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| Headshot from Dan Burkey's website. |
I first met Dan Burkey virtually. Dan, who has a strong background in theater and performance, reached out to share about his artist-in-residency offerings in northern Kentucky, but more to the point, he had come across my work with "Polyhedral Pedagogy" -- using tabletop role-playing games (TTRPGs) in education. As it turns out, Dan had also been using TTRPGs with students as part of his substitute teaching, and he regaled me over Zoom with some of his tales. We finally met in person when he attended a "Dungeons & Desks" professional learning day I co-facilitated in Louisville, part of an ongoing regional series.
Dan contacted me recently to let me know about an educational resource document he had made along with the latest success he was having implementing a simple TTRPG rules system with students. With that, I knew we needed a full-blown interview!
Enter Dan, stage right...
Dan, welcome to Edtech Elixirs! Please share your educational and artistic journey.
I graduated from Centre College in 2009 with a degree in Dramatic Arts, a rough cut of my first feature film (a noir adaptation of Euripides’ Medea) and a strong Liberal Arts interdisciplinary mindset. It was the middle of the Great Recession, and I started substitute teaching while I worked on various creative projects and sorted out what might come next. With my theatre background, I couldn’t help finding ways to liven up sub plans every day: singing, juggling, showing up in character as an eccentric scientist, etc. This caught the attention of the Étude Group schools, a public charter network in Sheboygan, WI, that focuses on project based learning and arts integration. In 2014, they brought me on as an artist-in-residence to work alongside teachers to interpret academic content through a dramatic lens. I earned my teaching certificate in Theatre Education from UW-Milwaukee, then continued at Étude as a certified drama teacher for 6 years- mostly at the K-8 level, but also some high school classes. I taught drama, filmmaking, animation, script writing, and game design, usually working with grade-level teams and other arts specialists to weave together form and content. Our projects included student-written plays about settlers coming to Wisconsin, games designed to simulate bird migration and population dynamics, and creative drama journeys through the human body with the Magic School Bus, among many others.
In parallel with my work at Étude, I was developing my career as a theatre director. I started Mad Yarn Theatre Company to produce offbeat plays at Paradigm, the local coffee shop and hub of Sheboygan’s creative community. We became better known for our MadCap 24-hour Play Festival, where teams of writers, directors, and actors created plays from scratch in a single day. I also worked with Warped Dance Company over several years to develop an aerial dance adaptation of The Nutcracker (in the process I invented and performed a new form of aerial unicycling).
After the pandemic and the birth of our first child, my wife and I moved to Northern Kentucky to be closer to family. After a couple years finding my footing in the area, I started working as a teaching artist with American Legacy Theatre and The Carnegie, and I remembered how much I love collaborating with other educators to bring vibrant learning into their classrooms. Last year, I was accepted to the Kentucky Teaching Artist Directory, which means that schools and libraries can apply for Kentucky Arts Council grants to bring me in for programming. I typically consult with teachers to create and facilitate drama, creative writing, and media arts (including game design) experiences that are tailored to their specific classrooms and curriculum.
This year, KAC grants are funding three of my projects: guiding students to make and perform a dramatic sequel to The Giver at St. Cecilia in Independence, introducing tabletop game design concepts to patrons at Campbell County Public Library, and making storybooks come alive through creative drama with youth at Kenton County Public Library. In addition to grant-funded work, I can also contract separately for residencies with schools and nonprofits. So far, my work has taken me to Kenton, Boone, Campbell, and Pendleton Counties, but I’m open to working within about a one-hour radius of Covington. There’s more information on residencies at my website, danburkey.com.
When I’m not doing a residency, I continue to practice substitute teaching as a structured improvisational art form, along with various writing and game design projects.
What a lovely set of experiences you've had! Tell us more about your personal experience with playing tabletop role-playing games (TTRPGs). What was your first TTRPG?
My first TTRPG was a homebrew fantasy thing my high school friend made up on a road trip. It had no dice, and as GM he would just say how he thought actions would resolve. We also did a lot of freeform boffer LARP- live action roleplaying while fighting with foam swords. This guy in our class was seven feet tall and his actual name was Hrothgar; he played a troll and wielded a war hammer made out of a couch cushion folded in half and covered in duct tape on the end of a long PVC pipe. We were the coolest people we knew.
I didn’t get back to TTRPGs until about 10 years later when I became a drama teacher. I was looking for ways to scaffold character creation for improv and scene devising with middle school students. A friend introduced me to Fiasco, a GMless indie RPG by Jason Morningstar, and we tried it out at game nights with a couple other teachers. Content-wise, the game is hilarious but not appropriate for middle school (it’s designed to emulate a Coen Brothers style crime caper gone horribly awry). But its mechanics opened my eyes to some brilliant ways to start a story: a network of character relationships, a shared problem, and some objects and locations to get the imagination running. The game’s rules actually shaped my approach to playwriting and improvisation. The latest version trades out dice and roll tables for a card-based engine that smooths out setup and features a “Let’s Not” card (like the X-card safety tool) to empower players to reshape any story content that gets in the way of safe and enthusiastic fun.
These days, I have three small children, so most of my roleplaying is freeform improv adventures in the yard chasing bad guys and pirates. My oldest is getting big enough to enjoy more structured games, so we’ve tried some simple RPGs, including Super City with the VRBS system.
You mentioned that TTRPGs opened a door for you to teach improv and scene creation with students. Can you tell us more details on how you made that work?
When I first got the idea for using TTRPGs in the classroom, I was teaching a middle school drama class and using the technique of improvisational devising to create scenes. Instead of having one playwright create a script and then give it to actors to perform, the devising process shares the story creation work with the whole ensemble. In our version, each actor created a character, then we put those characters into different situations to see how they would respond. I wanted to get students thinking about their characters’ lives beyond a job description, so I looked at the idea of character sheets from the TTRPG space. You could call this “Elemental Infusion” on the classroom RPG spectrum- we used the character sheet to fill out character ideas, but we didn’t run the whole creation process as an RPG. [Dan is referring to the Depth of TTRPG Infusion Framework from my book. -- Adam] I started researching other ways we might bring together drama and TTRPGs.
Last fall, I got to do an arts residency with students at Prince of Peace Catholic School in Covington, and I really got to put my research into practice. We played the game Super City by David Garrett, and adapted it to fit the settings and problems with their science and social studies units. This was in their STEAM class, so after the residency, they used the stories from our games to inspire visual art pieces.
You’ve already mentioned VRBS and an example TTRPG that uses that rule set, Super City. From our previous conversations, I know it was created by David Garrett, the system is free under Creative Commons, and that you are a big fan of it! Can you tell us more about how VRBS works, and the advantages of VRBS over other TTRPG rules or systems?
VRBS – by the way, I usually pronounce it “verbs,” but I saw an old blog post that said it originally stood for Virtual Reality Battle System – presents the ideal balance of flexibility and structure to teach students the core loop of traditional TTRPGs. Players take action to respond to a problem in character, roll dice to find out how well it worked, and take turns until the team solves the problem or fails. For years, I couldn’t find anything in the goldilocks zone between games with daunting three-pound rulebooks and games that assumed too much improv skill and previous knowledge of RPGs to work with beginners (especially without a GM). A typical VRBS game (rules, scenario, character sheet, and space for note-taking) fits on two sides of a sheet of letter paper, but it gets players straight into the action.
Instead of traditional stats, each character starts out with 3 verbs they are good at doing. In Super City, David Garrett’s game about students at a superhero school, these are themed as your character’s superpowers. So maybe you start with Fly, Blast, and Lift. The scenario has roll tables for setting, problems, and citizens to save, so you roll up a situation and someone describes it (the game can be played with a GM or with players sharing the GM role). On your turn, pick ANY verb and say how you use it. If it’s a verb on your sheet, you have better odds of success, but you can try anything you can imagine. In our example, you could Blast the giant robot’s processor and get a bonus to your resolution roll. Or could try to Interrogate it, which would be riskier because you don’t already have that skill.
Resolution happens with a 1d6 system, which makes it accessible to anyone who can find a standard die. Add any bonus points from the verb you used to your roll. Whether you succeed or fail, you get to describe what that success or failure looks like. A total of 5-6 is a Success. A 7+ is a Big Success- describe how it’s even better than you expected, and add one point to the team’s Energy pool (Energy is a team resource- if it runs out, the scene ends in failure). Rolling a 1-4 is a failure. When you fail, lose one energy, describe how something unexpected happens when you do the verb, and gain a bonus point for the verb you failed at.
The fail-forward mechanism is where the game really shines as a learning tool. Characters (and all humans!) learn through their mistakes. This is what makes stories interesting. The game highlights this important storytelling lesson; it rewards players with improved chances on future dice rolls (an extrinsic reward) and the chance to describe their character’s failure and how it affects the story (an intrinsic reward). If you try a new verb and fail, you get to add it to your sheet with a bonus point. The only way you can get new skills is by trying something new and failing at it!
VRBS is adaptable by design, thanks to the System Reference Document (SRD) that powers the mechanics of the game. D&D is like a luxury sports car: to tinker with it you need to consider a lot of different systems and mechanisms that all interact to make it work. VRBS is like a hot rod: there aren’t a lot of moving parts, so anyone with a wrench and a blowtorch and a free Saturday here and there can modify it and make something unique that will run pretty well. So I’ve found lots of ways to hack it for the classroom.
It sounds like VRBS would be great for younger students, but have you also used it with older students? Can you share other examples of how you’ve used VRBS in schools?
During my residency at Prince of Peace, I ran Super City with two groups of students during their Art and Technology block: a 3rd-4th grade combined class and a 5th-8th grade class. I wanted to support students in independent GMless (or, more accurately, co-GM) play, so I divided the duties of the GM into four roles. Each role received a card listing their duties and a tool to help carry them out:
- The Scene Setter used roll tables to choose the next scene situation and was also in charge of describing it.
- The Note Taker summarized main events for each scene so that stories could be adapted into comic book form later.
- The Goal Setter used a problem progress bar tool I made (not native to VRBS, but helpful for collaboration) to set a difficulty (number of successes) for each scene’s problem.
- The Peacemaker resolved disagreements using the questions: Does it follow the rules of the game? Is it helping all players feel safe and comfortable and have fun? Does it make sense in this story world?
[Dan is describing an innovative "Student-Led" role-playing experience, one of the "degrees" from my Degree of TTRPG Facilitation Framework. I love how he's taken what can be a complex task and structured it in a way to "share the burden" amongst the students! -- Adam]
We also used a version of Beau Jagr Sheldon’s Script Change tool to empower students to pause the game and call for a re-do on choices that overstepped the boundaries those questions imply.
We started with a couple play sessions to learn the game- once with me as GM, and once with the shared GM roles in place. Then we started folding in academic content. Using a Chalk Talk routine, we brainstormed setting, character, and problem ideas to get characters interacting with ideas from science and social studies units. The 3rd-4th grade class was studying US regions, so students’ ideas included landmarks (San Andreas fault, farm in Kansas), jobs related to regional resources (lifeguard, miner), and natural disasters common to different areas (earthquake, tornado).
In 5th-8th grade, students were learning about cell structures in their life science unit. We generated ideas that used a city’s buildings and institutions as a metaphor for a cell’s organelles based on their functions. Combining different students’ ideas, Cell City became an archipelago of island neighborhoods in a sea of cytoplasm, surrounded by a seawall representing the cell membrane. It included an Endoplasmic Reticulum Airport for transporting goods between the islands, a Ribosome factory that supplied local KroGoo stores with food goo, a Mitochondria power plant, and it was controlled by a nucleus: a giant neon sign that sent out reminders about the laws of the city (the DNA). After a few sessions of adventures with individual super squads, we finished with a whole class showdown when the Nucleus got a virus that sent the Nuclear membrane guards to attack the whole city, while at the same time a giant bacterium was attacking the cell wall. Students were invested in the story and characters because of their independent play sessions, but the whole-class session allowed everyone to share out their character actions and pursue shared goals. As a facilitator, the whole class session gave me an opportunity to assess how students were approaching gameplay, and also call out great examples of the Cell City metaphor in action.
I also had a chance to adapt Super City for an AP French class at Boone County High School during a residency with American Legacy Theatre. We started out trying to do more improv-based work, but we ran into some challenges. It was a tiny class divided between three fluent heritage speakers and two non-native speakers. As a result, class discussions often involved three students chatting comfortably in French while the other two struggled to keep up or get a word in. The uneven comfort with conversation was especially challenging for improv, with the triple challenge of understanding a scene partner, deciding what to say, and how to say it in French.
The TTRPG structure brought us a softer approach: giving each player a turn to describe what they are trying to do, then roll the dice to determine the outcome and describe what it looks like. This gave a natural rhythm of spotlight shifting that allowed everyone to share and get help when needed without feeling like it was interrupting the flow of the story. Since the current vocabulary unit was about Self-Discovery (describing strengths and weaknesses, comparing the inner and outer self, etc.), I translated and expanded the Super City character sheet to include descriptions of each character’s secret identity to target the unit’s grammar and vocabulary in a new context. It worked especially well with the small student-teacher ratio. I could see this being a good rotation station style activity in a larger foreign language class (a great way to practice transitive verbs in particular!).
I put an outline of my hacking process and links to the tools I created into a document and resource folder to help other educators hack VRBS games for their classrooms. Hopefully others can join the quest!
In June 2025 you attended a “Dungeons & Desks” PD facilitated by Kalli Colley and myself. You told me in previous talks that you found it valuable, which I'm glad! How did something you learned there help you in your educational work?
For starters, it was a great example of hands-on PD that uses the methods to teach the methods. We were playing educational games pretty early in the session, cycling through small-group and whole-group discussion as we reflected on the rules and the various stages we played through. One of the example games that stuck with me was a simplified D&D-powered scenario that recast the dynamics behind the Mayflower Compact into a space mission. In the scenario, a small group of scientists doing planetary research ends up stranded with a larger group of workers who just want to survive. The experience showed the power of pre-generated characters and Auto-GM scenarios for guiding a story. ["Auto-GM" is another example from the Degree of TTRPG Facilitation Framework. -- Adam] By bolting down a lot of variables in character creation, it opened up focus on the debate at the heart of a significant historical moment. I recently heard a talk by Susan Haarman through Tabletop EDU, who described the gaming table as a micro-democracy, and connected gaming to John Dewey’s idea of a “dramatic rehearsal” for civic life. Putting those two ideas together, I like the idea of a whole-class campaign structured like a representative democracy.
Coming from a drama background would be a huge asset for playing or running TTRPGs. If nothing else, I would think it gives you confidence to model for, and lead students in, role-playing and structured imaginative storytelling. But what if we don’t have a background in theater? If we are educators wanting to use TTRPGs but we aren’t actors or directors, what can we learn from the dramatic arts?
I think the biggest thing I bring over from drama is a sense of playful collaboration. Inside the magic circle of a game or the given circumstances of a scene in the rehearsal room, we have a lot of freedom to try new things, make mistakes, and then try something different. We get comfortable doing silly acting exercises, then use the safety of that space to experiment with ideas for telling the story. As a director, I try to empower my actors to make their own choices by helping them understand the stakes and situation their character lives in. Then I can ask them what they would do instead of telling them what to do.
Some of the best GM advice I’ve read is to ask your players questions about the world, and then incorporate their ideas into play. It lightens your cognitive load, honors the creativity of the people around you, and gets others invested in your shared journey together. It’s equally good advice if you’re a teacher, a director, or any other role where your leadership guides someone else’s experience.
A side note on the subject of verbs: one of my favorite drama tools is action analysis (sometimes called beat analysis). Actors can break down a scene based on their character’s motivation, objectives and tactics, each expressed as a verb. I think this process primed me to see the VRBS system as a bridge between TTRPGs and dramatic storytelling.
How have students reacted to your educational TTRPGs? How do you know their learning is more vibrant, deeper, memorable?
We closed each game session with a Stars and Wishes share-out, and students were always excited to share the highlights of their characters’ actions throughout the session. I was also intrigued by the way that the Cell City setting worked for students in various stages of the middle school developmental mind warp. For kids in the thick of the change, who often struggle with abstract thinking, there was a concrete task to latch onto, with a small menu of go-to choices to lean on. At the same time, the setting creation process let the students who were still in younger imagination-brain mode share wacky ideas and allowed students who had crossed over and regained their capacity for metaphorical thinking to apply it in a way their peers could relate to.
In the AP French class, I could tell the TTRPG was an effective learning tool because everyone was naturally applying their language content in a new context. Students at all levels of fluency were seeking out new vocabulary words to describe their superpowers and their impacts on the story world.
What’s next? What would you like to try with TTRPGs in classrooms that you haven’t done yet?
I have so many ideas! The structure of whole-class and small group play could be used to simulate representative democracy in a whole class setting. We saw a little of that with different superhero teams joining together, but it would be interesting to lean into that dynamic more specifically.
After reading Hamlet’s Hit Points by Robin D. Laws, I think it would be interesting to adapt the VRBS system to explore different ways an existing literary or dramatic scene might play out. The book shows a way to analyze a text by finding the inflection points of a character’s rise and fall. It would be interesting to actually roll some dice on an action at each inflection point and see where you end up.
My two-year-old daughter loves bugs, and as we were watching some ants together I got the idea to use nature observation as a tool to identify animal-action verbs for a game of heroes who merge with other creatures.
In a math class, I think there’s also a lot of potential in examining different probabilities in various card and dice resolution systems. It could be used to make stronger choices for a crunchy RPG session, or it might be used to show how designers choose different layers of probability to match their system to the stories they want to tell. Stories of bold risk-taking often use luck-pressing systems, card-driven prompt games offer variety in a predictable structure, and stories of gradual personal growth often give level-up bonuses to make success more likely over time. This might be a good hook for students with literary strengths who might have trouble relating to the world of numbers.
In any case, I’m always open to the adventure of making new discoveries with other educators. One of my secret powers as a teaching artist is sharing the planning load for weird new ideas, then helping unpack the surprises that emerge.
Dan, I am thoroughly impressed by your structured Polyhedral Pedagogical approach! A school would be lucky to have you as a teacher or as an artist-in-residence. I usually end these KyEdRPG Spotlight interviews with a variant of the same question: What advice would you give to a teacher who wants to start using TTRPGs in their own classroom?
First, don’t feel like it has to be a huge undertaking to plan. If you can engage your students in building out the game world with you, they will be more invested in it and it’s less prep up front. Build onto students’ ideas and ask questions that lead toward specificity and imagery, or show where the danger is in a place or situation.
Second, make sure to model the gameplay as a whole class before breaking into smaller groups. Take a day to teach the “what is this thing we’re doing” and another day to layer in any tools you are using to support GMless or co-GM play. I like to use a giant die we can toss to whoever is taking a turn in our first learning session.
Finally, remember to have fun and show that you’re having fun! Your energy and enthusiasm feed your players.
A big thanks to Dan Burkey for taking the time to be interviewed! If you would like to work with Dan, be sure to reach out via his website.
Kalli and I will be leading our next educational TTRPG session as a FREE two day workshop at the Frazier Kentucky History Museum on June 11 and 12, 2026. For more details and a registration link, visit here. Hurry -- seats are limited!
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