Frequently Asked Questions

• During the academic year, we offer ongoing after-school groups meeting once a week.
• During the summer, we offer weekly half-day camps with morning and afternoon sessions. Students can sign up for just one week, or a series of weeks.
• We also run school break camps during the academic year: Fall Break, Winter Break, Spring Break, Ski Week, and some holidays such as Veterans Day.
• Birthday Party Adventures are also available, and include a pre-meeting to make characters and two Birthday sessions of 2.5 hours each, occurring over the weekend.
• We offer Young Adult Groups for ages 19-22, meeting one day a week on an ongoing basis.
• At this time we don’t offer activities for parents, but an option to learn D&D and play as a family is in the works. Let us know if you're interested!

After-School Groups:

• Students can enroll at any time, depending on spaces available. Many spots are avilable in September/October and January/February as we organize groups for the semester.
• A new group can begin anytime during the academic year if we have 3-4 interested students, and we do start up a few a month throughout the year, including May.
• For families new to Gaming Together, we meet one-on-one with each student before they begin playing D&D with us, so please expect at least a week between registration and entry into a group.

School Break & Summer Camps:

• Families new to Gaming Together can register for summer camps or school break camps until 3 business days before the camp begins. (This leaves time for us to meet the new player and get to know them, before we assign them to a group.)
• Experienced Gaming Together families can register up to the start of the camp.

We put care and attention into grouping students for our program. With only 4 students per group, the mix of students is critical to creating a supportive environment and friendship opportunities. For this reason, we do not allow direct enrollment into a group or camp -- we want to get to know each new student and family in order to place all students in groups where they will feel safe and supported. (Though extremely rare, we would rather say no to an enrollment than give a student a bad experience.)

After-School Program:

• Offered between September and May, on an ongoing basis with rolling enrollment.
• Groups are offered Monday through Friday, and meet once a week.
• Group meetings are for 2 hours and occur between 3pm and 7pm, with the exact time of each group determined by the availability of the families involved.
• Eastern time and Pacific time options are available.

Summer Camps:

• Offered June 6 - September 3, and later in September upon request.
• Our half-day camps are online via Zoom and Roll20.
• Camps run for 1 week each, Monday through Friday.
• Students meet for 3 hours each day (with several momement/snack breaks).
• Morning camps are 10am-1:00pm pacific (1pm-4pm eastern).
• Afternoon camps are 1:30pm-4:30pm pacific (4:30-7:30pm eastern).

School Break Camps:

• Fall Break Camp is offered Monday through Wednesday of the week of Thanksgiving.
• Winter Camps run for a partial week the week of Christmas, and the next two full weeks.
• Ski Week Camp is a full week in mid- to late-February, with the exact dates determined by the academic calendar of participating students.
• Spring Break Camps are offered over a 3-week period in late March and early April.
• Custom camps can be arranged for any group of 3-4 students with shared availability! (custom times, 2-day camps, 3-day camps, etc.)

• We updated our pricing for Summer 2022, starting June 6.
• School break camps are $550* for a 5-day camp, pro-rated for shorter camps.
• After-school group tuition is $89* per class.
• *Sliding scale tuition discounts are available.
• *Additional discounts are open to Spring 2022 families.
• We offer a 10% sibling discount on all tuition for any week both siblings are enrolled.
• Our Birthday Party Adventure package pricing is under review.

• For Summer Camp registrations January - April, a $50 deposit is required to hold your student’s spot, and full tuition is due 30 days before camp begins.
• For Summer Camp registrations May or later, full tuition is due 30 days before camp begins.
• For After-School Groups, we ask for a 4-week deposit at the start of the group. After that, tuition is billed monthly for the prior month.

After-school 2-hour sessions:

• Arrive, greet each other, recap the previous day’s adventure.
• Play D&D for about 45 minutes.
• Take a 20-minute break in which students must drink water, have a snack, use the bathroom, and take a significant movement break for at least 5 minutes.
• Play D&D for about 45 minutes.
• Conclude the day’s adventure, say farewell.

Half-day camps with 3-hour sessions:

• Arrive, greet each other, recap the previous day’s adventure.
• Play D&D for about 40 minutes.
• Take a 10-15 minute break in which students must drink water, have a snack, use the bathroom, and take a significant movement break for at least 5 minutes.
• Play D&D for about 45 minutes.
• Take a 10-15 minute break in which students must drink water, have a snack, use the bathroom, and take a significant movement break for at least 5 minutes.
• Play D&D for about 45 minutes.
• Conclude the day’s adventure, share feedback with each other, say farewell.

Story Tellers are the instructors who run Dungeons & Dragons for our students. The more common terms for this role are Dungeon Master (DM), Game Master (GM), or Game Moderator (GM). At Gaming Together, we do not use terms including “Master”, as that is a slavery reference; in addition, we emphasize the collaborative story-creation aspect of D&D, and so we use Story Teller or ST.

Our Story Tellers are mostly young adults ages 18-25, though we also have some younger and some older STs. They are a wonderful group of caring, creative people who love to share D&D with young people and who are committed to mentoring and supporting our wonderful students. While each Story Teller has their own style, they are all trained in the Gaming Together Way of running D&D, which emphasizes creating a safe and supportive space for learning and growth, taking advantage of all the skills-teaching opportunities that arise during D&D, meeting each student where they are, and creating fun adventures for all.

• For online programs, we have a ratio of 4:1 or 3:1.
• For in-person programs, the ratio is 3:1, 4:1, or 5:1.
• In both cases, this refers to a small group of 3-5 students working with a single instructor whose focus is on them entirely.

Our Story Teller training focuses a lot on safety and how to create a safe and supportive environment for all students, including students who are queer, neurodiverse, shy, or overly talkative. During D&D sessions, if a student says something biased or potentially harmful, the Story Teller gently explains the bias/harm and uses the moment as a teaching opportunity for all the students.

We also use every opportunity provided by the adventure story to talk with students about consent, how to express a boundary, and how to gracefully respect another person’s boundary. These approaches are encapsulated by the Gaming Together Code of Conduct, which all students and Story Tellers agree to follow.

Some childcare program tuition includes a branded water bottle or t-shirt; in contrast, Gaming Together’s included benefits are intangible but invaluable. Your tuition includes our strong commitment to get to know your child well, to care about them, and to think deeply about how to draw them out and use D&D to expand their skills and support their learning and development. Story Tellers will notice what upsets your child, listen when they talk, and care when something is wrong.

If we identify a particular challenge your child is working on or see a consistent change in their behavior, we will let you know. If they are struggling with something or they need support to navigate that challenge, Director Honor Doherty will sit in and offer expert guidance to both your child and their Story Teller. If they do something amazing and wonderful, you’ll get an email about how amazing they are. Most of all, we care about each of our students and are deeply committed to giving them the best possible fun and the best possible support for growth and learning.

Good question! Here’s a short list for the FAQ, but be sure to read about the Benefits of Gaming and what other parents have shared.

• Fun that is created and shared with their peers.
• Expansive options to express their creativity, individuality, and imagination.
• A highly engaging activity that uses every aspect of their academic learning, reinforcing and connecting STEM concepts and skills while also developing communication and leadership skills.
• A safe place to be themselves, and to be accepted and valued for who they are.
• Coaching and support in developing and using their voice and their agency (personal power), in having and expressing boundaries, and in teamwork and cooperation.
• Stories to tell their peers — and parents — about the funny, the serious, and the heroic things that happen in their D&D game.

D&D provides a fun way to practice one of the most pivotal aspects of learning: failure. Players get to try out an idea (hypothesis) and measure the success of that theory by the results. Actively engaged students pull from all the academic subjects they are familiar with, which helps them gain a deeper understanding of the academic material. STEM skills are heavily supported as everything players do in the game is affected by physics, chemistry, biology, and principles of math and engineering.

While students have learned these ideas in school, D&D provides a real-life-like context for the value of those skills and invites players to think from a systems perspective (i.e., how all those different topics of study come together in a single moment). This mirrors the work of actual scientists. In other words, D&D presents knowledge in a multi-modal and multi-disciplinary way that creates links between subjects in the student’s mind.

In an adventure, for example, players might be asked to stop a forest fire. This requires active learning/knowledge of the terrain, the role that wind will play in the spread of the fire, and what is and isn't flammable.

• Engineering and Geography will help them locate the nearest source of water and move a lot of water to the fire.
• Biology tells them that some plant species have adapted to forest fires, and inspires them to consider all the creatures of the forest and how to protect them from the fire.
• Chemistry has them thinking about what they might call upon or create with magic to interrupt the fire's chemical processes, smother it, etc.
• Language Arts and Social Studies help them understand and communicate the narrative of what is happening, as well as call upon local allies in the game to help.
• Logic, analysis, and persuasive argument are given real meaning as players talk together about the best approach to use to meet their goals.

Don't take our word for it, though: check out this article on how a group of students out-performed everyone else in their district, and the only thing they had in common was playing Dungeons & Dragons.

Tuition is billed through Quickbooks, with invoices emailed to you that include all the information needed to use your Dependent Care FSA funds. The invoice includes a click-to-pay link, accepting both credit cards and bank transactions. In addition, tuition can be sent using PayPal.

We take the safety of our students, families, and Story Tellers very seriously. As a company, we follow pandemic news about new variants and surges closely. As of May 2022, we plan to offer limited in-person camps in Redwood City, CA with dates TBA. Let us know if you're interested!

New to Gaming Together?

1. Fill out our New Student Registration Form and email it to staff@gaming-together.org.
2. If you're registering siblings, please submit a separate form for each of them.
3. In the email, let us know what activity you're signing up for.
4. We will reply about tech setup and scheduling for your gratis New Player Information meeting (required).
5. When you receive your invoice, submit your tuition payment.

Played with us before?

1. Email us and let us know what activity you're signing up for.
2. We will send you an invoice for the required tuition deposit or payment.