Edutainment Content - The Oregon Trail

education
#1

My wife works with K-6 at the Boys and Girls Club of America, and they have guests come in for different clubs. I wanted to do a TTRPG club, leveraging the unique collaborative and experiential environment to connect kids to history. The Oregon Trail seems like a good campaign to run, rife with adventure, encounters, exploration, resource management, etc.

A few questions for anyone with ideas or experience:

  • In working with TTRPGs and young kids, what are some keys to success, and what are good cautionary tales?
  • Does anyone happen to have Oregon Trail settings content? Between CORE, Ghost Mountain, Blood and Snow, and Grizzly Encounters “Journey” and “Civilizations” (and “Forces”, when it hits the shelves!), I think I have sufficient structure to develop it, but if someone already had done some work and was interested in collaboration, I would love to leverage it.
#2

I always died of dysentery…

#3

You can actually play the 1990 DOS version online here:

And here is the games guide book which may have some useful information:

Here is the original 1978 program source code, which even if you’re not a BASIC programmer, most of it is in readable text:

#4

@slingstone thanks for the resource links! They aren’t quite what I’m looking for, though.

What I’m hoping to create isn’t so much a recreation of the experience of the computer game, but a tabletop RPG campaign which takes people through the experience of travelling the Oregon Trail. I want to include role-based responsibilities such as basic resource acquisition and management, pathfinding, social encounters, bartering, handling sickness, equipment repair and upkeep, making difficult travel decisions (“we really gonna ford that river?”).

Like the video game, it’s an opportunity to introduce history to people in a different way, but leveraging the uniquely interactive and collaborative nature of table top RPGs.

Does this provide some clarity for what I’m looking for? Thanks again for your time!