Engaging young people, especially teens, can be a difficult task in general but even more so for museums. Traditional exhibits, no matter how informative and detailed, don’t always do the trick. More diversity and inclusiveness are often needed, greater interaction, a combination of both the educational and entertaining, as well as unique opportunities for selfies sprinkled throughout. Even then, though, efforts may still not be enough to lure the allusive age group.
Keith Outcelt, an educator at the Aurora History Museum in Colorado, was pondering how to get more teens involved at his museum when a novel idea popped into his head – creating a Dungeons & Dragons-style adventure that incorporated aspects of Aurora history.
“I came up with this really complicated role-playing game,” he explained during a panel at the October 2021 Fan Expo Denver. “It involved bringing in more (teens) from Aurora and nearby towns – you have different personalities, different needs. And I sent that up the flagpole and it got shot down immediately.” The concept was intriguing enough, everyone agreed, but instead of something new, the question was asked, “Why isn’t it D&D?”
Outcelt agreed and approached Pop Culture Classroom – a non-profit in Denver that uses popular culture as an education tool – for assistance. As fate would have it, a member of the organization, Faith Ojebouboh, not only had experience at crafting Dungeons & Dragons adventures but was a true believer in the educational value of the game.
“We learn through play, like that’s the point,” she explained to AuroraTV. “Most of us, we learn through play and engagement and doing hands-on activities.”
In Ojebouboh’s mind, Dungeons & Dragons was a perfect example. She met with Keith Outcelt for some initial ideas for the project, visited the Aurora History Museum to gain additional insights, and then held a massive brainstorming session that resulted in four unique D&D storylines that incorporated Aurora history into the adventures.
Although the resulting mashups retained the fantasy elements of Dungeons & Dragons, the factual components were slightly altered to not overwhelm or distract from the enjoyment of the game itself.
“We made some really strong connections but also did this sort of obfuscating, in a really fun way, and made everything feel fantastical,” Keith Outcelt said. By not over emphasizing the historical, it also allowed players to become curious about the real-world connections, which were then explored in greater detail at the end of each adventure. Even the name of the town was changed from Aurora to Arrowpoint to keep the illusion of fantasy while still having it relate to actual Aurora history.
“Before we had the name Aurora,” Faith Ojebouboh explained at Fan Expo, “it was actually called Fletcher, because the person who put Aurora together, his last name was Fletcher.” Since a fletcher in medieval times was someone who crafted arrows, the name Arrowpoint Adventures was selected for the Aurora Dungeons & Dragons excursions.
Aurora’s first librarian, meanwhile, was named Sara Woods, who became Shara Silver Woods in the game, while an educator in the adventures is simply Swith, after William Swith, who established the first school in the actual city.
“Why would an educator come to Colorado and settle in Aurora when there was nothing and build this from the ground up?” Ojebouboh asked herself. “Because he really cared about his people. So that gave me some basic ideas, what these people would look like, what their personalities might be.”
Colorado in general is home to three different species of prairie dogs, and Aurora has specifically been overrun by the black-tailed variety since before the first settlers arrived in the 1880s. Many in the community inevitably consider the abundance of prairie dogs as a nuisance, but the animals also serve important roles in the overall ecosystem of the region. The question of how to balance resident needs with the existence of so many prairie dogs has thus been debated for over a century and serves as the basis for the first Arrowpoint adventure.
Should the prairie dogs be allowed to stay in Arrowpoint, should they be attacked and eradicated, or can a compromise be reached? For the initial group of D&D participants, the solution involved kidnapping one of the prairie dogs and having it sniff out another prairie dog community, where the Arrowpoint prairie dogs could then relocate.
The four adventures were tied together via time travel, which enabled the players to get a sense of how the factual Aurora has changed over the years. “I would run the adventure, and then I would ask them what they saw, if they could connect it to Aurora history,” Keith Outcelt explained at Fan Expo Denver. “That seemed to work really, really well. As opposed to me telling them what things are supposed to be referencing, I let them decide what they wanted to know about, what they were curious about in the game, and then I gave them as much history background as I could as they made those connections afterwards.”
Arrowpoint Adventures was also designed to enhance the experience of visiting the Aurora History Museum. When participants explore the museum after completing the adventures, they are able to link elements of the game with the exhibits they encounter.
“We were loose with the history in the actual game,” Outcelt said. “We didn’t make sure everything was resolved the same way as historically, we just made sure that we were putting together these connections that when you look at Aurora history if you played the game, you would later go, ‘Oh, that’s what that was!’”
Keith Outcelt, Faith Ojebouboh, and other members of the Aurora History Museum and Pop Culture Classroom hope that Arrowpoint Adventures can serve as a blueprint for similar museums to craft their own D&D adventures. Dungeons & Dragons may be a tabletop game that merely requires a special set of dice, but it also relies on the imagination of the players, making it popular with teens as a result.
“D&D is a great way for kids to express themselves without judgement,” Outcelt told AuroraTV. “To be able to play around with someone that they’re not, and I think that’s part of why its appealing, especially for teenagers who are figuring out who they are and what they want to do with their lives.”
In Aurora, Colorado, Dungeons & Dragons is also a great way to teach local history.
Anthony Letizia