山陽論叢 第 23 巻 （2016）

論文
論文"What Are You Going to Do?"An in-depth analysis of a roleplaying game EFL class
Magnus Kuwahara Magnusson1)
Keywords: roleplaying game, RPG, EFL, authentic material, motivating students
I. Introduction
In this article, I explain how I used roleplaying games in two language classes. Firstly, I describein brief my use of Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay to teach Japanese to high school students in
Iceland (RPG Class A). Secondly, I describe in depth how I used the roleplaying game Dark Heresyto teach English to first-year students in a university in Japan (RPG Class B). My description of
RPG Class B, includes a description of the classroom setup, various problems posed by the settingof Dark Heresy and its system, and a detailed analysis of the language used in the lessons, both
input from the teacher and student's output using transcripts of my recordings of the classes. The
analysis also describes how I responded to students’ errors, using reformulation1 to teach and elicit
correct forms of their utterances.
My reason for deciding to use Roleplaying games (RPGs) to teach English stems from myexperience playing RPGs from the age of 14. My mother tongue is Icelandic, and when I was
growing up in the 80s, English language classes began at the age of 12. Yet, after a year of playing
RPGs with my friends, my English ability far exceeded that of my peers. There were no RPGs in
Icelandic in those days, so my group of friends used the English books available to us, and soon
started speaking English alongside Icelandic during our games. Once I started studying English
teaching in 2006, I realized the potential of RPGs for language learning. My early forays into
researching this possibility was to interview Terry Gunnell (Magnusson, 2010), who had used

Advanced Dungeons & Dragons in one of his high school English classes for about 15 years. His
experience of using RPGs convinced me I must try to use RPGs one day.
RPGs are a unique form of tabletop games, invented in 1974 (Peterson, 2012, p. 78) withthe publication of Dungeons & Dragons. The game is a sort of interactive, collaborative narrative,
where the players take on the role of characters in a story that takes place through their described1) Department of Language and Culture at Sanyo Gakuen University- 81 -

Magnusson ： "What Are You Going to Do?"actions. The game can be played by two or more players, usually no more than seven, with one ofthe players acting as the Game Master (GM). Thousands of RPGs have been published, eachhaving detailed description of the game setting (e.g. a medieval fantasy world, a sci-fi world of space
exploration, modern world with super heroes). Each game setting also has detailed rules of often
hundreds of pages, describing how to make a realistic character living in the setting (the charactershave abilities and skills of varying strengths and expertise represented by a numerical value). The
rules also describe how to play adventures in the setting, how to resolve the results of thecharacters' actions (usually with dice, comparing the result with the characters' ability or skill
statistic). Each player, except the GM, has one character to play, and together the player
characters collaborate to achieve various goals depending on the setting. The Game Master's rolein the game is to provide the adventure scenario for the game, describing whatever the characterssee and experience in their navigating the game world, playing the roles of anyone the player
characters meet, and arbitrating the results of actions of player characters and non-player
characters and creatures they interact with during the game.
RPGs are mostly a speaking and listening activity, where nothing happens unless theplayers or GM describe the actions of characters and ever-changing situations. The players andGM also need to consult the rulebooks to understand how their many abilities work, so there isalso considerable reading involved. The players write descriptions of their characters, and the GM
often writes descriptions of non-player characters and area descriptions. Therefore, and RPG
appears to be perfect to practice all four language skills. However, as this article shows, using RPGsin class is not necessarily straightforward and easy.
II. Literature Review
While numerous articles and books exist about RPGs, not much has been published about theusage of roleplaying games to teach English. The most detailed that could be found is Role-Playing

Games in the English as a Foreign Language Classroom (Phillips, 1993). Phillips gives an excellent
argument for the educational merits of using RPGs in EFL classes, describes the history of RPGsin general, gives examples of the plethora of RPGs extant at the time, and most importantly,
relates several examples of teachers using RPGs in their EFL classes. In one of the classes
described, the teacher chose to make his own simple-system game to teach his Czech students, andthe setting was modern-day America, and the players enjoyed playing Americans as they werevery interested in the culture (p. 9). Another example was a teacher using the sci-fi system

Traveller to teach his Chinese students science vocabulary. Later employed the supernatural
horror RPG, Call of Cthulhu, to teach Japanese students English in the US. Phillips also describes
his own use of Advanced Dungeons & Dragons in one of his classes. He discusses the importance- 82 -

山陽論叢 第 23 巻 （2016）of teaching the students the language of describing actions, otherwise the output becomes too
simple (p. 17). Phillips concludes that RPGs "may not be appropriate for all EFL classes" (p. 18)
but could be considered among useful techniques for some classes.
In Interactive Pynchon: Teaching Thomas Pynchon's Crying of Lot 49 with Roleplaying

Games, Phillips (2011) describes in detail how to adapt a literary work into a roleplaying gamethat could then be played in class.
Other articles of note are Armann Halldorsson's Teaching English through Role Playing

Games (Halldorsson, 2012), which includes a brief description of his using an RPG in an English
class at a high school in Iceland. Halldorsson didn't use a particular system, which he regretted.
He introduced character sheets to the students, divided them into groups and "had them play afree form adventure in any way they pleased" (p. 22). The activity was of mixed success, with somestudents enjoying it while others were confused, probably as a result of the lack of rules or specificadventure to play.
Finally, the source that inspired me early on to try and use RPGs in EFL classes, is Terry
Gunnell's detailed description of the merits of using Advanced Dungeons & Dragons as homework
activity biannually for 15 years at another high school in Iceland (Magnusson, 2010). The students
formed groups and played in their homes every other week for three hours. Gunnell felt this wasa success, and that it helped them to become more fluent in speaking. Getting Icelandic teenage
boys to talk in English in class is difficult, but in this activity they spoke freely, probably because
they were speaking in the role of a different person.
III. RPG Class A
The first time I used a roleplaying game in language teaching was in 2007 in Iceland. The
participants were four of my former students of Japanese in high school. I invited the students tomy home to try to play an RPG using some Japanese. My Japanese was not very good at the time,
I had co-taught the Japanese classes with my Japanese wife, who prepared all the material, so theJapanese language part of the RPG activity was limited. Most of the participants were interested
in games or fantasy, and I chose to use the game Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay, which I knew
very well, in this experimental language-learning activity.
The participants generated their characters well before the actual game started. The
character sheets were in English, as the Japanese-translated character sheet was much too
difficult to use for both the students and myself. I acted as Game Master throughout the four 3-4
hour sessions, and we played a store-bought scenario called Ashes of Middenheim (2005). The
adventure was also in English, and the language used by the students and myself was mostly
Icelandic and English. The Japanese content came from a list of phrases I thought were likely to- 83 -

Magnusson ： "What Are You Going to Do?"be used frequently used in the game, such as “Roll your dice”, “I shoot with my bow”, etc. Thesephrases were used mostly during combat scenes, and there was about one combat scene per lesson,taking about an hour each.
While the students enjoyed the activity, the focus was on the game and not on the language.
However, they got the opportunity to use some Japanese words and simple phrases in entertaining
situations. As this was simply an experiment, it was successful in achieving its limited goal ofpracticing the set phrases. What the experiment showed was that, in predictable language
situations, such as combat, phrases can be prepared beforehand and used when needed in ameaningful way. Therefore, simple and short RPG scenarios, mostly revolving around combat,
could be used for beginners in a foreign language as an entertaining way to speak the language.
IV. RPG Class B
The second time I had the opportunity to use RPGs in the classroom was in a Japanese university
in 2010. The participants were two first-year English major students who were preparing to go to
study abroad for six months and a year, respectively, at an English-speaking college abroad theyear after. In order to prepare them for the long-term study abroad, they had been enrolled in all
the English classes available to them, as well as three different TOEIC preparation classes, one ofwhich I taught. Three TOEIC classes was considered a little too much by the teachers, so it was
decided that I would do something different and motivational with the students in my class,especially since they were the only ones enrolled in my class. With my background in RPGs I
couldn’t think of anything more different from their usual classes, so I decided to spend six out offifteen 90-minute classes playing a roleplaying game. I recorded the audio of lessons two to six,
regretfully forgetting to turn on the recorder in the first lesson.
V. Classroom Set Up
The classroom was small, as I only had two students. The tables were arranged so that thestudents sat across from me, with about a meter and a half between us, with ample table space tothe sides. On the table to my right, I had a projector connected to my laptop. Being quick at typing,as I talked (describing areas, encounters, and situations) I typed a lot of what I said. I did this tohelp them identify new vocabulary in context, and the written form, to look up the words in theirelectric dictionaries. I also typed vocabulary, phrases and expressions, sentences I wanted them torepeat and remember, especially English equivalents of words they used in Japanese andcorrections of their grammar errors. As in a normal roleplaying game, I had a wide but low screen(28 by 84,5 cm) between me and the students to hide my dice rolls, as well as creature/villain
statistics. Normally, the Game Master's screen has rules from the rulebook useful for the GM- 84 -

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during the game, however, the screen I had was actually from another game, Warhammer

Fantasy Roleplay, so it only served to keep secret information hidden. The students had each theircharacter sheet, dice, and electric dictionaries. When describing locations, I drew a rough map of
the area on a sheet of paper placed between me and the students. The maps contained roughimages of important features, such as doors, windows, and locations of the characters and any
opponents they encountered.
VI. Problems with the Setting and System
What became apparent to me in the first lesson, was that the setting of the game I had chosen,

Dark Heresy, was completely alien to my students. There were many concepts that they had notencountered even in Japanese. Therefore, just to describe the setting and help the students'
understand their characters’ place in it, and purpose took about half of the lesson, character
generation the rest. A short summary of the setting should explain how difficult it was for the
students to grasp what this was all about: Dark Heresy is a game that takes place in a distantpost-technological future, where the "major scientific advances . . . come from the rediscovery offorgotten secrets from the Dark Age of Technology" (Dark Heresy, p. 19). It is a mixed genre ofhorror, sci-fi, and fantasy, with fanatical Inquisitors seeking out heretics worshiping dark gods
from the corrupting dimension of Chaos. Looking back, I could have dispensed with explaining thesetting in detail, because the scenario was a simple break-in into a corrupt politicians home to findcondemning information on him. Eventually they would find the evidence they needed and fightsome of the villain's minions. Had the RPG activity extended to full 15 lessons, a deeper
understanding of the world the characters lived in would have been needed for the students toenjoy the game more, but in this case it was unnecessary. In any case, choosing a setting that wasfamiliar to the students would have been better.
The game system also presented some problems. While the game mechanics were notcomplicated compared to many other game systems, the characters had an overabundance ofchoices of abilities and weapons. To an experienced gamer, this would be interesting, and I
expected it would also be so to the students, but to them, it was a burden. Too much time was spent
explaining the rules of new weapons they found during the game, or new abilities they bought with
their experience points. Almost the entire fourth lesson went into spending experience points theygained in the first two lessons and understanding how they could use them in the final two lessons.
Furthermore, one of the character, an 'Imperial Psyker' (a person able to use psychic powers), foundhis abilities entirely useless in lessons two and three; the powers were weak, and he had little
chance in succeeding using them. After increasing their power in the fourth lesson, however, he
could finally use his psychic abilities, and gained some more useful ones. This could have been

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Magnusson ： "What Are You Going to Do?"avoided by having the characters start more powerful from the beginning, so more time could havebeen spent on playing the game.
VII. The Language of Descriptions
Descriptions of locations, people or other creatures, as well as constantly changing situations, arethe most important input the students are exposed to during an RPG. Every area their characters
are currently in is described verbally by the teacher. Examples of areas described in these lessons
included the house they meant to break into; the rooms inside, including objects and furniture, andone scary-looking villain; the underground complex below the house had several rooms they
explored, including one with captive civilians in cages; and the macabre grand finale, a fight withsome skeletons, took place in a ritual sacrifice chamber to the forbidden god of blood and war,
Khorne.
Each location was described in detail, and every detail was potentially important to thecharacters' mission or survival. For instance, in lessons two and three, they were exploring thehouse of the possibly corrupted politician. On opening a door to a room, the teacher described theroom beyond as an office. The office had an opulent desk with some papers on it, a filing cabinet, apainting on the wall, and a rug on the floor. The students could decide to have their charactersinteract with the objects in any way they wanted. One of characters examined the desk and saw
that it had drawers in it. Picking the lock in the drawer revealed some papers which they took.
One of them looked behind the painting and found a safe in the wall. Using his Security skill, hemanaged to open the lock of the safe finding a dataslate inside (a tablet computer), which contained
the damning information they needed against the corrupted politician. However, on opening thesafe, a silent alarm went off, causing all the doors and windows in the house to be shuttered and apoisonous gas to issue from vents in the ceiling. With but moments to act, they found a trapdoor
underneath the rug, and after opening the trapdoor they could go down to the basement bydescending a ladder, thus evading the deadly gas.
So, unlike a description in a story, where the author decides what the characters do, thestudents have total freedom to do what is within their characters capabilities. Every object in theroom could be important, so they have to decide whether to examine it, how to examine it and what
to do with it (a few examples of the characters' interactions with objects are in the transcript
excerpts below). The students need to rely on their imagination and common sense to decide what
to do. Because the students feel they are actually there, the descriptions are as real as they could
be in a classroom language activity. Compare this with the usual way college conversational
textbooks teach location and room descriptions. Some of the books try to find a way for the students
to interact with the objects in the images, but usually the students simply take turns looking at a

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picture of a room and describing to the other student where things are. In my opinion, this is not avery interesting activity, and it is not real in any sense of the word. In RPGs, on the other hand,the descriptions of the characters' immediate surroundings are of great interest to the students.
Everything they see is "real" and can be taken and used, opened, or even broken. Descriptions in
RPGs thus have a high likelihood to stay in the students' memory, as they need that information
for a real purpose.
Regretfully, not all the descriptions were interesting to the students. In the fifth lesson,
there was a long description of the ritual chamber where the grand finale would take place. The
description was intended to evoke feelings of horror, with quite heavy vocabulary. One of thestudents almost fell asleep while looking up the vocabulary of the room description. Also,
understanding the description was a waste of time, as much of the heavy vocabulary was not usedagain in the following lesson. The description would have been interesting to higher level students,
but for these students, it was simply too much.
VIII. Students’ Language Production and Humor
Because of the simplicity of the scenario, the students’ expected language use was the use of the
future tense to explain what their characters were going to do; sentences along the lines of: “I’mgoing to pick the lock of the door”; “I’m going to look into the room”; “I’m going to shoot the mutant
with my gun.” However, I had no sentences prepared for my students, and their language ability
was unexpectedly low. This was my first teaching job at college in Japan, and they apparently were
the top freshman English students in the school. Consequently, I overestimated their productive
ability. What follows is a summary of their language production, and humorous exchanges during
five lessons of gameplay. The excerpts are from the second to sixth lessons. In the excerpts fromthe transcripts, T stands for teacher, and the students are A and B. In the excerpts and my
discussions about them, I use ‘the teacher’ to refer to myself.
The following excerpt is from the characters’ fight against a villain, in insane mutant brute,
early in the second lesson. The characters had several weapons that had different damage
potential, but for the better weapons (e.g. autopistol and shotgun) they had a limited amount of
ammunition, which explains Student A’s choice of using his brass knuckles. Later in the lesson,
the teacher decided to give them more ammunition for their firearms, otherwise their characterswould not have a chance to survive the scenario. Before this exchange, the teacher gave an
explanation of the pros and cons of the weapons. Refer to note2 for an explanation of thetranscription symbols used in the excerpts.
Excerpt 1 – Lesson 2
T: OK. Are you gonna shoot him? ((Student A had a choice of weapons to defend against the villain))- 87 -

Magnusson ： "What Are You Going to Do?"

A: No, no, no . . .
T: No?
A: Brass knuckles ((his choice of weapons due to few bullets for his gun))
B: He? He? ((Japanese expression of surprise and disbelief))
T: ((Again explains the merits of the more powerful weapons, as their opponent appeared quite
formidable))
B: ((Whispers advice to A in Japanese))
A: Autopistol.

At first the teacher didn’t correct these single-word utterances, focusing instead on moving on.
What followed were short exchanges regarding Student A’s dice rolls and rules that applied tothem. The student continued to use single words or short phrases without subject or auxiliary
verbs to state his action when given a choice by the teacher (for example: “Dodge!”). When it cameto Student B’s turn, his production was also limited to short phrases, but a natural response to thequestion.
Excerpt 2 – Lesson 2
T: What are you gonna do?
B: Sssshoot him!

Again this early utterance was left without feedback from the teacher, it wasn’t incorrect in any
case, and the game continued. However, while the incomplete form is acceptable in this context,
when the students produced such partial phrases without the teacher asking, "What are you goingto do?" then the phrases carried the meaning of an order or instruction. Because of this, the teacher
usually emphasized the complete form. The following is the beginning of Student B’s next turn:Excerpt 3 – Lesson 2
T: Alright . . . Your turn. ((Addressing Student B))
B: Shooting.
T: ((Reformulates)) I’m going to shoot him.
B: I’m going to shooting hiT: =Shoot hi- er- er- shooting not shooting aB: SHOOT him.

As is often the case with partial reformulation, the student only repeated the part which had theerror. Later in the lesson and in subsequent lessons, the students got used to the teacher'sreformulations and usually repeated the full corrected sentence. After this, the usual dice throwing
ensued along with exchanges discussing success or failure (mostly consisting of talking about diceresults vs. his characters ability statistic) of his attempt to fire at the villain.

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The fight continues in the next excerpt continues on Student B’s next turn, after Student
A completed his turn.
Excerpt 4 – Lesson 2
T: What are you going to do?
B: I’m going to shoot . . . him again.

Student B not only produces a full sentence, but after a pause, extends it further to include therepetition of his action. The teacher did not give feedback on the correct use, but continued toresolve the action. Little by little, the students began producing longer utterances without being
prompted, but more often they used simple phrases or single words before the teacher's feedback
and reformulation. The fight continues in Excerpt 4 below, which shows further examples of theteachers' reformulation, as well as examples of the high frequency of humor in the game.
Students B’s dice roll to determine the success of his shooting (in Excerpt 3 above) failed
badly, and the teacher explained that he could possible hit his friend, unless he spent a so-called‘Fate Point’ (they only had three each) to reroll the dice. Student B nonchalantly declined:
Excerpt 5 – Lesson 2
B: No, no, no.
A: NN! ((Japanese: Shocked exclamation, objecting to his partner’s decision))
B: Don mato . . . don’t matta, don’t matter. ((Laughs hilariously))
T: Are you SURE?
B: M. ((Japanese ‘yes)) Yeah, yeah, yeah. ((Casually))
A: NO!=
B: =DON’T WORRY! DON’T WORRY! ((Laughs hilariously))((The subsequent exchanges were partly in Japanese as the students joked about the possibility of Student
A’s character accidentally killing Student B’s character. Finally the action was resolved with a dice throwthat didn’t succeed in hitting their opponent))
T: . . . 42? . . . how much did you need to get? . . . 39. Well you don’t hit him ((the villain)), but you don’t
hit him either ((indicating Student B))((At this the students giggled loudly))

Such humorous exchanges often occurred between the students, which gave them opportunity to
use language they would normally not have the chance to use in a normal class, like 'don't matter'and 'don't worry'. Usually the reason for them laughing and making humorous remarks, often in
English, was due to either of them failing their dice throws, which often had negative, but funny
results. Excerpt 6, late in the third lesson, is another example of this.
Prior to this exchange, the students' characters had set off a silent alarm, which resulted
in all the exits being shuttered and poisonous gas beginning to emit from vents in the ceiling. They

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Magnusson ： "What Are You Going to Do?"searched desperately for a way out, and realizing the gas was slow to reach the floor Student A got
an idea:
Excerpt 6 – Lesson 3
A: 'm going to . . . lie flat on the ground.

Without being prompted, Student A produced a full grammatically correct sentence, which wasrare in the first lessons, but as mentioned above, the students increasingly produced complete
utterances, though not always grammatically correct ones.
After some crawling about on the floor, and trying various things, Student B considered thedescription of the room they were in, and decided to look under the rug.
Excerpt 7 – Lesson 3
B: Turn rug. Turn rug.
T: Lift the rug up.
B: Lift the rug up.

This is another example of the teacher's reformulation, and exemplifies how the students havegotten used to repeat the reformulated sentence.
Normally, when a character in an RPG tries to do something that is easily within his
capabilities (like here, lifting up the rug), no dice rolls are needed as it is considered an automatic
success. However, to add a little humor, the teacher jokingly pretended that this was a difficult
task.
Excerpt 8 – Lesson 3
T: ((Speaking ominously)) CAN YOU LIFT THE RUG? ((Pretends to lift something heavy and makes
sounds as if it is very difficult))
J: ((Laughs loudly))
T: ((Laughing)) Okay!
J: ((Rolls dice for fun, knowing he didn't need to)) OH!
T: A HUNDRED! ((A hundred on the dice is always a failure, usually having exceptionally badconsequences))
J: ((Laughing))
T: NO! YOU BREAK A FINGER!
((Everyone laughing))
T: NO you lift the rug AND . . . there is a trapdoor.

Failing a dice throw that had negative consequences, (even in a situation that didn't actually takeplace, as above) usually resulted in laughter, shock, or both. In this excerpt, the students didn't
produce any language, but it shows the light atmosphere during the game and the students' delightin the frequent dark humor.

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The next excerpt, from the sixth lesson, shows more of the students' humorous interactions
and willingness to communicate with each other in English. Prior to this, they had entered a roomwith quite an eerie description.
Excerpt 9 – Lesson 6
A: Hmm. I'm going- . . . I'm, I'm going to look over this closet. ((Pointing at the map))
T: Ok, A starts walking here. ((Pointing at the closet on the map)) What are you going to do?
A: Come on, come on. ((Waits for B to reply)) Come on!
B: I ((Long pause))
A: Follow: me: ((Both words drawn out as if trying to hypnotize B))
B: I'm going to go . . . with him
T: Okay.
A: Ooh, mezurashii ! ((Japanese: That's unusual!))T: ((Laughs)) Well, I don't think he wants to be alone. ((Laughs))((Students laugh))

Considering the short sentences the students produced in the first lessons, this excerpt shows
considerable improvement in the students' producing longer sentences. Furthermore, before theywould usually talk to each other in Japanese (with some exceptions), but here Student A, speaking
as his character, urges Student B's character to come with him. Until that point in the scenario,
Student B had played his character as overly cautious, thus the teachers joke that it was actually
his cowardice that drove him to follow Student A's character. Such in-character talk is expected inroleplaying games, but it took some time for the students to do so. The teacher could haveencouraged it more, but it is noteworthy that they started doing so by themselves without being
pushed.
IX. The Language of the Dice
Much of the talk during the game had to do with the rolling of dice to determine whether the
students' characters succeeded in what they were attempting to do. Excerpt 10 from the third
lesson is a short example of such talk. This exchange occurs when they players have just set off thesilent alarm resulting in the exits being closed by steel doors and shutters.
Excerpt 10 – Lesson 3
T: Roll Perception again ((The students need to roll their dice and see if the result is equal or lower thantheir Perception skill))
A: Seventeen! ((A success))
T: You? ((Addressing Student B))
B: ((Rolls dice)) Twenty six.

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Magnusson ： "What Are You Going to Do?"

T: Ok . . . did you succeed? . . . What's your Perception? How much do you have in Perception?
B: Thirty nine.
T: Okay. So you passed the test. Did you pass also? Did you pass the test ?
A: Thirty six. Hm?
T: You passed the test right? . . . Did you pass the test?
A: Yeah.
T: So, you can hear a sort of heavy thud, thud, thud, coming from SEVERAL PLACES in the house.
J: ((Speaking to himself)) nani darou? ((Japanese: What could it be?))Since rolling dice to determine the outcome of the characters' actions is one of the main elements
of most roleplaying games, such exchanges were very frequent. During these exchanges thestudents simply told the teacher their dice results and were asked to check their skill statistic on
their character sheets to see if they succeeded. As a speaking activity, this appears quite limited at
first glance. Phillips (1993) criticized such exchanges between his RPG class students as "not very
promising" (p. 17), insisting his students use more descriptions. However, first and second year
students at university, and other high beginner, low intermediate students in Japan, usually havedifficulty with numbers. Probably they don't practice numbers much in high school, at least not
producing them verbally. They especially have difficulty with knowing the difference between the'-teen' numbers and the '-ty' numbers (such as thirteen and thirty), they pronounce themincorrectly, as well as being not sure which they heard during listening exercises. Practicing
numbers during RPGs, both speaking and listening, is likely to help with this basic but importantskill. As the numerical value of skills in Dark Heresy ranges from 1 to 100, and the players
generate random numbers between 1 and 100 with two ten-sided dice, they get excellent practicein the first hundred numbers which is useful in various daily conversations. The practice is alsomeaningful to the students, as they need the information for the purposes of the game, and theresults are almost always exciting.
In addition, the language used during dice rolls was richer in these lessons than how they
appeared to be in Phillips’s class mentioned above. Other frequently used phrases when talking
about the dice rolls were for example: If you get over/higher than x, then (you fail); You must/haveto get lower than/below/under x to (succeed); How much did you need to get?; and other related
phrases. Also, depending on the difficulty of the action (determined by the teacher) the students
were asked to add to their skill statistic, or subtract, 10, 20, or 30. So, while rolling dice is mostly
about numbers, the students get repeatedly exposed to other language in connection with the rolls.
Another example of this is below, an excerpt from the sixth and final lesson.
The characters had a final fighting encounter with some skeletons in the undergroundritual sacrifice chamber. The large room they found themselves in, had some horrifying scenes- 92 -

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which had the chance of causing the characters to freeze from fear or worse. The teacher instructed
them to roll their dice and refer to their Will Power score. Will Power represents e.g. the characters'
mental resilience.
Excerpt 11 – Lesson 6
B: ((rolls)) OH MY GOD!
A: Ore sanjuyon desu ((Japanese: I got 34))
T: How much . . . did you fail by? Very little? . . . You failed?
B: Purasu ni! ((Japanese: Plus 2!))
T: So, you failed by two.
B: Failed by two.
A: ((Rolls, then lets out a breath of shock))
T: You failed as well?
A: Failed by seven.

This part is a good example how quickly the students picked up and used a new expression bylistening to both the teacher and the other student. The students had not used 'failed by' before,
and not knowing how to say it in English, Student B says it in Japanese. The teacher gives him
the English equivalent, and Student B immediately repeats it. Following that, after his roll,Student A also uses the new expression correctly.
In sum, the language of dice rolls can include a lot of useful expressions. Phillips’s (2010)class had the students take on the role of GMs (p. 15), so the language use was entirely in in theirhands, although Phillips encouraged them to use more descriptive language (p.17). However, sincerolling dice and resolving the results is very frequent during RPGs, giving the students a list of
useful phrases, such as the ones mentioned above, would help them produce more varied language
during the inevitable rolling of dice.
Furthermore, talking about numbers was not the only skill promoted in these exchanges.
Before and after rolling their dice, the students always needed to refer to their character sheets
and scan for the relevant skill. Scanning for information on a form is an important reading skill,
but as a class activity, it is usually not interesting to students. During roleplaying games, scanningfor information is a part of the game, not the main activity, and there is a real need to find theinformation. Therefore, during RPG classes, scanning for information is as authentic an activity
as the speaking.
X. Increased Use of Exclamations in English
During the lessons, the students often relied on Japanese when expressing surprise, joy, shock,and other emotions. Gradually, they used English expressions more often to convey their emotions.

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Magnusson ： "What Are You Going to Do?"

Among these were exclamation like 'Yay!', 'Wow!', 'No!', 'Yes!', 'Good job!', 'Very bad!', 'Good!', 'Oh
my god!', etc., as can be seen in some of the excerpts above.
RPGs are activities of high emotion and action, and they offer many opportunities for suchlanguage. Conventional English classes rarely contain such high emotional material, so in RPG
classes, the students get to practice exclamations that they have learned in the past but perhaps
never had the chance to use them in appropriate contexts.
XI. Reviewing the Lesson Before
At the beginning of each lesson, the teacher reviewed what happened in the lesson before. This
activity included going over the notes that he had projected on screen in the lesson before, andconsulting the map of their current location. The teacher didn't just remind them of everythingthat happened, but tried to get them to describe what had happened, as in Excerpts 12 and 13
below.
Excerpt 12 – Lesson Five
T: Do you remember what you saw?
B: Wo:ru ((Japanese pronunciation of 'wall', such pronunciation occurred only occasionally))
T: Yeah something with the walls.
A: There are . . . There is . . . blood on the wall.
T: Yeah, good.
T: Do you remember what you heard? Kiita koto no wa oboeteiru? Do you remember what you heard? …

Koko kara ((Pointing at a room on the map. Japanese: From here.)) Do you remember?
A: ((Moans thinking))
B: Screaming voice.
T: Yeah!
A: Yeah.
T: Something like that, moaning and stuff.
A: Moaning.

Reviewing what happened before is usually done in normal RPGs, and review is doubly importantin RPG English classes. Not only were the events reviewed, but also the language associated withthem. During the review, the teacher also went over language notes from the lesson before,
sometimes asking the students to repeat new words and phrases. Of course, review at the
beginning of each lesson takes time from the game, but this is a language class, so it is prudent toreview the language as well as the events.
XII. Conclusion- 94 -

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RPG Class A showed that beginner-level students can play an RPG using simple set phrases topractice a foreign language in an entertaining way. RPG Class B, on the other hand, was mostly
conducted in English, the language to be studied, and had no such set phrases. In this class, thestudents both improved their fluency and accuracy in speaking over five lessons. The type of
language they were required to use was not extensive (describing their characters’ intended
actions), so repeated drilling could probably produce the same result, however, without the fun.
Additionally, the students didn’t just improve their fluency and accuracy in describing theircharacters’ actions, but also produced a lot of spontaneous language, e.g. exclamations in English,
and gradually began talking to each other in English in the role of their characters without being
told to do so. Humor and laughter was very frequent during the lessons, and learning a foreign
language while having fun is likely to produce better results.
The language of the dice, as I choose to call it, has been underestimated as being of limited
use to students, but during these lessons, the students were exposed to and produced a lot of usefulexpressions that are needed to talk about numbers. Being fluent in talking about numbers, is quite
useful in many daily conversations, such as when making plans, shopping, and travelling.
The setting was difficult for the students to comprehend, so choosing a setting which isfamiliar to the students would be better, especially when the lessons are few. With more lessons,an unfamiliar setting could be justified, with more time spent on getting to know the new world.
Also, the descriptions of locations sometimes contained too much heavy vocabulary, forcing thestudents to rely heavily on their dictionaries to be able to imagine the scene. More care should havebeen given in choosing language that was appropriate to the students' level.
With few lessons as in this RPG class, complex RPG systems with a lot of choices seem to
be too much for the students. Simpler systems would be better in classes like these. However, withlonger, whole-semester RPG classes, complex systems could possibly be used, and the choices
available appreciated by the students.
Overall, RPG Class B was an immensely enjoyable experience for the students and teacher,and the students showed marked improvement in fluency and listening ability over the short spanof five lessons.
Notes
1 In this article, I use ‘reformulation’ to describe instances when a student has produced a grammatically wrong

sentence, and I repeat the sentence in correct form. Furthermore, after a reformulation, I pause, prompting the
speaker to repeat the reformulated sentence.
2 The transcription symbols used to transcribe conversations used in this article were originally developed by Gail

Jefferson but were adopted from Psathas’s (1995) list (pp. 70-78). Most of the symbols are the same as in Psathas, butsome are simplified or altered slightly.

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Magnusson ： "What Are You Going to Do?"= Is used to show when one utterance overlaps or interrupts another.
- Is used to show when a speaker abruptly stops in the middle of a word.
. . . Marks a pause in the speech of the speaker.
(( )) Double parenthesis are used for various descriptions related to the excerpts.
Utterances in capital letters mark utterances that are of louder volume than normal speech.

References
In the two methods are being used because roleplaying games usually do not have a single author identified, but alarge staff contributing on the design and writing. Therefore, in the entries with roleplaying games, the title of thegame comes first.

Ashes of Middenheim. Designed by Black Industries staff. Black Industries. 2005
Dungeons & Dragons. Designed by Gary Gygax and Dave Arneson. Lake Geneva, WI. 1977.
Dark Heresy. Designed by Owen Barnes et al. Fantasy Flight Games. 2008
Jon Peterson. (2012). Playing at the World. San Diego. Unreason Press.
Phillips, Brian David. (2011). Interactive Pynchon: Teaching Thomas Pynchon's Crying of Lot 49

with Roleplaying Games. Journal of Interactive Drama.
Phillips, Brian David. (1993). Role-Playing Games in the English as a Foreign Language

Classroom. Brian David Phillips. Journal of Interactive Drama.
Psathas, G. (1995). Conversation analysis: The study of talk-in-interaction. CA: Sage
Publications.
Halldorsson, Armann. (2012). Teaching English through Role Playing Games. Iceland.
Malfridur. http://timarit.is/view_page_init.jsp?pageId=6089614

Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay, Second Edition. Designed by Green Ronin staff. Black
Industries. 2005.
Magnusson, Magnus Kuwahara. (2010). „Það er nauðsynlegt að gefa þeim tækifæri til að notaímyndunaraflið“ (interview with Terry Gunnell). Iceland. Netla,
http://netla.khi.is/vidtol/2010/001/index.htm- 96 -