Dungeons & Dragons has clerics and paladins that can heal your characters, but what about healing the players? Welcome to Gaining Advantage. Hi everyone, I'm Dale Critchley the owner of Wyrmworks Publishing, and welcome to gaining advantage. Wyrmworks is all about helping you, the players, make other people's lives better. We're going to give you the opportunity as a company to be for you to be the hero, we're going to be the Forever Dungeon Master for you that is going to give you the resources and the training and whatever it is that you need so that you can use Dungeons & Dragons and other games like it to make other people's lives better. And so we hope that you will come and be a part of this journey and this adventure. The first step in that process is in the creation of a book that we're calling Disabilities and Depth: Creating Disabled and Neuroatypical Characters in Dungeons & Dragons. And what this book is all about is, it started out when I was looking to add some prosthetics like the combat wheelchair you've probably heard of, and I wanted to add them into my Dungeons & Dragons game, but I thought okay well prosthetics are a solution to a nonexistent problem if you don't have disabilities in your game and so I started looking around for how to do disabilities in Dungeons & Dragons, and I found that there really wasn't much there. And so I decided, well, then I'm going to write the book on it. So, as I tried to figure out how to do this I realized there's a lot of overlap between different disabilities, mental illnesses neurodivergence and where you have the same symptoms all over the place and so I'm putting the book together using symptoms, so that you can, with, if you want, if you have a disability or a mental illness or anything like that, and you would like to create a character that's like you, and you have a list of different symptoms that you have because of your particular condition, then what you can do is you can look in this book and you can find those specific symptoms, and put them together to create your character, or if you'd like to randomly roll a character you can do that and in fact when the book comes out, we will also have a random generator a random disability generator that is based on the tables in the book, and that generator will be free on our website, Wyrmworks Publishing, calm, and so you can go there, you can roll up your character, it makes it easy for people that own the book, if you don't own the book you can still use it, you just don't have the game mechanics, the assisting devices the magical devices and things like that, that go along with it but you can still use it as is. And then we're also going to publish a Disabled NPC of the Week that you can use in your game. so that, just like the real world, you know here in America 25% of people and worldwide, the number that I found is 15% of people have some kind of disability. And so it makes sense that in your world where there's, you know dragons going around chewing on people that there's going to be some people with disabilities in in your world too, and so we're going to create a Disabled NPC of the Week and make those available for free, so that you can populate your world with them, and then what we'll do is, those NPCs, a lot of them will have mixes of symptoms to replicate real life people. And so now with all that, some of the things that I want you to know about these projects is that for the book especially, we are using all of our artists are disabled, neuroatypical, or mentally ill. And then we're also, because I really want to get representation, right, and while I have a handful of things that I deal with, I don't really consider myself disabled. I wanted to make sure that we were representing those symptoms and disabilities correctly. And we have about pushing 300 different symptoms in the book, I can't possibly find that many people that have every one of those because some of them are extremely rare. And it may be that no one even alive right now has them in the world. Some of them are isolated to very small areas in the world. Some of them are magical and were created specifically for this book to think about what might disabilities look like in a magical world. And so there's no way that we can have representation of every one of those. But what I have done is make available and I'm making this available to you who are watching this right now: I have reached out in various communities, and connected with many people that have disabilities that have mental illness and neurodivergence, that have been willing to talk to me and share their experiences and, as I'm writing the book and writing up those symptoms for the book to use in the game that I'm sharing those with them to get their feedback, and see is this what you experienced? Does this seem like a good representation of it? And so I'm happy to do more of that. And so, as the before the book comes out, which would be later this fall. Anybody who wants to contact me, and our contact information is in the show notes, and if you have disability, if you are neuroatypical, if you have mental illness and would like to share your experiences with me, in exchange for your time and your willingness to share something very personal, I'm willing to give you a free copy of the book. Also we are looking for more artists, and we have a bunch already but we would love more because it's going to be a big book and the more illustrations, the better. If you are an artist who is disabled, neuroatypical, or mentally ill. And you're interested in providing art for the book, we will give you not only a free copy of the book when it comes out, but we'll also give you access to the manuscript, as it's being written - I'm writing it in a Google Doc and so you can literally watch me type it. And this is normally only available to our Young Dragon patrons, but for artists that are willing to contribute, we're opening it up to you while this book is being written. And so if you'd like to be a part of that we also give you access to our Discord server, which is also normally only available to our patrons. And so we would love to have you join in. I'm excited about the fact that we have lots of different kinds of artists' styles involved in the creation of this because all of these, all these experiences, disability and mental illness and neurodivergence are very different, and they're not isolated to a particular demographic of people, or anything like that, and so I wanted the art in the book to represent that diversity. And so we're seeing that in the artwork, and I'm really excited about that and would love to have more styles of art as part of our book, so please, artists, if you're interested in that, and you identify as one of those, please contact me. And already, if you're interested in the book, you can get a preview of that if you hop over to the DMs Guild, and the link is in the show notes, you can see we already have a preview table edition so you can start creating those characters right now, and we don't have all the descriptions ready yet, those will be in the full book, but the preview table edition has all of the tables, so that you can roll up those characters as you need. And so now the last thing that I want to get to is our Patreon. We have different patron levels as those who are familiar with Patreon are familiar with. Right, what we're doing as Wyrmworks Publishing is more than just making books, alright, we really truly want to provide the resources, the training, everything that you need to make other people's lives better, to set out on that adventure and change the world. And so what we do is for our, our Wyrmlings level of patrons, you get not only this book that we are working on right now for free, but you get access to everything that we publish for free. Now little tip, if you haven't figured this one out, you actually save yourself a lot of money by signing up for Wyrmling status when the book comes out, download all of our other content that's currently available, and maybe check in once a year, sign up and then cancel your membership. Now, we hope you won't do that because we hope that by signing up, that you really believe in what we're trying to do, and you want to be a part of it that we're starting a movement of change in the world using Dungeons & Dragons and other tabletop role playing games to make that happen. And so we would love your support to see that. Now if you sign up for the Young Dragon level of patronage, you actually get access not only to that book, the Disabilities & Depth book that I'm working on, but also everything that we make alright? We… the NPCs…the Disabled NPC of the Week, the Accessible Adventure of the Week that we're going to produce that will have some kind of disabled characters or accessibility information or something like that worked into the adventure. And so we'll see more of that and hopefully that people will see that and say this is a good idea I want to do this in my adventures too. So again, we're trying to start a movement here. And if you are at the Young Dragon level, you can you not only get all of that for free because those actually will be free but you will be able to see it as being written, and if you have thoughts on it you can jump on our Discord server and say hey, I'd like to see this in there, I'd like to see this change or whatever or what about this idea, and you can share that with us on our Discord. And speaking of, our Discord server is open to all of our patrons. And it is a safe place to talk about Dungeons & Dragons or other tabletop role playing games, to talk about advocacy and finding other disabled, mentally ill, and neurodivergent players and Dungeon Masters and non-disabled allies. Alright, it's a no ableism zone — it's a safe place to come and hang out and just care about each other. And so I hope that that you'll see that as a real value in what we're offering. Now if you're not sure about that, or money's tight for you, or whatever it is, you can go to WyrmworksPublishing.com, our website, and sign up for our free newsletter, alright? Just with that is completely free. Our letters will come out about once a week. And just for signing up, you get our Nullimancer subclass, that is for free. And you'll also get book release announcements, notifications of our new products, our Disabled NPC of the Week, our Accessible Adventur of the Week, tips on how to use role playing games to make people's lives better. And just the more support that we have, the more even if you can't support us financially, if you can support us by, you know, by retweeting, by subscribing to to this channel right here, just right now that little bell down there if you're on YouTube, you can click on that subscribing to our, our podcast or wherever it is that you're catching this show. Get that subscription and share it to spread the word — that is just as important to us to what we're trying to accomplish as your financial support, and so however you're able to do that, we really appreciate it. And so now with all of that, thanks for hanging around. And now let's jump into our interview. Wyrmworks Publishing Wyrmworks Publishing is dedicated to helping you make lives better through tabletop role playing games and so we're thrilled that our first guest is a kindred spirit in our cause. Adam Davis from Game to Grow. So Adam, welcome. And tell us about Game to Grow, how does it work? Adam Davis Thanks for having me. So Game to Grow we are a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization. We're based in the greater Seattle area but we actually have participants worldwide, but our mission is the use of games of all kinds for therapeutic educational and community growth, what we're most well known for is our therapeutic use of tabletop role playing games like Dungeons and Dragons but not exclusively, and then our training program where we actually train therapists, educators, and community members around the world to bring that life enriching magic of games to their own communities. Wyrmworks Publishing All right, cool. So how have…How long have you been, has this been going Adam Davis Game to Grow is founded in 2017 So we've been around for a handful of years at this point. I've actually been doing this work using tabletop role playing games to improve lives for over a decade now, actually, 2011 was when I first got started, something like February of 2011, and then the other founder of game to grow and I actually before game to grow myself and Adam Johns founded a small for profit company for a few years called Wheelhouse Workshop. So we started, like I said, 10 years ago, more or less, and then we ran a small two person company while we both had side jobs so he was a full time therapist in private practice, and I was a full time classroom teacher teaching fourth grade literacy, while after our full time jobs we would spend our evenings running tabletop role playing games for, I say kids but I really mean you know as young as eight and as up to emerging adulthood. We were helping them in a social skills group, and I'm air quoting that because social skills is really not what we're doing. What we're looking at was helping these kids build that sort of social confidence to be able to connect with each other and build that capacity to connect so that they can form relationships not just in our program but also out there in the real world and over the time of running both the pre Wheelhouse Workshop groups and then the Wheelhouse Workshop groups, we realized you could do so much more with this model if we had a bigger platform and the capacity to spend more time and hire people. So then we launched Game to Grow like I said in 2017. And we have done several rounds of hiring. Now we have new directors and new facilitators that are all over the country now so we have, We started off when we first started Wheelhouse Workshop, we had three clients a week that Adam Johns and I ran groups for and then now we have somewhere between 120 and 150 participants a week that come to our tabletop role playing game groups or our Minecraft groups so we're continuing to serve a larger audience across the world now. Wyrmworks Publishing Wow, that's great. So how have you seen lives changed through this? Adam Davis So, it would help to understand a little bit more about the demographic we're working with. So we don't actually require any sort of diagnosis to attend our groups we're basically helping young people who may be struggling for one reason or another, connect with other people connect with their peers and really have that sense of rewarding enriching social experience that they may have lacked. So a lot of our participants do have diagnoses of autism or ADHD or anxiety or depression and kind of constant across that is, they haven't really had an opportunity for one reason or another, to have a meaningful social connection. So that means they've never really been to a birthday party, never really had a birthday party, those who will have attended maybe they've never wanted to. And a lot of our participants have been in that kind of direct instruction social skills training program and I'm air quoting again here because this is something that I want to, I'm wanting to clearly define something different than what our program is, so a lot of our youth were identified as needing some social support, and what that looked like was scripts that looked like sitting in compliance to do the thing that the teacher wanted them to do, which was ask the right questions, make eye contact, have, you know, good first impressions, because the goal there is to help them function socially. We don't want our participants to just function socially to fit in or to camouflage. We want them to flourish socially on their own terms, respecting their own autonomy and making sure they're connecting socially in the ways that they want to connect and as much as they want to connect so the real sign of that success is not, I'm not checking boxes to say oh this person, met the expectations of a social skills training program and sustained eye contact for this long or those kinds of outcomes. What we look at really is decreasing that sense of social distress, and really looking at our participants desiring more social contact, because that is a sign that they're not only, you know, getting along with other people but seeking it out and requesting it and being excited about that we believe that we are social animals, and that we, our lives are more enriched when we can have access to this social dynamic the social sphere. So, what we look at and a lot of the kind of exciting things we see, and we hear this from parents and from the participants themselves is that, you know, the, the participants now actually look forward to leaving the house. They're excited about going to spend time with peers. One parent even said that it was like eating their vegetables without knowing they were eating their vegetables, because it's a fun and dynamic social space that has its own sort of built in rewards so we don't have to provide any sort of extrinsic motivators. We don't, we're not giving, you know, progress charts or candy or anything like that to say, great, you did a good job doing some social behaviors. We can actually build a safe and rewarding social space where then the participants can build that capacity to connect. They'll work on through the context of a tabletop role playing game their ability to self regulate, their ability to collaborate and communicate effectively with other people, logical inductive and deductive reasoning; they'll build that capacity for symbolic thinking…. There's so many things that are sort of naturally built into a tabletop role playing game that we are cultivating through harnessing the power that's already built into the game, but really looking at translating those, you know, those capacities into other contexts so that there is an intrinsic motivation to be social. So, to answer your, your question, what kinds of life enriching life enriching magic we've actually seen is we have had participants, I mentioned earlier, who'd never been to a birthday party before, but now they're inviting their team of adventurers to come over to their house on a weekend. And that right there is a huge sign of success. I had a group, this was before COVID hit where we were taking a break for the summer, and at the end of the, you know, the spring quarter, we were wrapping up, and some of them were going to be returning in the fall, but most of them are taking a break for this summer. And these teenage boys, you know, 13 to 15 year old boys, stood at the table, and they were, the parents were outside they were going to go get picked up and go home, but they paused for a moment, kind of looked at each other, they weren't quite ready to leave. And one of them said, "I'm going to miss you guys." And then they look at each other and other ones said, "Yeah I'm gonna miss you too." And then they hugged. And that might seem like a you know a trivial thing. But that wasn't in any way prompted by an adult or a facilitator to say, "Here's what it looks like to show you care for somebody." That was them organically connecting with each other in a way that was mutually supportive of their relationship, and that is the kind of success that we look for is that social reciprocity. Wyrmworks Publishing Wow, that's, I mean, having worked with, with those that have those kinds of social struggles, Yeah that's pretty amazing. That's, that right there, you know, that's real life experience points, real life leveling up, adding, adding features. Yeah, right. Adam Davis And it's actually really hard even for adults who have been interacting socially in mostly positive ways for our whole lives, it's still hard for us to find somebody that we, we get along with and say, "Hey, I'd like to see you again. Let's exchange contact information." It's hard. And so, you know, recognizing that it's challenging for, you know, across the lifespan and across the range of human experiences, it's difficult to do that, so really seeing young people who have some additional kinds of struggles or setbacks pushing through to do that is really a beautiful sign that that's how valuable those relationships are. Wyrmworks Publishing Yeah, no, absolutely. Okay so then is the magic in the game itself, or is it in your method, or something else? Adam Davis There's. It's a great question, and the best way that I like to think about it is the game is just the vessel. The magic is in the play, because I've, I've, you know, played tabletop role playing games for a very long time, for a very very long time, and I have played games that were super fun and super exciting and I have played games that were just a grueling slog of procedural dice rolling. And so, there's, there's really a lot to be said for, the game can can disappear, in fact, the most beneficial sessions of tabletop role playing games oftentimes only vaguely resemble, you know, the game itself at times, because what's really the magic there is, is the story, is the play, and oftentimes you know that the definition of play Stewart Brown in his book, Play, talks about the sort of descriptive qualities of play, and oftentimes it involves losing track of the rules and losing track of yourself and losing track of time and really having that reduction of your performance anxiety and the, you're actually in the present moment, connecting with other people — it's a flow state. And that is really what we're aiming for when we're utilizing these games is ideally the game is just a gateway into this unstructured narrative social play that almost looks like the playground. It's, it's like that kind of playground experience where you're chasing each other around. I mean I grew up playing Power Rangers or Ninja Turtles on the playground, and you know you just, you'd roll switch, you change, you dynamically respond to how the situation happens all sort of, in the present moment, and that kind of social navigation is really what we want in the game, but sometimes the game gets in the way. So we have to kind of ignore parts of the game and highlight other parts of the game to provide it that structure, that safety net, but really, it's the play. The play is the thing. Wyrmworks Publishing You know they talk a lot about how, you know, with with kids that kids learn through play and the importance of recess and all that kind of stuff. And, but, you know, it's not just with, with, you know, preschoolers and toddlers and that. And I found it's true of adults too. And so it, Adam Davis absolutely Wyrmworks Publishing Yeah, unfortunately we lose that along the way to some degree, because we lose our creativity and stuff, Adam Davis But we don't. This is the, this is the, I'm gonna push back on this a little bit, because I don't think we do naturally. We do because of certain societal influences that say that adults shouldn't play, that say anything, but adults still do play, adults who, you know, play is not necessarily an activity. Also I want to just broaden our perspective on this too. Play is not necessarily just the activity. Play is the disposition that you take Play is the relationship you have. There's another book, Ian Bogost wrote a book called, Play Anything. And he uses an example of his daughter when they're walking through the mall is like skipping over the stones in the mall, in the mall floor, and how she's playing — she's engaging with the, with the stones in the floor, and that that is accessible to anybody. It's just about a relationship and a dynamic relationship with your environment, almost like a scientific, "I want to experiment and tinker," and adults do this all the time. Anybody with a hobby tinkers and they they play with things that anytime you know I like to cook when I'm cooking I mean, I'm engaging in play, because I'm trying new things, I'm losing track of, you know, the success criteria at times to try to see what happens and that's the access to that I think is something that I think is crucial. And we, it is tempting to think that play is for children, or that play is not cool, but the opposite of work is, actually the opposite of play is not work — the opposite of play is depression. And this, that's a quote from Stuart Brown's book as well, and that's the important thing that we want to remind everybody, not just youth and not just youth in need additional social supports, but everyone can really benefit from engaging in this authentic relational play experience, and I'm sure you know this as someone who's, you know, speaking from the hilltops about the benefits of playing games in a safe and supportive and inclusive way. We this will make the world a better place if we were able to relate to each other in a more authentic way. Wyrmworks Publishing Yeah, yeah no absolutely no I, my thought was, it's the, we get these, We're told, "No, you can't play that way." And, and so, you know, we lose, we lose some creativity. I know when I play with my kids and, you know, they're like, "Okay here's my dinosaurs, you know, let's play." And, and I can't just sit on the… we can't immediately mentally jump into that world, and, "Oh wow! I really lost something here," you know, and so I, I needed, and this seems to be a part of what we're talking about, is I need some kind of a system to, you know, give me, give me a to hit, you know, roll or something like that, you know, and then, okay, now I could jump in, but I need, like I need an ordered system whereas with them it's, I made a comment, a number of years ago I was working with some preschool kids, and, and we're sitting around, we're playing Duck Duck Goose right and if you ever played duck duck goose with with kids, with preschool kids, I described it as, "It's like a dream that the rules change every 30 seconds, and then everyone just goes with it and assumes that it's just normal." And so you have, Oh, they'll run around three times instead of just one so you know whatever. Or, you know, it's the rules are constantly changing and everyone just goes with it. And it's like it's okay cuz this is we're just having fun and when it comes down to is fun is the main thing. And, like, oh, well you guys get it. We need to learn that. So yes, Adam Davis I think that is a beautiful story yes the, oftentimes the, the kids, definitely get it, and it's sometimes it's adults, you're mentioning we don't play the right way, there is, there is something to be said for adults trying to help kids play by encouraging them to play in the right way. And sometimes that is, you know, you mentioned having, you know you're you I don't know if you mentioned it with your children but with dinosaurs, right, and if the kids want to say, "These dinosaurs are going on a date. And these dinosaurs are driving in a car," and you know the adult might say, "Well actually, dinosaurs didn't have cars. Dinosaurs actually didn't speak, so dinosaurs are that's a carnivore — they're probably fighting right so they, you know, the adult in that case is trying to help by enforcing sort of script, you know in like a little kid playing with a GI Joe. He wants that GI Joe to go, you know, be a barista and have a little play, because they you know, doing some, some imitative social play with something they saw with a parent, but the parent says, "No no GI Joe is not a barista. GI Joe is a soldier. He's a real American hero. So this is how you play with GI Joe," right, and then we're preventing that that sort of broad view of what we can do with our unstructured play, and so there's, there's, there's lots of theories about that. We have some play therapists on our staff, and I'm not trained as a play therapist, but about the benefits of having blocks instead of GI Joe, because the blocks can be a person; the blocks can be literally building blocks, it could be a car could be a plane, it could be a whole lot of things. So there's something really nice about tabletop role playing games, because they are the blocks, not the GI Joes in so many ways, because we can do so much with it. We've got a basic back and forth structure where the Game Master describes things and the players can kind of say or do whatever they want to do. And then we see what happens, and sometimes it's built into the rules, and it's about the abilities they want to try to do based on the rules as written, and sometimes it's, "I want to try to jump over that thing." All right let's let's see what happens. "And I want to use this spell in a way you never considered it." Okay, let's, let's see what happens. Now we're engaging in play when everybody leans forward and gets excited about the potential in that moment, especially when you can bend or break the rules to cultivate that sense of, of leaning in, that enthusiasm — that's what the magic is. Wyrmworks Publishing Okay, so you already mentioned that this is a global thing that you guys are doing. So how can people that are not connected with you benefit from your work? Adam Davis So, if people want to join a group, we actually have groups for for youth as young as eight I believe is our youngest slot right there, and then we have adult groups, so people who want to participate can participate from anywhere in the world you can just go to gametogrow.org and see the signup links there. We have, our groups are full right now, but we have waiting lists. You can join our waiting lists. We're actually in the middle of hiring right now. And we actually, we transitioned our groups, digital March of 2020 as a response to the COVID 19 pandemic. And before that, all of our groups were in Seattle, or the surrounding areas. And we had, you know 30 Something youth a week, because we were bound by geographic location, and then after we went virtual, it was an interesting thing, because I was really struggling. We like many organizations shifted our group virtual as a triage. Oh my gosh, what are we doing this is a scary time. And then what happened as a response to that is our groups are no longer bound by geography in several different ways. So we were then, we have we have we have people joining our waiting lists from other places around the country for years hoping someday we'd open up a small branch in their neighborhood in Pennsylvania or wherever, and suddenly we can actually put them in a group. So all of these people who have been waiting for sometimes years to maybe get into a group are now able to join a group in with another youth in another part of the world which is really interesting, so we also had people in Australia who are hoping someday we would open up a branch in Australia able to join and we have Western Europe and parts of Asia all have participants playing together. When I was a kid, we had pen pals in school, and it was a neat experience to, you know, share your thoughts and feelings with someone in a different part of the country or the world. And now these youth don't just get the opportunity to share their thoughts and feelings — they joined forces and save the world, they are joining a team of adventuring heroes with people from all over the world, so it's really like a really cool opportunity for some for some bridge building across the world. So that that's one way people can participate with us. If they want to join our groups, we have, we're hiring right now to expand the capacity to do so. We also have trainings that I mentioned this earlier as well, we have three different tiers, or tracks of training program where we have mental health practitioners who can come and take, there's there's three sets of six hour trainings people can participate in to become fully aware of what goes into the Game to Grow method. We also have trainings for educators for the educational application of tabletop role playing games, and then we have a community track for maybe it's a parent, maybe it's someone who runs or works at a game store who's working in a community context, not looking at educational outcomes or therapeutic outcomes but really does still want to build a safe and supportive community around their tabletop role playing game. They can learn all about those at gametogrow.org/training. Wyrmworks Publishing Okay, great. Well, what a, so Okay, question, with that: with people not being able to connect in person. Alright, we've been, since COVID, we've been playing virtually too. All right. How are you seeing the social development, and things, all of those kind of goals that you're working toward. With, on the one hand, you have these great opportunities to connect with people that, you know, live outside your community. On the other hand, they're outside your community, and you can't, you know, sit down and around a table and so can you just, what are your… What's your experience with that? Adam Davis So, I'll be honest with you, and say that I was worried when we went virtual, it was a it was a triage, and it was a lot of… we didn't apologize for what we were expecting was going to be a downgrade in our groups, but I was worried about it. My training is in drama therapy. I am very active. I'm very kinesthetic. I like, I like to embody my characters, and I want my players to also feel their characters in their bodies as well in a relational space in in 3d, in the room together, so I was worried that we were going to see a reduction in the in the impact of our work, and I was absolutely wrong about that, and we had so many parents reach out to us to say it is so essential that they're having regular social contact right now, that this is so extra important in the in the era of COVID. But then what was also unique about this as I mentioned that we were no longer bound by geography, we're also no longer bound by transportation. So as far as access, we have actually helped people. One of, one of the big aspects of our work is that we want to build a cohort of individuals who can support each other. It's a peer learning model on top of the mentorship model. So, when we have a group we put together, you know, before we had all the kids in Tacoma, Washington, to choose from to build those cohorts together, but now we can build cohorts across the country and around the world, sometimes bound by time zones, obviously, you know someone in Australia is not going to have the same after school schedule as someone in New Hampshire, but when we can build these groups together, we can then, we no longer have to worry about that, so that's been really valuable as well to build those cohorts, but also parents don't have to drive their children to groups anymore, which means we're able to access people who maybe don't have that parental support or don't have that capacity financially or otherwise, to drive a youth to an after school program and then wait for them and pick them up again etc. So we're able to access other things, and the other really beautiful thing about technology and the way that we're using it in Game to Grow's groups right now is that it's providing a valuable accessibility tool. So, we have participants who have some sometimes some non communicative verbal sounds that they make in a in person group, that sometimes might cause another person to be frustrated with them or to, to cause some distress in other participants, but because we're in a virtual space now, those players with non-communicative sounds, they can mute themselves. And that means that they can selectively be heard, and they can have all of the sounds they want to make on their own, and it does not impair their ability to form those relationships. So, which is a really, it's a fantastic opportunity to see someone leveraging and utilizing the accessibility tool that we have in our computers, and then able to accomplish more building those relationships than they were when we were in person. This, we've also had, you know, there there are built in things like, you know, we have some participants who become nonverbal at times. Some of their, you know, that depends on the day, depends on the week, but because there's a chat function in our Zoom windows, they can type in what they what they want their characters to do or their thoughts or their feelings in a way that is allows them to still have that human connection. It's mediated, but it's still a very valuable human connection, and there was a one of our facilitators was telling me a story recently about one of her players was having a day where he was not able to communicate verbally, due to some some medical complications. But that day, that player called their father in to join in the session, where the father was there, and the player had an assistive device where they could type what their words, what they wanted to say. And then the father read it. So then the father is able to be the voice for their child. For the rest of the participants and the other participants in the group saw and recognized and appreciated and validated this experience, which helped this person who might have otherwise stayed home and not been able to connect with other people allowed them to connect meaningfully, and the other players to see them, recognize them, validate them, and celebrate their participation, and that kind of thing is only possible because of the fact that we were able to join them in their home instead of having to have them drive, and then the parent is go running errands during the group or whatever the case may be. So there's, there is a lot of magic in leveraging the technology instead of seeing it as an obstacle, it's I guarantee you I was really worried like I said I was worried about the technological mediation, but once we pushed through and realized that what we have here is a valuable tool set, not just something that inhibits our ability to connect with each other, that I think has been a really eye opening experience which is part of the reason why we've kept pushing for more online programming. We will at some point go back to having some of our groups be in person as well, but I think we're always going to be having a lot of virtual groups now just because of the power that they enable us to have to connect with people around the world. Wyrmworks Publishing Wow, that's great. Okay, so you just rescued a djinn from the hands of an efreet, and it offers you three wishes to achieve Game to Grow's goals. What do you wish for? Adam Davis Um, this is a great question. I have. So one of the things that made us successful as an organization is being able to respond to the emerging needs. So I'm going to tell you this, I'm only going to use one wish for now and bank the other ones, to see how things go. But I, I you know, I could say, I wish for donations. I wish for grant funding. Because I think that would, that would help us with so much of our mission, but I I'm going to switch that around, and I'm going to say, if I could have one wish, I wish more people knew about our mission. Because I think that if more people knew about the work that Game to Grow was doing. I think that even if they're not joining our groups, even if they're not receiving our training, or even donating to us, I think if more people were aware about that life enriching magic of games, I think the world would be a better place. And I think if more people knew about our mission, certainly they would donate to us, they would help us write grants, they would, you know, do streaming to support Game to Grow and things like that, but I don't want to wish for those because I think those are small potatoes. I want to wish for a world in which everyone knew about the life enriching magic of games and authentic relational social play, and are eager to pursue it. Wyrmworks Publishing Alright so everyone, there's a Share button right there as you're watching. You guys can be genies, and, and help to make that wish come true. So, that's awesome. All right, so what one message would you like to give people that are struggling with mental illness? Adam Davis One message I would give to people who are struggling with mental illness. I think the, I first of all I would say I'm not in a position to give advice, I would say that the because everyone's journey is different and everyone's journey is unique, but I would say it's okay to not be okay. I'm stealing that line from Take This, another great nonprofit. But I think the important thing that when someone is struggling is recognizing that struggling is actually pretty normal. Um, struggling is actually where most of us are. There's people who are struggling and people who don't know they're struggling. And I think that if someone is struggling, then I think it's it's first step is acknowledging that that's okay, it's normal to be struggling and then to do, take whatever steps you can take to get some support and get some help, and I see a therapist. I am a huge advocate for normalizing getting support and getting help from therapists who are qualified and trained and, you know, that that's certainly a really valuable thing but it's, it's, yeah that is my, my advice is, is to take that moment and go, "You know what? I'm not alone in struggling, and that it's okay for me to get the support that I need to push through and maybe overcome and maybe live with that struggle." Wyrmworks Publishing I think you might have answered my next question. What's one message you want to give to people that are not struggling with mental illness? Adam Davis Get some support. Take a moment and see, recognize that nobody, nobody is, is, is all the way out of the out of the woods, and I think that's just, that that's okay, and I think there's a really dangerous belief that we're the only one who's struggling, or we're the only one who's lonely, or we're the only one who's isolated and I think social media makes it a lot harder, because you're looking at a lot of avatars, and a lot of presentations, curated presentations of what people's lives might kind of look like. So I think it's the first thing I would, I would say is that nobody's life is looks like their curated persona, and that most of us are struggling to have the kind of meaningful relationships that we want to have. So it's okay to acknowledge that. It's okay to reach out and continue to cultivate those relationships that are meaningful and enriching, because I, one of the foundations of our model at Game to Grow and one of the principles that we adhere to is the value of relationships. The work that we do all of them the entire intervention that we've built our framework on is relational and that authentic relational social play is something that isn't just for people who are struggling, people who are really suffering. It is for people who are functioning, we, our goal is to bring everyone up to this position of social flourishing, where we're connecting with each other in this authentic, you know, meaningful way where we can see and be seen in a community of mutual support and care. Wyrmworks Publishing That's great. All right, so What projects are you working on right now besides the whole COVID remote stuff? Adam Davis So Game to Grow is has a lot of irons in the fire right now, and it will depend on funding so as much as I wished for everybody to know about us. I will also do a little tiny wish for extra funding for some of these things too, but we have… We just got a grant to run groups for foster care youth. So most of our programming has traditionally been a fee per service. We have a sliding scale; we have scholarships etc., but we have not yet had the ability as a nonprofit to really have entirely service oriented groups where we have people who are not able to, to, otherwise, attend our groups, attend them, so we have these, we got this grant to run foster care groups and I'm really excited about helping to expand that program with more financial ability to do so. We also have a pilot program right now. Really once a week, at most, myself and Adam Johns are putting together, the other founder of Game to Grow, for hospital groups. So there's a lot of youth who are struggling with isolation and solitude in a medical context where they're in a hospital, and we've run I think four or five, you know one shot RPG adventures. We're using Critical Core which I should probably also mention on this podcast as well. But the we're running these sort of one shots and seeing just how that like 90 minutes of narrative social play helps, you know, blossom some kids who have struggled being in a hospital bed, unable to move and connect with people in a normal way, but we just have an iPad and some dice, and connecting with some other kids and connecting with, you know, with our facilitators and really seeing how impactful that can be. We had a someone who has been the child life specialists say that they had not seen one of their kids who'd been in the hospital for a while, you know, smile in a week, but now they're helping the king, you know, make the food, like I said earlier with somebody that barely resembles a typical role playing game, we're helping the king make the food for the very fancy dinner that they're having. And that's you know the first time they smiled in a week, right so there's, there's, that's really something that I'm, I'm very passionate about personally is about expanding that program as well. We've also been working on programming for veterans. So two members of our team, Dr. Jared Kilmer and Dr. Elizabeth Kilmer both have experience using tabletop role playing games with VA. And so we're going to take some of their knowledge, skills and experience and pilot some program through Game to Grow for to help veterans struggling with, with the, the myriad of things that veterans may be struggling with. So, like I said there's lots of irons in the fire, as well. I mentioned very briefly, I'm wearing the Critical Core t-shirt. We launched Critical Core on Kickstarter in 2019. And it was designed to be the beginners box for therapeutic tabletop role playing games, so we basically have in there a simplified rule set. It's very similar to Dungeons & Dragons it's actually built on the open gaming SRD from fifth edition. It's a simplified rule set, and then we also have in there a facilitator's guide where we use a lot of the, the, you know, battle tested so to speak, participation structures we've built over a decade of practice, and then we also have adventure modules in there that are streamlined with a, with a narrative structure that we've implemented to really guide facilitators and how to structure and look at building those what we call the core capacities. So that's all we actually have a webstore available now, people can buy the digital version. The physical kits are in production, so it'll be for sale soon, but there's all of that you can find at criticalcore.org as well and that one we are continuing to build that out so we have the actual modules themselves, we had three modules in the physical kit, but we have a bunch of digital stretch goals that we're still working on right now, some with with Shana Jermaine and Jerry Holkins who were sort of guest stars of our Kickstarter, and then we're building more of those. We're gonna have those for sale through the criticalcore.org website as well. So there's a lot, there's so many irons in so many fires right now. I'm glad that we have a nice, great team of professionals all collaborating together to work on all these projects. Wyrmworks Publishing That's cool. All right, so we will have your contact information in the show notes, but where is the one best place if people want to contact you, they want to start to learn more about you, what you're doing anything like that. What is the one place to go to that is better than anything else? Adam Davis The one place to go is gametogrow.org/newsletter and join our newsletter. We don't send things out much more than once a month, but that is where the first place we ever announce new things like when when Critical Core was launched, we announced it to our newsletter. Whenever we have new training opportunities, it's our newsletter, a new group opportunity, it's the newsletter, that's the easiest place. We're also on social media and all of those as well but the newsletter is it the number one place to make sure you stay informed about the latest what Game to Grow is up to. Wyrmworks Publishing Awesome. All right, thank you, just, I, I just can't say enough — I'm so excited. You know the work that you're doing is, it's, it's what I've been trying to do in my just in my own space without all the training and things, so I'm actually really curious about the stuff that you guys have put out that I haven't a chance to look at yet real in depth. And, and I just see the work you're doing and, "Yes! Yes! This is it right here!" I mean I can't wait to share this with other people. And so I hope that that those of you who are watching that you'll do that too just to see the power of all of this, you know, people say that, "Well, you know, Dungeons and Dragons, you're just saying that you're using magic. You're not really doing it and, you know, I gotta push back on that, because I just I see magic happening all the time and, and so I just, I'm really excited about what you guys are doing, and, and just, just thank you for the work and and as a, as a foster parent, I also have to say, "All right, that's, that's awesome, you guys are in the foster space too cuz I know firsthand what that's like." So, that's cool. Adam Davis Thanks for helping me, you know, spread the word about the life enriching magic of games. You're helping that genie implement that wish! This next segment is called Playing the Other. It's all about playing a character that has particular symptoms that are more specifically a particular disorder or neurodivergence or mental illness. And so before I even start this, I'm going to explain one that is close to me and it's something that is part of my family. But what I also like to do is invite anyone else who is 18+ and is willing to come onto the show and explain your experience and how you would like to see your experience, played out in Dungeons & Dragons or another tabletop role playing game, please send me a note. It's a family friendly show and so you know if you keep things PG and that would definitely appreciate that but, but I'd love to have, to hear directly from those who have these experiences, and so that you can share that with people so that they know how to express and demonstrate that to their players. So today's condition is reactive attachment disorder. And so the way that reactive attachment disorder is experienced is, imagine a child's greatest fear — what do you think it is? Alright, in most cases, their biggest fear is abandonment, you know, as long as mom or dad or somebody, you know, that parent whoever that parent is is there, then everything's gonna be okay, but if that changes, then everything falls apart. Well, in this case, what we're talking about is someone for whom that actually happens. And that could be because of neglect, that the parent is maybe around but not very much, and not when they're needed, can happen because of sometimes because of abuse or neglect where the child is taken out of the home, ends up in the foster care system or some other kind of living arrangement is abruptly changed, then they experience that, and then if, say for example you have a child who has moved through the foster care system from home to home until they find a permanent home for them, then that just amplifies the fear that you're, "I know that the parents don't stick around, and I'm just getting moved again." And so then the way that this plays out is then the child, subconsciously, and oftentimes this will happen in the first year of their life before, you know, they have words to explain this, but their brain is forming an understanding of how the world works. And so, they develop this subconscious attitude of, "you're gonna leave me anyway. So, let's get it over with before I let my guard down and get too attached and hurt again." And so what happens is the child becomes distrustful of their caregiver. And they actively push them away and they will act in ways that that are essentially their, what they're trying to do with their behavior is to say I'm going to do stuff, so that you'll get rid of me, because I know it's gonna happen eventually. And so let's just get on with it already. And, um, and so they'll be very distrustful and especially toward someone who reminds them of the person that they feel let them down the most. And so, for example, you have a child living with their mother, and then their mother is taken from them, they never knew their dad, and so now they're distrustful of women especially mother figures right and that could play out in, when we talk about how you would play this in a game as a character, and to be in a party with a character like this, that character is going to be distrustful of someone who reminds them of whoever that caregiver was that they last that they were most attached to. And so it could be that, well, that my caregiver was a wizard. And so I don't trust wizards, or it could be anything very it could be my caregiver was a Minotaur and now I'm in this party, where one of the people in the party is a minotaur or, you know, this is fantasy. It could be anything. And so, if you're going to use a character with this, the Dungeon Master and the player should find a way to let the other players know what's going on. Now this could be just write out, lay your cards on the table right during session zero, and say, You know I'm playing this character this is their situation and so this is what you can expect, you know, or the party could encounter this character and see the situation that the character is in or the character shares some, some backstory with them at the, at the inn or something like that, and they find out about their background and then when they see things happening, they start to realize what's going on, but you want to make sure that the rest of the party knows as soon as possible. And that way you don't run into problems where they're going, "man, what is, what is your problem?" And so, you have the hurting party, and then you have the object of their distrust, that parental or caregiving figure that has let them down. And so the hurting party then blames the object of distrust for everything, alright? And they can be convinced otherwise, each time, say, no, no it wasn't really this person's fault. Look, they had nothing to do with it. They weren't even there, you know, they didn't say anything or whatever it is, but each time they have to be convinced, and it's not easy, and it won't be easy for them to believe that this object of distrust, this person really cares about them, and they have to be convinced, over and over and over again, because there's always, even though, OK, well maybe not this time. But there's always this fear that the object of distrust is going to leave. And so the hurting party may, if that object of distrust is going somewhere, you know, even it's, I'm just going down to the general store to pick up some rope, say, or I'll go with you. Or, when are you going to be back? Are you coming back? Well of course I'm coming back — I'm getting rope for our next adventure. But they're going to keep asking those questions: are, you know, are you going to come back and are you really going to come back? And, you know, it might just need some kind of reinforcer. Well, you leave something with me so I can make sure that they're going to come back because you want to come back for that. And so that person oftentimes, that hurting party knows that that object of distrust cares but just needs to be convinced repeatedly of that that relationship really is there and it's not going anywhere, it's going to continue, just because they had this unshakable feeling that something's gonna go wrong, and just, it's y'know logic isn't a part of this, alright, this is feelings takeover and and I just can't shake that feeling that, so I just need that reinforcement or I'm going to be anxious the whole time you're gone, or I'm going to be anxious even when you're here because I'm worried that something's going to happen, you're going to leave or, or even something's going to happen to you. And so over time, those two characters that have that distrust in between can actually develop a really deep bond because there's been so much reinforcement, alright, but that takes a long time — we're talking years. We're talking decades. And it never goes away completely — there's always that nagging fear in the background of of the hurting party's mind, and any kind of progress is going to be slow — it's not, "Hey I risked my neck to save you from the dragon." Of course y'know, isn't that proof? It's not about that because that's thinking with the head. Alright, you got to talk to the heart. And so now, with all of these descriptions, like this example of reactive attachment disorder, no two people are alike. And so, no two disability expressions are alike. What's described here is one expression, but no two expressions are identical. Alright, if you've experienced this or you have a family member or someone you care about, that has experienced this and you'd like to share your experience with that, alright, you can send us a note or you can leave a comment here or all the different ways that we have to communicate, you can come on our Discord, if you're a patron and you can talk about it there. And also a reminder that if you're 18 years or older, have a disability, a mental illness or neurodivergence, and you'd like to come on the show to help people understand what your life is like, what you experience, what challenges you face, and how you overcome them, and talk about how you'd like to see what you experience, represented in role playing games, please contact me through the links in the show notes. Understand that the reason that we're doing this, the reason that we're incorporating these characters into the games is so, lots of reasons: number one representation — just for people to experience, there's someone like me in the game, there's someone like me, that I encounter. I'm not this oddity. Alright, but also to, so that other people that are not disabled that do not have the experiences that we're talking about, can experience those things, can on the one hand, to step in someone's shoes, sort of, It's not the same experience but to get a sense of it and not, more so than just, "I'm putting on a blindfold and seeing what life is like for blind people, right?" which doesn't really work, but rather to go, "okay, well how would I navigate if, if that were me, how would I navigate the world, and how would I deal with these different things," and to help to see that, on the one hand there's challenges, but there's also ways to overcome those challenges. And so then, also so that people can have a chance to encounter these kinds of disabilities, these kinds of symptoms, so that when they encounter those people in real life, it doesn't strike them as odd or or they're not afraid or that it's, "Oh, well I'm used to that. I'm comfortable with that." And so we want people to be able to experience that just to make it easier for them to, to recognize people that are different from them are not really so different. So, thank you for watching. If you're still here, then clearly you care about making people's lives better, and we're so happy you are kindred spirits, and so please consider us helping you to do that by supporting our Patreon, and all the links are in the show notes. And I'll close with this question: How has playing tabletop role playing games made your life better?