Roll For Kindness

Recently an article came out in Wired about therapeutic gaming, 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 the therapists using RPGs ignores

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

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 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,

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

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

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

I recently started working for a nonprofit that serves the needs of individuals and families of individuals with intellectual and developmental disabilities, working in their information and referral department. While a lot of the work I'm doing is systems navigation, I found out about a Dungeons and Dragons summer program,

I've written about choosing the right game for your applied group in the past, but since then the landscape has changed. Initially, the options for applied RPG groups were limited to a handful of mainstream RPGs such as D&D and Pathfinder. Now this has been challenged by new

Here is the VOD for our PAX East panel on using games to talk about difficult topics that I spoke on. Check it out!

The Panel Playing with Knives at Pax EastBeen some time since I've posted, and that by no means indicates I've been inactive. Quite the contrary. For the purposes of this blog, I've hit most of my big applied rpg general education milestones- indicated by the fact that when someone came

By @Culliope Peter makes a great case in the “No Phones” article for why phones should be allowed for neurodivergent players at the TTRPG table. I completely agree! However, I think that his article is the seed for an even bigger conversation to be had about tabletop manners and play.

"No phones at the table!" This is one of the most common rules I see as part of applied RPG groups, specifically ones that look at teaching social skills to autistic individuals. The notion that screentime is a problem, whereas face to face communication is good is very common in

By Culliope We hear a lot about safety tools in RPGS these days. Safety tools are agreements at the table about the content and tone of the story, as well as pre established routines for how to flag a particular bit of content, conversation, storyline, etc. if it moves beyond

I recently watched a talk about RPG safety tools, and I've been thinking about them nonstop since then. It's essential for players to feel safe and welcome at the TTRPG table, but to get the most out of safety tools, it's important to reflect on how they can be used

By @culliope I had the pleasure of once again attending PAX Unplugged in Philadelphia, Dec 11th and 12th, 2021. It was wonderful to be back at this con after losing last year to the Covid haze. I hosted and presented on the “Can We Finally Admit Games Belong In the

By @culliope People are often fascinated to hear we have a 65+ participant middle school DnD Club. In many ways it is both harder and much easier than you might think. The most important thing to keep in mind, as always, is that we are all here to have fun

For applied RPG games to work you need to be able to give every student time in the spotlight- that is, a scene, encounter, or aspect of the game that they get to engage with directly. This is fundamental to any applied RPG work, as it gives the student time

A few months ago, I had the pleasure of speaking with Anthony Bean, founder and Director of Geek Therapeutics. After talking shop about applied RPGs and our shared vision for the future of the field, he invited me to become certified as a Therapeutic Game Master through Geek Therapeutics. I

I've recently had a chance to look at a few educational RPGs, and was thinking to myself, "What is the learning goal here? How would assessment work? What are the students going to carry away? How does the design of this game feed into those learning goals?" And in many

Hello Travelers, Heroes’ Hall is in full swing. I have affectionately been calling it the Heroes’ Hall Hydra - as one person decides it isn’t for them, two take their place! With three weeks under our belts, we have filled nine tables of players, about 66 kids. Eight of

It's important to find ways to reward creativity and exploration as well as combat. (Source: Legend of Zelda)One of the fundamental pieces of RPGs is the concept of rewards- from XP that unlocks additional abilities to gold that can be used to purchase weapons, or magical items or information

This is, as the title says, a list of 100 warm up questions. I've spoken about how to use warm up questions before, but I wanted to make a more thorough list for people to use. Many of these are ones I've used, others are ones I would like to

Years ago, I read the Cyberpunk Manifesto, and was inspired. Sadly, my career in cybersecurity was the bland corporate variety, but the same energy from that piece has stuck with me for years. On a whim, I've decided to transcribe an Applied GM's Manifesto. Applied GM's Manifesto I will always