Youth Led Dungeons and Dragons Programming at the Library, a guest post by Max Manga

I work in a library system with 16 branches. Five of them are urban, within the city. The others are all in rural communities ranging from a few hundred to three thousand in population. Especially in rural communities, it can be hard to plan strong teen programs that are responsive to community needs. Once you have planned these programs, it can be even harder to get teens to actually show up to the events you have spent hours organizing.

I received 4 separate emails, from students at a rural high school, asking for a Dungeons and Dragons program at the library. The local Trading Card Game store, that previously served the community with its D&D needs had recently left, leaving a huge gap in the community. We really wanted to fill this community need through library programming, but I had one problem: neither myself nor any other programmer at my library know how to play Dungeons and Dragons.

D&D is a very complicated role-playing game. The rulebook alone, the D&D Player’s Handbook, is over 300 pages long. Each game, or campaign, can last months at a time, and often comes with its own guidebook with custom monsters, characters, rules, and worlds.

For an explanation of the game and how it works, check out this article on TLT:

So You Want to Play Dungeons and Dragons in the Library? The Teen is here to help you with that

After emailing the teens who submitted the program idea, we were able to figure out how we wanted to run the event. The program would be run weekly, after school. A single session takes about 3 hours. A session can run even longer, especially if there is a tense battle or roleplaying event going on inside the game, so we made sure to “end” each event an hour before the library closed. This gave us a good amount of buffer time, which we needed in at least one case when the session went 45 minutes over time.

Finding a Dungeon Master

Everything was ready to go… Everything except the most important part of a D&D campaign: the Dungeon Master. The Dungeon Master, or DM, plans out each week what happens to the players. They have to create maps, plan encounters, create unique NPCs to interact with the players, know everything about the imaginary world, have a complete understanding of all the rules to the game, and use their imagination on the fly to move the game forwards.

Since I had decided to run two games, one in downtown Kingston and one in a rural branch, I needed to find two Dungeon Masters. We are lucky in the city to have a large selection of trading card game and board game businesses, all of which would be happy to rent you a Dungeon Master for a series program. However, as a big believer in giving youth opportunities to take leadership roles, I wanted to find students to run my games.

I reached out to a teacher who ran his school’s “Games Club,” who was able to connect me with a recent high school graduate who had lots of Dungeon Master experience. Since he had been to school with many of my confirmed players, they had rapport already, which helped my program get off to a flying start.

For my urban, downtown session, I connected to the Role-Playing Games club at Queen’s University, and posted on their Facebook group, asking for a Dungeon Master who was willing to work with six teenagers once a week for an afternoon.

Running the Game

Once I had my Dungeon Masters sorted, we were ready to roll. Initially, for both groups, I planned on having a 10 week session, ending with the school year. However, in both cases, we ended up extending the program a few extra weeks, as all the teens were having a great time. On the last day, the teens came in dressed as their characters from the campaign, and we ordered in pizza! One of the players from the session also volunteered to DM a future game if we decided to run the program again.

Each week, I worked with both DMs to make sure they have everything they needed. In advance of the campaign, I bought a few copies of the Player’s Handbook, as well as enough dice for each player to have a set. Most players will have their own, but it is good to be prepared. Each week, the DMs sent me an email with maps or pictures they needed to print, or if they were out of snacks and needed more.

We also were able to get miniatures for each player, of their character. Minis represent the character on the field of battle in the game, and are incredibly customizable and detailed. They are also very, very expensive to buy online. To print minis, I use the DM Workshop, by Miguel Zavala. He has thousands of free minis that you can print out on your library’s 3D printer. If you print them in white, players can paint their minis. Then, at the end of the campaign, every teen gets to take home their own free custom miniature!

While running a program with a teenager as the primary facilitator can be scary (what if they don’t show up?) or stressful (teenagers are not always great about responding to emails promptly), I am a strong believer in youth-led programming, and there are myriad benefits to having a youth lead your library’s Dungeons and Dragons program:

1. Library staff do not have to spend all their time preparing for one program, especially if that program has a limited number of participants. Each session can take anywhere from 2-4 hours, with a roughly equivalent amount of time for preparation in advance of a session.
2. You are giving youth agency, helping them take leaderships roles in the community. There are limited opportunities for youth to get this kind of experience, especially considering they are getting paid to do something they truly love.
3. You are giving teens a safe space in their community, where they can be themselves. Having a DM who is also a peer can help alleviate some nervousness, and may make the teens more comfortable.
4. It is great for building community. The teens at both of the programs traded social media handles and phone number, and coordinated matching outfits and complementary characters.

Meet the author

Max Manga (he/him) is the Teen and New Adult Librarian at the Kingston Frontenac Public Library.

Filed under: Guest Post, Uncategorized