Wyrmworks Publishing  
Picture a therapist's office. Got the image, or think about what you would find there and make a mental list of that? Right, so you've got chairs, table, books, dice, a DM screen. Oh, is that not what you were picturing? Welcome to Gaining Advantage.

Wyrmworks Publishing  
Welcome to Gaining Advantage. We are using roleplaying games like Dungeons and Dragons to help you make lives better. A few announcements before we go any further: 

Wyrmworks Publishing  
First of all, update on Limitless Heroics - Including Characters with Disabilities, Mental Illness, and Neurodivergence in Fifth Edition. Alright, we have released the electronic version to our Kickstarter backers. But right after that, we found some major accessibility issues that require some pretty significant work on it. And so we'll be putting out hard copies soon to our Kickstarter backers first. Then we will produce an updated version of the electronic copy, and then it'll go public. So if you are looking for it, you're waiting for it, then all you gotta do is jump over to our website and sign up for our email list. It's called the Dragon's Hoard, because we treasure you, and you can sign up there, and you will find out as soon as it's available and get discounts and deals, and so I encourage you to do that. Also, speaking of other things that are available: Meanwhile, we have our coloring book that's based on Limitless Heroics. It's a great opportunity to to get a little bit of a taste of it. And one of the things I'm really excited about with this coloring book, aside from the fact that you can give this to a kid and it will normalize disabled heroes in their lives, because that's just what they're used to. It's what they're literally coloring and and creating. But also, every page has a quote from a disabled, mentally ill, or neurodivergent person who submitted quotes to be sent to me giving their perspectives on on all kinds of different things: on their experiences and things they find encouraging and all kinds of stuff like that. It's really cool. I love it. You can jump over to our website right now. Wyrmworkspublishing.com/shop and you'll find it there, and it's available both in softcover and electronic.

Wyrmworks Publishing  
If you'd like to find all the different things that we are producing and get access to everything right now, including Limitless Heroics and have it all linked together nicely to make it really easy to use, for $3 a month via our Patreon, you get access to the Dragon's Lair, which has all of our publications, it has prerelease content there. All of Limitless Heroics broken into its individual entries, all linked together. There's adventures. There's the Limitless Champions adventures are going to be posted there before they even get to the Kickstarter. And and so if you're waiting for Limitless Heroics, and you missed the Kickstarter and the preorders, you can actually go to the Lair right now and access all those pieces. And in fact, the PDF is also there at our $9 a month level tier. And so you can even get that, the one that that we still need to finish the editing but the initial copy is already there. Now with all that said, let's get to our interview.

Wyrmworks Publishing
Life is hard, and games make life better. But what happens when trained professionals use games to make life a lot better? Today we welcome Jack Berkenstock Jr., the executive director of the Bodhana Group to tell us how that works. Welcome Jack.

Jack Berkenstock Jr.
Thank you for having me. It's good to be here.

Wyrmworks Publishing
Right so what would you like us to know about you personally, specifically talking to the RPG crowd?

Jack Berkenstock Jr.
Ah, well, I am not just a practitioner. I'm also a lifelong gamer. I've been RPGing since I was about 12 years old. I have played in probably about 40 to 50 different systems. I started with D&D, of course because everyone does then I went into Ghostbusters, Marvel, Call of Cthulhu, Shadowrun, all the way up to the new classics as it were like Kids on Bikes and Teens In Space. So I definitely got the chops as a true gamer because as we're gonna find out through the talk, the game is not the destination but the vehicle, but it is still one of the most compelling parts about why this model works and what we can do to enhance that.

Wyrmworks Publishing
Alright, so tell us about your work, the work of the Bodhana group.

Jack Berkenstock Jr.
Sure. So Bodhana group, we are a 501(c)3 non-profit. We're based in New York, Pennsylvania, and we offer a wide array of services. So we do direct services either for individuals, private pay, or we also run for agencies that may not have people that can run games for their company. So that's our direct services, and we offer training and consultation. We actually have a very robust training program. So if you are a professional who would like to learn how to do this, bring it into your own agency or practice, we offer a continuing education, our approved training series, so it's essentially 40 hours total and that's on theory, application, we actually offer direct practice in our training programs. So you actually eventually plan and run a 2-hour one shot with other professionals. And through that, we also offer consultation, so if you want to bring not only RPG but we also board game. We offer board games services as well, which we also have trainings in, so we do a lot. We do a lot. Plus we're developing our own role playing game called Branch Riders, which is designed for fun first, but we found it more helpful to bake the therapeutic elements into the setting, the mechanics. So this way therapists, practitioners, educators, even parents, will find it easier to work meaningful and intentional goals into the game, but at its heart and its core, it's an excessively fun system to run and very easy as well. 

Wyrmworks Publishing
Cool. 

Jack Berkenstock Jr.
I think that's kind of most of what we do,

Wyrmworks Publishing
Yeah, so can you give some some specific examples?

Jack Berkenstock Jr.
of like therapeutic gaming? Yeah, yeah, sure. So we've mostly worked with kids and teens, a lot of the kids that we've worked with are autistic. We also have worked with kids with different behavioral challenges. So generally, what we do is we determine what goals the client has, then we determine what type of therapeutic approach would be best. Would they benefit from like CBT, psychotherapy, would they benefit from you know, Rational Emotive Behavioral Therapy, Dialectical Behavioral Therapy, and then what we do is we find ways within the structure of the game to replicate or simulate that. So for example, let's say a person has social anxiety. One of the common hallmarks of social anxiety is what we would define as impostor syndrome, or negative self talk. So what we might do is, in the context of the game, we might create a character that represents that internal voice externally. So through roleplay, we had this character's an NPC who's like very judgmental and like, you know, calls into question and some people were like, Yeah, but you know, that's happening. So does that really work? Yes. It does. We, we actually did a research study on the efficacy of RPG with a local university and their IRB. And what we found was when people were reporting on the game, they're like, You know what? I'm in this role playing session, right? We're in this Kids on Bikes town, so it's this small town sheriff like, "Hey, now, come on you kids." You know, we kind of turned it up and the players like so I'm in this game. And all of a sudden, I'm having this visceral emotional reaction. Oh my god. This character reminds me my father. I hate my father because of the way they said this or did this and they would say, "But it's a game. Why am I still having this reaction?" If this is a game, and then later, they took that information and started to process it deeper with their one to one session. And it was just fascinating to them as well as us. That exploring narrative allows you to notice things because your feelings … and you know, it's what Sarah Lynne Bowman and a lot of others of us who do this kind of work, you know, we talk about bleed. You know, how much your personal identity bleeds into your character and how much your player experiences, character bleeds over into the person that you are. So the Bodhana model, we actually kind of refer to it as therapy blended RPG, because we mix therapeutic approaches and techniques with a very strong, compelling narrative. We believe that the story of the game is what drives people to conclusions, discovery, self-awareness, and even practicing real world skills so that for us, literally it is about the play.

Wyrmworks Publishing
That's such an interesting example. Because this this little miniature here, this is Gog the ogre. All right, and because I struggle with imposter syndrome, and and Gog sits on my desk, and when I get those sort of voices telling me that I'm worthless and terrible and stuff that I just say shut up Gog, you're a liar. And

Jack Berkenstock Jr.
That's amazing. One of our designer friends, Bear Winters, introduced, I can't remember who it was. We were on a panel at our Save against Fear convention. And during the middle of that, that the determiner was, "Shut up, Stanford," was the name that had been given to imposter syndrome. But yeah, that that's, it was what our study was all about, efficacy with social anxiety with adults.

Wyrmworks Publishing
So I love it. How do you how do you find the you know, what advantages do you find over traditional therapy settings and methods?

Jack Berkenstock Jr.
One, the the engagement factor of it being a recreational opportunity and a game allows for a lot of different factors. I mean, one, people feel safer because it's not real, real consequences. So in most times, I can explore these issues. In these concepts. And if I make a mistake, if I you know, quote, unquote, screw up, you know, no big deal, right? It's just the game. We've also found that that character identity, and some folks call it scaffolding. Sometimes they call it aesthetic distancing, you know, whatever you call it. The fact that I'm playing a character, I can explore things as the character that maybe I as a person, am either unwilling or you know, uncomfortable, or maybe I don't feel confident, but my character could be more than what I want to be which in the therapy game is. That's an approach goal. It's something I want to work towards myself and I'm not only the Hair Club president, I'm also a client right? When I was younger, first starting RPG, I was not at all confident. I was very, very low self esteem. I have ADHD and bipolar to complete, you know, disclose. But through gaming, I played characters that were more competent than myself, they were more gregarious and more outgoing. And by playing those characters, I got to kind of practice the role before I then kind of turned it into real life. And, you know, running stories for my friends and like, well, I'm pretty creative. They really liked what I'm doing here. And the way I did this character really zinged with them, well, I'm better at this side, maybe I'm better at other things. You know, so role playing really saved me from a life of social isolation. Where now you could say, Hey, Jack, here's a here's a PowerPoint presentation with a couple of notes. Could you speak in front of 5000 people? Yep. What time do I go on? Not not a problem. That was not me at 11, 12, or 13. But yeah, I really think that this model allows people to dive into ways that traditional talk therapy does not. I mean, I jokingly, having been through a lot of therapy myself when I was younger, "Wow, I'm paying you to tell you how much my life sucks for an hour. This is wonderful. Let me get more of that in my life." Right? But instead, we talked about what you want to work on. We don't have to call it out directly every session, but you play a character in a storyline with challenges that are customized, like we don't run modules. We're everything is individualized. So this challenge is built for you to to exploring motion to connect with yourself to discover you know who you are, through this character that, I mean, let's be honest, every character we make has a part of ourselves in it. We can't avoid that as humans. So that's what I think is the most engaging, that it literally RPG can be partnered with virtually any therapeutic approach to find an analogue of how we replicate that approach, whether it's exposure therapy, whether it's, you know, when we talk about DBT and exploring your visceral, you know, your bodily reaction versus your mental reaction. Yeah, we can explore that, you know, if it's, I'm uncomfortable with people arguing, I can create those NPCs that are arguing with each other because we also have a co-facilitator in the Bodhana model. So we can rehearse and, you know, just have people encounter these things in a way that is much less threatening, and even confrontational, a case of things like thinking … and whatnot.

Wyrmworks Publishing
This reminds me of, I've heard of therapy, especially with younger children using puppets.

Jack Berkenstock Jr.
Yeah. Puppets, toys, art, sandtray. I mean, to be honest, the therapeutic use of RPG and again, I don't say RPG therapy, I don't say D&D therapy because, you know, in the Bodhana model, the therapy has to come first. You have to decide on a direction and an approach you're using. And even the question of whether or not the client is appropriate for group using D&D or any other kind of role playing game, some folks who are very high on social anxiety, they're not recommended for group so it's not technically for everybody. But you know, you have to take the same safeguards you would with any other model, but yeah, it's it's a mix of aspects of play therapy, expressive arts therapy, narrative therapy, psychodrama, like there's so many things in this rich stew, that that is RPG as a form of therapy.

Wyrmworks Publishing
Right. So tell us about some of the how you've seen lives change. You've alluded to that a little bit, but do you have other examples, of course there's all the confidentiality issues?

Jack Berkenstock Jr.
Oh, yeah, absolutely. Every person I talk about will be their character name, and they will all have the last name HIPAA, just to make sure that you know, I don't gloss over into into territory. But no, we've actually seen meaningful change. I remember quite quite a few young people. I'm trying to think of some specific examples. There was one young man came to us very high functioning, autistic, and he just had very little confidence. He was you know, typical wallflower. And through exploring the game, we knew that one of the big goals that he had was getting a job and maintaining a job, because he was you know, like I said he was very shy wasn't very open or very talkative. So what we actually did creatively was any time that they would go to the royalty or whoever they went through for their quests, we created kind of like the negative version of like, you know, if you meet the Scooby Doo crew, and then all of a sudden they show up and there's like another group of teens that are groovy and solve mysteries. We literally created an opportunity for him to apply for the quest in the campaign. So we built in the king was asking questions that were reflective of questions you would be asked on a job interview. So we found a way through the modicum of play and fun to ask some of these questions that he would need to know how to answer at least in spirit. And then we kind of had some follow up chat and was basically like, "Hey, so tell me again, why are you nervous about interviews?" And he would kind of talk and I go, "Well, you just succeeded in your interview there," and he goes, "Well, that's different." And we'll, How's that different?" He goes, "That's not a real job. I go, "Until you get the one you're applying for, that one ain't yet, but you know, let's try to make it more real, right?" We also have used things like real world consequences, quote, unquote, in the game. We were playing Kids on Bikes, and one of the young men was playing a British jock. And his whole thing was, you know, I'm a jock. I beat up nerds. And one of the other players was playing a character who was playing a nerd. So in the middle of this, he was like, "Well, I want to, you know, give him a wedgie, and rough 'em up. And so I said to the player, "Are you okay with that?" Yes, yes. So it had been happening that the players character had just been talking with his in-game dad. So you know, there are Kids on Bikes his kids off running like shadowy catacombs or whatever and dad's like, "Haven't seen the a lot of you lately at home, son, like everything okay?" like it was like an ABC After School Special. And so dad was watching his concerned son, and this jock character is going to like rough 'em up. Now, eyeline is this young man was had a lot of anger. Had a lot of like, Napoleon Complex, I guess you would say, he's a very short guy who was like always, "Well, you gotta be the toughest guy in the school yards," who is all about physical representation. So he was roughing up the nerd character. Dad came out confronted him. And he goes, what are you going to do about it? I'm a kid. I'll beat your son up whatever I want. So in character, I had the dad cold clock him. I had him just punch him in the face. He's like, Wait a minute. He can't hit a kid. I go. No, he can. Is that what your character says? And he goes, Yeah, you can't hit me. I'm a kid. Abd Dad said, you put your hands on my son. I don't care. I'll go to jail. And you know what? I'll be laughing at you from the stall next to ya. Because no one puts their hand on my son. And they had this big conversation as characters when they were in jail. And mom was like, wow, we actually had a conversation about consequences of our behavior and how you may think you're doing it for the right reason. But that doesn't matter. And sometimes people don't care. So you got to make, you know, you got to be careful about what it is that you put out there. So I mean, those are I can tell stories all day. I would like literally we can be here for two hours. But those are just some ways that we try to get creative with how we connect to goals that people are having through the story. And sometimes it's not even what we planned, but paying attention to what players bring to the session and realizing, "Oh, that's what they really want to work on." And following kind of where they take the play, which again, is very much like a lot of aspects of play therapy and, you know, even Creative Arts Therapy.

Wyrmworks Publishing
So I'm wondering about parents, and if parents bringing their kids and reactions to to this method and what reactions you've gotten.

Jack Berkenstock Jr.
We've gotten a lot of different, I mean, most of the reactions that we've gotten from parents has been very, very positive. Most of the parents, one, are kind of surprised that their kids kind of doubled down on it as much as they do. And it's funny, we always get a mix of like, half of our parents are gamers themselves. So they're like, "Man, this gaming helped me when I was a kid so my kid needs some support. So I'm gonna get them into this." Which is cool because then we can transition them to like game together as a family or you know, let's say it is just mom and you know, the child, go to a convention together, like do a thing on the weekends as family right. But for just as many parents that don't understand it, I literally had a mom just recently, it was like, "Look, I don't understand anything that he's talked about. He said something about a hit point thing." And I went, "Oh, yeah, last session he had the option of whether he wanted to take the you know, the minimum hit point for his level boost, or whether he wanted to rule random so he could either get eight hit points or he risked it, you know, to get 13, and he rolled a 10 on his D10 for his hit points, and he was just over the moon." And again, not a therapeutic thing, ostensibly, right? But mom is like, his excitement, and just how happy he is and the fact that he's making friends in this group that he's starting to connect with outside of the group. And I'm like, well, that's our goal. You know, not only do we use this directly to work on goals that people have. We've also mixed in the aspect of we're not going to just play part of our program is that we teach the kids in our groups, how to be GMs. So now you can start a game club at your local school, you started wanting your library start wandering your home, so you can take these things that you're learning and use them to develop natural social supports. We also run a lot of our games out of game stores. So we'll have like a private room at the game store. "Hey, we're just the game group. Right?" That's all. Like we don't say to everybody, "Hi, we're the therapy group. Hi, everybody." Like we don't do that. But we normalize it, and the kids are like, "Wow, this place is awesome. Can I come back?" I'm like, "Yeah, you can even come back on a day I'm not here. And you can make friends, and guess what, they play Magic and they do minis and board games and all this cool stuff." That is going to open up this humongous world. Like how many games how many gamers can tell you, uh, friends that they've had for like 25-30 years? And where did you meet? At a table playing RPG or at a store or whatever, playing board games or Magic. So yeah, we really have gotten a lot of support from parents. They love how excited their kids get about it. They love the way that we're being creative about testing things like resilience and social skills, critical thinking, you know all these concepts. They like the way that we're getting to their child. And the fact of the end of the things that they tell us and you know, we had a story, just this past week where you've been here. The dice hate you some nights, right? It's just you, you can't roll above a 10 to save your life and one of the young persons in our group, let's just say he took that situation very emotionally. He was very upset, you know, crying because he was just, "I can't do anything. I'm just not any good to the group tonight. This is horrible." And we and my co-facilitator was totally, "Well wait a minute, dude. Like, yeah, these powers you have, that's awesome. But that's not as important as like three turns ago when you took a hit and come back to stabilize your buddy who is like on his third death save, right? So it's not what's on your sheet that's important. It's up here and what's in here." And he was just, "Really?" Like, he came around, and Mom's like, "Oh, thank God, I'm not the only person who sees this. If he isn't stellar at everything, he really has this like, esteem issue." She's like, "Thank you for working him through this," and I go, "Oh, role playing games are going to give you a lot of opportunity to test your resilience against, you know, whether it's the dice or poor planning or whatever." So yeah, I would say that parents've been very pleased with what it is that we do and how we do it because because of how it opens them up and how it opens up the world.

Jack Berkenstock Jr.
I'm not surprised. I mean, even you know, and we've talked about this that the games kind of have this inherent benefit to them. 

Jack Berkenstock Jr.
Oh, yeah. Absolutely.

Wyrmworks Publishing
You know, any kind of professional, you know, therapeutic aspect or anything like that. So you're already kind of starting out ahead.

Jack Berkenstock Jr.
Yeah, that that's really one of the things that we try to express to folks is this is not the kind of a thing where every five minutes we asked her how do you feel question or it's like, you know, hyper intensive, because you just said it yourself. I said it earlier right. I gained inherent benefit just from playing. Now, some people don't need therapeutic advanced intervention on it, right? This is why you'd have like just basic social skills groups where we just play to get better at friends. We use it also to like, okay, how can we work on maybe depression or anxiety in the framework of a role playing game, but it really is about taking that experience that people have naturally and just kind of guiding or directing it a little bit with some intentional creation of either the storyline, the NPC, the challenges that we run into. That's really what's at the heart of it with which again, we want to when it's clinical, we will make sure our goals are at the forefront, so we're not just getting paid to have fun. But yeah, at its heart, anyone can gain provided with the right group because there are some toxic circles out there. But for the most part, yeah, you gain so much, not only as a player, but that's the other reason we teach kids how to be GMs because now, oh my gosh, I could tell that story if we had time, if you don't mind, I wanna make sure…time here. 

Wyrmworks Publishing
Yeah, Absolutely.

Jack Berkenstock Jr.
So one of the young men, that guy that I mentioned earlier with the job. One of the other stories was we joke that we take the summers off of Bodhana that our clients run the group, so we take the part of players, and they run the show. So we teach them all about, you know, five act structure and how to set up a scenario and an encounter and a challenge. They pick the system. They design it with one of the facilitators so they get help, and the first time that he ran this, and I don't mean this to sound cruel when I say the words, it was just a train wreck to a to a degree, right. He ran the game and it was very much that you know, he was telling a story that he felt was compelling and very interesting. And it was just shine a light on him. And all he was doing was just telling the story, and like one of the other kids in the group kind of leaned over me was like, are we going to do anything? And I was kind of like, I don't know, I'm not your GM. Why don't you ask him? And so at the at the end, he was like, "Can I have feedback?" And so everybody, we said, "Well, do you want very direct, honest feedback?" And he went, "Yes, I have to get better." We said okay, so we outlined everything. We were like, "Well, you didn't really listen to your players a lot, and you had a great story, but we didn't feel like we were a part of it. Right?" Everybody gave such great feedback. And he took like six months to replan, get a new story together. And when he designed it, the skill side flip of the act of listening, the reflective listening, working outside of his plan and his like pre-formed idea. Like that session he ran the second time around obliterated theory of mind for this young person, because he was like, "I want to do this right," so he really knuckled down and we're like, that is another layer of skill definition and demonstration when you talk about running. Not to mention the fact that it then gets that person out like you know, we have kids now that are running for their local school groups that are a part of our groups and now we get to talk about, "Well how did that feel, and well how was that like, and did they did they destroy your plot?" And he goes, "Oh, yeah, no plot survives first contact with players. We know this right?" All these truths. But again, we use them to benefit in helping people move forward. I love telling stories like this.

Wyrmworks Publishing
I love hearing them. So great. So you just rescued a djinni from the hands of an efreeti, and it offers you three wishes to achieve your goals to make the world better. What do you wish for?

Jack Berkenstock Jr.
I wish one I wish that people automatically saw the perspective of the other person that they're talking about before they were allowed to say something in response. I just I would I would probably wish that three times to make it even more so, but I would also wish that people learn to appreciate what they had within their means. And I'm just not going to be shy. I don't disagree with the person becoming a billionaire. But I think that's just ridiculous that anyone Person A needs that much money or B is then thereby entitled by their right of having that money or whatever, that they make the decisions for so many other people and it's all based out of greed so I just wish people were maybe maybe limited you know. Yeah, it's okay to have some nice things. I bought some C mon Kickstarters myself so yeah, extra money is cool. But, uh Yeah, I guess kind of equal distribution. So maybe that makes me a communist. I'm cancelled now.

Wyrmworks Publishing
I've been ranting about that for the past couple of weeks, so, with everything that's been going on on Twitter,

Jack Berkenstock Jr.
Yeah. Yeah. Too much too much money, too few people.

Wyrmworks Publishing
You know, if you could, if it's within your means to write a check, and go, "There, now as soon as this is taken and implemented, literally everyone in the world will have access to clean water." And like if you could do that, and like and not really, you know, wouldn't be able to affect the way that your life you know, your lifestyle or anything, 


Jack Berkenstock, Jr.
Yeah. Not a day.

Wyrmworks Publishing
and you could do that you don't? What is going on?

Jack Berkenstock Jr.
Nope. Absolutely. And I'd also I wish also that people would be able to recognize their biases and the impact of them not only on themselves, but on others I again, at my heart, I will fully admit this always, I follow the Buddha's path. It's very central and I just, you know, I want that Star Trek future. But unfortunately, we're not going to get there with with greed, hate, judgmental, and self serving ideology. You know, we have to we have we don't, we're not alone in this planet. We share it with other people, many other people and we got to stop thinking just of ourselves. So I guess if you had to put all those wishes under one label though, those would be my three wishes. Yeah.

Wyrmworks Publishing
That's great. I just kind of makes you dream, doesn't it?

Jack Berkenstock Jr.
Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. Well, we make it our reality in little pockets. Sometimes they have a mark sometimes they don't. So what I call the Eco principle. I know I'm not going to change the world. But I would like if something that I say at some point echoes back to the person I sent it to, and that it helps them out, either in a time of crisis or in a time of need. And I think that if everyone thought about what they say and how it would echo I think we'd hear a lot better things. You know?


Wyrmworks Publishing
Yeah. Absolutely. All right, so what one message, speaking of echoes, we'd like to give to gamers struggling with mental health issues

Jack Berkenstock, Jr.
um, While games can be therapeutic and beneficial. I would say that, you know, realize that There is a difference between a professional helping you with something mental health. And just gaming for fun, or you throw us. There's a difference between therapeutic benefit and clinical benefit. Clinical benefit is when you're targeting and diagnoses and mental health illness, what have you Therapeutic is you know, I spend right? Where did Human Services? I spent 60 hours a week being jacked,executive director and clinician. Yeah, for four to six hours. I don't want to be jacked, that's therapeutic. That's like a mini vacation that I can take from my dining room. So, I would say that with that one. Don't force your friends to be your therapist because that's not what they're there for. But on the other hand, I also want to kind of advise to all gamers, “Please. Use safety tools at your table and legit use them because they're helpful for fun, as well. As for everyone's general mental health, I will always, that's an advocacy point on, I'll never, this dog will never let go of that bone, in other words, so Yeah.

Wyrmworks Publishing
Yeah, yeah. And and you just I go that more that um, you know, I hear a lot of people say Well we don't use them but, you know, this group's been together for years and and whatever and stuff like okay well, you know but if you if you implemented them, there may be something that just hasn't been addressed in all this time and maybe people feel like, well, it's been so long that I don't really feel like it's like it's too late to bring it up now. But but if you actually implement something like that then it what it's it's doing is it's at least offering to people the opportunity to address it.

Jack Berkenstock, Jr.
Right. It. Well, and it's and it's even because you know, I hear a lot of folks like well you know but yeah I come up with this great adventure and you know all the sudden you know they say no you can't do that and it's it's censorship. It's trying to stop, you know, well if you are my table then you know, and I'm like but that's part of safety tools letting people know like, yes this adventure is going to include themes of death, this, this, and people are like, “Well doesn’t that ruin the story?” You're playing a role-playing game. How many conversations about meta do we have to have? Like, we all know fiction How many times do you guess a movie halfway in but you watch until the end anyway? But you hit upon the most important point is yes humans gaming together for years, but like you said, you don't know if one of the people at that table has been cringing every single time that you play an NPC or inject the plot element or maybe it's worse than cringing, Maybe it's really traumatizing or triggering this person. But now they're sitting in silence miserable, not wanting, because we're herd animals, we don't want to upset the apple cart. So people are nine times out of 10, going to be more quiet. which is why I and a bunch of other folks will also say that until you've had an unsafe table, you really haven't had a safe table until people at the table know that if they were to raise their hand or tap an X card or you know, push a button on script change until that has been respected, heard and acknowledged. You don't technically have a safe table, you have a table intending to be safe, but until you've tested it, you're not safe yet. Because you don't know if what would happen or if somebody would even bring it up, you don't know. And the beautiful thing is, is once you start having that safety table. Yeah, it's a little rough at first when everything comes out, right? Or maybe you start to have those convos put over time. Everything smooths down, people are feeling a lot better. And you know, I'll advocate script change again as the safety tool kit. That actually is more positive. It's, It's not Censorship. It's a beautiful thing designed by Beau Jágr Sheldon, you can get it on, itch.io, it's fantastic. So, I can get on the soap box there. Sorry about that.

Wyrmworks Publishing
No, absolutely. So. Okay, so, you may have already answered this question. But one, what one message would you like to give gamers who are not struggling with mental health issues?

Jack Berkenstock, Jr.
Enjoy the game. And please for the love of all that is, holy, do not gate. Keep this hobby, because there was a time where you didn't know a d12 from a D20 and you didn't know what RPG was, and it doesn't belong to anyone. And if you like D&D over another system or another edition, just, say you like it and that's it. Like, stop gatekeeping. Stop shaming. Stop. Just stop boxing people out of this hobby again. I'm 50 this year, I legit was stuffed in lockers in high school for playing Dungeons and Dragons, like the people go. “Oh Satanic panic, chuckle, chuckle.” No, that was real kids. Okay that happened. Nerds, when I say that generically, I'm sorry. But between Oh my God these superhero franchises are so over it right now or all these different things. I'm like man I, you don't know what you got right now. Like we're in a culture where nerds rule and again, Whatever you're into, let's celebrate it again. This goes back to my Buddhist stuff I realized. But could we celebrate the things we have in common as opposed to pointing out the things that we do not have in common? That would make conversation daily life, getting a sandwich, it would make everything just so much easier, so please don't keep this hobby everyone plays. And there's room for everything. Yes, we have Warhammer. We also have Golden Sky Stories, you know? Yeah, I get pretty fired up about that one as well.

Wyrmworks Publishing
I hear, definitely hear that. All right. So what projects are you working on right now that you can talk about?

Jack Berkenstock, Jr.
Well, biggest one that I had said before was the Branch Riders role-playing game. It's a very it would take a while for me to go into all the ins and outs on it. But the basic story is that you are a Branch Rider. You are a warrior of sorts, a soldier. A fighter that is part of the elite squad that goes into, one of eight different, distinct realms to combat a force known as the Blight which seeks to create chaos, mistrust, you know, just want to create madness, and you go into these eight realms that are separated from each other to prevent the light from tearing the curtain that could disrupt all of reality. So you have skills at your disposal, gifts which are powers that you carry with you from your home realm. And each of those realms is based on a genre convention. So we have a steampunk world, the Western world, but they're all part of the same universe, and we actually for those who may be going to PAX Unplugged this year, in December 2nd through the 4th in Philadelphia PA, we are going to have a booth at PAX on the main floor, but we're also be running play tests of Branch Riders downstairs in the RPG library room. So that is probably one of our biggest projects. We have been picked up for publishing through Onyx Path. Publishing, who do a ton of different games. Most of you like Pugmire, Scion, Exalted,, yeah, scarred land, like tons of different systems that they do but we are being publishing by them. So we're hoping on a quarter 2 quarter 3 Kickstarter launch in 2023. We want to make sure, you know, the book of materials is about 95% done. And as far as other projects we're planning again for next year, Save against Fear convention, which will be in York PA during hopefully, again the month of October, that's our annual, three-day game convention, fundraiser, that we run, we're probably going to add back in more of an online component because we noticed people are kind of a little bit more, so about doing that. And for any professionals of my hear this, by then we have our Tvg, 201 or Advanced Level Training course which is designed for people who already know about RPGs but want to learn about how to build the therapy in for clinical use that will be run this Saturday from 9 am to 5 pm on zoom. It's two hundred dollars for the eight hour session but I'll get you seven CE hours through NBC. So if any professionals out there, just go to our main website and you can find it. It's www.thebodhanagroup.org. I'm sorry, the thebodhanagroup.org. And you find all the other information. Those are kind of our major products and projects at the moment.

Wyrmworks Publishing
Okay, so then what's the best place to contact you? That website then is the best place to start. Right? And we will…

Jack Berkenstock, Jr.
Yeah, you go ahead. I'm sorry.

Wyrmworks Publishing
Oh no, go ahead.

Jack Berkenstock, Jr.
Yeah, so yeah, if you go to the main website there's a Contact Us link there. You can also just email us theBodhanagroup@gmail.com. You can also find us @theBodhanaGroup on Twitter. We're also on Facebook as the Bodhana group. We're exploring one of the other new shots for social media. We're all at the Bodhana group on Instagram. But yeah if you want to get in touch with us for any number of the things that we've talked about consultation training information about us. Yeah, just email us thebodhanagroup@gmail.com, and I'm normally the one who answers those, as executive director.

Wyrmworks Publishing
Okay, well Jack thanks so much for coming on the show and…

Jack Berkenstock, Jr.
I wear all the hats. So

Wyrmworks Publishing
everyone check out those links in the show notes.

Jack Berkenstock, Jr.
All right. Thank you.

Wyrmworks Publishing  
Thanks so much for watching, for listening, and a huge shout out to those who support us on a monthly basis through our Patreon. It really makes a difference. It gives us a chance to interact with you on our Discord, which I love just getting to know people better. And so a big shout out to our new patrons Roy, Melestrua, and Michaella, thank you so much for your support. 

Wyrmworks Publishing  
Alright, if you see the show being helpful, hit the like button if you're watching this on YouTube, or if you'd like to see more, subscribe. If you know people that need to hear this, please pass it on to them. And if you, like me, think everyone needs to hear this, pass it on your social media friends. And really, we would love… Alright, the holidays coming up. This is my request for… this my Christmas list, my holiday wish list. However you watch this or listen to this, whatever you use to get your podcasts, or if you're watching it on YouTube, stop and leave a review. If you're watching this on YouTube, leave a comment. I'd love to hear from you. If you're listening to this on some kind of a podcast player, you get it from a podcast directory somewhere, go to that directory and leave a review. It makes a huge difference in helping more people find this. And so please I'd really appreciate it. If you could just make a point and if you're if you're busy doing something right now, give yourself a reminder and jump in later and post that review. That'd be really helpful and just gives us the opportunity to help a lot more people. Alright, so thank you so much for joining us to make lives better with D&D. 

Wyrmworks Publishing  
Let me close with this question: How do you use roleplaying games to provide encouragement to your friends?

Transcribed by https://otter.ai