Roll For Kindness

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,

Running Disability Inclusion Groups

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,

Do Rule Sets Matter?

I've written about choosing the right game [https://rollforkindness.com/choosing-the-best-system-for-your-needs/] 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

Pax East Panel

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

Updates and Interviews

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

Tools Versus Toys - Musings on the “No Phones” Rule

By @Culliope [https://rollforkindness.com/welcome-to-culliope-maryanne/] Peter makes a great case [https://rollforkindness.com/recentering-player-engagement/] 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

The problem with "No phones at the table"

"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

How Classroom Management Tools Can Augment Safety Tools at the Recreational RPG Table

By Culliope [https://twitter.com/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.