Harnessing the Hero's Journey: Exploring the Therapeutic and Educational Power of D&D and Tabletop RPGs

Andrew: 1:05

Joining the Legends, Lute and Lore podcast today is Dr Megan Connell and Ryan McLaughlin. Welcome both of you to the podcast today. Thank you so much for joining.

Dr. Megan A. Connell: 1:17

Thank you for having us. It's great to be here.

Ryan McLaughlin: 1:19

Yeah, thank you so much. I'm excited to chat with you all.

Andrew: 1:22

Wonderful. I'm really looking forward to this. I've been looking forward to this conversation since we've all been started to talk about it, so I'm really excited. Dr Connell is the author of Tabletop Role Playing Therapy Great, great book and resource for using Tabletop role playing games In my case, we're specifically talking about D&D, dungeons and Dragons in therapeutic situations. So we're going to dive into a lot of those topics and Ryan's experience is on the side of. He's gone through the therapeutic game master program with Geek Therapeutics, so he's been through that program, has a lot of experience there, works in education and we'll talk a lot about how a lot of these skills and things can be done, can be used within an educational environment. So let's start with Dr Connell. Can you provide an overview of the book? I gave kind of the briefest background, but what inspired you to write this book?

Dr. Megan A. Connell: 2:28

Well, something that I had been wanting to write, and I was actually very fortunate in that somebody from Norton reached out to me and asked if I would consider writing this book and to write up the proposal. And they did, and they agreed to take it on and pretty quickly thereafter got it written and published, which has been really exciting. Yeah, it's a I hope it's a really helpful book for folks. I wrote it in a way for professionals to understand what tabletop role-playing games are, how they can be an effective tool to use in therapy research that can be done around it. But then I also tried to make the language approachable to people who aren't clinicians and aren't in the mental health profession, to just understand, like, what is it about these games that gets me to feel so much and why do I feel so tied to these fictional characters and what's going on in their world and what's going on in my brain and my body that's causing this? And so my hope is that the book kind of illustrates that for everybody and provides that really broad overview for folks.

Andrew: 3:22

Oh, that's fantastic. And how so? How does your personal experience with tabletop role-playing, how did you get into that world and how did that influence the creation of the book?

Dr. Megan A. Connell: 3:36

Yeah, I share the story pretty frequently that the way I came to use tabletop role-playing games in therapy was through realizing some stuff about myself through playing and realizing to it like it probably would have taken years in therapy for this stuff to come out and that in just a few games I was confronting some of my central issues. And that's where I was like, okay, I got to use this in therapy and so I think within a year I was running my first group where I was using tabletop role-playing games as a therapeutic tool.

Andrew: 4:07

So do you prefer to be the Game Master, the Dungeon Master, or do you actually like to play as a character as well?

Dr. Megan A. Connell: 4:16

I love playing. I'm in a weekly group that we play. We've been playing every week for seven and a half years now, I think.

Andrew: 4:23

Wow, that's amazing.

Dr. Megan A. Connell: 4:25

Yeah, I've gone through weddings and births and all kinds of life events together. It's been wonderful. Now I love playing. I do love being a Game Master and having my players just surprise me. It's so much fun.

Andrew: 4:39

That's one of the things I think I love so much about the gameplay itself is the problem-solving skills that come about. You really have to think of it in a creative way, so it really is, I think, a tremendous tool for, especially for, problem-solving skills. Now, Ryan, so let's talk a little bit about your background and so how did you get introduced to D&D? How did you? What is your background in education and how did you blend the two together this love for D&D and your passion for education and then talk a little bit about your introduction to Geek Therapeutics and their Therapeutic Game Master program.

Ryan McLaughlin: 5:30

Sure, absolutely so. I grew up very much wanting to play D&D Every time I heard it described. Oh, there's this game where you can be a knight or a wizard and you fight dragons. That sounded right up my alley. I wanted to play so badly. Unfortunately, I grew up at the tail end of what we now call the Satanic Panic.

Andrew: 5:49

And.

Ryan McLaughlin: 5:49

I was absolutely forbidden from playing Dungeons and Dragons. My mom and my youth pastor were both convinced that it was a great way to be possessed by a demon, right? So I did not get the chance to actually play until I was several years into my teaching career, actually, and a co-worker of mine, her boyfriend, and I, were chatting at a Christmas party and he said you know, I've got this new campaign starting up. Would you like to give it a try?

Andrew: 6:14

And I was like, absolutely, I've been waiting for this opportunity for years.

Ryan McLaughlin: 6:19

I absolutely loved it from day one and have never looked back. I've been involved with the hobby ever since. A few years after that, my oldest son would overhear some of my conversations about D&D and he began to ask when he could have the opportunity to play. I was like well, get your buddies together and let's start rolling some dice. And it was through that group of friends, actually, that I began to really realize, first of all, d&d's tremendous opportunity for education, seeing it through my son's eyes, seeing it through his friend's eyes, seeing what a powerful learning tool it is powerful tool for social and emotional learning in particular, but lots of other things as well. But then also the need that I had to get a little bit more training, because it became very, very obvious from the beginning that a lot of heavy stuff was going to come out of the table. And I think a lot of new dungeon masters, new game masters, have this experience where all of a sudden, heavy stuff is coming out of the table and you realize, oh, that's not about the character, that's about you, isn't it? So I began digging around the internet a little bit and quickly stumbled on the Geek Therapeutics website, enrolled in their Therapeutic Game Master course where I got to see many of Dr Connell's awesome lessons and get trained in that. And, yeah, I've stayed involved with them since finishing the certificate program. I frequently come in as a guest GM to train cohorts on various TTRPGs like Call of Cthulhu and Scum and Villainy and some others. I've worked a few cons for them and I have really, really loved the opportunity to not only stay involved with Geek Therapeutics but also, in my practice as a teacher, continually bring D&D and other TTRPGs more and more into the learning environment.

Andrew: 8:12

That's tremendous. That's such a great, great experience. I come from a very similar background to you growing up and I had the same issues with D&D and finally got to play as an adult, so I was very excited about that and we've been playing for about four years now and it's been tremendous, Dr Connell. So what exactly is tabletop role-playing therapy and how does it differ from traditional kind of therapeutic approaches that someone would take?

Dr. Megan A. Connell: 8:53

Yeah, so it's very much similar to like art therapy, music therapy, dance therapy, in that you're utilizing something that isn't necessarily therapeutic to teach skills that aren't related to the activity. So it's essentially using tabletop role-playing games to teach skills and interventions that aren't necessarily related to playing the game and building those up, and so you're using the game as a medium to help people practice and communicate and to learn these different therapeutic skills that you're wanting them to learn through the course of therapy.

Andrew: 9:26

So what are some of the primary skills that one can learn from playing D&D other tabletop RPGs, that they couldn't necessarily develop in direct, or maybe develop better than in direct, therapy?

Dr. Megan A. Connell: 9:43

Yeah, well, it's interesting you're saying like direct, you know, get better, right, Because it's. I'm going to go on a little tangent here, on the little bit of a soapbox it's such a frustration, which is that we know from lots of research that group therapy is actually better than individual therapy. Because there's a lot that happens when you get in a group and one of the big things is that sense of community of you know when we're dealing with a mental health illness, depression, anxiety, social anxiety, ptsd, autism, learning disabilities, whatever it feels so isolating and we feel alone. And when we're in these group settings we're all of a sudden in a group of people who are going yeah, me too. I've had that exact same thing happen to me and, oh my gosh, this is how I dealt with it and that sense of community and that sense of cohesion is really powerful and we know, like just kind of hour for hour of therapy, group therapy tends to be much more beneficial than individual therapy for most diagnoses some asterisks on a couple that actually are not well treated with group therapy. There's two big problems that we have with group therapy in America. The first is insurance doesn't pay for group therapy and what they do pay is ridiculously low and so like it becomes like financially difficult for therapists and for facilities to run groups. The second is people's own internal bias of I don't want to go into a group with a bunch of crazy people is what we hear a lot when we talk about group therapy. Failing to recognize is like no, it's just, it's people like you. It's people who are, you know, having a hard time when you say we're gonna, I want you to go to this group and what you're going to do is you're going to roll dice and tell a story for an hour and a half. It's like, okay, and this counts as therapy. Yes, Like that's, you get a really big guy.

Andrew: 11:37

Yeah, right, yes, yes, this counts.

Dr. Megan A. Connell: 11:40

And it's really interesting because, like for some groups we know again, group therapy is very beneficial but, like a lot of times, the difficulty is attrition people dropping out of therapy. So they start but they drop out before the end of the protocol, so they're not really getting the benefit. We don't have enough research on tabletop role playing games as a form of therapy, so it's just something to be very clear on. We don't know this for sure, but anecdotally, and kind of some early preliminary studies that are starting to come out, it looks like the dropout rate for tabletop role playing games is considerably less. Like on average, most people only miss one session and nobody dropped. For the most part, the only people who drop out do so due to other circumstances rather than not wanting to come to the group. It's usually things like they got really ill, they something emergency happened and they had to leave the state or for a while, or something like that. So it seems to be a really effective form of therapy. You know, even like it's one of those things of if the outcomes come out, that tabletop role playing therapy is just as effective as therapy as usual, which I think it's more effective. I wouldn't be spouting it so much. The fact that people stay from session one through session 10 or 12, which other you're doing indicates that they're going to have a greater therapeutic effect, because more people drop out of therapy as usual. So that's a lot of where it can really be powerful and help out.

Andrew: 13:09

Interesting. So how long does a? I know in traditional D&D campaigns can run months, years, so what so in a more therapeutic environment, how long does a typical campaign run for something like that?

Dr. Megan A. Connell: 13:29

What I talk about doing is 10 to 12 weeks, 10 to 12 sessions. That includes a session zero in there, so like nine playing sessions or 11 playing sessions. The reason for 10 to 12 is that's what most group protocols are. So if you're trying to follow a more traditional cognitive, behavioral or acceptance of commitment therapy or prolonged exposure kind of protocol, this would follow along with that pretty nicely. Also, for schools, 10 to 12 weeks tends to work very well with fall and spring semesters.

Andrew: 14:03

Perfect, you're talking about running a session zero. Do you have them create their own characters? How does that part of it work? Because I mean, I guess that's a big part of it putting themselves into the character that they create. So do you go through that whole character development, part of it, or how do you address that?

Dr. Megan A. Connell: 14:24

I do, but not everybody does. And this is again where we just we don't know. We don't know if having a pre-generated character is equally as beneficial as having your own character that you make. I like to help walk people through building the character, just because I think it's fun and it's cool to see what people come up with and it really kind of gets. I don't know for me. I just get these little modes of inspiration by, like, oh, what are you motivated by? What do you want your character to be? Are you trying to look at the achievement score? Are you trying to min-max this out? Are you trying to be something really weird? What is your draw here? But that's not for everybody, and you certainly can use pre-generated modules, pre-generated characters, and that seems to work pretty well too. I think a lot of it is just like how do we get the players to feel attached to their characters? And then how, as a GM, do you help weave that all together?

Andrew: 15:22

Absolutely. That was kind of my curiosity about how emotionally invested do they get in the character, whether it's their own developed character or kind of a pre-built character that they're working with. So that's interesting that it seems to be pretty evenly matched between the two. So I have a question for both of you. I'll jump back to Ryan first. So you've got 14 years of experience in education, five years of DMing for kids, so you must have encountered all sorts of challenges and moments that Dr Connell was talking about. So are there any in particular that really jump out to you? You said you really cover some kind of heavy topics at times. So is there something that really stood out to you? I don't want to call it a breakthrough, but kind of something that really just was very meaningful to one of the students or to you as the DM?

Ryan McLaughlin: 16:37

Oh sure, I'm going to have trouble picking just one or two. One of the first ones that comes to mind is I had a student come to me once during session zero and I also have my players create their own characters. I think that in particular in a school setting or in a setting for young people, there's so few opportunities over the course of a modern American school day for kids to have a creative outlet. I always feel bad taking one away from them. I'm sure there's differing opinions on what's best for bringing a game for kids, but I always have them create their own characters, and one day during session zero, I had a student come up to me who was identified female at birth. And this student came up to me and said, as we were creating, hey, mr M, is it all right if my character doesn't have a gender? And I said, yeah, of course it's okay. Is this character non-binary, or is there a better word that I should use? And the student kind of looked at me and said I'm not sure just yet, but I'm pretty sure the character prefers they them pronouns. And I was like that's awesome. Well, we look forward to having them on the adventure with us. And big smile on the student's face and I thought, oh, my goodness, like there's this innate sense that the student has that this game, this table, is a safe place to figure things out. And that student I don't know if they have another place to figure that out, but I'm really passionate about making sure that D&D and tabletop role playing games continues to be the sort of safe place for them to figure those things out. Another story that pops into my mind when you ask that question, andrew, is I had a young man who struggles quite a bit with feelings of being demonized at school for ADHD and he doesn't mind me sharing this story, and neither do his parents, but he was playing this character that was a damp here and for the listeners who might not know what a damp here is, it's half human, half vampire. And he wrote this backstory where his parents dying wish he was the orphan in the game and his parents dying wish was for him to find a way to become fully human and not a damp here anymore. And so, after playing for a while, I had them down in a dungeon and gave him the opportunity to fulfill his parents wish. I had them encounter a ghost who told them that in life he had been a professor and had studied damp here biology and if he would hop up onto the operating table we can go ahead and take care of that and make him fully human right now. And there was this moment of silence, and anybody that spends a lot of time around middle school kids can tell you how rare moments of silence are right. So there's this moment of silence. Is all the kids at the table kind of just look at him and see what he's going to do? And after a few seconds he says you know, if you'd offered me that opportunity a few months ago, I would have said yes, but after being on an adventure with these guys, any gestures at the other boys at the table. After being on an adventure with these guys for a few months, I've learned that I have a lot to contribute and there's a lot of things that we had to do that only I could do because of what I can do, what my skills are, and so I think I'm going to say no, thank you. I think I'm going to stay a damp here and, again, silence. One of the other boys just stands up, walks around the table and wraps him up in a big bear hug and you know I'm tearing up.

Andrew: 20:15

I'm gonna say, I'm gonna say oh, my God, you're gonna make me cry yeah.

Ryan McLaughlin: 20:19

So this radical moment of self acceptance and self love and overcoming some of those feelings that he had of being demonized at school, like, yeah, I mean I tell that story all the time and I still get goosebumps every time I think about it. So those are the first two stories that pop into my mind. I'm sure I could talk your listeners ears off for quite a while. We don't want this to be a five hour podcast, I'm sure, so that's.

Andrew: 20:47

That's tremendous, that's that's. That's, that's what I, that's what I hope that listeners get from this, that that they can see that they're really the transformative power of D&D and other tabletop role playing games, and that's just such a such a powerful example, Dr Connell, do you have? I mean obviously keeping keeping everybody's privacy in mind, but is there anything that you can share, that that you can think of, that that really made an impact on on you in your therapy?

Dr. Megan A. Connell: 21:22

Yeah, I think there's a good. I'll go with two, two stories. Well, one is super short. I had like a little parent session just to answer questions because I was like parents probably are a bit confused, just like what are my kids even doing? What is this?

Andrew: 21:36

And I had been running. They're going. Is this really therapy? Yeah, yeah.

Dr. Megan A. Connell: 21:40

But like it was fascinating because I had this dad come in and there my groups are all those assigned female at birth and those who identify female and who go all of that. And he came in and he was I, I, he was the only parent there. So it's just like you have questions. So it's like I don't have like a structure to this. I just here to answer questions and it was sort of like he's like no, I just want to give you some feedback. And I'm like you know, I'm in the South, so I'm like, oh boy, here it comes. And he's like I see my daughter with her friends from school and it's all backhanded compliments and gossip and just this undercurrent of aggression and meanness. And he's like I hate it. And she joined her group and she started bringing her D&D friends around and they laugh and they tell jokes and they lift each other up and they have silly inside jokes and I hear them laughing and he's like I just I want to figure out how do I make all of her friends D&D friends?

Andrew: 22:41

That's a great question.

Dr. Megan A. Connell: 22:46

That was one of those ones where I'm like, okay, okay, because I had a lot of as I was building the program and doing this, like I am one of the pioneers of doing this therapy and so, like there's always this fear of like, what if I'm not doing therapy? What if I'm just running a fun game of D&D, which is great, but like I'm a therapist and I have an ethical obligation to do therapy. But that was quickly. That feeling went away completely with the second story of I had been doing a kind of modified Horde of the Dragon Queen campaign with this group and modified, being the only thing was a dragon cult, was trying to bring Tiamat to the material plane. That was the beginning and end of where the overlap happened. But the players figured out who the big bad evil guy was that it was a green dragon trying to manipulate things. They were incredibly smart, created this amazing ambush, got all their allies together it was an epic battle fought the green dragon, they got the killing blow and I was like you know, I narrated the death scene of the dragon and I look up and I'm ready for that. I'm expecting them all to cheer and they all burst into tears and I had this little moment of like, oh God, oh God, what did I do? What did they do? And they all are standing up, hugging each other and sobbing and I still get choked up with. This is like one of them finally kind of got her crying under control enough to go look at what I can do when I'm with my friends. And these girls had all been bullied and just had social anxiety and all of these different challenge, like a lot of ADHD girls, aspie girls or autistic girls, and it was just so amazing to see this moment of cohesion and coming together and just like lifting each other up and I was like, wow, yeah, this, this therapy, this is, this is there. That's carthus, that is blending, that is a deep learning of a lesson of like what positive you know peer interactions can be like. Yeah, this is therapy.

Andrew: 24:41

That's wow. It's just. It's so moving just to just to hear these stories and the experiences that that people are having. So you mentioned, you mentioned, some of the different conditions and things. So are there, are there specific conditions and challenges that tabletop role playing therapy is is better suited to, or or is it an overall just great therapy opportunity for, for all a variety of conditions like what's?

Dr. Megan A. Connell: 25:15

Yeah, this, this is where I get to save my tagline of more research needed. It is used a lot to teach social skills for folks on the autism spectrum, to help with folks with ADHD, social anxiety, ptsd groups, but we really don't know where it's most effective or if it's just sort of it. The style of the game just needs to be tailored to specific diagnoses. Like huge amounts of research are needed.

Andrew: 25:42

Absolutely. Yeah, I can imagine it's I haven't in doing, in doing the research for For this episode, I don't see much, much talked about out there, about about the topic, so it's. It is, I think, still relatively new and I find it very intriguing concept for for treating a lot of those, those conditions that people deal with. Like I think about myself and when, when, when reading through your book and when preparing for this, thinking, thinking about all the things that I have kind of dealt with as far as my mental health is concerned, and and then thinking about how has D&D really helped that? And it's it was surprising, you know to to think about in that context, because I never really, I never really put the put the two together. So it was, it was an interesting, interesting kind of look back at my, at my own experience over the last four years and what impact that has had on had on me, ryan. So so you talked a little bit about this. So you're working with Geek Therapeutics you, you, you are also helping to teach the RPGs, the tabletop role playing games, to to the therapist. Is that, is that what, what it was, or or talk to me about that.

Ryan McLaughlin: 27:04

Yeah, the way, the way that Geek Therapeutics structures their cohorts is they'll have a clinician teach most of the class but they'll bring in a guest GM one week out of a nine week cohort for the Therapeutic Game Master certificate and that guest GM's job is to expose the cohort to something different in the tabletop world, so typically different games. So you know a cohort that's going through D&D, I'll come in and you know, if they're in the mood for a horror game, I'll teach Call of Cthulhu. Or if there's something you know more lighthearted, there's a game called Scum and Villainy that I like to show them. That's a a forged in the dark game for those of your listeners that are familiar with that system. So I've had a lot of fun doing that and kind of picking their brains on what they see as possible applications for those games and their contexts and then their roles.

Andrew: 27:54

Have you, have you gotten gotten as deep as creating your own kind of homebrew world, or or do you stick pretty much to the to the traditional material, that's that's produced out there?

Ryan McLaughlin: 28:05

I homebrew all the time for my own table. Yeah, so much fun doing it. You know, we don't get too many opportunities to be creative as adults either, right?

Andrew: 28:15

True.

Ryan McLaughlin: 28:16

So I love doing all of that. I haven't done that in that context. No, I I stick to, to pre-written adventures for the most part, mostly mostly due to time. But also just, you know, I don't know, it's a little easier to to show my friends my creations and say like, all right, what do you think afterwards?

Andrew: 28:35

I suppose, I suppose that's fair and it's nice because it's, I mean, with with your, with your, with your own homebrew world. That's, that's your creation. You know when, when you're introducing them to other games, it's something they can pull off the shelf and and and use themselves in their own, in their own therapy and things like that. So that's that's very interesting. How long, how long have you been doing, how long have you been guest DMing for for them?

Ryan McLaughlin: 29:04

Not very long, just started this year.

Andrew: 29:06

That's great, are you? Are you enjoying it Like what's what's? What is the feedback you get from from the, the participants?

Ryan McLaughlin: 29:13

I think everyone's having a good time. I think they enjoy it. I've had a lot of fun doing it and Alicia, who's the director of education there, keeps inviting me to do it again, so I guess that's that's good, excellent.

Andrew: 29:26

That's, that's fantastic. So so, Dr Connell, I've been, I've been reading I'm going to hold it up again so I've been reading the book and one of one of the interesting topics that that really jumped out to me was the concept of immersion and and being being being a director, and being being tabletop RPGs being this immersive experience, and I and I think from from several of your anecdotes already you can we get the feeling for how immersive it really can be. So what are the, what are the therapeutic benefits to being immersed in that environment over over that 12 week campaign?

Dr. Megan A. Connell: 30:06

Yeah, there's a lot there. So you know the the thing with therapy is it's 45 to 50 minutes, or for group, you know 90 minutes, maybe 120, if you're in a you know lucky where you're doing something. And then there's all those other minutes and hours and days between your sessions, right, and so if you stop doing the work the moment you walk out of the office, you stop doing the work. Right, it's not carrying over. And one of the things is our brains are wired for story. That's actually the title of the book that I read a little while ago. But like that, if it's that, this fascinating thing that if you hear about a tragedy happening and you say, like you know, 200 people died, it's like that's sad, but that doesn't really mean anything, right? But if we tell the story of, like here's the story of so and so and so and so was going to work and so and so would do this and so and so had been working at this job for this long and on this day, so and so was swept away in this flood that also killed 199 other people, all of a sudden we're like that that's horrible, right, we feel that so much deeper because, like that's how we connect with other people. You know, there's this really fascinating thing that happens when we play tabletop role playing games, when we play certain video games, when we read books, when we watch movies and TV shows, where, as we are watching, the more immersed we are in that experience, the more we have a special kind of neuron firing in our brain, called a mirror neuron. This is why, like if you are an elite athlete, you watch other videos of elite athletes, because those mirror neurons in your brain are firing and essentially what that is is it's your brain practicing, it's your brain like kind of rehearsing how to do this thing. And so, like, if we're thinking about like we ended on a cliffhanger where your character is about to confront you know their big, their personal big bad there. You know this person, this adversary from their past. They're going to get that chance to stand up to them. That whole week you're going to be rehearsing in your head like what am I going to say? How am I going to do this? And as you're kind of just mentally running through that, like that's the you know kind of the start of like both activating your own, like actual neurons and actual processing, but then like going through it and rehearsing that, the emotion that's attached to it, because, remember, there's no stimulus coming in to create an emotional response. You're just internally creating that and let you have that experience and it is very real. And also like there's this really fascinating thing Like and I'm sure you all have had this where when we start to talk about our memories from gaming, it's not, you know, like a friend and I were in a cab paint together wouldn't be right. Do you remember that time our characters were going across the bridge and they had to confront the troll? Like no, we don't talk that way. It's like do you remember that time we went across that bridge and we had to confront that troll and you had that epic hit when you took out its knees and then I got to come in and punch it in the freight it and so there's something about it. Where it's like it was yesterday, right, it becomes incredibly personal to us, right, and like there's something to that and they get research needed. But like that, you know, it carries so much more weight when it is our story. You know, like I think most of us can remember I'm right, you probably could speak to this way better than I can, but where, like in school, you have the teacher explaining something to you and it's kind of in one ear out the other, but then, like your, the pieces of the puzzle are put in front of you and you Suddenly get them to go together, you figure it out, you don't have anybody tell you how to do it, you snap the pieces together. That learning is so much deeper and sticks with you for so much longer and, emotionally, that's what we're talking about with these tabletop role-playing games is we're trying to know. It's not giving like a corrective, emotional experience of like Go back through this horrible event and have it happen the right way, whatever the heck that means, but it's more like Practice standing up for yourself, practice saying no, practice setting a boundary. Yeah, as I said, my groups are for women and girls and, like I, have a protagonist who is that guy, and they have to deal with that guy. And guess what? Just because they put up boundaries one time and that guy respected the boundaries that time, the next time he's not, worse, he doesn't remember, and so that, like the, whenever I had this guy, the, in the previous campaigns I did, his name was chat and then never he came in. He would go ladies and one of the ones I was like we don't want to be called ladies, we are heroes, we are adventurers. You can call us by our group name, but you will not call us ladies. Sorry, my bad. Then the next time, ladies, how many times do we have to explain? I'm sorry, that's my bad, you know, but like typical chat, it's yeah, it's rehearsing. And what's funny is I have heard from a few of the girls who were in those campaigns and they're like I met a chat. Sorry, guys, but you know that's what that immersion is. It's rehearsal. And and like there have been some studies in literature when the more you read Books and the more you identify with the character that you're reading, the more you're going to develop empathy, the ability to feel the experience of others, and so, again, like it makes sense that tabletop games, where you have created the character you are expressing and emoting as the character, are gonna have even bigger gains in empathy.

Ryan McLaughlin: 35:31

Yeah, and to speak to the point that you made, Dr Connell, about Problem-solving and deepening learning, when I was in grad school in education we studied a theorist named Paulo Freire quite a bit, and he's still one of my favorite authors. Paulo Freire was famous for criticizing what he called the banking model of education that we have in so many Western school systems. And the baking model of education is this basic idea that the student sits there and they're a passive account. The teacher comes along and deposits some knowledge in their brain and At some point later that teacher makes a withdraw in the form of a quiz or a test. And, as we all know, that is truly a withdraw, because once you take that test, there's no intention of that material later. Right, paulo Freire suggested that we replace us with what he called the problem-posing education, where the teacher's main job is to pose a Problem that is going to challenge the students to think critically, to be problem-solvers, to work together, to Not rely on the teacher for the answer but to see the teacher as a co-participant in the problem-solving. It turns out that that's pretty logistically difficult to do in a lot of our school systems. Paulo Freire was very into problem-posing in the real world and saying like, hey, listen, this town over here Doesn't have clean drinking water. What should we do to solve it? That's actually really difficult to do, especially within the confines of the American school system. I think Dungeons and Dragons and other TTRPGs are really, really logistically feasible ways of living out Paulo Freire's pedagogy. Because what is a, what is a good DM? Do they pose a problem? Right, I'm not giving you any solutions here. I'm sitting down and I'm saying, hey, the next town over is getting terrorized by a dragon. What are you gonna? do about it, and I'm not gonna give you anything more than subtle hints on how you might be able to solve that or where in the dungeon you might find the magical item that you need to finish the quest. Being a great DM and being a problem-posing teacher, I think, end up having a lot in common, and we know that that's a better way to teach kids right. We know that the learning is deeper when they're the ones doing the critical thinking and all this, and so there's a lot of untapped potential for education every time we sit around the table rolling dice, I think.

Andrew: 37:57

That's a that's a great point, ryan. So do you see? So the, the, the students that are participating in in D&D? How do you, do you see any differentiation between their, their skills and and other student skills in the classroom, or or how does that what? What impact is is that environment having on on on their education?

Ryan McLaughlin: 38:22

Sure, I think it's my turn to say more research needed. We have seen some studies come out and say like I oh goodness, I should have this at my fingertips, but I don't. There was a school district in Texas that did show games doctor canal Do you know this one.

Dr. Megan A. Connell: 38:38

I heard the dr, I can talk.

Ryan McLaughlin: 38:42

Awesome, yeah, so so there's some out there right, anecdotally, I could tell you about the student who His teacher could not get him to write a paragraph to save her life and he played Dungeons and Dragons at our table one time and went home and wrote three pages a backstory for his character. So you know, I've got anecdotes like that. Again, more research needed, but I do see, anecdotally, increases in particular on things like self-efficacy and things like Grits, a big buzzword in education. I see students leaving the table more confident and ready to tackle challenges and less Dependent on the adults in their life to spoon feed them the answers to all the questions and things like that. I see them more comfortable interacting with their peers. I see them more willing to share the creative side of themselves. So, again, more research needed, but yeah, anecdotally, as as one guy rolling dice with a few different groups of kids, I see a lot, a lot, a lot happening.

Dr. Megan A. Connell: 39:49

Yeah, and there was like a cool study that was published in I think it was 1986, of a Guided or a counselor at a inner city Like youth center for after-school programs and he ran a couple of D&D groups and he was just writing His observations of the students who played in his groups and he said they they learned better conflict resolution, that they would have disagreements and actually know how to resolve it rather than getting into fights. I said one of the things too that really stuck out for him was how they all Realized the need for a diverse group of friends, that if everybody was a rogue they couldn't do anything, that they needed to have a diverse party, yeah, and proposed at that time more research needed. But then, as we have already touched on, entered the satanic panic and nobody's gonna write a grant for something that's getting that much bad publicity.

Andrew: 40:43

So you bring up a really good point talking about diversity and an inclusivity in in D&D. So I know that that's a big, a big emphasis in in role-playing and in therapy. So how, how do you, how do you both ensure in therapy and in education, how do you ensure that what you're doing is is accessible and welcoming to, to to everybody? How do you, how do you help them feel like Ryan? I know you had the one example about you know just you know just you pronouns and things like that. You know how. What are some other ways that you can in ensure inclusivity for for everybody to to feel comfortable in this environment? Either one of you can. Who wants to take that first?

Ryan McLaughlin: 41:29

I'll just say briefly yeah, it's a. It's a day today, constantly trying to do better, in particular with using Materials that are published rather than home ring worlds. Unfortunately, there's a lot of material out there that's not good At this particular. Oh, my goodness. I want to go off on a rant on one campaign in particular but I'll save that for another time where I had to go through and Remove racist elements, misogynistic elements, ableist elements, like all in you know, less than half of that one campaign right. I'll save that for another day. But I think it's on us as teachers, as parents, as DMs, as therapists, to constantly do that work. I don't think there's a magic bullet, at least I haven't found it yet.

Dr. Megan A. Connell: 42:20

Yeah, I might say something a little weird here because, like, my groups aren't Inclusive, because I exclude people who identify as male and were signed male at birth for my groups. Right, and so, like, I think that's also sometimes an important thing is to recognize, like, what kind of players you're wanting to have the table kind of experience you want. Right, it's like if and what you can run. Well, right, and I'm not saying this to be like to say, you know, being exclusive, but to be Be intentional with your players. Right, because, like, if, say, I was to be running a game for people who have a vastly different experience, for me that might not be a good fit. There's more of a chance of me doing something unintentionally harmful because I have ignorance in something which is just a lack of knowledge. Right, and like, there's a lot we can do to gain knowledge, but it's it really imperative for us to understand where the edges are and what we know and what we don't know, and then always to try and better ourselves, to read more books, to listen to more stories, to to engage with Communities and to listen to people and listen to their experiences and listen to what people want out of their stories because, like, we're not always going to get it right. I've screwed up lots of times. This is like my book is a big like don't do what I did. Learn from all my pain, please. You know. And so like understanding, like, how do we do that and how do we make our tables as inclusive and as comfortable to the players who are at the table as possible? You know, a good, good, good session zero is imperative to that. And having those rules and having, you know, like having our go and no go topics, you know, like one of the, when people sit down on my table and like look, there's a few things that just are not in my world. We don't have sexual assault. We don't have slavery. Those like if that needs, if that's part of your character's backstory that's a weird thing that only happened to your character doesn't exist really in the world. We are also not going to abuse children. I'm not cool with that. That's not going to happen. Also, cockroaches are just off screen. They can exist in the world. I don't like them. They're not in my game, you know. And to put up those boundaries and then to find ways to get your players to help communicate that, you know Monti could, could send in gaming. I saw it's a good check it out. It is a free PDF. Go get it if you don't have it and read through it. But also the oh, I'm going to forget the guys who created this, but it's called the deck of player safety. Okay, and it's awesome. It's a deck of cards with just different triggers on it, but also it can just things cards that say anything goes. And the way it's designed to be played and this is even for one shots is that you sit down and you pass, split the deck and half pass it around and everybody has to grab a card when it gets to them and then you put it in an envelope and you pass all the envelopes to the DM. Dm shuffles up the envelopes, pulls out the cards, shuffles the cards and then puts all the cards on the table that were pulled and those are the topics that are going to be. No goes in the campaign. It's an awesome way to get a lot of kind of common things like snake spiders, stuff with eyeball, you know, like whatever, out of the game in a way that is feels good for the players, because nobody knows who pulled what card.

Andrew: 45:35

Very interesting. I'm going to just just for everybody listening, especially all these things that are mentioned, I'm going to make sure that we include either either mentions of them or links to them in the show notes so that everybody can find these resources as easily as possible. So we will, we'll make sure that we we have all that. So, so you can jump on the website or or into whatever podcast platform, look in the show notes. You should see those links available to you there. Another thing that I want to talk about with with both of you is also a similar, similar vein, but time of representation in the game itself. So we've talked about there. There are some issues and, ryan, we still may let you rant, so there are definitely some issues within within the game. I don't know if you've seen the article yet, but coming out is the, the new, the deck of many things, and this, the book of many things and in the book of many things, is going to be the first canonical autistic character in in D&D. So which, which I think, with that, which I think is a tremendous way to to help include representation for for other groups that that may already play D&D but don't necessarily see themselves represented in D&D. So how, how can, how can we make it a better game so that that everybody feels represented in, in playing and and in the at the table with, with another group, with a group of people?

Dr. Megan A. Connell: 47:09

Oh, I could start with that one. I think like, make the characters multi dimensional, if they have. You know, the like, the this, that thing about them is not the only thing about them, right, right, and it doesn't have to be very obvious. You know, like I GM day live stream show called clinical role that I swear is coming back at some point if I ever find time again. But I had the players did an arc where they rescued people from the under dark and when they brought them back, a lot of them were displaying symptoms of PTSD. I didn't go. These, all these people all have PTSD. But I was describing the symptoms like, yeah, you see, so and so is sitting by the fire and their eyes are just unfocused and staring off as though they're 1000 miles away. And you, at night, you sometimes hear people waking up from a nightmare.

Andrew: 48:01

Right.

Dr. Megan A. Connell: 48:01

And but like then, there's other things where they talk about, like loving the sunshine and they, you know, being able to connect with their families and like you, just you want to make it live, do you? Don't want it to be like that's Jim? Jim has one leg Right. What else about Jim?

Andrew: 48:19

It's not, it's not just one legged Jim, it's a. Yeah, there, you know, it's like there's got to be more there's got to be more to it, yeah.

Dr. Megan A. Connell: 48:26

Yeah, and I think like this is honestly Ryan, you talked about rant, I'm about to go on one but like there's this danger that in psychology we call it diagnosis threat, which is when you are diagnosed with something, there's this threat that you can over identify with it and make your whole personality about that thing and that's really unhealthy. So, for example, like with depression, you don't have to have all nine symptoms of depression to be depressed. But somebody's diagnosed with depression, they're going to go home, they're going to Google it and they're going to learn about the symptoms they don't have and kindly develop those symptoms to meet their label, which I see is causing harm. And so I have a real internal struggle with diagnostics. I talk about that pretty openly and like there's benefit to it, but there is also harm, and thinking about what that harm can do, like I think, through showing that it's not just that this character is depressed or that this character uses a mobility device or this character needs help with whatever, it's giving them more depth than that. It's saying that it's a facet, it's not the whole thing. I actually use a d20 sometimes in therapy to be like look, you should have been multifaceted. You don't want to be a d2. You want to be a d20. You want to have not just one thing about you, you want to have multiple things about you. And so, when building a character, when building a world, we, as DMs, need to keep that in mind.

Andrew: 49:56

Interesting. Now do you before you jump in, ryan, I just one quick follow up to that. Do you when so I know you have the session zero do you have them develop a backstory for their character? Is that a part of the therapy, or how do you incorporate backstories to kind of flesh out those characters so they're not so one dimensional?

Dr. Megan A. Connell: 50:20

For the players. I let them develop the backstory, but I give them the understanding that we're going to be exploring a different story and I'll try, if I can, to bring in elements of their backstory. But almost all of my campaigns start off with you wake up somewhere else. So it's more about like bringing it in through NPCs and interesting NPCs, Interesting, Okay.

Ryan McLaughlin: 50:45

The only thing I'll add is that, in terms of representation, I think that the segment of the TTRPG world that seems to be doing the best at that is the Power by the Apocalypse world slash forged in the dark world. There are so many creators who are queer, there are so many creators who are people of color in that particular segment of the TTRPG world, and I think having those folks be the creators, you automatically I shouldn't say automatically you're more likely to get those multi dimensional characters written that Dr Connell was just speaking about. And so I think that there's a lot of lessons there to be learned from other segments that other segments of the TTRPG world could learn.

Andrew: 51:29

It's just it's so. It's so fascinating Because, again, I think about a lot of my own experiences with within playing and it's I've really tried to explore different. I use it as a way to explore different parts of my personality that I don't necessarily get to explore on on a regular basis and I think it's just been, it's really, for me, made me more comfortable in my own skin. You know, and I think I've heard that from from both of you, with the, with the people at your tables, you know, it's just I feel, I feel the more that D&D has grown, especially with with 5a and the creation of all the additional races and all the additional stories and things like that, I think they really have made it. So it's not as one dimensional. You know, really it's been interesting. On our podcast we really started out with the basic races and the and the classes, and it's interesting, I find, how one dimensional those original kind of base races are. You know they're, they're very. I mean, a lot of them have been around since the mid 70s, you know when, when D&D started, so so it's interesting to see how D&D has really grown and tried to represent more people and more, more backgrounds and things like that. So that's that's really interesting.

Ryan McLaughlin: 52:54

I'll say too, as an educator, that I'm really, really excited that Wizards of the Coast is getting rid of the word race from that aspect of the game and I don't know if they've decided yet whether it's going to be Ken or Ancestries or one of the other words that gets used in other games, but I've seen firsthand how uncomfortable that makes my students of color feel when that word gets used in that way. So that's a. That's another step towards greater inclusivity, greater diversity. All that good stuff, I think.

Andrew: 53:24

I agree that that's a really good point. Yeah, I think they've. They. They start out with species. I think has been the, has been the in the, in the test environment, that's, that's the word they've been using, but I don't know what the, what the final is going to be, but it is a very good point. You know we, I play, you know being, being, being a, being, a white male, you know it doesn't necessarily impact me as much, you know those types of things, but but, but race, race, the word itself carries a lot of weight for, for other groups and, and I think it's, I think it's great that again they're, they're, they're being considerate of all the people that have gotten into, into D&D over the over the last few years. Oh, my goodness, so many, so many other things to talk about. I know we're running out of out of time, so where? So let me, let me ask you both this question when do you see the future of D&D in therapy going? And where do you see, ryan, where do you see D&D in education going? How do you see it progressing from kind of what it is I don't see it in its infancy, but just kind of starting to scratch the surface and really start to the anecdotal evidence is becoming bigger and bigger. So where do you see some of the next steps going in both of those? So, Dr Connell, maybe you first in therapy? How do you with your book and other research being done? Where do we go from here?

Dr. Megan A. Connell: 54:59

I mean hopefully, with the research it starts to come back and shows us what I think we're all experiencing, which is what an effective tool this is, and it inspires more therapists to get trained and to go through training programs and to start using this tool. You know there's a number of programs out there. You know my book's out there now, like it's growing, it's catching on. It's really exciting to me to see people who I've either trained or have been kind of following in my footsteps doing better than me in a lot of ways in it which I totally expect, because again I had to forage this by screwing up. It's like okay, people get to start without the mess ups and it's just really cool to see. I hope that you know gaming therapy, geeking gaming therapy is recognized. I don't know if we want our own APA division. That seems like a weird thing, but I do hope it gets more recognition and utilized more. It'd be awesome if American Insurances would reimburse at a rate that allows providers to run these groups because they are effective, but that's yeah. I don't have a lot of hope for that one. It would be cool, it'd be amazing if that could happen. I don't know.

Andrew: 56:20

One we can only hope this is. I think the research is being done these days is a good step in heading in that direction. So the more research that can be done, the more exposure that this gets. I think. Hopefully that will become true sooner rather than never. I'll say it'll probably be later, but hopefully sooner or later than never at all. But that would definitely be the hope. And Ryan, what about you? Where do you see it going in education? How is it just becoming more than just the after school group of kids playing D&D to really incorporate the therapeutic side of it into D&D?

Ryan McLaughlin: 57:10

Yeah, I think that there's probably two different directions that could go. One would be more of kind of a content driven approach where you are using D&D specifically for ELA instruction, specifically for math instruction. I've seen a few experiments out there with that sort of thing. It seems to hold a lot of great promise for things like creative writing and ELA. As someone who spent a lot of years teaching algebra and trigonometry and calculus, I'm less optimistic that there's a whole lot of direct instruction that can happen through D&D for the math side of things, at least at the higher levels, and that's all well and good. The content side of things I think is great. I mentioned the young man earlier who was inspired to do more creative writing at my table. I love all of that. I think the more promising branch from my personal perspective is kind of the more skills based approach where you're addressing the student as a problem solver, addressing the student as a creative agent, addressing the student as someone who has agency within their own lives and in their own education. That to me, is what the secret sauce actually is. That's what D&D actually has to really offer that not many other things available to the modern American educator have. I think the greatest struggle that we're going to have is logistics and figuring out how to make this work when we all have experiences DMs as GMs, running games for three to five to seven folks max, and schools in America have 30 to 40 students in a classroom at a time. So how do you make that work logistically? I don't know, but I think that there's so much potential there and so much power there that we'd be really foolish to not try to figure it out.

Dr. Megan A. Connell: 59:05

Have you heard of reacting to the past? Are you familiar with that? Oh, check it out. So it is historical RPGs. I was actually got to be the keynote speaker at the last reacting to the past game developer conference and I got to be in a role play. For what is this? It was a Cambridge role play from 1681 where it was heresy trials and things happening in England where the power shift was starting to happen between the church and more of the crown. Getting to play in that, it was very cool because you get to play historical characters and you're given secret objectives that you're trying to do within the role play. It's much deeper learning of history. It has a lot of power for that?

Ryan McLaughlin: 59:50

That's fascinating.

Dr. Megan A. Connell: 59:54

So it's like learning ancient Roman history Again, that bank model that you were talking about. We can deposit it or we can be like okay, here's your character sheet for being a Roman soldier, let's go.

Andrew: 1:00:07

That's great, that sounds fascinating.

Dr. Megan A. Connell: 1:00:09

Yeah.

Ryan McLaughlin: 1:00:11

I will have to check that out as well.

Andrew: 1:00:13

Wonderful. I want to thank you both so much for your time. Before we go, I know especially Dr Kanell. Is there anything you'd like to plug? I mean, you've got the book which is TableTop Role Playing Therapy, Geek Therapeutics, so what would you like to leave with our audience today?

Dr. Megan A. Connell: 1:00:35

Also check out my new psychology practice Innovative Therapeutics. We are physically located in Charlotte, north Carolina. Virtually practicing and over are in 39 states in the US, 40 next summer, 42 if Massachusetts and New York passed the laws and I'm also part of Geeks Like Us. We're on a little hiatus right now, but we are coming back. I do psychology at the table through there, the Brain Noodles podcast, clinical role, a live play D&D game and just play games. A lot of us are playing Baldur's Gate and really enjoying it, so we'll probably all play that together eventually too.

Andrew: 1:01:13

I finally. I had to wait for the PS5 version of Baldur's Gate, so I spent my last weekend obsessed with it. It was that month in between that I was watching everybody talk about it. It was so painful, but it's been a blast. So thank you so much, Ryan, anything from your side.

Ryan McLaughlin: 1:01:33

Yeah, absolutely so. In October I've got a new podcast launching called D&D for the Deconstructed. It's going to be a mostly actual play podcast, but we're going to take a break every few episodes to have a talk back where we reflect on themes related to loss of faith, crisis of faith, deconstructing faith, refiguring out your adult beliefs as opposed to your childhood beliefs. We are going to be playing through in our first season Beth the Bards. She is the ancient, which is a gender bent version of Cursus Trot, and we are really, really excited to explore all of those themes through the lens of one of the classic horror campaigns of D&D, but completely reimagined for the 21st century. So it's going to be a lot of fun and I would love for your listeners to check us out when we start dropping episodes in October.

Andrew: 1:02:23

Absolutely.

Ryan McLaughlin: 1:02:24

Fantastic.

Andrew: 1:02:27

Thank you both so much. I can't express my appreciation for you being on the podcast. This has been a great conversation. I would love to. There's just so much more that I would love to ask and talk about, but we will save that for another day. But thank you again to everybody listening, we will. All these things that we've talked about. I'll make sure that all those links and everything are in the show notes so you have access to them. And again, Dr Connell, thank you so much, ryan. I appreciate your time. Have a great day. Thank you so much.