Roll Insight: Teaching Undergraduate Philosophy through TTRPGs

Board Game Academics, March 2025
Published in Vol 2.
DOI: https://doi.org/10.70380/ifbd9m2ip

Archie Fields III
University of Calgary

I. INTRODUCTION

It is clear that tabletop roleplaying games (TTRPGs) are useful pedagogical tools in a variety of educational contexts (Hammer et al. 2018, Cullinan and Genova 2023). Indeed, educational contexts abound—from elementary school to university education, with as many different benefits across those contexts. Playing TTRPGs can help students build community, learn specific content, develop social and emotional intelligence, and much more (Cullinan and Genova 2023). But these are quite general benefits. In this paper, I wish to focus on a very specific educational context: undergraduate philosophy classrooms. Undergraduate philosophy has its own distinctive learning goals and skills to master, such as learning to analyze, assess, and construct arguments (Rudisill 2011). Can TTRPGs help with these sorts of learning outcomes?

 I aim to show how it is possible to teach undergraduate-level philosophy using TTRPGs as well as defend this approach to teaching philosophy by articulating a set of distinct benefits associated with it. I begin in Section II by providing a description of the course to provide context for the rest of the discussion. My argument then unfolds over the following sections of the paper: in Section III, I articulate a distinction between philosophy of TTRPGs and philosophy through TTRPGs, showing how the latter makes it possible to learn and participate in philosophy through the act of playing a TTRPG. In Section IV, I defend this approach to teaching philosophy by describing the benefits of learning philosophy by playing a TTRPG, including showing how the phenomena of bleed and immersion lead to greater student interest and investment in the course material as well as how taking on a role in the way that playing a TTRPG requires develops skills essential for doing philosophy. In Section V, I raise and respond to two possible objections to teaching philosophy through TTRPGs. The first objection derives from general challenges to teaching with games, including how games may not appropriately reflect reality and thus limit learning potential. The second objection is a more specific challenge to the efficiency of teaching philosophy with TTRPGs compared to the classic Socratic method. Section VI concludes the paper with a discussion of directions for future research.

II. THE COURSE

Before describing and defending the possibility of teaching philosophy with TTRPGs, it will be helpful to say a bit about how my course is structured to offer some additional context for my arguments in Sections III-V. My course is a special topics philosophy course titled, “Dungeons & Dragons and Philosophy” that has no prerequisites. The course typically runs during a seven-week summer term with each week consisting of two class sessions, each of which runs for 2 hours and 45 minutes. This provides somewhat optimized conditions for running gaming sessions because classes are nearly three hours long, more in-line with the length of typical TTRPG sessions.  I chose to use Dungeons & Dragons (D&D) as the TTRPG for the class for a couple of reasons. One is that it’s simply what most students have heard of and may already have some familiarity with the game. Another is that, compared to other fantasy-themed TTRPGs (Pathfinder, Dungeon Crawl Classics, Shadowrun, etc.) the mechanics of the fifth edition of D&D are relatively easy to pick up. There are, of course, simpler systems that I’ve considered using—Kids on Bikes/Brooms or Fate might be simpler and work just as well as D&D, but they don’t have the name recognition and are less likely to draw students to the class.

The course begins with several class sessions that prepare students for doing philosophy through playing TTRPGs by introducing them to philosophy (broadly speaking) and to some specific issues in the course. Because the course has no perquisites and attracts students from many different majors, it’s important to spend time during these early classes discussing what philosophy is and what philosophical questions and research are like before moving on to specific course issues. Those specific course issues include philosophical questions about what a game is, whether games can count as art, and whether committing immoral actions within a fictional game world can ever count as having done something truly immoral (that is, immoral even outside of the context of the game). 

Before the students play their first D&D session in class, I also dedicate one class to helping students create characters, learn some basic rules, and provide table etiquette guidelines. Students are broken up into groups of 4-5: these will be their gaming and discussion groups for the rest of the term. My class enrollment is capped at 50, so I usually have nine to ten groups of 4-5 students. I also introduce safety mechanisms that must be used. One is the X card (Stavropoulos 2012), which is a card with an X on it that can be used to immediately stop the action of the game and address or edit out something that makes a player uncomfortable, such as a joke that was meant in good fun but was actually hurtful. I also provide yellow and green cards to signal growing discomfort or active enjoyment of game content, respectively. I also ask that students use lines and veils (Edwards 2003). Lines are roleplaying boundaries that cannot be crossed in the course of the game, while veils are events or actions that might be allowed but won’t be described or roleplayed in detail. Some lines are mandated by me (for example, no romantic content/roleplay, and nothing that can be construed as torture or sexual harassment or assault) while leaving students free to add other lines or veils based on discussion with their gaming groups. For example, some students may wish to avoid especially graphic descriptions during combat, and I ask that groups accommodate such requests.

The classes then alternate between in-class game sessions and class lecture and discussion. For the in-class game sessions, students each take turns being the Dungeon Master (DM). There are five single-session, philosophically themed adventures I’ve written and distributed to my students, so each student in a group of 4-5 runs at least one adventure (in groups of 4, one student will run two sessions). Following the game session, in the subsequent class session I will provide a brief lecture (typically 15-20 minutes) recapitulating and explaining some of the key philosophical issues in the game session before moving on to small group discussions. During these group discussions, I provide questions that ask students to reevaluate their actions in the game, relate the philosophical content of the game scenario to the corresponding course readings, and engage with those philosophical questions from their own (student) perspectives if they stayed entirely in character during the discussion that was part of the earlier game session. After each small group discussion of a question or short set of questions, I break students out of their groups for a class discussion of those questions so that individuals from different groups can share their perspectives while also getting feedback and follow-up questions from me.

The game sessions and group discussions build towards the primary means of assessment in the class: written assignments that ask students to analyze certain choices or events in the game by focusing on the philosophical issues related to those parts of the game. To do this, they must make connections between the game events and course readings. For example, I might ask students to use a particular moral theory they have read about to analyze the actions of a character in response to an in-game dilemma (the discussion of “The Dragon Problem” in the next section provides a short example of how this can work). Thus, students must write and argue about many of the same issues as in any other philosophy class, but they’ll often be writing about them as they arise in the context of the game.

Overall, then, students learn philosophy through both traditional and game-based methods. Students complete, discuss, and write about course readings, but they also play through adventures that connect to the philosophical issues in those readings. By providing different avenues of engaging with the course material, I hope to provide students with a better learning experience than traditional lecture/discussion or only playing the game without further reading, lecture, and discussion. 

III. PHILOSOPHY OF AND THROUGH TTRPGS

Having spelled out the general structure of my course, my first aim is to show simply that it is possible to learn philosophy and to do philosophy by playing TTRPGs. To that end, I begin by making a distinction between two related ways of engaging in philosophy related to TTRPGs. The first is philosophy of TTRPGs, and the second is philosophy through TTRPGs. The first way of doing philosophy related to TTRPGS (philosophy of TTRPGs) is the more traditional form of philosophy, analogous to philosophy of art or philosophy of science. It involves using a philosophical lens to analyze a discipline or activity. Philosophy of TTRPGs involves questions like: What is a game (Suits 2014)? Are there moral restrictions upon our simulated actions in virtual or imagined worlds (Luck 2009)? Are TTRPGs art, and if so, what makes them better or worse, aesthetically speaking (Nguyen 2020)? Several of these questions originate from or are related to questions in other fields of philosophy, such as ethics and philosophy of art. In the same way that one can do philosophy of science without being a scientist, or philosophy of art without being an artist, one can study the philosophy of TTRPGs without actually playing any games.

The second way of doing philosophy related to TTRPGs (philosophy through TTRPGs) isn’t an area of study so much as a means of engaging in philosophical activity. There are some fairly standard, recognized ways of studying and doing philosophy, such as verbally or in writing developing or critiquing an argument, reading a philosophical essay, engaging in a philosophical dialogue, or listening to a presentation or lecture on the subject of philosophy (Concepción 2004, Rudisill 2011, Martin 2016). I would like to suggest that it is also possible to do philosophy by playing a TTRPG¹. That is, I define philosophy through TTRPGs as engaging in philosophical discourse, thinking, and learning through the act of playing a TTRPG.

How does one learn and participate in philosophy by playing a TTRPG? Let us consider two archetypal activities involved in philosophy and see how they might be accomplished in the course of playing a TTRPG: conducting thought experiments (Sorenson 1992) and engaging in philosophical discourse, including constructing arguments (Rudisill 2011). Let’s begin with thought experiments. A typical thought experiment asks us to imagine a certain scenario, such as a runaway trolley endangering one or more people on a track (Foot 1967, Thomson 1985), a randomly kidnapped person being forced to serve as life support for a sick virtuoso violinist (Thomson 1971), or a researcher who has spent her life studying all of the empirical, quantitatively measurable facts concerning color but has never seen a color herself (Jackson 1986). Such scenarios are often strange, outlandish, and downright improbable—in other words, exactly the sorts of situations we might expect to encounter in a fantasy roleplaying game. These situations perhaps even become more believable in a world of high fantasy: the existence of a ‘zombie’ version of ourselves that functions exactly as we do and responds to stimuli exactly as we would but without having any of our conscious experiences seems incredible (Chalmers 1997), and yet this is quite similar to the effect of creating a copy of oneself using the spell simulacrum in Dungeons & Dragons.

In the class I teach, the fantastical setting of the game world provides endless possibilities for confronting student-players with classic thought experiments from philosophy. For example, in one adventure, players face the “Dragon Problem,” a scenario much like the classic Trolley Problem (Foot 1967, Thomson 1985). In the Dragon Problem, a destructive and completely unreasonable dragon threatens the lives of the townsfolk, and players can choose to redirect the dragon from a greater number of people to a lesser number. This scenario presents similar opportunities for applying consequentialist and deontological theories of morality while considering the nuances of which ways are acceptable to redirect the dragon, just as in classic trolley problems. 

Let’s turn now to the second philosophical activity: engaging in discourse and constructing arguments. Through a game session (for any TTRPG game, not just philosophically-themed ones) players are in constant discussion and dialogue with one another about the correct course of action to take in the game. Should they charge boldly into the goblin camp, or sneak in quietly? Should they make a deal with a mysterious entity for aid, even though it might later exact a terrible price? Players can and often do spend a great deal of time discussing strategy, in-game goals, and theories about the story of the game—often leading to extended debates which, in my experience, can become quite heated. In other words, engaging in discourse and constructing arguments (in the very straightforward sense of providing reasons for accepting a conclusion) is already built into TTRPGs. It’s quite simple, then, to extend those discussions into the realm of philosophy by building philosophical problems or issues into the scenarios players face during the game. 

Continuing with the Dragon Problem example, players must discuss whether to, say, push a very large half-giant townsperson into the path of the marauding dragon to prevent its deadly breath from killing five other townspeople. One player might argue that as a matter of pure consequences, they ought to push the half-giant into the path of the dragon’s breath to spare the five other townspeople, while another player might instead suggest that something seems wrong about pushing an otherwise safe person into the path of harm, even if it would save more people. The former student might draw upon John Stuart Mill’s moral theory of utilitarianism, while the latter student might appeal to Kantian deontological moral theory. And just like in a normal classroom discussion of the Trolley Problem, players can argue for the right course of action while the action of the game is paused: the decisions need not be made in ‘real time’ to allow for players to think carefully about what they want to do and—more importantly—why they want to do it. Thus, the activity of engaging in philosophical discussion and constructing arguments can just as easily happen at the game table as at a student’s desk or other more traditional classroom environment.

Finally, I’d like to note that it’s also possible to do philosophy of TTRPGs through playing TTRPGs. Consider the question of whether it is ever morally problematic to engage in acts of simulated violence—a question discussed not just in the philosophy of TTRPGs but in philosophy of games more broadly (Luck 2009, Brey 2020). As players engage with the game worlds of TTRPGs, they often find themselves in positions to consider employing violence. In D&D, for example, much of the ruleset is devoted to specifying what exactly players can do in combat encounters. As players encounter situations where violence might be done in the game, they can ask and try to answer both whether violence is justified in the game scenario itself (that is, whether the character does something wrong by enacting violence—a case of doing philosophy through TTRPGs) and whether there may be something morally suspect about engaging in simulated violence (that is, whether the player does something wrong by participating in simulated violence through playing the game—a case of doing philosophy of TTRPGs through playing TTRPGs). As we’ll see in the next section, being able to directly participate in the activity that is itself the subject of philosophical inquiry provides a unique advantage for teaching philosophy through TTRPGs.

In this section, I’ve argued that it’s possible to learn and engage in philosophy through playing TTRPGs. One might object, though, that it’s unclear why we should bother with playing TTRPGs to do philosophy. Perhaps I’ve established that it’s plausible that we can do philosophy through playing a game, but what do we have to gain from it? In other words, is there any advantage to having students engage with ‘The Dragon Problem’ rather than the good old-fashioned Trolley Problem? In the next section, I’ll answer this question by articulating a set of advantages that come from philosophizing through TTRPGs. Later, in section V, I’ll also address objections to this approach, including asking whether teaching through TTRPGs is too inefficient and time-consuming compared to traditional teaching methods like the Socratic method.

IV. ADVANTAGES OF PHILOSOPHY THROUGH TTRPGS

The first advantage of having students learn philosophy by playing TTRPGs is that student investment in the course and in the material is increased via immersion in the game. While there is debate about how precisely to define ‘immersion’ in roleplaying games, almost all such definitions involve the idea that immersion occurs when players take on traits of their characters (e.g. their beliefs, desires, goals, etc.) as their own in the context of the game (Pohjola 2004, Lankoski and Järvelä 2012, Bowman 2013, Bowman and Lieberoth 2018). In other words, when a player is immersed in a game, they see themselves (to some extent) as the character. A related phenomenon (sometimes discussed synonymously with immersion) is bleed, a phenomenon in which the player and character mutually influence one another (Montola 2010, Bowman 2013, Bowman and Lieberoth 2018). Two primary forms of bleed are discussed in the literature: bleed-in and bleed-out. Bleed-in occurs when a player’s personality traits, beliefs, desires, life events, etc. affect the character portrayed by the player, while bleed-out occurs when the personality traits or in-game events involving the character affect the player (Montola 2010).  If a player’s penchant for being well-dressed finds its way into their characters, or if a character becomes a bit more jovial because the player had an especially good day, those are examples of bleed-in. If a player experiences a low mood after a game session in which a terrible tragedy befalls their character, that’s an example of bleed-out.  Both forms of bleed are involved in immersion. For example, bleed-in may contribute to the player identifying with their character and making them feel more like their character, and bleed-out may result from that identification as the player feels on behalf of the character.

My classroom experience suggests that educators can leverage these phenomena of immersion (bleed-in, bleed-out) for educational purposes: as students become immersed in their characters and in the game, they also become more invested in the class and the issues of the class². This can only occur if the course issues and content, the philosophical questions of the course, are part of the game world and story. This is because, if the philosophical content is baked into the game, such that the characters are confronted with philosophical puzzles and dilemmas that they must navigate, then student-players—if they are immersed—may also be inclined to care more about these issues thanks to bleed-out from the character. For example, one of the scenarios in my class involves an ally of the players involuntarily turning into a werewolf and causing harm in the town in which the PCs live. At the end of the session, the PCs must decide the fate of this ally, which involves a discussion of free will and moral responsibility. How much control did the ally have over her actions when in werewolf form? What precautions did the ally take to prevent herself from harming others prior to the transformation? What punishment, if any, does the werewolf deserve for her actions? The characters in the game, insofar as they are allies of this werewolf and heroes in the town who need to do the just thing, are typically invested in trying to choose the best course of action for her and for the town—and so, too, the players are interested in how to sort out the tricky issues of free will and moral responsibility in relation to the scenario. 

One might note that one could simply increase student investment in the course by allowing students to play a game they enjoy and care about as part of the class without making the game have anything to do with the course content. In other words, one could simply use the fun of gameplay as a motivator for students to come to class. But this loses any unique advantage of playing TTRPGs to learn philosophy—the same effect could be accomplished by rewarding students with anything they enjoy to motivate them to come to class and do well. Moreover, playing a TTRPG to any extent as part of a class takes up a massive amount of time, such that almost any other reward would be less disruptive to the course itself. Worse still, if you’re simply using the game as a reward or as a fun class activity to maintain student interest, students don’t actually become interested in the course issues for their own sake. Rather, students become interested in those issues only as a means to be rewarded with gameplay. Or, as Ryan and Deci (2000) might say, students are merely extrinsically motivated to come to class and learn in such a case, rather than intrinsically motivated.  So, importantly, one cannot just have students play a TTRPG that has no connection to course issues as part of a class and expect it to increase student investment in course issues by itself.  Students might become invested in the game, which might make them want to come to class so they can play, but then the class becomes secondary to the game. To take full advantage of immersion for student learning, one must also make the game involve those course issues (that is, having students learn philosophy through playing the TTRPG) so that students become invested both in the game and in the course material—and indeed, they become invested in the course material because it is part of the game.

The second benefit of having students learn philosophy by playing TTRPGs is that playing TTRPGs, as an activity, involves developing skills that are crucial also to doing philosophy. Nguyen (2019, 2020) argues that games are the art form of agency, an aestheticized version of decision-making and problem-solving, in the same way that music is an aestheticized version of auditory experience. In a game, according to Nguyen, we adopt alternative agencies that come with their own goals and abilities for navigating the challenges of the game. In TTRPGs, this means taking on the role of a player character, who may have a set of loosely articulated goals and desires (perhaps some that also come from the story of the game) and a set of abilities that may help them achieve those goals. To play the game well, we must try to think like the character, to try to approach a challenge as they might, and think through an issue from their perspective. Nguyen (2020) argues that in a well-designed game, player abilities are adequate for accomplishing the goals set within the game, providing a satisfying play experience that may sharpen the player’s own problem-solving and decision-making skills.

Nguyen may well be right about games building problem-solving skills, but there is a more specific benefit for philosophy students—adopting alternative agencies. Practicing trying to inhabit another viewpoint, is itself a valuable skill in philosophy. In any area of philosophy, it is crucial to be able to think about what another person, especially someone who is unsympathetic to your views, might say about an argument you’ve constructed (Martin 2016). In moral philosophy, it’s likewise important to be able to think of how someone with a different set of values might object to a way you’ve framed a moral issue (McGrath 2008). And in epistemology, standpoint theory suggests that some people in different perspectives are in positions to know certain things to which others may not be privy (Hartsock 1983). Opportunities abound in TTRPGs for players to try to adopt alternative viewpoints as they play through the game. Players are invited and encouraged to consider, as part of navigating the philosophical issues of the game, what they think their character would do (and why) and what the player thinks is right (and why), as well as what might lead those courses of action (player v. character) to be different. And, of course, players are constantly in conversation with each other (and their characters with each others’ characters!) throughout the game, leading to many more opportunities for considering alternative perspectives on a given issue. Thus, the very act of playing the game builds the key skill in philosophy of considering and attempting to incorporate and engage with the perspectives of others even as one tries to offer their own answer to a philosophical question.

The final advantage of having students engaging in philosophy through TTRPGs is unique to cases of thinking about issues in philosophy of TTRPGs. Recall the earlier distinction between ‘philosophy of’ and ‘philosophy through.’ Many areas of philosophy involve ‘philosophy of’: philosophy of science, philosophy of art, philosophy of religion, etc. In many of these cases, students often learn a bit about the subject of that area of philosophy—in a philosophy of art class, it’s quite likely students’ attention will be drawn to works of art which raise philosophical questions. Duchamp’s infamous Fountain, for example, can be used to raise the question of what ‘counts’ as art and related questions about what makes something a work of art. And rare is the student who escapes a philosophy of science class without learning about certain crucial experiments from the history of science, such as the Michel-Morley experiment that showed that there is no luminiferous aether and that therefore light waves require no medium through which to travel. 

But students must rely upon their professors, texts, or their own research for these details—creating art or performing a scientific experiment isn’t part of such a class. And yet, research suggests that learning is greatly enhanced by active participation in the subject or discipline of study (Lave and Wenger 1991). For this reason, philosophy of science and art can be daunting enterprises, since students both must struggle with the philosophical issues while also trying to understand the relevant scientific experiments or theories, or interpret works of art without necessarily having firsthand experience in either area. By contrast, a class that teaches philosophy of TTRPGs in part by playing RPGs provides students with firsthand experience in the subject of philosophizing. In other words, students become acquainted with and equipped with knowledge of the subject of philosophy of TTRPGs in a way that they don’t in, say, a philosophy of science or art class. Students thus become further empowered in their inquiries into the philosophy of TTRPGs because they gain expertise in playing TTRPGs as part of the course, helping them better grasp the material.  

V. CHALLENGES AND OBJECTIONS

According to the arguments I’ve made so far, there are several clear advantages to teaching philosophy through TTRPGs. But there are also objections that might be raised to the approach that must be considered and dealt with, if possible. I now turn to outlining and responding to these objections and describing strategies for dealing with these challenges.

The first objection is really a set of related challenges raised by Nguyen (2020) and applies to learning with games in general, not just TTRPGs. These challenges can be thought of as limitations of teaching with games; that is, ways in which games might fail to help us learn. One way a game might fail to help us learn is because games are often idealized versions of some activity, or a simulation of an activity, that could lead to export a false expectation back to the real world of how to solve a problem or perform an action. For example, many pilots begin learning with flight simulators, but those simulators have limitations and are no substitute for actual flight time. Indeed, many of us would be horrified if we discovered that our commercial airline pilot had only practiced in simulators prior to our flight. So, too, we might think that because games don’t present ‘real world’ scenarios, how useful can they really be for learning philosophy?

Another way Nguyen (2020) contends that games might fail to help us learn is by providing us with a false sense of clarity about an issue, especially a moral issue. In many TTRPGs, players are often framed as the heroes, the moral centers of the story. And indeed, stories are often framed to let players be heroic: in the Dragon Problem above, whether the players sacrifice one to save five or not, their actions might be framed as morally good. If they did sacrifice one to save five, the town might be grateful that the PCs saved as many lives as they could. If they instead refrained from sacrificing one to save five, they may be seen as making a morally noble choice not to intentionally harm another, even if it would save more people. One might worry that because, most of the time, the heroes of the story ‘win,’ that they are also therefore morally correct. But of course, the PCs could have chosen their courses of action for poor reasons, but may feel that (because they are the heroes of the story), they nonetheless did the right thing.

But teaching philosophy through TTRPGs provides special considerations that help us overcome these challenges. The first is that philosophy already deals in abstractions or idealized scenarios—TTRPGs don’t change much about that. In the Trolley Problem, for instance, it must be assumed, among other things, that there aren’t alternative means of stopping the Trolley, that the person operating the switch can be certain that throwing the switch will divert the trolley, that all persons involved in the dilemma are of equal moral importance, etc. So, insofar as these sorts of challenges perhaps apply to philosophy more broadly, it’s not clear that teaching those issues through TTRPGs necessarily creates further distortions in the same way that a flight simulator isn’t an appropriate substitute for practice flying a real aircraft. The basic tool of philosophy is reasoning, and that applies whether you’re thinking about redirecting a rampaging dragon or a runaway trolley, so long as all of the relevant moral features are held stable between the two scenarios.

Moreover, in response to the idea that games may offer a false sense of clarity, I argue that the collaborative nature of TTRPGs makes such an outcome unlikely. Groups often have extended discussions about the right thing to do, and even if they ultimately decide jointly on a course of action, each player may have different reasons for that course of action or may dissent from the rest of the group but opt to go along with the majority decision. When Nguyen raises this challenge, it’s meant to apply equally to many kinds of games—board games, video games, etc. In those games, especially single-player games, the danger of a fantasy of clarity is especially threatening. But in a collaborative storytelling game where each player has autonomy and different points of view, group discussion can lead, just like in the real world, into muddy territory where it becomes unclear what is (or if there is any) singular, clear answer to a moral dilemma.

The second objection to teaching philosophy through TTRPGs is that it seems much more inefficient than the classic mode of teaching philosophy, the Socratic method. In the Socratic method, teachers, like Socrates in many of Plato’s dialogues, teach their students by raising questions that invite students to question their own beliefs, sometimes revealing inconsistencies or startling contradictions among those beliefs (Pekarsky 1994). For example, using the Socratic method to teach students about a topic such as what are minds (physical brains? immaterial souls? a pattern of functions?) would involve asking students about what properties such minds might have, and asking careful follow-up questions to challenge their thoughts. If a student argues, for example, that minds are simply brains, the Socratic teacher might question the student about what physical characteristics their own conscious experience has—if one looks inside a functioning brain, nothing like our stream of conscious experience is detectable and appears to be something beyond the physical brain itself. Such an approach immediately makes clear the topic of investigation and begins showing students the available arguments and reasons for accepting or rejecting one account of minds over another. So, the objection goes: even if students can engage in philosophical dialogue through playing a game and there are even advantages like increasing student investment through immersion, playing a game in class might be thought of as, ultimately, a waste of time. The key philosophical issues can be reached much more efficiently, and perhaps even more clearly, through student-teacher Socratic dialogue rather than getting at the issues through game scenarios.

My first response to this sort of objection is that while typical, dialogue-based instruction in philosophy is perhaps more efficient, there is a trade-off between efficiency and interest or investment. A Socratic learning experience might be extremely interesting for the active participants in the dialogue, but the teacher cannot simultaneously talk to everyone in the class, and some students might not care. But by teaching philosophy through a TTRPG, in my experience, many more students may become invested in the course and its content. Yes, some time playing the game will necessarily be devoted to storytelling and gameplay rather than philosophizing—but those elements create interest and investment where there might otherwise have been none. Certainly, some students might find playing a game as tedious, just as some students find the Socratic method discouraging. In my own class, it’s quite clearly advertised as, “Dungeons & Dragons and Philosophy,” so students who sign up for it are generally enthusiastic about playing. But if adopting this approach in a regular introductory philosophy class, it would be a good idea to gauge everyone’s interest levels and get students on board with learning by gaming before implementing it. Of course, it’s not as if these approaches are mutually exclusive: playing the game won’t take all available class time (or it need not). In my own class, students alternate between gameplay days and discussion days, providing both discussion-based instruction and philosophical discussion among students as part of gameplay. Moreover, as mentioned in section II, many of the key writing assignments ask students to reflect on and analyze in-game events with an eye towards the philosophical issues involved, which means that time spent on the game still matters for the class even after the game session itself is over.

But a second line of defense against this objection involves raising issues with the Socratic method itself. While the method is often considered the norm in philosophy and has many advocates, there have been challenges to the pedagogical efficacy of the Socratic method as well. One such challenge is that the Socratic method, insofar as it interrogates students about their beliefs with the aim of discovering inconsistencies, can be seen as unnecessarily combative or even humiliating for students (Pekarsky 1994, Westerhof-Shultz and Weisner 2004). The pedagogical strategy, it seems, is to expose students’ inconsistent beliefs with the hope of motivating them to be more careful thinkers. For some students, this will be enlightening and exciting—an opportunity to exchange a false or poorly defended belief for a true or more well-thought out one. But for other students, this can instead backfire and feel shameful and demotivating. To clarify, my point here isn’t that the Socratic method is bad—rather, that it also has benefits and drawbacks, that it can be executed well or poorly, just like teaching with TTRPGs. But if there exist these trade-offs in both the Socratic method and teaching with TTRPGs, then we, as instructors, should feel empowered to utilize whichever strategies appeal most to ourselves and to our students—perhaps even allowing ourselves to choose to teach with TTRPGs simply because, among many other good reasons, it’s great fun.  

VI. CONCLUSION

I have argued that it is possible to teach and learn undergraduate-level philosophy through playing TTRPGs, and that there are distinct advantages to taking this approach. Yet much about the approach is left underdeveloped here: I’ve gestured at what sorts of scenarios can be converted from philosophy into a TTRPG session (turning the Trolley Problem into the Dragon Problem for example), but more could be said about this topic. Do you need a classic thought experiment from philosophy to make a TTRPG scenario? If so, then the range of topics in philosophy that can be taught with TTRPGs is somewhat limited to those with clear thought experiments. But perhaps there are other ways to build philosophical content into a game besides having players participate in TTRPG versions of thought experiments.

Moreover, I’ve indicated that there is a trade-off between building immersion (providing a game story, fun encounters, etc.) to help build student interest versus active philosophical discussion as part of a game, but I did not have the space here to articulate further how to calibrate that balance, or what the optimal balance is for an undergraduate philosophy classroom. Empirical research on these matters, as well as further empirical research on the efficacy of teaching (and teaching philosophy) with RPGs, would be of great relevance and use as well, but that goes beyond the scope of this paper (and its author’s expertise). Still, to provide students with the best possible learning experience through gaming, these issues should be explored further in future work.

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1. I, of course, am not the first person to try to teach philosophy using a roleplaying game. For example, Howard (2015) describes an approach for teaching philosophy to children using fantasy roleplaying games. My approach differs by focusing on the benefits and drawbacks for undergraduate philosophy education and by drawing attention to the difference between doing philosophy of TTRPGs and learning philosophy by playing a TTRPG, as well as the connection between these activities. ↩︎
2. I show how this may be possible in the argument that follows, but of course, further empirical research beyond the scope of this paper would be ideal for further establishing this claim (Cullinan and Genova 2023 also call for further empirical testing of RPGs in classrooms). Some preliminary work and support for the possibility that immersion supports learning can be found in Hammer et al. 2018. ↩︎

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