Episode 154 Victoria Banks on Dungeons, Dragons, and Discourse
Victoria Banks on Dungeons, Dragons, and Discourse
Episode Summary
In this episode of Experience Points, Dave Eng interviews Victoria Banks, a Clemson University PhD student and video game scriptwriter, on using Dungeons & Dragons–inspired course design to engage students. She explains how mechanics like levels, boss battles, and character creation boost motivation and agency, while linking game rhetoric to classroom design. Sharing stories of students tickling dragons or exploiting overpowered abilities, Victoria reflects on balancing play and structure. The episode shows how games transform classrooms into spaces of creativity, choice, and discovery.
Victoria Banks
she/her/hers
English & Interdisciplinary Graduate Teacher of Record, PhD student in game studies, & video game script writer
Clemson University
Victoria Banks is a graduate student in the Rhetoric, Communication, & Information Design Program at Clemson University where she teaches English and Interdisciplinary classes utilizing play pedagogy and DnD influenced course design. Her focus of study is in the rhetoric of video games and ludological narratives. She is also a video game script writer.
(LinkedIn): https://www.linkedin.com/in/victoria-banks-7a1195b7/
Dave Eng:
Hi, and welcome to Experience Points by University XP. On Experience Points, we explore different ways we can learn from games. I'm your host Dave Eng from Games-Based Learning by University XP. Find out more by going to www.universityxp.com. On today's episode, we'll learn from Victoria Banks. Victoria Banks is a graduate student in the Rhetoric Communication and Information Design Program at Clemson University, where she teaches English and interdisciplinary classes utilizing pedagogy and D&D-influenced course design. Her focus of study is in the rhetoric of video games and Ludological narratives. She is also a video game scriptwriter. Victoria, welcome to the show.
Victoria Banks:
Thanks, Dave. I appreciate you inviting me back after the conference this summer and I'm happy to discuss a lot of my work in academia.
Dave Eng:
Great. Thank you, Victoria. Like I said before in the pre-show, I'm very interested in your work. I know that a lot of people may not know about your work, so the entire premise of the show is for other people to learn more about you. So based on that, I want to jump into our first question, which is overall inspiration and design. So I know that the course that you talked about during your session at the Games-Based Learning Virtual Conference blends play, pedagogy with Dungeons & Dragons-inspired elements like character creation, levels and boss battles. So my question to you is what inspired you to merge these game mechanics with academic learning and how did your students respond the first time you implemented them?
Victoria Banks:
So I kind of went through two stages of gamification. I always wanted to blend my research in game studies with my teaching pedagogy, but I was just seeing a lot of overlap between practices within level design and understanding player behavior and motivation with the pedagogy I had towards course design and student learning motivation and that kind of thing. So I went through two stages of one where I just was kind of experimenting with it and then a second stage where I fully went with the D&D gamification, and that occurred when I arrived at Clemson University. I was talking with one of my colleagues, Justin Shay Easler. He also studies video games at Clemson and does VR stuff.
But he was mentioning that a lot of people who came before me also use these kind of D&D strategies. So I'm definitely not the first, but I learned a lot from those ideas. I know Christopher Stewart, who was a guest at the conference this summer as well, and also graduated from this program, used gamification in his own course as well. So really, it was a lot of seeing that overlap between what motivates players and what motivates students as well as seeing a similarity in unit design and level design that led to this eventual overlap.
Dave Eng:
I see. You brought up an interesting point here, which is you said specifically motivating players and motivating students. In my mind, I kind of combine both of them like players are also students, but have you learned anything through your own practice? Is there anything that specifically motivates players over students or students over players or anything like that?
Victoria Banks:
Yes. A lot of my research, I've gone down the path of looking at the etymology of play. So there's a lot of research around the biology of our nature to crave play. It's kind of a social practice and evolutionary practice. But I also had a lot of research from Miguel Sicart who talks about the nature of humans to create play in different scenarios, as well as Greg Costikyan's Uncertainty in Play, which looks at risk and reward as a key factor to motivation. You think about why a player of Elden Ring is going to keep going back after being defeated over and over again and what motivates them or what makes that still fun. I also just think that learning is a form of play. It's a creative endeavor. And so I applying some of those mechanics as far as designing something that is engaging offers the player agency, offers risk and reward. Those are the things that are going to keep a student engaged as well as a player.
Dave Eng:
Right. And I think that's a good point to make because I know that a lot of educators that are using I would call them traditional or orthodox methods are going to rely mostly on something that's very linear, something that's very didactic, which isn't necessarily a bad thing, but to your point, you did talk about player agency and I'm a big proponent of that, of giving players and students and learners the opportunity to choose and decide because I think that having those decision points is an integral part of play. And I think also addresses the intrinsic motivation of individuals to want to do something that's fun and interesting and something that piques their curiosity and isn't something that's just merely told to them, but something that they can experience.
Victoria Banks:
They're creating the space like... Well, we design the space within the classroom, but then the student should have agency of how they engage with that space.
Dave Eng:
Right. And I think that goes into the second question, which is what I wanted to ask you on rhetoric and Ludology. I know your work focuses on the rhetoric of video games and the Ludological narrative. I know we talked about the overall setup, the structure, player agency, but I think what's really important here is the Ludological narrative. Can you share an example of how understanding game rhetoric has shaped the way you teach or design games-based learning experiences?
Victoria Banks:
Right. Well, I think a lot of that is also the overlap in the roles. I think about what is the interaction between me as a designer and writer of the game and the player, how are we interacting and engaging within this space? And then I also think about that same thing within a teacher-student dynamic. How am I setting up this space to offer agency for the player or agency for the student? And how are we then interacting, rhetorically speaking, through play? So I see a lot of overlap there in regards to the way designers make intentional choices to influence a player's experience. In some ways, designers are a little bit manipulative, so we're kind of influencing the player in certain ways while also offering them some sense of control while it's not full control within the space. But understanding that interaction and understanding the rhetorical influences of design also helps with teaching. Also, excuse my dogs. She's snoring.
Dave Eng:
Great, thank you. Well, one, I think that the dog snoring provides some good character to this overall interview. But the other thing I wanted to ask, and I think this speaks to it, is have you ever been surprised as the designer? I feel like as the designer you are creating, you're the auteur, you're the author, you're creating experience. And you're going to provide the let's call it the constraints or the overall structure of that experience to your players, to your students, for them to experience on their own. Have you ever been either legitimately or pleasantly surprised by something you've designed and then the student has done something that you totally didn't expect afterwards?
Victoria Banks:
Oh, absolutely. It happens every time. I mean, there's-
Dave Eng:
Do you have an example?
Victoria Banks:
I had a student who I wasn't preparing for them to... One of them in a dragon battle I had, so with each assignment they battled these different elemental dragons. One of my students decided, they rolled a 20 and they were going to tickle the dragon and allow it to kind of chill out and stop attacking them. So it ended up happening. But sometimes they'll do stuff within the story of the game that I'm not expecting. And that happens too whenever I'm designing a narrative for a game. I always like to think about, "Okay, what is the player going to want to do or try to do?" And then I design for that. At the same time, players often experiment with the space to test the limits of what they can do, and sometimes they even break the game.
For my teaching, I also try to think about that. That's actually what led to my students being able to have character creation where they select different power-ups or abilities that they use each level. I asked myself, "If I were a student in this class, what kind of power would I want to have or want to do? What are some things I expect my players to try to attempt within this space or what they would want to attempt?" And then I design it for that.
Dave Eng:
And have you ever had an experience where, I guess, the tickling the dragon experience, has it ever-
Victoria Banks:
Yeah, good stories...
Dave Eng:
I know you said broke the game, but in the context of I guess the Ludological narrative, has it ever compromised the structure to the point where you're like, "Well, I don't know what to do at this point, so I'm just going to try to steer it back towards whatever my objective is"?
Victoria Banks:
Yes. So that was kind of a trial and error within my course design is I found that when I first started that some of the powers were too OP (overpowered). So I think I had one of the power-ups used to be have an additional revision opportunity, and students were just spamming that power-up every time. So it led to an imbalance in other students not having, I guess, as strong of a power. So again, that's balancing issues that you see in a lot of game design is making sure that most of the powers are even. So there were times that it didn't necessarily break the game for the semester, but it was something I had to revisit when I was designing the course again for the next one.
Dave Eng:
I see. Yeah, I think that sometimes you honestly don't know what students are going to do, what players are going to do, and I think that just being able to have the flexibility and I guess experience and maturity to be able to address some of those changes is important to have, but it's something that can only be gained over time.
Victoria Banks:
Right.
Dave Eng:
I want to go into the third and last question here, because you'd brought it up before specifically about trial and error. Overall in Ludic design, if you're going to be approaching this, you're going to gamify something, there's going to be a lot of trial and error for how you apply it. So for those that are listening, from your perspective, what are some lessons, I know you talked about some of the lessons learned already, but what are some points or advice that you would give to other people that want to gamify their classroom and want to follow in your footsteps, and how can they avoid some of common mistakes that maybe you've made or you've seen other people make in the past?
Victoria Banks:
Well, I think the biggest thing and the biggest change for me when I saw that shift of this course really having a positive impact on my students was when started thinking less about just switching out terms for what I call things and then saying it's gamified because I'm calling a unit a level or saying it's gamified because I'm calling my grades XP points. That does help as a stepping stone. That's how I started. But I don't think that's fully gamifying a course. Because then you're not thinking about where in this design is their play? Where in this design am I allowing the students to play around in the class?
So the biggest shift I made was while yes, calling things a level and kind of framing it that way helped students understand how there's a progression between the work they're doing towards the major assignments. The way I have it laid out is the units or levels, they have side quests throughout the level that prepare them for the main boss battle, which is the main assignment, doing that does help them see the connection between all the work they're doing. I had feedback from a student who said that's something that was particularly helpful for her, but doing that alone does not necessarily make it a game, if that makes sense.
And the biggest shift was when I started thinking about, "Okay, what powers am I giving my students? Where am I offering risk and reward in a way that's balanced and engaging?" Those kind of things, that aspect of design is where I think you'll see the most change in engagement. It shifts it from gimmick to intentional rhetorical interaction between the teacher and the student, and the designer and the player.
Dave Eng:
Right. And I think that's a really good point because I've seen a lot of different applications where people, they'll just change terms like you said before, instead of just calling it a week, they'll call it a level or anything else. But focusing in those elements that allow players to make choices, have agency, focusing on play where they can action that agency. And overall, I think just exploring how this framework of using games for teaching and learning is more important than just renaming stuff because really anyone can just rename stuff.
Victoria Banks:
Right.
Dave Eng:
And you could call it gamification or just gamified learning or applied games, but I think taking a deeper approach like you've done in your work is also really useful. So I appreciate you sharing that, Victoria.
Victoria Banks:
Yeah, it's more about the mechanic, I would say.
Dave Eng:
Right, right. The actual actions that players will be taking rather than just calling it something else.
Victoria Banks:
Exactly.
Dave Eng:
Using vocabulary terms. Great. Well, thank you, Victoria. I appreciate that. Where can people go to find out more about you and your work?
Victoria Banks:
I do have a LinkedIn, which is available. It should be Victoria Banks. If you search me up, it should be associated with Clemson. And then I also have a personal website that's titled Victoria Banks Writes, and it is a Wix website, so I can also be reached there. I should have more publications on that website and just links to some of the work I've done so far.
Dave Eng:
Great. Thank you. I'll include those links in the show notes. Thank you, Victoria.
Victoria Banks:
Thank you so much.
Dave Eng:
I hope you found this episode useful. If you'd like to learn more, then a great place to start is my free course on gamification. You can sign up for it at www.universityxp.com/gamification. You can also get a full transcript of this episode, including links or references in the description or show notes. Thanks for joining us. Again, I'm your host, Dave Eng from Games-Based Learning by University XP. On Experience Points, we explore different ways we can learn from games. So if you like this episode, please consider commenting, sharing and subscribing. Subscribing is absolutely free and ensures that you'll get the next episode of Experience Points delivered directly to you.
I'd also love it if you took some time to rate the show. We live to lift others with learning. So if you find this episode useful, consider sharing it with someone who could also benefit. Also make sure to visit University XP online at www.universityxp.com. University XP is also on Twitter and Bluesky as University XP, and on Facebook and LinkedIn as University XP. Also, feel free to email me anytime. My email address is dave@universityxp.com. Game on!
Cite this Episode
Eng, D. (Host). (2025, December 28). Victoria Banks on Dungeons, Dragons, and Discourse. (No. 154) [Audio podcast episode]. Experience Points. University XP. https://www.universityxp.com/podcast/154
Internal Ref: UXPMHP5HDYYZ
References
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