Christopher Woo -- a social studies teacher who has been at Seneca High School since starting his educational career in 2014 -- came across my social media feed last month in the form of a video by JCPS (the Jefferson County Public School district, in Louisville, KY):
At first, the story seemed wonderfully typical of today's pop culture scene -- yet another high school's afterschool Dungeons & Dragons club was well liked by its students -- but I was quickly struck by two things. The first was the passionate, palpable community that Mr. Woo cultivated, made evident in the testimony of the young people in the video. The second was the discovery of Woo's self-published book series that turns the fictional exploits of his students' characters into a recorded, narrative history.
I had to visit, and a few weeks ago I made the pilgrimage to Mr. Woo's classroom to learn more.
Christopher Woo become a player of the game in the 1990's, when he first got his hands on the Advanced Dungeons & Dragons Monstrous Manual. (He still has a copy in his classroom!) But the club's story began several years into Woo's teaching, when a student asked if he would sponsor it. What started with four students in 2018 has now grown to a dozen, ranging from freshmen to seniors. Woo is usually the Dungeon Master (DM) who facilitates the adventures, and like many DM's, took on the burden of capturing each session's detailed notes for what choices were made by the characters and how the narrative they co-created together marched forward. Additionally, Woo's club is somewhat unique for an extracurricular K-12 experience, because the game's "campaign world" has been consistently growing since its start; as students graduate and leave Seneca, the feats of their heroes become legendary lore for the incoming new members of the club.
But such continuity created a conundrum. How would the new players ever catch up on all of that lore? Additionally, Woo wanted to give the members of the club something to remember of their playing time together -- tangible proof that their voice matters, that it makes an impact and carries a legacy. Last but not least, what's a catchy way to recruit new members for your afterschool club? The solution for all of these problems: put it in a book. And so, the first volume of Fate, Friends, and Fortune: A High School TableTop RPG Club's Adventures was self-published by Woo via Amazon in April 2023. As of now, the series is up to eight books, with Volume Nine in the works for late summer.
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| The first book in the series, held by the real Mr. Woo, with the cover Mr. Woo peeking behind a DM screen. |
It's important to note that Woo gives away the copies of the book to the members of the club, and that the cost of the self-publishing comes out of his personal pocket (currently over $200 per new edition). While that is certainly one kind of impressive obstacle that Woo rises to overcome, the second is the time involved, from writing the original session notes to later crafting the notes into a coherent story.
Thankfully, he has help from La'Kori Carson, a former Seneca student. After Mr. Woo set up an introductory email, I was grateful she agreed to an interview to share her perspective.
La'Kori had played a little D & D in middle school, but hadn't planned to join Woo's club until a friend brought her in. "I came in, and I was like, okay, I'm just actually going to sit here the first day. And [Mr. Woo] was like, you can join. I'm like, you want me to join? Very well. So I ended up joining with a character named Holland who starts off as a rock gnome and gets completely obliterated through the story, funnily enough."
Despite such inauspicious beginnings, La'Kori kept coming. Over time, she became a "secondary DM" to help Mr. Woo out with running adventures. By the time she graduated in 2023, her role grew to be a session notetaker (she still occasionally drops in on gameplay remotely via Woo's laptop and Zoom). These notes are not vague and general. As an example: "They rolled an 18, which means this passed the DC check that had been say a 15 at the time. This is how they did the attack. This is their name. This is who they attacked." By Volume 6 of the Fate, Friends, and Fortune series, she also became a volunteer editor and co-author. La'Kori manages all of this while attending college ("I'm a criminal justice major, sociology, anthropology with a minor in environmental justice sustainability with certifications alongside agriculture and different parts like veterinary sciences, animal sciences") and now runs a personal campaign as a DM herself. And the gameplay she sets up for her players is not just hack and slash combat! "I'll puzzle them with random problems, and they have to sit here and try to figure out these math equations. They're like, when did algebra get into D&D? I'm like, oh, I don't know." You could hear the smile of professed innocence in her voice. "And I'm honestly testing their real-world skills, and that's something that my players have mentioned that they like. I've brought in real-world problems for them to fix. Each location that I write has some real-world problem. One area has poverty. Another area has bad schooling because of who's in charge. There's a monarchy that's falling apart."
In his own quest for authentic learning, Mr. Woo also brings in TTRPGs into his social studies instruction. He has students roleplay as President Kennedy and members of his cabinet during the Cuban Missle Crisis -- a roll of the dice at the end (augmented by their choices) determines whether the world ends in nuclear war. Students participate in a simulation based on the War in Ukraine, gaming out whether they as the United States can de-escalate, or will inadvertently escalate, the situation. As 13th century explorers and merchants on the Silk Road to China, students play to see if they end up rich from trade, or dead from a duel. Woo emphasized that reflection afterwards is essential. What did you learn? Could the outcome have gone differently if you had made other choices? He hopes to one day share modules of his TTRPG examples so that teachers could benefit from his front-loaded work, as he can see what a difference playing TTRPGs makes in student engagement and learning.
As we wind down this blog entry, it seems fitting to return to La'Kori to ask about the impact of Mr. Woo and the Seneca D & D club. By many metrics, she was a successful student - yet prior to that fateful afternoon her rock gnome was "completely obliterated," she felt unappreciated as the creative and multifaceted person she truly is. "I've been a student that's always been categorized by their test scores. A 3.99 GPA student who passed with straight A's and B's or just straight A's in many semesters. But I'm horrible at standardized testing. So I was never with all the smart kids. I didn't receive the rewards being on a bus that had multiple destinations, a compound bus. I didn't get my perfect attendance award, and that was something that I couldn't handle. That wasn't even something that was my fault, and it was still held against me."
Mr. Woo, and by extension the D & D club, was crucial for La'Kori to feel connected, seen and heard, and highly recommends other teachers run their own: "It allows you to form bonds outside of it. And if students are having trouble with, say, schooling, for example, they may even come to you because they feel connected to you through this game to ask for help. And that's a great way to form a bond because a teacher's job is to help students, and what better way for a teacher to help them than to understand their problems better?"
Today, La'Kori is a published writer who will likely graduate college early with multiple majors, and she enthusiastically gives credit to Woo's D &D club for helping to launch her on that adventure. "I really do appreciate what experience he gave me because I'm part of the small student group of like, say, minority. And that also just didn't make friends well. So to be put into a team-based game where me as a person, I don't like group projects. I don't like group projects solely because I'm always the one who does everything. I'm always the one who has to take a leadership position. I'm always put into a leadership position by my teachers, by my professors, so to be put into a game where I can just kind of sit down, de-stress after schooling, it was fine. Then I became the group leader, funnily enough, through the situation, and I was allowed to like reach my own peaks of interest where I could play out what I could do. That was pretty cool, but I also understood balancing out my skill set. I was not a fighter, but I was a healer of the group. And through being a healer, I was probably, I think, the smartest person in my group."
Amplifying voices. Finding balance. Challenging what it means to be "smart." Giving opportunities for leadership. Healing. For La'Kori, and for so many other Seneca High School students that have gone through Christopher Woo's D & D club through the years, the fantasy game of funny shaped dice has transformed real lives.
