Roll for insight: Using Dungeons & Dragons as a group therapy tool
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Isn't this why most us "Nerds/geeks/social outcasts" played D&D back in the 80's to begin with?
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Anecdotal, but this has helped my daughter a lot. She has social anxiety like nobody's business. Between D&D, martial arts and some therapy she has improved. I think our biggest argument is who is going to DM.
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I played a lot of GURPS with adult buddies when I was a teenager. I mentioned this hobby to a (not completely crazy) born-again fundamentalist aunt, and said it was DnD. She asked me about whether it promoted satanic worship or something similar (instead of immediately getting loudly horrified), and listened when I (having realized my mistake) explained that it was basically just Let's Pretend for grownups with rules.
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Looking back I wish I had played D&D, but the Satanic panic by my family and friends parents in the 80s was overwhelming. That was also back in the day when playing records backwards allegedly relayed subliminal Satanic messages too.
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She's on Faster Purple Worm! Kill! Kill! — an improv show where a party of level 1 characters happen to discover a level 20 boss and die horribly shortly thereafter. This is their (brief) story.
The players on the show have mentioned a couple times how therapeutic the game is too.
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I am fortunate to play at a terrific tables with people I didn't really know before I started playing, but gathered by a DM with excellent taste in players. I've found it interesting and even unexpectedly therapeutic to play my characters, and writing out their inner dialog and reactions to the things that happened (as a thing I do for my own enjoyment between sessions) even more so. I've gotten better at pronoun management. The creative thinking on my feet and the teambuilding, I'd like to think I was good at before I joined, but I've really only gotten better at them with this additional dimension of practice. And I've built some strong friendships besides.
When I was a kid, my counselor played simple board games with me during a session, like othello etc; this just seems like an evolution of that into a more complex system, with the benefit of - no one wants to miss out on a key part of the adventure.
I like exploring the world from different points of view, and I like the collaborative storytelling too.
When I was a kid, my counselor played simple board games with me during a session, like othello etc; this just seems like an evolution of that into a more complex system, with the benefit of - no one wants to miss out on a key part of the adventure.
I like exploring the world from different points of view, and I like the collaborative storytelling too.
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Scary Devil Monastery
Ars Scholae Palatinae
...and anything made by White Wolf or Black Dog games.
Once we get down into RPG's it's a jungle. Keep your laser handy and trust no one, Citizen.
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Scary Devil Monastery
Ars Scholae Palatinae
Yes, Inquisitor, this guy, right here...
On a side note, the very second I saw the headline to this OP I knew that beyond the shadow of a doubt at least 25% of the comments would be game system talk.
There are much more relevant criticism's of DnD than the admittedly wonky game system (i mean, it's always been wonky, for five iterations of the game. You want soft system realism, go for GURPS or Champions fer dog's sake). Such as how the normal campaign world has, for the longest time, had the bad guys conveniently color-coded for your convenience (drow and orc) with entire races consigned to be designated beatsticks, confirming the idea that you can point to someone's ethnicity and/or skin color and make a snap judgment of what they're like.
Or how the way "alignment" worked until they finally retconned that in 5e. Etc.
With DnD being a forerunner in fantasy RPG's the same way Tolkien set the trend for high fantasy its legacy is spotty - such as the concepts of Bad Guy Races and especially the idea that you can tell who the bad guy is by looking at their set of immutable characteristics.
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Well.... I would be careful with that, statement, there are a lot of grey areas on this
I am and have been running RPG-campaigns at the local Uni (a giant one by US standards with the majority coming from other parts of the countyr - think in the tens of thousands ) with open groups to help people make friends with "shared interests" (aka other gamers ) . We do get the full plethora of different gamer types from extroverts , to extreme loners and people who simple are not as adept at social interaction or maintaining a conversation.
I do not consider myself a therapist by any means, I instigate stories and try to make everyone participate
The more "excentric" players (or statistic outliers ? ) do not always mix, or mix well or make the game "enjoyable" for everyone at the table, and outside therapeutic treatments, Fun and a good time for all should be the prime reason to game and participate in a group - whatever the rules used .
So yeah I agree on the social contract, but for many players the awkwardness is outweighed by not feeling isolated, which makes it a weird deal for them , so in a way they feel abused ?
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The "Satanic Panic" about D&D was so dumb. Literal opposite day.
Players in D&D are typically trying to defeat demons or devils which are encountered.
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No worries - while I was raised in a nicely agnostic environment, some of my teenage groups parents had some strong suspicions at times voiced quite loudly and for one player meant being sent to boarding school, the game promoted drug use (potions), alcoholism, lewd sexuality and overall aggression..
Parents will always worry, with varying degrees of intensity.
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Satanic Panic as well as most other "threats' were always about evangelicals bearing false witness against others so they can get their flock to give them more money.
As for the more heated argument here about if D&D is the best game for the purpose, that would depend on what is needed for such therapy. That would be a question for therapists which I have not heard from yet. Is a looser and free from ruleset considered better, a detailed and strict one, or does it even matter? Half the D&D stats are basted on mental qualities, which quite honestly is about as much as most RPGs, and with certain version you have skill systems that go more detail. Does that extra detail matter when assuming a role and acting it out?
For that matter, I consider the common idea that D&D was a broken ruleset that ignored such considerations as social interaction wrong. From the description of old school play from grognard's, the Arneson documentary, and careful reading of the 1E AD&D DMG and nuances found within, I think it was a large part of the game they were actually exploring. If they wanted a game completely bound by rules, they could have come up with one, that was the world they were coming from with tabletop war games. There are rules for what they considered objective parts of it such as combat. The game they were actually exploring with D&D was Braunstein style of play where the PCs explain what their characters do and the DM adjudicates that to modify the situation and even rules. Of course, they lacked the vocabulary and structure to describe that as it would not be formalized for decades to come. Meanwhile, from people not coming from the original groups, there was a movement to apply more rules to what was considered missing, as the Braunstein style works fine if you have a good GM, and can fail horribly if you have a bad one.
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As a certified Hawaiian pizza hater, I recently was served a pizza made with grilled pineapple and it was really good. Really, it seems like it's the over-sweet raw canned pineapple most pizza joints serve that is really awful.
Take fresh pineapple and give it some char before assembling and baking the pizza, it's night and day better.
/offtopic
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As the designated pineapple-picker for my longstanding friend group, I absolutely agree. Canned pineapple pretty well sucks.
Ideally you also select a pineapple which is fully ripe. Many pineapples are shipped under-ripe. While having some yellow color is an indicator, by far the most reliable is to smell the pineapple. It should have a noticeable pineapple odor, at least at the base. If not, you can let it ripen on the counter before cutting into it.
And yes, I've brought pineapple to roleplaying sessions as part of the gamer snacks. We usually do some kind of fruit, one or more kinds of carbs and maybe some nuts.
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I tend to the pragmatic here. If the article discussed "DnDTM," then roll for initiative. If we read "DnD" as "interactive tabletop role-playing games such as the seminal Dungeons and Dragons, as developed by..." the we can relax and move on to the next encounter. Even what would be considered "by the book" gives a lot of leeway to the DM to apply DnDTM [insert edition here] rules in a fair manner that encourages an enjoyable game.
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I think it's just a joke about using D&D for a marital counseling session.
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There's a reason I have played almost exclusively female characters since I was a teenager.
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While I haven't put all that much thought into it until now, my preferences vary depending on the style of game.
Tabletop I've had both male and female characters in a roughly even distribution. No big preference, depends on what I come up with at character creation as an interesting character.
Back when I did LARP, it was male characters as far as I can recall. Admittedly a small sample. We only did LARP for a few years and I mostly played the same character.
Online RPG, I typically pick female characters. Male characters are often over-the-top, ridiculously muscular bodybuilder models. Since I generally prefer 3rd person they block more of my view - and I don't like the aesthetic anyway. Female character models are smaller and more likely to look generally fit, not over-the-top.
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Scary Devil Monastery
Ars Scholae Palatinae
I've long since come to the conclusion that which gender a person feels comfortable depends on so many variables nothing much can be said about it. What style of game you're running. How deep you go into character development. Whether romance is a factor at all in it. And so on.
Online I can anecdotally only refer to several women, including my s.o. almost always going with male characters because too damn many online RPG's have focused on classic unrealistic or anatomically borked depictions of female body shape and animation. Including no small number where the normal pose of a female character is that typical broken back depiction we see in too damn many superhero comics.
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