

So, the minimum work grants 12 levels

BUT THEY ONLY EARN "GRADABLE" POINTS ON "DO" ACHIEVEMENTS / KNOWING EARNS NO POINTS, but are required to earn a particular grade.

You can't achieve level 100 without getting a boss win on one branch of knowing and 2 branches of doing

You can't "know" without a "do." Without a "do," there's no way for anyone to know what you "know."

Quest lines form up into 2 main trunks:

Knowing

Doing

The Knowing trunk asks students to demonstrate that they know X about Y.

The Doing trunk asks students to demonstrate that they can acquire knowledge X in a particular way or transmit or pass on their X knowledge of Y in a particular way Z.

KNOWING

A3.0 is about the history of the United States after 1970, but America 2.0 remains a strong part of the course and the thinking about the time period.

You must reach level 10 in every branch of knowing.

You must reach level 20 in four of six branches.

You must reach level 50 in two of six branches.

You must reach level 100 in one of six branches.

Levels 1-10 deal with America 2.0: background, status, circumstances, conditions, figures, realities.

The Knowing trunk further subdivides into the following branches:

Social Change and Reaction

Level 1: Gather 8 pieces of data that inform you about the state of Black America in America 2.0 and DO.

Level 2: Gather 8 pieces of data that inform you about the state of women in America in America 2.0 and DO.

Level 3: Gather 8 pieces of data that inform you about the conditions facing Native Americans in America 2.0 and DO.

Level 4: Gather 8 pieces of data that inform you about the state of Mexican Americans (or another immigrant group) in America 2.0 and DO.

Level 5: Gather 8 pieces of data that inform you about the conditions facing gay Americans in America 2.0 and DO.

Level 6: Derive 3 common threads between the experiences of these groups.

Level 7: Choose 3 from previous levels (Black America, Women, Native Americans, Mexican Americans, gay Americans). What were the triggering event or events that stimulated a new consciousness for these groups in America 2.0? Why these events and DO.

Level 8: What, if anything, is common between these triggering events?

Level 9: Gather 15 pieces of data that inform you about the state of "mainstream" America in America 2.0. What does "mainstream" mean in this case? Derive what is common between your data points and DO.

Level 10 BOSS: What qualities of the mainstream were the disenfranchised entranced by or interested in attaining for themselves? How were the disenfranchised resisting the power of the mainstream? What about the mainstream were they reacting against? DO

Level 11: Gather 8 pieces of data that inform you about the state of American military servicemen between 1970 and 1980. DO.

Level 12: Gather 8 pieces of data that inform you about the state of American family life, marriage and childhood between 1970 and 1980. DO.

Level 13: Gather 8 pieces of data that inform you about the state of American religious and spiritual life between 1970 and 1980. DO.

Level 14: Derive 5 common threads between your data points.

Level 15: Gather 4 pieces of data that inform you about the change in the state of Black America between 1970 and 1980. DO.

Level 16: Gather 4 pieces of data that inform you about the change in the state of women in American between 1970 and 1980. DO.

Level 17: Gather 4 pieces of data that inform you about the change in the state of Native Americans between 1970 and 1980. DO.

Level 18: Gather 4 pieces of data that inform you about the change in relations between native-born Americans and immigrant Americans between 1970 and 1980 and DO.

Level 19: Gather 4 pieces of data that inform you about the change in conditions for gay Americans between 1970 and 1980. DO.

Level 20 BOSS: In the transition from America 2.0 to America 3.0 many norms were destabilized. What norms were being destabilized between 1970 and 1980? What was in transition? What was stable?

Level 90 Question: Gay Marriage

SCR BOSS WIN: Choose one of the following socially constructed concepts (parenting, family, gender, sexual orientation, adolescence, work) and trace all of the ways in what that concept has changed since America 2.0 began to give way to America 3.0. Trace the development of the change in your chosen concept through each of its major crisis points, how the American people have stimulated and resisted the change and speculate based on reason and sound evidence how you believe your chosen concept might continue to develop over the next ten years.

Culture

Level 1: Gather 8 pieces of data that inform you about the state of American popular music in America 2.0 and DO.

Level 2: Gather 8 pieces of data that inform you about the state of American film in America 2.0 and DO.

Level 3: Gather 8 pieces of data that inform you about the state of American television in America 2.0 and DO.

Level 4: Gather 8 pieces of data that inform you about the state of American fiction (novels, poetry) in America 2.0 and DO.

Level 5: Gather 8 pieces of data that inform you about the state of American visual arts (painting, photography) in American 2.0 and DO.

Level 6: Derive 3 common concerns/foci/approaches between these different cultural media.

Level 7: Find and defend your choice of 2 cultural artifacts that were culturally transformative in each of the 5 modes and DO.

Level 8: What, if anything, is common between these transformative cultural artifacts?

Level 9: What was the reaction of mainstream culture to these transformative moments?

Level 10 BOSS: Contrast the different concerns/foci/approaches/obsessions/anxieties expressed by transformative and mainstream culture. What is common between them? What's different? What is the transformative trying to transform? What is the mainstream trying to preserve? DO

Level 11: Gather the 4 most influential musicians in America between 1970 and 1980. DO: What made them so? Were they Americans?

Level 12: Gather the 4 most influential films released in America between 1970 and 1980. DO: What made them so?

Level 13: Gather the 4 most influential television programs in America between 1970 and 1980. DO: What made them so?

Level 14: Gather the 4 most influential pieces of American fiction between 1970 and 1980. DO: What made them so?

Level 15: Gather the 4 most influential pieces of American non-fiction (documentary film, monographs) between 1970 and 1980. DO: What made them so?

Level 16: Gather the 4 most influential pieces of American visual arts (painting, sculpture, video arts, photography) between 1970 and 1980. DO: What made them so?

Level 17: Derive 5 common concerns/anxieties/foci between these different cultural media.

Level 18: Whose stories are being told in the media you identified at level 17? DO.

Level 19: Gather 8 examples of "fringe" cultural practices in America between 1970 and 1980.

Level 20 BOSS - By 1980, significant cultural transformation was well underway, not just on the fringes but also in the mainstream. What were fringe movements protesting against in the cultural sphere? What were they angry about? What made their vision of the United States fringe, and how would they have transformed society had they won?

Level 30 - public intellectuals

Level 90 Question: Network Cultures (microcultures)

Cu

Jon’s reflections on creating knowledge leveling trees.

Thoughts on the Rolemaster skill system.

Creating your first D&D character.

Photo by Marco Hazard.