Roll For Kindness

GM Academy

One of the most effective tools I have in my repertoire is a fun activity, or themed group even, called GM Academy.  While most of the groups I run are focused around simply playing a TTRPG, GM academy puts that all aside and focuses on something else- Running games. Participants

Autism Stories Podcast

Here's me talking about my history growing up autistic and how I used D&D to find friends, and turned that into a career. Podcast: Autism Stories | Autism PersonalCoachAutism Stories and Info Dump Files are podcasts created by Autistics and highlight Autistic voices.Autism PersonalCoach

APA 2024

I spoke at the American Psychological Association's Annual Conference in Seattle on supporting autistics in working in mental health with Dr. Lucas Harrington of the UW Autism Center, with a focus on social skills facilitation in D&D. Check out a brief video of my part of the presentation!

Silos

I recently watched the show Silo, and really liked it. But, it also got me thinking about the Silo-ification of the autism world. Silo-ification, as far as I'm aware, isn't a real word, but it helps with this point, and is honestly very much present in a lot of different

Pride and autism

With Pride month starting, I want to talk about something that is really important in understanding and supporting queer autistics- the concept of autisexuality. Reflecting on my lived experience as a bi/pansexual, and how as I've accepted my autism diagnosis and learned about autistic culture, the concept of autigender/

Nothing about us without us passes!

A bit old news, but wanted to just celebrate the passage of the Nothing About us Without us, HB 1541, which states that any committee, task force, or work group pertaining to disability (or other population) have an individual with lived experience in that realm. While this has massive implication

2023 in Review

Been a pretty transformative year for Roll for Kindness, in some really good ways. I've been really busy, and haven't had time to post as much, but there have been some really big changes, and a few big events. For starters, I was featured as one of the cover stories

Adblock is Accessibility

Youtube is another tech giant pushing against adblockThis is a slight departure from the usual articles about RPGs and autism, but as there is a lot of RPG content online, and internet accessibility is needed to make it a space for neurodivergent individuals to exist, this is an important issue

Building Autistic representation in autism services

A few months ago, I was hired on at Behavior Bridges, an autism clinic in Puyallup, Washington, as their Inclusion Director. While the largest part of my work there is running their various geek centric groups (mostly tabletop gaming and D&D), my official title is inclusion director, and a

APA 2023

First, apologies for not posting in a while, my PC was down and things were just hard to get done during that time. But- I wanted to share a clip from the talk I did with Dr Amelia Herbst at the American Psychological Association's Annual Conference in Washington DC, where

Tips for Running Autism TTRPG groups

I recently wrapped up my final session of my D&D autism community building groups for the quarter, and I asked the students for feedback. It was largely positive, but when I framed it as ideas on what other GMs should do, they were able to provide a lot of

Screentime and Mental Health Summit

This last week, I had the opportunity to attend the Screentime and Mental Health Summit, hosted by Bright and Quirky [https://hub.brightandquirky.com/summit-2023/]. It was a series of ~45 minute long video interviews from various screentime experts (although some of them I would describe as 'experts') about the

Losing the ableism within RPG social skills groups

When people think about therapeutic RPG groups, they're usually thinking of autism social skills groups. The idea of using D&D, a well loved game within the autism community, to teach autistics how to socialize better? It's obvious! It's amazing! It's widespread! It's an easy fit! It's also rooted in

UW Story Corp

Been a while since I posted- I've been very busy, and will write a major update of what's been happening soon, but I wanted to share the UW Autism Story's (think Story Corp) interview of me and my cofacilitator Celia. This is really important, as elevating autistic voices, especially those

D&Done

D&D is a bit of a clusterf*** right now with the OGL mess. If you've been hiding under a rock, there's new info every day, but here's [https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2023/01/game-makers-stage-mass-exodus-from-dungeons-dragons-open-license/] a pretty good write up on what's going on, with major news outlets starting to

Rethinking Autistic Social Skills (video)

Realized I hadn't shared my video of the talk I did for the Southwest Washington Autism Coalition's annual conference on rethinking autistic social skills. Check it out!

University of Washington Tacoma Interview

I'm on the cover of the UWT's website, both as an article and a podcast! Check it out [https://www.tacoma.uw.edu/news/world-builder]!

Lessons from Applied Games

Recently an article came out in Wired about therapeutic gaming [https://www.wired.com/story/therapists-dungeons-dragons-tabletop-games-helping-people/] , and since then there's been a lot of focus on people using D&D and TTRPGs within therapeutic contexts. While I am absolutely for people using RPGs therapeutically, I feel like focusing exclusively on

Can Published RPGs Work In a Classroom Setting?

By contributor Maryanne Cullinan Recently, I had the privilege of participating in an ILA X Wizards of the Coast panel on using DnD for Writing. More than 900 people signed up for the Zoom broadcast, which shows the increasing interest in using RPGs in the classroom. Teachers and counselors know

Using TTRPGs to change the narratives around Autism

Working for a disability advocacy nonprofit, I've been paying a lot of attention to the narratives around disability, especially those around autism and neurodivergence. They range from viewing autism as a cautionary tale about vaccines to a beautiful way of engaging with the world, and everything in between. However, as

The Caravan Endures update

The launch of the Caravan Endures has been a failure. I set the payment to a donation system, with the idea that I wanted the game to be affordable for people who were struggling, but it seems like that just became an excuse for people to get it for free,

Caravan Endures is out!

Buy it here [https://g3rmb0y.itch.io/the-caravan-endures]! Buy the visual accessibility version here [https://g3rmb0y.itch.io/caravan-endures-vision-accessible-version]! Been a long time, but it's finally out in the wild. Thanks to everyone who gave feedback, helped produce it, and helped test it. I've spent two years working on this,

Practical tips for Supporting Autistic players at your Table

I was recently asked by someone for some advice on helping their autistic son succeed in an improv group, and what the teacher could do to help make the group better for the youth. I gave them a list of advice on what's worked really well for my autism social

Granting player agency to create the best quarter I've ever run

Last week, I wrapped up my final session of Summer Quarter for the group I've been running consecutively for about 8 years, and I have to say that this was easily the best quarter I've ever run. I wasn't planning on running group over the Summer- I was hoping to

Rethinking Autism Social Skills groups

As applied and specifically therapeutic RPGs come into vogue, more and more I'm seeing therapists and social skills coaches running 'Autism Social Skills D&D/RPG groups.' On a lot of levels, this makes a lot of sense. It's the most obvious application of RPGs in the therapeutic space,